Realms of Gold

by Terry Stanfill

  *

  The Monday after she returned from Italy, she’s at her office desk by nine. Neither Sergio nor Leonardo has turned up. Sergio has most likely spent the weekend in East Hampton. As for Leonardo, she hardly knows anything about his private life, except that he worked for an art and architectural design magazine before Sergio hired him.

  Leonardo, her immediate boss, is the new jack-of-all-trades at the magazine. Administrator as well as Editor-in-Chief. Like Sergio, he is Italian-born, but has lived in Manhattan since childhood. He and Sergio were classmates at Columbia.

  He calls her into his office before noon. Leonardo can’t be more than forty, but with those spectacles, his shiny bald pate and snub nose, he looks like a Dominican priest who might be more at home in a brown, rope-tied habit. But Leonardo always wears too tight designer jeans and never a tie, in studied contrast to Sergio’s Cerutti haberdashery look.

  Leonardo doesn’t look up from his desk. “How was the rest of your week in Venice?”

  “Interesting. I arrived home Monday night.”

  He glances up, seemingly surprised. “Why so soon? Work? Problems?”

  She bites her lip. Mind your own business, she wants to say. “When I walked in the door last night, I found that my apartment had been ransacked.”

  “My God! What a shame!” He makes a clucking sound. “Terrible coming home to that.” He leans back and stares at her as though he expects a reaction.

  She stares back boldly.

  He takes a cigarette from his pack, then slips it back in, slaps his hand over the pack, and almost squeezes it flat. “I’m trying to kick the habit. Doctor’s orders. Quitting cold turkey is driving me crazy. By the way, I thought Sergio said that you were staying on in Venice.”

  “And didn’t you tell me you were going on to Rome?”

  He nods. “I spent Saturday night on the Via Appia Antica—at my widowed aunt’s villa. She’s had a slight stroke so she doesn’t get out much. I came home Sunday. Lots of work to finish up. Now what about your expense accounts? Do you have them ready yet?” He begins shuffling papers around.

  She speaks confidently. “Over the past two days I caught up on six months’ worth.”

  His jaw drops. “Are you kidding?”

  “You were right to keep reminding me. I can’t have my own money tied up in travel expenses that mount up to losses because I don’t claim half of them. I wind up cheating myself.” She hands him the envelope.

  He looks up, peering at her over his spindly Armani glasses. “Good girl. I’ll look them over—then Wanda will cut a check for you.”

  An hour later Leonardo calls her into his office. “I have a question to ask you about your accounting. I see that you took your Venice hotel bill as an expense.”

  “Sergio told me I could. He also encouraged me to stay a few extra days if I wanted to, but I decided to come home after the wedding.”

  “Fine.. But then you’ve cut yourself short on your meals in Venice. You’re only cheating yourself when you do this. You should get exactly what’s due you.”

  “I didn’t have to pay for any meals.”

  “Who did then?”

  So that’s what he’s getting at. “I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

  He grins and raises an eyebrow. “Hey—don’t tell me you finally found yourself a man.”

  Bianca

  New York City, late October, 2007

  From time to time Sergio comes by to cook dinner for her. In the kitchen drawer she keeps the recipe for one of her favorites, Le Cirque’s spaghetti primavera. Now and then she pulls it out to read, but that’s as close as she ever gets to cooking. This is something she intends to change—just in case Giovanni ever appears on her doorstep. Since Grace’s Marketplace is only a few blocks away, she goes by to stock up on all things Italian, from pasta, cheese, and biscotti to even a CD of Neapolitan songs sung by Roberto Murolo.

  At exactly three she checks her e-mail and finds a message from Sergio.

  Ciao, Bianca. I’ll be stopping by around six o’clock with some gorgeous white truffles and fresh porcini. I’m going to make you a risotto like you’ve never tasted. A tutt’ all’ ora, tesoro.

  Her heart sinks. He’s back in town again. The last person she feels like seeing tonight is Sergio. She planned to order in some Chinese, and after dinner she wanted to read more about Sinope and the Black Sea, where traces of an ancient, submerged city were recently discovered by Robert Ballard, the underwater archaeologist. She’d also come across a story in The New York Times about Dr. William Ryan and Dr. Walter Pitman, geologists from Columbia, whose theory is that the Mediterranean, thousands of years ago, had burst through the narrow Bosporus valley pouring itself with cataclysmic force into a large sweet water lake destroying all life and causing the inhabitants to flee for their lives. What was once a benign body of sweet water became the Pontus Euxinus., the inhospitable, dangerous saltwater sea, the Black Sea.

  *

  The doorbell rings at six thirty. With her eye pressed against the peephole, she squints at Sergio’s Ferragamo necktie. Her first instinct is to keep the door locked, but the instinct flies by unheeded so she opens it.

  “Hi—how did things finish up in London?” Sergio stayed on after the board meeting.

  “Better than I thought, so I came home early,” he replies in his perfect, beguilingly accented Columbia University English. He then proceeds to straighten his new “cheetahs lolling among the daisies” necktie as if it is a signal for her to admire it. “The Bergamo lab should give us better color repros at a cheaper rate. And if they don’t work out, I’ve got a printer lined up in Bari who supposedly does fantastic work. But you know how I hate dealing with those terrone. I guarantee you that in no time we’ll beat Franco Maria Ricci. Eyes and Soul will become the most beautiful art magazine in the world…and because of you, Bianca, the most fascinating one.” He smiles broadly. Sergio smiles a lot ever since his teeth have been resurfaced.

  “You’ve got a long way to go before you beat Franco Maria Ricci.” She has no trouble at all speaking up to him.

  “Let's walk over to Grace’s together. I need to buy a few things to make our dinner."

  She is surprised because Sergio rarely goes out in public with her. He claims he doesn’t want it to get back to his wife.

  “I've already done the shopping.”

  “How did you know what to buy?”

  “I’m a quick study. You should know that. You’ll be happy to hear about my decision to learn to cook. I stocked up today at Grace’s —all the ingredients to make risotto, pastas. San Marzano tomatoes, Parmigiano Reggiano—extra-virgin olive oil....”

  “You’re telling me no more take-outs from Word of Mouth, no Chinese, no more pizza deliveries?”

  “You heard what I said.”

  He produces a truffle grater from his pocket and opens a bag containing a glass jar. A huge earth-cloaked truffle is nested in a bed of rice. “I bought it in a little shop in Bergamo Alta. So far the best of the season. They had a lot of rain this year.”

  “It must have cost you a fortune.”

  He winks. “Let’s say we’re enjoying it compliments of the magazine. Have a sniff. I’ll be right back.”

  She puts the jar to her nose and inhales, convincing herself that she can smell the truffle’s musky ripeness right through the glass.

  He takes off his coat in the bedroom and tosses it on her bed, then rushes to wash up in the bathroom. “Merda!” he shouts when he returns. “Why the hell don’t you take that poster off your mirror? How can you live without a mirror in your bathroom?”

  “Because I don’t like looking at myself. The only time I do is when I have to and that’s not often.” Last year when her mother had given her an elegant silver compact for her birthday, she returned it to Tiffany’s for credit, relieved that it hadn’t been engraved BEC.

  Sergio wraps himself in her new apron and begins step by step to show her how to make risotto wit
h porcini. “All’onda, Venetian style so when you pour it, the risotto ripples like waves, each short, swollen rice grain still hard to the bite, all bound up in a loose, creamy sauce. When you hear the rice clinking against the sides of the pot, then, only then, do you add the hot broth,” he says as seriously as she’s ever heard him speak.

  She stands by watching him stir, every now and then taking her turn. In nineteen minutes when the risotto is perfect to the tooth, he adds freshly grated parmesan and some heavy cream and beats it quickly. He spoons it reverently onto Nina’s gently warmed Bianco Ginori plates, then, rubbing the hard fungus knob against the sharp teeth of his truffle grater, he crowns the rice with a heap of wispy, putty-colored flakes.

  Instead of just digging into his risotto, the way she always does, Sergio flattens his with a fork, patting it into a “cake.” Then he begins by eating from the outer, cooler edge to its warmer center. Venetian style.

  She puts the plate to her nose to sniff the truffle. “Such a strange, animal smell. I read somewhere that it’s probably the same chemical as civet or….”

  “Truffles are supposed to have aphrodisiac qualities,” he says, raising his eyebrows, as if to suggest “even if they might not work for you.”

  “This has got to be the most delicious risotto I’ve ever eaten,” she exclaims after savoring the first forkful. “I’d call it sybaritic what with truffles almost worth their weight in gold.”

  He nods. “They cost more than $2,000 dollars a kilo in New York.”

  She gasps, remembering his cost-cutting admonitions to most of her colleagues.

  “But of course I buy them near Alba –where there’s a black market for white truffles. I get them a helluva lot cheaper—you bet I do!” he announces proudly.

  “I wonder if the Sybarites ever ate truffles,” she muses aloud, once again remembering that Giovanni said his father had dug with the looking for the site of the fabled city.

  “I’m not sure if truffles were found in the south, although oak trees certainly grow in Southern Italy. And there sure are plenty of lazy pigs down there to sniff them out.” He slaps his knee and laughs, obviously delighted with his own joke.

  Sergio always makes fun of Southern Italians—terrone he calls them, regarding them as inferior beings. “A race apart,” he often says disdainfully. It always makes her angry when Sergio derides the South. Especially Puglia and Calabria. He often speaks about how he believes the north should secede from the rest of Italy. He is all for the creation of a separate new state, Padania.

  “How come the Sybarites were so rich?” she asks.

  “Location, location, location. The Italian boot narrows as it reaches the ankle. The Sybarites had a very short land route from the Adriatic side of the Italian peninsula, across the mountains— from the eastern side of the boot to the Tyrrhenian Sea. If weather conditions were good, it could be traveled with pack animals in just three days, connecting with Etruscan traders who sailed along the west coast south from Etruria to trade with Sybaris and Poseidonia, also founded by Sybarites. Both became important trading posts for the entire western Mediterranean.”

  “I’m amazed, Sergio. You seem to know an awful lot about Sybaris.”

  “Hey—a few years ago I saw that show on the Greeks in South Italy at Palazzo Grassi.”

  “O.K. So tell me more about what you learned.”

  “At the port of Sybaris boats from all over the Mediterranean were unloaded and the goods hauled away on pack mules or wagons headed for the Tyrrhenian Sea and the cities of Neapolis or Poseidonia. There, the Sybarites would trade with the Etruscans or they would send cargos of amphorae of wine and olive oil via the sea route to Massilia, ancient Marseilles. From there, the goods would travel up the Rhone, the Seine and its tributaries to the British Isles. The Greeks and the Etruscans bartered for tin and copper from Cornwall, both alloys necessary for making bronze. The other city states of Magna Graecia had to send ships all around the heel and toe of the Italian boot up the Tyrrhenian Sea. This route was more dangerous and took longer, lessening their profits and giving the Sybarites a huge advantage.”

  “Since the Sybarites didn’t have to sail all around the toe of Italy, they made more money. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “You’ve got it, Bianca. It was this short trade route that made the Sybarites super rich. But they were already wealthy from cattle and wheat, wine and fruit."

  She closes her eyes and envisions the trim ankle of the Italian boot. Finally she rises from her chair. “Excuse me. I’m going to get my atlas—to find Sybaris.”

  “Sit down! You don’t need any atlas! Sybaris is in Calabria. On the instep of the boot—down the coast from Taranto—on the Ionian Sea. Ancient Sybaris was supposed to be at the mouth of the River Crathis. Near the sea, but not on it—now the sea has receded to about three miles away. “

  “For an arrogant northerner who’s always making fun of the South, you’ve certainly learned a lot about Southern Italian history. You took it all in. I’m impressed.”

  He sits back in his chair and fixes his eyes on hers, as if commanding her to believe him when he senses she doesn’t. “When I was growing up we had no choice. We had to study Greek, as well as Latin. We read the ancient historians, Herodotus, Athenaeus, Diodorus Siculus."

  "One of these days I might even do some research on whether or not your Sybarites ate truffles,” she replies, spearing the last swollen grains of the risotto with the tines of her fork. The rest of their dinner conversation is all about the next issue of the magazine—until Sergio sidles over and starts stroking her shoulder.

  She shrugs it off.

  “I’ve missed you, Bianca.”

  “I was hoping you enjoyed being back in Italy with your wife and kids.”

  “Bianca Fiore, piccolo fiore, my little white flower, why don’t you ever take me seriously?” He squeezes her hand so tightly, she yelps.

  “Why? Because you’re married! To a beautiful woman who so far has given you two perfect children and another on the way.”

  Besides, she isn’t the least bit attracted to her boss. Sergio is a nuisance but she’s learned that he’s relatively harmless. She’s known him for three years, and then she’d worked in the mailroom for more than two years before Sergio bought the magazine. Later on Sergio discovered what he considers to be her special talents. Despite his benign hounding, he’s occasionally generous to her, a quality not shown to other staff members.

  She leans back in her chair to give Sergio the full attention he demands. “Haven’t you read what happens to men who keep on making advances to colleagues? Especially when they do it in the office?” she inquires.

  “American women are such hypocrites—suing their bosses for being nice to them. That would never happen in Italy. “

  Better to change the subject, she decides. “You know——I’m not sure I like Leonardo. There’s something about him that bothers me, but I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  “Well—keep your fingers off him, then,” Sergio chuckles at his own joke and at the same time removes a hair from the sleeve of his Brioni custom suit sleeve. He studies the long blonde strand, then, blowing it into the air, chortles. “How do you like your new desktop?” He walks around the desk to gaze over her shoulder. “I wanted you to have the best, Bianca. You deserve it. Milan circulation had another survey made. They hate to admit it, but you’re still the reason for our upward circulation and increased advertising revenues. Our little Bianca Fiore has become quite a star in Italy. They love all those over-the-top rhapsodies dream up.” He laughs.. “The staff over there doesn’t know that I changed your name from Caldwell to Fiore. You’re so damn good, they think you’ve got to be Italian.”

  He pats her shoulder. “Hey—you know I love your kind of looks—but it’s better that you remain mysterious. That’s your big draw, Bianca. Your mystery. You’re my most precious commodity. Why are you turning red?”

  She was born with a systemic problem with blushi
ng: she blushes when she’s happy, blushes when she’s sad, embarrassed, or whenever she feels the slightest emotion. Or whenever she thinks about sex. Because her skin goes from far too pale to red, people always notice. It’s been a life-long curse to have her face so blatantly betray her feelings.

  The phone rings. Sergio leaps up. “It’s probably for me. I left your number on my answering machine.”

  Saved by the telephone. She often wonders what would happen if she allowed herself to be seduced by Sergio. Or if she’d ever feel enough desire to seduce him.

  “Ciao, Leonardo,” he says grumpily. He doesn’t move a muscle as he listens. “OK, OK.” He murmurs something in Italian, then says, “I haven’t seen it. Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s…” He pauses, looks up at Bianca. “I’m sure it’s somewhere in my desk. I’ll come right over.”

  “What’s so important it can’t wait until Monday morning?” she asks after he hangs up.

  “You heard what I told him. He needs information for a client in Rome. And he couldn’t find the manila folder. I’m sure it’s around. I’d better check my office”

  She glances at her watch and adds six hours forward from New York time. “It’s already way after midnight in Italy.”

  “Leonardo is working with the night shift.”

  “I didn’t know there was one.”

  “I told you I made a lot of changes in the Milan office.”

  She finds Sergio’s coat and graciously opens it for his arms.

  “I’m not happy leaving you with dishes to wash. And I hope you do wash them, Bianca.”