Juliet

‘Umberto always says that you can’t explain Siena,’ I said, suddenly wishing he was with me, listening to this fascinating woman. ‘You have to be there and hear the drums to understand.’

Eva Maria smiled graciously, like a queen receiving a compliment. ‘He is right. You have to feel it’ – she reached out and touched a hand to my chest – ‘in here.’ Coming from anyone else, the gesture would have seemed wildly inappropriate, but Eva Maria was the kind of person who could pull it off.

While the flight attendant poured us both another glass of champagne, my new friend told me more about Siena, ‘so you don’t get yourself into trouble,’ she winked. ‘Tourists always get themselves into trouble. They don’t realize that Siena is not just Siena, but seventeen different neighbourhoods – or, contrade – within the city that all have their own territory, their own magistrates, and their own coat of arms.’ Eva Maria touched her glass to mine, conspiratorially. ‘If you are in doubt, you can always look up at the corners of the houses. The little porcelain signs will tell you what contrada you are in. Now, your own family, the Tolomeis, belong in the contrada of the Owl and your allies are the Eagle and the Porcupine and…I forget the others. To the people of Siena, these contrade, these neighbourhoods, are what life is all about; they are your friends, your community, your allies, and also your rivals. Every day of the year.’

‘So, my contrada is the Owl,’ I said, amused because Umberto had occasionally called me a scowly owl when I was being moody. ‘What is your own contrada?’

For the first time since we had begun our long conversation, Eva Maria looked away, distressed by my question. ‘I do not have one,’ she said, dismissively. ‘My family was banished from Siena many hundred years ago.’

Long before we landed in Florence, Eva Maria began insisting on giving me a ride to Siena. It was right on the way to her home in Val d’Orcia, she explained, and really no trouble at all. I told her that I didn’t mind taking the bus, but she was clearly not someone who believed in public transport. ‘Dio santo!’ she exclaimed, when I kept declining her kind offer. ‘Why do you want to wait for a bus that never shows up, when you can come with me and have a very comfortable ride in my godson’s new car?’ Seeing that she almost had me, she smiled charmingly and leaned in for the clincher. ‘Giulietta, I will be so disappointed if we cannot continue our lovely conversation a bit longer.’

And so we walked through customs arm in arm; while the officer barely looked at my passport, he did look twice at Eva Maria’s cleavage. Later, when I was filling out a sheaf of coloured forms to report my luggage missing, Eva Maria stood next to me, tapping the floor with her Gucci pump until the baggage clerk had sworn an oath that he would personally recover my two suitcases from wherever they had gone in the world and, regardless of the hour, drive directly to Siena to deliver them at Hotel Chiusarelli, the address of which Eva Maria all but wrote out in lipstick and tucked into his pocket.

‘You see, Giulietta,’ she explained as we walked out of the airport together, bringing with us nothing but her minuscule carry-on, ‘it is fifty per cent what they see, and fifty per cent what they think they see. Ah!’ She waved excitedly at a black sedan idling in the emergency lane. ‘There he is! Nice car, no?’ She elbowed me with a wink. ‘It is the new model.’

‘Oh, really?’ I said politely. Cars had never been a passion of mine, primarily because they usually came with a guy attached. Undoubtedly, Janice could have told me the exact name and model of the vehicle in question, and that it was on her to-do list to make love to the owner of one while parked at a scenic spot along the Amalfi Coast. Needless to say, her to-do list was radically different from mine.

Not too offended by my lack of enthusiasm, Eva Maria pulled me even closer to whisper into my ear. ‘Don’t say anything, I want this to be a surprise! Oh, look…isn’t he handsome?’ She giggled delightedly and steered us both towards the man getting out of the car. ‘Ciao, Sandro!’

The man came around the car to greet us. ‘Ciao, Madrina!’ He kissed his godmother on both cheeks and did not seem to mind her running an admiring claw through his dark hair. ‘Bentornata.’

Eva Maria was right. Not only was her godson sinfully easy on the eyes, he was also dressed to kill, and although I was hardly an authority on female behaviour, I suspected he never lacked willing victims.

‘Alessandro, I want you to meet someone.’ Eva Maria had a hard time curbing her excitement. ‘This is my new friend. We met on the plane. Her name is Giulietta Tolomei. Can you believe it?’

Alessandro turned to look at me with eyes the colour of dried rosemary, eyes that would have made Janice rhumba through the house in her underwear, crooning into a hairbrush microphone.

‘Ciao!’ I said, wondering if he was going to kiss me, too.

But he wasn’t. Alessandro looked at my braids, my baggy shorts, and my flip-flops, before he finally wrung out a smile and said something in Italian that I didn’t understand.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I don’t…’

As soon as he realized that, on top of my frumpy appearance, I did not even speak Italian, Eva Maria’s godson lost all interest in my person. Rather than translating what he had said, he merely asked, ‘No luggage?’

‘Tons. But apparently, it all went to Verona.’

Moments later I was sitting in the backseat of his car next to Eva Maria, fast-forwarding through the splendours of Florence. As soon as I had convinced myself that Alessandro’s brooding silence was nothing but a consequence of poor English skills – but why should I even care? – I felt a new kind of excitement bubble up inside me. Here I was, back in the country that had spat me out twice, successfully infiltrating the movers and shakers. I couldn’t wait to call Umberto and tell him all about it.

‘So, Giulietta,’ said Eva Maria, at last leaning back in comfort, ‘I would be careful and not tell…too many people who you are.’

‘Me?’ I nearly laughed. ‘But I am nobody!’

‘Nobody? You are a Tolomei!’

‘You just told me that the Tolomeis lived a long time ago.’

Eva Maria touched an index finger to my nose. ‘Don’t underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man. I advise you, as someone from the New World: listen more, and speak less. This is where your soul was born. Believe me, Giulietta, there will be people here to whom you are someone.’

I glanced at the rearview mirror to find Alessandro looking at me with narrow eyes. English skills or no, he clearly did not share his godmother’s fascination with my person, but was too disciplined to voice his own thoughts. And so he tolerated my presence in his car for as long as I did not step outside the proper boundaries of humility and gratitude.

‘Your family, the Tolomeis,’ Eva Maria went on, oblivious to the bad vibes, ‘was one of the richest, most powerful families in all of Siena’s history. They were private bankers, you see, and they were always at war with us, the Salimbenis, to prove who had more influence in the city. Their feud was so bad that they burnt down each other’s houses – and killed each other’s children in their beds – back in the Middle Ages.’

‘They were enemies?’ I asked, stupidly.

‘Oh yes! The worst kind! Do you believe in destiny?’ Eva Maria put her hand on top of mine and gave it a squeeze. ‘I do. Our two households, the Tolomeis and the Salimbenis, had an ancient grudge, a bloody grudge…If we were in the Middle Ages, we would be at each other’s throats. Like the Capulets and the Montagues in Romeo and Juliet.’ She looked at me meaningfully. ‘Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Siena, where we lay our scene–do you know that play?’ When I merely nodded, too overwhelmed to speak, she patted my hand reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, I am confident that you and I, with our new friendship, will at last bury their strife. And this is why’–she turned abruptly in her seat–‘Sandro! I am counting on you to make sure Giulietta is safe in Siena. Did you hear me?’

‘Miss Tolomei,’ replied Alessandro, looking at the road ahead, ‘will never be safe anywhere. From anyone.’

‘What kind of talk is that?’ scolded Eva Maria. ‘She is a Tolomei; it is our duty to protect her.’

Alessandro glanced at me in the mirror, and I got the impression that he could see far more of me than I could see of him. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want our protection.’ From the way he said it I knew it was a challenge, and I also knew that, despite his accent, he was eminently at home in my language. Which meant that he had other reasons for being monosyllabic with me.

‘I really appreciate this ride,’ I said, deploying my cutest smile. ‘But I am sure Siena is very safe.’

He acknowledged the compliment with a slight nod. ‘What brings you over here? Business or pleasure?’

‘Well…pleasure, I suppose.’

Eva Maria clapped her hands excitedly. ‘Then we will have to make sure you are not disappointed! Alessandro knows all the secrets of Siena. Don’t you, caro? He will show you places, wonderful places that you would never find on your own. Oh, you will have fun!’

I opened my mouth, but had no idea what to say. So I closed it again. It was quite evident from his frown that showing me around Siena would rank very low on Alessandro’s agenda for the week.

‘Sandro!’ Eva Maria went on, her voice turning sharp. ‘You will make sure Giulietta has fun, no?’

‘I can imagine no greater felicity,’ replied Alessandro, turning on the car radio.

‘See?’ Eva Maria pinched my flushed cheek. ‘What did Shakespeare know? Now we are friends.’

Outside, the world was a vineyard, and the sky was suspended over the landscape like a protective, blue cape. It was where I was born, and yet I suddenly felt like a stranger–an intruder–who had crept in through the back door to find and claim something that had never belonged to me.

It was a relief when we finally pulled up in front of Hotel Chiusarelli. Eva Maria had been more than kind throughout the trip, telling me this and that about Siena, but you can only make so much polite conversation after losing a night’s sleep and all your luggage in one fell swoop.

Everything I owned had been in those two suitcases. I had basically packed up my entire childhood right after Aunt Rose’s funeral, and had left the house in a taxi around midnight with Janice’s triumphant laughter still ringing in my ears. There had been all sorts of clothes, books, and silly knickknacks, but now they were in Verona, and I was here, stuck in Siena with little more than a toothbrush, half a granola bar, and a pair of earplugs.

After pulling up at the curb in front of the hotel and dutifully opening the car door for me, Alessandro escorted me all the way into the vestibule. He obviously didn’t want to, and I obviously didn’t appreciate the gesture, but Eva Maria was watching us both from the backseat of the car, and by now I knew that she was a woman who was used to having things her way.

‘Please,’ said Alessandro, holding the door open. ‘After you.’

There was nothing else to do but enter Hotel Chiusarelli. The building greeted me with cool serenity, its ceiling supported by high marble columns, and only very faintly, from somewhere below us, could I discern the sound of people singing while throwing pots and pans around.

‘‘Buongiorno!’ An august man in a three-piece suit rose behind the reception counter, a brass name-tag informing me that his name was Direttore Rossini. ‘Benvenu–ah!’ He interrupted himself when he saw Alessandro. ‘Benvenuto, Capitano.’

I placed my hands flat on the green marble with what I hoped was a winning smile. ‘Hi. I am Giulietta Tolomei. I have a reservation. Excuse me for a second.’ I turned towards Alessandro. ‘So, this is it. I am safely here.’

‘I am very sorry, Signorina,’ said Direttore Rossini, ‘but I do not have a reservation in your name.’

‘Oh! I was sure…is that a problem?’

‘It is the Palio!’ He threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘The hotel is complete! But’–he tapped at the computer screen–‘I have here a credit card number with the name Julie Jacobs. Reservation for one person for one week. To arrive today from America. Can this be you?’

I glanced at Alessandro. He returned my stare with perfect indifference. ‘Yes, that’s me,’ I said.

Direttore Rossini looked surprised. ‘You are Julie Jacobs? And Giulietta Tolomei?’

‘Well…yes.’

‘But…’ Direttore Rossini took a little sidestep better to see Alessandro, his eyebrows describing a polite question mark. ‘C’è un problema?’

‘‘Nessun problema,’ replied Alessandro, looking at us both with what could only be a deliberate non-expression. ‘Miss Jacobs. Enjoy your stay in Siena.’

Within the blink of an eye Eva Maria’s godson was gone, and I was left with Direttore Rossini and an uncomfortable silence. Only when I had filled out every single form he put in front of me did the hotel director finally allow himself to smile. ‘So…you are a friend of Captain Santini?’

I looked behind me. ‘You mean, the man who was just here? No, we’re not friends. Is that his name? Santini?’

Direttore Rossini clearly found me lacking in understanding. ‘His name is Captain Santini. He is the–what do you say–Head of Security at Monte dei Paschi. In Palazzo Salimbeni.’

I must have looked stricken, because Direttore Rossini hastened to comfort me. ‘Don’t worry, we don’t have criminals in Siena. She is a very peaceful city. Once there was a criminal here’–he chuckled to himself as he rang for the bellboy–‘but we took care of him!’

For hours I had looked forward to collapsing on a bed. But now, when I finally could, rather than lying down I found myself pacing up and down the floor of my hotel room, chewing on the possibility that Alessandro Santini would run a search on my name and truffle out my dark past. The very last thing I needed now was for someone in Siena to pull up the old Julie Jacobs file, discover my Roman debacle, and put an untimely end to my treasure hunt.

A bit later, when I called Umberto to tell him I had arrived safely, he must have heard it in my voice, because he instantly knew something had gone wrong.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just some Armani stiff who discovered I have two names.’

‘But he is an Italian,’ was Umberto’s sensible reply. ‘He doesn’t care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?…Principessa?’

I looked down at my flip-flops. ‘Looks like I’ve had it.’

Crawling into bed that night, I slipped right into a recurring dream that I had not had for several months, but which had been a part of my life since childhood. The dream had me walking through a magnificent castle with mosaic floors and cathedral ceilings held up by massive marble pillars, pushing open one gilded door after another and wondering where everyone was. The only light came from narrow stained-glass windows high, high over my head, and the coloured beams did little to illuminate the dark corners around me.

As I walked through those vast rooms, I felt like a child lost in the woods. It frustrated me that I could sense the presence of others, but they never showed themselves to me. When I stood still, I could hear them whispering and fluttering about like ghosts, but if they were indeed ethereal beings, they were still trapped just like me, looking for a way out.

Only when I read the play in high school had I discovered that what these invisible demons were whispering were fragments from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet–not the way actors would recite the lines on stage, but mumbled with quiet intensity, like a spell. Or a curse.

I.III

Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake

It took the bells of the basilica across the piazza to finally stir me from sleep. Two minutes later Direttore Rossini knocked on my door as if he knew I could not possibly have slept through the racket. ‘Excuse me!’ Without waiting for an invitation, he lugged a large suitcase into my room and placed it on the empty baggage stand. ‘This came for you last night.’

‘Wait!’ I let go of the door and gathered the hotel bathrobe around me as tightly as I could. ‘That is not my suitcase.’

‘I know.’ He pulled the large handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. ‘It is from Contessa Salimbeni. Here, she left a note for you.’

I took the note. ‘What exactly is a contessa?’

‘Normally,’ said Direttore Rossini with some dignity, ‘I do not carry luggage. But since it was Contessa Salimbeni…’

‘She is lending me her clothes?’ I stared at Eva Maria’s brief handwritten note in disbelief. ‘And shoes?’

‘Until your own luggage arrives. It is now in Frittoli.’

In her exquisite handwriting, Eva Maria anticipated that her clothes might not fit me perfectly. But, she concluded, it was better than running around naked.

As I examined the specimens in the suitcase one by one, I was happy Janice could not see me. Our childhood home had not been big enough for two fashionistas and so I, much to Umberto’s chagrin, had embarked upon a career of being everything but. In school, Janice got her compliments from friends whose lives were headlined by designer names, while any admiration I got came from girls who had bummed a ride to the charity store, but who hadn’t had the vision to buy what I bought, nor the courage to put it together. It was not that I disliked fancy clothes, it was just that I wouldn’t give Janice the satisfaction of appearing to care about my looks. For no matter what I did to myself, she could always outdo me.

By the time we left college, I had become a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Cute, but still a weed. When Aunt Rose had put our graduation photos side by side on the grand piano, she had smiled sadly and observed that, of all those many classes I had taken, I seemed to have graduated with the best results as the perfect anti-Janice.

Eva Maria’s designer clothes were, in other words, definitely not my style. But what were my options? Following my telephone conversation with Umberto the night before, I had decided to retire my flip-flops for the time being and pay a little more attention to my bella figura. After all, the last thing I needed now was for Francesco Maconi, my mother’s financial advisor, to think I was someone not to be trusted.

And so I tried on Eva Maria’s outfits one by one, turning this way and that before the wardrobe mirror, until I found the least outrageous one–a foxy little skirt and jacket, fire-engine red with big black polka dots–that made me look as if I had just emerged from a Jaguar with four pieces of perfectly matched luggage and a small dog called Bijou. But most important, it made me look as if I ate hidden heirlooms–and financial advisors–for breakfast.

And by the way, it had matching shoes.

In order to get to Palazzo Tolomei, Direttore Rossini had explained, I must choose to either go up Via del Paradiso or down Via della Sapienza. They were both practically closed to traffic–as were most streets in the centre of Siena–but Sapienza, he advised, could be a bit of a challenge, and all in all, Paradiso was probably the safer route.

As I walked down Via della Sapienza the façades of ancient houses closed in on me from all sides, and I was soon trapped in a labyrinth of centuries past, following the patterns of an earlier way of life. Above me a ribbon of blue sky was crisscrossed by banners, their bold colours strangely vivid against the mediaeval brick, but apart from that–and the odd pair of jeans drying from a window–there was almost nothing that suggested this place belonged to the modern world.

The rest of Italy had developed around it, but Siena didn’t care. Direttore Rossini had told me that, for the Sienese, the golden age had been the late Middle Ages, and as I walked, I could see that he was right; the city clung to its mediaeval self with a stubborn disregard for the attractions of progress. There were touches of the Renaissance here and there, but overall, the hotel director had sniggered, Siena had been too wise to be seduced by the charms of history’s playboys, those so-called masters, who turned houses into wedding cakes.

As a result, the most beautiful thing about Siena was her integrity; even now, in a world that had stopped caring, she was still Saena Vetus Civitas Virginis, or, in my own language, Old Siena, City of the Virgin. And for that reason alone, Direttore Rossini had concluded, all of his fingers spread on the green marble counter, it was the only place on the planet worth living.

‘So, where else have you lived?’ I had asked him, innocently.

‘I was in Rome for two days,’ he had replied with dignity. ‘Who needs to see more? When you take a bite of a bad apple, do you keep eating?’

From my immersion in the silent alleys I eventually surfaced in a bustling, pedestrian street. According to my directions it was called the Corso, and Direttore Rossini had explained that it was famous for the many old banks that used to serve foreigners travelling the old pilgrim route, which had gone straight through town. Over the centuries, millions of people had journeyed through Siena, and many foreign treasures and currencies had changed hands. The steady stream of modern-day tourists, in other words, was nothing but the continuation of an old, profitable tradition.

That was how my family, the Tolomeis, had grown rich, Direttore Rossini had pointed out, and how their rivals, the Salimbenis, had grown even richer. They had been tradesmen and bankers, and their fortified palazzos had flanked this very road–Siena’s main thoroughfare–with impossibly tall towers that had kept growing and growing until at last they had all come crashing down.

As I walked past Palazzo Salimbeni I looked in vain for remnants of the old tower. It was still an impressive building with a positively Draculean front door, but it was no longer the fortification it had once been. Somewhere in that building, I thought as I scurried by, collar up, Eva Maria’s godson, Alessandro, had his office. Hopefully he was not just now paging through some crime register to find the dark secret behind Julie Jacobs.

Further down the road, but not much, stood Palazzo Tolomei, the ancient dwelling of my own ancestors. Looking up at the splendid mediaeval façade, I suddenly felt proud to be connected to the people who had once lived in this remarkable building. As far as I could see, not much had changed since the fourteenth century; the only thing suggesting that the mighty Tolomeis had moved out and a modern bank had moved in were the marketing posters hanging in the deep-set windows, their colourful promises interrupted by iron bars.

The inside of the building was no less stern than the outside. A security guard stepped forward to hold the door for me as I entered, as gallantly as the semiautomatic rifle in his arms would allow, but I was too busy looking around to be bothered by his uniformed attention. Six titanic pillars in red brick held the ceiling high, high above mankind, and although there were counters and chairs and people walking around on the vast stone floor, these took up so little of the room that the white lions’ heads protruding from the ancient walls seemed entirely unaware that humans were present.

‘Si?’ The teller looked at me over the rim of her fashionably slim glasses.

I leaned forward a little, in the interest of privacy. ‘Would it be possible to talk to Signor Francesco Maconi?’

The teller actually managed to focus on me through her glasses, but she did not appear convinced by what she saw. ‘There is no Signor Francesco here,’ she said firmly, in a very heavy accent.