The Conversion Read Online Free PDF Page A

been observed all over the country, and that, for a while, Marina herself had bent to the pressure of following in his footsteps and briefly served as the mayor of Genoa before returning to her childhood home in Tuscany.
    And yet her manner and appearance strike me to be more Scandinavian than Italian, even down to her tasteful yet simple dress, which is neither ultra chic nor expensive. She seems to prefer tweed jackets and corduroy pants with snug twinset sweaters that are often much brighter in color than the rest of her ensemble.
    Marina now asks me how I met Ed, and I explain that a mutual friend had introduced us and how, when my affair with the Frenchman ended,he’d been mysteriously waiting in the wings and had helped me through that difficult time.
    “I understand now. Say no more,” Marina murmurs. She brakes the car in anticipation of the last toll station that remains before Italy begins. She pulls up to the booth, smiling at the boyish sentry patiently waiting for her payment, then realizes she hasn’t even prepared it and begins rummaging through her purse saying,
“Désolée
…
désolée,”
eliciting his smile of indulgence. Once she finds her euros, pays the toll, and we are speeding along again, she sighs and continues in Italian, “The last few days … hard to believe when you actually think about it.”
    A thumbnail flash of the brutal intrusion, the faces in fury, but at what? The dull gleaming gun. And the evil sun, the long, scabrous knife, the clammy fear gripping once again. “I just wish I could … well, just take in what’s happened,” I say. “It all still seems so absurd.”
    “You’re in shock,” she reminds me. “Of course you are. Now, I must confess to you how bad I feel because the last time I spoke to your friend, I made him feel his Italian was inadequate.”
    “Luckily, he was a Francophile,” I find myself saying. For the first time since our journey began, we both laugh.
    This bit of shared irreverence seems to dismantle the facade of strict decorum that we’ve been maintaining. The highway is crossing a divide that affords a commanding view of the Mediterranean, whose tourmaline depths, now more than a thousand feet below us, pitch and roll beneath the glaring sunlight. The heat wave plaguing Paris also afflicts the South of France; with the warm dry air blasting me in the face, I look out over the water and dream of a cooling swim.
    “I do remember that your friend worked very hard at being charming ,” Marina remarks at last.
    “He didn’t think his charm worked very well on you.”
    “Nonsense! I just couldn’t place him at first.”
    “Apparently you had long conversations.”
    “So what? Not everybody is blessed with immediate recall. I wasn’t expecting to see him. But he obviously demanded instant recognition because of his celebrity.” Hearing Ed spoken of in the past tense gives me a terrible jolt, and a buzzing, windy silence follows the remark. “I don’t know about you, Russell, but I must say I never feel completely at ease around people for whom charm and suavity are second nature.I admit that I am utterly fascinated by them, but that’s where it ends for me.”
    “But charm isn’t ever second nature. It comes at great expense. Always,” I say just as I spy ahead of us a checkpoint where cars are being randomly stopped and searched by men in military fatigues. In travel between one European Union country and another, this border searching seems superfluous, a throwback to another era before the European community became economically linked. However, in light of the recent Middle East conflicts and the various terrorist bombings in Europe, the “instant checkpoint” is becoming more frequent. On certain days the Italian authorities set up random roadblocks and do unannounced inspections and searches. “What a mess!” Marina exclaims, and then suddenly pulls the car hard to the right and steers for a man wearing a splendid khaki