not want a job as translator, or as Marcella had suggested, as a secretary. All she wanted was to scrub floors in her old home, beside Marcella, and for that she barely needed to speak English at all.
“You're familiar with the existing housekeeper, you say, miss?” She nodded. “Did she send you here?” The Americans spoke loudly and precisely to the Italians, assuming that they were both stupid and deaf. Serena nodded again. “How well do you speak English? A little? More than that? Can you understand me?”
“Si. Un po' … a leetle. Enough.” Enough to clean floors and polish silver, she thought to herself, and apparently the woman in uniform at the desk thought so too.
“All right. The major moves in on Tuesday. His aide-de-camp will be there too, and the sergeant who attends to his household. In addition, there will be three orderlies. I think they're going to be housed in some old servants' rooms upstairs.” Serena knew immediately which ones. The rooms under the roof were hot but well aired, and had been occupied by several of her parents' servants over the years. The better quarters were belowstairs, and she was pleased that she and Marcella were keeping those. “We haven't found another girl yet, but we're still looking. Do you think that, in the meantime, you and this woman Marcella can handle it alone?”
“Yes.” Serena answered quickly. She was not anxious to have an intruder belowstairs.
“The other woman seemed quite old when I saw her. What about heavy work?”
“I'll do.” Serena stood to her full height and made an effort to stand even straighter and taller than usual. “I am nineteen.”
“Good. Then maybe we won't need another girl.” The American woman mused, as suddenly Serena realized that if she did the heavy work and discouraged them from hiring another young woman to help her, then she would be spending most of her time upstairs with “them,” in the rooms she had hoped to avoid. But one couldn't have everything. She would just have to brace herself and do it. It was worth it, not to have a stranger around, downstairs with her and Marcella. She would have resented that more than she resented the American officers living upstairs in what had once been her house. It was crazy really, this business of her living with Marcella in a house that had once belonged to her family and now belonged to someone else and was being rented to the American army. What in hell was she doing there? She wasn't really sure, but for the moment it seemed to feel right, so she'd stay. “We'll send someone out to inspect the place on Monday and give you any necessary details. Please see to it that all the rooms are clean, especially the master bedroom. The major”—she smiled coquettishly and Serena thought she looked absurd—”is used to very handsome quarters.” The comment was wasted on Serena, who didn't really care. The American woman stood up then, handed Serena some papers to sign, and explained that she'd be paid in lire on the first and fifteenth of every month. Fifty dollars a month plus room and board was what it amounted to. And it sounded good to Serena. Very good. She left the building on the Piazza della Repubblica with a happy grin, and by the time she got back to her own house and stepped into her little apartment with Marcella in the basement, she was singing old familiar songs.
“My, my, so happy. They must have hired you to work for the general.”
“No.” She grinned at Marcella. “Or should I say yes? They hired me to work for my very own general: you.” For a blank moment Marcella didn't seem to understand her.
“What?”
“You heard me. I will be working for you. Starting on Monday. Or before, if you'd like.”
“Here?” Marcella looked stunned. “In the palazzo?”
“That's right.”
“No!” Marcella turned on her instantly, outraged. “You tricked me! I gave you that address so that you could get a good job! Not a job like this!”
“This is a good job.” And then gently, “It's good enough for you, Celia. And I want to be here with you. I don't want to work in an office. I just want to be here. In the house.”
“But not like that. Santa Maria … what an insanity. But you're crazy. You can't do that?”
“Why not?”
And then it began. “Because,” Marcella railed at her, “you are forgetting who you are again, Principessa.”