That Summer in Sicily

by Marlena de Blasi

  I hadn’t seen the note that Fernando had left on the bedside table. He writes that he’s been back to the room to bathe and change, then gone on some mission to Enna with Valentino. They might be a bit late in returning, but I am to go ahead without him. We’ll meet in the salone francese, he writes.

  I undress, pour the heels of all the perfumes and oils and soaps into the tub, and twist the faucets open all the way, expecting the thin streamlets that normally fall from them. This evening water gushes hot and quick onto neroli, lemon, lavender, frothing them to an iridescent meringue. I scrub and think how I wish I had known the prince.

  It’s already past nine as I step into the silvery-brown dress. As though it was made for me. That’s how it fits, how it feels. The long-cuffed sleeves Agata has cut away entirely, as she has the stiff stand-up collar. From the once demure bodice she has carved a deep heart-shaped décolleté, anchoring it with thin shirred straps. What she’d cut from the length of the skirt is now a wide sash to wind ’round and ’round the waist for a kind of corset effect. I crisscross the satin ribbons of my sandals. A rim of kohl for the eyes, a slick of Verushka for the mouth. No time to fix the hair still damp from the bath. A loose knot I make of its untidiness, leaving it to hang over one shoulder. I have no evening purse, no pearls. I cut short the stems of two creamy roses, wrap the thorned ends of them in a tiny tulle and lace doily that sits under a bud vase, and push the nosegay between my breasts. Thinking of Tosca and Flaubert and the rose petal between Roseannette’s lips, I walk down the stairs to find the salone francese.

  Opened only part way, I stand before the tall, chipped gilt doors. The leaving sun slashes pink across the room and tinges bronze the profiles of a small complement of men and women posed about a vast grouping of love seats and chaise longues flung with lengths of worn brocade that might have once been blue, as though the task of upholstering the lot had long since been abandoned. The men and women hold old-fashioned coupe-shaped glasses, speak in lulling voices, and the pink light flashes, falls away even as I stand there so that they and the stone-floored room with the cornflower-blue silk walls are lit now with only the quivering flames of candles massed on tables, mantles, sideboards. It is Cosimo who sees me as I enter, who comes toward me with his arms open.

  “La Chou-Chou. Buona sera.”

  Escorted and presented into their midst, I immediately wish I’d stayed in my reverie under the iridescent meringue. Here in the salone francese, I am an old prom queen misdirected into the sanctum of an Armani summit. Each one here is draped severely in black. Not widow black but chic black. Caught narrowly and left to puddle above the heels of alligator shoes, silk pleated-front trousers flutter down the long legs of the men. More black silk in T-shirts or open-necked dress shirts, longish, wide-shouldered jackets. Including Cosimo—who is dressed as they are all dressed—there are four of them. Two women wear short black jackets constructed with the precision and inflexibility of armor. Stiff peplums flare out from thin waists and hover above toneless derrières sheathed in tulip-shaped knee-length skirts. Bony bare sun-browned legs and narrow feet totter upon the heels of jeweled pumps. Tosca wears one of her blacks, a chiffon tunic that covers her up to her emerald in front and bares the burnt-almond Saracen skin of her back and shoulders. I am the single flaw in this living frieze and though I want to run out and away from it, I take the coupe-shaped glass of sparkling wine that is offered to me and drink to their collective health. They drink to mine. I can’t recall even one of their names and I wonder about the Venetian, whether I’ll ever see him again. I wonder who these people are. I wonder why Tosca didn’t lend me a black dress.

  One of the men, perhaps the eldest of the group, perhaps sensing my discomfort, compliments my dress.

  “Do I recall, Tosca, that you once had a dress in that same wonderful color?” he asks of her while smiling at me.

  “I might have,” she says to him. And then to me, “As I’ve told you, Chou, we’ve all known one another for centuries. Of what we don’t recall about ourselves, the others are always ready to remind us.”

  Forgetting the torment of the old prom queen, I look at Cosimo, think how fond I have grown of him. Too, I could soften to the eldest Armani whose mise and whose manner, closer up, is less studied than that of the others. When we are called out into the dining hall, it’s one of the other Armanis, though, who crooks his arm, nods at me, “Con piacere, signora.”

  He is called Icilio, he tells me. I sit between him and Cosimo, who is already deep in discourse with one of the peplums. Across from me sits Carlotta, and next to her is Fernando’s empty chair. Elijah, where are you? Tosca sits across from Icilio, and for a while I hope it will be to her rather than to me that he will intend the nasally delivered orations he’d begun on the way to the hall. Meanwhile I am distracted by supper.

  Long terra-cotta dishes of sarde a beccafico, fresh sardines stuffed with fried bread crumbs and garlic and pine nuts and raisins and baked with fresh bay leaves and olive oil. There are trays of panelle, fritters made of chickpea flour; great metal dishes with sizzling black olives that have been roasted with lemon and garlic; there is maccu, fresh fava beans braised in olive oil and wild fennel, puréed and smeared on charred bread. Fangottu, monumental white china bowls, are heaped with pasta sauced with raw crushed tomatoes, olive oil, and shreds of pecorino still too young to grate. It is Saturday, and Furio is at table orchestrating the passing and tearing of his two-kilo sesame-crusted breads cleverly slashed so that, as they baked, they took on the form of immense golden crowns. There is lamb roasted with mountain mushrooms and wild herbs. Sausages and small potatoes wrapped in pancetta, speared onto wine-soaked twigs and grilled over vine cuttings, are piled onto wooden boards and carried ’round the table. Still no Elijah. I ask Tosca if she is concerned that Fernando and Valentino have not yet arrived.

  “Not at all,” she says. “You see, when Valentino goes to town, he does errands for everyone else who has neither time nor opportunity to go himself. The trip always takes a while.”

  “But it’s nearly eleven and everything’s been closed for hours.”

  “The deliveries,” she says. “He must stop in five or six or more places to bring what’s been commissioned. A coffee. A grappa. Some gossip. A hand of briscola.”

  “La signora is missing her husband. This is lovely.” It’s Icilio who puts his large, smooth brown hand over mine. To comfort me.

  “No, it’s not that I miss him as much as that I wish he were here.”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “This is our last evening at the villa. That’s all. It’s only that.”

  Icilio leans close to me, watches as I fumble trying to slide the sausages and potatoes from the twig. Setting down knife and fork, I turn to face him. It was that for which he’d been waiting. In a quieter but still grandiloquent tone he tells me that life is meant to un armonia di amore, dovere e tradimento. A harmony of love, duty, and betrayal. He says that each one is essential to the other. Not one of them can survive alone. No two of them can survive without the third.

  He pauses then. A sip of wine. I’m still looking at him but thinking that I’m already struggling with the old prom-queen complex and now these damn sausages welded to a twig and he wants to be provocative, wants to talk about betrayal and harmony and the stuff of true love.

  “Are you saying that rather than coming to supper this evening, my husband is elsewhere betraying me?”

  “If he is not betraying you this evening, he will only have to betray you tomorrow morning unless, of course, he has already betrayed you yesterday. Love is not love without duty and betrayal.”

  “I see. Together, they make harmony.”

  “Excellent. You have understood.” He sips his wine. Picks up his twig and bites cleanly and with finesse directly into the sausage and potato. Pats his lips with his napkin. “Of course it’s true for you, as well.”

  I laugh perhaps a little too heartily, since one of the peplums swivels her bl
onded head toward me in what seems dismay. I think this Icilio is saying that my love for Fernando will not be a harmonious love unless I betray him. That it is my duty to betray him if I love him. Yes, I think that’s what he’s saying and, too, I think his is far and away the most brilliantly delivered seduction of my life. I tell him so. He thanks me. Refills my wineglass. Disposes of the lush scorched meat of another twig. Tells me how fetching are the roses tucked into my dress.

  “Sicilians dwell in a sub-rosa world, you know. Under the rose. The implicit word. The gesture, cloaked. I will tell you another, more subtle, significance of sub rosa. A girl called Rosalia is our saint. We are under the protection of Rosalia. We trust ourselves to a virgin hermit and should she not be clever enough to save us, we can always turn to our goddess farmer. Do you know of our Demeter?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. So you know, then, that we Sicilians, most especially we Sicilian men, believe in the power of beautiful women.”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Pindar called us men in love with brazen warfare. Though I do like the sound of that phrase, alas, he was wrong, signora. Pindar was wrong. Or perhaps he was only half right. We are mama’s boys, homespun, silver-tongued, Machiavellian. Everything we’ve learned, we’ve learned from women.”

  “A goddess-worshipping culture.”

  “Far more than that, signora. Far more than that. All Sicilians think they are gods. We pastoral Sicilians know that we are. Descended directly from Hera and Zeus and Poseidon and Hades himself—hardly a united family or one shy of terrifying characters—we understand and accept our wisdom and greed and infinite powerlessness as birthrights. Heredity. The gods lived right here where we live. They built temples, worshipped one another and themselves, wreaked havoc, murdered, loved, feasted, swindled, raped one another’s wives, stole one another’s children, surrounded themselves with beauty. They slept on beds strewn with wildflowers and drank their wine from alabaster cups. And, except for those—for the wildflower-strewn beds and the alabaster cups—all of us who have come after them have lived or are still living versions of the same lives they did. As you have undoubtedly noted, the past is not dead here. It hardly ever sleeps. That’s why we are not much interested in change and not at all interested in changing ourselves. We are already perfect in the same imperfect way that the gods were perfect,” he says as dishes of watermelon jelly are set down along with doilied trays of little peach tarts.

  Elijah has yet to arrive. What with the sizzling olives, my discreet glances down the table at Furio—which only Icilio has noticed—the twigged sausages, all the Armanis, sub rosa and wisdom and greed and murder and swindling and alabaster cups, I’ve hardly had time to think of Fernando. Everyone is moving out into the gardens.

  Tosca comes to whisper that Fernando is upstairs in our rooms. She tells me that he left word in the kitchen, asked that I be told he was tired. That he went to rest and to wait for me. That I shouldn’t rush. I excuse myself and run up to him.

  Fully dressed, Fernando sleeps. A canarino, a cup of water steeped with lemon peel, still warm, is on the night table. I sit beside him, stroke his forehead. The Venetian farmer is finally exhausted from nearly a month in the orchards and the fields. Banker’s hands roughed, pale skin flushed to a dark ruddle, he has worked and, I suppose, played in a way he never had before. He stirs, murmurs something about grappa and Valentino, and I understand that with the lemon tisana, he meant to calm his stomach.

  “I’m going back down to say good night. I’ll be right back.”

  He sits up then. “I think we should leave this evening.”

  “But you’re so tired. A good sleep and then we can be off.”

  “No. I want to drive in the darkness rather than the daylight. I’ll get up and pack the last things. Let’s just slip away.”

  “Are you sad to be going? Is that it?”

  “It’s not sadness. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not sadness. I’ve never had homesickness, but I think that’s what I’m feeling. It’s like when you say you feel bittersweet. I could never really understand what you meant, but I suppose I do now.”

  “Bittersweet. Life played on the minor keys. Small affirmations of beauty.” I caress his face. “Will you betray me tomorrow morning, or have you already betrayed me this evening?”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  When I return to the garden, all the torches and candles are spent. The household has retired. Even the Armanis have started back for Palermo or are tucked away in the villa. No, Icilio is still here. Sitting with Tosca near the magnolia. Still unseen, shall I slip away? Bid them good night? If we leave this evening, I’ll not see her again. Icilio strikes a match and as it flashes, I say, “Buonanotte, Tosca. Signor Icilio. Volevo solo dirvi buonanotte.”

  Icilio lights a cigarette and, still talking, they stand, begin walking toward me.

  “I was waiting for you; we were waiting for you,” Tosca says. “Is Fernando feeling better?”

  “Yes, I think so. I’ll just get back to him, then.”

  “I’m going up as well. I can’t seem to persuade Icilio to stay the night, though.”

  “If I can arrange it, I always prefer to spend Sundays in Palermo.”

  “Ah, Signore Icilio misses someone. Isn’t that lovely?”

  Tosca seems perplexed. A three-cheek kiss for Icilio. And, for the first time, one for me. Her hand on my face, she says, “You were welcome when you arrived and you are loved as you leave us.”

  She’s gone. I stand with Icilio and we watch her until she reaches the door. I am still looking in Tosca’s direction when he barely brushes my face, still warm from Tosca’s hand, with his lips. He begins to walk away. I am nearly at the door when he stops, calls out in a stage whisper, “Signora. Signora.”

  I swing ’round, press my back against the door.

  “In another time, I, too, would have loved you. I would have loved you very well.”

  I climb the stairs to Fernando, wondering about Icilio’s theory. I wonder about betrayal and duty. I wonder about love.

  Fernando has packed our things, written a note to Tosca, one to Valentino, one to Agata. I trade the silvery-brown dress for jeans and boots. A fresh white shirt. I am folding the dress, tucking it into my case, when Fernando says, “Come here. Stay with me for a while before we go.”

  We lie down face to face on the bed, talk a little about the route. It takes a few minutes before we realize that we don’t want to go to Noto at all. Or anywhere else in Sicily, for that matter. We want to go home. The quickest, fastest route back to Venice. Each one relieved to learn the other one agrees. We check ferry schedules. We can be halfway up the coast of Calabria by sunrise. In Venice for a late supper.

  We carry our things down and I wait in the garden with them while Fernando goes to fetch the car, to drive it to a place closer than the distant villa gates where it has been parked since we arrived. I sit in the cleft of the magnolia. When I hear Fernando’s approach to the little gravel lot on the other side of the villa, I begin dragging the bags across the garden to it. He comes to help me and, in a few moments, everything is stowed. I have never seen this side of the villa and so look about. Look up to a wide loggia that runs the whole length of the outside wall and has the same red marble columns that march along the loggia on the ground floor. It would be large enough to hold ten couples waltzing. Or just one. Or a daybed wrapped in opalescent curtains with a heavy satin border. Fernando has started the motor again. I get in, close the door quietly. As he maneuvers the car to face the private roadway, I look up at the loggia. I see a face in the upper window framed in a Gothic arch. A silhouette. A shadow. I see two shadows.

  EPILOGUE

  MARCH 2000

  A Letter from Tosca

  LUI É MORTO. HE IS DEAD. IT’S BEEN ONE MONTH AND THREE days since Leo died. Yes, you’re reading correctly. I said since Leo died. It was Leo with whom I lived for these past years since his
“resurrection.” His reappearance. I imagine your perplexity. I hear you asking, But why didn’t you tell me? Or perhaps, Why did you deceive me?

  I could answer by saying, I am Sicilian. Tell you that mystery and even duplicity are my birthrights. That chiaroscuro is another form of storytelling. I could say that silence is not always meant to conceal but sometimes to enfold, to keep safe. Or I could propose that sins of omission may not be sins at all. Besides, what woman worth her femininity has ever told all of her story? Surely you have not, my darling friend. As the gods do, we reveal ourselves—if we reveal ourselves at all—to whom we choose and in our own good time.

  It was in 1968, five years after I returned from Palermo with Nuruzzu to set up life here at the villa, when Leo came winding up the pebbled road one morning, flinging open the door of the old Rover while the motor was still running, unfolding himself from behind the steering wheel to stand there grinning at Agata and the women in the garden, holding a finger to his lips to silence them. He walked inside, listened for me, came to the door of the salone francese, where I was still trying to play Saint-Saëns. A long, lean spectre in sore need of a shave and a good scrubbing, he was wearing the same jodhpurs and riding boots he’d been wearing on the last evening that I saw him. And I was wearing his old suede jacket. The first words I heard him speak in fourteen years were, It’s a swan, Tosca. The music was composed to give the impression of a swan. There is no indication that an elephant approaches. Piano, piano, amore mio.