Lambrusco (31 page)

M
ILK IN A COCONUT.

Sap in a tree.

A turtle.

A clam, a mussel.

Snails.

Life in wartime.

Like a song. A song called “List Of Things With Hard Exteriors.” Try to keep adding to it. Try to make substitutes for singing.

“List Of Things With Hard Exteriors For Me To Think I Am Like.”

In the hospital the whole world was the hospital. Days went by without distinction—a week, two, more, blending into each other in a shadowy way, without edges, all the same.

At first it felt strange to be outside of measured time. There wasn't a calendar in the room. I made an effort, for as long as I could, to keep myself aware of things like Sundays and Mondays and Tuesdays and all the rest, but I soon lost interest.

Somewhere the sun was rising, setting. An article of faith: dawns and dusks. The light in the hospital was pretty much always the same. Almost-twilight, all the time. There wasn't a clock.

It occurred to me a few times to try to find out what town I was in. I didn't know how to. Soon, it didn't matter. I'd never been this far south of Mengo, in this part of Romagna, but it was still Romagna and it was still the Adriatic, turquoise and shiny, with its same old shimmering horizon and languid waves.

On the outside, it was winter. Inside was more important than out.

I rarely left the room. It did not look out on the sea, which was just as well. The view was a war one. The beach was a graveyard of bombed boat hulls, all types of boats—sailboats, fishing boats, rowboats, big, small, medium, tiny, enormous—and past them, in a pretty little bowl of a harbor, with only half a pier still standing, were the remains of boats at anchor, bombed, not yet sunk, swaying gently.

I saw these things on the day I arrived. Along the shore, fish carcasses, dead crabs, dead birds. The smell was horrible, but the hospital didn't let it in. The hospital had a smell of its own.

The room was in the low-rate side of the hotel this used to be. Two beds, old and musty. A small table between them, a shelf on the wall, a closet of a bathroom. The only window looked out at the eyesore of a building next door, not bombed: a training school from the twenties, a four-story brick lump, a real monstrosity, like all the rest of them along the coast, like the very face of Mussolini.

No Fascists were in occupation, but it wasn't empty. Ropes were strung up for drying laundry; smoke from little braziers floated out from slightly raised windows.

Families were in there, all sorts of people, refugees from their own neighborhoods, bombed. Now and then a face would appear—a child, an old man, a teenage girl—all with sad, baffled eyes, waiting, watching. And yet the war did not end, did not end, did not end.

Better to keep the curtain closed. At least I knew the name of the hotel. Jewel of the Sea. There was nothing special about it. An artificial jewel, I decided, which the owners, whoever they were, had felt pretentious about. No hotel staff, naturally.

“I'm at the Jewel.” It sounded nice. The sign had been taken down but the name was inscribed in tiles by the front door. It must have happened that visiting Fascist officers, on tours of school inspections, had stayed here. It seemed like that kind of place.

It was American territory now. Not like before, when I'd been the patient, at the
palazzo,
which had felt, in spite of all the soldiers, so Italian, with the soldier named Frank speaking my language.

One minute talking, and the next, not. One minute walking out of a doorway, and the next, not ever coming back. “I'm just going out for a smoke.”

Frank
Agnello,
lamb, like what's born from a sheep. An Umbrian's stepson. I remembered him. So many ghosts.

He had said that Annmarie's nickname was
Mallo,
like a particular type of American candy. I tried it out, softly, gently, an Italian sort of word.

“Mallo? Explain how I can make you comfortable. Mallo? Will you speak to me?” No response. No recognition. Maybe she hated that nickname?

“Annamaria? Would you like to have me describe how Beppi found me? You would not believe what was happening to me when he appeared. Shall I tell you about it? Would you like to know where he'd been? Would you believe me if I told you there might be a wedding, when this shitty war is over? Not that I'm saying I'm fully thrilled about the choice for the bride, not that it matters to Beppi. You met him yourself, if briefly. You know what he's like, a real pighead, and I say that with complete objectivity.”

Nothing, for so many days. Annmarie was too far away. There, right there, and far away. Even when she opened her eyes.

Near and far. Those two conditions could exist simultaneously. It was easy, like being outside of time.

“Mama, what are you doing?” Beppi had said, back at the Galimbertis' house.

He was dumbstruck with confusion. He knew I'd been fixated on finding him. “I just got here,” he said, “and you're getting in that ambulance and
leaving
?”

I stayed calm. I had not had a choice. “I don't have a choice,” I told him.

“Are you all right, Mama?”

“I am now. Because you are. But you should have told me about that truck.”

“I'm
sorry.
Do you want me to say it a thousand times?”

“It would take you too long. Can't you see they're waiting for me?”

“If I told you ahead of time, you would have tried to stop me.”

“Perhaps.”

“You wouldn't have believed I'd pull it off.”

“I'd believe it!”

“You wouldn't. You'd think I'd get everything wrong, and end up exploding nothing except myself.”

“Well, it was your first time. Papa would have been proud of you.”

“Oh, I know.”

I held him in my arms. My boy. My cheek was pressed against his. I was nuzzling him, and filling myself with the old familiar smell of him, the feel of him. I had this. I truly did. That sweet, strong, wonderful thing, unbombed, unwrecked, unchanged: the thing of being a mother. To know he was all right was like the difference between a tree that's been torn from the ground, and whirls madly about in a windstorm, and a tree standing still, rooted as deeply as roots can go.

My roots, I thought. Then I pushed him away from me. “Are you going to tell me where you've been?”

“Hiding.”

“Hiding where?”

A sigh. A droopy, woebegone look, then an earnest attempt to change the subject.

“I noticed Polpo,” he said, as if this were the most important thing in the world. “I was wondering, why is he here?”

“Ask Marcellina. Were you with a girl, Beppi?”

“I don't want to answer that.”

“It's answer enough. All of a sudden, you're mysterious? You were never any good at keeping secrets. Your whole life, you were just like a spaghetti strainer. You could never keep a thing to yourself, and suddenly, you're different? Do you expect me to think it's normal you don't tell me things?”

“Don't be mad at me.”

“This girl you were with, do I know her?”

“You might. Maybe. A little bit. How can I know if you know someone, or you don't? How can I answer that question?”

“You just did. You were in Mengo all this time?”

His eyes went wide with surprise.

“Mama! You thought I was in Mengo, when they were looking for me in every corner? Every rock, they turned over. Honestly, did you think that? Where exactly? At someone's house, did you think? You reached a conclusion, I can tell. I'm willing to bet almost anything on that. Whose house? The house of a girl I might marry? A girl you think is unsuitable, but if you think so, there's a very good chance I don't agree with you?”

“Unsuitable for what reason?” I said.

“Unsuitable for no reason at all, as far as I'm concerned, Mama. Unsuitable if the only person who thinks so is yourself.”

I looked at the way his cheeks were flushing up. That pinkness told me everything. What was it going to look like to other people, a son of a singer with a deaf wife?

Assunta and Cenzo Ballardini, I reminded myself, had normal ears. It didn't seem to be an inherited condition.

“This girl you're being so forthcoming about,” I said, “would she happen to have someone in her immediate family who's a waiter?”

“Maybe.”

“Would he know about you and this girl?”

“No. I mean, the waiters haven't been home in a long while, Mama. They're all too busy being partisans.”

Well, I couldn't be mad at Cenzo Ballardini. I felt bad that I'd thought of him as a son of a bitch. I said, “This girl, do I know her mother?”

“Maybe.”

“They took care of you?”

“You can tell that with your own eyes.”

“Are you going to go back there soon?”

“I don't know. I'm back in the war now. Pia feels that—”

He'd blurted out the name without wanting to, as though it wouldn't behave itself, wouldn't stay tucked away. It seemed to have come out of him like a bubble, iridescent and sparkly and lovely: Pia!

How did they communicate with each other anyway?

Beppi recomposed himself. Now a new topic. “Germans were at our house, Mama. They may be there still. First the restaurant, then the house. We're exiles.”

“We're alive.”

“The American girl, is she going to die?”

“Ugo says no.”

“She doesn't look good.”

“No one looks good. Only you do. Are you in love, Beppi? Are you
engaged
?”

“Do I have to tell you everything? I can't tell you everything! Not now! I'll tell you everything when I'm ready and I'm not ready! You've got to leave! I can't believe you'd leave when I just arrived! They're waiting for you! You've got to get into the ambulance!”

Then I was kissing him, his cheeks, his forehead as he bowed his head to me, blessing-like.

And I was caught in a rush of last-minute instructions, like bubbles of my own, but not about love, not about deafness, not about anything there was to wait for, to postpone, to talk about later. It was all about the present, practicalities, listen to me, Beppi, go and have a good talk with Marcellina. Try to get along with Cherubino. Try
hard.
Welcome Etto Renzetti to the squad. You know he always liked you. Remember he once called you Jesus? Make sure you keep the squad together in one place, because everyone goes crazy when they don't know where everyone is. Go out of your way to pay a visit to Carmella and the children. Be careful with guns. Don't go off on your own to blow up things. Once was enough! Don't let Nizarro get up until he's fully recovered. If he tells you his injuries are minor, don't believe him.

He trotted after the ambulance for a while, waving. But he quickly ran out of breath. He hadn't yet discovered that everyone was talking about him, that a
tarantella
-like song was being made for him, that he had entered the realm of a legend—good Christ, I thought, I'll never hear the end of it, not for all the rest of my life: Mama, Mama, I'm a hero, I'm a legend, I'm a hero, I'm a legend, and I'm in love with a girl with a chicken house and there's a
song
about me, and I don't give a damn that she'll never be able to hear it, and neither should you, so
there.

And here I was. Soft inside, hard outside.

Was staying still and holding on a very different thing from marching all those miles, with my feet in such bad condition?

It was a very different thing indeed. It was harder.

Ugo. “Don't become hard inside. I will come to you. Don't let this war inside you, now that you've excised it from me. The moment I held out my hands to you, before Beppi interrupted us, you excised it. It was that simple. And now you're leaving so quickly. Goodbye, but only for now. She's still my patient. I have an interest, professionally. I'm wanted there by those Americans. You know they're short on help. I can help. After Forli, after finishing here in the tents, after a very short trip to Eliana's mountain. My list of things to do, in that order. I was never in a hotel converted to a hospital before. I'm interested in how they've managed it. Of course, I'm not sure I can trust anyone else to do, you know, the procedure.”

“Procedure,” I'd repeated, like a stupid echo.

“Yes. If there needs to be one, I'd prefer to take care of it myself. She deserves that. You look surprised. Lucia, I'm a doctor. Did you forget that? Do you think there haven't been women in need of procedures? I will come, no matter what. Eliana will be staying where she is. Until the war ends. I'm certain of that. I don't think she's lost her faith, and it's not because a priest is with her, to keep it shored up. She's more religious than Enzo anyway. Her family took a terrible beating, but I don't think she's ready to give up on God. Not like us.”