Italian Fever Read online

  “Yes.”

  “And your family lives here as well?”

  He forced a little puff of indignation through his chiseled nostrils. “My family has been in Rome for a thousand years.”

  Ancestor snobbery, Lucy thought. The food, the excellent coffee, the sun that was warming the stones on the raised step where their table perched precariously, the fatigue of the journey, and the archetypal behavior of her companion combined to make her giddy. “Any popes?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “In your family. Any popes?”

  He regarded her with suspicion. Was she making fun of his family? “Actually, yes,” he said. “There was one, a long time ago. A very short time, he was pope.”

  “Was he a good pope?”

  “No.” He took a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and began feeling about for his lighter. “A very bad pope. He was murdered, I think.”

  Lucy finished her coffee, excused herself, and went off in search of the bathroom, leaving Massimo to stretch out his legs into the sunlight, clearly content to enjoy his cigarette alone. When she returned, he rose languidly, flicking the cigarette stub into the street. They got back into the car.

  Since leaving the airport, they had been on congested highways, careening through ugly suburbs, but now, suddenly, they were in the countryside, the gently undulating cultivated vineyards, the olive groves, the stands of cypress and umbrella pines, the steep, jutting hills capped with ancient walled towns that have for centuries charmed even the most jaded, travel-weary eye. If the beauty of the scene hadn’t taken her breath away, the speed at which they hurtled through it surely would have. However, Lucy noticed, Massimo wasn’t passing anyone. Indeed, they were occasionally roared down upon and left behind. Massimo appeared perfectly calm. She put her seat back and gave herself over to dreamy contemplation of the landscape and the unexpectedness of finding herself in it. She felt a throb of gratitude to DV for dying here.

  “You are married, Signora Stark?” Massimo asked.

  Her head followed her eyes as she shifted them in his direction. He was studying the road ahead. “No,” she said. “I was. But not anymore.” He nodded. They both noted the quick inspection she gave to the wide gold band on his right ring finger.

  “You can sleep a little now, if you like,” he said.

  “Thanks. I think I will,” she said. And she did.

  TUSCANY IS STUDDED with beautiful little towns, each justly famous for something, be it the perfection of its piazza, the charm of its bell tower, the unusual frescoes in its church, the refreshing air of its hilltop setting, the view from its ancient walls, or the incomparable bistecca served at the restaurant, formerly a monastery, a castle, or a farmhouse, which can be reached by a short drive along a picturesque lake, a cypress-lined avenue, or a vineyard. Ugolino is not one of these. “Before yesterday, I never hear of this town,” Massimo commented as he turned down a rough narrow road between two fields of dry plowed dirt. “How did your friend find it?”

  “He wanted something quiet,” Lucy said.

  “Something quiet,” Massimo snorted. “The grave is quiet.” Then, after a moment in which the cruel irony of his remark became apparent to them both, he said, “Please excuse me. I have spoken without thinking.”

  “No. It’s all right. What you say is true.”

  The road diverged at the end of two fields. One fork was paved, leading uphill toward a line of cypress; the other, dirt, ran downhill between more dried clods of earth. Massimo swerved onto the latter, raising a cloud of dust in the cool afternoon air. The sky was a deep, almost alarming blue and it stretched ahead of them like something solid; it seemed they might smash into it at every moment. DV died in this autumn light, Lucy thought. Did he fall into the well under a sky as bright and serene as this one? They came to a sign—UGOLINO, 2 KM—and after that a few ugly modern apartment buildings perched at the edge of the road; then the road widened. They passed a bar where a few men sat at two plastic tables. After that, their way was lined on both sides with stone dwellings, the shutters open to the light, clothes dripping from lines stretched between the windows, the occasional flower box, an old woman leaning out on one side, upbraiding a sullen-looking boy on a bicycle who moved reluctantly out of their path as they passed. Then, abruptly, they entered the treeless, dusty piazza of Ugolino with its cluster of public amusements and services: a bar, an alimentari, the doorway shielded from bugs by strips of faded multicolored plastic, the town hall and police station, with CARABINIERI printed neatly in large black letters on the white plaster over the door. As Massimo pulled up, this door opened and two young men in uniform came out, talking animatedly. Massimo got out of the car and Lucy followed. The two policemen, absorbed in their conversation, which was punctuated by shouts of laughter, ignored them and strolled away in the direction of the bar.

  “We will go in here,” Massimo said. “They are expecting you.”

  They entered a long, low-ceilinged whitewashed room with a counter across one end, beyond which a few desks and straight-backed chairs were scattered haphazardly. Each desk sported a typewriter of classic design: Like the ones in fifties film noir, Lucy thought. The room was dim; the only light came in at two long windows on one side.

  It was also completely empty of humanity. Massimo looked about pointedly for a few moments, as if he expected to scare someone into view by the penetration of his eye beams, but he, too, was soon forced to admit that no one was there.

  “Perhaps they’ve gone to lunch,” Lucy suggested.

  He glanced at his watch. “Lunch,” he said impatiently. “It is four-thirty.”

  “Well. I guess we’ll have to wait.”

  “I have no time for waiting,” he exclaimed, and went back through the door. Lucy followed and stood watching as he charged down the street—there was no sidewalk—to the bar. I am fortunate to have Massimo, she thought. She looked up and down; the town was eerily silent. As there were no trees, there wasn’t even the occasional twittering bird in residence. After a few moments, the bar door flew open and the two policemen came out into the bright street, followed by a gesticulating Massimo. He herded them toward her; they were clearly unwilling, eager to run astray. When they got closer, she saw that they were really just boys, perhaps eighteen or nineteen, and that they were torn between their inexperience and their conviction that the perfectly tailored and pressed uniforms they wore gave them all the authority in the world. One sauntered past Lucy, hardly giving her a glance; the other followed, responding to Massimo with raised voice. His hand made little chops at the air near his face. As he passed, he delivered his closing remark with a quick thrust of an open palm, nearly striking her. She ducked; Massimo cast her a look of horror. Somehow, all four shoved back through the door. “These are idiots,” Massimo said blandly as he pursued the two young men through the gate in the counter. One began taking files out of drawers, then carefully putting them back in. The other threw himself onto a chair with exaggerated huffiness, took up a pen, and began turning it over and over in his hand.

  “What are they doing?” she asked.

  “They are pretending that Americans fall into wells every day here,” Massimo said.

  “Will they let me see my friend? Is he here?”

  Massimo burst into a long stream of Italian, which the young men interrupted almost at once and in unison. Gradually, the volume went up, each striving to make himself heard over the others. Then abruptly, the conversation ended. Massimo turned to her. “They say you cannot see him.” He paused. Lucy detected a flicker of concern. He was uncertain how best to proceed. “There has been an autopsy.” He lingered over the last word, got the stress wrong, on the second syllable. “It would not be a good thing for you to see him.”

  “But I have to identify him,” she protested. “I have to be sure it is him.”

  He studied her momentarily, looking for signs of hysteria. “Signora Stark,” he said, his voice controlled, conciliatory. “Your friend has bee
n identified by his landlord and by his passport. There is no doubt that it is he. An autopsy is … It will not be good for you to see him.”

  “Because I wouldn’t recognize him,” Lucy said.

  “I am afraid you would not.”

  “Can’t they show me something? Isn’t there some proof beyond someone’s word?”

  Massimo addressed the young man at the file drawer, who had, apparently, found the one he was looking for. There was a brief ceremony, the passing of the file from policeman to interpreter to American. A sensation of dread made Lucy turn away from the men. She took the file to the counter and opened it.

  It was DV, she knew at once, but for a moment she tried to tell herself there was some mistake. How could the self-satisfied, confident, brash, excitable man she had known be reduced to this wizened and grimacing mask of fear? His upper lip was pulled back from his teeth in a way she had never seen it in life, and his forehead was furrowed over his open, sightless eyes. His thick hair was plastered flat against his skull, flecked with leaves and dirt. Just at the hairline, there was a dark gash, the skin puckered and bruised around it. There were three photographs, two of his face and one of his whole body stretched out flat on a table, still dressed, but without his shoes. She recognized the sweater he was wearing, though it was torn and stained—his favorite blue cashmere.

  Lucy fought down a wave of nausea so powerful, it made her grasp the counter and groan. She had always referred to DV as “my employer.” She thought of him sometimes as “the scribbler,” or “the Marrying Man,” but the word that presented itself then as she looked at this awful proof of his death was friend. My poor friend, she thought, and tears overflowed her eyes.

  Instantly, the three haughty and quarrelsome men were transformed into a team of comforting grandmothers. “The signora is crying,” she understood Massimo to say, followed by a few terse orders she couldn’t follow. A chair materialized next to her, a clean white handkerchief was pressed into her hand, and a glass of mineral water was poured out from a bottle and offered to her with soft, encouraging words. She sat down gratefully on the chair, dried her eyes with the handkerchief, accepted and drank the cool water. “It is my friend,” she gasped, before a fresh torrent of tears overtook her. “I’m sorry,” she added between sobs.

  “But signora,” Massimo assured her. “You must not apologize. This is a great shock.” The young policemen exchanged subdued phrases she took to be further sympathy. One hovered over her; the other spirited the empty glass away. She cried for a few minutes while the men waited patiently. They didn’t seem to mind. Then she stopped. “I’m all right now,” she told Massimo, folding the handkerchief and making a few last dabs at her eyes. “What do I have to do?”

  Massimo spoke softly to the young policeman who was returning the photographs to the file. “You must sign some papers,” he said. “Then, if you wish to bury your friend here …”

  “I do,” she said.

  “We will arrange for a place—how do you say …”

  “A plot,” she said.

  “A plot,” he echoed uncertainly. “You will want the services of a priest?”

  “No. DV was not religious.”

  “There will be no ceremony?” He looked distressed.

  “They’re having a ceremony in the States,” she said. “His friends and his family.”

  His distress turned to puzzlement. “I see,” he said.

  Who would go to DV’s memorial service? His editor, his agent, various people who made money from his books, maybe one or two of the wives, the ones with kids, maybe not. His parents were dead, and he was not on speaking terms with his brother. A few acquaintances might show up, other writers, as friendless, ultimately, as he was. More tears welled up at these thoughts. “Can I hold on to your handkerchief for a while?” Lucy said, getting up.

  “Of course,” Massimo replied.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

  The funeral business in Italy is not the profitable, professional operation it is in the United States. The vigil is generally held in the deceased’s home, and the interment is accomplished without the services of a funeral director. Ugolino was so small, Lucy was able to make the arrangements for DV’s burial right there in the police station. There was some difficulty about money because the police were not equipped to take credit cards, and a check drawn on an American bank was useless to them. She explained to Massimo that she could get a wire transfer from DV’s bank that night and would be able to have the cash in lire the next day.

  “But how can you take money from his bank when he cannot sign for it?” Massimo asked.

  “I know all the right codes,” she said.

  Massimo’s light eyes darkened at this allusion to the recondite world of American technology. He said a few words to the policemen, who assured him that the burial could go forward the moment the money was in their hands. To this end, the grave digger was summoned. He arrived so quickly, Lucy assumed he, too, had been in the bar. He was a gnarled and twisted old fellow, garrulous and odoriferous, like something out of Shakespeare. Whenever he spoke, Massimo seemed to draw himself more tightly into his coat, his handsome features knit in an expression of deep revulsion. After a great deal of talk, it was decided that Lucy must see and approve the plot.

  “What about a coffin?” she asked. “Don’t I have to choose one?”

  “This is provided,” Massimo said curtly.

  So after shaking hands all round and agreeing that DV would be laid to rest the evening of the following day, Massimo, Lucy, and the grave digger walked out to the little cemetery that was to be the future home of the famous American writer. The sun was going down and it was much cooler; there was a gusty wet wind that made Lucy button her jacket as they walked along. The cemetery was a simple, pleasant spot at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by a concrete wall that rose toward the back because the ground wasn’t level. There were four cypress trees, one at each corner. The graves were marked with headstones or small urns; many had glass insets covering photos of the deceased, who smiled benignly, eternally, upon those who came to mourn. There were plastic flowers, some in vases, some just strewn over the graves. The plots were lined in concrete; they were, in fact, sunken concrete boxes filled with dirt. The old grave digger, who had never stopped talking from the moment he had first appeared, pointed from one grave to another, rattling on, presumably about the occupants. He stopped at one, the only one with fresh flowers on it, and after a few sentences fell suddenly quiet. “This is a young woman,” Massimo told Lucy, “who committed suicide a few months ago.”

  “How awful,” she said.

  The old man, who stood with his head slightly bowed, his dirt-stained hands clutching at each other over his heavy thighs, raised his eyes to hers and flashed a lewd toothless grin. Then he hurled a mass of language at Massimo. She detected the word straniera, and la signora. He’s talking about me, Lucy thought. “What did he say?” she asked.

  “It is difficult to understand this man,” Massimo replied. “He is very stupid and has not enough teeth.”

  DV’s plot was at the back, on the high ground. She didn’t particularly want to linger over it; it was like the others. Massimo seemed to sense her reluctance, for after a moment he interrupted the grave digger’s endless monologue and led her away. The old man followed them to the gate, then took up a shovel he had left there and turned back, still muttering, addressing the captive audience under the soil of his grim domain.

  The Roman and his American charge walked back down the road without speaking. Lucy was feeling low, cast down by the business at hand and fatigued from lack of sleep. She wanted a shower, a glass of wine, a plate of food—she didn’t care what—then a long sleep. She didn’t know what she would find at DV’s villa, where it had been arranged that she would stay, and she was anxious about being left there. When they got into the car, Massimo took out a sheet of directions and studied it silently.

  “Is the villa very
far?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Only a few minutes. The casa colonica is just beyond that. We are to pick up the keys at the owner’s, which is across the road from the villa.”

  This information arrived in her consciousness with a demoralizing though not unexpected thud, like the news that an incorrigible relative has been arrested again. “What’s a casa colonica?”

  “It is the house—how do you say?—the farmhouse where you will be staying.”

  “I thought I was staying in the villa?”

  “No, that is not what is indicated here. Your friend had rented the farmhouse, and I am to take you there.”

  “That’s odd,” she said. “He called it a villa.”

  “These people call everything a villa. They call a converted cow barn a villa. It is the agriturismo. It is disgusting.”

  “I see,” Lucy said, though she didn’t. “Well, it will be fine with me, if it has a hot shower.”

  Massimo folded his instructions carefully and put them in his inside pocket. “It is cooler here than in the city,” he said. “I will make sure these people have turned on the heat for you.”

  “Where will you stay?” she asked.

  “I will stay in Sansepolcro. I have a cousin there. I will come again tomorrow to take you to the town.”

  “Thank God,” she said gratefully, sinking back into the comfortable seat. “Thank God for you, Massimo.”

  He gave her a tight smile, then turned his attention to starting the car. Though it was not particularly cool, he pushed the heat up full blast as they whirled around the tiny piazza and up the hill to DV’s last official residence on earth.