Beautiful Ruins

But Guido died, too, shot through the throat in the icy meat-fields outside Stalingrad in the winter of ’42. His parents, now ruined by grief, wanted only to hide from the world, and to protect their miracle boy from such insanity. So Carlo sold his stake in the family business to some cousins and bought the tiny Pensione di San Pietro in the most remote place he could find, Porto Vergogna. And there they hid from the world.

Thankfully, the Tursis had saved most of the money from selling their Florence holdings, because the hotel did very little business. Confused Italians and other Europeans occasionally wandered in, and the little three-top trattoria was a gathering place for the dwindling fishing families of Porto Vergogna, but months could pass between real guests. Then, in the spring of 1952, a water taxi drifted into the cove, and from it stepped a tall, neatly handsome young American with a narrow mustache and slicked brown hair. The man clearly had been drinking, and smoked a thin cigar as he stepped onto the pier with his one suitcase and a portable typewriter. He looked around at the village, scratched his head, and said, in surprisingly fluid Italian, “Qualcuno sembra aver rubato la tua città”—Someone seems to have stolen your town. He introduced himself to the Tursis as “Alvis Bender, scrittore fallito ma ubriacone di successo”—failed writer but successful drunk—and proceeded to hold court on the porch for six hours, drinking wine and talking about politics and history and, finally, about the book he wasn’t writing.

Pasquale was eleven, and other than the occasional trip to see family in Florence, all he knew of the world came from books. To meet an actual author was unbelievable. He’d lived entirely in the shelter of his parents in this tiny village, and he was enthralled by the towering, laughing American, who seemed to have been everywhere, to know everything. Pasquale sat at the writer’s feet and asked him questions. “What’s America like? What is the best kind of automobile? What’s it like in an airplane?” And one day: “What is your book about?”

Alvis Bender handed the boy his wineglass. “Fill this up and I’ll tell you.”

When Pasquale returned with more wine, Alvis reclined and stroked his thin mustache. “My book is about how the whole of human history and advancement has brought us only to the realization that death is life’s point, its profound purpose.”

Pasquale had heard Alvis make such speeches to his father. “No,” he said. “What’s it about? What happens?”

“Right. Market demands a story.” Alvis took another drink of wine. “Okay then. Well, my book is about an American who fights in Italy during the war, loses his best friend, and falls out of love with life. The man returns to America, where he hopes to teach English and write a book about his disillusionment. But he only drinks and broods and chases women. He can’t write. Perhaps it is his guilt over being alive while his friend died. And guilt is sometimes a kind of envy—his friend left a young son, and when the man goes to visit his friend’s son, afterward, he longs to be a noble memory, too, rather than the obscene wreck that he’s become. The man loses his teaching job and goes back to his family business, selling cars. He drinks and broods and chases women. He decides the only way he’s ever going to write his book and ease his sorrow is to go back to Italy, the place that holds the secret to his sadness, but a place that escapes his powers of description when he isn’t there—a dream he can’t quite recall. So for two weeks every year, the man goes to Italy to work on his book. But here’s the thing, Pasquale—and you can’t tell anyone this part, because it’s the secret twist—even in Italy, he doesn’t really write his book. He drinks. He broods. He chases women. And he talks to a smart boy in a tiny village about the novel he will never write.”

It was quiet. Pasquale thought the book sounded boring. “How does it end?”

For a long time, Alvis Bender stared at his glass of wine. “I don’t know, Pasquale,” he said finally. “How do you think it should end?”

Young Pasquale considered the question. “Well, instead of going back to America during the war, he could go to Germany and try to kill Hitler.”

“Ah,” Alvis Bender said. “Yes. That is exactly what happens, Pasquale. He gets drunk at a party and everyone warns him not to drive, but he makes a giant scene leaving the party and he jumps in his car and accidentally drives over Hitler.”

Pasquale didn’t think it should be an accident, Hitler’s death. It would take all the suspense out. He offered, helpfully, “Or he could shoot him with a machine gun.”

“Even better,” Alvis said. “Our hero makes a huge scene leaving the party. Everyone warns him that he’s too drunk to operate a machine gun. But he insists and he accidentally shoots Hitler.”

When Pasquale thought Bender was making fun of him, he would change the subject. “What is your book called, Alvis?”

“The Smile of Heaven,” he said. “It’s from Shelley.” And he did his best to translate: “The whispering waves were half asleep/the clouds were gone to play/And on the woods, and on the deep/the smile of Heaven lay.”

Pasquale sat for a while, thinking about the poem. Le onde andavano sussurrando—the whispering waves, he knew these. But the title, The Smile of Heaven—Il sorriso del Paradiso—seemed wrong to him. He didn’t think of heaven as a smiling place. If mortal si

“In your book, why does heaven smile?”

“I don’t know.” Bender guzzled the wine and handed Pasquale the empty glass again. “Maybe because someone has finally killed that bastard Hitler.”

Pasquale stood to get more wine. But he began to worry that Bender wasn’t teasing after all. “I don’t think Hitler’s death should be an accident,” Pasquale said.

Alvis smiled wearily at the boy. “Everything is an accident, Pasquale.”

During those years, Pasquale couldn’t recall Alvis ever writing for more than a few hours; sometimes he wondered if the man ever unpacked his typewriter. But he came back year after year, and finally, in 1958, the year Pasquale left for university, he presented Carlo with the first chapter of his novel. Seven years. One chapter.

Pasquale couldn’t understand why Alvis came to Porto Vergogna at all, since he seemed to get so little done. “Of all the places in the world, why do you come here?”

“This coast is a wellspring for writers,” Alvis said. “Petrarch invented the so

Pasquale didn’t understand what Alvis Bender meant by these writers “inventing.” He thought of inventors as men like Marconi, the great Bolognese who’d invented the wireless. Once the first story was told, what was there to invent?

“Excellent question.” Since losing his college teaching job, Alvis was always looking for opportunities to lecture, and in the sheltered, teenage Pasquale he found a willing audience. “Imagine truth as a chain of great mountains, their tops way up in the clouds. Writers explore these truths, always looking out for new paths up these peaks.”

“So the stories are paths?” Pasquale asked.

“No,” Alvis said. “Stories are bulls. Writers come of age full of vigor, and they feel the need to drive the old stories from the herd. One bull rules the herd awhile but then he loses his vigor and the young bulls take over.”

“Stories are bulls?”

“Nope.” Alvis Bender took a drink. “Stories are nations, empires. They can last as long as ancient Rome or as short as the Third Reich. Story-nations rise and decline. Governments change, trends rise, and they go on conquering their neighbors. Like the Roman Empire, the epic poem stretched for centuries, as far as the world. The novel rose with the British Empire, but wait . . . what is that rising in America? Film?”