Hill Towns (45 page)

376 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

“I know,” Joe said very clearly, “that he knows how my wife looks when she’s getting fucked. That’s what I know.

And now the entire world is going to know it too. What is it, Cat, you expect me to go to the big opening for it and chomp shrimp on a toothpick and sip wine and say, ‘Yes, indeedy, that’s my little wife, all right, coming like a house afire’? Sure I will. Sure I will.”

“How can you say that? I have never in my life slept with anybody but you! You know that! You
know
that!”

My voice cracked. I couldn’t get a deep breath.

Behind me Sam Forrest said, “Take it easy, Joe. Cat doesn’t deserve this. If you want to yell at anybody, yell at me. It’s exactly the pose of the Saint Teresa; don’t go accusing her of anything until you’ve seen the statue. My God, man, what do you think—”

“How did you know?” Joe spat at him in a voice I did not know, had never heard. He did not look at Sam but at me.

“How else could you possibly know?”

“I’m a painter,” Sam said. “I paint what I see. She looks for all the world like the Bernini
Teresa
; I saw it when I first saw her, at our place in Rome. I’m sorry if you’re upset, but if I were you, I wouldn’t go throwing accusations at Cat.

She’s done nothing wrong. Nothing. She might, in fact, want to ask you about the time
you’ve
spent with my good wife!”

I went hot all over, felt sick. Please stop this, I thought dully. Everybody please, please stop.

Joe’s face went even whiter, but he dropped his eyes from my face. He turned away again and walked into the lounge.

Just beyond the doorway he looked back over his shoulder.

“Did you holler, Cat?” he said.

I turned away, blindly, and went back to my seat. I heard Joe say something to the group of Dekes around HILL TOWNS / 377

the piano, and heard them laugh and cheer, and when they began to sing again, his rich tenor rose with them.

“Roll your leg over, oh, roll your leg over,” they sang. “Roll your leg over the man in the moon.”

“I think maybe we’ll pass on dinner,” Maria said in a small voice. She got up out of her chair and walked from the terrace. Colin looked at Sam and at me and then lifted his hands and let them drop, silently, and followed her. His crutches thumped loudly.

“Well,” Sam said presently. “How about another drink, Saint Catherine of the sorrows?”

“Please,” I said, holding out my glass.

We drank our drinks in silence. I clenched mine very hard, trying to stop the fine trembling that had begun again in my stomach and now shook every part of me. It was like a tiny engine; I did not think he could see it, but I could not stop.

I simply could not think of anything to say to him. I thought I would like to sit here on this terrace, with the Tuscan treetops at my feet and the little night wind tasting of dust off the pink hills on my face, until everyone else had gone away and night had fallen, and I could go back to my room unseen. I knew I must talk Joe through this, but the effort seemed so monumental it was ludicrous, as if I had been asked to move a mountain unaided, empty a sea.

“Not a great night for art fans,” Sam said. He was slumped down in his chair, his long legs extended straight out in front of him, chewing ice. His eyes seemed very blue in the dusk.

“It’s a beautiful painting,” I said dully. “It really is. Please don’t think I think it isn’t. But it…I guess I didn’t know you were going to do that.”

“Didn’t you?” he said.

378 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

I did not reply. Had I not known? I wasn’t sure, now.

“I’ll go in and talk to him in a minute,” he said. “Soon as those assholes have gone. I can make him see what I was doing, that you and I didn’t—well, whatever. I can probably even make him like it, or think he does. I’ve done it before.

Christ, you should have heard David Cardigan when he first saw what I’d done with Verna, and now he thinks he invented the portrait himself.”

“What did you do with Verna?” I said.

“Well, one of her tits sort of hangs out,” he said. “And they were something to see in those days. Cantilevered, I guess you’d say.”

I burst out laughing in spite of myself.

“What on earth am I going to do with you?” I said, near tears. “What am I going to do with him?”

“I don’t know about with me. That’s up to you. I’m going to go talk to him. Though I really ought to let him twist in the wind awhile. I’m not real fond of what he said to you.

You ought not be, either.”

“Well, I’m not,” I said. “I hate what he said to me. He’s never said anything like that before. But Sam, it’s been hard on him, this trip. Back home he’s…I don’t know. So totally in charge. So many people look up to him. He’s really good at what he does. Over here, every time he turns around, something happens to him. He falls in a canal. You pull him out. You haven’t exactly made him look good, you know.”

“Goddammit, Cat, I haven’t tried to sabotage him,” he said, frowning in annoyance. “Most of the time I haven’t even been thinking about him. If he feels he’s been shown up in Italy, the problem is his. Not mine. Not yours.”

“I know,” I said.

After the last drink, things did not look so bad. I felt HILL TOWNS / 379

suddenly lazy and loose-jointed, indolent, powerful in an odd and offhand kind of way. I stretched, and rolled my head back until I heard vertebrae crackle, and said, “Well, let’s finish this bottle and then we’ll both go talk to him. You wrap the painting back up and take it upstairs, and we’ll take him somewhere great for dinner and maybe get him a little drunk. It won’t seem so bad to him in the morning. Joe doesn’t hold grudges.”

We finished the inch or so left in the bottle. Sam reached out and touched my cheek with one finger, very lightly. Just that touch. I reached up and put my finger where his had been.

“In a way I’m sorry the painting is done,” he said.

“So am I.”

“Maybe,” he said in a low voice, “I can go back and rework some of it. I’d need you to sit again a few times….”

“Maybe you could,” I said. My own voice was husky. I cleared my throat.

“Let’s see what happens,” Sam said. “Shall we? There’s a lot of Tuscany left.”

“Let’s.”

He got up and gave me his hand and pulled me up. Then he dropped my hand and we walked into the bar to talk to Joe. It was full dark now. The lamps in the bar were lit, and a small fire blazed in the huge fireplace, but there was no one there. The Dekes had gone. Joe was gone too.

I looked at Sam and walked rapidly out to the desk. The green-eyed man was not there. A heavy young woman with improbably carmine hair piled up on her head was sorting forms of some sort. She looked up, smiling courteously.

“The gentlemen in the bar, have they left?” I said.

380 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

“Yes,” she said. Her accent was heavily Italian, the Italian of the South. “They have go to Siena to eat and howell. They gone in the big fan.”

“Howell?” I said stupidly.

She grinned and threw her head back and pantomimed a wolf’s howl. I could just see the Dekes doing it.

“Ah…there was another gentleman with them, another American, tall, blond, wearing a blue jacket. Did he go too?”

I said.

She just stared at me. I realized those words could have described any one of the Dekes. I tried again.

“Gaillard. A Mr. Joe Gaillard.”

“Ah. Choe. You mizziz Choe? He leave you a note.”

I nodded. She handed it to me. It was sealed inside a Villa di Falconi envelope. I opened it.

Going to travel a little with the Dekes
, it read.
Maybe I’ll
see you in the morning. Maybe I’ll see you in Rome. Maybe
I’ll see you in a gallery
.

He had signed it with a large, looping J. The writing and the signature were loose and sloppy. He was drunk, I thought.

“What’s up?” Sam said. He was looking at me intently.

“Joe’s decided to join the Dekes and see the world,” I said, and giggled. The giggle came out more like a hiccup. Perhaps a sob.

“Jesus,” he said. “The asshole. Want to go down to Siena and look for them? There are some pretty raunchy spots down there, in the back alleys. Somebody will point them toward one. It shouldn’t be any problem finding the RV.

There’re only one or two public lots where they could park it.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t. What I want to do is go down HILL TOWNS / 381

to Siena or somewhere and have a wonderful dinner and then go somewhere and dance. Or something. Will you take me to dinner?”

“I will,” he said. “And to something, too.”

“Can you dance, Sam?”

“Like a waltzing hippo. But I can something like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Then,” I said, taking his arm, “let’s go something.”

“Your call, Cat,” he said.

W
E NEVER DID EAT DINNER. I THINK I KNEW

WHEN WE set out in the Opel that we would not. I had a powerful sense that another woman entirely wore my skin that night, sat in the seat beside Sam Forrest as he drove, barbarously, down the sinuous road to Siena. This woman laughed as he skidded perilously through curves, sprayed gravel on dizzying overhangs; this woman laughed as oncoming cars veered out of the way of the Opel, blatting their horns, their drivers mouthing silent curses and shaking fists. This woman leaned her head far back on the seat, stretched her arms, and arched her back until the linen of her dress threatened to part over her breasts.

This woman clung to the arm of the man in the driver’s seat, leaned her head over to bite his shoulder none too gently, sang a little, hummed the rest of the way.

This woman had not come to eat dinner.

“What first?” Sam said, when he had rammed the Opel into a narrow parking place in the lot beside the 382

HILL TOWNS / 383

Cathedral. The rest of the lot was full, but there was no RV

there. The old Catherine Gaillard would have gotten out of the car trembling and ashen and asked for dinner, but the woman who had pushed her far back and down danced out, demanding drink.

“I want some more bourbon,” I said. “And then maybe some more someplace else. Seedy places, Sam; dark. Can you pub-crawl in Siena? That’s what I want to do. And then I want to dance. Then, maybe, we’ll eat.”

He laughed.

“Not a lot of night life in Siena; it’s a clubby place. If folks are going to let it rip, they usually do it in the clubs in their
contrada
. But I’ll see what we can do. There are a couple of little places down in the old town that might be seedy enough for you. You up to some walking?”

“I’m up to anything. The question is, are you? I saw you stagger getting out of the car.”

“So did you, me proud beauty. Wonder we both aren’t crawling. Do you really think you ought to drink any more hard stuff? Wine might be smarter.”

I whirled around and put my hands on his shoulders and leaned up into his face.

“This is not a night for wine,” I said. And then I twirled away, spinning on one foot so that the skirt of my dress would bell out.

He caught me by the arm and looked down at me, smiling.

“And who have we here tonight?” he said.

“Catherine of Siena,” I said. “They’re going to talk about her for a long time in this town. You are too.”

“I bet,” he said, and we plunged none too steadily down into the spiderweb of narrow streets that led into the heart of Siena.

384 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS

The old part of Siena huddles around the great open fan of the Campo, jumbles of severe Gothic houses and palazzi and shops, their plain brick walls studded by small shuttered windows. They are set so close to the tortuous streets that you must walk there; there seemed that night to be no sidewalks at all. But there were no automobiles either. None could have circumnavigated the streets. They were too narrow and too steep; often they gave up, and simply became flights of shallow stairs, and then were transmuted into streets or alleys again. The houses on either side shouldered into one another, so that it was like walking between high, forbidding walls. The overall feeling, I thought as I lurched along beside Sam, clutching his arm and stumbling on the rough cobbles, was of verticality and darkness. Shops were guarded with corrugated iron. Windows were shuttered, and what little light leaked through was pale and thin. And yet, even in the darkness, Siena seemed to glow. The very stuff of the houses did; they seemed to breathe out pale golds and yellows and reds into the thick night; their tile roofs seemed to burn like embers. There was a huge white moon; we had driven down into the city bathed in its light. But it did not penetrate in there. Roofs leaned too closely over the streets. Nevertheless, Siena lay that night in its own glow.

“It’s like being in the heart of a banked fire,” I said once.

“Burnt sienna,” Sam said. “It’s the color of the earth around here. It makes one of the best pigments for painting. I use a lot of it; it’s the undercolor for a good bit of your portrait.

Most of the houses are built of it. There’s a saying; I think it’s the motto of one of the districts: ‘It’s the red of the coral that burns in my heart.’”

“I love that,” I said, squeezing his arm and stumbling.

HILL TOWNS / 385

He righted me. “I think that will be my motto for tonight.”

I giggled. “I’m going to be the coral that burns in your heart.

Watch out, or I’ll burn you up.”

“I think you would,” he said, and leaned over and kissed the top of my head. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him, fully and deeply, and then broke free of his tightening arms and pulled him on down the alleyway.

“We haven’t even crawled one pub yet,” I said.

Behind me he made a sound that might have been laughter or a soft groan.

He dogtrotted me down one dark old street and up another; I had no sense at all of where we were. There were people on the street, but not a great many. They all seemed to be heading the same way we were: down. Back and forth, in and out, but always and inexorably down. At last, breathing hard and beginning to feel the spongy deadness of sobriety, I said, “Dammit, Sam, we could just have brought a bottle and sat in the car. Where are we going?”