The (Other) You Page 10

  In the interior of the great church, in the still stony air, the Professor’s wife shivered. She was accustomed to churches on a far smaller scale—New England rural Protestant churches, the most elemental of wood-frame architecture. Here in the Basilica di Santo Clemente, whose pre-Christian foundation had been a ninth-century pagan temple allegedly dedicated to Hera, the scale was distorting, vertiginous. You were supposed to feel important, as if your soul mattered to God, or indeed as if you possessed a soul; but in such a vast space you felt nothing at all, like a frail bubble floating on a turbulent sea. And uncanny to the Professor’s wife, disorienting, to feel a compulsion to crane her neck, to stare high overhead at vividly colored stained-glass figures—human, angelic—like gigantic predatory creatures poised to swoop down upon the kneeling worshippers.

  In which direction, the wife wondered, were you supposed to pray? Or were you supposed to shut your eyes, and pray within?

  At a side altar at which a few small chubby wax candles had been lit was a primitive wooden cross of about five feet in height upon which the ghastly sculpted figure of Christ, near death, or indeed dead, was suspended by alarmingly realistic-looking spikes through his hands and feet. Red varnish shone like fresh blood. This was Jesus—the Christ in a transport of agony, before the triumph of His resurrection.

  “I don’t really enjoy crucifixions”—the wife complained in a lowered voice to her husband.

  The Professor laughed. There could be no other rejoinder to such a remark though with a black lace shawl draped over her hair, a veil of Catholic modesty, the wife might have passed for an authentic churchgoer.

  “I mean—suffering and death should be private. At least, that’s how I feel.”

  The Professor kissed the wife’s cheek. What other response, to so practical and female an observation?

  For five euros more, visitors could explore the Basilica’s cloister, which the Professor recalled as a serenely beautiful place with a grassy interior; but the serenity was sabotaged today by the loud voices of workmen repairing damages.

  “Oh, why must they talk so loudly!”—the wife lamented, pressing her hands over her ears.

  And so, they could not remain long. The Professor vowed to return by himself, to meditate in the cloister as he’d done years ago.

  It came to him now: he’d met Agustina in the cloister. He’d dared to take her hand, he’d lifted her hand and kissed the palm, which had made her squirm and giggle, like a child—indeed, he could see close up that Agustina was a child . . . But no. That had never happened.

  Of course, nothing remotely like that had ever happened. In the cloister he’d fantasized shamelessly of Dr. Albano’s daughter but Agustina had never met him there, or anywhere in Mairead.

  “Please! I can’t stand it here. It’s so noisy, those terrible men are laughing at us.”

  The workmen were not laughing at them, surely. Scarcely aware of them, an American couple, tourists. If the workmen glanced toward them, their eyes moved through them as if they were wraiths.

  Back again on the noisy street the Professor realized he’d forgotten to say a prayer in the cloister. The great Basilica rendered irrelevant matters of mere belief or disbelief. Thank you, God! Or—is it Jesus? A sensation of buoyancy filled him. Years ago as a young man on the threshold of his life he’d often come to the cloister with a book, to read in the still, sacred space all the more precious because it was not anything of his—he wasn’t Catholic, and he wasn’t Italian, he was but a visitor to this magical world, where even skepticism dissolved like wetted tissue.

  The Basilica had drained the couple of energy, even in its diminished state, badly they wanted to return to the Mairead Grand Palace to take a nap, as they would never have done at home in Ardmore, Pennsylvania; but the Professor would not hear of it, succumbing to such weakness at such a time of day as if he were an elderly man, as surely he was not. And so, the couple merely stopped for cappuccinos at a sidewalk café, so that the Professor could consult the Blue Guide another time. After some deliberation he devised a complicated “scenic” route to the University, that turned out not to be scenic at all but to involve crossing streets made treacherous by a continuous stream of vehicles of all sizes, from motorbikes to buses belching exhaust, and brought them to an open-air market at which only a few vendors’ stalls were set up, selling cheap-looking souvenirs, handicrafts, and wilting vegetables and flowers. Here, the Professor could not comprehend what was shouted cajolingly at him; if the language was Italian, it was an Italian dialect new and alien to his ears, as the individuals who spoke it were new and alien to his eyes, dark-olive-skinned persons with blunt, sensuous faces, seemingly not ethnic Italians.

  “Why on earth are we here?”—the wife asked, vexed.

  “Because the Blue Guide has brought us here. The market is one of the ‘essential’ points of interest.”

  The wife was staring at stacks of small cages inside which bright-feathered birds cheeped in continuous terror, and at larger cages in which dull-feathered chickens scarcely moved, resigned to their fate. There came a blood-chilling squeal—a pig? Piglet? The wife swallowed hard, shut her eyes and turned away. A smell of animal panic, pungent, excremental, made her sensitive nostrils pinch.

  “Ah!—this was once a place of execution,” the Professor said, squinting at the guidebook, “—all of this open square. ‘Preferred means of execution were hanging, drawing and quartering, decapitation’ . . .”

  The wife glanced down at the ground, alarmed. Cracked pavement, not blood-soaked earth. She was spared having to see.

  “How recent were executions in Mairead?” the wife asked, supposing the Professor would say Not for hundreds of years but instead the Professor said, reading from the Blue Guide: “Nineteen forty-three—winter—‘Fascist reprisals against the Mairead Resistance’—hanging, firing squad.” He paused, then continued: “‘The youngest executed were children of eleven, twelve . . .’”

  “Oh, stop! Were these Italians who did the killings, or Germans?”

  “Possibly—Germans. But maybe not . . .”

  “Italy turned against the Nazis, eventually—didn’t it?” The wife spoke hesitantly for she dreaded the Professor smiling at her with his superior knowledge. “The Italians were never really—like the Germans—a brutal and barbaric people—anti-Semites . . .”

  The Professor was distracted by something he’d discovered in the Blue Guide.

  “Damn! I see what we’ve done wrong. At the Via di Monti, back there, we should have turned left . . .”

  After another twenty minutes of walking (steeply uphill) they reached the stately medieval arch that marked the front entrance of the University of Mairead—only to discover that the main campus was closed to visitors following a bombardamento terroristico the previous week. “‘Terrorist bombing’! I had no idea . . .” The Professor was astonished. (Why had no one warned him? The airline with whom he’d booked tickets? The hotel? Why hadn’t he seen a news report?) Yet, clearly something terrible had happened: they could see a part-collapsed building, heaps of rubble, a devastated tree.

  The Professor’s wife pressed a tissue against her nose and mouth. Oh, what was that smell! Something dry, acidic—scorched hair? Burnt clothing, bones? Terrible.

  Seven persons had been killed in the bombing and many more wounded, the Professor learned from questioning a passer-by.

  And were the terrorists apprehended?—the Professor asked.

  And who were the terrorists?

  The young man, seemingly a university student, burdened with a heavy backpack, having grudgingly removed iPods from his ears, was not very forthcoming or friendly—unlike students the Professor had known as a Fulbright scholar.

  That is not for us to know at this time—the young man muttered. Almost rudely he pushed past the Professor in his eagerness to escape.

  “What did he say? Could you make it out?”

  “Yes. But—no. I’m not sure.”

  “Was he speaking
Italian?”

  “I think so—yes.”

  “You think so?”

  Since the Atlantic flight words seemed to be gliding by the Professor even when he tried to concentrate on them. Water rippling over his brain, paralyzing.

  “Maybe he thought you were a journalist. An American . . .”

  “I spoke Italian to him as an Italian would have spoken to him. Please let’s drop this subject.”

  The wife knew herself rebuked. Very well, then—she would say nothing more for the remainder of the afternoon. Let the Professor talk to himself which was what he most enjoyed.

  Still, the Professor’s hope was to visit the Museum of Antiquities.

  The major impediment was the blocked-off campus: when the Professor tried to make his way on alternative paths he soon became lost, in cul-de-sacs behind buildings. After forty minutes the couple was no closer to the Museum than they’d been at the start, so far as the Professor could judge.

  Why didn’t they return in the morning, the wife suggested, trying to remain patient. “You’re becoming overheated. It isn’t good for you to be excitable.”

  “My dear, I am not excitable. I am ‘excited’—in a perfectly appropriate way.”

  The Professor walked on ahead. The wife could follow him, or not—as she wished. He was very vexed with her.

  All this day the Professor had been feeling sentimental, soft at the core as an overripe melon. Stick him with a knife blade, he thought, his soft boneless interior would leak out like sticky fluid.

  Badly he wanted to return to the main reading room of the Museum—to see if some of the (women) librarians he remembered, who’d been so gracious to a young visiting American, were still there. Badly he wanted to return to his carrel in the interior of the library where he’d spent many enthralling hours reading and translating precious manuscripts as if delving into the mystery of his own soul.

  Of course, he wanted most badly to return to the Viale di Pignoli where Dr. Albano and his family lived, or had lived, in a dignified old brownstone facing a small park. He’d explained to his wife that he had lost contact with Dr. Albano but might, if he could summon up his courage, ring Dr. Albano’s doorbell. “The worst that could happen would be that the Albanos no longer live here.”

  “‘The worst’? No. I can think of ‘worst.’”

  “What do you mean, dear? Please don’t be inscrutable this morning, you know how much Mairead means to me.”

  The Professor spoke wistfully yet with an air of vexation. The wife relented at once: “I wasn’t being inscrutable. I meant only—‘the worst’ could be that the Albanos are home, and are very elderly and ill. And wouldn’t remember you. That would be the worst.”

  The Professor laughed, though what the wife said wasn’t funny. He had thought exactly the same thoughts more than once in the weeks preceding the trip.

  Of course the Professor knew it was improbable that Agustina would still be living in her father’s house after forty years—it would be likely a catastrophe, if she were.

  A middle-aged woman, the schoolgirl Agustina? Not possible!

  He could not imagine this. The slender waist, the small but distinct breasts, the exquisite face, dark-lashed evasive eyes . . . If he shut his eyes he saw, with a stab of excitement, the girl’s beautiful eyes staring at him.

  Dark eyes, yet exuding a tawny glow, in certain lights. In candlelight. At the dinner table.

  The Professor’s wife knew nothing of Agustina. The Professor rejoiced in all the secrets he’d managed to keep from the woman, most of them small, negligible, yet precious to him, like small coins in his pockets which, when he wished, he would sift through his fingers.

  Still, this was Italy. Northern Italy. Not far from the Swiss border. He’d been noticing very attractive women here in Mairead—middle-aged, even elderly. These were affluent women, well-groomed, well-mannered. Venturing on the street they wore stylish clothes, high-heeled shoes. Their eyes were protected from the bright sunlight by dark-tinted designer glasses that exuded an air of glamour. Agustina would have grown into one of these women, the Professor was sure.

  Women of other (ethnic) backgrounds did not seem to mature so attractively, the Professor thought. Catching his eye since he’d come to Mairead, to his displeasure, like bits of grit.

  Like the short squat individuals descending the stone steps of the Mairead Grand Palace the other day. The Professor had glimpsed them on the Promenade, and he was sure he’d seen them in the Basilica, fortunately at a distance. Where had these others come from? So many of them? Were they guest-workers? Refugees? Northern Africa? Syria? Though they appeared to be tourists, not workers. Though crudely dressed, with no taste, they did not wear work clothes but clothes of leisure. The Professor valued authentic Italian beauty very highly even when he wasn’t sure he could define it.

  And here was another jarring surprise: the Viale di Pignoli was no longer a beautiful avenue lined with pine trees; most of the stately old trees had been removed, and the once-dignified old houses had become shabby. The Professor recalled lush gardens and carefully tended lawns, but these too had vanished. The park had vanished. Graffiti defaced walls, lampposts. To his chagrin the Professor was not even sure which house belonged to the Albanos for the houses he saw exuded a dispiriting sameness: weatherworn brownstone facades, narrow latticed windows that emitted a grudging light, tiled roofs that looked as if they might leak.

  “I—I think this is their house. Here.”

  The Professor’s heart was beating absurdly. Oh, ridiculous! You are a grandfather. That part of your life is long over.

  “Well, go on, then—ring the bell. What are you waiting for?”

  The Professor’s wife was resigned to the Professor being disappointed and thought it wisest to get the disappointment over with so that they could hike to the next landmark designated as not to be missed in the damned guidebook.

  The Professor stood hesitantly before the door of the house. It was painted a dark, agate hue, which the Professor believed he remembered. Yet, he could not bring himself to ring the doorbell. As the wife waited patiently he stood in a kind of paralysis, beginning to sweat as if he’d devoured too much meat at midday.

  “Do you want me to ring it?”—for once, the wife spoke gently.

  “No. Of course not.”

  Boldly then, steeling himself, the Professor pressed the doorbell. It wasn’t clear that there was any sound within. In any case there was no response.

  Another time the Professor pressed the doorbell, and another—no response. Perspiration shone on his lined forehead. He was limp with relief.

  “Ah! Look.” The wife was peering through a rusted wrought-iron fence overgrown with ivy, beside the front walk. Here was a garden gone wild—a tumult of shrubs, grasses, vines. Once, Mrs. Albano had grown roses here, the Professor was sure; scattered amid the jungle of vegetation were crimson, yellow, white roses in ragged clusters. There were snake-like vines, that seemed almost to be writhing. In the lower branches of straggly trees were raven-like birds with iridescent, slate-colored feathers, acid-bright eyes, long, sharp beaks like ice picks. As the couple peered into the garden the guardian-birds made belligerent shrugging motions with their large wings and emitted hoarse cries of indignation, alarm.

  “Maybe this explains it: no one lives here any longer.”

  When the Professor did not reply the wife added, practicably: “If you go to the Museum tomorrow, you can ask about Dr. Albano. If he isn’t there, they can put you in touch with him. If—”

  If he’s alive. The wife fell silent, the Professor again made no reply.

  As the raven-like birds continued to scold out of the trees in the garden, the couple turned away. The Professor closed up the Blue Guide for now and shoved it into his pocket.

  Though he tried to keep up an air of lighthearted conversation with the wife, the Professor was feeling a sick sort of dread. For—what would he do, now? Had he not journeyed all the way to the medieval city of
Mairead to seek out Agustina? While acknowledging the utter absurdity of the quest he had to concede that he’d come these thousands of miles, he’d fantasized how many thousands of times in the past forty years, to catch a glimpse of the wraith-like face at a second-floor window of a house that turned out to be abandoned.

  4.

  “It’s hopelessly out-of-date. I wish you’d buy a new guidebook, and get rid of that damned thing.”

  “It is not out-of-date. No other guidebooks have so much scholarly information. And my notes are in this copy.”

  “Your notes! Can you even read that scribbling?”

  “Of course I can read this ‘scribbling.’ It’s crystal-clear to me.”

  The wife had noticed, her husband had begun to scrawl an indecipherable signature on checks, credit card receipts. Surely no one could read such a scrawl, that was hardly more than a defiant wavy line, though shopkeepers and waiters had no choice but to honor it.

  Next morning after breakfast the Professor and his wife set out another time for the Museum of Antiquities. The wife had insisted that the Professor consult a tourist map provided by the hotel, as well as his beloved Blue Guide, and as a consequence the couple found the Museum within a reasonable amount of time though, even with the hotel map, it was farther away than it should have been, in a part of the historic district the Professor didn’t recall.

  But then it turned out, to their surprise, that the landmark they were approaching wasn’t—yet—the Museum of Antiquities but the Royal Garden, which they’d intended to visit after the Museum. Somehow, the two had been reversed on both maps. The wife would have liked her husband to pretend that he’d meant to guide them to the Royal Garden first, and not the Museum of Antiquities, but the Professor merely laughed and conceded yes, he might have taken a wrong turn somewhere—“But it doesn’t matter, dear. The Royal Garden is one of the starred tourist sites.”