The Sonnet Lover (29 page)

I sign the credit card slip and leave a generous tip in cash. When I’m folding my receipt I notice the name of the restaurant printed on the top: Il Galeotto. Of course. It’s the Italian name for the Arthurian knight who encouraged the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere. In
The Inferno
Francesca calls the very book she and Paolo read from a “Galeotto”—the go-between that prompted their unlawful love. Bruno told me that the restaurant took its name because it was a place where Jewish refugees could go to make contact with antifascists, and then, after the war, it became a place where lovers met. The owners didn’t have to advertise the name, relying on tradition, word of mouth, and, most of all, discretion, to provide their clientele.

As we walk back down the hall of those souls who lived without praise or blame, I try to feel that having just maneuvered Mara into making her husband confess what he saw on the balcony, I’ve avoided at least one sort of purgatory.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

W
HEN WE COME OUT OF
I
L
G
ALEOTTO
I
LOSE MY SENSE OF DIRECTION ONCE
again, and instead of heading toward one of the major streets where we stand a better chance of getting a cab, we find ourselves wandering through the streets just south of the Duomo. I realize how close we are to the Duomo when we turn onto the Via dello Studio, so named because it housed the workshop for the artisans who worked on the great church.

“I’m sorry, Mara, I don’t see any cabs, but we can get a bus on the other side of the Duomo. It will take us right up to the villa gates.”

To my surprise, Mara agrees. “At least I can tell Gene I took the bus,” she says. “He’s always complaining I take too many taxis in New York.” Poor Mara. I feel like I’m sending her into the lion’s den. If Mara really does confront Gene, he’s unlikely to take the news that Mara wants to break off their deal with Balthasar better because she saved on cab fare.

“We just have to buy a ticket in a
tabaccheria,
” I tell her. “I think I saw one on the last block.”

Mara nods but I see that her attention has drifted to a paper goods store—one of the few shops that haven’t closed for the
riposo.
“I just want to get a few of those darling little paper boxes to bring home for gifts for the maid and Ned’s tutors and all. Why don’t you meet me back here?”

“Okay,” I tell her, amazed that she still has the will to shop. Maybe, though, it’s her way of calming herself in preparation for her showdown with Gene. I only hope she hasn’t changed her mind about talking to Gene. I go back to the
tabaccheria
on the Borgo degli Albizi and buy a book of tickets. After what I’ve spent on clothes today, I should take the bus for the rest of the summer.

When I come out of the
tabaccheria
I notice the art store directly across the way. It’s the same store where the art students at La Civetta bought their supplies back when I was a student. Figuring that Mara’s probably not done with her shopping yet, I wander in, drawn by the shelves of powdered tints that line the back wall. It’s as if all the colors in the Uffizi—the golden hair of Botticelli’s Venus, the limpid blue mantles of Fra Lippo Lippi’s translucent madonnas, the rich red velvet cloaks of Raphael’s noblemen—had filtered through the air and settled into the glass jars. I remember being sorry when I came in here that I wasn’t a painter.

But Bruno said I was lucky. The art students often went home overwhelmed by the centuries of genius crammed into this small city on the Arno. The stacks of drawing pads they bought here (embossed with the name of the art shop and a drawing of the Via dello Studio) would remain blank. Not that their time in Florence would be wasted, Bruno said when I protested that he was being too cynical; they would become teachers or curators or maybe just well-educated tourists bringing their own children to visit their favorite paintings at the Uffizi. Only a handful would absorb the lessons of the masters, take what they needed, discard the rest, and continue painting. Of course, it could happen to writers, too, Bruno told me. The literary critics even had a name for it: anxiety of influence.

I leave the art store, but instead of going back to the paper store, I turn back down the street to the little church of Santa Margherita and go inside. It’s a plain medieval church, a single rectangular room with little of architectural interest, its only real claim to fame being that Beatrice Portinari, Dante’s beloved, is buried here and that it was here that Dante first glimpsed her.

I sit down in the last pew in back in a dark corner, grateful for the cool gray stone, the dimness, and the silence. I remember coming here one day after Bruno had told me about the anxiety of influence and thinking, yes, I could feel it here where Dante first met Beatrice. I could
hear
it: the whispering of the poets from Ovid to Petrarch to Shakespeare uncoiling down the narrow streets along the rough-scored paving stones like a mist rising to envelope me. I imagined I could see the high-water marks, like the plaques commemorating Florence’s floods, but instead of feeling overwhelmed I had thought that if Shakespeare could take what he wanted (the influence of the sonnet tradition, Ovid’s stories, and Renaissance Italian sources), why couldn’t I?

I wonder whether that’s what Robin thought when he found Ginevra de Laura’s poems—that he could appropriate the legacy of the past and so link his voice to the chorus that I heard in these streets when I was his age. Little did he know that taking the poems would lead to his death.

Although I’m not particularly religious, I bow my head and try to pray for Robin. I tell him that I’m sorry I didn’t listen to him the night of the film show and that I’m sorry I wasn’t able to rescue him as he asked me to. I promise that I’ll do everything I can to find out the truth of what happened to him and make it known—publicly, but most of all, to his father. And then I whisper out loud, because it feels like these heavy walls are the best audience for the admission, “I’m sorry, Robin.”

I’m startled to hear his name echo in the church. I look up and see that two people, a man and a woman, have entered the church and are wandering along the wall farthest from where I’m sitting, looking at a display of paintings that depict the meeting of Dante and Beatrice. It takes me only another second to realize that the woman is Claudia Brunelli and the man is Mark Abrams.

I immediately duck my head again, leaning my forehead against the back of the next pew, and shield my face behind clasped hands so that I can listen to their conversation unobserved.

“I don’t know why we couldn’t have met at the villa,” Mark says. “Do you think Cyril’s got it bugged?”

“Of course not,” Claudia answers, “but La Civetta was built for spying. There are hidden niches covered by tapestries and stairs behind shelves and false cabinets leading to secret rooms. Cyril knows them all.”

“And you wouldn’t want Cyril to hear that you’re willing to settle out of court?” Mark asks.

“I think it best we don’t involve Cyril in this at all.”

“That’s probably wise. I imagine you wouldn’t want your husband knowing either. He doesn’t know anything about this, does he?”

“Don’t worry about Bruno—he’s been punishing himself for that fling he had with Rose Asher for twenty years now. He’s really become quite boring. I could never have gotten him to see the wisdom of my plan. No, I sent Orlando to New York, so of course I feel partially responsible—that’s why I thought we should talk. After all, the boy’s dead. We can’t bring him back. I see no reason why anyone else should be made to suffer,
capisce
?”

“I understand completely. I’m sure we can come to an agreement, but why not over a glass of wine? I find these gloomy old churches depressing.”

I hear their footsteps pass down the aisle into the noise of the street. Still I keep my head pressed against the back of the wooden pew in front of me. There’s a slight depression in the wood, worn smooth by generations of supplicants, that feels oddly comforting—like a hand pressed to my forehead. I’m reluctant to leave it, but then I remember Mara in the paper shop. She must think I’ve abandoned her.

I leave the church and head back toward the Duomo. When I get to the paper store I see with relief that Mara’s just paying for her purchases. As I come into the shop, the salesgirl is handing two heavy shopping bags across the counter. “There you are,” Mara says when she sees me. “I was just wondering how I was going to carry all this.”

Since I already have two bags from our earlier shopping expedition, I’m not sure how we’re going to manage, either. When we emerge onto the Via dello Studio I feel as if we’re taking up half the narrow street with our large rustling bags fanning out around us like hoopskirts. I look nervously up and down the street for Mark and Claudia, afraid they’ll see us. Why I should be afraid to be spotted by them, when they’re the ones who seem to be bartering truth for money, I’m not sure, but I’m relieved when we get around the Duomo and see the bus waiting that we’re getting out of the city without running into them. Mark is unlikely to take the bus since he got his pocket picked the last time he was in Italy. And besides, he and Claudia are in some cafe. I imagine that they’re working out how much Claudia is willing to reduce her lawsuit in exchange for Mark’s silence about what he saw on the balcony. With any luck he should be able to get her to drop the suit entirely to ensure her son’s safety. This must be what Gene referred to as Mark’s “own reasons” for not accusing Orlando of killing Robin.

The only La Civetta residents I see when we get on the bus are a couple of students sitting up front. I steer Mara toward the back to the last remaining seats just as the bus lurches into motion. While Mara lists for me her purchases—this oval box covered in blue and gold Florentine swirls for Esmerelda, the housekeeper, and this ledger bound in hand-marbled paper for Ned’s math tutor—I replay again the dialogue I overheard in the church, searching for some other explanation than the one I have arrived at. Was Mark really cold-blooded enough to sell his collusion for getting La Civetta free and clear of a lawsuit? I knew that the lawsuit was a thorn in his side—and how much he wanted Hudson to acquire the villa—but I never would have dreamed that he’d stoop to making such a callous exchange.

A group of students gets on at the Piazza San Marco, clutching bags from the Accademia’s gift shop. They crowd close to us, falling and giggling as the bus fills up. Instead of looking annoyed, Mara asks them what they bought in the shops, and soon they’re pulling out T-shirts emblazoned with naked Davids and boxer shorts silkscreened with selective parts of David’s anatomy. Mara shrieks at the boxer shorts and makes me promise I’ll take her to the Accademia so she can buy a pair for Gene. It occurs to me that for all Mara’s complaining about Gene, she manages to work him into the conversation as often as possible, like a teenager writing the name of her most recent crush over and over again on her notebook covers. It makes me wonder whether she’ll really ask Gene to reveal what they saw on the balcony. Why should they? Gene and Mara will get rich on Robin’s film; Mark will get his villa without legal entanglements. Everybody is cleaning up on Robin’s death. Including me. I’ve been paid a very nice fee to work on his script and look for those lost poems.

I suddenly feel as if I might be sick.

“I just remembered something I have to do,” I tell Mara, getting up. “Some research at a museum near here. I’m sure these nice girls will help you with your bags.”

The nice girls eagerly agree to help Mara with her bags and even offer to take mine back to the villa as well. The bus has started up, but I pull the stop cord and it comes to a screeching halt. Before Mara can object, I’ve squeezed my way out into the Piazza San Marco, where I lean against one of the columns in the square until the nausea passes. All around me tourists stream past, heading toward the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David. I think longingly of the quiet of Santa Margherita, but it seems far away now. I remember, though, that just down the street from the Accademia is the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, a less popular tourist destination, and, I think, peeling myself away from the support of the column, I can do some actual research there. I can find out whether there are any
pietre dure
floors like the one at La Civetta. Perhaps there’s even a record of who laid the floors and when, since the museum is also a center for restoration.

I know even as I locate the museum and buy an admission ticket that I’m trying to take my mind off what I’ve just learned, but still I’m absurdly grateful for the coolness of the museum, the effect, I think, of all the marble and precious stones that line the walls and cases. I’m grateful, too—almost to the point of tears—for how beautiful it all is.

I’ve seen examples of
pietre dure
in the Uffizi, but I’ve never been surrounded by so many beautiful pieces: tables and vases crafted of multicolored precious stones—marble, agate, jasper, heliotrope, lapis lazuli, and chalcedony carved into flowers and birds and butterflies. In the courtyard stand great chunks of stones—the raw materials collected and hoarded by the Medicis. There’s something audacious about the whole enterprise of
pietre dure
—mining the earth for precious stones to fill the artists’ palette instead of paint.

A guard walks through the courtyard announcing that the museum is closing in ten minutes. I make a more scientific search then, instead of letting myself be dazzled by the colors. So far nothing resembles the rose-petal floors at La Civetta at all. The patterns here are all symmetrical and ordered, nothing like the free-flowing cascade of rose petals. I’m just about to give up when I find, in a corner behind a block of Carrara marble, a fragment of white marble floor with what looks like a scattering of rose petals across its surface. It’s hard to tell, though, because the stone is cracked and covered by a fine layer of pine needles from a nearby tree. I kneel to brush away the needles.