Free That Summer in Sicily by Marlena de Blasi

shaves. “So easily has she convinced you to stay for
another week
? It wanted only a traffic report and a weather prediction? Such an easy mark you are.”
    “Not so. She hardly set out to
convince
me of anything. She only presented additional information that caused me to change my mind. And why are you so dressed up this evening?”
    “Tosca. She wanted to know if I’d brought elegant clothes. I thought I’d demonstrate my collection.”
    So easily has she convinced you,
he mimes.

    For the next day or two I don’t see Tosca, save in purposeful flight about the villa and the gardens or glimpses of her at lunch and dinner. She never stops to mention the state of the silvery-brown tea dress or if or when the outside guests would come to supper. I remain mildly curious about both.
    One evening as we enter the dining hall, Agata rushes up to escort us away from our regular places at table, takes us to sit with Tosca and Cosimo. Almost at once, Tosca begins speaking to me in English.
    “Have you had a lovely day? Tomorrow will be somewhat cooler.”
    She tries out little niceties. She asks me if this form or that grammar is correct. Cosimo has commandeered Fernando’s attention and I am left to Tosca’s will.
    “I’d like to tell you a story, Chou,” she says. “Oh, I don’t mean right now, of course. But soon. It’s a long story, you see. I wouldn’t be able to tell it to you all at once. It might take a few days. A week. I don’t know. But it’s a good story, I think. I’ve never tried to tell it from beginning to end but I want to tell it to you and I want to tell it to you in English. I suppose I’m thinking that if I tell it in a language other than my own I will still feel as though I haven’t really told it at all. Does that make sense to you?”
    She knows it does.
    “I know that Cosimo has been telling you tales out there in the garden every day, and . . .” She smiles. Throws up her hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Maybe it’s just a desire to speak in English while I have the chance. No, it’s not that. Not only that. I think it’s because you’re someone from the outside. Yes, I want to try out my story on someone from another place. I want to tell it to you,
leave
it with you, I guess, knowing that you’ll go away. Knowing that your return here to us is
improbable
and, since my preferred method of travel is on horseback, the chances of our ever meeting again in your territory are equally
improbable
. . .”
    In the space by the side of her plate, Tosca rolls her napkin into a tight cylinder, then unrolls it, smooths it flat upon the table. She repeats this business several times, then begins rolling it from a single corner, gathering up the other edges and folding them toward the center to fashion a pouch of sorts. A pocket. A place to save her story? I look at her and understand why, a few days earlier, she’d daunted Fernando’s resolve to leave. Tourist hordes and traffic notwithstanding, it was because Tosca was not
ready
for us to leave. I recall Fernando’s early take on villa life.
I have this eerie sense that everyone here was someone else before they arrived. You know, like the island where all bad boys are turned into asses.
    Why does Tosca want us to stay? Can it really be so that she can tell this story of hers? And if it is, why would she want to tell it to me? Oh, I heard her reasons: I’m an outsider, she won’t ever see me again, the story will be told yet remain as though it was never told at all. Still. Perhaps this desire of hers will fall away like the old taffeta of the silvery-brown dress. Perhaps not, though.

    The next afternoon, it’s Tosca rather than Cosimo who waits for me at the table under the magnolia.



CHAPTER I
    “
S E STAI ASPETTANDO UN RACCONTO DI UNA CENERENTOLA Siciliana . . .
If you’re waiting for a story about a Sicilian Cinderella . . .”
    “I’m not waiting for any sort of story at all,” I say, still standing, uncertain whether