MANSHIP WAS SCARCELY PREPARED for what followed after he tugged the pull-chain bell at the front door of the gray, somewhat down-at-the-heels Villa Tranquillo in the Via Prospecta in Fiesole.
It was the woman herself who came to the door. He had no idea why he’d assumed that someone else would appear or, for that matter, what had made him think that the great-great—whatever she was to the Simonetta—would be a fortyish, somewhat drab spinster getting through life, trading on whatever benefits might accrue from being a direct descendant of the exalted Vespuccis and Cattaneos.
Far from it. Isobel Cattaneo was a much younger woman—Manship estimated somewhere in the late twenties to early thirties. She was unmarried, to be sure, but hardly drab. Nor was she especially beautiful, at least not in the sense in which that word is generally understood. He could see the resemblance to her illustrious forebear at once, but if he had not been forewarned to look for it, chances are that he would have missed it.
For one thing, she did little to call attention to the similarities. If anything, she went out of her way to play them down. Instead of the flowing gold tresses of the Primavera, Isobel Cattaneo’s hair was pulled back and pinned up almost mannishly. She used little in the way of cosmetics and dressed as though she hadn’t given a moment’s thought to what garment she’d put on that morning.
Overall, the effect was somewhat slapdash. Further, it was clear she’d made no special effort to put on appearances for him.
She met him at the door in a long flowered skirt, a loose peasant blouse, and a pair of thong sandals that flapped disconcertingly on the cold tiles as she walked.
She apologized for not having been in when he called, shooed a drowsy cat from a tatty armchair so he could sit, and offered him tea.
“I’d love a cup,” he said, gazing about at the dilapidated interior while she fussed about somewhere in a distant kitchen. He heard the clank of pots and pans, followed shortly by the whistle of a teakettle down a darkened corridor. Moments later, she reappeared, carrying a tray, and beckoned him to follow.
“Outside is better.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, an oblique apology for the widespread disorder of things. “The housekeeper.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. “She’s young and a bit scatterbrained. Her family’s been with us for years.”
They turned a corner and went out through tall French doors into a garden. It was bounded on either side by a pair of high stucco walls squared off at the bottom of the lawn by a stand of tall, feathery cypress. The fourth side, where they now stood, was a stone patio at the rear of the villa, where a cast-iron table and a pair of canvas lounges sagged in a state of shabby disrepair.
Highlighting the garden at its center was a narrow, rectangular reflecting pool, its shallow water scummy and choked with lily pads. Clay pots of tangled agapanthus sat along its granite coping and, in the center of the pool on a pedestal, a moss-stained marble cupid with a shattered nose plashed a lazy stream of water through its genitals into the pool below. All about the place, unattended beds of irises and yellow ranunculuses thrived vividly despite near-total neglect.
“I still have no idea what you want of me,” she said, pouring steaming water into a majolica pot when they’d settled on the patio.
“Mr. Osgood told you nothing—”
“He said something about an art show. It was all a bit vague.”
She spoke a perfect unaccented English. For their purposes, he thought, that wasn’t good. The American media idolized the foreign and mysterious.
“This is to take place at the Metropolitan Museum in New York,” he explained. “Botticelli. Five hundred and fiftieth birthday. He didn’t say anything to you about that—Mr. Osgood?”
“Yes, he said something like that.”
“In September. About four weeks from now.”
“Yes, yes.” She placed two biscotti on a plate and handed it to him. “But I still don’t quite see what all this …”
The note of feminine helplessness struck him as disingenuous. She was anything but helpless.
“For one thing, I can’t afford …”
Ah, now it comes, he thought. The money thing, of course.
“There’d be no question of your paying,” he explained. “We’d handle all expenses, travel to and from Italy, lodging, food, all per diem out-of-pocket expenses, plus a small honorarium for your time.” (He was careful to use the euphemism for salary.) “It’s only a matter of your being there opening night and, possibly, a week or two after. You might be asked to sit for a few interviews.”
“Interviews.” She looked up warily. “My English …”
“Is fine.” He smiled. “Perfect. Believe me. Too perfect.”
She made an odd face at him.
A door slammed from somewhere inside. Moments later, a dark, surly-looking young man, a scurf of plaster powdering the shoulders of his denim shirt, stuck his head out through the French doors. He shot Manship a somewhat-disapproving look, then proceeded to ignore him.
They rattled off some Italian between themselves, from which Manship detected a note of strain. When the young man turned to go, he half-nodded to Manship before disappearing into the gloomy darkness of the villa.
She offered nothing by way of explanation for the interruption, but sat erect, teacup poised at chest level, waiting for him to continue.
“As I was about to say, it won’t be unpleasant. We’ll try to make it as painless as possible for you.”
If he thought he was winning her over, in point of fact, she’d grown markedly cooler.
“What will I have to do?” she asked, as though she suspected something illicit.
“Nothing much. Just stand around and look like your famous ancestor.”
“I don’t look like her at all.”
“There are some who’d dispute that,” he said, and sensed her annoyance. “Did I say something wrong?”
“It’s just that it all seems so …”
“Irrelevant,” he concluded for her. “Perhaps it is. What’s wrong with a bit of irrelevance every now and then?”
“Nothing at all, if you like that sort of thing.” Her irritation increased. “I hate this.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This … this … connection to some famous ancestor who means nothing to me.”
“Like it or not, I’m afraid you’re stuck with it. It could have been a lot worse.” He laughed, but she didn’t. “What do you know about her?” he asked, changing the subject.
Her head came around, sending a rush of color to her cheek. “I know what everyone else knows, and that’s not much. Only that she came from Genoa. She lived in Florence in the final decades of the fifteenth century. Her beauty was celebrated, not only by the common folk but by the major artists and poets of her time.”
His confusion had been growing steadily. He’d been expecting an altogether different response to his invitation.
“The usual thing,” she went on. “I know what is common knowledge—her marriage to Marco Vespucci, her love affair with Botticelli, with Jiuliano de’ Medici, and all the others. She was not particularly discreet. What’s the big attraction anyway?” Isobel Cattaneo asked, the red flare at her cheeks deepening. “I fail to understand it. No one outside of Italy has ever heard the name Simonetta. Only here is she known; looked on as a sort of minor icon; celebrated because her face is immortalized in a few great paintings and also because she happened to be clever enough to sleep with the right men.”
She made a disparaging face, as though the whole thing was beyond her. Here, a direct descendant of the Simonetta was at great pains to distance herself from her famous forebear. It puzzled, irritated, and surprised him.
Manship’s head tilted slightly to the side as he studied her. “Have you had the connection traced?”
“My parents and grandparents have.”
“Through a certified genealogist?”
“Of course.”
“May I see the trace?”
She shrugged indifferently. “If you like.”
The expression on her face made him feel silly, so that he thought it wise to abandon the subject. “Would you take your hair down for me?”
“What?”
“Your hair. Would you take it down? Unpin it?”
“Are you insane?”
“A bit, I suppose. Anyway, please indulge me.”
She looked at him, not knowing whether to ask him to leave or to call her friend upstairs for help. At last, she shook her head and sighed, then slowly reached up and removed several bobs from her hair. In the next instant, it all tumbled round her shoulders like a shawl, the sheer volume of it far more than he’d suspected from the tight, severe upsweep with which she preferred to present herself.
He stood there, chin in hand, tilting his head right and left. He walked away from her a short distance, then came back. “Well, I must say, I don’t see that much of a resemblance to your famous ancestor.” All the while he spoke, his eyes kept studying her. “What do you do, by the way, if I may ask?” Manship said.
“Do? What do you mean, do? You mean for a living?”
She seemed on the verge of lashing out again, then appeared to draw back. “Some acting. Some modeling. But, professionally, I’m an actor.” She said it proudly, almost defiantly. “That is, when I can find work.”
“Is that often?”
“Not often enough. There can be some thin times.”
“Are they thin now?”
“For the moment, I’m between roles. In all truth, however, it’s been a fairly long moment.” She laughed ruefully.
Her laugh lingered on the air, but when Manship took out his wallet and started to peel off bills, she looked mortified.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
“Oh, come—it’s nothing, really.”
“Absolutely not. I’m not in the habit of begging.”
“This is hardly begging. Just a small advance on your salary.”
“What salary? I haven’t, accepted your offer. And what’s more, I don’t intend to. I have one or two prospects here that look quite promising …”
Her voice trailed off as if she knew her boast conveyed little conviction. She went on now in a more conciliatory vein. “It’s awkward for me right now.” She looked uneasily up at one of the leaded windows. “There are things pressing.”
His eyes followed hers to the window. “Have you ever been to New York?”
She shook her head no.
“Despite the fact that it’s a bit crazy there, it’s a wonderful place,” he said. “Much theater, and lots of people who can move you ahead in that area. I know some of them.”
Her mouth fell open and she gaped at him. “You can’t really believe I would agree to come for that reason?”
For the first time during their conversation, he sensed her pride and realized what a crude enticement he’d offered. It made him feel shabby.
He put his cup down on the cast-iron table and rose with a sigh. “I’ll be with our restorer all day tomorrow. Don’t answer now.” His manner was contrite. “Sleep on it. Then have dinner with me and we’ll talk again.”
She made a wary face. “What does this mean—‘sleep on it’?” She pronounced the words as though he’d proposed something indecent.
In spite of the tension of the moment, he laughed. “An idiom. It means don’t rush to judgment. Think about the offer a while before you decide anything.”
Outside in the narrow streets, the sky was brushed with streaks of russet. A soft violet dusk had rained down like wine decanted slowly through water. It cooled the air and brought with it the scent of heliotrope and fennel. The shuttered windows of nearby dwellings had been thrown open as if to breathe in the approaching cool of evening. Lights twinkled everywhere and darkness carried with it the sounds of supper being prepared in countless kitchens—the clatter of pots and pans, cutlery and dishes being laid out on tables, mothers at the open-shuttered windows, calling tardy children home for the night.
He was looking for a taxi stand, but his movements through the narrow, winding street seemed aimless, desultory, like a man who felt he’d mislaid something but wasn’t quite sure what.
Over and over, he replayed in his mind the scene in. the villa, trying to analyze what had happened. He couldn’t escape the thought that he’d committed some awful gaffe—brandished money, treated her cheaply. He knew he’d gone there with the hope that the woman would decline the offer he’d been ordered to propose. Now his greatest fear was that it seemed she might.