Lambrusco (3 page)

Black shirts at the tables. Leather, regalia, boots. I had not experienced stage fright, because it didn't count as real singing.

Waves of applause. Compliments in German, translated by Fascists: I was a songbird, an angel. When the war was over they'd arrange for me to sing in great houses all over the world—in their Paris, their Vienna, their London, their Milan, their everywhere. I had not eaten the food placed in front of me, as hungry as I was.

The cooks. Stuck in the kitchen like prisoners. I imagined them with me, crowded together, finding fault with the train, the seats, the view, each other. They resented it so much that they weren't with the squad. I could smell the kitchen, as if it were imbued in their clothes and skin and hair: garlic, onions, roasting meats, tomatoes, and complicated scents of the sea, salty and fishy and marvelous.
Oh you ask me.
I imagined them singing our partisans' song, with the train wheels beating time.

Oh you ask me why I closed up my shop,

Why I brought up my boat to dry land,

Why I walked away from that restaurant,

Why I gave up all pleasure, worse than a penance in Lent.

Do you want me to say I went into the hills with guns

Because of love in my heart for liberty,

With the fight in my blood for the freedom of my country?

I will tell you, please, put your fancy explanations up your ass.

I came into the hills so I can run my shop,

I can fish in my boat,

I can make love in peace like there's no tomorrow,

And go seven days a week to that restaurant,

To suffer complaints and insults,

And bust my balls in servitude,

Which no one cares about,

Because no one ever worries about men who work with food.

A
DISTURBANCE.
A clearing of the throat of my compartment companion. A little cough. It startled me. I'd been so wrapped up in my thoughts, I'd forgotten all about her. It was the type of noise one makes when one hasn't spoken for a while, and is getting ready to say something important.

“Excuse me, Signora Fantini,” she said. “Please don't mind this intrusion on your privacy, but I've been trying to get your attention. I really must speak with you.”

It was the voice of an alto, measured, discreet. Foreigner-Italian: a little hesitant, a little too careful. But perfectly understandable.

Barriers. Graciousness. Nuns had often patronized the restaurant. Aldo—then Beppi—never charged them full price.

“You know me?” I said.

“I don't mean to startle you. I've been sent by your friends to offer help.”

The nun picked up the book in her lap. She lifted it so the cover was showing. It was not a Bible, and I recognized it: Beppi's mysterious, fell-from-the-plane book. It was some sort of diary. We knew it was American because stamped inside were the words “Made in U.S.A.” There was no name. All the pages were blank except for the first two, on which someone had written carefully, in black ink, what appeared to be a poem, without a title. In English.

Six days ago Beppi had turned up at home to take a bath. He spotted the book in the nut orchard, in the crook of a tree, as if it had grown there. He had to use the ladder to take it down. The book was unharmed except for a chipped-off, tattered corner.

He concluded that it had fallen from a reconnaissance plane, which I'd refused to believe. Why would a pilot throw out a handsome book? It was obviously worth some money. The leather was luxurious.

There were more than twenty lines. If the thing was a poem, was it obscene? Had the pilot written it, like a literary version of pictures of busty, cleavage-showing movie stars, which American pilots were said to tape to their consoles, like icons, where an Italian would keep his pictures under his mattress, and have Mary Queen of Heaven in his cockpit?

The lines seemed to be some sort of American dialect. The crucial word was “surrey,” which had a “fringe.”

Beppi became fixated on it. Was a surrey a woman? Why didn't we have dictionaries in the house? Why were we so provincial? Why were we so illiterate?

He felt sure the whole thing was a code. He deciphered a few words from having heard English in the restaurant. I helped with the little I knew from songs. We understood wheels, dashboard, take, drive, bright, shiny, and high, as well as the pronouns and three edible fowls—chicks, which we assumed were chickens, and ducks and geese. Marcellina helped, too, remembering that someone had told her that Englishwomen called the bangs on their foreheads a fringe.

Beppi rushed off with the book in great excitement. What he wanted to do was speak quickly to the one Mengo partisan who knew the language: a waiter named Nomad, who had worked for six years in a London hotel.

But all that week Nomad was out of touch in a village near Urbino, helping to train a new squad of farmers; he was teaching them English expressions. Everyone thought it would be useful to know a few phrases in case it really did happen that they looked out their windows one day at the American Army, shooting their way up from the south like cowboys. Hello, GI, how are you? Good to see you. Has anyone killed Mussolini yet? Can you spare some ammunition, rifles, anything?

And here it was, the fallen book, with its injured corner.

“Are you American?” I said to the nun.

“I am.”

“Where did you get this?”

“From your son, although not directly. I only saw Beppi for a moment, in passing. We didn't speak. It was given to me by Vito Nizarro.”

“Prove it.”

“He asked me to give you his greetings. He said to tell you, the glasses in Aldo's at the moment are so filthy, one could get venereal disease just by looking at them. And it's always a good idea to have the spaghetti with mussels.”

Nizarro was our headwaiter. He'd created a code for the Mengo squad that was based on expressions they used with each other in the restaurant. The partisans who came from other lines of work—Emilio Batarra, the tobacconist; his brother Teo from the pharmacy; Tito Roncuzzi, the butcher, and Galto Saponi, the fisherman—had been forced to play catch-up, which they'd all complained about. But the system was working. A filthy glass that gave you diseases meant all
nazifascisti.
Mussels and spaghetti meant “a German supply truck, which we could hijack.”

It was odd to hear a nun talking about venereal disease, even as part of a code.

“No one,” I said, “told me anything about you.”

“That's what I was told you would say.”

Was this some sort of trap? Just because someone was a nun didn't mean they sympathized with partisans. An American
fascista
in a habit? Anything was possible.

It wasn't out of the question to think that an outsider might have found out about the waiters' code. The nun might have stolen the book, having been trusted to read it for Beppi and look for clues.

“Tell me,” I said, “what my son looks like.”

“He looks like someone who would succeed at American football, especially in the position of a guy on defense, who has to knock down opponents.
Tackle,
it's called. Tacklers get everyone out of the way, so their own team keeps the ball. Basically, he looks like a barrel with arms and legs and a head.”

Well, that was accurate. “And Nizarro?” I was convinced, but I was also curious.

“Nizarro is a bigger barrel, but not as good-looking, which I say in the most objective way possible. He looks like, if he knocked you down, you might die. Look, he'd wanted to write you a proper letter, but there wasn't any paper.”

The nun opened the book to a page near the back. Someone had penciled in a message. It was Vito Nizarro's penmanship: squat, block-like letters, very muscular. I'd know it anywhere. His writing was just like his body.

He'd written, “The bank account, Lucia, has been checked, and I'm sure you understand my meaning here. The customer, in this case a female
grattacielo,
as you can see for yourself, is good for the whole table's bill. No problem. She's with us. Don't worry that I'm marking up someone else's notebook, as our friend will erase this. By the way, Beppi's really looking forward to Aldo's birthday, which I know because he just told me. But in case he doesn't show up, don't hold it against him, as we've got our hands full with a couple of minor details. I hope your shopping expedition was everything you hoped for. If we can't see your new dresses at the scheduled time, we'll arrange another.”

The nun closed the book and put it back into her pocket.

“Nizarro has a sense of humor,” she said. “A female skyscraper. I like that.”

“It's interesting that he doesn't refer to you as a Sister.”

“He was in a hurry.”

“But he would have said Sister.”

The nun sighed. “Perhaps he was telling you something indirectly.”

“You're not a nun?”

“It's a long story.”

“You're not! You fooled me!”

“I wasn't about to for much longer. I'll tell you—”

“No, I'll tell
you.
” I kept my voice low, almost whispery, holding back my temper. This was not a good time for a flare-up.

“I never know what's going on,” I said. “They send me on errands like this and tell me nothing. Not long ago outside the station I was accosted by a filthy, bad-smelling man selling chestnuts. He turned out to be a partisan, but he was truly selling chestnuts. And he was Italian. What's the meaning of the poem in that book?”

“It's not a poem, but I can see where you'd think so. It's a love song about a wagon.”

“A wagon?”

“A fancy carriage, the type that horses pull. A
surrey.
”

“Is this an American way to say a type of woman?”

“No, it's just a wagon. A man sings the song, and he wants to take his girlfriend for a ride. It's from an American musical play,
Oklahoma.
In case you never heard of it, it's a state. It's western.”

“Like cowboys and Indians?”

“Sort of, but without the Indians. In the title of the musical, instead of just having the state's name, there's an exclamation point, for special effect. It's been a very big hit since last spring.”

In another part of the world, people were going to plays? Were hearing songs? I tried to imagine this.

“Funny it landed in your own particular territory,” said the nun who was not a nun. “But I'm sure it's a coincidence.”

“Where did it land from?”

“A parachute drop. The box it was in had been shot at, and everything was scattered. There've been problems with radio communications. But it may be the key to messages, or orders. Americans in fighter planes are very resourceful, almost as much as partisans.”

“I'm sick of your planes. Who are you? Where have you been? Where did you come from? What are you really?”

“My name is Annmarie Malone.” She said it in five syllables instead of eight, and I offered her a correction, as a question.

“Annamaria?”

“Yes.”

“Mah-lo?”

“Mal-lo-
nay,
if you like. Or, Mal-
lo
-nay. I'm from the state of Connecticut, and don't even try pronouncing it. It's in the East, near New York. Right now, as it happens, I'm with the army. There's a special branch involving secret operations, and I'm part of it. But what I really do is play golf. That is, before this shitty war, I used to.”

“Golf? With a tiny white ball and a stick?”

“A club, not a stick, actually. In fact, for a while back home, in certain circles, I was famous.”

Well, so was I. How much did she know about me? About my singing, my strike, my favorite songs? What about my special one?

“Lambrusco,” I said, and she looked at me with confusion.

“Isn't that a wine?”

“Never mind. I just felt like saying the word.”

Beppi hadn't told her about that. The shattered gift bottle.

He'd never appreciated the taste of it. He felt that the buoyant little fizz that sparkles so wonderfully in the mouth and throat does not belong in a wine, and never mind he was the only one he knew who thought so. He claimed to hate my song about it, but he loved it.

The tune was from the glorious song of Rosina—not the betrayed, unhappy countess of Austrian Mozart, but the real one, the Italian one: the Rossini Rosina, gutsy and alarming, the star of the show, a woman with some steel up her back,
una voce poco fa, qui nel cor mi risuono.
A little while ago, a voice echoed inside my heart.

Every time I sang it, I'd enter a place without fright, and feel as dizzy as if I stood on the edge of a roof, which I'd want to jump off of—a roof, a cliff, anything high,
l'ingegno aguzzerò,
I'll sharpen my wits,
se mi toccano dov'è il mio debole,
if they touch me in my weak spot…

Instead of those words at home, what did I sing instead?

Lambrusco. Every way you can arrange those syllables, I'd do it, lam-bru-
sco,
lam-
bru
-sco-
lam.
I'd start out comical, a clown, but the song would find its own way, lightly, airily, importantly,
lam-brus-co, o-o-o, o-o-o.

I'd cut off vowels, draw them out. In the act of ascending, I'd look at the three of them—or four if Ugo Fantini showed up, or five if Enzo showed up, too—all of them in front of me, listening with the faces of people bewitched: my son, my husband, his cousin, the priest, Marcellina with her mouth wide open, with the five or six teeth she still had turning pearly, translucent.

We were coming into Mengo. The American stood up, swaying and ducking her head; the ceiling of the compartment wasn't high. She picked up the two bags effortlessly, as if they weighed almost nothing.

“I'll take charge of these, Signora Fantini. I won't mind if you take out the guns and keep them with you, in case you haven't decided to completely trust me.”

“The guns,” I said, “aren't loaded.”

“You look at me as if you wish they were.”

“I am annoyed, not violent.”

“That's good to know.”

The American didn't move toward the compartment door. She sat down in the window seat opposite me and placed the bags on the seat beside her.

“Go away from the window at once,” she said softly. “Please don't be alarmed. It's not possible to get off here.”

“You're mistaken. I've a dinner to prepare, which I suppose I'll have to invite you to, as you seem to have decided to come home with me.”

The train was grinding to a halt. Outside the window, no soldiers in sight. Just people. Just the plain old Mengo station and the fields and trees all around it, and the ordinary Italian fall sunlight, yellow and crisp and luminous. No trucks, no tanks. Not a plane in the sky. All was quiet, as if the war were taking a nap.