SEVEN

L’ONDA, THE WAVE

“THE COLOR OF THE SKY, THE STRENGTH OF THE SEA”

1.

Scottie had been too worried about concealing her pregnancy when she left America to bring any books on childbirth with her, and now she wouldn’t find any in English, and probably not in Italian, either. She couldn’t see Italian women turning to Dr. Spock for advice. Plus, she wasn’t the type to learn from books anyway. Almost any woman in Siena could tell her what she needed to know.

The baby was real now, to her, in a way that it had not been before. She had never thought of it as something that would leave her body and take up its life in the world. It was just a Problem. She had a brief thought about what would happen if she had a girl, and together they went to look at Vassar … She pushed the memory out of her head—Michael was this child’s father. If she said it often enough, it would become true.

She went home and made a nice dinner for the two of them—the three of them, really. Chicken marsala. It took her hours, and it came out perfectly.

Except Michael did not come home by seven, or eight, or nine. She finally dumped the dinner in the trash and did the dishes and went to bed.

It was after ten by the time she heard his key in the lock. He came in complaining about Palio drummers blocking his way.

Instead of saying, “I’m pregnant,” she said, “I have a headache.”

She pretended to be asleep while he went off to work the next morning, still furious with him, and the more furious for knowing he had no idea she was angry at all.

At lunch she polished off a plate of the most exquisitely delightful tagliatelle ai funghi porcini at the restaurant downstairs, on the excuse she was following the orders of the local women. Signor Tommaso, obviously pleased by her appetite, explained that fresh porcini mushrooms would not come for another few months, and that when they did the woods would be full of eager hunters. This dish, made from the dried version, would be a “foreshadowing.” She skeptically sniffed the shriveled tan and brown mushroom that Signor Tommaso brought out on a plate to illustrate, but each bite when the actual dish arrived was a miracle—the hand-rolled noodles put up a slight resistance to her teeth, then surrendered in a cloud of velvety flavor so intense she felt she would swoon.

After lunch she returned to the bakery, feeling a bit shy but wanting to thank the women who had been so kind. The owner had simply nodded and taken her money for the bread. The other women had once again given La Straniera a wide berth.

*   *   *

Scottie was ironing Michael’s shirt as he lifted pots on the stove. “Mmm, smells good,” he said.

She would tell him now. Earlier that day she practiced in front of the mirror. “I’m having a baby,” she had said out loud, turning sideways, studying her body. She would tell him now. Now. Now.

What if he figured it out? What if he realized the baby was not his? What if he threw her out onto the street, like she deserved?

She felt her resolve weakening. She could tell him another time.

Then a boxed ad on the back page of the newspaper on the table caught her eye. Cuccioli. Robertino had taught her that word. Puppies. A puppy would be good training for both of them. And an instant friend for her. It would warm Michael up to the idea of having a little one around.

She opened a can of Del Monte peaches, topped them with whipped cream and popped a maraschino cherry on top like she had seen in the June issue of Life Michael had brought up from Rome. Michael ate the peaches in silence, reading the paper as she hung up the freshly ironed shirt.

Next she served him a Salisbury steak with a side of mashed potatoes and a perfect pool of gravy, while deftly removing the plate that had held the peaches. The meat for the steak had required quite a bit of wrangling with the butcher, who found it upsetting to have to grind up perfectly good beef. She tried to say she was making a ragù alla bolognese, but this didn’t help—why was she not then buying veal, and a chicken liver? The butcher’s mother was from Bologna, and this was how it was to be made, he insisted.

She sat down opposite Michael and spoke to the newspaper. “Do you like our home?”

He gave her a quizzical look over the top of the paper. “Of course I do. It’s the best address in the city.”

“But … does it feel like a home to you?”

“Of course it does. You’ve done a beautiful job. Oh honey, don’t you know that?” His voice was warm, kind but also …

“No,” she said.

“Come here.” He pulled her onto his lap, brushed her hair back with his hand. “You know what I love about it? It’s a showplace of all that’s best about America.”

“You don’t think it’s—cold?”

“Not at all. I love it. And you’re a wonderful cook.”

At this she laughed. “And you’re a great liar.”

“I love that you cook American.”

This was one of Michael’s odd quirks, that he wanted her to cook American food. “It’s not easy. I found those Del Monte canned peaches in the back of a dusty old dry goods store. They’re probably left over from World War II.”

“They were delicious. And so was the burger.”

She removed the plate with the crusty remains of the Salisbury steak and topped off Michael’s glass of milk. “Hey, what do you think about getting a dog?”

“Would be nice, but we don’t have a yard for it.” He wiped his mouth with a chintz napkin she realized she’d have to wash and iron again tomorrow. She must find some paper napkins somewhere. The Italians were really behind the times on disposable products.

“I’m out walking all day anyway,” she said, keeping her tone cheery. “And I’m lonely when you’re away, you know.” She smiled at him as she rearranged the flowers as she had been taught in homemaking class at Miss Porter’s. She hated the class, felt flowers looked prettiest in the fields where they grew wild, but she did remember some of it, taller flowers in the middle.

“I know you’re lonely,” he said. “I mean, I can see it, and of course, you’re thousands of miles from your friends. You’re brave to have taken this on.”

“So it’s okay if I get the dog?” she pressed, putting a fresh plate of brownies on the table. They were a little burned—she had made them in a tiny electric countertop mini-oven she’d bought at the hardware store, and all of the gauges were in Celsius.

“Oh no,” he said. He was staring down at the “News of Siena” page.

“What?”

“The mayor’s been killed in a car crash.”

“The mayor of Siena?”

“Yes.” He was reading the story intently.

“Ugo Rosini is dead?”

“No,” said Michael. “You were so caught up in making the house pretty that you missed that there was an election.”

“I—I guess I did,” she said. “So it’s not Rosini?”

“It’s Manganelli who’s dead.” He sounded upset. “The guy who beat Rosini. He only took office a few days ago. He was pro-business, the Christian Democratic Party. Bad blow for us businessmen.”

She hadn’t even bothered to try to understand the complexity of Italian politics. There were about forty political parties. It was like when a British boy had taken her on a date to a cricket match and then tried to explain the rules to her, both dull and complicated.

Ugo was alive. She felt a sudden desire to run into him, to see him in the flesh. To feel desired.

“Let’s go down and have an ice cream in the piazza,” Scottie said.

Michael put down the paper and sighed. “I’m sorry. I have to go out. Work.” He stood up and put his napkin on the dirty plate, adding, “I just don’t think getting a dog is a good idea. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll ask Ford for a trip home at Christmas.”

She blinked at him, a rage rising in her that she had not felt since her pony Shorty had dumped her in the water obstacle at a horse show. She followed him toward the door, twisting her apron in her hands.

“I’m pregnant,” she said as he took his hat off the rack.

He looked at her in surprise, then frowned. “We can’t start a family now.”

“Well, we are. I’m having a baby.”

“Here?” He was incredulous.

“People have children in Italy.”

“Yes, and they get diseases and worms and run over. It’s filthy and dangerous here. Run by Communists, for God’s sake. Who knows where Italy will be in five years? Six months, even. The whole place could be at war.”

“At war?”

“With us. You can’t raise a child under those conditions. It’s not safe.”

She was so confused. What was he talking about? What was he actually afraid of?

“Well. It’s too late. I—I’m having a baby,” she said. She was racked with guilt. Part of her wanted to tell him, to throw herself on his mercy, to live honestly.

She said nothing.

“I assumed you were … being careful,” he said. “Because we didn’t talk about starting a family.”

“But … you’re Catholic.”

“You’re not.” They stared at each other, realizing the things they had both taken for granted.

“I just assumed you’d want children … It’s normal for a man to—”

He flinched as if she had struck him. “This is terrible timing.” He turned away, and she went into the bedroom and shut the door. She heard the front door close.

Who bought tractors after dinner, she wondered.

2.

The political situation in Siena had just been upended again. Michael read the article in the evening paper with growing dismay as Scottie served him a hideous piece of ground something. He noticed she didn’t eat it. She must think he was crazy for asking her to cook this stuff. The truth was he hated this kind of crappy American cooking, but the rules were very clear that agents were not supposed to “go native.” Their homes were supposed to be as American as possible. The Agency actually preferred if their people didn’t speak the language. This kind of immersion in the local culture can lead to ambiguous loyalties, one urgent notice had warned. Not all of the rules made sense to him, he had to admit. Most of them seemed to have been made by people who had never left America. But he was here to do a job, so he followed them. And that job had just gotten harder.

Only four days into his tenure, Mayor Manganelli had lost control of his brand-new Fiat 600 and slammed it into a wall near Porta Romana, the latest of a million victims of car accidents in Europe this year. He was taken to Ospedale Santa Maria della Scala, but had died within the hour, and the vice mayor, an odious tax lawyer named Vestri, had been sworn in. New elections would be called for November 4. His mission was not over.

The article, by Rodolfo Marchetti, went on to complain that the Italian love affair with la macchina was turning deadly, especially since traffic lights, speed limits and rules of the road were basically nonexistent. “We’re killing each other and bankrupting ourselves for gasoline,” Marchetti wrote. “Trying to live like Americans.”

Scottie chose this moment to announce they were starting a family. Was she insane? The idea of bringing a poor innocent child into this terrible world, bombs pointed right at them, two empires on the verge of World War III! But later, he felt terrible about the way he had shut her down. She didn’t know. She didn’t live in the world he lived in. She thought life was buying tomatoes and waxing the floor. She was lonely—terribly lonely—and of course wanted to start a family, since she had none. He would make it up to her. The idea of being a father terrified him, but he couldn’t say that. He would get her a dog after all. It would be a good distraction.

He sent Luce an encoded telegram from the central Siena post office in Piazza Matteotti using his Geoffrey Sneedle alias, since they had told him never to trust the phone lines. He hoped she’d get it—he had heard she was ill. The rumor was that she had been poisoned by the KGB. He had laughed when Duncan told him about it, pointing out that it was more likely that she was suffering from the side effects of the steady stream of Dexedrine and Benzedrine she swallowed to get through the day, and almost certainly sleeping pills at night, but Duncan was serious. “I think it’s true,” he had said, sipping a pear grappa from a handblown Venetian glass during one of their evenings out in Rome. “It’s very serious, Michael. They’re combing the palazzo for signs of poison. These Russians are everywhere, and they will take down anyone who stands in their way.”

He gathered up all the evening newspapers and went to write up a detailed report about Manganelli’s death and what this would mean for politics in Siena.

3.

The next morning Scottie dressed quickly and slipped out while Michael was still asleep. He had come in very late and gone to bed in the guest room. So now they were giving each other the silent treatment. Other women had talked about this. She had never thought it would happen to her. Out of habit or perhaps malice she left him a bowl of Cheerios—the dregs of the last box from the shipment that came with them from America—and turned on the percolator, putting in the last scoop of the Maxwell House they’d brought. How he could drink that stuff was beyond her, but he claimed to love it.

She walked across the Campo and into Via della Galluzza. She lingered, looking into the window of a dress shop, admiring a blue and white striped belted cotton dress in the full-skirted Dior style. Soon she would not be able to wear dresses like that.

“Signora Messina?” It was Carlo Chigi Piccolomini.

The sight of him was, as her father would say, like a cold beer on a hot day. He was smiling at her with his lopsided grin, his eyes flashing behind his glasses. He was holding the hand of a little girl with a headful of reddish ringlets. She had his eyes, almond-shaped and sly. Carlo gave Scottie a toothy smile as he locked the front door behind them, turning the huge key slowly—crank, crank, crank. The way he moved drew her eye to his forearms, the nape of his neck, the tilt of his fedora.

“What a pleasant surprise,” she said.

“This is my niece, Ilaria.”

Scottie greeted the little girl, who said, “I live in the Tartuca.”

“I live in the Selva,” said Scottie. “But I wasn’t born there, so I can’t actually be a member of the contrada.”

“Like Mommy,” said the little girl. “She was born in Roccastrada. Uncle Carlo is a Tower.”

“Yes, when the Palio starts next week we will be archenemies, won’t we, cara mia?”

“Sì,” the little girl giggled. Carlo swept her up and kissed her cheek, and she squealed with delight. It was such an uncontrolled sound of joy that Scottie reached out and put her hand on Carlo’s arm.

“I’m pregnant,” she said, beaming.

His face lit up, his mouth open in joy. “Auguri!” he said. “Did you hear that, our friend is having a baby. That is why she looks especially beautiful.”

Ilaria clapped her hands. Scottie felt that finally, finally, her child had been welcomed and celebrated. And Carlo had called her beautiful. She felt warm and happy.

Carlo put Ilaria down and smiled at Scottie. “We are walking the same way, no? We go together?”

He took Scottie’s arm, which she did not admit to herself she had been longing for him to do, and steered her and Ilaria around puddles and dogs’ land mines. He was such a gentleman.

“Is it far to San Galgano?” The words were out of her mouth, planned or unplanned, she could not be sure.

“About an hour to the southwest. Just past Monticiano. You haven’t been there before?”

“No. I might drive out there,” she said. “I’ve heard it’s worth seeing.”

Carlo thought for a moment. “The road is not well marked. I will take you myself if you don’t mind stopping in Monticiano first.” There was a hesitation in his voice, and she assumed he was just being polite.

“I wouldn’t want to take your time.”

“No, no, I’d like to show it to you.” There was something else he was saying; she didn’t know what it was, but she saw that it was important to him that she go.

Ilaria looked up at her. “I’ll show you the ducks.” The girl’s sweet face made her heart ache.

“Well, if it’s really not too much trouble—”

“It would be my pleasure, Mrs. Messina. My car is parked near the Fortezza.” He was suddenly quite formal, as if to banish any sense of impropriety.

She felt as if things were getting slightly out of her control, but at the same time that was like the best part of riding. You used the bit and your legs to direct the horse, but there was always a moment when the animal, at speed, was immune to your commands. Some riders only rode in fenced arenas because they were terrified of being run away with. Scottie lived for that moment when you knew you might not be able to stop the horse, so you didn’t try, you just rode it out and trusted the horse not to kill you both.

4.

Michael got a cable from Rome saying that he needed to provide more information on the Communists in Siena, so that “measures could be taken” to prevent Ugo Rosini from being elected mayor again in November, “a potentially disastrous outcome.”

The thought that he was going to be a father kept slipping into his consciousness, distracting him from his work. What kind of a father would he be? His own father was cold to him while at the same time doting on his four sisters. His father even liked his sisters’ husbands, whom Michael saw as monosyllabic and sports-obsessed. He could have had better conversations with Banchi’s oxen. Scottie had pointed out it was “normal” for men to want children. He picked up a copy of Life magazine. They sent him Life and Look with orders to leave them on café tables so that the Sienese would see how wonderful life in America was. He flipped through the pages, looking at pictures of normal men. Normal men bought life insurance so their children would be taken care of when they died. A normal man read the paper while his wife was in the delivery room having their first child. Normal men had heartburn, and no wonder: A Union Oil ad featured a veteran enjoying the amazing comforts of modern life but warned that “eternal vigilance—historically the price of liberty—may in our time be the price of prosperity, too.”

A survey reported that American women’s ideal man was six feet tall, with black wavy hair and blue eyes. He was a business executive, sincere and honest, but also polite, sporting, helpful, communicative, well read, and enjoyed dancing and woodworking.

Woodworking?

Michael sighed. He would rather fight Communists.

5.

Carlo had one of the super-popular, tiny new Fiat 600s in robin’s egg blue. She looked at his hand on the gearshift, how the thin hair climbed down his arms possessively, like a single strand of ivy taking over a column. His hands were broad with long fingers, and his nails short and clean. Michael’s hands were quick and nervous, always in motion. Stop that, she told herself. Stop comparing them.

Just outside the city walls, they turned off the pavement into a narrow, bumpy driveway that led through a dense group of trees up a hill. At the top, the view opened up and there was a beautiful gray stone farmhouse next to a crumbling tower. Before they drove down the road, Carlo paused for a moment.

“This is where my wife lives,” he said simply.

They got out, and a tall woman with a cloud of curly copper hair shot through with gray came out of the house and hugged Ilaria.

Scottie half recognized her, but thought she must be wrong. It couldn’t be. She was wearing tan trousers covered, Scottie noticed, in white dust, like powdered sugar. The woman stared at her down a long aristocratic nose, expressionless, and then, after a glance at Carlo, broke into a wide smile.

“Signora Scottie Messina, my wife, Franca.” Carlo was speaking English.

Franca looked an awful lot like the woman with the donkey.

“I recognize you, I think,” Scottie said carefully.

Franca smiled. “You must be mistaken.”

Scottie shook Franca’s hand, feeling the strength in her thin, callused hand. She paused, never sure when the tu form, or informal “you,” was appropriate, and decided to stick to English, although it felt like a form of defeat.

“My husband and I live in the apartment you own, in the Campo,” said Scottie. “We love it.”

“Ah, yes. One of Carlo’s family properties.”

“Are you a baker?” asked Scottie, nodding at the white dust.

“Sculptor,” said Franca. “I’m finishing a piece in marble.” Franca’s hands moved nervously when she wasn’t holding something.

“Wonderful,” said Scottie. “I’d love to see it.”

“Where is Ciucco?” asked Ilaria.

“In the barn,” said Franca, and Carlo explained, “Franca has a dear old donkey that Ilaria is in love with.”

A donkey. Franca was the woman with the donkey who had hissed at her in the street. She felt cold, and a little afraid, but kept her face pleasant.

“There are new ducklings in the pond,” Franca told Ilaria. Ilaria ran around the back of the house, and a barking dog, some sort of little beagle mix, followed.

“Carlo said you went to Smith,” said Scottie.

“Yes,” said Franca. “I left in 1937.” Scottie expected her to say more, but Franca didn’t, instead moving into the house. Carlo waved his hand for them to follow. As she glanced at his face, Scottie saw a tension there under the polite smile.

Franca had turned the ground floor, which used to house the animals, into a studio. There were small chalk and clay models around the space, which was littered with bits of wood, wire and the clay and chalk that had been chipped away. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling; Scottie recognized lavender and rosemary, but couldn’t name the myriad of other dried flowers and plants hanging there. The smell was amazing—a garden, condensed. There were shelves lined with jars containing more herbs and what looked like stones suspended in cloudy water.

“Franca is an herbalist and a brilliant sculptor,” said Carlo, running his hand over a marble column that reminded Scottie of a cypress tree. Franca smiled at him and tossed her hair.

“Carlo knows nothing about art,” she said. “But I love him anyway.”

Carlo smiled at her and said a simple “Me, too, amore.

Scottie admired the flowing, sensuous, abstract shapes. They were a strange couple, she thought, yet Franca seemed happy when she looked at Carlo. He seemed to make her relax, and in those moments she became beautiful, Scottie thought, despite the fact that she wore no makeup and sloppy clothing. And yet, behind the eyes … what was it? A hardness. Pain. They must have been married a long time, been through so much together, including the war.

Franca handed them both a glass of wine, which had appeared out of nowhere. “It’s not great,” she said, “but it’s from my own grapes.”

There was a piercing scream, and as they ran outside, the beagle arrived carrying a duckling in his mouth, followed by sobbing, horrified Ilaria.

Scottie looked at the limp little bloody body and felt suddenly very ill. She saw Franca watching her carefully.

Carlo tried to get the duckling away from the dog, but he ran circles around them, the little beaked head bobbing out of his mouth making the girl scream even louder. Scottie sank onto the stairs, feeling the blood drain from her face. The nausea she had felt in the bakery was back.

“You’re pregnant,” said Franca quietly.

Carlo was hugging the sobbing little girl. He said, “The duck has been transformed into an angel.”

“An angel with little yellow wings?” Ilaria asked, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Exactly,” said Carlo.

With a cool glance at Scottie, Franca herded Ilaria into the house, promising her sweets. Carlo turned to Scottie.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, sorry,” she said quickly.

“Ilarietta,” he called. “We have to go now.” Franca came out, and he added, “Franca, come with us to San Galgano. You can show Scottie around.”

“No, I’m working. Leave Ilaria here. I’ll bring her back to her parents tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Ciao, amore.

Carlo and Franca kissed each other on both cheeks. “I’ll see you soon. Ciao.

Scottie went to shake Franca’s hand, but the thin, birdlike woman pulled her close and kissed her cheeks. It felt more like malice than affection.

As they got back in the car, Scottie felt awkward and unsettled.

“We don’t have to go to San Galgano,” she said.

Carlo put a hand on her back and the electricity hit her. “It’s not far,” he said, turning onto the main road heading away from Siena.

*   *   *

Carlo drove in silence for a while. “There is something I wish to tell you,” he said. “About me. About Franca.”

“It’s none of my business,” she said quickly.

He nodded. “It’s true. But in you I feel I have found a friend. May I think that way?”

She looked at him. “Yes,” she said.

“Siena is a difficult place for me. I do not have many friends. Perhaps none. It is my own fault.”

She waited.

“Franca and I have always known each other. Our families … We were always together, like it was fate.”

“She was from a noble family, too?”

“Yes. We were so different but still so close, best friends. I wish you could have known her then. She was so funny, so wild. I was, I don’t know, a dreamer. When we were sixteen, well, there was a mistake. We were in love, and things went too far. She became pregnant.”

“Oh.”

“Our families were very angry, of course, but this happens. So we got married, and we lived with my parents. It was important to them that we be educated, so I was sent to England and Franca to America. The child was kept at home, a secret from our lives as students.”

“Boy or a girl?”

“A boy.”

“You must have missed him.”

“I did, but to be truthful, also I didn’t. I was too young to be a father. My parents were right to send me away.”

“And Franca?”

“She was unhappy in America. She missed Raimondo. She did not finish at Smith, but came home.”

The landscape outside the window shifted, as if in response to Carlo’s story. The forest became darker and denser, and a fog settled over them.

“I came back from England, and for a while we were happy, actually.”

She waited, knowing he was deep in the past. She imagined Franca and a little boy in sunlight, in vineyards.

“And then … I don’t know. I wanted to have more children, but she became very nervous.”

“During the war?”

“I was stationed near Poggibonsi, north of here. We had an apartment there so she and Raimondo could be close to me. I thought it was safe. I was wrong. A bomb hit our apartment building. Raimondo was killed. It was his fourteenth birthday.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.” It was a deeply inadequate response, but to say more would have been worse. Everything she had sensed about Carlo but not understood made sense now.

They drove along in silence for a while.

“It was hard for us to be together after that. I moved into the castello after my parents died, and she chose the farmhouse you saw.”

“You’ve been apart a long time. But you’re still married?”

“It’s Italy. There are no divorces, or at least it’s not worth the time and effort it would take. And I would not do that to her.”

“You both didn’t want to start over? Try again?”

Carlo shrugged. “Me, yes. But Franca … she is stuck in the past.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I try to help her. She loves the visits from Ilaria. And she sells her herbs. She is wise in these things. Her grandmother was, too. It’s good for her, to help people, to feel useful. But it’s hard not to see the woman she was, hard not to miss her. And I think she must hate me a little. I wasn’t there when it happened.”

*   *   *

They drove on into the countryside. “This is a volcanic zone like Amiata,” Carlo said as they climbed again, leaving the farms behind them and heading into a wilder zone. She found the beauty outside the car window almost unreal, mesmerizing. “The Etruscans had mines and quarries here. Cinnabar and alabaster.” He seemed relieved to have told his story. This is who he is, she thought. He is someone who moves forward. But poor Franca.

“It feels very remote,” she said. “When we drove through Chianti in April, it reminded me of a patchwork quilt. This is more like a scratchy wool blanket at summer camp.” Carlo nodded and smiled at her, and as their eyes met she felt something inside her release.

Carlo had lived through so much. “You must hate seeing the German tourists,” she said.

Carlo looked confused. “The Germans?”

“They killed your son.”

Carlo was silent for a moment, then spoke quietly. “Italy changed sides in October 1943, and declared war on Germany, but the Germans were all over Italy and would not give up easily. The planes that bombed Poggibonsi were American planes, cutting off the German retreat.”

“Americans?”

“They missed the railyard and hit the center of the city.”

Scottie felt faint. “Oh my God.” Hot tears streamed down her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Carlo put a hand on her arm. “The past is past,” he said.

Not for everyone, she thought.

*   *   *

Raindrops started spattering the windshield as they turned up a small unmarked road. Scottie could see a perfectly cylindrical little building at the top, horizontally striped like the Duomo in Siena, except if the Duomo were the teapot, this would be the matching sugar bowl.

“How strange and beautiful,” she said. “What’s it doing here?”

They got out of the car. The scattered drops had turned to a light, steady rain, but it was still warm. “Wait one second,” said Carlo. He pushed open the wooden door and disappeared inside. The wind had picked up, and the views from the hilltop were spectacular, made even more so by the storm clouds massing overhead. When Carlo called, “Come now,” Scottie went in.

Carlo had lit four tall candles in sconces on the walls, illuminating the striped, perfectly round interior of the chapel. She looked around, admiring the dome overhead, which carried on with the stripes all the way to a small disc in the center of the ceiling.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “Like being inside a snail.”

“Here,” said Carlo. He motioned her to the center of the room. Iron railings surrounded a large rock that emerged from a break in the floor, jutting up from the earth below.

In the rock was a black iron sword, only its hilt showing.

Scottie wasn’t sure what to make of it. It couldn’t be real, could it?

“Galgano was a knight from Chiusdino,” said Carlo. “He was a good swordsman and quite the brawler and womanizer, too. But one day in 1180 an angel appeared to him and told him to change his life. His horse ran away with him and brought him here to Montesiepi. He plunged his sword into the rock and became a man of God.”

“Like King Arthur.”

“It predates the Arthur legend. This is the real thing.”

Scottie reached down and touched the hilt of the sword. It felt cool to the touch, but also electric.

She stood up. “What a magical place,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Ah, but that is not all,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

When they got outside the rain was falling harder. Scottie wasn’t sure she wanted to go tramping around more of the countryside in her sandals.

“Close your eyes,” said Carlo.

She did, and he led her a few steps around the back of the chapel.

“Okay, open them.”

She was looking down a grassy hillside at one of the strangest things she had ever seen. A huge roofless Gothic cathedral lay below her, sitting in the middle of a field of yellow and green sunflowers.

“It’s like something out of a ghost story,” she said.

“Yes. I wanted you to see it before we left. I am sorry about the rain. We should probably go back. There is nothing inside except grass.”

She couldn’t stop herself. She ran down the hill toward it, the gray stones of the cathedral looming larger and larger. All of the latticework of the rose windows was intact, but there was no glass. It was the most arresting sight she had ever seen.

Carlo came panting up behind her.

“What happened to it?” she asked, looking up at the ominous sky above the church.

“Churches from this era often have lead roof tiles. Heavy, durable and expensive, they were supposed to protect them forever, and many of them have. But here, a corrupt abbot sold the lead, probably to someone who melted it down to make weapons, and took the money. Shortly after that, a bolt of lightning struck the exposed timbers and burned the place down.”

“That sounds like the definition of ‘smiting’ to me.”

She walked through the portal where tall wooden doors would have been. Inside was a carpet of wildflowers growing up through the stones. The rain slowed, and a ray of sunlight cracked through the black cloud overhead and shone down into the space.

“I half think angels with duck wings are about to talk to us, too,” she said.

He nodded. “It’s my favorite place on earth.” She looked over at him. His shirt was wet, and his hair slick. He was smiling at her, happy to share this wonderful place. He was standing at a distance, fifty feet or so away from her, looking at her, deeply, without hesitation, drinking her in.

“I thought I lost the baby the other day,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

“A baby is a miracle,” he said.

She put her hands on her belly and left them there, staring down at it. Her insides were churning, her heart in her mouth, pounding.

“I have a story, too,” she said. “But I can’t tell it. I want to, but I can’t.”

“Then don’t,” he said, staying where he was. They were talking across a wide expanse of space, as if through a wall. “You are unhappy. I don’t want you to be unhappy. I brought you here so you could be happy for one day. Let’s be happy together for one day.”

She saw him about to take a step back, to turn, to head toward the car. She saw the day ending with a squeeze of her hand, with the acknowledgment of friendship.

She went quickly over to him. Put her hands on his shoulders. Stared into his eyes. He knelt in front of her and put his hands on her belly.

Her dress was wet, and she was conscious that it clung to her. He was looking up at her, the raindrops dripping from the rim of his fedora, his eyes once more on hers. She could not look away from him. What was she looking at, for, into? She could never have put it into words, but whatever she had been looking for, she was now looking at it. She took one hand off her belly and put it over her breast, which was aching with desire. But it wasn’t her own hand that she wanted there. She reached down, keeping her eyes on his, and took his hand off her belly and put it on her breast, and it was as if a giant void in her had been filled. She sighed deeply.

He gently rubbed the wet fabric. She inhaled, but didn’t move.

He stood, and she thought again of what Ugo had said about power, and she decided, This time I will not be taken, I will take, and she moved into his body, feeling the warmth of it through her dress. She raised her face and kissed his mouth.

He kissed her with such certainty it made her knees nearly buckle. His arms closed around her and she felt the whole cockeyed, askew world suddenly slide into place.

“Cara,” he said. “Carissima.”

*   *   *

The sun came out, and it was suddenly warm. From the trunk of his car he produced a bottle of wine, and a blanket he spread out on the dry ground under a huge tree. Laughing, he removed what remained of their clothes and hung them from the branches of the tree to dry. He was lean, and pale, and had dark brown moles. His toes were long and sensuous. They gazed at each other in the dappled sunlight under the tree, touching what was new and unfamiliar, as if each was blind and the other was a sculpture. Then she lay naked in his arms and he caressed her hair and kissed her and she climbed on top and put her hands in the air as she rode him until they shouted with joy, and then lay still again. She wanted to lie like that forever, the only two people on earth.

“Are you sorry at all?” she asked. “Because I’m not.”

He laughed. “Not sorry.”

“Even though it’s a sin? Even though we’re both married, and I’m pregnant?”

“Passion is not a sin,” he said. “Not in such a beautiful place. Are you sorry you have made love to an old man?”

“An older man,” she corrected. “A knowledgeable man.” He kissed her and ran his hand up her leg, and as they rolled over, she wrapped it around him, hearing thunder in her ears, but as the thunder grew she realized she heard something else.

Drums? No. Hoofbeats.

No, she thought. No. She sat up and saw that Robertino was cantering toward them. She grabbed Carlo’s hand and he sat up, too. They pulled the blanket around them. Robertino pulled up the horse when he saw them, looming over them, the horse’s hoofs churning in the dirt, inches from them. Robertino’s face was a traffic jam of emotions.

“Buongiorno, signori,” he said formally, coldly. The horse, feeling his anxiety, danced under him, tossing its head.

Ciao, Robertino, listen,” she said, trembling.

Robertino nodded curtly and rode off. Scottie put her face in her hands. Why did the birds keep singing in the trees? She wanted to scream at them to shut up so she could think.

“He won’t say anything,” said Carlo, standing and handing over her dress.

“How do you know?” She thought she was shouting, but it came out as a whisper.

6.

Michael parked along a gravel road under an oak tree, set up a folding chair and an easel, placed his half-finished watercolor on it and settled in to wait. Anyone who came along would find just another foreign artist, in love with Tuscany’s famous light, though the light was in short supply today, and it smelled like rain. Squalls were visible in the distance. He looked out over the misty overlapping, undulating hills, the vineyards, the olive groves. It reminded him of the fresco by Lorenzetti he had mentioned to Luce during his job interview. Its title was Effects of Good Government on the Countryside, and it was part of a series of frescoes on the subject of leadership. Painted in 1339, this particular panel showed hunters, farmers, livestock and travelers all peacefully coexisting just outside the walls of recognizable Siena. Since he had moved to Siena the fresco had taken on a deeper significance. Lorenzetti’s allegory sought to illustrate for anyone passing through Siena’s city hall—citizens and politicians—the risks of tyranny and corruption and the rewards of justice and virtuous leadership, that the Common Good trumped personal advancement.

Unfortunately, it was a short leap from Common Good to Communism.

It was hard to believe he shared DNA with these people, and spoke their language. They didn’t just live differently, they thought differently. Backward.

But it was still a beautiful painting.

Robertino should be coming by soon. He had said he was riding to San Galgano today. Michael dipped his brush in water and put a tiny dab of Winsor Green in the corner, where a beech tree should go. The color immediately spread and began to pollute that entire area of the painting, turning a distant castle a sickly hue. He cursed and dabbed at it. Michael had always felt Winsor Green was like Sunday dinners with his entire extended Italian family—vile but necessary, and highly invasive. And now he would be a father himself. He would do it all differently.

He heard hoofbeats and stood up. Robertino appeared, atop a charging brown horse. Michael felt a little nervous. He was asking a lot of the kid. Asking him to break the law, betray his people. He thought again of that Ninth Circle in Dante. Traitors, frozen forever. Would the kid feel loyal to his father, the American GI, or to his grandfather’s political party? Or would sheer greed, a sort of loyalty to his own survival, win out over all of it?

“Do you know where Communist Party headquarters is, in Via Cavour?”

“Sure,” said the kid.

“Do you think you can get me the list of party members without getting caught?”

He held his breath. The kid might say no, or threaten to tell someone.

“Sure.” The kid gave a mean smile, his blue eyes sparking with the challenge.

Michael blinked, startled. It was that easy? “You won’t tell Rosini?”

The kid’s lower lip twisted. “I’ll squeeze in the back window. How much you pay me?”

Michael hesitated. The whole thing was risky. What if the kid were caught, and told someone who he was working for? Using him at all was foolish, but he was such a good source of information, and could slip so easily into any situation. He was already known around Siena as nosy, talkative, a pest. Any questions Robertino asked would be interpreted as only serving his own interests. As part of the kid’s campaign to ride for the Porcupine contrada in the August Palio he had powerful locals to sway, and so did Michael.

“I’ve got the first issue of Matt Slade, Gunfighter,” Michael said, producing the comic book from under a block of paper in his watercolor case. “Just arrived.”

Robertino looked unconvinced. “How about a tractor for my grandfather? He liked the blue one.”

“I can’t give you a tractor. They cost millions of lire. How about World of Fantasy? Devil-Dog Dugan? Yellow Claw? Pretty choice stuff.”

“I want the tractor.”

“I told you, I can’t give away tractors. How about tickets to the movies? You can go with Mrs. Messina.”

Robertino gave a small snort that Michael could not understand. The kid seemed to be in some kind of foul mood, but he was fourteen, so it was to be expected. “A thousand dollars,” Robertino said, his eyes narrowing.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Less than a tractor.”

There was something feral about the kid that scared him a little. The ease with which he had agreed to treachery and theft. It was wrong to entrust Scottie to him. Maybe wrong to trust him at all.

“Okay,” he said. “A thousand.” Michael sometimes had the feeling it was he who worked for Robertino, not the other way around.

The boy reached into his pants and pulled out a small brown paper package, then dropped it on the ground in front of Michael. Dust rose from where it landed.

“For you,” he said, then sank his heels into the horse’s side. The beast shot forward.

Michael picked up the package off the ground and unwrapped it. It was a magazine called Physique Pictorial. He dropped it again and his stomach came up into his mouth, and he retched. He stood there for a moment, panicked, panting, staring at the thing on the ground as if it were a snake. He had seen it before, though not this issue. On the cover was a very muscular man in a Greek statue pose wearing nothing but a tiny pouch. The scrap of fabric was like something a little girl would carry to church with a quarter inside for the collection plate. Though this pouch contained more than a quarter. He knew that inside the magazine, there would be very few articles but lots of photos of men in very tight pants or even showing their bare buttocks, splashing in water troughs, demonstrating how to administer a shot, or performing wrestling moves on each other.

Michael calmly packed up his Winsor Green and the rest of the watercolor set. He put them back in the car; then, almost as an afterthought, he picked up the magazine and put it in his briefcase and locked it. He got in the car and drove back through the narrow gate in the walls at Porta Camollia, under the inscription that read in Latin COR MAGIS TIBI SENA PANDIT. Siena opens its heart to you.

The boy knows.

7.

Scottie was silent in the car on the way back to Siena. The landmarks they passed were a rebuke. The turnoff for Franca’s. The bridge of La Pia, the scene of one of Siena’s favorite gruesome stories of infidelity and death. What if Robertino told Michael? Or told anyone? Siena was, according to everyone, a small, gossipy place. She would be branded a whore, like Gina. Maybe she was like Gina. She had taken Carlo, as much as he had taken her. She felt deeply ashamed and more than a little shocked and angry with herself. At Vassar Leona had a mare that went into heat at every horse show. The poor beast would stand in her show stall or tied to the trailer, tail up, legs spread, juice running down her hind legs. People would avert their eyes, distract their children. Leona had called the horse a “nympho” and sold her.

The rain beat down on the little car, and Carlo had to concentrate on the road, leaning forward to see the few inches that the wipers cleaned. He parked back near the Fortezza.

“I can’t ever see you again,” she said.

He looked like she had spat on him. “Don’t be a child,” he said slowly.

She walked away, furious with the entire world.

*   *   *

She took a hot bath when she got home and tried to scrub away her guilt. She was making meatloaf when she heard Michael’s key turning in the heavy lock—thunk, thunk, thunk. She had it all planned out. She would greet him as if nothing had happened between them. She would be a perfect, faithful, adoring wife, like the women in the ads. My husband loves Crest!

“I’m sorry I was such an ass about the baby,” he said, coming up behind her and putting his arms around her, around her belly. She could feel him trembling with emotion. “Please forgive me. You caught me off guard, is all.”

“I understand,” she said. “It was a surprise for me, too.” She turned and hugged him hard, and they stayed that way for a moment.

“Well, I have another surprise. Guess where we’re going on Saturday?”

She really, really hoped he wouldn’t say San Galgano.

“Rome?”

“Better. I called the number in the paper. Let’s go get you a puppy!”