The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro (6 page)

BOOK: The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro
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A foot-shuffle down the hall told me that someone had heard, and that bothered me more than anything.

 

The next day she was at breakfast as usual, looking composed, even refreshed; no sign of distress.

I said, “I am very sorry about last night.”

Just a slight flash of her eyebrows indicated she had heard me, but there was nothing else, and not a word.

I said, “I'm afraid I was a little drunk.”

For a moment I thought she was going to cry. Her skin wrinkled around her eyes, her mouth quivered, and she struggled with it, the effort showing on the thin pale skin of her face, and as she fought it her eyes glistened. Then the emotion passed, and though she did not say anything I knew she was angry—because of what I had tried to do, or because of my lame apology, I did not know, but I saw that afterward she turned to stone. Except for our chewing, breakfast was silent, and it was all so painful I finally crept away, feeling like the dog I was.

Haroun recovered that day. He looked brighter, he offered to run the errands, taking a taxi to the shops below in Mazzarò. He spent the day with the Gräfin and by afternoon he looked harassed and impatient. I began to surmise that in his absence he had been enjoying a dalliance with one of the boys on the staff, that he resented having to reappear for duty with the Gräfin. They spoke German that day. I was excluded, and it seemed to me that not I but Haroun was being given an ultimatum.

That night, exactly a week after I had arrived in Taormina, Haroun said, “The Gräfin is very unhappy. You must go.”

“I did my best,” I said.

He shook his head. He said, “No. I have failed.”

It amazed me that he did not offer me any blame. He reproached himself. He sucked on his cigarette and spat out the smoke, looking rueful, hardly taking any notice of me, and not mentioning the fact that he had been paying my hotel room and all my expenses for a week, enriching me.

“She does not think she is beautiful,” Haroun said.

That was not at all the impression I had. The Gräfin seemed impossibly vain about her beauty, and I knew from the casual way she moved her body and exposed herself that she was utterly unselfconscious, which was the ultimate sexuality: no matter how many clothes she wore, she was at heart a nudist.

“She is lovely,” I said.

“You think so?” He looked into my face as though testing it for truthfulness.

“Yes, I do.”

“She doesn't agree. She is not convinced.”

Haroun stared in silence at the stars and dropped his gaze to where they sparkled on the sea.

“A lovely face,” I said. “Like a Madonna.”

This was a bit excessive, but what did it matter? I was on my way out. Why not leave them smiling? But Haroun liked what I said, and nodded heavily, looking moved.

“If you truly think so, you must find a way of convincing her. I will give you some days. Otherwise you must go.”

4

That was my challenge: the strange task assigned by the Gray Dwarf to the Wanderer in the folktale, the young man on the parapet of the palace. The Countess was still in her tower, facing her looking glass—and in my version of this scene she had a mirrored glimpse of the young man on the balcony above her, as well as of her pretty face.

I had to succeed or else I would be banished. That was the narrative. But there was something beneath it. I had not been lying to Haroun in praising the Gräfin. I thought she was beautiful, I knew she was wealthy, she seemed like a sorceress, I desired her. I wanted badly to make love to this seemingly unattainable woman, who did nothing but insult me and reject my advances.

I did not want to think that I was in a trap. But a week in that great hotel, a week of luxury, had spoiled me—“corrupted” is too big a word; I was softened. I had become accustomed to the sweet life that, up to then, I had known only in Italian films. I was habituated to luxury, the easiest habit to acquire, like a taste for candy or for lying in a hammock, like being on a fine yacht and saying, “I don't want to get off—sail on!”

In this mood I had fantasies of inviting Fabiola, the Principessa, down to the palazzo and dazzling her with my new clothes (gift of the Gräfin) and my new friends, my vastly improved circumstances, my money. She would have been impressed, but not enough. She had a title but no money. She would have been pleased for me in her generous way, and then she would have begged me to tell her I loved her, implored me to utter the word. After that soft pitiful pleading, she would have raged at my selfishness, saying as she had said before, “This is meaningless. You will just leave me. I will be so sad!”

That cured me of wanting Fabiola to visit Taormina.

As for me, I was not ready to leave. I had begun to love waking to each hot day in the comfort of the palazzo; I had even begun to enjoy the challenge of the Gräfin, seeing myself as the youth being tested by the lovely Countess and her riddling adviser in the palace; I was enacting the struggle in the folk story. I was the young Wanderer in the woodcut, an evocative figure, black and pivotal, wearing a half-smile and looking jaunty, poised between success and failure.

I did not take her rejection personally. It was for me to solve the riddle, to find a way to make love to her. The oddest part was that I suspected that Fabiola was a virgin—and I could have had her merely by speaking the formula “I love you.” The Gräfin, I gathered, had been married twice, had had many lovers, she constantly alluded to intrigues and liaisons in far-off places—and I could get nowhere with her. But the Gräfin's obstinacy did not turn me off; it made me calculating and desirous.

Haroun, confused by my lack of progress, was by turns abusive and encouraging.

Abusive: “How can you take my money and do nothing? You are selfish, in love with yourself. You pretend to be one of the elite, but I know you to be a poor American student. Oh, yes, maybe intelligent and you will amount to something, or maybe you will be like this always—taking money to look pretty, and lying to people and misleading them.”

He went on in this vein but I just stared at him. He had a strong Iraqi accent overlaid by certain German mispronunciations. I found it hard to take any abuse seriously when it was spoken in such a heavy, unconvincing accent, since it all sounded faked or approximated.

“I could cut you off today and you would have to depart on a train traveling in the third-class carriage with all those dirty people, those stinking men and thieving boys, and you wouldn't think so much of yourself then!”

Stinking men and thieving boys were the object of his desire, and so this was a rather ambiguous threat.

I could bring you down,
he was saying. But he was wrong, for I had arrived in Taormina with nothing and it made no difference to me if I left the same way. I could not be reduced, for I came from nowhere. I was strengthened by that thought. Having nothing to lose, I felt indestructible.

Haroun was not always so abusive. He could be the opposite, praising, highly pleased.

On one of these occasions we were on the stage of the Teatro Greco, the dramatic outdoor theater, the ancient setting within sight of Etna and the sea. In the purest gold there are many russet shades, among them the pink of the rosiest flesh, which is also the golden pink of sunset flames. From the direction we were facing it would have been easy to mistake the sunset for an eruption of the volcano, and even for the heat of a woman's glowing body. Clapping his hands he said, “You say she is beautiful. I did not command you to say that, correct? You say her face is like a Madonna—your own word. I am happy! This is very positive. It means you believe it. I did not tell you what to say.”

I liked him in this encouraging mood, because he was so lively and joyous himself—inexplicable to me, but pleasant to hear someone so attached to his friend that he glowed when she was praised.

“You thought these thoughts yourself, from your own heart and brain. It is what I always hope—that people will make up their own minds and go forward.”

I thanked him for understanding me.

“But the Gräfin does not understand,” he said. “You are not so convincing to this wise woman.”

“I'll try again.”

He said, “People's lives are much the same. The rich envy the poor. The poor envy the rich. People with great riches are afraid of losing what they have. Famous people fear falling into obscurity. Beautiful women are fearful. Everyone in the world has the same fears.”

Was it the setting, this Greek theater, that inspired this speech? He was strutting on the cracked marble of the ancient stage and striking poses. What he said made no sense to me, and I was on the point of arguing with him when he spoke again.

“Of growing old and ugly. Of dying.”

I almost laughed at this, because I saw those fears as so distant for me here in Taormina, where I seemed just born and almost immortal. I wondered if he and the Gräfin had returned to Taormina to ease their fears.

The Gräfin was inert. Did she know that she was the subject of our strolls around the town, our whispered discussions among the ancient ruins of Taormina? But why should she care? She was above all this, she was powerful, she was resistant. Someone with little or no desire seemed very strong to me. It was hard to influence such a person. The Gräfin's rejection of me was a sign of her strength.

In the second week I saw this wooing of the Gräfin, this ritual courtship, as a battle of wills. I also believed that I was strong—at least wanted to believe it: Haroun had said what I felt deep in my heart. And for all their power, wealthy people always, I thought, had an inner weakness, which was their need to be wealthy, their fear of poverty. I had no such fear. What confused me was that I suspected them to be undeserving—lucky rather than accomplished. That luck had given them privileges, but left them with a fear of losing their luck. They were no better than me, but they were on top. I knew I was anyone's equal, even the Gräfin's. But I told myself that I lacked funds.

Even then, dazzled as I was, I felt resentful toward the people of power who had not created their own wealth. They were children of privilege. I consoled myself with the belief that privilege made them weak, and I had proof of it, for my short time in Taormina had weakened me.

The Gräfin was a countess by an accident of fate. She was someone's daughter, someone's lover, someone's ex-wife, just a lucky egg. She had done nothing in her life except be decorative. Her life was devoted to her appearance—being beautiful, nothing else. Yet what seemed shallow, her impossible vanity—her wish to be pretty, nothing else—attracted me. She was completely self-regarding, she existed to be looked at. She was utterly selfish; her narcissism made me desire her.

I wanted, in my passion for her, to discover her weakness and to awaken passion and desire in her. I feared that there might be none, that she was too powerful in other ways for these emotions. So far, I had failed to awaken even mild interest; so far, she had not asked me a single question—did not know who I was or where I came from.

I made no active attempt to woo her now. My one pass at her had been a humiliation for us both. But neither was I submissive. I continued to buy the German newspaper and the other trivial items from Mazzarò, I flunkied for her, watching her closely. I did not volunteer any information, did not allude to anything in my own life, nor did I ask her any questions. I imitated her; I put on a mask of indifference.

My coolness worked, or seemed to. I sometimes found her staring at me, silently quizzing me. But when I turned to meet her gaze she glanced away, pretending not to care.

Late one afternoon in the large crowded Piazzale Nove Aprile, some street urchins, Gypsy children perhaps, began pestering us, asking for money, tugging our clothes—the Gräfin hated to be touched. When I told them to go away, they began making obscene remarks, really vulgar ones, variations of “Go fuck your mother.” I took this to be commonplace obscenity, but then it struck me that they might be commenting on the difference in our ages, the Gräfin's and mine, for she was noticeably older. That angered me and I chased them away, kicking one of the boys so hard he shouted in pain and called out, saying that I had assaulted him.

“Di chi è la colpa?”
a shopkeeper jeered—So whose fault is that?

“Haroun never treats them that way,” the Gräfin said. “I think he's a bit afraid of them.”

That sounded like praise. We walked some more; still she was inscrutable behind her dark glasses.

“Or maybe he likes them too much.”

Recalling their obscenities, I said, “I hate them.”

She gasped in agreement, a kind of wicked thrill. “Yes.”

So that was a point in my favor, my harrying the ragged children. I earned more points not long after that. The Gräfin was confounded and angered by anything mechanical. She saw such objects as enemies, they made her fearful. Breakdowns, even the chance of one, horrified her. She was very timid in the real world of delays and reverses—things she had no control over, which produced anxiety and discomfort.

We had gone back to Bustano, the olive estate, one day. She said, “Harry says he cannot accompany me, so you must come”—one of her usual graceless invitations. As she had hired a driver, I sat next to him, the Gräfin having the entire back seat to herself. We traveled in silence and I missed Haroun now. I looked for anything familiar: the village of Randazzo, the signs of old earthquake damage, the Mussolini slogan.

At Bustano we were greeted by the owner and some servants. I was not invited into the villa, though the owner (yellow shirt, pale slacks, sunglasses), with gestures of helplessness and fatalism, indicated that if it had been up to him I would have been welcome. I trembled to think what he made of me, in my white slacks and white espadrilles, my striped jersey, my new blue yachting cap. She had bought me the cap on the day of the pestering children.

BOOK: The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro
11.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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