The Doctor and the Diva (47 page)

She ascended, and rapped her knuckles noisily against his door, hoping to be heard above the flourish of the orchestra. No stirrings from within. She tried again. Still no response. Had he left in a hurry, she wondered, and forgotten to shut off the gramophone? That would be typical of him. Erika scoured her memory to reconstruct what she knew of Christopher’s schedule. Hadn’t he mentioned something about going to audition for a man who was arranging a party at a palazzo on the Via Maggio? Or perhaps he had gone to Mark’s place, a rented room near the Duomo.

Fishing in her bag, Erika searched for the key Christopher had given her. She would step inside, just for a moment, and deposit the basket on the table. Just as she took hold of the doorknob, the recording reached its rousing finish; the gramophone music died and the air became quiet. Her chain of keys jingled as she inserted one in the lock. A drowsy mumble came from within; she worried that the sounds of her entering might have awakened him. Apparently Christopher had fallen asleep while listening to music, as he was apt to do on a hot afternoon.

The dangling keys swung from the door’s lock; she caught and squeezed them silent in her hand. Not glancing over at the bed at first, she tiptoed inside and set the basket down. Then Erika turned. She hardly moved or breathed as she surveyed the room. Her eye followed the odd trail of clothes strewn across the floor—Christopher’s shirt and trousers, and also Mark’s high-collared jacket, a distinctive dark maroon. A shoe of Christopher’s, lopsided and worn at the heel, lay upside down on top of one of Mark’s buffed boots. The mates—one of Christopher’s and one of Mark’s—had been kicked halfway under a chair, and those were touching, too.

In the bed, in the unpleasant heat of the afternoon, the two men lay together, asleep. Their backs were turned toward her, the sheet half-shrugged from Christopher’s shoulder, exposing a golden shoulder with a sprinkling of freckles, like sand, upon it. Suddenly, without opening his eyes, Mark rolled over. Reaching out an arm, he grasped the sheet and flung it off. Both men lay there nude. The bed linens exuded smells of salt and perspiration, semen and sweating feet.

The room enclosed her in its odors. With his eyes still closed, Mark scratched his groin.

Her footsteps were fleet, her respiration softer than a gasp, as she turned and fled.

Later, she had no recollection of how she had gotten down four flights; she might have been dropped, like a parachutist, down the empty well.

Outdoors she went, straight into sunlight, and crossed the river. She found herself wandering into one of those nameless, innumerable churches that waited with open doors all over Florence, as silent as caves harboring frescoes and statuary.

Just a handful of shrouded old women were present, their heads bowed, rosaries twined around arthritic fingers. Erika sat in a pew, trying to gather the quiet of the sanctuary inside herself.

Two men in love—yes, her heart was hitting hard from the shock of that. Never before had she thrown a door open to the sight of a man she’d not expected to see naked. And there had been
two
of them lying there relaxed and languorous, at their most private. She could still hear the sound of Mark’s fingernails as he scratched himself. If they had opened their eyes at that instant and seen her, what could she have said? She might have given a small strangled cry. Should she have apologized to them? Or they to her?

Two men, friends of hers, in love. How very peculiar that was—contrary to nature’s laws, for no child could ever be born to them.

When the stillness of the church failed to calm her, she left and went to the Accademia to gaze at a painting she loved more than any other—Botticelli’s
Primavera
. People talked of moving the painting to the Uffizi, where it might be displayed alongside the artist’s other masterpieces. She entered the building and headed straight toward
Primavera,
its vast canvas spanning a whole wall, its backdrop a dark forest, as mysterious as night.

Against that dark screen, eight figures danced and lifted their limbs as if lit by music, their long hair and whisper-thin gowns floating with wind. One blond figure with a beautiful, triangular face reminded her of Christopher—the features not quite those of a woman or a man.

The three Graces joined hands and danced in a circle, transparent costumes showing their long legs. The painting made her remember the smells of sweat and sex in Christopher’s room; she’d entered before the scent had evaporated. The air had been drenched with it, an atmosphere she had not stood inside in a very long time.

“I wanted to tell you about Mark and me, but I didn’t know how,” Christopher said the next day. “And Edmund, too—he’s one of us.”

She said nothing.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Christopher suggested, “along the river.”

They crossed a bridge built from a sketch by Michelangelo. Erika leaned her elbows against the arched stone rail. At this dusky hour, reflections of the ochre buildings that lined the Arno lay on the surface, as if their façades had fallen into the water. Their lovely, liquid images wavered and dimmed with the day.

“I hope things won’t change between us,” Christopher said. “Now that you know.”

“Why,” she said, “should anything change?”

In only a day, the shock had lessened, and she suspected that it would soon fade and not matter to her what the two men did. It wasn’t as if Christopher might have become
her
lover. She had always known, as women often do, that he would be a neutral presence in her life. Toward him she felt the same absence of tension that existed between her and female friends, no matter how attractive their faces.

How did one sense this? How did one understand, before any words of explanation came?

She envied what he and Mark had, that raw bliss. The sweep of a man’s breath against her spine, a man’s hand resting against her hip as they both faded to sleep: when would
she
know such rapture again?

“If I tell you something I’ve told no one else,” Erika asked softly, “will you keep my secret?”

The blind landlady nodded. In Donna Anna’s apartment, gilded frames held ancient paintings the old woman could not see. Here at last, so far from Boston—where gossip could not travel from tongue to tongue and harm her son—Erika found herself free to confide.

“Quentin is not related to my husband by blood,” she said. “The man who fathered my son—that man lives on an island near South America. I’ve never told him that my son is his.”

She swallowed, her words fading to whispers, her cheekbones warm with tears. “I’m a terrible person,” she said . “I left my child. I’ve done the worst things a woman can do.”

Donna Anna listened for a long while without speaking. In the darkness of evening, she shifted skeptically in her chair. Her small shoes retracted under her skirt. From the recesses of her bodice the old lady drew out a clean, folded handkerchief and handed it to Erika.

“Believe me,” Donna Anna said finally, “there are women who have done worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“There are women in jails in Florence who have murdered their own children.” Donna Anna waved a knotted hand dismissively, impatient with this opera of tears.

“Tell me,” the old lady said. “Do you still love him—the other man?”

“Yes,” Erika whispered. “I think about him constantly.” She described the coconut plantation—its bats, quicksands, and lights that glowed like messages across the water. But she explained that the Cocal was not a place where she could stay forever; she couldn’t live there, not even for Ravell.

“Maybe you’ll take a trip to see him,” Donna Anna said. “Or persuade him to visit here.”

In bed that night Erika flexed her toes, smiling in the dark. The sheets almost smelled of Ravell, his heat. In her excitement she slipped from the bed and sat at the wooden table, caught by the urge to write to him.

Ravell could probably guess what she was telling him—if he hadn’t surmised the truth already. But for her son’s sake, she realized that she ought to be cautious and vague in writing about him. She had already caused enough distress in her little boy’s life. (“Always be careful what you put in a letter,” Papa had once warned her.)

She lay down her pen. It was really too much to confess—the complications too extraordinary and dangerous to introduce into all their lives just now. Who knew how Ravell might react to the news that he had a child? What if he wrote to Peter, and begged to see Quentin? Suppose Ravell felt disappointed in her? Disapproving? What if he wrote to her saying:
It grieves me to think of our child growing up on another continent, apart from his real father and mother. . . . Erika, how could you have left him?

In a letter, there was little she could possibly say that would make the situation forgivable, or even comprehensible. If she saw Ravell again, if she discussed it with him over many days, surely she could make him understand why she’d come to Italy.

No, she wouldn’t tell Ravell just yet. She couldn’t unleash havoc now, not while she was working toward what mattered so much—her
prova,
and winning over an impresario.

So she folded up the letter and tore it into halves, quarters, eighths.

“I
haven’t seen Venice in years,” Erika said, “and I want to go back.” “It’s smelly,” Edmund said.

Mark tossed aside a magazine he’d been reading. “What’s smelly?”

“Venice. Last time I took a gondola along the Grand Canal,” Edmund complained, “the water was green, with muck floating past. I had to hold my nose shut.”

“Well, don’t come along with us, then,” Christopher said.

In the end, because Edmund couldn’t stand to be left out, he packed a valise. All three of them (Christopher, Mark, and Edmund) accompanied Erika to Venice.

They found an enormous room in a decaying palazzo so full of atmosphere that they could not bear to search for any other accommodation, even though it meant the four of them would have to stay together. They agreed to split the cost four ways. When a gondolier dropped them at the palazzo’s water gate, the entry was so low that Erika’s skirts dipped into the canal as they hopped out.

“I can smell it, too,” Erika said the first night, as they settled themselves under blankets in scattered corners. “That odor Edmund was talking about. But it isn’t unpleasant.” Moss-covered pilings held the buildings up. She sniffed again and there it was: the aroma of wet wood and ancient stone.

The Gothic windows framed views of the Grand Canal, and the tiled floors felt sunken under their feet. The furnishings were glorious—tapestries that cloaked the walls, and vermilion chairs with carved, gilded legs.