Lambrusco (19 page)

The press of people around me made me gasp for breath. My throat went dry; my heart was pounding hard. How could I be more afraid of these people than of
nazifascisti
? My legs felt as rigid as wood. I could only smile weakly at Roncuzzi and Geppo, by way of saying thank you, for helping me get out of there.

They lifted me, between them, one at each side. Lido went outside ahead of us and lifted his foot to that bench and kicked it over.

“It's going to be all right. I'm sure someone's looking for us,” Geppo said quietly.

“I'm positive about it,” said Roncuzzi.

“There might even be someone close by. I haven't given up on the golfer,” Geppo added.

“We're turning into dogs!” cried Lido.

We hurried away. The outside air was cold, damp, biting. This time I didn't object when Roncuzzi offered his jacket.

It was night. Up ahead, the
palazzo
windows were shrouded. There was not a trace of light in any one of them.

There was a plan.

The plan was to walk two miles or so to the next village. It was manageable. It was a good idea to stay off the roads. Two miles or so. One step at a time. There weren't any planes in the sky. The moon hadn't risen.

Geppo was good at walking in the dark. He'd negotiated a great many miles in darkness in his life so far, first in his youth, in villages so small they weren't on maps, then here.

His interest in staying alive was keen. He was happy to describe his feelings concerning survival. He was really committed to it. A million times by now, he'd dreamed about himself as the founder of a museum; he was convinced it was going to happen. Plus, there was his son and his wife to be considered. His wife was going to be the general manager. His son was going to inherit it, having grown up in it. There was going to be an alcove inside, or a outdoor terrace, or both, where refreshments and snacks could be bought. He didn't want his waiter's experience to go to waste. There'd be an authentic all-Etruscan menu.

The trick of it was, you had to believe in the future. You had to imagine a future, and then you had to believe in it.

“No one's turning into dogs, Lido,” said Roncuzzi. “We're all staying human. I promise.”

I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that I could not remember changing from Annmarie's habit to the uniform.

I wasn't wearing underwear. Where was my bra? My underpants? More lost items. My lost memory: one more. How was I supposed to get used to knowing that my brain wasn't functioning right? There seemed to have been a partial shutdown.

“There's never been anything more graceful than the carvings on Etruscan tombs,” Geppo was saying. “I don't just mean the technicalities. It came from their souls. Everything they made was full of grace.”

“Etruscans were pagans,” said Lido. “How can you be a pagan and have grace? I thought you had to be a Catholic.”

“You have to be a Catholic to be a Fascist,” said Roncuzzi.

“A Fascist can't have grace,” said Geppo. “You have to have a soul to act as the container for it. No one can argue that point.”

Always when Geppo was around, an intellectual discussion. People were always willing to talk about Etruscans as the opening move of a conversation. You never knew where it would lead.

“You can be a Catholic and not have grace,” said Roncuzzi.

“I agree,” said Lido. “But maybe when you're talking about a pagan, you should call it something else.”

“Such as what?” said Geppo. “I'm open to suggestions.”

“I don't know. Pagan grace,” said Lido.

“Lucia,” said Roncuzzi. “Is there such a thing as an opera about Etruscans?”

They weren't giving up on trying to get me to join their chatter. Persistence was a good quality in a partisan. But I wished they'd stop talking.

“It's a blot on our culture that there isn't,” said Geppo. “I've told myself a hundred times, I should find someone to write one.”

“I wish Puccini wasn't dead. He could do the music,” said Lido.

Roncuzzi let out a weary sigh. “If I wrote an opera, it would have to be about butchers. But no one would pay money to see it.”

“I would write one about us,” said Lido.

Everywhere one went, one heard about Italians wanting to create new operas. Aldo had wanted his pirate giant, Etto wanted his crazy, love-thwarted Orlando, and now this. It was good to know that it was something the war hadn't changed.

In the fields, on the paths, going away from the grounds of the
palazzo,
it was easy walking. They wanted to carry me. Take turns with it, or figure out a way to make some sort of stretcher, or something.

I held my ground. As long as I wore a soldier's clothes and boots, I felt, I should try to march like one. I wasn't sure how it was done. The only marching soldiers I'd ever seen were Fascists.

Maybe the boots would know on their own what to do. I'd put my faith in the boots, I decided.

Pick up one foot, put it down, pick up the other one, put it down. How long did it take to go two miles or so? Half an hour. Forty minutes. Forty-five at the most. Less than the length of a program in the spotlight at Aldo's, including encores.

I was aware that I had reached a threshold of pain: a limit to what I could bear. I knew I was walking a line between being able to bear it, and not. I couldn't imagine what the “not” might involve. I felt like a
pioneer.
Which village were we heading to?

We were going inland. The reason I knew the moon wasn't up yet was that there wasn't any moonlight. I tried to tip back my head to look up at the sky, then gave up on it and decided not to try again.

Looking straight ahead was all right. I didn't need to see the sky. If stars were up there, they were up there, and if they weren't, they weren't.

If it had happened after the bombing that things were shifted in the constellations, and nothing was where it should be, or if huge tracts of stars had gone missing, it would be better, I felt, to find out about it later.

My eyes were used to the dark. I could see in the dark. I wouldn't let anyone hold on to me, but they were close by, matching their pace to mine. Geppo was at my right, Lido was at my left, and Roncuzzi was just behind me.

It was Geppo who said, quietly, gently, “Lucia, please, when I give you a signal to close your eyes, will you do it, without questions, please? Close your eyes and keep walking? I swear, I won't let anything happen to you. You won't fall, or even stumble.”

“Tell her what the signal is,” said Roncuzzi.

“Tell me, too,” said Lido. “I'm already not looking in the same direction you are.”

“A little cough,” said Geppo.

Almost immediately, I heard the sound of Geppo letting out a cough. I shut my eyes and kept moving. I let myself be steered. March, march, march, march. The absoluteness of the darkness felt strangely comforting. I barely knew what my feet were walking on—dirt, pebbles, dry grass, twisted vegetation. Small slopes now and then to be worked out carefully. Waves of earth.

“I'll go off for a minute,” I heard Roncuzzi say, “and see if we know them.”

There was no slowing down of the pace. When Lido reached over to take hold of my hand, I didn't push him away. His chilly fingers closed hard around mine. I didn't have warmth to give him; my hands were colder than his. But I didn't pull away from him.

“We don't know them,” Roncuzzi called out softly. “You know what I think? I think I hear a car. We're not that far from a road. I think it's a non-Fascist one. Fascist engines don't sound so noisy.”

My eyes still closed, I strained my ears to hear it. But there were only some echoes of faraway guns, too soft to be thunder, rolling gently through all that silence. Pick up a foot, put it down, pick up the next one, put it down. Trust the boots.

When Roncuzzi was back in place behind me, Lido said, “Did you go and look at someone who's not alive?”

“A few of them.”

“Are they Italians?”

“They're Germans,” said Roncuzzi. I knew from his tone he was lying, but Lido seemed to accept his word.

“Good,” said Lido. “Now we don't have to remember this spot, to come back and get them buried.”

“You can open your eyes now,” said Geppo. Lido slipped his hand away from mine.

Shapes of trees. Shadowy outlines of bushes, stone walls. Not counting Roncuzzi's jacket, I was only wearing two articles of clothing. I realized I had never been out in the world before without underwear.

And this was my first pair of pants. “I've got pants on, like a man,” I said to myself. “I'm wearing
pants.
”

“Roncuzzi? What's the matter?” said Geppo, looking back over his shoulder. Roncuzzi had trailed behind. I pretended not to notice the sounds he was making.

“Nothing, nothing. I'm all right,” he finally answered. His voice was hoarse, choked, like someone who'd been shouting for a very long time.

“Remember when you trained those dogs to piss on the boots of the Fascists, Roncuzzi?” said Geppo. “I just want to tell you, I admired it. I thought it was brilliant of you for thinking of it.”

Roncuzzi caught up with us again. He couldn't let a subject like that go by without talking about it. “I was the one with the shop where the dogs always congregated, so that was how it happened. It wasn't difficult. You can pretty much always get them to do what you want, if you're a butcher. I was the only human in Mengo they respected. But it wasn't brilliant. It was stupid. That's on my conscience, by the way. The dogs were a hundred times smarter than I was.”

“How many of them got shot?” said Geppo. “I forget.”

“Four,” said Roncuzzi. “It took me a week to teach them the trick. But it took me a month to untrain them.”

“How many had learned it?” said Geppo.

“Ten, maybe eleven.”

“That's six or seven not shot,” Geppo said.

“In case you think it makes me feel better, it doesn't.”

Now the ground was fairly level. Nothing dangerous. Nothing to require the lifting of a foot any higher than I was doing already. It wasn't much different from singing. One knew the point at which one's voice might break, like a glass.

“Honest to God, were the dead guys Germans, Roncuzzi?” said Lido.

“I wouldn't lie to you.”

“Then why did you puke?”

“It must have been something I ate.”

“Plus, you were upset about the old folks,” said Geppo.

I thought about the way I used to talk to my voice. “Don't let this be the day you leave me.” As if my voice were a living thing. As if I were praying to it.

Please. Don't leave me. I wondered if I was getting feverish. Was that something the limit would allow, a fever?

Don't think about any more problems. Think of something else. Did American soldiers have marching songs? Too bad the boots couldn't transmit one: the memory of a song stitched into the leather, traveling up my legs as mysteriously as a telegraph message.

But just because it couldn't was no reason to lose faith in the boots. “Keep trusting the boots,” I said to myself, as an order. It had a nice rhythm: da
da
da da
dum,
even though it didn't sound march-like.

The rhythm started tapping itself in my head. It didn't hurt.

Keep trusting the boots,

Da da da, da da dum.

Keep trusting the boots, da da dum.

This is my first pair of pants in my life!

Da da da, da da da, da da dum.

“Lucia, here. I made you a sandwich.”

Between the time he'd snatched the chestnuts off the table and now, Lido had managed to peel them. He'd broken them into bits, as Geppo had done before, but he'd gone further. He had pressed the bits into the bread. The small piece of
piadina
contained them neatly.

“If you don't eat this, my heart will break,” he said.

I didn't want to break his heart. I could eat on the move. I could force myself to swallow. Keep trusting the boots, da da da, da da dum, keep trusting the boots, da da dum.

F
OLCORE WAS
before us: a tightly packed, walled medieval town of stone, towers, alleys, and narrow streets, with outlying farms and groves. It stood on a plain between the sea and the Apennines, beyond a wide, gently rounded hill. At the top of the hill was a small peach orchard. There weren't any peaches. Geppo, Roncuzzi, and Lido had searched every tree; they'd scoured the ground as well.

Moonlight was everywhere, but this time it was hard and thin and cold, as though it came from something covered with ice. There were stars to be seen without trying. As far as I could tell, nothing had shifted. Nothing appeared to be missing.

No smoke, no fog. No planes.

The sky was all right. I could generalize about it from the slice I could see. It was empty and black where it was supposed to be. It was starry where it should have been. The constellations were in the right places, and all across the sky, around its giant, wide belly, the belt of the zodiac was intact, not having been loosened, tightened, altered in any way, or taken off. How many notches were in the belt?

“Aquarius,” I said to myself. “Pisces, Aries, Taurus.”

I didn't know how many there were. I didn't know any more names.

I'd found a fairly wide trunk to lean against: a substitute backbone. I'd been running out of strength. The bark was smooth, cool. A net of delicate leaves was around me: pretty leaves, not bombed, still attached to their twigs. As dark as it was, I knew their color was green, like it was supposed to be.

I tried to remember names of shapes, particularly regarding peach leaves. Oblong. Oval. Almond-shaped. Pepper-shaped.

A strange sensation was in my feet. Wetness. Had I stepped in a puddle without knowing it? I trusted the boots not to leak at the soles, but water might have seeped in from the tops.

“It's only from a deep puddle,” I said to myself, because certainly, if one were bleeding, one would be aware of it.

When we looked down at Folcore from the top of the hill, we saw that it was filled with Germans.

“I used to come here all the time. There was an elderly man in the post office with a drawer of Etruscan pottery shards. He was cataloging them. He'd been at it for thirty years. He was an amateur expert,” said Geppo.

“Maybe he can help us,” said Lido.

“Fascists tried to get him to be an equipment manager for one of their brigades,” said Geppo. “He sneaked away. I don't know where he went. I don't know if he took his drawer. I hope so.”

“I used to know the two butchers here,” said Roncuzzi. “They had rival shops and they hated each other's guts. The only subject they agreed on was me. They had it in common that they hated me equally, because every time their rivalry got out of hand, which was often, the townspeople here, plus a few commercial proprietors, to avoid the antagonizing, came to Mengo for whatever they needed. I was always glad to help out. Last I heard, they'd closed up, having had nothing to sell. They joined a new partisan group, somewhere north. I wonder how they're doing.”

“We don't know anyone here?” said Lido. “Is that what you're saying?”

“Lucia, do you know anyone in Folcore?” said Geppo.

I didn't know. I didn't think so. I couldn't even remember how far Folcore was from Mengo, or from the sea, or from anywhere.

“The name Folcore, heart of Folco, comes from the illegitimate son of the thirteenth-century duke who used to live here,” explained Geppo. “The duke had locked him up in a tower to hide him from his jealous wife. Folco had everything he needed, because the duke was not a sadist. He wouldn't have killed a child. He was waiting, so he could do what he considered an honorable thing, and kill his son as a grown man. In the tower, Folco had his own staff. He had servants and tutors, whom the duke believed he could trust. He had books, amusements, excellent food, all the sorts of things that rich people had. Then one day, around the time of his fourteenth birthday, when the duke went up to see him, as he regularly did, for he actually felt some affection for him, Folco wasn't there.”

“He jumped out?” said Lido.

Geppo shook his head. “There were bars on the windows, which anyway were just slits. On his writing desk was a bloody heart. The note beside it said, ‘Papa, this was mine, and now it's yours. It was removed with my own two hands. You'll never find the rest of my body because, by the time you read this, it will have been left too long in the mountains, for the birds.'”

“It seems to me he had help from the servants,” said Lido.

“The servants loved him,” said Geppo. “The duke didn't dare touch the heart. He believed he could see it still beating. He fell to pieces and underwent a religious conversion. To everyone's amazement, he put on sackcloth and went to a dozen different priests to confess to the murder of Folco's mother, a gentle yellow-haired girl from the north, who'd been a maid in his castle. He moved his whole household to a
casale
on the grounds of a monastery. He took vows of celibacy and poverty and his wife ran away with their daughters, never to be seen again. But his legitimate sons stayed with him. After his death, they came back, armed to the teeth, to take possession of their town. Folco was waiting for them, and he was
strong,
as if living all those years in a tower had turned him into one. For every weapon the other sons had, he had three. He killed them all. And you know, later on, when he became the duke, he kept his bedroom in the very same tower.”

“I bet it was a sheep's heart on the desk, not a human one,” said Roncuzzi. “I bet he had help with that from a butcher.”

“Maybe so. I wish he were with us. This would be a good time to have him around,” said Geppo.

There were sentries at the walls, at all the large buildings.

“Two tanks,” counted Lido. “All sorts of trucks. Big ones, too, bigger than in Mengo. Black cars and motorcycles, all German. Heavy guns on piles of sandbags in the
piazza,
soldiers napping behind them, but of course at the slightest sound they'll wake up. Nazi flags and banners streaming from balconies, not that they could hurt us, but they make me nervous. Two flags, eight banners. All brand-new, by the way. Mounted guns on a few flat rooftops, five of them. No Folco, I'm sorry to say. I'm telling you, we cannot,
cannot,
go down there.”

“Nizarro told us before that the Germans would set up a barrier along the mountains to block off this whole part of the country,” said Roncuzzi. “This must be a stronghold for them. A command post. A lot of those cars belong to officers.”

“We've been lucky so far,” said Geppo. “It might hold.”

“We're not going down there,” said Lido.

“Keep your voice down,” said Geppo calmly. “See that tower over there, the highest one? That's Folco's. There's a song about him. A troubadour sort of song, very old. It sounds best with guitars, although originally, it was probably played with lutes. Lucia, do you know that one? It's called ‘Folco's Day' and it's beautiful. You never heard of it? I'll give you the gist. Folco gets out of bed before dawn and looks out the eastern side of his tower to watch the sun come up on the Adriatic, with the sea spread out like a mirror, on which thousands of white jewels are glittering. When the sunrise is over, he turns slowly, very slowly, like the hour hand on a clock. It takes him a whole day to get his back to the east and his face to the west. Then he watches the sun, in a blaze, go down behind the Apennines, the most perfect range of mountains that ever rose up from the deep and formed the backbone of a country.”

“You're idealistic, Geppo,” said Lido. “Maybe it comes from studying your Etruscans. You're not on good terms with reality.”

“That's because reality is something that gets in the way of what you want to be doing,” said Geppo.

“What's in the way right now, excuse me for reminding you, is a substantial portion of the German Army,” Lido said. His voice was shaky; he couldn't conceal his nervousness.

“They're all asleep,” said Geppo.

Then he had a question for me. “Do you remember my wedding day, Lucia? I will never forget what it was like when you sang. Everything was so solemn. It was all Palestrina. Two motets, a madrigal, a Magnificat. Everyone there felt the same way about it. The guests, the other waiters, the cooks, Adalgisa, and I—well, to put it succinctly, we could have listened to double as many songs, easily, without shifting one inch in our chairs, and all along, barely remembering to draw breath. Remember how Enzo broke the rules and said Mass for us in the restaurant?”

“He could have been excommunicated,” pointed out Lido. “Before the Mass, the sacraments were in the kitchen on a counter, next to
antipasti
platters. It was unorthodox, but then, as everyone says, the Vatican's a long way from everything else in Italy.”

Adalgisa had to be the name of Geppo's wife. Just a name. It came to me with no information.

“Don't you have to say ‘hymn' for that man Palestrina, Lucia?” said Roncuzzi. “I mean, it's all very churchy. I don't know anything about opera, I admit it, but when it comes to holy music, remember, my father's only brother, who wasn't a butcher, was an organist. The only time I ever heard that stuff outside a church was at Geppo's wedding, not that I'm saying it was disrespectful to have chosen it. That wedding was unforgettable. Shivers go down my spine when I recall it.”

“You can say ‘song' for Palestrina,” said Geppo. “It can be holy and be a song.”

“You got married a week after Aldo's funeral,” said Lido. “The restaurant closed for a funeral, and then it opened again for a wedding, which was the best, if strangest, I ever went to, especially since everyone except the bride wore black.”

“Not Lucia,” said Geppo. “Lucia, do you remember? You wore a gray gown, which Adalgisa admired. She said that when a woman wears silk the color of iron, she's really saying something about her basic character.”

Lido let out a little gasp and made a noise as if rebuking himself. “I'm sorry, I just realized, is it all right to mention Aldo? Did I put my foot in my mouth?”

“It's all right, isn't it, Lucia?” said Geppo. “You don't seem to be looking at us like you think it's taboo.”

“No one who ever knew Aldo would think he'd want anyone not to mention him. He'd want everyone to have nothing else on their minds,” said Roncuzzi. “I loved him like a brother. Even when we weren't on speaking terms over business transactions, and even when I wanted to never see that face of his again, I loved him. I miss him every day. I knew he was someone you don't see the likes of very often.”

“Well, there's always Beppi,” said Geppo.

Roncuzzi agreed. “You're right, but Beppi doesn't fight with me, and he's better at paying the bills.”

“He fights with me all the time,” said Lido. “Once, he told me if he had one of those tomahawks like an Indian, he would scalp me.”

I didn't remember Geppo's wedding. I didn't care if they talked about Aldo or not. I didn't remember singing Palestrina.

“Lucia?” said Roncuzzi. “I respect you for being so quiet. I'm not asking you to converse with us, or hum, or sing. I'm not asking about memories of days gone by, either. But I'm going to ask you something. We can't put off talking about this, as much as we've been trying to.”

It was sad to think that peach leaves couldn't be eaten. Roncuzzi had been right to insist that everyone would stay human. Leaves weren't food. Only a human being with a mind and a memory would know this.

Yes, peach leaves were pepper-shaped. It was an accurate observation. They reminded me of the long conical peppers Mariano Minzoni grilled whole, then dipped into oil and served with squid. I remembered smells in the kitchen at Aldo's. That was something.

“I don't have a full-blown case of amnesia,” I said. “I can tell you're all worried about that. Was that going to be your question?”

Roncuzzi was quick to answer. “It was, although we wouldn't have said it so bluntly. What kind of shape do you think you're in, exactly? I only ask because of what needs to be done here. We're certain that no one came this far to look for Beppi. Here we are, and you see the conditions. We don't think he was captured, never mind by this regiment, but all the same, we're going down there. Maybe all of us, maybe not.”

“You want to leave me behind?”

“Your mind is fine!” said Lido. “You just proved it!”

“It's not because we think you'd be in the way, or we think you're a bad partisan,” said Geppo. “It's because we'd rather have you wait for us.”

There wasn't a fruity smell among the trees, not at all. It seemed impossible that peaches had ever grown here, had ripened, had dangled on bending branches, sun-sweet and firm and delicious. I'd always liked peaches.