Twain's End (15 page)

“You told Susy and me that Tom Sawyer was you as a boy,” said Clara.

“No more talk of Tom!” Papa scowled as if being playful, but
Clara could see the telltale red spots of anger appearing on his cheekbones.

His anger did what it always did—fueled hers. If he wanted to fight, she'd fight! “Gladly. I'd be happy to be rid of Mark Twain altogether. He's been nothing to our family but a nuisance.”

“Nothing to us,” said Papa, “but the person who butters our bread.”

He looked down his squashed nose at Miss Lyon. You could almost see his ruffled feathers smoothing. “If I ever wanted to be shut of Mark Twain, this would be the appropriate place to do it. We are standing on the spot where the Mad Monk of Florence, Savonarola, put his match to that famous pile of books and art. He said that anyone who tossed treasure on his Bonfire of the Vanities would be guaranteed a country home in the afterlife.”

Miss Lyon raised her skirt from her ankles to see the street. “Do you mean—the fire was right here?”

Papa's gaze went to her ankles. “Close enough.”

Clara stared between them. Papa had chased their childhood nurse, Rosa; he had chased their governess, Miss Wright; he had chased Mamma's nurse, Miss Sherry, when she'd gone with them on their lecture trip around the world. He'd sworn after Susy died that he'd stop—he claimed his sins brought the curse on his house, and Clara believed that. But then he'd chased Mamma's new nurse until she got sent off—her boat was leaving Italy as Miss Lyon's arrived—and now Clara was stuck with Mamma's care by herself. The man had not the decency to keep his britches buttoned, yet he could not bear if a fellow so much as looked at his daughter.

“You know they burned the monk a year later,” Clara said bitterly. “Same spot. He asked everyone to give up their pleasures, and it seems that people don't like that.”

Papa looked up from Miss Lyon's ankles. He reached in his jacket for a fresh cigar. “You seem surprised, Clärchen.”

Clara turned to Isabel. “Savonarola thought he would rule forever, but he didn't. He was just in power for one short year. Never take anything for granted, Miss Lyon. Nothing ever lasts.”

Jean trotted back to the group. “The villain says he will increase the horse's rations, but I don't believe him. Papa, will you buy that horse, please?”

“Why not?”

“You will?” Jean threw her arms around him. He patted her, shooting a cool glance at Miss Lyon before puffing his cigar at Clara. “I'll get you that cameo you were looking at earlier, too, Clara.”

“I don't want it. I want to go home now.” Clara turned on her heel and, with a kick of skirt hem, marched across the plaza. She didn't know whom she hated more, Mark Twain or Samuel Clemens.

• • •

Isabel navigated the tumult of the piazza, inwardly scolding herself for not having been aware sooner of Clara's feelings. Of course Clara felt threatened. Isabel sympathized with her. She knew too well the wrenching queasiness that came with detecting a whiff of one's father's desire. She remembered with sickening clarity the overlong gaze of the lady on Bleecker Street when they had gone again to visit, and how carefully Father had avoided looking at her. It had been his avoidance that had tipped off eight-year-old Isabel. Yet Mr. Clemens and she had not acted on their feelings; Isabel would never allow it. But Clara would have no way of knowing this and would hate her as much for mere suspicion than if Isabel had actually succumbed.

A row of pinafored girls led by a nun marched between Isabel and Mr. Clemens and his daughters, separating Isabel farther from them and giving her room to shake off her discomfort. What had she done other than adore a man whom millions of others adored?

She resumed her walk, passing a trio of English women, their hats bent together as they consulted their tour book, their gentleman escort eyeing the newfangled automobile parked across the plaza.

She allowed herself to luxuriate in remembrances of the day. She pictured her walk downhill behind Mr. Clemens and his daughters this morning, running her gloved fingertips along the rough stone wall beyond the villa gates, on their way to pick up the electric tram
into town. She then saw herself strolling through the vaulted rooms of the Uffizi, reading her copy of the newest Baedeker's travel guide to Clara as they examined the Botticellis, the da Vincis, the Titians, and the Raffaellos. She saw herself in the plaza between the Duomo and Giotto's Bell Tower, watching the bony little brown boys flock around Mr. Clemens as he distributed a pocketful of change, his walking stick pressed under his arm. Her memory came to rest upon the Ponte Vecchio, where she was ambling along with Mr. Clemens, absentmindedly gazing at the jewelry shops that had lined the bridge for centuries, while he told her about the aborigines of Australia. Was there a place that Mr. Clemens hadn't been?

They had left behind Clara, who'd stopped to admire a cameo pin, and Jean, kodaking a basket of Italian greyhound pups just inside a jeweler's doorway. Acutely aware of Mr. Clemens's presence by her side, Isabel had paused before a shopwindow, where a heart-shaped ruby had caught her eye.

“You like that?” He stopped next to her, closer than he should.

She did not adjust her distance. “I saw one just like it in New York before we left, in a shop on Maiden Lane, near Broadway. I don't usually care much about jewelry, but I was with Mother, and she wondered what had drawn such a crowd.” Three boys in jackets and short pants ran by, kicking a ball and shouting in Italian. “A number of us were looking at the ring—it was quite big, maybe the size of a walnut shell—when an older man came in with his younger mistress and, as if we weren't there, bought it for her. We were all in shock.”

Mr. Clemens peered down his fierce nose at her. “What was the shocking part—the contours of the ruby, that someone bought it, or that the old man liked a young woman?”

Heat washed over her. “I must sound so provincial.”

A man and woman, respectable in fine clothes, nodded as they passed. “
Buongiorno, Professore.
”

Mr. Clemens tore his gaze from her. “
Buongiorno, buongiorno.
”

Clara came flouncing back. “That thief wanted two hundred and fifty lira for that cameo, can you believe that?”

Then Jean drifted up, and the four of them made their way over the crowded street toward the Pitti Palace and its art treasures, their party frequently addressed with nods and
Buongiorno, Professore
s. Although Mr. Clemens walked with Jean, Isabel could feel him reaching out to her. Keenly Isabel willed her inner self to let him know that she was reaching back.

At the palace, they broke into pairs, the Clemens girls not willing to wait on their father when he was accosted by a couple from Indianapolis just inside the first salon of the Palatine Gallery. It pleased Isabel to wait for him. She stood back with her Baedeker's and watched him perform. How he radiated charm without effort, grace without caring what kind of impression he made!
Take me as I am,
he seemed to say,
you can't hurt me.
He was irresistible.

Once freed of his Midwestern admirers, he walked with Isabel through the rest of the gilded salon and into the next, she reading aloud from her copy of Baedeker's, he strolling along with his walking stick under his arm and his hands behind his back. “ ‘Raffaello, Number Sixty-one, Agnolo Doni, and Number Fifty-nine, Raffaello, his wife, Maddalena Strossi Doni, from his Florentine period, circa 1505.' ”

She stopped to examine the portraits of the wiry, cruel-mouthed young man peering suspiciously from under his black hat, and his heavy-faced wife, whose mismatched eyes registered hurt, hatred, and determination from beneath her black rickrack headband. Isabel shuddered to think what kind of treatment Signora Strossi Doni bore at the hands of such a husband.

“Do you aspire to money like this?” asked Mr. Clemens of her.

Isabel looked away from the pictures.

“This place. This was someone's house.” He raised his walking stick to indicate the sumptuous room of the palace, with its frescoed ceilings, rococo moldings, and scarlet silk brocade walls covered with milestones in the history of art. “Don't you wish it was yours?”

She laughed. “No.”

“That's because you grew up with money. This place looks pretty good to a boy born in a two-room shack.”

She lowered her book, sensing that something important was being said.

His eyes went stern. “I had a house nearly this fine in Hartford. Me. Little Sammy Clemens. You remember it from our card games? At least in my mind, it was this fine. It was the loveliest house that ever was. I lost it due to my own stupidity. It was payment for my crimes.” He looked in Isabel's eyes. “I've committed a lot of crimes, Miss Lyon.”

“I'm sure that you haven't.”

“Are you? You shouldn't be. I'm a dangerous man, Miss Lyon.”

Carefully, she said, “You're beloved by so many, sir.”

“You know you break my heart when you call me ‘sir.' ”

“I'm sorry.” She looked blindly at a white marble statue, then back at him. “What should I call you?”

“Sam. Just call me Sam.”

In that moment, he looked strangely vulnerable, a sensitive boy trapped in the flesh of an aging, worldly man. She said it tenderly: “Sam.”

The peaks of his craggy brows softened. “That sounds good.”

She turned to the wall, then raised her guidebook. “ ‘Number One-seventy-one. Tommaso Fedra Inghirami. Humanist and Papal Secretary.' ” She failed to hide the emotion in her voice.

“Imagine that: another secretary. But not nearly as good-looking as you. And likely not as much of an inspiration to his boss.”

She lifted her gaze to his.

“I'm glad you didn't laugh,” he said. “I wasn't joking.”

He had a wife. An ill wife, one so infirm that she could not leave her bed.

“You inspire me, Miss Lyon. I appreciate how you take me seriously. Most people laugh no matter what I say. That's what makes me so dangerous. The things people let me get away with because I make them laugh.”

She wanted to embrace him. “It's not as if you murdered someone.”

He lifted his cane and, as if probing a wound, gingerly pressed a spot on the scarlet brocade. “Oh, I've done in a few. Even my brother, Henry.”

It took her a moment. “Your brother died in a steamboat accident. He was a hero. I read about it.”

“I gave him too much opium, Miss Lyon.”

“If you did, you didn't mean to.”

“I didn't?”

Why was he telling her these things? She raised her book. A tremor entered her voice. “ ‘Number One-sixty-five, Madonna del Baldacchino.' ”

“I killed Susy. If I'd stayed home instead of tramping all over the world, piling up money to show that I was not bankrupt, seeing how much I could make people worship me, she never would have died. I destroy everyone I love, Miss Lyon. Stick with me, and I'll destroy you.”

He said love. His wife is back at the villa, too ill to move.

He followed her into the next salon, empty of people save the portraits of those long dead. He touched her arm. “Isabel.”

She looked up at a portrait of a beautiful veiled woman who gazed down with a mysterious smile. Isabel scanned the picture frame for a number, then ran a trembling finger down the page of her Baedeker's. “ ‘Number Two-forty-five. Raffaello,
La Velata.
The artist's mistress.' ” She stopped.

“I've got the Twain Touch, Miss Lyon. Everyone I love best suffers. Susy, my wife . . . others.”

Her voice cracked. “Why do you tell me this?”

“Because you're in deep.”

At that moment they became aware of the sounds of swishing cloth and shoes upon the marble floor. They moved apart as Jean marched in.

“Papa, where have you been? We are already done with the museum.”

The party had then quickly finished their tour, Isabel consulting the Baedeker's and reading passages, her mind not catching a word of it, and Mr. Clemens following along with a tap of his stick.

• • •

Now, across the piazza, Mr. Clemens and his daughters had been stopped by an Italian gentleman—near Isabel's age, she judged—exquisitely dressed in a black fedora and a soft gray morning suit crossed by a gold chain. Isabel closed most of the distance between herself and her employers, but she did not get too near. She was not part of the family.

Mr. Clemens leaned on his walking stick as he smoked his cigar. He raised his voice. “Get your pen and take that down, Miss Lyon.”

She came forward, self-conscious in his presence.

“She wasn't listening, Papa,” said Clara. “Her head has been in the clouds.”

“Ah, Firenze will do that to a person.” The gentleman smiled at Isabel. “I have lived here much of my life, and it still has that effect on me.”

“The beauty of the place, every little thing—the very air—overwhelms,” said Isabel, more warmly than she intended.

“Nothing is more attractive than enthusiasm.” The gentleman fixed her with an earnest dark-eyed gaze. “Luca Aleghiri, Count de Calry, at your service.”

“This is Isabel Lyon,” Mr. Clemens said.

“My mother's secretary,” said Clara.

Mr. Clemens picked at a paving stone with his stick. “The count just revealed why everyone has been calling me
Professore.
It seems that I bear an uncanny resemblance to a professor at the university in town. Here I thought everyone felt that I should have an advanced degree based on my looks alone. This will be a good item for my autobiography.”

“Papa has been writing it for years,” Jean said fondly. “Nothing ever comes of it.”

“Did you need a pen and some paper, Miss— Pardon me, I did not catch your name.”