Geri

Meanwhile, in Florence, a birthday.

   By the time Alfred Geri, curator of the exalted Uffizi Museum in Florence and old as Methuselah, slams down the telephone on Armitage’s wearied circumspections (art here so war there, Italy this and France that), Césca sashays into the private study and hands her grandfather a temerariously scribbled note from the east wing custodian bearing the news that the second floor toilet has just mysteriously flushed itself about fifteen times, and unless Geri can do something to banish the demon from the premises, he’ll have to recruit himself a new custodian. Geri issues a prolonged sigh, not about the note or the toilet or the custodian. On an ordinary day at the museum, his care for those dilemmas is minimal at best. But today, certainly, there are to be no problems, nothing to cause darling Césca Geri, the beautiful granddaughter threatening to turn twelve years old any second now and wearing the presumptuous azure birthday dress her parents couldn’t bring themselves to delay to give her, any sort of worry.

   Armitage is not about to become a worry. Geri sweeps it from his mind, gingerly kneeling down to Césca, and smiles the astonishingly simple smile that only grandfathers of lovely daughters seem to master. She’s maddened with anticipation of her present. Last year was a guitar, a real guitar, for her to pluck out the songs she hears at school. Before that was a brush and set of paints, the oval-framed product of which hangs now between the two picture windows on the isosceles wall of the study. This year’s gift, however, Geri believes, taking Césca’s right hand gently in his left, can be much more … marvelous if also less tangible.

   Stepping slowly, deliberately in an unmistakable this-is-your-gift manner to Césca’s swelling glee, Geri unlatches the brass door to the balcony and leads her to the outside, to the sunny colorful view of the piazza and the green Arno flowing humbly before she realizes she’s looking in the wrong place, before she sees it, arms stretching out over the laughter and waving, actually waving huge fervent strokes of delight, to one dozen mighty Cielo Brigata airships floating in the lofty blue above. And to the elation of the younger Geri and the pride of the other, they descend nella formazione, draped in waving colors and shimmering lilies on the Florentine gonfalons, to weave themselves into a constellation of two very beautiful letters:  C G.

   She squeezes his hand and doesn’t know it. “You’re very welcome, Césca,” he grins.