He couldn’t tell his mother why he hadn’t returned the ring right away: he imagined that if he gave a girl a ring, they would be married and he would have to leave his parents. And while his mother’s lecture had gone over his seven-year-old head, Pasquale saw now what she meant—how much easier life would be if our intentions and our desires could always be aligned.
When the sun finally crested the cliffs, Pasquale washed at the basin in his room and put on his old, stiff suit. Downstairs, he found his Aunt Valeria awake in the kitchen, sitting in her favorite chair. She glanced sideways at his suit.
“I can’t go to the funeral mass,” his aunt sighed. “I can’t face the priest.”
Pasquale said he understood. And he went outside to smoke on the patio. With the fishermen away, the town felt empty, only the wharf cats moving around the piazza. There was a light haze; the sun had not yet burned off the morning fog, and the waves were falling lifelessly on the shallow rocks.
He heard footsteps on the stairs. How long had he waited for an American guest? And now he had two. The footsteps were heavy on the wooden patio and soon Alvis Bender joined him. Alvis lit his pipe, bent his neck one way and then the other. He rubbed the light bruise over his eye. “My fighting days are over, Pasquale.”
“Are you hurt?” Pasquale asked.
“My pride.” Alvis took a pull from his pipe. “It’s funny,” he said in smoke. “I used to come here because it was quiet and I thought I could avoid the world long enough to write. No more, I guess, eh, Pasquale?”
Pasquale considered his friend’s face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee’s face, like Michael Deane’s face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality—that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries—America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires.
This reminded him of Alvis Bender’s contention that stories were like nations—Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor—and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she’d spent years “waiting for her movie to start,” and that she’d almost missed out on her life waiting for it.
Alvis lit his pipe again. “Lei è molto bella,” he said. She is very beautiful.
Pasquale turned to Alvis. He’d meant Dee Moray, of course, but at that moment Pasquale had been thinking of Amedea. “Sì,” Pasquale said. Then he said, in English, “Alvis, today is the requiem mass for my mother.”
So gracious were these two men, so fond of each other, that they sometimes had conversations speaking entirely in the other’s language. “Sì, Pasquale. Dispiace. Devo venire?”
“No. Thank you. I am go this alone.”
“Posso fare qualcosa?”
Yes. There was one thing he could do, Pasquale said. He looked up to see Tomasso the Communist puttering back into the cove. Almost time. Pasquale turned to Alvis and switched back to Italian to make sure he said it right. “If I do not come back tonight, I need you to do something for me.”
Of course, Alvis said.
“Can you take care of Dee Moray? Make sure she gets back safely to America?”
“Why? Are you going somewhere, Pasquale?”
Pasquale reached in his pocket and handed Alvis the money that Michael Deane had given him. “And give this to her.”
“Of course,” Alvis said, and again, “but where are you going?”
“Thank you,” Pasquale said, again choosing not to answer that question, afraid that if he said aloud what he intended, he might lose the strength to do it.
Tomasso’s boat was nearly at the pier. Pasquale patted his American friend on the arm, looked around the small village, and, without another word, went into the hotel. In the kitchen, Valeria was making breakfast. His aunt never made breakfast, even though Carlo had insisted for years that a hotel hoping to cater to French and Americans must offer breakfast. （It’s a lazy man’s meal, she always said. What laggard expects to eat before doing any work?） But this morning she was making a French brioche and brewing espresso.
“Is the American whore coming down to eat?” Valeria asked.
Here it was, the moment he figured out who he was to be. Pasquale took a breath and climbed the stairs to see if Dee Moray was hungry. He could tell by the light coming from beneath the door that her window shutters were open. He took a deep breath to steel himself, and tapped lightly on the door.