The Distance Between
by Maxwell Thorne
I, like almost anyone, had heard of Adriano Iago Rinnoteveni but had never had the fortune to be in his presence. I had seen the images of the man printed in the paper that I reported for, spread evenly across the business and entertainment sections with headlines such as RINNOTEVENI BUYS BIG AT BASEL or ADRIANO AIMS FOR THE SKY. Many journalists considered themselves lucky just to get a comment from the businessman as he left some gala, but there were few who had ever received the opportunity to interview the near mythical man. It was, needless to say then, an immense and welcome surprise when I received an invitation, on thick, gold-lined paper, inviting me to dine with Mr Rinnoteveni in Buenos Aires.
The invitation provided little detail as to what Mr Rinnoteveni wanted to dine with me for, apart from saying he was “impressed with my work and character” and “wanted me to be the first to see his next endeavour.”
My colleagues were noticeably jealous. They would ask me how I had managed to obtain this opportunity, the latest great one in the many that had seemed to fall my way over the past months. I would tell them that it was simple: all that they had to do was win a Pulitzer. Many would shake their heads. “Julian, people just want to look at you for an hour,” they would joke. “They just want to stare at those darling blues.” Whatever the reason was, I was not going to stop it.
I arrived in Argentina’s capital a day ahead of my meeting. I checked into my hotel in the same neighbourhood where I would meet Mr Rinnoteveni, Recoleta. I had never been to the city before, so I spent my first evening walking the streets. The architecture reminded me of Paris, and I thought of the months I spent there with my mother and her family every summer in my childhood, from the age of ten until I was an adult. As I sat at the Plaza Francia, I could almost close my eyes and be with her and my grandmother again, just as we had once sat at the Jardin du Luxembourg.
I was suffering awfully from jet lag and so I decided to sleep early. When I woke, there were still many hours before I was due to meet Mr Rinnoteveni. I took some time to sit at a café and think of what I could ask the great man, before I decided to give my mother a call. I told her where I was, how the architecture had reminded me of our holidays when I was younger, and it made me want to talk to her.
“That is sweet, mon petit chou,” she replied.
“Are you busy right now?” I asked.
“Only as busy as always, cleaning and cleaning,” she said. “Why are you in Argentina?”
I told her who I was due to meet. I thought the poor connection had finally dropped out. I repeated my mother’s name twice before she finally broke her silence. I asked her if she had heard of the man I was due to meet soon.
“Only what is reported in the papers,” she said.
“Yes, not a lot is known about him really,” I replied. “I can’t even find a solid answer as to where he was born. Some say it was London but others say it was Rome.”
“Well, I hope that you find out all you need,” she said. “Listen, mon choupinou, I must go. I will call you later, ok?”
Her tone seemed to indicate that she was in a hurry, but I thought nothing of it. I knew she thought it a sin to get caught on the phone by one of her clients while she was working.
Shortly after lunch, I made my way to the hotel where I had agreed to meet Mr Rinnoteveni. Across the marble floors of the lobby, standing beside one of the sea-green columns that rose up to the ceiling was his assistant, dressed head to toe in a sharp, black suit. She noticed me before I saw her; I was too busy admiring the gold accents that filled the room and I was intoxicated with the smell of orchids.
“It’s quite a sight, isn’t it?” I heard her ask as she approached me. “Everyone will look as in awe as you when they arrive.”
“It is certainly something,” I said. “Does Mr Rinnoteveni always stay here when he is in Buenos Aires?”
She shook her head. “This one is his new hotel. It’s only just finished being built.”
I had little information to prepare for my interview and now knowing that this was Mr Rinnoteveni’s next endeavour, I found myself thinking of all the other hotels in the world that shared the same name as this one. We took a private elevator to the top of the building, and I was led through a double door to a room larger than any house I had ever been in. Windows which seemed to expand over all the walls were slightly ajar, and the curtains in front of them delicately flew inwards then out. The furniture was simple: an L-shaped, denim-coloured sofa and a curved, glass table filled the living space; art of varying frames and sizes lined the walls.
As I admired it all, I heard a voice grow louder from afar. I turned to see a gentleman walk out of a room, hang up his phone and look directly at me. He paused. He did not move for so long that I could see, unimaginably, that Mr Rinnoteveni was slightly shorter than me. His skin was tanned and his hair was sprinkled sparingly with tones of grey. I nearly did not notice his thin moustache but could not miss his steel-blue eyes. As he finally began to move, I noticed he had the frame of someone who exercised when he could, a slight, lean build. He wore a pair of dark jeans and his shirt was open at the top.
“Mr Allard, it is a pleasure,” he said, as his outstretched hand met my own. “Your surname, it’s French?”
“It is,” I said. “On my mother’s side.”
He nodded and gestured for us to sit. “A beautiful country with people who are even more beautiful.”
“Is that how you chose your hotel’s name?” I asked. “I don’t see any other reason a man born in England or Italy would choose Chéri for his hotel’s branding.”
“A special woman, one who loved me before I had anything, used to call me that name,” he grinned, as if he had not thought of it in a long time. “You certainly get right to it, don’t you?”
I smiled. “So where were you born?”
He leant back, taking a deep breath. “I was born in London but I made my initial fortune in Italy, across Florence and Rome. I had some family there. My mother is Italian.”
“And your father?”
“English, but he left when I was young. My mother thought of taking me back to her home in Italy after he left but she decided we should stay in England, for my betterment.”
“I know what that’s like.” In both my own and his sudden openness – an unravelling I was unsure had ever been demonstrated by Mr Rinnoteveni – I realised that I was not recording any of our conversation. I pulled a notepad from my bag and asked if I could take notes about what he had said so far. He indicated for me to go on.
“What was it like for you growing up?” I asked.
He stared upwards for a moment. “I was born poor. I grew up in a little village to the west of London. There was a well, a short walk from my house. When the pipes froze during winter, my mother would send me there to retrieve water. One day, a particularly cold day, the winch was not working properly so the bucket did not come all the way up. I leaned over to grab it but I fell in. I landed on my arm. I don’t know how long I was there shivering before she found me.”
“Do you think that moment shaped you in a significant way?”
“More than anything else in my life,” he said, nodding. “I decided, as I sat in that water and stared at a thin sliver of grey sky that I could see above me, that I would never live poorly when I was older.”
“Were you happy as a child?”
His head bobbed from side to side. “I don’t think many people were happy in that small place. I saw people suffocated by a lack of everything. They were forced to live too rigidly. Their lives were too structured. I never wanted that. I wanted to be free, like a balloon.”
“I was raised in London. I still live there, actually. I think many people are still like that,” I said. “Now, there is a great deal of speculation about how you made your money. Was it in the hotel industry?”
He shook his head. “It was noticed that I had an eye for beauty, so I sold art at the beginning of my career.”
“Who noticed this eye?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, many people. My mother used to tell stories of how I would rearrange the limited furniture we had in our living room. I sat in a museum one day when I was young and began talking to an older gentleman about a piece. His name was Montgomery Walls. He let me call him Monty. Over an hour passed before we realised how long we had been speaking.”
“Did Mr Walls inspire you start selling art?”
“He owned galleries. He gave me my start.”
“And where did you sell art? In London?”
“In Rome.”
“Why did you go to Rome if you had been raised near London?”
The words were at the edge of his mouth. He seemed to understand that as soon as he spoke them, a part of the extraordinary mystique that had shaped his image would become an irrevocable truth. He paused for a second; then, he let himself go.
“I had lived my whole life in England,” he said. “I knew that if I wanted to become who I had to be, I had to reinvent myself. I could not do that in the place where I was born. So, I left. I put distance between the life I wanted and the life I had. I never looked back.”
“That must have been difficult.”
“Unfortunately, I have had to do that at many times in my life. I only started making good money and becoming who I envisioned after about five years. It took me a decade from when I began to be able to really help the people I hurt along the way.”
I gestured around. “So, all of this, comes from art sales?”
He laughed. “Not all of it. I went into the hotel business with Mr Walls and some wealthy clients I had gotten to know. Chéri London was our first hotel. We’ve since expanded to over 25 countries – 26 now, with Chéri Buenos Aires. I also made some good investments with Mr Wall’s guidance. Some bad ones too. Fortunately, I’m still in the black.”
I took in the room again. When I looked back at Mr Rinnoteveni, he seemed to be admiring me, a slight smile on his face.
“Mr Rinnoteveni,” I began, “the invitation that I received from you said that you wanted to show me your ‘next endeavour.’ Would you care to show me around the hotel?”
One eyebrow raised slightly. “The hotel? Eventually. We’ll dine in the restaurant this evening and I’ll show you the rest before then. There is something else, actually, that I want to show you.”
“Oh?”
“Anna,” he called out. “Pull the car around please, dear.”
We walked out of the lobby to the eyes of guests looking on. A black sedan waited in the valet section. The driver opened the door for me and a security guard opened Mr Rinnoteveni’s, before they both returned to their seats in the front and the car began to rumble.
“Emil, some privacy please?” requested Mr Rinnoteveni. A screen rose, separating the front two seats from where we sat. “So, what do you want to know about me?”
“Honestly, Mr Rinnoteveni, I had a hard enough time preparing for this interview without knowing what it would be about. I’m still unsure what I want to ask you.”
“I should have said this earlier but please, call me Adriano. You can ask me anything, please.”
I thought for a moment, looking at my few notes so far. “Alright, Adriano. You mentioned before that you felt as though you had hurt people, and that it took you a decade to help them. What exactly did you do that made you feel you had to right your wrongs?”
He looked past me and nodded. “Good question. When I was younger, I think I was even more ambitious than I am now. Still, I was a romantic and a fool like all young people. I broke some hearts. I’m not proud of it. I also wasn’t as moral as I could have been about how I went acquiring art. I used to read the obituary notices in the papers twice a day just to ensure I had not missed any important deaths … does that sound awful?”
I shrugged. “Alright, an easier question: do you have a wife, or children?”
“I have never been married, and if I do have any children, I doubt their mothers have told them about me because I do not receive calls from anyone claiming to be my children.”
We both laughed. I stared out through the tint of the windows to see us passing the Obelesico, the towering, sharp monument in the Plaza de la República.
The car rolled to a slow stop outside a showroom. Mr Rinnoteveni announced that we had arrived. I was led by my host through a glass door, into a room filled with a variety of sculptures and art pieces. Mr Rinnoteveni moved quickly, gesturing toward me to follow him. He rounded a corner and when I did too, I found him standing in front of a piece nearly two metres in length and a metre in height. The background colouring was made of varying shades of blue and grey, light and dark, continually interlacing to give the perception that people were in the background. The defining aspect of the painting showed two figures opposite one another on the sides of the canvas, each with one arm stretching towards the other. The figure on the left looked closer, and I could see how both figures were painted to look human, but their faces were blurred, just as the background seemed.
“It’s beautiful …” I said.
“It is, isn’t it?” Mr Rinnoteveni replied.
“What’s it called?”
“The Distance Between.”
“I like that you can’t see their faces. They could be anybody. It could be two people who are being pulled apart – ”
“It could be two people who have been looking for each other, and they’re so close.”
I nodded. “Is it for the hotel?”
Mr Rinnoteveni shook his head. “No. This is for my own collection. I’m unsure where I’ll put it though.”
I could feel his eyes on me, but I was too absorbed by the painting to say anything. Mr Rinnoteveni began to move away and placed his hand on my shoulder. He began to guide me through the rest of the room, beaming as he showed me other pieces that he had bought.
After some time in the gallery, we decided to make our way back to the hotel. Another question came to my mind as we were let into the car.
“Adriano,” I began, “there are very few people who seem to know anything about your life. You are hardly ever in the public eye. You rarely do interviews. And I report on foreign policy and politics mostly. So, why request an interview with me?”
His words sat there in his mouth again for a moment. “I’ve read your work for some time – excellent, by the way – and I learned a little about you through my own research. You seemed like a self-made man. I don’t know, maybe I just felt some form of connection.”
The rest of the night progressed how I had thought it may initially go. Mr Rinnoteveni showed me around the facilities of the Chéri Buenos Aires. I was shown what guests could expect of the hotel, regardless of if they stayed in a king suite or a room with a single bed. Shortly, after it got dark, he suggested we finally have dinner. It was here, as we said farewell to one another at the end of the meal, that my most peculiar interaction with Mr Rinnoteveni occurred.
“It’s been a pleasure,” he said. “You should be proud of yourself. I’m proud of you.” With that, he leaned in and hugged me.
When he let go, I look at him, puzzled. “Thank you?” I laughed.
“Sorry, that must be strange to hear from me, a stranger,” he said. “Like I said before, I liked your work and I knew something about you. I admire how hard you must have worked to get to where you are. Most people don’t know what it takes to make something of themselves. They settle for less.”
“I take it you’ve never wanted anything but the best?”
He shook his head. “Life is too short for it not to be great.”
I did not hear from Mr Rinnoteveni for some time. When the article came out, I thought that he may get in contact with me and tell me what he thought, but I never received a call from him. It was not until a month after the article was published, one evening after I returned from the office, that a wooden box, nearly two metres in length and a metre in height, showed up at my door. I had to use a drill to open it. Once I had removed the outer layer, I found a large frame laying picture-side down. A piece of familiar paper was wedged into the corner, with a note written on it: A gift for your kind words. Sorry about my distance.