The Ice-Cream Makers (33 page)

Around midnight, the group moved on to a nearby cocktail bar. There were two tall tables on the footpath outside, no bar stools. Others joined us — friends, nighthawks. There were lodgings above the bar, but the lights were on and the windows were open. The entire city appeared to be awake.

Opposite me, with one arm on the standing table, a young woman was smoking a cigarette. She was willowy like a model and started telling me about a party she'd been to as if we were old friends. But it took a while before she gave me her name. Elvira. She was a photographer with Italian ancestors.

‘Whereabouts in Italy?'

‘The North,' she said. ‘Not far from Venice.'

That's all she knew; she had never been to Italy, never been to Europe.

I told her I was from the Province of Belluno, north of Venice, and that the first wave of Italian immigrants had hailed from this region. ‘They went to North and South America in the hope of a better future,' I said. ‘But some were plain old adventurers who left everything behind, including their wife and children in some cases.'

Elvira was sure her forefather had been an adventurer. ‘Perhaps we're related,' she said with a smile.

‘My great-grandfather went to America, but he didn't stick around.'

‘A half-baked adventurer.'

‘That's one way of putting it. He came back with a Native American headdress.'

‘With what?'

‘A feather headdress. He wore it on his head, pretending to be a Native American.'

No reaction from Elvira. She must have thought I was pulling her leg.

‘Nobody believes the story,' I elaborated, ‘but he is thought to have lived with the Blackfoot Indians and to have adopted their customs. Back home, we still have the white feather headdress.'

‘It sounds like a myth.'

‘I know.'

‘What more do you know about him?'

‘Not much. He never really settled.'

She lit another cigarette and offered me one too. I shook my head.

‘Do you know the poets here?' I asked.

‘Practically all of them. I've even photographed a few.'

‘Have you read them, too?'

She laughed. ‘They read to me.'

There was a small dent in her forehead, just below the hairline. Other than that, her face was flawless. She had lovely eyebrows, delicate, the hairs like little stalks.

‘He wrote a poem for me.' She pointed to one of the poets I had spoken to after dinner. ‘And so did he. Several, in fact.'

‘Are you a muse?'

She blew out her cigarette smoke, close to my face. I needed no intoxicants; it was already happening without their influence.

I thought of Apollonie Sabatier, muse to Charles Baudelaire, but also to Théophile Gautier and Gustave Flaubert. All three had sent her erotic letters, but only Baudelaire's were intense and tortured, romanticism of the highest order. He dedicated a total of seven poems to her, Gautier four, while Flaubert based a character in a novel on her. Baudelaire was the only one who spent the night with her, a single night. Afterwards he wrote to her, ‘You have a fine soul, but ultimately it's the soul of a woman.'

Elvira laughed. ‘I'd hate to be a muse,' she said.

Her father was a painter. His work could be found in galleries around town, as well as in the grand buildings in Recoleta. But at home the taps were leaky and the floor was always dirty — from footprints, daubs of paint, hardened brushes. Her mother was a simple woman who did everything for her husband and even posed nude for him on the cold tiled floor. She had no ambitions for herself. He had been her first love. She was sixteen when she met him in a café; he wore a grimy shirt and was twenty years her senior. He had cheated on her countless times and yet she couldn't leave him. It would be akin to treason. Elvira wanted to live her own life, independent, autonomous. And that's how she weaved her way through the lives of the young men who worshipped her, not just the poets. She was no muse; she was hard to forget, though.

‘How old are you?'

She was twenty-two, her body like nectar.

She didn't ask me about my age, just as she hadn't asked me about my job. Perhaps she had no need to, as some women know everything just by looking at you.

In the bar across the street, someone turned up the music. A dark-skinned woman started dancing in the road, swaying her hips seductively. We both watched her. It seemed we had nothing left to talk about until Elvira suddenly said, ‘You've got a wife.'

‘What makes you think so?'

‘Well, do you?'

‘No, I don't.'

‘I don't believe you. Your wedding ring is in the hotel, on the bedside cabinet.'

‘I'm unmarried and unattached.'

She kept her eyes on me as she inhaled, and blew out the smoke seconds later.

‘I have a son,' I said. ‘He's two months old.'

It was the first time I had told anyone. It felt like a confession. It felt good.

At first Elvira said nothing. Perhaps she was waiting for me to elaborate.

‘What's his name?' she finally asked.

‘Giuseppe.'

‘Do you miss him?'

‘Yes.' I could say it, I could admit it, in the dark, in Buenos Aires, to a young woman I'd never see again, someone I'd know for one night only.

By now more women had started dancing, including some who had been in the cocktail bar. They had crossed the street with their glasses in hand and were now moving their bodies to the energetic music. Bar Miami, the joint was called. It sounded better than Ice-Cream Parlour Venezia. If my great-grandfather had gone to Argentina we might have owned a bar where people danced outside. But he had gone to North America and had returned home after a few years.

I was a half-baked adventurer, too.

Back in Rotterdam, I gave Giuseppe a stuffed toy I had bought at Buenos Aires airport. It was a grey dolphin, as soft as a peach. He clutched it gleefully, squeezing it in his little hands. The dolphin became his constant companion. He took it everywhere, sucked its beak, and often fell asleep snuggled up against it.

I would bring Giuseppe something from every country I visited. A marble elephant from India, a matryoshka doll from Russia, a tin car from Senegal. Luca said I was spoiling him, that I didn't have to give him a present after every trip. Later, when Giuseppe was a bit older, I started bringing back books of poetry from all corners of the world. Luca didn't like it one bit, and likewise my father always grumbled when I entered the ice-cream parlour with a slim, rectangular package. ‘That's no present for a boy his age,' he would exclaim. ‘He's going to be an ice-cream maker, not a poet!' But Giuseppe was curious and began to read them.

He had grown. I saw it the instant I stood before him with the dolphin in my hands. It was incredible, as if all the imperceptible little bits he had grown now added up to a tangible whole.

‘You've grown bigger,' I said to him. ‘You've gone and grown behind my back, but you can't hide it from me.'

He flailed his arms about and laughed.

‘He's happy to see you,' Sophia said.

‘I'm happy to see him, too.'

When he fell asleep shortly afterwards, I studied his face and ran my fingers over his skin. I discovered a scratch close to his knee. His very first scratch, little more than a dotted line. A few days later, it was gone.

His hair grew thicker and lighter in colour, the creases in the skin of his arms and legs deeper. He became more alert by the day, but he could also stare at an object for minutes at a time. The sleeves of his onesies didn't have to be rolled up anymore. And then the last day of the season arrived. Shortly after midnight, my mother stuck the note to the door. ‘Back in March!'

The following morning the ice-cream parlour would be dismantled. The freezers would be emptied, the refrigerators cleaned, the cupboards cleared out. The ice-cream machines would be taken apart and given the once-over by my father. The display would receive a good scrubbing. Everything had to be switched off: gas, water, and light. Then the awning would be folded up and the key stuck in the lock. And once it had been turned three times, they would drive to Italy, via Germany and Austria, across the Brenner Pass, via Dobbiaco and Cortina d'Ampezzo, to the Cadore Valley. Like the other ice-cream makers, my father would sound his horn on the main street, and people would stick their head out of the window and wave at the cars entering the village.

It would be Giuseppe's first winter, his first time in Venas di Cadore.

In Venezia's Kitchen

The things that glitter like gold on the filter of memory: his blond hair, his teeth, his first steps. I clearly remember coming back from the International Istanbul Poetry Festival and hearing Giuseppe say his first word: ‘Mamma.' Prior to that he had linked objects to certain sounds, but they weren't proper words yet. Sophia was incredibly proud and had Giuseppe repeat his first word over and over again.

I tried to teach him the Italian word for uncle.
Zio
. But he had trouble with the letter z, and kept saying ‘io', which means ‘I' in Italian. Whenever I entered the ice-cream parlour and Giuseppe saw me, he would exclaim in delight ‘Io!' It always made Sophia laugh. She would jab her index finger at her son's chest and say ‘Io', and then point to me: ‘Zio.' But it was too complicated.

Luca has no recollection of Giuseppe's first words. They came during the summer Giuseppe was one year old. He could walk, but not all that well yet. He would bump into chairs or fall over on the paving stones, having tripped over his own feet. We all trotted after him so we could pick him up. Customers, too, often rose to their feet to keep the waddling baby safe.

‘He's trying to escape,' said one of our regulars on the terrace. ‘Look, there he goes again.'

I laughed when I heard that and said, ‘He's already tired of the ice-cream parlour.'

‘No, no,' my father said. ‘He's practising waiting tables. Next year he'll be able to do it with a tray in his hands.'

Luca doesn't remember that, either. ‘I was in the kitchen, churning ice-cream,' he'll say when you ask him about it. In fact, that's his answer to most questions about Giuseppe. Only after several consecutive days of rain and declining ice-cream consumption did he have time for his son. But an ice-cream maker is never happy on rainy days.

‘Daddy' was Giuseppe's sixth or seventh word.

‘You do remember the first ice-cream he ate, don't you?'

‘I was the one who gave it to him,' my brother says to me. ‘He cried; he thought it was too cold.'

I hadn't been there, but had heard the story from my mother afterwards. Luca had emerged from the kitchen with a tub of freshly made vanilla ice-cream. Giuseppe was in the stroller and clamouring for attention, but Sophia was at work. He was ten months old and at times he got by on only an hour of sleep. My brother fetched a spoon and held it out to him. ‘This is the best vanilla ice-cream in the world, and it so happens that it was made by your father.'

Giuseppe opened his mouth, revealing two small teeth, both at the bottom. My brother inserted the spoon and his son's lips wrapped themselves around it. Cold numbs the tastebuds, it dampens everything. It takes a second, perhaps, and then you taste the sugar, a wave that builds and builds. But it took too long for Giuseppe. His eyes had closed, like those of all other family members about to get their first taste of ice-cream, but they simultaneously filled with tears. He squealed, as if someone had hurt him. His own father. The tongue-numbing vanilla came pouring out again.

‘I won't eat it, either,' said Beppi, who had walked in with a tray. ‘But the people are the worst. The people buying it. They're impatient, loud, and incredibly lazy. They sit down, scratch their fat bellies, fart, and expect ice-cream on the table within seconds.'

‘Beppi,' my mother yelled. ‘Don't force your poisonous ideas onto your grandchild.'

‘Anita, will you please leave your husband alone?' My father leaned over the stroller. ‘Your granny is an extremely difficult woman,' he said. ‘Do you remember her having a go when I bought you that small crosshead screwdriver?'

Giuseppe didn't hear his grandfather. He was still bawling. He wouldn't have a second bite until the following season, when it melted on his tongue and he relished the flavour on his tastebuds, the sweetness that washed over him. ‘Another bite,' he shouted. ‘More!' All words he had learned to say by then.

‘Such a beautiful tool,' Beppi muttered. ‘And what does your granny do? She takes it away.'

One quiet morning, he had gone for a walk with his grandson and had taken the stroller into Spijkermand, the ironmonger. Like his grandfather, Giuseppe had been all eyes. They had spent longest staring at a pneumatic drill.

‘That one,' little Giuseppe had said, ‘that, that.'

‘That one,' big Giuseppe had echoed, ‘that one's nice, isn't it?'