The Last Promise (6 page)

Eliana just stared at him.

“You know I am right, Eliana. You know there are many foreign women living in Italy because they cannot take their children back to America. You have told me about them yourself. So you make your choice. You divorce me and live in Italy alone and try to find a job, while someone else watches your son, or you go back to America alone. Or you stay with me and have a nice home in the countryside and take care of our son. But these are the only choices you have, because I will not allow you to take him from Italy. It is not in his best interest.”

Eliana stood staring at him, as breathless as if she had just been slugged in the stomach. She could not answer him. He had her and they both knew it. Maurizio smiled at her sympathetically. “It’s not so bad, Eliana. I’m just doing what all men do. The problem is only with how you see things.” He ground his cigarette out in a glass dish near the bed. “You’ll get used to it,
amore
. Then you’ll be happy. Now be a good wife and come to bed.”

—Dante

 

 

 

 

 

R
oss’s commute to work was less than fifteen minutes and could have been pulled from a travel book’s walking tour of Florence. He crossed the Arno at Ponte Vecchio, against the backdrop of the central landmark of Florence: the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo, its roan dome rising above the city like a great matron. The Duomo was enigmatic to Ross, both majestic and peculiar in her green, rose and white marble, as unlikely as a gingerbread house built for God.

The Uffizi was just on the other side of the bridge.

The first tour Ross conducted concluded about two hours after it began. Francesca had followed along on his tour without interference, and afterward the two of them took coffee together to evaluate his presentation. She was pleased. She had only a few suggestions, minor ones, and pointed out his one mistake, attributing Fiorentino’s
Musician Angel
to Raffaello, which no one noticed but Francesca. “Don’t worry about it,” she said with a grin, adding in Italian, “These bus monkeys didn’t know their Donatello from their Bernini. You could have told them that Titian’s
Venus of Urbino
was a paint by numbers and they would have believed you.”

In spite of Ross’s knowledge and love for the art, it was his interaction with the group that she was most pleased with. Twelve years in the business had taught her a peculiar truism: most tourists spend more time looking at the guide than the art.

She gave him a hundred and twenty thousand lire in cash along with her cellular and home phone numbers and the time of his next tour. She had already booked him a tour for the next morning. Francesca was a shrewd marketer and had arrangements with most of the large hotels. She led more tours than any other guide in the city and still turned down nearly half her offers.

They parted and Ross set out for his next task. After six months of sleeping in hotels and hostels, he was ready to settle down. He remembered passing a real estate office near the train station, and he headed off to find it, wandering slowly through the back streets toward the station. He stopped briefly at the open market at San Lorenzo, where he looked at leather-bound books and a sweater, but purchased nothing. Forty minutes later he found the agency.

The office was small with two wooden desks. A young man was speaking on the phone behind one of them. A cigarette burned in his hand, its smoke rising in wisps, occasionally dissipated by an oscillating desk fan. His other hand held a pen, which he tapped rhythmically on the desk. Despite the summer heat, he wore a tweed jacket with a collared shirt beneath.

As the door shut behind Ross, the man looked up and acknowledged him with a curt nod. Ross glanced around then walked to the side of the room, where handwritten apartment information was posted on the wall.

Five minutes later the young man hung up the phone. “
Buona sera.
May I help you, sir?” He spoke in clear English.

Ross turned around. “I’m looking for an apartment.”

“Yes. Please sit down.”

Ross sat in one of the small metal chairs in front of the desk.

“You are looking for something in Florence?”

“Outside the city a little. Perhaps in Chianti.”

He took a short puff of the cigarette. “Yes, in Chianti. You are quite fortunate as there are now many places free.” He reached for a black binder on the desktop and opened it. “Chiocchio, Strada in Chianti, Impruneta. Greve. There are many. How many rooms will you require?”

“It’s just for me. I would like something with a fire-place and a good view. Someplace interesting. Perhaps an old farmhouse or in a villa near a vineyard.”

“In Chianti they are all near vineyards.” He stood from behind the desk. He was in actuality much taller than he had looked sitting down. He extinguished his cigarette in a glass ashtray, then extended his hand. “My name is Luigi Tommassi.”

“My name is Ross. You speak good English.”

“Yes, well, I went to school in San Diego for three semesters. Do you speak Italian?”

“A little,” Ross said, though more as a matter of courtesy than truth. His Italian was as good as the man’s English.

“How long of a lease do you wish to make?”

“I plan to live here indefinitely, but I might decide to change apartments after I know the city better. A one-year lease would be good.”

“That is not a problem. When would you be available to see something?”

“I’m living in a hotel right now, so the sooner the better. I could go today.”

“Yes, well, I only have my scooter today and I will need to make some arrangement. But I am free tomorrow. If you like, I could get my car and we could see a few places.”

“Tomorrow would be fine.”

“I must talk to the people with the apartments, of course, but early afternoon would probably be the best time.”

“How about three o’clock?”

Luigi looked at a calendar on the wall. “
Alle tre,
yes, three o’clock would be good. Do you have a phone number where you can be called?”

“Yes.” Ross wrote down the number and handed it to him. “That’s my cellular.” The agent looked at the number then slipped it into his front pocket.

“I will only call if something comes up. Otherwise we can plan to meet here at three tomorrow. I will have a car to drive.
Va bene?
”

Ross stood.
“Va bene. Grazie.”

 

The next morning Francesca was nearly twenty minutes late for the tour, and Ross, sensing the group’s growing impatience, started without her, which simultaneously pleased and concerned her. When she caught up with him, she took him aside. “Don’t forget you are an
abusivo,
” she warned. “Some of the other guides will want to turn you in to the commune. If you are stopped, you must tell them you are only helping me and I am in the toilet or getting a coffee.”

“That’s how it works, huh?”

“Yes. Many are very jealous of me.”

Even before he finished the tour, Francesca had arranged for another—an American group from an active Dayton retirement center. He thought that he could fit the group in before his afternoon appointment, but found that they moved from exhibit to exhibit almost as if in slow motion. By the time they reached the second corridor, they were spending more time looking for places to rest than at art, so he abbreviated the last half of the tour.

Still, it was past three when Ross ran from the Uffizi, hailed a cab and arrived at the real estate office. It was another sweltering day and the front of his shirt was stained with perspiration. He wiped his forehead with a Kleenex as he walked in.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

Luigi appeared relieved to see him. “It is no problem. I was only afraid you might not come. I have made us four appointments for today. Our first appointment is one in the country with a beautiful view, about twelve kilometers from downtown. It is a very small community near Greve in Chianti. There are many vineyards, you said you like vineyards.”

Ross nodded.

“There is an apartment a little closer to town in Grassina. It would be maybe a fifteen-minute ride by
motorino
to the center of town. There is also a villa near Impruneta that I have not seen but it sounds interesting. Afterwards, if you are not too tired, there is another place we might go and see. It’s on the other side of Florence in Fiesole. It is a little bit further drive but it is very beautiful in Fiesole. I haven’t seen the apartment myself but my partner says it is magnificent.” He took his jacket from the back of his chair. “Shall we go?”

Ross followed Luigi out to his car: a small, navy-blue Punto double-parked in front of the agency, with its hazard lights flashing.

Their first stop was in Chiocchio, a Chianti township about a half-hour drive from Florence. The road to the community was nicknamed
la strada del vino
(
the street of wine
), as for many kilometers both sides of the road were flanked by large, well-cared-for vineyards.

The rental property was a hundred-year-old summer cottage up a gravel drive lined with cypress trees and terra-cotta figurines. It had a large front porch that looked out onto a valley of vineyards and farmhouses and a small fishing lake,
Lago Chiocchio
. Next to the home was a
limonaia
, where lemon trees grew in terra-cotta pots for the winter.

There were no homes nearby and this bothered Ross. He wanted his privacy but not solitary confinement. In addition, the home was larger than he needed, with an expansive family room and three bedrooms. The owner was a barrel-chested man with a thick Florentine accent, who offered them Chianti wine until they relented and took a glass.

After touring the house, they walked around the side patio and Luigi pulled Ross aside. “I asked the owner if they had ever rented it for winter. He said they have not. The house is heated with
gasolio—
how do you say in English?”

“Diesel fuel.”

“Yes, diesel fuel is not efficient. This was built for a summerhouse, I think. I think it would be very expensive to heat in winter. And you would still be cold.”

Ross looked across the yard. The place was beautiful but not right for him. “Let’s keep looking,” he said.

Their second stop was closer to Florence, in a compact, busy township called Grassina. The rental property was new and clean, but its decor was modern European and lacked the rustic Italian feel Ross was looking for.

Their third stop was a villa near the Chianti township of Impruneta. It was in the countryside, away from the main thoroughfare and difficult to find. Luigi kept a hand-drawn map on his lap which he frequently consulted as he plied the wooded back roads, stopping, backtracking, then launching out again, each time asserting with certainty that he knew exactly where it was. He made several wrong turns before the road emerged from a forest into a large orchard of dusty olive trees. A posted, hand-lettered sign read
“Villa Rendola, 1000 metri.”
Luigi said, “That is the name of the place.”

“What does Rendola mean?”

“I don’t know. It is only a name, maybe.”

A few meters past the first sign was another:
“Olio di Oliva e Vino. Vendita diretta”
(
Olive oil and wine sold direct
).

As the Punto rose over a small knoll, Ross got his first glimpse of the villa. He liked the place immediately. It was as if they had passed through a portal and emerged five centuries earlier. The villa was a majestic structure surrounded by high, amber-colored stucco walls. A small tower rose above it. It was set back on a working
fattoria
at the end of a long, cypress-lined driveway. On the distant hill overlooking the villa was a castle.

Luigi parked the car on a small gravel incline and they both climbed out. The landscape of the
fattoria
was lush with foliage. There were neatly trimmed hedges of pliable, tab-leafed bosso and sturdier, rougher hedges of laurel, dark in places and bright green where new branches grew. Luigi snapped a dark leaf off a laurel bush as they walked and crumbled it in his hand before holding it out for Ross to smell. It was sweetly fragrant. “You can cook with this,” he said. “And, of course, you can crown emperors.”

Three massive cedars of Lebanon grew around the house—symbols of a villa’s age and power. There were other trees: oak; cypress, fat bodied and spear shaped; a single walnut tree next to the villa. “A walnut tree is a companion for the house,” Luigi added, as if the villa was in danger of loneliness.

Scattered around were myriad flowers: poppies, yellow broom, irises and a dozen others Ross couldn’t put a name to.

“This is a villa that has been divided up into three apartments,” Luigi said. “The sheet on it says that there is a one-bedroom apartment available and it is furnished.”