by Gay Talese
As Antonio walked on in his heightened state of awareness and forgiveness, he heard things he had not heard before—the genial sounds of birds in the gray winter sky, and what sounded like the polite applause of palm leaves in the wind, and what clearly was the sound of a choir at practice in the monastery near the cemetery. His thoughts of Olympia, his wondering about where she was exactly since leaving the post office—she had to have left it by now!—and the thoughts of warning carried his way by Basile and Paone, had receded in his mind and were being replaced by thoughts more conciliatory and felicitous now that he was again at peace with himself.
When he reached the edge of the square and turned toward the narrow street leading to his father’s shop, Antonio heard at first imprecisely, and then more definitely, the hurried tapping of female feet along the cobblestones well behind him. Not turning around, not even when he vaguely heard his name called out eagerly by a female voice, Antonio entered the street that was heavily darkened in shadows. He kept walking, his pace quickening, as the onrushing woman gained ground while pleading with him to stop. He almost did stop, hearing in her voice a tone that was oddly compelling and that brought to mind his classroom readings about the legendary Calypso every young southern Italian boy is regularly warned about by his mother and priest—the beseeching voice, both sympathetic and insistent, that induces procrastination, dalliance, and ultimately ruination. The fact that this was an exaggeratedly negative interpretation of Calypso mattered little in the rural south, where nearly all of Greek mythology was instilled with touches of Italian tragedy and iniquity. Antonio had almost reached his father’s tailor shop when the woman caught up with him and, throwing her arms around his back, forced him to turn and embrace her.
“Mother!” Antonio cried out, as she wept in his arms. “Mother, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I was afraid I’d never see you again, Antonio!” Maria said, trembling and holding him close. “I’ve had premonitions for days, Antonio, that you were being followed by evil men. These premonitions became so strong an hour ago that I ran out of the house to your father and told him we had to stop you from getting killed. He said you wouldn’t listen to him, so he sent me through the back road to the post office to convince you myself to leave town. I couldn’t find you, but thank God you’re here now.”
“Mother, Mother,” Antonio said, sounding more stern than he intended, “you’ve got to get control of yourself.…”
“No,” she interrupted, trying to push him away, “we must leave! The monsignor’s carriage is waiting. I’ve packed an overnight bag for you. Your father and the monsignor’s driver are all set to go.”
“To go where?”
“To Bovalino,” she said. “There awaits the woman of your dreams.”
“I can’t, Mother, I can’t,” Antonio said.
“You must!” she demanded. “If you don’t, something horrible will happen—not only to you, but to me.”
The street was empty, and her tearful urgings had brought some neighbors to their second-floor windows. The sounds of their shutters opening, and their inquiries about her well-being, embarrassed her.
“I’m sorry, Antonio,” she said, more quietly, “but you must trust me.” Then she said something that Antonio heard perfectly, but in his surprise he exclaimed, “What?”
“I saw her,” his mother repeated.
“You saw Olympia?”
“Yes,” she went on, “I saw her in the post office. I had a good look at her.” After a pause, his mother continued: “Oh, Antonio, she’s not much to look at. Her face is long and bony, the kind of face you see on so many noblewomen, and it always reminds me of horses. And she’s tall, Antonio. She is a head taller than you are. Oh, my dear Antonio,” she intoned with forbearance but finality, “she’s not for you. She’s just too tall!”
Antonio said nothing. His arms were still around his mother, but he was staring out into the shadows of the lonely street, shaking his head slowly. Yes, he thought, his mother really knew how to get him. So, Olympia was too tall. What else was there to say? That just about ended it. Antonio could not picture himself walking arm in arm with a woman noticeably taller than himself down the aisle of a church, or indeed up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
Antonio turned to his mother. He smiled slightly. Neither said anything for a few seconds. But they both knew that he would soon be off to Bovalino to meet the woman of his dreams.
Not only did the monsignor’s carriage have large white crosses painted on both sides and on the back, but the horses wore steel rosary beads around their necks that jingled through the night, creating sounds apparently familiar to the monsignor’s plundering co-religionists in the hills, none of whom charged down to mount an attack. The monsignor’s guard nonetheless remained posted on the upper bench next to the driver, while Antonio sat in the warmth of the cabin with his father, who informed him about their itinerary. They would be spending the night at the home of the prospective bride, Adelina Savo. Her mother and Antonio’s mother were old friends, having been introduced years earlier by the monsignor. What Antonio did not know until now was that the monsignor and grandfather Domenico had been together at the seminary. Adelina’s family was a major contributor to the monsignor’s diocese, and the main source of the family’s wealth was derived from productive landholdings in the region and a number of small but solvent businesses in and near the town of Bovalino. In a meeting held there between the Savo family and Antonio’s mother and grandfather, before Antonio’s arrival from Paris, the terms of the dowry had been discussed and agreed to.
“This dowry is by far larger than anything offered by other families,” Francesco told his son during the journey. “Of course, money is not the important thing,” he continued with as much conviction as he was capable. “What’s important is that you and Adelina meet and get to like one another.”
“When do we meet?” Antonio asked.
“Not tonight,” his father said. “We won’t be there until near midnight, and Adelina will have retired to bed long before that. Her parents and relatives will be waiting up for us, the monsignor told your mother, and tomorrow morning we’re expected to attend the seven-o’clock Mass. You won’t meet her then, either. She’ll be in the front pew praying next to her mother—they do that every day—and we’re to sit near the back with her father, who wants to leave early and give us a tour of the town, and show us his land. Later we’ll have lunch at his home. That’s when you’ll meet Adelina.”
Things went according to schedule that night. The Savo family owned a spacious home and, although in the darkness of his arrival Antonio could not see it, the home was said to overlook the Ionian Sea. Far south into the currents was the alleged lodging place of the nymph Calypso, but what remained of her corruptive magnetism was probably too distant and faint to penetrate the Savos’ thick-walled residence, where apostolic statuary stood guard at the gate and a cross was carved into the front door, and whose interior hallway was lined with niches containing stone figures representing Christ and his followers as they progressed through the Stations of the Cross.
After a brief but cordial late supper, presided over by Adelina’s white-moustached father, who wore a black suit a bit tight for his expanded girth, Antonio and his father were escorted to separate guest rooms in the west wing of the house, away from the sea; the carriage driver, who had often stayed overnight at the Savos’ with the monsignor in the past, occupied his usual quarters in the carriage house.
In the morning Antonio and his father were awakened by a single forceful rap of Signor Savo’s knuckles against each of their doors, accompanied by his announcement that breakfast was being served. Adelina had already left the house with her mother for confession when Antonio and his father arrived at the table; but within an hour, from his vantage point in the rear of the chapel, Antonio had his first view of her slender figure as she stood and approached the altar for Communion. He had no sense of her facial features, hidden as they
were behind her flowing gray veil; but what mattered most to him at this time he noted with relief and satisfaction. Adelina Savo was not tall. She was definitely not taller than he; Antonio was in fact confident that she was a bit shorter. Before the end of the Mass, as Antonio turned to leave with Signor Savo, who would escort him on the obligatory tour of the town and the family holdings in the countryside, Antonio took a furtive glance at the kneeling figure of Adelina, and he looked forward eagerly to meeting her at lunch.
If all such meetings between prospective brides and their suitors could fulfill the couples’ highest expectations, as did this one involving Antonio and Adelina, the history of arranged marriages in southern Italy would be a repetitiously blithesome chronicle devoid of the disappointments, the bitterness, the angry departures, and the bloody vendettas that have characterized this ancient custom first inspired in a cave during the Stone Age by a nameless couple’s scheming tribesmen. But no matter; the luncheon at which Antonio was introduced to Adelina, and the impression she made during that occasion, left little doubt in his mind that his mother had been right when she had heralded Adelina as the woman of his dreams.
Although her father did most of the talking, being on rare occasions interrupted by her uncles, who were in his employ, Adelina managed while saying very little to communicate her intelligence and modest charm during those moments when she was called upon to comment. Antonio was surprised to learn that mathematics had been her main interest at the convent school, and it pleased him to no end to learn that she had a degree that qualified her as an accountant. A woman who worked with figures, he reasoned, was likely to appreciate the price of things, and therefore practice frugality as a wife; and a woman who was a qualified accountant was definitely needed in his shop in Paris, where the unqualified accountant (and outright thief) whom Mademoiselle Topjen had recommended three years before had, in addition to misappropriating business funds, guided Antonio into tax difficulties with the French government.
The unexpected bonus that Adelina brought with her accounting abilities was complemented by her attractive appearance and social poise, which Antonio saw as traveling well to the French capital and, together with her dowry, contributing greatly to the advantaged life he imagined for himself there as a married man (Antonio was nothing if not practical); and when, after the luncheon, her father suggested that she show Antonio their greenhouses in the rear yard, she surprised him further by introducing him to her hobby of growing exotic flowers from seeds she imported from the Italian colony of Somaliland. Adelina had a green thumb as well as a head for money—and an impulse toward romance, too, as she showed when she snapped off a long-stemmed white rose as they left the enclosure and, standing in front of him, deftly pinned it to his lapel. It was then that he knew for sure that she was at least a half-inch shorter than he; and it was also then that he became fully aware of the momentum that seemed to be making him altar-bound, and of his own diminished desire to resist it. It was as if he was an insignificant factor in a process headed toward an inevitable conclusion. He had begun to sense this the night before, shortly after meeting Adelina’s mother. Although she was a friend of his mother’s, Antonio himself had never met her; and yet she assumed an immediate familiarity toward him that struck him as utterly natural, and her presumptuousness oddly put him at ease—she was his future mother-in-law, she seemed to be intimating without saying a word. There was nothing that he could do about it, so he might as well become happily resigned to it. She later made passing references to the earlier meeting held in Bovalino—the one attended by his mother, the monsignor, and Domenico. This second meeting was obviously looked upon by his future mother-in-law as pro forma, a ceremonious occasion whereby Antonio could meet his future bride and father-in-law, the latter a bit stodgy toward Antonio at first, but soon falling in line. Signor Savo’s wealth and position, Antonio later learned, had come from his wife’s side of the family, although the Savo family was old and respected among bourgeois Catholics of the south (and it would claim added status in future generations when an emigrant cousin’s son, Mario Cuomo, would be elected governor of New York State). As to what Francesco was doing here in Bovalino, Antonio could only conclude that he had come along for the ride.
With the generous terms of the dowry having no doubt been signed, sealed, and made ready for delivery after the consummation of the marriage, Antonio further took for granted that Adelina’s mother had resolved whatever problems might exist with Adelina’s other possible suitors in or around Bovalino. Still, it was a nagging question; and after Adelina had taken the liberty of pinning the rose to his lapel, he took the liberty, in the most discreet way, to ask if there were any cutthroats in the vicinity waiting to attack him, or if Bovalino had a local version of Bruno Raffaeli.
“There might be a little something you’d like to explain about your recent past before we go in?” he asked, wishing he could have been more explicit as they walked side by side back to the house.
Adelina turned toward him with a modest smile indicating that she understood perfectly.
“No,” she said, “nothing at all.”
Inside, the others were standing and waiting, forming what Antonio thought was a receiving line. But his father stepped forward, took Antonio by the shoulder, and said, “Well, my son, I think it’s time for our farewell. We’ll all be seeing one another again in the near future.”
As the elders smiled, Antonio kissed in turn Adelina’s mother and aunts, and another older woman whose relationship to the Savo family was unclear to him; and then, after shaking hands with Adelina’s father and uncles, he exchanged awkward bows with her. He told her in a voice that everyone could hear that he would write her from Paris. Adelina thanked him, and gave him her post office box number.
The horses had now arrived, and the monsignor’s coachman took the Cristianis’ bags and placed them in the carriage. Adelina’s mother came forward with a gift package for Antonio to give to his mother. She kissed him on the cheeks and lightly squeezed his left arm. Antonio and Francesco turned to board the carriage, and, after their final wave from the window, the black vehicle with white crosses headed through the iron gates toward the coastal road along the Ionian Sea, beginning the ride back to Maida.
Antonio saw no reason to spend more time in Maida. He had found what he had sought, and it seemed wiser that he return quickly to Paris and avoid further complications in his village. His father agreed. The Savo family and the others could proceed on their own with the nuptial agreements, as they had been doing behind his back all along; and when a wedding date had been set, Antonio knew that he would receive adequate notice as to when he should reappear in Bovalino to marry Adelina. Until then, Antonio had much to do in Paris. He had to get back to his business, to arrange for the indictment of his accountant, and to locate an apartment that would be large enough for a wife and the young family that would inevitably follow.
His bachelor apartment was small, and located up five flights of steps. While he at first thought it would be adequate for Adelina and himself until they were expecting a child, he would soon learn that under no circumstances was Adelina to set foot in the place. This pronouncement would come from Adelina’s father, who, a few months after Antonio had returned to Paris, had himself traveled to the French capital on what he insisted was primarily a courtesy call.
Signor Savo had strolled into Antonio’s shop on the Rue de la Paix shortly before closing time one day in early April 1925. At first Antonio failed to recognize him; and although he quickly compensated for the oversight with effusive cordiality, Antonio was mildly irked that Savo’s suspicions about him had been so strong that he had come all the way from Bovalino to see with his own eyes that Antonio did indeed own a shop on the Rue de la Paix. Apparently satisfied with what he saw, Savo then proposed that they dine together that evening and review the guest list for the August wedding. Antonio suggested a restaurant where the maître d’ had yet to pay him for a tuxedo delivered before Christmas; and he a
lso suggested that Savo come to his apartment for an aperitif before dinner. Two hours later, having climbed the five flights of stairs, the stout Signor Savo arrived at Antonio’s door red-faced and breathing irregularly; and on entering the apartment, and seeing on the walls a few large oil paintings and pencil sketches of women entirely in the nude, he collapsed into a chair with his hands covering his eyes, and in a quivering but wrathful voice he exclaimed: “Oh my God, how disgusting!”
“Signor Savo, please,” Antonio asked, “what’s wrong?”
“Disgusting!” he repeated, his eyes still covered. “Where did you get such disgusting pictures?”
Antonio turned to look at the paintings with all the tolerance of a man who had been living with them for five years, and then turned again to his guest. “These are works by some of France’s most promising young artists,” he explained.
“They make me sick,” said Savo.
“I’m sorry,” said Antonio.
“Then get rid of them.”
“Get rid of them?” Antonio asked. “When, tonight?”
“No,” Savo said, “after I leave town.”
Antonio stood looking down at Savo slumped in the chair, his hands now resting on his knees but his crimson-colored head and walrus moustache still tilted toward the floor, away from the surrounding display of blatant immodesty.