A foot-shuffle down the hall told me that someone had heard, and that bothered me more than anything.
The next day she was at breakfast as usual, looking composed, even refreshed; no sign of distress.
I said, “I am very sorry about last night.”
Just a slight flash of her eyebrows indicated she had heard me, but there was nothing else, and not a word.
I said, “I’m afraid I was a little drunk.”
For a moment I thought she was going to cry. Her skin wrinkled around her eyes, her mouth quivered, and she struggled with it, the effort showing on the thin pale skin of her face, and as she fought it her eyes glistened. Then the emotion passed, and though she did not say anything I knew she was angry — because of what I had tried to do, or because of my lame apology, I did not know, but I saw that afterward she turned to stone. Except for our chewing, breakfast was silent, and it was all so painful I finally crept away, feeling like the dog I was.
Haroun recovered that day. He looked brighter, he offered to run the errands, taking a taxi to the shops below in Mazzarò. He spent the day with the Gräfin and by afternoon he looked harassed and impatient. I began to surmise that in his absence he had been enjoying a dalliance with one of the boys on the staff, that he resented having to reappear for duty with the Gräfin. They spoke German that day. I was excluded, and it seemed to me that not I but Haroun was being given an ultimatum.
That night, exactly a week after I had arrived in Taormina, Haroun said, “The Gräfin is very unhappy. You must go.”
“I did my best,” I said.
He shook his head. He said, “No. I have failed.”
It amazed me that he did not offer me any blame. He reproached himself. He sucked on his cigarette and spat out the smoke, looking rueful, hardly taking any notice of me, and not mentioning the fact that he had been paying my hotel room and all my expenses for a week, enriching me.
“She does not think she is beautiful,” Haroun said.
That was not at all the impression I had. The Gräfin seemed impossibly vain about her beauty, and I knew from the casual way she moved her body and exposed herself that she was utterly unselfconscious, which was the ultimate sexuality: no matter how many clothes she wore, she was at heart a nudist.
“She is lovely,” I said.
“You think so?” He looked into my face as though testing it for truthfulness.
“Yes, I do.”
“She doesn’t agree. She is not convinced.”
Haroun stared in silence at the stars and dropped his gaze to where they sparkled on the sea.
“A lovely face,” I said. “Like a Madonna.”
This was a bit excessive, but what did it matter? I was on my way out. Why not leave them smiling? But Haroun liked what I said, and nodded heavily, looking moved.
“If you truly think so, you must find a way of convincing her. I will give you some days. Otherwise you must go.”
4
That was my challenge: the strange task assigned by the Gray Dwarf to the Wanderer in the folktale, the young man on the parapet of the palace. The Countess was still in her tower, facing her looking glass — and in my version of this scene she had a mirrored glimpse of the young man on the balcony above her, as well as of her pretty face.
I had to succeed or else I would be banished. That was the narrative. But there was something beneath it. I had not been lying to Haroun in praising the Gräfin. I thought she was beautiful, I knew she was wealthy, she seemed like a sorceress, I desired her. I wanted badly to make love to this seemingly unattainable woman, who did nothing but insult me and reject my advances.
I did not want to think that I was in a trap. But a week in that great hotel, a week of luxury, had spoiled me—“corrupted” is too big a word; I was softened. I had become accustomed to the sweet life that, up to then, I had known only in Italian films. I was habituated to luxury, the easiest habit to acquire, like a taste for candy or for lying in a hammock, like being on a fine yacht and saying, “I don’t want to get off — sail on!”
In this mood I had fantasies of inviting Fabiola, the Principessa, down to the palazzo and dazzling her with my new clothes (gift of the Gräfin) and my new friends, my vastly improved circumstances, my money. She would have been impressed, but not enough. She had a title but no money. She would have been pleased for me in her generous way, and then she would have begged me to tell her I loved her, implored me to utter the word. After that soft pitiful pleading, she would have raged at my selfishness, saying as she had said before, “This is meaningless. You will just leave me. I will be so sad!”
That cured me of wanting Fabiola to visit Taormina.
As for me, I was not ready to leave. I had begun to love waking to each hot day in the comfort of the palazzo; I had even begun to enjoy the challenge of the Gräfin, seeing myself as the youth being tested by the lovely Countess and her riddling adviser in the palace; I was enacting the struggle in the folk story. I was the young Wanderer in the woodcut, an evocative figure, black and pivotal, wearing a half-smile and looking jaunty, poised between success and failure.
I did not take her rejection personally. It was for me to solve the riddle, to find a way to make love to her. The oddest part was that I suspected that Fabiola was a virgin — and I could have had her merely by speaking the formula “I love you.” The Gräfin, I gathered, had been married twice, had had many lovers, she constantly alluded to intrigues and liaisons in far-off places — and I could get nowhere with her. But the Gräfin’s obstinacy did not turn me off; it made me calculating and desirous.
Haroun, confused by my lack of progress, was by turns abusive and encouraging.
Abusive: “How can you take my money and do nothing? You are selfish, in love with yourself. You pretend to be one of the elite, but I know you to be a poor American student. Oh, yes, maybe intelligent and you will amount to something, or maybe you will be like this always — taking money to look pretty, and lying to people and misleading them.”
He went on in this vein but I just stared at him. He had a strong Iraqi accent overlaid by certain German mispronunciations. I found it hard to take any abuse seriously when it was spoken in such a heavy, unconvincing accent, since it all sounded faked or approximated.
“I could cut you off today and you would have to depart on a train traveling in the third-class carriage with all those dirty people, those stinking men and thieving boys, and you wouldn’t think so much of yourself then!”
Stinking men and thieving boys were the object of his desire, and so this was a rather ambiguous threat.
I could bring you down, he was saying. But he was wrong, for I had arrived in Taormina with nothing and it made no difference to me if I left the same way. I could not be reduced, for I came from nowhere. I was strengthened by that thought. Having nothing to lose, I felt indestructible.
Haroun was not always so abusive. He could be the opposite, praising, highly pleased.
On one of these occasions we were on the stage of the Teatro Greco, the dramatic outdoor theater, the ancient setting within sight of Etna and the sea. In the purest gold there are many russet shades, among them the pink of the rosiest flesh, which is also the golden pink of sunset flames. From the direction we were facing it would have been easy to mistake the sunset for an eruption of the volcano, and even for the heat of a woman’s glowing body. Clapping his hands he said, “You say she is beautiful. I did not command you to say that, correct? You say her face is like a Madonna — your own word. I am happy! This is very positive. It means you believe it. I did not tell you what to say.”
I liked him in this encouraging mood, because he was so lively and joyous himself — inexplicable to me, but pleasant to hear someone so attached to his friend that he glowed when she was praised.