Beautiful Ruins

After that burst of prolific writing, Alvis Bender never made much more progress on his novel when he came to Italy. Instead, he’d cat around Rome or Milan or Venice for a week or two, drinking and chasing women, then come and spend a few days in the quiet of Porto Vergogna. He’d rework that first chapter, rewrite it, reorder things, take a word or two out, put a new sentence in—but nothing came of his book. And yet it always restored him in some way, reading and gently reworking his one good chapter, and seeing his old friend Carlo Tursi, his wife, Antonia, and their sea-eyed son, Pasquale. But now—to find both Carlo and Antonia dead like this, to find Pasquale a full-grown man . . . Alvis wasn’t sure what to think. He had heard of couples dying in short order like this, the grief just too much for the survivor to bear. But it was hard to get his mind around: a year earlier, Carlo and Antonia had both seemed healthy. And now they were gone?

“When did this happen?” he asked Pasquale.

“My father died last spring, my mother three nights ago,” Pasquale said. “Her funeral mass is tomorrow.”

Alvis kept searching Pasquale’s face. He’d been away at school the last few springs when Alvis had come. He couldn’t believe this was little Pasquale, grown into this . . . this man. Even in his grief, Pasquale had the same strange calm about him that he’d had as a boy, those blue eyes steady in their easy assessment of the world. They sat on the patio in the cool morning, Alvis Bender’s portable typewriter and suitcase at his feet where Pasquale had once sat. “I’m so sorry, Pasquale,” he said. “I can go find a hotel up the coast if you want to be alone.”

Pasquale looked up at him. Even though Alvis’s Italian was usually pretty clear, the words were taking a moment to register for Pasquale, almost as if they had to be translated. “No. I would like you to stay.” He poured them each another glass of wine, and slid Alvis’s glass to him.

“Grazie,” Alvis said.

They drank their glasses of wine quietly, Pasquale staring at the table.

“It’s fairly common, couples passing one after the other that way,” said Alvis, whose knowledge sometimes seemed to Pasquale suspiciously broad. “To die of . . .” He tried to think of the Italian word for grief. “Dolore.”

“No.” Pasquale looked up slowly again. “My aunt killed her.”

Alvis wasn’t certain he’d heard right. “Your aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she do that, Pasquale?” Alvis asked.

Pasquale rubbed his face. “She wanted me to go marry the American actress.”

Alvis thought Pasquale might be insane with grief. “What actress?”

Pasquale sleepily handed over the photo of Dee Moray. Alvis took his reading glasses from his pocket, stared at the photo, then looked up. He said flatly, “Your mother wanted you to marry Elizabeth Taylor?”

“No. The other one,” Pasquale said, switching to English, as if such things could only be believed in that language. “She come to the hotel, three days. She make a mistake to come here.” He shrugged.

In the eight years Alvis Bender had been coming to Porto Vergogna, he’d seen only three other guests at the hotel, certainly no Americans, and certainly no beautiful actresses, no friends of Elizabeth Taylor. “She’s beautiful,” Alvis said. “Pasquale, where is your Aunt Valeria now?”

“I don’t know. She ran into the hills.” Pasquale filled their wineglasses again. He looked up at his old family friend, at his sharp features and thin mustache, fa

“Of course, Pasquale,” Alvis said. They quietly drank their wine. And in the quiet, the waves lapped at the cliffs below and a light, salty mist rose in the air, as both men stared out at the sea.

“She read your book,” Pasquale said after a while.

Alvis cocked his head, wondering if he’d heard right. “What did you say?”

“Dee. The American.” He pointed to the blond woman in the photo. “She read your book. She said it was sad, but also very good. She liked it very much.”

“Really?” Alvis asked in English. Then, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Again, it was quiet except for the sea on the rocks, like someone shuffling cards. “I don’t suppose she said . . . anything else?” Alvis Bender asked after a time, once again in Italian.

Pasquale said he wasn’t sure what Alvis meant.

“Concerning my chapter,” he said. “Did the actress say anything else?”

Pasquale said he couldn’t think of anything if she had.

Alvis finished his wine and said he was going up to his room, Pasquale asking if Alvis wouldn’t mind staying in a second-floor room. The actress had stayed on the third floor, he said, and he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it. Pasquale felt fu

“Of course,” Alvis said, and he went upstairs to put his things in his room, still smiling at the thought of a beautiful woman reading his book.

And so Pasquale was sitting at the table alone when he heard the high rumble of a larger boat motor and looked up just in time to see a speedboat he didn’t recognize round the breakwater into Porto Vergogna’s tiny cove. The pilot had come too quickly into the cove and the boat rose indignantly and settled in the backsplash of its own chop. There were three men in the boat, and as the boat rumbled up to the pier he could see them clearly: a man in a black cap piloting the boat, and behind him, sitting together in back, the snake Michael Deane and the drunk Richard Burton.

Pasquale made no move to go down to the water. The black-capped pilot tied to the wooden bollard and then Michael Deane and Richard Burton climbed out of the boat, stepped onto the pier, and began making their way up the narrow trail to the hotel.

Richard Burton seemed to have sobered up, and was impeccably dressed in a wool suit coat, cuffs of his shirtsleeves peeking out, no tie.

“There’s my old friend,” Richard Burton called to Pasquale as he climbed toward the village. “I don’t suppose Dee’s returned here, sport?”

Michael Deane was a few steps behind Burton, taking measure of the place.

Pasquale looked behind him, at the sad cluster of his father’s village, trying to see it through the American’s eyes. The small block-and-stucco houses must look as exhausted as he felt—as if, after three hundred years, they might yet lose their grip on the cliffs and tumble into the sea.

“No,” Pasquale said. He remained seated, but as both men reached the patio, Pasquale glared up at Michael Deane, who took a half step back.

“So . . . you haven’t seen Dee?” Michael Deane asked.

“No,” Pasquale said again.

“See, I told you,” Michael Deane said to Richard Burton. “Now let’s go to Rome. She’ll turn up there. Or maybe she’ll go on to Switzerland after all.”

Richard Burton ran his hand through his hair, turned, and pointed to the wine bottle on the patio table. “Do you mind terribly, sport?”

Behind him, Michael Deane flinched, but Richard Burton grabbed the bottle, shook it, and showed Deane that it was empty. “Outrageous fortune,” he said, and rubbed his mouth as if he were dying of thirst.

“Inside is more wine,” Pasquale said, “in the kitchen.”

“Bloody decent of you, Pat,” Richard Burton said, patting Pasquale on the shoulder and walking past him into the hotel.

When he was gone, Michael Deane shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “Dick thought she might have come back here.”

“You lose her?” Pasquale asked.

“I suppose that’s one way to put it.” Michael Deane frowned, as if considering whether or not to say any more. “She was supposed to go on to Switzerland, but it looks like she never got on the train.” Michael Deane rubbed his temple. “If she does come back here, could you contact me?”

Pasquale said nothing.