Hill Towns (34 page)

“This drive is no picnic,” Colin said faintly. He was lying on the grass with his head in Maria’s lap, his eyes closed, bandaged foot extended. She was holding a wineglass for him to sip from and looking down at him with no expression at all.

“Poor baby,” Yolanda said, not looking up from her map.

“Looks like a job for the Misericordia,” Sam drawled in an unctuous announcer’s voice. Yolanda giggled.

“What’s the Misericordia?” I said, more to divert attention from myself than from interest.

“Probably the oldest public ambulance service in the world.

Started in Florence. Members wear robes and hoods with slits, so nobody can recognize who’s who, 282 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

and they carry the dead and dying to hospitals, free of charge.

Volunteers can be garbagemen or royalty; everybody’s sworn to anonymity. They go in procession, absolutely silent, with the red cross of mercy banner at their head. They wear black now, but in the Middle Ages it was red. Red robes, for the red death. That’s what they used to call the plague. A bell tolls—or, nowadays, a phone rings—and all over Florence men get up from whatever they’re doing and just leave without a word. And pretty soon you see them, coming down the street. I saw them right after the flood, in ’sixty-six. It was pretty impressive, all that water and darkness, and these guys all in black, with the red cross going before them, without a sound.”

“What were you doing here during the flood?” Maria asked.

“Helping mop up, like everybody else.”

I thought of it, solemn ranks of red going two by two down tortuous, narrow old medieval streets, torches flickering, gowns brushing cobbles, otherwise silence….

“I think I’d absolutely die of terror if I were hurt and looked up and saw that coming at me,” I said.

Sam looked at me with interest.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It would be like the very angels of death coming for you, two by two, the splashes of red like blood and the hoods like executioners, and the damp glistening on the old gray stones, and just…silence….”

He stared at me. His eyes seemed to be turned inward.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I can see that. Yeah.”

“I think,” Yolanda said, “that I smell the imminent birth of a painting.”

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“Might not make a bad one at that,” Sam said. He looked past us, seeing…what? Nothing we could see.

I felt oddly gratified, but somehow uneasy too. What was it he saw, when his eyes went away from you like that?

Ada came back.

“He’s feeling some better and doesn’t want to be sponged off,” she said. “I think he’s gone to sleep. But I believe I’ll just take Yolie’s car and run back to that telephone we passed—it’s hardly a mile—and call on ahead for the doctor to meet us at the hotel. It’ll save time, and he can look at Colin’s ankle at the same time. It’s hurting him more than it should by now.”

Colin murmured something and closed his eyes. I thought I might have heard Maria snort, very softly, but I was not sure.

“Let me go with you; you shouldn’t have to do all this by yourself,” I said.

“No, eat your lunch. Yolie’s probably going to make you drive some now, unless she’s lost her mind and asked Sam, and you’ll need some food in you. It’s a haul on in to Florence. I can rest. Maria’s taking over for me.”

She got up and Yolanda tossed her the keys, and she got into the Opel and slid it smartly out into the stream of traffic booming by. I did not think she even looked back. The thought of driving in that hurtling maelstrom made me almost physically sick.

The food the Europa and Regina had packed was very good. Even in the heat the cold, sweet chicken and crisp salad and icy wine tasted wonderful. We had almost finished when Ada came back.

“Have any luck?” Sam said.

“He’ll be there when we get in,” she said, smoothing 284 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

her silver hair back. “And listen, everybody, see what you think about this: I know you four”—she nodded at me and Colin and Maria—“are staying at the Croce di Malta. Now, I have absolutely nothing against it; it’s a quirky, wonderful old hotel, but it’s right on a main artery from the station into the heart of the city, and it has no air-conditioning and no window glass, only shutters. The noise is going to be hideous, and the heat and grit and dust worse, and nobody will get any rest. So I called our hotel, the Villa Carol, up in the hills just above Oltarno, and they’ve found rooms for you. Signor Guiducci there knows Sam too, from way back.

We always stay there. It’s very old and lovely and small, and has a garden and a pool and wonderful unobtrusive service, and it’s going to be fifteen degrees cooler. I promise Signor Guiducci will make his rates comparable, and they have a jitney to take you into Florence, free, whenever you want to go. I really think everybody will be much better off up there, but of course if you think—”

“I think you’re an angel,” Colin said. “I accept. I accept for us all. Let’s go there this instant.”

She looked at me, smiling obliquely.

“Cat?”

“Of course. We’d be truly grateful,” I said. How could I not? She was right. The Villa Carol would be infinitely better for Joe.

“It’ll be easier for you and Sam too,” she said. “For the painting.”

“Yes.”

I opened the door of the station wagon on the way back to our car and leaned in and brushed Joe’s cheek with my lips. He felt much cooler but did not stir.

“See you in Florence,” I whispered.

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When I got back to the Opel, Yolie was back in the driver’s seat, and Sam was in the front passenger seat beside her.

“It’s my turn,” I said, my heart pounding rapidly. “Fair’s fair.”

“It is, and that’s what I’m being,” she said. “I know you were up with Joe all night, and I like to drive. If I get tired I’ll enlist Sam. How much worse can he be than everybody else on the road?”

“Try me and see,” Sam said agreeably. He looked back at me. “Everything OK?”

“I think so. He seems cooler, and he’s sleeping.”

“I meant with you,” he said.

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

But it wasn’t. I was worried about Joe, and his abruptness had hurt my feelings badly, and I hated his growing dependence on Ada and my seeming inability to help him or even engage him, and I did not want to stay in Ada Forrest’s villa in the hills, with garden and swimming pool and perfect unobtrusive service. I wanted us to be by ourselves, Joe and me, if we still could. And there was something, something about Sam….

We had driven almost an hour, into and through the steely haze around Bologna, before I let myself put a name to the feeling. I was disappointed at his preoccupation, hurt and diminished by the distance he had put between us. Whatever the cause of his abstraction, I had to admit I missed the prickling tension, the almost tactile connection, that had grown between us since we met. Missed the prospect of whatever his kiss had promised….

The realization appalled me, and I stretched out as best I could on the Opel’s back seat and tried to sleep. Ahead of us, not seeming to be closer, still half drowned in frizzling gray heat, the mountains shimmered.

286 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

Please, let us get up there, into the mountains….

If we can just get to the mountains….

For a long time I lay awake, feeling the swaying motion of the road under my head and crossed arms, hearing the rush of the big Lancias and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs around us, feeling the monotonous vibration of the Opel, feeling hot wind on my face and arms. I thought desolately that I would never sleep, but finally I drifted into that kind of half-drowsing, half-waking state you reach when you try to sleep in a car, when the road noise gets louder and louder in your ears, and then fades away, and then hums in again.

I don’t know how long I lay there, drifting and snapping back, drifting and snapping. At one point, I thought I heard Yolanda and Sam talking in the front seat.

“…do it again,” I thought she said. “How can you?”

“It’s really working now,” he replied, or I thought he did.

“I hope to God it’s worth it,” Yolanda’s voice said, blend-ing into the singsong of the tires and the road under my cheek.

What’s worth it? I remember wanting to say, and thought I would sit and see if we were any nearer to the spectral succor of the mountains. Oh, the mountains….

But then the road roar grew louder in my ears, and the drone of their voices faded, and when I woke up we were through the Appenines, and through Florence, and pulling into the gates of the Villa Carol, which were of stone so old they were blunted and burnished like satin, and topped with winged bronze lions that looked just as old, and Sam was saying, “Wake up, Cat. Christ, you look like you’ve been whupped through hell with a buzzard gut.”

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Ada’s doctor, a slender, pale Florentine with rimless wire spectacles whom she called Giampolo, was waiting in the cool tapestry-hung lobby of the Villa Carol when we got there. He had taken the liberty, he said, of checking us in; Carlo Guiducci was an old friend. We could go straight up to our rooms, and he would come with us and see to the two American gentlemen. The porter would bring our luggage. Then he really had to run; Leonora had guests coming.

He knew Sam and Ada would understand.

“Perfectly,” Ada said, rising to kiss him on both cheeks.

He went ahead up the curving stair with his worn medical bag in his hand. She followed. The rest of us came up in an ornate scrolled-iron elevator with a liveried attendant. It creaked and shimmied and seemed to take forever.

The Villa Carol remains one of the loveliest places I have ever seen. It is a three-story Romanesque structure with pale honey-colored stucco walls and the ubiquitous red-tiled roof of Florence, tall, wide, green-shuttered windows, and a graceful curving staircase. It was built, Ada said, in the late fifteenth century. It sits in a cool green park planted with the formal green-black cypresses I so love, full of secret grottoes and small gardens and fountains, broken statuary, stone paths bordered with herbs and flowers, and a long covered loggia flanking a glittering blue pool. The rooms on one side and the back overlook the pool and a terrace with umbrella tables and chairs. The air is fresh and sweet, the scent of sun-warmed flowers and basil and thyme drifts everywhere, bees hum in the picking gardens. The whole affair overlooks Florence from its hill. I still do not know why I disliked it on sight, except to think, It will make a lovely setting for Ada.

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Ada’s Giampolo was waiting for Joe and me in a large tiled room with luminous faded frescoes on the wall, a tall, narrow canopied bed piled high with white cutwork pillows, dark old armoires and chairs and a desk, and a sitting area in an alcove with a small sofa and a chaise. A velvet-padded window seat overlooked the gardens and pool, and a small balcony off the French doors held wrought-iron chairs and a tiny table. It was a wonderful room; its cool dimness reached out for me as I followed Joe into it. How lovely it would be to have a bath and sink into that tall Viking ship of a bed. I could tell from the doorway that it had feather mattresses piled one upon another.

It also looked as though it would hold only one person comfortably. Italians, I thought sourly, especially the well-born ones, must be accustomed to sleeping on their backs, side by side in decorous repose, like effigies on a tomb. I foresaw either a rollaway bed for me or three nights spent on the small alcove couch.

The doctor listened to Joe’s heart and took his temperature and blood pressure, heard his story, pronounced his judg-ment on the water of Venice, and gave him several injections.

He also left a vial of pills.

“As much rest and sleep as possible,” he said. “I will telephone in the morning.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“It is nothing.”

Colin was not so lucky. The impassive doctor poked and prodded, clicked his tongue, shook his head, and pronounced the ankle fractured instead of sprained.

“It should have been seen to immediately and set in a cast,”

he said disapprovingly. “No wonder he has the pain. I would not be surprised if there was damage.”

He left with Colin and Maria in the back seat of his HILL TOWNS / 289

large black Lancia, saying he would drop him off at the small hospital near Bellosguardo, where he had privileges. His colleagues there would set the ankle and give Colin medication for the pain. He would be well taken care of. “This time”

hung in the air.

“It is no trouble,” he said to a grateful, trembling Maria.

“I live nearby. Perhaps Ada and Sam will call for him?”

And so Colin went and was ministered unto, and came back in perhaps an hour properly cast and medicated, saying the pain was better already. Joe had been dosed and put to bed and was sleeping, and I sat with Sam and Ada in the garden near the pool, sipping whiskey and trying to absorb the profound, expensive peace of the Tuscan twilight. Maria had remained with Colin. Yolanda was staying at a small pensione in Oltarno, where she always stayed in Florence.

She knew the proprietors well, she said, and was eager to see them again.

“I’ll join you for dinner once or twice, and maybe we’ll do some gardens, Cat,” she had said, sliding the Opel away from the Villa Carol’s portico. “But I really do want to see Freddo and Cari. They’re family by now. And they say they have a surprise for me.”

She grinned and was gone.

“I wonder what the surprise is,” I said after she had gone, more to fill the void of quiet that had fallen than from real curiosity.

“I wonder who it is,” Sam said.

“You have a wicked mind,” Ada said. “Now what we must all do is simply be still and rest.”

It was what we did for nearly the entire remainder of our stay. We rested.

Or rather, Ada and Maria and I rested. Joe slept. All 290 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

through the first and second day he slept heavily, waked to eat blindly and have a quick shower, then slept again. I sat with him the first morning, but after that I was driven from the room by sheer ennui and the fear of waking him. I staked out a table and bench at the end of the garden, shaded by a thickly vined arbor, and sat there in the forenoons, had my lunch there alone or with Maria and Ada by the pool, sat for Sam in the afternoons, had dinner with Joe, and sat silently in the alcove or on the balcony, trying to read, until bedtime.