The Black Madonna (12 page)

“Never mind,” Zia Guinetta said. “Tomorrow morning Terragrossa's car will start. Eat something. Take your nap.”

“But I have to go to town. I have to send a telegram to New York . . . my son.” Amadeo shook his head as if to clear it, to find his past.

“Rest for now,” Zia Guinetta said, her hand stroking the back of his neck. “I'll take care of everything.”

“What happened, Zia?” he said. I feel it here . . . and here. He put a hand to his head, moved it to his belly. “Was it God or the Devil?”

Zia Guinetta clicked her tongue. “Fate,” she said. “It's always fate.” But under her breath, she praised her Madonna.

T
he wedding was everything Zio Carmelo had promised. Amadeo turned his pockets inside out and complained about nothing except that Magdalena was hidden in her father's house for the weeks before the ceremony.

Zia Guinetta fed Amadeo bits of meat and raw eggs and milk from the goat and when the day of the wedding arrived, he had to admit that she had saved his life. She pinched his cheek between her thumb and forefinger. “So handsome,” she said. “Any girl would be lucky.”

The wedding celebration lasted three days. There were fireworks after the vows, and the brass band did came from Matera. The musicians wore red uniforms with big gold buttons in two lines down the front of their coats.

Zio Carmelo had ordered paper lanterns in different colors strung across the piazza so the party could go on through the night. Silk banners decorated the balconies. Goats were roasted on spits, and the wedding cake, filled with almonds and honey, was so high that Magdalena had to stand on a stool to cut it.

The children got sick from all the sweets, the men got drunk from all the wine. The priest held the bride after the ceremony and kissed her for too long a time on the mouth.

Magdalena looked like a Madonna. Everyone said so. Five seamstresses had worked for two weeks to finish her dress. They had grumbled at such short notice but Zia Guinetta had put her hand in Amadeo's pocket and the seamstresses were sorry when the dress was finished.

Everyone talked about the embroidery on the bodice, the train that was as long as the church aisle. There were whispers that virtue was not rewarded, that the Devil's power was clear in the forces at work between men and women, but no one could say that it was not the most extravagant wedding Castelfondo had ever seen.

I
t was such a celebration that Zia Guinetta worried that it was too grand, grander than the festival for the Black Madonna. “She might take offense, get jealous,” Zia Guinetta said. “She's a woman, after all,” and so she dug into Amadeo's pockets and the papier-mâché statue in the church was replaced with a plaster statue that Zia Guinetta swore cried tears on the anniversary of the wedding. Zia Guinetta would wipe the tears with a lace handkerchief that she never washed but kept in a velvet-lined wooden box under her bed. The priest and the mayor talked about sending the handkerchief to Rome but Zia Guinetta would not give it up, not even for the Pope.

Zio Carmelo wrote all this in a letter to Amadeo and when Amadeo showed it to Magdalena she was not surprised.

T
he couple left in Terragrossa's car, which had miraculously started just as Zia Guinetta had said. The car was decorated with bits of colored cloth and ribbons and pieces of tin and mirror that caught the sun. Giacomo Caparetti would not let go of his daughter and cried until his eyelids swelled shut and Terragrossa said if they didn't leave soon they would miss the bus.

On the way to Naples, Magdalena told the people on the bus that they had just been married and she gave them pieces of wedding cake that she had wrapped in an embroidered cloth. She uncorked a gallon of wine and by the time they reached the city, it seemed as though they had had another wedding.

Magdalena held Amadeo's arm when they walked in Naples. She had never been outside of Castelfondo, never seen a city. In the hotel, she ran the water in the bathtub until it overflowed. She flushed the toilet over and over to watch the swirl of water go down. To where? she wanted to know. She stood at the balcony and looked out at the sea for hours. Amadeo made her a bath with bubbles.

She's a child, he thought, but when he lay with her at night, he wondered where she had really come from and how she had come to be his. She knew things. How? he asked himself. It frightened him, and when she saw this in his face, she laid her head on his shoulder and took his hand.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I'm yours,” Magdalena told him. “And you'll never be sorry.”

S
o,” the women said to Teresa Sabatini on the stoop outside the building on Spring Street. “What do you hear from Italy?”

“He's coming back soon.”

They all nodded. “Well, it's about time.”

“And he's gotten married.”

All of them gasped. “No,” from the first step. “It can't be,” from the second, and then, “So soon!”

“Wait,” Teresa said. “Stay right there,” and she went upstairs to check on Nicky and Salvatore, who were sleeping under the open window so she could hear their cry from outside on the stoop. She put a hand on their foreheads and pulled the blanket up under their chins. From behind the sugar bowl she took the yellow envelope with the telegram that had come from Italy. Downstairs, she smoothed her skirt under her and sat down on the top step. She handed over the telegram. The women passed it around.

“It doesn't say much.”

“Only that he's taken a wife.”

“A young one, I bet.”

“And maybe big like this,” someone said, and she leaned back and held out her arms in a circle in front of her. The others laughed.

“Too bad,” Jumbo's mother Antoinette said, putting the telegram back in its envelope, handing it up to Teresa, who sat on the step above her. “He would have been a good catch for you. You've practically raised his son.”

“What are you talking about?” Teresa folded the envelope into a small square and stuffed it down the front of her dress. “I have a husband.”

“Oh, that's right. It's hard to remember,” Antoinette said. “Who sees him?”

“And I have my own son.”

Antoinette smiled. “That's right, too,” she said, bouncing Jumbo on her knee. His body shook and trembled and everyone there could see that he was the biggest baby boy.

A
madeo took Magdalena everywhere in Naples. They went to dinner and to the theater. He bought her clothes to wear and rings for her fingers and her ears. She was a witch, he told her, and he was caught under her spell. She laughed at him deep in her throat.

“We have to go back,” he said one morning. “My son . . . the business. I didn't know I would be gone so long.”

“There's something . . . before we go,” she said.

“What? Anything.”

“I want to see my mother. She's here, in Naples.”

“Magdalena,” he said. “You don't know that.”

“She's here. I have proof. Wait.” And she dug through her things to find a postcard of the Bay of Naples. The ink on the card was faded.

“So she sent you a postcard. How long ago? She might have been passing through. She might have had a friend send it. And even if she was here, how could you find her? Do you know how big Naples is?”

“You could find her for me. You promised me anything. You said that. I want to see my mother.” She curled herself into the curve of his arm. She made a mustache under his nose with the ends of her hair. She left a trail of kisses down the center of his body.

“Magdalena,” he said. She covered his mouth with her hand.

“You'll find her. I know you will . . . for me.”

A
madeo said he would try. She was a child, he reminded herself. She wanted her mother. When he was away from her, his head would clear and he would wonder how it had all come to be, but he could never understand. He would see her and he would forget everything that had gone before, except for Zia Guinetta's face and the way she had held Magdalena before they left in Terragrossa's car. How Zia Guinetta had whispered in her ear and touched the amulet from around her neck to Magdalena's lips. Amadeo didn't ask. The way of women. What could he know?

He ordered a coffee in a bar near the waterfront and thought about Magdalena's mother. A country girl with a small child arriving in Naples. A good-looking young country girl with no family and no money. He paid his check and asked the waiter the best place to find a woman in Naples.
“Una casa di tolleranza,”
the waiter said. “There's plenty, but forget the houses. I get you a woman.”

“No,” Amadeo told him. “I want a house, a good one.”

“But this woman is beautiful, young. She comes to your hotel room, no questions. She does whatever you want.”

“My wife is in my hotel room.”

“Ah.” The waiter shut one eye. “I understand.”

Amadeo made a face he hoped was sly and held out a folded bank note. “Where do I go?”

The waiter took the bill and put it in his pocket. He smiled. “I know some places, not that I've been there. Eh, what would I be doing in a place like that? I'm a waiter. Life's not easy but you have to thank God. I always tell my children . . .”

Amadeo stood up. “Are the houses near here?”

“Yes, yes, very near,” the waiter said, and he took the pad from his pocket and drew the directions to an area on the outskirts of the city.

A
madeo stood on the street across from the brothels. Outside the houses there were colored lights to show that they were open for business.

He went into the first one. There was a young girl on the couch in the front room. Her hair was in pigtails with yellow ribbons tied on the ends.

“I want to speak to the
signora,”
he said. She smiled when she heard his accent and he saw she was missing a tooth. She was as young as Magdalena.

He thought about Magdalena then, about sending her back to her father. He could give her money and put her on the bus to Castelfondo. He had thought about this when he was sitting in the coffee bar near the waterfront. He always thought about this when he was away from her. What would happen to her in New York? She was so young. What was he doing anyway?

The girl in the pigtails had gotten up and was knocking on a door. She looked at him seductively as she waited, her hip against the door so that when it opened she almost fell inside. The woman who opened the door shouted at her and the young girl raised her hands to cover her head as if the woman would hit her.

“Signora,”
Amadeo said, and his voice and his accent made the woman stop and look up. She was bony, and, Amadeo thought, very ugly, with a long nose and the mottled, yellowish skin of an opium smoker. He gave her a gracious smile.

She sent the girl away, up the stairs, and she came over to him. “So early,
signore,
” she said.

“The light was on.”

“Yes, from last night. Saturday. “We are always busy on Saturday.” She yawned. He saw long stained teeth.

“Should I come back?”

“No, no. Sit.” And she led him to the red couch where the young girl had been lying when he came in. Amadeo sat down. He knocked off the embroidered doily that covered the armrest with his elbow. The fabric underneath was stained and worn. The woman picked up the doily and pinned it back in place. “The girls make them when it's slow,” she said. “Sweet, don't you think?”

Amadeo nodded. She did not seem so ugly now. She put a hand on his knee and moved closer to him and he remembered why he was here.
“Signora,”
he said. “I'm looking for a woman.”

“You've come to the right place,” she said. “Just tell me what you want, how you want it.”

Amadeo leaned closer. “The woman I want came to Naples ten years ago. She had a baby with her, a boy, I think. She came from the mountains, from Lucania.”

The woman sat back.
“Uffa,”
she said. “Naples is a big city. Girls are always coming here. They all have babies. They all come from the mountains. Ten years is a long time. Do you know anything else? The name of the village? You have a picture?”

“Castelfondo,” he said. “Near Viggiano in Lucania. She was beautiful, strange eyes, anyone would remember them, bright, as though a lamp were held behind them.”

“Lucania,” the woman said. “I know Lucania.” She smiled with one side of her mouth. “So who is this? Your wife? Your sister?”

“No.”

“Who then?”

“Does that matter?”

“You want me to help you, you have to help me. Everything is important. Who are you? Why do you want to find her? Maybe you're up to no good. How do I know?” She paused, traced an eyebrow with a delicate finger. “So, now, tell me. What is this woman to you?”

“I've just married a young girl whose mother ran off to Naples years ago and she wants to find her. She wants to see her again before we leave for New York.”

“
Fortunata
. . . this girl is lucky. Do you know how many
cafoni
come here and promise to take my girls off to America? Then the girls cry when they're left. You're an American. You could have any girl in this place.”

“I don't want a girl,
signora.
I want to find my wife's mother. That's all.”

“Of course, I understand. Didn't I have a mother? What is a girl without a mother? But who's to say that this mother wants to see her daughter? Or that she's still in Naples? That she's even alive? Not to discourage you, but things go on here. You wouldn't believe the things God allows. . . .” And here she kissed the medal of the Madonna that hung around her neck. “I pray to her every day to keep my girls safe.” She held out the medal for Amadeo to see. It was the image of the Black Madonna. The woman tucked the medal back into the front of her dress.

“Can you help me?”

The woman lay back. “It won't be easy. I can't promise you anything.”

Amadeo stood up. “Maybe I should go somewhere else.”

“Please, sit down. Did I tell you no? You Americans. So nervous. Of course, I can help you. I just have to be careful. Your poor wife. You have to understand this won't be easy. I'll need some money.” She paused. “Five hundred lire.”

“That's a lot of money,
signora.
”

She shrugged. “Nothing's free,” she told him, “and nothing's easy. Women who run away don't like to be found or they wouldn't be gone in the first place.”

Amadeo counted out the lire. The woman's eyes followed his movements. “How do I know you'll do what you say?” he asked her.

“You don't,” she said. “It's the way of the world,
vero?
” She took the money neatly from his hand. She licked her thumb and counted it carefully. Then she stood up. “
Signore
. . . ?”

“Pavese.”

“Signore Pavese.” She bowed.
“Piacere.”
She held out her right hand, the money was clutched in her left. “You come back in a few days. You ask for Signora Carnevale.”

Amadeo bowed and he turned to go. Signora Carnevale held him back. “Liana!” she called, and the young girl who had let Amadeo in came down the stairs. “See the gentleman out,” Signora Carnevale told her. “A few days,” she said to Amadeo's back.

Out in the street, Amadeo questioned what he had done—giving five hundred lire to an old painted whore in the first brothel he had come to. He might have gone to the police. Maybe Magdalena's mother had come to the city and gotten a job as a maid, maybe she'd married, but these were fairy tales, he knew. She'd had a baby with her, no money, no experience. He stopped for an anisette before he went back to the hotel. He told the bartender to put a coffee bean in the glass.

Magdalena wanted to know where he had been. She said she was lost without him. She closed the curtains and wrapped her arms and legs around him. He told her that he had been looking for her mother. He forgot all his thoughts about sending her back to Castelfondo. He forgot everything except that she was with him now.

“Forever,” she told him.

A
fter a week, Amadeo went back to see Signora Carnevale. The cabdriver knew the place. “A good clean house, nothing to worry about,” he said when Amadeo tipped him.

This time the young girl did not answer the door. It was later in the day. There were sounds coming from upstairs and two men waiting on the couch. The girl who let him in put an arm around his waist. Amadeo told her he was there to see Signora Carnevale, and she knocked on a side door and opened it.

“Come in,” Signora Carnevale said when she saw him. “Would you like a drink? A cup of tea?”

“Did you find out anything?”

“I need more money . . . three, four hundred. Five hundred would be better. Then I wouldn't have to bother you again.” She crossed her legs, pulled the silk kimono over her knees. “It's expensive to make inquiries.” She twisted the curl at her temple around her finger while he counted out the money.

“I'll be back only once more,” Amadeo told her, “in one week.”

When Signora Carnevale heard the outer door slam, she leafed through the bills with a wet thumb. One week was enough time for what she had to do. She counted the bills again. Five hundred lire . . . if it hadn't been for the arthritis in her knees or if she had been ten years younger, she would have had him for herself.