The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro Read online

  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.

  “The cap now, the yacht later,” she had said, and what she intended as humor sounded like mockery to me.

  On the way back to Taormina, at dusk, nowhere near any village, on a mountain road beyond Troina, the car stalled at a stop sign—just faltered, chugged and coughed to a stop, like a death from black lung.

  “This is impossible!” The Gräfin was angry. She repeated the sentence, sounding uncertain. She said it again, sounding fearful.

  The driver fuddled with the key—the ignition key!—and stamped on the gas and hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. He knew absolutely nothing. He was a villager, he had grown up among animals, not machines. He treated the car as though it was an ox dawdling in its yoke, or a willful shivering dray horse. His Sicilian instinct was to whip and punch the car.

  I told the Gräfin this, hoping to impress her, but she was too fearful to listen.

  The car had faltered before this. When we had set out from Taormina it had been slow in starting up, and sometimes died while idling. I suspected a weak battery, perhaps a bad connection on the terminal. The engine was good enough. The car was an Alfa-Romeo TI.

  “What is your name?”

  “Fulvio, sir.”

  “Open the hood, Fulvio.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Gräfin said, “What do you know about these things?”

  “It's a good car, the Alfa TI. You know what TI stands for?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Tritolo incluso. Bomb included. Tritolo is TNT.”

  That was the joke in Palermo that year, where the Mafiosi were blowing each other up in touring cars like this. The Gräfin did not find this the least bit funny. In fact, she was annoyed by it.

  “What can you possibly do?” she said, a sort of belittling challenge.

  I said, “It's almost dark. We're not going anywhere. The only other living things here are goats.” I could hear their clinking bells. “What do you think I should do?”

  This little speech, so theatrical in its rhetoric and unnecessary detail, served to make her more afraid, which was my intention. But fear also made her nervously bossy, and she began to bully Fulvio in German-accented Italian.

  “C’era d’aspettarsela,” he said, meaning, We should have expected this.

  I said to the Gräfin, “He doesn't seem to care very much.”

  “We must go now to the d'Oro,” she said. “I have had so much to drink. Ich muss mal. I must pass water.”

  The idea of relieving herself anywhere except in her suite at the palazzo being out of the question made me smile.

  “I have pain here. Ich muss pinkeln,” she said, touching herself unambiguously, and I stopped smiling. “Maybe we need benzina.”

  “We've got benzina.” I looked under the hood in the last of the daylight. Although the Alfa was fairly new, the engine was greasy and looked uncared-for. The battery appeared serviceable yet the terminals were gummed up with that bluey-green mold, as lovely and delicate as coral froth, that accumulates on copper wires. I could see that the clamps were loose and sticky with the same froth. This bad connection could have accounted for the faltering start. I easily twisted one terminal and lifted it off, and I guessed that it was overlaid with scum, a sort of metallic spittle.

  Flicking the wire onto the terminal produced a strong audible spark. It might be just this simple, I thought. I had dealt with enough cheap old cars to reach this conclusion. A more expensive car would have baffled me, but this was Sicily, and although this was an Alfa-Romeo it held the same battery as a Fiat or an old Ford.

  The Gräfin got out, and from her stamping and hand-wringing I could tell that she was bursting for a pee—or a pinkel, as she kept calling it in a little girl’s voice. She berated the driver. I took pleasure in showing her the large greasy engine, of which she knew nothing.

  I made an elaborate business of pretending to fuss and fix the engine, tweaking wires, testing wing nuts, tapping the caps on the spark plugs, all the while hoping it was just the battery. Fulvio stood just behind me, sighing, muttering “Mannaggiai morti tui!” —Damn your dead ancestors!

  With a broken knife blade I found in a toolbox in the trunk—Fulvio seemed surprised there was a toolbox at all—I scraped the terminals clean, shaving the lead to rid it of scum. I did the same to the clamps.

  Fulvio looked hopeful, though it was now fully dark, the goat bells clanking in the deep gully beside the road, the hooves scrabbling on the stony hillside.

  The Gräfin said, “What shall we do? It’s all his fault.” She turned to Fulvio and said, “Cretino! Can’t you learn how to fix the car?”

  “I am a driver, not a mechanic,” Fulvio said, and made a gesture with his hand and his fingers
that can only have meant: This is irrelevant.

  “You could try—you could learn,” the Gräfin said.

  With another rapid hand gesture, Fulvio said, “If you are born round, you cannot die square.”

  “This guy is useless,” I said, laughing at his Sicilian folk wisdom.

  “This guy is useless,” she repeated, using my words approvingly. But she was still twitching, needing urgently to pee, clutching her sunglasses as though to ease her need.

  “Don't worry. I’ll get you back there. You’ll be fine, Gräfin.”

  For the first time, I used her title. She looked at me with a kind of promise, a kind of pleading.

  She was now a small girl. I was her father. I scraped away at the terminal for a while longer. Then I tightened the nuts on the clamp—just fuss and delay, for at last I was in control.

  “Get out,” I said to Fulvio, a little louder than I should have, but I wanted the Gräfin to hear.

  I ostentatiously took the ignition key and sat in the driver’s seat. Seeing the Gräfin beating her feet beside the car, I said, “Sit here,” and indicated the passenger seat. Getting in awkwardly, made fragile by her fullness, she looked more than ever like a little girl.

  I turned the key, pumped the gas, got the engine to chug, and then it roared.

  “Ai!” The Gräfin clapped. “Hurry.”

  “Get in the back seat, Fulvio,” I said.

  So we drove back to Taormina sitting side by side, the Gräfin and I, Fulvio muttering “Mannaggia” in the back seat.

  The Gräfin said, “I can hold it. Ich muss dringend pinkeln. I need to pass water but I like the feeling. The pressure makes a nice feeling. Hee-hee!”

  She was five or six again, a pinkel on her mind, with her daddy in the car on the road heading home, but I was still thinking, What?

  “I don’t want to make an accident!”

  We were going up the steep hairpin curves of the Via Pirandello to the town. She had never seemed so frail and small and helpless, so lost in the world. Gratitude did not come naturally to her, yet I could sense something like an admission of her dependency in her respectful way of addressing me.