Lambrusco (28 page)

I
T WAS A DIFFERENT ROOM
from before, although the only things that had changed were the addition of two chairs at the side of the bed and the bed's occupant. The chairs looked homemade, with matted straw seats and high backs, which gave them an air of formality. They hadn't come from Etto's factory.

Annmarie.
Annamaria.

“She was a nun when I met her,” I said quietly. “Her hair was covered.”

“It was a perfect disguise,” said the American. “The opposite of her personality, and her life as well. I mean, the way she lived her life before the war. I don't know if she told you, but she used to raise hell, pretty much everywhere she went. In America they have a word for it.
Hellion.
On the golf course and off.”

“Hellion,” I said, trying it out.

It took a lot of effort to make the sound of the letter H. A ridiculous American noise. A wasted breath, pushed too hard.

A weariness had come over me. It wasn't just from being so tired. I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so heavy in my own body. Maybe when I was pregnant, all those years ago. Maybe never.

A whole new level of heaviness, unexpected. I said, “She told me she went to a convent school.”

“She was a hellion there, too. I didn't have the chance to see her in the habit. I would have enjoyed that.”

“It was gray,” I said.

“I wonder what happened to it.”

“It got lost,” I said.

Her head was covered now, but this time by a swaddling of bandages, which fit her like an odd white cap, with a missing top, exposing a patch of that sand-colored hair. One ear was partially covered, the other fully. No marks on her face, no bruises.

She lay on her back, eyes closed, with Annunziata's linen sheet pulled up to her chin. Her skin was as pallid as the light.

I heard them arguing in that half-bombed kitchen. Something to do with the soup. Marcellina really did sound like a hoarse old crow.

Soon more voices joined them—masculine, saying my name insistently, Lucia, Lucia, Lucia. Like diners at Aldo's after a performance, when I'd slipped away to the kitchen or back into the office. Wanting something—a conversation, an autograph, a souvenir, a handshake, or even a kiss. I never knew what they wanted.

“Let's never mind about the rest of this household,” the American said, closing the bedroom door. Latching it. I hadn't noticed the lock when I was here before.

Just the two of us. Just the three of us. At least this wasn't pitch-darkness. At least I could see the chairs, the door. Everywhere one went, one found oneself sitting down on something that hadn't come from Etto's factory, in a place one did not wish to be.

There would never be more of Etto's chairs. Or his tables, bureaus, cabinets, whatever else they'd made. I didn't know what else.

Trouble.

“She told me,” I said to the American, “she joined your military because of trouble. Something she'd got into. She never told me what it was. I'd like to know, please.”

“She needed to stay out of a certain litigation in court.”

“She broke the law?”

“Is that what you really wanted to ask me about?”

“It's secondary.”

“You want to know what they did to her. I'll tell you. They wanted information.”

“Don't tell me you're worried she gave any away.”

He seemed to cheer up at that. “She did! Did you know about a certain book she had, a sort of diary?”

“My son was the one who found it. With the song about the
surrey.
”

“The very one. I hadn't been told of the connection. They'd got hold of it. She told them the song was an American code. She claimed that the words represented—oh, I don't know, troop movements or something. But the thing was really only lyrics of a song. I found out a few days ago that a pilot of ours has a girlfriend who's the understudy to the lead character in the play it's from. The girl writes songs in her letters to him. He'd copied the surrey song into his journal, which was a gift he'd only just received, also from the girlfriend. He was trying to memorize the lines because it made him feel a little better about things in general.”

“I know that feeling. I know the name of the play, too. It's like the name of one of your states. In the West. Okla-
ho
-ma,” I said, resenting another H.

“That's right.”

“So she gave them this information, and they concluded they didn't need to hurt her any worse than they had already?”

“No. It didn't happen like that. They wanted more information than one code.”

“It was bad?”

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“For one thing, the head wounds are fairly superficial. For another, both her arms were injured. They're in splints and bandages, waiting to be properly set, which isn't possible here, without the right materials.”

“By injured do you mean bones?”

“Both her arms are broken. They'd found out she was a golfer.”

Stay calm. Surely in the history of golfing in America, there'd been golfers sidelined with arm injuries. With the right methods of treatment and recuperation, they'd all have the chance to get up and go forth, sore but intact, swinging their clubs, devoting themselves to a little white ball. I imagined an army of Americans with clubs in their hands instead of guns.

“A hospital,” I said.

“Yes. At a base of ours. For a while. For however long it takes. Then home.”

“To Con-eh-tah-kit?”

A little chuckle of approval at my pronunciation. “Her family's there. But she also has a house in a place called—”

“Ar-ee-zo-na.”

“Yes.”

“The desert. In the West.”

“Exactly. That's where she'll want to go. She confided in you, I can see that.”

“South of here,” I said. “A base. A hospital that's a tent?”

“It's a building. By the sea. It's a small hotel that the army was able to borrow. To adapt. I'm told it's comfortable.”

“And she'll be there for however long it takes for what? To set the arms? To find a way home to America?”

A pause. “Her house in Arizona is near one of the most famous places to play golf in the United States. Did she tell you she's a champion?”

I turned so I was facing the American. I couldn't think of a way to ask him what his name was. “She told me, champion, yes. Do people tell you all the time you look like Caruso?”

“All my life. Even when I was a baby. My parents had high hopes for me. But as it turned out, I can't sing.”

“I've often wished I wasn't able to,” I said.

“That's impossible.”

“It's true. We don't have to speak of that. Do people tell you all the time your Italian is very good, without an American accent?”

“It's always nice to hear that. Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Under the covers, if I were to pull them back and look at her, would I find myself getting distraught?”

“Let's not pull back her covers.”

“All right. If that's what you wish. You're going with her, when they come for her?”

“I'm not able to. I'm being reassigned to—well, reassigned. I can't say where, I'm sorry.”

“I understand. You came to Italy to be with her.”

A face appeared at the window: Roncuzzi, pale and looking exhausted, smiling at me, averting his eyes from the woman on the bed. That was all right. He wasn't ignoring Annmarie. I could tell he was being respectful, in the belief that an unconscious foreigner deserved privacy.

“
Ciao,
Lucia. They told me in the kitchen not to bother you. But here I am, and here you are, still wearing my jacket. I'm happy to know that. Nizarro, who used to be one heartbeat away from dead, and is now his same old pain-in-the-rear self, sends you a
ciao
also, and so do the rest of them. We are living like Gypsies, but at least we're alive.”

Coming up beside Roncuzzi was Etto Renzetti. He didn't exactly give the butcher a sideways shove, but he came close to it, as if intending to displace him absolutely. For a long moment he gazed at me, his head tilted a bit to one side, then the other, as if a camera were in his hands and he wanted the picture to be perfect, and couldn't decide on an angle.

“You're still in one piece,” he said.

“I am, I am.” I found it impossible to let him know that I wasn't unhappy to see him. That I wasn't forgetting San Guarino, the moonlight, the way he'd watched out for me, that house, the way he'd held me.

I knew he was looking at me with the eyes of a man who's looking at a woman he has kissed, has embraced, has played the part of a lover to. I really was glad to see him. But it wasn't the same “glad” as the one I knew he wanted.

“They told me you helped a lot in the rescue, Etto,” I said.

A shy scoffing, a shrug. “I was a temporary American aide. It worked out. How is she doing?”

“No change,” said the American.

“Lucia,” said Roncuzzi, shouldering himself back into my line of sight. “If Etto here joins the squad, which he's thinking about, there'll be five non-waiters, which is one more than before. I think you should encourage him.”

“There are four?” said Etto. “You and the two Batarras, I know. Who's the other one?”

“Saponi the fisherman,” said Roncuzzi. “He's old, but he didn't want to be left out. If you bring along some of your carpenters, we might have an equal number of normal people, instead of an overwhelming majority of waiters. I'd enjoy that.”

“What's the matter with waiters?” said the American.

Roncuzzi let out a chuckle. “Did you ever eat in an Italian restaurant?”

“When I got here, they were pretty much all closed, except for the Fascist ones.”

“There's nothing the matter with them,” said Roncuzzi, “if you don't count an air of superiority. They are, to put it bluntly, the whole lot of them, snobs. I'm interested in balance.”

“I started making a squad before, but now I don't know where my carpenters are,” said Etto. “There's just me.”

“I encourage you to join, Etto,” I said.

I couldn't bear his tender, hopeful look. I went over to the window. “I'm going to have to close the shutters,” I told them. “It's getting cooler. And I think it will be better for Annmarie to have it darker in here. And quieter.”

Roncuzzi backed away from the window at once; Etto took a little longer. Again that look at me. But level this time, steady. Asking a question without putting it into words.

The question, I got.

“
Ciao,
Etto,” I said.

“Wait. I want to know…” He furrowed up with indecision, turned away, turned back, then said, “How is it going with finding your son?”

“It's going all right.”

“He'll be turning up soon, I am sure of it. Do you still remember when he was a little boy and you lost him at my place? And he was sleeping in the bushes?”

“I remember.”

“Good. I just wanted to make sure you do. It's important to remember things. Things that are, you know, important. Things in the past.
Everything.
”

“I won't forget. I promise.”

“
Ciao,
Lucia.”

He gave me the courtesy of hurrying away, so that I didn't have to close the window, literally, in his face, which I probably wouldn't have done. It could have been awkward. I tried to picture him getting along with everyone, fitting in, catching up on things he'd missed out on. I tried to picture him with a gun, taking it apart to clean it, loading it, feeling the heft of it in his palm.

Maybe. Everything in his life had been lost. Not just his factory. His house, too. His bed. He'd told me that. Me? Did he count me as one of his losses? Maybe he'd really be all right on the squad.

“It's not getting cooler,” said the American. “And it wasn't all that bright to begin with.”

“I had the feeling that those two wouldn't be the only ones to show up to talk to me.”

“Do you mean someone's around? Someone you choose to avoid? For personal reasons?”

I returned to my place on the chair beside him, taking my time to answer that question. “Excuse me for being blunt like Roncuzzi,” I said, “but if I felt that way, it wouldn't be something I'd tell you.”

“Sorry. I was out of line. I was being American. It's my job to ask questions, usually about something that's not obvious on the surface.”

Those last seven words lingered in the air like the last phrase of a song—the type of song that keeps going, with echoes creating more echoes. Ugo was under my surface, I realized. I'd never thought of him in quite that way before.

The shutters didn't completely block out daylight from that weak, pale sun. They were old, disjoined, worn. Annunziata's bedroom took on the other-world atmosphere of a small church with darkly painted windows. The feeble light began taking on a luster, an importance.