Lambrusco (27 page)

In that moment, I allowed myself to acknowledge the dead soldiers.

My eyes became eyes that had lost the power to blink. I couldn't fool myself any longer into imagining that those shapes were anything but what they were: four, maybe five, maybe half a dozen, just several yards away, sprawled on the ground below a couple of trees that were unusually close together, with trunks that nearly touched and crowns so intertwined they appeared to be sharing branches. The soldiers were American. Their boots were the same as mine. I maneuvered myself to my hands and knees and crept closer.

They looked as if they'd been there for a while. They must have gone into the olive trees for shelter from the fog. My hands grazed the side of a boot, not being worn: big, a big man's boot. All the feet were big. All men. Not a woman among them, a tall woman, slender, short-haired, American, a golfer.

They hadn't died from a bombing. It was too dark to see bullet wounds, but I knew they'd been shot.

A patrol. Germans had found them here. One of the small objects on the ground was a belt buckle, damaged, discarded: my fingers probed it. When I realized what it was, I pulled away, as if it might contaminate me. I'd seen those things often enough. Luftwaffe, an officer's. Metal. Ornately decorated, with the shape of an eagle in the center, within a wreath.

Perhaps the Germans who killed them were the same ones who'd done what they did to the Bologna partisans. It made sense; it wasn't that far away.

I got down to business. There were pieces of equipment all over the ground: belongings, a rucksack, a bedroll, helmets. They'd taken off their helmets. I didn't notice any guns. I noticed a tin can, another, and another, on their sides, open. Paper-wrapped packets.

A calmness came over me, unlike anything I'd felt before, except perhaps at the end of a performance. My hand closed around a packet. I thought it might be some sort of thick, square, hard biscuit. The paper had been torn back about an inch or so, but it was all there. It had not been partially eaten, or bitten into. I sniffed it. Chocolate. Something like baking chocolate, in the shape of a small brick.

I managed to get hold of two open cans that weren't empty. Some type of thick stew. Meat, potatoes. Maybe bits of vegetables that once had been green.

I found several other cans that were sealed. I didn't take them, although I paused for a moment, feeling about on the ground for a can opener. And a spoon or a fork. I didn't find any of those things.

“Excuse me,” whispered the voice of my husband. “I've come back again because I forgot to tell you something.”

I pictured him turning on the walkway at home in a snappy little pirouette, charming and delightful, especially for a man of his size: elegant Aldo. There'd always been moments when he knew how to carry his weight.

I imagined myself in my own doorway. He came near me, his face furrowed with worry.

“Lucia, where's Marcellina?”

“Oh,” I said, “never mind about her.”

“I don't want to never mind about her. You know how she is. She must be wondering why you're not with her. Why aren't you with her? She must be—”

“Stop telling me what to do.”

“I will, except for one more thing. The rims of those cans are very sharp, very pointy. Be careful not to cut yourself. I wouldn't be able to bear it.”

“I won't cut myself,” I promised.

Why did Aldo have to bring up Marcellina? Her face seemed to loom up in the fog, as if she were haunting me, too. Did I have to go back and get her, and take her with me, and probably her boyfriend as well? Did I
have
to? Or at least go back and let her see I was all right? She always said that when someone goes off somewhere without a
ciao
to people who love them, they are committing a sin. If they go off without a word of their whereabouts, causing all sorts of frantic worrying, they are commiting another one, worse.

I put the chocolate into my pocket. In each of my hands was a can. It wasn't stealing. When I got myself back up on my feet, I was careful not to rush away like a thief. I took my time, moving slowly back onto the footpath, seeking the shelter of another tree, a good distance away, to sit beneath for a while, and eat my supper in peace.

I
F THE
A
MERICAN BOYFRIEND
who looked like a young Caruso had not played
baseball
in his youth, with a specialty in a position called
shortstop,
and if he hadn't walked into what was left of the Galimberti kitchen from the side, from Annunziata's room—which he'd only done because he was hungry, he'd smelled food, and he wanted to find out what the women were cooking—and, most importantly, if he hadn't been successful at liberating Annmarie—he and Etto, who'd been a big help—he would not have been there, in the right place, in exactly the right set of circumstances, to have intercepted, like an
infield pop fly,
the onion Marcellina had flung at my head, the instant I appeared in the hole in the wall, the same one I'd left from, which everyone was using as a doorway because the real door was fully blocked up now, from the second bombardment, the Folcore one, which had not gone as planned.

Bombs had fallen profusely, all around this area, but they had not destroyed Folcore. The old main tower had gone down, but that was all.

Good old Folcore. The Germans were evacuating, were going west.

Down here, there'd been hits. Many fields had new craters, which, on the bright side, might one day serve as ponds for irrigation. It had been possible to gather root vegetables without having to dig for them, thanks to the disturbances of the land. Several farm buildings had been lost, several barns.

Marcellina was not sorry about the onion, which she'd been about to chop up for soup. The only reason she'd thrown it was that she'd needed a substitute for her voice. She had a rotten, potentially fatal head cold, no doubt from hiding from the bombs in the Galimbertis' damp, awful cellar, and while her throat wasn't sore, it was filled, it felt, with little rocks, and she was suffering from a case of laryngitis, which Ugo refused to pay attention to.

It was true he had his hands full out there in the tents with what seemed like half of Italy, including refugees from Folcore and San Guarino; Etto, who was sleeping, and who planned to sleep straight through for a couple of days, which he deserved; farmers whose houses had been destroyed; and half a dozen Galimbertis.

But still. Busy as he was, Ugo could have acknowledged her ailments as a direct result of the war. He could have taken the time to confirm what she'd figured out for herself: that a head cold in wartime for someone her age was likely to become pneumonia. She could drop dead any minute, and she probably would, as soon as the soup was hot, like poor Aldo. In fact, she was shocked she was still alive, considering what I'd put her through,
running away from poor Polpo without a word, like a sinner.

The tents were American. The Galimbertis had raided one of their encampments while they were all out on a mission. It had taken forever to get them set up. They'd been all rolled up, without a set of directions, which anyway would have been in English, so it didn't matter.

The boyfriend—the
fidanzato
—had turned up just in time to offer advice. Sometimes things worked out all right. Not often, but sometimes. The news about Beppi was the same. The news from Cassaromilia was so bad, it was better not to discuss it. But now that I
had come back from God knew where,
when everyone had been
insanely frantic
about me, things were getting better, not counting certain things.

Everyone knew where every squad member was, excluding Beppi. The partisans who'd been here before were still here, taking up room in the tents with the rest of the occupants: Nizarro, Nomad, the butcher, the Etruscan, Cherubino, the Batarras.

Everyone else was in Cassaromilia: Mauro, the Triumvirate, Ferro, old Galto. Even Enzo and Eliana Fantini were accounted for; there'd been a message. They'd gone to Eliana's mountain. Her home village had been bombed. Her family was alive, but their priest was badly wounded. Another fallen priest! They'd heard what happened to the priest in Cassaromilia! Americans were going out of their way to bomb priests! Enzo should have disguised himself!

The laryngitis was not preventing Marcellina from communicating her feelings. I noticed the way she wasn't saying anything about the secret she'd kept from me all those years.

I wasn't going to bring it up. She'd probably find something else to throw at me.

They were composing the soup out of root vegetables: carrots, potatoes, and so on. They were cooking three at once. Three was the number of pots they had, counting the one from before, which had held Annunziata's delicious beans, which could not have been called soup, as intended, because
a certain person greedily drank up all the broth.

Three pots, but they were basically all the same soup. Yes, one lucky result of the bombing was that, when nearby fields were hit, the disturbed ground had yielded these very vegetables, unexpectedly.

“Welcome back, Signora Fantini,” spoke up Annunziata, barely turning around from her stove.

Annunziata had a cold as well but she was tougher; she was already halfway recovered. She didn't have a throat full of stones that made her voice sound like a crow's.

“I'd offer you a glass of water,” she said, “but we haven't got glasses, and the water we had, given to us in bottles by Americans, has all gone into the soup. It's your own business if you don't want to tell us where you've been. You owe me a song or two, but I'm willing to forget that. You don't look so good, but cheer up. You're fortunate that my friend Marcellina chose the onion, and not the knife she was holding. It's very sharp, so be glad doubly. I'm not sure the American would have stuck out his hand for it.”

I tried to remember what the words “cheer up” could possibly mean.

Morning. Cold, pale.

A long night behind me. A daze. Backtracking along that path slowly, carefully, with the feeling I was walking on a tightrope.

Finding my way to the truck. Waiting for the farmers. Not looking at Cassaromilia. Not looking anywhere.

Pretending that the sound in the distance was thunder, and not doing a good job of it, because I knew what direction the blasts were coming from. Saying to myself, “I remember when the only thing to worry about dropping out of the sky was bird shit.”

The farmers had been grim, dirty, exhausted, dazed, beyond words. Some of them had stayed behind. The burial work was far from completed, but there were still morning chores to go home to. Chores, and checking to see what damage had been done to their homes and fields, so near to Folcore.

Not talking about bombs. Not talking about new or old dead. Not talking, period, except to tell them—Adriano's father in particular—that I had changed my mind about my destination. Would they take me to the Galimbertis' house? They knew where it was. They asked no questions.

Stopping on the way only once, by the trees of the partisans from Bologna. Not there. On the ground, the discarded ropes, like skins from which snakes had crawled out.

Wondering where the Germans had acquired ropes for hangings. Maybe they'd been brought from Germany in a box labeled “Ropes for Good Nazis to Hang Bad Italians.”

Wondering who cut the partisans down. And where the bodies were taken. Don't ask. No one felt like talking.

With the ropes, booby traps: glass shards, pieces of metal with corrugated edges, like teeth. Neatly piled up, as if swept in a housecleaning. The branches of the trees were just branches, ordinary, unmarked. No signs of what had been done there. No scars.

The truck proceeding with an air of invigoration.

Riding in the cab where the shrouds had been.

Getting out of the truck at the end of the lane that led to the Galimbertis' house. Waving goodbye to the farmers.

Tents, an encampment. Don't look for Ugo.

“That was a great
pop fly
! I'm still good! I've still got it!”

“If you don't give back our onion, a frying pan may come in contact with the side of your big, thick skull, and then you won't get anything to eat.”

“My dear Signora Galimberti, baseball players don't keep the balls they catch. They have to throw to a
baseman
for an
out.
When there aren't any runners, they have to throw to the
pitcher.
”

Handing back the onion. Caruso. It was kind of him not to mention the other night, the cart, picking me up from the bottom of the Folcore hill. But everything else he wasn't saying was much more significant than that. My own part was minor.

I couldn't remember his name. He was American, he'd grown up in America, but no one could have looked more Italian, not even Caruso himself. He was freshly shaven. Hair slicked back. A crisp, clean shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, no jacket. Clean, new-looking trousers.
Khaki.

Turning his gaze to me. Sad, tired, gentle, polite. Determined to put up a strong front. “Wonderful to see you again, Signora Fantini. I'd forgotten you were dressed as one of my compatriots. Isn't it a good thing we're all on the same side? Tell you what. You don't seem to be busy right now, so why don't you follow me in there?”

“In there” was the same as before. The room of Annunziata.

Cooking smells in the background, eradicating the oppression of stifling dust, dirt, post-bomb air clutter. A type of fortification. If something was cooking, everything was not as bad as it could have been. Maybe it wouldn't be bad.

Getting down to business. A touch of the American's hand on my arm as I paused in the doorway.

I didn't want to go in.

His voice was low. Visit-a-patient low. “Look, we've got chairs. We borrowed them from some neighbors. Marcellina and Annunziata sat with her last night. It's good you arrived when you did. We've got a car on the way, to take her to a hospital. Romagnan, but one of ours. South of here. Secure. A spot where it's clear now.”

Secure. Clear. Think about those two words as words containing a dependable reality.

“How does she look?” I asked.

“Don't worry. She's been medicated. Your relative the doctor gave her a sedative. She won't know you're here. It took an American general and a trade with the Germans to get her back. They had her, you see. We gave them eight Nazis from a camp of ours near Naples.”

He sounded like a black market trader. What was the worth of a life? Was one life of more value than another?

I looked inside. The shutters were open. No warmth was in the air. The light had turned paler, as if it weren't the sun up there but some other, weaker, farther-off star, barely adequate for anything alive. As if the real sun was gone forever, bombed.

“Mama,” Beppi used to say, looking up at the zodiac on his wall. “What's the biggest, strongest thing outside of the earth? And don't say God, like Marcellina does.”

“The sun,” I'd answer.

“Is it holding everything together?”

“It is.”

“Can it break?”

“It's gas. Gas can't be broken.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm your mother, and I say so.”

Beppi's head on his pillow, past terror. His eyes closing gently, safely. Another nightmare abated. Try to think about that: being present in a state of peace. Try to remember what it was like.

Try to think this was only a nightmare.

In Folcore the big tower had fallen. Folco's tower. Folco the boy had kept his eyes on the sky, watching the arc of the light in his long-ago century. He had problems, but he never had to worry about someone up there in a plane, blowing up the sun.