‘It is an obscure picture,’ he says. ‘Which some argue only adds to its greatness; the fact that what seems clear on first glance becomes less clear the longer we gaze upon it. So we must accept that the images mean more than one thing at any given time.’
Ellen bursts into vigorous applause as he stops speaking, causing a brief flash of panic to dart across the poor man’s face. His lunch sits untouched in front of him, and I’m sure he’s terrified that now Ellen’s going to pepper him with questions, preventing him from ever picking up his fork. Henry rescues him, pouring him a glass of wine and urging him to eat.
‘I wonder if he was having second thoughts when he painted it,’ Henry says. ‘Botticelli, I mean. Didn’t he finally reject humanism, end up a huge fan of Savonarola’s?’
‘Card carrying,’ Kirk says. ‘Right?’
Signor Catarelli nods, stabbing eagerly at his ravioli. ‘According to Vasari, he felt a deep need to re-examine his faith in the last twenty years of his life. So the work becomes both prophetic and apocalyptic, and yet he cannot leave behind him the immense richness of Ficino’s Neoplatonism, or perhaps the memory of his great patron, Lorenzo. Which God do you betray? In that way,’ Signor Catarelli says, reaching for his glass, ‘he typifies Florence.’ He takes a sip and smiles ruefully. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘he typifies Italy. The seduction of beauty, literature, art. Petrarch, Dante, Michelangelo, Botticelli himself. The surface of the ocean. But underneath, always, there’s that other tide, the pull, pull, pull of the church on our hearts.’
We have become so used to hearing jokes from him that there is a momentary silence at the table. A round, ageing man in a beautifully cut threadbare tweed jacket, Signor Catarelli looks at us and smiles, but there is nothing in his face but sadness.
It’s perhaps a half-hour later when Ellen and Tony escort him away, their chatter as bright and sharp as broken glass.
‘Well,’ Henry says, ‘that was certainly jolly. I think I’ll have a grappa with my coffee to recover. Possibly two. Anyone else?’ He signals to the waitress, and Kirk nods. He’s fiddling with something in his pocket, and I can’t help thinking it’s Billy’s ring. I can practically see the tiny hearts pushing against his fingers.
‘I would like one.’ Mikiko looks back at us, widening her eyes when we all stare at her. ‘Well, why not?’ she says. ‘We don’t just drink tea, you know.’
Unexpectedly, it’s Kirk who reaches over and pats her hand. ‘We never thought you did,’ he says. He smiles, looking almost as sad as Signor Catarelli, and when the waitress comes to the table, he tells her to bring a round of grappa for everyone. Then they all look at me, and this time it’s Ayako who asks the question.
‘So?’ she says. ‘Where’s Billy?’
I tell them I don’t know. That I haven’t seen her because I haven’t been at the apartment much, but that I do know she’s been there. I describe the postcards, and the wiped-off messages on the machine. The cigarettes and the lipstick.
‘Well,’ Mikiko says finally, ‘maybe she went away. Just for the day, or something. She said she wanted to see Siena. Maybe she decided to spend the night.’
‘She’s a big girl, she’ll show up when she’s ready.’ Henry shrugs.
Kirk doesn’t say anything. A second later the tiny glasses of grappa arrive, and he throws his back in one gulp. ‘She could at least call,’ he says.
‘She could,’ Henry agrees. ‘But then she wouldn’t really be Billy.’
Back in the apartment, I turn on all the lights. The wind has stopped, and it’s just warm enough to sit outside, so I wipe the table again and put the tulips in the centre. At dusk, I set the table for two, using Signora Bardino’s pretty flowered plates and mismatching old-fashioned silver. It looks lovely, like a scene from one of those movies about Americans who come to Italy and make all their dreams come true. I even find a candle lamp and light the flame so it flickers in the glass. Then I sit down to wait.
There’s the occasional click of steps from Signora Raguzza’s apartment, a rustle of voices. Someone turns on the lights in the courtyard. The lemon trees throw shadows, filigree patterns against the walls of Sophie-Sophia’s wing of the building. After a while I go back inside, take the salami, cheeses, prosciutto and olives I’ve bought and lay it all out on a serving plate. I put the crusty rolls in a little porcelain basket and lift two wine glasses down from the top shelf of the dresser. Then I stand at the rail, watching the darkness under the archway, waiting to hear the clang of the gate and see Billy’s figure thicken out of the dark, the gold crown of her hair sparkling in the light.
At just past eight, there’s a burst of voices. The security gate clangs, footsteps ring on the paving stones, and I wonder who she’s brought with her. But when they emerge from under the archway, I see a middle-aged couple, well dressed and dragging two small children. The woman is carrying a covered dish, hanging on to it precariously as she hauls a little boy in best clothes, a mini dark blue blazer and long pants. The man has a bottle of champagne, and looks slightly as though he’s contemplating thunking it over the head of the little girl who hangs on his free hand.
Signora Raguzza’s family coming for dinner on Holy Thursday.
‘Don’t you want to see Nonna?’ the man demands, as they disappear through the lower door. A second later I hear clattering on the stairs and a burst of voices.
At nine I pour myself a glass of red wine, pick at the salami and eat most of the olives. At ten I put the food away. At eleven-fifteen, Signora Raguzza’s family leaves. The lights go off in the courtyard and I clear the table on the balcony, bring the tulips in, and tie the latch of the French windows in the kitchen with some cooking string I find in the back of a drawer.
Kirk’s right, I think, she could at least call. Then I tell myself that she assumes I’m at Pierangelo’s, and it’s no big deal. The ‘gift’ has probably let her down, so she doesn’t know I’m sitting here waiting for her. I imagine her in a bar in Lucca or Siena. Maybe she made it all the way to Ravenna to see the mosaics, and went on to Ferrara or even to Venice, where right now she’s sipping spumante by the Grand Canal and seducing twenty-year-olds. I check the phone in the living room, listen to the empty buzz of the dial tone as if it could tell me something, then check my cell’s turned on and prop it on the side table next to my head while I lie on the couch, reading.
I don’t know what time it is when the book falls onto my chest, maybe midnight. I should go to bed, I think, but instead I pull Signora Bardino’s satin throw off the back of the couch and read one more chapter. This time, when the book falls out of my hand, it lands on the floor.
I hear it vaguely, a thud, and reach up and turn off the lamp as I close my eyes. I’ll go to bed, I think, when Billy comes home. After I’ve talked to her. Which will be any second, because I can hear her keys in the door.
‘Bill!’ I sit up with a start.
My heart’s racing, banging all through my body, in my ears, my throat, my stomach. Fragments of dreams jangle around, and I realize I’m clutching the satin throw, pleating it into a rumpled ball. I sit there in the crackly stillness, knowing I shouldn’t move, and wondering what woke me up.
Street light filters in through the tall windows, making the room black and white. I slide my eyes to the living-room door. I can see a wedge of the kitchen: the corner of the table, a block of floor, the white stripe of the linen blind on the French windows. Nothing moves. It feels too still, as if the apartment’s holding its breath. Is someone in there? Or just down the hall? Around the corner, flattened against the wall beside the spindly ornamental chair? Is that what woke me up? The skin on my face feels hot, as if someone’s held their hands on my cheeks while I slept.
A knot of panic lodges in my throat, and my hand reaches backwards, groping, fingers fastening on the wine glass I brought in from the balcony. Shoved hard, straight into someone’s face, it would do some damage. I slip my bare feet out from under the throw and place them on the cold marble f
loor.
It seems to take for ever to stand up, to make my knees straighten and bear my own weight. The throw slithers to the floor with a hiss, and I freeze, waiting to see if the sound alerted whoever’s here. But nothing moves. So finally I take the first step, the wine glass held at my chest, grasped by the stem, my elbow bent like a spring.
The second step is easier. The third brings me to the door. I can see into the kitchen now. It’s empty. The French windows are still tied shut. Across from me, the bathroom door is ajar and my bedroom door is closed, just the way I left it. So is Billy’s. Then something shifts, a movement in the air, less than a sigh, and my eyes focus on the end of the hall, and the tall front door. There’s someone on the other side. I can feel them. I can feel their heart beating.
‘Billy?’ I whisper. But nothing moves.
I slide forward, past the half-moon table and the little chair. Past her bedroom door, until I’m not six inches from the polished mahogany panels. Until I can put my cheek against the dark glossy wood, my lips to the crack above the big brass locks.
‘Billy?’ Her name is no more than a breath.
‘Billy, is that you?’
Then I realize there’s something else, a smell, wafting under the door. Sliding through the cracks. Sweet and redolent and familiar, acacia hangs in the night air like half-heard music.
Chapter Sixteen
‘ DO YOU REALLY think it was her?’ Pierangelo asks. ‘Why would she do that?’
‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’
It is just past eight in the morning, and I have caught him on his way to work. A car honks in the background and I can hear the rush of traffic as he walks along the street.
‘So you didn’t actually see her?’
‘Well, no.’
I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t made this call. ‘I didn’t open the door,’ I add. ‘It was three in the morning.’ As if that explains everything. Which, from the sound of his voice, Pierangelo thinks it does.
‘Ah,’ he says. Then he adds, ‘Look, cara, something woke you up and you got spooked. It happens. As for Billy, the Three Little Maids from School are probably right. Most likely she took off for a few days.’ Pierangelo has adopted Kirk’s name for the Japanese girls. I told him about lunch yesterday and Mikiko’s suggestion. It’s Easter, I hear Billy saying, maybe I’ll go away for three days and come back again.
‘She could have missed her train coming home and decided to spend in the night in Siena,’ Piero says, ‘or Lucca or—’
‘Mantua.’ I told him about the postcards too.
‘Yeah, OK, Mantua. Look,’ he says, ‘maybe she got sick of Dracula and his bat cape and sushi and ran off with the guy in the mask for a lost weekend. It’s been known to happen.’
‘So why doesn’t she call?’
‘Why should she? For all she knows you’re staying here all week. It’s not like you tell her what you’re doing all the time,’ he points out. ‘She’s not your mother.’
I seem to remember telling Billy the same thing relatively recently.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Pierangelo asks.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ I laugh, but it sounds more like a cackle.
‘Why don’t you just come home?’ Piero says. ‘I have a meeting in about a minute, and I’m late. But I’m going to finish early. Even the paper packs up on Good Friday. We’ll go somewhere.’
‘So, call me when you’re done,’ I make my cackle voice brisk and businesslike. I’m going up to Settignano this morning,’ I add. ‘But I’ll be back.’
‘I should hope so.’ Pierangelo laughs. ‘OK, cara, I’ll call you. I have to go.’ Another horn blares and I imagine him darting across the street. ‘Ciao, ciao,’ he shouts.
‘Be careful! I love you,’ I shout back, battling the sound of the cars, but the phone’s already dead, and I realize too late I didn’t even ask him how the football was.
I look at the phone in my hand, feeling like an utter fool. I don’t know how long I stood in front of the apartment door last night, convinced there was someone on the other side. It could have been a minute or a half-hour. Eventually, I told myself that if I really thought Billy was standing out there playing some weird hide-and-seek game, I should open the door. Or go and call Pierangelo, who I knew would come over right away, even if it was three in the morning. The idea of doing that and having to explain myself sobered me up pretty fast, and finally I settled for sliding the half-moon hall table under the door knob, wedging it there so if someone tried to come in they’d virtually have to break it in half. I didn’t share that part with Pierangelo. Or how I had looked in the closets and under the bed and in the shower. I pull the photo of us out of my back pocket, smooth it out, and look at her. ‘Thanks a ton,’ I say. But all Billy does is grin.
I hadn’t actually planned to go to Settignano until I realized what a witless wreck I was sounding like, but now it seems quite a good idea. There’s a garden up there I’ve been meaning to visit, and it’s going to be a beautiful day. I might even stay for lunch. It’s been a while since I did any drawing.
Suddenly energized, I collect my sketchbook and pencils, decide I don’t want to take the time to go for pastries, and have one of the rolls from last night with my coffee instead. As I’m putting the bag away, I come face to face with the platter of cold cuts, more than I’ll ever eat, so I make two thick sandwiches. Then I add a bottle of water and an orange and put it all in a plastic bag. As I lock the front door and go down the stairs, I remind myself to check next time I’m in the signora’s shop and see if she carries dog biscuits. It’s silly, but I feel as excited as I used to when I was a little kid and had a special present to bring home from school for Mamaw, a clay ashtray, or autumn leaves ironed between sheets of waxed paper. I close the security gate, drop my keys in my bag, and trot across the street to the little church, bearing my improvised picnic.
But when I get there, the portico is empty. I bite back a pang of disappointment. There are no dog dishes, no duffel bag. In fact, there’s no sign that anyone’s ever been here, nothing at all but three crimson splashes against the stone; tulip petals curled as tight as babies’ fists.
The garden is beautiful, and I stay much longer than I’d planned. I wander from ‘room’ to ‘room’, through separate mini-gardens walled by high, square-clipped hedges. Water plays in fountains and pools, and the view over Florence from the top terraces is sublime. I start some sketches, and as my hand moves over the page I feel as if I’m getting myself back, as if it’s OK to care about landscaping, and the shapes of walls and buildings again. By the time I finally put my pencils away, it’s almost two, and I’m starved. I’d thrown the sandwiches out and Pierangelo hasn’t called, so I wander into the village where I buy a newspaper, find a trattoria with an outside table and settle down.
I’m on coffee when the bill arrives and my phone cheeps. A text starts, then goes blank: failed connection. I pay and it comes through again. In Bargello. Meet me.
It’s one of Piero’s favourite museums, and if I hurry I’ll just be able to catch the bus.
Because of the holiday it’s crowded, and I have to stand. We swing round corners and lurch into the centre of town, and by the time I get off I’m hot and a little crabby. My phone cheeps while I’m standing in line for my ticket. Where R U? I guess he needs to know exactly. BRgeloticket, I text back. U? But there’s no reply, so I switch it off and drop it into my bag. He’ll find me.
When I get to the window I find out that the museum is closing at five this afternoon because it’s Good Friday. As she takes my money, the girl reminds me I have only an hour. As I cross the courtyard, I look up and see dark sky. Clouds have been gathering all afternoon, and now a sharp squall of rain throws itself against the walls.
The first room is still crowded despite the late hour. I keep a weather eye for Piero, but don’t spot him, and am distracted instead by the child Eros perched on his pillar. His baby wings sprout from his back, not yet big enoug
h to carry him into flight, his pudgy legs and arms stretch as he reaches for the sky. I have some talent with pencils and paint, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to be able to sculpt, to release faces and figures trapped in stone, ensnare souls in bronze. Most people come here for the Davids, Donatello’s long-haired naked boy, and Verrocchio’s Roman-skirted youth who stands with the monumental head of Goliath weeping at his feet. But I love some of the odder pieces, the sad-faced Marzocco lion, paw resting on his shield, Donatello’s sweet St George, who looks as though he feels faintly sorry for the dragon, and the still marble busts of forgotten young men and women who died five centuries ago in Florence.
I wander into the chapel, look at the ghostly Giotto frescoes, and linger over the strange collections of jewels and daggers and coins trapped below the glass. Billy loved these cases. She said they were the best fleamarket display in the city.
By the time I come back into the main gallery there are fewer people. They’ve stopped selling tickets now, so those who trickle away are no longer replaced. If Pierangelo is here he’s probably up on the third floor, with the displays of armour and weapons. The little boy in him still loves that stuff, lances and pikes, swords and shields. Secretly, I think he believes he’s reincarnated, and that in some former life he was a condottiero, fighting for the glory of his city. The ragged Baptist, his eyes hungry and crazy-looking from a diet of locusts and honey, stares at me as I walk past him out onto the loggia.
The roof out here is painted with stars. Under them, Giambologna’s birds rest on their marble pedestals. The owl leans forward, its eyes beady, something like a scowl on its face. The big hawk digs its talons into bronze earth and twists its neck, beak sharp and ready for prey. Beyond the stone pillars, the rain falls steadily now, muffling noise as a school group clatters down the steps, the teacher stopping to point at the crests of the Podestàs, the mayors of Florence who occupied this fortress before they moved to the Palazzo Vecchio. Their shields are mounted on the lower pillars, not feet from where a scaffold once stood beside the fountain. The fact that this was once a prison probably interests the kids a lot more than sculpture. Watching them, I wonder how many people died here and why, what crimes they confessed to, whether they had committed them or not. The children get herded away. Rain slicks the courtyard stones, but for centuries they ran with blood. Crimson, like the glint on the puddles.
The Faces of Angels Page 25