Sweet Life (15 page)

Herr Heinemann stared at his plate, murmured a thank you after being served.

When it was Mme Dupuis’ turn, she tried to catch Andrea’s
eye by dipping her finger into the sauce, and then licking it. “How delicious. Wouldn’t you agree, Frau Heinemann?”

Frau Heinemann waved her fork at Signor Corba. “This is not veal.”

M. Dupuis sat straighter. “What? Not veal?”

Signor Corba held the platter against his chest as though to forestall an attack. “Is veal.”

“
Nein.
Not veal.”

Herr Heinemann took a bite and looked at his wife. “It may not be veal, my dear, but it is tasty.”

Frau Heinemann tossed her fork across the table where it struck her husband’s chest before rattling to the floor. “It is the pretence I mind, Karl! The pretence.”

Just then, the Canadians burst into the dining room. Not in the least tired, but oh so hungry.

The
Marble Nymph

This time when Vittorio drove by the building
– 2234 Via Scorta – a middle-aged man in some type of hospital uniform stood outside the front door, smoking. But this wasn’t a hospital; it was a nursing home for the sick and elderly, and this was the third time in the past ten minutes Vittorio had driven past. Again, he circled the town square where the marble nymph, her wet body artistically draped to reveal one breast, gazed down at the pool into which she poured water from a pitcher she held on her bare shoulder.

Back on Via Scorta, he left his rented Mercedes in the visitor parking lot and entered through the nursing home’s front door. The large vestibule had windows on three sides, shelves of books, a sofa and chairs. A pleasant room to enter,
but no one could leave without punching the code on the se
curity keypad.

He knew where she would be this time of the morning, had called and spoken to someone earlier. And his grandmother, the
nonna
he’d never seen, had been told he was coming. At the first doorway on the left in the hallway, he stood and looked around the
salotto,
his feet planted squarely on a large, black tile. His gaze passed over the two men playing checkers, the several people watching television and the woman playing solitaire. And there was his
nonna
where he’d been told she’d be: sitting near a window that looked out to the garden. A square-looking woman with a flat bust, her curled grey hair framing a light complexion. Both her hands balanced on top of a cane.

Anna pretended not to see Vittorio cross the room, wasn’t ready to see him. She wanted her lunch. She was starving. Ravenous. She wanted hot soup, white rolls and soft cheese. Not this young man with thick, red-gold hair.

“
Buongiorno.
May I sit next to you?”

Anna stared at the top of her cane. “Free country.”

Vittorio moved a chair, sat, planted his feet and unzipped a leather bag.

“What are you doing?”

He removed a notebook and pen, smiled like a man ac
customed to charming recalcitrant women. But she still wouldn’t look at him, and he let the smile go. “You know who I am? The director told you I was coming?”

“That Roman. Can’t be trusted. All Romans are rats and if you give one a chance to run anything, he will drag it down the sewer.” Anna glared at the door as if daring the director to walk through it.

A woman with a walker stopped and caught her breath. “You can talk to me about anything you want, honey.”

Anna thumped her cane. “This is my visitor, Ina. Go.”

“If you get tired of the cranky princess, meet me by the television.” Ina lifted her walker into a halting turn.

The young man clicked the pen.

“What the devil are you doing?”

He closed the notebook. Perhaps the book was a bad idea. Perhaps the whole thing was stupid. Hadn’t his best friend warned him against coming? “I wanted to take notes.”

Again Anna thumped her cane. “Who sent you?”

While sitting, their blue eyes were level. “I came on my own. I would appreciate being able to ask questions. Personal questions.” He stopped himself from adding
please
.

“Personal. You show up out of nowhere and expect me to fill you in about my life?”

The young man turned his head toward the wide window framing the garden. He watched while an elderly man on a bench pulled a blue handkerchief from his shirt pocket and blew his nose. And it was like seeing a vision of himself in fifty years: a man resting, with nowhere in particular to go.

He hadn’t come all this way to fight. When he turned to her again, his tone was as flat as the notebook onto which he refastened the pen. “I apologize for bothering you.”

Her own voice rose like a startled bird. “Giving up already? You should have more backbone. All right. Ask me questions. But no writing.”

He slid the notebook into the satchel. “My mother –”

“Did you hear a bell? I could have sworn I heard the lunch bell and there is nothing wrong with my hearing. Have all my teeth, too, the ones in the front, which is all the chewing power a person needs around here. See the brown woman in the wheelchair? A big whiner like everyone coming from Calabria. Can’t speak
Friulano*
properly, accent thick as your arm. Fake hair, fake teeth. What is the point of vanity at her age?

“I have always been too sensible to put on airs. When my hair turned white, I let it. But when I was young...” Anna looked beyond the young man as though she had a clear view to the foothills of the Alps. “I was a real blonde. Blue eyes like
the sky cleaned by a hard rain. Or so the tailor said in the poetry
he wrote me, the silly ass. My friends and I laughed our heads off. I was fifteen, he was thirty, had a wife and six kids.”

“Do you have any photographs?”

“Ha. You young people can’t understand what it’s like to
have nothing but the clothes on your back, nothing to eat except
what grows. But you’re not the son of a farmer, not with those pretty hands. That’s a silk shirt, and you didn’t buy those fancy shoes from the Monday market in town.”

“How old were you during the war?”

“Too young and too old.” Now Anna looked at the young man, his translucent eyelashes, the faint shine of whiskers along his upper lip. “I suppose you want a better answer. When the war started, I was seventeen. Let me fill you in so you don’t waste my time. The eldest was my sister, Gina. Not half as pretty as me, but twice as wild. After me came Leonardo, Alessio and Franco.
Mamma
died when Franco was two. Mussolini paid a bonus for each child and trying for that money was the hardest work
Papà
ever did in his life.”

“So there were six of you when the war started?”

“Are you telling this story? Gina took the train to Rome and got work as a maid in some rich man’s house. Before the war, she became a Black Shirt. I suppose you know Black Shirt.”

“Fascist. Follower of Mussolini.”

“
Bravo
. Gina became a Fascist because she believed Mussolini cared about the poor. He handed out shoes; the first time in his life
Papà
wore anything but
zoccoli.
Now only farmers wear those wooden clogs into the fields. Not long after poor
Mamma
died,
Papà
dropped dead from a heart attack. Goodbye
Papà
, hello war.”

“Did you own a house in town?”

“
Papà
was hopeless. Drunk most of the time, and all he ever managed to hang onto were some tools. We stayed with relatives and slept in the attic.

“During the war, we moved in with a woman who needed help with her house and small children. In return, she let us share her children’s beds. The only men left in town by then were the grandfathers, the cripples and the crazies.”

Vittorio again looked toward the window. The elderly man’s head had dropped. He napped with his big-knuckled hands curled like cups on his narrow lap.

“Such an awful day when the Nazi troops marched into town. Those faces, hard as stone, their boots like shouts on the streets. The soldiers took over people’s houses but left us alone; we were already crammed one on top of the other. They did take my landlady’s chickens, but they paid, which was more than the Italian soldiers did.

“Eh, such a cruel time and me with three brothers to look out for. We were starving and we were cold. Why were we cold, why were we starving? Most blamed Mussolini, but some blamed the Jews. One priest said judgment had come for the Christ murderers.

“The priests could talk, but I was the one who had to hunt for sticks, anything that would burn. One day, I passed the shrine of the Madonna of the Roads. And there stood a soldier, his blue eyes piercing through me like I was a moth being pinned to a book. ‘
Signorina
,’ he said, ‘are you looking for firewood?’ My tongue turned to clay because I recognized him:
il Capitano.

“He waved for me to follow and I was afraid, I can tell you. We walked to the road, where a Volkswagen and driver waited. The captain spoke good Italian and he told me to get in. When he saw how terrified I was, he said, ‘Tell my driver where you live and I will have the coal delivered.’

“After I returned home, the driver pulled up and unloaded a bag of coal. The woman of the house could not believe her eyes. ‘Where did this come from?’ And the soldier said, ‘
Kapitän
Wolfmann.’

“A miracle, after all our suffering. We burned the coal in the stove, dried out our mattresses and slept warm at last. Next day. Meat and vegetables and bread. Unless you have been hungry, you cannot imagine. Everyone was happy but that ingrate, my brother Leonardo.

“‘What did you do for this captain?’ he said.

“‘Nothing, nothing.’ But he would not believe me. ‘Don’t eat,’ I said. ‘Take
your
money and buy us food.’

“Leonardo was the one with
Papà’
s bad temper. Stubborn, too. Worse than a mule being forced to plow. That stubbornness has ruined more than one person in my family. More than one. He wanted to hit me, but the woman we lived with stopped him. ‘Let me feed my babies.’

“Leonardo warned me not to speak to the captain again. What did it matter he was younger than me? He was the eldest male, so he was the boss. My job was to cook and clean for all of those boys and do what I was told, no please or thank you. Are you married?”

Vittorio hesitated before shaking his head no.

Anna poked the hem of his pants with her cane. “I suppose your girlfriend washes those pants. Cleans the piss from your toilet.”

“I live with my parents. What happened to the captain?”

The grey-haired woman playing solitaire lifted her voice in a trembling falsetto, sang about the friends she could no longer find. He watched his
nonna’
s face, watched for a hint of sadness or regret. But she continued in the same matter-of-fact tone.

“One day, when I walked home from visiting a friend in Castello Blanco – or was it Camerina? – the captain passed me in his car. He stopped, got out and took off his hat. His hair...a colour I’d never seen before. Not gold or red, but something of both. He asked my name.

“When I told him, he said, ‘Your name is not Anna; your name is
Ninfa
, because you remind me of the beautiful nymph at the
piazza
fountain.’ Yes. He called me his
Ninfa
.”

“What was he like?”

“You heard it this time. The bell.” Anna started to rise.

The young man looked about. “No one is leaving.” He waved to an attendant, a middle-aged woman pushing a man in a wheelchair. “Is it lunchtime?”

She set the chair’s brake and crossed the space between herself and Anna in three strides. “Well. Such a handsome visitor, Anna.” She beamed at the young man. “Are you a relation?”

Anna thumped her cane. “Lunch is late. Everything around here is late. The staff is incompetent.”

The attendant raised her brows at Vittorio, turned on her heel and marched back to the wheelchair.

Anna scowled. “Do you know why I have to live in this awful place? I am not sick or crazy or too old, like these others. I am here because of the generosity of the state.

“None of my family would take me in when I couldn’t keep myself. This is my reward after a lifetime of sacrifice.

“A bad lot, my brothers. After the war, Alessio went to America and got rich. Has he once thought of me? Would sending me a fur coat kill him? But I didn’t ask for charity from anyone, not even Gina, who should have understood how it was, how I had no one to depend on. No father or mother or husband. The priests were no help. But after I moved in with him, I had all I needed.”

“You moved in with the Nazi captain.”

“Helmer took care of me. He explained who really started the war, and for the first time I knew why we’d suffered, my brothers and I. But they were ashamed of me, although I looked after them. Leonardo threw that name at me. You know the one. I slapped his face. He hit back and dragged me to the floor. There I was, my mouth bleeding and my brothers gathered like I was a dog they would kick to death. Me! The one who kept them alive, protecting them while my sister marched with the Fascists and ate white bread.