Waking in Ravello, an hour or so south of Naples, on the morning after a very late and somewhat problematic arrival at this inaccessible, mountaintop hotel, Caroline sees the slits of sunlight between the louvers, in the long wide windows. She sees and feels that indeed it must be morning, and so she gets up, she goes to open a shutter, and she sees what she never could have imagined: a bright vista of small steep olive fields, bordered by gray stone fences; tiny houses with sloping red-tiled roofs, gardens, everywhere trees and flowers; a miniature woman, blue-aproned, in her doorway; a man with a wheelbarrow; a horse and a goat; and far off in the shimmering pale-blue silver distance the sea, the Mediterranean. Caroline gasps and almost laughs with the sheer surprise of it all, of what she sees, the amazing beauty. A painter’s dream of a morning, she thinks to herself.
She arrived the night before at a darkened entrance: a gate, a terrace, steps and a massive, barely illuminated door with a big brass plate. Bearing a name. A bellboy mysteriously appeared, opened her car door and took in her bags—there seemed no question as to her destination.
Quite punchy with fatigue, Caroline stood beside her pile of luggage in the entrance hall, on a black-and-white marble floor, noting a broad carpeted staircase with intricately carved banisters—leading upstairs? to beds?—as she watched the bellboy in some sort of conference, or argument, with a sleekly white-haired, rather corpulent person behind the desk. They both were gesturing, scowling, as Caroline was acutely aware of a longing to be in any bed at all.
She was allowed, though, only to wash up (in a surprisingly institutional, utilitarian, large bathroom, on the ground floor) before being ushered into what she could dimly make out to be a magnificent dining room: deep-drawn draperies, presumably over windows that looked out to some sort of view. And a dozen or so small round white-clothed tables, above one and only one of which a delicate crystal-hung chandelier shone down.
Seated alone in such splendor, she was soon served by a young blond white-coated waiter, who brought her a chilled green bottle of wine. Then cold chicken, a plate of sliced tomatoes. Some cheese and bread and butter.
Feeling drunk from her first sip of wine, which was dry and delicious, heady, Caroline said to the white-haired owner, “This is the most elegant supper I’ve ever had.” He had appeared discreetly to inquire.
He bowed and smiled, reminding her suddenly but imprecisely of someone, someone—and then, as the smile receded, she saw that it was Roland. For a single exhausted and quite unnerving moment Caroline felt that Roland had followed her there—disguised, in a white wig, an affable innkeeper manner.
In the morning, though, waking to that view, and to no Roland, to her own wide restful private bed, Caroline thinks, How ridiculous, how very silly I do get, sometimes when I’m tired. Roland Gallo has undoubtedly propositioned at least several women since me, and no doubt with large success, his turn-downs must be as rare as hen’s teeth.
“How brave you are, going all the way off to Italy by yourself.” Almost everyone said that to Caroline, with a few individual variations. Even her daughters said it. And Saul, the favorite, reliable son-in-law, surprised her by asking, privately and highly seriously, “Caroline, are you really sure you want to do this?”
“It’s actually much easier and much less brave than staying at home.” That is what Caroline would have liked to say, and what she felt to be true. But she did not say that. Staying at home was indeed far harder to do; there were whole lists of simple and highly complicated demands, from people and from the house itself, enough to fill all her time.
And there at home was where she missed Ralph most. At many times, in many corners—in bed—at times intolerably.
But in Italy, and especially in Rome, Caroline walked all day, savoring the crowds and sheer foreignness, the frenetic bustle of streets, the rare shadowed peace of gardens. She was not thinking at all, she believed—she was simply enjoying the privilege, rare in her life, of being all alone.
At night, alone, she went out to restaurants, dressed up in her best (each night a new restaurant, but the same fairly old best dress). She held her head high, and shamelessly eavesdropped on all possible conversations. She ate pasta and marvellous veal and beautiful fruits and cheeses—and did not gain weight. She drank a lot of wine.
One day, in the Villa Julia, at a distance, Caroline noticed a smartly dressed American woman, navy silk with big white polka dots, who strongly reminded her of someone, somewhere—or was she only a type, from the mold of upper-class women everywhere—especially during the Fifties, all those women in their silks and hats and gloves, seemingly going underground or elsewhere in the Sixties and most of the Seventies, to resurface with bells on, so to speak, in the super-rich Eighties. And then Caroline thought, It is Mary Higgins Lord, who did not, after all, become a homeless, chanting bag lady.
On closer viewing, though, the polka-dot woman is far too young to be Higgsie Lord, and her eyes are dark, not pale yellow. She is neither a type nor a recognized person, then, but a very young, very proper, slightly overdressed young woman, whose moist upper lip betrays some crucial error: she has worn too much silk for the day, which is very hot.
She will have to call Jim McAndrew as soon as she gets home, Caroline determines. Perhaps Caroline can find Higgsie herself.
In the meantime she simply wanders about Ravello, through gardens with sudden, breathtaking views of the sea, past courtyards of white stone statuary, sometimes stopping at a small open café for coffee, or an apéritif. A woman alone, testing waters—though Caroline herself would probably describe her activities as resting.
Tomaso, her white-haired host, remains discreetly, availably helpful. Would she like a trip to Capri, to Paestum or to Pompei? Any or all of those could be most easily arranged. But Caroline thinks not, actually (she has been to all those places with Ralph, on one of their Italian tours—though not to Ravello, which was one fact that brought her here). Caroline has the sense too that should she show the slightest interest Tomaso would also make himself available to her, a very temporary, probably very thoughtful lover. But she lacks that interest—entirely.
It is Tomaso, though, who wakes her from a longer-than-usual siesta—to announce, of all things, a phone call. (No room phones: she must come downstairs to take it.)
“From the States?” Caroline has thought first, of course, of her daughters, of some possible new disaster in any of their lives.
“No, it comes in fact from Palermo. Much less far.” Tomaso smiles, secretly.
Hurrying toward the phone, Caroline is thinking, Roland, of course, but however did he—? And then in an instant she decides that since he could only have got her number from one of her daughters, with all of whom she leaves itineraries, she does not want to know which daughter, how, why.
“Well, here I am in Palermo,” Roland tells her, quite as though from the next room. “I’ve tracked you down!”
Sensing that he would like to be asked how he did so, Caroline again decides not to ask, and only comments, “You sound much closer.”
A laugh. “Well, actually I could be, but I’m not quite as tricky as all that. Palermo is absolutely marvellous, though.” He pauses, lightly clears his throat. “In fact I have high hopes of persuading you to join me here.”
“Roland, really—”
“What you would do, my dear Caroline, is to go down to Naples, easy enough by car, Tomaso could handle it for you, and from Naples a most pleasant overnight boat to Palermo, where, in the morning, I greet you. You see? It is almost all arranged.”
But I don’t want to come to Palermo, is what Caroline would have liked to say. Instead she temporizes, “How nice of you to have thought it all out.”
“It’s as good as done,” Roland tells her, somewhat too emphatically. “I have the hotel reservation for you, can you stay a week, two weeks?”
“My dear Roland, actually I can’t come to Palermo at all, nice as it sounds. I’m meeting a friend in Madrid next week. An old school friend.”
“You fly to Madrid from Naples?”
“Uh, yes.” Can one fly to Madrid from Naples? Caroline very much hopes so.
“Well, in that case, a slight detour to Palermo. Perfecto.”
“Roland, I’m sorry, but I honestly cannot come to Palermo.”
A pause. “Then perhaps I should come to you there.”
“I think not, on the whole. Thanks, though.”
“But, my dear Caroline, I had at least two things of the utmost importance to say to you.”
But I don’t want you here, Caroline does not say. However, she does manage, “I have to tell you, Roland, that I’m much enjoying being by myself. You know, I’ve had rather little of that in my life, and I value it now.”
A long, no doubt expensive pause. “In that case I must come to you there.”
“No, Roland, honestly. Please don’t. Really. Please.”
Roland arrives about mid-morning of the following day, having taken the Palermo-Naples boat and driven (surely madly) up from Naples.
Seemingly not wishing to commit themselves to a single place, any venue for what must be a difficult conversation, for an hour or so they simply walk about, Roland and Caroline. Each, perhaps, playing for time.
It is over Camparis at Caroline’s small café that Roland, as though from the blue, begins to talk about Buck Fister.
“It is true that we were friends,” Roland tells her, earnestly. “I talked to him, I don’t know, something about him seemed to invite certain conversations. As you have no doubt observed, ordinarily men do not have conversations with each other.”
“Yes, it seems very sad for them.”
“Indeed so. In any case I did find myself talking to Buck, we had enjoyable lunches, though not with great frequency. It always seemed that it was I who talked, though. I had not noticed this, I had not thought of it, not giving it much attention. And then—” Roland scowls, as his voice simultaneously deepens and strains, as though he now speaks from great dark depths, with great effort. “And then one day he talked to me,” Roland with difficulty says, “and he told me in some detail of what he was doing. His business—his business with girls.”
“Girls?” Tired Caroline is not picking up the threads of this conversation.
“His, uh, traffic. The prostitution.”
“Oh.” But why are we talking about this, and why now? Caroline would like to know.
“But not with prostitutes. With nice girls. The prostitution of nice girls.” Roland brings these last words out heavily, large stones on the table between them. Ugly stones, repellent. “I knew already that he had an interest in some houses,” Roland continues, “but the houses were quite another thing from these girls. Girls even from families that you might know, sent out to hotels. Businessmen from wherever, even doctors, of course many lawyers.” Roland pauses, staring across the table at Caroline, almost accusingly. “He mentioned one girl, and then I had to end it. I made a certain phone call. Concerning Buck. To certain people.”
He is telling me that Jill was involved with acts of prostitution, thinks Caroline, her mind reeling. That Jill went to hotels for money, with strangers, and that for that reason he caused Buck Fister to be murdered. Caroline receives this dizzily, it almost makes her faint. Closing her eyes against it, beginning to deny it, “I am tired,” is all Caroline said.
A moment later, opening her eyes, revived to a degree perhaps by sheer curiosity, she asks him, “But how did you know—to call—?”
“How did I come to be involved with such people? My darling, this is a very long Italian story, very Sicilian, commencing with the youngest sister of my grandfather. I will tell you at a later time.”
It is enough—just for an instant—to make Caroline believe that she might never return to San Francisco, nor to her daughters. How selfish they all are, really—beautiful, selfish, spoiled and greedy girls, San Francisco girls, perfect products of that spoiled and lovely city. She almost wishes that an earthquake might overtake them all, so that San Francisco, like Pompei, like Paestum, would be historical.