Juggling the Stars (7 page)

He went to his bedroom, pulled down an old suitcase from off the wardrobe and dug out a Michelin guide from the bric-à-brac inside. 

VICENZA
. Principal Sites (visit, I to
1 1/2
 hours): Piazza dei Signori - like St Mark's Square in Venice, this is an open meeting place for all… No, nothing there. Bissara Tower - this occupies one entire side of the ...No, no accurate description. The Basilica then? Too crowded by the sound of it. Minor Sites. Yes, here was what he was after. The Church of the Holy Crown - This magnificent edifice was constructed in the mid-to-late thirteenth century in honour of the Holy Crown of Thorns donated by St Louis, King of France. Two signed paintings are to be admired within: a
Baptism of Christ
by Giovanni Bellini (5th altar on the left), and an
Admiration of the Magi
by Paolo Veronese …

Morris tried to picture the church. A string of altars up the left-hand side with candles burning here and there in the gloom, probably a little machine at the fifth altar where you could slip in fifty lire to illuminate Bellini's
Baptism
and hear a description of the thing's history in two hundred foreign languages. There would be a little group there most of the time, but hardly a stampede.

FIVE MILLION LIRE
- No, make it six, may as well get enough to survive the summer at least. In style. Especially if he was supposed to give one away, six
MILLION LIRE IN THE
CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROWN, VICENZA, ON JUNE I2TH. THE MONEY MUST BE IN BILLS OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND IN A REGULAR ENVELOPE. GO TO THE FOURTH ALTAR ON THE LEFT. SIT ON THE NEAREST CHAIR WITH HEAD BOWED AND TAPE THE ENVELOPE UNDER THE CHAIR WITH SIMPLE SELLO-TAPE. NO TRICKS OR MISTAKES OR YOUR MARRIAGE IS FINISHED.

Morris could see the scene perfectly and was delighted. It was pretty well foolproof, damn it. Cartuccio would put the stuff there on the twelfth and he himself would pop in the following day to pick it up. If Cartuccio didn't oblige, okay, then at least he got a look at the paintings by Bellini and the Veronese. Which had to be better than the old waste-bin-at-the-bus terminus trick.

Morris went over the letter, rewriting it on the back of another gas bill and changing a few details. It was important to sound more threatening and a bit crazy, he thought. If you weren't crazy, nobody would believe you'd ever really do anything. Begin something like,
EGREGIO SIGNOR
CARTUCCIO
, YOU STINK, YOU KNOW THAT, STINK, YOU AND ALL YOUR FILTHY RICH LEATHERGOODS BOYS WITH YOUR COPIES OF
PENTHOUSE
AND A SLUT IN EVERY TOWN. REMEMBER ME?

He checked up a few words in the dictionary and a couple of points in his grammar book to make sure he had the Italian just so and then copied out the final thing in an uneven, disturbed looking hand, making the low quality Biro smear sticky blotches all over the place.

When he had finished and popped the thing into an envelope, he felt so hugely entertained (he'd never mail it anyway) that he started another one directly, and this time straight onto letter paper.

Gentile Signora Trevisan
, he used his own handwriting now, at its most sloping and lyrical, occasionally wiping the Biro on his handkerchief. Beside his left hand he kept Massimina's letter with its long sob sentences like, ‘Oh Morris, if only we could arrange to meet somewhere, if only I had your phone number, I miss you so -‘ and then the cries of desperation - 'Mamma's saying I must do nothing but study because I'm so behind at school and I have no time for silly crushes on older men, but Morris, truly, I do love you and …' 

It was awfully overblown, Morris thought. But that was the Italian style (don't think a single word in English was the secret). And at least it saved him having to come up with any less conventional expressions of emotion. The following morning then outside the post office in Verona, Morris tossed a coin to decide whether to send the letters. Heads yes, tails no. Both times the coin came down tails. He tossed it again and still tails. The hell with it. Morris mailed the letters anyway. They could do no harm.

‘But it does seem amazing to me they managed to drag themselves up to the second floor on just that bare wistaria.'

Morris was speaking to Gregorio between lessons. It was a chance meeting in a café that spread its tables out onto the stylish esplanade of Piazza Bra; and Gregorio said yes, the police thought it must have been a teenager, or even a young child, because whoever it was hadn't broken a single branch near the top. And then it would explain his taking something so basically valueless.

‘Good job they didn't spot the little silver Neptune though, the one on the mantelpiece, you know. My father would have gone crazy. It's worth a fortune.'

A gesture of the hand, as if brushing away a fly from his face, hid Morris's wince. He was teaching Chapter Four of
Simply English
this week, which was all about where people keep things (‘in the kitchen, second cupboard on the right, top shelf, behind the sugar'), and just for fun, to add some spice to the thing, he made a point of asking people if they had any sculptures in the house and where they kept them. ‘In the lounge. A Renaissance piece with Jupiter as a bull carrying off Europa,' ‘And what's it made of?' (Chapter Three, materials, legitimate revision.) ‘Of silver.' Incredible how ingenuous people could be, Maria Grazia said her grandfather had picked the thing up in a junk shop and later discovered it was worth a lot of money, Morris would be going into arrears on his rent, he calculated, around the end of June.

He looked out over his wine across the square at the gently milling promenade of shoppers. It was precisely this aspect of Italy that kept him here really; the
passeggiata
, the stylishly flaunted wealth, a sense of repose he enjoyed in simply watching beauty all around him - a liquid clear sunlight across the square, sparkling the fountains, baking the ancient unblinking façades - and these people who had inherited so much, the stones, the sunshine, the style - all laughing and floating through these golden pedestrian streets.

But how to become a part of it? Morris, who had never been a part of anything, who doubted if such things were possible? (Every man is an island …) Yet the desire was achingly, shamefully strong. Precisely the strength of desire, Morris reflected, if experience was anything to go by, confirmed the unattainability of the object desired.

Gregorio, meanwhile, was discussing his summertime plans. He was going to stay at the family villa in Sardinia and recover from all the studying he'd been doing before facing university. If he'd passed his exams that is.

They sat sipping wine under a torch of a sun.

‘And you?'

‘Oh, no plans as yet. Depends on work of course.'

‘Not going on one of your long travels to the ends of the earth?' Gregorio smiled softly, rather effeminately, Morris thought. And it occurred to him that Gregorio did have rather a curious way of looking at one. Too intense. As if you were an object of interest. Which was perhaps why he liked the boy in a way. One felt flattered.

‘I was thinking of going to Turkey with some others. Like to come?' Invite to be invited. There was an idea.

‘Love to,' Gregorio said. ‘If only my damn parents would let me. They'd never give me enough money for the trip.' Again the smile.

'There are problems though. (Carefully does it.) I haven't decided a hundred per cent myself. These people are going in a dormobile and I'm afraid the company isn't so hot.'

A long, glass-draining pause, and then, there it was:

‘Would you like to come with us, then? There's plenty of room. For a few weeks at least. My parents won't get there till August, but I'm setting off any day now. Saturday probably. We could have quite a time.'

Morris held his breath. It was like having a creature walk into a trap before you'd barely set it. How many invitations had he had in his life? You could count them on the fingers of one hand.

'If I could make it, I'd love to see Sardinia. It depends on work though, you know. I've had a couple of offers for interpreting at conferences.'

‘Suit yourself, but the swimming's excellent there. Plus there's always plenty of company, not to mention a boat or two to play with.'

What could be better? And having managed not to jump at it right from the very start, Morris was just going to accept quite definitely, and rather prematurely really, because the lad could easily go and cancel on him the next day and then he would look a complete fool - just about to accept, when all at once there was a voice calling out his name across the square. Morris's name.

“Morrees! Eccoti qua! Che meraviglioso!'
Oh Morri, I have to speak to you. ‘ The girl was in tears, you couldn't say whether of joy or pain. 'I saw your letter, Morrees!'

Morris looked at her. Massimina was in a complete mess. Red in the freckled face, make-up all over the place, hair tousled, body apparently quite shapeless in a running outfit of all things. And out of breath to boot - nostrils flaring and eyes puffy. Rather horrible.

Just when he might have settled things with Gregorio too! Morris didn't stand up.

‘Morrees, thank God I found you, thank God, if you knew, if you only knew what…' She stopped, unable to go on and burst into tears. Gregorio stood, embarrassed, but curious too, eyes flickering from the girl to Morris. His long delicate fingers moved inside his shirt for his wallet.

‘No, look. I'll pick up the bill,' Morris told him quickly. ‘And I'll give you a call as soon as possible about Sardinia, okay?'

Gregorio turned to where Massimina stood there panting, and was obviously waiting to be introduced, but Morris didn't oblige. Introduce friends and they end up going off on their own together. To talk about you behind your back.

‘Are you sure it's okay?' Gregorio asked. 'Yes, I'll get it,' and he winked at the boy with just the right kind of ambiguity.

‘I'll leave you to it then,' Gregorio grinned, nodding at the weeping girl, and he had obviously decided to find the situation amusing. His slim figure swayed off across the square in white bermudas and neon-blue T-shirt.

Massimina sat down and had found a handkerchief. Her tracksuit was brilliant red with white flashes down the arms. Her black hair, fallen forward, stretched down as far as the table. Sympathy was in order. (This was the girl he'd asked to marry him.) Morris put out a hand and took the girl's wrist gently.

'Tell me about it. Come on. Cheer up now, everybody is looking.' When the waiter passed he ordered two martinis, which would just about break him.

He looked over Massimina's body, but there was no sign of a bag or purse.

‘Come on now, tell me.'

So bit by bit, sniffling her martini and pushing the back of now one wrist, now the other, into her red eyes, she told. Everything had gone wrong at home, just everything and again everything. Yes? Morris tapped his feet on the marble flagstones under the table. The martini was making him feel extremely comfortable and rather distant, as if he were at the other end of the square.

Grandma was ill, she said, that was the first thing, dying most probably with her angina, and all the others were being so horrid about it saying it was probably better if she went now, if she was going to be so demanding and helpless all the time. Then she, Massimina, had failed all her end-of-term exams, everything, completely, which meant she would have to study all summer to retake them in September, and it just wasn't fair, it wasn't, nor even sensible, because there was no point in her studying, because she just wasn't that sort.

‘No,' Morris said.

Anyway, then she had discovered his letter, which Mamma must have been hiding from her for days, and so now she
knew
he loved her and she was more sure than anything in the world that she loved him and her mother was just being horrible saying the things she did about him. Paola had sent her running to get Grandma's pills in the middle of the night from Mamma's handbag and she'd found the letter by accident. So after lunch she'd put on her tracksuit and said she was just going for a run and then she'd run all the way into town to find him, because she wasn't going home any more.

Morris watched the coloured dresses shifting in the steadily slanting light across the square. If the mother didn't want Massimina to see the letter, why hadn't she simply destroyed it? A far more sensible line.

‘So, what are you going to do?'

'I'm not going back, that's all. Not to spend all summer studying for exams, and with Mamma not allowing me to see anybody. I wasn't made to do exams.'

In about five minutes she would change her mind, Morris thought. After all, she had never even slept in a different bed from her mother. He waited, watching as she dabbed the tears away from her round, faintly freckled face. The prettiness of the camellia coloured skin was coming back now. Extraordinarily smooth skin when you compared it, for example, with Gregorio's. Or any boy's over fifteen. And that was something Morris always looked for in girls and that never failed to fascinate him when he found it. Simply as an extraordinary fact, that skin could be so smooth, life seem so fresh.