A Collection Of Short Stories & Poems

Courtly Love

Courtly Love

We met three years ago, in Florence. I was touring the Museum Bargel o. She was sitting and intensely sketching The David, a bronze statue by Donatello; I was awestruck by her beauty. I decided to take a chance. I walked up behind her and looked over her shoulder; she looked up with an expression of surprise.

“Excuse me. I was admiring our work,” I said.

She smiled and asked, “Are you a fan of Donatello?”

“I am, and particularly this piece because of its importance to the Renaissance,”

She relaxed and stood, extending a hand. “My name is Kathy; not too many people realize its importance. Are you an artist?”

“A fine art photographer.” Taking her hand, I introduced myself. “Jack Spencer. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to disrupt your work.”

“You didn’t, I was just finishing when you walked up.”

I looked at my watch. “It’s just noon. May I buy you lunch?” I asked.

She stared at me a moment, deciding. Her eyes were hazel and full of feeling, they reached deep into my soul, and I was hooked.

“Okay. Do you have a place in mind?”

“There are two restaurants on this street, within half a block. How about you pick one of them.”

“Let’s try the first one, Jack.”

We were off to lunch. At lunch, we mainly talked about our personal lives. Kathy was married for the second time and had a young child. She was a lot younger than me and lived in America. She was both a painter and a songwriter. Kathy has been studying Italian for several years. This was the second year she has come to Florence to study art and practice her Italian. By comparison, I am a photographer and divorced. I have been coming to Italy for several years to photograph and fell in love with the culture. There is so much about Italy to inspire an artist. I just bought an ancient house in the Piemonte region of Italy. It is in a small vil age in the hil s at the beginning of the Aosta Val ey. It is three stories, with two large terraces. One is off the second floor living room, and one is off the third-floor master bedroom.

The attraction between us was immediate. I knew what it was for me; it was Kathy’s beauty. We had so much in common. We had long discussions over lunch about Ezra Pound, Clifford Still, and Ansel Adams. As a songwriter, she was surprised I could discuss and knew much about the poet Ezra Pound. I explained that Ezra Pound’s struggles inspired much of my photography. I try to put the emotions of his poetry in my photographs.

We had several lunches that week, and it wasn’t long before I fell deeply in love with her and believed she felt the same about me. This was beginning to cause conflict within me. I would not help raise a small child at my age, and when she spoke of her husband, it was always respectful. Was I assuming too much about how I think she felt for me? We had not kissed or held hands. At the same time, I felt a deep connection. I wanted to be clear about how I felt. I didn’t want to give her any mixed signals. I struggled with how to bring it up. I was scared; I might say something that would ruin our relationship.

I picked her up at her apartment on Via Della Scala at seven the next night near the Chiesa S. Maria Novella. I took her to dinner at Ristorante Buca Mario. I decided to tell her how deeply I felt for her. The restaurant wasn’t very far, so we walked. We had just been seated at the restaurant when Kathy looked at me and asked. “Is there something on your mind, Jack?”

“Is it that obvious?” I asked.

She smiled with one eyebrow up, which said to me, “Yes, it is.” I proceeded to tell her all and my concerns. She listened intently, and replied,

“I was not sure you felt the same way for me as I do you, Jack. All I could think about last week was the love between Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo Buonarroti, Dante Alighieri, and Beatrice Portinari.”

“Courtly Love.”

“Exactly,” she said. “A love so great it does not need to be physical, demanding, or possessive.”

I nodded in agreement. I finally understood Dante in a way I never did before. At the end of the week, she went home. We continued to talk, and when I went back to America or when she came to Italy, we would see each other. We would go to dinner or have coffee. One Easter, I even spent Easter Sunday with her and her family.

One day about three years after we first met, I got a call. She was distraught. Her husband, Jim, had been killed in a car accident. In the next three weeks, we talked every day. About a month after the funeral, I called her and asked her to come to Italy. She decided she would come and stay with me for three weeks once school was out, and her boy was staying with his grandparents in August.

I picked her up at the airport, and we started back to Muriaglio, the village where I live.

“Are you tired from the flight?”

“No, Jack.”

“I wasn’t sure if you would be hungry. I have prepared a small lunch at the house or we can stop and have lunch.”

“Let’s just have the lunch you prepared. I want to get away from people and relax.”

August in this part of Italy is always very warm. Today would be no exception. It would be in the ninety degrees, and I bet we would have another thunderstorm in the evening. The sky was such a beautiful blue with large white cumulus clouds. We sat on the terrace, eating cheese, melon, and prosciutto, drinking iced tea, and enjoying the view down the mountain to the Po Valley.

The slight breeze coming up from the valley cooled as it passed through the trees’ shade on its way to us. It was refreshing. We sat quietly, lost in our private thoughts. It was wonderful to be with someone who was as comfortable with the silence and intuitively knew when silence meant something was wrong, and when it didn’t. It was special to be with someone who needed to sit for hours quietly and think. Then I remembered something I had written long ago as a caption to one of my photographs. Because of you, I understand the meaning of a special one-ness and a special separate-ness together. Around one o’clock in the afternoon, Kathy reached over and put a hand on mine. I looked over at her. “Can I ask you about something?” she queried.

“Sure, Kathy. Anything.”

“I Googled your name looking for dates of your next photograph exhibit and ran across this photograph of you.” She then handed me a photograph of a young sailor. I took the picture and smiled.

“Yes, that is me in the summer of 1967. I have not seen this since then.”

“Despite all that we have shared with each other, you never mentioned you were in the service, Jack.”

“It has always been an issue with me, Kathy. You were too young to remember what was going on in the country then. It was a strange time for young men. At eighteen, you had to go to the draft office and register. All my friends were being drafted within a week or two of graduating from high school. I had come to believe the Vietnam War was wrong. At the same time, I wanted to support the country and those who went to fight. I decided to enlist in the Naval Air Reserve. I would have less than a year of active service but a five-year commitment during which I could be called back on active duty. I figured it was my best chance to avoid direct combat. My fear was not killing or being killed. It was that I might enjoy combat too much. I have always given myself permission to be violent, which also gives me permission not to be violent. I did not want the war to change that.

As a Reservist, we were given pink I.D. cards, whereas those in the regular Navy were given a green I.D. card. The regular Navy never accepted us. They said we got pink cards because we were pinkos and traitors to the country. The civilians our age disowned us, saying we were traitors to our generation. I would be shunned if I wore my uniform in public.”

“My god, Jack. That sounds terrible.”

“It was. Stil , it was not as bad as coming home wounded and spat on for having served. Of all the returning veterans from other wars in the country’s history, Vietnam veterans were treated the worst. When I got off active duty, I was told I would never be considered a veteran unless I agreed to another active-duty year. I said no. Like most, I just tucked the anger away and moved on with my life. Two years ago, a college I attended to study Italian was putting in a Veteran’s center on campus. I received a notice asking me to participate in the opening of the center. I responded that as a non-veteran, I would not participate in the ceremony. The next day, I got a call saying they checked my records: I was a veteran and should come. I was encouraged by my children to go and decided I would. The ceremony caused me to unleash a lot of emotions I had put away a long time ago. The college president was there, along with other important people associated with the school, like professors, department chairs, et cetera. They were all about my age. I was having a hard time as they came up to thank me for my service. I could not get past the thought that these were the same people forty years ago who would spit on us for wearing the uniform. They are now competing with other schools for money from the government and private organizations for veterans’ education. It had nothing to do with the change of heart. This is the most I have said to anyone about the subject ever.”

I looked over. Kathy was staring down the valley. I realized my telling the story raised deep hidden anger in me that had upset her. “Sorry.” I said, “Now you know why I never talk about it.”

She looked at me. “I am not upset, Jack. I am just trying to understand.”

“Alan Watts said, “To understand is to not understand, I said.

“Alan Watts?” she asked.

“Yes. Alan Watts, the philosopher. He wrote a book entitled The Book. In it, he says, ‘There is no on without >off, no up without down.’ In my life, I have found it is the answer to what is true, the other side of the coin: no love without hate, no winning without losing. We admire someone for his or her dedication to work. Then, we get upset because he or she will not go on vacation with us. I believe we are all things at the same time, and when we give ourselves that permission, we are free.”

“One day at a time.”

I looked at her. “One day at a time?” I asked.

“Yes. My dad was an alcoholic,” Kathy explained. “One day, he admitted it and started attending A.A. meetings.

My father told me that once he accepted that he was an alcoholic, he gave himself permission to drink or not, one day at a time. He never drank again.”

“That’s it,” I said. “To be human is to be all things good and bad. When we accept that, we are at choice. If we give ourselves permission to be bad, we also have permission to be good.”

We both went back to our private thoughts. I started to get up to get more tea and noticed Kathy looking at me. She had a playful look, and that slight smile women have practiced for ten thousand years and, She asked, “Shall we take a nap?”

Without saying a word, I stood. Taking Kathy by the hand, we went inside and headed for the bedroom. “Go on up, Kathy; I will be right there.” I went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out a bottle of Prosecco. I opened it and put it in an ice bucket with ice. I grabbed two flutes from the bar and a bunch of grapes. I headed upstairs.

When I entered the bedroom. Cindy had opened the French doors wide open to let in the breeze. She was lying nude on the bed. The playful smile was gone and replaced with a look of deep desire. My god, she was beautiful. I set the wine and grapes on a small table near the bed and undressed faster than ever in my lifetime. We made love like two lust-filled teenagers. We laid there naked for the rest of the afternoon, drinking wine and feeding each other grapes. We talked about our hopes and dreams, disappointments, failed marriages, the art world and songwriters, photographers, authors, and their place in it. It was indeed one of the great days of my life. Courtly Love be damned.