It is quiet, she says, and I say Alice, look at the flowers. Yes, she says. Yes, I say. Is it not grand to say yes back and forth when we mean something else and she went behind the bush and loosened her stays and camisole and shamelessly stepped out of the frilly heap they made around her buttoned shoes and I said yes, here where St. Francis walked, Alice, you do realize, don’t you, that the reason we came to Assisi is that you are from San Francisco and this is the hometown of St. Francis and she says I am wrapping my underthings in my shawl, do you think anyone will notice?
Red tile, moss, pigeons. We drink wine under the trees, though it is too hot to drink wine. Well, I say, we are here. Yes, she says, we are here, and her eyes jiggle and her smile is that of a handsome officer who has been called to headquarters and seen General Grant and is pleased to please, well bred that he is.
This is not Fouquet’s, I say. Certainly not Fouquet’s, she says. I touch her foot with my foot, she touches my foot with her foot. The crickets sing around us, fine as Stravinsky. If Spain is a still life, what is Italy? They came here, I said, the grand old poets, because the women have such eyes. Surely not to see the cats, Alice says. No, I say, not for the cats. Henry James came here for the tone. William might come here and never see the tone. William if he came would take in the proportions, and would not look at the cats. A princess and a cart go by, Henry sees the princess and William sees the wheel of the cart how it is in such fine proportion to the tongue and the body.
When you talk, she says, I shiver all over, things flutter around inside. When you smile, I say, I bite into peaches and Casals plays Corelli and my soul is a finch in cherries. Let us talk and smile forever. This is forever, Alice says. It is so quiet. Look at the dust, I say. Would you walk in it barefoot? Another glass of wine, she says, and I will fly over the bell tower. Did you have a rosewood piano in San Francisco? I ask. With a bust of Liszt on it, she says, and a vase of marigolds.
Look at these colors and you can see why Sassetta was Sassetta. Will we go to England again, she says, to sit in the cathedrals? Look at these hills and you will know why St. Francis was St. Francis.
The roses, she says, are very old. They are the roses of Ovid, I say. They are the only roses that are red. If I knew the Latin for red I would say it, if the Latin for rose, I would say it, the Latin for the only red in the oldest rose, I would say it. Were I Ovid, I would give you a rose and say that it is given for your eyes. I would take it, she says. I am glad you would, I say, touching her foot with my foot. Sassetta’s rose, Pablo’s rose.
Madame Matisse is a gentian, she says, touching my foot with her foot. Are all women flowers, all girls? Henri Rousseau was married to a sunflower, Cézanne to a pear tree.
Alice, I say. Yes, General Grant, she says. Pickaninny, I say. Augustus Caesar, she says. Do you see those pines over there, the ones that look like William McKinley addressing the Republican Party? You mustn’t mention McKinley to Pablo, she says, he thinks he has trod on the honor of Spain. He has, I say, that is the American way. But the pines, Alice, the pines. I see them, she says, they have had a hard life. Do you, I say, see the bronze fall of needles beneath them, and know the perfume of rosin and dust and old earth we would smell if we climbed there? The flutter has begun, she says. And now look at the rocks, the cubist rocks, down the hills from the pines, and the red tile of the roofs, and the chickens in the yard there, the baskets. I see all that, she says. And having seen it, Alice? I ask. It is there to see, she says. That is the answer, I say. It is also the question.
MAO SAT in his red armchair looking benign and amused. Richard Nixon sank too far into his chair, his elbows as high as his ears. He beamed. He did not see the stacks of journals, the shelves packed with books, the bundles of folders, the writing brushes in jars. He beamed at Mao and at Dr. Kissinger, whom Mao had called a modern Metternich. The reporters had written that down.
The cluttered room was dark. What light there was came from tall windows which gave onto a courtyard as bleak as the playground of a grammar school. The translator said that Chairman Mao had asked about hegemony.
— We’re for it, Richard Nixon said.
— Your aides are very young, Chairman Mao said.
— Are they? Richard Nixon asked.
— We must learn from you on that point, Chairman Mao said. Our government is all of old men.
Richard Nixon did not know what to say.
— Old, Chairman Mao said, but here, still here.
— The world is watching us, Richard Nixon said.
— You mean Taiwan, Chairman Mao said.
— No, Richard Nixon said, beaming, the world out there, the whole world. They are watching their
