Dusk and Other Stories - James Salter [17]
The sky became violet. Under the colonnade the butchers had hung out chickens and roosters, spurred legs bound together. Two men sat trimming artichokes. The blue car of the carabiniere lazed past. The bags of rice and dry beans were set out now, the tops folded back like cuffs. A girl in a tailored coat with a scarf around her head called, “Signore,” then arrogantly, “dica!”
He saw the world afresh, its pavements and architecture, the names that had lasted for a thousand years. It seemed that his life was being clarified, the sediment was drifting down. Across the street in a jeweler’s shop a girl was laying things out in the window. She was wearing white gloves and arranging the pieces with great care. She glanced up as he stood watching. For a moment their eyes met, separated by the lighted glass. She was holding a lapis lazuli bracelet, the blue of the police car. Emboldened, he formed the silent words, Quanto costa? Tre cento settante mille, her lips said. It was eight in the morning when he got back to the hotel. A taxi pulled up and rattled the narrow street. A woman dressed for dinner got out and went inside.
The days passed. In Verona the points of the steeples and then its domes rose from the mist. The white-coated waiters appeared from the kitchen. Primi, secondi, dolce. They stopped in Arezzo. Frank came back to the table. He had some postcards. Alan was trying to write to his daughter once a week. He never knew what to say: where they were and what they’d seen. Giotto—what would that mean to her?
They sat in the car. Frank was wearing a soft tweed jacket. It was like cashmere—he’d been shopping in Missoni and everywhere, windbreakers, shoes. Schoolgirls in dark skirts were coming through an arch across the street. After a while one came through alone. She stood as if waiting for someone. Alan was studying the map. He felt the engine start. Very slowly they moved forward. The window glided down.
“Scusi, signorina,” he heard Frank say.
She turned. She had pure features and her face was without expression, as if a bird had turned to look, a bird which might suddenly fly away.
Which way, Frank asked her, was the centro, the center of town? She looked one way and then the other. “There,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he said. He turned his head unhurriedly to look more or less in the direction she was pointing.
“Si,” she said.
They were going to Siena, Frank said. There was silence. Did she know which road went to Siena?
She pointed the other way.
“Alan, you want to give her a ride?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
Two men in white smocks like doctors were working on the wooden doors of the church. They were up on top of some scaffolding. Frank reached back and opened the rear door.
“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked. He made a little circular motion with his finger.
They drove through the streets in silence. The radio was playing. Nothing was said. Frank glanced at her in the rearview mirror once or twice. It was at the time of a famous murder in Poland, the killing of a priest. Dusk was falling. The lights were coming on in shop windows and evening papers were in the kiosks. The body of the murdered man lay in a long coffin in the upper right corner of the Corriere Della Sera. It was in clean clothes like a worker after a terrible accident.
“Would you like an aperitivo?” Frank asked over his shoulder.
“No,” she said.
They drove back to the church. He got out for a few minutes with her. His hair was very thin, Alan noticed. Strangely, it made him look younger. They stood talking, then she turned and walked down the street.
“What did you say to her?” Alan asked. He was nervous.
“I asked if she wanted a taxi.”
“We’re headed for trouble.”
“There’s not going to be any trouble,” Frank said.
His room was on the corner. It was large, with a sitting area near the windows. On the wooden floor there were two worn oriental carpets. On a glass cabinet