Old Pictures In Florence. Lucia Amazon went to the window. Across the way was the dome of the Duomo. It's strange, she mused, this is the first time I've been to Florence since I met Geoffrey here in 1926. I came with my mother and Geoffrey with his father and we had stayed at the same pensione. My father had been killed in the First World War and Geoffrey's mother had died in the influenza epidemic during 1918. So we were both semi-orphans as Geoffrey had termed us that summer. Putting her hands on the windowsill, she leaned forward and peered at the scene below. Much busier now than then, she informed herself, feeling her age, sensing her loneliness, remembering Geoffrey. Mother said I was conceived here, Lucia reminded herself, moving away from the window and walking to the chair by the bed. Conceived in Florence, born in Surrey, where will I die, I wonder? she mused, sitting in the chair, looking across at the scene through the window. She wondered if the pensione had a piano. Her mother had been a pianist and told her she had played in the pensione when she'd come to Florence with Lucia's father back in 1908. She, too, was a pianist, but was more inclined to play Bach and Bartok to her mother's Beethoven and Schubert. Geoffrey played nothing but sang reasonably well, she remembered, closing her eyes and shaking her head slightly. Long ago, she sighed, long ago. Why had she come back to Florence? What was she looking for? She came to lay ghosts and wrap up old memories, she told herself, imagining herself eighteen again, but feeling her fifty-three years. Long ago, she sighed, too long ago. * Lucia entered the Santa Croce. She remembered clearly meeting Geoffrey and his father here, while her mother had gone off to visit the Peruzzi Chapel to view the Giotto's. Mr Amazon, Geoffrey's father, was enlightening Geoffrey of the merits of the Santa Croce, and Lucia recalled how suddenly struck she was with Geoffrey's handsomeness. She paused. Somewhere here, she told herself, looking around, trying to place the exact spot. She peered at the floor, and then as she lifted her eyes, she saw a young man looking at her with the most wonderful face and eyes and it momentarily rendered her speechless and slightly senseless. "You are all right, Signora?" the young man said. Lucia seemed unsure and put her hand to her forehead. "Yes, it's the heat," Lucia informed. "Thank you, all the same." The young man smiled and made a slight bow. "The heat, it can be hot here," he said, warmly. "Maybe you should go out in the air to refresh yourself, Signora." Lucia seemed perplexed and merely nodded her head. The young man offered her his lean arm and escorted her outside into the air. She sensed her hand touch the young man's arm and felt a strange sensation move within her that she had not felt for years. The young man sat her on a seat close by and stood over her for a few seconds. Then, when she lifted her head to thank him, he had gone. She sat and waited, but he never returned. Inwardly, she saw him, and wanted him. Lucia looked down at the Arno. Two days had past since she had seen the young man in the Santa Croce and since that day she had slept badly; slept in a semi-sleep. She had not known such feelings since she was young; even with Geoffrey things had become pretty tame towards the latter years of their marriage. Now, inexplicably, she was unsettled. Who was the young man? she asked herself, staring down at the Arno, remembering the night before, where she had become so frustrated, that she had to relieve herself with a schoolgirl's sense of shame. The last two days she had wandered over Florence searching for the young man, but had seen no sight of him, and, was beginning to wonder if he had not been just a figment of her imagination. She recalled something Simone Weil had said, about imagination and fiction making up more than three quarters of real live. And it seemed to her there, watching the Arno moving, that her life had become, the past two days at least, full of both imagination and fiction. She began to doubt that she had really met the young man; that maybe it was all one long dream. Lucia stood by the Neptune statue. The Boboli Gardens had not brought her the peace she had hoped. The morning had past unproductively and now she stood gaping at the statue with a good deal of indifference. She looked at away from the statue, and out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of someone familiar: the young man. He stood some few yards away looking at her. She suddenly felt as if her legs would give way if she were to move towards him; but instead, he came towards her in a slow leisurely walk. "Signora," he said,� you are feeling well today?� He now stood before her, so that she could have touched him with her hand had she the nerve at that moment. "Yes,� she replied, smiling nervously, "I am perfectly well." She let her eyes search him as he stood near her. His eyes were almost liquid and a deep brown; his face, slightly tanned, was lean but not gaunt. She sensed herself becoming warm and a sensation of desire moved her. "I have not seen you about," she said, looking away, feeling herself blush for the desires she felt. "I have been busy," the young man related. "My father keeps me active." "You live in Florence?� Lucia asked, bringing her eyes briefly to his face. "No, near by, a small village. I come here to work," he informed. He gazed at her in a curious way that made her look away again. "But, excuse me; I have not introduced myself, Signora. I am Paelo Bertolini." With this, he bowed slightly, and then stood up and smiled, his eyes alight, as if fires were within him. Lucia introduced herself, and taking the arm that he offered her, they walked further into the Boboli Gardens talking like old friends and not like strangers at all. Lucia watched the bright moon. From the window of her pensione she could see it well. The air was warm and she found that sleep was not near. She recalled the brief meeting with Paelo, remembered how sad she felt, when he had to go to visit clients in another part of the City. She had watched him walk away until he vanished amongst the crowds, and sensed an opening within her widen. She knew she was on the verge of tears so moved away trying to think of other matters, but unsuccessfully. Now, back at her pensione, she had only the memory of the brief meeting and her unfulfilled desires. He had not promised to meet her again, but he had asked where she was staying and that, she hoped, was something positive; something to look forward to; something to make her stay in Florence, more than just this tour of ghost-laden memories. Lucia tossed in her sleep when it came. She had retired to her bed naked because of the heat, but still she perspired. In her sleep Paelo was beside her; his eyes, liquidy-brown, passed over her body like a sculptor standing back and scrutinizing his work. She dreamed they made love; could feel his body against hers; feel his warmth against her; his lips touching hers so softly that she almost drowned in the passion. She dreamed it so well, that when she woke she felt utterly betrayed and abandoned, and had to convince herself that it had been just a dream, nothing but a dream. "And you a woman of fifty-three!" she said in a whisper to herself, sitting upright in the bed, her arms crossed over her breast, "What a fool! What a damned fool!" she muttered into the semi-darkness. She sensed the ghosts of emptiness and loneliness return. And felt herself quite undone. Lucia entered the Museo di San Marco. She came to see the Fra Angelicos, but she lacked enthusiasm. She had been here with her mother those many years before, full, then, of youthful excitement and the desire to learn. Now she felt only half-alive, as if her dream of Paelo the night before had drained her. If the Dominican monk, Fra Angelico, ever felt as I do at this moment, she mused sadly, he would not have been such a good model of a monk; possibly more like Fra Filippo Lippi, whom I admire more. She sensed herself tiring and having wandered for a good hour, turned to leave. "Senora Amazon," Paelo said, standing a few feet away. "You have come to see the art?� "Yes," Lucia replied, subduing her excitement at seeing him again. "The frescoes are delightful." She wanted to say more, but suddenly found herself without words to express what it was she really felt. Paelo bowed slightly and came towards her. His brown eyes were fixed upon her warmly. "You are leaving?� Paelo looked around him, and then looked at her again. "Not if you will be my guide," she uttered quietly. Paelo smiled. He doesn't look his twenty-seven years, Lucia mused, feeling her desires rising again, sensing his body so close to her. He assented with another slight bow and following his gesturing head she found her enthusiasm once more returning like a Prodigal child. Lucia sat in the bar. She knew she had been drinking too much; the room began to become crowded and the noise seemed to encroach upon her, hemming her in from all sides. And deep within she wanted Paelo to be there, to be beside her, to drive the emptiness away. But he wasn't, and she knew he wouldn't come. He hadn't said he would, it was just that she hoped he would, hoped that maybe he would sense her loneliness, and arrive just out of the blue to surprise her. In desperation she scanned each face that entered the bar, only to turn away again in disappointment, when it failed to be the face she wanted. Paelo, she muttered to herself inwardly, Paelo, where are you? Where are you? But there was no answer, only a further hemming in by the noise and crowds. Lucia lay slumped across the bed. She had managed to stagger from the bar to her room in the pensione, and once there had made it just to the bed where she slumped with a groan. The room seemed to gyrate causing her to feel she was at sea on a small makeshift raft, whirling round and round in the half-dark. Her arms drooped over the bed like broken stems, her hands mimicking drowned swans. And she too felt as if drowned, not only in the imagined waters, but in her desolation and solitude. Lucia entered the Galleria degli Uffizi. The day before she had not ventured out and had slept most of the day in between bouts of vomiting. But this day she felt able to face the world and had made her way to the gallery in search of art, and maybe, Paelo. She wandered slowly gazing at the paintings, half her mind on what she saw, the other half looking out for Paelo. She knew she was becoming undone somewhere...Things seemed less real, less important. In bed the day before she had thought of little else but seeing Paelo again. And even while vomiting in the toilet she could not keep him from her thoughts. Madness! she muttered inwardly." I'm going mad. I am becoming undone," she said, just below a whisper. She paused in front of Gentileschi's painting of Judith Slaying Holofernes and stared. The sheer horror of the subject made her stare harder, yet she was torn between the need to turn away and allurement of the brutality, the fascination with death and blood. "A woman painted this," Paelo said. He stood just to the right of her, his eyes peering closely at the painting. Lucia turned round and stifled her utterance with her right hand. She had not expected him. She had not for that moment thought of him at all; at least not in any connected way. "I didn't expect to see you." Lucia moved her hand from her lips and clutched it. Paelo turned round and smiled. He gestured with his hand at the painting. "Artemisia Gentileschi was a talented woman, yes?� Paelo turned towards the painting again. "And Judith she had courage, what you think?� Lucia looked at the painting again, but her mind was far from the subject. Paelo is here, she said internally with excitement hemmed in. She sensed him so near, so close that she wanted only to touch him and hold him, but she did neither. She held back, clutching her body with her arms. She couldn't at that moment give a fig for the painting or the painter, Paelo was all that filled her mind at that moment. But none the less, words left her lips as if spoken by another, some other self. The words conveyed what she knew and what she understood of the subject and artist, but it was not she who was speaking, not her thoughts..." Can we go elsewhere?� Lucia suddenly said. "Yes, Lucia, of course," Paelo said. He seemed surprised and smiled awkwardly. Lucia grasped his hand and he followed bewildered and speechless, like a child taken by a barely known adult to a place unfamiliar and possibly forbidden. Lucia stood at the window. The sun was setting. The Duomo was beautiful. Florence was where she was conceived, and now, possibly where she would die and be buried. On the bed behind her in the pensione she and Paelo had made love, she passionately, Paelo reluctantly. She had been consumed by a driving passion to the point, where she was lost to everything but the object of that passion. Now, standing by the window, gazing over the scene before her, she smiled. The consummation of the passion had left her fulfilled; yet on the other hand, empty. Loneliness and solitude had begun to enter her again. She turned to face the bed. Did I have sex with Paelo? she asked herself, looking at the empty bed. Was he really here? The bed appeared untouched just as the chambermaid had possibly left it earlier. Yet she was sure he had been there with her in that bed not more than ten minutes before. Now nothing. The room seemed chilled. The end of day beckoned. And darkness was approaching on the horizon like an unwelcome guest. Paelo lazed in bed. His wife was reading the newspaper. "An English woman drowned in the Arno yesterday," she said. Paelo looked round at her. "Who was it?" he asked peering over her naked shoulder. His wife stared at the print in silence. "Well, Maria, what's it say?� "Says a name was Signora Lucia Amazon," Maria said. Paelo stared at the print hard. Taking hold of the newspaper he drew it close to him. "What�s a matter, Paelo?� Maria asked. Paelo frowned and shook his head. Something felt undone within him as if a knife had slit him open and all his entrails had slithered slimy and bloody over the bed. His wife muttered something beside him, seeing him turn pale, but he didn't hear her words, saw only her lips move. Then looking up, he saw her, Lucia, by the window, looking at him. She seemed to be beckoning him with her finger and saying something, which was mouthed but not spoken aloud. Then, she was gone. "Florence conceived her," Paelo muttered. "And Florence has sadly consumed her," he added in a whisper. Paelo said no more. Maria shrugged her shoulders and taking up the newspaper again, turned the page with a drawn out sigh.
Copyright © 2000 Terry Collett |