The Conversion (16 page)

“But if she and I will live apart, as we are now, then I will have plenty of time to spend with you. Especially because Laurence will accept this.”

“What makes you assume that?”

“Well, first of all, because this can happen—”

“You mean when a man has a mistress and keeps her separate from his family and from the rest of his life?”

“Something like this, yes.”

“But
I’m
a man, so it’s
not
so easily accepted. This, according to your wife!” I explain that the day I showed up at the apartment, Laurence informed me that Michel’s living with a man would never be accepted by the echelons of the social world into which he was born, that it would be far more difficult than having a mistress on the side.

Michel looks down at the floor, shakes his head, and says, “With this I cannot argue. But listen to me for a moment.” He gazes at me balefully. “Sometimes, all these things stand in your way and you still go forward. You know what you’re doing might destroy everything that is stable in your life, but you still cannot get this other person out of your head. And eventually you do what you never think you will do. In your case, this is what happens with me. And when I read your friend’s obituary in
Le Monde
, I start figuring how I can get back with you again.”

Moments pass and then Michel continues. “Laurence is my wife, my companion, the mother of my children, but she has not been my lover for many years.
You
, Russell, were my lover.” The final words are gratifying, but I resist them as he takes a step toward me, rests his arms on my
shoulders
, and tilts his head for a kiss that I studiously avoid.

Instead I tell him, “When you used to say that in English, that you loved me, I actually almost believed you.”

“You should have.”

“I’m glad I didn’t.”

Outside the chapel a lawnmower suddenly sputters and ignites; the roar of its engine is so loud it threatens to deafen any further conversation. As we make our way out, Michel struggling to turn the rusted key in the enormous lock, the Polish gardener comes running up and asks us to lend a hand moving the broken statue.

He leads the way across the road, along the lane of overripe fig trees, to a group of laborers wearing paint-spattered clothes hovering over the fractured Apollo, now wound in rope like a captive. Once we join the band, two of the laborers grab two ends of the rope, while the rest of us clutch at the decapitated alabaster statue and lift. There are seven of us, and still the sculpture feels incredibly heavy. We manage to hoist him onto a dolly, and then one of the workers begins pulling our splintered quarry back down the driveway in the direction of the villa.

“Pity that this splendid figure gets so broken,” Michel murmurs to me at last.

“One’s beauty is always such a fragile state,” I reply as I escort him back to the villa.

The following morning, Lorenzo calls from what sounds like a noisy bar and asks me to meet him on the steps of the cathedral inside the city. It takes me a half hour of brisk walking before I reach the nearest portal built in the four-hundred-year-old ramparts. This last day of August is the day of the antiques market, which attracts people from all over Tuscany. I wander through the stalls, eyeing English furniture, much of it left over from the once-thriving British colony in Livorno; there are trays of heavy ornamental silverware, wardrobes full of starchy linens and lace, shelves of moldering old books, boxes filled with slightly battered postcards and magazines. My eye catches an attractive watercolor of an island; the stall proprietor claims it’s a late-nineteenth-century depiction of one of the smaller archipelagos to be found in the Venetian lagoon, somewhere beyond Torcello. Knowing Ed’s taste in art, I feel certain he would have impulsively acquired this painting; the thought that he is not here to purchase it, that it will fall in the hands of someone who probably would appreciate it less than he, makes me curiously sad.

I know I should be furious at what he’s done, or undone, as it were, but find that I just cannot sustain the anger for too long. He was certainly wrong about Michel’s intentions and probably would be astonished at the lengths my former lover claims to be willing to go on my behalf. But in other ways, Ed was right to remind me that even if I started spending a lot of time with Michel, I’d still be living with somebody who was, for all intents and purposes, married, and that this after a time would have to take its toll. Ed rightly reasoned that I probably would never feel satisfied or safe unless I had Michel to myself. As far as the “mistress idea” was concerned, despite my initial desire to agree to such an arrangement, Laurence and I—Americans, after all—would most certainly find that living it out would be impossibly painful. Besides, if she loved Michel, why should she have to share him, much less agree to it? And why should
I
have to share my lover? The fact that Michel could even expect this of us makes me doubt the reliability of his feelings.

The white cathedral where Lorenzo waits was built from locally quarried marble. With its intricate carvings of delicate columns and
pediments, it resembles a listing wedge of wedding cake. Perched on the steps outside, wearing a pair of teardrop Ray-Bans, he is in
carabinieri
uniform. He has taken off his jacket, and his forearms, hugging his knees, are soaking in the sun. Without a word, I walk up and sit down next to him. A strange hope goes through my head: that the poison of my
attraction
to him will be the antidote to my remaining longing for Michel. Lorenzo leans over and kisses me gently and ceremoniously on both cheeks and then gives my shoulder a playful squeeze.

“What took you?” he carps with another intimate nudge. However, he hardly seems irritated that I am late for our appointment. I tell him I walked to town from the villa and got distracted by the antiques mart. “Come inside with me,” he says and leads the way into the church, stopping at a limestone font. He dips his fingers in holy water, then kneels and crosses himself. Feeling puckish, I reach toward the holy water, but he gently slaps my arm away with an admonishment that I am not Catholic and heads to a row of pews close to the altar. He sits down and, putting his arm around me in a collegial way, says sotto voce, “If you crossed yourself like that it’d be a sacrilege.”

I tell him I always do this when I visit Catholic churches, especially when I’m alone.

“Then you’ll go directly to hell,” he says, shaking his head, though there’s an irrepressible grin curling the edges of his lips.

“Hell is right here on earth,” I tell him. “That it comes after death is organized religion’s biggest misconception.”

“I won’t discuss this with you any further!”

“So then why bring me into a cathedral at all?” I ask, noticing a tightly knit group of Japanese tourists, each armed with a camera, gravitating toward the altar.

“To speak in private,” he murmurs and then explains.

The
carabinieri
have received a communication requesting them to escort an American consular attaché to the Villa Guidi. This will be happening tomorrow. I will be served a subpoena for my computer as well as for as a manuscript thought to be in my possession.

“Oh, no,” I groan.

“Luckily, I just happen to overhear this.” He removes his sunglasses and his naked eyes dazzle me. “And which manuscript is this?”

I hesitate.

“It’s okay. I will help you, Russell. This I promise.”

And so I manage to explain the rest of the story that he doesn’t know.

“
Madonna
,” he says when I’ve finished. “What complications you bring into your life. This executrix, if she can prove you’re holding on to this book when you say you don’t have it, then maybe she can also protest the fact that your friend took her away from his life-insurance policy.” He grins brilliantly. “Maybe she thinks you coerced him with your sexiness and told him to sign over the money.”

I tell him that the insurance policy is the least of my worries, that I hardly care whether or not I get the money. “Because I really don’t deserve it.”

“Well, you should care.”

“I can earn my own way. And honestly, Lorenzo, I don’t know if I’d even want money from somebody who manipulated my life.”

Lorenzo takes this in and then says, “What he does is very human. Hard to blame him if he was that in love with you.”

Indeed, I think, this is my struggle.

“Why don’t you take out the part concerning your relationship with this man and give up this unfinished work and be done with it?”

I explain that carefully weeding out the bits of the manuscript that involve me would be impossible by tomorrow. And surely, the editors and the executrix would quickly figure out what I’d done. Not to mention that Ed himself felt the book was not ready for publication.

Lorenzo makes a circular gesture with one hand. “Well, he has no say over it now. He’s dead.”

“But I know his intentions … that’s the dilemma.”

“And what is the
signora
’s opinion of this?” Lorenzo wonders aloud. I tell him that Marina thinks I should just give it up. “Well, then do what your hostess wants. It’s only proper.”

“I can’t. Something in me is worried that it’s the wrong thing to do.”

Lorenzo grabs my shoulder. “Luckily for you, I have appointed myself to come tomorrow with this official from Florence. The
capo
almost didn’t let me because he knows I take you to the gym. But then I assured him I will get what I am supposed to.”

“And if you don’t you’ll be discredited?”

Lorenzo recoils a bit. “You say there is nothing in your computer. If that is where they think this manuscript is, then obviously I will take your computer.”

“You can’t!” I cry out. “I won’t be able to work.” I remind him that I do freelance translations for American companies and that a substantial project is due in less than a month.

Lorenzo shrugs and tells me that I must make a choice: my computer or the manuscript in my possession. He confiscates either one or the other.

“I could always just leave town.”

He searches my face to see how serious I am. “You could, but then they will assume I warned you. And this would not be good. This would hurt me. You will not do this, will you?” he asks sweetly, seeming unworried.

I shake my head.

One thing I like about Lorenzo is his voice, its resonant, basso quality, slightly nasal. It’s very masculine.

At that moment an elderly priest passes us and seems to recognize Lorenzo, who grows noticeably bashful. The two men nod to each other; the priest eyes me and then continues to a rectangular display where a gilded glass casement encloses the blackened, gnarled remains of a body, covered with stigmata, that arrived mysteriously by rowboat in Livorno three centuries ago and was immediately declared a holy relic. I ask Lorenzo who the priest is, and he explains that the man is his confessor and has been since childhood.

“Oh.” I hesitate. “So he’s the one you told about your interest in men?”

Lorenzo lowers his head and nods slowly. “Recently, yes.”

“Recently,” I repeat. “And before recently, what were you confessing?”

Lorenzo looks at me askance. “That’s between me and my confessor.”

“Right. Understood. Just tell me and I won’t bother you anymore.”

Shaking his head, Lorenzo admits that he confessed his desires and sexual activities with women other than his wife.

Of course, I think to myself cynically. Perfect.

Lorenzo says to me breathily, “I can be free tonight to see you. Can you be free to see me?”

So for him the thrill must be indulging in something so strictly
forbidden
that he would even hesitate bringing it up in confession. How
pathological
is that? I inform him Marina knows that I secreted him into the villa and it’s perhaps ill advised to invite him back.

“I never expected this,” he says, “to be invited back,” and admits to having another place in mind. A friend of his owns a vacation house in the
Garfagnana, a mountain region forty minutes away. Much as I find the idea appealing, I don’t immediately agree to the plan. For once again I’m deeply mired in thoughts of Michel and even remember thinking, just before his impromptu visit, that the passing of time had slowly leeched away the painful bits of psychological shrapnel left over from his sudden rejection—now more than a year old. In fact, in the wake of Ed’s death I found myself missing Michel less, and this, in and of itself was a relief. It occurs to me that it would be better not to miss or long for anybody at the moment. And if Lorenzo is even more tied up and unavailable than Michel, in this regard, he is a potentially perilous companion. And I have to ask myself: Why am I drawn to this sort of pain?

On the way out of the church, we pass a well-lighted painting that I recognize as a copy of Carpaccio’s famous portrait of Saint Augustine. “What is this doing here?” I demand. The original, housed at a Dalmatian
scuola
in Venice, is one of my favorite paintings of all time.

“Yes, you are right,” Lorenzo says, and goes on to explain that it’s an early replica of the masterpiece that a nobleman had had duplicated and then brought to Tuscany.

The scene is of Augustine standing at the desk in his study, which at first glance appears to be completely in order. But the man himself looks stupefied and then you notice that there are books scattered on the floor, and everyday objects are out of place. Staring at the saint is a small dog whose watchful confusion seems to indicate that something is amiss, some sense of routine and order has been uprooted.

“I’ve studied this painting,” I tell Lorenzo. “I’ve been to see it in Venice at least a dozen times. It’s the only one in the
scuola
that scholars don’t seem to agree on.”

“Really,” Lorenzo says, sounding genuinely interested.

“Do you want to hear my take on it?” I ask him.

“Of course.”

Saint Augustine is having a vision of Saint Jerome’s death. The vision itself brings momentary chaos. Like a wind has come into the room and knocked things to the ground, and that bewildered dog only wants things to return to normal. I imagine Saint Augustine is actually seeing a soul’s conversion to the immortal.

Reflective silence follows this and finally Lorenzo wonders aloud, “I wonder what will happen to our souls?”

“Purgatory at the very best,” I quip, studying the painting for a bit longer while he patiently waits. It is one of the more contemplative masterpieces that I’ve looked at, a far cry from Caravaggio’s staged “conversions” that proclaim a religious awakening to Christianity. All is not spelled out with this Saint Augustine. The great thinker’s moment of indecision, his grappling to understand what is happening to him is comforting to somebody such as myself, struggling to distinguish all the betrayal surrounding me.

At last Lorenzo leads the way out of the church into the sunlit square and we begin strolling back through the antiques market toward the main piazza. I ask if he’s worried that Marina knows I brought him into the villa. He surprises me by shrugging. “She doesn’t bother with people such as myself. Which is not to say that she’s a snob. It’s more that our lives never cross except for the times I go to the villa for one professional reason or another. She would never know anybody who knows my wife. The distance between her world and mine is great.”

We walk a ways in silence, and still under the spell of the powerful painting, I say, “But you seem conflicted about seeing me.”

He shakes his head. “No. If I didn’t really want to see you I wouldn’t,” he says with great simplicity. “One day I will be able to resolve this and then live my life more peacefully.”

I stop walking abruptly and face him. “But you won’t resolve it,” I say. “Once you get that, your life will be a lot easier. Then you don’t even have to worry about getting divorced.”

His expression turns quizzical. “I never plan on getting a divorce,” he assures me, shifting his sunglasses from their position above his brow back down over his eyes. “But I still have to lie to my wife, and this I don’t like.”

Naturally I think of Michel and Laurence, of her efforts to accept his sexual nature and keep their marriage together. And yet Laurence
probably
still doesn’t quite understand, or perhaps is just too afraid to recognize, the fact that at his very core her husband is galvanized by men.

I tell Lorenzo, “You lie only because you believe your true nature cannot be accepted by those who love you.”

“Yes, this is correct.”

I wait a few seconds and then say, “But if it’s your nature, then it’s natural.”

Lorenzo sighs and seems exasperated with me. Clearly he’s unused to being challenged or contradicted. I can’t help wondering if giving up his
philosophical studies in favor of a less intellectually demanding profession makes it easier for him to avoid examining his own beliefs, much less what drives him: his motivations, his desires. Then again, Michel wasn’t so in touch with himself, either.