Home to Italy (16 page)

“Ciao, Peppi!”
called Enzo.
“Come va?”

Peppi answered with a shrug and a yawn as he trudged down the steps from his apartment. He had just arisen from his
siesta
and he was feeling a bit grumpy. He wasn't sure why he felt that way; he had slept well enough after eating a good lunch. Perhaps it was the heat of the July afternoon. Peppi had forgotten how hot the summer days could get in his native land. It would take some time for his body to reacclimate to the sultry weather.

Three days had already passed since Peppi had seen Lucrezia and her parents off to Milano. Their departure had been an exercise in organized chaos. While Filomena hastily prepared some pasta salads, panini, and other provisions for the long ride, Lucrezia and Luca had scurried about the factory, issuing the inevitable last minute flurry of frantic instructions to Enzo and the rest of the staff. For his part, Peppi helped carry out their luggage and stowed it in the trunk of the car for them. Aside from that, he stood on the sidelines and simply watched the spectacle. When the time had come for them to finally leave and the three had installed themselves in the car, Luca had rolled down the car window and beckoned for Peppi.

“You'll have to look after the place for me while we're gone,” his friend told him.

“I'll try,” Peppi replied.

“Don't worry, nothing much happens this time of year,” Luca went on. “Just remember, you must come and stay with us at the ocean when all of this nonsense is over. Till then you have the key to the house, so feel free to go up and cook dinner or watch television or sleep there if you like.”

“Grazie,”
said Peppi. “Now go before you waste the whole day here.” He looked inside the car to say good-bye to Filomena and Lucrezia.
“Buon viaggio, tutti,”
he said.

“Ciao,
Peppi,” Lucrezia replied before turning her attention back to the contents of her briefcase, which were by now spread out across the backseat. She seemed to have barely noticed Peppi, but as the car pulled out of the drive, she looked out the back window and nodded good-bye to him before they drove out of sight.

Now, with the absence of the boss and the presence of the heat, things in and around the factory were moving in slow motion. Enzo and Fabio were sitting on the front step, their backs pressed up against the door to take advantage of the shadow cast by the factory. To Peppi's astonishment, they were contentedly puffing away on cigarettes as they always did during their break time. He shook his head in disgust at them as he approached.

“It must be a hundred degrees outside,” he said. “Why would anyone want to stick a piece of burning paper in his mouth on such a day?”

The other two men nodded and smiled.

“It's the menthol,” answered Fabio, exhaling a long, lazy plume of smoke. “It gives the tobacco a nice cool taste.”

Peppi shook his head once more and sat down next to them. He stretched out his legs and let out another yawn. “How are things in the factory today?” he asked.

“Like Dante's Inferno,” groaned Enzo.
“Grazie Dio,
we won't be in there too much longer. Two more weeks and then we're closed for August.”

“Then what will you do with all your spare time?” said Peppi.

“Sleep—as much as possible every day,” chuckled Fabio. “Then of course at night…” he let the words drift away on a sigh as he gestured with his hands to form the hourglass shape of a woman.

“Heh, nice to be single and free,” grunted Enzo.

“What about you, Peppi?” said Fabio.

Peppi looked out across the drive to the gardens he had started in the spring. The flowers and shrubs were starting to wilt in the blistering sun. They would all need a good watering before the end of the day. “I don't know,” he finally answered. “I guess I'll find something to keep me busy.”

“Peppi, it's the summer,” Fabio kidded him. “The only thing you need to keep you busy this time of year is a woman.”

“Don't you ever think about anything else?” said Enzo.

“Not if I can help it.”

Enzo looked over at Peppi, who was still gazing out toward the flowers. “You know, Peppi,” he said, giving his cohort a nudge and a wink, “Fabio might be right. Maybe you
should
go out and find yourself a nice woman. A bed gets cold at night when you're sleeping all alone. It's no good.”

“A cold bed doesn't sound so bad right about now,” grumbled Peppi, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow. “As for you, Fabio, you might benefit from a cold shower.”

“Hot or cold, it doesn't bother me,” laughed Fabio, “just so long as I have someone in there with me to scrub my back.”

“You can't win with him, Peppi,” chuckled Enzo. “It's not even worth trying.”

Peppi rubbed his chin and looked up at the sun. He was feeling restless, anxious to do something productive, but the afternoon heat made it near impossible to do anything but hide in the shade until the early evening came.

“So, Peppi, what do you think of the Tour de France so far?” said Enzo, referring to the French version of the Giro D'Italia. The Tour had started just a few days earlier. “Have you followed much of it?” he asked.

“No, not yet,” shrugged Peppi. “The flat stages at the beginning don't interest me much. I'll start paying attention when they get to the mountains.”

“Me, I'm just the opposite,” said Fabio between puffs on his cigarette. “I love the flat stages because that's where you get all the best sprint finishes. In the mountains they just crawl along. It's boring to watch.”

“Eh, to each his own,” said Peppi, getting back to his feet. He stood there for a moment, gazing off toward the horizon. “One good thing at least,” he said.

“What's that?” said Enzo.

“This hot weather will be good for my tomatoes,” Peppi replied, “so long as I keep them watered.”

“Yes, but be careful, Peppi,” cautioned Fabio. “If you water them too much you'll break their skins.”

“Grazie,
Fabio,” said Peppi, “but I've already been warned about that.” Peppi gave them a nod and headed off to the back of the building to check on things in the courtyard.

“What's with him today?” said Fabio as they watched him go.

“What do you think?” snickered Enzo, flicking away his cigarette butt. “He's getting tired of that cold bed of his.”

Peppi wanted to make sure that the flowers had a good drink, so he waited until almost sundown before he watered the gardens. In the cool of the evening the water would have a chance to soak deep into the soil to the roots of the plants instead of evaporating right away in the scorching heat of the midday sun. For good measure, he would water them again in the morning before the heat returned.

When he had finished watering the gardens, Peppi went back to his apartment to prepare supper for himself. As the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the temperature outside mercifully cooled. Inside, however, the warm air was still trapped. Peppi peeled off his shirt and left it hanging on the chair while he prepared for himself a salad to have with some bread and a little cheese. It was much too hot to eat anything more substantial. He set his simple meal down at the table, opened a bottle of mineral water, and sat down to eat.

As he ate, Peppi became acutely aware of the stillness of the descending night and the quiet of his apartment. Surrounded by this silence, it occurred to him that even the crunching of the lettuce between his teeth overwhelmed any sounds that might have drifted in from the world outside his window. When he stopped chewing, he was sure that he could hear his own heart beating. It was an odd feeling and, for the first time since returning to Villa San Giuseppe, he felt truly alone.

Peppi put his fork down and let his thoughts drift back to America, to a dinner he had eaten on another warm summer's night many years earlier. That night, however, he had not been dining all alone. Anna had been with him then. It was a breathless, sultry night, as he recalled, and they had decided to brave the mosquitoes by eating dinner on the little stone table beneath the grapevines in the back garden. To ward off the bugs, Peppi had encircled the table with a ring of citronella candles. It was the soft glow of those candles on Anna's face, the reflection of the tiny flames dancing in her eyes, that he most remembered from that night. In that gentle light, she had looked as young and beautiful to him as the day they first met.

“It's not polite to stare, you know,” he remembered Anna telling him.

Later that night, after they had made love, Peppi could not have imagined feeling more content and at peace as he felt in that moment. As he lay beside her in bed, caressing her cheek, she had looked up at him and smiled.

“You're still staring,” she had said.

“I'll never stop staring,” he had promised her.

It was a beautiful memory, but somehow it only deepened his sense of isolation. He gave a sigh and tried to think of other things. His thoughts drifted to Milano, and he wondered how Lucrezia was managing at the trade show. It struck him then that thinking of her made him feel equally lonely. He glanced over at his bicycle and decided that perhaps it would be better at that moment to get out of his apartment and not to think of women at all. He ate his meal quickly, and when he had finished he took the key Luca had given him and trudged up to the house to watch the evening recap of the Tour de France.

A curious thing
happened one afternoon a few days later when Peppi rode out to the mulino to check on his tomato garden. Tending to the garden had become something of a daily obsession since Lucrezia and her parents had left for Milano. There was next to nothing happening at the factory, so the quest for a bumper crop of tomatoes gave him something around which he could build his day and focus his energy.

By now the plants in the garden were supported by the rows of stakes Peppi had pounded into the ground. As he went from plant to plant each day, tying each one to its stake as it grew taller and taller, Peppi would meticulously prune each branch. When that task was completed, he would turn his attention to the soil and attack any upstart weeds without mercy. Finally, when he was satisfied that all was as it should be in the garden, he would walk to the river to fill the buckets with water for the plants. Afterwards, he would sit for a time and admire his work, all the while telling himself that he must be patient, that in time he and the others would enjoy the fruits of his labors.

As he pedalled up the hill toward the mulino that afternoon, Peppi was daydreaming about how delicious his tomatoes would be. When he crested the hill just before his ancestral home, he was greeted by the sight of a hawk perched upon the highest section of wall that had yet to totally collapse. Peppi pedalled to a stop at the edge of the road and straddled the bike. To his surprise, the hawk did not fly away at seeing him approach, but instead remained there observing him with dark, fearless eyes.

Peppi lowered his sunglasses and gazed back. It was another torrid but breezy day. As man and bird regarded one another, a hot, dry wind whistled through the ruins of the mulino and across the long waving grass. Peppi rested his bike on the ground and slowly stepped closer to get a better look at the hawk and perhaps to see just what it was up to. It was then that he suddenly recalled the hawk he had seen soaring through the sky that day with Luca. He wondered if this hawk and that one could be one and the same.

Peppi took off his helmet and laid it next to the bike. He inched closer still until the hawk opened its wings as if it were about to take flight. Peppi stopped in his tracks and the bird resumed its previous impassive stance.

“What is it you want, my friend?” Peppi called to it. “What are you doing here in my wreck of a mulino?”

The hawk made no move other than to scratch at the stone wall with one of its talons before suddenly raising its head. It opened its beak wide and let out a long, shrill screech that gave Peppi a start. Just as suddenly, the hawk spread its wings, and with a few powerful flaps it effortlessly soared away from the mulino. Holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun, Peppi stood there watching the mysterious bird fly away until it had glided out of sight.

Now, Peppi had lived virtually all of his adult life in America, but he had grown up in the isolated highlands of central Italy where superstition still ran very deep. Peppi, however, never considered himself particularly superstitious. Just the same, though, he upheld tradition by always keeping a broom by the door to his home, an ancient trick to keep away witches who, should they want to enter one's house during the night, must first waste all the dark hours before dawn counting the bristles. Not surprisingly, the strange encounter with this natural predator had left him troubled. Despite the insistence of his intellect that it had all occurred by chance, his emotions told him that their meeting on that spot at that time had nothing to do with mere coincidence. It was an omen, but of what type he could not guess. Peppi continued to look up into the sky, wondering all the while what meaning there was to be found in it all.

Turning his gaze back to the Earth, Peppi stepped inside the crumbling walls of the mulino to examine the spot where the hawk had perched. The rock, he soon saw, still bore the faint scratches left behind by the bird's claws. He passed his hand over them, feeling the rough texture of the rock against his fingertips. Turning, he looked around at the remains of the mulino. He had pecked about the rubble more than once, sifting through the broken fragments of wall and ceiling, searching for any artifacts of his former life there. Aside from a few forks and knives and other utensils, he had never found anything of true interest amidst the debris. Over the years just about everything else had been taken from the abandoned homestead by vandals or mischievous youngsters.

Leaning back against the wall, Peppi let his eyes continue to roam about the place as he puzzled over the eerie incident with the hawk. He had just made up his mind to go check on the tomato garden when the weight of his hand against the wall caused a small section of rock and plaster to crumble and fall.

Peppi looked down. There by his foot, tucked beneath the shattered remains of one of the ceiling beams, he saw the faint glint of some small object reflecting the sun. When he stooped down to get a closer look, he realized that what he had seen was the edge of a small oval picture frame lying half buried beneath the beam. Very carefully, he reached down and tugged the frame free from its hiding place. Miraculously, the frame and glass were in perfect condition. When Peppi dusted off the glass and held up the picture, his lonely heart soared a thousand times higher than any hawk had ever flown. Behind the glass was a photograph of Peppi's mother and father, a very old photograph he suddenly now remembered very well, for it had always rested on the mantel above their fireplace.

Stunned by this discovery, he sat down against the wall and beheld the photograph. How young and strong and beautiful his parents looked! Tears of joy welled in Peppi's eyes and a thousand memories flooded his mind. It was if he were holding in his hand some sort of portal to the past through which he could suddenly see all the people and places he once knew and loved so well as a child. Common, everyday events he had long ago forgotten burst into his memory. He remembered watching his father and mother toil away in the mulino, never once complaining, for they were happy to have productive work to sustain them. He remembered riding in the back of the wagon atop the sacks of grain on their way to the market. He remembered holidays when the house was filled with aunts and uncles and cousins and friends, all long gone now or scattered to the four winds. In particular, though, Peppi remembered a stormy night, late one spring, when the thunder boomed so loud that he feared the mountaintops would topple down upon them. His mother had tucked her frightened son into bed that night while his father secured the windows. “Don't worry,
figlio mio
,
vananon',”
she had comforted him. “You'll always be safe in this house because your father and I will always be here watching over you.” Peppi closed his eyes and smiled as he recalled his mother's words. In that moment, he knew in his heart, for the very first time, that he had truly done the right thing in returning to Italy.

Afterwards, when Peppi had finished tending to the garden, he tucked the picture frame safely into the back pocket of his cycling jersey. As he mounted his bike, he happened to look up into the sky where he once again saw the hawk circling high above him. To his delight, a second soon joined it and the two birds floated gracefully along, held aloft on the breath of that hot summer's day. Peppi made the sign of the cross and blew them a kiss. Then he turned and pedalled home, mindful all the way of the precious newfound treasure he carried with him.

“It's a sign,” declared Fabio with some authority after Peppi recounted the story of the hawk later that afternoon.

“What kind of sign?” said Enzo, not at all confident in Fabio's ability to interpret such phenomena.

“It's a sign from God, what else would it be?” Fabio replied. Some of the other workers who had gathered around to hear the story nodded in agreement.

“But what do you think God is trying to tell me?” asked Peppi, as skeptical as Enzo of Fabio's perspicacity. “What's it all supposed to mean?”

“Think about it,” said Fabio, striking a contemplative pose. “The mulino was the place of your birth, where you started your life, and now you've come back to it. You've come full circle, but your life hasn't ended yet. You've just ended up back at the beginning. You see, your life is like a big circle. Even the picture you found of your parents is shaped like a circle.”

“It's an oval,” Enzo pointed out.

“Oval, circle, what's the difference?” said Fabio. “Wherever you start on it you end up back in the same place.”

“But you still haven't told me what it all means,” said Peppi with a smile. “What is God trying to tell me?”

Fabio scratched his chin thoughtfully. “If you asked me,” he finally replied, “I'd say He's trying to tell you that your life isn't over, that it's time to make another circle.”

“What are you saying?” scoffed Enzo. “He's supposed to go back to America again? He comes all the way over here and now you think God wants to send him back there?”

“I didn't say that he had to make the
same
circle,” said Fabio, anxious to defend his theory. “Maybe it's time for a different circle, a brand new one.”

“And maybe it's time for you to get out of the sun and get back to work,” said his supervisor. “Come on, everyone, back inside. We still have lots to do today. Signora Lucrezia will be calling soon to see how things are going and I don't want to have to lie to her.”

With a communal groan, Fabio and the others obeyed Enzo and went back into the factory to finish their work for the day. When the door closed behind them, Enzo turned to Peppi and gave him a nod.

“What do you think, Peppi?” he said. “Do you think maybe Fabio is right, that it really was a message from God?”

Peppi shrugged. “Who knows?” he said. “Maybe it was all just a nice coincidence. Either way, I'm happy to have my parents back.”

With that Peppi started to make his way up the stairs to his apartment. He paused and looked back at Enzo, who had yet to go back inside the factory.

“Does Signorina Lucrezia call every day?” he asked.

Enzo smiled. “Without fail,” he chuckled. “God help me if I'm not there to take the call.”

“I hope things are going well for them in Milano,” said Peppi, starting up the stairs once more.

With an impish sparkle in his eye, Enzo watched him go. “I'll tell her you were asking for her,” he called up the stairs. Then he went back into the factory to wait by the telephone.