by April Smith
And yet Cecilia is stepping doelike over the pavers in high heels and an Armani dress with tiny dots that she will later wear to the hospital, movie star sunglasses, and a buckle-encrusted marigold leather purse as big as a watermelon. I notice that the other women, young and old, all of them in Oca scarves like flocks of green and white hens, are also carrying handbags and wearing dresses—tailored cotton with belts, or splashy bosom-revealing rayon—going about their morning business with self-assured femininity. And here I am, dressed L.A.-style for a day in the sun: hiking shorts, adventure shoes, water bottle, and baseball cap, trudging behind.
Cecilia is so in charge of her world, you forget that it isn’t her world. Passing a shop with eye-catching patterns of blush peaches and dark plums reminds her of helping her mother at the fish store in El Salvador when she was five years old. Her stories are told in clean, thought-out paragraphs. Reflexively running Cecilia through my FBI profiling machine, I assess her as a high-functioning, fiercely well-organized, extroverted personality. Which means it will not be easy to get past her defenses. When she feels secure, she will tell me her secrets; why she asked me here and what her husband is up to. I must be patient.
“I had to arrange the fishes on the ice so that they looked like flowers.” She describes the design with a doctor’s hand—long fingers, graceful and strong—gold bracelets jumping. “I was also working in the house. We had no housekeeper—no need for one since we didn’t own things. We had coffee bushes growing everywhere, like weeds, and when I was little, I would pick the beans when they were red and sell them at the market. I would help with the laundry and take care of the pets. I had two dogs; they were my most beloved things in the world.”
“I couldn’t have pets,” I say. “My grandfather wouldn’t allow it. I used to talk to the worms in the backyard.”
Cecilia laughs so hard she chokes and almost stumbles. “Playing with worms? That’s very sad.”
“I was happy when it rained and all my friends came out.”
“Stop, you are making my makeup run!”
She dabs her eyes under the sunglasses. It pleases me to amuse her. Not everybody gets my jokes, especially at the Bureau.
“We had beautiful wild birds,” she goes on. “We kept them in cages. I loved them, too. You know who was my favorite? That yellow one in the cartoon who is always making trouble, what is he called?”
“Tweety Bird?” I ask incredulously.
Cecilia laughs again and blushes. “Yes, that’s him.”
“You had one, a toy?”
“No, just a tiny room and a lamp. On the walls, I painted that little bird. I would spend hours painting him. It took me away from my homework or when I was overwhelmed and stressed out. My mother sent my brothers and me to private Catholic school, and then to the university—with no support from the government. My aunts and their husbands gave money to pitch in with my studies, so I had to do well.”
“And our father? Miguel Sanchez?”
“He wasn’t there,” Cecilia reminds me quietly. “He was in America, remember? Married to your mother.”
“Not for very long.”
I am struck with a pang of envy. What if my absent father did spend more time with his El Salvadoran family? What difference can it make now?
“I guess we have that in common.”
“What?”
She asks this kindly, as a question.
“It’s funny, but we both grew up without the same father. I have virtually no memory of him. Except for one blurry image … He’s just not there. And you didn’t get much of him, either.”
“A little more, perhaps. I know his face. He was very friendly-looking. I’ll find that picture. He was playful, and he enjoyed making jokes, like you.”
“You and I, we each have pieces missing.”
After a silence, Cecilia says, “True.”
“And we’re both half-and-half. You’re from El Salvador, but you might as well be Italian.”
“I am not one thing or another,” Cecilia says.
Around the tourist attraction of the Church of Sant’ Antonio Abate there are stores with bombastic windows crowded with cheeses, chocolates, sausage, and mountains of gorgeously wrapped panfòrte, the signature fruitcake of Siena, with seventeen ingredients—one for each contrada—and hard as the brick of the houses that surround us in an almond-colored maze. The old lanes tilt and curve, go uphill and down and return to the starting point, like the meandering talk between us.
“What made you search for me?” I venture. “Why now?”
“Didn’t you read my letters?” Cecilia asks. “I thought you knew about the inheritance.”
“Yes, you mentioned it, but I wasn’t sure.”
“You have an inheritance coming from the family. It’s small—a couple of thousand euros. It came when we sold the fish market, after my mother died.”
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s very honorable of you to seek me out.”
“I did want to meet you, after all these years.”
“You made a big effort.”
“It was the right thing to do,” she says. “The money belongs to you.”
She sounds awfully matter-of-fact, compared to the emotion in the letters, in which she begged for information about the American relation she had held in her heart for many years. Is she disappointed in what she found? Or, faced with it, has she reconsidered whatever bold moves she imagined?
As we walk, I’m figuring out how to go deeper. It is afternoon, and from the rows of houses, scores of green shutters have opened to the breeze. Old people are everywhere. And happy, too. They watch from doorways or perch on wooden fruit crates that they pick up and move as the sun moves. Cecilia introduces me to each and every nonna, it seems, and they respond with sweet attempts at English. “Hear you soon!”
Finally we come to a small square with a fountain and another church.
“Fontebranda is the oldest fountain in Siena. Here I was baptized into Oca when we got married. If I was not baptized to the contrada, the marriage would be impossible.”
“Can sisters tell each other absolutely anything?” I ask.
“Yes, of course.”
“I noticed that you and your husband are very affectionate—but you don’t sleep in the same room.”
“We do sleep together, but not every night,” Cecilia replies tartly. “He starts snoring like a train and then I have to leave. I get emergency calls, I need my sleep.”
“What does that do for your marriage?”
“Probably saves it.”
We turn away from the fountain, down a steep side street.
“Did you want to be baptized into Oca?”
“It was a bit strange, but they consider it an honor.”
“That’s what I mean. You’re obviously a smart, independent woman, but it seems like Nicoli runs your life.”
“It only looks that way,” she says, then smiles quickly.
“I’m not making any judgments—I’ve been there with men—but I’m concerned. After we spoke at the embassy, I went on the Internet and read about the affair he had with this mafia person who disappeared.”
“That was difficult, but we worked it out.”
“You worked it out about the mistress?”
“Yes.”
“But what about the mafias? Cecilia—do you know if he’s involved?”
“Okay, stop.”
“Here’s why I’m asking. Do you feel like you’re in any danger?”
She jerks her head in surprise. “That’s ridiculous,” she says. “Not at all.” And she shoves me through a beaded curtain hanging in a doorway. Inside, a dank, cavelike store is presided over by a crone in black.
“I’m going to show you the best porcini mushrooms in Tuscany. I’m fine. Stop always being FBI.”
By the time the guests arrive at the abbey it is night and the floodlit stone walls stand out in relief against the pitch-black sky. There is no roof above the half-dozen tables draped
in white and laden with bowls of white roses. The women are glittering, in shoulder-length earrings, jackets woven with gold, long iridescent satin dresses, hammered bronze bracelets, and crystal-encrusted stiletto heels. The men look even more exotic; I have never before seen silk pajamas worn underneath a tuxedo jacket. They’re shaven-headed with a tiny earring or—like Nicosa—breathtakingly tailored in dark pinstripes. And the faces! Filled with character and power.
They are the ruling class—bankers and industrialists, with a couple of hungry writers and art dealers prowling the edges—whose belief in themselves and in their accomplishments seems to make them untouchable by the facts: uncollected garbage two stories high in Naples, human trafficking of eastern Europeans, reprisal murders in broad daylight, Chinese gangsters moving counterfeit goods at will, even the time-honored kidnapping for ransom of executives or their wives, are believed to be a “southern sickness,” of little consequence to the sophisticated north. The ruddy and rouged faces are a smiling blur of civility. The business at hand is to score points with their hosts in the high-stakes tally of social influence, as volatile here as it is in Los Angeles.
Cecilia takes me around. I get a quick handshake, and she gets a soulful exchange in Italian. I am the sidebar; she is the star. Her hair is up in a loose tangle, which emphasizes the diamond hoop earrings and the square neckline of a black sheath with spaghetti straps that turn into chains of gold snakes.
I have worked protection for celebrities who are addicted to the spotlight and can’t get enough, who will preen for anyone who stops them in the street, but that is not Cecilia. She is tense and keeps looking at her watch. I get the sense that she plays this role for Nicosa—for their marriage—but it does not come naturally, especially because she has been preoccupied about Giovanni, who still has not shown up at the party.
She had told me he would be there when we were in her closet. She had tried to talk me out of the brown wrap dress I bought in London with an invitation to enter her private oasis (where I couldn’t miss the price tag on the Roberto Cavalli snake-strap dress—about two thousand U.S. dollars), an enchanted forest of flirtatious fabrics, large enough to have its own window with a writing desk beneath. She kept plucking out hangers and murmuring, “This is your color,” although I had no idea why it was my color. The dresses scared me. I was afraid of ruining one just by putting it on. They had intricate linings you had to pull down carefully, or step into without catching a thread. I thought she was trying awfully hard to make this experiment in couture work. Her clothes were too tight in the waist and too wide in the hips for me, pointing out the disparities in our figures—and that after all, this sister thing might just turn out to be a bad fit.
She had been inflated and boastful that unlike most teenagers, Giovanni is so reliable; her friends are envious of how grown up he is; and how she loves to show him off. She might have also expected to show off the guest of honor, but the brown dress was an embarrassment. Losing patience when in spite of her luxurious offerings I kept saying, “No thanks,” she became the bossy pain in the ass sister Dennis had described, saying, “Never buy cheap things; it’s a waste of money!” and “You should start wearing makeup and look like a woman!”
But now, in the sensuous candlelight of the outdoor party, as we chat with yet another diva with flat-ironed blond hair and blackened eyes, a white halter showing the crescents of her breasts (“They all think they’re Donatella Versace,” according to Cecilia), I feel like a little brown squirrel in the cheap brown dress. Like everyone else, the wannabe Donatella is obsessed with Palio. Which horse is best? Which jockey will ride for Oca? What is Cecilia cooking for the contrada dinner, a preposterous-sounding undertaking where the women convene in the kitchen of their contrada headquarters and whip up dinner for two thousand members—and the horse—seated at tables set up in the street. From whose apartment in the Piazza del Campo will they watch the tratta and the prova? It’s like listening to folks planning a tailgate party when you don’t understand football.
Luckily, Sofri arrives to save me.
Nicosa’s business partner, the brilliant scientist, turns out to be a white-haired, impeccable dandy with a hooked aristocratic nose and a folded square of green and white Oca silk in the pocket of a blue blazer.
“Sofri is the secret to our success,” Cecilia says, kissing him on both cheeks.
He graces me with a luminous smile. “It is a delight to meet your beautiful sister. Has the signorina seen much of Siena?” he asks Cecilia. “It would be my pleasure to show her. You must please be my guest for Palio.”
“I’d love to. Nicoli told me you invented a new coffee bean. How do you invent a coffee bean?”
He leans forward, speaking intimately. “The breakthrough came when I was able to decode the coffee genome. Then it was a matter of identifying the genes that produce characteristics of sweetness. But my passion is to create new recipes using coffee—far beyond the usual,” he says, and his eyes grow big, as if he were describing a distant galaxy.
“Like what?”
“For example, rabbit loins stuffed with liver and coated in coffee. You will taste them tonight!”
It takes a moment to come up with a suitably Italian response: “Beautiful!”
He grasps my hand and leads me through the party, making introductions, replenishing my glass. Holding hands with an elderly gentleman feels very European.
“How is it to be the guest of honor inside the home of one of the greatest hostesses in Tuscany? I cannot imagine what it would be like if I, for example, discovered that I had a brother I had never met—and then found out he lives like this!”
I laugh. “It has been quite a ride.”
“Not to insult you,” he adds quickly. “Maybe you, too, live in an historic monument.”
I am about to joke that I live in the Federal Building, but, remembering my promise to Cecilia, I put the brakes on just in time.
“I’m between addresses now,” I say.
“What work do you do?”
“I’m in security,” I reply, with what I hope looks like a sincere smile.
“I’m sorry—do you mean banking?”
“Protecting banks. Alarm systems.”
His eyebrows rise. “Interessante. I would have thought fashion.”
Involuntarily I look down at the brown dress. “Really?”
“Of course, bella! You know, you look just like your sister? Both of you are intelligent and lovely women. I adore her. And now I have the pleasure of knowing you!”
Sofri releases the pressure on my hand with a sigh of satisfaction, and I feel that I have met my prince—never mind that he is fifty years older than I am, and that I’m in love with Sterling. His courtliness makes me feel special. The other half of the equation, of course, is my appreciation of his masculine ability to charm. I am thrilled by the novelty of what promises to be an old-fashioned, chivalrous relationship; without the need to conquer, we are free to become great friends.
At one point, behind our wineglasses, we find ourselves watching Cecilia, who is standing alone in the smashing black dress and listening in dismay to a message on her cell phone.
“She looks worried,” I say. “She hasn’t heard from Giovanni.”
“I know. I told her it is to be expected.”
“Isn’t it kind of a slap in the face to his parents not to show up?”
“Normally yes, but not during Palio.”
“Because Giovanni’s out partying?”
“Fighting.”
“Fighting! For what? Defending the antipasti?”
Waiters have appeared with fried artichokes, marinated mushrooms, dried beef drizzled with olive oil, cured mussels, mozzarella and tomato and basil, plates stacked all the way up their arms.
“Each contrada has a blood rival. Our enemy is Torre, the Tower. If a young man enters the zone between Torre and Oca, it means a fight. Love for one’s contrada is equal only to hatred for one’s enemy,” he says passionately. “Y
ou will find guests from different contrade here tonight, but never from Torre. Never.”
Sofri removes the silk square from his breast pocket and pats the moisture at his temples. You have to love this guy. He takes everything seriously.
“Calm down, Sofri. It’s only dinner.”
We move toward our table, where six or eight well-dressed people gaily introduce themselves in an incomprehensible chatter of Italian. The mood is buoyant as the food is served. After the primi course of homemade ravioli stuffed with the porcini mushrooms we bought that morning, Sofri jumps up to pour more wine. “A big red,” he explains grandly, “to accompany my latest recipe—ròtolo di coniglio al caffè, rabbit rolled with coffee!” Waiters are fanning out with plates of browned meat on skewers when I notice a figure crossing from the blackness beyond the ruin walls into the lights of the party. She is purposeful but respectful; a police detective wearing a skintight blue-skirted uniform, a white gun belt, and low heels. She taps the hostess on the shoulder. Obviously, they know each other. Cecilia looks up with recognition and joy, but the detective has her cop face on.
Sofri reacts immediately.
“Stay,” he says. “This is not a problem,” absurdly denying the presence of red lights pulsing on a cruiser parked nearby, and the grim policewoman. The guests are either in on the game or too absorbed to pay attention. My guess is they know the code: Pretend to ignore this.
Sofri excuses himself and joins Nicosa and Cecilia at a serving station. The detective is holding Cecilia’s hand. Cecilia breaks away for a brief hug from Sofri. After some conversation Nicosa, Cecilia, and the detective leave together, and Sofri returns to the table.
“What is going on?”
“There has been an accident.”