Alive In The Stone
“Do you find him gorgeous?” the young Italian asked in English, his accent adorable. “Women of all ages always do.”
He was gorgeous, too, lean, buff, and darkly handsome. And he knew it; otherwise, he wouldn’t dare stand there looking to his left with knee and elbow bent, imitating the world’s most famous sculpture. He was wearing tight jeans and a black sweater over a vivid, blue-collar shirt, and casually carrying a leather day-bag over his shoulder, looking like he’d just stepped out of a fashion magazine. During her short visit, Crystal had already figured out that everything in this country was about style. Italians only feigned being casual, while spending a fortune on their appearance.
“That’s a rather sweeping statement, isn’t it?” she said.
Slowly, he turned his head and stared at her with a mocking expression, those big dark Mediterranean eyes never leaving her.
“But it is true. Michelangelo’s David is woman's ideal man, a symbol of strength and youthful beauty.” He smiled, revealing perfect shiny white teeth. “Of course, it only lasts a few years.”
She wondered if this was a subtle dig—he’d mentioned age twice. He was probably only about thirty, a few years younger than she was.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Vittore Piccinetti.”
He was trying to pick her up. She could hardly believe it, didn’t know whether to give him her name or not. She’d heard frightening things about some Italian men, how an unescorted woman could be treated as, well, disreputable. But surely not in a cosmopolitan city like Florence, so overrun with tourists.
“I’m Crystal.” She raised her voice to be heard in the mobbed Galleria dell’Academia. “Even after seeing so many images of this statue all my life, it’s still magnetic.”
He nodded without commenting, and she felt she had failed, somehow.
This morning, Crystal had dressed carefully, trying to duplicate the Italian look by wearing a black blouse and narrow black shoes with form-fitting jeans. He’d spoken to her in English. With lots of Americans around, maybe that was why. She was slim enough to be Italian and her jewelry was sufficiently understated—a simple gold neck chain and bracelet, no wedding ring (since a year ago). She’d even tied a denim jacket around her waist and knotted a loosely woven, almost transparent green scarf at her throat.
But she feared the effect still must not be quite right. She’d applied makeup but wondered if her complexion remained too fair. She’d brushed back her thick hair, using a comb to hold it in place. But perhaps it was too long, not umber enough. Could it be the light, which changed everything in Tuscany, making everything look better—except possibly Crystal.
As she grew less confident, Vittore seemed more confident, proprietary even, as if the most recognizable statue in the history of art were his to share with her alone, never mind the sinuous throng of tourists floating them to the other side of the sprawling room. David, of course, was so big you could still see him. Crystal turned away from Vittore, only to find several other Michelangelo sculptures, which unlike David were only partially carved out of the block.
“Those are supposedly unfinished, but they seem alive in the stone, do they not?” Crystal drew in a sharp little breath, for Vittore had echoed her thoughts.
“Michelangelo believed he saw in every block of marble a statue, as if it were standing before him,” Vittore said, allowing his eyes to wander over her. “Like the soul is in the body.”
“You ought to be a professional tour guide.”
“I am.”
Was he making fun of her? Giving him a sharp look, she said, “So where have you left your tour group?”
“This is, as you say, my day off.” He smiled, and it was as if the sun had come out from behind one of those incredible Tuscan hills.
When she first read that book about Tuscany, she’d begun dreaming of medieval towns and wooded valleys dappled with villas and farmhouses and sun-drenched vineyards and olive groves; beauty that made her ache. Then the movie version had firmed up her determination to come here, though she hadn’t expected to come alone.
Franny, her former best friend back in Louisville, would’ve said Crystal, you’re on the rebound, girl. Franny should know, since she was the reason Crystal had been unable to hold onto Robert, her husband.
“Why are you here on your day off?”
Vittore shrugged. “I like it. My friend Arturo lets me in for free.”
“Lucky you.” Crystal was trying to get her mind around the idea of a man giving up his day off to visit an art museum he’d already toured many times.
“You are lucky, too, Crystal, to find me at such a time. How would you like a personally led sightseeing trip of the city by its greatest tour guide?”
Crystal felt a stab of skepticism, wondering if all this merely had been a sales pitch, and the look of embarrassment that came over Vittore’s face suggested he had read her thoughts once again.
“It would be free of charge, of course. That goes without saying.”
She smiled, relieved, and nodded slowly.
“Molto bene,” he said.
On the street outside the museum, where mimes were imitating sculptures of saints, Vittore guided her past what he said had once been Leonardo’s workshop. Was it possible to go anywhere in Florence without walking in the footsteps of the great? But he could talk about more than art and kept her entertained with a running commentary on new structures that didn’t fit into Firenze’s traditional architecture, like companies that started but didn’t complete construction projects, high taxes, or the intense soccer rivalry with Sienna.
At the Uffizi, “the first museum in the world and the finest picture gallery in Italy,” according to Vittore, hundreds of tourists were already lined up, waiting to get in. She was going to insist on paying, but somehow, he bypassed the lines and escorted her directly inside the museum. My God, he must really be well-known here. He led her into an unbelievable collection of hundreds of early Christian altarpieces, paintings, and sculptures. They shared a laugh when Crystal pointed out what she thought were some odd portraits of both the baby and adult Jesus, looking mean, tortured, drunk, or angelic.
Vittore remained a perfect gentleman, not even presuming so much as to touch her, which she really wouldn’t have minded. Still, she was nagged by doubts. Why was she getting VIP treatment in one of the world’s great cities—and from such a handsome, charming, well-informed man?
After three unforgettable hours in the Uffizi, they decided to walk around the old town, where there were so many colors of marble and magnificent buildings and sculptures everywhere. It seemed they were on the back side of the streets, which were narrow as alleys, when suddenly a lovely shop or restaurant would appear. This city had been made for walking. Every time a car came along, Crystal reacted by awkwardly plastering herself against the wall. Vittore, however, was always in perfect position, like a bat guided by some inner radar.
“This dates back to 1345,” he said of the Ponte Vecchio, as they worked their way around a knot of tourists. A few blocks beyond the ancient, covered bridge, they arrived at the Pitti Palace, where they strolled through the formal gardens full of statues and grottos. By the time they finished, Crystal was hungry. But every restaurant they passed on the way back was jammed with tourists, and though one herself, she was learning to hate them.
Seeing a gelato shop, she stepped inside. She wasn’t carrying a purse—discouraged in all the travel books—and before she could reach the Euros in the front pocket of her jeans, Vittore already had his own money out.
“Oh, this is on me,” she said, but he laid his hand on top of hers and, shaking his head, took her money and in an intimate gesture put it back into her pocket.
They each had a scoop of Nutella and cherry. As she savored the frozen treat, Crystal gave Vittore an amused look. How could a man who took her on free museum tours and bought her gelato have anything but the best possible intentions? And yet …
Back in the packed square that contained the enormous Neptune fountain, Vittore said, “This was David's original location.”
When he added that many had been killed here over the centuries, Crystal felt a little stab in her heart. It seemed impossible for such brutality and beauty to have existed side-by-side, yet nobody had ever been crueler than the Romans.
Out of the tourist hordes, a woman who looked like nothing so much as a gypsy came up and spoke to Vittore in Italian. She was dark-skinned and had long braids, and she wore a patterned shawl and a long skirt. After a brief exchange, he handed the gypsy woman a coin, and she disappeared among the masses. Vittore explained that she was a lookout for known pickpockets, but that there were none in the crowd today.
Crystal wondered if that was true.
*
She woke up the next morning in her hotel room with Vittore lying beside her. She didn’t remember the exact sequence of events that had brought them here, but she had asked him to dinner. It had seemed harmless enough. This was the 21st Century, after all, and women could do as they liked. He’d shown her a good—no, a great time in one of Italy’s most wonderful cities, so no reason why she shouldn’t reciprocate.
Yet somewhere in the middle of the food and wine, the mood had darkened and the truth had finally spilled out. It wasn’t Vittore’s day off; he’d lost his job. And in a country where tourism was ninety-nine percent of the economy, this amounted to a major personal disaster. He wouldn’t say specifically what had happened to him, only that he’d been wronged, first by someone he’d guided, and second by his company’s owner. Crystal asked what he would do now; he didn’t know.
After she paid the check, one thing led to another.
Now, as Vittore slept, she walked naked over to the window and drew open the shutters, exposing an exquisite view of red-tile rooftops, stone walls, and spires. She turned and looked for a moment in the mirror on the wall, where the slanting sun bathed her lithe body in gold. Then she went over beside the bed, lifted the sheet, and admired Vittore’s strength and youthful beauty until, at her gentle insistence, he began to stir.
© 2024 Rick Neumayer
“Alive In The Stone” will appear in the forthcoming THREE FOGGY MORNINGS: Stories by Rick Neumayer. If you like this one, I’d love to hear from you.