The Wedding Officer

28

LIVIA AND James stroll back from the market together in the pleasant warmth of a Naples morning, their arms laden with produce. In James’s hand is a huge tomato, as big as a grapefruit and as red as a Neapolitan sunset.

“Again,” he says.

“To-mayto.”

“Tomahto,” he corrects. “And this—” he delves into a bag and holds up an eggplant—“is an ‘au-ber-gine.’”

She frowns. “Eric says it is called a ‘aygplent.’”

“Well, that’s just silly,” he points out. “How can it be an eggplant? A melanzana is nothing like an egg.”

She considers. “Au-ber-gine.”

“Exactly,” he says, a note of quiet satisfaction in his voice. One nil to the Brits.

A little farther on they come to a stall James has never seen before. It is festooned with tiny cages, and in each cage there is a bird. The song of thrushes, nightingales and robins fills the air, and for a moment he is transported back to England, and the sound of a spring dawn chorus.

“I don’t understand. Are these being sold as pets?” he asks Livia.

“Pets?” She laughs. “No, not pets. Pies.”

He makes a face. “You eat robins?”

“Of course. People here will eat anything. Although personally, I never see the point of eating nightingales. The song is better than the meat, and there’s much more of it too. What are you doing?”

Impulsively, James has pulled a pile of lire from his pocket, thrust it into the stallholder’s hands, and is pulling open the cages. Wings flutter around his head as the tiny birds wheel and scatter to freedom. The stallholder launches into an operatic denunciation of the madman’s behavior, and even Livia looks taken aback.

“Captain Goal,” she says, “you are even stranger than you appear to be.”

“I don’t care. There are enough pies in the world already, and not nearly enough robins.”

She shrugs. “OK.”

He stops. “What?”

“I said OK. Why?”

“Nothing.”

All day he listens to her carefully, noticing how often she uses the expression “OK.” Admittedly, it does not sound much like “OK,” since Livia pronounces it “au-kaya,” with the emphasis on the second of her three syllables. In addition, she tends to use it as a form of expletive, meeting any request when she is busy with an indignant toss of her head and a yelled “Au-kaya! Au-kaya! A’mm doing!”

The American inflection is almost imperceptible, but every time he hears it James experiences a sharp stab of jealousy.

“The thing is,” he confides to Jumbo, “I’m in love with her.”

“When you say you’re in love with her—how can you be so sure?”

“I think about her every minute of every day. When I’m sitting at my desk I have long, imaginary conversations with her. Then, when I’m with her, I talk utter nonsense. I find myself doing stupid things in the hope of impressing her. Sometimes I find myself doing stupid things even when I’m not with her, in the hope of becoming more worthy of her. I’m learning to cook because of her. I lie in bed dreaming of Livia in a white wedding dress, walking down the aisle of the church in my parents’ village. Then I imagine taking off her wedding dress, and finding her naked under it, and throwing her onto a big double bed—”

“Yes, I see,” Jumbo said quickly. “That does sound as if you might be, ah, becoming quite attached to her. Either that, or you’re getting a touch of malaria.”