“He was a visionary. What do you think of the ‘Mona Lisa?’”
“C'è di peggio,” he says dismissively.I’ve seen worse.“But there is really a lot of hype around it. I much prefer ‘The Last Supper’ or ‘Virgin of the Rocks.’”
One day I will take him to see those paintings and many more.
“Do you miss school?” I ask and he stills because I have referenced his former life. Poor, poor Matthew.
“No,” he says very carefully.
“You could re-enroll somewhere else.” I attempt to sound casual even while knowing I am pushing.
“Da Vinci was unschooled,” Giovanni says. “He had home instruction on reading, writing, and mathematics but no formal education. Did you know that?”
“I did not,” I say, allowing for this deflection.
“His mother was a peasant, or more likely a slave. Caterina was her name. She was raped by her master, a notary named Ser Piero da Vinci. Leonardo was illegitimate but took his father’s name and left his mother at the age of five to live with him when he remarried. They were close, Leonardo and his rapist father.”
I clear my throat and study him, giving him the opportunity to elucidate me further, if he so desires.
“Leonardo was arrested for sodomy too, at the age of twenty-four,” he says.
“That I did know. That he was homosexual, at least.”
“Is that why you came to America?” he asks. The shift in conversation is remarkable, but so is his mind.
“That was one of the reasons. Sexuality in general is far more repressed over there. I was also looking to expand my professional horizons. My Don in Roma was not a respectable man, and I was getting drawn into crimes that didn’t agree with my constitution.”
Those were bloody times indeed and the source of most of my nightmares and my regrets. I was young but not blameless. I’m grateful I got out when I did.
“Killing,” Giovanni says. But that was only one aspect of it.
“Killing I can handle. But harming spouses or children is a hard limit.”
I hid as many as I could, and then I left Italy on a cargo ship out of La Spezia with little more than my gun and the shirt on my back. A friend in New York introduced me to Don Aponte, Giovanni’s grandfather as well as his namesake. I worked my way up in the organization, admiring the way my new Don ran his business—discreet, measured, but with an uncompromising strength. I was his lead enforcer for a while. The work was familiar, and my English wasn’t so good. Eventually, I was promoted to underboss and then, his capo or right-hand man. In that position I learned to deal with a whole new type of criminal, smooth-talking liars with money and connections who can’t be so easily eliminated—politicians, developers, and the like. Matthew Sr. taught me a different kind of negotiation strategy where power, influence, and secrets are the main currencies. I’ll be forever indebted to that man.
“Your grandfather was good at what he did,” I tell Giovanni.May he rest in peace.
“So are you. I can remember Grandfather saying, ‘get Valentin on the phone’ or ‘put Valentin on it,’ and he always seemed more at ease after.”
I smile at the shared memory. “From my side, it was always—” I interrupt myself from calling him by his former name.“He was always bragging about your accomplishments, how smart you were or some mischief you’d gotten into with your tutors.”
Giovanni smiles and it seems safe for him to remember those times. “I tormented them,” he readily admits.
I recall with him an incident when he’d hid from one of his instructors, so that the woman was tearing through the large manor, calling his name over and over, distraught that she’d lost the Don’s precious grandson. I found him eventually, in the deep shade of a tree reading a book without the slightest concern that he’d been missed.
“You always listened to me,” he says wistfully. “You always treated me like I was something special.”
“You are something special, Gio.”
He smiles and glances away, embarrassed. I return to our original conversation. “So, school?”
“I do not wish to go back.” His chin lifts in a princely manner. “And I would appreciate it if the subject were not raised again.”
I swallow my immediate response, which is to tell him the subject will be raised if and when I see fit, and instead go for a more circuitous approach. “I appreciate that you are so comfortable establishing your boundaries with me.” He studies me closely to see if I’m being facetious. I am not. “There is another matter I’d like to discuss. This is a requirement in order for us to move forward in our explorations.” He tilts his head, wary. “I’d like you to start seeing a therapist.”
His face pales immediately and a woozy look overtakes him. “Give me your hand.” He places it in mine, and I squeeze tightly, trying to anchor him to the present. “There’s nothing scheduled as of yet, and you’ll have plenty of time to digest this, but this is something I need you to do, for yourself and for me too. Our sexual experiments are going to unearth a lot of emotions, good and bad, and while I’m capable in many ways, I’m not a therapist, nor do I want to act as one to you.”
“But I only want to talk to you,” he says.
