Collected Novels and Plays (37 page)

“Such as what, Lily? What do you want?”

She looked away. Did she have to want something? “I don’t know yet,” she said.

“I’m not butting in.” Larry wiped his brow. “The ring belongs to you. But why don’t you think it over?”

“She has, Larry.”

“I have, Daddy.”

“
Eccovi, Signori!
” said the driver, stopping the taxi. “Lovely day. Good luck.”

“They won’t let you practice your Italian,” Enid pouted.

“We’ll talk about the ring later,” said Larry firmly.

Inside, they made for the monument. It was barely visible behind
a breathing shroud of tourists, passengers of four CIT buses the Buchanans had remarked, pretending bravely not to, in the piazza.

“God damn it!” Larry hissed. “Don’t tell
me
these baboons know what they’re seeing!”

Lily hoped he would be forgiven. Her new straw hat sat squarely on her head. Alice had described to her the torments in store for bareheaded women.

When the crowd pivoted and marched away, the Buchanans moved forward to where a gray-haired couple remained in conversation with the English-speaking guide. From behind bars Moses stared furiously over their heads. The marble had an oily unwashed look. Horns grew from his brow. One huge hand clutched not only the tablets of the Law but a few thick coils of his unnaturally long beard.

“Moses was very wise,” said Enid. “That’s why his beard’s so long.”

Oddly enough, Moses’ beard was the subject of the tourists’ debate.

“I do
not
see it,” said the woman. “I’m not sure I
want
to see it.”

“There, below his lip, and a little to the left.” Her husband pointed. “That’s her head. About six inches on down, the waist begins, then the curve of the buttock. Right?” he appealed to the guide.

“Do I understand?” asked the latter, a civil young man. “You have seen a nude figure in the beard of Moses?”

“There’s her breast. There’s her knee. See her now? She’s partly wrapped up in the beard.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s crazy,” the woman told the guide, who forthwith, as if at last perceiving how to deal with this type of crank, broke into a smile of illumination.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Quite so. There in the beard.”

“See?” said the man.

“No, I do not see,” said his wife, putting on one-way-mirror dark glasses.

“Thank you, Sir,” continued the guide. “Wisdom and woman. I shall mention it next time. It is very interesting.”

When they left, Enid giggled: “Grandpa would have been amused by that, don’t you think?” Larry glowered. This oblique remark was one of the few Lily heard either make, throughout their stay in Rome, that could be taken to bear on her grandfather’s marriage. The omission didn’t bother her. Stranger things had been occupying her thoughts, much of that winter.

It had begun with Xenia’s telling Lily that her mother had been raised in the Roman Church. Since then, the child had developed a curious susceptibility to incense, to droned Latin and red flickerings. Alice furthermore—it was Alice who now and then exposed her to these novelties—had flatly stated that nobody was ever converted
from
the Church. An amazing suspicion then dawned on Lily; her mother
hadn’t
left the Church, but
chose, for reasons of her own, to either neglect or dissemble her faith. At once the little girl felt engaged in some dark communion with her mother, too strange and sweet ever to be hinted at. Strolling down a side aisle, Lily would be overcome by a guilty warmth, a dizziness nearly. The give-and-take shocked her most. The fonts of holy water, the poor boxes, old women in black waiting to be paid for the candle you lit, above all the confessionals—to what did they add up, if
not the weird notion of bringing out into the open what you felt; the notion, weirder yet, of confessing to
anyone
what you had done? That should be between you and God. But Alice disagreed and more than once, after vanishing into the carved recess with its whispering and perhaps the fold of a black skirt visible, had emerged smiling, rosary in hand. It had worked.

It worked in Rome on a scale for which even Alice couldn’t have prepared her. Lent had turned the city into a vast humming clay-colored baroque greenhouse for the conscience. In every church a pleasurable moaning from behind the little grilles told of sins sprouting like bulbs, soon to grow tall and fragrant for the Mother whose image, sometimes lofty and unapproachable, sometimes sadly smiling with hands outstretched, met Lily on all sides. She made now for a
freestanding statue.
Maria! Santa Vergine!
sighed the women pressing forward, black shawls slipping off their heads, to fondle her garment, kiss her hand. A sudden gap in the worshippers made Lily gasp. She had never seen
that
before. The Virgin wore a cluster of knives at her breast, but casually, like a big brooch. Her hand, moreover, had been entirely worn away by love. These glimpses both excited and alarmed Lily. She wanted to know whether
the women were to be punished for what they’d done.

Her alarm extended, as she toured the church, to include a number of paintings, large and small, draped with black veils. She didn’t care to think what had happened to them. Still, before she could check herself Lily had pictured a tiny monkey of an Italian child leaping up in a passion to plunge a knife into the canvas. Shrouded like corpses—or as she and her mother would be, tomorrow at the Pope’s—she counted a dozen such in this church
alone. No wonder the confessionals were full.

To tell a
priest
what you had done was easy. To tell your own mother—! Sick at heart, Lily swore, not for the first time, that she would do this before Easter.

Or if not—for she’d put off her confession so often as to have grown a bit cynical about it—if not, she would know what to buy with the money from the ring. A lovely present. A present to show her mother how she felt.

Lily had had, the past two days—they spent the first day being measured for suits and dresses; the second day, Sunday, shops were closed—her first concentrated vision of
how much
money could buy. Shopping in the States was a tame ritual, involving perhaps two shops in an afternoon; each purchase would be charged and sent. But in Rome Enid’s great bulb-shaped leather bag kept opening. The beautiful money, pink, gold, green, blue, unfolded
like blossoms, to be spent like perfume in one shop after another. All but the biggest items were carried off in triumph. People turned on the street to point out the rich Americans. Back at the hotel you could hardly sit down. Packages open or sealed contained: baby clothes for little Tanning, wardrobes for the twins; luncheon sets, dinner sets, breakfast-tray sets; leather boxes, pocketbooks, wallets;
Roman scarves; eighty meters of red damask for the ocean
room; ceramic roosters; two pairs of Venetian glass candlesticks in the shape of blackamoors, tubular, flecked with gold; ties and gloves and pullovers; compacts, two of silver, three of amber; a pile of fruit in bisque; dolls dressed as little Dutch girls, as Spanish dancers, as peasants from Sicily—where Michèle, the Buchanans’ gardener, had been born; dolls with carrots or peapods for heads; a grasshopper of colored felt, an octopus of the same; a guaranteed
Canaletto, on approval for a week; a pair of electrified baroque cupids; and six alabaster dishes, rims marked by alternating indentations for cigarettes and white doves bending, no doubt, to sip the ashes. Bulkier purchases—antique chests, chandeliers, a carpet, etc.—were being shipped home.

The end of a day’s shopping left Lily feverish, ecstatic. That first dinner at Alfredo’s had seemed a foretaste of Paradise. With lights switched off and special music playing, the mustachio’d old proprietor waltzed towards them, an omelet flaming blue in one hand, a solid-gold fork and spoon in the other. The surrounding diners, saintlike, their chins resting on white napkins, craned and cheered.

The second dinner, that night, ended in disappointment. “Why, all the people here are Americans!” complained Lily, late in the meal.

“I know, sweetie,” said her mother.

“But you made us promise to bring you back here, Lily,” her father reminded her. “Which we’re very happy to do. Your mother and I, by ourselves, prefer a more authentic atmosphere—you know, candlelight and perhaps just one singer strolling from table to table with a guitar, instead of these fancy bands.” He sipped his wine. The musicians, not hearing him, began to play. “But it’s a pleasant occasion all the same,
and if it helps teach our little girl the difference between average and top-notch, it won’t be wasted.”

“The food’s still delicious,” said Enid, because Lily often needed to have what her father said interpreted. “We just think the restaurant has grown the least bit commercial over the years.”

“That ring of Lily’s, for instance,” he went on, “may not have cost a
thousand dollars (though Francis could damn well have afforded it if it had). It may not even have cost ten dollars. The point is, it’s old and interesting and probably the only one of its kind in the whole world. Some things can’t be measured by everyday standards.”

“We mustn’t always think of the price,” put in Enid.

“Hear what your mother says? Now, if you’ve made up your mind to sell the ring, we won’t stop you. Bear in mind, though, once it’s gone you’ll never be able to replace it.” He paused significantly, as if talking about something quite different, a carefree childhood or a first love. “All
we
ask, your mother and I, is that you spend the money intelligently. It’s never too early to develop taste. Learn the
value of things. You might consider buying a few shares of a good, inexpensive stock. The money that gets thrown away in this family makes me see red.”

Lily didn’t need her mother to interpret that remark. The day Xenia delivered her head, bronze set on a base of black marble, their murmurs of delight and wonder hadn’t outlasted the closing of elevator doors upon the sculptress. Then, silence in the living room, already dense with objects. “I don’t like it,” her father said, “not one bit, do you, Enid?” “It’s
starker
than I expected
….” “It’s the face of a sly scheming child, not Lily at all. Look, you can’t even see where her hair begins. I wouldn’t put it past that woman to have done this on purpose, to get back at us.” “Get back at us for what, Larry?” “For not being taken in by her continental charm. For not paying her in advance for the head of your father that Francis commissioned. Never deal with artists, Lily. They’re all
spongers and ne’er-do-wells.” He paused, remembering, “But you
saw
the finished head!” “We did, didn’t we, sweetie? But it had been cast, and the light was bad. Besides, I told you, Francis was there. I don’t think we’d have noticed anything. Did you, my pearl?” “No,” said Lily. At such times, the way they kept appealing to her, Lily would feel like a hollow tree, one in which messages were left.
“Well,” her father summed it up, “that’s another five thousand dollars down the drain. It makes me good and mad, doesn’t it you? What’ll we say to your father? By God, he
ought to be told when he’s been taken for a sucker!” “He hasn’t been, Larry. Some people think very highly of Xenia’s work.” “Your mother’s always so sweet and open-minded, isn’t she, Lily?
Next to her, I’m the bull in the china shop.” “Goodness me!” They decided to write Grandpa that his gift went so well in their apartment, they wanted to keep it there rather than in the country. This wasn’t entirely a lie. The head “went” into the hall closet. Lily would unwrap it now and then to see whether she was growing to resemble it. That, Xenia once told her, was what great art made you do.

Ice tinkled in Enid’s glass. “Francis may see Lily without the ring,” she said.

“I could tell him I lost it,” suggested Lily.

“Tell him the truth,” said her father. “Francis doesn’t spare
our
feelings.”

“All the more reason to spare his.” Lily and her mother exchanged smiles. Poor Uncle Francis had to be protected.

“
Cameriere!
” Larry snapped his fingers. “
Aspettiamo dieci minuti per le nostre
rum omelets.”

“Here they come, Sir!” cried the waiter, and the lights went out and the music played. Gasps of wonder rose from the diners. “We should have ordered that,” somebody said enviously in the dark.

Lily felt duty-bound to clean her plate. She didn’t see the omelet again till nearly midnight, when Enid had her stick a toothbrush down her throat.

The next morning they went to the Vatican.

Soberly attired, gloved and veiled, they presented their invitation to one stately functionary after another. Each waved them—down a corridor, up a stair, through a packed antechamber—a degree nearer to His Holiness. The Pope was very nice, Enid had been saying in the taxi, to want to give them a Special Audience. “Oh well,” Larry had replied, “where would the Catholic Church be in Italy without American dollars to fight
Communism?” Lily understood her mother’s gentle smile. They
had speculated next upon the length of the interview, whether they wouldn’t be received in the Pope’s
den
, over a glass of unsanctified wine. Their high spirits, as the Buchanans left the taxi, made even the Swiss Guard smile.

They had reached the end of their quest. “You will please wait in this room,” said a handsome, grizzled man in morning clothes.

“I’m so thrilled I can’t stand it!” whispered Enid. “And to think we don’t even believe it!”

Again, Lily knew better.

Larry looked about. “Does everyone in here get the Special Audience?” he asked a passing official.

“That is correct.”

“Then what’s an ordinary audience?”

“In the first room you entered,” the man explained, “five hundred people are waiting for a regular audience.”

“Oh I see,” said Larry in a voice his father-in-law often used.

The Buchanans spent a half-hour studying the room—whose walls, Lily observed, were only painted to look like marble—and a group that might have illustrated one of her United Nations storybooks: little children, hand in hand, Swedish, Chinese, Liberian, every color and creed. They lined the room, sixty all told, no longer children, to be sure, nor—except for one sari and three tailored suits of tweed, worn with low heels—in native costume. The
range of feature and complexion made up for this. There were a Siamese nun and a Samoan priest, the latter weighted down with medals and rosaries. “Why is that?” Lily inquired.