The Italian Party

by Christina Lynch

  Only four days into his tenure, Mayor Manganelli had lost control of his brand-new Fiat 600 and slammed it into a wall near Porta Romana, the latest of a million victims of car accidents in Europe this year. He was taken to Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala, but had died within the hour, and the vice mayor, an odious tax lawyer named Vestri, had been sworn in. New elections would be called for November 4. His mission was not over.

  The article, by Rodolfo Marchetti, went on to complain that the Italian love affair with la macchina was turning deadly, especially since traffic lights, speed limits and rules of the road were basically nonexistent. “We’re killing each other and bankrupting ourselves for gasoline,” Marchetti wrote. “Trying to live like Americans.”

  Scottie chose this moment to announce they were starting a family. Was she insane? The idea of bringing a poor innocent child into this terrible world, bombs pointed right at them, two empires on the verge of World War III! But later, he felt terrible about the way he had shut her down. She didn’t know. She didn’t live in the world he lived in. She thought life was buying tomatoes and waxing the floor. She was lonely—terribly lonely—and of course wanted to start a family, since she had none. He would make it up to her. The idea of being a father terrified him, but he couldn’t say that. He would get her a dog after all. It would be a good distraction.

  He sent Luce an encoded telegram from the central Siena post office in Piazza Matteotti using his Geoffrey Sneedle alias, since they had told him never to trust the phone lines. He hoped she’d get it—he had heard she was ill. The rumor was that she had been poisoned by the KGB. He had laughed when Duncan told him about it, pointing out that it was more likely that she was suffering from the side effects of the steady stream of Dexedrine and Benzedrine she swallowed to get through the day, and almost certainly sleeping pills at night, but Duncan was serious. “I think it’s true,” he had said, sipping a pear grappa from a handblown Venetian glass during one of their evenings out in Rome. “It’s very serious, Michael. They’re combing the palazzo for signs of poison. These Russians are everywhere, and they will take down anyone who stands in their way.”

  He gathered up all the evening newspapers and went to write up a detailed report about Manganelli’s death and what this would mean for politics in Siena.

  3.

  The next morning Scottie dressed quickly and slipped out while Michael was still asleep. He had come in very late and gone to bed in the guest room. So now they were giving each other the silent treatment. Other women had talked about this. She had never thought it would happen to her. Out of habit or perhaps malice she left him a bowl of Cheerios—the dregs of the last box from the shipment that came with them from America—and turned on the percolator, putting in the last scoop of the Maxwell House they’d brought. How he could drink that stuff was beyond her, but he claimed to love it.

  She walked across the Campo and into Via della Galluzza. She lingered, looking into the window of a dress shop, admiring a blue and white striped belted cotton dress in the full-skirted Dior style. Soon she would not be able to wear dresses like that.

  “Signora Messina?” It was Carlo Chigi Piccolomini.

  The sight of him was, as her father would say, like a cold beer on a hot day. He was smiling at her with his lopsided grin, his eyes flashing behind his glasses. He was holding the hand of a little girl with a headful of reddish ringlets. She had his eyes, almond-shaped and sly. Carlo gave Scottie a toothy smile as he locked the front door behind them, turning the huge key slowly—crank, crank, crank. The way he moved drew her eye to his forearms, the nape of his neck, the tilt of his fedora.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” she said.

  “This is my niece, Ilaria.”

  Scottie greeted the little girl, who said, “I live in the Tartuca.”

  “I live in the Selva,” said Scottie. “But I wasn’t born there, so I can’t actually be a member of the contrada.”

  “Like Mommy,” said the little girl. “She was born in Roccastrada. Uncle Carlo is a Tower.”

  “Yes, when the Palio starts next week we will be archenemies, won’t we, cara mia?”

  “Sì,” the little girl giggled. Carlo swept her up and kissed her cheek, and she squealed with delight. It was such an uncontrolled sound of joy that Scottie reached out and put her hand on Carlo’s arm.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, beaming.

  His face lit up, his mouth open in joy. “Auguri!” he said. “Did you hear that, our friend is having a baby. That is why she looks especially beautiful.”

  Ilaria clapped her hands. Scottie felt that finally, finally, her child had been welcomed and celebrated. And Carlo had called her beautiful. She felt warm and happy.

  Carlo put Ilaria down and smiled at Scottie. “We are walking the same way, no? We go together?”

  He took Scottie’s arm, which she did not admit to herself she had been longing for him to do, and steered her and Ilaria around puddles and dogs’ land mines. He was such a gentleman.

  “Is it far to San Galgano?” The words were out of her mouth, planned or unplanned, she could not be sure.

  “About an hour to the southwest. Just past Monticiano. You haven’t been there before?”

  “No. I might drive out there,” she said. “I’ve heard it’s worth seeing.”

  Carlo thought for a moment. “The road is not well marked. I will take you myself if you don’t mind stopping in Monticiano first.” There was a hesitation in his voice, and she assumed he was just being polite.

  “I wouldn’t want to take your time.”

  “No, no, I’d like to show it to you.” There was something else he was saying; she didn’t know what it was, but she saw that it was important to him that she go.

  Ilaria looked up at her. “I’ll show you the ducks.” The girl’s sweet face made her heart ache.

  “Well, if it’s really not too much trouble—”

  “It would be my pleasure, Mrs. Messina. My car is parked near the Fortezza.” He was suddenly quite formal, as if to banish any sense of impropriety.

  She felt as if things were getting slightly out of her control, but at the same time that was like the best part of riding. You used the bit and your legs to direct the horse, but there was always a moment when the animal, at speed, was immune to your commands. Some riders only rode in fenced arenas because they were terrified of being run away with. Scottie lived for that moment when you knew you might not be able to stop the horse, so you didn’t try, you just rode it out and trusted the horse not to kill you both.

  4.

  Michael got a cable from Rome saying that he needed to provide more information on the Communists in Siena, so that “measures could be taken” to prevent Ugo Rosini from being elected mayor again in November, “a potentially disastrous outcome.”

  The thought that he was going to be a father kept slipping into his consciousness, distracting him from his work. What kind of a father would he be? His own father was cold to him while at the same time doting on his four sisters. His father even liked his sisters’ husbands, whom Michael saw as monosyllabic and sports-obsessed. He could have had better conversations with Banchi’s oxen. Scottie had pointed out it was “normal” for men to want children. He picked up a copy of Life magazine. They sent him Life and Look with orders to leave them on café tables so that the Sienese would see how wonderful life in America was. He flipped through the pages, looking at pictures of normal men. Normal men bought life insurance so their children would be taken care of when they died. A normal man read the paper while his wife was in the delivery room having their first child. Normal men had heartburn, and no wonder: A Union Oil ad featured a veteran enjoying the amazing comforts of modern life but warned that “eternal vigilance—historically the price of liberty—may in our time be the price of prosperity, too.”

  A survey reported that American women’s ideal man was six feet tall, with black wavy hair and blue eyes. He was a business executive, sincere and honest, but also po
lite, sporting, helpful, communicative, well read, and enjoyed dancing and woodworking.

  Woodworking?

  Michael sighed. He would rather fight Communists.

  5.

  Carlo had one of the super-popular, tiny new Fiat 600s in robin’s egg blue. She looked at his hand on the gearshift, how the thin hair climbed down his arms possessively, like a single strand of ivy taking over a column. His hands were broad with long fingers, and his nails short and clean. Michael’s hands were quick and nervous, always in motion. Stop that, she told herself. Stop comparing them.

  Just outside the city walls, they turned off the pavement into a narrow, bumpy driveway that led through a dense group of trees up a hill. At the top, the view opened up and there was a beautiful gray stone farmhouse next to a crumbling tower. Before they drove down the road, Carlo paused for a moment.

  “This is where my wife lives,” he said simply.

  They got out, and a tall woman with a cloud of curly copper hair shot through with gray came out of the house and hugged Ilaria.

  Scottie half recognized her, but thought she must be wrong. It couldn’t be. She was wearing tan trousers covered, Scottie noticed, in white dust, like powdered sugar. The woman stared at her down a long aristocratic nose, expressionless, and then, after a glance at Carlo, broke into a wide smile.

  “Signora Scottie Messina, my wife, Franca.” Carlo was speaking English.

  Franca looked an awful lot like the woman with the donkey.

  “I recognize you, I think,” Scottie said carefully.

  Franca smiled. “You must be mistaken.”

  Scottie shook Franca’s hand, feeling the strength in her thin, callused hand. She paused, never sure when the tu form, or informal “you,” was appropriate, and decided to stick to English, although it felt like a form of defeat.

  “My husband and I live in the apartment you own, in the Campo,” said Scottie. “We love it.”

  “Ah, yes. One of Carlo’s family properties.”

  “Are you a baker?” asked Scottie, nodding at the white dust.

  “Sculptor,” said Franca. “I’m finishing a piece in marble.” Franca’s hands moved nervously when she wasn’t holding something.

  “Wonderful,” said Scottie. “I’d love to see it.”

  “Where is Ciucco?” asked Ilaria.

  “In the barn,” said Franca, and Carlo explained, “Franca has a dear old donkey that Ilaria is in love with.”

  A donkey. Franca was the woman with the donkey who had hissed at her in the street. She felt cold, and a little afraid, but kept her face pleasant.

  “There are new ducklings in the pond,” Franca told Ilaria. Ilaria ran around the back of the house, and a barking dog, some sort of little beagle mix, followed.

  “Carlo said you went to Smith,” said Scottie.

  “Yes,” said Franca. “I left in 1937.” Scottie expected her to say more, but Franca didn’t, instead moving into the house. Carlo waved his hand for them to follow. As she glanced at his face, Scottie saw a tension there under the polite smile.

  Franca had turned the ground floor, which used to house the animals, into a studio. There were small chalk and clay models around the space, which was littered with bits of wood, wire and the clay and chalk that had been chipped away. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling; Scottie recognized lavender and rosemary, but couldn’t name the myriad of other dried flowers and plants hanging there. The smell was amazing—a garden, condensed. There were shelves lined with jars containing more herbs and what looked like stones suspended in cloudy water.

  “Franca is an herbalist and a brilliant sculptor,” said Carlo, running his hand over a marble column that reminded Scottie of a cypress tree. Franca smiled at him and tossed her hair.

  “Carlo knows nothing about art,” she said. “But I love him anyway.”

  Carlo smiled at her and said a simple “Me, too, amore.”

  Scottie admired the flowing, sensuous, abstract shapes. They were a strange couple, she thought, yet Franca seemed happy when she looked at Carlo. He seemed to make her relax, and in those moments she became beautiful, Scottie thought, despite the fact that she wore no makeup and sloppy clothing. And yet, behind the eyes … what was it? A hardness. Pain. They must have been married a long time, been through so much together, including the war.

  Franca handed them both a glass of wine, which had appeared out of nowhere. “It’s not great,” she said, “but it’s from my own grapes.”

  There was a piercing scream, and as they ran outside, the beagle arrived carrying a duckling in his mouth, followed by sobbing, horrified Ilaria.

  Scottie looked at the limp little bloody body and felt suddenly very ill. She saw Franca watching her carefully.

  Carlo tried to get the duckling away from the dog, but he ran circles around them, the little beaked head bobbing out of his mouth making the girl scream even louder. Scottie sank onto the stairs, feeling the blood drain from her face. The nausea she had felt in the bakery was back.

  “You’re pregnant,” said Franca quietly.

  Carlo was hugging the sobbing little girl. He said, “The duck has been transformed into an angel.”

  “An angel with little yellow wings?” Ilaria asked, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Exactly,” said Carlo.

  With a cool glance at Scottie, Franca herded Ilaria into the house, promising her sweets. Carlo turned to Scottie.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sorry,” she said quickly.

  “Ilarietta,” he called. “We have to go now.” Franca came out, and he added, “Franca, come with us to San Galgano. You can show Scottie around.”

  “No, I’m working. Leave Ilaria here. I’ll bring her back to her parents tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Ciao, amore.”

  Carlo and Franca kissed each other on both cheeks. “I’ll see you soon. Ciao.”

  Scottie went to shake Franca’s hand, but the thin, birdlike woman pulled her close and kissed her cheeks. It felt more like malice than affection.

  As they got back in the car, Scottie felt awkward and unsettled.

  “We don’t have to go to San Galgano,” she said.

  Carlo put a hand on her back and the electricity hit her. “It’s not far,” he said, turning onto the main road heading away from Siena.

  * * *

  Carlo drove in silence for a while. “There is something I wish to tell you,” he said. “About me. About Franca.”

  “It’s none of my business,” she said quickly.

  He nodded. “It’s true. But in you I feel I have found a friend. May I think that way?”

  She looked at him. “Yes,” she said.

  “Siena is a difficult place for me. I do not have many friends. Perhaps none. It is my own fault.”

  She waited.

  “Franca and I have always known each other. Our families … We were always together, like it was fate.”

  “She was from a noble family, too?”

  “Yes. We were so different but still so close, best friends. I wish you could have known her then. She was so funny, so wild. I was, I don’t know, a dreamer. When we were sixteen, well, there was a mistake. We were in love, and things went too far. She became pregnant.”

  “Oh.”

  “Our families were very angry, of course, but this happens. So we got married, and we lived with my parents. It was important to them that we be educated, so I was sent to England and Franca to America. The child was kept at home, a secret from our lives as students.”

  “Boy or a girl?”

  “A boy.”

  “You must have missed him.”

  “I did, but to be truthful, also I didn’t. I was too young to be a father. My parents were right to send me away.”

  “And Franca?”

  “She was unhappy in America. She missed Raimondo. She did not finish at Smith, but came home.”

  The landscape outside the window shi
fted, as if in response to Carlo’s story. The forest became darker and denser, and a fog settled over them.

  “I came back from England, and for a while we were happy, actually.”

  She waited, knowing he was deep in the past. She imagined Franca and a little boy in sunlight, in vineyards.

  “And then … I don’t know. I wanted to have more children, but she became very nervous.”

  “During the war?”

  “I was stationed near Poggibonsi, north of here. We had an apartment there so she and Raimondo could be close to me. I thought it was safe. I was wrong. A bomb hit our apartment building. Raimondo was killed. It was his fourteenth birthday.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.” It was a deeply inadequate response, but to say more would have been worse. Everything she had sensed about Carlo but not understood made sense now.

  They drove along in silence for a while.

  “It was hard for us to be together after that. I moved into the castello after my parents died, and she chose the farmhouse you saw.”

  “You’ve been apart a long time. But you’re still married?”

  “It’s Italy. There are no divorces, or at least it’s not worth the time and effort it would take. And I would not do that to her.”

  “You both didn’t want to start over? Try again?”

  Carlo shrugged. “Me, yes. But Franca … she is stuck in the past.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I try to help her. She loves the visits from Ilaria. And she sells her herbs. She is wise in these things. Her grandmother was, too. It’s good for her, to help people, to feel useful. But it’s hard not to see the woman she was, hard not to miss her. And I think she must hate me a little. I wasn’t there when it happened.”