Freeman, though heartened to be off, contented, loving the wide airy world, wasn’t comfortable sitting so snug with Ernesto, who smelled freshly of garlic. The talkative guide was a silent traveler. A dead cheroot hung from the corner of his mouth, and from time to time he absently poked his cane in the slats at the bottom of the boat; if there was no leak, Freeman thought, he would create one. He seemed tired, as if he had been carousing all night and had found no time to rest. Once he removed his black felt hat to mop his head with a handkerchief, and Freeman realized he was bald and looked surprisingly old.
Though tempted to say something pleasant to the old man – no hard feelings on this marvelous journey, Freeman had no idea where to begin. What would he reply to a grunt? After a time of prolonged silence, now a bit on edge, Freeman remarked, ‘Maybe I’d better row and give the boy a rest?’
‘As you weesh.’ Ernesto shrugged.
Freeman traded places with the boy, then wished he hadn’t. The oars were impossibly heavy; he rowed badly, allowing the left oar to sink deeper into the water than the right, thus twisting the boat off course. It was like pulling a hearse, and as he awkwardly splashed the oars around, he was embarrassedly aware of the boy and Ernesto, alike in their dark eyes and greedy beaks, a pair of odd birds, openly staring at him. He wished them far far away from the beautiful island and in exasperation pulled harder. By dint of determined effort, though his palms were painfully blistered, he began to row rhythmically, and the boat went along more smoothly. Freeman gazed up in triumph but they were no longer watching him, the boy trailing a straw in the water, the guide staring dreamily into the distance.
After a while, as if having studied Freeman and decided, when all was said and done, that he wasn’t exactly a villain, Ernesto spoke in a not unfriendly tone.
‘Everybody says how reech ees America?’ he remarked.
‘Rich enough,’ Freeman grunted.
‘Also thees ees the same with you?’ The guide spoke with a half-embarrassed smile around his drooping cheroot butt.
‘I’m comfortable,’ Freeman replied, and in honesty added, ‘but I have to work for a living.’
‘For the young people ees a nice life, no? I mean there ees always what to eat, and for the woman een the house many remarkable machines?’
‘Many,’ Freeman said. Nothing comes from nothing, he thought. He’s been asked to ask questions. Freeman then gave the guide an earful on the American standard of living, and he meant living. This for whatever it was worth to such as the Italian aristocracy. He hoped for the best. You could never tell the needs and desires of others.
Ernesto, as if memorizing what he had just heard, watched Freeman row for a while.
‘Are you in biziness?’ he ultimately asked.
Freeman searched around and came up with, ‘Sort of in public relations.’
Ernesto now threw away his butt. ‘Excuse me that I ask. How much does one earn in thees biziness in America?’
Calculating quickly, Freeman replied, ‘I personally average about a hundred dollars a week. That comes to about a quarter million lire every month.’
Ernesto repeated the sum, holding onto his hat in the breeze. The boy’s eyes had widened. Freeman hid a satisfied smile.
‘And your father?’ Here the guide paused, searching Freeman’s face.
‘What about him?’ asked Freeman, tensing.
‘What ees hees trade?’
‘Was. He’s dead – insurance.’
Ernesto removed his respectful hat, letting the sunlight bathe his bald head. They said nothing more until they had reached the island, then Freeman, consolidating possible gain, asked him in a complimentary tone where he had learned his English.
‘Everywhere,’ Ernesto replied, with a weary smile, and, Freeman, alert for each shift in prevailing wind, felt that if he hadn’t made a bosom friend, he had at least softened an enemy; and that, on home grounds, was going good.
They landed and watched the boy tie up the boat; Freeman asked Ernesto where the signorina was. The guide, now looking bored by it all, pointed his cane at the top terraces, a sweeping gesture that seemed to take in the whole upper half of the luscious island. Freeman hoped the man would not insist on accompanying him and interfering with his meeting with the girl; but when he looked down from looking up without sighting Isabella, both Ernesto and Giacobbe had made themselves scarce. Leave it to the Italians at this sort of thing, Freeman thought.
Warning himself to be careful, tactful, he went quickly up the stairs. At each terrace he glanced around, then ran up to the next, his hat already in his hand. He found her, after wandering through profusions of flowers, where he had guessed she would be, alone in the garden behind the palazzo. She was sitting on an old stone bench near a little marble fountain, whose jets from the mouths of mocking elves sparkled in mellow sunlight.
Beholding her, the lovely face, sharply incised, yet soft in its femininity, the dark eyes pensive, her hair loosely knotted at the nape of her graceful neck, Freeman ached to his oar-blistered fingers. She was wearing a linen blouse of some soft shade of red that fell gently upon her breasts, and a long, slender black skirt; her tanned legs were without stockings; and on her narrow feet she wore sandals. As Freeman approached her, walking slowly to keep from loping, she brushed back a strand of hair, a gesture so beautiful it saddened him, because it was gone in the doing; and though Freeman, on this miraculous Sunday evening was aware of his indefatigable reality, he could not help thinking as he dwelt upon her lost gesture, that she might be as elusive as it, as evanescent; and so might this island be, and so, despite all the days he had lived through, good, bad and boring, that too often sneaked into his thoughts – so, indeed, might he today, tomorrow. He went toward her with a deep sense of the transitoriness of things, but this feeling was overwhelmed by one of pure joy when she rose to give him her hand.
‘Welcome,’ Isabella said, blushing; she seemed happy, yet, in her manner, a little agitated to see him – perhaps one and the same thing – and he wanted then and there to embrace her but could not work up the nerve. Although he felt in her presence a fulfillment, as if they had already confessed love for one another, at the same time Freeman sensed an uneasiness in her which made him think, though he fought the idea, that they were far away from love; or at least were approaching it through opaque mystery. But that’s what happened, Freeman, who had often been in love, told himself. Until you were lovers you were strangers.
In conversation he was at first formal. ‘I thank you for your kind note. I have been looking forward to seeing you.’
She turned toward the palazzo. ‘My people are out. They have gone to a wedding on another island. May I show you something of the palace?’
He was at this news both pleased and disappointed. He did not at the moment feel like meeting her family. Yet if she had presented him, it would have been a good sign.
They walked for a while in the garden, then Isabella took Freeman’s hand and led him through a heavy door into the large rococo palazzo.
‘What would you care to see?’
Though he had superficially been through two floors of the building, wanting to be led by her, this close to him, Freeman replied, ‘Whatever you want me to.’
She took him first to the chamber were Napoleon had slept. ‘It wasn’t Napoleon himself, who slept here,’ Isabella explained. ‘He slept on Isola Bella. His brother Joseph may have been here, or perhaps Pauline, with one of her lovers. No one is sure.’
‘Oh ho, a trick,’ said Freeman.
‘We often pretend,’ she remarked. ‘This is a poor country.’
They entered the main picture gallery. Isabella pointed out the Titians, Tintorettos, Bellinis, making Freeman breathless; then at the door of the room she turned with an embarrassed smile and said that most of the paintings in the gallery were copies.
‘Copies?’ Freeman was shocked.
‘Yes, although there are some fair originals from the Lombard school.’
‘All the Titians are copies?’
‘All.’
This slightly depressed him. ‘What about the statuary – also copies?’
‘For the most part.’
His face fell.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘Only that I couldn’t tell the fake from the real.’
‘Oh, but many of the copies are exceedingly beautiful,’ Isabella said. ‘It would take an expert to tell they weren’t originals.’
‘I guess I’ve got a lot to learn,’ Freeman said.
At this she squeezed his hand and he felt better.
But the tapestries, she remarked as they traversed the long hall hung with them, which darkened as the sun set, were genuine and valuable. They meant little to Freeman: long floor-to-ceiling, bluish-green fabrics of woodland scenes: stags, unicorns and tigers disporting themselves, though in one picture, the tiger killed the unicorn. Isabella hurried past this and led Freeman into a room he had not been in before, hung with tapestries of somber scenes from the Inferno. One before which they stopped, was of a writhing leper, spotted from head to foot with pustulating sores which he tore at with his nails but the itch went on forever.
‘What did he do to deserve his fate?’ Freeman inquired.
‘He falsely said he could fly.’
‘For that you go to hell?’
She did not reply. The hall had become gloomily dark, so they left.
From the garden close by the beach where the raft was anchored, they watched the water turn all colors. Isabella had little to say about herself – she seemed to be quite often pensive – and Freeman, concerned with the complexities of the future, though his heart contained multitudes, found himself comparatively silent. When the night was complete, as the moon was rising, Isabella said she would be gone for a moment, and stepped behind a shrub. When she came forth, Freeman had this utterly amazing vision of her, naked, but before he could even focus his eyes on her flowerlike behind, she was already in the water, swimming for the raft. After an anguished consideration of could he swim that far or would he drown, Freeman, eager to see her from up close (she was sitting on the raft, showing her breasts to the moon) shed his clothes behind the shrub where her delicate things lay, and walked down the stone steps into the warm water. He swam awkwardly, hating the picture he must make in her eyes, Apollo Belvedere slightly maimed; and still suffered visions of drowning in twelve feet of water. Or suppose she had to jump in to rescue him? However, nothing risked, nothing gained, so he splashed on and made the raft with breath to spare, his worries always greater than their cause.
But when he had pulled himself up on the raft, to his dismay, Isabella was no longer there. He caught a glimpse of her on the shore, darting behind the shrub. Nursing gloomy thoughts, Freeman rested a while, then, when he had sneezed twice and presupposed a nasty cold, jumped into the water and splashed his way back to the island. Isabella, already clothed, was waiting with a towel. She threw it to Freeman as he came up the steps, and withdrew while he dried himself and dressed. When he came forth in his seersucker, she offered salami, prosciutto, cheese, bread, and red wine, from a large platter delivered from the kitchen. Freeman, for a while angered at the run-around on the raft, relaxed with the wine and feeling of freshness after a bath. The mosquitoes behaved long enough for him to say he loved her. Isabella kissed him tenderly, then Ernesto and Giacobbe appeared and rowed him back to Stresa.
Monday morning Freeman didn’t know what to do with himself. He awoke with restless memories, enormously potent, many satisfying, some burdensome; they ate him, he ate them. He felt he should somehow have made every minute with her better, hadn’t begun to say half of what he had wanted – the kind of man he was, what they could get out of life together. And he regretted that he hadn’t gotten quickly to the raft, still excited by what might have happened if he had reached it before she had left. But a memory was only a memory – you could forget, not change it. On the other hand, he was pleased, surprised by what he had accomplished: the evening alone with her, the trusting, intimate sight of her beautiful body, her kiss, the unspoken promise of love. His desire for her was so splendid it hurt. He wandered through the afternoon, dreaming of her, staring often at the glittering islands in the opaque lake. By nightfall he was exhausted and went to sleep oppressed by all he had lived through.
It was strange, he thought, as he lay in bed waiting to sleep, that of all his buzzing worries he was worried most about one. If Isabella loved him, as he now felt she did or would before very long; with the strength of this love they could conquer their problems as they arose. He anticipated a good handful, stirred up, in all probability, by her family; but life in the U.S.A. was considered by many Italians, including aristocrats (else why had Ernesto been sent to sniff out conditions there?) a fine thing for their marriageable daughters. Given this additional advantage, things would somehow get worked out, especially if Isabella, an independent girl, gazed a little eagerly at the star-spangled shore. Her family would give before flight in her eyes. No, the worry that troubled him most was the lie he had told her, that he wasn’t a Jew. He could, of course, confess, say she knew Levin, not Freeman, man of adventure, but that might ruin all, since it was quite clear she wanted nothing to do with a Jew, or why, at first sight, had she asked so searching a question? Or he might admit nothing and let her, more or less, find out after she had lived a while in the States and seen it was no crime to be Jewish; that a man’s past was, it could safely be said, expendable. Yet this treatment, if the surprise was upsetting, might cause recriminations later on. Another solution might be one he had thought of often: to change his name (he had considered Le Vin but preferred Freeman) and forget he had ever been born Jewish. There was no question of hurting family, or being embarrassed by them, he the only son of both parents dead. Cousins lived in Toledo, Ohio, where they would always live and never bother. And when he brought Isabella to America they could skip N.Y.C. and go to live in a place like San Francisco, where nobody knew him and nobody ‘would know.’ To arrange such details and prepare other minor changes was why he figured on a trip or two home before they were married; he was prepared for that. As for the wedding itself, since he would have to marry her here to get her out of Italy, it would probably have to be in a church, but he would go along with that to hasten things. It was done everyday. Thus he decided, although it did not entirely satisfy him; not so much the denial of being Jewish – what had it brought him but headaches, inferiorities, unhappy memories? – as the lie to the beloved. At first sight love and a lie; it lay on his heart like a sore. Yet, if that was the way it had to be, it was the way.
He awoke the next morning, beset by a swarm of doubts concerning his plans and possibilities. When would he see Isabella again, let alone marry her? (‘When?’ he had whispered before getting into the boat, and she had vaguely promised, ‘Soon.’) Soon was brutally endless. The mail brought nothing and Freeman grew dismayed. Had he, he asked himself, been constructing a hopeless fantasy, wish seducing probability? Was he inventing a situation that didn’t exist, namely, her feeling for him, the possibility of a future with her? He was desperately casting about for something to keep his mood from turning dark blue, when a knock sounded on his door. The padrona, he thought, because she often came up for one unimportant thing or another, but to his unspeakable joy it was Cupid in short pants – Giacobbe holding forth the familiar envelope. She would meet him, Isabella wrote, at two o’clock in the piazza where the electric tram took off for Mt. Mottarone, from whose summit one saw the beautiful panorama of lakes and mountains in the region. Would he share this with her?
Although he had quashed the morning’s anxiety, Freeman was there at one P.M., smoking impatiently. His sun rose as she appeared, but as she came towards him he noticed she was not quite looking at him (in the distance he could see Giacobbe rowing away) her face neutral, inexpressive. He was at first concerned, but she had, after all, written the letter to him, so he wondered what hot nails she had had t
o walk on to get off the island. He must sometime during the day drop the word ‘elope’ to see if she savored it. But whatever was bothering her, Isabella immediately shook off. She smiled as she greeted him; he hoped for her lips but got instead her polite fingers. These he kissed in broad daylight (let the spies tell papa) and she shyly withdrew her hand. She was wearing – it surprised him, though he gave her credit for resisting foolish pressures – exactly the same blouse and skirt she had worn on Sunday. They boarded the tram with a dozen tourists and sat alone on the open seat in front; as a reward for managing this she permitted Freeman to hold her hand. He sighed. The tram, drawn by an old electric locomotive moved slowly through the town and more slowly up the slope of the mountain. They rode for close to two hours, watching the lake fall as the mountains rose. Isabella, apart from pointing to something now and then, was again silent, withdrawn, but Freeman, allowing her her own rate at flowering, for the moment without plans, was practically contented. A long vote for an endless journey; but the tram at last came to a stop and they walked through a field thick with wildflowers, up the slope to the summit of the mountain. Though the tourists followed in a crowd, the mountain top was broad and they stood near its edge, to all intents and purposes alone. Below them, on the green undulating plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, seven lakes were scattered, each a mirror reflecting whose fate? And high in the distance rose a ring of astonishing snow-clad Alps. Ah, he murmured, and fell silent.
‘We say here,’ Isabella said, ‘“un pezzo di paradiso caduto dal cielo.”’
The Magic Barrel Page 11