The Prodigal Daughter Page 15

  “How’s Danielle?” she asked.

  He stared at her. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?” said Florentyna.

  He continued to stare at her as if he couldn’t get out the words. “She’s dead.”

  Florentyna gazed back at him in disbelief.

  “She was driving too fast, showing off in my new Austin-Healey, and she turned the car over. I lived, she died.”

  “Oh, my God,” Florentyna said, putting her arms around him. “How selfish I’ve been.”

  “No, I knew you had your own troubles,” said Edward.

  “Nothing compared with yours. Are you going back to Harvard?”

  “I have to. Danielle’s father insisted that I complete my studies. Said he would never forgive me if I didn’t. So now I have something to work for. Don’t cry, Florentyna, because once I start I can’t stop.”

  Florentyna shuddered. “Oh, my God, how selfish I’ve been,” she repeated.

  “Come over to Harvard sometime. We’ll play tennis and you can help me with my French verbs. It will be like old times.”

  “Will it?” she said, wistfully. “I wonder.”

  Chapter

  Twelve

  When Florentyna returned to Radcliffe, she was greeted by a two-hundred-page course catalogue that took her three evenings to digest. From the catalogue she could choose one elective course outside her major area of study. Miss Rose suggested she take up something new, something she might never have another chance to study in depth.

  Florentyna had heard, as every other member of the university had, that Professor Luigi Ferpozzi would be spending a year as guest lecturer at Harvard and conducting a seminar once a week. Since winning his Nobel Peace Prize he had roamed the world receiving accolades, and when he was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford the citation described him as the only man whom the Pope and the President were in total agreement with, other than God. The world’s leading authority on Italian architecture had chosen Baroque Rome for his overall subject. “City of the Eye and the Mind” was to be the title of his first lecture. The synopsis in the course catalogue was tempting: Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the artist aristocrat, and Francesco Borromini, the stonecutter’s son, transformed the Eternal City of the Caesars and the Popes into the most recognizable capital in the world. Prerequisites: knowledge of Latin and Italian, with German and French highly recommended. Limited to thirty students.

  Miss Rose was not optimistic about Florentyna’s chances of being among the chosen few. “They tell me there is already a line from the Widener Library to Boston Common just to see him, not to mention the fact that he is a well-known misogynist.”

  “So was Julius Caesar.”

  “When I was in the common room last night he didn’t treat me like Cleopatra,” said Miss Rose. “But I do admire the fact that he flew with Bomber Command during the Second World War. He was personally responsible for saving half the churches in Italy by seeing that the planes made detours around important buildings.”

  “Well, I want to be one of his chosen disciples,” said Florentyna.

  “Do you?” said Miss Rose dryly. “Well, if you fail,” she added, laughing as she scribbled a note for Professor Ferpozzi, “you can always sign up for one of those survey courses. They seem to have no limit on numbers.”

  “Rocks for Jocks,” said Florentyna disparagingly. “Not me. I’m off to ensnare Professor Ferpozzi.”

  The next morning at eight-thirty, a full hour before the professor was officially available to see anyone that day, Florentyna climbed the marble steps of the Widener Library. Once in the building, she took the elevator—large enough to hold herself and one book—to the top floor, where the senior professors had offices under the eaves. An earlier generation had obviously decided that being far removed from zealous students more than made up for the long climb or the inconvenience of an always occupied elevator.

  Once Florentyna had reached the top of the building she found herself standing in front of a frosted door. The name “Professor Ferpozzi” was newly stenciled in black paint on the glass. She recalled that in 1945 it was this man who had sat with President Conant in Munich and between them they had decided the fate of German architecture: what should be preserved and what should be razed. She was only too aware that she shouldn’t bother him for at least another hour. She half turned, intent on retreat, but the elevator had already disappeared to a lower floor. Turning again, she knocked boldly on the door. Then she heard the crash.

  “Whoever that is, go away. You have caused me to break my favorite teapot,” said an angry voice whose mother tongue could only have been Italian.

  Florentyna stifled the impulse to run and instead slowly turned the door knob. She put her head around the door and looked into a room that must have had walls, but there was no way of knowing because books and periodicals were stacked from floor to ceiling as if they had taken the place of bricks and mortar.

  In the middle of the clutter stood a professorial figure aged anywhere between forty and seventy. The tall man wore an old Harris tweed jacket and gray flannel trousers that looked as though they had come from a thrift shop or had been inherited from his grandfather. He was holding a brown handle that moments before had been attached to a teapot. At his feet lay a tea bag surrounded by fragments of brown china.

  “I have been in possession of that teapot for over thirty years. I loved it second only to the Pietà, young woman. How do you intend to replace it?”

  “As Michelangelo is not available to sculpt you another, I will have to go to Woolworth’s and buy one.”

  The professor smiled despite himself. “What do you want?” he asked, picking up the tea bag but leaving the remains of his teapot on the floor.

  “To enroll in your course,” Florentyna replied.

  “I do not care for women at the best of times,” he said, not facing her, “and certainly not for one who causes me to break my teapot before breakfast. Do you possess a name?”

  “Rosnovski.”

  He turned and stared at her for a moment before sitting at his desk and dropping the tea bag into an ashtray. He scribbled briefly. “Rosnovksi, you have the thirtieth place.”

  “But you don’t know my grades or qualifications.”

  “I am quite aware of your qualifications,” he said ominously. “For next week’s group discussion you will prepare a paper on”—he hesitated for a moment—“on one of Borromini’s earlier works, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane. Good day,” he added as Florentyna scribbled furiously on her legal pad. Without giving her another thought, he returned to the remains of his teapot.

  Florentyna left, closing the door quietly behind her. She walked slowly down the marble steps trying to compose her thoughts. Why had he accepted her so quickly? How could he have known anything about her?

  During the following week she spent long days in the crypts of the Fogg Museum poring over learned journals, making slides of the reproductions of Borromini’s plans for San Carlo, even checking his lengthy expense list to see how much the remarkable building had cost. She also found time to visit the china department of Shreve, Crump & Lowe.

  When Florentyna had completed the paper, she rehearsed it the night before and felt confident about the outcome, a confidence that evaporated the moment she arrived at Professor Ferpozzi’s seminar. The room was already packed with expectant students and she was horrified to discover that she was the only nongraduate student, the only non-Fine Arts major and the only woman in the course. A projector was placed on his desk facing a large white screen.

  “Ah, the home wrecker returns,” the professor said, as Florentyna took the one remaining seat in the front. “For those of you who have not come across Miss Rosnovski before, do not invite her home for tea.” He smiled at his own remark and tapped his pipe into an ashtray on the corner of the desk, a sign that he wished the class to commence.

  “Miss Rosnovski,” he said with confidence, “is going to give us a talk on Borromini�
��s Oratorio di San Filippo Neri.” Florentyna’s heart sank. “No, no.” He smiled a second time. “I am mistaken. It was, if I remember correctly, the Church of San Carlo.”

  For twenty minutes Florentyna delivered her paper, showing slides and answering questions. Ferpozzi hardly stirred from behind his pipe, other than to correct her occasional mispronunciation of seventeenth-century Roman coins.

  When Florentyna finally sat down, he nodded thoughtfully and declared, “A fine presentation of the work of a genius.” She relaxed for the first time that day as Ferpozzi rose briskly to his feet. “Now it is my painful duty to show you the contrast and I want everyone to make notes in preparation for a full discussion next week.” He shuffled over to the projector and flicked his first slide into place. A building appeared up on the screen behind the professor’s desk. Florentyna stared in dismay at a ten-year-old picture of the Chicago Baron towering above a cluster of elegant small-scale apartment buildings on Michigan Avenue. There was an eerie silence in the room and one or two students were staring at her to see how she reacted.

  “Barbaric, isn’t it?” Ferpozzi’s smile returned. “I am not referring only to the building, which is a worthless piece of plutocratic self-congratulation, but to the overall effect that this edifice has on the city around it. Note the way the tower breaks the eye’s sense of symmetry and balance in order to make certain that it’s the only building we shall look at.” He flicked a second slide up onto the screen. This time it revealed the San Francisco Baron. “A slight improvement,” he declared, staring into the darkness at his attentive audience, “but only because since the earthquake of 1906 the city ordinances in San Francisco do not allow buildings to be more than twenty stories in height. Now let’s travel abroad,” he continued, turning to face the screen again. Up on the screen came the Cairo Baron, its gleaming windows reflecting the chaos and poverty of the slums huddled on top of each other in the distance.

  “Who can blame the natives for backing the occasional revolution when such a monument to Mammon is placed in their midst while they try to survive in mud hovels that don’t even stretch to electricity?” Inexorably, the professor produced slides of the Barons in London, Johannesburg and Paris, before saying, “I want your critical opinion on all of these monstrosities by next week. Do they have any architectural value, can they be justified on financial grounds and will they ever be seen by your grandchildren? If so, why? Good day.”

  Everyone filed out of the professor’s room except Florentyna, who unwrapped the brown paper parcel by her side.

  “I have brought you a farewell present,” she said, and stood up holding out an earthenware teapot. Just at the moment Ferpozzi opened his hands, she let go and the teapot fell to the ground at his feet and shattered into several pieces.

  He stared at the fragments on the floor. “I deserved no less,” he said, and smiled at her.

  “That,” she rejoined, determined to say her piece, “was unworthy of a man of your reputation.”

  “Absolutely right,” he said, “but I had to discover if you had backbone. So many women don’t, you know.”

  “Do you imagine your position allows you—”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Next week I shall read your defense of your father’s empire with interest, young woman, and I shall be only too happy to be found wanting.”

  “Did you imagine I would be returning?” she said.

  “Oh yes, Miss Rosnovski. If you are half the woman my colleagues claim you are, I shall have a battle on my hands next week.”

  Florentyna left, just stopping herself from slamming the door behind her.

  For seven days she talked with professors of architecture, Boston city planners and international conservationists. She telephoned her father, mother and George Novak before coming to the reluctant conclusion that, although they all had different excuses, Professor Ferpozzi had not exaggerated. She returned to the top of the tower a week later and sat at the back of the room, dreading what her fellow students would have come up with.

  Professor Ferpozzi stared at her as she sank into her seat. He then tapped his pipe into an ashtray and addressed the class. “You will leave your essays on the corner of my desk at the end of this session, but today I want to discuss the influence of Borromini’s work on European churches during the century after his death.” Ferpozzi then delivered a lecture of such color and authority that his thirty students hung on every word. When he had finished, he selected a sandy-haired young man in the front row to prepare next week’s paper on Borromini’s first meeting with Bernini.

  Once again, Florentyna remained seated while all the other students filed out, leaving their essays on the corner of Ferpozzi’s desk. When they were alone, she handed the professor a brown paper parcel. He unwrapped it to find a Royal Worcester Viceroy teapot in bone china dated 1912. “Magnificent,” he said. “And it will remain so as long as no one drops it.” They both laughed. “Thank you, young lady.”

  “Thank you,” Florentyna replied, “for not putting me through any further humiliation.”

  “Your admirable restraint, unusual in a woman, made it clear that it was unnecessary. I hope you will forgive me, but it would have been equally reprehensible not to try to influence someone who will one day control the largest hotel empire in the world.” Such a thought had never crossed Florentyna’s mind until that moment. “Please assure your father that I always stay in a Baron whenever I have to travel. The rooms, the food and the service are quite the most acceptable of any of the major hotels, and there is never anything to complain about once you are inside the hotel looking out. Be sure you learn as much about the stonecutter’s son as I know about the empire builder from Slonim. Being an immigrant is something your father and I will always be proud to have in common. Good day, young lady.”

  Florentyna left the office below the eaves of Widener sadly, aware of how little she knew of the workings of her father’s empire.

  During that year she concentrated zealously on her modern language studies, but she could always be found on Tuesday afternoons sitting with a pile of books, absorbing Professor Ferpozzi’s lectures. It was President Conant who remarked at the senior dinner that it was sad that his learned colleague was having the kind of friendship with Florentyna that the professor really should have had thirty years before.

  Graduation day at Radcliffe was a colorful affair. Proud, smartly dressed parents mingled with professors swathed in the scarlet, purple and multicolored hoods appropriate to their degrees. The academics glided about, resembling a convocation of bishops, informing the visitors how well their offspring had done, sometimes with a little considerate license. In the case of Florentyna there was no need for exaggeration, for she had graduated summa cum laude and had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa earlier in the year.

  It was a day of celebration and sadness for Florentyna and Bella, who were to live on opposite sides of the country, one in New York and the other in San Francisco. Bella had proposed to Claude on February 28—“Couldn’t wait for Leap Year,” she explained—and they had been married in the Houghton chapel at Harvard during the spring vacation. Claude had insisted on, and Bella had agreed to, Love, Honor and Obey. Florentyna realized how lucky they both were when Claude said to her at the reception, “Isn’t Bella beautiful?”

  Florentyna smiled and turned to Bella, who was remarking that it was sad Wendy was not with them that day.

  “Not that she ever did a day’s work,” added Bella, grinning.

  “Florentyna could not have worked harder in her final year, and no one will be surprised by her achievements,” said Miss Rose.

  “I am sure she owes a great deal to you, Miss Rose,” Abel replied.

  “No, no, but I was hoping to persuade Florentyna to return to Cambridge and study for a Ph.D., and then join the faculty, but she seems to have other ideas.”

  “We certainly do,” said Abel. “Florentyna will be joining the Baron Group as a director, with special responsibilities for the l
easing of the shops in the hotels. They have grown out of control in the last few years and I fear I have been neglecting them.”

  “You didn’t tell me that was what you had in mind, Florentyna,” boomed Bella. “I thought you said—”

  “Shhhhh, Bella,” said Florentyna, putting a finger to her lips.

  “Now, what’s this, young lady? Have you been keeping a secret from me?”

  “Now’s not the time or place, Papa.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t keep us in suspense,” said Edward. “Is it the United Nations or General Motors who feel they cannot survive without you?”

  “I must confess,” said Miss Rose, “now that you have gained the highest credentials this university can award, I should be fascinated to know how you intend to use them.”

  “Hoping to be a Rockette, perhaps,” said Claude.

  “That’s the nearest anyone has been yet,” said Florentyna.

  Everyone laughed except Florentyna’s mother.

  “Well, if you can’t find a job in New York, you can always come and work in San Francisco,” said Bella.

  “I’ll bear the offer in mind,” Florentyna said lightly.

  To her relief, further discussion of her future was impossible because the graduation ceremony was about to begin. George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, delivered the graduation address. His speech was received enthusiastically. Florentyna particularly enjoyed the quotation from Bismarck which ended his peroration: “Let us leave just a few tasks for our children to perform.”

  “You’ll deliver that address one day,” said Edward as they passed Tricentennial Hall.

  “And pray, sir, what will be my chosen subject?”

  “The problems of being the first woman President.”

  Florentyna laughed. “You still believe it, don’t you?”