Juliet's Answer

by Glenn Dixon

  “Ha,” I said. “I’m usually the one boring my students with metaphors.”

  She glanced sidelong at me.

  “But that’s a pretty good one,” I admitted.

  We stopped near the busker and listened for a while, but I could tell she was fading.

  “You getting tired?” I asked.

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I think I’m about done.”

  We doubled back and just before we came out onto the street again, Desiree stopped. At a gap in the wall, far below, the ground dropped away into a deep trench.

  “Hey,” she said, grabbing at my arm. “Look down there.”

  Beneath the redbrick walls, half-hidden in the shadows, was the moat, dry now, probably dry for hundreds of years.

  “I knew there was a moat here,” she said. “I knew it.”

  “Is that another metaphor?” I asked.

  “Hey, you just smarten it up, mister.” She turned on me then, but she was grinning, enjoying herself. “Sometimes,” she said, “you see what you want to see.”

  * * *

  That night, the wrought iron streetlights lit up like stars. Old men lounged on their balconies and smoked. We came in from dinner, a pizza place we’d found under the medieval walls, and Desiree headed straight for her room. “Good night,” she said, not turning around. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night,” I answered, and I went to sit by myself in the front room. I pulled out my notebook. I wanted to write another letter to Juliet. I wanted to get it right this time. “Dear Juliet,” I began, “I have come again to Verona with a shattered heart. Sometimes, I think, it is best to just flee—to put some distance between yourself and the sharp edges of fate. The girl I loved for many years did not love me. I despair of love, Juliet. I have been hurt many times and I am worn out and cynical. I am afraid of growing old alone. It’s too much. I think I am a good person, and I don’t know why this keeps happening to me.”

  I stopped. I didn’t know what else to write and it just sounded like whining anyway. I heard the accordion door ratchet open and Desiree’s footsteps tapping down the hallway. She drooped in toward me, her laptop tucked under her arm. “I can’t sleep,” she said.

  “Me neither.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Writing another letter. The first one didn’t work out so well.”

  She yawned and sat down beside me. She popped open her laptop and it cast a bluish light across the tabletop. She’d changed into pajamas—flannel boxer shorts and a tank top—and her hair was up in a ponytail.

  “Hey,” I said, “could you look something up for me?”

  Her eyes flickered over to me. “What?”

  “Dante,” I said. “The Divine Comedy.”

  “What for?”

  “I just want to see something. Canto 6 in Purgatorio.”

  She tapped at the keyboard and a page opened up.

  “Lines 106 to 108.”

  “Okay,” she said, scrolling, squinting at the screen. “Here it is.”

  I leaned in to read it.

  Vieni a veder Montecchi e Cappelletti

  Monaldi e Filippeschi, uom sanza cura

  color già tristi, e questi con sospetti

  “Can you translate that for me?”

  “Come and see,” she said, “Montecchi and Cappelletti.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s them. That’s the two families—Montague and Capulet.”

  She traced her finger under the second line. “There are two more names, then ‘uom sanza cura.’ That means ‘men without cure.’ ”

  “Without cure?”

  “I think it means something like without hope, without the possibility of release. This is Purgatory, remember.”

  I shuffled in a little closer to her. Her hair had a faint fragrance—and her bare shoulder touched mine. It was as soft and smooth as caramel.

  “The last line is . . .” She squinted into the computer. “Already sad, these with suspect.”

  “Suspect?” I said.

  “That’s just the rhyme,” she said. “He uses sospetti to rhyme with Cappelletti.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “They’re in Purgatory,” she said again. “They’ve done something awful, but maybe something for which they can still make amends.”

  “Their hatred led to the suicides of their children, but it also brought peace to two warring families.”

  “That makes sense,” said Desiree.

  “Manuela told me that Prince Escalus told this story to Dante, that it actually happened in Verona just before Dante arrived. That was three hundred years before Shakespeare.”

  “Do you think it could be true?” Desiree asked.

  “Juliet’s house really is the Cappelli family home. Romeo’s house is fake, but Manuela said there probably was a Montecchi family who lived just outside the Old City walls.” I stopped. A chill ran down the back of my neck.

  “Via dei Montecchi,” she went on. Her eyes were as wide as mine. “We’re right on the Via dei Montecchi, and we’re south of the medieval walls.”

  “Holy shit,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said, “maybe, Romeo lived right here.”

  Arise, fair sun

  Desiree was up before me, already sitting at the breakfast table when I plodded into the front room. I’d stayed up late doing more research on the real Romeo and Juliet story, and I’d come across a few more tantalizing clues. The early-morning light washed across the plank flooring. Desiree’s long hair shone, tipped in gold. “Buon giorno,” she said. “Did you have a good sleep?”

  “Pretty good, yeah. How about you?”

  “Weird dreams,” she said. “But good.”

  On the side counter, Emiliano had set out granola, orange juice, cheese, and yogurt. Half the pan di spagna was still there under its glass bell. I took a yogurt cup and sat down beside Desiree.

  A pretty little locket dangled from her neck. I’d noticed it from the beginning—rectangular, like a tiny illuminated book from the Middle Ages, with fine lines of filigreed silver tracing across its cover.

  “Does that open?” I asked.

  “This?” said Desiree, touching the locket. “Yes.” She plucked at it and a tiny hinge swung wide. It was empty.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Thank you. My mother gave it to me.”

  “You should put something in it.”

  “I know. I will, when I find something I like.”

  “Listen,” I said, “I was thinking maybe we could visit Juliet’s vault before we go into the office. It’s right behind this apartment block.”

  “Isn’t that a bit creepy?”

  “Kind of. But seriously, it’s right there.” I pointed at the wall to the back of us.

  After breakfast, we gathered our things and tramped down the stairs together. We walked along the rain-spattered sidewalk to the end of the block and then up a lane and into the old abbey ruins.

  “You brought your camera, right?” Desiree had an expensive camera, a Canon 5D Mark III, and she was just getting into filmmaking. She patted her daypack. It weighed heavily on her shoulder.

  We crossed a grassy quadrangle, what used to be the cloisters of the old abbey. In the center was an ancient well, like a wishing well. Past it grew an oak tree, skeletal and ancient. All this was once hallowed ground. For centuries it had been a monastery, then a convent, then an abbey.

  “The vault is down here,” I said.

  Desiree wrestled the camera out of her pack and snapped a photo of the wishing well. Her eyes narrowed at the steps. “I don’t know about this,” she said.

  “Come on. It’s not that bad.”

  I went first. The stairwell smelled like wine that had gone off. Desiree trailed behind me and our footsteps echoed in the silence.

  The first cavern had tombs set into the floor, unmarked with dates or names, and Desiree bent to her camera again. She twisted at the lens. “It’
s a bit too dark in here,” she said but clicked off a shot anyway.

  “I was reading about this place last night,” I said as she worked. “There’s a reference to it from the fifteen hundreds.”

  “Mm,” she said, focusing.

  “The sarcophagus was used as a water trough up by the cloisters.”

  Desiree peered up from her camera viewfinder. “Which one is hers?”

  “Juliet’s tomb is in the next room.”

  I stepped ahead of her. The cavern was the same as last year, probably the same as it had been for centuries. A barrel vault of dusty bricks, like an ancient wine cellar, arched above us and in the middle of the floor an unadorned stone sarcophagus sat there like a bathtub. At the end of the cavern were two Venetian arches set in a niche.

  “What the historian said was—”

  “What historian?” She brought the camera up to her eye again.

  “A historian from 1540 or something. He wrote that this sarcophagus originally had human bones in it but the people threw them out and set it up as a water trough.”

  “You love that history stuff, don’t you?”

  “It’s interesting,” I said.

  She lowered her camera. “I like that about you, that you’re always curious.”

  Desiree steadied herself and snapped another shot. Her flash went off and the sarcophagus shone for a moment, the shadows black and deep around it.

  “So what about Juliet’s bones?” she said. “Do you really think they were thrown away? Italians are very respectful. I can’t believe they’d just—”

  “That’s just the point,” I said. “For the bones to be tossed out like that, this historian figured they had to be the bones of a person who’d committed suicide. They wouldn’t have been treated with respect.”

  “A suicide?” she said.

  “Well, yeah. First of all, the sarcophagus was buried outside the actual cemetery, so it almost certainly held the remains of someone who had committed suicide. Suicide was considered a mortal sin, so the body couldn’t be buried in hallowed ground.”

  Desiree swore in Italian and she made an odd gesture with her hand, something to ward off evil. It occurred to me that she could swear in three different languages and I found that vaguely impressive.

  “And,” I went on, “the family would have had to be rich to pay the monks to look the other way. You know, so that they could bury their loved one as close as possible to hallowed ground. It’s about the right time period. And the Capulets were a rich family.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “So you think it really could have been Juliet? In there?”

  “I don’t know. It could be.”

  Desiree stared at me for a long moment. She put a hand on the stone. “It’s warm,” she said. “The stones are warm.”

  I touched them. “Weird,” I said.

  “I can imagine how she must have felt,” said Desiree.

  “Huh?”

  “She was trapped. She would rather die than live a life she didn’t choose.”

  “I don’t know that it—”

  “I’m the same way. You need to know that.” Desiree held me in her gaze. “I have to live my life in my own way, not according to anyone else’s rules.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She let her camera hang from the strap around her neck. “Can we get out of here now?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She was solemn as we trundled up the stairs. At the top, the sun slanted down through the old cloisters. The clouds had lifted and a bird was singing in the high branches of the oak tree. We strode back out to the street and Verona clattered to life all around us.

  * * *

  The office was bustling when we arrived. A number of women looked up from the round table when I walked in with Desiree. I didn’t recognize any of them. Giovanna was behind the counter, and on the near side, a thin woman held a sheaf of papers and was addressing the group. Her papers rattled and her eyes darted. Through the crowd, Anna drifted into view. She waved when she saw us and we shuffled over to where she was standing. The thin woman grimaced at the interruption.

  “Buon giorno,” Anna whispered. “Is this Desiree?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Desiree.

  The woman by the counter glared at us but continued to read from her papers.

  “Let’s go to the back,” said Anna. “We can talk there.”

  “What’s going on?” I whispered. We followed Anna down the hallway, and at the door to her office she stopped. She glanced quickly at me and then sized up Desiree.

  “It’s the first meeting,” Anna said.

  “The first meeting of what?”

  Her eyes turned back on me. “Probably I have told you about Juliet’s birthday. We are beginning the planning.”

  “And who was that woman speaking?” I asked.

  “That is Barbara,” Anna said. “She will be organizing the celebration this year.”

  Desiree murmured something in Italian and Anna looked a bit surprised, then burst into a conspiratorial chuckle. They exchanged a few more whispered words, glancing at me and then laughing.

  “Hey,” I said. “No fair.”

  Out front, Barbara plowed on until something in her speech caught Anna’s attention.

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said. “She is passing out the papers now. I think I must go back.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll just get to work on the letters.”

  “No, you must come too,” said Anna.

  She turned me around and gave me a little push down the hall to the front. People were chattering now. The papers rustled and flapped as they were passed around. Anna took one and passed the very last one to me. It was a schedule of sorts, marked with times and languages. At the top it read “Compleanno di Giulietta.”

  “What is this?” I asked Anna.

  “For the birthday celebration, we always read from the letters—in many different languages.”

  Barbara called for quiet again and I felt Desiree tuck in beside me. Barbara rattled through the schedule, then her gaze turned on me. She spoke directly at me, in Italian.

  “Glenn,” Giovanna said, translating, “you will read the English letter at Juliet’s birthday.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. We would like this,” she said.

  Barbara waited patiently.

  “But, I’m not . . .” I began, but Desiree nudged me.

  Everyone in the room was staring at me. Then Desiree squeezed my arm. I could tell she was excited for me and wanted me to say yes.

  “What do I have to do?” I asked.

  “You will read the English letter,” said Giovanna, “in the Piazza dei Signori.”

  “In the piazza? But how many people are going to be there?”

  “All of Verona,” said Giovanna. “All of Verona will be there.”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  “Glenn,” whispered Desiree, “you should be honored that they’re asking you.”

  “All right,” I said, but everyone’s attention had already turned back to Barbara.

  When the meeting finally broke apart, Desiree and I shuffled back to our office down the hall.

  “They must like you,” said Desiree.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Of course they do. They’re impressed by you.”

  “Who said that?”

  “No one. They don’t have to. It’s obvious.”

  On the desk, the cardboard box was overflowing again. Someone must have refilled it. We rearranged the chairs, side by side, so that when we sat our knees touched under the desktop.

  A few minutes later, Anna appeared at the door. “Everyone is leaving for lunch,” she announced. She was pulling on her coat. “But I am going home for the day.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, though something looked amiss. “I will see you tomorrow?”
she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I will go to the new office tomorrow afternoon. Probably, I will collect the letters from the letter box first. Would you like to meet me there?”

  “At Juliet’s house?” Desiree asked.

  “Yes. You will come?”

  “Of course,” said Desiree.

  “And Glenn,” said Anna, “I will have a surprise for you there.”

  “A surprise?” I said.

  Anna waved her hand. “Tomorrow. We can say three o’clock? At the letter box.”

  * * *

  Desiree and I chipped away at the letters. It grew quiet out front, and I think maybe we were the only ones left in the office. Half an hour later, I came to an astonishing letter. “Dear Juliet,” it began. “My name is Fiona. I’m twenty-three and currently traveling in Europe. We’ve had a day trip to Verona, and so I wrote you this note. I was born with a lung disease called cystic fibrosis and my health is now declining quickly. There is no cure for this disease.”

  “Oh,” I said, out loud.

  Desiree looked up from her own letter. She watched my face fall. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I just . . . well, I’ve never seen one like this before.” I tapped at the letter in front of me and read some more.

  “I am in love with a man named Danny. He’s twenty-five and we want to get married. If you believe in soul mates, he is mine. I don’t know if our parents will allow us to marry and I wonder if it is fair to him. Already it is very hard for me to breathe. I probably won’t live to be forty, and my last years will not be good. Is it okay for me to just accept that I will have a tragic love story in the end? He says yes but I don’t know.”

  “What is it?” Desiree asked.

  The last two lines of the letter read: “All my love is on these two sheets of paper. Treat them well.”

  “Oh shit,” I said. I could feel my throat constricting.

  “What does it say?” she asked, reaching for the letter. She scanned it and her eyes grew liquid. Then she stood up abruptly. “I have to go outside,” she mumbled. She toppled out of the office and disappeared. I sat for a moment then went after her. Out front, her face had drained of color. She was not quite crying but it was close.