Lambrusco (23 page)

“Who is Annunziata?” said Polpo. He gave me a look that meant only one thing. He didn't know who I was talking about.

Fog-head! I'd been doing so well with thinking clearly!

I didn't know what to say to him. Marcellina told me I'd had morphine—the real reason I'd slept so well. It wasn't just Annunziata Galimberti's good room. Which Polpo had never been in? The morphine must have been acting on my system all over again, with an effect of befuddlement.

“I have to go now,” I said. “I have a fairly long distance to cover, to get to where I need to be, and there's not much daylight left. So if you don't mind I'll be on my way now. Goodbye, Ignazio. What's your last name?”

“My real one, or the one I go by?”

“Whichever you prefer.”

“Galeffi is the one I go by privately. I don't see why I should conceal that from you, now that we're on intimate terms, conversation-wise.”

Galeffi was Marcellina's name. An old Mengo name. She had no relatives I didn't know about; everyone knew all the Galeffis. There'd never been a fisherman in her family.

Maybe I'd heard it wrong. It didn't matter. Should I cross that field and take my chances that the mines were fabrications, or should I skirt it for the longer route? What did you call it when people put guns in their mouths, when one bullet was in the chamber, which might or might not go into you when you pulled the trigger?

Russian roulette. That was it. My mind was fine, once more. I tried to picture myself sitting at a table in a bar, shadowy, smoky, the sort of place where they'd sing the I-made-love-to-a-Blackshirt song. In my hand, a pistol, with one bullet, and what would I have done with it?

Put it down on the table, that was what. I was a mother. Who had to
get to her son.
“As I was saying, goodbye, Ignazio, ah—what's your actual last name?”

“Innamorato,” he said. A lover, in love.

“No, I mean, really.”

“That's really it. My initials are like the number eleven or the Roman number two, depending on how you like to write a capital I. And now, please forgive me for what I'm about to do, which is, grabbing hold of you.”

He clutched me by a hand, with his long white fingers squeezing in, as tightly and neatly as if he'd caught me with a hook. It was no use trying to break free of him.

“I really am very sorry, Signora Fantini.”

“Tell me if there are mines.”

He shook his head. “The farm's been abandoned, but there really were Germans. They all went to Folcore, because they'd run out of food.”

He relaxed his grip as he spoke, but not by much. Maybe he'd come with me to Mengo. Maybe I'd be able to talk him into it. “Let's go visit Cenzo Ballardini's wife and daughter,” should I say? Something like that.

What about offering him money—well, to be paid later on, after the war—for escorting me? Surely he'd appreciate cash. Enough for a new boat. Fishermen always wanted new boats. What did a boat cost?

“Let's go back to that house you came out of,” Polpo said gently.

“I want to go to Mengo.”

“So do I. Perhaps we will, tomorrow.”

Tears shot into my eyes, hot and stinging. I turned my head because I didn't want him to see me cry.

“Come,” he said, tugging me. “I feel rotten about the mines. You know, when I followed you, I could have fully observed you when you were taking care of some business in those pine trees, but I did not, and excuse me for mentioning it. Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm an honorable man. I swear, the only time I tell a lie is when she asks me to, since I deny her nothing. Plus, when she makes threats to me, I believe them.”

“Let go of me.”

“That I cannot do. I said to her, ‘Marcellina, sweetheart, I'll be back in five minutes with your Signora, and look, it's been much more than that already.”

Marcellina?

The shock made the tears stop immediately. He'd been talking about Marcellina all along? The deviousness! The cunning! The secrecy! All these years!

Marcellina and the Octopus Man of Mengo! How had she managed it? Under my nose! And this was how I found out about it! Was I supposed to congratulate him for not watching me go to the bathroom? And lying about mines, and tossing those stones? The fakery! The two of them! Marcellina and this man! Years and years!

And a voice cried out, far back, in the direction of the Galimbertis' house, clear and ringing in the air. “Lucia! It's me! Roncuzzi! We came out of Folcore! Beppi's not there! The Galimbertis rescued us! I see you're still wearing my jacket! Polpo, is that you?
Ciao,
but what are you doing here? Come and tell me, but later! Come at once! We're going to the Galimbertis' cellar! We're in danger! It's about to be bad! The Americans will bomb Folcore! In a minute! We just saw some soldiers who told us! This time, they've given us warning! We're in the line of attack! I have to rush back now, to help with the wounded boys! Nizarro's got to be carried, and you know what he weighs! Come! Run! Hurry!”

Roncuzzi turned away before finishing; the last of his words trailed after him, thrown over his shoulder.

And Polpo—bless him, bless him after all—let go of me. He hadn't been able to resist the urge to wave both arms in the air at Roncuzzi. “I'll help, too!” he cried. “I'll be there in a jiffy!” He was palpitating with eagerness. When he set off, in a hurry, he didn't pause to consider the possibility that I might not be behind him.

I seized my chance. I commanded my feet to give me no pain. “Feet! No hurting!” Maybe there were further stores of morphine inside me, dormant, waiting to be called into play.

I turned and set off running, not into the field, but along it, where there was tree cover.

Run! I'd done it before; I could do it again. This time there wasn't a hill to be coped with. The ground was flat. I lowered my head and hunched my shoulders, imagining myself running with a ball in American football.

I knew what to do, keep going, la la la, la la la. Run to the goal, run to Mengo.

“I hate Fascists,” I sang to myself, so that the beat would keep pounding in my head, like the beat of an engine. “La la la, la la la. It's a good thing I don't have a pistol, or I'd be shooting my no-good, lying servant, la la la, la la la. Waiter, bring me my bill. I'm a partisan, and so is my son, la la la, la la la, la la
la.
”

When I glanced back, I saw that Polpo still rushed in the opposite direction, like a boat getting smaller and smaller, far away at the rim of the sea.

I felt as stealthy as a fox. I felt invincible.

“Waiter, I must go now, and don't try to stop me. I don't care about bombs. I don't care about this stupid, rotten war. I'm going to rescue my Beppi, la la la, la la la,
from that horrible house, with those horrible chickens,
la la la, la la la, la la la.”

T
HEY COULDN'T TAKE ME
to Mengo. They were only going as far as Cassaromilia. Yes, that was its name. Just because I'd never heard of it didn't mean it didn't exist.

Cas-sa-ro-mil-ya. A small place up ahead on the plain: stone houses with tiled roofs and gardens. A village of people who before the war went east every day to work along the shore, not as fishermen, not in boats, but in businesses, hotels, restaurants, private enterprises.

Stone houses and the Church of San Stefano.

Unfortunate things had gone on there. Very bad. Hadn't I heard? It was incredible that I wasn't familiar with that church. It had been built in the year after Christ 1 or 2. That was how it was always described. It was probably an exaggeration, though. It was probably more like the year 10.

Very old indeed, a parish of several original martyrs. Mosaics all over the walls, the floor, the altar. And quite a few drawings on stone, which someone found a long time ago near some cave and hauled in; they'd been placed with the Stations of the Cross. They were not only pre-Jesus but pre-Roman. Very much the work of cave dwellers: animals, stars, sea monsters. Beautiful to behold, in a way.

Also, because in places like this, there was always a tower, there was a tower, poor thing, which leaned. Not like Pisa. This one tilted backward, like it was tired and wanted very much to lie down, as though it hoped a bed were waiting just behind it.

The Weary Tower, people called it, the home of a famous, heavy bell, a
basso profundo
of a thing, completely masculine. It was said that the sound really carried, all the way to the sea. I'd probably heard it often, without knowing what it was.

A lift was being offered. I couldn't just stand there on the side of the road as if waiting for a taxi, and I didn't have to introduce myself, for Christ sake. Just because they were farmers didn't mean they didn't know who I was, even bruised like this and dressed like this, which surely had a story behind it, but there wasn't a need for me to summon the breath to explain.

I'd find that no one was interested in asking me personal questions. They'd been through hell already with Fascists and Germans and Americans, and everything was about to get worse, but if a diva of the Adriatic, not currently at the top of her form, felt disposed to walk around by herself in a GI uniform, and a man's civilian jacket on top of it, and also a pair of boots, the likes of which, it was safe to say, had never been worn before on the feet of an Italian matron—well, that was the business of the diva.

Plus, everyone knew I was Beppi Fantini's mother.

Did I know of a musician in Rimini—well, not in it at the moment, as he was actually below it, hiding in a cellar? I didn't? His instrument was the guitar. They'd heard he was writing a song in Beppi's honor. The title was “Five Hundred Bullets In My Pockets.”

I hadn't heard about that? The point of view was that of a partisan who had no prior experience with guns. It was somewhat bawdy, but only to people who knew the folk song it was based on.

“Five Million Seeds In My Apples,” it was called. It was Sardinian, a shepherd's song, about a big lusty boy, just coming of age and a virgin. All his life, he's been up on a hill with sheep, and now he's getting ready, with some nervousness, to go into town and make love with as many girls as possible, perhaps ten, all in one night, he imagines. He plans to rest the next day, then move on to another town, and on and on, no more sheep.

I have five million seeds, five million seeds, five million seeds in my apples.
The shepherd's nervousness is expressed in the lines “If on my first few tries I miss my target, I won't fret, I'll try again, I've got plenty of ammunition to spare.”

Those lines would be reproduced in the new song, which Sardinians were going to love. They were always saying no one in Italy ever thought about them at all, never mind appropriated something from their culture. The tune would be reminiscent of a
tarantella,
very fast, very lively, very much something that anyone with two feet and a beating heart would respond to.

Wasn't that excellent? I should make an effort one of these days to contact the guitarist and learn it. Anyone in Rimini who wasn't a Fascist or a German should know which cellar he was in. Proud mother!

Did I know why the roads were so empty? Not an invader in sight. Two occupying armies, not to mention what was left of the local Blackshirt brigade, and look: a condition of absolute safety.

This was because everyone was saying the Americans would bomb Folcore. But did I understand that when you don't expect bombs, there they are, and when you expect them, there they are not?

Look at that fog rolling in. Light at the moment, yes, but bet you anything, it's a whole lot thicker to the south, where the planes were. This fog was coming up from the south. There was also fog developing in the usual places east. Anyone with a little knowledge of natural phenomena could make a forecast of heavy fog and be correct.

American pilots weren't ignorant about certain things. Sure, they were bastards; look what they'd done already, in just a couple of weeks. One wondered if they looked out their cockpits to see what they were aiming at, or if they ever aimed at all. One wondered if they closed their eyes in prayer and begged their American God to forgive them.

Lots of them were probably Catholics. They must have consciences. Sure, they were treating this country like it was Nazi Germany; it was all the same to them. But they must have learned a couple of things about Italian fog. They'd know to climb back in their bedrolls when they saw it close the sky like a big, heavy, white lid.

No need to worry.

Was I astonished that someone had gasoline? They had gasoline. American, British, Canadian. Well, they had enough at the moment to get where they were going. It was nice how it didn't take long to be adept at stealing it. It was purely a matter of knowing where to go and when—and how not to let any of it into one's lungs in the process of sucking a tube.

So, Signora Fantini, it's an honor to have encountered you. You're our first-ever diva. It does not appear you've got a choice here. You can't be wandering around. When the fog starts getting down to business, you won't be able to see your own hand in front of your face. You look a little dazed, to be honest.

All right, climb up in the back, there's room. Everyone's packed like spaghetti in a box already. One more won't make a difference.

“Diva,” I said to myself.

The truck was a dark Fiat pickup, battered and rusty and dusty, with a grille in the shape of a heraldic shield and two high headlamps, like the eyes of an oversized insect. Farmers were in it, all farmers, men and teenage boys, in field clothes, and in much the same condition as their vehicle. But they looked at me with gentle, friendly expressions.

In the cab with the driver, taking up all the space of the seat, and on the floor as well, were piles of what seemed to be newly washed laundry, all linens, all white: bedsheets, big towels, small towels, cotton blankets, curtains, tablecloths. The linen on the floor had been wrapped in brown paper, but most of it had fallen off. I had the idea that this was a delivery errand. I wondered if their wives, at home on the farms, might be laundresses-for-hire in their spare time.

It seemed so. I would have liked to have made myself small enough to fit in the seat, but not an inch of extra room was available.

Were the trains running? Was there a station in Cassaromilia? Was there a bus?

There was a church, San Stefano—did the priest have a car? He might want a change of scenery. He might offer me a lift. Maybe he knew who I was. Maybe he had connections in Mengo. Maybe he knew Assunta Ballardini and her daughter. Maybe he'd consider it an act of charity to go out of his own jurisdiction to see a deaf girl, offer some prayers. Maybe they'd give him a chicken. Maybe he'd cure the deafness! Maybe he was beatific. His first miracle, maybe.

If the girl weren't deaf, would it be all right for her to be with Beppi, if things with Annmarie didn't go as I wanted? There was the problem of that
fidanzato
of hers. I wasn't forgetting that.

The undeaf daughter of a waiter and a chicken lady?

Why was I even asking myself the question? I didn't believe in miracles. I was letting my imagination run wild.

Why had I thought to use the words “be with”? Pia
with
Beppi. There were biblical-type connotations there. The daughter and her mother were only hiding him, surely. They might have bewitched him.

The farmers helped me up to the back of the truck as if I were a bale of hay or a sack of potatoes or a vagrant, prodigal member of a livestock collection.

The truck gave a lurch and started moving. There was no room to sit. Like everyone else, I was upright, arms at my sides: a woman in a tight crowd, enclosed, safe. Earth smells, men smells. It felt good to be riding while standing and not be alarmed I'd fall out.

The driver's name was Adriano Venturoli. His wife was seven months pregnant. Their first child. She'd been suffering from terrible pain in her lower back, and spent most of her time lying down. He was nervous about it. The only reason they were letting him drive was that this was his truck.

Everyone else was a Venturoli, too. Or they were a Cardella, a Perilli, a Meneghini, a Baraldi, a Braccini, a Muzzioli, a Farinazzo, or a Fusi.

On their farms were hay, corn, wheat. Pigs, cows. Artichokes, tomatoes, onions, beans, eggplant, squashes, peas, five hundred kinds of peppers. Chestnut trees, apples, lemons, oranges, figs, apricots. Melons, berries. Rabbits in hutches, ducks in a pond, you name it.

Now, to admit to reality, there wasn't much. They hadn't stopped working; they still had chores by the hundreds, but things weren't looking good. In fact, if this were the Old Testament, they'd be Job.

A respectful veneer of privacy all around. Their first diva.

No one had ever called me that before. I'd noticed that some of them had what looked like guns in their hands. Stens and rifles, I'd thought, held close to their bodies, like splints.

But those things weren't guns. They were shovels. Small ones, long-handled ones, and here and there, trowels the size of pistols. They must have been going to help someone plant a field, not that any of them looked hopeful in any way.

Damp air was on my face, sweet, soothing. I had never been in a truck before, except once, when we didn't have a car. Aldo and I had stayed at the restaurant so late one night—no, not the restaurant, the first
trattoria
—we hitched a ride home on the back of a milk wagon, our legs dangling over the edge, all that milk at our backs, and sunrise just beginning.

That had been a happy time, holding hands, my head against Aldo's shoulder. “You sang well last evening,” he must have said. “In my head, your voice is still echoing, and I want it never to stop, until the next time you sing, Lucia.” If he hadn't said so, it wouldn't have been a good time. But he nearly always said so.

Naturally, when we got home, out came Beppi, throwing a coat over his pajamas, rushing at us—how could it have happened that he'd been born to parents who'd ride with the milkman without him? How could we do this to him? Where was God and where were the angels when he needed them? Always a conspiracy against him! He was doomed. He climbed up to the seat of the wagon, with a cheerful
ciao
to the milkman, prepared to spend the rest of his life there. It took forever to drag him away; he had to go to school.

“Mama, why don't you want me to be happy?” I could hear him now. “Mama, why didn't you let Pia Ballardini put her hands on you to feel the vibrations when you sing? Do you think she's a bad person? Did you think she smells badly because of the chickens? Did you think she would strangle you, with those small, soft, pretty hands?”

The truck wheels had met up with resistance from ruts. This was a country road, bumpy, deeply grooved. The engine groaned but kept going.

“Adriano!” called out a farmer, up near the cab. “Put your pedal to the floor! You're driving like a little girl!”

“If we stall, we're done for,” said another man. “You know how low the juice is.”

“We should have taken your mules,” said another.

“They've hardly eaten for three days. They wouldn't have the strength to pull one piece of grass, in their condition. Anyway, they're pissed off. They're on strike until I come up with something to feed them. To make it worse, I think they've been looking at me like I'm their next meal.”

The young man at my right—I was crammed in a corner, near the tailgate—was being careful to not let his shovel bump against me. It was a short one; the blade rested on his feet. “I don't want to impinge upon your person,” he whispered to me. “I wouldn't be able to bear it if I caused you bruises, on top of the ones you have already, which bother me unspeakably.”