Emilia was chewing khat leaves again. The night she spent with Gyles had heightened her self-consciousness and worried her about her weight, wondering what he had thought, and worrying whether she had pleased him. Her concerns derived as usual from Francesco, who had taken to making snide comments about her weight when she least expected them. Increasingly the strain between them had widened. She found herself detesting Francesco’s approaches to her in bed. Her feelings and desires for him had evaporated, and now their lovemaking was monthly and mechanical, and whatever passions remained had dissolved. She was resigned to believing he was with other women imagining he had a deep pool to choose from. Asmara was flooded with thousands of young, attractive Italian women—many married to military men, though that would not have stopped many of them. Knowing Francesco as she did she was certain he would manage to interest whoever appealed to him using his good looks, his charm and his smooth tongue, perhaps even using the uniform he was so proud of to show himself off.
She thought about Mario whose sexual passion often aroused her and about which she sometimes compared to Francesco’s animal lust that had devoured her the first few times they had made love. She was loath to admit it, but if Mario brought anything at all to their enforced relationship, it was his passion and skill as a lover, otherwise she considered him lecherous, annoying, and immature. She knew she would never be seen in public with him, and Francesco had agreed.
Despite that their last time together, he pleaded with her to come watch him and his friends race around a track on the other side of town. And even when having sex and while he was mauling her, he persisted. She had said no firmly, over and over again, imagining herself having to stand around in the heat and dust enveloped in the stench of gasoline fumes, having to bear the ogling of his friends, and answering their unembarrassed questions, while he, in his helmet and goggles, raced around in his little car oblivious to her displeasure. She remembered with mixed emotions that hot, awkward afternoon when she and Francesco had gone to the car show and met him for the first time. She vowed never again to look twice at any man who raced cars.
Gyles had left town without saying good-bye and she was crushed. The next morning she called the hotel only to be told Mister Aiscroft had checked out. The girl at the front desk hearing her disappointment suggested he was probably booked on the late-morning Ala Littoria flight to Rome. Disheartened he had slipped away without so much as a goodbye she was determined to call him. She found his business card on Francesco’s desk and jotted down the number. For an excuse she decided to say she was calling to learn what he had reported to her parents, and to hear what they had said, though in the end she didn’t care. What she wanted was to hear his voice again remembering their night together and finding a way to lure him back to Asmara. Remembering the flying time to reach Rome she waited several days and finally one afternoon impatient and anxious reached for the telephone and was connected.
“Hello, Aiscroft here, who’s calling?”
“Gyles, it’s Emilia.”
“Emilia?” He sounded pleased though wary.
“It’s me, Gyles.”
“Yes, yes, I recognized your voice. How are you?”
She thought she heard a lilt to his voice that could have been happiness at hearing hers though otherwise he sounded calm and collected.
“Gyles, I called because...”
“I apologize, Emilia,” he sighed. “I should have called but it was spur of the moment. There was an empty seat, a cancellation, so I took it. Bit of a deadline so I had to get back.”
Emilia doubted him and, had she not been so infatuated, would have called him a liar. Most any Italian in Asmara knew Ala Littoria flights to Rome were always booked weeks in advance. One didn’t simply show up and expect to find a seat. She had Francesco to thank for that bit of information.
“I wish you had, Gyles. I wanted to say goodbye, too, properly if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know,” he said thoughtfully. “I did, too.”
Emilia heart leapt at that and, because he sounded so full of regret, his response pleased her at once.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded confused.
Emilia thought that was the most honest answer she had ever heard from a man.
“Look...” he said, now sounding determined. “I want to see you again, Emilia. Is that outlandish?”
She laughed softly, imagining how it would be. “What could be so outlandish about two people who want to be together?” She caught herself in time avoiding calling him darling.
“Is it that simple do you suppose?”
“Why can’t it be?”
“There’s your colonel. You’re his wife after all. And that despicable business with the race car driver.”
“We’ll manage,” she said quickly. “We’ll find a way, but first you’ll have to return to Asmara.”
“Why don’t you come to Rome instead, Emilia? We could be together for a few days, maybe even longer. After all, with you here we won’t have to worry about Francesco.”
“What would I tell him?” she asked breathlessly. “He has a right to know.”
“Strange of you to say so.”
“I’m his wife. Gyles, and if I did fly to see you I would have to explain myself?”
“Explain? Oh, I don’t know,” he said sounding unconcerned. “I suppose you could say you’re homesick, you’d like to see your parents again, they’re getting on in age, you want to go shopping, that sort of thing.”
“Well that’s all quite clever, Gyles, except for one thing. What if he wants to accompany me?”
“Somehow doubt he would,” he grumbled. “Doesn’t he cheat on you? You seemed to imply he did.”
“I can’t be sure,” she sighed. “Yes, I suspect so.”
“I dare say he does. My guess is he’ll take advantage.”
“Take advantage?” she asked sounding sad. She paused for a second. “Yes, probably so.”
“Good, then it’s settled. You’re here with me for a few days. Have a calendar handy? Today’s what, the ninth? Let’s see, fly out on Monday, November 14th, arrive here Wednesday afternoon the 16th. Would that suit? I’ll book it if you say yes.”
“That would be lovely. How many days, Gyles?” she asked giddy with excitement.
“Let’s see, if you fly back the following Monday, the 21st, four days. I’ve a meeting in Marseille on the 22nd.”
“Four days,” she said, dreamy with anticipation.
“Right, I’ll call the ticket office it as soon as we say goodbye. I’m looking forward to seeing you again, Emilia.”
“Me, too, Gyles. Almost a week away before we see one another again. It sounds like a lifetime. In the meantime, though, I’ll worry.”
He chuckled. “Worry? What about? You and me?”
“No, Francesco.”
“Francesco? Can’t imagine why you’d bother, Emilia, nothing to be worried about there. You’re his wife, not the hired help. You can come and go as you please, can’t you? As I mentioned, you inform him you’re concerned about your ageing parents, they happened to have bought you a ticket, and you’re planning a visit. You could even say you’re off to do some early Christmas shopping while you’re here. I rather think he’ll be pleased to find he has the villa to himself.”
“Um, I suppose he might.”
“I took the measure of him that evening at dinner, Emilia,” he said sternly. “He won’t stand in your way, mark my word.”
Emilia flew out of Asmara as planned five days later and flew in first class, something she had never done before. As Gyles had predicted, Francesco’s response had been tepid, and he had not interfered, though he tried to sound hurt because she had not asked him to accompany her. He even made the point that in the period following their move to Asmara he had never been left alone. Looking closely at him she was able to discern his true feelings and in the end there was relief and pleasure in his eyes, despite his words. He had kissed her lips coolly goodbye before going off to work that morning and hadn’t accompanied her to the airport to see her off. Instead, he had his driver take her which made her leaving that much more pleasant.
Planning to ride the airport bus into town, and call Gyles from the city ticket office, she was thrilled when instead he surprised her and met her at Rome’s Urbe airport with a bouquet of white flowers. Wearing an endearing grin Emilia thought he looked more handsome than ever and somehow taller than he had in Asmara. Thank heavens, she decided, he was not wearing that rumpled suit and those desert boots she remembered him wearing at the Villa Kebessa. This time she approved of his well-cut dark gray suit, pale blue shirt with cuff-linked sleeves, the regimental tie of black and burgundy diagonal stripes, and the polished black dress shoes. Standing taller amidst a crowd of shorter Italians she thought he looked distinguished and quite British which pleased her, his salt and pepper hair flopping over his forehead.
Laughing with pleasure at seeing him again he kissed her on the cheek—he smelled pleasantly of a floral cologne with a woodsy base—though right now she wanted to feel his lips against hers and be tightly held. Instead he took her hand, carried her suitcase, and whisked her away in a taxi into town. The driver crossed over the west bank of the Tiber into the Trastevere rione part of Rome and stopped at last in front of a small restaurant in the Piazza di Santa Maria that Gyles said was not far from his apartment.
After they were shown to a table on the sidewalk terrace, Emilia caught her breath, and they spent what was left of the afternoon sitting closely side by side, his arm loosely around her shoulders talking, people-watching, and having drinks before moving inside for dinner as the winter sun set over the Eternal City.
Rome was glorious and colorful and vibrant after dull, arid, African Asmara with its native population that she had observed from the vantage point of her segregated neighborhood. She had not often stepped outside and had little incentive to do so. The only natives she knew were her two houseboys. She felt no qualms about not mingling, no sense she was disrespecting anyone, recognizing instead she was behaving exactly as had her parents during the many years they had spent abroad as a family.
Emilia was happy and relieved to be back in Rome again with its hallmark splashing fountains, monumental buildings and bustling crowds. She was amazed to find how much she had missed it all. It pleased her to watch and be able to mingle again with cosmopolitan Italians, not the bland, cast from the same mold Eritrean colonialists who seemed to have lost a measure of their true identities and become something else instead—Italians in name only. And to overhear again the rapid Rome patter of ordinary people, waiters, taxi drivers, and shop girls and people on the sidewalks, to be able to listen to the news readers on the radio and to enjoy again in the magazines the latest Rome gossip about this one or that one, and to view the latest fashion trends that had always interested her.
Emilia remembered their first night together in his apartment situated on a tiny downhill street with a Virgin Mary looking down from her shrine at the corner of the intersecting street. It had been an atmospheric evening lush with excitement and desire. At home after dinner they drank the bottle of Dom Perignon he had set out on ice, though the ice had melted when they finally arrived home. He poured himself a quick cognac while she watched and, near midnight, they collapsed into bed and made love for what had seemed like hours.
Emilia rose early the next morning, as was her habit, despite a throbbing champagne headache. Sex with Gyles had again satisfied her completely and now she was basking in the glow of being alone with him and away from Francesco. She watched Gyles sleeping as she dressed, wanting him again, but deciding not to wake him. She fantasized, as she folded his clothes hurriedly dropped to the floor last night, about how different a life might be with him, imagining how much more loving and pleasant it would surely be when compared to what she was enduring with Francesco. She shuddered at the thought of having to return to Asmara, wondering how she could ever bear to have either Francesco or Mario touch her again.
Out in his bachelor kitchen, Emilia fixed herself coffee to ease the pressure in her temples and, after the first few first sips, opened his cupboards. There wasn’t much to see: several white plates, cups and saucers, mismatched glasses and a few cooking pots. In his larder she found bottles of olive oil, Worcestershire sauce and sherry, boxes of pasta shells, sleeves of vermicelli, tins of tea cookies, curry powder, a can of loose-leaf black tea, a jar of Scottish marmalade, and Lavazza coffee beans. His refrigerator hummed loudly, and opening it Emilia glanced inside to find it contained only milk, butter, a Camembert cheese, an avocado, cucumbers, and a several bottles of Pellegrino and white wine.
Sitting in the small living room on the sofa where they had kissed drunkenly, and where she had let him gently fondle her before going off to bed, she watched the sun streaming through the narrow window, brightening the dull plaster walls. Emilia finished her coffee and enjoyed her morning cigarette, wondering how long Gyles would sleep, what Francesco was doing in Asmara and whether he had leapt at the opportunity to sleep with someone else. She stood finally, ran her fingers backwards through her hair, and surprised herself by deciding that this morning she no longer cared.
Barefooted she decided to explore. The size of Gyles’ second floor apartment was deceiving as she rounded corner after corner in the labyrinthine space. His narrow bedroom window—all of the windows in the apartment were small and she suspected typical of those in a building dating to the late 18th century—but only his living room and bedroom gave on a panoramic view of the muddy Tiber and, on the opposite shore, of Rome’s centro storico and the Vatican City. She remembered him mentioning the view, and the quick glance she gave it, as he led her into his bedroom his hand in hers before they collapsed on the bed.
She found another bedroom, this one smaller, windowless, and mostly empty—with an unmade four-poster bed and, aligned on the floor, battered, tobacco-colored leather suitcases adorned with colorful airline stickers.
Rounding a final corner she entered a long narrow room that overlooked his little cobbled street. The space reminded her of a window envelope. He had arranged it as a study, with a wide wooden messy desk on which sat a Hermes portable typewriter. She recognized it at once, her father had one as well, and she remembered while growing up listening in the evening to the sound of the keys clacking on the paper filtering from behind the closed door of his study.
Waist high shelves filled with stacks of old magazines and yellowed newspapers and many books, some with soft, red Moroccan leather bindings that also reminded her of those prized by her father. And arranged haphazardly around the room, ebony and ivory African knickknacks. He had hung two rather frightening tribal masks on either sides of the window, and on the opposite wall a collage of framed photographs.
She leaned in to get a better look at Gyles posing alone or with other Europeans in foreign locales she couldn’t identify though her instincts said they were somewhere in Africa. Coloring her perception—though she had only travel magazines and her stay in Eritrea to compare them to—was the vast emptiness of the sky that in the distance seemed to wrap itself around the land. It was an illusion she had often noticed in Asmara but never in Rome. She looked critically at the images of dusty ficuses, the familiar looking juniper trees, and the lifeless turmeric-colored buildings in front of which he was often posed—far away outposts the windows covered with decorative ironwork instead of glass. And she wondered why there were no photographs of him and her father because she knew the two had sometimes travelled together.
Unseen in the photographs but lurking nearby, she supposed, because her father had once explained their beliefs to her, might have been the natives watching speechless and fascinated when they heard the shutter of the camera click understanding that the soul of this white man had been captured forever.
Deciding the photographs validated what he had told her about himself—not that she had doubted him—she turned and left the room, stepping gingerly again around a sandy brown animal skin rug that gave off a strange wild scent.
She took it as her cue to wake Gyles when she heard the knife sharpener down in the street calling out "arrotino!" In his bedroom she found the vendor had awakened him. He was pulling on his trousers, his hair tousled from sleep. He kissed her on the lips and said he was hungry so they went out for breakfast and ordered cappuccinos, eggs, and bread with butter and jam.
They lingered over breakfast and as they did their conversation eventually turned to her parents.
“I spoke to your father the other day,” he said as if commenting on the weather. “Reporting in, as he would term it.”
“How official sounding.”
“You know how he is, quite the bureaucrat your father.”
“Unlike a certain foreign correspondent I know.”
“I’m a much more relaxed sort, aren’t I?” he said grinning.
“I should say so.”
Emilia put her fork down and turned to him. “You didn’t tell him all of my secrets, I hope.”
“Well, not everything.”
“I don’t think I like the sounds of that, Gyles. Whatever do you mean, not everything?”
“Strictly business, Emilia. Asmara impressions, state of affairs, that sort of thing, though I mentioned my dinner with you and your husband.”
“And what exactly did you tell Father? You didn’t breathe a word about us, I hope.”
“Nothing at all.”
“I certainly hope so,” she said looking worried. “After I bared my soul to you that day at lunch.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Emilia.”
“Well I hope so because I took you into my confidence. I sensed you would understand, Gyles, because I needed to confide. I was at my wit’s end. I took a chance. It was before we knew what would happen, between... us. Anyway,” she made a dismissive wave with her hand, “it’s all water under the bridge now.”
“Well aware, Emilia.”
“And he didn’t invite you to dinner? I’m certain Mother would have wanted to hear the details from you rather than listen to Father’s version.”
“No, he didn’t, thankfully. I’d rather not go anywhere near their villa and be interrogated by your mother.” He smiled at her.
“Because of us, you mean?”
“I should think so.”
“I can’t imagine what Father would think if he knew.” Her brow furrowed faintly imagining it and she looked worriedly at him.
“Well, I can,” he laughed. “And your mother, too.”
“She’s rather more broadminded, you know, my mother.”
“I wouldn’t want to put her to the test.”
“Gyles,” she said dabbing at her mouth with her napkin before leaning over to gently stroke his arm. “I have to ask. Did you like it last night? I had so much to drink.”
“It was glorious, of course. And for you?”
“Wonderful for me, too, Gyles.”
“I was half awake when that bloody knife sharpener happened along. I was hoping you would come back to bed.”
“I wanted to but I thought you were asleep.”
“You should have.”
“We had an awful lot to drink. I thought you might need your sleep.”
“Nonsense, let’s make the best of our time together from now on, both in and out of bed. Are you with me?”
Emilia laughed with pleasure. “Yes, of course.” She hadn’t been this happy in a long time.