“‘Bruno,’” she says. “That’s my dog’s name, and Mama had a lover named Bruno, Bruno Bruni. Do you know him?”
“Of course, everybody knows Bruno Bruni. But I’m hungry. Let’s eat. You can tell me about Bruno and your mother while we eat.”
After lunch the piazza will remain quiet for an hour or so. Back in their room the dottore is drowsy, ready for a siesta, but Margot is ripe for play, for love. He allows her to undress him.
“What’s the meato?” she asks, tugging his shorts down.
“It’s an obsolete word that means orifice or opening.”
“Oh.” She kisses, pinches, pats, tickles, fondles him, but he is incapable of (a) erection, (b) penetration, (c) semination. He has become, at least for the moment, what he has been pretending to be.
14
An Instinct for Happiness
Dottor Postiglione looks sideways at the woman sitting in the taxi beside him blowing on her hands from time to time to keep them warm and then tucking them between her legs. With her hair tied back in a yellow scarf, she is especially beautiful. And strong, full of strength, like a young heifer. High spirited without being high strung. So different from the hesitant young woman he remembers standing on the steps of the Uffizi, abandoned by her idiotic American colleagues. He runs through all the clever things she’s said in the past months, and remembers the way her eyes widen in surprise, though she knows it’s coming, when he caresses her in a certain way. She is intelligent; she is interested in his work, as he is in hers; her fundamental outlook on life is, like his, romantically realistic or realistically romantic. They take the same pleasures in the same small things: the plaques on the walls of the palazzi that mark the levels of the great floods of the past or that indicate that some great man worked here: “Here Fyodor Dostoyevski wrote The Idiot”; “Here Luigi Bertoli conducted his immortal experiments on vermin.” She is delighted by the old rosemary plant on his balcony, the tiny artichokes they eat with lemon and oil at the Trattoria Maremmana, the freckled brown eggs she boils every morning for her breakfast. She herself is as zingy as the artichokes, as fresh and smooth and delicate and delicious as the eggs, which he tastes from time to time, though he seldom takes more than coffee and milk in the morning.
I’ve been disappointed in love, of course, he says to himself. Who hasn’t? As a young man I fell in love with and married Isabella Colonna, the daughter of a Roman banker, Ignazio Colonna, against the wishes of her family, but her brothers eventually came round and with their help I was able to follow my inclination and pursue my studies at the Istituto per Restauro in Florence, and then, after the war, at the Courtauld Institute in London. When it became clear, after several years, that Isabella would not be able to have a child, I did what I could to comfort her. When, in a desperate attempt to become pregnant, she took a string of lovers, I closed my eyes and ears. When, after almost twenty years of marriage, she decided that Florence was too provincial for her and returned to Rome, I shrugged my shoulders. I had done what I could do. I never let it get me down, you see. And besides, for reasons which I’ve never fully understood, I’ve always been, without making any special effort to be so, attractive to women. Even after losing my hair. Or perhaps especially so. And so . . .
They are crossing the Tiber on the Ponte Umberto I and Dottor Postiglione is rehearsing in his mind a speech he has been composing ever since they left his parents’ home in the Abruzzi. It is his daimon, his instinct for happiness, that has prompted him to compose this speech.
I’ve always been happy, Margot. I was happy as a child in the mountains; I was happy minding the cartoleria for Papà and running errands for Mamma; I was happy when I went to Rome, and when I fell in love with Isabella, and when I first put on a soldier’s uniform. I was even happy in the British prisoner-of-war camp in North Africa, which is where I really learned English, and I was happy when I was able to study in London at the Courtauld Institute, and when I was given my first painting to clean—a nineteenth-century landscape by Giovanni Boldoni, not one of my favorites, but . . . It’s up on the top floor of the Uffizi; no one ever sees it except the guards. But I’ve never been as happy as I am now. Only one thing could make me happier: if you would agree to be my wife.
If it is his instinct for happiness that has prompted him to compose this speech, it is also his instinct for happiness that has prevented him from delivering it prematurely. He has to bring the business of the Aretino to a successful conclusion first, and besides, he’s not satisfied with the bit about “being attractive to women without making any special effort to be so.” It’s true, but it sounds too much like . . . like Zeus boasting of his conquests just as he is about to bed Hera on the gentle slopes of Mount Ida. He’ll have to work on it.
They’ve had a siesta and are on their way to the rare book dealer to dispose of the Aretino. The dottore would prefer to go alone, but he knows better than to suggest it.
“How do you know you can trust him?” she asks as the taxi accelerates on the Lungotevere Castello.
“We were in North Africa together, in a prisoner-of-war camp. That was before Italy switched sides. The lot before us was wiped out completely, and we’d have been wiped out too if the British had waited any longer.”
“Army buddies,” she says in English.
“Buddies?”
“Old friends.”
He nods. “Besides, è finocchio.”
“Finocchio?”
“Homosexual. He can be objective about the drawings as art per se.”
“What do you think he’ll offer?”
Dottor Postiglione shrugs and remains silent as the taxi slows down and then stops in front of one of the high-rise office buildings that have begun to spring up like mushrooms along the west bank of the Tiber.
The elevator that takes them up to the sixth floor does not open onto the sort of corridor one expects in an office building but onto a small foyer. On the left, in a handsome display case, a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible; on the right, a book of hours, open to a genre scene—peasants drinking wine and baking bread. Opposite the elevator, a heavy door with a small bronze plaque:
sig. volmaro martelli, antiquario
esercente di libri rari
soltanto per appuntamento
The door is opened by a young man with an American haircut, very short, and Dottor Postiglione follows Margot into what appears to be a gentleman’s library, English rather than Italian, though the grisaille paneling has undoubtedly been chiseled out of some old palazzo. Volmaro himself, a beefy man in a linen vest that fits him like a girdle, returns a book to its place on a shelf just slightly higher than he can reach comfortably, and turns to greet his guests.
“Champagne,” he says to the young man. And turning to Dottor Postiglione: “We’ve been expecting you.”
Volmaro greets him warmly with a double hug, left cheek to left cheek, right cheek to right cheek. Margot, evidently not wishing to hug or to be hugged, extends a hand, which Volmaro grasps firmly—the whole hand, not just the fingers. He raises it halfway to his lips and then, as if meeting some subtle resistance, releases it with a smile.
“Piacere.”
The dottore is not a jealous man by nature and does not begrudge his old acquaintance his success, but he always feels uneasy in this splendid room, which—because of the arrangement of the bookshelves in a series of bays, some of which are subdivided into additional bays—cannot be taken in at a single glance.
“I hear about you from your brother-in-law.” Volmaro motions his guests to sit down, which they do. He sits down himself. “You’re going to be pulverized by the Rota, ground to fine powder.” His eyes sparkle. “You’ll pay and pay and pay,” he says. “Believe me, it’s not worth it. Better to live in . . . sin, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Not if you want children,” the dottore replies.
“At your age?”
Volmaro laughs. “I’ve been reading about you in the papers, too,” he continues, changing the subject. “You’re quite a hero. First the Vasari Corridor, now the Lodovici frescoes. I hope the soprintendente has learned to appreciate you properly.”
Dottor Postiglione, pleased to hear his actions spoken of before Margot, holds up two fingers to indicate that he and the soprintendente are on good terms. “And Abbot Remo, too. The good abbot is eating out of my hand right now.”
“You’re going to go ahead with the strappo?”
“As soon as I get back to Florence.”
“You restorers are like surgeons: always eager to use the knife. You pretend to be cautious, but you have an appetite for drama, for drastic intervention.”
The dottore, though he is anxious to get on with the business at hand, begins to defend the decision to detach the Lodovici frescoes, but Volmaro laughs. “Not you, I didn’t mean you. You are the exception. You approach the matter in an entirely different way. But tell me,” he says, leaning forward in his chair; “you’re doing well?”
“I’ve found my niche, you might say, and it’s a comfortable one.”
“You and I,” says Volmaro, eyeing Margot, “after what we’ve been through, we deserve a little comfort.”
The young man with the American haircut returns with three champagne flutes on a silver tray that he places on Volmaro’s leather-covered library table. Volmaro lifts a glass and proposes a toast:
“The Sixteen Pleasures.”
They drink.
“You have the book with you?” He addresses Dottor Postiglione.
“Che bella . . .” Margot, rummaging in her borsa for the Aretino, swings her head around at her surroundings. “What a beautiful . . . room. I hardly know what to call it.”
“Libreria, Signorina.” He shrugs, inclining his head toward the cases of gleaming leather volumes. “I sell these by the meter.” He indicates a row. “The decorator calls and says, ‘I need ten meters, browns and reds, no blues.’ He doesn’t ask what they cost.” He pauses. “Please,” he says, “look all you want. Then when we’re through I’ll show you the vault: climate control, humidity, temperature, the door opens only when it recognizes my palm print. You’ll see.”
Margot places the book on the table.
“Where did this come from?” Volmaro taps the protective box.
“The solander case? I made it.”
They both reach for the book and their fingers touch. “Allow me, Signorina. Giulio, bring me a cloth, please.”
Giulio produces a soft cloth.
Volmaro rubs the box carefully before opening it. “Dust, you know, is the enemy.”
Margot nods.
“Dust and water.”
“Yes,” says Margot. “And acid and fire.”
“Of course.” He lets the book fall open in his hand, catches the edge of a page on his thick thumb and turns it, then another, then another, till he arrives at a print. “Porcamadonna!” He continues to page through the book. “And you did the binding as well as the box?”
“Yes.”
“Very fine indeed.”
Volmaro shakes his head, purses his lips. “Well,” he says, closing the book. “I won’t haggle, but I won’t give you any reason to complain. Eight million lire. There you have it. Eight million, ‘in cash,’ as you Americans say. No questions asked.” Volmaro opens a drawer—“That’s more than five thousand American dollars”—and begins to count out hundred-thousand-lire notes.
“Momenta.”
Volmaro looks up, a finger separating the banknotes he’s already counted from the pile in the desk drawer.
“Could you explain how you arrived at otto milioni?” Margot asks.
Volmaro looks at the dottore, incredulous. “I arrived at that figure out of the goodness of my heart, Signorina, out of a kind of inborn generosity. I arrived at that figure because this man”—nodding at the dottore—“gave me his cigarettes when we were prisoners of the British. We each got four cigarettes a day and a book of American matches. That’s how I arrived at that figure.”
“I was thinking more in terms of market value. I mean, this is an unico, unique. No one has a copy. And it’s erotic. And it’s famous. There’s nothing like it. I’d think there’d be collectors willing to pay through the nose. I mean, someone just paid almost one million dollars for a Monet. There’s a lot of money around.”
“You’re confusing your markets.” Volmaro laughs and gives another eyes-rolled-up-into-the-top-of-his-head look at Dottor Postiglione. “Art is art, books are books. Besides,” he says in English, “I’m already paying through the nose. I’m paying through the arse.”
“But sixteen drawings by Marcantonio Raimondi, that’s art, too.”
“Prints, not drawings. Nothing original.”
“Engravings. What do you think it would bring at Sotheby’s?”
Volmaro pulls himself up, slides backwards in his chair, leans forward: “Sotheby’s won’t touch it unless you can establish your title to it. They’ll want a clear provenance and a licenza d’esportazione from the Italian government. They’re not going to sell something that might have to be returned if someone brings a claim against it. No reputable auction house will touch it without papers. You can’t sell it out of the country. There’d be too much publicity. This is a national treasure. You don’t just walk out of the country with it.”
“And what do you plan to do with it? How will you establish your title to it?”
“I don’t think that’s important now. What’s important is that I’m risking my neck to do you a favor, and paying handsomely. Through the nose,” he adds in English, “for the privilege.”
“But you stand to make a handsome profit?”
“Not as handsome as if you’d kept your hands off it. You should have left it as you found it, you should know that. You shouldn’t have touched it.”
“Nonsense. The binding was completely gone. The textblock was starting to mold. If I hadn’t intervened it would have been ruined. There wouldn’t be any book.”
Volmaro speaks in English: “I’m sorry, miss, we’ve already reached an agreement.” Laughing, he pushes a stack of banknotes across the table toward the dottore. “You didn’t tell me she was so spirited.”
Dottor Postiglione, who has been watching, like a man watching a street quarrel, from a distance, is uneasy. But what is he to do? His fast-food restaurant behind the central market is as empty at noon as it is in the evening; his low-calorie wine is sitting in a warehouse in a place called New Jersey while two different unions decide who has the right to distribute it. He has to have money. Money for his lawyers, for Gianozzo in Rome to press his case in the Rota; for other lawyers in Florence; money to pay off the note on the restaurant, which is coming due; money to pay off the union officials in New Jersey. His parents have refused to lend him more money; his older brother has refused him; his sister would give him anything, but she has no money of her own. His only hope is the Aretino, however distasteful to his open and honest nature his plans might be. If he is to marry, he must have more money. He has been hoping, with Volmaro’s help, to clear eighty million or so by disbinding the book and selling the engravings separately, though even with eighty million he wouldn’t be out of troubled financial waters. But at least he’d be in a position to maneuver. He wouldn’t be in immediate danger of drowning. But now he feels that Volmaro is deliberately jeopardizing their plan by refusing to deal directly with Margot. He feels that Volmaro is deliberately putting him on the spot, reminding him that he is not the master of the situation, that he has not been able to bend this young woman to his will. But that wasn’t what he had wanted to do. What he had wanted . . .
“You didn’t make an agreement with me,” says Margot. “And I’m the one who has the book.”
“How much do you want?” Volmaro addresses the question
to Dottor Postiglione.
Margot: “The book is not for sale.”
“Really,” says Dottor Postiglione, “this is beyond me, I hadn’t expected, I had no idea . . .” He is aware that he is making brutta figura, but he is at a loss, taken by surprise, can’t help himself.
“Twelve million,” says Volmaro.
“Not for sale,” Margot says in English.
Non è in vendita. Dottor Postiglione repeats the words to himself in Italian. What he wanted was . . . He is no longer sure what he wanted, but he is experiencing a feeling of relief. He has attempted to betray Margot, and she is probably well aware of it. But he has not betrayed her de facto. He may still be able to redeem himself.
“Piano, piano,” he says. “Il libro non è in vendita.”
“I can assure you,” says Volmaro, ignoring him and speaking now to Margot, “that if you don’t sell to me now, there’s not a dealer in Italy whom you can sell to. I give you my word.”
“I don’t intend to sell it in Italy.”
Volmaro, leaning back: “You are prepared to violate international law?”
The Sixteen Pleasures Page 22