Love Begins in Winter (9 page)

“No,” the boy said. “I saw it on TV.”

When Molly woke with a start, it was almost dawn. Her son was sleeping with his head against the gondolier's striped shirt. The gondolier smoked and stared at nothing. Molly wondered for a moment if it was the same cigar.

“You must think we're pathetic,” she said.

The gondolier thought for a moment and then said:

“Would you permit me to perform one favor for you and your son?”

“I don't know,” Molly said. “My fiancé may not be in a good mood when he comes out.”

“Okay,” the gondolier conceded. “It doesn't matter—I just thought you might like it.”

Two small eyes between them bolted open.

“Might like what?” inquired a little voice.

“Might like to be honored guests on my gondola—through the canals of Venice.”

The boy climbed up on his mother's lap.

“We have to do this,” he said soberly.

Molly turned to the gondolier.

“I don't know why you're doing this for us—but if you were going to kill us, you probably would have done it by now.”

Her son glared angrily at her.

“He's not going to kill us.”

As they entered the Venetian Hotel and Casino, the gondolier raised his arms.

“Welcome to the most beautiful country in the world,” he said.

The boy looked at the statues perched high up on the roof.

Their white marble skin glistened in the early morning sun, their hands forever raised, the fingers extended slightly with the poise of faith.

“I think they are holy saints, little one,” the gondolier said. “They look out for me—and you too.”

One of the statues was missing. There was a space on the roof where it had once stood.

“Where's that one?” the boy said.

“I don't know,” the gondolier said thoughtfully. “But just think—
caro mio
, he could be anywhere.”

“I think I believe in saints,” the boy said, and considered how the missing saint might somehow be his real father.

“You truly believe in the saints, boy?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then you are an Italian, kid, through and through—a hot-blooded Italian. Can you do this?” The gondolier pressed his fingers together and shook them at the sky. The boy copied his movement. “Now say, ‘Madonna.'”

The boy put his fingers together and shook them and said, “Madonna.”

“Good, but louder,
caro
, louder!” the gondolier exclaimed.

“Madonna!” the boy screamed.

People looked at them.

“What does that mean?” Molly asked. “It's not a bad word, is it?”

“No, Mama, it means, simply: I am in love with this beautiful world.”

The boy looked up at the saints, his fingers pushed together like a small church.

“Madonna!” he said in that delicate thin voice of all children.

The three of them strolled through the casino without talking.

A few lugubrious souls were perched at the slots. The machines roared with life.

Two black men in suits with arms crossed smiled at the gondolier.

“How you doing, Richard?” one of them said.

“Ciao,” the gondolier replied in a low voice.

“Is your name Richard?” Molly asked.

“In another life.”

“In Italy?” asked the boy.

“Another life, little one,” the gondolier said.

“Actually, can you call me ‘big one'?” the little boy asked.

The corridor was a long marble walkway with tall milky pillars. Then they reached a room with a thousand gold leaves painted on the wall. The boy looked up. Naked people in robes swam through color. There were scores of angels too—even baby ones with plump faces and rosy cheeks.

“Madonna!” the boy said.

As they neared the end of the room, they could hear music, a few notes from an instrument strapped to a man's belly.

“
Caro mio
,” the accordionist said when he saw the gondolier.

“
Ciao fratello
,” the gondolier said. “Let me introduce you to my dear two friends from the old country.”

Carlo smiled and moved his instrument from side to side. His fingers pressed buttons and the box emitted its unique croak. The rush of air into its belly was like breathing.

“It's nice,” Molly said.

Carlo followed them at a distance of several yards, playing the same three notes over and over again. The little boy kept turning around to smile. He'd never felt so important. When they stopped walking, they were outside on a bridge.

The rising sun was visible through a crack between two towering casino buildings.

“See that, big one?” the gondolier said to the boy. “Every morning can be the beginning of your life—you have thousands of lives, but each is only a day long.”

When the sun had passed above them and given itself to the world, a woman in a black dress brought out a tray. She was very tall, and her heels clicked along the stone bricks.

“Good morning,” she said, and passed the tray of food to the gondolier.

Molly hesitated. “We didn't order this.”

“No, no—it's from your friend,” the woman said, then pointed to one of the many intricately arched balconies built into the façade of the casino. An unrecognizable figure from a great height began to wave. When the same three notes bellowed out into the square, the boy waved back.

On the tray were half a dozen Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts and a small wine bottle with a rose in it.

“Venetian Donetti Rings,” the gondolier marveled.

The boy stared at them. “They look nice,” he said.

The gondolier sniffed one and handed it to his little friend. “They're fresh—only a few minutes old,” he said.

“Like the day,” the boy said. The gondolier nodded with enthusiasm.

There were also three very small cups, two filled with black coffee and a third with milk.

“Are these cups for children?” asked the boy.

“Yes,” said the gondolier, “because no matter how big sons and daughters get, they will always be children in the eyes of their parents.”

Molly laughed.

After breakfast, the gondolier took Molly and her son by the hand and led them to the edge of an enormous swimming pool that ran under bridges and skirted the edge of the main square.

There were strange boats floating, all tied together and bobbing in agreement.

“We should probably get back,” Molly said.

“You're right, Mama,” the gondolier said, “but one ride won't take long.”

“
Jed
will have to wait for
us
now, Mom,” the boy said.

“Shit,” Molly said angrily.

“Why not?” the gondolier said.

“Come on, Max,” Molly said.

Molly started walking away. Her son trailed reluctantly. He felt like crying again and his legs were stinging.

Molly abruptly turned back to the gondolier. “You don't know us.”

The gondolier had not moved, as though he hoped she might turn back.

“Yes I do, Lola,” the gondolier said without any trace of an Italian accent.

Molly stopped walking.

“Why did you call me that?”

The gondolier looked at his worn-out shoes.

“That was my daughter's name,” he said with a shrug.

“Your daughter?”

“Yes—my beautiful daughter. That was her name.”

Molly glared at him with anger and pity.

“Well, that's not my name.”

“But it could be,” the gondolier insisted. “It could have been.”

“You're not even Italian, are you?”

“Mom,” the boy said.

Molly stood looking but not looking at the gondolier. The boy tugged on her arm. Then the reality of what her life truly was flooded her.

She felt sick and tired.

Several birds blew across a clean sky—unaware of anything but their own tiny lives.

The boy let go of his mother's arm and squatted down.

His head fell limply into his hands. He took his sandals off. In the hot morning sun his legs had begun to sting again.

People walked around them.

Then Molly reached down and fixed his caterpillar sock.

“Put your shoes on if you want to go on the gondola,” she said.

At the entrance to the boats there were other men dressed in the same striped shirts. They smoked and drank coffee in little cups. They raised their hands in greeting and nodded without smiling.

Within a few minutes, the gondolier, Molly, and her son were in the boat. The boy said the boat looked like a mustache. He held on to his mother's hand. He wanted her to know she had made the right decision. Hands have their own language.

The gondolier stood like a mechanical toy and pushed against the bottom of the blue water with a long pole. Everyone was watching. Carlo walked alongside them and played his three notes.

“
Buongiorno
!” the gondolier announced to passersby. A Japanese woman started clapping.

Molly marveled at the people on their balconies. The restaurants too were filling up. The sinister cast of characters who had passed them during the night had gone, and the city swelled with a softer, gentler group who rose with the sun and woke only at night to fetch glasses of water.

When they reached a wider stretch of the canal, the gondolier stepped down and opened the trunk upon which he had been standing. He undid the lock and lifted from it a large dark wooden box. He set it down on the bench between the trunk and the emerald seat upon which Molly and her son sat very close together.

“What is it?” asked the boy.

“You'll see, big one.”

From the trunk, the gondolier took a thin but heavy black circle and placed it on top of the box. Then he turned a handle quickly and pulled over a thick metal arm with a needle at its end.

At first, Molly and the boy heard nothing but crackling. By the time the strong, sweet voice of Enrico Caruso echoed through the Venetian piazza, the gondolier was back on his trunk mouthing along to the words.

People flocked to the side of the bridge and applauded. Children stared in silent wonder.

The gondolier moved his mouth in perfect timing to the song. People thought he was really singing. But the voice was that of someone long dead.

Molly leaned back and closed her eyes. She had never heard a man sing with such emotion. She put her arm around her son and realized that the love she'd always dreamed of was sitting in the seat beside her wearing sandals and socks with caterpillars on them.

The song ended, but the needle kept going. The box crackled as they returned to where they had begun. The gondolier quickly tied his boat to the line of other boats. His hands were old and beaten like two worn-out dogs.

The gondolier sat down on the bench next to the music box.

“Again,” the boy said.

The gondolier wound up the machine as he had done before. At the sound of crackling, the other gondoliers stopped what they were doing and turned to face him. He stood proudly on his trunk, cleared his throat, and began to sing.

The piercing beauty of a lone voice soared determinedly from the canal into the piazza, drawing people from beds and flat-screen televisions to the edges of their balconies.

For a few moments, the voice was even audible in the casino; cards were set down; heads tilted upward.

“What's the song about?” the boy whispered to his mother.

“I don't know,” Molly said.

“I do,” her son said.

The piazza crackled with applause.

When it came time to say good-bye, the little boy didn't want to let go of the gondolier. They could feel the beating of each other's hearts.

In the Square of St. Peter, the lines outside the tomb had grown very long. Young Italian men in jeans sold water and apples. Tour guides stood still and held paddles. Children fell asleep in carriages. Teenagers tore past on smoking scooters. Restaurant managers heckled passing tourists, who stopped for a moment and then kept walking.

Occasionally, someone looked up and noticed that a statue was missing.

The priest took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes.

“Madonna,” he said quietly.

And before parting, the two men thought of a lone gondolier paddling the canals of a swimming pool in the Nevada desert—reeling in the forsaken with the song he had once sung to his daughter on a farm in Wisconsin.

W
ALTER WHEELED HIS HOT,
ticking motorbike up and down the muddy lane, breathing with the rhythm of a small, determined engine. Fists of breath hovered and then opened over each taken-step. He would soon be within sight of his beloved's house. In the far distance, Sunday parked over the village like an old mute who hid his face in the hanging thick of clouds. The afternoon had seen heavy rain and the fields were soft.

Tired and wet, lovesick Walter thought of the Sunday town streets, hymns and hot dinners, the starch and hiss of ironing; shoes polished and set down before the fire so that each shoe held a flame in its black belly; dogs barking at back doors. Early stars.

He stopped and held his motorbike still. He listened for the sounds of the faraway town. At first he could hear only his own hard breathing. Then a bus growling up the hill; the creaking of trees; and then in the distance—seagulls screaming from the cliffs.

There were scabs of mud on the black fuel tank of Walter's motorbike. Leaves and sticks had caught in the spokes and marked the stages of his journey in their own language. Light had not yet drained from the world, yet the moon was already out and cast a skeletal spell upon the bare branches of trees.

The road sloped downward for several hundred yards. In the distance, cows perched on steep pasture and barked solemnly out to sea. Walter imagined their black eyes full of wordless questions. What were they capable of understanding? The cold country of water that lay beyond the cliffs? Did they feel the stillness of a Sunday?

Walter removed the basket of eggs from the milk crate strapped to the back of his seat. Then he lay the machine down on its side. A handlebar end disappeared into a puddle.

It was the highest point in the county. Looking west, Walter knew from the few books in his uncle's caravan that America lay beyond. He exhaled and imagined how night—like a rolling wave—would carry his breath across the sea to New York. He imagined a complete stranger breathing the air that filled his own body.

Walter removed a glove and rubbed his face. The dirt beneath his fingernails was black with oil. Walter pictured his mother back at home, sitting by the fire with Walter's baby brother in her arms—wondering what her son was doing out in the drizzle. His father would be out of his wheelchair and up on the roof of the caravan, whistling and hammering new panels above the sink where the leak was.

“This country is nothing but rain and songs,” his father once said in his Romany accent.

A young Walter had asked if that was good.

“Ay, it's grand, Walter—because every song is a shadow to the memory it follows around, and rain touches a city all at once with its thousand small hands.”

Walter loved The Smiths. In the caravan last week, as his mother sat him down for a haircut, Walter showed her a picture of Morrissey.

“Who in the world is that skinny fella?” she'd said.

“Can you cut my hair like that—can you do it, Ma?”

“Why would you want it all on one side?”

Walter shrugged. “It's what I want,” he said.

“All right—if that's what you want.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

“He's a pop singer, is he?”

Walter sighed. “He's a little bit more than that, Ma.” Then Walter thought, How could any sane woman turn me down if I looked like one of The Smiths—which in his Romany Irish accent sounded like “The Smits.”

One night, long ago, Walter's father sang his own song to seduce a woman he'd just met. She listened with her hands in the sink. She fell in love holding a dinner plate. It was not how she'd pictured it.

Then several years later, he metered softly a different song to baby Walter as rain beat down upon the roof of the wind-rocked caravan.