The Italian Romance (33 page)

I don't know what is happening. Someone has the hiccups. No. No, he's lost it, has Gianni. He's sobbing big, wracking sobs.

The phone shuffles once again. A woman's voice. ‘Hello, Mrs da Lucca? This is Loretta da Lucca. Please, are you sure about this?'

‘Loretta, every single thing tallies. I loved my husband. I would never say I was sure if I weren't.' I sigh. ‘He searched for Gianni for years. Two decades. Displaced persons camps. He went to Israel twice. He wrote to everyone. God knows how Gianni slipped through the net.'

She says, ‘I think they put the wrong name down when they shipped him over. He was only a kid. They gave him a French name, de Lucey, I think it was. So if his father tried the records for the States...'

‘Oh, my God,' I say.

I think I hear a kiss. She's kissed him, his head, his cheek.

He's taken the phone. ‘Ma'am, Loretta and I, we're planning to go to Italy. Maybe we could meet up.'

I say, ‘Your father and I bought a farmhouse in Tuscany. What you should do is come over and stay there.'

He's put the phone against his shirt. I can hear the beat of his heart. He's telling her. ‘We'd love to, ma'am,' he says. ‘Thank you. That's very generous.'

‘Gianni,' I say. ‘It's not generous. It's your father's house. Do you understand?'

He does not speak.

I continue, ‘When you come, we'll go through his things. I'll show you the files he kept about his search for you. He was a methodical man.'

‘I'm the same, ma'am. Have to have all my records straight.'

‘Yes. He was like that. Your house was ransacked. But he went through it and found a few things. Books, things like that, not much. You might like those. And, there's so much of his. We'll go through everything when you get here. There's a couple of old, antique tablecloths. Your wife will love them.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘Gianni, will you call me Lilian? Or Lil?'

‘Yes, ma'am ... Lil. There's so much I want to ask you.'

‘I'll give you my address, too.'

‘Oh, I have that. Jane sent me the address. Trastevere, is that right?'

‘Then give me yours, and the phone number. I don't want to lose you again.'

He laughs. ‘No, ma'am. Lil. Have you got a pen?'

‘Just a minute,' I say, and I run into the study. There are half a dozen pens in a honey jar. I scrawl with one on the back of a notebook. It works. I lean against the desk and hold my hand over my mouth.

Lilian waited for him on the main deck. She stood under the iron stairway, in the dark. The sky was torn with stars, the spinning of their lighted planets; and over her right shoulder, a rock of fire had that moment scattered bright remnants of itself into the universal blaze, tailed away in a tearing rush to some other space. She had missed it. She watched the steps a few inches from her nose. She waited for his shoe to lower itself, for his bare ankle, the ridge of bone behind it which she already ridiculously loved, to reveal itself in the reflected moon-path. She would put out her hand and touch the bony ridge as he climbed down, feel the truth of his sinews, the warm olive skin that made her own lips tingle; although he'd warned her last night, ‘Don't do that. Do you want me to fall?' Even so, he'd stayed for a longer moment as her thumb and finger moved down his calf under his trouser leg, narrowed slowly to the ankle. She would have bitten it if she could have squeezed her head between the two cold rungs.

Her arms were sunburned. The salty breeze, blowing in sideways at the ship, stung at her skin. And in spite of the heat of the day just died, she shivered. She pulled her cardigan across to cover her breast. She folded her arms, lowered her chin. She breathed
into the wool on her shoulder, rocked herself back and forwards, closed her eyes. She wanted him to come. She waited all day for this dark, private hour. Only this hour calmed her. She stroked her arm, slowly.

The ship was changing its course. It had hugged the southern landmass, the huge, heavy weight of the continent. Lilian saw them in her mind's eye – the ship, the passengers – as the tip of a finger trailing along the bottom of her school atlas, turning at the corner, heading north, and west, to the heady countries of Asia, towards the invitation of spice smells that might make one dizzy, to the infatuation of silk colours that only wild birds wore in her own known place, the sudden rising of stone statues, the gods, and strange wails and callings, dark, moist eyes. She clung on to all that, welling and heaving within her. She clung to the touch of Antonio's thumb on her jaw. She lifted her arm and smelled the wool smell. She rubbed her nose into it.

He was late. Or she thought he must be late. She no longer knew the time. The sun and the moon were all she had now. No earth at all.

Last night they had leaned on the wooden rail, looked out over the brilliant white roadway that perhaps led all the way to India. She had said so. The moon is leading us to India. She'd said it shyly, using movements of the mouth more naturally his than hers, the play that could be also in the fingers and the lips and slide of hips. She'd been shy to say it, but brave, and she felt her nerve ends open like sea-fronds to face him. Nothing would be hidden in the end. She already knew that.

But after she'd said it, feeling the slide on her tongue, he hadn't looked at her. He held his hands tight in front of him, over the edge of the rail, as if he prayed. He looked down. The water licked at the hull, and the ship bounced gently against it. In the darkness they floated on the surface of the sea, held up from the depths by a slight curve, a momentary understanding reached between men who built ships and their terrible love.

She, though, had turned her head to stare at him. He was aware of her gaze, sensed it, and she suddenly feared his irritation. His elbow edged away along the oiled rail, away from her, only a few inches, imperceptible almost.

She didn't know him. They were, truly, two strangers, washed up together on a strong, irredeemable tide. And here they were. In the silence between them, she could hear her own breath. She tried to quieten it so that her sudden, gut-deep fear would not rise off her like the smell of a panicked animal. She forced her gaze to the deck, to the slimed glimmer on the wooden planks. Spray had frothed up and drenched it, perhaps, or a seaman had mopped it down as the healthy passengers had gathered, bored, glad to be released from their tiny, sick-stenched cabins to eat their tea together in the dining room.

And then Antonio had said, unexpectedly, ‘She was only sixteen when I met her.'

Lilian jumped at his voice. Her mouth had shaped, ‘Who?', but before she said it, she knew.

She felt as if he had punched her in the stomach. She wanted to go somewhere where she could lie down, under the stairs perhaps, hidden, or if she couldn't make it that far, she might simply curl to the dampness of the deck. But she couldn't bear to leave his unbending body.

He lapsed into silence again, heavy, angry. She didn't dare speak. They stayed there a long time, each leaning on the rail that glimmered in the unlikely light of the night, till her neck stiffened. He'd come out of it in the end, and finally he turned to her, pulled her into him, too tight really, rib against rib, so she could not catch her breath. She didn't care.

Tonight, his footsteps hadn't rung on the stairway. She waited there till the calves of her legs began to ache. Blood gathered in her ankles and her feet. She walked away to a wooden bench and sat down, rested her head back against the damp wall. She closed her eyes again. The air was cool, almost cold. She couldn't bear to
think he wouldn't come. If he did not come, she was without anything in the world. In an hour or two she'd have to force herself to stand, go below to the stinking cabin she shared with five women, lie on her bunk, try not to make noise. She would gasp for air. Where would she go? How could she live without his lifeblood?

He came up to her silently. She opened her eyes.

‘I thought you weren't coming,' she said.

He sat down beside her, bumped her up the bench with his hip. He lifted his arm, draped it around her shoulders. She turned her face into his neck. She felt him kissing her hair.

‘Sorry,' he said. His jaw, unshaven, rubbed against her forehead. How she loved that.

‘I met a man this evening,' he was saying to her, ‘who's sailing to Europe to work with the displaced people. He gave me an address for his headquarters.' Antonio's hand gripped the bone of her shoulder. He hugged her more tightly to him. Her ear was squashed against him, hot, reddened. She didn't mind. He whispered into her hair, ‘Thank God.' She felt his intensity rising up through his chest, his excitement. ‘Everything will be all right now. I know it. I am absolutely certain I will see my son alive. You and I will find him.'

His hand razed against her skin as it slid up to hold her neck. She felt his fingers at the back of her head as he lifted her face to him. She looked into his eyes. She felt the clear sensation, for the first time in her life, of her own dark pupils opening, growing wide. He smiled slowly, watching her and she, watching him, also smiled. His breath warmed her brow. She loved the hot, sweet smell of his breath, more real even than her own. Her body slumped, subtly, held up by him without any effort on his part. She floated now, arms outstretched, head back, hair wet and waving, floated in the light of the sea, so alive with the light and the sea that she almost ceased to exist.

I ring Johnny, the other one, to tell him I'll be late for his party. He says he's noticed. I stuff Jane's letter in my brocaded purse as I tear out of the apartment. Guido seems to sense my urgency. He walks from his cubbyhole towards me as I approach the doors. He picks up the red shawl, one end of which is trailing behind me along the tiled floor. He settles it across my shoulders as I try to get outside. For some reason, he insists on coming down the steps with me, out past the stinking, overfilled garbage container. I'd phoned for a taxi, and here it is, parked by the footpath. Guido opens the back door officiously. Of course, he doesn't know where I'm going so he can't issue instructions, which spoils it for him. He holds a hand up as we pull out into the traffic. I wave.

My heart is beating so hard it frightens me. It takes me a minute to quieten myself before I snap open the catch on my bag. Her letter is long, I suppose, by space-age standards. Two and a half pages. I scroll down. Now, you see, I'm doing it.

Have you got any interesting e-mails lately? I thought that meant she was going to send me one. I'll send one to her. She'll be pleased, and proud of herself. And so she should be.

Not one word of Roberto, who saves the world. It's now someone called Thomas Lee. Chinese extraction, I gather. She tells me that Chinese civilisation is about a million years older than I
think it is. He's in her year at school. She's decided to do the Higher School Certificate after all, which I gather is why she was fighting with her mother a couple of months ago. Now there's an unexpected turn of events.

She's sorry about getting that guy who used to live in my cupboard's name wrong. She didn't know Benito Mussolini was the name of a famous guy. That's what he told the boss of the homeless crowd his name really was. Maybe it truly was the right name. Sometimes people have the same names, like these two girls at her school. I can laugh. The child's an angel.

And on the bottom of page two. My dad says to tell you he's taking your advice about Francesca. She's back in Australia, did you know that? Is she talking to you yet? She's got to do some work at the university, so Dad and her are seeing a lot of each other. I hope they do it right this time. People have to learn to be nice to one another. Dad sort of told me about what happened in Dublin and I really let him have it. He won't do that again. Men! They just can't be faithful for one minute. Except Thomas. Please, please write, your loving friend, Jane.

I read it over once more. Then I fold it up, slip it back inside my purse.

‘I apologise for my rudeness earlier, Lilian. You can be as late as you like.' Johnny kisses my cheeks, once, twice, three times. ‘You look beautiful, cara.'

‘Of course I do. I get better every day. Just as you do, Johnny.'

He laughs and puts his arm around my waist, and we walk together down his long hallway. The sitting room is the beautiful thing around here. He's scattered candles around, which chatter with the huge gilt mirror over the marble mantelpiece, and talk amongst themselves in quiet corners. They please the senses, and they also have the strangest effect on me this evening, as if their various and particular cones of light are more than themselves, whispers of lives lived, gone and not gone. The room feels very crowded.

‘And look,' Johnny says, ‘especially for you, Lil.' He gestures his hand towards one of the huge windows. The sun is enormous, shockingly close on the horizon. Rising through it, the perfect dome of St Peter's.

‘A splendid choreograph,' Johnny says.

‘How long did it take you to do?' I ask.

‘All day,' he says. ‘I've been up since dawn.' He is at his most charming. No, that's not the truth. He's more than that, Johnny. He wishes to be loved, and it's hard not to give in. Probably everyone gathered together in this room has succumbed to that plea.

‘I'd better go and say hello to Dora and Vince,' I say.

‘Certo.' He guides me, his most tender flower, down the length of the room. There must be eighty people here.

‘Oh, there she is,' Dora says. ‘Are you letting yourself out for drinks again, Lil?'

‘Finished the damn thing, at last,' I say. ‘Posted it off a few days ago.'

‘Lilian, no,' Vincenzo says. His hair is oiled and brushed neatly back from his forehead. It's a most beguiling colour, true black, grey in wings from the temples and nowhere else. ‘You must learn the e-mail. You can send your manuscript as an attachment. Zip, like that, it's gone.'

‘That's what I'm afraid of,' I say. ‘Who knows where it will end up? Zip, down the time tunnel. Imagine who might pick it up and read it.'

‘Time tunnel?' he says. He looks at his wife.

‘Like a machine,' she says. ‘H. G. Wells, you know.'

‘Ah, yes. But my dear, you are in a tunnel at the post office. By the time you escape from there, it is a new era. That is Rip Van Winkle. You will need a road map to find your way home.'

Dora smiles up at him. She really does adore him.

Johnny says into my ear, ‘I will bring you some rather wonderful wine,' and he is gone, as is his musky after-shave.

‘I haven't seen that dress for a while,' Dora says.

‘Is it awful?' I say. ‘I know it's a bit old-fashioned.'

Vince is about to do his party piece. I set him up for it, really. He takes my veined, knobbled hand and kisses it. ‘Lilian, you are the belle of the ball. Women don't know how to be women these days.' I look behind him at Dora who's raising her brows to me. ‘When they wore cocktail dresses such as this, so alluring. Is that the word?' He glances at Dora for affirmation, which of course she's been giving him for fifty years. She composes her face and nods. She looks at the floor, polished mellow wood under our feet where the Persian rug does not reach. ‘Yes, alluring,' he continues. ‘The full skirt, the hint of petticoat, the waist, the sensuous cut of the bodice...'

‘Yes, all right, Vince,' Dora says. ‘We get the picture, darling.'

‘I'm flattered, Vincenzo,' I say, and he smiles, justified. I can't help it, either.

‘Vince,' Dora says. ‘Claudia is on her own over there.'

He raises his eyes from me. ‘Oh,' he sighs. A deep line sinks into the skin between his eyebrows. He's like a child. He finds it difficult to even glance at me, now, but he does his best. He bows and says, ‘Please excuse me, Lilian.' I gaze over my shoulder as he wanders, back straight as a man twenty years younger, towards the open hearth. Claudia is standing in front of the mirror, her chignon reflected in the glass. She wears a jade green pyjama outfit. She is trying. How well I remember. Franz died only, what was it, five months ago?

‘Well, I haven't seen you for ages,' Dora says.

I turn back. ‘Up to my neck,' I say. ‘Don't suppose you're around tomorrow?'

‘Sure,' she says. She checks her bra strap with her fingers. It's peeping out beneath her leotard top and she eases it under. ‘What do you want to do? Coffee? Or lunch?'

‘Why don't we meet for coffee at eleven, and see what happens,' I say.

‘That sounds great. We haven't done that in a long time. Years.'

‘I got some good news today,' I say.

And a glass of white wine appears between the two of us. Johnny says, ‘Try this. I must go.' And he slides the glass into my hand. It's wet, slippery. The wine is finely chilled. As he disappears from beside my shoulder, I hold the glass up to my nose. It's a field of lavender, tumbling down a hill, honeysuckle forcing itself on the border of a hedge. I sip. ‘Mmm. Wow,' I say. ‘That's nice.'

‘Yes, he's just bought a few boxes. It's his latest.'

I nod. Johnny keeps himself busy in this frenetic world. It's just that he moves at a pace more likely two centuries ago, or two millennia. I've walked the grassy pathways of the Forum with Johnny, across the neat intersections of ancient streets, past the Senate, the stone memories of a temple, under the high, burning sun, the dangling hot leaves which nevertheless offered their shade. No one better. He strolls as if he's so familiar with it all, the almighty archway where legions marched, the quiet corners where lovers, perhaps, once met – ‘Sit over here, Lil, out of the sun' – that one could grow a little scared of Johnny.

I sip again at the cold tingle of the wine. ‘I was saying that I got good news.'

‘Francesca?' she says.

I look down at the wine. It reflects nothing but the sun dropping on our heads. ‘No, though I did hear from young Jane, Jim's daughter, you remember, and she says Francesca's back home.'

‘They're in touch?'

‘Jim, yes.'

‘Well, that's something, Lil.'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘It is. Look on the bright side.'

‘Oh, I am, really. And I might hear from my granddaughter, Sam, who knows?' I say, to please her more than myself.

‘Exactly.' She is standing in a stream of evening light, almost in shadow though the fine, flyaway curls are on fire. A shaft of it hits my eye. And I see her gone. Just gone, zip, like that.

My eyes must have filled with tears. She says, ‘What's wrong, Lil?'

‘The sun, that's all. Shining right in my eyes. Anyway, the good news is something else.'

‘Sorry, go on. About your work, is it?'

I have to restrain a laugh. Dora tries so hard. ‘Nothing like that,' I say. ‘Much, much more wonderful. Guess who I was talking to on the telephone this afternoon.'

‘Gosh!' She looks around as if someone in the crowded room will signal a hint. ‘I don't know.'

I bite my lips. I say, ‘Nio's son.'

She steps back. She is up against the window frame. ‘Nio's son? Gianni?'

I nod.

‘Gianni?' she says again.

‘It's a long story,' I say.

‘But my God, Lilian, how on earth?'

‘Little Jane did it on the Internet.'

‘Oh, my God.' She looks across at Vincenzo, willing him to turn to her.

‘I'll tell you all about it tomorrow.'

She holds her hand against her breast. ‘I can't believe it. All these years. He survived.'

‘He's in the States. He's married. He has five kids. Nio has five grandchildren.'

‘Oh, Lil.' Dora raises her wineglass up in front of her nose. It's not a very good shield. Tears pop out of her eyes too. ‘If only he'd known. But, how wonderful.'

‘Yes,' I say.

She feels in her silk trouser pocket for her handkerchief, and she dabs at her mascara'd eyes. She suddenly looks beyond me, over my shoulder. ‘Margaret and Frank,' she says quietly. ‘Just come in.'

‘Are they heading this way?' I do not turn.

She dabs again as she casts a surreptitious glance. ‘Yes,' she says.

‘I can't,' I say.

She casually stuffs the handkerchief back into her pocket. I feel the lightest touch of her hand on my arm as she glides neatly around me and I see a surprisingly genuine smile break open on her face. Bless her.

I head for the glass doorway. Someone looks up as I pass but I don't stop. I push down on the brass handle and step outside, into the warm, quiet air. I close the door behind me.

Out here on Johnny's terrace is one of my favourite places in all the world. He has six topiary laurel trees, one each side of three large, light-smeared windows. They grow in pots that may have cost as much as my pearl earrings. Below, a cedar tree reaches out its branches across the silent, green lawn. Outside his garden, into the city, buildings are solid, squat, shades of ochre and stone among pines and laurels, the old city walls climbing and enclosing Vatican Hill. And that setting sun.

I remember the time we had Sunday lunch with Paolo, do you remember, and Brigitte and his crazy sister, what was her name? Lucy, or something? He was working at the university again, but they had as little money as we did. He'd managed to find two bottles of wine, and invited us around to share it. Brigitte had bought bread from around the corner, and she'd spied some big red tomatoes in the market. We'd been out in the country the day before and bought a round of creamy, fat cheese. And there we were, the five of us in their one-room, stifling hot apartment, the window wide open. It was magnificent. We dined liked kings.

And the thing is, I can't really recall what the argument was about. Was it over Lucy, poor befuddled Lucy? She'd had too much wine, too much heat, too little food. She wanted to tell us about Naples, when she was stuck down there during the war. She said there was a tank that had been blown up. Was it German, or American? She said it was too hot to touch for days. No one could open the hatch to look in. Fat dripped itself into a puddle underneath it. She had terrible eyes, Lucy. I remember now that she looked at me and said, ‘The soldiers. That was the
soldiers. Cooked.' I put my bread and cheese down on the wooden table.

I don't know why it upset me so much. You said I spoiled the day for everyone. We fought all the way through the park till we came out beside the Spanish Steps.

There, at the end of an avenue which ran the length of Rome, was that same sun, fat, bloated, hanging over the dome of St Peter's; and it had all been laid out precisely for that sun, that evening moment, so they say. We stood, you crushing me against the stone balustrade. You said, ‘We are standing in front of eternity and all we do is fight.'

‘You don't care, Nio, about what I'm going through. I lost my little girl, don't you understand?'

‘And I? I lost my son. Don't you care about that?'

And like the fool that I am, I could think of nothing else to do but cry. You couldn't stand that. You patted my back, said, ‘Lily, cara. Ssh. Sorry, sorry. Stop now.'

I wiped my nose with my hand. You said to me, ‘Why do you love me, darling? I am such a selfish oaf. One day you will not care anymore. You'll see me as I am, and you won't love me then.'