Bluebeard (37 page)

As for Innocenzo “the Invisible” de Medici, according to Kim Bum Suk: he was a banker, which I choose to translate as “loan shark and extortionist” or “gangster,” in the parlance of the present day. He was simultaneously the richest and least public member of his family. No portrait of him was ever made, save for a bust done of him when a child by the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti. He himself smashed that bust when he was fifteen years old, and threw the pieces into the Arno. He attended no parties and gave none when an adult, and never traveled in the city save in a conveyance which hid him from view.

After his palazzo was completed, his most trusted henchmen and even the highest dignitaries, including two of his own cousins who were Popes, never saw him save in the rotunda. They were obliged to stand at the edge of it, while he alone occupied the middle—wearing a shapeless monk’s robe and a death’s-head mask.

He drowned while in exile in Venice. This was long before the invention of water wings.

When Marilee told me on the telephone to come over to her palazzo right away, the tone of her voice, coupled with her confession that there were no men in her life just then, seemed guarantees to me that in no more than two hours, probably, I would be getting more of the greatest loving I had ever had—and not a callow youth this time, but as a war hero, roué, and seasoned cosmopolite!

I in turn warned her that I had lost an eye in battle, and so would be wearing an eye patch, and that I was married, yes, but that the marriage was on the rocks.

I am afraid that I said, too, in making light of my years as a warrior, that I had spent most of my time “… combing pussy out of my hair.” This meant that women had made themselves available to me in great numbers. This odd locution was a variant of a metaphor which made a lot more sense: a person who had been shelled a great deal might say that he had been combing tree bursts out of his hair.

So I arrived at the appointed hour in a twanging state of vanity and concupiscence. I was led by a female servant down a long, straight corridor to the edge of the rotunda. All the Contessa Portomaggiore’s servants were females—even the porters and gardeners. The one who let me in, I remember, struck me as mannish and unfriendly—and then downright military when she told me to stop just inside the rotunda.

At the center, clad from neck to floor in the deepest black mourning for her husband, Count Bruno—there stood Marilee.

She wasn’t wearing a death’s-head mask, but her face was so pale and in the dim light so close to the color of her flaxen hair that her head might have been carved from a single piece of old ivory.

I was aghast.

Her voice was imperious and scornful. “So, my faithless little Armenian protégé,” she said, “we meet again.”

“
T
HOUGHT YOU WERE
going to get laid again, I’ll bet,” she said. Her words echoed whisperingly in the dome—as though they were being discussed up there by the Divinities.

“Surprise, surprise,” she said, “we’re not even going to shake hands today.”

I wagged my head in unhappy wonderment. “Why are you so mad at me?” I asked.

“During the Great Depression,” she said, “I thought you were the one real friend I had in the world. And then we made love, and I never heard from you again.”

“I can’t believe this,” I said. “You told me to go away—for the good of
both
of us. Have you forgotten that?”

“You must have been awfully glad to hear me say that,” she said. “You sure went away.”

“What did you
expect
me to do?” I said.

“To give some sign, any sign, that you cared how I
was,” she said. “You’ve had fourteen years to do it, but you never did it—not one telephone call, not one postcard. Now here you are back like a bad penny: expecting what? Expecting to get laid again.”

“You mean we could have gone on being lovers?” I asked incredulously.

“Lovers? Lovers? Lovers?” she mocked me raucously. The echoes of her scorn for lovers sounded like warring blackbirds overhead.

“There’s never been any shortage of lovers for Marilee Kemp,” she said. “My father loved me so much he beat me every day. The football team at the high school loved me so much they raped me all night after the Junior Prom. The stage manager at the Ziegfield Follies loved me so much he told me that I had to be part of his stable of whores or he’d fire me and have somebody throw acid in my face. Dan Gregory loved me so much he threw me down the stairs because I’d sent you some expensive art materials.”

“He did
what?”
I said.

So she told me the true story of how I had become the apprentice of Dan Gregory.

I was flabbergasted. “But—but he must have liked my pictures, didn’t he?” I stammered.

“No,” she said.

“That’s one beating I took on account of you,” she said. “I took another one after we made love and I never heard from you again. Now let’s talk about all the wonderful things you did for me.”

“I never felt so ashamed in my life,” I said.

“All right—I’ll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me.”

“Yes—” I said, “I remember those.”

“You used to rub your feet on the carpets and then give me shocks on my neck when I least expected it,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“And we were so naughty sometimes,” she said.

“When we made love,” I said.

She blew up again. “No! No! No! You jerk! You jerk! You incomparable jerk!” she exclaimed. “The Museum of Modern Art!”

“So you lost an eye in the war,” she said.

“So did Fred Jones,” I said.

“So did Lucrezia and Maria,” she said.

“Who are they?” I said.

“My cook,” she said, “and the woman who let you in.”

“Did you win a lot of medals in the war?” she said.

Actually, I hadn’t done too badly. I had a
Bronze
Star
with a
Cluster
, and a
Purple Heart
for my wound, and a
Presidential Unit Citation
, a
Soldier’s Medal
, a Good
Conduct Badge
, and a
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Ribbon
with seven Battle Stars.

I was proudest of my
Soldier’s Medal
, which is usually awarded to a soldier who has saved the life of another soldier in situations not necessarily related to combat. In 1941, I was giving a course in camouflage techniques to officer candidates at Fort Benning, Georgia. I saw a barracks on fire, and I gave the alarm, and then went in twice, without regard for my own safety, and carried out two unconscious enlisted men.

They were the only two people in there, and nobody was supposed to be in there. They had been drinking, and had accidentally started the fire themselves, for which they were given two years at hard labor—plus loss of all pay and dishonorable discharges.

About my medals: all I said to Marilee was that I guessed I had received my share.

How Terry Kitchen used to envy me for my Soldier’s Medal, incidentally. He had a Silver Star, and he said a Soldier’s Medal was worth ten of those.