Lambrusco (6 page)

Green was for Puccini. Yellow, red, orange, and gold were for Rossini. White and silver were for Verdi. Multicolored prints and stripes were for occasional Sunday afternoons of folk songs, mostly Sicilian, but also the old songs of Naples, which made tourists feel lavish about tipping the waiters. Black, brown, and beige were for Bellini and Donizetti, and the wildly popular program I put on in the spring, around Easter, of songs from
Cavalleria rusticana.

Aldo had claimed not to favor one color or composer. But all the same, when I showed up at the restaurant in blue, his face lit up. He'd loved my Mozart, especially my countess, but also Susanna. And my Donna Elvira, Zerlinda—all of them.

It used to worry Beppi that I sang songs by a non-Italian, but I told him that Mozart's first name was Wolf, and his middle name was Amadeo. He was God's Beloved Wolf, and you couldn't get any more Italian-sounding than that: Romulus and Remus, say, combined with a Catholic God. It had appeased Beppi. He grew up in a Fascist world,
patria,
Mussolini, children around him being drilled, being taught to handle guns almost as soon as they could handle a pencil. Beppi had skipped the summer camps and youth groups because Aldo said he needed him too much in the
trattoria,
where he could do his part by serving good food to Fascists who had the money and the palate to appreciate it.

There was a certain hush in the restaurant when I finished singing from
Figaro,
first with pragmatic, perky Susanna, the most famous about-to-be-married maid in the world. Sometimes—this was rare—I added a bit of Figaro himself. No one ever said they minded hearing him in a soprano's voice.

Customers loved it when I mimed Susanna at the start of Act One, posing before a mirror: “Figaro, look at me, do you like my new hat?”

Her
fidanzato
doesn't give a damn about the hat. He's too busy. I'd pace out those steps of Figaro's as he measures the space for their bed, counting off the numbers in lustful, proud joy,
cinque…dieci…venti…trenta…quarantatre!

After a pause, the time would arrive for the Countess Alma-viva, Mozart's Rosina: beautiful, complicated, brave, heartbroken, wise, kind, forgiving, heroic, luminescent. It was all right that her composer wasn't Italian. It was enough that her words were. “Mozart has no nationality,” Aldo once said, “the way an angel doesn't.” I sang every one of her lines on Mozart nights, sometimes in the order of the opera, sometimes not.

For the countess, always, that same hush.

“Mama, you sing best when you wear a blue dress, so please don't waste it on an Austrian,” Beppi would say. “I don't care what his name means. Please put on blue for our Rossini, the greatest of all, who'd be hurt if he knew how you slight him.”

For Rossini I could feel that I sparkled, I climbed heights, I wanted to leap into air, I was dazzled. But for Mozart, I could feel that I possessed a soul, because I had to turn myself inside out to reach into it, like trying to become, with all of myself, pure air.

And Aldo's face would take on that particular light, and Beppi would pull a chair away from a table, positioning himself near me, with his head tipped back, looking up at me, bright-eyed, solemn, with that soft little private smile of his—insider's knowledge. He'd never say so, but he understood a lot about that hush, even at a very young age. “It's quieter in the restaurant, Mama, than it ever is in church. After you sing those songs, it's quiet like when it's raining, and then all of a sudden the sun comes out, and the sky's all blue again.”

And the waiters and the cooks would line up at the back to hear me. “Look, she's wearing blue tonight!”

“Actually,” Annmarie was saying, “back in America, when I put on exhibitions, I wore very bright skirts, and dresses, too. Designers used to give me clothes for free, to show them off.”

“Exhibitions?” I said. “Of your golf game?”

“Yes, but without the game. It's when people come to see technique. I got paid, more or less, to show off.”

“People paid money to watch you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Are you rich?”

“Not exactly.”

“Do you have a house?”

“I do. In fact, I have two, but they're nothing fancy. They're very small. One's in Connecticut, my real home, and the other one's in Arizona. I play at a club there. Arizona's another state. In the West.”

“Like Oklahoma?”

“Sort of, but it's mostly a desert.”

“Golf is in a desert?”

“It sure is.”

“It must be hot.”

“You get used to it.”

“It's hot here, too,” I pointed out. “All the time, I hear people talking about how Italy needs to have golf. I'm certain that after the war, there'll be plenty of people building clubs and courses. You can put on exhibitions here.”

“I'm not sure that's part of my future, but it's an interesting idea.”

“It can be part of your future!”

I went back to thinking about barrels and rainspouts. Annmarie had said she didn't care if a man was shorter than she was, which proved she was sensible and not vain. And she had said she'd found Beppi to be handsome, objectively.

“I don't care if she's a virgin, which she very most likely is not,” I said to myself. “She and Beppi don't have to mention to each other what their pasts are. That
fidanzato
of hers will have to find himself another golfer.”

Baby hips. It was a good sign that, lean as she was, her hips were curvy, ample. Women with narrow hips, I'd always heard, have a terrible time in childbirth.

For the first time in I didn't know how long—in spite of the war, in spite of that cursed, unlookable-at, Etto-Renzetti-tainted village—I felt at peace with all the world. I wasn't thinking about danger, guns, Germans, Blackshirts, trucks, explosions. “Beppi has a future, which I know because I just saw it,” I thought. “I'll keep quiet about it, but obviously, he'll be very much staying alive.”

Suddenly there was a movement at the far end of the platform: a shadow. I became aware of it as if it made a sound of its own. One second later, Marcellina came bustling around the corner of the station in her good, go-to-church tweed coat, replacing the shadow dramatically.

“Please tell me you know this woman. Please tell me she can help us,” Annmarie said quietly.

“That's my housekeeper. That's Marcellina,” I said. “She's probably got our priest nearby. I can't imagine how they got here. Neither of them drives. But I suppose we're being rescued.”

“You say that as if you wish we weren't.”

“Only because it means that now, we have to go back to the war.”

“Did you feel we left it?”

“I did.”

“So did I. I'm sorry I assaulted you. I promise it will never happen again.”

“I forgive you.”

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.”

Everything was all right. Marcellina was rushing toward me. I felt the same as if I were back in the spotlight at Aldo's, holding on to a salt cellar, or a spoon, or a napkin.

I
HELD OUT
my arms to receive the embrace Marcellina was bound to give me, but there was no embrace. She sizzled with agitation, and came to a stop in front of me, punching the air with a fist.

“Lucia! Who is this flagpole of a woman? They told me they sent you a nun! Tell me what is happening! Beppi threw bombs at that fancy truck with the cannon! By himself! He could have blown himself up in the process! No one knows where he is! Enzo's with Eliana! In a hiding place! Everyone says there's going to be bombing! We have sandwiches! Enzo's holding them! He'll eat them all, if you don't hurry! Where is the nun? What have you done with her? I'm going to learn to shoot! I'm going to kill someone! If Beppi hurt himself, I'll shoot him! The stupid boy! Five hundred Germans are looking for him! I sneaked out the vestry with Enzo! Enzo's a hero! Eliana was with us! She lit every candle before we left! Germans came into the church! Ugo drove us out of Mengo! We left the other two at the hideout so we could fit you in the car! We're just like refugees! Refugees in our own country! Did you hear me say I'm with Ugo? He's not seeing patients today! He's got gas! We had another bunch of sandwiches, for Carmella's children! We passed them on the way! One of them fell down and had scrapes on his knees, but Ugo had his medical bag in the car! Carmella's on the radio all the time, but no one is answering! Ugo smuggled the sandwiches from the restaurant! The cooks are going crazy in there! The restaurant is their prison! Lucia! There's no one in San Guarino! It's empty! Everyone's hiding! Even Renzetti with the tables and chairs! The Germans said they want his factory! But Germans aren't here! Maybe there won't be bombing! I don't know! Poor Aldo! I left the soup for his birthday on the stove! He won't know where we are! I want to go home! Lucia! Why aren't you talking to me? Why aren't you telling me about the nun?”

Pausing for breath, she teetered a bit, as if she'd just run too fast up a flight of stairs. Then she tipped back her head and looked up at the tall, tall stranger, and whispered to me, “I don't want this woman near me, Lucia. She looks like a flagpole, but even more, a giraffe. Is she a Fascist?”

“She's American, she's the nun, and she understands everything you've said,” I said calmly.

“Parlo italiano,”
said Annmarie. “Excuse me for being uninformed, but who is Ugo? Who is Eliana? What bombing?”

“She means the rumor we've heard of bombing by your countrymen. I am Ugo. Eliana is my wife.”

He'd come up silently behind Marcellina, who immediately seized his arm and clasped hands with him, allowing him to help her hold herself up; she was exhausted.

Here he was, Ugo, standing there, with his same old warm, tired eyes, and his same old never-looked-rumpled suit. His same old elegant, paper-white silk shirt. His same old narrow dark tie. His same old quietness.

Why was Annmarie giving me that narrow-eyed, scrutinizing look? Was this how she appeared when she was about to take a shot at a golf ball? Squinting fiercely like this, studying the situation?

I could feel my face pinkening.

Ugo should not have been roaming the countryside. He was a watched man. By now, he must have known the first names, and probably the ailments, of every Fascist and German who trailed him. Sometimes when he went to his patients' homes, people brought refreshments, if they had some, to the black cars or trucks parked nearby, especially when Ugo was there for a long childbirth, or a deathwatch.

Ugo. His same old high forehead with its deep-set creases, his same old warm, tired eyes.

“
Ciao,
Lucia. I've given my followers the day off.”

“
Ciao,
Ugo.”

“Lucia!” cried Marcellina, restored. “Introduce this stranger! Nun or not, where are your manners? Just because there's a war doesn't mean you should act like a peasant!”

Ugo stepped forward to take care of it himself.

He held out his hand to clasp Annmarie's, not mine. Of course not.

His same old mild voice. “You must be Signorina Mal-
lo
-nah. Forgive me if I've said it wrong. It's fortunate that the Americans assigned an officer to our part of Romagna. I've heard that your collaboration with our squad is going well.”

“She's an officer?” cried Marcellina. “Ugo Fantini, what are you saying? She's a woman!”

“I can see that.”

“You pronounced my name perfectly acceptably,” said Annmarie. “Are you a physician?”

“He certainly is!” said Marcellina. “He's ours, but not Lucia's! She insists on going to another one, across two villages, just because he's Sicilian!”

“They tell me you play golf,” said Ugo.

“Golf!” said Marcellina. “Everyone's talking in riddles! Signorina
Americana,
or Sister, how should I know what to call you? You have a nun's hair! I am Marcellina Galeffi, which no one has mentioned! No one makes introductions of a housekeeper! Let's go to the car, not that I look forward to being stuck in a cave!”

Marcellina stamped her foot like an impatient nanny. “Lucia, you're not saying anything!”

“My throat feels a little dry. A little scratchy.”

“You're ill on top of everything else! You sound hoarse! Ugo, do something!”

“We have some wine in the car,” said Ugo.

His same old calm manner. His same old echoes of Aldo: a resemblance in the narrow lines of his nose, the curve of his quick, soft smile, the slight hollows under the cheekbones, which had stayed with Aldo even after he'd got so overweight.

His same old bushy eyebrows, so at odds with the rest of his face, not having grayed at the tempo of his hair: two tweedy, black-and-silver, woolly-looking caterpillars. “Ugo's awful caterpillars,” Beppi used to call them, running to a mirror, licking his fingers, reaching up to smooth down his own.

His same old way of not looking at me directly. His same old stoop. He was almost as tall as Annmarie, but they had opposite methods of coping with their height. Where Annmarie was straight-backed and full of ease, poor Ugo acted as if he hated it. He always seemed to be ducking down low, as if worried about hitting his head on a doorframe.

His same old imperfections. The eyebrows, the stains on his teeth from smoking, the wrinkles; the hollows, the narrow chin with its tiny scar, just off-center, about the size and shape of a thorn, where a patient had once attacked him, with his own scalpel.

A voice inside me rose up, like a warning. Always it was this way. Don't do it. Don't go near him.

To go near him would be breaking a rule. Where had I heard the rules about being a widow? What song was it?

It was an old one, a folk song, about someone giving a new widow advice. An old woman talking to a younger one. A litany of proper etiquette. Hymn-like, but it wasn't a hymn.

I remembered. The proper title was “The Apparition To Mary Of Jesus' Grandmother, Following Joseph's Death.” But everyone called it “Mary, Mary, Don't Do It.”

Mary, a new widow, is walking away from her husband's grave, bent low in mourning. Her mother, dead for many years, steps down from a cloud to have a talk with her.

It was no surprise to me that I was thinking of it now, in a village of carpenters, all of whom were likely to have Joseph as their personal occupational saint.

Follow my simple widow's rules.

Soon, you may want to look at men,

You're human.

You may want to look at men a certain way.

You're not a saint yet.

It's well before the Assumption.

You may want to look at men,

But they're married, all of them.

If a certain someone flutters your heart,

Keep your distance!

Mary, Mary, don't do it!

Don't go near him!