That Summer in Sicily by Marlena de Blasi

Author:Marlena de Blasi
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780345513335
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

“I stop counting after five flights of narrow stone stairs, each one of which seems to veer off in a different direction. Valentino leads the way to a double wooden door, unlocks it, leaves the key in the hole, places water and a glass and two small linen towels on a table in the salone where we enter, wishes me a buon riposo, and quickly retreats. Even by palace standards, the room is large, its ceiling a high silver-gray vault, its walls covered in tufted watered silk the color of coffee beans. A man’s salone, I think, running my hands along the top of a faded brown velvet settee where Leo might have rested his head. My boots make a hollow sound on the bare stone floors as I walk from room to room, opening and closing doors. I find several where all the furnishings are covered with sheets and thick canvas throws and one empty room where rolled carpets line the walls. On one side of a long corridor I notice the faint outline of a flush door with no knob. A single push of my hip opens it to reveal yet more rooms with long unwashed windows flanked by tatters of drapes. Behind another door there is a bedroom decorated much like the first salone. A bed draped in layers of brown silk seems almost small, adrift on the great sea of the stone floor. A chandelier with tiny bronze brocade shades on each candle-shaped light swings low over the bed. There is a single chair, a dresser with no mirror, and a small chest of drawers. On one wall doors are open to the loggia, from which the wide view of the land stops only at the horizon, at the place where the nearly colorless honeydew sky bends into the wheat. The loggia is empty save a four-postered daybed laid with fresh white sheets and pillows and surrounded by opalescent curtains, thin as a spiderweb and weighted with a wide border of heavy rose-colored satin. I will rest here, I decide. But I’ve forgotten to take the water and so must first traverse the whole apartment to retrieve it. On my way back to the loggia, I stop again in the bedroom. I slide open each drawer of the little chest. What am I looking for? Is it these? Two thin silk white nightdresses, perfectly ironed and folded. A bottle of perfume with a beveled glass stopper. Chanel No. 5. I unseal the stopper, begin dabbing myself with the perfume, which is not Simona’s scent. If no one will ravish me, I will ravish myself, I think, quickly unfastening the buttons on my shirt, throwing off my canottiera. I throw down the stopper, too, pour the perfume over my chest, rub it into my arms, my neck. Pulling the pins from my braids, I pour what’s left of it in my hair. I walk out onto the loggia, kick off my boots, and wearing only my riding pants, I part the thin curtains of the daybed and lie down.

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