Chapter 1: The Home of Master Giovanni Vidasempi
Lucy read the letterhead over and over again as the sleek car came to a halt in front of a magnificent building. She furrowed her brow and looked at the name and address once more: Don Giovanni Vidasempi at 1459 Bellasera Calle in Naples, Italy. She had once had family living in Naples, but of the numerous places her faded familia had traveled, she had never visited Italy with them. In truth, Italian culture seemed so overbearing and dull. As an artist, she fully understood its importance to the society of art and philosophy and even modern science, but she could not get past the 'pantheon of pedagogues' that she believed were at every turn of every century in the country since its Roman days. Perhaps it was the rest of Europe filling her veins that harbored disdain for the nation's classics despite its classical contributions. She shook herself and sighed heavily. The place was not familiar and neither was the name, but at least Italy had incredible food and enchanting music.
A servant, a man dressed in brown trousers, a white shirt, and a dark brown vest (clearly a testimony to local colour with his lovely olive skin and dark hair), raced quickly from the enormous house she now found herself staring at and he quickly opened the car door. He spoke the native tongue wonderfully, or at least, she assumed he did. Of all the languages that her familia had once been burdened with learning for the sake of interaction, Italian had never been one of her favorites and she had quite deliberately neglected to study it as often as possible. The servant closed the door, taking her luggage and loading it onto a modest, brass, cart and then led the way excitedly toward the villa. Lucy smiled and nodded at the man, trying to use Castilian and French together to decipher some of his words so that she could at least respond in English. It was useless, as he left no time to respond. The girl shook her head and took the opportunity, instead, to take a good long look at the villa that would serve as her home for the next six weeks. It was typical of many of the paintings and pastoral photographs she had been shown in magazines and artistic studies. Glistening white stairs leading past marble columns into a terra-cotta dwelling roofed with brilliant red tile and dappled with chimneys and weathervanes. There was a large, green stretch of land leading off from the left side of the house obviously used as a garden and a vineyard not far from that with enormous grapes already glistening on the vines.
She sighed and looked yet again at the letter as they walked up the steps. Vidasempi, the name alone was strange and added to it the idea that she had been able to find no information whatsoever neither via internet nor by asking locals via translator about the name or estate. The villa itself was a homestead that belonged to several different brothers of the same line (a name that she had learned was common in Naples and would be difficult to trace) and that each allowed an heir to dwell in it from time to time depending on how well they could suit the family's dedication to five virtues; wine, dancing, music, saffron, . . . and written word. This was the reason that Lucy had been 'hired'. Had it not been a childhood dream to come here under these circumstances, she might have sensed the unusual nature of the calling more than anyone. An executor of the estate had found her, 'lolling about aimlessly' as he had put it, at Southern New Hampshire University. She had written poetry for years and had been recognized every now and again by the right, but now it seemed that her writing had made its way far past any admiring afficionado or professor. She had known for some time that her work was available to some very small extent overseas, but this was unbelievable. She had been told by the executor that the current lord of the manner, a Don Giovanni Vidasempi, was seeking a contributor to the art of written word that could come and stay at the estate for a short time to both study and perform the craft. Lucy had been hesitant, especially not knowing anything about the family or what sort of poetry it was of hers that had intrigued him most, but found the romantic part of her existence far too drawn to be turned away. It had been common practice before dying in the Victorian Era for wealthy families throughout Europe to take in, house, sponsor, and even further an artist of the day. She looked at the large door and thought for a moment about what sort of person would be clinging to such an ancient tradition.
Someone that must mourn the passing of time with a mind to celebrate the present, she reasoned. Obviously a person with too much money who realizes they can't exchange it for time.
"Avanti!" the servant said excitedly and gestured for her to enter. She smiled and nodded once more, removing her sunglasses. The man said something else that she couldn't recognize that and began laughing excitedly.
Lucy stepped inside and looked around. The clean, white marble was meant to seem magnificent as it harkened back to the days of the senate, but Lucy found it stale and sterile all at once. It reminded her of looking at pictures of old physician's offices, very clean and very filled with ideas long past their edge. There were obligatory portraits, vases, marble statues, and plants lined the hallways with gold-edging and onyx bases for visitors to admire. Lucy admired them only for the briefest of glances and then looked toward the stairs. She wanted to see her room and the library for now and that was all. The servant shouted something and a few other servants, in similar attire and all around appearance came from different directions. Lucy could see that there were at least five hallways all leading into the rest of the house.
The first servant spoke quickly to the others. Three nodded and left the room while the other two joined the man as he took the luggage and began scaling the stairs, calling back to her. Using knowledge of context, Lucy inferred that she was about to be shown her room and she should follow. The journey through the halls after the stairs seemed just as splendid and jaded as the house below, but more dismal. The windows had all been drawn closed and over them, thick curtains had been pulled together to prevent any trickles of light from the aged sills. She stopped and, for the first time in the house, stared intently at one of the fixtures. The edging on the windowsills, where hooks for pulling back the curtains, were shaped exactly like something very familiar. She stared more closely at the gold oddment and realized that the artwork was as out of place as she was. "A Claddagh," she muttered. The servant closest to her turned and said, 'que'. She shook her head and turned back to him. "Claddagh, it's an Irish sort of ring," she explained as carefully as she could. The man frowned at her and stared at the hook as well. She sighed and tried to form the heart-shape with her hands. "Claddagh, it's a symbol for true love. Amore?"
The man laughed and nodded, pointing at the gold-work. He said a few more phrases in Italian and then gestured for them to continue. Lucy followed and turned to look at each window carefully as they moved. Sure enough, each curtain hook was graced with the same golden hands grasping a crowned heart. She wondered if this was the influence of a relative of one of the older owners as she entered the room assigned to her. It was grand, very comfortable and more lavish than anything an American girl who had been most recently living as a writer in a university had ever seen before. The image of the Celtic hands grasping the crowned heart was puzzling her too much to take any of this in. After the luggage had been delivered fully and the servants had finally left the room, laughing and speaking loudly to one another, she decided to go and have a closer look. She ventured out of the room and down the hallway a distance, looking at all the curtain hooks in disbelief. It seemed more than odd for such an old symbol from a country so far away to be here. Not to mention that the idea of Claddagh was more dismal and despairing than even the most ostentatious of the great Latin tragedies. She noted that one of the sets of enormous doors upstairs had been left open and the room was well lit by an electric chandelier. At the back of the room was an enormous window covered in the same drab curtains, but flanked on either side by a much larger version of the Claddagh. She slipped into the room, not opening the doors any wider, and hurried to the back to examine the gold-work more closely.
She brushed her fingers tenderly over the edge of the crown and stroked down to the lifeless fingers of the still hands. Leaning closer, an almost saddened expression crossed her face. The Claddagh on this side had the heart's apex facing downward. She glanced toward the other, noting that it seemed to be in the same position. She stood upright and took a step backward. "This couldn't have been a happy edition to the house," she thought aloud. She looked over the symbol and felt somewhat of an ache as the fantasies of what could have prompted such artwork in the villa so far from the lovely, sorrowful otherworld of the Emerald Isle. She sighed heavily. "Seeking true love, all of you are pointing away from the heart. That must have meant something awful for the poor guy that commissioned them."
"It was not a man that commissioned them," a new voice announced from the other side of the room. Lucy jumped, gasping silently, and turned to face the new edition to the room. The man smiled, and she was sure that by his trim and pale appearance that he was the master of this villa, Don Vidasempi. He had both hands folded neatly behind him, clothed in a dark blue suit trimmed with white gold. His dark hair was lengthened past his shoulders, but neatly pulled back at the parietal portion into a small braid that kept the rest neatly settled over neckline. He smiled, an odd smile, and moved a step closer. He gestured toward the Claddagh and smiled; a reminiscent smile that almost seemed fond of the symbols. "Do you know that some of the greatest pens that have ever written for many nations ventured here to take in the charm of the Vidasempi?" he asked, as if thinking that such a thing would have been common knowledge for her. She shook her head and appraised him more carefully. There was something about him that seemed too comfortable with his own presence and yet painfully excited. "Not all of them were famed, mind you, but she . . . she was noted in her own country and in this villa for many a passionate stanza. Perhaps you know of Nuala Ni'Domhial?"
Lucy gazed back at him, surprised that he was able to pronounce the name with its necessary Celtic flare and an Italian softness all at once. She studied him a moment longer and then nodded. She glanced back at the Claddagh. "She was so well noted even in the Catholic Church that they built a whole cathedral in her honor to the north of Belfast," she replied. He smiled more excitedly, a look that she recognized from instructors as that of an older generation eliciting a universal parental joy from a child's recognition of information. She gazed at him in concern, realizing that he seemed to be studying her in return now. She gently touched one of the curtain hooks and cleared her throat. "She wrote about the Claddagh, several poems. The legend says that if the apex is pointing upward then the person who wears the symbol has found true love, but if the apex points downward or away then the person has not found true love and is seeking it."
"And the seeking of true love seems awful to contemporary poetess?" he asked softly, seeming to tremble with eagerness for the answer. Lucy shifted uncomfortably, but seemed more intrigued with his reactions for the moment. While he might have seemed a little off putting and far too wistful, she also understood that Italians were vastly different from the people of New England. True, the man did not have nearly the same accent as his servants, nor did he appear in body or clothing like them, but he was obviously tied to the region deeply by blood. He grinned and extended a hand toward her. She noted that his fingers were curled ever so slightly. A gesture that she had been taught from childhood meant that he was refined. Her own curiosity pressed her to reach out and take his hand, a typical greeting from formal days of yore. As she carefully placed her hand in his, she saw his eyes widen.
Perhaps it was the jet-lag, but his eyes seemed to shift from ice blue to carmine red for a beat as he closed his fingers around her hand, pressing the pads of each digit gently into her palm as if probing for something other than formality. He slowly drew her hand up to his mouth and, leaning forward, kissed the back of it with a tenderness she had never felt before. It almost chilled her to feel something so soft from something so foreign. He lowered her hand and, instead of releasing it, clasped his other over it, tracing the fingers of the other hand gently over the sinews gripping her carpals to her wrist. She breathed cautiously, not sure of what the depth of this display truly was. He lifted his eyes to meet hers, a flash of brilliant red yet again catching her attention. She closed her own eyes for a moment, trying to center her vision as he kept a focus into her eyes. Lucy shifted, realizing that he looked as though she had removed several layers of clothing just now while he was still grasping her hand. Simultaneously, he seemed to be seeing something fulfilling, something purposeful as he gripped her. It bothered her all the more that the grip seemed so terribly strong, but was so very gentle. He breathed deeply and took a half step closer to her. "You have been seeking more than words, more than poetry, for a very . . . very long time."