Lambrusco (29 page)

The American had come to Italy to be with her. That was the last thing we talked about before the interruption. “You came to Italy to be with her,” I repeated.

“I did.”

“But you're not going to the base hospital by the sea. Because of the reassignment.”

“It's not my decision. Now that they've got me here, whatever I do, or don't do, it's not from making my own choices.”

“The same thing's been happening with me.”

“You understand me, then. Things in Italy aren't going well. Mistakes have been made.”

“Things are going well in other parts of this war? Mistakes aren't made in other places?”

“I don't care about other parts and places. In case you haven't thought about this lately, Mussolini is still very much alive. The Fascist imagines himself a full-blown Nazi now. Do you know what it's like? It's like the bully in a schoolyard being finally forced out, and then he goes and joins a criminal gang, just to save his own skin, and since he's stupid he never figures out that the gang considers him an incompetent, undependable, laughable, slow-witted failure.”

“If you grew up here,” I said, “your political analysis might be a little more complicated. A bully in a schoolyard doesn't have his own army, plus the adulation of most of the school, plus enormous amounts of money to do what he likes with—which would be, in part, to find the means to get rid of anyone who disagrees with him. And a lot of his money, let me point out to you, came from America in the first place.”

I sounded like Ugo! The American looked taken aback. He hadn't counted on being corrected.

“I'm not disagreeing with you,” he said.

“Fascists are as criminal as Nazis.”

“They're not.”

“They are.”

“All I'm saying is, they are failures at a different type of evil. It's not complicated at all. But what I'm trying to say is that, what I care about is right here. Everything I care about is right here, in front of my eyes.”

I felt aware that there was still something he wasn't saying. Behind his words was a silence. I was determined to pay careful attention to it, the same way I listened to the different silences of an audience, before and after singing.

There were so many: the hush of expectation, in the moment the spotlight went on; the silence that filled my ears when I paused for breath; the astonishing quiet at the end of a song, when it was still too soon for applause. And the Verdi silence, a special one, serene and a little awesome. And the Mozart silence, which was even more special because the only thing it ever was, was beautiful.

And the silence of the cooks and waiters and Aldo, after a certain type of performance, when it was not a good night, when I was not at my best.

And other silences, too, new ones, newly learned. Counting them up, I listened to them all, sitting there.

The silence after a bombing.

The partisans from Bologna in the trees.

The Americans whose food I ate.

The hungry
anziani
at the farmhouse.

The farmers in the truck, returning home after their night among the dead.

The
basso
bell of the Weary Tower.

Etto's factory.

The new and old dead of Cassaromilia.

Cesare not singing.

Normal life in a war.

Annmarie Malone, who had helped me.

“Are you unwell?” the American said. “Would you like to go out, get some air?”

“I'm all right.”

“You must be so terribly anxious about your son. Forgive me for not saying so earlier.”

“You have other things on your mind. I was just thinking, I owe her a debt. You know, in your football, what happens when someone grabs hold of someone else, on the opposite team, to knock them down to the ground?”

“
Tackling,
it's called.”

“Yes. She more or less did that to me. On a train. Well, getting off it. If she hadn't done that, I believe I would not be here. I have a suspicion that the train we were on was destroyed in the bombing. It's just a guess, but it's a reasonable one.”

“She saved your life?”

“It's possible. And before that, she managed to keep me away from some Germans who were looking for me. Tell me where she was when they caught her, please.”

“I'm not sure.”

“She was in a car,” I said. “With others. Americans, an Englishman. What happened to them?”

“I believe the men who were with her didn't make it.”

“I see. The car she was in was outside an American place where I was. A
palazzo.
There was an attack.”

“I know about that. We lost some men there.”

“She was waiting for me. To take me away. When I came outside, she wasn't there. She was there, and then she wasn't.”

“It's not your fault. Was that going to be the next thing you'd say?”

“The next thing,” I said, “is for you to tell me, the base hotel hospital for however long it takes for what, please?”

“May I point out to you the interesting fact that, if I ask you a personal question, you tell me it's none of my business, and yet, you don't extend that feeling to me? It seems to me you have a double standard going on here.”

“It's my right. I'm older than you. And I'm only asking you for the finishing touches on information I have already. Or should I say, intelligence, seeing as that's your actual position, Mr. Intelligence Officer. The hospital for however long it takes for what?”

He was a soldier through and through. If I hadn't known he was military, I would have been able to tell. Only a slight twitching of his nose and lips, like the involuntary gesture of someone who was about to sneeze, but then didn't, betrayed the reality of his feelings. He loved her.

“They were rough on her,” he said slowly, with great formality. “The possibility exists that, during the time they imprisoned her—more specifically, during the time they interrogated her—they caused it to happen that she conceived.”

It took me a moment to understand what he meant.

“It's not a good idea to wait till she gets to America to…to undo something like that,” he was saying. “To have, you know, the necessary medical procedure. It can be taken care of in this country. It'll be easier on her. She's not fit for a long journey.”

His voice wasn't bitter or angry. Just low, flattened.

Another kind of silence. The silence of the absence of tones.

“Easier,” he said. “I take that back. Nothing is ever going to be easy again in any way. But the hospital was chosen especially. They're ready for her. She's not the first one this has happened to.”

Why did I close those shutters? Why hadn't I wanted anyone else to come looking for me? This would have been the perfect time for another interruption.

Where was Geppo, where was Lido? Why weren't they bothering me the way Roncuzzi had? Anyone! The yard out there was crowded! Ugo!

Why wasn't he at that window, or at the bedroom door? He'd have got past the women at the stove. He knew what the American was telling me. He was the one who'd given Annmarie whatever he'd given her to keep her so still. He was the one to have bandaged her. He was also the one—the only one—who might have taken one look at me and figured out, instantly, something to say, or something to do, to make this heaviness of mine go away, this whole new degree of heaviness, in my bones, my heart, the voice inside me, all of me. “Ugo,” I wanted to say. “Appear. Do something. Say something. Make me lighter.”

With all my will, I focused my thoughts on that closed, bolted door, commanding the sound of his knock, his voice, here I am, here I am.

I gave myself a little shake.

“They raped her,” I said, after a long moment. “They raped her and you think she might be pregnant. There. I've said it. Things will have to go on. Things will have to be done. I'd like to tell you what I'm wondering. I'm wondering, what was the trouble she made, to have, as you put it, litigation?”

The American looked at me with a shock of amazement. His jaw dropped; his expression made me almost giggle. “This isn't the time—”

“It is, Mr. Intelligence Officer. I want to know. Make me intelligent.”

A quick, genuine smile. He was willing to make a small act of surrender.

“She was in a golf tournament,” he said, and some tone began creeping back into his voice. “She was the only woman competing. This was—oh, three years ago. We were engaged—”

“You were married to someone else, before,” I broke in.

“I can't believe she told you that!”

“We were stuck together for quite a while.”

“I was married. Legally, I still am. It doesn't have anything to do with what you want to know. Do you know what the Fourth of July is?”

“An American holiday. Yankee Doodle Dandy. A song that Caruso sang—”

“In a famous American concert. It was one of the first songs he ever recorded. Did you know he always wore a pearl stickpin in his tie when he made a recording? When I was old enough to start wearing ties, my parents gave me one for a birthday gift, hoping it would perform a miracle on my vocal cords. They wanted to be the parents of a tenor very badly. Actually, I disappointed them in many ways. The fact that I became an officer compensated for some of it.”

“Your wife was Italian?”

“She was. She is. A fresh immigrant, when we were introduced.”

“Your parents, they liked her?”

“I thought I was telling you about the Fourth of July.”

“Continue.”

“On that day, a certain golf club—this was in Arizona but not her home club, which had hired her years before—put on a tournament. Her club is near a city called
Phoenix
and this one was farther south. It doesn't matter where it was. The Fourth of July Four-Ball, it was called. Golfers lined up and shot four balls and whoever hit the farthest won a trophy. It was a very big deal. They'd never let a woman play before, and I don't remember how they let her in, but she got in. I was in Washington then and I went out to watch. She was terrific. I wish you could have seen her.”

“Did she wear brightly colored clothes, for free from American designers?”

“She told you about her golf clothes?”

“We're women. Women talk about clothes.”

“She only wore bright colors in exhibitions, which are—”

“I know what they are. When you show off.”

“Exactly. For competing she always wore—oh, tans, whites.”

“I'm trying to picture it.”

“Tan skirt, white blouse. Her skin was so brown, she looked like an Indian. And her hair was bleached out by all that sun. A beautiful Indian with pale yellow hair. She was taller than most of the men.”

“She's taller than you, too.”

“I kind of know that.”

“Don't tell me she didn't hit the best ball.”

“Oh, she did. On her last try. Her first three were great, but the fourth, her own Fourth Fourth, as she called it, went up in the air, I swear to you, like a rocket, in the most beautiful arc I ever saw, and believe me, I've seen a lot of golf. The spot where they were hitting the balls was down in a little sort of trench, and you couldn't see where it landed. They had distance markers set up. They had club officials out there to record whose balls were whose, which wasn't difficult, as the balls had been marked with the golfers' initials. A.M. were her letters. As it happened, a man by the name of Merrigrew, Philip Merrigrew, had his turn just before hers. I think she underestimated the resentment some of those guys felt toward her. Or their level of corruption. They ended up saying the initials were the same. That her fourth ball was actually his.”

“But what letter does Philip start with?”

“It starts with a P, actually. And here's the interesting thing. His nickname was
Ace.
It's an American word that means, when you use it for a person, someone who's good at something, who's the best.”

“He was the best golfer, besides her?”

“No, he was the worst. He was fairly competent, but not good, with
long drives,
which this was. With everything else, he was terrible. It was an ironic name for him.”

“We do that in Italy all the time,” I said. “I understand. Sometimes it comes out of affection.”

“Not in this case. This guy hated being called Ace, but he put up a good show about it. He wanted everyone to like him, but he only gave people reasons not to. He used to be a member of Annmarie's own club, so she knew him pretty well. A real
jerk.
He never used his nickname. See, golfers put their own initials on their balls, and he never would have put an A. They only used nicknames for golfers who had matching initials and there wasn't any other P.M., so he definitely would have put a P. It could never be proven, since all the balls that said P.M. had mysteriously disappeared.”

“So they told her she lost?”

“They did. She was sometimes all right controlling her temper, but this wasn't one of those times. No one from the club took her side. She was an outsider there anyway. She'd only gone into the tournament because her home club didn't have one as big. Also, more importantly, she'd wanted to stick up for a principle. She was sick and tired of their no-women policy. They were one of those clubs, like most, that refused to call a woman golfer a professional, regardless of how good she was, or how much money she made, or how many trophies she had. She refused to call herself an amateur.”

“I understand. She told me that in your home state they didn't let Catholics near their clubs.”

“Would you call that Fascist?”

“No. It can only be Fascist if they arrest you and maybe kill you, not just discriminate against you. A different evil, yes?”

“You've got me there. But she was arrested. For assault.”