Rome surprises you
by Carlos Alberto Montaner
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(FIRMAS PRESS. Rome). We flew to Rome to present the Italian edition of The Colonel’s Wife. It is a novel that takes place, to a great extent, in this chaotic and marvelous city. It is in Rome where the protagonist, Nuria, has a brief adulterous affair with an old Italian professor, Valerio Martinelli. Nuria is the wife of a colonel in Cuba’s Special Forces. She loves him but decided to explore the forbidden zone in her emotions. The couple meet at the Mecenate Hotel, across the street from the Basilica of Saint Mary Major. There, in a suite, they have some absolutely torrid love encounters, described in sweaty detail. Martinelli is a consummate erotomaniac.
As I knew that hotel only through references, we decided to stay there to find out how close reality was to fiction. I asked for the suite in the novel, but it had been taken (I was told politely) “by an Argentine couple.” I lamented the news but we accepted I was traveling with my wife another, very pleasant suite facing the church. That night, a surprise.
While dining on the hotel’s top-floor terrace, we were approached by the couple. They identified me through the photo on the book jacket. Then they told me their story: they had met in a book club during a discussion of The Colonel’s Wife. They fell in love (both had just divorced their respective mates, one of the purposes of the book clubs’ existence) and decided to repeat the bedroom feats of Nuria and Martinelli. “How did the experiment work out?” I asked them. They laughed. “Superbly,” they answered. They walked away, embracing at the waist. I never thought I’d end up emulating Masters and Johnson.
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