Tourmaline (6 page)

Claire had bolted out of bed by then. Murray stumbled after Claire, pulling on pajama pants. Harry followed Murray, dragging a blanket along with him. They gathered out on the balcony and found the old widow on the balcony next to theirs screaming something about a gatto, a gatto cattivo, weeping, shuddering, clutching the sides of the parakeet’s cage. Inside, the little green bird lay on its side, button eyes without the flicker of life, legs twisted together like pieces of wire.

Cattivo,
Claire heard, a word she mistook to be the Italian word for
cat,
and with her mistake succeeded in understanding the woman’s accusation.
Gatto cattivo.
Cat something. Something cat. The parakeet was dead — that’s what had made the old woman distraught, a dead bird, nothing more — and our cat, black-masked, velvet-pawed Meena, was the assassin. Or mere onlooker, perhaps, since the door to the birdcage remained closed. Or a medusa, which was the widow’s explanation, Claire would understand later from the concierge, Meena having murdered Cerabella with her gaze, simply sitting on the partition and staring had driven the little bird into such a state of inarticulate panic that it had what the concierge called in English “an eruption of the heart.”

Nothing more than a parakeet with heart failure on a balcony in Genoa with a view of the rose gardens edging the cimitero di Staglieno and the Ligurian hills beyond. Nothing more than two trunks stolen by a Genoese thief. Nothing more than a few polite conversations with a stranger on an ocean liner. Nothing more than the first two weeks away from home.

OUR FATHER HAD BEEN TRYING TO FIND
a suitable job ever since he’d come home from the war. In ten years he’d talked his way into eight different firms — advertising, investment, and real estate — and then somehow managed to talk his way out, leaving behind him a history that his colleagues politely called
mixed.
Finally he decided to open his own consulting firm. His mother loaned him money. But before he’d even rented office space he felt he needed a break from work to consider his options, and he convinced his mother to let him use the money for a trip abroad. He assured her that he would secure a good job upon his return in the fall.

When our grandmother wired the extra money to Murray in Genoa, she warned him that this was it — he’d get no more. But it was enough to let us continue our journey. We left the hotel for the train station on a warm July morning when the clouds were still pink with dawn. We were going to Florence, though in the taxi Murray suggested that we get off the train in Pisa and from Pisa take a bus to Piombino and there catch the ferry to Elba.

“We’re going to Florence,” Claire said.

“Why not directly to Elba?” repeated Murray.

They argued in the taxi, though Murray knew that Claire would not change her mind. Of course we’d go to Florence, as planned, and Murray would travel alone to Elba to find us a suitable place to stay for the month.

“Wish I didn’t have to go alone,” Murray murmured.

“The whole point…” Claire was in the backseat with me on her lap. She let her voice drift off, leaving the obvious point implied — that Murray had chosen to take us to an island known to the rest of the world only as a place of exile.

When we arrived at the station our train was waiting, the rear cars already packed with passengers. Claire agreed with Murray that if we were going to find seats we’d have to travel first class. Murray, carrying the two new valises, went off to buy tickets. Claire led us toward the front of the train and lifted us one by one up the metal stairs.

The seats of our compartment were upholstered in red leather, the armrests were mahogany, and the perfume of the last passenger still lingered in the air. Harry, always the luckiest among us, found an empty ring-box covered in navy velvet beneath his seat cushion. Patrick offered to trade the rope he’d found in Genoa for the ring-box. Harry declined. Patrick sat on Harry, pinning him down, and tried to pry the box from his fist. Harry screamed. I started to cry. Claire grabbed her umbrella and raised it threateningly. Patrick’s terror was fleeting; a moment later he was tugging at the umbrella, wrestling in fun with Claire. No one paid attention to the train whistle. Only when we moved forward with a lurch did it occur to Claire that Murray had been left behind.

“Boys, we have to get off!” But we’d just gotten on, Harry said. Claire gestured as if to wave off his stupidity and rushed to the door at the end of the corridor. By then the train was already moving fast enough to blur the platform, making it appear liquid. As the carriage passed a porter Claire yelled, “Stop this train!” The man cheerfully touched his cap and nodded. Jump, Claire thought to herself in desperation. We must jump. Of course we couldn’t jump. It was too late. We were heading to Florence without Murray.

We rode in silence. The train’s jerking settled into a smooth forward motion, and Claire sat with her hands crossed over the base of her throat — a position she’d assume in an attempt to ward off panic. The sunlight gave her eyes a milky sheen. She caught the smell of cigarette smoke drifting through from the corridor — Murray’s cigarette…but Murray wasn’t there. She jumped to her feet, snapped open her wallet, and poured the contents onto the seat, counting her lire too frantically to keep track. She had begun counting it again when we heard the conductor’s sullen “Biglietti, prego,” in the corridor. Claire separated coins from bills. She told us to keep quiet, though we weren’t making a sound. A moment later the swaying of the train unbalanced Claire, and she tipped toward the door and into the arms of the conductor, who stood with the smirk of understanding on his face, his expression suggesting that he needed no explanation, he knew well enough about le signore like this one, le signore traveling without their husbands. Lonely signore and their clever mistakes.

Claire stumbled away and resumed her frantic search for money to pay our fares. The conductor watched her through the smoke of his cigarette. My brothers and I watched the conductor.

Six carriages back, Murray leaned out a window and watched the landscape, drawing a deep breath in an effort to inhale the scenery — the long single-arch stone bridge, the steep hillside rising above the tracks, a castle’s towers in the distance, terraces of vineyards, perfect rows of cypress, a boy walking along a dirt road with a goat on a leash, morning sunlight turning a river gold. He nodded to a conductor and squeezed past with the valises into the next carriage. He opened each compartment door and checked to see if we were inside.

Where were we? If not in this first-class car then in the next one. Murray ambled on — or danced, yes, it felt like he was dancing to the music of the train. He tried to decide whether he wanted a cigarette. He didn’t really want a cigarette right then, but he could strike up a conversation by asking someone for a light. How do you ask for a light in Italian? At this point Murray knew only words from a phrase book he’d brought along.
Piacere di conoscerti. Mi vuol passare il sale per favore.

He looked around. This gentleman in the white linen suit, maybe he’d have time to spare, along with a light. “Pardon me, per favore, signore….”

Of course he had a light. And he spoke a little English. He had a brother who lived in New York. Murray said he was from New York. Davvero? Sì, sì! Murray offered the man a cigarette. The man was from Genoa but was going to Florence to visit his cousin. He wanted to talk. If the signore could wait there, Murray would be right back. He had to find his wife and give her the tickets.
Va bene, va bene —
the man nodded him on. He’d wait there. They could talk about New York. The man had lived for six whole months with his brother in New York!

Murray continued down the corridor, checking the first-class compartments. When he finally located us, Claire had just finished paying the conductor for our tickets. Murray, a few inches taller than the conductor, peaked his head over the man’s tasseled shoulder, and said, “There you are!”

“Murray!”

“Where were you?”

“Where were
you?
”

Claire explained that they’d had to purchase five tickets to Florence. But Murray had bought our tickets back at the station. He tried to give them to the conductor; the conductor would only accept a single ticket for Murray. It was too late, apparently, to return Claire’s tickets. The five new tickets had been issued. We had eleven tickets for the six of us to travel from Genoa to Florence, at a cost equivalent to a night at the Hôtel Luxembourg, Claire pointed out after the conductor had left.

But she was too relieved to stay angry at Murray. We were together. We were coming from Genoa, heading to Florence, following a zigzagging route to Elba. There was no possibility of retracing our steps. We could only go on, go forward, continue to go away from the past. The speed of the train made our journey feel more than ever like destiny.

MOST OF WHAT I KNOW
about my mother’s experiences in Italy I know from her directly. We have talked at length. She continues to reminisce. She has shown me photographs and read aloud portions of her journals. Though sometimes she chides herself for her forgetfulness, her memory is far richer than any hazy story I might concoct.

On the other hand, what I know about my father’s experiences I’ve had to piece together from a variety of sources. I’ve been back to Elba once and plan to go again. I’ve read history books and newspapers. From my mother and brothers I have a sense of what questions to ask. And thanks to my grandmother, who hoarded everything, I have the letters my father wrote to her from Elba.

As our parents had planned, Murray left us in Florence, in a dark, modest pensione on Via Faenza just around the corner from San Lorenzo, and he went ahead to Elba. In his first letter to his mother, he describes the blue sea cracked with white beneath the blue cloudless sky. He describes the sweet scent of lavender, the linked shale peaks of the mountains, the blue of periwinkles and the red of poppies rippling like scattered bits of silk in the grass. He says the island was even more beautiful than he remembered.

I picture my father standing on a balcony, watching a farm-hand named Nino nudge open the door to a shed with his elbow. From another place in the yard came the sound of hammering. A nightingale hidden in an almond tree sang, paused, and sang again. A woman up on a vineyard terrace pushed back her straw hat and called, “Lidia! Lidia!” A small dog yelped in pain, and Murray saw it go skittering across the dirt yard.

Here in a villa on the island of his dreams. Here in the place that after a month-long visit in ’44 had filled him with the desire to return. Peasants tying vines, cows chomping on wildflowers, a black dog running across the yard, as weightless as a tumbleweed.

In the distance Murray could see the lopsided orange roofs of the houses in Portoferraio. He considered how little had changed in hundreds of years, how what he saw was close to identical to what Napoleon would have seen during his year of exile. He imagined the little emperor in military garb wandering around the island, plotting his escape. The contradiction amused him: the island of Elba had served as Napoleon’s prison, and yet Murray Murdoch had never been as free as he was now.

The summer ahead was like a picture on a screen gradually coming into focus. On Tuesday Murray had lunch with the hotel proprietor, whose friendliness made up for his poor English. Later that afternoon Murray fell into a conversation with a British historian, Francis Cape, when he was browsing in a little stationary shop in Portoferraio. On Wednesday Francis introduced him to Lorenzo Ambrogi, a local padrone, who invited him to stay at his villa. On Thursday Murray borrowed a car and visited Lorenzo’s various properties, and by Thursday evening he’d decided upon a house, a sprawling, one-storied house amidst neglected vineyards in the hills midway between Portoferraio and Magazzini. Today was Friday. At one he would have lunch with Lorenzo Ambrogi and negotiate a rent.

Until then, what? Here in a villa on the island of Elba, without his family, with miles of fields and woodland to explore. He would have liked to linger just a little longer at the pocked pinewood table in the kitchen, where Nino’s wife, Maddalena, served him a breakfast of hot milk and coffee and panini with fresh butter and honey. But Maddalena, who spoke no English, had chores to do, and she left Murray to finish his breakfast alone.

Afterward, he went for a stroll. He followed a shale path up to the vineyards. He paused at the end of a row and watched two young women tending vines. They glanced at him, turned to each other, and began whispering. If Murray had spoken their language he would have introduced himself. Instead, he left them to their secrets and continued along the path, up and over a verge, and down into a ravine. The broken shale gave way to slippery clay beneath his shoes. The perfume of lilies grew stronger, the vegetation denser as the path leveled. Velvety ferns bordered the path. The sun, still low in the sky, shone through a gap in the ravine’s ledge, catching the glint of larkspur and daisies. The rock walls threw back the hollow echo of a trickling spring.

Murray sat on a flat-topped rock beside a pool. He would remember — mistakenly — feeling the tension of expectation, as though he’d been waiting for someone to join him. He listened to the water, the call of a cuckoo, the shush of the wind along the grassy shelves above the ravine. He sat without thinking. He sat for an hour, a day, a week. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, how long he’d been listening to the sound of soft humming, how long he’d been watching the girl work. She was pulling handfuls of clover from the flower bed along the opposite rim of the pool. When Murray realized that she didn’t know he was watching her he found himself unable to move, as if after immeasurable time he’d grown rubbery roots that stretched around the rock and deep into the soil.

He kept staring at the girl; she must have felt the pressure of his gaze, for she looked up at him abruptly. But she just shook away the startle, shrugged, and went on weeding, as though she didn’t mind having an audience. No, she didn’t seem to mind at all.