The Italian Romance (8 page)

He had to know. He touched the bush again, pulled slightly at it so he could just see the house through the crisscross of branch and twig. She was still there. She hadn't gone to call for someone. She leant down and rubbed her leg, slowly. And when she straightened, pulled back the flyaway curtain and closed one of the French doors, he felt a loss, a rather strange one. She did not show herself again.

He heard the boy, the quick, light footsteps. He'd lost concentration. He should have been watching the back door. He was shocked out of the dream he had fallen into. He froze, his heart thumping. The youngster didn't see him. Jack waited. He strained to hear other steps.

It was quiet. The boy had done well. There was nobody coming after him. Jack moved carefully behind the shield of the green hedge.

Later, Gianni let himself back into the kitchen. Alphonso was sitting at the table, his braces down, his bad leg resting on another chair. He licked his thumb and turned a page of the newspaper, glaring at the boy over the top of his glasses. ‘What mischief have you been into?' he said.

‘Nothing,' Gianni answered, and shrugged his bony shoulders. They were beginning to broaden out, though Gianni didn't really know it. He walked quickly by the older man, who made to whack at his legs with the newspaper. The paper disturbed the air and the quiet of the kitchen. Gianni jumped, as Alphonso wanted him to do, and laughed. He ran up the stairs to his bedroom.

He wondered if anyone would notice that a round of cheese had disappeared from the pantry, and a whole loaf of bread, four big, juicy red tomatoes and a bottle of red wine. He'd even delayed to fill up an empty bottle with water. And before he'd left with his booty in the cloth bag where Berta kept her rags, he went back to the pantry and lifted down a can of anchovies. He hadn't thought about how the Americans would open it. It was the anchovies that worried him. Grandfather had sent them in a box with a few other things to his mother a few weeks ago. Something in him thought it right to give them to the Americans. It was Gianni's gesture, his attempt to tip the balance into rightness.

The dark man had said the name of a town. Gianni stood in the middle of the road and pointed south. He had watched the two Americans, the one he knew to be Capitano and the smaller, fair one, disappear into the trees. He felt proud.

I lived with him for four decades. Why didn't he tell me?

Shame? My poor love. How it must have scalded you, hounded you, if you felt you had to keep it from even me. Unless it was particularly from me. That's a possibility. Did you think it would hurt me? Disillusion me? Or did you think it was none of my business? I could wring your neck. Why the hell did you leave me out of this?

When was the last time you read these letters? Did you read them over and over? Or couldn't you stomach it? Yet you kept them. Did you suddenly remember you loved her? Oh, yes, I knew there was something I'd forgotten. I
did
love my wife, that was it.

And I want to ask you the question she asked. Why didn't you write back? I want to ask you in all seriousness. Why didn't you help them? Or try? At least try. My God, Nio, why didn't you write?

Was that your life for forty years: How could I have done that? How could I have done it?

Nio. Nio. You made yourself a stranger. I didn't know you. If I didn't know the hell at your heart's core, who did I know? Don't you see, you bloody fool, you did it to me, too?

She writes like a child. Neat, carefully blotted, the first one
anyway. And the second almost as controlled. Not the third. The ink is smudged here and there. And she's written quickly. Didn't that wrench your heart?

It does mine. It does mine. Beloved husband, she says. Yes. I am touching her for the first time, as I touch her notepaper.

The file is labelled ... what is it? Doesn't he know pencil fades? Restaurazione? Restituzione? Something in here about art collections. Another an interview with a Yugoslav journalist, war crime claim. I suppose it's as good a place as any to hide them away.

I wanted to read interviews with people who'd helped Allied prisoners on the run. Thought he might have done some of those. In fact, I was sure I heard him talk about it. Maybe I made that up. It was a long time ago.

Well, Leah, I'll keep your letters now. I'll put them at the back of my diary. I might as well let it all burn into me, too. Seems to be the season for it.

Ah, well, enough of this. Back to work.

And right on the button, there's the bloody doorbell. I struggle to my feet. ‘Pronto,' I say into the intercom.

‘It's Dora.'

‘Oh. Hello.'

‘Are you at work? I'll go away if you are,' she says. Her voice sounds as if we're talking to each other through a couple of tin cans and a long piece of string. I suppose I sound like that, too.

You can't send someone away who volunteers to send themselves away. I say, ‘Just having a break. Come up for coffee,' and press the door release.

I hope I've hung the mouthpiece up when I say, ‘Damn.'

The elevator is like an old lady. Slow, deliberate, yet a trifle on the absent side. I listen to her clanking up the lift shaft. It seems to take too long for the distance actually travelled. I presume she'll erupt from her reverie and direct herself to arriving on Floor
Seven. And since I am clearly attempting to insult only myself in this uncalled for metaphor, I question the ‘reverie' referred to. It is rather a concentration. Whatever this concentration is addressed to, the boy jumping from the moving tram, the plastic bag on the very edge of a tumble from the stuffed garbage container, the brutal truth about how we feed off each other, the freckled skin of one's abandoned daughter, it is focused on with an immovable, full frontal and blessedly self-forgetful eye.

I hear Dora say, ‘Oh, shoosh,' crossly to herself as the elevator doors clash closed. She huffs up the steps. She's in her seventies now, too. I always think of her as a youngster. She doesn't look up when she rounds the return, so she's unaware I am watching her performance. She pulls at the stair rail, hauling herself up step by step. ‘Whoo,' she expirates. As a younger person, I'd have returned quietly inside and closed over the door, rather than embarrass her. I couldn't care less any more. I doubt she could, either.

‘Ohh,' she says as she catches sight of me. ‘Bloody hot.'

‘Mmm,' I say.

I put out my arm to give her a quick hug. She reaches out her hand responsively and takes hold of the sheets of paper I seem to have clutched in my fist. I snatch them back. ‘Are those for me?' she says, as bewildered as I am.

‘No,' I say. What on earth am I doing with Leah's letters in my hand? ‘Come on in.'

‘I should have phoned,' she said. ‘Are you busy?' She walks in through the lobby. ‘Oh, my goodness, what have you been doing? Clearing things out?' She bends over the coffee table and peers at a photograph in a press cutting. ‘Who's this?'

‘Just some of Nio's articles and things. I'm looking for something.'

Dora straightens up and walks to the dining table, where she deposits her handbag. ‘Oh?' she asks.

‘For my new book,' I say.

‘Oh,' she says. She drags a chair out and sits heavily. ‘Oh, God.
Me feet ... I don't suppose I could trouble you for a glass of water?'

I seem to be standing sentry over Nio's boxes. I laugh. She's a canny old bird. ‘Sorry,' I say. I drop the letters, folded, on top of the press clippings and slap an empty, dried-out vase from the sideboard on top of them.

‘I've got some very nice cheesecake.'

‘Lovely.' She's as eager as I am. ‘Where did you get it?'

‘What do you mean where? I made it.'

‘What came over you?'

I shrug, and open the refrigerator. There is at least a glassful of mineral water left in the bottle. ‘Don't know.' I close the door with my elbow. ‘Just felt like it. I haven't made one in years.'

‘You must be good,' she says, more as a commentary to herself, really.

‘Why wouldn't I be?'

She doesn't answer. I pour water into a long glass, and put it down in front of her. She picks it up and drains it, her head back. I look at her. ‘My goodness, you were thirsty.'

‘Told you, it's hot out there.' She dabs at her mouth with her white hanky, which she's had in her hand since she left her apartment, probably. ‘So have you been busy?'

‘Reasonably,' I say. I sense another question, its head peeping over the rise of a hill, judging the lay of the land. ‘Coffee?'

‘Yes, please. What have you been up to?'

‘Work, work and more work,' and I press my finger down hard on the button of the coffee grinder. If she's said anything, I certainly can't hear it. I study the raging grinder with interest. I have to turn it off before the coffee's turned to dust. She is silent.

‘I gather you'll try the cheesecake,' I say. She is looking at me. She is giving me a metaphorical slap across the wrist.

‘Might as well,' she says.

When my head is in the fridge, she says, ‘You were going to ring me.'

I lift the cake out on its cold plate, close the door with a kick and place my masterpiece on the table. I lick a smudge of creamy filling from my finger. ‘Was I?'

‘After the other night,' she says.

I suppose she'll lose patience in a moment. And that will just make it worse.

‘Oh. Sorry,' I say. I hand her the knife.

‘What do you want me to do with this?' she says.

I laugh. ‘All right, all right.' I take two small plates from the cupboard, two forks from the drawer.

‘Will you sit down?' she says.

I do as I am told. I open my hands as if I'm about to tell her a truth. I can't think of a word to say.

‘Look,' she says. ‘You don't have to tell me. If I'm a nosey parker, and it's none of my business, fine. I thought you wanted to, that's all.'

I reach across the table and pat her hand, carefully for she holds the knife out, point forward. ‘Dora, it's just that I can't think of a good enough reason to discuss it. I mean, if she were in trouble, if I had to speak up, I...' I don't finish the sentence because it makes me out to be some kind of heroine. Now I am well and truly sickened. ‘Cut the cheesecake,' I say instead. ‘I'll confess, Father, while we chomp our way through it.'

I look at the silver-handled knife Nio and I bought in the market. And I say, ‘She's my daughter.'

Dora hesitates only for a very small moment, then she plunges down. She says nothing. I look at her eyes. They are lowered, at her task.

I say, ‘I left her when she was a baby. And her father.' Her eyebrows arch, only for a second. She turns a slice on its side, the knife supporting it, and lifts it carefully to a plate. She slides it across to me and it's now she gives me a glance.

‘Nio,' she says.

‘Yes.'

She serves herself a slice. She picks up a fork. ‘Right,' she says.

I've lost my appetite. She takes a taste. There's a lump of creamed cheese on her lower lip. ‘I used to wonder why you spoke so little of home,' she says. ‘I said it to Vincenzo once. Years ago, you know.'

‘Yeah,' I say.

She pokes at another lump, fallen to the side of her plate. She is being careful. ‘But you kept in touch,' she says.

‘No. For a while, with my parents. They died within months of each other. My brother and his wife moved to Queensland even before I left. Lost the other brother. But, no, I didn't keep in touch.'

She looks at me. ‘How did she know where to contact you?'

‘From the jacket of one of my books,' I say. I stare straight at her eyes.

‘Christ,' she says.

‘Yes,' I say.

She looks down. It's a bit much even for her. I don't blame her. I am prideful enough, still, to feel the prickle of her disgust.

She says, ‘It might have helped if you'd spoken about it. You didn't have to tell the whole world, but...'

She is trying to ask me why I didn't trust her. I can't say to her that I trust no one, not even myself. Particularly not myself. Not life, not love. It would hurt her. I say, ‘Perhaps I didn't want to be helped.'

‘Oh, Lilian.' She suddenly breaks. She puts her hands over her face.

God! Now what do I do?

‘I can't bear that you kept all this to yourself, all these years. It must have killed you,' she says, or I think that's what she's saying.

‘No,' I say. ‘I just lived my life, that's all.'

Her eyes are full of tears when she looks at me. ‘Oh, but, Lilian, that can't be true. Why are you so hard?'

‘Dora, listen.' I am tense. ‘I made a decision. I did what I did. What do you want me to do now? Start blubbering about it,
so you can make me a hot toddy and put a blanket around my shoulders? That would be a bit rich, wouldn't it? There's the coffee.'

The pot is bubbling and gurgling. Brown steam shoots from the spout. I get up and turn off the gas.

As I reach overhead for the cups, she says, ‘Why are you angry with me?'

I raise my brows to heaven. I'm glad she can't see my face. I say, ‘I'm not angry with you, Dora, for goodness' sake. I'm angry with her.' I bang the white cups down on the table. ‘What the hell does she want from me? She hates me.' I open the cupboard door again. I've forgotten the sugar. I slam the door closed.

‘I don't blame her,' I say. ‘She's bloody entitled to hate me. But what the hell does she want? To torture me? You know, I mean, if I just knew.' I spill muddy blobs on the table as I pour. ‘Milk?'

‘If you have any.'

I slam the fridge door closed, too, put the carton on the table. ‘I hope it's all right. Give it the sniff test first.'

Dora, more than a little appalled at me, does as I say. ‘It's okay,' she says.

‘Good.'

She drops one, two plops into her cup. I don't know why she bothers. ‘Do you love her?' she asks me.

‘Of course I do! Jesus Christ, I'm not that bad.'

‘Maybe she needs to work things out with you.'

‘Yeah, well let her go and psycho herself elsewhere. She's fifty years of age. It's about time she forgot about me and got on with it.' I blow on my hot coffee. ‘She's bloody miserable, that's as clear as a bell. I don't know what the hell's gone on, but something is wrong. She's tight as a ... I don't know what. The best revenge she can have on me is just to bloody live her life, be happy.'

‘You do care about her.'

‘Of course I care about her. I've always cared about her. A doesn't equal B, or two doesn't equal four or whatever it is.'

‘Well,' Dora says. ‘I don't know what to say to you, Lil.'

I shake my head. ‘That's the point. There's nothing to say.'

My hand circles the sugar bowl and I pull it toward me. ‘Sorry about the coffee,' I say. ‘It's too strong.'