“I believe so,” says Anja.
“And you haven’t done anything with it?”
“It was a gift to me,” Anja says. “I showed it to my husband once, many years ago. We read it out loud together. It is short, more personal than commercial. Naked. I have arranged to donate it to the University of the South, but until then it belongs to me and me alone.”
Trevor raises his eyebrows at Sandrino. Sandrino shrugs. The current shoots through her.
“I will tell you about the last time I saw Tennessee Williams,” Anja says. “I will tell you about the play he wrote for me, because I promised Sandro I would. But before you ask, let me answer: no, you cannot read it.”
5.
THE HEAD OF THE WOLF
Frank sat in the front seat, Tenn beside him, Luca driving. Jack and Sandro were in the back, one at each window, a mile of thigh-burning leather between them. The women followed close behind in Luca’s brother’s truck. At the switchbacks they waved to each other like children on a carousel. Frank’s sweat-soaked shirt clung to his back. Tenn fanned himself with a handful of pages he pulled from his satchel. Sandro stuck his head out of the window like Mr. Moon did when they drove him down Duncan Street. The open windows gave them no relief, not even as they climbed toward the supposedly drier mountain air. They were fools to have left the beach, Jack said, and what was the point of a view when the sun baked and blinded you and heights made you dizzy? What was all the fuss about a view anyway? What did a view give you but a false and dangerous illusion of command over the world, shrunk down small enough to be pinched and flicked away? If only!
He went on like this until Sandro offered to switch places with him. When Jack refused, he offered his lap for him to rest his head. He refused that, too.
What kept two people together? On those turns, when the truck seemed to hover for a moment on the edge of the road over the rocky ravine, what kept Sandro reaching over to put his arm across Jack, though Jack offered no acknowledgment or tenderness in return, no hint that he even wanted to be saved? What better version of himself did Jack show Sandro when they were alone, and what, if anything, did he do to compensate for these times when he behaved like a bratty child, holding everyone hostage with his constant displeasure? Frank wanted to find out. More than that, he wanted Tenn, unprompted, to compare how Jack treated Sandro to how Frank treated him, and to be grateful; and he wanted to welcome Tenn’s gratitude rather than immediately resist or distrust it; but most of all he wanted all of that welcome and gratitude to harden around them like a shell.
They’d already stopped once at Bitte and Anja’s apartment for a change of shoes, then at Sandro and Jack’s for Sandro’s binoculars, and now, at the ladies’ request, they were stopping again at a touristy terrazza panoramica for pre-hike aperitivi. The picnic lunch at Paraggi had been their idea, but they hadn’t packed any food for it, relying on the men to provide for them. Anja hadn’t eaten a thing over the hours at the beach, while Bitte had devoured half of Frank’s mortadella sandwich, a peach, a handful of hazelnuts, and most of Sandro’s wine.
Bitte invited Luca and his brother to join them at their table on the terrace. “We will wait,” they said, without hesitation, putting up both hands to signal that they were on one side of this trip and that Bitte and her puzzling assortment of friends were on the other. Frank wasn’t surprised. Everywhere he traveled outside the States, hired men not only knew their place, but they took pride in it, and in the particular service they offered, whether that was driving a car or carrying a bag or delivering groceries to a rented flat. The brothers were getting paid for their time, after all. To ask them onto the terrace for a Campari and soda with their employers implied that the terrace was higher ground, a privilege they hadn’t requested and didn’t necessarily desire. Instead, they stood within shouting distance in the parking lot, which was just a patch of dead grass between the road and the cliff.
Though it was now close to five, the sun was still so high in the sky that it felt like midday. They sat on the terrace under an umbrella at a round table draped with bright red linens, and which had a postcard view of the beach they’d just abandoned. “What a relief,” Jack said when the drinks arrived. He took an ice cube from his tumbler and rubbed it across his forehead.
“Sometimes I tell my sick people,” said Sandro, “‘To cure yourself, all you need is Campari and soda.’”
“I thought you only cured animals,” Frank said.
“He has human patients more and more,” Jack said. “They flock to him. Our Sandro is something of a witch doctor in his little hamlet.”
Sandro looked around the table. “What does this mean, witch doctor?” he asked, with an eager smile.
“I want to ask you, Sandro,” Frank said, quickly. “Something I noticed, back in the truck. When we went around the turns, you put your arm across Jack. To protect him.”
“It is silly, I know,” said Sandro, laughing. “Like a father to a child. But it is instinct.”
“What I noticed, though,” said Frank, “was that you put your arm low, across his waist and not his chest—” He demonstrated. “As if you were hiding it from Luca in the rearview mirror. Every time you did it, you looked up at Luca afterward. Nervous-like. Do you think Luca doesn’t know what we are?”
Sandro narrowed his eyes. “Instinct again,” he said. “And you say ‘what we are’ as if it is a uniform we wear.”
“It’s not?”
“Luca’s job is not to notice,” declared Tenn. “And if he did notice, not to let on. The last thing in the world he’d ever do is sneer. These laborers pride themselves on their poker faces, you know. How they talk behind our backs is a different story altogether.”
“They hate us,” said Frank.
“I think they’re just afraid,” said Jack.
“Of you maybe,” said Bitte, and they all laughed. Even Jack managed an almost-smile, though that was likely meant for the waiter who’d arrived with his second drink.
Anja leaned over and kissed Frank on the cheek. “Who could be afraid of this face?”
“Hear, hear,” Tenn said. “Who could be anything but in love with my Little Horse?” He reached his own arm across and ruffled Frank’s hair. “You should see how he charms all of Key West just by strolling down the sidewalk. Not even the cops are immune. I’ve often said that if Frankie ran for mayor he’d win in a landslide.”
“Un angioletto,” said Sandro.
Everyone was looking at Frank. He was conscious of the sweat on his face that Anja had tasted with her cool lips. He shook his head, trying not to blush. “I’m no angel,” he said. He stuck two fingers in the bowl of olives and dug out a couple green ones. They were the little kind, leather-smooth and mostly pit, the pits sharp at both ends. The restaurant gave you these olives and the wrinkly black oil-cured kind on the house, along with oily potato chips and mixed salty nuts and cubes of provolone impaled with toothpicks. Food that stimulated both thirst and hunger, food that got you through those empty late-afternoon hours when most men were at work but you were lucky enough to have nothing in the world to do but jabber with your new friends who praise your angelic nature. How did he get here? What had he done to deserve such richness?
“Pay no attention to him,” said Tenn. “Frankie is like all the truly great actresses; the louder the applause, the more convinced they become of their worthlessness.”
“Except Anna,” said Frank.
“Anna Magnani is the exception to every rule,” said Tenn. Then, to Anja, he said, offhand, as he batted away a fly, “When you come to Rome, we’ll introduce you.” He smiled at her.
“You will do that?” asked Bitte.
“Yes, of course,” said Tenn. “Anna will despise her on sight.”
“Oh, she will,” said Frank.
“And that will amuse you?” Bitte asked.
“Endlessly,” Tenn said. “T
he sooner your daughter learns to manage the contempt and subterfuge and mendacity of her fellow actresses, the better off she’ll be. It’s a necessary phase of her education, which, if you ask me, is already behind schedule. We don’t know yet if she has the constitution for it, but Signora Magnani will make the diagnosis.”
Bitte nodded conspiratorially. “I have been trying to toughen her up,” she said.
Anja had turned her face away, toward the road, as if she were indifferent to their intentions for her, but Frank knew from their earlier conversation that she registered every word. Tenn went on to script the next fifty years of Anja Blomgren’s life, from the walk-ons in European films to her enrollment at the Actors Studio in New York City. Then: supporting roles on Broadway. Then: the next Geraldine Page. He said he knew just the place in Gramercy for them to camp out for a few months; a friend of Kazan’s had a white Persian longhair and a spare room with two single beds. A friend, a cat, a situation Frank had never heard of before or since.
“She is much prettier than Geraldine,” said Frank.
“We’re talking talent,” Tenn said. “Not window dressing.”
The stage would be wasted on Anja, Bitte argued, as if Kazan had already put an offer on the table. The camera gave her dimension you could not appreciate from fifty rows back. She expressed hope that more films would be made from Tenn’s plays so that Anja could star in them and Bitte could fly to the premiere in a private plane.
Throughout all this, Frank kept his eye on Anja. She’d been watching a pack of young boys who’d appeared from behind the rows of cars. When they approached Luca and his brother, they kicked dirt at them and shooed them away.
“I did not expect gypsies here,” Anja said, and they all turned to see who she was referring to. “How very sad.”
There were nine of them. Shirtless. So thin their ribs glowed. Their shorts and calves were stained with mud. Some carried their shoes in their hands. One of the boys Luca pushed off twirled a wooden yo-yo around his head. His friends scattered, and then, in fits of mad giggles, tackled him in the middle of the street as the cars swerved around them honking and shouting.
“I hope they don’t bother us,” Bitte said. She pushed her chair back from the railing that separated the terrace from the road. The terrace was low enough that the boys could come right up to it and stick their bony arms through the slats.
“This isn’t Africa,” said Tenn. “It’s not even Sicily. They’re harmless.”
“Quite,” said Jack.
“You can never be sure,” said Bitte.
“They do not look desperate to me, Mor,” said Anja. “They look happy. Like little birds.”
“Quite,” Jack said again.
“Well, forgive me, all of you, if it’s not so easy for me to recognize happiness,” Bitte said.
Anja rolled her eyes at Frank. But Bitte had a point about the boys. There was something wild about them. They might have been happy, but their hands were filthy, as if they’d just burrowed into the light from underground. They’d tied pieces of colored string around their wrists and necks, like some sort of tribe. They reminded Frank not of birds but of angry raccoons, their dark, tired eyes rimmed with dirt, their little hands frantic as claws. They called to each other in little yelps in what was either a low-class Italian dialect, their own language, or gibberish.
“They give me the shivers,” Bitte said.
“If they’re Italians, they should be ashamed,” said Sandro.
“And if they’re not Italians?” Jack asked.
“Boh,” said Sandro, with a shrug.
“Boh,” Jack mimicked, in a high girly voice.
“You don’t see such things in Sweden,” said Bitte.
“Certainly not in New England,” said Jack. “Where boys are conscripted at birth into the Anglican choir.”
“It is very refined there, is it not?” Anja asked Jack. “My cousin Brigit told me New England is the most civilized region of the United States. She wrote to us from Boston. She was on a world tour. I remember seeing the words New England and thinking how hopeful they looked.”
Much to Frank’s surprise—and Sandro’s apparently—Jack not only agreed with Anja, but he went on to describe, with a wistfulness they’d seen no trace of until that moment, the hushed greens and stern churches of Andover, the snow that was no match for the town’s municipal order, the concentration of boarding schools and universities from Maine to Connecticut. The childhood he spent on cold wood floors gazing at books of paintings, the phonograph beside him playing Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. The smell of incense that clung to the nuns’ habits at St. Augustine’s. His mother’s hand, which he’d been required to hold just to cross the street to their neighbor’s.
The small New England town had its charms, Jack admitted, but there was no place on earth more dangerous. “What is provincialism but the willful collective agreement not to keep trying?” he said, returning to form. “I’d rather be stabbed in an alleyway in Naples than rot on the leafy lawns of Phillips Academy.” His mother was the only thing Jack truly missed about New England, about his hometown, about the whole goddamned country. He hadn’t written to her in many months, he said, but lately she’d been on his mind more than usual.
They’d heard some of this the night before, but Jack said so little, and his tenderness was so rare, that they let him go on. “When he drinks,” Sandro whispered to Frank, “he remembers most his Mamma. Then he remembers nothing.”
Mother Burns was not dead. She was not even terribly old. She’d visited Jack in Florence as recently as last summer. They’d taken a trip with Sandro to the thermal beaches in Ischia, which required a train, a ferry, bathing suits, and blind denial of the queerness of their threesome. Sandro was nothing more than Jack’s good buddy. A real stand-up guy to pick up the check, wasn’t he, Mother? Turning in early are you, Mother? Good idea!
“He says the best good things about me when Mamma Burns can hear,” said Sandro, again in confidence to Frank. “The rest of the time, I am . . .” He turned his thumb down.
When he bid farewell to his mother in Genoa, Jack said, he expected it was forever. There was little chance she’d return, and he had no intention of going back to the States, not even for the green lawns of Andover, and not even if his next book, A Cry of Children, was a hit, which it had not been. “I was the one crying when those reviews came out,” he said.
“Bad reviews sell papers,” said Frank.
“Then they must have sold a million papers,” said Jack.
He’d just finished a draft of a new novel, though, Jack said, right on the heels of the last one. He worked hardest and produced his best stuff when he was counted out, when he had wounds to stitch. “These are my best pages since The Gallery,” he insisted, which meant nothing to Frank or to anyone at the table, none of whom—not even Sandro, Frank would later learn—had read it. “And it’s got a great fucking title: The Stranger’s Guise.”
He looked around at the circle of blank faces.
“G-U-I-S-E?” asked Frank. “Or G-U-Y-S?”
“I’m quite sure I prefer the latter,” Tenn said.
“Laugh if you want,” said Jack, all traces of tenderness suddenly gone. “My editor’s gaga over what I’ve got so far. One or two months of tinkering and I’ll get it into its final form. I should be working on it this minute instead of faffing up and down the coast like a tourist with you people. If this book never sees the light of day, the one to blame will be him.”
Sandro, the accused, took Jack’s half-full glass of whiskey from out of his hands and downed it in one gulp.
“What’s the book about?” asked Anja.
The street boys had quieted down, but now, in a flash, the yo-yo kid took off up the hill. They watched his friends chase him into the woods, shouting those strange syllables. Along the way, they picked up sticks and rocks and stuffed th
e rocks in their pockets.
“They’re just playing war,” Jack said. He called the waiter over for another, and he answered no more questions about his book or anything else.
* * *
• • •
WHEN THEY GOT to Testa del Lupo, the sun was dropping fast and they had to rush to catch the colors. They were somewhere between Portofino and Santa Margherita, on an unpaved branch of an unmapped road, on the abandoned property of what was once an important family long died out. The only access to the cliff was through the sculpture garden, high-walled and forbidding, littered with statues that had been overturned or defaced or strangled by weeds. Luca walked them to the garden, then directed them to the white stone path on the other side that led to the point. He’d watched the sunset from there enough times, he said. It was where all the men brought their fidanzate to propose marriage, where one day he would bring his Teresa, of whom he spoke frequently and with great solemnity. In the meantime, he’d smoke. No one else was in the garden, but they could hear voices in the distance and a percussion that sounded almost tribal. “Probably a serenade,” Luca said. He sat on one of the crumbling stone benches and struck a match.
With its high wall and neglected monuments, the garden resembled a necropolis. In the center stood the fountain that gave the place its name: a pillar ten feet tall with identical wolf heads carved into each of its four sides. Under the heads, cracked half-moon basins into which the water once flowed from the wolves’ lips. At the top of the pillar, a creature with a wolf’s head and torso and a fish’s long tail, its teeth bared in the direction of the setting sun as if in rage against it. This was the only statue in the entire garden that had remained intact, that didn’t have cracks or lichen or missing eyes staring up at it from the ground through the vegetation. Someone cared for the odd creature. Someone wiped its grooves of grime, polished its jagged teeth, scrubbed its scales.
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