“No, no, no!” I said. “I meant no, don’t worry about it. Anna Lisa’s my daughter, not my property. You don’t have to ask me. She’s the most precious thing in the world to me and I want her to be happy, that’s all. Make her happy, or keep her happy, or at least try to break her of the habit of talking all the time…but don’t worry about me.”
He went quiet. I glanced over at him. A nice-looking young man. Sincere. On the gentle side, but in a sufficiently manly way. His English rough, his Italian eloquent. I was old enough to wish that he and my daughter had put things in a different order: marriage first, then parenthood. But Rosa and I had put things in that order and look where we’d ended up…so I didn’t say anything.
“My family’s Jewish,” he said. “Dad’s a rabbi, in fact. In Venice.”
“What happened to you, then?”
He made a noise like a laugh, a small, gentle laugh. I was forming and re-forming my opinion of him as we walked, and the laugh made me see that he had a sense of humor about himself. He wouldn’t always need to be right, the way I did, the way Rosa sometimes did. In the tumultuous sea of marital life, the hour-by-hour mix of storm and calm, their little vessel of love might actually have a chance to stay afloat. Plus, the Pope’s closest childhood friend had become a rabbi, so we had that going for us.
“Penso che…” he said. “I think what happened to me is the same thing that happened to Anna Lisa. We respect the faiths we were raised in, but traditional Catholicism and traditional Judaism left too many unanswered questions and had too many rules. For us—let me emphasize that part. I don’t judge what other people believe or don’t believe. I really don’t.”
“What do the Jews believe, anyway? Other than the fact that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, kosher food, and so on, I haven’t the faintest idea where they stand on the spectrum.”
“It’s not simple,” he said.
“Nothing is. Listen, I have no advice to give, about marriage or anything else. Only this: The older you get, the more complicated everything becomes. Marriage is at the top of that list. At least mine was—is. I hope yours works out better.”
“Anna Lisa says you still love each other, you and Rosa. I saw the kiss.”
I didn’t feel I’d known Piero long enough to discuss how much Rosa and I still loved each other, so I grunted in a more or less positive-seeming way and kept my eyes forward.
“The Jews,” he said, “believe, basically, that you should pray only to God and that there will be a resurrection. But when and what kind of resurrection—that varies. There are Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Reform Jews, and they all interpret things a bit differently, but basically just try to live a good and decent life. It can get complicated, though. Some people say there are six hundred and thirteen commandments in the Torah.”
“Sounds a little extreme.”
“The religion goes back at least four thousand years, and has some wonderful traditions. Bat mitzvah and bar mitzvah. The Day of Atonement. Seder.”
“What’s a seder? I’ve heard of it.”
“A feast.”
“Feasts I like. I don’t think the Buddhists have them, do they? I’m sorry. This is why I could never convert. No feasts and too much sitting still—it’s not going to catch on in Italy, believe me.”
I was in a mood to mutter semi-sane statements. Piero didn’t seem to mind, or to be paying too close attention. I decided he’d fit in to the family very well.
“There’s a large spectrum in Judaism, just like in a lot of faiths,” he went on. “My family is on the Reform end. Less strict, more modern. In fact, my parents observe the High Holidays, and the rest of the time they live more or less like everyone else in Italy.” Piero pointed to our right; we turned. “One more block,” he said.
“I read where only something like 30 percent of Italians attend Mass every Sunday now,” I told him. “When I was a boy it used to be 90 percent.”
He pondered that for a few steps, then said, “I think most people feel the need for some kind of spiritual practice in their life, spiritual guidance, or at least something larger to believe in. But they’re not comfortable with many of the old rules. That you have to go to Mass every Sunday or you’ll be condemned to hell. That you have to eat only kosher food, or wear your facial hair a certain way. A lot of people don’t see the connection between those kinds of things and the search for spiritual meaning in modern life. What I’m trying to do with the meditation meetings, what Anna Lisa and I hope to do with our child—children, actually—is to make something new, something that draws on and respects the beautiful traditions and disciplines of the past, but also something that gives him or her—and us—some modern center, some core of belief—in goodness or kindness or selflessness or service, a sense of awe before the mystery of creation—and at the same time makes sense to us on the most practical level.”
“You might convert me, after all,” I said, and we stepped into the wine store.
I told Piero he could pick out the champagne, but that I was paying—our first gift to him and Anna Lisa. He didn’t object. He spent a couple of minutes looking through the offerings, then chose a bottle at the middle-lower end of the price spectrum and carried it to the counter.
“Celebration?” the clerk asked. He had jowls and a big belly, hadn’t shaved in a week, but he was one of those people who give off an undeniable sense of being at peace. In their place. Never in my life had I truly felt that, and I had an urge to ask the man where it came from, what was the secret, what kind of religion did he practice? How much of his own product did he consume on any given day?
“This is my future son-in-law,” I said. “He and my daughter just told us they’re engaged. We’re visiting. We wanted to raise a glass with them.”
“Che meraviglia!!” the man said. How marvelous! He had the bottle in his hand and was examining it. Looking for the price, I thought, but then he said, “This is decent. Drinkable. Not the best we have, but drinkable.” He looked up at me, and at that moment I realized—again—that I was not white, which most likely conveyed to this man the idea that my daughter was entering into a mixed marriage. I braced myself for some kind of remark. Was that the way people of color went through their days in this world—bracing for a remark, a nasty look, or worse? Had I never really understood this before Mario applied the polish to my skin? Was this not, truly, a spiritual lesson? But the bristly, jowly cheeks only squeezed up into a smile. “My gift to you, then,” he said. Il mio regalo. “My gift to the couple. Prendete! Take it. Please. I’ve had a good summer so far, business is good, the Russians are here, and they drink like they’ve lived their whole life in the desert! So this is my gift.”
He placed the bottle lovingly into a paper bag, and, after trying halfheartedly to pay, we thanked him and started back.
“That kind of thing,” I said, “happens more in Italy than anyplace I’ve ever been.”
“You’ve traveled?”
“With the Pope. Some when I was a boy.”
“We’d like to travel.”
“Well, don’t let people tell you it’s impossible with a small child. In fact, it’s easier with a small child, and then later on it gets…challenging. My parents took me everywhere, all around Europe, New York, South America. They were lovable eccentrics, artists, good people.”
“We need more eccentrics,” Piero said.
I raised him up one more notch on the likability meter.
All of this—Anna Lisa’s news, my beginning the process of liking my future son-in-law, the free champagne—would have made for an especially pleasant afternoon if we hadn’t stepped through the gold-and-maroon-trimmed door, walked into the back room, and found our four friends there with faces painted in an expression close to shock. I thought, for a moment, that there had been an argument, a schism, or the opposite: a stunning conversion by one of the holy men, or that the Pope had taken my daughter to task for “premarital love,” as she called it, a mortal sin in our tradition. Or that t
he Dalai Lama had let himself get angry about being shown, in front of everyone, to be afraid of water.
But no.
“Anna’s roommate, Beatrice, just called her,” Rosa said. She was moving me into the main room and toward the front door as she spoke. The rest of the group was following. “The police were at their apartment, asking questions. ‘Where is Anna Lisa?’ ‘Has she heard from her father?’ And so on. Beatrice told them she thought Anna Lisa had gone to the beach. Also, apparently someone in L’Aquila thinks he saw the Holy Father in disguise, and that was on the news, too. We have to go, Paolo. Now.”
I looked at the Pope, the Dalai Lama, turned to my daughter. “We could just surrender,” I started to say, but something on Anna Lisa’s face cut the thought off before it could completely form. The expression there was one of admiration. For me. She’d apparently always wanted a criminal for a father.
“I’m proud that you did this, babbo,” she said. “When you and Piero were gone, the Holinesses were saying how much it means to them to get away like this, in spite of all the uproar. We made a short recording to protect you, and so people wouldn’t worry. I’m so proud of you!”
I shrugged manfully, eyed the champagne. “One drink before we depart?”
“We have to go!” Rosa said. “Now!”
“You shouldn’t walk back to the car together,” Piero advised, “in case the police are at the beach.” Up another notch he went. He put his arm around Anna Lisa. Up two more notches. “Your father should go and get the car and bring it here.”
“Here’s no good,” Anna Lisa said. “Here is someplace they’ll look. Someone will tell them I come here for services.”
“Then they should go in two groups,” Piero said. “Rosa—may I call you Rosa?”
“Of course.”
“Please put this on over your head. It’s my mother’s scarf. I keep it here for luck. They’ll think you’re Jewish, or Muslim. Russian maybe. You and Paolo go together, and the Holy Father and His Holiness a little ways separate.”
“People will guess.”
“They should speak Russian, then,” Piero said.
“We don’t know any Russian,” the Pope told him.
“I know some words. I wait on tables. There are Russians here every summer. You and the Dalai Lama should keep quiet, but if someone walks by you should say ‘Nu, ladna’ and ‘Shto?’ And maybe ‘Piva!’ ”
“What means these things?” Dalai asked. It was easy to hear the amusement in his voice. He’d be in yet another level of disguise. More trickery. What fun! He and the Pope were a pair of jesters. Soul mates.
“ ‘Well, okay,’ ‘What?’ and ‘Beer!’ ” Piero told him. “In that order. Can you say it?”
The Pope and then the Dalai Lama took turns mangling Piero’s half-mangled restaurant Russian.
“And here,” the young man said, “take this soccer ball and toss it back and forth, so people will pay attention to that and not to you. They’d never expect the Pope and the Dalai Lama to be walking toward the beach with a soccer ball, speaking Russian. Leave it at Beach 45 if you can, I’ll get it later. Or keep it as a gift from me.”
“Pa, you and Mamma go first.”
“Right,” Rosa said, draping the black scarf over her head and accepting a pair of sunglasses from her daughter. “Your Holinesses, walk on the other side of the street and keep us in view. We’ll meet at the car and get out of here as fast as we can.”
Hugs and handshakes all around. Back out into the midday heat we went, separating quickly to opposite sidewalks and going along at a brisk pace. “You know,” I said to my wife as we hurried, “I think it’s going to be all right. The marriage, I mean.”
“Better than us, I hope,” she said, and in such a sorrowful voice that I reached out for a moment and put an arm around her shoulder. She didn’t try to shrug it away. “You kissed me,” she said.
“I did.”
“You haven’t kissed me in years.”
“I wasn’t thinking. I apologize.”
“Take that back or I’ll hit you.”
“Take what back?”
“That hideous apology. Don’t you dare apologize for kissing me!”
“Okay, nonna,” I said, and she did hit me then, but it was a fake hit, a slap on my upper arm, a love tap. “And what’s this about a recording?”
She held up Mario’s phone. “It was Tenzin’s idea. He and Cousin Giorgio feel bad about causing so much concern all over the world. So Tenzin suggested we make a short video and send it in to a TV station. Then we realized a video would give away the disguises, so we made just a voice recording instead.”
“Like the ones kidnappers make with hostages.”
“It was thirty seconds. Just the two of them speaking, saying they’re fine, they’ll be back soon. They’re not being harmed. I e-mailed the file to a friend at a Naples TV station.”
“Can’t they trace that?”
“To Mario’s phone, yes. But that will take a while, because I sent the file to Anna Lisa and she sent it to the TV friend.”
“You’re a criminal genius,” I said.
Just then I heard the Dalai Lama on the other side of the street, saying “Piva!” too loudly. “Nu, ladna,” the Pope answered. It seemed they might be overdoing it: every time someone passed by they tossed the soccer ball back and forth—dropping it at least once—and threw out a word of Russian. What would happen, I wondered, if one of the other pedestrians was actually a native Russian speaker? And then that was exactly what happened. I heard the Dalai say “Piva!”—Beer!—and a man going the other way stopped suddenly and turned and asked a loud question in what must have been the dialect of the steppes. It very well could have been “Where is the beer?” but for all we knew it could also have been “Isn’t Putin a god!” or “Where does a fellow get a copy of The Brothers Karamazov around here?” The Pope made a lucky guess, or had a moment of divine intuition. I saw him pointing toward the center of town. The man offered what might have been a thank-you and hurried off.
We made it to the beach road without further incident. “No time to bring the ball over there,” Rosa said. “We’ll keep it. Let’s go!” I turned, for just one second, to look at her—I found the sight of her in a head scarf and sunglasses strangely arousing—and then the Pope and the Dalai Lama opened the doors and we were all in the baking-hot Maserati and making our way through Rimini’s summer traffic.
“Watch for police cars,” Rosa said.
“I’m watching.”
“I thought, for a minute, when you and Piero came back with the champagne, that you wanted to give up.”
“I did, but I don’t.”
“You’re growing up. You’re starting to understand.”
“Nice way to say it, Rosa. ‘You’re growing up.’ What kind of thing is that to say to a man?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Two apologies in twenty-four hours. A miracle. Two miracles! You’ll be eligible for sainthood.”
“Now who’s being mean?”
The Pope reached forward and put a hand on my right shoulder and Rosa’s left. “What a blessing!” he said. “What a wonderful girl! What a fine mother she’ll make!”
Nothing, not a word, not a single syllable about premarital love, Dzogchen, or the police. What a magnificent pope he is! I thought. What a man! At that moment, comparing myself to him, recognizing my less-than-kind side, I felt like a snake. I couldn’t even meet Rosa’s eyes.
I was about to apologize when her phone rang. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her put it to her ear; then I heard her say, “Mario?…Cosa?…Quando?…Va bene. What?…When?…Okay, well, don’t worry. Thanks. You’re not calling on my phone, I hope!…Well, that was probably for the best. It’s replaceable. I’ll return the favor…Okay…Yes, a very good time, thank you. The time of my life…Excellent. Bye.”
She turned to me. “They called the shop—Vatican police, he thought it was. He told them I was in Africa on vacat
ion, but when they asked where in Africa he said Monte Carlo. They sounded skeptical, he said.”
“Hard to understand why.”
“He says they hinted they were going to stop by for a visit. Last night he got scared and threw my phone in the river. And just now he was watching the news. Someone recognized the Pope. From Mario’s description, I think it was the woman on the street in L’Aquila. She must have heard you say ‘Holy Father’ or something.”
“Shit,” I said.
Behind me the Dalai said, “Piva!”
“So they know we went as far as L’Aquila, and if they trace the e-mail they’ll know we headed from there to Rimini to see Anna Lisa, and they’ll be all over her. Any ideas now?”
“One,” she said, and then there was a thoughtful hesitation. “I have a friend in Padua. Not the first place they’d expect us to go from here, probably. I’m sure he’ll have room to put us up.”
“Carlo Mancini?”
“No, another famous friend.”
“Who?”
“Antonio Mazzo.”
“You’re kidding. Now you’re really kidding, Rosa…or lying.”
She shook her head and began punching numbers into the phone. “Unlike some people I know,” she said, “I don’t lie.”
27
Antonio Mazzo, for those few souls who don’t know, was an iconic Italian film star and international sex symbol. Retired by the day of our visit from all but cameo appearances, in his prime Mazzo had acted alongside all the greats—Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Giancarlo Giannini—and had been close to the famous American stars Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe. He’d had affairs with scores, perhaps hundreds, of glamorous women. It was said that he’d been the person who’d convinced his younger friend George Clooney to take up residence in Italy, but then again, as he himself once noted, “many things are said about me. Ten percent of them may even be true.”
I knew, of course, that Rosa had clients among the rich and famous—especially in the film community—but it must have been the case that in the years since we’d stopped living together, she’d actually become friends with these people. Good enough friends that she could borrow Carlo Mancini’s new Maserati, that she had Antonio Mazzo’s phone number, and felt comfortable calling and asking if she and three “friends” could spend a night at his villa near Padua. I wondered—what estranged husband wouldn’t?—if she might be more than friends with some of them. Mazzo, especially, was famous for his decadent lifestyle and bacchanalian parties, and while he was probably too old to be having an affair with Rosa, he could very well have introduced her to the kind of men for whom sex with a stranger wearing a ring was not morally troubling—the equivalent of having lunch with her, of shaking hands, of spooning sugar into her espresso at breakfast.
The Delight of Being Ordinary Page 17