“Non preoccupe, Giacinta,” I said, and then repeated it. She gradually relaxed. Her head drooped, her arms dangled toward the dark water. Gleaming palely in the ambient light, her face was serene, enraptured, lips parted, slitted eyes directed to heaven, to a pattern of stars that exhibited the workings of a divine intellect and transformed our rutting into a mating of angels. God knows what fantasies populated her head! Perhaps she saw herself as a goddess suffering a vile martyrdom, or as a twenty-first century Leda. I gave passing thought to the notion of letting her fall, but though I am not known for my generosity of spirit, neither am I the cruelest of my kind, and I must admit to having some trivial affection for every creature who shares with us their inch of time. Yet the scent of her despair and desperation, the fact that she was surrendering herself in the faint hope that her ardor might persuade me to love her, to sweep her up into a moneyed life, one wherein she could afford the procedures I had mentioned to Allessandra, those that would make her uninteresting to me—all this yielded a fine perfume that stirred my emotions to such an extent, I believed I loved her more purely than those who had previously used her, and it occurred to me that I might want to keep her around for the winter, that I might, for my own amusement, if nothing else, grant some of her wishes.
Afterward she brushed stone dust off her dress and cleaned herself with a tissue, casting furtive glances at lovers less bold than we; and when she was done with her toilette, she rested her head on my chest, as if sheltering there. I tipped her face toward mine and kissed her brow, an affectionate gesture unalloyed by irony. A worry line creased that kissed brow. She pushed me away and began berating me—that much was evident from her tone, but she spoke too rapidly for me to catch a single word until I heard “…profillatico…” The poor girl was rebuking me for not having worn a condom, a fact to which she had just awakened. I could have eased her fears on this score, but in the spirit of the scene I acted out my own concern, expressing that I had been swept away by passion, pledging that everything would be all right, that together we would find our way whether or not a little troglodyte had started its journey lifewards in her belly. At length I made myself understood and, mollified, she allowed me to guide her toward Baldassaro’s. We had scarcely gone ten paces when she quickened her step, allowing the hint of a smile to touch her lips, and latched onto my arm with a proprietary grasp.
It was the last night of the season but one at Baldassaro’s and we had rented the entire restaurant for a party of nine. A waiter led Giacinta and me through the main dining area and along a corridor to a large room, where a table had been set with a white linen cloth, crystal, and gold utensils. The cream-colored walls bore a mural of Roman galleys engaged in battle with a fleet of sleeker ships manned by soldiers with Persian-style beards. At one end of the room were French doors that opened onto a balcony overlooking the water. Jenay, a brunette this year, resplendent in a blue business suit tailored to accentuate her statuesque figure, smelling of flowers, greeted me with a kiss and introduced her companion, a German furniture salesman named Vid, a pop-eyed little monster in a houndstooth jacket who might have been her pet frog. When I introduced Giacinta, Vid performed a jaunty bow and Jenay whispered to me in the Old Tongue, “She’s exquisite! I’m certain you’ll win this year.”
“What were you going for?” I asked her. “Comic relief?”
“I thought I’d give the rest of you a fighting chance.”
“Just because you won last year doesn’t mean…”
“I’ve won the last two out of three,” said Jenay with mock indignation. “And it should have been three in a row.”
“What language are you speaking?” Vid asked. “It’s familiar, but I can’t place it.”
“It’s an archaic French dialect,” I said. “From the Aquitaine region.”
“We belonged to one of those secret societies in college,” said Jenay. “Learning it was required for membership.”
“Aquitaine,” said Vid. “I would have thought farther west. It reminds me of Basque.”
“My, you’re quite the linguist, aren’t you? But then…” Jenay made suggestive play with her tongue and smiled. “I suppose I already knew that.”
Vid, I swear before God, puffed out his chest, like a male bird fanning its plumage, and explained that in his undergraduate days, he had studied the French language and its origins; a family crisis had forced him to give up his studies.
“May I have some wine?” Giacinta looked at me crossly—she was feeling left out.
I hastened to serve her, also pouring Vid a glass, which he downed in a gulp, and the four of us began talking about Diamante, the only subject with which Giacinta seemed conversant. The town’s many murals, she told us, were the result of a contest held each year—artists were invited from all over the world to paint a wall and the best of their work became part of Diamante’s permanent exhibition.
Next to arrive was Elaine, also a brunette, more slender than Jenay, her perfume more subtle, with darker hair and piercing blue eyes, her pale, classical features rendered saintly by a cowled evening gown of a shimmering beige fabric. She had in tow a leather-jacketed street hustler named Daniele, his chiseled chin inked with stubble, who challenged me with a stare and otherwise exhibited a cool indifference that doubtless accorded with the personal style of some cinematic tough guy. Both Jenay and I took the position that Daniele was far too handsome and self-assured. Elaine defended her choice by saying that his pathos was inherent to his fate, which was so precisely demarked as to be obvious, but Jenay reminded her that, pitiful though Daniele was, our contest was judged on appearances and behavior, not potential.
“What do you expect?” said Elaine. “I only had a few hours to find someone.”
“You could have arrived sooner,” said Jenay. “Everything is always so last-minute with you.”
Elaine made a dismissive noise.
“No, really,” said Jenay. “It’s tiresome. You’ve never taken your responsibility seriously.”
“This hardly qualifies as a responsibility.” Elaine pushed back her cowl and I saw that she had left a white streak in her hair. “This is a pig party. It cheapens us. Though I must say…” Coquettishly, she touched my chest. “Yours is wonderful! Where you did find her?”
“She found me,” I said. “She more-or-less fell into my lap.”
Elaine smiled. “Repeatedly, no doubt.”
I had grown weary of Lucan’s dramatic entrances, as had we all, this mostly a reaction to his overabundant personality, which was redolent of a gay maitre de; yet I must confess that I also anticipated them. Music preceded him, piped in over hidden speakers: Verdi’s March from Aida. Next came Professor Rappenglueck, Lucan’s lover for a term, now reduced to a familiar, and a guest at our dinners for nearly thirty years: a diminutive man, once handsome, his looks severely diminished by age and a slovenliness attributable to mental deterioration. He shuffled forward, gray and shrunken, like a piece of fruit left too long in the icebox, mumbling as he came, absently stroking his beard, and stood at the end of the dinner table, his voice increasing in volume and waxing lectoral, addressing the empty chairs as if they were a vast assembly, holding forth in an erratic fashion on the subject of Cro-Magnon sky maps in the caves of El Castillo.