For Having Offended Thee

By Drew Bacigalupa

Echoing the international "dolce vita" scandals of mid-20th century, the novel follows New York socialite Kirsten de Furia's flight from celebrated American husband and brilliant son to the arms of famous Italian artist in Tuscany. The center of numerous, colorful, creative family members and friends, Kirsten's betrayals and ultimate search for reconciliation leaves no one unscathed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Drew Bacigalupa
• Release date: Oct 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452466446

Drew Bacigalupa

Artist/Writer, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Graduate Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; post-graduate work L'Accademia di Belli Arti, Florence, Italy. Married, 5 children. Extensive travels, work and study abroad, paintings and sculpture private collections, public installations USA and Italy. Published works include novels, children's books, collections of essays and short stories, newspaper columns and features.

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*****

"… Bacigalupa is an antidote for the clever vacuousness of much modern fiction … a true storyteller, more than a smith of nuance. The author’s instinct for human understanding—of compassion for a man’s or woman’s frailties, of the timeless urge for integrity and peace with one’s soul—makes Bacigalupa’s people live … the characters in For Having Offended Thee struggle with loyalties cultural, spiritual, sexual and geographical, forced to come to grips with the darkness of their own particular shortcomings, and to glimpse what personal redemption really may mean ... I’d love to see this story on the screen."

—Richard Polese, Southwest Book Views

*****

FOR HAVING OFFENDED THEE

by

Drew Bacigalupa

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY

The Studio of Gian Andrea at Smashwords

For Having Offended Thee

Copyright 2010 by Drew Bacigalupa

Cover painting and design by the author

A work of fiction, names of all characters not related to persons living or dead, though many readers have assumed the story is based on the Rome/Hollywood dolce vita scandals of the early 1950s. The author affirms that, despite similarities of location and international fame of central characters, the work is a fictitious novel.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be resold or given away to others. If you would like to share the book with others, please purchase additional copies for each person. Thank you for respecting the work of the author and Smashwords Editions.

*****

We have sinned quite as much as our fathers —

Psalm 106

The Jerusalem Bible

*****

PART ONE

Reunion

The first time I saw Kirstin de Furia after all those years, I thought she was mad. She came to the door of her uptown Manhattan apartment with blood on her hands, wildness in her eyes, hair falling in disorder about the long thin face. She looked at me for long seconds with the blankest of stares. And I remember thinking that perhaps she did not recognize me, it had been a long time, and I could quickly go away. One shies from walking in on madness. Then, still with no sign of recognition, she spoke my name, and one of the bloody hands listlessly beckoned me to enter.

I cautiously followed her across the wide living-room, unable to force any sound from my throat. Alarmed—yet ironically bemused. Had I come all the way from Europe aching for a sense of peace I thought America could give me only to stumble into something like this my first few hours ashore? And what was it? My eyes stealthily sought out every inch of the room, any corner that might harbor whatever havoc Kirstin had wrought. Nowhere anything. Her shoulders moved before me in a straight course, through the living-room and dinette. At the pantry door, they stopped. Kirstin turned to me, and this time her eyes were no longer blank, were frightened, confused, pitiful. The bloody hands stole at me in entreaty.

Frank, I’ve killed Stoic.

Stoic proved to be a gray and yellow cockatiel, brutally hacked, lying in a small red pool on the kitchen floor.

Kirstin collapsed. I carried her into the living-room and settled her on the sofa. She revived but was shaken by convulsions. I found sedatives in the bathroom and forced her to take one. She fought swallowing at first, begging me not call anyone in. Those were the only words she spoke—Call no one, Frank, no one—and with such urgency that I respected her wish. After a while she slept, fitfully. I got a blanket from the bedroom and covered her. Then I stood about wondering what to do next. A pigeon on the ledge outside the closed window reminded me of the bright spring day I’d left outside. I considered leaving but could not bring myself to do it. I was committed—and resigned myself to that, returning to the kitchen to tackle the first task.

My stomach is not always strong, and once I had to halt the work and retch in the kitchen sink. It was obvious that Kirstin had not killed the cockatiel with one angry quick thrust of the knife. Long after the bird was dead, she must have torn ruthlessly at its small corpse. I found rags, newspapers and a paper bag in a pantry closet, packed the mess of flesh, guts and stained feathers into a parcel which I dropped into the waste can. I cleaned the knife and the floor, all of this taking quite a bit of time. Yet, when I’d finished, Kirstin still slept.

I sat across from her in the living-room, watching her face in tormented sleep. She was still very beautiful, fair and slender. I’d not seen her since the war years, yet she was much as I’d remembered her—strong Nordic features, classical in proportion. Her present leanness accentuated the sharpness of her broad brow, deep-set eyes, the high cheekbones. There was a difference. The features were the same, but once they’d been rounded, girlish, now were angular, womanly, knowing.

The apartment was the kind of place I’d expected Kirstin to have—fashionable, orderly, what she’d always said she wanted. Back in the earliest days when we were kids together in Baltimore, I’d believed she would someday live like this. She had seemed misplaced in our dreary neighborhood, had appeared to be waiting for, living for, the day which would deliver her into just these surroundings.

Framed photos of her husband and son graced the mantel. I recognized Lindley Hausner from the many pictures I’d seen of him in newspapers. He was a successful writer, both as novelist and critic. In Europe, I’d frequently come across articles about him in the American giornali. He was often photographed at various social functions in the company of actors and writers, Hollywood and New York coteries. It struck me now that I had seldom seen Kirstin with him in those photographs. He looked out of his portrait with cool, detached, slightly disdainful eyes.

The boy seemed much like Kirstin, had the same angular face, already harbored an intense expression similar to the one she now wore. He must be about fifteen years old, having been born when we all quite young, Kirstin not yet twenty. Even in this portrait, which evidently was not recent, he seemed too old a child to be Kirstin’s. She herself had not stopped being a child to me.

I heard a startled cry behind me, and turned to see Kirstin sitting up on the sofa, staring down at the dried blood on her hands. I dutifully went to fetch basin, soap and towel.

Though I’d not seen her since that day we both decided to leave Baltimore behind us forever, we’d maintained a vital, if spasmodic, contact. I sent her an occasional post-card from my travels, Kirstin wrote only the briefest lines—but at every significant development in her life.

—Frank, I’ve married Lindley Hausner. Honeymooning in Mexico.

—Frank, I’ve had a child. A boy. Looks like me, I think.

—Frank, I’m reading Goethe. Why did you never make me read him before? And do you know Dardi’s paintings?

—Vacationing with the boy in Maine. Happiness beyond belief. Wanted you to know.

Typical of her highly irregular brief notes to me, the messages often took months catching up with a new address. A few times, like this:—terribly despondent. Someone has to be told.

Though I’ve often taken Kirstin lightly, I never read those lines with anything but interest and respect. They were the essence of her.

Kirstin reaches into my earliest memories. We were both born on Washington Street in South Baltimore within a few months of each other. We lived in one of the same long blocks of row houses which were endemic to the city. Each house was identical, a narrow two-story building fronted by a flight of four white stone steps. In summer, most social activities of the neighborhood revolved around those steps. Families sat in the cool on them, young men courted girls on them, mothers gave their breasts to infants on them. Drunks occasionally sprawled on the steps, and, of course, children played on them—games of ball-and-jacks, checkers, pick-up-sticks. The steps were always pristinely white. Each morning of every year the women went on their knees with buckets of soapy water, scrub-brushes and rags, and worked vigorously to keep their stamp of regimentation shining bright.

It must have been on a pair of those steps that Kirstin and I first came to know one another. There were many children in the neighborhood. Kirstin had brothers and sisters and we all played together but there was always a special alliance between her and me that none of the others shared. We eventually came to be constantly together. We began school at St Elizabeth’s and remained in the same classes through all eight grades with many of our evenings shared over books. I was more often in Kirstin’s home than in my own, for my mother had died while I was quite young and my father simply disappeared one day, sucked into a vacuum from which he never returned. I lived with an aunt and uncle and their two sons but preferred Kirstin’s house where her Italian father, Norwegian mother, four sisters and two brothers shared a gregarious way of life I highly coveted. Mrs de Furia was especially kind to an orphaned boy and I’ve never forgotten her.

What was Kirstin like as a child? There is in my heart a presence of Kirstin as a little girl, not any strong recollection of habits or actions. Still, not all recall fails. She was, I remember, straight and angular, as she later proved to be in womanhood after the plumpness of adolescence had gone. She was not considered a beautiful child. She was the only one of the de Furia children to inherit her mother’s Scandinavian looks, the brothers and sisters clearly stamped with their father’s heritage, that dark sultry beauty of the south. Beside these other robust children, Kirstin appeared fragile. Her sisters’ dark flashing eyes, their heads of lustrous blue-black hair paled Kirstin with her light brown eyes and short blonde bob. She was the only one of the children having a Scandinavian christian name. And, not surprisingly, she was her father’s favorite. Whenever de Furia was troubled, he sought out his one fair child and pressed her close to his aching Latin heart.

She was an intelligent girl, quick to learn. Her school work went easily. There was a sense of mischief and adventure in her, and often it was she who suggested our forays into numerous escapades. In summer, she suggested trips into the country, planned excursions on the Chesapeake, argued me into going swimming or berry picking when I’d sooner read a book. Yet she was never aggressive with me, and even as a youngster delighted in my insistence to lead as a man. Often when I entertained her with true or fabricated stories, with romantic desires and ambitions, she would sit and listen with a vague, happy—and, it seems to me now, femininely indulgent—expression of sympathy.

Our relationship was considered highly unusual on Washington Street where, sooner or later, boys and girls drifted into separate groups—no one wanted to be branded sissy or tomboy. Kirstin and I were the butt of many jokes, often cruel ones. The de Furias and my aunt and uncle sometimes speculated as to whether or not we’d marry when we came of age. It seemed inevitable in view of our enduring companionship Yet such a consideration only embarrassed us; especially after we reached adolescence, physical contact with each other was something to be avoided. I was jealous of Kirstin’s escorts, and she of the girls I dated, but both of us understood, without discussing it, that we were not right together for the conventional practices of our peers. I did date her once, when she was desperate for an escort to a high school dance. We were silent and awkward, changed partners later at the dance, and avoided each other the rest of the evening.

My sharpest recollection of Kirstin at that time, our high school years, is of her in the midst of her family at home. There was always a crowd at the de Furias, always animation. The kitchen was the heart of the home as Mr de Furia’s chores kept her there almost constantly, and neither husband nor children were usually far from her when in the house. Kirstin’s father had a rocking-chair by the window, and there he spent most of his leisure hours, not far from his wife’s side. The children did their lessons at the kitchen table, or in a far corner of the room. Many times, Kirstin and I huddled over books at the table while her mother drifted pleasantly about, preparing the meal, and her father rocked tirelessly on, reading or sipping his wine or listening to Italian songs emanating from a battered old Victrola.

Often, Mr de Furia with Kirstin at his feet, her head in his lap, would speak of his beloved Italy, his days as a youth in Florence, his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker. He would tell how one day he saw a beautiful young vision from the north in Piazza del Duomo. She was touring, stood in rapt wonderment before Ghiberti’s doors, and now and then thumbed her Guide Bleu. He could not resist her. For the first time in his life he was moved to speak boldly to a foreign young lady on the street. When she returned to the north, they exchanged letters all winter. In the spring she came again, and this time he personally conducted her about Florence. She never went home again. She married the gentle man from the south, sailed with him to America and bore his children. And as de Furia spoke, his eyes caressed the late fair fruit of their love, and often his lips brushed the top of the blonde head. Occasionally I, with the dark brothers and sisters, bitterly resented this tenderness so generously lavished on one child.

Yes, it is there one places Kirstin as a young girl—with her family, and, particularly, in her father’s embrace. I do not think the fact that I had no parents of my own makes me put excessive stress on this. The de Furias were romantic, unique—the entire neighborhood recognized them as such. All that follows in Kirstin’s story stems inevitably from her special presence amidst the kindly Italian and his Scandinavian bride, and the beautiful, expansive brothers and sisters.

As a high school senior, Kirstin had turned plump, lost some of her angular lines, showed promise of turning into a ravishing beauty. She was witty, remarkably so, and popular. She had many interests, was developing a discriminating taste in the arts. She was an individualist, making it more and more difficult to group her with the other de Furia children. Friends spoke usually of one of the de Furia girls when referring to any of her sisters, but this designation was never applicable to Kirstin. She remained Kirstin de Furia, distinct, unique.

Just before her graduation from high school, one swift fateful stroke shattered completely the life Kirstin had always known. Both parents were instantly killed in a traffic accident one night while returning from a movie in a taxi. It was trauma for all the children, but Kirstin, being the youngest, perhaps suffered most. Older brothers and sisters had already found interests outside the home, were married or planning to be, were in business. One brother left the house immediately after the funeral, was not heard from for a year or more—and then from Spain, where he soldiered in the Civil War as a mercenary. It was impractical for the children to keep the house on Washington Street, and soon they sold it. Kirstin lived first with one married sister, then another. I began to see her only rarely. Each time I did, I was aware of sadness in her, of a growing emptiness which she did not seem able to remedy.

Youth is rarely easy. How we anguished as young graduates seeking something to believe in, something worth living for. There was Depression in our country, Hitler in Germany, unrest throughout Europe. Sensitive, thoughtful young men and women need look no farther than the nearest headlines to know what the future threatened. In America, middle-class youths of the cities could not afford college, going immediately from high school into small-salaried, monotonous jobs that would help meet family mortgage payments, a hundred debts which had accumulated through the Terrible Thirties. Kirstin and I both experienced this, she to help out the sister with whom she lived, I to repay a little the material benefits I’d received from my aunt and uncle. Many of our friends were drinking heavily, carousing, engaging in stealthy liaisons that resulted in pregnancies, hasty marriages. There was a pervasive rationale at that time for any kind of license—war’s coming, what the hell! Kirstin, when I saw her, spoke of her loneliness and isolation in a world she did not understand. She yearned for the spiritual and moral values, the sense of security she’d known with her father. I was angry with the bleak prospect of the coming years, wanted to crowd all the experiences I’d ever craved into what little time remained before war claimed me. I began to speak of roaming, at first halfheartedly, but finally with definite conviction. One day I walked out on my job, went to see Kirstin at her office, told her I was training out that night—Mexico, as good a place as any. She looked at me dully, as if she could not understand where I’d gotten the energy to make such a decision. And then she said Go Frank. I need someone to set an example.

I was in Mexico one month when I had a letter she’d written in New York. It said only that she hoped she could find work in order to remain there. There was no further word for almost six weeks. Then came the brief card—forwarded to my changed address—announcing that she’d married Lindley Hausner. Honeymooning in Mexico City. By that time, I was already back in the U.S. At boot camp in the Carolinas.

*****

And the long years had closed over us. As I washed Kirstin’s hands of Stoic’s blood, the span of time indeed lay heavy between us. What could I speak of to this woman, what had we really shared for nearly two decades except a few scribbled lines? Could I tell her of the old war or of my present unrest or of all the things I had failed to accomplish in Europe or here in America? Did I want to inquire about what would lead her to slaughter a helpless pet? Was I interested in the havoc of still another life? My eyes went to the window again, and to the sunny day outside.

Go, Frank, Kirstin said. Go. Get out of this.

I set the basin on the floor and sat back, studying her, trying to read something—anything—in her face. It was a mask. And my eyes kept going from her to the window.

It’s all right, Frank. I’ll be all right. Go back into your sunshine.

Perhaps I would have, except at that moment my foot kicked the basin and caused the stained water to swirl noisily about. Kirstin began to cry.

Let me at least call a doctor for you. I can’t just leave you, Kirstin.

No, no doctor. He couldn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. This has been coming on a long time.

She waved her hand at me with a finality that indicated she wasn’t capable of further discussion. She sat waiting for me to go. I got up and looked out the window.

It’s a fine day, Kirstin. I struggled for deliverance. Could you manage to be outdoors with me for a while. Maybe just walk. Get away from here.

She considered that.

Yes. Yes, I would. I really shouldn’t stay here alone, Frank. Need a little time. Keep me out until about six, until Lindley gets home?

She rose from the sofa.

I’m sorry you had to find this. Sorry for Stoic, too. You see, she said, numbly, "the cleaning woman’s off today and there was no one here, and this thing’s been coming on for so long. Today I was thinking of Papa, needing him, wanting him, convinced he alone could bring me calm. But he wouldn’t