didn’t have ten children by then instead of just two and eight-ninths.
Giulia managed to reach out and pat the behind of Charles de Gaulle, who growled.
“I must warn you that Charles does not like children,” said Madame Guillot, looking disdainfully over her shoulder.
“How French of him,” I muttered under my breath.
“Try to remember, my love, that we’re all one happy European Union now,” my husband whispered, his lovely blue eyes twinkling. Where did they come from? Perhaps an ancestress had been raped by a soldier in an army of a Holy Roman Emperor from Germany. Fortunately, the rape and its genetic consequences had failed to cast Germanic gloom over my husband’s happy and ardent disposition. I sincerely hoped that the late Paolina had been lucky enough to have lovers of Lorenzo’s temperament before her death.
8
Sicilian Hospitality
Carolyn
As we entered the room where the cocktail party was to be held, I hung back to avoid the dog. My cheek ached miserably where Charles de Gaulle slammed into it with his hard head. Avoiding the dog left me in the receiving line beside Hank and just in front of the Stackpoles. Mrs. Stackpole dithered on and on in a high voice about whether the bellman could be trusted with the uprooted plant she had been forced to leave with him. Professor Stackpole seemed to take no notice of his wife’s concerns.
First he asked me about the woman I had discovered in the pool, so I gave him a brief description of Paolina’s death. “I wonder whether the pool water killed her,” he speculated, as any chemist interested in toxins would. Jason might have said the same thing. I assured the Englishman that I did not think toxic water had been the problem.
He then looked about him with interest and obvious surprise, which I could understand. The Victor Emmanuel room was so much different from the Roman villa feel of the hotel with its tiled floors and its doors, windows, and balconies opening onto gardens and pools. In this room the walls were covered in red brocade (perhaps red for the flags of Garibaldi, who united Italy and put the King of Savoy on the throne?), and the floors were marble and littered with gilded furniture. Heavily draped windows screened out the sunshine and the grandeur of the natural world outside and lent a claustrophobic feel to the space.
But more than the room, our hosts mesmerized me. Constanza Ricci-Tassone was a tall woman with generous breasts, but otherwise starkly thin, her tanned skin stretched tightly across her bones. She had blonde hair, natural blonde but rinsed to control any darkening brought on by maturity or the encroaching white of age. I knew this because I rinse my own hair periodically for just those reasons. A blonde Sicilian. I later learned that she claimed descent from the Norman, Robert Guiscard, who marched his army north to Rome in the eleventh century to rescue Pope Gregory, looted the city, and made off with his prize, the pope himself—Guiscard and his amazonian Lombard wife, Sichelgaeta, who rode into battle with him, hair unbound and streaming from under her helmet. Was the haughty Constanza wily, like Guiscard, or warlike, as his wife had been? Or both?
Her husband, Ruggiero Ricci, owner of the chemical company hosting the meeting, was dark skinned, perhaps with the blood of the Saracens who had ruled Sicily before the Normans, with dark hair, whitened at the hairline. He was shorter than his wife, and stocky. My mind jumped back to a church in Sorrento I had visited with Paolina. It contained an altar to Saint Giuseppe Moscati, who wore, in his portrait, a pale green lab coat and round spectacles. A handsome man from the early twentieth century, he had taught in the medical school in Naples, where his chastity and his good works among the poor, to whom he gave money rather than accepting fees, and his miraculous medical cures both before and after his death earned him sainthood.
A priest in the Sorrento
Giulia managed to reach out and pat the behind of Charles de Gaulle, who growled.
“I must warn you that Charles does not like children,” said Madame Guillot, looking disdainfully over her shoulder.
“How French of him,” I muttered under my breath.
“Try to remember, my love, that we’re all one happy European Union now,” my husband whispered, his lovely blue eyes twinkling. Where did they come from? Perhaps an ancestress had been raped by a soldier in an army of a Holy Roman Emperor from Germany. Fortunately, the rape and its genetic consequences had failed to cast Germanic gloom over my husband’s happy and ardent disposition. I sincerely hoped that the late Paolina had been lucky enough to have lovers of Lorenzo’s temperament before her death.
8
Sicilian Hospitality
Carolyn
As we entered the room where the cocktail party was to be held, I hung back to avoid the dog. My cheek ached miserably where Charles de Gaulle slammed into it with his hard head. Avoiding the dog left me in the receiving line beside Hank and just in front of the Stackpoles. Mrs. Stackpole dithered on and on in a high voice about whether the bellman could be trusted with the uprooted plant she had been forced to leave with him. Professor Stackpole seemed to take no notice of his wife’s concerns.
First he asked me about the woman I had discovered in the pool, so I gave him a brief description of Paolina’s death. “I wonder whether the pool water killed her,” he speculated, as any chemist interested in toxins would. Jason might have said the same thing. I assured the Englishman that I did not think toxic water had been the problem.
He then looked about him with interest and obvious surprise, which I could understand. The Victor Emmanuel room was so much different from the Roman villa feel of the hotel with its tiled floors and its doors, windows, and balconies opening onto gardens and pools. In this room the walls were covered in red brocade (perhaps red for the flags of Garibaldi, who united Italy and put the King of Savoy on the throne?), and the floors were marble and littered with gilded furniture. Heavily draped windows screened out the sunshine and the grandeur of the natural world outside and lent a claustrophobic feel to the space.
But more than the room, our hosts mesmerized me. Constanza Ricci-Tassone was a tall woman with generous breasts, but otherwise starkly thin, her tanned skin stretched tightly across her bones. She had blonde hair, natural blonde but rinsed to control any darkening brought on by maturity or the encroaching white of age. I knew this because I rinse my own hair periodically for just those reasons. A blonde Sicilian. I later learned that she claimed descent from the Norman, Robert Guiscard, who marched his army north to Rome in the eleventh century to rescue Pope Gregory, looted the city, and made off with his prize, the pope himself—Guiscard and his amazonian Lombard wife, Sichelgaeta, who rode into battle with him, hair unbound and streaming from under her helmet. Was the haughty Constanza wily, like Guiscard, or warlike, as his wife had been? Or both?
Her husband, Ruggiero Ricci, owner of the chemical company hosting the meeting, was dark skinned, perhaps with the blood of the Saracens who had ruled Sicily before the Normans, with dark hair, whitened at the hairline. He was shorter than his wife, and stocky. My mind jumped back to a church in Sorrento I had visited with Paolina. It contained an altar to Saint Giuseppe Moscati, who wore, in his portrait, a pale green lab coat and round spectacles. A handsome man from the early twentieth century, he had taught in the medical school in Naples, where his chastity and his good works among the poor, to whom he gave money rather than accepting fees, and his miraculous medical cures both before and after his death earned him sainthood.
A priest in the Sorrento
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