I.III
Within this three hours
will fair Juliet wake
IT TOOK THE BELLS OF the basilica across the piazza to finally stir me from sleep. Two minutes later Direttor Rossini knocked on my door as if he knew I could not possibly have slept through the racket. “Excuse me!” Without waiting for an invitation, he lugged a large suitcase into my room and placed it on the empty baggage stand. “This came for you last night.”
“Wait!” I let go of the door and gathered the hotel bathrobe around me as tightly as I could. “That is not my suitcase.”
“I know.” He pulled the foulard from his breast pocket and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “It is from Contessa Salimbeni. Here, she left a note for you.”
I took the note. “What exactly is a contessa?”
“Normally,” said Direttor Rossini with some dignity, “I do not carry luggage. But since it was Contessa Salimbeni-”
“She is lending me her clothes?” I stared at Eva Maria’s brief handwritten note in disbelief. “And shoes?”
“Until your own luggage arrives. It is now in Frittoli.”
In her exquisite handwriting, Eva Maria anticipated that her clothes might not fit me perfectly. But, she concluded, it was better than running around naked.
As I examined the specimens in the suitcase one by one, I was happy Janice could not see me. Our childhood home had not been big enough for two fashionistas, and so I-much to Umberto’s chagrin-had embarked upon a career of being everything but. In school, Janice got her compliments from friends whose lives were headlined by designer names, while any admiration I got came from girls who had bummed a ride to the charity store, but who hadn’t had the vision to buy what I bought, or the courage to put it together. It was not that I disliked fancy clothes, it was just that I wouldn’t give Janice the satisfaction of appearing to care about my looks. For no matter what I did to myself, she could always outdo me.
By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed. When Aunt Rose had put our graduation photos side by side on the grand piano, she had smiled sadly and observed that, of all those many classes I had taken, I seemed to have graduated with the best results as the perfect anti-Janice.
Eva Maria’s designer clothes were, in other words, definitely not my style. But what were my options? Following my telephone conversation with Umberto the night before, I had decided to retire my flip-flops for the time being and pay a little more attention to my bella figura. After all, the last thing I needed now was for Francesco Maconi, my mother’s financial advisor, to think I was someone not to be trusted.
And so I tried on Eva Maria’s outfits one by one, turning this way and that before the wardrobe mirror, until I found the least outrageous one-a foxy little skirt and jacket, fire-engine red with big black polka dots-that made me look as if I had just emerged from a Jaguar with four pieces of perfectly matched luggage and a small dog called Bijou. But most important, it made me look as if I ate hidden heirlooms-and financial advisors-for breakfast.
And by the way, it had matching shoes.
IN ORDER TO GET to Palazzo Tolomei, Direttor Rossini had explained, I must choose to either go up Via del Paradiso or down Via della Sapienza. They were both practically closed to traffic-as were most streets in downtown Siena-but Sapienza, he advised, could be a bit of a challenge, and all in all, Paradiso was probably the safer route.
As I walked down Via della Sapienza the façades of ancient houses closed in on me from all sides, and I was soon trapped in a labyrinth of centuries past, following the logic of an earlier way of life. Above me a ribbon of blue sky was crisscrossed by banners, their bold colors strangely vivid among the medieval brick, but apart from that-and the odd pair of jeans drying from a window-there was almost nothing that committed this place to modernity.
The world had developed around it, but Siena didn’t care. Direttor Rossini had told me that, for the Sienese, the golden age had been the late Middle Ages, and as I walked, I could see that he was right; the city clung to its medieval self with a stubborn disregard for the attractions of progress. There were touches of the Renaissance here and there, but overall, the hotel director had sniggered, Siena had been too wise to be seduced by the charms of history’s playboys, those so-called masters, who turned houses into layer cakes.
As a result, the most beautiful thing about Siena was her integrity; even now, in a world that had stopped caring, she was still Sena Vetus Civitas Virginis, or, in my own language, Old Siena, City of the Virgin. And for that reason alone, Direttor Rossini had concluded, all fingers planted on the green marble counter, it was the only place on the planet worth living in.
“So, where else have you lived?” I had asked him, innocently.
“I was in Rome for two days,” he had replied with dignity. “Who needs to see more? When you take a bite of a bad apple, do you keep eating?”
From my immersion in the silent alleys I eventually surfaced in a bustling, pedestrian street. According to my directions it was called the Corso, and Direttor Rossini had explained that it was famous for the many old banks that used to serve foreigners traveling the old pilgrim route, which had gone straight through town. Over the centuries, millions of people had journeyed through Siena, and many foreign treasures and currencies had changed hands. The steady stream of modern-day tourists, in other words, was nothing but the continuation of an old, profitable tradition.
That was how my family, the Tolomeis, had grown rich, Direttor Rossini had pointed out, and how their rivals, the Salimbenis, had grown even richer. They had been tradesmen and bankers, and their fortified palazzos had flanked this very road-Siena’s main thoroughfare-with impossibly tall towers that had kept growing and growing until, at last, they had both come crashing down.
As I walked past Palazzo Salimbeni I looked in vain for remnants of the old tower. It was still an impressive building with quite the Draculean front door, but it was no longer the fortification it had once been. Somewhere in that building, I thought as I scurried by, collar up, Eva Maria’s godson, Alessandro, had his office. Hopefully he was not-just now-scrolling through some crime register to find the dark secret behind Julie Jacobs.
Farther down the road, but not much, stood Palazzo Tolomei, the ancient dwelling of my own ancestors. Looking up at the splendid medieval façade, I suddenly felt proud to be connected to the people who had once lived in this remarkable building. As far as I could see, not much had changed since the fourteenth century; the only thing suggesting that the mighty Tolomeis had moved out and a modern bank had moved in were the marketing posters hanging in the deep-set windows, their colorful promises sliced by iron bars.
The inside of the building was no less stern than the outside. A security guard stepped forward to hold the door for me as I entered, as gallantly as the semiautomatic rifle in his arms would allow, but I was too busy looking around to be bothered by his uniformed attention. Six titanic pillars in red brick held the ceiling high, high above mankind, and although there were counters and chairs and people walking around on the vast stone floor, these took up so little of the room that the white lion heads protruding from the ancient walls seemed entirely unaware that humans were present.
“Sì?” The teller looked at me over the rim of glasses so fashionably slim they could not possibly transmit more than a wafer-thin slice of reality.
I leaned forward a bit, in the interest of privacy. “Would it be possible to talk to Signor Francesco Maconi?”
The teller actually managed to focus on me through her glasses, but she did not appear convinced by what she saw. “There is no Signor Francesco here,” she said firmly, in a very heavy accent.