The Mermaid Garden(116)

“Well, it’s the second most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. “Thank you, Dante. I’ve had the most wonderful day. The best day I’ve ever had in my life. I won’t ever forget it.”

“This is only the beginning, piccolina. I’m going to have such pleasure in spoiling you.”

When Floriana returned home, there was no one to share her day with. Her father slept noisily in the room next door, and Signora Bruno’s apartment was dark. So, she sat by the window and gazed up at the stars. She wondered whether the same moon was shining down upon her mother and whether she ever looked up at it and thought of her.

“Mamma,” she said softly, “I’d like to tell you about Dante …”





26.


As September drew closer, like a river flowing inescapably towards a sharp waterfall, Dante began to feel the cold chill of the approaching descent. The summer had been a blissful plateau of long, lazy days in the sunshine, romantic drives through the Tuscan countryside, idle walks up and down the beach, and wishes tossed into the poppy fields like magical seeds to flower into happy endings. But now those poppies had withered back into the ground, and the last days of August finally drained away. Beppe summoned Dante to Milan.

Dante didn’t know how to say good-bye to Floriana. He loved her with all his heart and soul, but he hadn’t considered the practicalities of sustaining a long-distance relationship. He wished he could take her with him to Milan but that was as impossible as his father giving his consent to marry her. Until she was twenty-one they were bound by law to his command—and even then, he couldn’t imagine disobeying his father. In his daydreams, he swept her into his arms and ran off with her, to marry in some foreign country far away where no one could stop them. But they were only fantasies. The reality remained: Dante had to go to Milan to work with his father, and he loved his home and family too much to elope.

The day before his departure he found Floriana at home, alone. Her father was out, or slumped against a wall somewhere. Signora Bruno let him in and showed him up to her small apartment. At first Floriana was mortified that he had witnessed her poverty, but her mortification quickly dissolved when she realized he had come to say good-bye.

Fearful that her father might suddenly appear, she took him into her bedroom where they could speak in private. The room was small and simple, with a large cross on the white wall behind the bed and cool floor tiles beneath their feet. A chest of drawers stood opposite the iron bed, and the window was wide open, but neither was aware of the sounds of the town that blew in on the breeze.

They remained a moment staring at each other, suddenly daunted by the scale of all that stood between them. The languid summer days seemed far away now, gone with their carefree laughter and courageous dreams, and they searched each other’s eyes for confirmation that their love could be nurtured, like hands cupped around a fragile flame as the wind blows closer.

He pulled her into his arms and clung to her. “I’ll write and drive down as often as I can,” he explained, closing his eyes and savoring the vanilla scent of her skin with a sharp sense of longing for what was soon to be lost.

“I’ll wait for you, Dante,” she replied. “Whatever happens, I’ll wait.”

Those words “whatever happens” struck his heart with the full force of their implication, and he let his grief consume him. He no longer thought rationally. He imagined her alone in Herba, without anyone to protect her from the lurid intentions of malevolent men. The thought of her vulnerable to predators filled him with a raging jealousy and an unbearable sense of helplessness.

Dizzy with homesickness, he let his passion carry him away. He kissed her deeply, and she held him tighter than she had ever held him. A wild, uncontrollable desire overcame him, so that his instincts took over where his reason should have prevailed. He carried her onto the bed and lay down beside her. Floriana was willing to give herself to Dante, to do whatever he wanted. Without a mother to guide her, she barely knew what was happening, aware only of the deliciously warm feeling that saturated her loins as he ran his hands over her dark and secret places. And then he was inside her, moaning as he moved rhythmically to his own escalating pleasure. Beads of sweat gathered on his brow as he thrust deeper, claiming her for himself. Floriana bit her lip and withstood the initial discomfort, sure that this union   would tie them together for all eternity.

When it was over, they lay entwined. Dante trembled with remorse, suddenly aware of what he had done. Floriana smiled in her ignorance, flushed with happiness, for now they really belonged to each other in all but name.