Lambrusco (4 page)

But as I started to get up, planning to make a grab for my bags, my angle of vision shifted, and I saw, at the far end of the platform, some half-dozen German soldiers, standing there like a welcoming committee.

A few of them were officers. They were not the usual station guards. Annmarie reached up and closed the curtain.

“Move,” she said. An order.

I did as I was told. And for the first time that day, I was aware of no aches and pains, no dampness and dryness, no annoyances. I felt I'd taken some sort of medication, without knowing it, and it was now beginning to work, making me numb.

I thought, Nizarro. His writing. His note. He'd gone out of his way to say that Beppi was eager for his father's birthday party. He really looked forward to it,
which I know because he just told me.

The part of my mind that had ignored those words on the page was now prepared to face them, with a sharp and glittering clarity. Nizarro wouldn't have known this, because Beppi never talked with his waiters about fights at home, but he didn't want a birthday party for his father. We'd discussed it, fought about it, Beppi and I and Marcellina, but in a one-sided way. It was useless to argue with Beppi when he ranted and stomped.

“I will feel like burning down the house if you say another word about a birthday! We're not having parties till we get Aldo's back from those bastards! You want a party? Have it in your imaginations and don't tell me about it!

“Also,” he'd added, more calmly, “I'm sick of your superstitions, so don't tell me anymore about Papa being the wind at the kitchen shutters.”

Marcellina had shrugged it off. She told me later it was a pity we couldn't spare flour for a cake for Aldo. “The poor man will be disappointed. He was always so happy for a cake, especially on his birthday, when he'd never want to share it. Don't you feel sorry for Beppi? He thinks we cower at his commands. Imagine calling us superstitious! I think being squad leader has really gone to his head.”

Beppi would not have changed his mind. I found myself making small, cough-like sounds in my throat, as the other woman had done, as if we'd begun to develop our own code.

“Tell me what has happened to my son.”

Annmarie did not look away from me, but gave me a look of surprise, unguardedly. Then a look of distress, then resignation, and a tight little nod of her head, as if saying to herself, well, I should have expected this; she's his mother.

“Beppi is alive.”

“Alive where, please?”

The nun-like facade was gone, in spite of the habit. It was a voice of military terseness that answered me, as if speaking the lines of a telegram. “No one knows where he is. He's hiding. There was an incident with a German truck, a brand-new Opel, wildly expensive, which was parked in the road not far from—”

“The restaurant,” I said. I did not apologize for interrupting her. “That truck's been there all week. Everyone said they planned to mount one of their cannons on it.”

“They mounted it. Beppi blew it up. The cannon stayed pretty much together, but they won't be using it soon. The truck was a good target because it was far enough away from the building. But some of the windows were shattered.”

“Was anyone killed?”

“No. There were injuries, but they weren't severe. I'm sure he's sorry about the windows.”

“Was it the whole squad, or just my son?”

“Just your son.”

The only thing Beppi had ever blown up before was his temper. Surely something went wrong.

“You're not telling me something,” I said. “I can see it in your face.”

“You're seeing incorrectly. He wouldn't be able to go back to the squad. They know they have to lie low for a while.”

“He was hurt?”

“I know this is a shock.”

“Tell me if he was hurt.”

“I don't think so. We're going to find him, you know.”

Marcellina, what about Marcellina?

“I have a woman who takes care of my house,” I said. “I've got to get to her.”

“I know about her. I was told your priest will keep her with him.”

“Where are you taking me?”

The voice softened. “To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. No one knew how quickly they'd be looking for you, but we'd suspected it. We're to wait for a signal farther down the line.”

“Today is Beppi's father's birthday.”

“It was a very successful explosion.”

The Mengo stop was over. The train hissed out some smoke and gave a lurch and started moving again.

Annmarie had lifted an edge of the curtain. “We're lucky. The soldiers didn't board,” she said.

“They were waiting for me.”

“That's a good conclusion.”

Last week, the news had come to Mengo, through Enzo, that the wife of the leader of a brand-new partisan squad in Forli had been kidnapped by Blackshirts while she was hanging out laundry to dry; they had swaddled her in a wet sheet; they'd lifted her as if she were a dead woman already. A neighbor witnessed them putting her into the backseat of a car—the last that was seen of her. A handwritten notice had been placed on the front wall of her house by the door, addressed to her husband. His name was Budino. “Budino, be sensible. Your wife is a nice, pretty lady. We will not harm a hair of her head. We'll set her free when you turn yourself in.” So far, according to the latest reports, he had not turned himself in.

But Forli was Mussolini's hometown. Partisans there, I'd reasoned, had it harder.

We're going to find him. She had said that. It wasn't even her country. What was she doing here anyway?

We're going to find him, you know. A golfer, an American lady golfer. Maybe she thought of Beppi as one of her little white balls, obscured in a bush somewhere. Weren't golfers always hitting balls into bushes?

“I don't know much about golf,” I said.

“Almost no one in Italy does. That's all right. I don't know much about…” Her voice faltered, stopped. Maybe she'd been about to say, “singing.”

“Being anyone's mother,” she said. “This would be a good time for you to close your eyes and get some rest.”

“Do you honestly think I can
rest
?”

“No, but you should close your eyes. Now that we're moving faster, I'm going to open the window and get rid of all this flour. We can't have it weighing us down, and I believe it's not something you'll want to watch. Don't worry, I won't throw out the guns.”

“I won't look.”

“They told me that you're a woman of astonishing strength. I can see they understated it.”

I made an attempt at a smile. “No one my son associates with would say a thing like astonishing strength, not even our priest, as eloquent as he is.”

“I admit, it was put to me more colloquially.”

But I didn't feel strong. I didn't feel I could even pretend it.

Sometimes when I was about to enter the spotlight at Aldo's with an especially vicious fright, I'd pick up some object from a table, as if seizing a prop, whether or not it suited the song I was finding it impossible to sing. A spoon, a napkin, a salt cellar. Nothing easily breakable. It didn't matter what it was. I'd grip it intensely: a good-luck charm. I'd think of my voice as something to speak to. Maybe it was a little like praying. “Please, don't let this be the day you leave me.” At the end of the evening, I presented the object to a patron at the table I'd taken it from: a little ceremony. A souvenir. A waiter rushed over to put it in a white paper bag, embossed with a silver A, which Aldo's had crates of, for favors at wedding banquets and free sweets to children who behaved through an entire meal. “Good children get candy. Bad children drool while watching them eat it,” was Nizarro's rule of what to say, discreetly, while seating them.

Something to hold.

I remembered the Italian pistols. I put my hands in my pockets. I wasn't so numb that I couldn't feel how good it was to touch them, even though they weren't loaded, yet.

“Beppino,” I said to myself, as if my son were with me and I'd reached for him, patting him lightly. “What kind of a partisan are you, blowing something up without telling your mother? You'd better not be hurt in any way. You're a good boy, although I'm sick of all these surprises.”

T
HE VILLAGE OF
S
AN
G
UARINO
had been built in the early nineteen hundreds because of a furniture factory. It consisted of a long, broad avenue lined on both sides with trees, front yards, and boxy, tidy brick houses. There was no town square, no
trattoria,
no church, no school, no café. It looked as if someone had taken it from Ravenna or Bologna—a whole residential block—and plunked it at the edge of a marsh, far enough from the sea to be uninteresting to tourists, but close enough to call itself coastal.

In spite of its well-kept appearance, it looked like a misfit in that countryside. The one avenue began at the train station. Like the long line of the letter T, it stretched out to the gates of the factory, which formed its top line.

Adriatic Fine Furniture for Home and Commerce. The building was four stories high, and as gloomy and imposing as a prison. It had its own little grocery and dry-goods shop, its own kitchen, cafeteria and gardens.

I detested San Guarino, which the train would soon approach.

I'd only been there once, years ago, when Beppi was eleven or twelve. A family outing. The factory was where Aldo, and then Beppi, bought tables and chairs, which forever needed repairs and replacements.

An armload of flowers had been presented to me. The carpenters wanted me to sing to them, but it was out of the question. I had to save my voice for the restaurant, I told them.

Then Beppi got away from me and Aldo, and went missing for a couple of awful hours, when that visit should have lasted five minutes. The only reason it took place at all was that the owner of the factory, that son of a bitch Etto Renzetti, had offered Aldo a line of credit, with one small thing to be given in return.

Aldo was expanding then, moving up from our first to our second
trattoria,
which was double the size, and ten times more expensive. Privately, he'd been operating on bluff and optimism. He'd had little by way of capital.

The one thing Etto Renzetti asked for was that I accompany Aldo on his next visit to the factory. He was a fan. He was also a Sicilian.

There was nothing improper about it. It had happened before that I'd gone with Aldo to meetings with bankers, bureaucrats, suppliers. I didn't mind being looked at as collateral. But I'd never had to speak.

Aldo had helped me prepare what to say. He'd thought it would be nice of me to speak Sicilian. Thank you, Mr. Renzetti, for allowing my husband to pay you in the future, without interest, for one hundred chairs and forty-six tables, half of them square and half round.

He had fat fingers and oily skin. Aldo had been standing beside me, but at the sound of my voice in dialect, so alien to him—all those z's and choppy oo's; the cadence that sounded to his ears like growling—he'd tuned me out. He didn't know that Etto had quietly said to me, “I've heard you sing at least a dozen times. Your voice is always in my ears, and yet, why do I have the feeling that truly, of everyone you know, and everyone who has ever laid eyes on you, the only one who doesn't know you are beautiful is yourself? What's the matter with you?”

A hot flush had spread over my neck, my face, as if I'd stood too close to a fire, as if that man had burned me. I was polite about it. I did not let him know the degree to which he'd rattled me. “Aldo,” I said later, “if you were paying attention, you'd know he was speaking to me about how happy he feels to help you, and he wishes you a beautiful success.”

San Guarino. That odious man, and then we couldn't find Beppi.

We thought he'd only gone to the car, having had his fill of that environment, full of wood, sawdust, banging. He was crazy about the car, a brand-new Fiat, bought on credit. He was always begging Aldo to let him get behind the wheel.

He wasn't in the car. The whole factory came to a halt to search for him. They even went out to the well to see if he'd fallen in.

We found him at last in a hollow by the back gates, in the shade of some high bushes, flat on his back, fast asleep, clutching a smooth piece of wood a laborer had given him. “Mama, Papa, I like it here very much,” he said when we woke him up. “I looked at everything, and I was just now dreaming about it. I want us to move here, because I want to be a carpenter.”

“He sounds like Jesus, at the very same age,” Renzetti pointed out, which made Beppi
glow.
All the way home, and for days afterward, all we heard was, “I'm like Jesus! Jesus! I'm like Jesus!” Marcellina made Aldo let him drive the car in our lane, to shut him up.

The one good thing you could say about Etto Renzetti was that he wasn't a Fascist. Did awful San Guarino have a squad? I hadn't heard of one. The top floor of the factory served as housing for the workers who came from other places and could not afford houses on the avenue: Sardinians, Calabrians, Sicilians, Africans, Greeks. Maybe because of the war, they'd all gone home.

Maybe the factory had been shut down. Maybe the San Guarino station was closed. We might chug right through without pausing, and I could say to the American, “The village we're passing through—not that it's really a village, as it only has one street—is the biggest eyesore in Italy.”

The fact was, I had the crazy idea that Etto Renzetti would be standing on the platform, watching for me, shouting to be heard above the train. Your voice is in my ears! Why don't you know what you're like? What's the matter with you?

The American was watching me. “You didn't get flour on yourself when you threw it out,” I said.

“I was careful. What's the next station?”

“I don't know. But it might have been closed.”

My throat was beginning to feel uncomfortably dry. Sand-dry. I could feel the edges of a fright creeping up on me.

“Tell me, Annamaria, where you learned to speak Italian. I'm curious.”

“It's a long story.”

“That's the second time you've said that to me.”

“I'm not very good at conversation, not when it's about explaining things I've done.”

“Then I'll ask you something simple. Why are you in the army?”

“I didn't have a choice. I'd got into some trouble. The army was the best way out of it. If you don't mind, I'd rather not—”

“
Va bene,
of course, I understand. I won't press you, as we haven't known each other for long. But why are you in disguise?”

“I was ordered to.”

“Are you Catholic?”

“I went to a convent school, yes.”

“Is your habit from the order at your school?”

“Yes. The Sisters of Mary of the Rosary.”

“Ah, the rosary. I suppose they made you pray one every day.”

“Only on Monday mornings.”

“In Sicily, where I lived before I married, nuns didn't teach school. They were in hospitals, or they were cloistered.”

“Cloistered. You said that as if it's something you admire.”

“I don't always like the world very much, it's true.”

“Is your home in Mengo like a cloister?”

I didn't know how to answer that. Maybe. I didn't want to talk about home. I said, “You have a ring. It looks religious. Are you married?”

“The ring is part of my disguise, and I'm engaged. Sort of. It's a long—I mean, it's complicated.”

“He must be Italian.”

“Basically. He grew up American.”

“Like an immigrant?”

“Yes.”

“When my son was fourteen years old, his father wanted for us to move to your New York. A friend of his was opening a restaurant. Beppi had no intention of having this happen, so he began a hunger strike, and kept it up till we agreed to stay home, which was impressive of him. But he wasn't so pudgy back then.”

“You could have sung in New York. That would have been wonderful.”

“I didn't want to go. I wouldn't have. I wanted to only sing here. What's his name, this maybe
fidanzato
of yours?”

“Tom Tully, in American. But really, Tullio Tomasini.”

“How is he? Is he handsome?”

“You would think so if you got to know him.”

“Is he shorter than you?”

“Oh, yes. But I never held that against him.”

“Does he play golf?”

“He doesn't, but he used to work at a course. In the clubhouse.”

“In the state you said I'd never pronounce? Con-eh-tah-kit?”

“Yes, Connecticut, and you said it almost perfectly. It was at the golf course where I first learned to play, secretly. It seems ridiculous to mention it, but the whole business of taking lessons was a secret. I was only sixteen.”

“Secret because your family disapproved?”

“My family didn't know until later. It wasn't them. American golf clubs don't let in Catholics.”

“I didn't know that. Surely this boy Tullio, if he worked there…”

“People at the club thought he was a Protestant from the north of Ireland, but don't get the idea they were fond of the Irish. They weren't, but they were much less fond of Italians. At least the Irish spoke their language.”

“How was his English?”

“Perfect. No accent.”

“He was like an actor.”

“I suppose so. Good jobs were hard to come by. He was good at concealing himself.”

“Who were the people this club was fond of?”

“Oh, themselves. Is this too much talking? It must be tiring for you.”

“It's not. You fell in love. He's the one who taught you Italian?”

“That's right.”

“He's older than you?”

“A little. But young as he was, he was already married.”

“I should have guessed it. Don't tell me his wife died.”

“She's alive.”

“Is he a soldier?”

“He is. He's an officer, in fact. I haven't seen him for a while.”

“But you must know where he is.”

“He's in Washington, D.C., at a desk, safely, thank God. It seemed that working at a golf club gave him practice for helping to plan invasions and things.”

I didn't know why, but I found myself pleased to know that this Tullio was far away, and would not turn up suddenly at some station, greeting his possible future bride in his perfect English. I seemed to feel resentful to know he existed.

“Look,” said Annmarie. “I think we're coming to a village. I think—my God, what's
that
?”

There was a wide, low hump of a hill, barren and weedy, about a mile before the San Guarino station. The train had to slow to a crawl to negotiate the curve. The hill and its occupants were in full view.

“Do you recognize those children?” said Annmarie.

I was tempted to answer no, as if I'd never seen them before, even though it appeared that they were on that hill to send a signal regarding what to do next, the very thing the American had been hoping for.

“They belong to a waiter, all nine of them,” I said.

“Which one?”

“Maurizio Pattuelli.”

“The one called Mauro? The cheerful one?”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“I am.”

“Then, yes. His village isn't far from here. It hasn't got a station.”

The children were solemn and wide-eyed, clustered together like a partisan squad of their own, which they no doubt imagined themselves to be. They were waving at the train innocently, as if watching a parade go by, as if this were the joy of their lives. In their hands were what seemed to be ordinary squares of white cloth—just something to flutter in the air, like handkerchiefs or little flags—but they were linen napkins, heavily soiled.

The squad's code phrase for “you're in danger where you are, exit your situation at once” was “dirty napkin.” As far as I knew, it had only ever been used theoretically.

Those napkins had probably come from the restaurant. Each one had been spotted all over with mud.

The children themselves were freshly groomed and impeccably clean, although their clothes were ragged and worn. The five younger ones were wearing white—the boys in shorts and the girls in dresses—like children at church for First Communion, and I recognized the material. Tablecloths from Aldo's.

“I believe they're telling us to get off at the next stop,” said Annmarie. “Are they reliable?”

They were, but I didn't want to say so. “They might be playing a prank,” I said.

“It doesn't look like a prank.”

Mauro and his wife, Carmella, had named the three youngest—three girls—in honor of me, Aldo, and Beppi, and it was only fair to have learned all nine of their names: Marco; Francesca; the first set of twins, Mario and Sandro; Rudino; Antonella; the second set of twins, Alda and Lucianna; and the baby, Giuseppina, who was called Beppina. Their ages were between fourteen and five.

Carmella Pattuelli wasn't with them on the hill, but of course she was with them in spirit. When the squad was being formed, she got hold of a couple of radios, and set herself up at home as the squad's civilian operator. She'd learned the basics in her days as a Fascist Youth. Beppi complained that she abused protocol by contacting the squad to send personal messages to her husband: a child had broken a tooth; it was lonely in the house without him; good morning, good night, I love you, what did you have for lunch, if anything?