The Scent Of Rosa's Oil (2 page)

“It’s Friday,” Stella explained, “and last night I had a bad dream.”

“Enough of this witch talk!” Madam C snapped, raising her voice.

Rosa stood up and bowed. “We’re having the party, and my father was a British marquis who sailed around the world and then joined the Gypsies. Happy?”

She had spoken jokingly, but with a tinge of sadness in her eyes. The discussions about her father were not forbidden in that house, though they were normally carried out upstairs, in the girls’ rooms and the corridor, and never when Madam C was in sight. But on that day of mid-April, between the bewitching howls of the
libeccio
and the excitement for the upcoming party, the tongues of the Luna girls were restless.

“What you call witch talk,” Stella said, “is mere precaution. Dreams come for a reason. And in my dream there were dead goats and a house on fire.”

“What does that mean?” Rosa asked.

“Goats represent prosperity,” Stella explained. “And a house is a place where people come together. A house on fire is a sign of hatred.”

“I don’t hate anybody,” Rosa said with a smile. She turned to Madam C. “But if you keep hurting me with that comb…”

Madam C dipped her fingers in Rosa’s hair and fluffed it twice. “All done, dear. And don’t you worry about Stella’s goats. You’ll have a prosperous life, and we all love you to pieces.”

“Any last minute birthday wishes?” Margherita asked.

Rosa shook her head, wishing quietly and with all her heart that Angela were there, to help her with the party and be the one to comb and fluff her hair. “How can you love so much someone you’ve never met?” she had asked Maddalena earlier that day.

“Love is strange, dear,” Maddalena had replied. “The elders in my family used to say it’s a Gypsy spirit that wanders endlessly about the earth touching people’s hearts as it passes by. True or not, it’s a fact that love can play major tricks with your head. But you shouldn’t worry about loving Angela, because we all know that she loved you madly before you were born.”

“Sometimes I can feel her next to me,” Rosa had added. “I talk to her as if she were in the room.”

“Maybe she
is
in the room with you,” Maddalena had whispered. “We don’t really know what happens to people after they die.”

Rosa had nodded. She never told Maddalena or anyone else inside or outside the Luna that at night she often dreamed of being in a warm darkness inside Angela’s womb, feeling her movements and hearing the sound of her voice. And then she started kicking and elbowing her way out of the darkness, until she felt heat on her face and saw a ray of sunshine. To Rosa, the story of Angela’s life and of how she had given birth to her child was like a fairy tale. She was certain she didn’t have all the details. Madam C had told her portions of the story, and in the rooms of the Luna, over the years, Rosa had overheard other bits and pieces. In any case, for whatever reason, Rosa had grown up feeling that her mother was always by her side.

There had been no heat or sunshine on the day Rosa was born. It was 1894, a gray and cold spring day, rare in that region of Italy known for its temperate climate and clear, sunny skies. Madam C and her girls had waited on the second floor of the Luna, in the hallway outside the corner bedroom, for Angela to give birth with the help of a midwife. They heard the moans and the screams, the midwife’s orders to push and not to push, and then the loudest scream of all followed by the squeaks of the newborn. A moment later, the midwife came out of the bedroom, holding the little bundle that would be Rosa. It wasn’t a happy event, by any means. Angela died three days later because of an infection that spread fast and uncontrolled through her abused body. Like Madam C, she had been a prostitute most of her adult life and had no family or friends other than Madam C and the girls who worked at the Luna. So was it that Madam C, who was not fond of children and had sworn many times she wouldn’t raise one, nevertheless found herself a mother. She did the best she could under the circumstances: she named the child after Angela’s favorite color; for Rosa, she set aside a room at the Luna on the first floor, in the back, behind the kitchen, as far away as possible from the parlor and the rooms where the girls worked with the clients; she devoted a significant portion of her free time to play with Rosa; and every evening she sat by Rosa’s bed and sang her to sleep. She owed it to Angela, and, to paraphrase her, there was nothing else to say.

Angela and Madam C went back a long time. They had been born one year apart in the same shabby building on Vico Caprettari, Angela the only child of a single mother, Madam C, Clotilde in those days, the only daughter in a family of seven: her mother, her father, Clotilde, and four loud boys. She was the youngest child. Vico Caprettari was a
caruggio
few people knew beyond those who had family there and those who called it home. It was dark, narrow, and impregnated with the smells of seaweed, garbage, and
minestrone
. It was a world apart, with tall buildings stuck to each other to mark its boundaries, ensuring that the world of the neighboring streets would not seep over.

Clotilde’s family lived in three rooms on the seventh floor, with stairs so steep and narrow Clotilde’s father, a tall, strong man with shoulders much wider than his waist, had to climb sideways, and the younger children had to climb on all fours or they wouldn’t reach the steps. Angela and her mother had one room on the first floor, darker than a manhole. As a child, Angela used to hang out with Clotilde and her siblings in the dirty street, chasing pigeons. None of them went to school. One after the other, as soon as they were strong enough to lift, the boys went to work with their father in one of the warehouses by the docks; the girls were not educated, period. Angela’s mother was a seamstress, and she had done that for so long in that dark room on the first floor that her eyes were failing. When Angela was old enough to find her way around the maze of the
caruggi
, about seven, she made pickups and deliveries of clothes, sheets, and bedspreads for her mother. The rest of the time, she sat quietly next to her and watched those swift hands push the needle in and out of hems and buttonholes. At eight, Angela did her first repair all by herself: a white linen sheet, thin and torn in the middle, where someone’s body had been lying at night for years. As she mended, she thought she would meet this person someday, certainly a fat woman, and she would tell her to her face, “I know what you did to that sheet with your big behind.”

Meanwhile, on the seventh floor, Clotilde and her mother worked around the clock to keep their men fed and clean. They scrubbed, cooked, washed, ironed, and made beds. With all their chores, Angela and Clotilde had little time to spend together, but when they managed to do so, it was the best part of their day. Sometimes Clotilde helped Angela deliver the mended pieces; sometimes Angela accompanied Clotilde to the fountain to wash clothes. They always talked about their dreams: Angela, of the store she’d open in Via Luccoli some day, where beautiful rich ladies would have their Sunday dresses made to measure; Clotilde, of the trip she’d take on the back of a white horse on her eighteenth birthday, up and down the hills, to see the world.

Clotilde’s father had his own ideas about Angela and her mother and voiced them often and openly in front of his family at dinnertime. Who was that Angela, anyway, he’d mumble, dipping his bread in pasta sauce, who lived in that hole down below, and what kind of family was that without a man to give it respectability? And who knows who Angela’s father was to begin with, possibly a drunken sailor, but there was no point asking that question, was there, because no one knew the answer, not even Angela’s mother, who these days, with those tiny crossed eyes, looked more and more like a mole. Plus, who knew what was going on in that dark room when Angela was out, he’d continue, and in any case, even if nothing happened any more, surely those two females were no good for Clotilde, the daughter of a warehouse shift leader, respected by all and strong like a mountain. Clotilde’s heart sank when her father spoke of Angela that way, but she was careful not to show her tears, which she pushed hard down her throat, as she knew better than to contradict her father, especially after he had stopped at Lorenzo’s, the neighborhood bar, on the way home. Her mother had talked back to him one evening, over a bowl of soup that wasn’t warm enough, and the little blue scar across her lip was there to remind everyone who was in charge.

A father’s words, no matter how silly or mean, do make an impression on a daughter, so eventually the talk about Angela and her mother convinced Clotilde that she deserved better friends than the daughter of an unknown drunken sailor. Unconsciously, she began to avoid Angela in her outings, until the girls became estranged. So estranged, in fact, that years went by without Angela and Clotilde exchanging words. It took Clotilde a long time to realize that Angela no longer lived downstairs.

Clotilde’s family fell apart suddenly when Clotilde was sixteen. Her mother died of consumption, and her father began spending more time at Lorenzo’s than at the warehouse, until he could hardly stand up and finally got himself fired. He walked out of Vico Caprettari one morning, cursing his fate, and never came back. Clotilde was left alone with her brothers, who hardly talked to her at all. When they did, it was only to give her orders for a meal or ask for clean clothes. Her routine became more strenuous, as there was now one woman to take care of four men instead of two women to take care of five; her mother’s absence made the routine unbearable. The two of them had talked, laughed, joked. The days went by before Clotilde knew it. Now her days felt longer than seasons. When finally night fell, Clotilde prayed to God to take her so she could be with her mother again and have a laugh once in a while. There was never a reason to laugh now that she was all alone. And she wished that Angela were still living on the first floor, so she’d have someone to talk to, not just her four brothers who ordered her around like a mule.

On a sunny spring day that made even the darkest of the
caruggi
come alive, Clotilde went to the Sottoripa market to buy fruit. On the way back, she crossed paths with a beautiful, elegant, tall woman with long wavy cinnamon hair falling on her shoulders beneath a beige satin-brimmed hat. Her dress, a perfect match to the hat in color and material, glimmered under the sunlight and fit her body like a glove. Clotilde stopped walking and stared at the woman as she passed by. In front of Clotilde, the woman stopped and smiled. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I can’t blame you. I’ve changed.” It was then that Clotilde realized that the elegant woman was Angela. “You haven’t changed,” Angela continued. “I’ve thought of you many times.”

Clotilde spoke with a thread of voice. “I’ve thought of you, too. What happened?”

“Come along,” Angela said, taking Clotilde’s hand. “I’ll tell you everything.”

They went to Angela’s home, a spacious two-room apartment on the top floor of a white and gray building, with high vaulted ceilings and a tall window off the sitting room overlooking the port. The contrast to the dark room on Vico Caprettari couldn’t have been starker. “This is it,” Angela said. “My private palace. Bright and airy, for a change.” She opened the window, and Clotilde stood by it a few moments, blinded by the brilliance of the sea, inhaling the sharp, familiar odors of salt and weeds, lost in the multitude of sounds that rose in waves from the docks. “It’s beautiful here,” she said, taking a seat next to Angela on a worn-out couch. Angela nodded, then explained that the reason she could afford the place was that she had found a way to make good money with little effort, and she had done that for a couple of years now, since her mother had gone blind and moved in with her sister in the Lerici countryside. “And what about you?” she asked.

Clotilde summarized her life in two sentences, then inquired about the way to make good money with little effort, asking if there was a chance that she could do that, too. As Angela went on explaining, Clotilde understood what the way was and told Angela she was happy to have met her that day but now she had to go, and, no, she wasn’t interested in that way at all. True, she added, it was a bad life to be serving her brothers day and night, but at least she wouldn’t be going to hell after her death, which would be coming soon, as she couldn’t keep living like this much longer.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Angela replied. “And you don’t go to hell for this. You go to hell if you do things that hurt other people. I make men happy.” She paused and cocked her head. “For a fee.” She stared at Clotilde. “What’s wrong with that?”

Clotilde was out of arguments against the way.

“Come with me tonight,” Angela said. “You don’t have to do anything. Just watch me. Then decide. Can’t make a decision without knowing, can you?”

Clotilde couldn’t find an argument against that, either.

“Look at my clothes,” Angela said, showing Clotilde to her closet. “I buy the cloth at the market and then I cut and sew. For myself. Which is so much better than that silly idea I had of opening a store and making dresses for other people. I’ll make you a dress—what am I saying—three dresses of your favorite colors. For tonight,” she said, rummaging in the closet, “you can borrow this.” It was a dress of pale yellow muslin, with little glass beads along the hem and the neckline.

“Me?” Clotilde said, pointing a finger at herself. “Wearing that dress? I couldn’t. Look at me. My hair is wild, my hands are rough.”

“We have time,” Angela insisted, hanging the dress back in the closet. “Come with me.” It took them a few hours of scrubbing, drying, and styling. Then Clotilde wore the yellow dress and a pair of shoes with heels and a golden buckle she had seen before only in her dreams. Angela pinned a yellow cloth flower to her hair, dabbed some powder on her cheekbones, and took her downstairs, so she could see herself in the windows of the furniture store across the street. “I guess you won’t be going horseback riding on the hills any time soon,” Angela said with a naughty smile as Clotilde stared at the image of a woman she didn’t know. She stood still a moment, then turned around and shook her head to make her black hair bounce. Hands on her waist, she took two steps back, then two steps forward, and bowed at her reflection in the dusty glass. Angela laughed. “You’re on your way to heaven, darling. Forget hell.”