Paul Theroux: The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

“Look, Gräfin, our friend the American.”

I was convinced now that he was a man of calculation. This can be our secret and We usually have a drink on the terrace at seven. I was glad I saw this conspiratorial gleam in his eye, for it made me wary enough to listen for meanings and look for motives.

I joined them. Gräfin — a name I first heard as “Griffin”—still showed no interest in me. She sipped her wine, she might have been a little drunk — the way drunks can seem to concentrate hard when they are just tipsy and slow, with a glazed furrow-browed stare. I studied her smooth cheeks. She was German, he was not. She looked like a ruined and resurrected queen — someone who had suffered an illness that had left a mark on her beauty, not disfiguring it but somehow fixing it, aging it.

We talked. Haroun asked me questions which, I felt sure, were intended to impress Gräfin, or any listener — sort of interviewed me in a friendly appreciative way, to show me at my best, to establish that I had been an art teacher at the selective school inside the ducal palace at Urbino, that I was traveling alone through Sicily, that I was never without my sketchbook, which was a visual diary of my trip, that I was knowledgeable about artists and books—“Raphael was born in Urbino, he says.”

“I know that,” Gräfin said. She always spoke with a lifted chin, into the distance, never faced the listener, never faced the speaker for that matter. “I prefer Tiziano.”

“Would that be Titian?”

She didn’t answer. “I have one, like so, not large.” But her slender measuring hands made it seem large. “However, yes, it is a Tiziano.”

“You bought it yourself?”

“It has been in my family.”

“And your Dürer,” Haroun said.

“Many Dürer,” Gräfin said.

“I’d hate to think what those would have cost,” I said, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them for their vulgarity.

“Not much,” Gräfin said. She was addressing a large glazed salver hooked to the brick wall of the terrace. “Very little, in fact. Just pennies.”

“How is that possible?”

“We bought them from the artist.”

I saw Albrecht Dürer putting some dark tarnished pfennigs into a leather coin purse and touching his forelock in gratitude as he handed over a sheaf of etchings to one of Gräfin’s big patronizing ancestors.

Gräfin had a brusque uninterested way of speaking — but saying something like We bought them from the artist was a put-down she relished. She never asked questions. She seemed impossible, spoiled, egotistical, yet strong; in a word, she was the embodiment of my notion of wealth. I did not dislike her, I was fascinated by her pale skin and soft flesh in this sunny place, by her full breasts and pinched doll’s face and bleached hair and plump disapproving lips, even by her posture — always facing away from me. I saw her as incurious and something of a challenge.

“I am hungry,” she said to Haroun. “Will you call the boy?”

This was also interesting, the fact that she spoke to him in English when I was present. When they were alone, I was sure they spoke German. The English was for my benefit — I didn’t speak a word of German. But why this unusual politeness, or at least deference, to me?

Haroun snapped his fingers. The waiter appeared with two menus. Gräfin opened hers and studied it.

Holding his menu open but looking at me, Haroun said, “Have you seen the olive groves?”

I said no, feeling that it was expected of me, to give him a chance to describe them.

“They are quite magnificent,” he said, as I had expected. “We are driving out tomorrow to look at one near Sperlinga. You know Sperlinga? No? Perhaps you would like to accompany us?”

“Morning or afternoon?” I didn’t care one way or the other, but I did not want to seem tame.

“It must be morning. Afternoons here are for the siesta,” he said.

“I’d love to go with you.”

“We leave at eight.”

“I want the fish,” Gräfin said. “Grilled. Tell them no sauce. Small salad. No dressing.”

She snapped her menu shut. So, in that way, I was informed that I was not a dinner guest. But once again I saw how, in the manner of trying to appear offhand, Haroun was manipulating the situation. Gräfin was indifferent, though, or at least made a show of indifference. She did not look up as I excused myself and left. My audience was over. I had been summoned, I had been dismissed.

I walked through the upper town, from the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele down the Corso Umberto Primo, where most of the shops and bars were, the ones that catered to foreigners.

Down an alleyway I found a bar where some older Sicilians sat and smoked, listening to a soccer match being loudly broadcast on a radio. It reminded me of a religious ritual, the way they were seated around the radio with its glowing dial. I sat near them, ordered a bottle of beer and a panino, and I stewed, resenting the fact that my little discussion had taken place at Haroun and Gräfin’s table, and that I had been sent away. My frugal meal was proof that I had very little money and because of that was at the beck and call of these people. So what, I told myself; I could leave at any time: just board the train at the foot of the hill and head east, where life was cheap and cheerful. And somewhere in Palermo, Fabiola was yearning for my love.

Haroun was in the lobby the next day before eight. Gräfin was already in the car. These people were prompt. I imagined that their wealth would have made them more casual. Haroun greeted me and directed me to the front seat, where I would sit next to the driver. This made me feel like an employee, one of Gräfin's staff. But Haroun, too, seemed like an employee.

We drove through Taormina and down the hill, took a right on the main road, and then another right after a short time, heading upward on a narrow road into the island.

“Bustano,” Haroun said. Then he conversed with the driver in a language that was not Italian — and not any language I recognized.

Haroun laughed in an explosive way, obviously delighted by something the driver had said.

“He said it will take more than one hour,” Haroun said. “Because, he says, this is a macchina and not a flying carpet.”

“What is that language?”

“Arabic. He is originally from Tunisia.”

“The Moro of the Palazzo d'Oro.”

“Exactly.”

“How do you know Arabic?”

Gräfin said, “Harry knows everything. I am lost without this man.”

“I can speak English. I can write English,” Haroun said. “I can write on a 'piss' of paper. I can write on a 'shit' of paper.” He made a child's impish face, tightening his cheeks to give himself dimples. He tapped his head. “Ho imparato Italiano in una settimana. Tutto qui in mio culo. ”

“Now he is being silly.”

“Where did you learn Arabic?”

“Baghdad,” he said. “But we didn't speak it at home. We spoke English, of course.”

“You're Iraqi?”

He winced at my abrupt way of nailing him down, and rather defensively he said, “Chaldean. Very old faith. Nestorian. Even my name, you see. And my people…”

“He is German,” Gräfin said, and patted his knee as though soothing a child. “He is now one of us. A wicked German.”

Iraq then was an exotic country which had recently overthrown its king and massacred his whole family, but Baghdad a rich cosmopolitan city, colorful and busy, full of banks and socialites, not the bomb crater it is now.

“Ask him anything.” Gräfm's hand still rested on Haroun's knee. She was looking out the window at a village we were passing, near Randazzo, on the mountain road, a cluster of cracked farmhouses, one with black lettering that had faded but was readable on the side, a pronouncement in Italian.