Even if the invitation was motivated because the Contessa so hoped that Clare had come upon those non-existent papers of her uncle, well, why not? Clare, too, wished she’d found them. If anything worthwhile from her uncle did turn up, maybe we could work together, she was thinking now. It was fascinating to postulate the discovery of popular Etruscan literature, not just material to do with religion and ritual. She remembered seeing a photo of an Etruscan funerary bed; it had carved stone replicas of folded linen books beside the stone pillow. What fun to discover what those lusty people, so fond of banqueting and wine and dance, really read in bed.
Also, Luisa and her husband, the archaeology inspector, would be the very people for Clare to sound out regarding her own quest.
“I saw you talking with my dear friend William a few minutes ago in the piazza,” Luisa was saying.
Perhaps Clare frowned? She felt a pinch of unease to think that nothing here might go unobserved. Luisa caught that.
“Oh, we know everything about each other in these little towns,” she said. “It is the blessing and the bane of Italian life that we live so much in public.” She fluttered her beautiful hands. “I was very glad to see him talk to you.”
She leaned close, exuding a musky amber scent. “William has these little problems at the moment, and I feel sure you will want to help.” She glanced around as if someone might be crowding in to listen. “You see, the funds for his excavation might be in trouble, because of a stupid girl.”
“A girl?”
“A student on the dig last summer, who unfortunately is also the daughter of the chancellor of William’s college. William had to send her home to Santa Monica because she had such a monstrous attitude. Now she has spread all sorts of lies.”
“Oh. But I don’t see how I —”
“If someone could pass back a report to London, to the Plank Foundation, of how very important this excavation on Poggio Selvaggio is, it might be very influential for William to find new funds.”
“Isn’t that Luke Tindhall’s job? To assess these things?’
“Ah, Tindhall!” She threw up her hands. “He and William are unfortunately most antipatico!”
“Well then, if your husband … if Vittorio is the inspector of archaeology in these parts, wouldn’t it be more persuasive if he made the recommendation?”
Luisa spread her hands, an expression half-helpless, half-amused.
“In confidence, I must tell you that there is a little long-ago history between William Sands and myself, which makes it complicated to put such a proposal to my husband. I know you will understand.”
Whatever the implication of that was, Clare couldn’t help feeling a sweet twisty pleasure in being pulled into the confidence of the beautiful Contessa.
“You see, since I met you,” Luisa said, “I have not been able to help wondering whether someone who had the direct ear of Sir Harold Plank perhaps could assist?”
Clare flushed. Harold Plank must have quite a reputation among the Etruscan community, a community she was beginning to realize was very small.
The direct ear of Harold Plank.
She had to smile, recalling his ears. She’d spent a good two hours with them inclined towards her across the table at Simpson’s in the Strand, over their plates of oysters, rare roast beef, treacle pudding, wine and port — ears unusually large and turned forward (the better to hear you with, my dear), shell pink and shiny, as was his bald head. The most seductive memory of that extremely seductive lunch was the way the man listened — a gift surely rarer than anything he kept in that cabinet of curiosities in the Yorkshire Dales.
How much direct-ear time did a case of Brunello imply? Clare had planned to write a polite note of thanks, figuring that was that. Now Luisa was telling her that what Sir Harold Plank must be made to understand was the great importance of William Sands’s work. Luisa suspected that such slow and painstaking excavation of a settlement was not the glamorous sort of project that Sir Harold wished his foundation to fund, even though it was revealing a picture of Etruscan life over a period of many hundred years. Plank would be hoping for Tindhall to come upon some more sensational discovery, such as artefact-filled tombs.
“Do you think there are any undiscovered treasure-filled tombs?” Clare interrupted. “Ones that have not been rifled long ago?”
Luisa laughed. “Treasure filled? We serious archaeologists never admit that this is what we hope.”
“But?”
“My dear. Here is what it is important for Sir Harold Plank to know. In Italy, the situation is a little unfair. It is not simple for a foreigner to get a permit to work at any Etruscan site. If Sir Harold has these dreams of glamorous exploration, he must put them away. William Sands has managed to get the permit for his work because of an early friendship with my father, who was a keen amateur archaeologist, and well-connected with the Soprintendenza. If the Plank Foundation is looking to help a worthwhile project, they should look no further than William’s excavation on Poggio Selvaggio.”
She stepped back, a pretty laugh belying a look that was stern.
“It is a sin, truly, that in Italy the strict bureaucratic procedures are not quite as important as personal connections. But it is well to understand.”
“All the same,” Clare said, “I don’t see how I —”
She stopped. She’d been about to explain that she did not have that sort of influence with Plank, but then she caught the grin of the silver goat’s head in the shop window. How could it hurt to have that little extra gloss?
“Look, why don’t we go and have a coffee,” she said. “You can fill me in on the procedures over here.”
Luisa glanced towards the clock tower on the city hall. “Accidenti! Now I am very late for an appointment with the Director of the American School. How busy they keep one; one hardly has time to breathe.”
Clare felt a sting of foolishness at the picture she’d just formed of settling down with Luisa at a little table in the piazza, the two of them leaning close, easing into further intimate chat.
“But we are expecting you for tea.” Luisa took a card from her briefcase and pressed it into Clare’s hand. It listed degrees from Florence, Oxford and Bryn Mawr.
She blew Clare a kiss. “I will be very cross if you do not come!”
“Oh, absolutely I’ll come,” Clare said. Then, glossing that fib with a second one, “About Harry Plank,” she called, “I will drop a word in his ear.”
ROMA 5984W
AS CLARE WALKED BACK towards the piazza, she noticed pots of white daisies set out along the street. The woman in charge of the profumeria, who was tending the pot outside her shop, charmingly and fragrantly explained to Clare that the daisies were set out in honour of the seven-hundred-and-tenth anniversary of the return of the holy Santa Margherita to the city.
In the window of an antiquarian bookstore, the saint herself appeared, though not as Clare thought the real saint would have looked. The holy apparition had just raised a local boy from the dead; her face was uplifted in reverence, mouth half-open, eyes rolled back, as if that was all there was to being really holy. Surely the real saint, the woman who had so gloriously erred, would not have worn such a soppy, cow-like expression.
How would a person look, though, if they’d just raised another person from the dead? Lean, determined? Awestruck? Terrified at the responsibility of what it turned out they could accomplish if they set their mind to it? How would an artist show that essential quality? A physical sensation fused up from Clare’s toes along the inside of her legs and through her gut. A sudden flare-up of desire: That’s what I want to show, even in a flower, something revealing as all that.
LATER, IT SEEMED TO Clare that the rest of the day had the inevitability of one of those dreams in which things repeatedly slip sideways, yet some not-quite-understood quest leads you onwards.
She returned to her car with the mission of driving to the top of the town where the basilica stood, where the actual saint lay in
her glass casket, the woman so flawed and determined that she had ripped away her beauty in sacrifice to transcendence.
The guidebook said getting there was easy, yet immediately she got lost in the labyrinth of streets. After many wrong turns she found herself on a narrow track outside the city’s upper wall, with a teetering view over roofs and towers. An impatient driver right behind forced her through an archway into a tiny piazza with a playground, a bright red phone booth, houses with flowered balconies all around — and seemingly no exit but to drive down a shallow set of steps, then along the narrowest of twisting alleys, until she faced a wall with a barred gate.
The gate held a sign. This was where Santa Margherita had entered the city all those centuries before.
Did Clare get a chance to reflect on this? A Land Rover was right behind her, and behind that yet another car, the driver leaning on the horn.
The man in the Land Rover got out, came forward, bent in her window, controlling his expression with some difficulty as he told her that a footpath marking the Stations of the Cross led up to the basilica from here, certainly something that would be very interesting for her, he was sure. What she should do to clear the traffic, at the moment, however, was to carry on down the steep diagonal track to her right. Yes, it was a proper road, despite the cobbles. She should not worry about the policewoman in the piazza below, just drive slowly into the throng of pedestrians and reverse through them into the area with the statue of Garibaldi. There she would be able to find a parking spot. This was the way it was always done.
Today he was wearing faded jeans, a tan shirt with rolled sleeves. But she had recognized him, immediately, from the first glance in her rear-view mirror.
BY THE TIME SHE managed the tricky turnaround in the Piazza Garibaldi, he’d spun his Land Rover into a position ahead of her, blocking her exit and keeping all other traffic stopped. He sprinted over, still with that marvelling look on his face.
“Someone is pulling out. There, see! You can back into that spot.”
The policewoman raised her baton threateningly at him and laughed, while Clare did back into the spot.
THE MAN FROM THE autostrada, yes, though driving a different car. Italy is dangerous. Dangerous indeed. Now she knew who he was. She’d spotted an enamelled badge above his licence plate showing a rearing unicorn, exactly like the labels on the dangerous and delicious garnet wine. This was Federica Inghirami’s brother, the one who’d rogered every woman from here to Timbuktu.
He didn’t need to know who she was, though.
He put some money in her parking meter while she was still in her jeep, then leaned in her window again, saying, “Please, you will wait this time? Please?”
Those eyes. She got the same jolt as on the autostrada. His joyous ridiculous seared expression showed he felt it too.
She tried to collect herself while he reversed the Land Rover into a spot that clearly indicated the illegality of parking in front of a church across the little square. “This is so wonderful!” he said, when he’d sprinted back. “But not amazing, no.” He looked embarrassed, clicked his heels together, looked even more embarrassed. “Permit me. I am very forward. My name is Gianpaulo DiGiustini. I will hope to prove my correct intent.” With the same determined but self-conscious look, he began pulling out identification: his driver’s licence, his identity card, his library card, his membership in the cooperative where he took his olives to be processed, the badge proving he regularly donated blood,
“Oh, stop. Stop it! Please. It is amazing. It’s wonderful. I agree.”
“And so you will believe the reason I have driven up behind you on the autostrada, the other day? I don’t need to prove I am not what you might call a highway masher?”
“I’ll believe anything you say.”
“You will not try to make another getaway?”
Not a chance. The danger was in walking down the street together without setting the place on fire. All those sparks shooting back and forth, the whole street glowing, maybe even radioactive, her boots turning into ruby shoes. As they walked to a café table on the piazza, Gianni was greeted by one person after another, mainly women all happy to kiss him on both cheeks, and a young giant of a man with a Russian name who came bounding out of the tabaccheria, also to kiss this Gianni on both cheeks before he stooped to kiss Clare’s hand.
“Whew, I’m dying for a cappuccino,” she said as they sat down.
He glanced at his watch. “If you wish. All the same I believe the hour for that has passed.”
“Is it so strictly controlled here?”
“Not for North Americans of course. But I would suggest a small Cinzano so close to noon.”
“I’ll have a glass of prosecco, then. And an espresso on the side.”
THE SAME WAITER WHO had earlier brought her the correzione came to their table. Maybe she should thank its lingering effect for the buzz she was feeling. She studied this electric Gianni when he took his eyes off her for a moment. The upturned chin had both the noble determination of the coin-face in the book, and a hint of the same childish petulance.
She said, “I noticed you have a unicorn above your licence plate. Is that significant?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Do you believe in the unicorn?”
She said, “Yes and no.”
“Ah!” He sat back, smiling. “So you hedge your bets.”
When the prosecco came, he lifted his glass. A flush spread across his face.
“Salute …” he began, with the expression of someone about to make a speech no matter what. He started again. “Salute, ROMA 5984W.”
“Hello?”
“This is your licence number, is it not?”
“I have no idea.”
“But you must understand that this number has been embroidered on my cerebral cortex for the last three days.”
“That sounds sore.”
“Sore?” He frowned, assessing this so carefully that Clare could almost see the stitches going in. “No please,” he said, “Do not smile too soon. I confess, when I pulled up behind you on the highway, I was just a man doing a good deed for a woman in a very plain, disguising hat who might have been in trouble. Then we saw each other in your mirror. Just your eyes, I saw.” He held his hand, banditlike, to the bridge of his nose. “A dazzling bolt of blue. And then — poof! You drove off and left me only the vision of the golden spinning of your hair! It was at this moment, without even conscious thought on my part, that ROMA 5984W became embroidered on my brain.”
He looked ridiculously relieved to have completed the speech. To have achieved the moment at which they sat here with two glasses of sparkling wine in the lively piazza, with the crenellated tower outlined against the sky, was to him a kind of artistry, she told herself; he might have said the dazzling bolt of blue line even if she was ninety; it was like the creation of a fine sonata they could play together, and why should the other player in the duo feel demeaned because the performance would be a short one?
Now he was distracted, reaching for the briefcase he’d put under the table. He asked her if she knew the films of the great Marcello Mastroianni.
She frowned, nodded.
There was a scene in one film, he said, where the great Marcello, wearing a white suit, meets a beautiful woman at a spa. They are standing beside a mud bath. She is wearing a wide black hat. The wind blows off her hat. It sails into the midst of the bath of mud, which is the size of a swimming pool. The great Marcello, without a moment’s hesitation, wades in and brings it back. What a scene! A man might live his entire life without a chance to live such a scene. Yet there was he, Gianpaulo DiGiustini, standing beside the autostrada when a beautiful woman’s hat blew into a muddy field … He reached into his briefcase, brought out an oblong box, removed the lid.
Her hat.
AGAIN HE LOOKED ENORMOUSLY relieved to have brought that off, not just the retrieval of the hat, but the story, the presentation, his eyes sparkling with a kind of delighted apprehension, as i
f she still might smash this delicate cardboard castle of a moment he had somehow managed to construct.
She took the box warily in her hands; her good old vintage hat, her serious hat, worn in moments of her life when she needed a prop to disguise whatever else she was, if only from herself. She lifted it out. It released a powdery, dismal scent.
What to say?
“Does this mean I’ll be emperor?” she asked, wishing, right away, she hadn’t given an opening for more soppy lines.
“Brava! So you know this story of the Tarquins!” Then, catching her mixed feelings, he shook his head, looked distressed. “But I have put my own desire to impress you ahead of one iota of good sense. Why should you accept back this hat? You have thrown it out, and with good reason if I may say so. You were right to run away. Perhaps, after all, I am what in your idiom one might call an inadvertent highway masher.”
True enough, she didn’t want it back. But she put it in her bag. She laughed and said it was an amazing thing he’d done.
He brightened, relieved. And, dangerously, she couldn’t help picturing him as a boy, then a growing kid, dreaming up grand performances and repeatedly having them go a little wrong, never able to resist when the next great idea came along.
Now he was asking how it was that she had come to be driving down through the upper sections of the town, not a route many visitors attempted.
“ROMA 5984W, you are obviously an explorer.”
Now this Gianni DiGiustini (was he Federica Inghirami’s halfbrother?) was saying that the basilica was indeed a most important thing to see. Perhaps she would allow him to guide her there? Perhaps they might find a suitable place where the splendid hat could be sacrificed, so it would never find its way back to disguise her again? (That look again of trying too hard to hit the right note.)
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