“What was that all about?” Myra said.
I had turned to see the Gräfin walking away.
“Long story.” The Gräfin had never come to the Mocambo before.
“That's the third time you’ve said that.”
“Everything’s a long story to me. I’m an existentialist.”
But Myra did not smile. She was thinking hard. Women know other women, because unlike men they are not beguiled by appearances: they know exactly what lies behind any feminine surface. Myra’s alertness, the single woman’s scrutiny, something new to me, amazed me with its accuracy in processing details and giving them significance — finding clues, searching for dangers, all in aid, I guessed, of choosing a mate. Men were casual, women so cautious. Even from this swift glimpse of the Gräfin, Myra knew me much better.
“Her heels are amazing. What’s with those gloves? The hat’s Chanel, and so is the dress. I bet she gets her hair done every day. The dress is raw silk — you can tell by the way it drapes. Did you see the gold threads? That’s real gold. It’s from Thailand.”
I took Myra’s interest for curiosity, a way of telling me that she understood fashion; and I was startled to see her rising from the café table. There was a cloud on her face, a sort of resignation and quiet anger that might have been rueful. I saw that in that moment of witnessing the Gräfin poke me, Myra had written me off as someone she could not rely on. She had summed up the situation before I said a word.
“I’m going to Siracusa.”
“Why?” I said, sounding lame.
“It’s not far — you said so yourself.”
“I thought we were going together.”
She said in a warning tone, “You’re keeping your friend waiting, Gilford.”
She had indeed written me off. She knew everything, it all fitted, my clothes, my presumption, my vagueness, “Long story,” the sudden appearance and unequivocal demand of the Gräfin.
“These Germans really overdress. Especially the older ones,” she said, and turned and passed the waiter, leaving a thousand-lire note on his saucer for the coffee and the tip: pride.
I felt like a small boy exposed in a needless insulting lie, who would never be trusted again.
“See ya.”
Her false bonhomie gave her a sort of pathos, but she seemed brave as she crossed the Piazzale Nove Aprile with her bag in one hand and her map in the other. She walked purposefully but she was weary and burdened and so she was a little lopsided; but she was free. She was the person I had once been, before I had met the Gräfin. I could not bear to watch her go.
The Gräfin was on the terrace of the palazzo when I got back. The waiter stood beside her holding a bottle of wine. I sat down. He poured me a glass.
“Drink, drink,” the Gräfin said.
I did so, and my anger flattened the taste of the wine, soured it in my mouth. I watched the shadows rise up the walls of the terrace, saw the last of the daylight slip from the roof tiles. I said nothing, only drank. When the waiter approached — and now I was self-conscious: what did he make of me? — and lit our candle, the Gräfin stroked the inside of her handbag and found her key, which she handed to me.
In her suite, I locked the door and shot the bolt. I drew out my leather belt with a sliding sound as it rasped through the trouser loops, lifting it as though unsheathing a sword.
“No,” the Gräfin said with what seemed like real fear.
I prepared to tie her wrists with the belt and she relaxed a little — she had thought I was going to beat her.
In a calm voice she said, “There are silk scarves in the drawer of my dresser. Use them — they won't leave marks on my skin.”
She extended her arms so that her wrists were near each bedpost and she lay while I bound her with scarves. She slipped one leg over the other, looking crucified.
“Please, whatever you do, be gentle. Don’t rape me — don’t humiliate me.”
Not desire, nor even lust, but anger kept me there, forcing her legs apart, fumbling with her clothes. In my determination to have my way I did not even reflect on her desire but was singleminded, thrusting myself into her. Only when I was done did I realize that her sighs were sighs of pleasure. She had exhausted me again.
“We rest now.” Her voice came out of the darkness, waking me. “Zen we eat.”
Meeting Myra had retuned my ear: I heard the Gräfin’s German accent as never before.
Over dinner, the Gräfin said, “Who was zat silly girl?”
“American.”
“What shoes she had. Her blouse so dirty. And did you see her fingernails? She could at least brush her hair. Of course, American.”
7
I could not escape without encouragement. My inspiration was Myra Messersmith disgustedly turning away from me to pick herself up and swinging her bag and, without looking back, walking away across the piazza, into the Via Roma. The Gräfin’s contempt for Myra’s clothes made me remember everything she wore, from the white blouse and headscarf to her blue jeans and hiking shoes. She was my example. And she might still be in Siracusa.
We had a great deal in common, Myra and I, but I knew that she was the stronger, and that it would help me to spend a few days with her. Just the half hour I had spent with her at the Mocambo had lifted my spirits and shown me who I really was, an opportunistic American who was out of his depth here, being used by Haroun and the Gräfin. In a flash, Myra saw me with some accuracy as an idle parasite who needed the patronage of a rich woman, I wanted to disprove that. I was twenty-one, still a student, who until meeting these people had been traveling light, passing through Italy making sketches. Well, not many sketches lately. I had done hardly any, as though I feared incriminating myself, or feared having to face the person I had become, a flunky in the Gräfin's entourage.
And what images would I have recorded in my sketchbook? A howling woman in twisted underclothes. A doglike woman on all fours, buttocks upraised. A woman — I now saw — addicted to rituals: a certain time of day, a particular sequence of sexual gropings, always in the same room on the same carpet on the same portion of the floor. All of this was shocking, for sex was the last thing I wanted to depict. Sex was a secret; sexual portraiture was the stuff of lawsuits. This was 1962: the topic was forbidden. You could buy “Snake,” but Lady Chatterley’s Lover was still a scandal. The Gräfin's suite was another country, without a language, without literature, almost without human speech, with no words for its rituals; where it was always night.
I woke as always in the daylight of my own room — the Gräfin insisted on sleeping alone — and felt preoccupied, with an excited edge to my determination, my hands shaking slightly as I drank my coffee like a farewell toast. To steel my resolve I did not talk to anyone; I needed to concentrate. I dressed, took all the cash I had, and hurried out of the Palazzo d’Oro and through the town, my head down, moving like a phantom.
A beautiful September day, fragrant with the sweet decay of dying leaves and wilting flowers; most of the summer people had gone. I had been in Taormina long enough to notice a distinct change in the weather — the intense heat and humidity were over, days were sunny and nights were cool, and the smell of ripeness, of yellow leaves and fruit pulp, and a dustiness of threshing in the air from the wheat harvest.
Halfway down the hill I hailed a taxi, and at the station I found that a train was due soon. I calculated that I could be in Siracusa by midafternoon, still lunchtime in Sicily, and I might find Myra. I also knew that the very impulse to look for her would liberate me.
A voice croaking from the strain of urgency called my name and I saw Haroun crossing the road toward the station platform where I stood. He was puffing a cigarette, looking terribly pale and rumpled, as though he had been casually assaulted — roughed up, warned rather than mugged. But he smiled, it had been pleasure, he was dissolute, careless, happy, like a child playing in mud.