The secret of perpetual life"
Botheration. I am repeating myself.
It is hard to remember the particulars. I prefer to watch the people come and go, moving with supreme self-importance as I used to. The tourists’ babbling can be very irritating, especially the Americans in their ugly blue jeans and long, dirty hair all over the place and short, short skirts. They are so sloppy and loud. Hogarth would have held his handkerchief to his nose in distaste at the sight of them. But Hogarth is dead, isn’t he? His beautifully shaped balding head smashed like a hard-boiled egg cracked too hard on a plate.
Did I mention that already? I talk to few when I go out walking, over to the Museo Bargello, where I like the Della Robbia room the best. I squirm my bulk into one of the wooden chairs in the corridor because I am tired and it is so hot, then look down into the courtyard. It used to be an execution site. Do they have dungeons in the Bargello? I wonder. Industrious Americans with their dirty jeans and guidebooks and loud voices fill the courtyard with noise. Anyone left in the dungeon to rot, screaming for help, would not be heard above this din. I smile for a minute, and a tourist looks at me strangely. I, too, am an American, although I don’t feel like one. I am getting so forgetful.
The worn patterns in the old stones are oddly pleasing.
Matteo used to love visiting this museum. When he had a good day and felt a bit like talking, I could leave him to sit with the guards, murmuring in his shy lisp with them like old friends. I would go visit one of my favorite churches, Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi or San Lorenzo or Santa Croce. All those famous dead Italians buried behind grubby gray marble. I laugh to myself at the sight of all the enraptured tourists, who wouldn’t be caught dead lighting candles in churches back home. It’s always different when you are a traveler. There is more magic in the stones and the bricks around you.
Unless the stones and bricks are in a dungeon.
The tourists in the churches disappear behind a haze of indifference. Nothing really matters anymore. Whatever God there might have been had forsaken us a long time ago.
I light a candle in Santa Croce. I always count out the exact amount they ask for, or else it’s very bad luck. The gods only understand rituals. Caterina understood rituals, but she is gone, too. They’re all gone.
I kneel before the flickering candles and clasp my hands, staring down at the worn marble near the altar. I am kneeling on a tomb. Only a shadowed outline of it remains; it has been so well worn from thousands and thousands of footsteps that the letters have blurred and the features of the deceased have been erased. Smoothed and forgotten. All that’s left are sleek marble lines etched into the floor.
I leave the shadows of the church for the brilliant sunshine, and the rancid reek of cheap leather baking in the sun in the marketplace.
Wait"that’s not quite right. I am still in the museum waiting for Matteo. The bell at closing time is ringing to kick us out. Doors slam shut and hurried footsteps echo down dark hallways. A child’s whining changes to a shrill giggle after a promise of gelati from her grumpy parents.
Matteo and I walk to the Boboli Gardens, past the windows full of gloves and wallets and hand-painted platters, beautifully colored lacquer fountain pens and high-heeled shoes. The guards know us well and no longer charge us admission. They think our names are Tonio and Marcello.
Although Matteo told me she stopped looking when she knew for certain that I did not want to be found, old habits die hard.
I bring the guards lurid pink marzipan pigs and angels from one of the sweet shops, and they laugh. “Ciao, Tonio, Ciao, Marcello,” the grocers call out as I pass by their stores, no wider than my arm span. I raise my cane in greeting. “Ciao, Tonio. Ciao, Marcello,” says the proprietor of the Bar Tabacchi.
Sometimes, in the Boboli, when I close my eyes and concentrate very hard, I can pretend that I’m back on the veranda of the big house in Virginia, the expanse of plantation stretching at my feet. A dog barks in the distance, a horse whinnies, a cowbell clangs with a melodious ding. The fields of grain are ripening in the distance. As the sun sets, gentle breezes finally start to blow, and I am holding a silver beaker filled with mint julep against my wrist to cool it down.
An old southern belle’s trick.
I open my eyes. I am back in Firenze, sitting with my darling big brother on a bench under interlaced branches of the trees, arching over the pathways like desperate, creeping arms. I try to count the butterflies, but there are so many. Lizards and bugs crawling, too, full of purpose. They scatter when they hear the lumpen footsteps of shuffling old eunuchs.
On very hot days in the gardens, we sometimes don’t see anyone for hours. I sit with my notebooks and a thermos of cold tea laced with whiskey. Matteo reads or has a snooze. There is nothing to say, really. I am nearly finished. It has been more complicated than I thought it would be, to keep it all in order.
I told you everything. I said I would.
I tried not to lie, but sometimes I couldn’t help a tiny bit of exaggeration. You’re clever enough to have figured that out by now, aren’t you?
Don’t try to ask me any picky questions, because my lips are sealed. We were the keepers of secrets, all of us.
I have told you enough.
By the fountain down the cypress street is the wishing star. That’s what Bryony called it. Bryony saw it and ran ahead, exhilarated, her strawberry blond curls flying, tugging Matteo along with her.
“Look, Matteo, this is our star. You have to stand in the middle, there. Stand on it and make a wish.”
Then Bryony leapt off and ran down to the water, the moated garden on the island in the Oceanus Fountain. There were fragrant lemon trees growing in terra-cotta pots, each pot with a different design. “Uno, due, tre,” Bryony would call out as they ran races around the pond, laughing in pure joy. Bryony appointed me the timekeeper. She didn’t need me, though, because Matteo always let her win.
“Make a wish,” she said to the wind and the butterflies.
Make a wish.
I want to walk to the Oceanus Fountain one winter day, but Matteo says he is tired. There is a chill wind, too cold for moats and flowers. We go to our usual bench and Matteo falls into a light doze, his weight propped against my shoulder. I put my arm more firmly around him and ease his head down into my lap so he can sleep more comfortably. A worn light gray angora scarf that Bryony knit for him once upon a time is draped around his neck. He still has most of his lovely hair, curly and thick even if it is nearly all gray. We kept our hair, and not much else.
I like the feel of my brother’s warm heaviness against my own. He sighs in his sleep, and then his weight seems to shift. No no no. It can’t be true. If I don’t look at him, if I don’t move, then it can’t be true.
A little German boy brushes leaves and a speck of dirt off the bench opposite. He is a tidy sort, and the tentative shy smile on his face consoles me just a little before he runs off to join his parents.
Oh ho, I always was too sentimental.
I sit and caress Matteo’s hair. It’s still moving with each small breath of wind, still alive, rustling gently in the cold air. His color is a little off, but his skin is warm. He stays warm a long time.
If I sit here until dark, I know they will come to look for us, worried when they didn’t see us pass by at 6:37 precisely, en route to our evening bowl of pasta at the corner trattoria, finished with a glass of vin santo and biscotti to dip in it.
A weary old gardener trudges by, his rake propped on his shoulder, and nods a greeting. He stops when he sees my face, and Matteo, unmoving. “Per favore,” I manage to say, per favore.” He drops the rake with an awful thudding crunch on the gravel and runs off, crossing himself as he disappears into the twilight.
I never do see that gardener again. I wonder what happened to him. I wanted to give him a token in remembrance. Perhaps he feels the sight of us was a bad omen, or maybe one of his nieces finally persuaded him to live in the south, where the warm weather w
ill ease the aches of his rheumatism and he can tend his tomatoes in peace.
I don’t know. I’ll never know. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself as I sit in the gardens and watch the butterflies. There is no peace.
Sometimes I try to write in my notebooks. I hold one of my beautiful lacquer pens, but the words don’t come. I finished what I started, didn’t I? I saw it through to the bitter end. I know I did. Botheration. It is getting harder and harder to remember. It is so hot.
I am nearly finished. And then?
Then I’ll keep dreaming.
I am daydreaming on my bench. I finger Matteo’s light gray angora scarf, the one he was wearing when he died. It was his favorite, that one Bryony knit for him years and years ago, the stitches all crooked and unraveling, the fringe uneven. Then I put it back in my pocket. It is too sweltering for scarves. I hear footsteps but am too tired to open my eyes.
I feel someone touching my sleeve, a ghost’s touch. My eyes remain shut. Is this how it ends? I don’t want to look.
Tomasino. I hear my name. Tomasino, wake up. I have died and it is my brother calling me. For that, I will open my eyes. Until I feel the lightest touch of fingers, drifting along my arm.
She never did like to be touched.
The wind rustles the drooping dry leaves and I catch a whiff of something. Hers, yet not hers. I must be dreaming. I have dreamt myself back to my dream’s wishes; the wishing star that did it for me. Wishing as I was to hear that familiar, beloved voice.
Tomasino, I hear again. It is not her voice. Not hers, and not Bryony’s. It is a ghost voice, come to taunt me.
Belladonna sounds so sweet.
For only a second, I am young again. Full of cunning and self-importance and a mania for conniving. I am a masterpiece of ruined civilization"she said I was as I sat by her side, masked and omnipotent in the Club Belladonna.
Oh ho, I was happy then, to plan and plot and watch them suffer.
I did it for you, Belladonna. I did it for myself. I’d do it again, if you asked me to.
I think I have died. Matteo is calling me. I felt the thrill of his ghost fingers tickling my arm. He needs me. I’m waiting for him here. This is where he left me. He’s coming back; I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone for long. He left me once before, when he got married to Annabeth. I was happy for him then, truly I was. But once she was gone, he said he’d never leave me again. He’ll come back and we’ll go for a walk the way we used to, me chattering and my darling big brother regarding me with fond, silent bemusement.
I open my eyes. I am not younger, and my brother is dead. I buried him near Leandro, on a hillside in Tuscany. But there is a little girl standing before me. She looks so much like Bryony, with sea-blue eyes, but her hair is light brown and very straight. It can’t be Bryony. It is no more than a cruel trick of the hazy light of a sultry summer’s day.
“Are you Tomasino? You must be Tomasino. You look like Matteo, except you’re fatter,” she says, then puts her hand up over her mouth and glances over to someone. I close my eyes, but I feel her tiny fingers tapping on my knee for attention, and I open them again. My knee doesn’t throb anymore. It is as silent as I’ve become. “Tomasino, Tomasino,” the little girl is saying. “I know you’re Tomasino. I’m Angelica,” she says. “My mommy sent me to look for you. Do you really have a lion on your cane?”
“Yes, a golden lion,” I manage to tell her after clearing my throat. I don’t want to disappoint a little girl who looks like Bryony. “But who is your mommy?”
She looks bewildered for a second, and then she laughs. She thinks I’m teasing her.
“My mommy is Mrs. Gibson. Her name is Bryony, like the flower. Bryony Bryony Bryony Gibson,” she says in a singsongy voice, the same way Bryony used to. “I’m Angelica, like the flower. The Angelica flower. My daddy is Mr. Gibson. His real name is Arundel. Arundel means ‘eagle valley,’ did you know that? Arundel Arundel Arundel Cyril St. James Gibson.”
Angelica, daughter of Bryony, who married Arundel Gibson. I can’t believe I forgot all about them, that couple. How did they meet? Did Bryony ever know who Arundel’s father was? Matteo told me; I know he must have told me. Did the Pritch set it up? Something about a Jaybird? Botheration. It was too complicated to write down and remember, I chide myself. No, that’s not quite right. It was that they found happiness.
I had no room for happiness in my notebooks.
I smile at Angelica. Another beautiful little flower, a bright, sparkling child and then I see Bryony herself, when Angelica runs to her and protests that I didn’t know who she was. Bryony is as old now as Belladonna once had been, older even than she was when we first met her. Bryony looks so much like her mother, except her eyes are a brilliant blue-green and there is no hardness or fear in her face. No rage in her heart. She gives me a wobbly smile.
“I missed you so, Tomasino. All these years,” she says as she sits down next to me on the bench, in Matteo’s spot, and places her hand gently on my arm. “We found you only after they called us from Ca’ d’Oro after your brother’s …” Her voice falters. “After Matteo’s funeral. That’s when we knew you would let us find you again.”
“Really?” I ask, pretending to be genuinely surprised. I don’t want to talk about my brother. I’d rather drink in the sight of Bryony. She looks so much like her mother. I think I said that already; forgive me if I did. “You missed me?”
“You darling, crazy man,” Bryony says, kissing my cheek. Belladonna never kissed my cheek. She didn’t like to touch or be touched. And then I see that Bryony has tears streaming down her cheeks. Why is she crying? Do I look that awful?
“Of course I missed you,” Bryony says, wiping her eyes. “We all did, like crazy. My mother most of all, you goose. How could she not miss you? I thought for sure you would come for the wedding, and I cried all morning that you weren’t there to see me in my flower-girl dress. My face is ridiculously puffy in the photographs.”
“You did?” I ask, delighted. “But what wedding are you talking about?”
Bryony’s eyes widen and she bites her lip, that gesture still so familiar I nearly cry out at the sight of it.
“My mother’s,” she says, her small voice all wobbly. “My mother and Guy’s.” She fishes in her bag for a white linen handkerchief and blows her nose. “And then I hoped beyond all hoping that you might come to my own wedding. Even Matteo said you might.”
“You always liked Matteo better,” I protest. She laughs ruefully.
“We need you, Tomasino. She can’t do without you; she never could, after all these years. No one comes close to you, not even Guy.” Bryony sighs, then smiles sadly at me. I’m glad she didn’t say “my father” instead of Guy. How much does she know? I wonder. What did they tell her?
That, I will never ask.
“Come with me, Tomasino,” Bryony says. “I need to make a wish.”
I shake my head no. I am too tired to get up. I am afraid I am still dreaming, and that if I move, the illusion will shatter and I will wake up alone.
“Please,” Bryony pleads. “Please. Come with me to the wishing star. I need you.”
Botheration. I never could refuse anyone who needed me.
Bryony pulls me up gently and links her arm with mine. Angelica is skipping ahead of us, kicking at the little pebbles on the path and singing nonsense songs, just as her mother had done. We are walking very slowly, and I try not to lean too hard on my cane. It is so hot and I am so tired.
“Tomasino,” someone says. I shut my eyes. I have died, for real this time. We have all died, and this is heaven. Everyone I love is together with me, near the sound of a fountain in the bright light of a garden.
“Tomasino,” she says. I know she is close by. I can feel her presence, unwavering, and the scent of her perfume, so delectable, so sweet, concocted from the essence of plants that could kill you with a single bite.
She always managed to materialize so quickly, when you least expected her. I never did figure
out how she did it.
There is so much I will never ever know.
I open my eyes, and there is my heart’s darling, my very own Belladonna, standing beside me. Her bright green eyes are shiny with tears, and she, too, bites her lip. She, the indomitable Belladonna, in tears!
Something must be very wrong.
“Why are there tears in your eyes?” I ask her, trying to sound nonchalant. “You aren’t the crying type.”
Her hair is twisted up into what is now an unfashionable chignon, and at first glance she doesn’t look much older than the last time I saw her, when I disappeared from La Fenice nearly twenty-five years before. Her face is different, though. It’s fuller, softer, more womanly. There is no hint of rage hardening her features into an impenetrable, terrifying mask.
But the softening doesn’t mean she’ll ever forget.
I had to go, I want to say to her now, I had to. You had Guy and my brother and all the rest of your lives together stretching before you and you didn’t need me anymore. Every time you’d see me you’d remember what"
“I wanted to find peace,” I tell her now.
“Oh, Tomasino,” Belladonna says. “Come back to me, please. I beg you. I can’t do without you. Truly, I can’t. I need you.”
Three little words.
This is how we ask each other for forgiveness. The words hanging unsaid, as if their echoes were shimmering in the haze like the wings of butterflies.
Like the echo of footsteps disappearing down a hallway in a dungeon, receding forever in the darkness.
Belladonna isn’t real; she never was. She will remain forever untouchable, implacable, a mysterious goddess presiding over the dark realm below.
As I will remain forever her Tomasino.
And then I see Guy, leaning against the railing encircling the fountain. He is still dashingly handsome, although his face is deeply lined and his hair is streaked with more gray than mine. I was right about Guy all along, I tell myself smugly. He has the same air about him as when I’d first snooped on his conversation in the Club Belladonna, laughing about a sociopathic squire and lighting a cigarette from a woman’s necklace. Guy beckons to a slender man with light brown hair flopping over his forehead and a somber look. He reminds me of Hugh, I decide, what Hugh might have looked like when he was younger. Arundel Gibson, he says, introducing himself. Bryony’s husband and father of Angelica.
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