Джеффри Арчер - The Prodigal Daughter

‘Ah, the home wrecker returns,’ the professor said, as Florentyna took the one remaining seat in the front. ‘For those of you who have not come across Miss Rosnovski before, do not invite her home for tea.’ He smiled at his own remark and tapped his pipe into an ashtray on the corner of the desk, a sign that he wished the class to commence.

‘Miss Rosnovski,’ he said with confidence, ‘is going to give us a talk on Borromini’s Oratorio di San Filippo Neri.’ Florentyna’s heart sank. ‘No, no.’ He smiled a second time. ‘I am mistaken. It was, if I remember correctly, the Church of San Carlo.’

For twenty minutes Florentyna delivered her paper, showing slides and answering questions. Ferpozzi hardly stirred from behind his pipe, other than to correct her occasional mispronunciation of seventeenth-century Roman coins.

When Florentyna finally sat down, he nodded thoughtfully and declared, ‘A fine presentation of the work of a genius.’ She relaxed for the first time that day as Ferpozzi rose briskly to his feet. ‘Now it is my painful duty to show you the contrast and I want everyone to make notes in preparation for a full discussion next week.’ He shuffled over to the projector and flicked his first slide into place. A building appeared up on the screen behind the professor’s desk. Florentyna stared in dismay at a ten-year-old picture of the Chicago Baron towering above a cluster of elegant small-scale apartment buildings on Michigan Avenue. There was an eerie silence in the room and one or two students were staring at her to see how she reacted.

‘Barbaric, isn’t it?’ Ferpozzi’s smile returned. ‘I am not referring only to the building, which is a worthless piece of plutocratic self-congratulation, but to the overall effect that this edifice has on the city around it. Note the way the tower breaks the eye’s sense of symmetry and balance in order to make certain that it’s the only building we shall look at.’ He flicked a second slide up onto the screen. This time it revealed the San Francisco Baron. ‘A slight improvement,’ he declared, staring into the darkness at his attentive audience, ‘but only because since the earthquake of 1906 the city ordinances in San Francisco do not allow buildings to be more than twenty stories in height. Now let’s travel abroad,’ he continued, turning to face the screen again. Up on the screen came the Cairo Baron, its gleaming windows reflecting the chaos and poverty of the slums huddled on top of each other in the distance.

‘Who can blame the natives for backing the occasional revolution when such a monument to Mammon is placed in their midst while they try to survive in mud hovels that don’t even stretch to electricity?’ Inexorably, the professor produced slides of the Barons in London, Johannesburg and Paris, before saying, ‘I want your critical opinion on all of these monstrosities by next week. Do they have any architectural value, can they be justified on financial grounds and will they ever be seen by your grandchildren? If so, why? Good day.’

Everyone filed out of the professor’s room except Florentyna, who unwrapped the brown paper parcel by her side.

‘I have brought you a farewell present,’ she said, and stood up holding out an earthenware teapot. Just at the moment Ferpozzi opened his hands, she let go and the teapot fell to the ground at his feet and shattered into several pieces.

He stared at the fragments on the floor. ‘I deserved no less,’ he said, and smiled at her.

‘That,’ she rejoined, determined to say her piece, ‘was unworthy of a man of your reputation.’

‘Absolutely right,’ he said, ‘but I had to discover if you had backbone. So many women don’t, you know.’

‘Do you imagine your position allows you—’

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Next week I shall read your defense of your father’s empire with interest, young woman, and I shall be only too happy to be found wanting.’

‘Did you imagine I would be returning?’ she said.

‘Oh yes, Miss Rosnovski. If you are half the woman my colleagues claim you are, I shall have a battle on my hands next week.’

Florentyna left, just stopping herself from slamming the door behind her.

For seven days she talked with professors of architecture, Boston city planners and international conservationists. She telephoned her father, mother and George Novak before coming to the reluctant conclusion that, although they all had different excuses, Professor Ferpozzi had not exaggerated. She returned to the top of the tower a week later and sat at the back of the room, dreading what her fellow students would have come up with.

Professor Ferpozzi stared at her as she sank into her seat. He then tapped his pipe into an ashtray and addressed the class. ‘You will leave your essays on the corner of my desk at the end of this session, but today I want to discuss the influence of Borromini’s work on European churches during the century after his death.’ Ferpozzi then delivered a lecture of such color and authority that his thirty students hung on every word. When he had finished, he selected a sandy-haired young man in the front row to prepare next week’s paper on Borromini’s first meeting with Bernini.

Once again, Florentyna remained seated while all the other students filed out, leaving their essays on the corner of Ferpozzi’s desk. When they were alone, she handed the professor a brown paper parcel. He unwrapped it to find a Royal Worcester Viceroy teapot in bone china dated 1912. ‘Magnificent,’ he said. ‘And it will remain so as long as no one drops it.’ They both laughed. ‘Thank you, young lady.’

‘Thank you,’ Florentyna replied, ‘for not putting me through any further humiliation.’

‘Your admirable restraint, unusual in a woman, made it clear that it was unnecessary. I hope you will forgive me, but it would have been equally reprehensible not to try to influence someone who will one day control the largest hotel empire in the world.’ Such a thought had never crossed Florentyna’s mind until that moment. ‘Please assure your father that I always stay in a Baron whenever I have to travel. The rooms, the food and the service are quite the most acceptable of any of the major hotels, and there is never anything to complain about once you are inside the hotel looking out. Be sure you learn as much about the stonecutter’s son as I know about the empire builder from Slonim. Being an immigrant is something your father and I will always be proud to have in common. Good day, young lady.’

Florentyna left the office below the eaves of Widener sadly, aware of how little she knew of the workings of her father’s empire.

During that year she concentrated zealously on her modern language studies, but she could always be found on Tuesday afternoons sitting with a pile of books, absorbing Professor Ferpozzi’s lectures. It was President Conant who remarked at the senior dinner that it was sad that his learned colleague was having the kind of friendship with Florentyna that the professor really should have had thirty years before.

Graduation day at Radcliffe was a colorful affair. Proud, smartly dressed parents mingled with professors swathed in the scarlet, purple and multicolored hoods appropriate to their degrees. The academics glided about, resembling a convocation of bishops, informing the visitors how well their offspring had done, sometimes with a little considerate license. In the case of Florentyna there was no need for exaggeration, for she had graduated summa cum laude and had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa earlier in the year.

It was a day of celebration and sadness for Florentyna and Bella, who were to live on opposite sides of the country, one in New York and the other in San Francisco. Bella had proposed to Claude on February 28 — ‘Couldn’t wait for Leap Year,’ she explained — and they had been married in the Houghton chapel at Harvard during the spring vacation. Claude had insisted on, and Bella had agreed to, Love, Honor and Obey. Florentyna realized how lucky they both were when Claude said to her at the reception, ‘Isn’t Bella beautiful?’