The Incident at Montebello

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Richard—
Tu sei sempre nel mio cuore
.

The three men from Montebello had never seen a machine so fast or so beautiful before. They were smoking near the bridge in an oasis of shade because the summer heat had lingered that year, exhausting nearly everyone except a few children who shrieked and laughed in the stream just beyond the road. In this swelter the men could do little more than start conversations and idly drop them like the ashes flicked from their cigarettes, until one of the policemen glanced down into the valley where pillows of dust were rising from a lone car, speeding past donkeys, ramshackle cottages, and peasants with sun-dried faces, stubbornly farming in the shadow of Monte Vesuvio. He pointed.

The fruit seller crushed out his cigarette and swore that the car was faster than the train he had taken once to Roma. The policeman whistled, recognizing the Fiat 514 Mille Miglia and its driver dressed in black because he was often photographed at the auto races in Monza.

“What's he doing around here?” the officer asked.

“He's lost. He was looking for the Coliseum and he took a wrong turn,” the fruit seller said.

He rolled on top of her, his face just inches away, blocking out the sun. Making a game of it, he brushed his lips against hers and then pulled back, stirring her hunger, robbing her of her breath. Isolina shut her eyes and the world fell away—the blue swatch of sky, the cicadas whirring in the grass, and the flattop mountain capped with a cloud of steam. When Rodi convinced her to climb up the embankment and stretch out in the field with him, he made her forget her brothers and cousin playing by the stream, he made her forget practically everything, except his mouth and hands cradling her face.

Still, she heard a committee of nuns and priests whispering in her ear, “Have children.” That's what they said to the girls too poor to finish school. But she didn't want to end up like her mother—stuck in Montebello with a houseful of babies, so she managed to whisper, “Come to America with me. Say yes, Rodi, why don't you?” But instead of answering, he slid his hands over her breasts and pressed his hips against hers until a low vibrato echoed between them—insistent, sly, bone-to-bone. Helpless against it, she kissed him until shouts broke through the silence.

“Wait,” she told him, pushing hard against his chest until he rolled off her, sighing. Staggering to her feet, she stumbled to the edge of the clearing and peered down the hill. Through the fringe of trees, she glimpsed the children running and shrieking through the stream. Sofia's blue dress appeared and disappeared in the bands of sunlight.

“I should go,” she said.

“So go.”

“I don't want to.”

He laughed and reached for her hand, but she knotted her fingers and stepped back even though it broke her heart for he was truly magnificent, worthy of being painted on a ceiling in Roma: his bold nose as fierce as a falcon's, his eyes as black as watermelon seeds, and his tender lips, curving easily into a smile or a kiss—all that framed by a tumble of brown hair as soft as wool, curling over his forehead and neck, begging to be stroked, begging to be coiled around her fingers. But she couldn't stay and he knew it because she was an unmarried girl who didn't have much besides her reputation. So when she told him, “Don't follow me, don't let anyone see you,” he sighed again, planted a kiss in her palm and plunged into the tall grass, his head bobbling over the stalks of alfalfa rippling towards the abandoned soap factory and the Via Franca.

She took the longer way down the hill, but she couldn't stop thinking of him and his touch, making her body judder with love and longing, fusing them into one word—Rodi. Even as she neared the stream, her mind was still fixed on him until the church bells clanged in the distance making her blink and start as if awakened from a deep sleep. Only then did she remember the children. Only then did she shout their names, but they were not by the stream. They were not under the trees.

The men left Roma early that morning. For two hundred windswept kilometers the Italian talked, one hand on the steering wheel, the other beating the air. Veering off the highway in Ercolano, they climbed into the mountains, Monte Vesuvio looming on the horizon. At the side of the road, stone markers signaled the fiery reach of the lava, which had smothered every rock, tree and farm in sight in 1872, 1906, and 1929. The American shivered, but Benito Mussolini, the Italian head of state with a fondness for racecars, was immune to the ashes and mud. He swept his arm across the horizon. “The
italiani
men do not know the fear. We go and make the progress. We let the women cry the hot tears.”

But Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. wasn't deceived by the grazing sheep or the rustics trudging behind oxen in cobbled patches of green and gold. Dressed in black, they were smudges against the bright landscape except for the tremors of light from the crosses around their necks and a few capped teeth. He knew they stayed because they were poor; only the rich had choices. But even a family fortune had not insulated him from a different shame and despair.

Benito Mussolini took credit for the lush soil, improved crop yields, and the stark beauty of the countryside and his people. Jabbing his finger towards the volcano, he said, “You see, nothing can stop the
italiani
people, even the great Vesuvio.” And then he laughed, showing off his teeth as strong and square as little shovels.

Vanderbilt nodded and smiled. He had given up contradicting the Italian.

The motorcar surged through a village, rising out of the rock and rubble of the surrounding hillsides. Beyond the bridge and the sharp curve in the road, barefoot children were waving and tossing flowers. Vanderbilt was still smiling when a little girl dashed into the road, trying to keep pace with the car. She was no more than a flash of dark hair, a blue dress, and skinny arms. Mussolini swerved, but in the next moment, the car shuddered, its wheels rising and falling. To his horror, Vanderbilt glimpsed the child crumpled in the dust. “Someone's hurt.”