The Conversion Page 9

  Carla, speaking more slowly for my benefit, explains that half asleep, with hardly a second thought, she grabbed a butcher knife and went running outside. Apparently the man had hit his head badly on the windshield and was sitting in his van, bleeding and dazed by the collision. Carla rushed and threw open the driver’s door. “He’s not such a big man,” she tells me. “I stood in front of him, waving the knife. He was too wounded to try to drive away. The signora”—Daniela, she means—“called the carabinieri, and then she came and tied his hands. Then they showed up and took him.”

  I ask if this had happened around three A.M., and Carla nods and says it did. “I think I heard the yelling. I was actually awake.”

  “When you’ve been sleeping so much? Then it’s a miracle,” she snorts. Slapping her palms together as though she were dusting them of filth, she says, “Such a beautiful statue. Now he’s lying on the ground. His head is next to his body. His hands and feet have all broken off. What a shame! I’ve known him all my life, ever since I was a little girl and living up the road.”

  “It’s going to be difficult to have him repaired,” Marina adds. “The statue is old enough to fall under the authority of the local museum. They will insist on overseeing every step. Such a restoration could take years.”

  She points out that most of the larger homes in Italy are potential targets for burglars, even those residences with elaborate alarm systems, “Which, as you may or may not know, the villa has. However, the villa itself has never been broken into. Just its dependences.”

  She goes on to say that the villa houses few objects that have more monetary rather than sentimental value. “For example, I inherited a Tiepolo. It’s in the study off the library. You haven’t even seen it yet, I don’t think. Not one of his greater works. I seriously doubt the ordinary thief would even recognize it. But I have it insured. What I truly love, however, are the old books in my father’s library—I don’t think anybody would ever dream of stealing them. They are very large and heavy and probably would not be so easily resold. Up until recently I’ve never really worried about anybody coming into the villa at night. Because I have my dogs.” She pats the large black-and-white mutt, Primo, who in turn nuzzles her affectionately. “They would certainly know if somebody was trying to break in before the motion sensors would.”

  I say that I’ve been wondering if, in light of the rumor that people wanted to harm Stefano for his political views, she isn’t concerned about somebody trying to break into the villa.

  She shrugs. “Of course I am. If only my friend in Intelligence could give more definite information. I called him this morning—after we discovered the break-in—and now he says the informant who told him that Stefano might be a target is not quite so certain of his information as he was a week ago. Because these people get on the Internet and do their chatter, and the chatter seems to shift like the wind. My friend is now speaking to some other informants. In the meantime, what else can we really do to protect ourselves? We do have some protection, however. A few years ago I and several other villa owners in the area hired a company made up of ex–military men who patrol the neighborhood in unmarked cars. Nevertheless, somebody with bad intentions doesn’t even have to break in the villa. They can likely pull up in the driveway and shoot out the windows.”

  “God forbid, not at night,” Carla points out. “We lock all the gates at night.”

  “But we don’t lock them during the evening weddings,” Marina reminds her.

  Carla weighs in to say that never in all the years of Marina’s family owning the villa, even when the Nazis occupied it, did anyone shoot into the house, much less break into it.

  “A long history means absolutely nothing,” Marina tells her. “All it takes is one weapon and a religious fanatic holding it, and poof! A new chapter is written. I suppose one good thing is that Stefano’s bed is in an alcove away from the windows; you’d need to throw a bomb in order to kill him.” Although Marina says this with matter-of-fact resignation, I can now see worry furrowing her forehead.

  Remembering the amorous couple who had disregarded the DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door, I ask about the conduct of wedding guests who might wander where they shouldn’t during a party and possibly do harm.

  “Now, this could happen, but these days usually because there is some political figure or another who has been invited, all the wedding parties have gotten in the habit of hiring bodyguards who check the names of guests off lists and patrol the party. I must say, however, that in ten years of weddings I’ve never had a single incident. And not one thing stolen.

  “Anyway, enough of this discussion, I will need you to come with me to the carabinieri.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if you recognize anything about this thief.” This takes me by surprise, and I obviously look bewildered. “Because of what happened in Paris,” Marina adds.

  “But I told you they were wearing masks and gloves.”

  “Well, then perhaps something else about this man might set him apart and spark your memory.”

  We are interrupted. “We need to try to find out if there is a link between what happened to you in Paris and this break-in,” says a masculine voice, at once tremulous while managing also to be distinct and even authoritative.

  I turn and there is Stefano, in the same blue dressing gown I spied him in previously. His eyes are rheumy yet shrewd, his face looks patrician: long and gaunt and hoary with what appears to be several days’ growth of a snow-white beard. He stands perhaps twenty-five feet away from us in the main library, which unfolds beyond a doorway.

  “But why would there be?” I ask him. “I’m in a totally different place now.”

  “Some things are difficult to explain … to a foreigner. And this is a unique situation,” Stefano goes on. “Because so much is still speculation. I just hope that you will oblige us with your help.”

  Rhetorical formality, practiced among certain elderly Europeans, is clearly meant to discourage any further discussion. I can detect the noble influence of Milanese in Stefano’s vowels, in his distinct pronunciation. The Milanese, after all, pride themselves on their organization and their rationality. I suddenly remember overhearing Marina discussing my sleeping for so many hours shortly after my arrival at the villa nearly two weeks ago. This is the same voice that told her that sleeping a lot after any ordeal made perfect sense.

  Without another word Stefano retreats to his room and momentary silence follows his cameo appearance. Finally Carla says, “Dio Santo!”

  Marina now explains that besides herself and Carla, I am the first individual Stefano has addressed in person for longer than they can remember. Indeed, during the last ten years she has frequently hosted dinner parties for people Stefano knows and admires, all of whom he’s refused to see.

  When I ask how Stefano communicates with his editors at the Corriere, Marina explains that he never sees them, but rather speaks to them on the phone and corresponds by e-mail. “He may seem Old World to you, but he was actually one of the first people I know who used e-mail,” Marina tells me.

  “Makes sense,” I say. “The perfect mode of communication for a recluse. Or a misanthrope.”

  “He’s not a misanthrope,” Marina corrects me gently. “He’s just a solitary, reflective man who is terribly shy. Part of it is a constant battle with depression for which he refuses all medication.”

  “I thought as much,” I say in English. “Because he looks kind of hangdog.”

  “Hangdog?” Marina repeats, and the very American expression sounds farcical in the mouth of an Italian. Laughing, I try to define the idiom as best as I can. “Now, that is a good one,” she remarks, and then turns momentarily philosophical. “You know, Russell, none of my Anglo friends, even writers I know, ever bother to teach me the good idioms in English or in American. But you, since you care about language, you must do so.”

  I promise Marina that I will teach her every familiar and obscure English and American idiom I can
think of if only she’ll attempt to correct my Italian—which she never bothers to do. I’ve already caught myself making mistakes repeatedly and she neither seems to notice nor care.

  “Of course I notice, Russell. I notice every mistake you make, obviously. But I find the bêtises you make charming.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be charming. I want to be correct. I want to get better. It’s not a one-way street.”

  “Yes, sir. Va bene,” Marina says.

  Italian is my second language, but I miss many of its nuances. I feel that it takes decades of living in a foreign country to become absolutely certain of what common phrases and expressions imply, to recognize definitive meaning. This is something that Ed and I often spoke about. For even though his French sounded perfect to my ear, he complained about it, about missing subtleties at dinner parties and in general discourse with highly educated people. Sometimes he described the experience of speaking to several foreigners at once as “grasping.”

  Marina turns to Carla. “And so Stefano speaks to Russell. What do you make of this?”

  “He likes his story. He tells me so,” Carla says.

  “You think it’s out of respect, then? Interesting,” Marina says.

  “Wait a minute,” I say in English, and then force myself to switch back to Italian. “My story?”

  Marina smiles. “He read your novella. We both did, actually.”

  “But … how did you get a copy?”

  “The library in Ferrara sent it. It arrived while you were sleeping.”

  I’d told Marina that in light of my ancestry, the city of Ferrara had ordered a copy of my novella for its library. Assuming that my work had not been to her liking, I refrain from soliciting her opinion. Carla, however, is quite happy to act as Stefano’s proxy. “He likes it. He was not expecting to. But he says that—”

  “Do you see how easily he speaks to Carla?” Marina interrupts, jealous or perhaps guarding Stefano’s opinion of my work being delivered to me secondhand.

  Carla says defensively, “It makes sense, doesn’t it? If I am the one to bring him meals, to straighten his room, to do his laundry.” She bustles away to the kitchen.

  Looking after her, Marina smiles dreamily. “The great intellectual and the uneducated, wise housekeeper. Have you read Un Coeur Simple by Flaubert?”

  “Just thinking of that, actually,” I tell her.

  “Stefano is deeply touched by her devotion to him. It goes way beyond her paid responsibilities. They adore each other. She takes care of him like a dutiful child takes care of an ailing father. But it’s more than that. I know that she’s a bit in love with him, which is fine with me. Carla’s husband died a few years before Stefano came to live with me. They’ve always gotten on extraordinarily well. I, on the other hand, just go and visit him and talk of literature and politics and the dogs and then spend the night in my own room …” She hesitates a moment before revealing with a bit of discomfort. “Our relationship has changed a great deal over the years. Now they are almost closer than he and I are.”

  This bolsters my hunch that Marina and Stefano’s sex life is at a lull. Not only hangdog, he also seems quite frail. A less-than-satisfying sex life might even explain why Marina has a blooming, poised, sensual air about her.

  “So, would you or would you not like to know what I thought of your work?” Marina asks me finally, with an air of impatience.

  “Do I dare?”

  “Oh, stop. It’s good, don’t worry.” She laces her hands together in front of her chest, a somewhat sanctimonious gesture. “I think that the writing is, at times, strong. You’ve written well about the death of that child. Writing about death, that is your good suit. When you write about love”—she hesitates—“it’s not so very interesting.”

  I’m rattled by her candid assessment and try to assure myself that it’s just one person’s opinion. Then again, my confidence is not exactly in tact. I’d hoped that my novella, published by a small literary journal, would attract some attention. Unfortunately, there was not a single review. Friends of mine who were readers admired my little book, and although I heard some compliments, nobody raved about it, certainly. Several people tried to remind me that one writes because one has to, not to be admired. Although I understood the wisdom in this time-worn adage, I reasoned that there needed to be some acknowledgment of several years of work, that one couldn’t just release a book into a void of indifference. This was when I began to doubt my dedication, my conviction, not to mention my talent. It was hard not to assume that because the work was completely ignored that it had no merit.

  Ed, who’d managed to read the novella before we met, claimed to admire the writing. But later on he told me quite pointedly that he felt that I had yet to find my real subject matter. I asked him: If writing about a harrowing event in my life wasn’t my true subject matter, then what was? He shook his head and shrugged and wouldn’t pursue the conversation any further. This only helped to deepen my worry that I just didn’t have it.

  Marina grabs hold of both my arms. “What I want to say is that you must carry on, because there is insight there and intelligence. Your best work will come when you’re feeling more confident. If I hadn’t liked what I read, I would have just sent it back to Ferrara without saying anything. The fact I speak of it means something.”

  “I appreciate your making the effort to read it.”

  “Oh, stop it. I wanted to, of course.” She takes a step backward and looks at me appraisingly. “Look, Russell, we all want our work to be loved unconditionally. Just as we want to be loved, just as we want our children to be loved. And our dogs, for that matter.”

  “And when it’s not?”

  “There’s always the next book.”

  “I don’t know if the next book is ever going to happen.”

  “It must happen!”

  “Can we just go to the carabinieri now?” I say in exasperation.

  Marina gives up. “Certainly we can go.”

  We wedge ourselves into Marina’s tiny Renault and start down the long driveway and through the tall entry gates, then take a narrow road that follows the perimeter of a stone wall contouring the property line. We cross a small stream on a metal bridge wide enough for only one car and begin looping through backstreets, passing suburban-looking tracts of homes and apartments built since the Second World War that resemble the faux Mediterranean housing one finds in more arid regions of the United States. Still feeling a bit deflated following our brief discussion of the novella, I speak little, and Marina wisely decides to avoid pressing me into conversation.

  We approach a railroad crossing that is momentarily barricaded to traffic and wait until a local train from Florence lumbers past on its way to Pisa. Teenaged passengers are hanging out the windows, grinning like monkeys, smoking cigarettes, which are now forbidden onboard. I’ve ridden these trains all over Tuscany and even now can conjure up their tang of cigarettes and rank body odor and motor fumes.

  We are finally heading toward the city’s high brick walls, which are forty feet high and more than three hundred years old. There are walls in the interior that date back to the time of the Romans, including the remnants of a small amphitheater that was once used for competitions and spectacles. Wide green lawns surround these battlements, and there are five or six portals all the way around that allow foot traffic and cars with permits to enter and leave the city. We don’t venture inside the city, but rather join the throng of snarling traffic that keeps encircling ramparts that protect a core of sandalwood-colored buildings ranging in age from two hundred to eleven hundred years old.

  Honking cars follow within inches of one another, motor scooters desperately weaving in and out. Most Italians seem to drive with inexplicable urgency. This is ironic in that they also seem to have written the manual on how to relax and be leisurely—so this automotive madness is at once schizophrenic and inscrutable. And it’s not just the men who drive insanely. I’ve seen ladies leaning heavily on their horns
, making the obscene two-fingered gesture for cuckold and then going on to execute perilous maneuvers. Down in the Maremma in the southern part of Tuscany, I once saw a woman who had to be at least eighty years old pass a cluster of five slower-moving cars on a two-lane straightaway. Driving in the middle of the pack, I watched her whiz past and neatly tuck herself back on the proper side of the road, barely avoiding a head-on collision with an enormous truck. Nobody this ancient relic passed honked at her. Everybody seemed to take her momentary madness in stride.

  Marina, by contrast, is a more vigilant driver who suffers the constant indignity of having other cars honking and cutting in front of her. She registers displeasure but doesn’t seem to care about being a slowpoke. She’ll live longer with this attitude, I decide.

  We finally pull up to a modern building of white stone and glass windows unadorned with the characteristic Tuscan shutters. Milling in and out of the entrance are men dressed in red-and-navy uniforms with sashes and trousers that are more militarily stylized and form-fitting than those worn by their American policemen counterparts. Several carabinieri seem to recognize Marina and say hello. At first I can’t understand why she is so readily identifiable. Could it actually be because she is an award-winning writer? After all, she did win the Strega Prize, a dark-horse favorite who beat out the great Alberto Moravia, an upset victory that was broadcast on Italian national television. But I will soon learn there is a more pertinent reason: The local head of the carabinieri was her schoolmate at the liceo, and has remained a close friend.

  She turns to me. “You know the difference between carabinieri and polizia, don’t you?”

  “The carabinieri are national police, aren’t they?”