The Memory Palace (29 page)

“Come to Venice with me,” he says, when I gather my things to go inside. “I have to buy some antiques. Please come. You’re an artist; you can help me pick things out.”

“I’ll think about it,” I say.

“Don’t think too long. I’m going soon.”

The next day I return to town to get my bike and drop off another faux-antique watercolor at Emilio’s. “Have you ever made an icon?” he asks.

“No, but I could.”

“Wait, I have a better idea. An illumination with gold leaf. Can you do gilding? I’ll get you the vellum but you pay for the gold. Make a big initial, any letter you want. Something medieval or early Renaissance. You know what I’m saying?”

“I think so.”

“You sure you know? I’ll pay you a lot more for this kind of thing.”

“Fine. Thanks, that’s great. I can use the money.”

“Don’t show anyone, though,” says Emilio. “I’m paying you under the table. Let’s just keep it a secret, agreed?”

“I’m good at that,” I say.

Back home in Cerreto, I am in the kitchen reading a book about illumination, one of Cerreto’s new kittens, Puline, upon my lap. I can smell Gabriella’s cooking from upstairs, where I plan to go for dinner. Lately, I eat there almost every night. I’ve just thrown a log in the fire when Elsa walks in the room.

“Well, are you going to Venice with that man?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

She lets out a little snort. “He’s married, huh?”

“Yes,” I say, and return to my book.

“Men only want one thing, so it’s best to use them as you like. That’s what I do. You should do the same.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“I don’t bother with Swedes or Germans. Especially American men. They’re crybabies. I only sleep with Italians. Southern Italians. I have a Neapolitan soul.”

Here we go again, I think. Neapolitan, my ass. “I have work to do,” I say, then add, “By the way, I put my name on the answering machine. There are three of us living here, not just two.”

Later, in my studio, I consider the art of illumination; illumination, derived from the Latin,
illuminare:
to illuminate or enlighten. What is luminous to me is that I need to make my picture absolutely perfect so Emilio will give
me more work. I only have enough money for two more months in Italy, and then what? Go back to Chicago, where my mother probably is? I look out my window at the stars. You can barely see the moon in the city, let alone the stars. I want to stay. But I’ve never used gold before or painted on vellum or parchment. Emilio will pay for the vellum but I’ll have to buy the gold leaf, a burnisher, gesso, and other expensive things.

Illumination originally meant the application of minium, red lead, to decorate a piece of religious text written in black ink. But over time, artist-scribes applied raised and highly burnished gold, embellishing codices with delicate and meticulously painted letters and miniature scenes. They did it to honor God but also to help the reader find his way around the text. The first illuminated manuscript I remember seeing was at the Cleveland Museum of Art with my mother. It was Queen Isabella’s Book of Hours, made in fifteenth century Spain. I remember the pages on display were of Christ’s crucifixion, but what drew me to the book wasn’t the pious scene at the cross but the rich gold border surrounding it, decorated with flowers, butterflies, and birds. Each tiny bloom, wing, and beak looked so real and was rendered in such detail I felt I could crawl right inside the page.

Puline purrs at my feet while I read about how to make something gold: First I outline my drawing in ink, next I paint on gesso where the gold will go. When the gesso is dry, I breathe on the raised letter or design to moisten it so it can receive the thin sheaf of gold I carefully lay down with tweezers. After I apply each layer of gold, I breathe on it and burnish the surface until it glistens in the light. The painting comes after illumination. But what should I paint? I could make the letter M for my own name just in case I have to let it go. I will make a beautiful floriated letter, surrounded by an intricate border of flowers and birds, deer and exotic beasts. It will be a historiated letter, like one from an ancient Book of Hours where inside is a miniature scene from a story. In the background I’ll paint blue hills and a winding river, a garden, and a sky dotted with birds. Something full of beauty and longing, like Maria Callas singing in my grandmother’s basement, like my mother’s hands wavering above ivory keys.

After several drawings I am ready to start. Emilio had seen my final sketch and liked it. But when I think of Emilio touching my art with his long yellow fingers, I cringe. I imagine him handing my delicate painting over to a couple of rich loud Americans. Then I hear his voice in my head:
If it’s good I’ll give you a thousand dollars. But it has to look old.
A thousand American dollars will buy me two more months at Cerreto and food. Massimo from upstairs always says that Florence is a putana, a mercantile city only interested in selling her soul. Have I become one of her own?

The day I stop at Emilio’s studio to collect money for the vellum I’ve bought, he’s not there. Without the money, I can’t afford to buy gold. I pull out his business card to see if his shop address is on it. When I get to his store, the place is closed. Something in the window catches my eye. It’s my first Art Nouveau painting of the dancer. I’m happy it’s on prominent display. Then I see the sign. antica & autentica, circa 1900.

Have I been making forgeries?

Had he told me but I was too stupid to understand? “Are you sure you know what I’m saying? I’ll pay you a lot more for this kind of thing.” The gerbil wheel in my brain starts spinning: If I turn him in he can do the same to me. They’ll send me back. And he’ll blame me. Tell the police he bought art from me that I said was old. He could play dumb. What should I do? What if he calls, wants to know about the picture I promised?

Later that night, I am thinking of Robert when the phone rings. I jump to answer it but hear Paolo’s voice on the answering machine and decide not to pick up. Suddenly I hear a sound like thunder coming from somewhere below the house. My first thought is that it’s a bomb. With all this talk of war in the news—Iraqi bomb threats in American schools, the pipe bomb that went off at the American discothèque in Arezzo, only an hour from here—what’s next? I tell myself it must be the water heater or gas tank or something else. It couldn’t be a bomb.

The TV and lights go off with a pop. I try the phone. Dead. When I hear the second big ka-boom I grab my sweater, passport, and Puline. What if there is an explosion and the house catches on fire? The trees could go up in flames. We have no water here; this isn’t a city, there’s no fire station,
no truck of heroes heading to my house to save me. No one is home on the farm; even Sabina, Alfredo, and his mother aren’t home. Where has everyone gone? I stand outside in the cold damp night, clutching the small cat to my chest, waiting for someone to drive up the hill and take me home, give me hot milk and honey, read me a story, and put me to bed. But where is home? And whom am I waiting for? It starts to rain. I stand in the driveway and wait until I am thoroughly soaked and feel ridiculous and tired, then go back inside and crawl into bed.

The week before Christmas, Paolo tells me he has bought me a little gift. We are in his shop and his son stops by to say hello. His son is eighteen now, handsome and tall. He is only five years younger than Robert. “He’s a good boy,” says Paolo, watching his son wave goodbye from the door.

“He might go to war, you know,” I say. “He might get drafted to Iraq.”

“You are too serious sometimes,” says Paolo.

On the way to the restaurant, we pass a tall man from Senegal in a thin jacket, selling handbags on the street. The man calls out to us, “Gucci! Gucci! Armani! Vuitton!” His wares are spread out on a shabby old blanket, probably the same one he covers himself with at night. Does my mother sleep on the street like that? I haven’t told a soul here about her, her illness, about how she could be dead and I wouldn’t even know.

I want to talk about my mother to someone, anyone, but instead I turn to Paolo and go on a rant about how poor immigrant men from Senegal have to sleep ten to a trailer in Florence and have no legal rights. I tell him that I am now illegal too, unless I get a legitimate full-time job or get married.
Imposter
, says my mother’s voice inside my head.
You are the imposter now. You are a forgery. You’re not even real.

“I’m tired,” says Paolo. “Can we talk about something else?”

I am tired too.

Later, alone in my room, I take out the print Paolo had given me the first day we met. It smells like his shop, like sandalwood and a faint hint of mold. Is the picture of Hermes, god of dreamers, nomads, and thieves? Or maybe it’s
the Fool from the tarot, blindsided, ready to step off a cliff. Where to next? I ask myself. Should I stay or should I go? And if I stay, will I have to forge a life that isn’t true?

I never call Paolo again or stop by his shop. He phones me once but I don’t return his call. One afternoon I see his son near the Duomo. I pull my hood down so he can’t recognize me, and feel full of shame. I never call Emilio again either. I avoid walking past his studio and his store. I avoid crossing the river altogether, for everyone seems to know you there, everyone watches who comes and goes. I end up getting a job teaching art history at the American School in Florence and resolve to make my $1,000 the old-fashioned way. With my first paycheck, I buy a small packet of gold leaf and tuck the delicate sheets away for another time, for an illumination of my own, not someone else’s.

In January, America bombs Baghdad. I miss my sister and my grandma, who, by the time I see her again, probably won’t remember my name. I miss my mother too and am convinced she is sleeping on a park bench in the snow. I watch Baghdad blow up each night on the television, buildings exploding into bursts of green light. If you didn’t know it was a war, you’d think the night-vision sky looked magical, like the Night of the Shooting Stars. Despite the bombing, the streets are filled for some reason with brides; Baghdad defies the West with the oldest ritual in the world. After a month of this, the school I teach at and every other American place closes because of bomb threats. Then one morning Elsa bursts into my bedroom at five in the morning, screaming at me because Puline, the cat, had vomited on her newspaper the night before. In my half-sleep state I think she’s my mother; I pull the covers over my face so she can’t get to my neck. I want to go home.

The only airline flying out of Florence during the First Gulf War is Yugoslav Airlines. There is one condition if you want to leave the country on their
plane. You have to spend four nights in Belgrade as a tourist, even though Yugoslavia is about to go to war too and everything is shut down. At the airport, armed soldiers are crawling all over and customs takes an eternity. Something bad is about to happen and I hope I am gone by the time it does.

I spend all four days sequestered in an ugly state-run hotel taking naps and trying to figure out what to do when I get to Chicago. My last night before I fly back to America, I turn on the television to watch the news. On the screen is a BBC special about starving Kurds displaced by the American-Iraqi war. American helicopters fly low to the ground and drop frozen chickens onto a swarming crowd. Some chickens hit the heads of old men and young mothers holding babies. The men and women fall to the ground as if they have been shot. There aren’t enough chickens to go around and the camera pans to a fight starting up between two groups of hysterical men vying for a few frozen birds covered in sand.

I turn the TV off, sick of war and all the heartache in the world, sick of myself. I go down to the hotel restaurant to eat. Will this be the last year I go by my old name? I want someone to say it, Myra, to call out to me so that I’ll look up. But there’s no one here I know. When the waitress brings me my tea, I hold the slice of lemon up to my nose to breathe it in. I know the next day I will land in wintry Chicago without a place to live, my mother homeless and trying to track me down. I will have to change my name, find a job, and start over again, maybe in a new city. But for the moment, when I close my eyes, I smell the grove of lemon trees at Cerreto heavy with fruit; I smell the rich russet earth, the chestnut trees and pines. I promise myself I will never live anyplace ugly and dangerous again.