The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro (2 page)

“Have you just come to Taormina?”

“I've been here awhile,” I said, being evasive. “In town doing some drawings and a little literary research. D. H. Lawrence lived up the road in the Via Fontana Vecchia in the 1920s.”

Ten minutes at Lawrence's house, looking for a water trough to sketch. I could not tell them the truth, or give anything away: the hard seats of third class, the long walk up the hill, the stink of cigarettes called Stop, were just too awful.

“His wife was German,” the woman said in a correcting tone. “Thomas Mann was also here.”

The statement, and her accent, told me she was German, but she said nothing else. The man, who was swarthy and yet fine-featured, with a thin face and a beaky nose, did the rest of the talking, praising my sketches and asking questions. I answered him untruthfully to put myself in a good light.

I had been wrong about their ages. A twenty-one-year-old knows nothing of time and cannot assign anyone an age—thirty-eight is old, forty is hopeless, fifty is ancient, and anyone older than that is invisible. Desirable and ugly are the only criteria. The German woman was not ugly, but in attempting to appear young she seemed faintly doll-like and trifled with.

Yet they were obviously rich, and the rich to me then were like the mythical El Dorado: a race of golden giants, powerful in every way, even physically superior, protected, able to buy anything, confident, speaking a special language and, from their towering position in their palaces, regarding only each other. It was painful for me to think about the couple in this way. I tried to forget how limited my choices were. And how, if I were to succeed in life, I would have to penetrate that palace and inhabit it—not lay siege to its fortifications but insinuate myself, creep in through a mouse hole, use the postern.

The woman seemed to be smiling to herself and presenting her profile to me, her chin slightly lifted on a lacy finger of her gloved hand.

“We were just talking about opera, what a shame it is that the Teatro Greco here has no production,” the man said.

This was a helpful cue. I had no material resources but I was well read, I spoke Italian, and in my determined self-educating mission I had tried to know as much as possible about opera.

I said, “I've just seen a new production of
Otello
in Urbino.”

“The common people love Mr. Green,” the woman said.

“Not Verdi's
Otello,”
I said.

This seemed to perplex them, which pleased and emboldened me.

“Rossini's
Otello.
They did the version with the happy ending.”

“French opera is more to my taste,” the man said.

“I wish Bizet had succeeded with
Salammbô
.”

“There is no
Salammbô
,” the woman said, a querulous tone of literal-minded contradiction pinching her face.

“He never finished it. Flaubert wouldn't let him.”

Was what I was saying true? Anyway they believed it. They were listening closely to my cleverness. Instead of dealing with Wagner or Verdi, whom they would have known well, I made myself seem intelligent by mentioning obscure works. We would take the others for granted—though I knew very little, just the records, not the performances. Removing the great works from the discussion deflected their scrutiny. I was young but rich in ruses.

“I get tickets for Glyndebourne every year.”

Saying this, the woman revealed that the man was neither husband nor lover. Otherwise she would have said “we.” The man was a flunky or a friend.

“We have very good opera where I come from. In Boston. And at Tanglewood, in Lenox.”

“I have heard so,” the man said.

This was to impress them with the fact that they were dealing with a bright and cultivated person.

“You're right—it's a shame they don't use the Greek theater here for operas.”

“Well, they do of course,” the man said.

Fearing that I had revealed my ignorance, I risked another generalization and said, “I mean, this summer,” and the man nodded, and I knew I was flying blind.

“The seats are so hard,” the woman said. “I refuse to sit on marble stone. I want a soft chair in a balcony!”

Spoiled bitch, you're supposed to think, but I admired her for her forthrightness and for being uncompromising. No Greek ruins for me, forget the ancient stone benches of Siracusa and Taormina.

We talked some more—trivialities about the heat, the blinding brightness of noon, the wildflowers, the emptiness, the absence of visitors.

“It is why I come,” the woman said.

Again that “I” told me she was in charge and the man a mere accessory.

“Have you had lunch?” the man said with a gesture that took in all the plates of food. “You are welcome to help yourself.”

I was ravenous yet I said, “No, thank you.” I was too proud to accept, and anyway, by my seeming restrained and polite they would be reassured and would respect me more.

“You will forgive us?” the man said, and picked at some salad. The woman, still with her gloves on, and using a silver tool, pierced olives from a dish of antipasto and nibbled them.

“Such a pleasure to talk with you,” I said, and excused myself. I went back to my table, my empty coffee cup, and opened my sketchbook again and indulged myself in shading a sketch I had done.

The couple conferred some more. Then the woman got up slowly and, in a stately way, for her white dress was long and lovely, she left the terrace, shimmering in the dazzling light. The man paid the check—the Italian business, the saucer, the folded bill, the back and forth, and more talk with the waiter. When the waiter left, saucer of money in hand, the man came to my table.

He looked at me intently and then smiled in a familiar way, as though he knew me well.

“I have arranged for you to stay here,” he said. “I was once a student”—I had started a polite protest—“no, no. It will be pleasant to have you as a neighbor. We will talk.”

He had read me perfectly.

So, within an hour of happening past the Palazzo d'Oro, I was installed in a room with a view of the sea, seated on my own balcony, in a monogrammed bathrobe, eating a chicken sandwich, clinking the ice in my Campari and soda, the breeze on my face. I had been transformed: magic.

“This is my guest,” the man had said—I still did not know his name—and he asked for my passport, which he glanced at. “Mr. Mariner requires a double room with a view of
il vulcano.
Put it on my bill.”

A moment later he gave me his name but in an offhand way: “You can call me Harry”—as though the name was fictitious; and it was. His name was Haroun.

When I tried to thank him he put a fingertip to his lips and then wagged the finger sternly. There was no mistaking this gesture. He made this admonishing finger seem a very serious instrument, if not a weapon.

“This can be our secret,” he said. “Not a word to the Gräfin.”

That gave me pause, yet I had no choice but to agree, for I had accepted the free room. To ease my conscience, I told myself that if I wished I could leave at any time, as impulsively as I had come; could skip out and be gone, as I had left Fabiola, the Principessa. Even so, I felt that in acquiring the room I had been triumphant, it was a windfall, and there was a hint of mystery about Haroun that I liked, a conspiratorial tone that was comic and pleasing. And Gräfin? I supposed Gräfin was the woman.

“Not a word to anyone,” I said.

“The Gräfin is not my Gräfin, as you probably think, but she is a very dear friend. I have known her for years—we have been absolutely everywhere together.”

This was in my room—he had followed me there with the room boy—not a
Moro,
then, but a square-shouldered Sicilian boy, and Haroun was sort of eyeing the boy as he spoke to me, sizing him up as the boy bent and stretched, putting my bag on a small table and adjusting the fastenings of the shutters.

“Look at the skin these people have!”

He pinched the boy's cheek and arm, like someone choosing cloth for a suit. The boy, preoccupied with the shutters, smirked and allowed it.

“Never touch their women,” Haroun said. “That is the iron rule in Sicily. They will kill you. But their boys—look what skin!”

Now it seemed to me that the boy knew he was being admired, and he stepped away from Haroun and said, “
Bacio la mano
”—I kiss your hand—and somewhat giddy with this byplay, Haroun snatched the boy's hand and pressed some folded money into it.

“Ciao, bello,”
Haroun said to the boy, smiling as he watched him leave my room and shut the door.

Alone with Haroun I felt more uncomfortable than I had when the boy was there—the compromising sense that it was not my room, that in accepting it I had accepted this small, dark, smiling man who I felt was about to importune me. But from what he said next I realized that his smile meant he was remembering something with pleasure. Sometimes people smile to show you they are remembering something happy in their past.

“The Gräfin is such a dear friend,” he said. “And we have our secrets too.”

Something in the way he spoke made me think the woman was giving him money.

“She is a fantastic person,” he said. “Wonderful. Generous.”

Then I was sure of it.

“And she is very sensitive.” The way he stood in the room, lingering and looking around, conveyed the impression that the room was his—and of course it was. “All her noble qualities have given her a great soul and a fantastic capacity for friendship. I think somehow you guessed that about her.”

I had guessed that she was a rich, difficult woman who was not interested in anyone but herself, yet I smiled at Haroun and agreed that she was a sensitive person with a great soul. In this room I felt I had to agree, but agreeing was easy—this was small talk, or so I thought.

“I can see that you understand things quickly,” he said. “I admire you Americans, just showing up in a strange place with your passport in your pocket and a little valise. Fantastic.”

He saw everything. He made me shy.

“Probably you want to rest,” he said. “We usually have a drink on the terrace at seven. This is a lovely place. I think you will enjoy it.
Ciao
for now.”

Was that an invitation? I didn't know, but it did seem to me that I was part of a larger arrangement that at the moment I could only guess at. After he left I ordered the sandwich and the Campari and soda and tried not to ponder what the larger arrangement was. I told myself: I can leave tomorrow, just as I came, on the train to Messina. Being hard up in Italy didn't frighten me—people were friendly, strangers could be hospitable, I spoke Italian, I was personable—well, this hotel room was proof of that.

I guessed that something was expected of me. I did not know what, but something.

Because I had not been specifically invited, I did not appear on the terrace until nearly eight o'clock. The woman Haroun called Gräfin was holding a glass of wine and looking at the lights on the distant sea—fishing boats—and Haroun raised his hand in an effortless beckoning gesture that had a definite meaning: the languid summons of a person who is used to being obeyed. The woman herself, her head turned to the bobbing lights, seemed uninterested in me.

“Look, Gräfin, our friend the American.”

I was convinced now that he was a man of calculation.
This can be our secret
and
We usually have a drink on the terrace at seven.
I was glad I saw this conspiratorial gleam in his eye, for it made me wary enough to listen for meanings and look for motives.

I joined them. Gräfin—a name I first heard as “Griffin”—still showed no interest in me. She sipped her wine, she might have been a little drunk—the way drunks can seem to concentrate hard when they are just tipsy and slow, with a glazed furrow-browed stare. I studied her smooth cheeks. She was German, he was not. She looked like a ruined and resurrected queen—someone who had suffered an illness that had left a mark on her beauty, not disfiguring it but somehow fixing it, aging it.

We talked. Haroun asked me questions which, I felt sure, were intended to impress Gräfin, or any listener—sort of interviewed me in a friendly appreciative way, to show me at my best, to establish that I had been an art teacher at the selective school inside the ducal palace at Urbino, that I was traveling alone through Sicily, that I was never without my sketchbook, which was a visual diary of my trip, that I was knowledgeable about artists and books—“Raphael was born in Urbino, he says.”

“I know that,” Gräfin said. She always spoke with a lifted chin, into the distance, never faced the listener, never faced the speaker for that matter. “I prefer Tiziano.”

“Would that be Titian?”

She didn't answer. “I have one, like so, not large.” But her slender measuring hands made it seem large. “However, yes, it is a Tiziano.”

“You bought it yourself?”

“It has been in my family.”

“And your Dürer,” Haroun said.

“Many Dürer,” Gräfin said.

“I'd hate to think what those would have cost,” I said, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them for their vulgarity.

“Not much,” Gräfin said. She was addressing a large glazed salver hooked to the brick wall of the terrace. “Very little,
in
fact. Just pennies.”

“How is that possible?”

“We bought them from the artist.”

I saw Albrecht Dürer putting some dark tarnished pfennigs into a leather coin purse and touching his forelock in gratitude as he handed over a sheaf of etchings to one of Gräfin's big patronizing ancestors.

Gräfin had a brusque uninterested way of speaking—but saying something like
We bought them from the artist
was a put-down she relished. She never asked questions. She seemed impossible, spoiled, egotistical, yet strong; in a word, she was the embodiment of my notion of wealth. I did not dislike her, I was fascinated by her pale skin and soft flesh in this sunny place, by her full breasts and pinched doll's face and bleached hair and plump disapproving lips, even by her posture—always facing away from me. I saw her as incurious and something of a challenge.