The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro Read online

  “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.

  2

  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 v
ulgarity.

  “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.

  “I am hungry,” she said to Haroun. “Will you call the boy?”

  This was also interesting, the fact that she spoke to him in English when I was present. When they were alone, I was sure they spoke German. The English was for my benefit—I didn’t speak a word of German. But why this unusual politeness, or at least deference, to me?

  Haroun snapped his fingers. The waiter appeared with two menus. Gräfin opened hers and studied it.

  Holding his menu open but looking at me, Haroun said, “Have you seen the olive groves?”

  I said no, feeling that it was expected of me, to give him a chance to describe them.

  “They are quite magnificent,” he said, as I had expected. “We are driving out tomorrow to look at one near Sperlinga. You know Sperlinga? No? Perhaps you would like to accompany us?”

  “Morning or afternoon?” I didn’t care one way or the other, but I did not want to seem tame.

  “It must be morning. Afternoons here are for the siesta,” he said.

  “I’d love to go with you.”

  “We leave at eight.”

  “I want the fish,” Gräfin said. “Grilled. Tell them no sauce. Small salad. No dressing.”

  She snapped her menu shut. So, in that way, I was informed that I was not a dinner guest. But once again I saw how, in the manner of trying to appear offhand, Haroun was manipulating the situation. Gräfin was indifferent, though, or at least made a show of indifference. She did not look up as I excused myself and left. My audience was over. I had been summoned, I had been dismissed.

  I walked through the upper town, from the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele down the Corso Umberto Primo, where most of the shops and bars were, the ones that catered to foreigners.

  Down an alleyway I found a bar where some older Sicilians sat and smoked, listening to a soccer match being loudly broadcast on a radio. It reminded me of a religious ritual, the way they were seated around the radio with its glowing dial. I sat near them, ordered a bottle of beer and a panino, and I stewed, resenting the fact that my little discussion had taken place at Haroun and Gräfin’s table, and that I had been sent away. My frugal meal was proof that I had very little money and because of that was at the beck and call of these people. So what, I told myself; I could leave at any time: just board the train at the foot of the hill and head east, where life was cheap and cheerful. And somewhere in Palermo, Fabiola was yearning for my love.

  Haroun was in the lobby the next day before eight. Gräfin was already in the car. These people were prompt. I imagined that their wealth would have made them more casual. Haroun greeted me and directed me to the front seat, where I would sit next to the driver. This made me feel like an employee, one of Gräfin's staff. But Haroun, too, seemed like an employee.

  We drove through Taormina and down the hill, took a right on the main road, and then another right after a short time, heading upward on a narrow road into the island.

  “Bustano,” Haroun said. Then he conversed with the driver in a language that was not Italian—and not any language I recognized.

  Haroun laughed in an explosive way, obviously delighted by something the driver had said.

  “He said it will take more than one hour,” Haroun said. “Because, he says, this is a macchina and not a flying carpet.”

  “What is that language?”

  “Arabic. He is originally from Tunisia.”

  “The Moro of the Palazzo d'Oro.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How do you know Arabic?”

  Gräfin said, “Harry knows everything. I am lost without this man.”

  “I can speak English. I can write English,” Haroun said. “I can write on a 'piss' of paper. I can write on a 'shit' of paper.” He made a child's impish face, tightening his cheeks to give himself dimples. He tapped his head. “Ho imparato Italiano in una settimana. Tutto qui in mio culo. ”

  “Now he is being silly.”

  “Where did you learn Arabic?”

  “Baghdad,” he said. “But we didn't speak it at home. We spoke English, of course.”

  “You're Iraqi?”

  He winced at my abrupt way of nailing him down, and rather defensively he said, “Chaldean. Very old faith. Nestorian. Even my name, you see. And my people...”

  “He is German,” Gräfin said, and patted his knee as though soothing a child. “He is now one of us. A wicked German.”

  Iraq then was an exotic country which had recently overthrown its king and massacred his whole family, but Baghdad a rich cosmopolitan city, colorful and busy, full of banks and socialites, not the bomb crater it is now.

  “Ask him anything.” Gräfm's hand still rested on Haroun's knee. She was looking out the window at a village we were passing, near Randazzo, on the mountain road, a cluster of cracked farmhouses, one with black lettering that had faded but was readable on the side, a pronouncement in Italian.

  I pointed to the lettering. “What does that say?”

  Without hesitating, Haroun said, “'Do not forget that my'—genitori is 'parents'—‘were farmers and peasants.' It was put there long ago.”

  “Who said it? Why is it there?”

  I had been through this in another village with Fabiola; she had sheepishly explained these old Sicilian slogans.

  “Mussolini said this. It is from the war.”

  “You see?” Gräfin said with a mother's pride, and for the first time showed an interest, turning to read the peeling slogan on the cracked stucco wall of the ancient farmhouse. She turned to me and said, “It is so charming how they leave the words there!”

  “Fascisti,” Haroun said.

  “Even fascisti can be sentimental,” Gräfin said.

  “What's the capital of Bali?” I asked Haroun, to change the subject.

  “Denpasar,” he said. He folded his arms and challenged me with a smile.

  I was thinking how, when fluent foreigners uttered the name of a known place, they left the lilt of their suppressed accent on it.

  “I sailed there once on my boat,” Gräfin said.

  “Your famous boat,” Haroun said.

  “My famous boat.”

  “But that’s a long way,” I said.

  “Not long. I flew to Singapore and joined the boat. We sailed to Surabaja. Then I went by road to Bali. I stayed some nights with a member of royalty at his palace. Djorkoda Agung— agung is prince. He lives in Ubud, very beautiful village of arts, and of course very dirty. The people dance for me and they make for me a”—she searched for a word, she mumbled it in German, Haroun supplied the translation—“yes, they make for me a cremation. Dancing. Music. Spicy food served on banana leafs. Like a festival. We sail to Singapore and I fly home. Not a long trip but a nice one. I love the dancing. Ketjak! The Monkey Dance!”

  That was the most she had said since the moment I met her. It was not exactly self-revelation, but it was something—something, though, that did not invite comment or further questions. It was a weird explanation, a sort of truncated traveler’s tale. She was
so wealthy she was not obliged to supply colorful detail. I wanted to ask her about the cremation—I wanted to joke about it: So they killed and burned someone in your honor?—but irony is lost on Germans.

  “No more questions, Haroun,” I said. “You know everything.”

  “Where is the olives?” Gräfin asked.

  We were passing a settlement signposted Nicosia.

  “Just ahead, beyond Sperlinga.” There was something anxious in Haroun’s helpfulness that suggested he was afraid of her. He said, “Bustano—that is not Italian. It is from Arabic. Bustan is 'garden.' Caltanissetta, near here, has a place Gibil Habib. From Arabic, Gebel Gabib, because it is a hill.”

  “But where is the olives?” Gräfin asked again, in the impatient and unreasonable tone of a child.

  The olives was what she called the place, but Bustano was not a village, it was an estate, outside the pretty town of Sperlinga—many acres, a whole valley of neat symmetrical rows of ancient olive trees, and at the end of a long driveway a magnificent villa, like a manor house, three stories of crusty stucco with a red tiled roof, and balconies, and an enormous portico under which we drove and parked.

  A man appeared—not the squat stout Sicilian farmer I was used to but a tall elegant-looking man in a soft yellow sweater and light-colored slacks and sunglasses. His dark skin was emphasized by his white hair, and there were wisps of it like wings above his ears. He greeted us, and though I spoke to him in Italian—and he deftly complimented me—Gräfin and Haroun spoke to him in French, to which he replied in fluent French. I smiled and nodded and stepped aside. I understood a little of what they said, but my study of Italian had driven the French I knew out of my head. I could hear what was being suggested. The Italian olive baron was urging us in French to come inside and look around and to relax.

  I said in Italian, “I need to walk a little after that long ride.”

  “Yes, you are welcome,” the man said in English, which disconcerted me. “Over there is a little pond, with ducks. And many flowers for you. Bellina.”