The Sonnet Lover (21 page)

The sky has softened to a lambent lilac and the air smells like lemons and roses. Torches have been lit along the lemon walk and Chinese paper lanterns strung along the garden paths: a river of light moving on the soft evening air between the dark, flamelike shapes of the cypress trees. I pluck a red rose from the vine growing on the balcony and slip it into my hair. As I turn to go back inside, I feel the breeze touch my bare back like a hand urging to me to hurry on downstairs and join the party.

As I come down the curving stairs of the rotunda, I see Cyril Graham look up—away from Gene and Mara Silverman—and startle. For a second I think there must be someone else behind me or that he’s mistaken me for someone else, but he bows his head toward me and, when I’ve reached the foot of the stairs, lifts my hand ceremoniously to his lips.

“Rose,” he says when his dry lips have grazed my skin, “you have bloomed. You were a very pretty girl, but you’ve become a beautiful woman.”

I smile back at him and say, “Cyril Graham. You haven’t changed a bit,” and even though it’s a line I’ve been practicing, I find I actually mean it. His flattery (with a sly nod to my increased age) and the combination of admiration and malice in his eyes more than make up for his infirmity. In fact, Cyril seems more himself than ever, as if age had boiled him down to his essential self—a crafty spirit who loves gossip and pretty things above all else.

“Ah, you can flatter all you like,” he says wagging a finger at me, “but I’m still very angry with you for staying away from La Civetta for so long. When you left you promised you would help me put the villa’s archives in order, but you never came back.”

It’s not exactly true. Yes, I had, a few months before my aunt died, agreed to work as Cyril’s research assistant and had even started the laborious work of sorting through both the old record books that belonged to the villa and the archives that Lucy Graham had “saved” from the Convent of Santa Catalina, but I was hardly essential to the project and I found a replacement before I left. There’s no point arguing with Cyril, though.

“I’m sorry I took so long returning,” I tell him, accepting a glass of Prosecco from a waiter in a white tunic, “but I was unavoidably delayed.”

Cyril laughs, recognizing the formulaic excuse he gave our class nearly every afternoon when he would arrive as much as half an hour after the appointed time. He would always stroll out onto the loggia, a demitasse of espresso and saucer in one hand, a Dunhill cigarette in the other, the picture of unhurried elegance, and recite the line as if he were a character in a Noel Coward play.

“You are forgiven,” he says, bowing to me, “but only if you promise to take up exactly where you left off.”

“Take up what?” I hear someone ask.

I turn and find Mark, in an elegant dark gray suit I haven’t seen before, standing behind me. He’s directly in front of the tapestry I hid behind earlier today, and it reminds me of how I felt when I turned around in the garden and found Bruno behind me. Mark looks nothing like the pale medieval youth in the tapestry, though. Since I saw him just a week ago in New York, he has lost his city pallor and his skin seems to glow, the result, no doubt, of a diet rich in olive oil and the Mediterranean sun.

“My research in the villa’s archives,” I answer. “Cyril was just reminding me that I abandoned my work with them twenty years ago.”

“Your loss was our gain,” Mark says, moving close enough to me so I can feel the warmth he gives off.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve agreed to loan her to us for the summer. I’m looking forward to seeing what Rose turns up in the archives. I feel they’ve been neglected and that they will be especially valuable for Mr. Balthasar’s film project—not just the ones from Santa Catalina, but the villa’s archives as well. There are inventories going back to the quattrocento listing every painting, every vase, every statue, that ever passed through this house. Each room can be made to look exactly as it did in the 1590s when Shakespeare himself stayed here. There might even be proof somewhere in all the record books and letters and diaries of his visit. Imagine what luster it would add to your university, President Abrams, to own not just any Italian villa but the one in which Shakespeare visited his Dark Lady.”

Mark’s eyes catch mine with that same look of skepticism I’ve seen in faculty meetings when professors propose ambitious and expensive programs. “Hudson College will be happy to acquire La Civetta, in due time, with a minimum of controversy and fanfare. I think we can all agree that it’s a jewel just as it is.” Mark gestures toward the
sala grande,
where the wide doors are open, taking in with the sweep of his arm the torch-lit garden, the violet sky, and the domes and red-tile rooftops of Florence laid out below us like a fairy-tale city. He has that same proprietorial look he had surveying Washington Square Park from my office window, only here instead of NYU’s purple and gold flags, the intruder he spies is Bruno Brunelli, standing in a circle of students just outside the doors, the lilac evening light reflected in the fine white cotton of his dress shirt and the pale linen jacket draped over one shoulder.

“I would think he’d feel awkward working here while the lawsuit’s pending,” Mark whispers to Cyril. “I wonder that you’ve allowed him to live here all these years.”

“Ah, but the lawsuit is entirely his wife’s doing. I don’t blame Bruno at all. If not for the difficulty of divorce in the Catholic Church, he wouldn’t even be married to her. They live quite separately, you know, since the boy is grown up. I can’t say I blame Bruno for seeking refuge at La Civetta. Like me, his best memories are here.” Cyril finishes with a sly smile in my direction. Luckily Mark is looking at Bruno and doesn’t notice. “Besides,” Cyril continues, “my mother made me promise that Bruno would always have a place here.”

“Really?” I ask. “I’d never heard that. It’s unusual, considering—”

“Rose,” Mark says, cutting me off, “you haven’t seen the gardens yet, have you? You’ll be impressed with the renovations the college has financed since you last saw them in your undergraduate days. I think we have just enough time before dinner…”

He pulls me toward the open French doors before I can finish ask-ing Cyril what he’d meant. Why would Lucy Graham have wanted the son of her rival—and possibly the illegitimate son of her husband—assured a place here forever? I’m distracted from the question, though, when I see the direction Mark has chosen. He’s heading straight toward Bruno. I try to think of something to deflect him from his course—a demand for a drink? Tripping over one of the ornamental urns? But Bruno has already noted our approach, and his gaze wraps around me like a gossamer-thin net reeling me in.

“Ah, Professor Asher,” he says, ignoring Mark completely. “I was just telling my students that we’re fortunate to have in our midst such an adept practitioner of the art of sonnet writing.” And then, turning to Mark, he says, “Perhaps President Abrams will prevail on her to give a reading of her poetry this summer?”

“I didn’t realize Dr. Asher’s reputation as a poet was…international,” Mark says, “or that you were so familiar with her poetry.” The air between the two men is lit with a tension I can feel in my bones. I assume Mark’s hostility comes from the lawsuit, but I wonder at the source of Bruno’s animosity. Has he, as Claudia clearly had, heard some rumor about my involvement with Mark? But then why would he care whom I was involved with after all these years—unless he really did believe I’d gone into mourning after our affair and remained a black-garbed nun in New York.

“I took Professor Brunelli’s course on the Renaissance sonnet when I was at La Civetta,” I say, gratefully accepting another glass of Prosecco from a passing waiter. “It set me on my course of study.”

“Ah,” Mark says, holding a glass up to Bruno in a toast, “then we have you to thank for one of our most prized teachers. Do we also have you to thank for inspiring her to write love poetry?”

“I can hardly take credit for Dr. Asher’s writing talent,” Bruno says. “That’s something you’re born with.”

“Really?” Mark asks, furrowing his brow skeptically. “You think writing talent is innate? That it can’t be taught? That’s bad news for our writing program.” Mark grins amiably and the few students who are still standing in our orbit laugh, but then Mark cuts off his smile—so quickly it’s as if a mask has descended over his face. The students, sensing a change of mood, drift away from us to groups of their own. “But then, according to your theory, you
can
take credit for your son’s writing talent.”

“Orlando?” Bruno asks.

“Yes, Orlando. Do you have another son?”

“No, Orlando’s my only child,” Bruno says, squaring his shoulders as if he’s getting ready to block a tackle. “He’s talented at many things, but acting is his heart’s desire—an art I have no talent for whatsoever—”

“But I thought he was also a writer. When he came to New York recently he was claiming that he had worked with Robin Weiss on his screenplay. In fact, he was so vehement in his assertions that the poor boy killed himself.”

“I’ve heard a slightly different version of the story,” Bruno says slowly, enunciating each word carefully. “Orlando never said that he wrote part of the screenplay; he said he helped Robin do the research for it.”

“Ah, so he’s inherited your scholarly aptitude. Tell me, did you help with the research for Robin’s screenplay? Because if you did, Leo Balthasar might want to know before he has another lawsuit on his hands—”

“I have no intention of suing—”

At the sound of the words “lawsuit” and “suing,” Cyril Graham appears on the loggia and slips in between Mark and Bruno. “Oh, let’s not have any such talk,” he says, placing a bony hand on each of the men’s shoulders. “Not on a night as lovely as this one. Look,” he says, taking his hand off Mark’s shoulder and waving it toward the darkening garden, “isn’t it magical? Like the woods in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
”

Indeed his gesture seems to transform the party for an instant into the revels of otherworldly spirits. Laughter rises out of the shadowy groves, and sparks of light—from the torches and lanterns, perhaps, but also from the cigarettes or joints students are sneaking behind the hedges—flare up out of the dark like winged fairies. Cyril removes a torch from its holder to lead the procession in to dinner. With his wiz-ened old face lit up by the torch he carries, Cyril looks for a moment like an aged version of “that shrewd and knavish sprite” of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
the hobgoblin Puck.

Mark waves Bruno on ahead of us, but then, instead of staying by my side, he excuses himself, saying he has to oversee the seating arrangements. As I join the crowd following Cyril, I try to sort through the threads of Mark and Bruno’s argument. Tension over the lawsuit certainly explains some of the hostility between the two men, but something else is going on. What I’m afraid of is that Mark shares the same suspicion that I do: that Bruno sent Orlando to New York to get those poems back from Robin.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

D
INNER IS SERVED IN THE
LIMONAIA
, EMPTY NOW OF ITS LEMON TREES, ITS
floor-to-ceiling windows open to the night. The building was designed to let in as much sun as possible during the winter months and so works as well to let in the evening breezes. Lit by the flicker of candlelight, the wall of tall arched windows overlooking the lemon walk and the
teatrino
appears insubstantial, a painted scrim hanging above the stage of the
teatrino.
Even the way the tables are set up—in a U shape with the open end facing the windows—suggests that we are seated for a performance. Students dressed in Renaissance garb and silk masks are dancing to the strains of dulcimer and lute. Only the faces of some of my colleagues from Hudson dispel the illusion that I’ve wandered into the Capulets’ masked ball at which Romeo and Juliet first meet.

When I find my seat—marked by a name card bound to a silver napkin holder with lavender ribbons and silver wire—I feel a bit as if I’m taking my place onstage for a drawing room comedy. I see by the place cards that I’ve been seated between Mark and Bruno and across from the lawyer Daisy Wallace, Leo Balthasar, and Mara Silverman. I’m tempted to switch my place card with one at another table—even Frieda Mainbocher and Lydia Belquist lecturing to a group of Japanese businessmen at the next table look like restful company in comparison to this table.

I look around and see that several people are grabbing their name cards and switching them to other tables, so why shouldn’t I? I notice that Mark, in fact, is leaning over Gene Silverman, who’s seated at a table of pretty young students. Mark is whispering something in Gene’s ear. Mara, who’s hovering over my chair, is watching them.

“Isn’t that thoughtful of Mark?” Mara says when she sees Gene get up and walk with Mark back to our table. “He’s invited Gene to sit at our table. I’m sure Gene would rather sit with me and Mr. Balthasar.”

I’m wondering whether this is what Mark meant by overseeing the seating arrangements—making sure that Gene Silverman wasn’t hitting on any of the students—but still I agree with Mara. “Yes, it’s very thoughtful. In fact, he can have my chair,” I say, raising my voice so Mark and Gene can hear me as they get closer. “I don’t mind sitting somewhere else.”

“I’ve already asked the waiter to bring an extra chair,” Mark says, holding my chair out for me, and then, in a lower voice, “I’d prefer that you stay here.”

I slide into my seat just as Mara lets out an earsplitting shriek. “Hermès scarf rings!” she cries, holding up a silver-plated ring that I had taken for an ordinary napkin ring. “They go for over a hundred apiece in New York. Now
that’s
class.”

“Cyril likes everything done with style,” Bruno says, sitting down next to me.

“A ridiculous extravagance,” Daisy Wallace says, sliding her napkin out of its silver ring and briskly snapping out its folds before smoothing it over her lap. She herself is wearing a white cotton shift so austere in its simplicity, it might be a nightgown. With her long light hair, she reminds me, tonight, of the sickly Mary in Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s
Annunciation.
“No wonder this place is falling apart.” I notice, though, that she’s carefully slipped her scarf ring into her evening purse. Since I don’t have a purse, I place my ring to the right of my plate.