Paul Theroux - The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

“A doctor can be friendly with a patient, but not intimate,” he said. “So we travel, and I take care of her. But it ends there.”

“What a shame,” I said, hoping for more.

“But you see, even if I were not her doctor I could not help her,” he said. He was looking away. “I am of a different disposition.” His gaze fell upon a strapping bare-chested man with a pruning hook, and Haroun glanced back as we walked on, seeming to hold a conversation with his eyes alone, the bare-chested man, too, responding with a subtly animated and replying gaze.

“What a shame.”

“It is how God made me.”

“I think you want me to be her friend.”

“More than friend, maybe.”

“I see.”

As though he too had been practicing sentences, he said, “I desire you to woo her.”

The expression made me smile.

“Do you find her attractive?”

I had to admit that I did. She was pretty in a brittle old-fashioned way. She was chic, she was demanding. Yes, she was much older than me — I could not tell how much; thirty-five, perhaps — and I was twenty-one. But strangely, her age did not prejudice me against her. I was attracted to her for it, for the oddness of it. She was certainly unlike any woman I had ever met — in fact, she was a woman; I did not know any women. I had only slept with girls, the nubile, pleading, marriage-minded girls like Fabiola. What did a woman want? Not marriage. Perhaps a woman of such experience as Gräfin wanted everything but marriage, and that included debauchery, and that I craved.

“But she’s not interested in me.”

“Because she doesn’t know you,” Haroun said, and I hated him for agreeing with me.

We walked some more, Haroun steering our course toward more young men trimming the thick twisted olive trees.

“Another question,” he said. “Do you find Taormina to your taste?”

“Oh, yes.”

The prompt way I answered showed that I had been a little reluctant in replying to his first question — the one about her. My sudden eagerness about Taormina made him laugh.

“What is it about Taormina?” he asked.

“Taormina has existed continuously for over two thousand years and has always been beautiful. People have gone there for its beauty — great people, famous people. I want to be one of them.”

“You ask me what I want,” Haroun said. “I want you to be content in Taormina. I want my friend to be content. I think you can find contentment together.”

I saw exactly what he meant: he was, in a word, pimping for Gräfin. Well, I was not shocked. I was pleased. I was even flattered. I liked the obliqueness that had characterized the beginning — his getting me a room at the Palazzo d’Oro. And I liked the fact that he was petitioning me, soliciting my help in performing a certain specific task, as in a fairy tale’s plot. I liked his asking me to do him this favor; for his strange request gave me some power.

“You will be my guest,” he said.

His way of saying that he would support me at the hotel for this romance.

“And the guest of the Gräfin too.”

“What a funny name,” I said.

He half smiled with a distinct alertness, as though divining through a slip I had made that I was not so bright as I appeared.

“Not a name. Her name is Sabine, but I would never call her that.”

“Why not?”

He looked a little shocked, and he stiffened and said, “Because she is the Gräfin. It is her title. You would say Countess.”

“From her family?”

“From her husband. The Graf.”

With that revelation I was dazzled, I was lost. But before I could reply, there was a scurrying sound on the road — a boy summoning us to the house.

“If the answer is no, you must leave tomorrow,” Haroun said in a very businesslike way, as though trying to conclude a difficult sale, and he started toward the house where the olive man and the Gräfin stood waiting for us.

The day dawned fine and clear, another Sicilian day of high skies and golden heat, and I loved everything I saw and smelled — the prickly aroma of pine needles and hot bricks, the whiff of salt water from the blue sea, the cool air on my shaded balcony, my freshly laundered clothes, the new espadrilles I had bought in town, my breakfast of fruit and coffee, my feet outstretched on the chaise longue. I was reading Il Gattopardo, a novel — written by a Sicilian prince — recently published, which Fabiola had given to me so that I would be encouraged to improve my Italian. I read it slowly, using a dictionary with a sort of stealth, as though not wanting to admit I needed help. I had it in mind to visit the villa mentioned in the novel, Donnafugata, another beautiful name to drop. Donnafugata was in Agrigento province, in the village of Santa Margherita di Belice. I would go on a sketching tour, doing the settings of the novel, and I even imagined buying a special sketchbook, titled “Donnafugata,” and filling it with this dramatic topography. In that moment on my balcony, which was full of promise and fragrant with the Taormina morning, I loved my life.

After breakfast I walked downstairs to the terrace, where I knew the two of them would be.

“Good morning,” Haroun said.

“Hello,” I said with as much friendliness as I could muster, trying to look at the Gräfin's face, which of course was turned aside. She was idly examining her gloves, twisting the lacy fingers to give them a tight fit.

“You mentioned something about leaving Taormina,” Haroun said.

“I changed my mind. I think I will stay awhile.”

Haroun smiled, exhaled, and looked away. The Gräfin turned her big blue eyes on me with curiosity, but again peering as though she hardly knew me.

“Contessa,” I said.

She shrugged and lifted her gloved hand again, a fan of fingers that held her attention. And while she was preoccupied I imagined kissing her, holding her head, sucking slowly on her lips, slipping my hands beneath her dress and stroking her body.

Yes, I was staying. I excused myself by claiming I was poor; not ruthless but desperate. This excuse made me untruthful, it made me willing.

Haroun had given me the impression that the Gräfin was lonely and desperate. But in spite of that epiphany on my balcony, I was myself lonely, and I was probably feeling more desperation than she had ever known.

To succeed with her I had to convince myself that I desired her. I had to make her desire me. I did desire her, yet I could see that she was not particularly interested in me. She was vain, she seemed shallow, even her most offhand remarks sounded boastful, she was certainly aloof — now I knew why: not just money, she was an aristocrat.

Gräfin was a title, not a name. I had just found out her name, but I did not know her well enough to use it when speaking to her. I was still wondering whether to address her by her formal distancing title, for it was impossible for me to use her title without feeling submissive, even groveling.

Lonely? I did not think so, nor did it seem that she needed me.

There is wealth that makes people restless and impatient and showy — American wealth, on the whole. But the Gräfin was European. Her wealth had made her passive and presumptuous and oblique, indolent, just a spender, and as a countess she seemed to me regal now, queenly, superior-seeming, slow and somewhat delicate, even fragile.

I found it hard to get her attention. That morning, pleased by my announcing that I would be staying, Haroun began to devise ways of giving me access to the Gräfin. To me, his ruses were transparent; but she was so bored and inattentive she did not seem to suspect a thing. At the beginning Haroun developed a stomach upset; later that morning he disclosed his infirmity in a solemn, self-mocking way.