by Glenn Dixon
“Wow,” I said. “It’s Juliet.”
“It is,” said Desiree. “It is.”
Manuela’s daughter, Lucrezia, danced next. She pirouetted with a letter, holding it out at arm’s length as if to read it.
Desiree leaned into me. “She’s really good,” she said.
Barbara pushed toward us. She said something in staccato Italian. “You’re up next, Glenn,” Desiree said. “You’re the final act.”
“The Shakespeare reading?”
“Sì,” said Barbara. “Shakespeare, Shakespeare.”
Manuela’s daughter finished her dance by sinking gracefully to the cobblestones. She stood up and a great boom of applause thundered through the square. At the far edge of the square, the purple-caped Romeo was staring at me. The young actress playing Juliet stood beside him.
“Go,” said Desiree. “You’re on.”
I stepped to the podium. The crowd stilled. Romeo struck a pose in front of me. What was he meant to do? he seemed to be asking.
“But soft,” I began. “What light through yonder window breaks?”
Juliet climbed the staircase behind me. Her face peeked down from a balustrade above.
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun and kill the envious moon.
I saw Desiree, her hand on her locket, her eyes fixed on me. Romeo threw up his arm as if he were saying the lines himself, and I remembered my students, Sadia especially, rapt at this scene. I remembered Devin kicking at his desk leg, but listening, always listening.
“I am too bold,” I continued. “ ’Tis not to me she speaks.”
Romeo lingered at the steps. Above him, Juliet sighed and rested a white cheek on her hand.
The crowd was entranced. Could I really do the lines justice? I took a breath and barreled on. “Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes to twinkle in their spheres till they return.” The Shakespeare tumbled off my tongue as only Shakespeare can. I’d seen these very lines in the old quarto. A mad king had marked them as special. “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp. Her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing and think it were not night.”
“Ay me,” said Juliet from above.
“O speak again, bright angel.”
Behind me, Romeo raced up the stairs toward his Juliet. “As glorious to this night, being over my head,” I continued, “as is a winged messenger of heaven unto the white-upturned wondering eyes of mortals.”
I let those last few words hang in the air for a moment. Above me, Romeo had reached Juliet, and they embraced. All was still. I took a little bow and a smattering of applause rippled through the square, growing in volume until it became a sustained roar. I heard a few bravos, and I bowed again just before Barbara charged in to take the microphone from me. And then, that was it. Barbara said some closing remarks. Romeo and Juliet vanished. And Juliet’s birthday was over.
* * *
Once the square had cleared, Barbara dipped into the alcove under the stairs and returned with a couple of bottles of red wine. Giovanna swept in behind her with a couple of more whites. Giulio worked the corkscrew and passed the open bottles around. We filled our plastic cups, pouring for one another, the secretaries and actors and volunteers. Barbara was jubilant. We hoisted our cups in a toast to her. Giulio marched over to stand behind Desiree and me. He put a hand on her shoulder and said something to her. Then I felt his other hand come to rest on my shoulder. He held it there for a moment, though he never looked at me. His speech was short and in Italian. Still, I understood that he was pleased with the celebrations, and his hand on my shoulder was the single greatest compliment I received that day.
Giovanna looked more at ease than I’d ever seen her. She caught my eye and stepped in toward us. “You will be leaving Verona now?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so. Probably tomorrow,” I said.
“Then I wish to thank you both for your time here. You have been a great help.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It was our pleasure.”
“And you,” she said to Desiree. They broke into Italian, standing together as if they’d known each other for years. I took a step backward and bumped into someone behind me. Anna had slipped in tentatively, waiting to speak with me.
“You are leaving?” she asked.
“Probably tomorrow,” I said. “We want to see more of Italy.”
“It’s a very beautiful country.”
“What will you do now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I would like to work for a nonprofit.”
“Ah,” I said. “You will save the world.”
“Probably,” she said, brightening. “Probably I would like that.”
Someone called her name and she whirled off with a smile. Then Jolyon emerged from the crowd. He sidled up beside me, tucking his microphone away.
“Did you get everything you needed?” I asked.
“More than enough,” he said. “I’d like to air it on Valentine’s Day.”
“That’s a ways off.”
“Yes, but that’s not unusual. It takes some time to edit these things.”
Desiree skipped over to us with her camera.
“Would you like me to take a photo, just the two of you?” asked Jolyon.
“Yes, please,” she said, passing him her camera.
“What if,” he said, “you go up there?” He gestured up the staircase to the balcony at the very top.
“Is that all right?” I asked Desiree, but she was already pulling me to the stairs. I felt strange walking up those steps, as if only princes and poets were allowed to ascend. We rose, up and up, climbing to the top where a sort of balcony jutted out in front of the thick oaken doors of the tower. The doors were set in an arch framed by pillars of spiraling white marble. Above it, in the tympanum, an ancient fresco called the Allegory of Verona was still visible. A muse, or an angel maybe, sat in Roman dress with a book open on her lap as if she had just finished reading it. We walked to the balustrade and leaned over the railing. Far below us in the square, Jolyon motioned for us to step a little to the left. I put my arm around Desiree. Before us lay the gleaming rooftops of old Verona, shining in the last of the afternoon sun.
Jolyon raised the camera and snapped a few shots. Desiree mouthed a thank-you down to him. He nodded and then went to speak to others in the crowd. Desiree and I were silent for a moment; then she turned to me as if she’d just remembered something. “Did you post your letter yet?”
“No,” I said. “But I don’t think I will.”
A clear blue sky was reflected in her eyes.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because,” I said, pulling her toward me. “I’ve already got my answer.”
Epilogue
The epiphany of love
I jogged barefoot along the beach, a long, white stretch of sand ahead of me. The waves frothed and lapped up to my feet, but I plugged along, loping really, dodging the silver surf when it washed too high. I didn’t run very far, just out to a rocky point where a dog pranced along the shore with a stick in his mouth. He was the only other living thing I’d seen except for the seaweed. I turned back, my footprints collapsing behind me in the sand. I’d left a towel and a water bottle in the shade of a palm tree, but when I returned the sun had found them.
It had been more than a year since we’d left Verona. I sat on a fallen tree at the edge of the beach and watched a pelican swoop along the crest of the waves. The sea was an emerald green, breaking just out from the shoreline, thumping and washing up the sand in a bubbling froth.
Desiree was standing in the water. She must have surfed her last wave all the way into shore, dropping to paddle the last few feet. She undid the leash from her ankle, and tucked her surfboard under her arm. Her wet hair hung down her back. She waved at me.
“You looked great out there,” I called.
; She cupped an ear to tell me she couldn’t hear me over the surf and strode up the sand toward me.
“I saw a turtle!” she said when she arrived. “It popped its head out. It looked right at me.”
“Cool,” I said.
She laid her surfboard down in the shade, fins up, and gave a little shiver. I wrapped my beach towel around her shoulders.
“I love it here,” she said.
“Just think. It’s the middle of winter back home,” I said. “The kids are back in school.” I could still picture it so clearly, the fluorescent lights buzzing, the rustle of books being opened.
“Do you miss it?” she asked. “Do you miss being a teacher?”
“Here,” I said, “let’s sit in the sun. We walked down a little closer to the waterline, and she laid the towel down on the sand.
“I don’t really miss the teaching,” I said. “All the planning, all the marking. I don’t miss that at all. But I think about my students a lot. I wonder how they’re doing.”
“You made a difference in their lives. You know that, right?”
“I hope so.”
My former students would be out in the real world now. Sadia was probably in a university lecture hall, sitting in the front row. Devin, wherever he was, would be causing problems. Allison would be in law school, and maybe she was still with Andy. Minh’s English was probably pretty good by now, and Marc, well, I hoped he’d found his way. Over the years, probably three thousand students had passed through my classroom, and I did wonder what had become of them all.
We’d heard from Giovanna that the Club di Giulietta had opened another new office in Verona. Giulio, I think, had decided to close down the old one on the Via Galilei. That building had served its purpose. Thousands of letters and thousands of stories had passed through its doors. The secretaries had answered them all with good counsel, patience, and grace. Giovanna e-mailed me when she heard I was writing a book about my time as a secretary to Juliet. “I am happy for your good fortune,” she said, and she asked when Desiree and I might visit again.
In the spring, Soa had traveled all the way to Canada to visit us. We took her to the mountains and she bought a snowy owl keepsake in Banff. Anna returned to university to study for a master’s degree in fund-raising. I was proud of her for that. Manuela was leading tours across the Old City, teaching people about Dante and his connection to Romeo and Juliet. At Juliet’s house, the right breast on her statue would be polished to an even thinner eggshell of gold, though her expression, demure and distant and just a little bit sad, would never change.
“Earth to Glenn,” said Desiree. She’d nestled into me on the towel. “Where art thou?”
“I was just thinking about Verona,” I said. “Sometimes, I can’t believe everything that’s happened. I mean, look at this. Everything has turned out so perfectly.”
“That’s right, Mr. Destiny.” She kissed my cheek.
“I’m serious. I can’t help but wonder, what was I supposed to learn from all this?”
“And what do you suppose you’ve learned?” she asked.
“That I don’t ever want to feel heartache again. That I don’t ever want to be jealous or hopeless or sad. And”—I met her eyes—“that I want to be with you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Desiree.”
She smiled and leaned into me.
“What about you?” I asked. “What have you learned?”
“Me?” She paused. “Well, it’s as if the dust has been swept from my path and now it’s clear. Now I know where to walk.” She tucked her head into my shoulder. “And I’ll walk it with you.”
“That’s a pretty good answer,” I said.
Far on the horizon, a ship was sailing away. It was too distant to tell whether it was a cruise ship or a cargo container, just a dot on the ocean headed for faraway lands.
Right at that moment, I knew I didn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. There was no pain in my heart. No uncertainty. There was me. There was Desiree. And that was all I needed. I am no longer young. I know that. But I know who I am. I’m no longer at the mercy of the tides of my youth. And I know that I’m happy.
I remember one piece of research from among the hundreds of papers and books that I read about love. It was just a little aside, quite unrelated to the hard data of the research paper. Most of the world’s love stories, it said, are not love stories at all; rather, they are the stories of courtship, of those magical days at the beginning. There’s much less written about the long years that follow, about growing old together, about love that lasts and lasts and lasts. And isn’t that what true love is really all about?
Four hundred years ago, Shakespeare wrote something much the same.
“Love’s not Time’s fool,” he wrote.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
A Walking Tour of Old Verona
The following tour correlates to the map on pages 244 and 245.
The cobblestoned streets and shaded alleys of Verona are well-worn by those who have walked them over the millennia. Roman legions, star-crossed teenagers, and lovelorn authors have all followed these twisting paths through the heart of the ancient city, leaving their own indelible marks for the next travelers to find. What will you discover in Verona?
As Glenn learned, every journey must start from the heart. Roman engineers first laid out the heart of Verona within a bend of the Adige River, and the generations that came afterward turned the Old City into a dense cluster of piazzas and corsos. Consider beginning your walk in the Piazza delle Erbe (1), the old vegetable market. Here, you can haggle over fresh fennel and honey from the Veneto countryside and enjoy a glass of amarone in the shadow of the Torre dei Lamberti (2). The 276-foot spire was constructed in the twelfth century and has watched over Verona ever since—its bell may very well have tolled out the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. A spectacular view from the top awaits explorers who brave the stairs, though a lift will take you there all the same. Stepping out of the piazza, you are only a short walk from the Casa di Giulietta (3), out of which so much of Glenn’s story unfolds. Perhaps you’re there for a quick kiss on the balcony. Or maybe you’re delivering a letter of your own.
Then consider strolling through the Vicolo Santa Cecilia (4), a narrow street almost untouched by time, where the new office of the Club di Giulietta lies hidden, to the beautiful Tomba di Cangrande della Scala (5). Here, the remains of Prince Escalus are interred within the walls of the church of Santa Maria Antica, along with four other elegant tombs of Veronese rulers. Just around the corner sits the “Casa di Romeo” (6). Although it may not be the true seat of the Montague family, this proud fourteenth-century fortification sits resplendent with dovetail crenellations, and is well worth the short walk.
Following the Adige south from the Ponte Nuovo (7), you can wend your way along the riverbank to the ruins of the monastery of San Francesco al Corso, under which the Tomba di Giulietta (8) has survived the centuries. Perhaps you will be fortunate, as Glenn was, to enjoy a quiet moment in the stillness of the crypt. A bust of Shakespeare at the entrance to the tomb watches over the young woman to whom he gave immortality—be sure to read the words on the faded bronze plaque beside it. Tucked behind the monastery is the small pensione where Glenn stayed, at number 7, Via dei Montecchi (9). Is this the true home of the Montague family? Verona still holds its secrets.
If you have come this far, the day may very well be winding down. There is no place better to dine in Verona than the centuries-old Pizzeria Leon d’Oro (10), just a few blocks away from the Via dei Montecchi. Here, Glenn and Desiree shared a bottle of Valpolicella Classico Allegrini and began to contemplate a life together. After dinner, a short walk east will take you to the Arena di Verona (11). Constructed nearly two thousand years ago, it is one of the best-preserved Roman buildings in t
he world. The arena is breathtaking enough during the day, but nothing short of spectacular at night. Attend the opera, as Glenn did, if you can. If not, you can always swing by the world-renowned Gelateria Savoia (12) nearby, and take in the majesty of the ancient architecture with an unforgettable gelato in hand.
Beyond the arena, against the western arm of the Adige, sits the Castelvecchio (13), with its rust-red bricks, though this may be a journey for another day. From these imposing walls, the princes of Verona ruled their swath of northern Italy for centuries. Farther afield is the Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore (14), under whose vaulted arches Romeo and Juliet married in secret.
There are discoveries beyond counting to be made in Verona. Many are built of brick and mortar, but still more are found within our hearts and minds. When we step out of our normal lives, as Glenn and Desiree and so many others have, into this city, we cannot help but discover something about ourselves in the journey.
What will you bring back with you when you return?
Ph. Ferruccio Dall’Aglio. www.ferrucciodallaglio.com
“In fair Verona, where we lay our scene.” Thanks to Shakespeare’s choice of setting for his famous star-crossed tale, this small Italian city is known worldwide as the home of romance, destiny, and true love.
Luca Ghidoni/Getty Images News/Getty Images
The facade of Juliet’s house. The house itself is seven hundred years old and belonged to the Cappelli family—rewritten as Capulet in Shakespeare’s version of Romeo and Juliet.
Juliet’s letter box in the courtyard of her house.
Juliet’s balcony, really a Roman sarcophagus attached to the house in the late 1930s.
Desiree Bilon
The statue of Juliet—note how her right breast is polished to a sheen by her thousands of admirers.