“You know how that happens,” he said, and indeed I did. Quite often on a Saturday evening, he would doze off on the sofa in front of the fire, worn out from the week. I asked about le bimbe, about their mom, about his day with them.
“Le bimbe, they stayed the night with me,” he said, his face open, guileless. “It was easier because their mother had a date last night…we had an early dinner and I sat down to send you a message and then I woke up this morning. The phone had run out of battery.”
“So their mother had a date?” I asked.
He grinned. “Well, it seems that since I told her about you, she has decided to move on too.”
“Wait.” I held up my hand, surprised. “You told her about me?”
“Well, yes.” He shrugged. “I told her last week. Eventually, I want you to meet le bimbe, so it’s right to prepare her, give her some time to get used to that, capito?”
With a gust, the Winds of Doubt—which now sounded like my mother’s voice—hit me between the eyes with the reality of Bernardo’s life. He may not have been cheating on me last night, but he had collapsed, exhausted. These two months of fun were, inexorably, bringing me toward the truth. Overburdened, tired, at the beck and call of a small army of other people who would always come first, who would always come before me.
“Forgive me, cara,” he said sincerely. “It’s been a long time since I had someone. I don’t really like casual relationships. I hope you feel like I do.” He blinked and I held my breath. “I wanted anyway to come and invite you to spend Christmas with us. What do you say?”
* * *
—
“What did you say?” cried Luigo, unable to bear the suspense any longer.
I drew a deep breath. “I said I need some time to think. I’ll call you in a week or two when I have made up my mind.”
“When you have decided about Christmas, you mean?” Luigo quizzed me.
“When I have decided about him, I mean,” I told him, as Luigo gasped with the unexpected drama of it all.
* * *
—
Luigo was not the only one to be surprised. I had surprised myself. And Bernardo had looked like I had slapped him in the face.
I hadn’t tried to explain and he hadn’t pushed me to. He had left and I had gone to bed early, falling into an agitated sleep.
The day after, I woke up expecting that sinking feeling you get when a relationship has ended. Instead, I felt calm and perfectly collected. I set about breakfast, squeezing red oranges, sipping tea, and buttering toast, gazing out over the tower, when the phone rang.
“Have you moved into the castle yet?” Christobel chirped. I sat down with my tea and poured out my concerns. She listened carefully, apart from a whoop that broke out of her when I told her about the publishers interested in my book.
“I don’t understand what the problem is,” she said eventually. “You can stay in the apartment as long as you want and carry on writing your book and see how things go with Bernardo. No?”
“But Christobel, all his baggage. I don’t know…”
“Listen, darling,” she said, “the fact is, everyone has baggage. Anyone you are going to meet at this age is going to have baggage. It’s just that some people’s baggage you can see—like Bernardo’s—and some you can’t—like Dino’s. But it’s there all the same.”
I nodded silently. She went on as if she could see me: “Take it from me, no one is perfect. And okay, so Bernardo has all these ex-wives and kids, but he sounds like a good man.” I murmured my assent. “And these past couple of months you have been so happy. Not in that giddy way like with the dastardly Dino, but in a real way. Think about it, take your time, but remember, good men like him are rare, and at least he admits his mistakes. Make sure you aren’t throwing something good away just because you are scared that it might turn into a real relationship…”
* * *
—
I sat alone in my apartment, finding it very empty. All that life in my space—the huge presence of Bernardo, the muscular body of Cocca weighing on my legs as we slept at night, her myriad snorts and noises, the radiating warmth of his body, the blond boy in the other bedroom. I sat on the sofa next to the twinkling lights I had strung up around the room and distractedly picked at the pinzimonio I had made. Even Giuseppe was away. I clung to my routines, preparing multicourse meals that absorbed my thoughts and time, plugging away at the book and walking all over the city. As each step fell on the cobbles trodden by so many lovers over the centuries, I thought: Nearly a year has passed. What will I do? What’s my life and what’s my future?
I thought about my past, what I had left in London. Before leaving I had cut out all the articles I had written over the years for various magazines and filed them neatly in chronological order inside plastic pockets. Two files covering a fifteen-year period, all my writing laid out. I flicked through them now. What did they amount to? Was this all I had to show for my life so far?
Because there had been nothing else. No relationship. No children. No house and a mortgage. Plenty of other things, like friends and family, little godchildren and the whole of London waiting to divert me. But nothing intimate, warm. Nothing really outside of my career ambitions. Just, as I remembered it, a lot of being alone. Loneliness—I had never called it that. But now, looking back, I could see that it had crushed me. That sense of emptiness, of being tired of doing everything alone.
Here in Florence I had been solitary but not crushingly lonely. I had found a liberating lack of ambition that had emphasized the ordinary and everyday. It had given me the space to create, that reassuring absence of judgment in Florence, the fact that what you did was not what defined you. It had allowed me to stop doing and discover how to just be. London was much too stimulating for the state of undistracted calm I needed to create something as long and complicated as a book. Although it felt counterintuitive, the slow pace of life in Florence had sharpened my senses, not dulled them.
And since Bernardo’s appearance, life had become infinitely richer. All that life—the puppies, the dogs, the boy who needed me as much as his father did, the other children that perhaps one day I would meet too. My mother’s voice piped up inside my head: this is not your family, you should make your own, and this man will never give you that…No, he would never give me that, he had said as much. But, foolish or not, perhaps this was not a problem. Marriage was too distant a possibility, and children of my own—well, I was facing up to the fact that the model of womanhood presented to me by my mother was not the one I wished for. I didn’t want to be defined by my relationship and my children—for my body to be the territory of others, to be my identity. It came to me in a flash—I want to be free. Free of that kind of belonging that children bring. I hardly knew what this meant, but I felt it instinctively—the desire to make my own life, at any age and any stage of my existence, to be creative in ways other than through procreation. And I also felt instinctively that Bernardo would give me that freedom.
* * *
—
At the end of the agreed two weeks, I sat quite alone on a bench along the viale from Piazzale Michelangelo, the church of San Miniato behind me, and let my eyes drift over the city, once so new and uncharted, now familiar, always awe-inspiring.
I recalled the first time that I had seen this view, standing with the other tourists at sunset up at Piazzale: the city bound by its medieval walls, outside it the hills and valleys scattered with grand villas inset with delicate loggias, cypress trees on the horizon, the emerald grass dotted with silver-green olive trees like pom-poms. There were mists weaving through this valley that bordered the ancient walls punctuated with turrets, and on the other side, the terra-cotta roofs of Florence packed together, its churches, the bell tower of San Niccolò, the orange walls of the Palazzo Serristori behind my apartment. The silver line of the river cut through the buildings, threading through the arches of the different bridges. On the other side there was the watchtower of the Palazzo Ve
cchio, the brick bell tower of Santa Croce. And squatting like a giant in the middle of it all was the white mass of the cathedral, its vast red dome, the marble tower with its bells. Around it all the wooded hills dotted with villas and lights.
I was no longer ticking off monuments. Woven into the view were my memories of my year, the homes of my friends, the sites of my adventures. Scenes of my year in Florence rose up like ghosts: meeting Antonella outside the gay bar behind Santa Croce, Beppe kissing me on the doorstep of Cibreo, singing with Francesca at the checkout of Pegna, miming my shopping needs to Antonio in the market. I saw myself walking arm in arm with Dino through the gate of Porta Romana, thrilling with the anticipation of his kiss, and I watched the preoccupied-looking Bernardo gazing at me as I reached out to gingerly touch the snout of the Porcellino.
Looking to the hills of the Casentino as they were etched, hazy and delicate, on the eastern horizon of the Arno, I smiled. Somewhere there, I thought, is a man (and a shiny blond boy and a funny white dog) who wants me and to whom I feel like I could belong.
I meditated on Bernardo’s patience in waiting for my decision, his bravery with his heart—this heart that had been battered and broken, bruised and knocked about so many times, so often and by so many people. And yet, here he was again, with his heart in his hands, cracked and imperfect as it was. He was not waiting for a distant day when it would be whole and perfect. He was offering it to me as it was, with no pretense at papering over its cracks, but with honesty and transparency—be that for another month or a lifetime, he was not holding any bit of it in reserve.
At first I had found him thoughtless, careless with himself. Then, as the days passed and my steps echoed on untold cobbles, I realized that he was brave. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel fear. He let his fear and panic coexist but not overtake his heart, his desire to be with me. Unlike Nader, his reaction was not to run back to safer arms. Unlike Dino, he didn’t create a fantasy that he controlled and then—the ultimate demonstration of his dominance—leave without a word. Unlike Beppe, he was a man with understanding of life. Bernardo was, perhaps, the first grown-up man I had been involved with.
And his bravery inspired me to be brave too. To take a risk, not knowing how it would work out, what might come in the future. Once more, I decided to step off the edge of the cliff. A cliff with a Renaissance façade but a cliff nonetheless. But this time, I was not stepping off the cliff alone. This time, I had someone by my side, holding my hand, taking that step with me. It made the move no less dangerous, but it did make it infinitely more companionable.
The only choice, I realized, was to stay.
My phone rang. It was Bernardo. We had not talked in two weeks, and my days had paled. I had come to see his complications not so much as annoyances but as riches that embroidered my life, gilding my quiet daily routine with an abundance of characters and energies.
I answered with a smile in my voice, and Bernardo smiled back down the phone—I could hear it. He told me that he was at Rifrullo, asking where I was. “Wait ten minutes,” I urged, “I will be right there, I’m just up by San Miniato.”
I walked happily to the winding road that led back down to San Niccolò, practically skipping in my excitement to tell Bernardo that I would spend Christmas with them. As for the rest, I decided I had better confirm things with Christobel before telling him, just to be sure.
As I was rounding a bend, I stopped to let a car go past, a smile on my lips as I thought of Bernardo. I looked at the car as it drew closer and slowed down to take the sharp bend—it was a black Audi, the window was wound down on the driver’s side, and there, so close that I could have reached out and touched him, was Dino. He was staring so fixedly ahead that I knew he had seen me, and as he passed, I laughed out loud. All those months of peering into the windows of every Audi, thinking of all the things I would say, even if it meant shouting into his window. And now, just when I could not have cared less about him, when I was skipping joyfully around thinking of Bernardo, finally he had appeared, to bear witness to my happiness. It couldn’t have been more perfect if I had dreamed it up myself.
* * *
—
It was the night before Christmas Eve and Florence was decked out in her festive finery. She was prettier than ever. Cascades of lights hung over the streets of the centro, and the giglio of Florence, made of pinpoints of light, was suspended between the buildings. The Piazza della Repubblica displayed an enormous Christmas tree hung with red gigli, and another twinkled in front of the Duomo, Christmas songs emitting from deep within it. A wooden manger to one side of the cathedral bore exquisitely sculpted terra-cotta figures of the holy family placed among bales of straw. My side of the river competed with the center, with an enormous Christmas tree festooned with lights overlooking the city from Piazzale Michelangelo, and the tower of San Niccolò was lit up in reds and blues. A group of carol singers from the English church spent evenings traversing the Oltrarno carrying a fake gas lamp and singing English carols, and a festival of lights illuminated monuments around the city every night.
We drove to Colognole that night, through the dark country road skirting the river, passing Rufina with its own show of Christmas lights and displays of winter flowers lining the streets. We followed the road as it led us over the river and twisted up the mountain—Bernardo’s mountain—and, rounding a bend, he slammed on the brakes as a herd of deer broke out of the bushes. They passed immediately in front of the car, and, as we held our breath, one turned and looked right at us. “Good God,” I said, “is Santa coming up behind them?”
“You see, Kamin,” he said, grinning and placing a hand on my knee, “the city is beautiful, but Colognole is magic.”
* * *
—
He had picked up a real tree and wreath for the front door. They were sitting in the entrance of the house. “I can’t believe you haven’t done any decorations yet.” I turned to Bernardo.
He shook his head, telling me he wasn’t a fan of Christmas. “Yes, but Alessandro?” I cried. He assured me that his son too didn’t care, but I refused to believe it. “I bet he’ll love doing all this,” I promised. “Just wait…”
The next morning Alessandro willingly agreed to help me decorate the house. He led me through all the rooms that were shut up, full of boxes and a disorder of things, and we unearthed the Christmas decorations. We went for a walk into the woods to find holly and ivy. And as we gathered up armfuls of spiky leaves, Alessandro said shyly: “I’m glad you are here for Christmas. My father has invited other friends and it will be fun this year.” I looked at the boy, shiny as a newly minted gold coin in the woods, and my heart went out to him. I patted his back. “Yes, we will have fun,” I said.
We spent the rest of the afternoon weaving the foliage into corners as Bernardo set the table for the next day, explaining to me that Christmas Eve was the vigilia di Natale, it was customary to see in midnight together. “When I was little they took us to church,” he said, “but now for us is enough to be together until it passes into Christmas. We can have supper in front of the fire.”
Joining us on Christmas Day were his best friend and his family. “You will like Gaetano,” he told me. “He was educated in England, he speaks really good English.”
A son of an impoverished Sicilian noble family, Gaetano was, according to Bernardo, a true gentleman, “but you could never tell from his clothes. He is even more rough than me, cara,” he said. When they met, Gaetano had been living with his parents, helping out with his father’s business but deeply unhappy. Bernardo had encouraged him to leave the job and follow his heart.
“And what did his heart want?” I asked.
“Gaetano is the best falconer I have seen,” he said. “He has a way with birds that’s like…”
“You with the dogs?” I interjected.
“Actually, much better. But be ready. Gaetano loves his birds, he takes them everywhere, and his pockets are full of rats’ tails…And he has Cocca’s son.
He’s called Cocco, you will meet him, he’s got a black patch over one eye.”
Our vigilia was spent in front of the fire, Bernardo cooking us steaks on the flames while Alessandro and I finished up the decorating, finally tying a red bow around Cocca’s thick neck. After supper, Bernardo fetched a Monopoly board and the three of us played a raucous game together until, at just past midnight, we all retired to bed, wishing one another a Merry Christmas. Hours later, I slipped quietly out of bed and placed the presents I had brought with me under the tree, hanging up three stockings above the fireplace. I sneaked back to bed, feeling pleased with the execution of my role as Father Christmas.
The morning came, wrapped in mist. I made us all breakfast, and when Bernardo and Alessandro got up, I pointed to the fireplace. “Father Christmas must have come in the night,” I said to them, and I watched as the boy excitedly took down the stockings.
“You see,” I said to Bernardo as he watched the boy empty his stocking with all the eagerness of a young child, “he does like Christmas after all.” Bernardo slipped an arm around me and pulled me close. “Thank you,” he said, looking into my eyes, “you are a sweet woman.” And I melted into him.
Bernardo was busy in the kitchen from first thing, making a traditional Italian Christmas lunch. He first placed the cappone (cockerel) into a large pan with plenty of water and odori—a mix of carrots, celery, onions, and parsley—to boil. He called out instructions to Alessandro over his shoulder, and the two of them whirled around the kitchen together, preparing the leg of ham and placing the turkey he had picked up from the butcher into the oven. Alessandro peeled potatoes and I cleaned the vegetables: Brussels sprouts, carrots, and bunches of cavolo nero. There was also pork to roast and tortellini to cook in the broth made from the water of the boiled cappone. When he deemed this ready, after hours on the stove, I held the sieve while Bernardo poured in the water, throwing away the remains as he transferred the broth to another pan. Once this was done, all we had to do was wait for his guests, who, he assured me, would be late. I retired to get dressed and, when I reappeared, I found Bernardo and Alessandro eyeing up the presents under the tree.
Bella Figura Page 23