The Love of My Youth_ A Novel - Mary Gordon [119]
She is a lovely woman and he doesn’t want to say to her, I do desire you, but not enough to warrant the complications it would create for my life. This is, he knows, a brutal sentence. He sends up a prayer to the impervious Roman gods: Please make her understand that we must not speak of this. Please ensure her silence.
His prayer is heard. They walk outside, into the bright air. They unclasp their hands, and then, arm in arm, they circle the terrace, taking it all in: Rome, about which everything important certainly has already been said. She puts her head, companionably, on his shoulder.
Between them, there are no words.
Wednesday, October 31
THE VILLA BORGHESE
“Any Minute Now That Man Will Insist That You Buy Me a Rose”
Her plane will leave at 6:00 p.m., the flight will be long, twelve hours, and she knows that it is a good thing for her to take a real walk before; she has learned this helps with jet lag. So she suggests that on their last day they arrive at the park early and walk from one end to the other: from the Pincio to the Galleria and then back.
They approach the fountain of the Cavalli Marini, cheerful horses, lounging, supporting on their heads the bowl of the fountain, their manes sluiced by its streaming jets. She dips her hands in the water; the early morning chill pleases and saddens her: it is the end of something.
And as she is staring at the cheerful marble horses, a truck approaches. She can see horses’ heads pushing their way out of the truck’s opening. Three policemen jump out, let down the back, and push a lever that releases a metal ramp. And like a joke in a dream, a joke that the dreamer can’t quite comprehend, they lead to the horse fountain five real horses. Elegantly, extravagantly uniformed, their knee-high boots gleaming like the horses’ hides, their brass buttons, professionally brushed and polished, the handsome young policemen lead the horses to the water. Their shining flanks, black, gray, and chestnut, shine in the sun. Hard to believe, she thinks, this brilliance can be natural. And the horses drink from the fountain of the horses, and she takes Adam’s hand and says, “Isn’t this wonderful? Isn’t this just a lovely piece of luck.”
The policemen mount their horses and trot or canter away. It is as if they had never been there, as if they had dreamed it all.
She can see that he is too downcast to enjoy it. But despite himself, the horses’ cantering, their insistence on their own liveliness, engage him, and she can feel his spirits lift. They walk into a little bower where they can hear a smaller fountain. The light falls through the trees, blurred shafts of whiteness that transform, when they reach the water in the fountain’s bowl, into dazzling lozenges that blink and shimmer.
Adam and Miranda sit down on a bench and listen to the water.
A man with copper-colored skin and a mustache like a dirty toothbrush and a comical hat, like an organ-grinder’s, the kind of hat no one wears anymore, saunters toward them, as if he had no real purpose in his walk.
He is holding roses wrapped in white paper. The leafy light falls on the paper, revealing the roses as he walks unsteadily, crabwise, only partially in their direction.
“Any minute now that man will insist that you buy me a rose,” Miranda says.
“And what shall I do about it? What should I do?”
“I think you should buy one.”
“I think I should not, that I should tell him to go away.”
“Why?”
“For so many reasons.”
“Which reasons.”
“It’s a ridiculous way to make a living. It shouldn’t be encouraged.”
“Make a living. Why is a living something we should have to make?”
“The flowers aren’t fresh. They’re wilting.”
“If you tell him to go away, he won