Italian Fever

by Valerie Martin

  He called a farewell to Catherine, who sent back a cheerful “Ciao, Massimo” from the landing. Lucy watched him—he had his back to her—as he took up his stylish raincoat and umbrella from the chair next to Catherine’s cluttered desk. He hadn’t come out unprepared for anything. He ran his hand over one side of his hair, an unnecessary gesture, for his hair was always perfect, pulled on the coat, and, without looking back, went out through the archway. Lucy labored up the stairs to Catherine’s studio. By the time she got there, Catherine had draped a towel across the banister and put the kettle on to boil. “How long was he here?” Lucy asked as she applied the towel gently to her face and then roughly to her hair. It was plush and smelled faintly of lavender.

  “About an hour,” Catherine replied from behind the kitchen screen. “Have you eaten?”

  “I had a sandwich.” She rested Antonio’s stick against a table and collapsed into the nearest armchair. “Jesus, I’m exhausted,” she murmured. Catherine came out from behind her screen and stood cross-armed, smiling at her guest. “What did he want?” Lucy asked.

  “Oh, I think he wanted to further our acquaintance.”

  Lucy frowned. “How much further?”

  “He’s an Italian. He wants to go as far as he can, though, oddly enough, they are often satisfied with very little.”

  “He could have waited until I got out of town. I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.”

  “He said you were annoyed with him for going off so suddenly yesterday, and he feared he had made a bad impression. He was in the neighborhood, so he stopped in.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “No.”

  “What did he talk about for an hour?”

  “It was just gossip. His family knows my landlord’s family. He told me a few scandalous stories about them.”

  The teakettle shrieked and Catherine disappeared behind the screen. “What kind of tea do you want?” she asked.

  “Anything,” Lucy said. She folded the towel and placed it over the arm of the chair. She felt a cloud of gloom and consternation settling upon her, and no resistance rising to meet it. She gazed longingly into the shadows of Catherine’s forest screen. How pleasant it would be to lie down in some such peaceful place and drift off to sleep. Whose woods these are I think I know, she thought.

  Catherine appeared bearing two steaming cups, smiling and solicitous like some ministering angel. The artist’s life didn’t seem to be causing her any anxiety or discomfort, Lucy thought. She leaned forward to take the cup, murmuring her thanks. The aroma that rose from the tea had a familiar sharpness, and she sniffed it appreciatively.

  “Ginger,” Catherine said. “Very restorative.”

  “Wonderful,” Lucy replied. “I could use a restoration.”

  Catherine took the chair across from her, cradling her cup between her palms. “I suppose you really were in the neighborhood.”

  “I was,” Lucy protested. “I went to the Galleria Borghese and then I walked all the way through the park, and then I had lunch on Via del Babuino.”

  “That’s a long walk,” Catherine observed.

  Lucy nodded, rubbing her ankle. She hadn’t worn the bandage and the bruise showed through her stocking. “It would have been nice, but it’s so cold, and my ankle slows me down. Then it started raining.”

  “And then you came here and found Massimo.”

  “Really.” Lucy shook her head disconsolately. “Perfect.”

  Catherine sipped her tea thoughtfully. “But you’re not in love with him?”

  “I can’t figure out why he was so eager for me to come to Rome. He invited me, but now he acts like I’m pursuing him.”

  “But you’re not.” Catherine’s tone was teasing and provocative.

  “He’s married. I’m going back to New York in a few days. This is supposed to be a fling. It’s supposed to be free of recrimination, no expectations, nothing but fun, and then ciao, basta. Why is he trying to turn it into a contest?”

  “You really are a romantic, Lucy,” Catherine observed. “Of course it’s a contest. And if there are no expectations and no recriminations, how can he come out the winner? There has to be the danger of exposure; you have to be a threat. Otherwise, what’s the point of having an affair?”

  Lucy listened glumly. “I know you’re right,” she admitted. “I shouldn’t have come here. But he took care of me when I was sick, and I imprinted on him, like a duck.”

  “He does seem concerned about your health,” Catherine said.

  Lucy took a swallow of tea, recalling the absurd scene downstairs. She looked up at Catherine, who was holding her own cup to her lips, her eyes frank and interested above the rim.

  “That was pretty transparent, wasn’t it?” Lucy replied.

  Catherine nodded.

  “Fortunately, I’m not in love,”

  “You are sure about that?” Catherine said.

  “I think so,” Lucy said. Then, because Catherine looked so arch and so interested, she added, “I don’t know, really. How could I? Is there some simple test?”

  Catherine set her cup on the side table and flipped off her shoes. Then, with surprising grace, she drew her long legs up under her on the chair. “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I’ve never been in love.”

  “Never? Not with DV?”

  Catherine laughed. “No. Certainly not. Not for a minute.”

  And not with Antonio Cini, either, I’ll wager, Lucy thought.

  “Sex can be very powerful,” Catherine mused. “Very persuasive. Once, when I was a student in Florence, there was a man. He was my teacher.”

  “An Italian?”

  “No. He was an American. He was a brilliant painter himself. I was naïve. I thought he cared about my painting, but it turned out he didn’t understand it at all.”

  “So you broke up because he didn’t understand your painting?”

  “An artist can’t really care about anything but the work. The work comes first.”

  Lucy sat in silence, considering the implications of this sweeping and grandiose statement. She was ready to admit that art must be a powerful calling, a vocation, like the religious life, but did it really release its disciples from the ordinary obligations of affection and trust? It was true that artists were often cads. Bernini was famous for his irritability and bad temper, though he was not as vicious as Caravaggio, who had murdered a man in a quarrel over a tennis match. Catherine, Lucy recalled, was a fan of Caravaggio.

  This was what had troubled her when she stood gazing up at the beauty and terror so inextricably commingled on the face of Bernini’s Daphne. She had half-framed the thought that it didn’t matter what Bernini was like, whether he was a saint or a monster—the agonized cry that filled the still and chilly air around the marble face of Daphne proved he knew what it was to be betrayed. In that moment, Lucy had peered tremulously into a world where only art has value and no moral laws apply. “What would you do for it?” she asked Catherine abruptly. “Would you murder for it?”

  “For what?”

  “For the work, as you say.” She gave Catherine a penetrating look. “For art.”

  Catherine pursed her mouth, pretending to entertain the question. But she wasn’t serious, Lucy realized. Her declaration had had its origin in pique and stubbornness rather than in conviction; it was the rote response she applied to any and all opposition, anything that restricted her personal liberty, which she equated with her integrity as an artist. She had applied it to a man she both loved and admired, and dismissed him when he was bold enough to criticize her painting.

  And, of course, she had applied it to DV. Catherine gazed off dreamily into space, her mouth slightly open, pulling a curl slowly between her thumb and forefinger. Then her eyes shifted to Lucy’s. She had arrived at her answer, she was entirely satisfied, and she leaned forward in her chair to deliver herself of it. “I haven’t had to so far,” she said, and she gave Lucy her most radiant smile.

  Chapter 20
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br />   WHEN JEALOUSY AND ANGER ignite the flame of desire, the result can be an all-consuming blaze. As Lucy raised her wineglass to her lips and gazed into the calm pools of Massimo’s eyes, she knew herself to be in danger of a conflagration.

  She didn’t mind; in fact, the elevation in her emotional temperature suited her perfectly. She would need to be hot to do what she intended, which was to burn her image ineradicably into the landscape of Massimo’s memory, a scene she knew to be an alien thicket of impenetrable lore, but she had stumbled in, she was about to exit forever, and she wanted to leave behind a small, charred, blackened clearing that wouldn’t be overgrown too quickly with the dull flora of everyday life.

  He had arrived at the hotel in a good humor, forestalling any inquiry into the awkward meeting at Catherine’s gallery with the happy news that he would stay the night, their last night, in the hotel. After a brief absence in the early morning, he would return in time for lunch, after which they would set out for Ugolino. Lucy accepted this information as the fabulous gift it was meant to be. They cleared a space for his suitcase; he laid out his toothbrush and razor on the narrow bathroom shelf with her own.

  Now he reached across the table and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. He was complacent, as always, but he was playing the part of the lover saddened by the cruel twists of fate. After he left her in Ugolino, he was going on to Milan, where his business would detain him for several days, well past the date of her departure. “I wish you were not going,” he said.

  “Me, too,” she agreed.

  “We will not speak of it.”

  And indeed they could not speak of it, for the waiter arrived with a bowl of snowy mozzarella, which he served out carefully while engaging Massimo in a lively discussion of its freshness and perfection. Lucy nodded, smiled, and made appreciative noises, though she was generally bored by cheese and thought it a heavy way to start a meal. When the waiter had gone, Massimo stabbed a little sphere with his fork and informed her, as he cut it into neat quarters, that she would enjoy these because they were very fresh.

  “So I gathered,” she said, following his example. “They milk the cow right there in the kitchen.”

  Massimo chewed his bite worriedly. Irony was largely lost on him, and he disliked having his enthusiasms contradicted. Lucy concentrated on her cheese, which was, to her surprise, unlike anything she had ever tasted, succulent and light, with a delicate, slightly salty flavor that poured out over the tongue. “You’re right,” she said. “This is wonderful.”

  He nodded, but her remark had silenced him. He ate the rest of the cheese without comment and pushed the plate aside. “I am afraid you are having a bad influence on me, Lucy,” he said.

  “In what way?”

  “I am behaving in a way that is not entirely proper.”

  “It’s a little late to worry about that.”

  He gave her a sharp look. Clearly he was not speaking of their relationship, and it annoyed him that she should suggest that he was. She held his eyes, irritated herself now at the game he was playing. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “I am becoming like you,” he said, “full of suspicions. You will be pleased to hear that I have today accomplished some useful detective work for you.”

  Here it comes, Lucy thought. The lie about why he went to see Catherine. “What did you do?” she said.

  “When we found your friend yesterday, I asked myself how she could afford to have such a gallery.”

  “She rents it,” Lucy said. “That’s no mystery.”

  He laughed and refilled his wineglass. “Lucy, you are naïve,” he said. “Have you any idea what rents are on Via Margutta? It is one of the most expensive streets in the Centro. No one could afford to rent a closet on this street only with the sale of pictures.”

  Lucy nodded. He was right again. She had made the assumption that Catherine’s gallery supported itself.

  “I went there today to see what I could find out by making conversation.”

  Lucy smiled, but not from pleasure. She had asked for no excuse and did not want or believe this one. “So you asked her and she told you?”

  “No, Lucy. That is what is interesting. She did not tell me. I did not even ask her; I am not a fool. But she was so reluctant to speak on this subject at all that I became even more suspicious. Then she was called to see a customer and I was left alone in the room near her desk. There is a book of checks there, such as are used in business, with the name of the account printed on it. And this is where I behaved poorly, in a way I can hardly explain. I lifted the cover of the book and read the name.”

  The waiter appeared, bearing two bowls of minestrone, which he set before them with elaborate concern. Lucy had a moment to conjure up a picture of Massimo in a Sherlock Holmes hat leaning surreptitiously over Catherine’s papers, gingerly lifting the cover of a large leather-bound book, and dropping it back again, his eyes agleam with gratified conjecture. The waiter cleared away the cheese plates and refilled their water glasses before hurrying off to a table of chain-smoking businessmen nearby.

  Massimo had pressed his upper teeth into his lower lip, holding back the crucial information until the moment of maximum dramatic effect. “You were right, Lucy,” he said.

  She lifted her spoon. “About what?”

  “The name was Cini. The account is in the names Cini and Bultman.”

  She put the spoon down. “Antonio Cini is supporting Catherine?”

  “But this is what you thought all along.”

  She had thought it, she admitted, but she had changed her mind. She found this irrefutable proof unsettling. What a smooth liar Antonio was, with his air of disinterest and dismissal, his haughty assurance that he knew very little about Catherine, that he had only seen her about, driving DV’s car or sketching in the fields. He had almost persuaded her, though the evidence of the letter contradicted everything he said. When Catherine showed so little interest in speaking of him—he was apparently little more than a helpful acquaintance who had referred her to the right people in Rome—Lucy had concluded the letter might, as Massimo had suggested, have been sent by some other Antonio, some former lover, perhaps this Florentine whose paintings Catherine hung in her gallery. In truth, her conversation with Antonio on the drive to the train had persuaded her that he was too lifeless and certainly too aloof to entangle himself in such a liaison, and her two interviews with Catherine had led her to conclude that she was too willful and too fond of her liberty to submit to a sex-for-cash arrangement with such a man. But if Antonio Cini was paying her bills, what else could it be?

  “Why did he tell me where to find her?” Lucy wondered aloud.

  “She is a beautiful woman,” Massimo said. “Why should he be ashamed?”

  “But if he wanted me to know, he could have just told me.”

  Massimo leapt to the defense of their aristocratic connection. “He leaves it to Catherine to tell you, Lucy. He is a gentleman.”

  Lucy sputtered, “Oh, for God’s sake.” Next, she thought, he will tell me I don’t understand because I’m an American.

  “This is perhaps not something you can understand,” Massimo said.

  “Because I’m an American?”

  “Because you are not Italian.”

  I understand perfectly, Lucy thought, her pulse pounding in her ears. Lie about everything all the time, that’s the policy. But she said nothing. Instead, she took up her spoon again and tasted her soup. Minestrone was another choice she’d thought uninspired, but the first mouthful changed her mind about that, too—simple ingredients in perfect proportion, almost no salt. Minestrone was another secret beyond the comprehension of the foreigner. “This is delicious,” she said grudgingly.

  Massimo nodded sagely. The waiter appeared, carrying a tray laden with glittering fishes, all sizes, shapes, and a few colors. Massimo studied them seriously, discussing his choice with the waiter, who appeared fascinated and excited by the process. They settled on a larg
e sea bass whose round flat eye gazed up attentively at the two men. Even the fish is interested, Lucy thought. They were to have it grilled whole, with just a touch of olive oil and salt. No parsley, they agreed. This was sometimes done, but it was unnecessary, for it added nothing to the perfection of a good fresh fish.

  To the delight of the two men, Lucy concurred. “Prezzemolo, no,” she said. As the waiter hefted the tray up to his shoulder and strode away proudly through the noise and smoke of the narrow dining room, Massimo beamed at Lucy. Her Italian, he informed her, was really coming along.

  LUCY ROLLED OVER and looked at the clock: 7:00 a.m. Next to her, the sheets were thrown back; that side of the bed was empty. She could hear the shower running in the bathroom. They had hardly slept an hour.

  She pulled the covers up around her chin and stretched out languorously, noting with pleasure and very little surprise the soreness in her hip sockets and across her shoulders. “I’ve been rearranged,” she said dreamily.

  On their return from the restaurant, Massimo had pressed his palm to her cheek and forehead. She had a fever, he maintained; it was the result of walking about in the rain. She had made herself ill again. Lucy laughed, shaking off his hands; she felt fine, full of energy. She was hot, it was true, but this was no ordinary fever. She told him a few stories of saints who evidenced unnaturally high temperatures: of one who, when she drank water, was reported to emit a sound like sizzling coals while steam issued from her mouth and nostrils, and another, an Italian, whose temperature could not be recorded because he routinely burst thermometers. “It’s called,” she said, throwing her sweater over a chair and following it with her blouse, “ ‘incendium amoris.’ ”

  “You are making me anxious, Lucy,” he said. “I am afraid I will be burned.”

  “You’re perfectly safe,” she assured him.

  “But I am not a god.” He unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it off, and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. She kissed his cheek, bit his ear, wrapped her arms around his bare shoulders.