I believe that most memoirs are novels masquerading as memoirs.  My novel -- about a young American translator who flirts with the idea of becoming an expatriate in France and italy -- is based on real events.  It is based on real people, real places, real stories, but cemented together with a strong layer of invention.  So, when I take you to a Tuscan villa in Italy, when I describe the grounds, the people, the walls, the history, a great deal of this is based on actuality. 

When Ed and i went to stay at the Auberge Birague,

we certainly never expected to meet up with

anyone either of us knew. Our habit was to take

breakfast in the café and sit near a window that opened onto a

flower box overflowing with nasturtiums already wilting in the

sultry air. One morning several days after we arrived, a woman

in a short-sleeved black shirt and beige linen pants entered the

café and sat down several tables away from us. I noticed Ed

watching her with laserlike curiosity. “My God!” he gushed to

me in a whisper. “I know this lady.” She turned out to be Marina

Vezzoli, an Italian writer he’d met at a literary festival in Chile.

He got up and approached her, shoulders canted forward like a

primary-school student cowering before his teacher. Extending

his hand he said, “Hello, Marina, Edward Cannon. We met in

Santiago. At the festival.”

She was around sixty, quite trim with tawny shoulder-length

hair veined with gray. Her eyes were pale and thoughtful as she

looked at him with puzzled reserve. But soon her face kindled

with recognition. “Ah, of course,” she said. “Forgive me. What

are you doing in France?”

Ed explained that he had lived in Paris for ten years, that he’d

just sold his apartment right across the street from the Auberge

Birague, and that he and I were staying at the hotel for a couple

of weeks before he left for America to begin a tenured teaching

job at New York University. At this point Marina Vezzoli shot

me a look of bemused curiosity. And then, for some odd reason,

Ed launched into Italian.

After listening to a few awkwardly constructed sentences,

Marina leaned forward, patted him gently on the hand, and said,

“Why don’t you speak in English, my friend? It would be easier

on both of us.” I winced for Ed. His midwestern charm was usually

able to warm even the chilliest reception. As famous as he

was, he was unaccustomed to having his own pretentiousness

pointed out to him. Clearly stung, he straightened his six-foottwo

frame, nervously raked his fingers through his longish,

thick dirty-blond hair. He was fifty-nine years old, and if you’d

seen him at a distance you might have mistaken him for an aging,

slightly paunchy surfer. He returned to our table, flustered

and embarrassed.

Genuinely bewildered, I said to him sotto voce, “Why did

you . . . switch to Italian like that?”

“I don’t know why. Now I feel like an idiot.”

“Well, don’t worry. It’s not that critical.”

“Something is wrong here, Russell,” Ed warned me. “She acts

as though she barely remembers me, but believe me, she does.

We sat next to each other at dinner, as a matter of fact.” They’d

spoken at length; he remembered one fascinating conversation

in which Marina Vezzoli assured him that Henry James didn’t

really understand Italians. And then a few years after Santiago,

Ed had served on a panel in Saint Paul de Vence discussing two

Italian writers, one of whom came up and introduced himself as

a friend of hers. “Now she treats me like a stranger,” he grumbled.

“Whose ego is as big as Mount Vesuvius.” I glanced over at

the woman now perusing the Corriere della Sera while sipping a

glass of freshly pressed grapefruit juice.

Ed went on with a bit more restraint. “Besides, I’ve told you

all about her. She’s the one who wrote that wonderful novel that

was made into the film we saw. The one called Conversion.” He

leaned back in his chair.

“Oh,” I said. “So that’s who she is.”

As though perceiving that Ed and I wanted to gossip about

her, the woman took a last bite of her toast, carefully folded her

newspaper, and pushed back from the table. Nodding cordially

at us, she left the breakfast room. I remember Ed watching her

exit with an expression of pure reverence.

Our room at the Auberge Birague was decorated in blond

Swedish furniture; it had tall glass doors that opened onto a balcony.

Late in the night on the day we encountered Marina Vezzoli,

I woke up to a terrible pounding, to the smell of sweaty

bodies, to the alarming realization that there were other people

in the room besides us. Two men wearing black ski masks pulled

down to their lips had burst in from the terrace. One of them

held what looked like some sort of semiautomatic weapon. The

other pulled out a long, bowed knife, the sort that might fillet a

large fish. When I saw the first glint of the rifle’s muzzle, when I

heard the menacing click of the magazine, I was paralyzed by one

desperate hope: that the gun and the man who held it would

somehow just melt into fantasy and that I wouldn’t have to die

right there. “Stay where you are!” the gunman garbled in

foreign-sounding French. As if we’d dare to counter them.

“Your money! Your passports! Where!” snarled the other one

with the knife.

I managed to tell him and he opened drawers, quickly scrabbling

through the contents. He turned back to me and took several

steps closer, waving his dagger. “They’re not!”

“I have them,” said Ed, who was leaning up in bed on his elbows,

looking typically angry at something not to his liking. It

was as though he hadn’t even registered the threat of the

weapons.

From here on it all blurs, the order of things. I don’t know if

it was right then when one of them actually protested, “Wait,

shit! Two men. It’s two men,” before Ed recklessly jumped out of

bed. Standing there in a T-shirt and skimpy underwear, he

started screaming in English, “Get out of here, you monkeys!

Go fuck up somebody else!” There was a quick tirade in a language

other than French, but then they actually listened to him.

They turned and rushed back to the balcony and clambered out

whatever way they had come in.

Ed and I sat on our twin beds in quiet disbelief, staring at the

doors opening onto the slate mansard roofs of the place des Vosges.

The curtains billowed as if in the lingering spirit of such an

outrageous intrusion. “Are you insane?” I finally shouted at

him. “They could’ve killed us!”

Collapsing onto the bed, Ed, looking befuddled, admitted, “I

can’t believe what I said.”

“You called them monkeys. And they weren’t even black!”

“By the way, that language they broke into, that was Albanian.”

“So what! They still could’ve understood English.”

He stared at me, blinking. “Of course, you’re right, Russell.

But you should know me by now. What happens when I get

angry.”

“Ed, you told them to fuck off,” I reminded him.

This most eloquent of poets, who could also be profoundly

vulgar, actually laughed. And then I did, too—comic relief it

must have been. It suddenly seemed as though the bizarre incident

had never even occurred. The apoplectic yelling had attracted

no attention, no knock on the door, nobody calling up

from the lobby. The hotel had remained absolutely still. Could

no one have heard the commotion?

“We’ve got to call down and tell them what happened,” I insisted.

“Okay, but wait a minute.” Ed swept the hair out of his eyes

and peered at me. He was breathless. “You heard them say ‘two

men’ right?

I told him I had.

“They weren’t expecting to find us.”

I didn’t answer, trying to figure out why this might be significant.

“Don’t you get it, Russell? They were expecting a man in bed

with his wife.”

“If that’s true then we’re doubly lucky they didn’t shoot us,

the wrong people.”

“No, Russell. If they were hired or politically motivated, if

they’d have done something to us, then they would’ve failed

their purpose.”

“All the more reason to let them know downstairs.”

Ed looked distressed. “I don’t want to,” he insisted. “I just

can’t deal with anything more tonight. They’ll insist on calling

the police who will want to take reports. We’ll be up all night.”

He hesitated. “They’re gone; they’re probably halfway across

Paris by now. We can let the hotel know in the morning.” He

paused again, seeming bewildered.

“What is it, do you think you recognize something about

them?” I asked.

“No, no, it’s not that,” he replied. He got up and went into

the bathroom and left the door ajar. “Not at all.” He remained

there in complete stillness and finally I asked him if anything

was wrong. When he didn’t answer, I walked over and found

him staring at himself in the mirror. His eyes finally met mine.

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m just getting some Xanax.” He reached

for his shaving kit, opened a plastic cylinder and took out a one

milligram pill that he divided equally and gave half to me.

I awoke the next morning from a very deep sleep. The room

was profoundly quiet. Ed’s face looked unnaturally pale. I

climbed out of my bed and went over to check. I ventured to

feel his forehead. It was chill to my touch, winter cold; he no

longer seemed to be breathing. This was as shocking to me as

the appearance of that semiautomatic rifle just hours before. “It

can’t be!” I said aloud. “He can’t possibly . . .” I told myself,

cradling him in my arms like a child. I swept my fingers

through his hair and softly whispered, “No, no, no,” as though

my gentle reproach could make him breathe again. view abbreviated excerpt only...

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