The barkeep placed the glasses of aperitifs on the counter, and she tipped hers towards him. “Are you back from your daydreaming? Or do you really want an espresso?”
“I’m sorry. No espresso. To your health.” He drank while she eyed him over the rim of her glass. “I have many things in my head. Work, that is.”
“I heard that you’re sending out for soil samples to the Reschen Valley.”
He caught his reflection in the bar mirror, his surprise unmasked, his disappointment just underneath. Was the game over and she would turn to business? “I did not realise it had already been made public.”
“Minister Grimani, the state is absolutely pleased by every step in the right direction. Such news cannot be kept secret for long, especially amongst such indiscreet zealots as you have working in the ministry.” Her eyes flitted over his face, and she laughed. “Don’t look so horrified, Minister. I am only joking. My cousin works with your testing team. He was at my mother’s seventieth birthday party last weekend and told me he had to go up north. I told him he is working for a good man.”
Angelo relaxed. “I didn’t realise I work with relatives of yours.”
She chuckled and took another sip from her martini. “We Italians have become gypsies, flocking north to see the world. But it’s dull here, isn’t it? The Tyroleans and old Italian settlers are already such good, stoic Catholics, Minister. Such solid, upstanding citizens. If I tried to talk to the Tyrolean women up in the provinces about the duty of womanhood, I would be preaching to the choir.”
“Where would you rather be then?”
“Now, that, Minister, is not the right question. Not where I would rather be, but where am I most needed? Do you know where I am needed? I mean really needed?” She smiled over her glass. “Paris. Berlin. London.” She raised her glass and clinked with his. “The news trickling down from there is that there are no practising Catholics left and no decent women in those cities. Just bohemians and Communists. A true Sodom and Gomorrah.” She seemed to relish the words. “That’s where I am needed, Minister. I’m afraid I will just waste away here. You see, I’ve converted the most important women involved in the suffrage movements and the socialist movements except for…well.” She raised the drink to her lips, but her eyes landed on the red rose on the bar. She placed the emptied glass on the counter and turned to him. “Let’s get ourselves home to our meals, shall we? Or we’ll lose ourselves in the idea that we are in Paris and need absinthe to get through our days.” She patted her hat and winked. “We have our reputations to keep, you and I.”
Head spinning, and not from the spirits, he paid the barkeep and escorted Gina to the door. For lack of anything else to say, he thanked her for her help with the rose.
“We must do this again, Minister.” She brushed a gloved hand over his arm. “More often.”
She went right, and he went left, turning once in time to see the flash of crimson before she disappeared around the corner.
He backtracked to the florist.
“What does the coral rose signify?”
The woman blushed and finished wrapping a bouquet for a customer. When they were alone, she said, “Lust. Desire.”
Angelo lifted his hat and gave her a few coins.
Dangerous as a forgotten fire in a dry summer. That was Gina Conti.
At the villa, he already had his hand on the doorknob before he turned around, went to the garden at the back of the house, and stuck the red rose in one of the bushes.
***
T he sun had not yet come over the peaks of the Rose Garden range when Angelo took his breakfast on the veranda. Saturday was just another working day for him these days, but today was a right horrible mess. He put a wool blanket over his shoulders and poured himself a coffee from the silver carafe. The china jangled as his hand shook from anger or lack of sleep, or maybe both. He balanced the cup on the landing as he looked out at the vineyard below, the grapes finally taking on fuller form. He heard sparrows arguing, and a crow cawed somewhere behind the house. As the first rays of dawn reached the valley floor, he saw the insects take to the vines. Below him were the white oleander bushes his mother had given them last year.
His father was coming later, to meet with him and Pietro. Angelo considered cancelling. He needed time to prepare. To analyse. To sleep and gather the strength necessary to keep the Colonel in check, especially after last night.
Angelo rubbed his forehead and slapped his thigh. “Damn it! Where is she?” She was at Susi’s of course. He meant, why wasn’t she home yet?
He turned his thoughts to last night. Chiara and he had gone, arm in arm, to Senator Tolomei’s rally. It was the first time since he had accepted the ministerial position that she had gone with him to a political event. Still stinging from her calling him a sheep in wolf’s clothing, he had hoped that by going together, they could form some sort of public allegiance. Look at me, Minister Angelo Grimani, on the arm of my progressive wife. We both have an interest in Italy’s unification. We are the ideal couple, working together.
It had been a mistake. He should have just given her the rose.
What was supposed to have been a harmless speech by Tolomei became a nightmare. The theatre had filled up, not with people from Bolzano, but from specially chartered trains
