It was so so stupid of me to go back to the villa in the last week Giovanni was there with his miserable father! Oh if only I could let go of the whole thing, but how can I put aside the episode straight from hell?
I blame what happened on the weather. Well part of it.
After that Monday when I first learned Giovanni was being forced to leave the villa, I felt like I had lost the floor beneath me. I had gotten so accustomed to riding in the bouncy carriage each morning and seeing G six times a week! I thought it was unspeakably unfair that Alessandro the Great had decided to kick his son out of the villa. Like G, I was ready to hate the man even before I set eyes on him. And after I "met" him -- well let's just say, that's another very very sorry story.
For three days straight, it rained like it would never stop. Big ropes of water fell from the deep grey sky, and it just kept on raining. G and I had an understanding that if the weather was "bad, really really bad," -- "male, daverro molto male," I was not to come to the villa. So for those three days it rained I stayed home. I wrote a poem or two each day. I helped Mama clean and wax all the floors and I went next door and helped Signora Baptista to do the same. I also visited Nunzi and we made ravioli the first day, and the next day we cooked up a cod stew and Mama jointed me and Nunzi and her husband Luigi and her four kids, and we had a blessed feast!
The next morning the sun was shining bright in a sky that looked like it had been scrubbed clean. It was getting very hot, though. By the time I left to meet the carriage at 11, the sun was a white beast in the sky. In addition to bringing my journal, which I did every day I went to the villa, I decided to carry my bathing costume with me, as I was hoping that G and I would have time to plunge into the sea. It was something that he kept promising me, but we had not done.
As I rode to the villa, I was practically upside down with excitement. I think down deep I realized that it might be my last trip.
When I got out of the carriage, and knocked on the giant carved door, I don't know what I was expecting. Truthfully, I was nervous. I didn't want to come face to face with Giovanni's father. I stood there waiting for Pietro to answer the door, but no one came. I knocked again, and finally, Sofia opened the door. She wasn't any happier to see me than I was to see her.
"I was supposed to work today," I said, and Sofia smirked. What a dumb thing for me to say to her! In that moment, I realized that perhaps Giovanni had been wrong to tell me to come to the villa this week.
Sofia and I stood there in an awkward silence for a few moments. And then I decided I would simply go downstairs to the kitchen and talk to Giuseppi. I could always trust him to tell me the truth, and to make me feel better!
When I got to the kitchen, however, Giuseppi was packing up some pots and pans in the kitchen. My heart fell like a large stone into my stomach.
"Oh Giuseppi don't tell me you're leaving too!"
He looked at me forlornly. "Ah but what can I do? I'm afraid there is no more reason for me to be here, now that Giovanni is leaving. Perhaps when he comes back, but who knows..." He shrugged his shoulders, and I realized how sad he was too!
My mouth suddenly went so dry that it felt shrunken. "But Giuseppi, he is coming back isn't he?"
"Of course he is!" I turned. Giovanni was standing there, smiling his charming smile. My eyes went wide, and without deciding, I simply ran into his arms. I wanted to hold onto him forever.
"Oh how I've missed you Giovanni! It's been the longest three days of my life. But now that Giuseppi is closing up shop here in the kitchen, what will I do? I have no job!"
G backed away from me, but held onto my shoulders. His eyes looked bright and hopeful. He was wearing the powder blue shirt that I love so much, but this time without the leather vest. Oh how I wanted to rest my fact there on his chest!
"Fi," he said, "I hope that you will be able to go back to the jobs that you had before I met you! And then when I come back, you will of course have work with me once more."
I stared into those hypnotic blue green eyes. Didn't he realize that I would be completely miserable without him? Didn't he know that his life might be full of excitement and travel and what have you, but mine would go back to being flat and oh so boring! I inhaled slowly and shook my head. "Yes, it might take me a while but I will find something."
But nothing like this! I wanted to scream and jump up and down and stamp my feet. But I forced myself to be still, and to hold my head high. I would not start acting like a spoiled child.
While we were speaking, Giuseppi was busy doing something and now I noticed that he had set two places at the small table in the kitchen. He was carrying two plates to the table and setting them down.
We turned around and he pointed to the table. He was pouring two glasses of wine, and supplying us with a basket of bread.
So of course, we had to eat the delightful cold salad that he had prepared, tender lettuce topped with tomatoes and chunks of chicken and chopped parsley and other fresh herbs. He left the kitchen so as not to disturb us as we ate. Truthfully, I wasn't that hungry, but I ate nonetheless. Later, after we finished, G leaned over and said to me, "So while you are here, Fi, why don't we go upstairs and we can write together?"
He said nothing about his father being anywhere around, so I decided there was nothing to worry about. I followed him upstairs and out to the terrace, where we went to the furthest palm tree. We sat at the table in the deepest shade. It was unspeakably warm, and the wine had made my head swim a bit. I was hardly able to contain my excitement as I opened my journal. This was it, were we perhaps writing together for the last time?
"So how about a sonnet by Petrarch?" He was paging through a thick leather book edged in gold, just like my journal. I wanted so badly to hold this moment in my heart forever, him reading to me under the palms at the start of another writing session!
"Whatever you say," I replied. He began reading and I set my eyes on his mouth, and relished thinking about kissing those soft lips. But then I heard the words he was reading and I knew I had to listen closely:
"Bitter tears pour down my face
with an anguished storm of sighing,
when my eyes chance to turn on you
through whom alone I am lost from the world.
"Yet it is true that your soft gentle smile
quiets my ardent desires,
and saves me from the fire of suffering,
while I am intent and fixed on gazing.
But then my spirits are chilled, when I see,
at your departure, my fatal stars
turn their sweet aspect from me.
Released at last by those loving keys,
the spirit leaves the heart to follow you,
and in deep thought, walks on from there."
It was as though the poem was an arrow shot straight into my heart. Without any warning, I started to weep! Yes, bitter tears did indeed pour down my face! I had no armor, no protection to keep me from the fire of suffering, a fire that was now erupting inside. I covered my face with my hands and tried to get ahold of myself.
"Oh my dear Filomena, I am so sorry that you are feeling so sad! My heart aches for you, truly! But if it makes any difference, I am sad too about leaving you!"
I shook my head and tried to catch my breath. Finally I spoke. "Yes, yes, I am sad and thank you for saying you are too but..." and here came something I had not expected to say. "But honestly, Giovanni, I am so glad too that I have had this great opportunity to be here at the villa, to know you, and to write with you and your extraordinary friends!" I dropped my chin to my chest. "It's just...I never wanted it to end." My last words were breathless. I sat there, and G took my hands into both of his as tears crawled down my face.
He let a few moments go by like that and then he took a beautiful yellow handkerchief from his pocket, made from the softest cotton, and handed it to me. I wiped my face and he whispered: "And so, Fi, shall we write about these feelings we are both having?"
I smiled at him, so happy that he was freely acknowledging I wasn't alone in my sadness. I shook my head yes. And then, armed with the fountain pen from heaven, I dove into my diary with a headwind at my back. Words flew onto the page. I was in turn despondent (a word that I had first heard G use some weeks back!); I was outraged, and happy too with all the memories I was carrying away from the villa. Here is what I wrote:
"Will someone please tell me to stop crying? But how do I patch up this hole that is quickly widening in my heart now that G will no longer be living at the villa. I would give my little finger (at least) to have him stay here forever, with me visiting almost every day. But because of his monstrous father -- I would definitely say I'd rather he never existed except that then my precious G wouldn't either -- Giovanni will no longer send the carriage for me each morning at 11. And I won't be able to sit here at this spectacular villa, at the table in the shade of the palms, and pour my soul out onto paper. Or work for the delightful Giuseppi in the kitchen. Oh God which finger do you want? I'd say take them all but make sure it's those of the left hand, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to write! The whole of me is lost, yes, now I have said it, I will also say this: I so fear the dead feeling when I wake up next week and realize that all of this is over. Who knows, will my dear Giovanni ever return?"
When he asked me to read, I bit my lower lip. I didn't dare reveal myself to him, not when I was on the brink of tears. "I think that I" -- I shook my head back and forth slowly -- "I would rather not read today," I said, my voice as unsteady as the wind. "I hope you understand."
He sat there quietly, and then, he lifted my hand -- the one with the pen in it -- and kissed it long and hard. After a while, he spoke. "I will be back Fi, just you wait and see!"
And then a wild desire took hold of me. "Giovanni," I said, "I brought my bathing costume. Can we please please go swimming, right now? You know how often you have said we would!" He agreed at once, and so we vacated the table and entered the cool villa. He pointed to the bathroom (what a luxury) at the far corner of the pink marble foyer.
"I'll meet you at the top of the stairs outdoors!"
While I was changing my clothes, it occurred to me once again to ask him what had happened to his father? But once more, with Giovanni looking so relaxed, I assumed that perhaps the ancient dragon had gone home where he belonged!!
We met at the top of the stairs -- the heat was unbearable, the air thick and moist, and we raced down to the welcoming sea. G was way ahead of me in the hot sand. He threw two towels down and jumped into the waves, which were higher than those I was used to. With his long legs he galloped quickly into the ocean. He dove underwater and surfaced and swam way out with a very strong crawl stroke. I followed him, diving into the water the way I used to when I was a little girl.
By now, Giovanni had disappeared from view.
So often I have to work all day, and then there is always something else to do. It's not often I swim! But here now I felt the water all around me and loved it. I swelled up and down with a wave. I pushed forward and moved my arms the way Mama once taught me, in a breast stroke. And then another, sinking up and down in the water.
But then another wave crashed over my head, and into my nose the water flew and my whole head burned inside and I just plain panicked. I tried to touch down on the ocean bottom but there was no bottom there. I had come out too far too fast! I am not a strong swimmer like Giovanni, and now the waves kept slapping me in the face and filling my nose and mouth with salt water. I was splashing and trying to do another breast stroke but I just kept sinking deeper into the water, bouncing like a tiny cork in the strong waves.
"HELP!" I screamed, waving my arms. "GIOVANNI HELP HELP HELP ME!" I was terrified, certain that I was going to drown, because he was nowhere around and I was sinking fast. "HELP HELP HELP," I screamed and then my mouth filled again and I swallowed and went down through the wave and couldn't fight my way up. Water was everywhere in my mouth, my nose. I was drowning, I was certain of it, I was going to die, and here I was so young, and what would happen to Mama and Nunzi without me?
And then suddenly something caught the back of my bathing gown, and I could feel myself being dragged. I was thoroughly weak with fright so I let myself just float in the water, being pulled, and the next thing I knew my face was up in the air and I was coughing and spitting up and gasping and choking.
And there above me was Giovanni holding the back of my head. I couldn't catch my breath, I was terrified because I just couldn't get air to breathe and then he flung me around on my belly and he pummeled hard on my back with the flat of his hand.
I vomited, I could see chunks of chicken and lettuce and tomato floating in front of my face. And then, when all of the food had cleared, I spit out and felt a pinch of my breath return. He put an arm around me and moved me a few feet and then I was in the water on my knees and Giovanni was saying "please please breathe Filo, take another breath," and I did, I inhaled, and coughing up more water, and throwing up some more and gasping again, and coughing, I finally breathed again. And again. After a few moments, when I had breathed several times, I just knelt there trembling and feeling air swell into my lungs.
"Grazie a Dio," Giovanni said, and he turned me around and held me so tightly in his arms and I just gave into his embrace. I rested that way for a long time, so grateful to be alive, so grateful for him. Finally he released me. And holding onto my face, he very gently laid his lips on mine, and kissed me for a long time, more deeply than ever before, so that I finally had to pull away so I could breathe again.
"You are an angel," he whispered. "Did you know that? You are my angel, straight from heaven!"
"Sei il un angelo. Lo sapevi? Sei il mio angelo, dirattamente dal cielo!"
I knew with my whole self at that moment, that I was so deeply in love with this man who had saved my life in so many ways. I wanted desperately, in that moment, to be his wife, to be part of him, to share with him my whole body and soul, forever.
He took me by my shoulders, and I felt no more like a little girl again, but a completely grown woman.
"Turn around," he said, and I did as he commanded. I felt him take the hairpins out of my braid, one by one. And then he undid the braid completely, so that my long wavy hair billowed out into the greenish blue water. My hair covered my shoulders almost down to my hands. He gathered my hair into his arms and gently pulled me toward his chest. He twirled me around and lifted my hair and I rested there while he kissed my neck over and over again. I didn't for a moment protest.
Finally, I realized that he was starting to unbutton my bathing gown. My heart was beating strong, and I knew I should stop him there. But I was weak with desire for him.
"Please Giovanni," I said. "I adore you, but... shouldn't we... go back onto dry land?"
"And why should we do that my darling Filomena? He kept kissing my hand and then he slipped my bathing gown over my shoulders baring my breasts to his face. He buried himself there and I realized I was starting to feel faint.
But I had to force myself, I had to face the fact that Giovanni would soon remove my bathing gown, I knew what I had to do and with the last bit of energy inside me, I pushed his face away from my chest. "Please Giovanni, we cannot...you cannot...I cannot...please no!" I wriggled out of his embrace, and turned slowly, holding my gown next to my chest.
And what happened next was without a doubt the absolute worst thing, barring none, that has ever happened to me!
A really loud shout -- a long wailing call -- went up from the beach, a wild animal unleashed! "G-G-GI-I-I-I-OH OH OH -- VANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNIIIIIII" And then a flood of the worst Italian blasphemy my ears had ever heard.
Giovanni and I turned to face the wrathful father that he hated so much! My mouth dropped open to see the man screaming and shaking his hands at the heavens. In so many words he said that Giovanni was the worst thing that had ever been visited on his life! And he even swore at the wife now deceased who had made him and who had then conveniently abandoned him to deal with this young son of a bitch alone! And here now, he screamed, his filthy son was actually screwing some "puttana" from the town, out in the open ocean for everyone to see!
At that moment, I was so mortified that I almost wished that I had drowned a few minutes before! How could this be happening to me? I quickly pulled my bathing gown up and over my shoulders and holding it against my breasts, I followed Giovanni meekly out of the water. I took a wide circle around the raving maniac, keeping my face low, looking away, and hurried to the staircase, where I raced up the stairs. I had left G to face his father alone, I know, I was a total coward but how could I possibly have helped him at that moment, what with that ungodly man STILL SCREAMING about his maniac of a son who was fooling around, screwing some common 'puttana' from the town..."
Where had Alessandro been earlier in the day? I was never to learn his whereabouts while G and I were writing. Why had he come down to the beach? The only thing I can figure is that he had heard me crying for help. But perhaps not.
As I got dressed, trembling, my clothes sticking to my wet skin, I wasn't sure what to do, how to get out of the villa and home. Should I ask Giuseppi for help getting the carriage?
I was so scared, so upset, that once I was dressed and had my shoes on, I left the villa carrying my wet bathing costume, and my long hair sticking to my shoulders and arms, and I set off walking and I walked the whole way back to Paola! It seemed to take forever, it seemed like the worst possible dream, the road would never ever end. I would say that my feet were sore, because they were sore for days afterward, but while I walked I didn't feel anything, nothing but a thick grey confusion about what had happened and an overriding shame, that I came so close to letting Giovanni take me completely into his embrace.
When I arrived home, my face swollen red from crying, Mama was petrified. I fell into her arms and let her hold me like a baby. And then something blissful happened. I fell into a deep sleep, brought on I suppose by my near death, by my deep encounter with G, by the madness of the raving father straight from hell.
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