The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales (9 page)

“Signora! Attenzione!”

The voice was from above. A window had been pushed wide and a woman was leaning out to shake a carpet into the street. Margaret Johnson stopped, stepping back a few paces. Dust flew down, then settled. An arm came out and closed the shutters. She went on.

And quite possibly Noel, then, as dusk fell, his mind being still unsettled, would have walked over three blocks and across the park to his sister Isabels apartment. Didn’t he, in personal matters, always turn to women? Isabel, yes, would be the first to hear the news from abroad. She would not be as satisfactory a listener as Margaret, for being both a divorcee and something of a businesswoman—she ran the hat department in Winston-Salem’s largest department store—she was inclined to be entirely too casual about everybody’s affairs except her own. She would be beautifully dressed in one of her elaborate lounging outfits, for nobody appreciates a Sunday evening at home quite so much as a working woman. She would turn off the television to accommodate Noel, and bring him a drink of the very best Scotch. When she had heard the entire story of the goings-on in Florence, she would as likely as not say, “Well, after all, why not?” Hadn’t she always advanced the theory that Clara had as much sense as most of the women she sold hats to? “They’re going to want a dowry,” she might add.

Now mentioning a dowry that way would be all to the good. Noel would feel a great relief. He disliked being taken advantage of, and he was obviously uneasy that the Naccarellis were only after Clara’s money. Wouldn’t Margaret be staying in the best hotel, eating at the best restaurants, shopping in the best shops? The Italians had “caught on,” of course, from the first that she was well off. But now, through Isabel, he would have a name for all this. Dowry. It was customary. “Of course, they’re all Catholics,” he would go on to complain. Isabel would not be of any use at all there. Religion was of no interest to her whatever. She could not see why it was of interest to anybody.

Later as they talked, Isabel would ask Noel about the Communist scare. She would be in doubt that the crooner was actually such a
threat to the nation or the tobacco company that a song or two would ruin them all. And was all this trouble and upset necessary—trips to Washington, committee meetings, announcements of policy and what not? Noel would not be above reminding her that she liked her dividend checks well enough not to want them put in any jeopardy. He might not come right out and say this, but it would cross his mind. More and more in recent years, Noel’s every experience found immediate reference in his business. Or had he always been this way, if, in his younger years, less obviously so? Yet Mrs, Johnson remembered once on a summer vacation they had taken at Myrtle Beach during the Depression, Noel playing ball on the sand with the two children, when a wind had driven them inside their cottage and for a short time they had been afraid a hurricane was starting. How they had saved to make that trip! That was all Noel could recall about it in later years. But at the time he had remarked as the raw wind streamed sand against the thin tremulous walls—he was holding Clara in his lap, “Well, at least we’re all together.” The wind had soon dropped, and the sea had enjoyed a quiet green dusk; their fear had gone, too, but she could not forget the steadying effect of his words. When, at what subtle point, had money come to seem to him the very walls that kept out the storm? Or was the trouble simply that with Clara and her problem always before him at home, he had found business to be a thing he could at least handle successfully, as he could not, in common with all mankind (poor Noel!), ultimately “handle” life? And business was, after all, so “normal.”

Whatever the answer to how it had happened—and perhaps the nature of the times had had a lot to do with it: depression, the New Deal, the war—the fact was that it had happened, and Margaret knew now that nothing on earth short of the news of the imminent death of her or Clara or both, could induce Noel Johnson to Florence until the business in hand was concluded to the entire satisfaction of the tobacco company, whose future must, at all personal cost, be secure. On the other hand, since she had already foreseen that if he came here he would spoil everything, wasn’t this an advantage?

She had wandered, in this remote corner of the city, into a small, poor bar. She lighted a cigarette and asked for a coffee. Since there was no place to sit, she stood at the counter. Two young men were working back of the bar, and seeing that she only stared at her coffee without drinking it, they became extremely anxious to make her happy. They wondered whether the coffee was hot enough, if she wanted more sugar or some other thing perhaps. She shook her head, smiling her thanks, seeing as though from a distance their great dim eyes, their white teeth and their kindness.
“Simpatica
,” one said, more about her than to her.
“Si, simpatica,”
the other agreed. They had exchanged a nod. One had an inspiration.
“Americana?”
he asked.

“Si
,” said Mrs. Johnson.

They stood back, continuing to smile like adults who watch a child, while she drank her coffee down. At this moment, she had the feeling that if she had requested their giant espresso machine, which seemed, besides a few cheap cups and saucers and a pastry stand, to be their only possession, they would have ripped it up bodily and given it to her. And perhaps, for a moment, this was true.

What is it, to reach a decision? It is like walking down a long Florentine street where, at the very end, a dim shape is waiting until you get there. When Mrs. Johnson finally reached this street and saw what was ahead, she moved steadily forward to see it at long last up close. What was it? Well, nothing monstrous, it seemed, but human, with a face much like her own, that of a woman who loved her daughter and longed for her happiness.

“I’m going to do it,” she thought. “Without Noel.”

11

Signor Naccarelli was late coming home for lunch the next day; the water in the pasta pot had boiled away once and had to be replenished. He was not as late, however, as he had been many times
before, or as late as he would have preferred to be that day. And though his news was good, his temper was short. Signora Johnson had talked with her husband on the telephone from America. Signor Johnson could not come to Italy from America. He could not leave his business. They were to proceed with the wedding without Signor Johnson. He neatly baled mouthfuls of spaghetti on his fork, mixed mineral water with a little wine and found ways of cutting off the effusive rejoicing his family was given to. The real fact was that he was displeased with the American signora. Why, after dressing herself in the new Italian costume of printed white silk, which must have cost at least 60,000 lire in the Via Tornabuoni—and with the chic little hat, too—should she give him her news and then leave him in the café after thirty minutes, saying “lunch” and “time to go” and “Clara”? American women were at the mercy of their children. It was shocking and disgusting. She had made the appointment with him, well and good. In the most fashionable café in Florence; they had been observed talking deeply together over an aperitif in the shadow of a great green umbrella. It would not be the first time he had been observed with this lady about the city. And then, after thirty minutes—! An Italian man would see to manners of this sort. This bread was stale. Were they all eating it, or was it saved from last week, especially for him?

Signora Naccarelli, meanwhile, from the mention of the word “wedding,” had quietly taken over everything. She had been more or less waiting up to this time, neither impatient nor anxious, but, like a natural force, quite aware of how inevitable she was, while the others debated and decided superficial affairs. The heart of the matter in Signora Naccarelli’s view was so overwhelmingly enormous that she did not have to decide to heed it, because there was nothing outside of it to make this decision. She simply
was
the heart—that great pulsing organ that could bleed with sorrow or make little fishlike leaps of joy and that always knew just what it knew. What it knew in Signora Naccarelli’s case was very little and quite sufficient. Her son Fabrizio was handsome and good, and Clara, the little American
flower, so sweet and gentle, would bear children for him. The signora’s arms had yearned for some time for Clara and were already beginning to yearn for her children, and this to the signora was exactly the same thing as saying that the arms of the Blessed Virgin yearned for Clara and for Clara’s children, and this in turn was the same as saying that the Holy Mother Church yearned likewise. It was all very simple and true.

Informed with such certainties, Signora Naccarelli had not been inactive. A brother of a friend of her nephew’s was a priest who had studied in England. She had fixed on him already, since he spoke English, as the very one for Clara’s instruction. That same afternoon she set about arranging a time for them to meet. Within a few days, the priest was reporting to her that Clara had a real devotion to the Virgin. The signora had known all along that this was true. A distant cousin of Signor Naccarelli’s was secretary to a
monsignore
at the Vatican, and through him special permission was obtained for Clara to be married in a full church ceremony. At this the signora’s joy could not be contained, and she went so far as to telephone Mrs. Johnson and explain these developments to her, a word at a time, in Italian, at the top of her voice, with tears.

“Capisce, signora? In chiesa! Capisce?”

Mrs. Johnson did not
capisce
. She thought from the tears that something must have gone wrong.

But nothing had, or did, until the morning in the office of the
parroco
, where they gathered a little more than two weeks before the wedding to fill out the appropriate forms.

12

What had happened was not at all clear for some time; it was not even clear that anything had.

The four of them—Clara and Fabrizio, with Margaret Johnson and Signor Naccarelli for witnesses—were assembled in the office of
the
parroco
, a small dusty room with a desk, a few chairs and several locked cabinets that reached to the ceiling and one window looking down on a cloister. In the center of the cloister was a hexagonal medieval well. It was nearing noon. Whatever noise there was seemed to gather itself together and drowse in the sun on the stone pavings below, so that Mrs. Johnson experienced the reassuring tranquillity of silence. Signor Naccarelli, hat in hand, took a nervous turn or two around the office, looked at a painting that was propped in the back corner and, with a sour downturning of his mouth, said something uncomplimentary about priests, which Mrs. Johnson did not quite catch. Fabrizio sat by Clara and twirled a clever straw ornament attached to her bag. So much stone was all that kept them cool. The chanting in the church below had stopped, but the priest did not come.

The hours ahead were planned: they would go to lunch to join Giuseppe and Franca, his wife, and two or three other friends. Of course, Mrs. Johnson was explaining to herself, this smell of candle smoke, stone dust and oil painting is to them just what blackboards, chalk and old Sunday-school literature are to us; there’s probably no difference at all if you stay open-minded. To be ready for the questions that they were there to answer, she made sure that she had brought her passport and Clara’s. She drew them out of their appropriate pocket in the enormous bag Winston-Salem’s best department store had advised for European travel and held them ready.

Signor Naccarelli decided to amuse her. He sat down beside her. Documents, he explained in a jaunty tone, were the curse of Italy. You could not become a corpse in Italy without having filled in the proper document. There were people in offices in Rome still sorting documents filed there before the war. What war? they would say if you told them. But, Mrs. Johnson assured him, all this kind of thing went on in America, too. The files were more expensive, perhaps. She got him to laugh. His quick hands picked up the passports. Clara and Fabrizio were whispering to each other. Their voices, too, seemed to go out into the sun, like a neighborhood sound. Signor
Naccarelli glanced at Mrs. Johnsons passport picture—how terrible! She was much more beautiful than this. Claras next—this of the signorina was better, somewhat. A page turned beneath his thumb.

A moment later, Signor Naccarelli had leaped up as though stung by a bee. He hastened to Fabrizio, to whom he spoke rapidly in Italian. Then he shot from the room. Fabrizio leaped up, also.
“Ma Papà! Non possiamo fare nulla
—!” The priest came, but it was too late. He and Fabrizio entered into a long conversation. Clara retreated to her mother’s side. When Fabrizio turned to them at last, he seemed to have forgotten all his English. “My father—forget—remember—the appointments,” he blundered. Struck by an idea, he whirled back to the priest and embarked on a second conversation, which he finally summarized to Clara and her mother, “Tomorrow.”

At that, precisely as though he were a casual friend who hoped to see them again sometime, he bowed over Mrs. Johnson’s hand, made an appropriate motion to Clara and turned away. They were left alone with the priest.

“Tomorrow” …
domani
. Mrs. Johnson knew by now to be the word in Italy most likely to signal the finish of everything. She felt, indeed, without the ghost of an idea how or why it had happened, that everything was trembling, tottering about her, had perhaps, without her knowledge, already collapsed. She looked out on the priest like someone seen across a gulf. As if to underscore the impression, he spread his hands with a little helpless shrug and said, “No Eeenglish.”