Villa Coco

An older narrator named Geoffrey looks back on himself as a 21-year-old American arriving at a small Tuscan train station near the end of the millennium. A recent college graduate with a degree in Archives and Record Management, Geoffrey has answered a newspaper advertisement for an "adjutant" to catalog the collection of a Baronessa, an Italian baroness, at a country house in Tuscany before Christmas. His college adviser, who disapproved of both his academic major and his homosexuality, gave him the clipped ad as his only practical career advice. After a chaotic college experience, Geoffrey has vowed to swear off romantic entanglements and devote himself to intellectual discipline.

Ghazel, an elderly Lebanese handyman, picks Geoffrey up from the station in a battered Mitsubishi, christening him "Giovedì" (Italian for Thursday), a nickname the household adopts and never abandons. The villa turns out to be not the grand mansion Geoffrey expected but an ivy-covered stone building hidden along a narrow dirt road. Estelle, a woman of Italian and Algerian heritage and a friend of the household, greets him and explains that the rooms are not yet ready. Inside, Geoffrey finds an entrance hall crammed with artifacts, paintings, and a bronze sculpture of a boat. The Baronessa, Lisabetta, descends a wrought-iron staircase: a small, imperious, white-haired woman of 92 with an untraceable accent and two fawn pugs named Pushkin and Gorky. Immediately displeased that Geoffrey is neither blond nor British, she orders him to leave, but a fortuitous train strike buys him time.

Geoffrey proves his usefulness during a septic crisis and earns a provisional place. The Baronessa sets three conditions: he must learn to dress properly, learn Italian, and study history and culture. When Geoffrey accidentally places a hat on a daybed, she erupts in superstitious terror, insisting it portends death; the prescribed remedy requires Geoffrey to touch the nearest man's testicles. Oscar, her old friend and art dealer from Genova, arrives carrying brown paper packages and cheerfully volunteers. He privately advises Geoffrey never to leave the villa, promising the experience will be worthwhile.

Geoffrey settles into daily life, learning Italian through conversations with the cook Nimali and through long walks past Signora Guicciardini, an elderly woman who shouts at passersby from a red chair at a crossroads. The Baronessa repeatedly delays his cataloging, diverting him to household chores and errands, telling him cryptically that she has "put something in motion from which there will soon be no returning" (43). Oscar makes a second visit with his brown paper packages, and Geoffrey notices him and the Baronessa whispering together, examining paintings and carrying parcels in and out. An old American acquaintance of the Baronessa, Furman Childress, pays an unannounced visit. She introduces Geoffrey as her young expert, which puzzles him, and after Furman leaves she reveals her disdain for the man, claiming he seduced a diamond out of a friend on Capri.

The Baronessa announces a trip to Ferrara. Her young cousin Giacomo, a shy book editor from Vicenza, arrives to drive, while Geoffrey sits in the back beside a mysterious cardboard package no one will explain. In Ferrara, the Baronessa sends the two young men to the fishing village of Comacchio and then to Ravenna while she keeps a private appointment. The Mitsubishi breaks down, stranding Geoffrey and Giacomo overnight in a room with only one bed. Over dinner, Giacomo reveals his marriage to a college friend named Laurine is one of convenience, arranged so both could satisfy family expectations. Geoffrey breaks his vow, and the two spend the night together. They visit Ravenna's Byzantine mosaics before returning to Villa Coco, where the Baronessa reports that her Ferrara business "did not go as I had hoped" (111) and declares the rooms at last ready for cataloging.

As autumn deepens, Geoffrey catalogs the collection room by room while noticing objects mysteriously disappearing and sensing a thinning of the villa's contents. The annual olive harvest conscripts the entire household, and Giacomo returns. The Baronessa maneuvers the two young men to Estelle's cottage for an evening of grape-crushing, plying them with dangerously potent homemade wine, and their relationship resumes. Estelle and Giacomo reveal that the Baronessa's great love is not a man but a wooden two-masted sailing vessel she named Caprice, which she owned for 20 years before having to sell it. Geoffrey connects the name to the bronze sculpture in the entrance hall.

Oscar arrives for a final visit. He privately tells Geoffrey, "Do not be lazy in love" (160), warning him not to passively accept whatever comes. Giacomo then calls with an elaborate proposal: a pink building in Milan reconfigured into apartments, with the top floor for Giacomo and Geoffrey. Before Geoffrey can respond, the Baronessa tells him Oscar has died. Geoffrey learns she and Oscar's doctor had known about his leukemia for months. She slams her fist and insists Oscar "cannot go," that they "had such plans" (197). Geoffrey realizes the story was never about himself: It was about a dying man whose best friend tried to brighten his final days with high spirits and the company of young people.

Geoffrey accompanies the Baronessa to Oscar's memorial in Genova. On the drive, she reveals she once stole a toe from the ancient Four Tetrarchs sculpture in Istanbul. At the memorial, Furman tells Geoffrey the Baronessa was once a thief on Capri and that Oscar was not an artist but a dealer. Inspired by her example, Geoffrey steals Oscar's ashes, slipping the urn into her purse, and they flee. On the drive home, she advises that with a married man, one must decide whether it is "enough, or not enough" (223), and they witness the sun set three times as the road dips and rises through the mountains.

Geoffrey finishes his catalog and discovers the Picasso in the Baronessa's bedroom is a forgery. He confronts Estelle, who begs him to keep the catalog as it stands, "for Oscar" (234). The clues converge: Oscar's packages were replacement paintings, the Ferrara trip delivered the real Picasso for sale, and the disappearing objects were originals swapped for copies. Guided by Oscar's counsel not to be lazy in love, Geoffrey tells Giacomo he cannot accept the Milan proposal.

In Venice, Princess Pippa, an aristocratic childhood friend of the Baronessa, reveals the grand scheme: The Baronessa has sold Villa Coco and everything in it to Furman, replacing genuine art with copies, and used the proceeds to buy back Caprice. Geoffrey realizes he was hired as a young, unknowing archivist whose notarized catalog would legitimize the sale. The Baronessa returns the Tetrarch's toe to the sculpture in San Marco, though she later admits she kept it in her purse after all, calling it a last caprice.

On Christmas Eve morning, Geoffrey and the Baronessa wait on the Venice waterfront. The two-masted Caprice appears from the east, painted black with its name in gold leaf. Estelle is aboard with the pugs and, by accident, Geoffrey's duffel bag. As police approach, the Baronessa boards and her lifelong vertigo vanishes. She uses Geoffrey's real name for the first time, dropping the long-standing "Giovedì." Geoffrey chooses to stay aboard. The Caprice sails toward the Adriatic, the Baronessa announcing they will live frugally at sea. Geoffrey, switching to Italian, tells her she will live forever. "And so she did" (272).