Lambrusco (22 page)

Annmarie, whom I'd thought of as my potential daughter-in-law and mother of my future grandchildren—many of them, as many as the Pattuellis, all of them strong and smart and lovely, playing golf with their mother in a mowed-down field, or out in back of the restaurant, and then they'd all come inside and we'd sing.

A dream. Just a daydream. Marcellina had said her boyfriend was here. There was a boyfriend and he was here. Looking for her. Where was she?
Prisoner.
Don't think about that.

I remembered I wore the clothes of a dead man. That soldier, at the hospital-
palazzo.

I remembered Frank the truck driver. He hadn't been a true medic. I'd been his first patient. I had liked the sound of his voice.

Don't think about that, either. Get up. Stand up. Ugo was coming? This house had been bombed? Nizarro had been shot? That wasn't just sweat all over his jersey? It was a brown wool jersey. What was on it was blood. And the others‚Teo, not wearing his white coat of the pharmacy, and his brother Emilio of the tobacco shop, and Nomad Calderoni, who'd gone away to London and then came back—if they had jumped from a roof onto a cobblestone pavement, they would not have looked more bruised. Don't look!

I didn't know the Batarras well. I'd never been in their shops. Hadn't Teo been in Beppi's year at school? Yes, at the top of the class always. When he was a boy, he'd been pale in an unusually chronic way. He became a pharmacist, Beppi had said, because his skin was as white as a pill.

And Emilio, a little older. A little stouter. He sold cigarettes to the waiters and cooks at a discount. When he came to the restaurant to eat, they charged him half price. Once, he asked me if I ever sang Wagner. When I said no, he looked so unhappy, I considered learning something from the
Ring.
Somewhere, someone must have translated the whole thing into Italian. It might have been marvelous—but then, there was the takeover, the invasion. Germans
verboten.

Annunziata and Marcellina rushed to the men, all business, seized with urgency. Looking past them into the shadows beyond the doorway, I saw what Teo had meant about the kitchen. There really was only half of one.

Another bombed house. Dust in the air with the sunlight. White dust from plaster, tan dust from shattered wood, pink-red dust from roof tiles.

Too much sunlight. The kind of sunlight that comes into a house when the roof and walls aren't all there. Ugo was coming?

I forced myself to make it across the room. I felt I'd be all right if I positioned myself at the wall by the table.

A voice was calling out weakly, not here, not in this room. The next room. There was a room next to this one. From the reverberations, I could tell it was intact.

“That's my great-nephew Pippo,” said Annunziata. “I thought he was still knocked out. He and his brother Giorgio ran into some trouble with Germans. God bless them, they're keeping themselves alive, with the help of American morphine. That's my sitting room they're in. It's a luxury, I know, to have two rooms to oneself, but this is a big house, or it was, before they bombed it. I always felt I deserve the extra space.”

“Who is here? What is happening?” The voice on the other side of the wall was as faint as if it came from the bottom of a well.

Prisoners in cells must sound this way, communicating with each other when the guards had wandered away. Was Beppi in a jail cell? Was Annmarie?

“I'll come to you in a minute,” called out Annunziata. “Partisans are here. They're worse off than you. But a doctor is coming.”

I wanted to stand by the candles. I wanted to be close to something that was the opposite of cold and dark. I realized that I was moving exactly like Nizarro. I knew he was on the bed; it had let out a creaking. Or maybe it was Nizarro himself, creaking with pain.

“Marcellina?”

“Don't talk to me, I'm too busy. I'll be damned if Nizarro dies on us. Nizarro! You're not dying! If you don't put some effort into breathing, I'll send for Enzo instead of Ugo! Those candles will come in handy for your Last Rites!”

“Marcellina, I want to know where everyone is.”

“Don't talk to me!”

“The bullet isn't still in him,” said Teo Batarra. “It went out the other side.”

“That's always good,” said Annunziata.

“I'll kill you if you die!” cried Marcellina.

“I'm breathing, I'm breathing, shut up,” came the voice of Nizarro.

“Lucia, why are you dressed like a soldier?” said Nomad.

I put my hands on my ears. No explaining. No talking.

It was no good trying to stay upright. I let myself sink down. When was the last time I sat on a floor? I didn't know. It wasn't uncomfortable. I couldn't ask for a pillow because Nizarro deserved it more than I did. The bed had only one pillow. Annunziata Galimberti slept alone. So did I.

Nomad's real name was Franco. Blood was on both legs of his pants, in splatters, as if he'd been messily painting something. He told us once about something interesting he'd learned when he lived in England. He said that the English believe the only way to get a good night's sleep is to have a bed to yourself. He said they bragged about how intelligent they were when it came to the hygiene of sleep. Everyone had separate beds, including married couples, not like in Mengo, where sleeping alone was like sleeping in your coffin ahead of time.

I pressed my hands more tightly against my ears. Nizarro was moaning, moaning. There was a lot to be said in favor of silence.

Pia. Pia Ballardini, with her mother, visiting the restaurant.

Assunta. The other Mary feast. Assunta named for the Assumption. “I've brought you some eggs from my ladies, Signora Fantini, not for the restaurant, but for your home.”

The girl was beside her. Peaceful. The most peaceful-looking human being I had ever laid eyes on. Big, wide eyes, but of course you'd expect that. Certainly, deaf people possessed acutely developed other senses.

Maybe Pia saw things other people didn't see. She didn't look imbecilic. She looked thoughtful. She looked serene. “Mama, let her put her hands on your throat and hear you sing.”

Beppi happy.

Why had I refused? What danger could those small hands bring, touching my throat for vibrations? Well, it was barely afternoon when that visit had taken place. A Sunday, yes. I'd just arrived at the restaurant for the afternoon program. I'd come early. Beppi was still in school, and there'd been something requiring study, some book to be read. I'd planned to hole up with him in Aldo's office.

It wasn't singing time. You don't let a stranger put their hands around your throat.

Quiet Beppi. Sad Beppi. Peaceful Beppi, standing there beside the deaf girl, a strange stillness all around him, as if it came from deep inside him, as if he'd caught it from Pia. The one person who had no ears to hear me.

Then softly, sadly: “It's all right, Mama. Maybe Pia will come back another time.”

There'd been no other time.

The Ballardinis. They had a cottage not far from the Mengo church, on a back road heading to Rimini. Trees, flower gardens, chickens all over the place. I'd driven by there with Aldo. He always slowed down. Assunta's chickens enjoyed strolling about in the road.

A little stone house was in the back, a proper-looking, squat, one-story house, with a peaked roof and windows, as if it were for people. Assunta the Chicken Lady. Aldo always said the same thing when we rode by. “Why can't that woman do something normal, like keep her poultry in a regular coop?”

The air near their home smelled like feathers and chicken shit. It was awful, even with the car windows closed.

Suddenly I knew where my son was.

It just came to me naturally, like a shell being placed on the beach by a wave. “Cenzo Ballardini, you son of a bitch,” I said to myself. “I was with you in San Guarino, drinking your wine. I remember that. You never said a word. You son of a bitch, you could have told me.”

Where were my boots? Where were my
boots
?

They were drying in the not-bombed part of the kitchen, that was where. By the not-bombed stove.

Unsteadily, but full of resolve, I made my way into the kitchen. The boots had been cleaned and polished, and had a waxy, ebullient shine. I welcomed them like old friends.

What about the bandages? Thin white strips of cloth had been wrapped around my feet, and tied securely in well-made knots. There wasn't any blood. The cloths hadn't come loose. They were on me as tightly as stockings.

Stockings they'd have to be. I stepped into the boots. Anyone was capable of anything, I felt, as long as one's feet weren't bleeding.

It was difficult to breathe in the gritty, bombed air, but it was better than having a throat packed with sand. My throat was clear, empty.

I found the pot of soup. The stove had survived without a dent. There was warmth. It was impossible to tell what bits of debris had fallen into that pot. Sprigs of rosemary lay here and there on the top, like festive decorations. A white bean soup. Milky-looking broth, not too thick. There wasn't a table or a chair. I couldn't find a ladle, or a bowl, or a spoon.

It didn't seem that anyone noticed I'd left Annunziata's room. An argument had started up. Marcellina and Annunziata were like two old bullying nurses in a ward, dividing up the chores. Six injured men in their care.

“I'm not lying down on that bed beside Nizarro,” came a man's voice. Not Nomad. A Batarra.

Then Marcellina, casually. “What do you dislike more, Signora Galimberti, blood, or open sores?”

“Open sores.”

“What do you think they need first, a bath or some sleep?”

“We haven't got water.”

“Sleep, then. Could we put the two head wounds back there with your boys?”

“We could. But check to see if they have lice.”

“Good idea.”

I stood there and listened to what it was like to be forgotten.

“Auntie, Auntie, come quickly, I was spitting on the floor and it wasn't just spit. The color, I swear to God, is crimson.”

“Hold your horses! I have only two hands!”

“Get your hands off my head, Marcellina. We haven't got bugs.”

“You might not be able to feel them. You're all in shock. Nizarro, move over so the druggist can share the mattress. Even though your ribs are all broken, you can move.”

“I'd rather lie down on the floor. He stinks like an outhouse.”

“Auntie, Auntie, where is the doctor?”

“He's coming! He's coming!”

“Before they shot him, did they beat him?” That was Marcellina again.

Nomad replied, “Can't you tell? The bullet was the least of it. He played dead, and then he got up and ran like hell.”

“Germans did this?” said Marcellina.

“Who else? Hardly any
fascisti
are left. They fled like spiders, cowards that they are, as soon as the Americans started bombing.”

“Signora Galeffi,” said Annunziata, “do you think you'd recognize gangrene if you saw it?”

“That's not gangrene,” said a Batarra. “That's stain from moss. I slept in moss last night.”

“That's not moss,” said Marcellina.

“Now that I'm looking closer, I think it's just pus,” said Annunziata.

“Blood, pus, shit, sores, bugs,” said Marcellina. “I bet anything, when people write about this war for the history books, they won't put any of that into it. Nizarro! Keep breathing!”

“It hurts.”

“Stop complaining like a little baby,” ordered Marcellina. “Dead will hurt more, because I know what you're like, and you won't be going to heaven.”

I'd finished lacing up the boots. I pictured Nizarro running like an American, in the type of football that wasn't soccer—the type where you carry the ball with your hands. That was the difference between what the Americans did and what everyone else did, besides tackling. A useful fact. Americans use their hands.

I faced the big pot as if I intended to tackle it. I wasn't sure I'd have the strength to lift it, but I did. I only needed to hoist it a few inches to be able to tip it. I'd never drunk from the rim of a pot before.

It occurred to me that I should leave before Ugo's arrival. He was coming. They'd said so.

He'd take one look at me and that would be that. I didn't need a mirror to know I looked alarming. But I was sure I looked worse than I was, the way a bruised, discolored piece of fruit is all right beneath the skin.

I set down the pot to rest my arms, then picked it up again and drank more. I licked my lips. They tasted like rosemary.

It would not be all right if Marcellina, along with Nomad and Nizarro and the Batarras, regardless of their physical condition, had the chance to observe Ugo anywhere near me in these circumstances. They'd drop their jaws, asking themselves, “My God, are they in love? Are they? Are they? Are they?”

That was why, as I quietly made my way to a person-size hole in the wall of the Galimbertis' kitchen, and stepped outside into silence and shadowy afternoon light, I said to myself, “The only reason I'm slipping away like this is to protect poor Ugo from prying eyes.”

It did not feel abnormal to make an exit through a wall. It felt sensible, as if the bombers had done it on purpose, to help me.

I
FELT AS SAFE
as if I'd put myself under a spell, rendering my body invisible. And I felt rested—a credit to that marvelous room. It was amazing what a difference a good sleep made. Perhaps I'd write Annunziata a letter, praising her. “Thank you for everything. I hope that one day I have the chance to sing to you—stars, Rossini, whatever you want. Your soup was delicious. Remind me to ask how you prepared it.”

I stopped to use a stand of little pine trees as a toilet, marveling at my ease with the pants, the business of squatting, using leaves as wipes. Ahead of me were four, maybe five hours of daylight. The sun was going west, in its same old downward trajectory. No planes.

All I needed was a song. There was a marching song. Boots. A boot song, a boot song. I couldn't remember it.

There would have to be another, something lively and invigorating, propelling me to Mengo, to that chicken house, to my boy. It was almost like being at home, planning a program. But the song that came into my head, completely inappropriately, was “Last Night I Made Love With A Blackshirt.”

There was no getting rid of it. It was hugely popular; everyone at home knew it. It was a tavern sort of thing, for late, sad nights, in smoke-filled air. I'd never sung it in public, but the waiters often asked for it on nights when there weren't any Fascists at the tables. It was a favorite of theirs; a waiter was in it.

Waiter, bring me a coffee.

Are you allowed to sit and talk?

Last night I made love with a Blackshirt.

I did, I really did.

It took me a moment to realize that I was singing, in a small, whispery way.

Waiter, he's no brute with me. His body is fully a joy.

I hate Fascists. I'm miserable about it.

My three brothers are brand-new partisans.

Were those voices coming from the Galimberti house, calling my name, faintly? Certainly by now they'd have discovered I was missing.

It might have been only one voice. Maybe it was mine, echoing strangely, as if my ears had lost the ability to take my voice for granted, and had to learn it all over again.

Waiter, give me my bill.

It's nearly dusk. I must go now.

If you want to stop me, you'll have to shoot me,

Unless I take care of it myself,

With the little black pistol he gave me, a gift,

Wrapped up with a pretty, red bow.

I'm thinking about it.

But first, I want one more night in his arms.

Maybe a proper marching song would present itself later. As the saying went, beggars couldn't be choosers. I had something to sing. It didn't matter what it was. I was singing, and my feet weren't bleeding.

All was well. I surveyed the look of the land. There was a patch of woods up ahead. Through the trees, I saw the edge of a field, yellow-brown and stubbly from mowing. There was sure to be an old wagon road beyond it, which would lead to another, and another, in an intricate, trustworthy system of Italian byways, webbing steadily to the east, away from the sun, toward the sea, toward Mengo. I reasoned that there'd be plenty of trees and bushes for cover if I had to hide quickly.

“Waiter, bring me a coffee,” I sang softly.

After a while, I was able to put some bounce into it. “La la la, la la la, I hate Fascists, la la la, la la la. I'm a partisan, and so is my son, la la la, la la la, la la
la.
”

“Stop! Stop! Signora! I beg you! Stop at once!”

I halted at the sound of the voice—an old man's voice, behind me, raspy and unfamiliar, but not hostile, and not threatening in any way. I thought he might be a farmer.

He wasn't issuing a command. He seemed to express a genuine, impassioned concern, and I expected to see some terrible danger up ahead, like a tank with its gun barrel pointed at me, or a bull in a corner of the field, ready to rush and attack me. A real bull, not Taurus in the sky.

Nothing was in sight to harm me. I whirled about, and found myself facing—well, looking down on, as he was shorter than me—the stumpy-legged, hoary-faced, odd little fisherman known at home as the Octopus Man.

Polpo, he was called, as if he were one of those creatures himself. He was the reason why Aldo's, unlike every other restaurant on the coast, did not have octopus on its menu.

He'd made converts of Aldo and Beppi. He was just like a missionary. Octopuses were sacred; they were smarter than people; they were glorious in every way; if one of their arms broke off, it grew back, no problem. They changed colors at will. They were composed purely of mind, without bones. They were mysterious; they were solitary; they shimmered with radiant beauty; they were perfect. Yet every day they were captured, slaughtered, crammed into tins, fried in oil, boiled, grilled, laid cold on platters—all sorts of things—as if they'd been, in life, as mindless as onions and peppers.

To cook and eat an octopus in the well-known opinion of Polpo was to cook and eat an angel.

One day there'd been a diving expedition—this was long before Aldo's first heart attack—Aldo, Beppi, Polpo. Down in the sea they were embraced by long, thin, soft arms. Not tentacles. Arms.

That was how they'd described it. Beppi had ended up sick in bed with ear infections. Aldo had nearly drowned, having spotted a glittery object stuck up against an underwater cliff; he'd tried to retrieve it, thinking it was treasure off a wreck. It was just a piece of junk.

But they'd come home from the dive as glowing and dazzled as if they'd fallen in love, the two of them. Everything was octopus, octopus, octopus, and it didn't wear off. They fell in love with Polpo, too, for giving them the opportunity to be enraptured. And so the menu was changed forever.

Mariano had tried raising his voice as head of the kitchen, after Aldo died, to go back to what used to be one of his specialties: spaghetti in garlic and oil, with basil, a little lemon juice, and chopped-up, slightly sautéed
polpo,
but Beppi had held his ground. If customers wanted octopus, they'd get squid. No one in Mengo had ever stepped forward to defend and protect the lives of squid.

And here was Polpo, coming up beside me, talking almost as fast as Marcellina, almost breathlessly. “Please, excuse me if you think I've sneaked up on you. It's as lovely as ever to hear you singing, Signora Fantini, and I hated to stop you, but I don't think it's a good idea for you to walk across that field up ahead, unless you wish to be blown to pieces, seeing as how it's been mined by the Germans—who, as it happens, until a few days ago, were living at that farm, which it seems you're headed for.”

“Mined?” I said, feeling stupid. A mined farm field?

“Those Germans felt that, if anyone wanted to call on them, the hospitable thing would be, have them step on explosives. Mines are their idea of welcome mats. You seem surprised to see me.”

“I thought you never left Mengo except to go into the sea.”

“I had no choice, or I wouldn't have.”

He grinned at me, exuding a sense of ruddy good health. In his worn wool jacket and heavy fisherman's knitted vest, he appeared to be composed of nothing but muscle. His fingers were pale, as if he suffered from a lack of proper blood circulation, and they were a bit too long for his short, blunt hands, which were rough with blisters and calluses.

It was not preposterous to think of Adriatic octopuses swimming up to Polpo and touching his fingers with the belief that, if one fell off, it would grow right back. I was sure they didn't perceive him as human.

“The truth is,” he was saying, “I stand beside you only because my sweetheart sent me to follow you.”

Sweetheart? That word didn't seem to fit Annunziata Galimberti.

“She's your
sweetheart
?”

“Yes. Now you know. She finds it comical that you might have thought she didn't notice you fleeing that house. She has eyes in the back of her head, which I'm sure you've found out about. I'm curious, though. At my age, one knows a few things about impulsive, suicidal tendencies. You've been through a lot, as I've heard. Have you come to the end of your rope? Do you wish to be blown to pieces?”

I decided to behave as if it weren't bizarre to, first, encounter him here, and, second, to consider that old woman in his arms, in her airy, splendid room.

“I've gone to a great deal of trouble in the last few days to keep myself alive,” I answered. “I haven't got a rope, but if I did, I would not be at the end of it.”

“I'm content in my heart to know that. Stand absolutely still. By the way, the reason you're only just now meeting me, after all these years, is that she keeps me all to herself. I'm a man on a leash, and it's only about this long, believe me.”

Polpo held up a thumb and index finger spaced about two inches apart. What was he talking about, “after all these years”? I'd only just met Annunziata. What years? An old man's confusion?

“She gives the impression that she's very nice,” I said, trying to be helpful.

What I wanted to do was get rid of him, but he'd dug in his heels, growing more and more animated.

“Nice? You think she's nice? Ha! It's only when she wants something. We can be honest with each other, you and I. She's ten times more jealous than the devil himself, but that's another thing you'd know,” he said, as he bent down to pick up a stone. “However, I love her. What else can I say? You have no idea how I suffer. I do what she tells me. Ignazio, go here, do this, do that, go somewhere else, get out of the way, go and make yourself scarce. Ten minutes ago, it was, ‘Ignazio, go and follow Lucia and bring her back, and if anything happens to her, I will cut off'—excuse me for the crassness, but I'm only repeating her words—‘those little apples between your legs, or what's left of them, you old man.' As if she were twenty herself! As if she weren't five years older than me! I ask you. Did you ever blow up a German mine? No? Here, I'll show you what it's like. You might be wondering what I wanted this rock for.”

Ignazio. The name might have suited him if he weren't already Polpo.

The stone was about the size of his hand. He pulled back his arm and threw it hard, like a child throwing rocks at the windows of an abandoned building, prepared to be elated by the results. The stone landed in a patch of hay stubble, and nothing happened.

“I'll try it again,” said Polpo. “This is just like fishing. You throw out your line, you never know what's what, or what's where. It always takes a few tries. Did you know, Signora Fantini, that when an octopus mother gives birth, she holes up in a cave with her babies to protect them until they're big enough to go out, not eating the whole time, and then, when they're old enough to risk life on their own, she dies?”

“I didn't know that.”

“There are benefits to being a person. I'm sometimes willing to admit that. I suppose you want to ask me why I never married her. Go ahead, ask me.”

“I'm in a hurry. There's somewhere I must absolutely get to.”

“I'll take that as your question. I never married her because she wouldn't let me. ‘Go to hell,' she tells me, every time I bring it up.”

I didn't let on that I was startled to hear that—the same thing I'd said to Aldo in Sicily, a lifetime ago, a world away. All those times. Go to hell, Aldo. Then one day I heard myself say, “Yes.” As if that was what one said when one was sick of saying “hell.”

It was an interesting coincidence, but I didn't mention it. I didn't want to set him up for any more confidences; we might have stood there chatting forever.

“Oh,” he said, “she likes all the sneaking around. She truly
likes
it. I'm not complaining. But now that she's sent me to follow you, everything's out in the open. I had the devil of a time finding her in the first place, let me tell you. But I didn't doubt myself. If she were a needle in a haystack, I would find her. If she were one grain of sand on the beach, the same thing.”

He'd found another stone, a larger one. “Do you know that a rock is the preferred method of bashing an octopus by Italian murderers of octopuses?”

“I didn't know that.”

“Cephalopod. That's the scientific name, for your information. It's very dreary. I don't like it. But it's useful to know. All right. This one will be the rock that hits a mine. You can't understand the danger of mines until you've seen one erupt. It's like a volcano, in a way, without the lava. Get ready, Signora.”

He threw with all his might, glancing at me to make sure I admired his strength. The stone flew to the middle of the field and dropped like a shot-at bird, and again nothing happened. It came to me that he might have been lying.

I eyed him warily. “Did Annunziata tell you to tell me there are mines in that field to scare me, so I'd go back to her house with you? I bet Germans were never there!”