Juliet

by Anne Fortier

  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more the scales tipped in Eva Maria’s favor; after all, she was the one who seemed most determined to prove that despite our ancestral rivalry, we could still be friends. And if that was really so, I did not want to be the party pooper.

  THE EVENING CONCERT was hosted by the Chigiana Musical Academy in Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, right across the street from my friend Luigi’s hair salon. I entered the building through a covered gateway to emerge in an enclosed courtyard with a loggia and an old well in the middle. Knights in shining armor, I thought to myself, would have pulled water from that well for their battle horses, and beneath my high-heeled sandals the stone tiles in the floor were worn smooth from centuries of horses’ hooves and cartwheels. The place was neither too big nor too imposing, and it had a quiet dignity of its own that made me wonder whether the things going on outside the walls of this timeless quadrangle were truly that important.

  As I stood there, gawking at the frescoed ceiling underneath the loggia, an usher handed me a brochure and pointed out the door going up to the concert hall. I glanced at the brochure as I climbed the stairs, expecting it to list the musical program. But instead, it was a brief history of the building written in several different languages. The English version began:

  Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, one of the most beautiful palazzos in Siena, originally belonged to the Marescotti family. The core of the building is very old, but during the Middle Ages the Marescotti family began to incorporate the neighboring buildings, and, like many other powerful families in Siena, they began the erection of a great tower. It was from this tower that the victory at Montaperti in 1260 was announced, by the sound of a drum, or tambourine.

  I stopped in the middle of the staircase to reread the passage. If this was true, and if I had not completely mixed up the names in Maestro Ambrogio’s journal, then the building in which I was currently standing had originally been Palazzo Marescotti, that is, Romeo’s home in 1340.

  Only when people started squeezing past me in irritation did I shake my surprise and move on. So what if it had been Romeo’s home? He and I were separated by nearly seven hundred years, and besides, back then, he had had a Juliet of his own. Despite my new clothes and hair, I was still nothing but a gangly offshoot of the perfect creature that once was.

  Janice would have laughed at me if she had known my romantic thoughts. “Here we go again,” she would have jeered, “Jules dreaming about a man she can’t have.” And she was right. But sometimes, those are the best ones.

  My strange obsession with historical figures had been kicked off at age nine with President Jefferson. While everyone else—including Janice—had posters of pop tarts with exposed midriffs plastered all over their walls, my room was a shrine to my favorite Founding Father. I had gone to great lengths to learn how to write out Thomas in calligraphy, and had even embroidered a cushion with a giant T, which I hugged every night as I fell asleep. Unfortunately, Janice had found my secret notebook and passed it around in class, making everyone howl with laughter at my fanciful drawings of myself standing in front of Monticello wearing a veil and a wedding gown, hand in hand with a very muscular President Jefferson.

  After that, everyone had called me Jeff, even the teachers, who had no idea why they did it, and who—amazingly—never saw me wincing when they called on me in class. In the end I stopped putting up my hand entirely, and just sat there, hiding behind my hair in the back row, hoping no one would notice me.

  In high school—thanks to Umberto—I had started looking towards the ancient world instead, and my fancy had jumped from Leonidas the Spartan to Scipio the Roman and even to Emperor Augustus for a while, until I discovered his dark side. By the time I entered college I had finally strayed so far back in time that my hero was an unnamed caveman living on the Russian steppes, killing woolly mammoths and playing haunting tunes on his bone flute under the full moon, all by himself.

  The only one to point out that all my boyfriends had one thing in common was, of course, Janice. “Too bad,” she had said one night, when we were trying to fall asleep in a tent in the garden and she had managed to extract all my secrets one by one, in exchange for caramels that were originally mine, “that they are all deader than doornails.”

  “They are not!” I had protested, already regretting telling her my secrets. “Famous people live forever!”

  To this, Janice had merely snorted, “Maybe, but who wants to kiss a mummy?”

  Despite my sister’s best efforts, however, it was no flight of fancy but simple habit for me to now feel a little frisson at the discovery that I was stalking the ghost of Romeo in his own house; the only requirement for us to continue this beautiful relationship was that he stayed just the way he was: dead.

  EVA MARIA WAS holding court in the concert hall, surrounded by men in dark suits and women in glittering dresses. It was a tall room decorated in the colors of milk and honey and finished off with touches of gold. About two hundred chairs were set up for the audience, and judging by the number of people already gathered there, it would be no problem filling them. At the far end, members of an orchestra were fine-tuning their instruments, and a large woman in a red dress looked as if she was threatening to sing. As with most spaces in Siena there was nothing modern here to disturb the eye, save the odd rebellious teenager wearing sneakers underneath his pleated pants.

  As soon as she saw me entering, Eva Maria summoned me to her entourage with a regal wave. As I approached the group, I could hear her introducing me with superlatives I did not deserve, and within minutes I was best friends with some of the hot dogs of Siena culture, one of whom was the President of the Monte dei Paschi Bank in Palazzo Salimbeni.

  “Monte dei Paschi,” explained Eva Maria, “is the greatest protector of the arts in Siena. None of what you see around you would have been possible without the financial support of the Foundation.”

  The President looked at me with a slight smile, and so did his wife, who stood right next to him, draped around his elbow. Like Eva Maria, she was a woman whose elegance belied her years, and although I had dressed up for the occasion, her eyes told me I still had a lot to learn. She even whispered as much to her husband—or so it seemed.

  “My wife thinks you don’t believe it,” said the President teasingly, his accent and dramatic intonation suggesting he was reciting the lyrics of a song. “Perhaps you think we are too”—he had to search for the word—“proud of ourselves?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said, my cheeks heating up under their continuing scrutiny, “I just find it … paradoxical that the house of the Marescottis depends on the goodwill of the Salimbenis to survive, that’s all.”

  The President acknowledged my logic with a slight nod, as if to confirm that Eva Maria’s superlatives had been appropriate. “A paradox, yes.”

  “But the world,” said a voice behind me, “is full of paradoxes.”

  “Alessandro!” exclaimed the President, suddenly all jollity and game, “you must come and meet Signorina Tolomei. She is being very … severe on all of us. Especially on you.”

  “Of course she is.” Alessandro took my hand and kissed it with facetious chivalry. “If she was not, we would never believe she was a Tolomei.” He looked me straight in the eye before releasing my hand. “Would we, Miss Jacobs?”

  It was an odd moment. He had clearly not expected to encounter me at the concert, and his reaction did not reflect well on either of us. But I could hardly blame him for grilling me; after all, I had never called him back after he stopped by my hotel three days ago. All this time, his business card had been sitting on my desk like a bad omen from a fortune cookie; only this morning I had finally torn it in half and thrown it in the trash, figuring that if he had really wanted to arrest me, he would have done so already.

  “Don’t you think,” said Eva Maria, misinterpreting our intensity, “Giulietta looks lovely tonight, Sandro?”

  Alessandro managed to smile. “Bewitching.”

&nbs
p; “Sì-sì,” intervened the President, “but who is guarding our money, when you are here?”

  “The ghosts of the Salimbenis,” replied Alessandro, still looking straight at me. “A very formidable power.”

  “Basta!” Secretly pleased by his words, Eva Maria pretended to frown and tapped him on the shoulder with a rolled-up program. “We will all be ghosts soon enough. Tonight we celebrate life.”

  AFTER THE CONCERT Eva Maria insisted on going out to dinner, just the three of us. When I began protesting, she played the birthday card and said that on this particular night—“as I turn another page in the most excellent and lamentable comedy of life”—her only wish was to go to her favorite restaurant with two of her favorite people. Strangely, Alessandro did not object at all. In Siena, one clearly did not contradict one’s godmother on her day of days.

  Eva Maria’s favorite restaurant was in Via delle Campane, just outside the border of Contrada dell’Aquila, that is, the Eagle neighborhood. Her favorite table, apparently, was on the elevated deck outside, facing a florist shop that was closing down for the night.

  “So,” she said to me, after ordering a bottle of Prosecco and a plate of antipasto, “you don’t like opera!”

  “But I do!” I protested, sitting awkwardly, my crossed legs barely fitting beneath the table. “I love opera. My aunt’s housekeeper used to play it all the time. Especially Aida. It’s just that … Aida is supposed to be an Ethiopian princess, not a triple-wide wonder in her fifties. I’m sorry.”

  Eva Maria laughed delightedly. “Do what Sandro does. Close your eyes.”

  I glanced at Alessandro. He had sat behind me at the concert, and I had felt his eyes on me the whole time. “Why? It’s still the same woman singing.”

  “But the voice comes from the soul!” argued Eva Maria on his behalf, leaning towards me. “All you have to do is listen, and you will see Aida the way she really is.”

  “That is very generous.” I looked at Alessandro. “Are you always that generous?”

  He did not reply. He didn’t have to.

  “Magnanimity,” said Eva Maria, testing the Prosecco and deeming it worthy of consumption, “is the greatest of all the virtues. Stay away from stingy people. They are trapped in small souls.”

  “According to my aunt’s housekeeper,” I said, “beauty is the greatest virtue. But he would say that generosity is a kind of beauty.”

  “Truth is beauty,” said Alessandro, speaking at last, “beauty truth. According to Keats. Life is very easy if you live like that.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I’m not an urn.”

  I started laughing, but he never even smiled.

  Although she clearly wanted us to become friends, Eva Maria was incapable of letting us continue on our own. “Tell us more about your aunt!” she urged me. “Why do you think she never told you who you were?”

  I looked from one to the other, sensing that they had been discussing my case, and that they had disagreed. “I have no idea. I think she was afraid that—or maybe she—” I looked down. “I don’t know.”

  “In Siena,” said Alessandro, preoccupied with his water glass, “your name makes all the difference.”

  “Names, names, names!” sighed Eva Maria. “What I don’t understand is why this aunt—Rosa?—never took you to Siena before.”

  “Maybe she was afraid,” I said, more sharply this time, “that the person who killed my parents would kill me, too.”

  Eva Maria sat back, appalled. “What a terrible thought!”

  “Well, happy birthday!” I took a sip of my Prosecco. “And thanks for everything.” I glared at Alessandro, forcing him to meet my eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t stay long.”

  “No,” he said, nodding once, “I imagine it is too peaceful here for your taste.”

  “I like peace.”

  Within the coniferous greens of his eyes, I now got a warning glimpse of his soul. It was a disturbing sight. “Obviously.”

  Rather than replying, I clenched my teeth and turned my attention to the antipasto. Unfortunately, Eva Maria did not pick up on the finer nuances of my emotions; all she saw was my flushed face. “Sandro,” she said, riding what she thought was a wave of flirtation, “why have you not taken Giulietta around town and shown her some nice things? She would love to go.”

  “I’m sure she would.” Alessandro stabbed an olive with his fork, but didn’t eat it. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any statues of little mermaids.”

  That was when I knew for sure he had checked my file, and that he must have found out everything there was to know about Julie Jacobs—Julie Jacobs the antiwar demonstrator, who had barely returned from Rome before heading off to Copenhagen to protest the Danish involvement in Iraq by vandalizing the Little Mermaid. Sadly, the file would not have told him that it was all a big mistake, and that Julie Jacobs had only gone to Denmark to show her sister that, yes, she dared.

  Tasting the dizzying cocktail of fury and fear in my throat, I reached out blindly for the bread basket, hoping very much my panic didn’t show.

  “No, but we have other nice statues!” Eva Maria looked at me, then at him, trying to grasp what was going on. “And fountains. You must take her to Fontebranda—”

  “Maybe Miss Jacobs would like to see Via dei Malcontenti,” proposed Alessandro, cutting off Eva Maria. “That was where we used to take the criminals, so their victims could throw things at them on their way to the gallows.”

  I returned his unforgiving stare, feeling no further need for concealment. “Was anyone ever pardoned?”

  “Yes. It was called banishment. They were told to leave Siena and never come back. In return, their lives would be spared.”

  “Oh, I see,” I snapped back, “just like your family, the Salimbenis.” I stole a glance at Eva Maria, who was, for a change, dumbstruck. “Am I wrong?”

  Alessandro did not answer right away. Judging from the play of the muscles in his jaw, he would have liked very much to respond in kind, but knew that he could not do so in front of his godmother. “The Salimbeni family,” he finally said, his voice strained, “was expropriated by the government in 1419 and forced to leave the Republic of Siena.”

  “For good?”

  “Obviously not. But they were banished for a long time.” The way he looked at me suggested that we were now talking about me again. “And they probably deserved it.”

  “What if they … came back anyway?”

  “Then”—he paused for effect, and it struck me that the green in his eyes was not like organic foliage at all, but cold and crystallized, like the slice of malachite I had presented as a special treasure in fourth grade, before the teacher had explained that it was a mineral mined to extract copper, with evident harm to the environment—“they must have had a very good reason.”

  “Enough!” Eva Maria raised her glass. “No more banishment. No more fighting. Now we are all friends.”

  For about ten minutes we managed to have a civil conversation. After that, Eva Maria excused herself to go to the restroom, and Alessandro and I were left to each other’s devices. Glancing at him, I caught him running his eyes over me, and for the briefest of moments I was able to convince myself that it was all just a cat-and-mouse game to see whether I was sufficiently feisty to become his playmate for the week. Well, I thought to myself, whatever the cat was plotting, it was in for a nasty surprise.

  I reached out for a slice of sausage. “Do you believe in redemption?”

  “I don’t care,” said Alessandro, pushing the platter towards me, “what you did in Rome. Or anywhere else. But I do care about Siena. So tell me, why are you here?”

  “Is this an interrogation?” I spoke with my mouth full. “Should I call my lawyer?”

  He leaned towards me, his voice low. “I could have you in jail like this—” He snapped his fingers right in front of my nose. “Is that really what you want?”

  “You know,” I said, shoveling more food onto my plate and hopi
ng very much he did not notice my hands shaking, “power games have never worked on me. They may have worked wonders for your ancestors, but if you recall, my ancestors were never really that impressed.”

  “Okay—” He leaned back in his chair, changing tactics. “How about this: I’m going to leave you alone on one condition. That you stay away from Eva Maria.”

  “Why don’t you tell that to her?”

  “She is a very special woman, and I don’t want her to suffer.”

  I put down my fork. “But I do? Is that what you think of me?”

  “You really want to know?” Alessandro gave me the once-over as if I were an overpriced artifact put up for sale. “All right. I think you are beautiful, intelligent … a great actor—” Seeing my confusion, he frowned and went on, more sternly, “I think someone paid you a lot of money to come here and pretend to be Giulietta Tolomei …”

  “What?”

  “… and I think part of your job is to get close to Eva Maria. But guess what … I’m not going to let that happen.”

  I barely knew where to start. Fortunately, his accusations were so surreal that I was too flabbergasted to feel truly wounded. “Why,” I finally said, “do you not believe I am Giulietta Tolomei? Is it because I don’t have baby blue eyes?”

  “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Giulietta Tolomei is dead.”

  “Then how,” I retorted, leaning forward, too, “do you explain that I am sitting right here?”

  He looked at me for the longest time, searching for something in my face that somehow wasn’t there. In the end he looked away, his lips tight, and I knew that for some reason I had not convinced him, and probably never would.

  “You know what—” I pushed back my chair and got up. “I’m going to take your advice and remove myself from Eva Maria’s company. Tell her thank you for the concert and the food, and tell her that she can have her clothes back whenever she wants them. I am done with them.”