He still had so many Italian cities to see. They would surely have so much for him to discover. He decided to write home and ask for money.
But he put off the business of writing the letter from one day to the next. He had so far remained in Foligno to be near Dr Ellesley, the only person with whom he had any connection, however slight. He took a room, where he lived quietly, read the English novels the doctor lent him, and enjoyed his lunches and dinners. Food was the only thing that tied him to reality in those blank days. He loved the undisguised sentimentality of Italian cooking. Conventional French-European cuisine approves only subtle, subdued, qualified flavours, like the colours of men’s suits. The Italian loves intense sweetness, extreme tartness, strongly distinctive aromas. Even the huge servings of pasta could be seen as an expression of this sentimentality.
One evening he was sitting with Ellesley outside the main coffee-house of the town. As usual they were speaking English. Suddenly a young girl approached, addressed them in an American accent and joined them at the table.
“Please excuse my troubling you,” she said, “but I’ve spent the whole day wandering around this godforsaken town and found no-one I could communicate with. Can you please explain something? It’s the reason I came here. It’s very important.”
“We are at your disposal.”
“You see, I’m studying art history at Cambridge.”
“Ah, Cambridge?” cried Ellesley with delight.
“Oh yes, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Why? Did you graduate there?”
“No. I was at Cambridge, England. But how can we be of service?”
“Well, I’m studying art history and I came to Italy because, as you probably know, there are lots of great pictures here they don’t have anywhere else. And I’ve seen everything.”
She took out a little notebook, and continued:
“I’ve been to Florence, Rome, Naples, Venice, and a whole lot of other places whose names I can’t read just now, the light’s so bad here. The last place was Per … Perugia. Did I say that right?”
“Yes.”
“In the museum there I met a French gentleman. He was French, that’s why he was so kind. He explained everything beautifully, and then told me that I absolutely must go to Foligno, because there is a very famous picture there, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, you know, the guy who did the Last Supper. So I came here. And I looked for this picture the whole day and didn’t find it. And nobody in this revolting little bird’s nest can direct me to it. Would you please tell me where they hide this painting?”
Mihály and the doctor looked at one another.
“A Leonardo? There’s never been one in Foligno,” replied the doctor.
“That’s impossible,” said the girl, somewhat offended. “The French gentleman said there was. He said there’s a wonderful cow in it, with a goose and a duck.”
Mihály burst out laughing.
“My dear lady, it’s very simple. The French gentleman was having you on. There is no Leonardo in Foligno. And although I’m no expert, I have the feeling that there is no such picture by Leonardo, with a cow, a goose and a duck.”
“But why did he say there was?”
“Probably because cynical Europeans tend to liken women to these animals. Only European women, of course.”
“I don’t get it. You’re not telling me the French gentleman was playing a trick on me?” she asked, red-faced.
“You could see it that way, I’m sorry to say.”
The girl thought deeply. Then she asked Mihály:
“You aren’t French?”
“No, no. Hungarian.”
Her hand made a gesture of indifference. Then she turned to Ellesley:
“But you’re English.”
“Yes. Partly.”
“And do you agree with your friend?”
“Yes,” said Ellesley, nodding sadly.
The girl again thought for a while, then clenched her fist.
“But he was so kind to me! I just wish I knew the bastard’s name.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Ellesley consoled her:
“But there’s no great harm done. Now you can write in your notebook that you’ve been to Foligno.”
“I already did,” she said with a sniffle.
“Well, there you are,” said Mihály. “Tomorrow you’ll go happily back to Perugia and continue your studies. I’ll take you to the train. I’ve already had the experience of getting on the wrong one.”
“That’s not the point. The shame of it, the shame of it! To treat a poor defenceless girl like that! Everyone told me not to trust Europeans. But I’m such a straightforward person myself. Can you get whisky here?”
And they sat together until midnight.
The girl’s presence had a lively effect on Mihály. He too drank whisky, and became talkative, although mostly it was the girl who spoke. The little doctor became very quiet, being naturally shy, and finding her rather attractive.
The girl, whose name was Millicent Ingram, was quite wonderful. Especially as an art historian. She knew of Luca della Robbia that it was a city on the Arno, and claimed that she had been with Watteau in his Paris studio. “A very kind old man,” she insisted, “but his hands were dirty, and I didn’t like the way he kissed my neck in the hallway.” That aside, she talked about art history, passionately and pompously, without stopping.
It gradually emerged that she was the daughter of wealthy Philadelphia parents who enjoyed considerable influence in high society, at least as she saw it, but that some Rousseauistic tendency in her drove her towards solitude and nature, which from her point of view meant Europe. She had attended study semesters in Paris, Vienna and other fine places, but none of it had had any effect. Her soul had preserved its American innocence.
And yet, as Mihály walked home and prepared for bed, he hummed cheerfully to himself, and his apathy slipped away. “Millicent,” he said. “There’s someone in the world actually called Millicent! Millicent.”
Millicent Ingram was not the mind-boggling, soppily-named, beautiful American girl to be seen in Paris in the years after the war, when everything else in the world was so drab. It was only in the second of those contexts that Millicent could be classed as an American beauty. The basis of this beauty, though the word is perhaps an overstatement, was that her face was quite devoid of expression. But in any event she was very good-looking, with a little nose, a wholesome mouth that was large (and painted larger) and a fine athletic figure. Her muscles seemed as elastic as rubber.
And she was American. Indisputably of that class of wonderful creatures exported to Paris in Mihály’s youth. The ‘foreign woman’ is an element of young manhood, of footloose youth. What remains in later years is the undying nostalgia, for in the footloose years we are still gauche and timid, and let slip the better opportunities. Mihály had now lived for so long in Budapest that his lovers had all been from that city. The ‘foreign woman’ now rather denoted his youth. And liberation: after Erzsi, after the serious marriage, after so many serious years. An adventure, at last: something coming unexpectedly and moving towards an unforeseen conclusion.
Even Millicent’s stupidity was attractive. In the deepest stupidity there is a kind of dizzying, whirlpool attraction, like death: the pull of the vacuum.
It so happened that the next day, when he had escorted her to the station, and they were about to buy the ticket, he said:
“Why are you going back to Perugia? Foligno is a city too. Why not stay here?”
Millicent looked at him with her stupidly serious eyes, and said: