Page 44 - WTP Vol. XI #6

A Taste of Italy (continued from preceding page)
The ashlar masonry of the early temples was stunning.
I felt very privileged! As it happened, I was staying for those couple of days at a small boutique hotel down in the modern town... yes, to be sure, not much of a place... but run by this very genteel woman named Sophia. Her husband had little to do with the place, other than enjoy her solid management of it.
“Well! It further happened that her husband, Alfonso, was away at the shore at the time I arrived. And he returned from his seaside stay while I was there, sunbaked like a lobster, but jovial and refreshed, still busy unloading his things from the car. He’d been to Rimini, he told me. And my adventures? he inquired. I’d been up in the Abruzzi for a time, I replied... and through one thing and another, I chanced to mention this strange ‘restaurant’ I’d been to. With friends, for a private party, not there as a patron...
“Alfonso had laughed gaily, even as he was extracting his luggage from the trunk. ‘It’s famous!’ he replied. ‘It’s known all over. A wonderful place!’ he added. And here I had thought—”
Again, it was the professor who led the response, his voice grown emphatic. “Non ho mai sentito nominare un luogo del genere!”
“Nor have I!” exclaimed Roberto. “What was its name?”
“I never learned,” replied Parsons. “It was never so much as mentioned! It was just a ‘private party.’”
“Proprio strano,” the professor muttered.
“So, the mystery abides!” Parsons laughed. “My story is
finished.”
The guests would depart not very long after, but the professor himself was not altogether finished. The story had pleased him, perhaps, even, impressed him.
He came up to Parsons while waiting for his coat, and while Liliana was bidding goodnight to the younger wives, Roberto to their husbands. “Marvelous!” he exclaimed. And then, not quite ready to relinquish the issue, he said to the American in a congratulatory tone, “It is remarkable. Yes! How you speak without an accent. Your cadence also—flawless.”
“I found early,” Parsons said, “that your wonderful language rested comfortably on my voice.”
“Ah, yes. As how, then—?”
“I came to Italian by way of French studies.”
“Allors, bon!” smiled the professor. One final test. “Longtemps je me suis couché...,” he began.
Perfectly aware of Proust’s famous sentence, Parsons in annoyance declined to complete it. “I spent a year in Paris,” he said by way of answer. “At the École Normale.”
The professor grew wistful. “Ah, yes! Le Paris!... I was there myself for a couple of fine years, when I was a young fellow.”
His coat had arrived, which the maid helped him into. A final shot to be taken. Smiling, he turned to Parsons. “Perhaps in your speech, a slight trimming, here and there, of our elongated vowels... “
With a smile, Parsons answered, “Guilty as charged! Like my ‘countryman’ D.H. Lawrence, as you’ve insisted on calling him for his time in our great West. Siamo di ceppo anglosassone... The British in both of us.”
“Ah, you know that phrase, do you?” the professor said with a chuckle.
“Unavoidably,” said Parsons. Then, not wishing to have seemed abrupt with the professor, he said, “But I’ve been unforgivably discourteous this evening. Your great scholarly work—”
“Bah!” said the professor with a wave of his hand. “No reason whatever to refer to my work here!” His voice had grown gruff, the here! emphasized with a repudiating thud.
Here! In this home. In this great Umbrian villa, of such historic vintage...
They had brought to its conclusion, Parsons thought,
a circular journey. Nor had he missed, at the evening’s outset, the professor’s alluding to his writings as eclectic. Equivocal term, “eclectic”—arma a doppio taglio...
~
Before the evening had begun, Parsons had found a moment, alone with her in the villa’s study, to present
to the Contessa the gift he had purchased for her. The requisite white gloves on, she had turned the fragile pages with the necessary care, lingering over certain leaves, especially the elaborate full-page illuminations, so resplendent in their gold and intricate figures in lapis lazuli; then, every now and then, closing up the volume to turn it over in her hands, her place still marked by the sewn-in silk thread. And then, very slowly, reopening the treasure to where she had left off. Parsons stood quietly behind her left shoulder, enjoying the experience and, again, the book itself. At length the Contessa had
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