A Place I've Never Been

by David Leavitt

  “I’m loving it,” Nicholas said. “I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d grown up in a household like this. I think about Marco’s childhood and I get envious—mine was so boring by comparison.”

  “Don’t say that!” Fulvia clucked her tongue. “I know what it looks like to you. You think it was all warmth and singing, la mamma and il papà and pots of pasta and wine pouring out of the bottle onto the floor. But there was more to it than that, caro. Corruption. Curelty. Not to mention the drugs. You know all our children used heroin—even Marco.”

  “I know.”

  She beckoned him closer. “I’ll tell you a secret. Every one of these people in this house, every single one, I’d just as soon they would leave today and never come back. Except for Rosa. Without Rosa I’d be dead. Rosa walks out that door, I die.”

  “Ridiculous,” Rosa muttered from the other sofa, where she was reading the newspaper.

  “Rosa is the only person I love,” Fulvia went on. “If God had had any sense at all, he would have made us lesbians. But, unfortunately, we’re both too fond of cazzo for that. A pity. We would have treated each other better than any of our husbands. No, don’t think the men had anything to do with it. We built this family, Rosa and me. We raised all the children together, didn’t we, Rosa?”

  Absorbed in her paper, Rosa only murmured a concurrence.

  “Ah, I’m getting boring,” Fulvia said. “Now, caro, tell me about you. Your dull family.”

  “Well,” Nicholas said, “my mother’s a schoolteacher, and my father’s—”

  “A schoolteacher! I was supposed to be a schoolteacher when I was a girl! Can you imagine? Me? I can’t. Anyway, I lost the chance for that glamorous career when I married Carlo. I had to settle for being a famous journalist and cultural arbiter. Sad, when I could have been a schoolteacher.”

  “Cagna,” Rosa said, under her breath.

  “Porca,” Fulvia muttered. They both giggled.

  On the balcony, Marco stands, his back to the house, the household, Fulvia. In the distance, at the bottom of the hills, are the famous hot springs: a spa with pools, and down the road from it, a waterfall where you can swim without paying. At Nicholas’s insistence, they went at midnight the night they arrived, even though Marco was jetlagged and would have preferred to wait until the morning. But Nicholas was emphatic. He’d been hearing about the waterfall for too long. Now he saw: Naked men with big muscles and bulging stomachs stood under the dark heavings of water, their eyes cast up to a sky thick with stars. Women and babies. Grandmothers, their breasts distended. There was a strong, ugly smell of rotten eggs. “The sulfur,” Marco explained, pulling his shirt off. “Smells like farts, doesn’t it? But you’ll grow to love it soon.”

  And Nicholas has. Since their arrival a week ago he’s gone every afternoon to the spa, lying limp in the hot pool, or allowing the pounding weight of an artificial waterfall to beat his back. In the evenings he goes back to the natural waterfall, sometimes for hours. There are a big pool and a small pool at the spa. Near the big pool is a little fountain, a perpetual trickle, with plastic cups and a sign extolling the water’s health-giving properties. At first the thought of drinking the stuff repelled Nicholas, but by the second day he was ready, and lined up behind a family of fat Germans for his first taste of the acrid, sulfurous water. He could barely get it down, but once he had, felt purified.

  “There’s not a wrinkle on my body,” Fulvia boasted, the one afternoon she felt well enough to go down to the spa. “And I’m ninety-seven years old.”

  “Fulvia, don’t be absurd,” Rosa said. “Everyone here knows you’re just ninety-six.”

  Even so, when Fulvia pulled off her bathrobe, people gasped or turned away. She laughed. “You think I’ve been making it up, the dying part?” she asked, pulling loose the gathered leg-holes of her bathing suit. “Skinny, yes. But even at the hospital the doctors couldn’t keep their hands off me. Such skin. And you know why? This water. Help me, will you?” And Marco and Nicholas eased her in. Instantly she fell silent, and dropped her head back into the water, so that her hair floated out like strands of seaweed, her mouth open.

  “Stay with me,” she said. “I’m so skinny I might go down the drain.”

  On the porch, the rain has stopped. Small puddles reflect the peeling stucco that covers the old house. From where Marco stands, there is a good view of the spa, the brightly suited bathers standing out like colored beads against the green water. Nicholas touches Marco’s shoulder, and Marco flinches before turning.

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Marco stretches. “Yes, all right.”

  “Why did you leave the room?”

  “I just didn’t feel like listening to Fulvia and my mother chatter.” He puts his hands on Nicholas’s shoulders. “So how are you enjoying my—shall we say—family?”

  “I’m a bit perplexed,” Nicholas admits. “Everyone seems to be married to someone who’s dead, or in South America, or living with someone else, and they don’t care.”

  “Marriage Italian style,” Marco says, laughing. “Haven’t you read about it in books? But there’s an explanation. In a country where divorce has only been legal for fifteen years, people just get used to finding—shall we say—alternatives. For centuries we couldn’t divorce, and now that we can, nobody sees the point in taking the trouble when probably if you get remarried you’ll just end up divorcing again anyway. Why, look at Fulvia. I can’t even remember who she’s married to. The men she married, the men she lived with, they all blend together.”

  “It’s just different than what I’m used to,” Nicholas says. “I mean, my sister’s divorced. A lot of my friends too. But in America, even if you get a divorce, at least it’s a big deal. You don’t just leave a marriage behind like a shirt that doesn’t fit you anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it has emotional ramifications.”

  “A marriage is a legal document. A legal document does not have, as you say, emotional ramifications unless you give them to it.”

  Both of them lean over the railing, staring down at the plain.

  “Who’s Dario?” Nicholas asks.

  “Ah, the Dario question,” Marco says. “Dario was Fulvia’s son.”

  “But why isn’t—”

  “He’s dead. He killed himself seven years ago.”

  Nicholas catches his breath. “I didn’t know,” he says.

  “Of course not. I didn’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Marco says. “Why don’t you ask Fulvia? Fulvia will be more than glad to give you the whole story. All the gory details, including the shit.”

  “Shit?”

  “Ask her.” Then Marco turns and goes back into the house. Nicholas follows. From the front door he watches as Marco gets into Grazia’s little Fiat and drives off.

  “Coprophagy,” Alberto is saying to Alba. “That’s the technical term for it.”

  “I’ve never heard that word before.”

  “So you’ve learned something new for the day, haven’t you? And what a thing to learn.”

  “Sit down,” Fulvia says, making room for Nicholas on the sofa. “Sit down and Fulvia will tell you the whole story.”

  Nicholas sits down. Fulvia is flanked on one side by Rosa, who is knitting, and on the other by Grazia, who is running her fingers through her pale blond hair. Giuliana and Laura mill about, pretending not to listen.

  “My son,” Fulvia begins, “was a strange young man. He liked to wear dresses and eat shit.”

  Nicholas blinks.

  “A coprophagist,” Grazia says. “He had a whole philosophy about it.”

  “Why, look at him!” Rosa says. “The poor boy is shocked. Oh dear, Fulvia, it’s like you’re the worldly principessa in some Henry James novel, corrupting the innocent American. But there it is. He asked.”

  “Well, if he’s shocked, he shouldn’t be,” Fulvia says. “Worse things g
o on in New York. And every day.”

  “I’ve just never heard of someone eating—”

  “It’s not an ordinary practice,” Fulvia says. “Then again, Dario was not an ordinary young man. He had theories.”

  “For him, it was the ultimate transgression,” Grazia says. “The ultimate sin, the ultimate, unspeakable, unforgivable sin. And once you’d done it, well—you pierced through—what was it he called it?—the membrane of ordinary morality. You entered a kind of ecstasy, a freedom. You committed the final transgression, and it felt wonderful.”

  “My son was full of shit—if you’ll excuse the expression. He just wanted to shock.”

  “He’d read a lot of the Marquis de Sade. There was a scene where the nobleman who is the hero, after doing every imaginable thing, every vile thing, announces that he is going to take the village idiot into a room and once there do something with him so unspeakably obscene the other people in the book won’t ever in their dreams be able to imagine what it is. Then he leads the village idiot into the room and closes the door. The others wait. After about ten minutes, he comes out and announces he’s done it. He’s done the unspeakable thing with the village idiot. Then they all sit down and he gives them a thirty-page lecture on hedonism.”

  “Really, Grazia, you were rather too taken in by Dario—”

  “Dario was fascinated by de Sade. He wanted to know what it was the nobleman and the village idiot had done. He wanted to do it. You see, he was determined to show all of us what a joke our bourgeois lives were. He wasn’t ashamed of being homosexual. He was a beautiful boy, Dario, and he looked beautiful in dresses. Sometimes he sang.”

  “La Glamorosa,” Rosa says.

  “Dario,” Fulvia says, “liked attention, and never felt he got enough from me. That was all there was to it. He wanted to impress me. But I never attended one of his evenings.”

  “He said the taste of shit was ambrosial,” Grazia continues, rather dreamily. “He wanted me to try it, but I thought I’d throw up. I never did, that I knew of. But once he gave a party and baked a big torta di cioccolata. And he put it in it—the shit. And everyone at that party kept saying, ‘But Madonna, this is the best torta I’ve ever tasted! So delicious! Dario, what is your recipe?’ ”

  “Really, Grazia,” Rosa says, “must you remind us?”

  “Well, anyway,” Fulvia says, “to make a long story short, Marco became Dario’s lover. Don’t ask me why; Marco was very impressed by him. He even went on stage once and made love. That was when Dario was performing.”

  “Performing?”

  “Yes, it was the early seventies, when even intelligent people were behaving like fools. Dario would get on a stage, recite some of his ludicrous texts, lift up his dress, and squat—”

  “But Fulvia, you’re too hard on him!” Grazia says. “You were never there, you never saw. It’s true, seen from today, it was a bit strange. But what he read was—brilliant. And when you watched him—what he did—it seemed beautiful.”

  “Grazia, you’re a stupid vacca. You’ll fall for anything, even today when most people have gotten their brains back in order. I never understood what Marco saw in you, except you allowed him to get away with his own stupidity, which I never did.”

  “Fulvia, please,” Rosa says.

  “Oh, shut up, Rosa, I’m dying. I’ll say the truth, for once.”

  Grazia stands. “You really think you’re the queen, Fulvia. And like a queen, you assume that just because you’re cruel, you’re right. But you’re not always right.”

  She turns and marches out of the room.

  “Che sensibilità!” Fulvia says. “Hand me a cigarette.” Nicholas obliges. “So, to get on with the story: As time went on, the fashions changed. Fewer and fewer people came to Dario’s performances. He was—how would you say it in English—‘a flash in the bedpan’?”

  Nicholas doesn’t laugh. He is looking at the door through which Grazia has just passed.

  “Of course,” Fulvia says, “there were drugs. And even though nobody was listening to him anymore except stupid Grazia, he was still having his delusions of grandeur. He thought he was the Savior, the Messiah. Naturally Marco became sick of this soon enough, and left him. Dario was alone. The drugs were getting bad. Finally he took an overdose. They found him in the morning. He wasn’t trying to get attention, for once. He just wanted it over.” She blows smoke.

  “Fulvia acts cold,” Rosa says. “But that’s just her way of hiding her pain.”

  “Oh shut up, Rosa. Don’t speak for me. I act cold because I am cold.”

  “Marco never told me any of this,” Nicholas says.

  “Marco made a big exit, going to New York. He said he never wanted to have anything to do with any of us ever again. It doesn’t surprise me one bit that he never mentioned Dario to you.”

  “Dario was a disturbed boy, but he had something,” Rosa says. “He had charm and a certain real genius. A kind of genius. It was just that everyone mistook it for another kind of genius. He acted like a messiah, and everyone was looking for a messiah, so that’s what they turned him into.”

  “You’re too kind to him, Rosa.”

  “You’re too cruel.”

  “Perhaps. But I made him.” Fulvia takes a drag from her cigarette. “Now, for God’s sake, will someone empty this ashtray? And close the window! I feel a wind coming up.”

  Years before, during the war, when they were girls, Fulvia and Rosa lived alone in the house near Saturnia with an old crone and her cretinous son. They were being hidden, protected. Fulvia’s parents, they thought, were still alive; Rosa’s were fighting it out in Rome. One night the two girls sneaked out of the house to take a swim at the waterfall. It was winter and there wasn’t any heat; the hot water warmed them up. A pair of soldiers surprised them, where they were splashing, and the dread they felt, those first few moments, looking into the soldiers’ faces and wondering if they were Nazis, was worse than anything either of them had ever imagined they might have to feel. They covered their breasts with their hands and waited to see what would happen next. “You think they speak English?” one of the soldiers said. He was tall, blond, with fair skin. He seemed to be making a noble effort not to look at their bodies. The other soldier, who was shorter and more muscular, couldn’t keep his eyes from Fulvia’s breasts. “I’m not sure,” he answered. Then he stepped forward, and clearing his throat, said, “We are Americans. Americani. We’ve come to liberate you. From the Nazis.” The soldier spoke slowly and very loudly, as if he imagined an increase in volume might help to bridge the gap between languages. “Liberazione,” he tried. “The war is over.”

  “We understand English,” Fulvia said. “But is it true? We cannot believe it. The war is over?”

  “Maybe you could bring us our towels,” Rosa said.

  “Oh yes,” said the shorter soldier, and taking the towels from the tree, threw them out to where the girls were standing, knee deep, in the water. Rosa and Fulvia covered themselves. They were both laughing, yelling, really, with joy and disbelief. Could it be true? The war over?

  “Come in the water!” Fulvia said. “You must come in the water! The war is over!” She flung aside her towel and traipsed onto the shore toward the two soldiers, who stepped back. “Oh no,” the taller soldier said. “We can’t.” But the shorter was already taking off his shirt. “Hell, Wayne, why not?” he asked. “Shit, the war’s over.” Soon he was naked, splashing in the hot water with Rosa and Fulvia, while Wayne stood staring on the shore.

  “Come on, Wayne!” called the shorter soldier. “Get your clothes off!”

  “Yes, come on, Wayne!” Rosa called. She jumped out of the water and started tearing at the soldier’s uniform with wet hands. “Well, why not?” Wayne said finally. From the village on the hill, a sound of screaming was starting up. The girls climbed onto the soldiers’ shoulders and battled each other for a while, and then the four of them broke into pairs and moved together to opposing shadowy regions. In one corn
er of dry grass and moonlight, the shorter soldier, whose name was Nelson Perkins, Jr., called Fulvia “La Glamorosa” and after they made love gave her chewing gum. In another, Wayne Smith asked Rosa to come back to America and marry him.

  Fulvia thought Rosa was crazy, and told her so. “You’re nineteen, the war is over, you have everything ahead of you! How can you waste it all on a silly American? You’ll go mad with boredom wherever it is he lives—what is the place called, Canvas?”

  “I love him,” Rosa said stoically.

  “Love him! You hardly know him! Trust me, Rosa, very soon you’ll find another man to love—an Italian, preferably with some power and intellect. If you’ll pardon my saying so, your Wayne has eaten too much granoturco; they say it makes them feebleminded.”

  “Shut up, Fulvia. Why must you always know what’s best for other people? You’re envious of me, that’s all.”

  “Envious!”

  “Because my soldier loves me, and yours couldn’t care less. Wayne told me, Nelson said he thought you were—what was his word—‘uppity.’ He said you were uppity.”

  “Rosa, you are a fool.”

  “Fine, if that’s what you think. I’ll go. Then we’ll see.” And she went. They got married in a Presbyterian church in Kansas City. Then, for almost a year, Rosa lived—irony of ironies—in Rome, Kansas, the wife of an auto mechanic, while Fulvia—fueled, some said, by rage over her parents’ death—worked her way through a number of powerful men and eventually got a job interviewing people for a newspaper. She later wrote a column in which she expressed her resentment at the assumption that she’d only gotten where she was because of who she’d slept with; at the time she’d done it, she pointed out, sleeping with them was the only way for an intelligent woman to get powerful men to listen to her in the first place. Then she named the men. The article, like much of what Fulvia wrote, caused a stir, and had people arguing for a month. All this while Rosa—just nineteen—tried to make a go of it in Rome, Kansas, got pregnant, had a miscarriage. Her arrival had been greeted by an article in the local newspaper, a clipped copy of which she still keeps stowed in a kitchen drawer in Saturnia: