Lambrusco (26 page)

He would have to sing something religious. Something from Palestrina? Something out of a requiem? Or the Mass? Something Latin? A Romagna hymn? Something especially for the children?

The children. They made me think of what Beppi was like when he used to wake up with a nightmare.

We'd rush to him. I'd turn on the lights, take him in my arms, kiss him, soothe him, swear to him that whatever he'd seen, it wasn't real. Beppi, look, here's Mama, here's Papa, here's Marcellina too, in that frilly, ridiculous nightgown of hers. Here we are, and everything's all right.

He wouldn't believe us. He'd tremble with anxiety, open-eyed but still asleep, still in the dream; it took a long time to get through to him. On his face was terror and the blank, soft mask of sleep. Aldo, in a fit of distress, would take on the expression himself. He couldn't bear it, his boy, something had to be done, but what? Were we supposed to forbid sleep? Were we supposed to get a prescription from Ugo? Put some sort of medication into a child, which could result in permanent damage, which Beppi would never let us live down?

That was why Marcellina hung the zodiac on his wall. I remembered that. Marcellina had felt he could be trained to wake himself up and turn his eyes to it and be calm, or at least be distracted enough to snap back to real life: everything important in the universe, right there, all his.

“Look at your stars, Beppi, and hurry up about it; I want to go back to my bed,” she'd tell him gently—yes, Marcellina talking gently. Then came the zodiac song. Was that accurate? It must have been, or why would I recall it?

A good memory? Singing Beppi back to sleep with Aldo's star song, blanketing his whole world with my voice? All those constellations. I couldn't remember how it went.

The fog was descending, or another wave of fog had come in, from a different front. Two invading armies from two different countries, two invading fogs; it made sense. Soon everyone would look like ghosts, like Aldo.

No sound came from Cesare. He looked smaller and farther away. Again, he held up his arms. He closed his mouth tightly, then bowed his head, and gave up trying.

Thirty grenades in my arms.

The farmers were giving their piles of linens to some women of the village. Which sheets or towels would be used to wrap the new dead? Which were for the old? Were there enough to go around?

For twenty-nine.

I had no comfort this time for Cesare. This was no place for me. Berto Venturoli had been right. “Fucking Americans,” he had said.

It had been nice of the farmers not to ask questions about the way I was dressed. Too bad there wasn't a spare set of clothes in the truck—overalls, a shirt, anything that wasn't American. I'd have given a lot to be able to change. I'd hang on to Roncuzzi's jacket, though. He'd want it back. I turned toward the footpath. What if it didn't go to Mengo, wherever it was? I didn't know where Mengo was.

I didn't know! How could I not know that? I didn't even know what direction to face, in order to be certain I faced home!

Stay calm! Don't be helpless like Cesare! Keep making plans! Think of the boots! Trust the boots! Mengo was somewhere! I'd get there! What should I do with the boots when I got to Mengo?

Throw them into a compost pile, that was what. Assunta Ballardini was sure to have one. American leather would rot eventually, like the outer leaves of a cabbage. Or maybe I'd toss them onto a beach, or into some field, where it looked like mines had been placed, and really look forward to the explosion.

O
LIVE TREES,
these were olive trees, just a few, gnarled and barren, miraculously recognizable, not bombed, and I imagined Aldo beside me, in a piss of a mood, complaining.

Why had so many things gone wrong? Why didn't we plant olive trees at home? Why did we only have nut trees? It would have been a pleasure to pick olives, fill a basket, bring them inside, dump them out on the table. His own olives, a peaceful activity. A small press to make oil, for home use exclusively. His own private brand. He'd really missed out on that. Ugo had been after him for years to take up an interesting, calming hobby, remember? Something to counteract the stresses of the restaurant, the Fascists, the daily tensions involved in being a non-Blackshirt boss. If he'd grown his own olives, he wouldn't have had all those heart attacks. It was the fault of poor planning and not listening to the right advice.

He'd always been nervous in fog. This one was exceedingly low and thick, with mists that clung tightly to branches, leaves, and even rocks, as if glued there.

It was perfectly still, and denser than the worst of the steam in the restaurant kitchen, when pasta was cooking in three or four pots, and crabs were being boiled, and clams were being steamed, and dishes were being washed, and the cooks would refuse to open a window; they hated fresh air. Aldo would wander in cordially, innocently—as he'd put it—just to see what was what, just merely to say hello, and he'd feel blinded and overwhelmed. His clothes would curdle with dampness; his eyes would water; his hair would get moist, which drove him crazy. A cook would hand him a towel to pat it dry, and the towel would be wet, on purpose, to torment him, or it would be freshly stained with meat juice, to torment him further.

He'd never learned. He was always going into the kitchen when they didn't want him, which was moderately stupid of him, but there was no comparison, he felt, with what I'd done.

Christ Almighty. It was an indescribably, unspeakably stupid thing, setting off on an unfamiliar byway alone, when I'd seen it was foggy already.

I should have known it could only get thicker. Look how bad it was: I could open my mouth with the sense I could drink it, which would be wonderful, since I was thirsty, and hungry, too—he could hear my stomach make those rumbles, like on performance evenings, and he'd stand there begging God to silence my belly, especially during that important moment when everything became hushed, expectant.

One doesn't want an audience to be aware of the singer's stomach. Yet I'd rarely eaten a meal before singing. How many times had Ugo told me to have supper before going to work? If not supper, at least lunch?

Stupid beyond belief! Had I considered what might be floating around in the fog? It was getting dark; I couldn't see the danger. I might have been breathing tiny fragments of poison, metal, plaster, wood, stone, glass, tiles, the Weary Tower, the
basso
church bell, and worse things as well, things from inside the ground.

Cassaromilia was behind me. So was San Guarino. So was Folcore. It could only get better. At least I'd known enough to sit down and take a rest. For that he would have to congratulate me, begrudgingly.

He never gave me credit for making sensible decisions, not counting the one I'd made to marry him, then the one to go home with him to Romagna. No regrets there. I was Mengo's first singer and first Sicilian. He knew I enjoyed the distinctions.

But remember when I wouldn't go to America when he wanted to go to America? The Fascists had marched on Rome. Italy was filling up with Blackshirts; it was a nation of sheep being herded by one demented dog, this psychotic little dog—originally the runt of his litter—and suddenly he was armed, his skull was coated with metal, he was lining up all the dogs that barked back at him, bared their teeth at him, were bigger than him, were smarter than him, and look what had happened.

Well, that was Italy.

Why hadn't we gone to New York, even though it would have meant the misery of first, being Italian in America when Mussolini was climbing into bed with Hitler, and second, being Italian in America when America was bombing Italians?

Did I remember what I'd said to that? Beppi didn't want to go. He was too dug in where he was. He was already rooted.

Beppi didn't want to! Beppi was too dug in! Beppi was rooted! Did I think our son was some kind of tree—an Italian nut tree, or an olive tree—that couldn't be transplanted?

He could have been transplanted! People grow olives and nuts in America! I loved Beppi more than him! Admit it: he came second in my affections. Or third, if you counted singing. Or fourth, if I cared to delve into the subject of Ugo.

Which I did not. But what about that coach? Remember when he wanted to hire that theatrical coach from Milan who'd been willing to guarantee,
guarantee,
that if I put myself in his hands for one month, he'd have me strolling out from the wings, one hundred percent confidently, onto any stage in the world? And I wouldn't need a prop in my hands for reassurance. And I'd be able to sit in audiences of other singers' performances, without feeling that the next breath I drew would be my last. And walk into any theater as comfortably as if I owned it.

Did I honestly believe it was
all his fault
that I only sang to diners and the help and the locals and tourists who gathered outside for free?

I was the one who'd turned down the offer. I was the one who didn't believe in coaches.

But I was also the one who'd wanted so badly to go onto the stage, the genuine operatic stage. Did I remember I had a husband who would have turned himself inside out to see me established in the places I'd had the talent to be, the highest places, no expense spared, no matter how much debt he went into? He was going into debt all the time anyway. He didn't give a damn about it. He could always find financing. He was a genius at getting people to bankroll him.

But no, I had to cling to my old ways: if I couldn't do something on my own, all right then, forget it.

You can't always do everything on your own. Think of Beppi! Had I made Beppi by myself?

I should have listened to him about that coach. He would have treated the recurrence of sand in my throat like a good physician—like Ugo, for example, getting rid of a blood clot or an ulcer, or a good physician's impressive wife, such as Eliana, with her herbs and prayers and wisdom, getting rid of people's allergies, warts, stutters, nervous tics, psychological disorders, all kinds of phobias—so many, in fact, it would take two hours to list them, not that we didn't have the time for it, as it appeared—what an
idiot
—that I'd marooned myself.

I should do the sensible thing and look around for some shelter, get something over my head. Was I prepared to accept that I might be stuck here all night, alone, on the side of a path that appeared to be as treacherous as the edge of a cliff, and taking one more step meant walking off it? Did I remember that somewhere on an airfield, American planes were tanked up and ready, waiting for an opening in the fog to come and drop some more bombs? Also, had I considered the proximity of Germans?

A battalion could have set up camp nearby. Those shapes in the distance could be tents, tanks, cannons. Those pine trees across the path could be soldiers.

Did I remember the time Ugo was out in a fog like this one, but even worse, as it was closer to the sea? He hadn't taken his car for whatever patient's house he'd been called to. It had seemed a nice night for walking. On his way home, having believed he'd gone the right way, he found himself off-course, on his ass, in a pit some Fascists had dug for a pig. They'd planned to roast it the next day, which was Mussolini's birthday.

Had I honestly believed I was following a path to Mengo? Where was it anyway, this path? It seemed to have ended. It was swallowed up in fog.

I'd been walking on something that was all swallowed up. And I didn't know where I was to begin with. Would I be able to draw a map of this area, if I had anything to write with? Could I sum up the number of miles I'd traveled since leaving Mengo on that train?

Don't bother answering those questions! As my husband, it was his duty to point out the truth. My situation was obvious. I was lost.

Actually, he felt it was understandable that I had not gone into Cassaromilia. He wasn't calling me a coward. The only reason I didn't step forward to help Cesare was that I'd gone on strike against singing in front of an audience.

All the same, it would have been nice if I'd offered those people a song. Cesare might have found a way to join in. Think of it, a duet, soprano and baritone, which would have been appreciated doubly, since the people of Cassaromilia had been forced to say their prayers without a priest—and for God's sake don't be wondering what had happened to the priest, inside that church with his parishioners, all of them thinking they were safe and then…

Naturally, my thoughts had gone to my outfit. Any Italian in my position would have wanted to change their clothes, too. A normal reaction. Admirable, even. It was only the strike that had caused me to not go up there and sing.

Yes, surely it was only that. It wasn't that I suffered from heartlessness. It wasn't a lack of human feeling. I still had plenty of human feeling, right? I'd only acquired a sort of clinical detachment about tragedies and suffering, right? Like Ugo's doctorly professionalism?

“Aldo,” I said. “All you talk about is Ugo. You're annoying me. Go away.”

But wouldn't I like to know his idea of what I could have sung for the new and old dead of Cassaromilia? And the people without a priest? And those children?

Why, Verdi, of course.

My Desdemona was famous in our part of the world. When I sang from
Otello,
in a white dress, or a silver one, the waiters had to wait at least ten minutes before venturing back to the tables. The cooks had to keep everything on warming plates. The restaurant became transformed. The whole place would seem temporarily paralyzed.

Oh, it didn't matter that I didn't like the character, that I felt there was something abnormal in a woman who didn't spit in the eye of a husband who made false accusations against her: spit in his eye and walk out, not wring her hands in anguish and doom, and stand around waiting to be smothered.

You couldn't blame Verdi for that. You had to blame Shakespeare, who was probably only concerned with the drama. A heroine in a murder scene would fill more seats than a heroine who used her own wits and felt she'd do anything to stay alive.

Think of it: me and Verdi, and Cesare backing me up, a baritone echo, as deep as the bell that would never ring again from the Weary Tower.

Did I feel a little guilty about not singing to Cassaromilia? Did I feel a little selfish? Did I feel a little Fascist?

“Aldo, shut up. From now on, when I want you to talk to me, I'll invite you.”

“I'm trying to help.”

“Don't. You make everything worse.”

“Very well. I surrender to your decision. You've hurt my feelings, but I'll be off now.
Ciao,
Lucia.”

It was as if he were at home, ready to set off for the restaurant. Looking at himself in the vestibule mirror, checking his hair, his tie, brushing dandruff or lint off the shoulders or collar of one of his beautiful suits.

“
Ciao,
Aldo. Go to Beppi now. Tell him I'll be coming very soon.”

Beppi always went in before his father to oversee deliveries and supervise whatever cleaning was going on. Someone in the kitchen would be laying out flour on a smooth wood counter for pasta. Someone would be starting soup from yesterday's bones. Someone would be taking the bones out of fishes, for fillets. Someone would be chopping onions or bulbs of fennel, with flesh that was whiter than fog, whiter than bones, whiter than my dresses.

The fog contained its own silence, the way a volcano contains its own noise. It settled down on me with a surprising comfort. I told myself that I'd only sat down in the shelter of the olive trees out of weariness.

“Ave Maria,” I said to myself. “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

Verdi's prayer in
Otello
's fourth act. An invocation—quiet, coming up from a depth that ordinary church hymns could never reach, would never attempt—well, that was Verdi: Hail Mary, full of grace, show your pity. Pray for those whose heads are bowed by affronts and spiteful destiny.

They were only words. I had no music in that silence. They were only some words to which my mind was indifferent, as if I'd remembered a few lines from an advertisement in a magazine. It was only exhaustion, I felt, that bowed my head.

It was shadowy and getting darker. My senses were in a state of over-alertness, so that I thought I heard many different types of sounds, all frightening and sinister: breathing, groaning, footsteps, boot steps, distant thunder, the chugging of heavy trucks on roads built for carts, the drone of planes, echoes of explosions—a world of war sounds dredged up to mock me, as if my ears had memories of their own. All the noise of war I'd ever heard seemed to gather together into one mass, then shatter into hundreds of fragments, amplified and terrible, riding the back of the now-lifting fog.