A MittelEuropean Story
What appears in the following pages really happened, but part of the story belongs to the privacy of its characters. Therefore, although I was more than entitled to use real names, I only used them at my discretion, often changing them, often omitting surnames, and sometimes using anagrams. So much time has elapsed that the effect of real names has utterly evaporated and the story finally stands on its own, beyond the importance of names. Of course, places names have not been changed because places have no memory.
Palermo 1950. Margaux Wuttembach was looking out of the window of her hotel. At short distance the Antinous, docked in the harbour, had become a new monument embedded in the soft flux of Sicilian days. There was always a crowd of people admiring it. In just one day it had become a landmark in the city. On the other hand only old seaunworthy ferries were docked in the harbor and the Antinous was probably the first yacht most of these people had seen in years, more than anything its presence affirmed the certainty that the war was over. She closed the window with a gesture of disappointment: what was more useless than a boat that could not take to the sea?
"How long do you think it still takes for those calls to Germany?" she asked the concierge. She had asked at least ten times that morning. "It shouldn�t be long. Please, be patient" she was always answered in that sort of a runaround. Once the operator even asked her why she was in such a hurry: an invisible operator who had wanted to show her that she too could speak German.
She looked around. This hotel La Palma was truly something. Antique furniture and the ceilings painted with opulent landscapes made her feel prisoner of a golden cage. She wasn�t at all confident that they�d be able to fix the yacht. The hub of the propeller had to be sent over from Germany and if a phone-call took an entire day, such a piece of equipment would take ages. Although she didn�t know Sicily, she had no confidence in the island or its inhabitants. By the same token she didn�t have any confidence in her own crew either, men of the purest Aryan race, same race which had lost the war.
The hotel was deserted. Although it was spring and the perfect time to visit the island, the hotel was empty. Outside the morning fairly danced and sparkled as an air of baffling immobility hung over everything. Utter peace. It wasn�t hot but everything around was a smoldering mass of bloom: the flowers, the light, the sea, the monuments, all seemed to crowd against her window. First in the line of attackers was the villa on a soft incline behind the hotel which she could see from her balcony. The villa which had impressed her somehow. She wanted to go down to the garden and take a look at it again. Margaux Wuttembach had always been sensitive to certain forms of beauty. She called for a coffee saying she would take it downstairs. She would actually have her breakfast in the garden. She had always loved flowers: looking down from her balcony the path of colors stretched almost all the way until her yacht, surely an optical link. Bougainvillea of all colours. She had always thought bouganvillas were only violet. Before leaving the room she looked at herself in the mirror. A split second in which she always held her breath until she punctually won her own endorsement. What a pity to waste her beauty in another empty day, beauty and flowers, both so short lived. She would offer that day to her friends the flowers. In the meantime her phone-calls would arrive.
"Madame Wuttembach..." said the concierge on seeing her. The man�s way of staring, so insistent to be almost indecent. Wasn�t he considerate. The whole composure was that of a question mark, sinuous and curvy, except for the chin shaped like the heel in an old boot.
"If someone calls for me I am in the garden. Have you got some newspapers?"
"Only Italian. I have some postcards if you want to send any." The concierge had some open on his desk.. All around waiters were dusting the furniture, on the ceiling the blades from a large fan lazily sliced down the temperature.
"Ok, I get some." She had never sent a postcard in her life; she had never received one either; in her time no one sent postcards. Now postcards were another small proof that the war was over. Peace was made up by small events such sending and receiving postcards, unlike war when those same events ceased to exist.
As she passed into the garden she was almost bowled over by a volley of perfumes, all hidden by the door waiting for her. She felt almost dizzy in that spree of light, silence and solitude in which the superb garden was imbued with, almost saturated with a thousand forgotten essences. But, as she regained her senses, she realized how those perfumes were in fact various and distinct: the aromas of sage, tuberose, lemon and jasmine began to reveal themselves. The authors of those perfumes protruded from their vases, bending towards her, following her, like the eyes of the concierge and the staff. These could not be seen but she knew they were there. She always knew when someone followed her.
This awesome garden was also desert, inhabited merely by those perfumes. But it was by no means soundless: cicadas had set their membranes into motion in a seemingly mad cadence against which all other claims of the earth went unheard. Between sound and perfume the air was a concoction of energy, an invisible fight of vitamins and proteins. All that lust, disgorged from an immense bouganvilla and turned into a cascade of sanguine, overlapping festoons. Whenever she was surrounded by flowers like these Margaux Wuttembach was always lost to a feeling of merriment.
She sat at a table carved from a stone block, marked here and there with gray and black encrustations of mildew, geological layers masking the original color. A magnificently-decorated table cloth had been engraved into the stone�s surface, and as she sat down on a chair upholstered in velvet and stuffed with feathers, Margaux realized the chair too was made of stone! If nothing else, she thought, these Sicilians were certainly artists. Wherever she looked she saw amazing things - even on the postcards which she had by now spread on the table like small windows on the city. All Palermo lay in front of her, winking from those postcards, each one flaunting a belfry, a dome, or a mosaic. She had never thought of visiting Palermo before. Although she was heading for Greece the idea of discovering Palermo was becoming attractive, furthermore, she couldn�t say no to those perfumes, those images. The Palatina Chapel, the Palace of the Eagles, the cloister of ... she couldn�t read that last name. She took out her address book. She needed at least a dozen postcards. She would have to send at least six home.
She checked the time. No calls yet. The skipper of her yacht would pass by at lunch to keep her informed. She addressed her first postcard to Ute. She deserved it. She had remained in Paris, ready to join her in Greece. But now the program had gone awry because of a stray plank which had hit the propeller. But she wasn�t surprised, during the war she had learned to give up planning, mere orientations she called them.
At that moment she saw a man walking toward her preceded by a black and white dog. A mighty dog. A tall, long-legged man with dark glasses, first man she had seen on the island who didn�t have a mustache. Good looking too: the more he advanced the more attractive he seemed to be, a sort of Apollo with black curly hair. The man too was staring in her direction. When he passed in front of her he nodded. For a moment Margaux Wuttembach was breathless. She wasn�t used to that kind of Mediterranean looks, but pulled herself together quickly, she couldn�t afford to lower her guard.
"O, what a fabulous dog you have," she said in English. Margaux Wuttembach knew English perfectly. It had been mandatory to learn English at one point in her life.
The man turned towards her. The dog sat on his haunches, his head reached the man�s waist.
"It�s a Landseer," the man said.
"Landseer. But I have never heard of Landseers."
"It�s a particular breed. Similar to a Newfoundland."
"It�s larger than a Newfoundland."
The man nodded having answered in impeccable English. Their exchange had happened in a spontaneous way, as if neither of them had noticed they had been speaking in a foreign language in a place that was in no way cosmopolitan.
The man took out a pipe; it was long and slim. As he lit it up he asked her: "Are you the owner of the yacht?"
"How do you know?
"We know everything in Palermo." Then he added: "I intercepted a message which was asking for help from a manufacturer in Germany. It was probably your skipper. Have you lost a propeller with its hub?"
"Something like that. The hub....I don�t know what a hub is. Are you a telegraph operator?" Margaux asked, a little uncertain.
"Indeed I am. It�s my hobby."
"I�m Margaux Wuttembach. I imagine you also know my name."
"No. I could have asked for it, but since I didn�t know you.... I�m Foudroy� Del Lago."
"Italian?"
"Italian."
"It looks like the bow of a violin."
"Parmi?"
"Your pipe."
"My English grandmother made these pipes."
"Church Warden," said Margaux reading the make. "There are your initials as well."
"Not really. They are my grandfather�s, a coincidence from my Nordic island."
The woman didn�t seem to be interested in what he was saying. She was thinking about something else: an Italian that could speak such perfect English. "Your Nordic island..." she repeated absentmindedly while she was taking in the way he was dressed: his broad-cuffed trousers draped over a pair of sleek moccasins. She could make out clothes made to one�s measure.
Foudroy� Del Lago swept his forehead with his hand. "My mother was English. I was raised in England. I came back to Italy after the war.".
The woman remained silent. "May I?" she asked.
"What?"
"I�d like to hold your pipe. It�s so much like the bow of a violin. I�m a fiddler, you see." The woman gave a long puff on the pipe. She held it in her hands with delicacy and let its stem run across her face -an irregular bony face with large spaces between its features: high cheek bones set well apart, green listless eyes as if in tune with an inner dialogue, and a smile which didn�t seem to have outgrown childhood. An Italian who�s half English, she thought. She would have liked to have asked on which side he had fought during the war, she didn�t care. The dog got up. If anything it looked even bigger, it seemed enormous. "What�s his name?"
"America."
"America?" the woman repeated laughing, a laugh which ended hoarsely. The woman thought for a moment, the man was married perhaps. She�d find out.
"Would you accompany me on a tour of this garden?."
"With pleasure."
"Are staying in this hotel?"
"No, but I come here every morning. I take America for a walk." Then he added: "I live in that villa just behind."
"That villa.... "repeated the woman.
As they walked the dog never moved from his master�s side, the woman knew how to recognize a trained dog.
"My God, what perfumes! This....this particular one."
"It�s the perfume from the oranges. La zagara."
"La za ga ra," repeated Margaux. She felt as if she were the target of some rare flower discharging its pollen in its mad pretension to bamboozle the sky. Standing at the edge of a terrace, one of the many in the garden, they were taking in the the view of an ancient Arab Mosque whose cupole blazed above the light haze, but in the area of the port some heavily bombed buildings offered a stark contrast, as if they were asking for the silence one keeps for someone who has just suffered an irrepairable mutilation. But the Antinous in harbor kept playing the primadonna. Refreshing in a way.
"Where were you heading?"
"Greece."
"By yourself?"
"When I need to recharge my batteries I close myself inside the Antinous and I let the skipper decide where to go. I often cruise the Med. It�s a very small sea. It�s its history that makes us believe is a big sea." Then she added: "In Greece I am supposed to meet a friend." As she spoke she studied him: a slightly aquiline nose, an enigmatic smile. She reckoned he could have been between 33 and 35. Perhaps less. Difficult to say whether he was a young man who had known the ropes or simply an older man, the hands were those of a young man, but those two wrinkles around his mouth were indistinguishable, impossible to say whether they came from laughter or tears. She wondered what color his eyes were, eyes darkened by thick shades.
"You don�t need a propeller to go to Greece. The wind is enough. "
"You�re right. The helm is not been damaged. The commander wants the engine as a precaution. "Germans have a knack about security" she said. "Then in the end they always get taken." Her thinking was always faster than her words and therefore these were often out of context. "You speak Italian�"
"I am Italian. Didn�t I tell you?"
Half English and half Italian, she had forgotten. "Look...an owl. What�s he doing there?" Margaux edged closer to the man and took his arm, perhaps because of the surprise. The big bird was perched on the boughs of a lemon tree.
"He�s probably sleeping. At this hour owls don�t see." Then he added: "Why do you wear gloves?"
"I... I always wear them." They remained silent.
A waiter from the hotel approached. "Prince, it�s half past ten. Madame...." The man bowed so low his head reached past his waist .
"Thank you, Gervaso," said Foudroy�, then turned toward the woman. "I must go. I have an appointment with someone from Hong Kong on the radio. Nice meeting you." Then, not quite as an afterthought, he asked her "How long will you stay in Palermo? Not knowing about your propeller you probably don�t know."
"Telephone! Telephone! Madame Wuttembach!" A woman�s voice cut through the garden.
"I have to go too. Probably news about my propeller." Margaux laughed. "We shall see each other again I hope. I absolutely must see that villa where you stay." Likewise she thought about the way the waiter had addressed himself to Foudroy�. No, it could not be true: such an attractive man.... a prince to boot, as far as she was concerned Sicilian men were all rather small and grew bushy black mustaches.
"Telephone! Telephone!" the woman�s voice kept screaming. Margaux was in no mode to hurry, this man wasn�t just anyone; it was essential that she saw him again.
"What did you say your name was?" she asked.
"Foudroy� Del Lago," he said as he smiled back at her. "I come here every morning." His voice reached her almost wavering in the intricacy of scents. She remained watching him as he walked away with his mighty dog at his side.