The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales (7 page)

He paused. “I understand that your husband is away.” She nodded. “So you have undertaken this—ah—experiment entirely on your own.” She nodded again, dumbly. Her throat had tightened. The word “experiment” was damning; she had thought of it herself. No one, of course, should experiment with any human being, much less ones own daughter. But wasn’t the alternative, to accept things as they were, even worse? It was all too large, too difficult to explain.

The principal stared down at his desk in an embarrassed way. “These realities are often hard for us to face,” he said. “Yet from all I have been able to learn, you did know. It had all been explained to you, along with the best techniques, the limits of her capabilities—”

“Yes,” she faltered. “I did know. But I know so much else besides. I know that in so many ways she is as well as you and I. I know that the doctors have said that no final answers have been arrived at in these things.” She was more confident now. Impressive names could be quoted; statements, if need be, could be found in writing. “Our mental life is not wholly understood as yet. Since no one knows the extent to which a child may be retarded, so no one can say positively that Clara’s case is a hopeless one. We know that she is not one bit affected physically. She will continue to grow up just like any other girl. Even if marriage were ever possible to her, the doctors say that her children would be perfectly all right. Everyone sees that she behaves normally most of the time. Do I have to let the few ways she
is slow stand in the way of all the others to keep her from being a whole person, from having a whole life?” She could not go on.

“But those Tew ways,’” he said, consenting, it was obvious, to use her term, “are the main ones we are concerned with here. Don’t you see that?”

She agreed. She did see. And yet…

At the same moment, in another part of the building, trivial, painful things were happening to Clara—no one could possibly want to hear about them.

The serene fall afternoon, as she left the school, was as disjointed as if hurricane and earthquake had been at it. Toward nightfall, Mrs. Johnson telephoned to Noel to come home. At the airport, with Clara waiting crumpled like a bundle of clothes on the backseat of the car, she confessed everything to him. When he said little, she realized he thought she had gone out of her mind. Clara was sent to the country to visit an aunt and uncle, and Mrs. Johnson spent a month in Bermuda. Strolling around the picture-postcard landscape of the resort, she said to herself, I was out of my mind, insane. As impersonal as advertising slogans, or skywriting, the words seemed to move out from her, into the golden air.

Courage, she thought now, in a still more foreign landscape, riding the train back to Florence.
Coraggio
. The Italian word came easily to mind. Mrs. Johnson belonged to various clubs, and campaigns to clean up this or raise the standards of that were frequently turned over to committees headed by her. She believed that women in their way could accomplish a great deal. What was the best way to handle Noel? How much did the Naccarellis know? As the train drew into the station, she felt her blood race, her whole being straighten and poise to the fine alertness of a drawn bow. Whether Florence knew it or not, she invaded it.

As for how much the Naccarelli family knew or didn’t know or cared or didn’t care, no one not Italian had better undertake to say. It was never clear. Fabrizio threatened suicide when Clara left. The mother of Clara had scorned him because he was Italian. No other
reason. Everyone had something to say. The household reeled until nightfall, when Fabrizio plunged toward the central open window of the
salotto
. The serious little maid, who had been in love with him for years, leaped in front of him with a shriek, her arms thrown wide. Deflected, he rushed out of the house and went tearing away through the streets. The Signora Naccarelli collapsed in tears and refused to eat. She retired to her room, where she kept a holy image that she placed a great store by. Signor Naccarelli alone enjoyed his meal. He said that Fabrizio would not commit suicide and that the ladies would probably be back. He had seen Americans take fright before; no one could ever explain why. But in the end, like everyone else, they would serve their own best interests. If he did not have some quiet, he would certainly go out and seek it elsewhere.

He spent the pleasantest sort of afternoon locked in conversation with Mrs. Johnson a few days after her return. It was all an affair for juggling, circling, balancing, very much to his liking. He could not really say she had made a conquest of him: American women were too confident and brisk. But he could not deny that encounters with her had a certain flavor.

The lady had consented to go with him on a drive up to San Miniato, stopping at the casino for a cup of tea and a pastry. Signor Naccarelli managed to get in a drive to Bello Sguardo, as well, and many a remark about young love and many a glance at his companion’s attractive legs and figure. Margaret Johnson achieved a cool but not unfriendly position while folding herself into and out of a car no bigger than an enclosed motorcycle. The management of her skirt alone was enough to occupy her entire attention.

“They are in the time of life,” Signor Naccarelli said, darting the car through a narrow space between two motor scooters, “when each touch, each look, each sigh arises from the heart, the heart alone.” He removed his hands from the wheel to do his idea homage, flung back his head and closed his eyes. Then he snapped to and shifted gears. “For them love is without thought, as to draw breath, to sleep, to walk. You and I—we have come to another stage. We have known
all this before—we think of the hour, of some business—so we lose our purity, who knows how? It is sad, but there is nothing to do. But we can see our children. I do not say for Fabrizio, of course—it would be hard to find a young Florentine who has had no experience. I myself at a younger age, at a much younger age—do you know my first love was a peasant girl? It was at the villa where I had gone out with my father. A
contadina
. The spring was far along. My father stayed too long with the animals. I became, how shall I say—bored, yes, but something more also. She was very beautiful. I still can dream of her, only her—I never succeed to dream of others. I do not know if your daughter will be for Fabrizio the first, or will not be. I would say not, but still—he is
figlio di mamma
, a good boy—I do not know.” He frowned. They turned suddenly and shot up a hill. When they gained the crest, he came to a dead stop and turned to Mrs. Johnson. “But for her he has the feeling of the first woman! I am Italian and I tell you this. It is unmistakable! That,
cara signora
, is what I mean to say.” Starting forward again, the car wound narrowly between tawny walls richly draped with vines. They emerged on a view and stopped again. Cypress, river, hill and city like a natural growth among them—they looked down on Tuscany. The air was fresher here, but undoubtedly very hot below. There was a slight haze, just enough to tone away the glare, but even on the distant blue hills outlines of a tree or a tower were distinct to the last degree—one had the sense of being able to see everything exactly as it was.

“There is no question with Clara,” Mrs. Johnson murmured. “She has been very carefully brought up.”

“Not like other American girls, eh? In Italy we hear strange things. Not only hear.
Cara signora
, we
see
strange things, also. You can imagine. Never mind. The signorina is another thing entirely. My wife has noticed it at once. Her innocence.” His eyes kept returning to Mrs. Johnson’s knee, which in the narrow silk skirt of her dress it was difficult not to expose. Her legs were crossed and her stocking whitened the flesh.

“She is very innocent,” said Mrs. Johnson.

“And her father? How does he feel? An Italian for his daughter? Well, perhaps in America you, too, hear some strange words about us. We are no different from others, except we are more—well, you see me here—we are here together—it is not unpleasant—I look to you like any other man. And yet perhaps I feel a greater—how shall I say? You will think I play the Italian when I say there is a greater …”

She did think just that. She had been seriously informed on several occasions recently that Anglo-Saxons knew very little about passion, and now Signor Naccarelli, for whom she had a real liking, was about to work up to the same idea. She pulled down her skirt with a jerk. “There are plenty of American men who appreciate women just as much as you do,” she told him.

He burst out laughing. “Of course! We make such a lot of foolishness, signora. But on such an afternoon—” His gesture took in the landscape. “I spoke of your husband. I think to myself, He is in cigarettes, after all. A very American thing. When you get off the boat, what do you say? ‘Where is Clara?’ says Signor Johnson. ‘Where is my leetle girl?’ ‘Clara, ah!’ you say. ‘She is back in Italy. She has married with an Italian. I forgot to write you—I was so busy.’”

“But I write to him constantly!” cried Mrs. Johnson. “He knows everything. I have told him about you, about Fabrizio, the signora, Florence, all these things.”

“But first of all you have considered your daughter’s heart. For yourself, you could have left us, gone, gone. Forever. Not even a postcard.” He chuckled. Suddenly he took a notion to start the car. It backed at once, as if a child had it on a string, then leaping forward, fairly toppled over the crest of a steep run of hill down into the city, speeding as fast as a roller skate. Mrs. Johnson clutched her hat. “When my son was married,” she cried, “my husband wrote out a check for five thousand dollars. I have reason to think he will do the same for Clara.”

“Ma che generoso!”
cried Signor Naccarelli, and it seemed he had hardly said it before he was jerking the hand brake to prevent their entering the hotel lobby.

She asked him in for an aperitif. He leaned flirtatiously at her over a small round marble-topped table. The plush decor of the Grand Hotel, with its gilt and scroll-edged mirrors that gave back wavy reflections, reminded Mrs. Johnson of middle-aged adultery, one party only being titled. But neither she nor Signor Naccarelli was titled. It was a relief to know that sin was not expected of them. If she were thinking along such lines, heaven only knew what was running in Signor Naccarelli’s head. Almost giggling, he drank down a red, bitter potion from a fluted glass.

“So you ran away,” he said, “upset. You could not bear the thought. You think and you think. You see the signorina’s unhappy face. You could not bear her tears. You return. It is wise. There should be a time for thought. This I have said to my wife, to my son. But when you come back, they say to me, ‘But if she leaves again?’ But I say, ‘The signora is a woman who is without caprice. She will not leave again.’”

“I do not intend to leave again,” said Mrs. Johnson, “until Clara and Fabrizio are married.”

As if on signal, at the mention of his name, Fabrizio himself stepped before her eyes, but at some distance away, outside the archway of the salon, which he had evidently had the intention of entering if something had not distracted him. His moment of distraction itself was pure grace, as if a creature in nature, gentle to one word only, had heard that word. There was no need to see that Clara was somewhere within his gaze.

Signor Naccarelli and Mrs. Johnson rose and approached the door. They were soon able to see Clara above stairs—she had promised to go no farther—leaning over, her hair falling softly past her happy face.
“Ciao
,” she said finally,
“come stai?”

“Bene. E tu?”

“Bene.”

Fabrizio stood looking up at her for so long a moment that Mrs. Johnsons heart had time almost to break. Gilt, wavy mirrors and plush decor seemed washed clean, and all the wrong, hurt years of her daughter’s affliction were not proof against the miracle she saw now.

Fabrizio was made aware of the two in the doorway. He had seen his father’s car and stopped by. A cousin kept his shop for him almost constantly nowadays. It was such a little shop, while he—he wished to be everywhere at once. Signor Naccarelli turned back to Mrs. Johnson before he followed his son from the lobby. There were tears in her eyes; she thought perhaps she observed something of the same in his own. At any rate, he was moved. He grasped her hand tightly, and his kiss upon it as he left her said to her more plainly than words, she believed, that they had shared together a beautiful and touching moment.

9

Letters, indeed, had been flying; the air above the Atlantic was thick with them. Margaret Johnson sat up nights over them. A shawl drawn round her, she worked at her desk near the window overlooking the Arno, her low night-light glowing on the tablet of thin air-mail stationery. High diplomacy in the olden days perhaps proceeded thus, through long cramped hours of weighing one word against another, striving for just the measure of language that would sway, persuade, convince.

She did not underestimate her task. In a forest of question marks, the largest one was her husband. With painstaking care, she tried to consider everything in choosing her tone: Noel’s humor, the season, their distance apart, how busy he was, how loudly she would have to speak to be heard.

Frankly, she recalled the time she had forced Clara into school; she admitted her grave error. Point at a time, she contrasted that disastrous
sequence with Clara’s present happiness. One had been a plan, deliberately contrived, she made clear; whereas here in Florence, events had happened of their own accord.