In the Name of Gucci Page 6

  Sales were going well at the East Fifty-Eighth Street store but international communication was cumbersome and my father knew he had to keep on top of things. Being the perfectionist he was, he couldn’t rely on telegrams or echoing long-distance calls and had to keep checking on the Manhattan store himself, even if his travels kept him away from the object of his desire.

  A month after their kiss, he returned to Rome and hurried to the office to tell my mother half under his breath, “I have to speak with you.” When she ignored him, he left a handwritten note on her desk demanding that she meet him that evening at six o’clock in the Parioli Quarter. It was an upscale residential neighborhood northeast of the city, where, as the secretary in charge of all his paperwork, she knew only too well that he also kept a bachelor pad, known as a garçonnière. What he used it for she’d tried not to imagine—until now.

  As the hour approached, and having told my grandmother and Pietro that she had to work late, she was filled with dread about where their secret rendezvous might lead. By the time she stepped out of the taxi that took her to Piazzale delle Belle Arti and spotted my father’s green Jaguar Mark 1, she felt physically unwell. “When I got into his car I was so afraid that somebody might spot us that I was trembling. Your father saw and he told me to calm down.”

  Taking her hand in his, he told her again how fond he’d become of her and then he stroked her cheek. Still shivering in her seat, she reminded him once more that his feelings weren’t reciprocated. As he moved closer, her eyes darted left and right and she broke into a sweat. “Don’t worry, Bruna, I won’t bite!” he said, laughing, before leaning over and kissing her full on the mouth.

  Mamma responded at first, confirming my father’s conviction that she, too, felt the chemistry between them. Then she suddenly pulled away, and on the brink of tears, she demanded to be taken home. When he dropped her in an alleyway not far from her apartment, she fled from his car without saying a word, her heart “beating like crazy.” She was, she said, “confused and upset, and still so very afraid.”

  My father’s heart was also beating fast, but in triumph. His coy little “Nina” had kissed him back!

  Mamma barely slept that night and dreaded going into work the next morning. Unable to confide in anyone, not even my grandmother, she had no choice but to show up as usual but then found any excuse to leave the office to deliver something to the shop floor or stockroom. Even though she’d done nothing wrong, the strain of keeping what she thought of as her “dirty little secret” began to make her sick. She lost weight and couldn’t sleep. Before long, those closest to her, especially Pietro and my grandmother, noticed a change.

  My father wasn’t a man who took no for an answer. Nor was he someone who liked to wait. He quickly planned a second outing with my mother, this time in the company of Vilma—his most devoted and longest-serving member of staff. My father assured Mamma that a chaperone would put her more at ease and that everyone would assume these outings were nothing more than ordinary business dinners.

  My mother felt she had to accept but insisted that the dinner be on a night when Pietro was out of town. The Antica Pesa restaurant was in an old customs house in the bohemian district of Trastevere. I have been there a few times, if only to imagine my parents meeting there during this tricky phase of their courtship. My mother paints an unhappy image of them arriving together and says she trailed miserably behind when they were led to a table at the far end of the terrace. Even after they were seated she was so worried that she’d be spotted that she barely ate a morsel.

  Papà was the consummate host. Laughing and telling tales, his eyes twinkling in the candlelight, he regaled her with stories of his travels, describing what it was like to fly four thousand miles across the Atlantic in a jet. “You can’t believe the luxury, Bruna!” he told her. “They have such comfortable seats and stewardesses in smart uniforms serve martinis and gourmet dinners. You’d love it.” The implication was always that—one day—she would accompany him. He went on to speak glowingly of New York with its supersized buildings and refreshingly honest people whose lives and enterprises were unaffected by the kind of political constraints he faced in Italy. He raved about the city’s buzz and bustle, and told her how much she’d enjoy the freedom America offered.

  Softened by alcohol and ambience, my mother began to relax, and—little by little—she came out of her shell. Sipping prosecco, she began to show my father the inner lighthearted side he’d always suspected she was hiding from him. “There was a woman in the store today who had a coat that perfectly matched her poodle,” she confided. “It was all we could do not to laugh!” Those early glimpses of the mischievous, giggling girl typical of her age only made him adore her even more.

  And so the courtship continued, albeit against my mother’s wishes. Her only respite came when my father went away and she had a few weeks’ peace. Or so she thought. Sifting through the mail one morning she came across an envelope from New York addressed to her. She recognized my father’s handwriting and immediately suspected what it was. Afraid to open it in the office in case someone walked in unannounced, she hurriedly tucked it into the waistband of her skirt. It wasn’t until later that evening when she was sitting alone in the back of the bus home that she reached for the first of his secret love notes, slid it open with her finger, and began to read.

  Papà’s words—and the strength of feeling they conveyed—stunned her.

  Bruna my dear,

  It’s the third time I put pen to paper, having destroyed the first two letters. I promised myself I would express just how strongly I feel the need to communicate with you, to tell you what I am feeling at all times, the tiny pleasures, the immense pain!!! It’s all due to this insatiable desire to love you and the endless suffering of our secret that I ask your forgiveness and permission to love you, forever, before I am overcome by sorrow and delirious with grief.

  My sweet Brunicchi, I hope you don’t think I’m exaggerating. I am just madly in love with you! As far as I am concerned, so long as I have the certainty of your affection and feel that I shall never lose you, I consider you my one big love; I swear I will do anything you ask! We don’t have to go out. I won’t torment you, nor will I do anything to agonize or embarrass you, all I ask is that you love me as if our hearts belonged to one another and our souls were fused into one, like an eternal embrace. I love you Bruna, I really, really love you and I will not stop telling you because it is the truth, above and beyond everything and everybody. —xxxx A.

  In these modern times of hasty emails and instant messaging, no man has ever written me a letter like that, sadly. What must it have felt like for my mother to hold that flimsy piece of paper in her hand and appreciate the weight it carried? She told me later, “It was incredible. I felt I was important.”

  No one had ever laid himself so bare to her. His use of language and sweeping declarations of love struck a deep chord. She had to pinch herself to believe this was from Dottor Gucci—a man of stature and the living epitome of style and grace. A successful entrepreneur, he was equally at ease with royalty as he was with a man in the street. Now here he was pouring out his soul to “an innocent creature” just out of her teens and from a modest background. How was that even possible?

  She sat stock-still in her seat for several minutes staring out of the window at passing street scenes. Dazed, she watched mothers shepherding young children and old people struggling through the rush-hour crowds. She saw couples walking hand in hand, openly showing their affection for each other. She said to me, “I remember thinking that not one of them was worried about the consequences, like me.”

  In Roman Holiday, one of the most popular movies of the era, which Mamma had seen with Pietro and watched with me many times years later, the unhappy princess played by Audrey Hepburn falls for the mere mortal—a reporter played by Gregory Peck. Yet even in such a Hollywood fantasy the two lovers couldn’t be together. After a magical time together they are forced to part, brokenhearte
d. My mother couldn’t help but think back to the ending, which always moved her to tears, and wonder what possible hope of happiness she could have with a man like Papà. “I assumed that was how it would be for your father and me, too,” she said. “The whole thing seemed so impossible.”

  Sliding the letter into its flimsy envelope and slipping it back inside her clothing, she tried not to dwell on the tenderness it conveyed or the passion it barely concealed. My father’s words were etched on her heart but after she’d finished reading them she had to decide whether to keep it as an enduring token of his affection or burn it—as she was tempted to. When she reached home, she hurried straight to her bedroom and secreted it at the bottom of the shoe box under her chest of drawers—underneath the dowry for her future with Pietro. She would never allow herself to look at my father’s handwriting again for fear of the emotions it might stir within her. Nor would she even mention to him that she had received it, choosing the path of least resistance.

  If she’d hoped that his letter would be the last, then she’d underestimated how obsessed he’d become. Having found a fresh outlet for his feelings and one in which he could reveal them to her without being contradicted or interrupted, my father took pen to paper again and again. He prayed that the avalanche of mail he’d send her would eventually serve its purpose and sweep my mother off her feet. It worked.

  She was flattered not only by his attention but also by his unconcealed jealousy about the time she spent with Pietro—someone Papà only ever referred to as “him.” This intense rivalry made her realize that, crazy as it might seem, there was a possible alternative to marrying the man she seemed inexorably bound to for life. Furthermore, my father insisted that if she married Pietro, she would be throwing away her chance for happiness and opportunity. “I want you to know how beautiful everything is here,” he wrote her from his suite at the Savoy-Plaza in Manhattan. “The hotel [and] this dream of a room. New York really is the high life; it’s what I often talk to you about—how wonderful it is to live like this!” He added poignantly, “The lovelier the frame, the more I feel the absence of a beautiful painting.”

  His words planted a seed in the mind of a young woman who’d known nothing but shortage throughout her childhood, beginning with a scarcity of love from everyone but my grandmother. She didn’t imagine that she would ever visit somewhere like New York or experience the life my father was talking about. He probably represented her only chance to see more of the world.

  In another letter, Papà tried to frighten my mother by suggesting that if she kept turning him down he might be forced to give up his pursuit of her. He wrote, “I have tried in vain to make you see the light but my advances will come to nothing if your intention is to seal your love with him and throw away your future in the process…Any other miserable soul would have given up long ago faced with such circumstances.”

  He repeatedly spoke of “the burning and spontaneous calling” of his “aching heart” and of the waste of not seeing what he called their “beautiful and sublime love” come to something. He said in another note (written at three a.m. when he couldn’t sleep for thinking of her), “[It is] as though the air I breathe is no longer the same as when you are there.” He wrote frequently of his internal “agony” and the “torture” of not being with her. “Love me, Bruna. I pray that you love me more and more and that you will consider me worthy of your affection…of the desire of our souls to be together and to grow into something undeniably wonderful…indelible for the rest of our lives….Allow me to love you forever. I swear you will not regret it—I will prove it to you with each passing day.”

  His time away from my mother began to weigh heavily on him and Sundays were the worst. Wherever he was in the world, the offices would be closed, there would be no one to berate, and instead of improving on trade, his employees would be indulging in the kind of personal time he hadn’t regularly enjoyed with his family in years. Those were idle, wasted days, he always thought, especially in Rome. Left to his own devices, he’d lunch with Olwen, their sons, and their sons’ families at Villa Camilluccia. Elsewhere, he’d don his fedora and wander aimlessly around the streets, imagining my mother with Pietro. Was she holding his hand as they strolled somewhere together? Was she locked in his embrace and kissing his lips? “How I envy him!” he wrote, adding that the very thought pained his heart.

  On another Sunday he wrote again to his beloved from abroad. “I want to know everything you’ve been up to and where you’ve been…what were you up to, I ask myself…I want you to know how much I love you and how terribly I suffer from this.”

  As soon as he was back on European soil he’d send a telegram or—more daringly—call her at home. Pretending that he needed to speak to his secretary on an urgent business matter, he’d apologize politely to my grandmother or uncle Franco so as not to arouse their suspicions. Standing awkwardly by the telephone as they half listened in, my mother could only answer, “Sì, dottore,” or “No,” to his barrage of questions about how soon he could see her again. These brief monosyllabic exchanges were deeply unsatisfactory for him and only served to panic her more.

  On a train back from Florence, Papà wrote, “Tomorrow morning I will rush to the office…It couldn’t possibly be business that arouses such passion; it’s the burning desire to see a…jewel—the essence of virtue, form and grace with such gorgeous eyes and a penetrating expression that does little more than glance at me before turning away because she insists it’s all in vain.”

  As soon as he could, and on any pretext, he’d try to snatch time alone with her, begging for “just five minutes of kindness.” On good days he’d take her for lunch to Ristorante Alfredo on Via della Scrofa, famous for its eponymous fettuccine. Once at their table he’d whisper again how much he loved her and longed to be alone with her. He affectionately called her Nina, or Nicchi (short for Brunicchi).

  Beguiled by his charm, seduced by his letters, and entranced by the places he took her to, she agreed to start accompanying him without Vilma, and safe from prying ears, her resistance weakened.

  “I love you, Bruna,” my father sighed one day, his hand tantalizingly close to hers across the tablecloth. She could almost feel the electricity. “Don’t you see that we were meant for each other?”

  Lifting her eyes from the table, she whispered, “And I love you, Aldo,” as she watched his face shine with joy.

  The next letter he sent spoke of how the “unrelenting weight on his heart” had been lifted and how by choosing to ignore the “harsh reality” they faced, he was suddenly overcome by “explosive sensations…of love and loyalty.” He added, “How glorious it is to love you, my adorable Bruna…I am wildly in love with you.” He assured her that now he knew her true feelings for him, they “owed it to each other” not to rush into anything and “drown” their love. “You are so young and beautiful and your sacrifice is no doubt greater than mine…I know our destiny is to be together…You have conquered my heart and I belong to you.”

  As she read his words, a seed was planted from which would grow their destiny—and, eventually, mine.

  I’m sure we can all remember those heady days when we first fell in love with someone and our thoughts about them consumed each waking moment. I know I’ve certainly felt that way more times than I care to recall.

  My parents were no different, it seemed. Papà had clearly been smitten for a while but my mother now began to look forward to their romantic encounters with just as much excitement. Laughing at his jokes, half leaning against his shoulder as he murmured affectionately to her over dinner and wine, she relished the experience of feeling cherished and adored without any of Pietro’s brooding undercurrents.

  “I was Alice in Wonderland,” Mamma told me, daring to believe that even though their love was “shrouded in secrecy” it offered the chance of a different life. Sadly, her happiness was colored by her growing anxiety that their relationship was ultimately doomed, coupled with her constant fear of being discovered—
especially by Pietro. That very nearly happened one Friday when her fiancé was out of town but called the house shortly after her brother’s nine p.m. curfew only to discover that she wasn’t home. The following morning, when he arrived to pick her up he seemed preoccupied and told her he’d have to stop by his house before going out for the day. Once there, he locked her in the garage and hovered over her, demanding to know where she’d been the previous night.

  Trembling with fear and stammering a reply, she claimed she’d been to a local pizzeria with a friend but quickly realized her mistake when he reminded her that it was closed. My mother had never seen Pietro so incensed as he grabbed her by the arm, demanding to know who the “friend” was and threatening that she would never leave there alive unless she told him the truth.

  “It was Vilma, the lady I work with!” she cried. “When we found the restaurant closed we went for a dress fitting instead. I swear! I swear on my father’s grave!” When he insisted that she take him to Vilma, she begged him not to embarrass her. At one point, when he put her in the car to drive her there, she tried to run but he grabbed her and dragged her back. “I was terrified.”

  It took several minutes to calm him down, but once she did he gave her an ultimatum. “We’re getting married!” he declared. “Pick a date in October, sometime around your twenty-first birthday. I’ve waited long enough.” That was less than three months away. It meant that by the end of 1958—the most tumultuous year of my mother’s life—she was destined to become Pietro’s lawfully wedded wife.

  Afraid of how he might react if she refused, she reluctantly agreed. “What else could I do?” she told me. A year earlier, she’d accepted his marriage proposal and she knew that keeping her pledge was the only honorable thing to do. The time had come to put an end to the madness of her dalliance with my father. She was lucky it hadn’t gone too far.