Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Well, I must explain. It’s my face.”

“Your face?”

“Yes, it’s given me trouble ever since I was a boy. Do you see my eyes?”

“Yes.”

“They slant upward. In fact, there’s some suspicion that my father was a Chinese.”

“You’re joking.”

“Yes, I am. But my eyes slant upward, nonetheless. And my mouth turns slightly upward too. So you see, in combination they give my face a look of constant amusement, even when I’m most serious. It’s a terrible thing, believe me. Men strike me, women avoid me, all because they think I’m smirking at them. I apologize for my stupid face, but there’s really nothing I can do about it.” He laughed suddenly, the blue eyes slanting, the mouth turning up at the edges.

She watched, and laughed with him, and then said, “No, it’s not your face. It’s something else, something inside. Be honest with me, Renato.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be perfectly honest. I’m not amused by you. Not in the slightest. I’m delighted by you, and my delight shows on my face, and I can’t help smiling when I’m in your presence. That is the truth.”

Julia nodded and lowered her eyes again.

“And as usual,” Renato said, “the truth when asked for is instantly embarrassing when delivered.”

“Yes, I’m embarrassed,” she admitted.

“Why should you be?”

“Because... because what you said pleased me.”

“And so you become embarrassed? Americans, Americans.”

“You sound as if you know a great many Americans.”

“No, only a few.”

“Women?” she asked, and was immediately sorry.

The smile dropped from his face. He looked at her silently for what seemed like a very long time. Then he said, “Julia, I don’t want to play the American game. I don’t want the disguised question, and the guarded answer. There is enough falseness in Rome. Let’s not add to it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She would not raise her eyes. “I... I guess I’m frightened.”

“Of me?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’m a simple man,” he said quietly.

She kept her eyes fastened to the table top. In a hushed voice, she said, “I looked for you. This is my third time in Rome. Each time, I looked for you.”

“You do not have to look any more,” he said.

A city is only wood and stone and glass until you are loved there. Julia Regan, in 1938, felt a oneness with Rome that she had never felt for any other place.

Everything about the city was romantic to her, yes, the obvious romance traps like the fountain of Trevi and the Spanish Steps and the church of Santa Maria Maggiore where it reportedly snowed through the open roof in the middle of summer, and the majesty of the Sistine Chapel, and the flamboyant severity of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, all these tried-and-true tourist delights seemed to have been invented and constructed for Julia’s pleasure alone, but more than these, there was romance everywhere in the city. And Renato, like a lover to woman and city both, showed off one to the other and unfailingly flattered both.

The cats.

Surely, she told herself, there is nothing at all romantic about the notion of cats or the presence of cats or the habits of cats. But one day Renato mentioned to her that there were more cats in the city of Rome than any other place in the world, and suddenly the discovery of each new cat became a momentous occasion charged with the excitement only a secret can possess. The cats of Rome were their secret. They found cats everywhere, the real cats prowling every cobbled alley, nosing into every uncovered garbage can, squatting contentedly on the hoods of the black taxicabs, stalking the banks of the snaking Tiber, howling to the moon in the triangular square formed by the junction of the Via Sistina and the angling Viale Trinità dei Monti, parading down the steps and through the Via Condotti like shopping dowagers, striped cats, and fat orange cats, and Persian cats, and black cats to be avoided, and a Siamese cat sitting in the window of a jewelry shop beside a clock with an ornately carved jade face, and an emaciated cat on the Via Giovanni who sat up and begged when Renato offered him a thin slice of salami, real cats of every shape and size, appearing as if by magic whenever they turned a corner or crossed a street. Sculptured cats in the frieze-work of buildings, cats in paintings at the galleries they went to, a lap cat carried by Violetta in the outdoor production of La Traviata which they saw at the Baths of Caracalla, the fat Angora suddenly joining the soprano in her aria, wailing to the stars and the crescent moon above, her song more forlorn than the singer’s, convulsing the Italian audience, sending them into gales of unrepressed laughter until the diva finally walked to the edge of the stage and stamped her foot and stopped the orchestra and silenced the audience with a glare colder than the September Roman night.

The cats of Rome, and the color of Rome, color in the long flat steps gleaming like narrow bars of gold in the musky yellow reflection of the sky’s muzzle, the rust red of huddled Roman buildings with crumbling bricks that stained the fingers, the bold reds and blues of the international traffic markers, the bright exploding greens of the trolley cars, the shining wet gray of the fountains and the liquid yellow-green taint upon the stone, color punctuated by the black shirts in evidence everywhere, the blue-black garments of the traffic policemen and the white of their shoulder straps and belts, and the deep jeweled black of the taxis, and the white of high-heeled pumps, and the radiance of yellow cotton on young girls, and the olive green of Renato’s army uniform.

The cats, and the color, and life bursting from the city like seeds spilling from a lush ripe melon, the Via del Babuino and the side street just off it teeming with grocery stores and butchers’ shops, the butchers presiding at the rear of each shop behind high counters resembling judges’ benches, the meat swarming with the lingering flies of September, the bicycles darting through the narrow street, skirts flapping wildly about strong sun-tanned legs, the smell of garlic suddenly assailing them from the open door of a shop, salamis flaked with white and green on long strings, pepperoni like Christmas lights, provolone like the breasts of a statue carved in yellow marble, mozzarella soaking in white enamel basins, the man who sold strips of coconut at a curbside cart, the chunky brown-encrusted wedges of white sprinkled with water from a miniature fountain on the cart, the hurrying girls in their thin frocks, white and yellow and the subtlest of blue pastels, the serious-looking young men in their soldier suits, the fluttering flags, the flat-footed stamp of leather-thonged sandals, the Tiber like a golden snake in the setting sun’s merciless glare, and, far beyond, the dome of St. Peter’s dominating the city.

The Borghese Gardens, the paths his father had taught him when he was a boy, secret paths through sun-dappled stretches of woods, memory, memory nudged, slipped, an oval of grass. “See how the sun catches each separate blade?” Renato said.

She sat beside him. She kissed his hands and the hard line of his jaw. “I feel nothing but love for you,” she said. “Nothing else. No guilt, nothing. Only love for you.”

And yet the memory was there, an innocent kiss somewhere, someplace, some time, the memory held for just an instant, Renato’s mouth turned to hers suddenly a fierce devouring mouth, which could be so gentle, his hands on her shoulders, her hair spread brown on grass as green as green as her skirt she stained her skirt that day the white skirt with the pleats the sun was so hot and her skirt became wrinkled and stained with grass his hand under her skirt one thick brown hand rubbing at the stain and the other hand beneath her skirt the knuckles pressing hard against her thigh she had stained her skirt and she twitched with new desire he could smell in the golden hot sunshine he kissed her again.