The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club (21 page)

‘“That you're maddening, that you're sweet … I don't know, I guess I'd say that you're audacious. Vivid. I'd say you were
vivid
.”

‘“Would you say that I was a hopeful person?”

‘“Of course. Hopeful, yes …”

‘“I've always thought so. But what I'm discovering is that most people who think they live in hope are really desperate while those who admit to despair are quietly operating under hope. Case in point, I present myself an optimist, a sanguine, and yet what I truly am is a desperate person in convincing disguise. Most Pollyannas are, of course. Truth is skittish as quicksilver and I, for one, hardly know what was or is my own truth. Or if I have one and if I do, will it still be true in an hour? That was until this afternoon.”

‘“This afternoon?”

‘“Umberto, he
proposed
something to me. An idea which, well … a
possibility
which … were it to become … well, it would change everything. I'm old, Paolina, and I trust there's time for me to grow yet older. Yet older or younger, I can't say which, though my sense, as of this afternoon, is the latter. In any case, there's something I'd like to do. And my
knowing
what it is I'd like to do makes me fortunate. Pollyanna is nowhere in sight, Paolina, it's only me sitting here saying all of this to you. And I'm telling the truth.”

‘“But
what is it
that you're sitting here telling me … I still don't …”

‘Carolina began laughing again and I – still not understanding and nearly past caring about her night-train confessions – laughed with her, bending forward in my chair, my arms twined about my stomach. I stayed like that, rocking my baby, and a moment passed before I realised it was only my own laugh that I heard. Carolina was suddenly grave.

‘“Paolina, from the deepest part of my heart I would like to invite you and your baby to come and live here with Umberto and Luigia and me. You know, to be a family with us. For always, Paolina. For always until, well, until you decide you'd like to live somewhere else …”

‘I didn't say a word. I only looked at her. Searching now for clues from what she'd just been saying and not saying. What was it that Carolina “knew” she wanted? Was it to give me charity? To provide herself with diversion? Were my child and I to be some sort of mission to soothe her uneventful dotage? I felt suddenly disconnected from her and when she reached for me, I pulled away too brusquely.

‘“Umberto said you might respond this way.”

‘“Umberto? Do you mean to say that he knows about this …”

‘“I've already told you, Paolina. It was his idea. I'm sorry to admit it wasn't mine.”

‘“Have you left off telling the truth already? Umberto, he hardly looks at me, he …”

‘“Paolina, Umberto is a Jesuit. Jesuits interpret, elucidate. Manipulate. A Jesuit believes in nothing so he is free to believe in everything and what you're perceiving as his … his diffidence, well, it's not that at all. What's at work is his
Jesuitness
.”

‘“Does he think I won't take proper care of my child, that I need …”

‘“No. No, Paolina.
It's we who need you
. You're Umberto's
canto libero
. His
magnum opus
. He's been your teacher since you were learning to read. He adores you as he would a little sister. It's
magis
. More. You know Latin better than I. It's his Jesuit's
need
– no, his Jesuit's obsession –
to be
more,
to do
more. He paces the four-hundred square metres of this old palazzo in agony for its emptiness. He's begun scheming his remedies, though; among them is a program for seminarians in their final phase of study who, one or two at a time, would live and work here. All the better to understand the life of a parish priest in a small isolated town. He's in Perugia this evening to beg funds from the Curia to transform two of the
saloni
downstairs into a
nido
for infants now that mothers are beginning to work outside the home. He has already found licensed teachers and nurses to oversee it and …”

‘“And so am I to be one of Umberto's
remedies
for the squandered space? Is that …”

‘“How much reassurance do you need, Paolina? When he speaks of you, he speaks of
grace
… He says that you will grace our lives.
And that we must strive to grace yours
. An honourable intent, Paolina.”

‘“Yes, honourable, but …”

‘“Is it that you don't wish to live here with us? Is it that? If so, I'll simply tell Umberto and …”

‘“It's not that. I don't think it's that. But it's all so, so
fraught
. I guess that's a good-enough word. I'd be expecting Vatican guards to storm the palazzo in the night … The idea is preposterous. My coming to live here with my fatherless child … it would be flying in the face of Mother Church, of Rome. Of the Curia.
Of the San Severese
.”

‘“Umberto is neither taking a wife nor entering, flagrantly, into sin. His behaviour is, well, I suppose I would call it
Jesus-like
. He's opening the parish-house doors to what he considers to be his extended family. Every family has some
eccentricity
. Some
anomaly
…”

‘“Anomaly. A Jesuit's word if ever I've heard one.”

‘We look at one another, taking turns shaking our heads, speaking only with our eyes until I say, “Carolina, I can't think beyond the bishop and all those monsigneurs and …”

‘“Whatever else they may or may not be, they're a troupe of gluttons at the Curia. You'll win them over with your pastries, especially those little round pink-iced things with the marzipan cherries on top … what do you call them?”

‘“
Cassetine
.”

‘“When I was a girl in Rome, I went every afternoon with my friends to eat gelato at Muzzi. I remember the boys would forsake gelato for pastries, for one sort in particular which looked very much like your
cassetine
. In dialect, the boys called them ‘nuns' breasts'. Pile a plate with those and, next to it, prop a little card identifying them. Written in dialect, of course. That should strike a note familiar enough to distract the old piggish knaves from fretting over who's who in Umberto's family.”

•

‘Earnest as an estate agent, Carolina led me through the farthest corners of the palazzo. Originally the sixteenth-century country residence of a minor branch of the noble Monaldeschi, it was a descendent of that clan who left the property – handsomely and honourably restored – to the Church during the years between the great wars. Though I'd been so often in one or another of the
saloni
and the library and, of late, in the cavern of a kitchen, I knew nothing of the true immensity of the place until that afternoon of wandering through it with Carolina. She'd begun by saying that I should choose whichever rooms pleased me most, but when we'd climbed to the third floor where she and Luigia were situated, she lingered longest, thrusting wide the windows in each room, opening her arms to the rooftops of San Severino and to the wheat and the olives trembling in the wind beyond.

‘“
Ecco
. Behold. Here you'll have morning sun and …”

‘“What about the attic? Will you show me the attic?”

‘Leading the way up the shallow stone steps of a narrow corridor lit by small, high windows, she said she'd been up there only once, maybe twice, in all the years she'd lived in the house, that it would be hellish in summer under the beams, that surely all the rats in San Severino assembled there, that I was too damn tall to even stand up anywhere but right in the middle.

‘Nearly at the top of the stairs there was a door. “What's in there?” I asked.

‘She told me it was for “storage”. An oddly small room considering the dimensions of the others, it might well have been where the women of the house were isolated during their confinements. “At least that's what Umberto thinks
,”
she said. “A rather morbid idea …”

‘I opened the door to what would become my home for the next thirty-four years. The ceiling was high and vaulted, it's one window was a door opening to a small balcony. The floor was made of marble laid down in a design like a carpet. Here I could be as together with them as I could be alone with my baby. I would paint it red, a clear pure red with a trace of blue to keep it soft: carmine.

•

‘On the agreed-upon moving day, Carolina and Luigia and I gathered together the things to be carried to the parish house: the baby's trunk, my books and clothes, a gilt wooden lamp with a grey-and-white-striped
abat-jour
from my parents' bedroom. Photos in silver frames and linens from my mother's chest. The Bohemian crystal. I don't remember that I took much else. At Carolina's insistence, we set about covering the furniture with sheets, turning off the water, the gas, unplugging the appliances. “You're moving house, Paolina, not just coming to us for a visit.” Having arranged transport with two of the men who sometimes worked at the parish house, she was impatient when they didn't arrive on time and so we three began to walk the few cartons and sacks across the piazza and up the hill.

‘On one of the trips up to the parish house, Ferrucci the baker – just returning from delivering the second bake and seeing us with our arms full – stopped his white van and loaded us and our baggage into the floured, yeast-smelling space. Leaving Carolina and Luigia at the parish house, Ferrucci and I went back to my house to fetch the baby's trunk, the books and then, rather than taking me directly back to the parish house, he asked if I'd like to ride along with him to Orvieto where he was to make the day's last deliveries. A kind of sentimental journey it would be since, when I was in elementary school and friends with his son, Ferrucci would often take us with him on his afternoon delivery. So I'd known Ferrucci forever, the small, sturdy white-clad figure of him racing on his wooden clogs into the shops and the
trattorie
, a brown paper sack of new bread in his embrace, shouting his arrival:
pane caldo, pane caldo
.

‘As though years had not passed since the last time we rode together, we drove up into Orvieto and, when he'd delivered his goods, he parked the truck in Piazza Duomo. Reaching under the seat, pulling out the half-kilo
pagnotta
he'd tucked away there, he slapped a clasp knife in my hand.

‘“Break it open, Paolina. I'll be right back.”

‘I sawed the bread in two and, with the halves resting on my lap, I sat there high up in the truck, pinching off pieces of crust, thinking how, from time to time, life makes such small circles. Wielding a paper packet like a trophy, Ferrucci soon came racing back and, opening the door on my side, he stood there laying slices of wild fennel
salame
in perfectly overlapping circles over the bread. Pressing the
pagnotta
back together with the heel of his hand, he tore the giant sandwich in two.

‘“
Andiamo.”

‘He led the way to the steps of the Duomo and we sat with our merindina, eating and smiling and feeling no need for words until, as we stood to leave, he said, “I can't wait until your baby is old enough to ride in the truck with me. I can't wait for that, Paolina.”

‘I looked at little Ferrucci in his white paper hat, eyes solemn behind glasses dusted in flour, more of it caked in the furrows of his cheeks.

‘“
Anch'io, Ferruccino
. I also can't wait.”

‘I didn't know back then nor do I now if Ferrucci, with his warm bread and his few words, meant to gift me my past and promise me a future. I think he did.

•

‘It was the last Saturday of that September. Having pilfered Umberto's cherished Zenith radio from his study and set it on the bedside table in the little red room, Carolina sat feverishly twisting its dials. She'd been out in the shops that morning and had returned to find me installed up there in an early stage of labour.

‘“You must have distraction,” she kept repeating, though it was she who gasped and trembled while I sat folding and refolding baby clothes. She came upon some music and raised the volume. “
Quando, quando, quando
… When, when, when …” Uncorseted in her black woollen robe, still wearing her elastic stockings and town shoes, Carolina began to dance around the bed, making delicate samba-like moves, the pearl drops of her earrings jiggling in time with her bosoms.

‘“
Amore mio
, dance with me.
Vieni, vieni
, come, come.”

‘She took my hands, strove again and again to wrench the great white bulk of me from among the pillows and each time she failed. I fell to laughing and begged her to leave me be.

‘“Carolina, I hurt quite enough already without your …”

‘“But it's this that will lessen the pain, you must move, move, move. When the contractions begin again, then you can be still. Come, try it.”

‘Carolina raised the volume just as Umberto entered the room.

‘“I heard the music … Paolina, is there something I can …?”

‘“Ah, Umberto. Maybe she'll listen to you. Tell her that she must move, she must dance. Did I ever tell you that Anna-Rosa danced me through seventeen hours of
travaglio
before you were born? Yes,
la pizzica, la tarantella, la monferrina
. I don't remember a polka but …”

‘Umberto and I laughed at Carolina and the more we laughed the better she danced and, when she pulled at me another time, I got to my feet and tried to do as she was doing. I'd never tried to dance before that afternoon. Never once. A contraction interrupted my debut and I fell back onto the bed. Intense as it was, Carolina had been right: the pain seemed less. After a few moments,
Quando, Quando
having given way to
Guantanamera
, I was on my feet again while Umberto, shaken by his first gaze upon a woman in her labours, was in retreat.