Lambrusco (21 page)

“What's the first note?”

“Anything at all, but I suggest that you imagine you're Rossini's Rosina. Unsweet and somewhat dry, so you can feel all the edges. Fizzy, light, and
buoyant
!”

The waiters had stopped working. They'd gathered by the kitchen door—Lido, Geppo, Cenzo, all of them—and there were the cooks, taking off their aprons—Fausto, Gigi, Romano, Rico, and Mariano Minzoni, the tyrant, who grinned at me and held up a fist with his thumb sticking out, pointing behind him. I knew what the signal meant. “Wait till you see what I cooked for you for after the performance, Lucia. I hope your mouth is
watering.
”

Enzo was at his private table with Marcellina. Beppi was sitting in his usual place, looking up at me. Ugo was beside him, in his brown suit, looking down at the floor. “I'm all ears for you, Lucia,” he was implying. No Eliana. She must have been with her parents, up on their cliff.

Over by the windows, trying to make himself unnoticed, like a bashful young man at a dance, was Enrico Caruso.

“God Almighty, that man is Caruso,” Aldo said. “Magnificent! I thought he was in America! Caruso himself!”

I was thrilled to see him, but I didn't let it make me nervous. The air smelled of food, same as always. I could make out the scents of garlic, onions, rosemary.

Aldo said, “Do you need something to hold in your hand? Shall I get you a salt cellar?”

“I'll just hold on to the air.”

No panic. No sand. No Fascists, no Germans. I welled up my breath to sing. It was the story of Beppino Strepponi. It really was.

First, I had to sing to the sky, then I had to sing to Beppino. Joy rose inside me. I held back my head, looking up to the light.

Zodiac!

Aquarius Pisces Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer!

Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio!

Sagittarius Capricorn!

Watch out! Here comes Beppino Strepponi!

Look how he's walking through the stars! Beppino!

Kill the water-bearer Aquarius before he bombs you! He has bombs!

Bring home the fishes of Pisces for dinner!

Cut the horns off the ram of Aries! Arm yourself with them!

Kill the Nazi bull before he gores you!

Kill the Gemini twins! They're Fascists!

Kill the crab! Kill the lion! They're also Fascists!

Bring home the Virgo woman! Marry her!

Get that scale of Libra! It's solid gold! We'll trade it for guns!

Embrace the fire-hearted scorpion! He makes you strong!

Kill the Nazi Sagittarius archer!

Kill the Nazi Capricorn goat, before he kicks you where it hurts!

Suddenly another voice was in my ears.

“I know you can hear me! Lucia! Don't pretend you can't hear me!”

Shrill, raucous, a crow's voice. Go away.

The spotlight went out. A terrible desolation hit me, like a punch.

“Lucia!”

Was this a dream? I was on my back. I was warm.

“Lucia Fantini! I can't begin to tell you what I've been through! I forgive the Galimbertis for trying to steal from the restaurant! They've been good to us! Two of their boys were shot, but they're not dead, and neither are you! Etto went to look for Annmarie! Etto Renzetti! With Tullio and some Americans! They wouldn't let me in their
palazzo
to see you! Or Etto, either! Tullio from America! The
fidanzato
of Annmarie! The one who saved you! He gave you morphine! But it's all worn off now! There's no more, so don't get your hopes up! There's a nice bean soup here! We have to eat! Then we have to go back to finding Beppi! Tullio says the Germans haven't got him! Tullio's an officer! Very high up! Intelligence! Secret missions! You saw how he's in disguise! He borrowed clothes from the Galimbertis! He thinks the Germans have Annmarie! If anything happens to her, he'll go insane! I'm sick and tired of how all we ever do is look for people! I told Etto to stay here! The Americans have maps! They didn't need him for a guide! They should find their own way around! Etto wants to be a hero! He's over fifty! He'll have a heart attack like Aldo! I just know it! Where is Cherubino? Where is the butcher? Where is the Etruscan? You were supposed to be with them! Now every Galimberti who wasn't shot is out looking for them! Not counting the old auntie! She's the one who made the soup! I have questions for you! Open your eyes, or I'll pry up your eyelids myself, with my own fingers! Wake up!”

“S
IGNORA
F
ANTINI,
please, weak as you are, excuse me for seeming as rough as my two great-nephews, who are bandits, I'm not denying it,” said the Galimberti
anziana.

She said “bandits” the way a relative of priests would say “priests.” She smelled like garlic and rosemary. Her face was paper-white and so was her hair, a mound of it, bundled up with pins so extremely untidily, with loose ends everywhere, frizzing and spraying outward, she looked like one of those pictures you used to see all the time, when electricity was new, of what would happen if you stuck your finger in a socket.

She was a very small woman; the heap of her hair looked twice as large as her face. In spite of her words, she didn't look capable of roughness. She looked as soft as a dumpling.

What room was this? Hers. The old woman's air was proprietary. Her bedroom, her bed.

Candlelight, soft and muted. The little windows had been covered with black cloths. It was the type of cloth used in churches to shroud statues during Lent.

What name had the old woman introduced herself with? It began with an A, and suggested an important feast of Mary. The Assumption into heaven? Was her name Assunta, like Cenzo Ballardini's wife who raised chickens and was the mother of a deaf girl? What was the deaf girl's name?

Pia, that was it. Pia the deaf-mute. Aldo had been fond of her. A sweet girl, small-framed, slim, pretty, flower-like. Fizzy hair, curls all around her face. Glowing, healthy skin. Younger than Beppi, but not by much.

“There's a certain magnificent quality about silence.” I'd overheard Aldo saying that to Cenzo. Maybe he'd been trying to offer consolation. He hadn't sounded convincing.

Cenzo was Beppi's favorite waiter.

Now a memory was somewhere close by, trying to make itself known to me. Cenzo's wife and daughter at the restaurant? The girl, Pia, paying us a visit, with all that silence inside her head? I might have looked at her with envy, in a way. If I woke up one morning as a deaf-mute, I'd never sing again. Would that have been something I'd have hoped for? It was possible, on a bad day.

On a good day, what I had was a gift. On a bad day, it was a curse. “If I were deaf like Pia Ballardini, I wouldn't have to work.” I couldn't remember a moment when I'd said those words, but I believed I might have.

Three Ballardinis. Cenzo, Assunta, Pia. Pia an only child, like Beppi.

Assunta bringing eggs. And Beppi was there, yes, excited and happy, as if a party were taking place. Pia Ballardini hadn't seemed to be someone he felt sorry for.

“Mama, you should let her put her hands on your throat when you sing.”

Wake up.

Smells. Good ones. Annunziata, that was it. Annunziata Galimberti. The Feast of the Annunciation, not the Assumption.

Bean soup. Rosemary, garlic. Rosemary in bean soup? In the restaurant kitchen they would have been shocked, disgusted. They'd call her a madwoman. The cooks. Prisoners of war in their own kitchen.
Captured.

Rosemary was for meats. Sometimes with chicken, but only in a stew. Mariano Minzoni would say that the flavor of rosemary in beans was a sin.

An independent soul, Annunziata. Her house, her room. Those black window shrouds probably had been stolen.

No religiousness, in spite of her name. The candles weren't like vigil lights. No Mary, no Jesus, no crucifix, no pictures of Popes. Unusual. Marcellina's room at home was like a shrine: saints everywhere, prayer cards in frames, the Holy Family on the bureau, a porcelain infant Christ on the night table, standing there with a gilt scepter, wearing a silk nightgown, which was regularly removed and washed. You felt you had to genuflect, just glancing in that doorway.

These walls were a soft shade of green, like the Adriatic horizon on a calm spring morning. For furniture, besides the bed, there was a small table between the windows, and nothing else. The candles were on the table, a half dozen of them, flickering warmly in little bronze cups.

It was not a small room. It was not austere. The absence of decoration did not suggest a lack of worldly goods.

If the walls could talk, they'd be saying, “The owner of this room can afford the luxury of open space and a great deal of clarity.” The spareness was like the beauty of a stage on which only a few simple things have been set, for the type of drama you don't go to for the designs but for the people, for what they're thinking and saying and doing. And maybe singing.

I felt myself basking in some sort of glow, as if I'd want to start singing. Maybe it was only the unexpected comfort. I became aware of an unfamiliar pressure on my feet. Bandages?

I was pleased to see that I still wore my American uniform. This wasn't like waking up in the
palazzo.
This was all right. Where were my boots? Maybe they were outside; they must have been filthy.

The bed was in the center of the room. It did not seem ungainly that those windows were covered. It seemed perfect.

“I've heard you sing at least thirty times, through the years, so believe me when I tell you I respect you with my heart as well as my ears, which are sensitive as well as highly discriminating, but this is my house, and this is my room, and I want your maid to keep quiet now,” Annunziata Galimberti was saying, in a gentle, soothing voice. “I promise that, if one more sound escapes her, I will knock out her brain with this pan, and when I'm finished with her, I'll put the mess into a bag, go over the hill to Folcore, and feed it to the dogs of the Germans. When you're fully awake, by the way, I'll feed you, and then you can sing to me, seeing as how you're here.”

An iron frying pan was in the old woman's hands. She'd heard me sing. I'd never seen her before. She must have listened from out in the yard. It seemed correct to assume that the only time a Galimberti would enter a place like Aldo's would be to rob it.

She wanted a song. I was curious. Which one?

“I'm not her maid!” cried Marcellina. “She can't sing to you! She's on strike! Plus, look at the shape she's in!”

I sat up. It was a narrow bed, sturdy, with a good thick mattress. The pillow was filled with feathers. The linens were just-washed clean. The quilt had a satin lining. It was wonderful to touch it.

“I never make threats, only promises,” said Annunziata. Up went the frying pan a few inches. No menacing look, no glowering. Just an ordinary, routine thing.

“Marcellina, for the love of God, be quiet and sit down beside me.”

Marcellina was beet-red in the face, as if she'd been boiled. She needed a bath. She smelled terribly, dankly sweaty, and a little pissy, too.

“Some soup would be nice,” I said. “Would you like a song my husband, Aldo, wrote about the stars and Beppino Strepponi?”

“I know who Aldo is—I mean, who he was, may his soul rest in peace,” said Annunziata. “But I was thinking about a song from that incomparable man who is the
sommo
of all, Gioacchino Rossini, son of the Adriatic, who stopped composing anything interesting before he was forty, though he lived to be seventy-six. I can't begin to describe to you my dismay to know that he squandered his genius, choosing to be a fat old man, lolling about for years, as lazy as a slug, but of course it was the fault of his parents, having started him far too early. He was only fourteen when he entered Bologna Academy. Poor Bologna! They say there are now more Nazis in the streets than Italians! The best city in Italy, overrun as though by rats! In case you're wondering, the particular Rossini I'd like to hear is the song about Lambrusco, the one people say you fashioned from Rosina's genius of an aria, about how she'll sting like a viper if she doesn't get her own way, from of course the most excellent opera ever composed,
The Barber of Seville.
”

Marcellina's expression was a combination of worry and bewilderment. She dared to speak, but she was crafty about it.

“With all respect, Signora Galimberti, that aria, with its excellent opening line,
una voce poco fa,
is absolutely the most perfect song ever written, not only by an Italian but by anyone. I salute your aesthetic taste. Let me ask you something. Do you know a woman named Brunella Vizioli? The mother of the waiter at Aldo's, the one who's called Zoli?”

“I don't,” said Annunziata, “socialize.”

“Well, if you ever meet her, please run the other way,” said Marcellina. “I have reason to know that she's a horrible woman. She is not to be trusted under any circumstances whatsoever. One has to know who one's friends are, after all.”

Oh, God, I thought, look what she's up to. Marcellina had bowed her head deeply, so that her chin was touching the top of her chest. This was her way of projecting an air of humility, along with a temporary, necessary submission—an old tactic of hers. The flattery was, as always, like frosting on a cake. It was irresistible. Annunziata looked at Marcellina with new eyes.

“Lucia!” cried Marcellina, back to her old self. “Are you going insane? What star song? You must have meant the song about the rain of coins in Palermo. Aldo only wrote one song.”

What a strange thing for Marcellina to say. Well, she was old. She was tired.

“Is it an aria?” said Annunziata.

“It's a lullaby. It's about a robber, and it's beautiful,” Marcellina answered. “I think something's wrong with Lucia's mind, I really do. Her poor dead husband had pined to write an operetta. May he rest in peace. He was a giant of a man in many ways, but frankly, between the two of us, he had as much talent as my big toe, not counting that one song.”

“How does it go?” said Annunziata.

Where was the soup? Was I supposed to leap out of bed and find the kitchen on my own? With bandages on my feet?

“Once upon a time there was a heroic Sicilian giant of a bandit, with the heart of a saint,” began Marcellina.

“Excuse me, where is the soup, please, and who put these dressings on my feet?”

“I did,” said Annunziata. “Don't ask me to describe what they looked like when you got here. You don't want to know.”

“I wonder if her head was injured, too, which would explain her dementia,” put in Marcellina, as chatty as if she and Annunziata had known each other their whole lives. “She was buried alive in the San Guarino bombing, did you know that?”

“I didn't, but I heard that her son blew up half a dozen Nazi tanks in your hometown, and now he's in hiding.”

“He's a hero, but he's a pain in the ass,” said Marcellina.

Annunziata nodded knowingly, as if to say, aren't they all? “What kind of bandit was this Sicilian?”

“A successful one,” said Marcellina.

“We could have two songs,” Annunziata said. “First, the Lambrusco.”

“If I don't have something to eat, I'll become unconscious again, if anyone is interested,” I said.

Just then came a commotion at the doorway. The bedroom door was open. The faces of the two old women turned instantly pale. Fearful.

Heavy footsteps, male voices. Familiar.

The head of a man appeared, peering in tentatively. Annunziata was about to rethink her frying pan as a weapon, but Marcellina cried, “We know him! Teo! Teo Batarra, the Mengo pharmacist! Teo! You're supposed to be in Ravenna! Where's Nomad? Where's your brother?”

Teo was trying to look cheerful. He wasn't doing a good job of it. “They're right here,” he answered. “We couldn't get near Ravenna. Germans were everywhere. We've got Nizarro with us. I warn you, things are not good. Are you Signora Galimberti? Sorry to barge in like this. If you don't mind, is there another bed in this house?”

Annunziata gave a shrug. “Not counting the two mattresses in the next room, which are occupied, this is the only bed in one piece. We were bombed, in case you didn't notice. Why my own special part of the house was spared, God knows, but I don't feel guilty about it. At least we've still got a kitchen.”

“Half of one, in fact,” said Teo. “
Ciao,
Lucia, we heard you were here. It's good to see you. If you're not very badly injured, do you think you could get up? Turn it over to Nizarro? We already sent a message to the doctor.”

“Ugo Fantini?” cried Marcellina. “Is Ugo coming here?”

“Yes. He'll soon arrive,” said Teo.

And a moment later, the two Batarras and Nomad entered the room, supporting Nizarro among them: a nearly inert Nizarro, his arms around Nomad's and Teo's shoulders, shuffling his feet forward, walking without bending his knees. One eye was purplish-red, swollen shut.

That was all I saw, before looking away.

Barrel-chested Nizarro, boss of the waiters, as strong as a force of nature! Everyone said he looked so much like Beppi, they could be taken for father and son, but there wasn't an actual resemblance, just physical dimensions, like two American football players who tackle their opponents to the ground. Who had said that? “Nizarro is bigger than your son. If Nizarro tackled you, you might die.”