Giovanna stopped working, lifted her head, ready to apologize for her strange reaction to his greeting, and found that he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to her.
Like a vision drawn by Botticelli, Antonia, in thistle-mauve and eyelet petticoats, appeared along the path. Approaching, her mouth stained crimson from the juice of ripe currants she had been gathering, she said in a breathless purr, “Oh, there you are, Giovanni. What a surprise! I only came to keep Giovanna company because she is always so alone.” And allowing him to clasp her small waist, lift her up, settled herself next to him on the low wall. “Want some? They are so sweet this year …” Stretching a graceful arm across him, she offered her open palm filled with the shiny fruit to Giovanna, who selected one tiny red currant, just to be polite. “Giovanni? …” Antonia turned the full intensity of her beautiful amber eyes to lock with his. “You take some … they’re so wonderfully sweet this year,” and, tipping her hand, let her bounty spill into his lap, inquired, “Are the others coming, Giovanna?”
Who murmured, “I don’t know … I came early,” very engrossed with a particular section of her lace that seemed suddenly to refuse to lie flat.
“Today, it’s much too hot to walk all the way up here … I don’t know why I even attempted it.” Sighing, Antonia removed the pins from her hair, letting it cascade down her back, raising her arms high to lift its shining weight, allow the air to touch and cool the nape of her milky white neck; that upward stretch accentuating to perfection the outline of her full breasts beneath the taut cloth of her bodice. From the moment of her appearance, the young man’s eyes had never left her, riveted, mesmerized by the delicious picture she made.
The shadow of a kestrel startled a colony of green finches to seek safety within a dark pine. The soft drone of bumblebees mingled with church bells, calling across from another valley, a lark sang. The three sat, listening to their secret thoughts.
He is still looking at me. He can’t take his eyes off me … I knew he would be here waiting for me … I was right! Antonia tingled, shivers of delight running all the way down to the very tips of her toes.
What a piece! She’s magnificent! What a whore she would make. If she keeps this up, I will … careful, my boy … Remember, this is an Italian virgin AND the physician’s only daughter … but … she may, just may … be worth the risk! If Giovanna hadn’t been there, Giovanni would surely have thrown all caution to the wind, grabbed the so seductive Antonia into his aching arms.
Temptress! If she stretches her arms any higher, she’ll split that badly stitched bodice and those big melon breasts of hers will pop out … in full view! … And look at him! … Sits there completely stunned! … Even his eyes are glazed! Really—if Father Innocente comes strolling by here now and sees this … he’ll have an apoplectic fit!
Deciding to avoid being a witness to such a very deplorable and probable confrontation, Giovanna rolled up her bobbins, slipped off the wall, and strode down the winding path towards the village. Antonia and her latest conquest didn’t even notice she had left.
The next day, Giovanna was so filled with remorse for having had such shocking thoughts about one of her dearest and oldest friends that she marched up the hill towards the oleanders, determined to make amends. How exactly she was going to manage that when Antonia didn’t even know the thoughts she was wanting to make amends for, Giovanna didn’t know … but surely something appropriate would come to her, once the right moment presented itself. Out of breath, full of good intentions, she arrived to find the wall deserted, except for the figure of Giovanni stretched out on the grassy knoll above it. Well, might just as well get him over with too; her thoughts about him had been just as mean, she really owed him a little atonement as well.
Not knowing how to begin, what to say, she stood looking down at him, hoping he was asleep. Raising his hand to shield his eyes, he looked up at her, his face expressionless. Giovanna hesitated, tongue-tied, suddenly shy. He reached up, caught her wrist, and pulled her down beside him.
“What’s the matter, little one? A raven got your tongue?” His strong hand kept its hold on her thin wrist.
“Don’t make fun of me!” she snapped.
“NOW what have I done wrong again? I’m not making fun of you!”
“Yes, you are … I’m not ‘little’! I’m tall … lanky and spindly. In school Sister Marie-Agnesia always called me the Fishing Pole. Don’t you remember?”
“No, I never heard that one … but I wasn’t thinking of the way you look … I don’t know why I said ‘little’… It just came out!”
“Then I am sorry. I shouldn’t have made a fuss.” Giovanna moved away from him and settled herself on the wall. “I know I must seem terribly touchy about absolutely everything, but I’m really not. Everyone always says how quiet I am, how controlled, practically unfeeling … Sister Bertine shakes her head over me constantly … She is very concerned about what she calls my ‘complete lack of fervor’! Of course, she’s alluding to religious fervor. Still, she has a point. I do try, I do … all the time … but …” Giovanna stopped, aghast! She was prattling! Saying anything that came into her head—and to a man—practically a stranger! Thoroughly shocked with herself, she fussed with her cushion, unrolled her bobbins, and, lips tightly compressed, took refuge in her lace.
Eyes half closed, he watched her in profile. High forehead framed by its chestnut brown hair, center parted, pulled back, secured with many pins, stationed on a neck so long—rising from a spine so straight—it had a military carriage. Maybe it was this that interested him, her bearing—it kept reminding him of a soldier he had once met, who’d told of battlefields, all the while appearing unaffected by his anguished tale. She had his same air of sad detachment that had moved him, had impressed itself onto his memory. He came to sit beside her.
“Friends?”
“Yes, thank you.” Nice of him. A man never needed to ask permission of a woman for anything. “Please, before the others come, would you tell me some more about America?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What do you do there?”
“I build motorcars!”
“Oh … horseless carriages. Those are only for the very, very rich.”
“In my factory, we build thirty every day!”
“Are there that many millionaires in America?”
“Daimler, the German, he builds his motorcars for the rich—but we, we know how to build them so that even the common man can afford to own one.” Giovanna, lace forgotten, hung on his every word. “Already in the big cities we have some surfaced roads that the invention of the bicycle brought, and soon there will be more.”