by Gay Talese
Antonio knew finally from his father’s last letter that in two cases he would not initially be introduced to the bridal candidates under the direct chaperonage of their parents or other family members. One father had explained to Francesco Cristiani that his eighteen-year-old daughter, Emanuela, was shy, incredibly shy; she was a maiden so sheltered and estranged from the wicked ways of the world that even a cloistered convent might not meet her standards of privacy and propriety—for which her father proclaimed his gratitude, because his daughter did not belong in a nunnery. “Emanuela is even more beautiful than she is shy,” he revealed in a tone of voice that was reverentially hushed; there followed by a wink, a nodding of his head, and finally the crossing of his heart—gestures he hoped Cristiani would somehow relay to his son in Paris so the latter would realize that Emanuela was one of Italy’s great undiscovered beauties as well as a peerless challenge for stalwart unmarried men.
“But in order for your son to meet my daughter,” her father then emphasized to Francesco Cristiani, “he will have to be patient. Emanuela cannot be expected to immediately come face to face with a stranger of the opposite sex, even with her entire family gathered around her, unless she first has a chance to see and familiarize herself with him without him seeing her.” Emanuela’s father next suggested how this might be done. On arriving in Maida from Paris, Antonio should come directly to Emanuela’s family village of Polia, several miles south of Maida. It was, however, a bit difficult to reach. The single, rocky road leading up to Polia was too narrow for carriages. Should Antonio come by carriage, it would be necessary for him to abandon it at the base of the hill and proceed for a half-mile up to the town gate on foot or by mule.
Never pausing to allow Antonio’s father a moment to doubt that the trip was surely worth the inconvenience, Emanuela’s father went on to say that Antonio, after passing through Polia’s gate, should cross the square and enter the town’s only café, and announce his name to the proprietor, Emanuela’s oldest brother. He in turn would send word to summon Emanuela’s other brothers and her father, who resided farther uphill. After they had all come down to meet Antonio, and had treated him to lunch, they would walk with him in the midafternoon passeggiata, traversing the square perhaps dozens of times so that Emanuela, observing him from her shadowed balcony, would come to regard him as less of a stranger, and would herself gradually become—in the words of her father—“less shy than beautiful.”
The other bridal candidate whom Antonio would not immediately meet through a parental introduction was a young noblewoman in Maida named Olympia Bianchi. She had been described by her baronial father to Francesco Cristiani as unfortunately not shy or in the least bit old-fashioned. She was so modern in her thinking, in fact, that she automatically rejected any potential suitor whom her parents would allow in the palazzo. The whole idea of parental involvement in the garnering of suitors she decried as primitive, exploitative, and, in her case, completely unnecessary. She had more suitors than she could count. Which was the problem, according to her father. She had received so much attention from men through the years that it gradually became the attention, not the men, that she loved. “My daughter Olympia,” concluded the baron with feigned anger, “is as spoiled as she is beautiful.”
But soon she would be twenty-seven, her father admitted with sincere concern to Cristiani one day in the back of the tailor shop; and since she was the lone survivor of the baron’s three children, his sons having died in the war, he and his ailing wife feared that they would never see Olympia standing at the altar as a bride; and they feared even more the possibility of her entering old age as a spinster, abandoned by her suitors—should her suitors outlive their frustrations—and of her ending up impoverished, and evicted from the palazzo because of her inability to pay taxes on it.
Francesco Cristiani was already aware of the declining fortunes of the Bianchis and similar aristocratic families in the south. It had been years since he had received an order of clothes from any man within the Bianchi family. It had also been years since the Bianchis and Maida’s other nobility had hosted one of the “open house” nights that had been traditional during the Christmas season; nowadays these families could no longer afford to open their palazzos to the entire town and offer the finest in food and musical entertainment to everyone who entered. The doors and windows of some palazzos remained closed throughout the year, the owners having moved to Naples or Palermo to occupy the servants’ quarters in the palazzos of their less destitute noble kinsmen. The nobles who had remained in Maida, such as the Bianchis, lived, ironically, with more exclusivity in their relative poverty than they had in their days of power and glory. They closed social ranks, retreating with inverted pride from the town’s commoners, bartering only among themselves. They released many old family retainers who had been the source of high-level gossip. Their gilded carriages bearing their coats of arms no longer pushed through the streets on shopping days; and at night, even on warm evenings, the shutters of their palazzos were closed to prevent outsiders from glimpsing the candled chandeliers that glowed with less and less frequency over the social gatherings of the town’s dwindling elite. Given the matchmaking possibilities, it was not surprising that Maida had been without a titled wedding since the end of World War I. And given the fact that the baron was a realist, it was not surprising that he would visit Francesco’s shop in late 1924 and tactfully inquire about the latter’s prospering son in Paris.
Antonio’s success was no secret to anyone in Maida. His father often displayed in the window of his shop some of his son’s advertising that had appeared in French newspapers and magazines (although Francesco’s motive in doing this had less to do with boosting his son than with suggesting that the Cristiani shop on the Rue de la Paix was really a branch of the one in Maida). Few people in Maida, however, knew anything about Antonio’s relationship with women. He had not been home since a brief visit following his discharge from the army; and during his earlier years in Maida, Antonio had kept his distance from every young woman in the village and beyond.
Antonio’s father, on the other hand, was just as unknowing about Olympia Bianchi’s personal life until her father had begun visiting, for she had come of courting age during the time of the social withdrawal of the nobility and after her family had ceased having their clothes made at Cristiani’s. But what Francesco was learning about her from her father convinced him that Olympia was exactly the kind of woman Antonio should not marry. She was very intelligent, her father had said; and worse, she had opinions and was eager to express them. She was probably licentiously inclined, too, because as her father admitted, she liked reading French novels in the original. Francesco Cristiani could only speculate darkly, although he could never bring himself to ask, just how freely Olympia had been relating to those admirers who supposedly never tired of pursuing her.
As for financial gains coming to the Cristiani family if Antonio were to marry Olympia, financial gains being second to none in Francesco Cristiani’s order of priorities, he could foresee absolutely nothing of material value. Her family’s feudal estate in the countryside was unproductive. Their palazzo in town was crumbling. What hope was there of a dowry coming from a family who for years had owed the Cristianis the cost of a cape? Social climbing in Maida at this time was definitely along a downward economic curve.
There also seemed to be little in the way of social prestige for his son’s future offspring as a result of a marriage into the Bianchi family—nothing beyond a frayed link to their threadbare title. In conclusion, even though Francesco did not boldly state it to the baron, a marital union between Antonio and Olympia did not on first reckoning appear to be a favorable deal for the Cristiani family, and on second reckoning it seemed worse—and made so by the supposition that such a union would be followed by the return of the large Bianchi family as patrons of Cristiani’s tailor shop, patrons who would come in often, would select the most expensive fabric, would demand the finest in workmanship, and would a
ssume a kinsmen’s prerogative in ignoring all bills.
As if the foregoing assumptions and facts were not sufficient to mark Olympia as an undesirable marital catch, her father often repeated in his talks with Francesco that she would be very difficult to catch; and the baron made such statements in tones of commiseration, as if there were nothing in the world that Antonio in Paris might want more than the hand of Olympia in marriage, if, alas, she were not virtually beyond reach. Poverty did not rob the nobility of their presumptuousness. But neither did this presumptuousness affect Francesco’s pragmatic nature. He knew a bad deal when he saw one. And yet he remained respectful as the baron spoke, never entirely unaware of the flowered white royal rosette on the baron’s lapel, and the heavy row of old Bourbon medals pulling down on the breast of his faded frock coat. Francesco also felt a certain empathy toward the baron, who after all was a caring father like him, a man wishing only that his daughter find love and happiness. And since there seemed no threat of the daughter’s finding love and happiness with Antonio, Francesco relaxed as the baron rambled on in the circuitous way that is common in the south, using many words to say very little, rhapsodizing on the joys of having grandchildren, lamenting the brevity of one’s lifetime on earth, quoting a line from Dante’s Purgatorio, pondering the price of keeping peace in the postwar Balkans, and then circling back slowly but surely to the subject of Antonio and Olympia.
“It is truly a pity that those two cannot be brought together somehow,” the baron reflected with a sigh, shaking his head slowly as he leaned lightly on Francesco’s showcase and gazed out the front window toward the road uphill, where the old shepherd Guardacielo was leading a flock of mangy-looking sheep.
“Yes, it is a pity,” Francesco lied, standing on the other side of the counter.
“Wouldn’t you think that the two of us, loving our children as we do, could come up with a solution?”
Before Cristiani could think of a reply, the baron snapped his fingers and turned with sudden enthusiasm toward the tailor.
“I think I have an idea!” he announced, as Cristiani stiffened. “Yes, I think I know how I can help your son get to know my daughter, although he must go about it cleverly, as I’m sure he’ll be capable of doing—with a little help from me. When he gets to town, the two of us will get together in some secret place where I’ll be able to point out Olympia to him, as she takes her daily walk to the post office. Every day after the siesta, at four o’clock or thereabouts, she goes over to unlock her little steel box and collect her mail—most of it, I don’t doubt, from out-of-town admirers. And all that Antonio would have to do would be to cross her path, once or twice, and pay her absolutely no attention! He should appear to be very aloof or conscious only of himself. He should be wearing one of his fancy French suits, and maybe have a French novel tucked underarm, and as he walks along he should be looking at the ground, or staring at the sky, as if his mind were contemplating universal questions. While she is approaching the post office from one direction, he is walking toward it from another—and then, briefly, their shadows blend together—but he keeps walking! Eyes straight ahead, he never looks back, never, just in case she’s hiding somewhere to see if he does!
“If Antonio will follow this advice for three or four days,” the baron went on avidly, somewhat bewildered but in no way discouraged by the blank expression on Francesco’s face, “a magical thing will happen. Take my word for it, a magical thing will happen! It will be a subtle thing, done with all the subtleness that a vain and beautiful woman is capable of when she realizes that she has gone unnoticed by an important and worthy man. She will find a way for him to take notice. Without his becoming aware of it, she will begin courting him!”
Although Francesco could imagine nothing he wanted less, he did not want to insult the baron with even a hint of demurral, for paternal meetings over matters such as this were typically complicated by fragile egos—and especially so in this case. A baron without money was more sensitive to slights than a baron who was rich. In either case, he was still a baron; and yet here was a baron practically humbling himself in Cristiani’s tailor shop with a plan designed to make the younger Cristiani his son-in-law—an act that in another age would have more than flattered any family of tailors. Indeed, even now a certain flattery was evident, for among the noble ancestors of the Bianchis had been cardinals and bishops, one of them a delegate to the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, and such spiritual enrichment in a family was beyond the measure of mere property and coins. Francesco’s devout wife, Maria, and her equally devout father, Domenico Talese, would undoubtedly gain added strength in their faith from the knowledge that through Antonio’s marriage to Olympia they might claim a retroactive relationship with men who were surely in heaven.
As he was berating himself for his mercenary tendencies, Francesco heard the baron’s raised voice, repeating the question: “So we are in agreement, then?”
“Yes,” Francesco tentatively replied.
The baron extended his right hand over the counter and Francesco took it, forcing a smile.
“We are now Cupid’s messengers,” the baron announced cheerfully, “and if we are lucky in our work—if Olympia and Antonio fall in love and marry—you and I will become relatives. And if we are not lucky, well … we’ll remain as we are—fellow villagers and good friends. So how can we lose?”
“Yes, how can we lose?” Francesco repeated, trying not to give the matter more thought.
“And as soon as your son arrives, you’ll send me word so that I can meet with him and point out Olympia?”
“Yes,” Francesco said.
“And you’ll get a letter off to him right away so he’ll be advised of my ingenious strategy?”
“Yes,” Francesco said.
True to his promise, Francesco began composing a long letter to Antonio as soon as the baron left the shop. He spent two hours working on the letter, uninterrupted by any profitable visits from customers, or chats with his fellow tailors, who had been reduced to working only in the mornings. Before addressing the envelope, and gluing to it six express-mail stamps, and then posting it, Francesco reread his letter three times. With each reading, the baron’s scheme seemed more preposterous.
Francesco could not believe that his son would ever be able to take the idea seriously.
But after Antonio read the letter, he thought the idea was fascinating. It was creative and logical. Carrying out the baron’s plan would also be fun! All that Antonio would have to do was walk around Maida like a narcissist, which for him would not be entirely out of character. If he played his part well, he would soon be vulnerable to the seductive intrigues of a beautiful young noblewoman. What could he lose? And if she won his heart, he could cancel those less convenient appointments that his father had arranged out of town—notably the one requiring that Antonio climb on foot up to Polia in the interest of igniting the passions of a shy maiden who probably did belong in a nunnery; and also the long trip down the coast to Bovalino that might subject him and his traveling companions to the raids of highway robbers—and for what? For the chance to dine at the table of a respectable local family and make furtive eye contact with yet another heralded daughter whose beauty and other assets might well exist only in the imagination of her adoring or conniving father.
No, Antonio decided, the baron’s daughter definitely topped the list of possibilities. She would be the first stop—and, he hoped, the last. A man as ambitious and busy as he was deserved a woman who would court him, saving him valuable time and energy; yes, he had time only for a woman who wanted him desperately, who would lose all pride in claiming him as her own. Now Antonio closed his eyes and fantasized about the aggressive female who would soon make him her prey, a victim of her desire. Fatigued though he was from the interminable, putrid ride on the southern train that ran counter to all of Mussolini’s strong-armed demands for railroad reform, Antonio could barely wait to make himself available to this shocking new proposal of courtsh
ip in reverse.
But as he swung his suitcase onto the platform, he was grabbed from behind and embraced by an older woman. He recognized her immediately—mainly because of what she was wearing: an elegant blue dress that Mademoiselle Topjen had designed for last year’s Paris collections but had been unable to sell even though Antonio had resewn it completely. So he had mailed it to his mother in Maida as a birthday present; and as she wore it now at the station, he was pleased that it fit her so well, although he was upset on seeing the tears in her eyes.
“Antonio,” Maria cried out, “Antonio …” It was all she could bring herself to say, resting her head on his shoulder until Francesco pulled her away to give his son a paternal kiss on both cheeks. He held Antonio by the shoulders and stood looking at him in silence for several seconds. It was presently so noisy along the platform that conversation was impossible. There were the whistles and hisses of the train, the shouting and shoving of other passengers greeting those who had met them. Glancing behind his father’s back, Antonio studied the townspeople and was bewildered by the proletarian style of dress that so many people seemed to have adopted. Women as well as men were wearing peaked caps, and overalls, and ankle-length boots, and they covered their upper bodies with several layers of sweaters. The Socialist workers had dressed this way in the cities of industrial Europe in an attempt to cushion the blows they received from right-wing strikebreakers; and the abundance of sweaters also made factory floors softer when strikers staged overnight sleep-ins. But Mussolini had long since checked the strikers in northern and central Italy, and in places like Maida there had never been any factories to strike against; and yet this proletarian fashion had somehow filtered down to the rural south, belatedly and incongruously, or perhaps, on second thought, quite properly.