Tuscan Rose (25 page)

The woman glanced around the store. ‘Is Antonio…is Signor Parigi here?’

Rosa shook her head. ‘He went home for lunch.’

The woman bit her lip. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Could you give him a message for me?’

‘Of course,’ said Rosa.

‘Please tell him that Signora Visconti called to see him.’

‘Yes, signora. My pleasure,’ said Rosa, watching the beautiful woman walk out the door. Well, if she wasn’t Antonio’s wife, then who was she?

Rosa was the first one back that evening and lit the stove before going to the room she shared with Orietta. She slipped the pins from her hair and changed from her suit into an ordinary dress before feeding Sibilla.

‘You’re a good girl,’ she said, tickling Sibilla’s tummy. Her baby wriggled with delight and smiled at her. ‘You grow more beautiful every day.’

Rosa gazed at her child, still mystified by the source of her exotic beauty. She closed her eyes and tried to see her own origins again, the same way she had with the jewellery box at the shop. But she felt and saw nothing.

Someone knocked at the bedroom door. Rosa turned to see Luciano.

‘I was putting Sibilla to sleep,’ she said.

Luciano stepped towards the bed and kissed Sibilla on the forehead. Rosa was moved whenever he did that. Sometimes, before she fell asleep, she fantasised that Luciano was Sibilla’s father and the three of them were a family.

She tucked Sibilla into her basket and Luciano lifted it into the cot that he and Carlo had made. ‘She’s as beautiful as her mother,’ Luciano said.

He turned to Rosa and pressed his hand against her cheek before slipping his arms around her. Rosa melted. All the nerve endings that had been deadened by prison sprang to life again. She hadn’t known until Luciano pressed her to his chest how much she had yearned for him to do that. He took her hand and kissed her palm. She sighed, and his kisses grew more passionate, burning her face and neck. Waves of pleasure washed over her as she felt his warm breath caress her skin. She thought she must be dreaming. Could what she’d hoped for be happening? Did Luciano love her?

‘Luciano,’ she whispered. His skin smelled like fresh apples. ‘What are you doing to me?’

He lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. He laid her down and pressed the weight of his body against her. She drank in his warm, salty breath. He sat back, his eyes on fire, before sliding his fingers down Rosa’s throat to the neckline of her dress. Slowly he undid the buttons, tugging open the fabric. Her breasts lay exposed to him. She shivered when he cupped them in his hands and lowered his lips to her nipples. Her breasts were tender from feeding Sibilla but the pleasure his touch brought was greater than the discomfort.

‘I want you, Rosa,’ he said, before finding her mouth again and kissing her. He pressed his cheek to hers. ‘Is it all right?’

‘Luciano,’ she whispered, stroking his face.

His fingers ran down her thigh and found the hem of her skirt. He lifted it to her waist and caressed her hip. Rosa was delirious with sensations she had never imagined. He slipped his hand between her legs.

‘Does it feel nice?’ he asked her.

Rosa answered with a weak moan. Her nerves were on fire. All the muscles in her stomach were drawing down, longing for some sort of relief. He lifted himself over her, rubbing himself between her legs. Suddenly Osvaldo’s face appeared between them. The image was like a shock through her body. Pain and humiliation seized her. She shoved Luciano in the chest. ‘No!’ she screamed.

Luciano leaped back, shocked.

‘Get out!’ Rosa said, covering herself. ‘Don’t touch me!’

The moment of passion was shattered. Rosa fought the confusion in her mind but all she could remember was the excruciating pain when Osvaldo raped her.

Luciano slipped off the bed and stared at Rosa. ‘I would never have laid a hand on you,’ he said, ‘if I hadn’t thought you wanted me to.’

Rosa tried to say something but couldn’t find the words. Luciano waited for her to explain her violent reaction. When she didn’t, he took a step back. ‘Forget this happened,’ he said. ‘I won’t come near you again.’ He turned and slammed the door behind him.

Rosa had never made an association between Luciano and Osvaldo. She hadn’t linked the yearning she felt for Luciano with the despicable act Osvaldo had performed on her. Now the thing she longed for was gone. Osvaldo had won again. He had stolen her joy. Her body, on fire a moment ago, felt cold and empty.

When she heard the others arrive home a while later and ask after her, she thought, for the sake of appearances, that she had better join them for supper. She wiped her face and tidied her hair. Her cheeks were blotchy. She soaked a towel in the basin and pressed it against her eye sockets to bring down the swelling.

Luciano was sitting at the far end of the table when she walked into the kitchen. He was fidgeting with his fork and barely touching the food.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Piero asked him. ‘Did you have a bad day?’

Luciano shook his head. ‘No, I’m just tired.’

‘You should go to bed early,’ Orietta advised him. ‘You don’t want to get sick.’

The more his siblings questioned him, the further Luciano retreated. He didn’t look in Rosa’s direction. She stared at the fire in the stove, trying to find comfort in its glow, but only sank deeper into loneliness. Everything was ruined between her and Luciano now.

‘The fire is dying down,’ Luciano said. ‘I’ll get some more coal.’

Rosa listened to the others talk although she could think of nothing but Luciano. Carlo was making them laugh by recounting the things guests left behind in their hotel rooms. Along with the usual socks, underwear, eyeglasses and ointments he had found a suitcase full of suppositories and a jar with a tapeworm in it. Carlo’s banter usually made Rosa laugh too but this evening she was engulfed in gloominess. When she couldn’t stand it any more, she excused to herself to feed Sibilla but instead went down the stairs to the cellar where Luciano was collecting coal in a bucket from the pile. He looked up when she entered then turned away.

‘Luciano,’ Rosa said.

He didn’t answer her. He continued dropping coal into the bucket.

‘I have to explain.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘There’s nothing to explain.’

He wasn’t making things easy for Rosa but she felt she owed him the truth. She opened her mouth to tell him about Osvaldo but found herself choking on her words.

‘I was raped,’ she finally managed to say. ‘That’s how I became pregnant with Sibilla.’

Luciano flinched. He stopped gathering the coal and looked at her.

All the horrible details flooded back to Rosa: the dank smell of Osvaldo; the stale wine on his lips; the painful tearing sensation. ‘I’m so ashamed,’ she said, crying into her fist.

‘Who did that to you?’ asked Luciano, stepping towards her and searching her face. ‘Who did that to you?’

Rosa sank to her knees and Luciano crouched down with her. ‘A prison guard,’ she said. ‘I was a virgin before that. I didn’t know anything. I was brought up in a convent.’

The colour drained from Luciano’s face. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Prison? Rosa, what were you doing in prison?’

‘The fascists,’ Rosa said. ‘I was accused of helping a woman with an abortion but I was never tried. It was to cover up the mistake of one of their own.’

She gave way to tears. They shook her until she thought her ribs would break. Luciano didn’t let go of her. When she calmed, he turned her face to his.

‘Rosa, if you were never tried…is there a record of your imprisonment?’

Rosa nodded. ‘It’s on my papers,’ she said. ‘Enemy of the state.’

Luciano’s face didn’t change expression but his eyes darkened.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

His brow furrowed. He didn’t answer her. Instead he held her tighter. Despite everything that had gone wrong, Rosa felt comforted. Being with Luciano was like standing in the eye of a storm: in his arms she was safe.

T
he following evening when Rosa was on her way home, she found Luciano waiting on the street corner for her. He had shaved off his beard and looked young and fresh.

‘I thought we could go for a walk,’ he said.

Rosa smiled, thankful that the revelations of the night before hadn’t left them awkward with each other. ‘Yes,’ she agreed.

They strolled in the direction of the Arno. The daylight was fading and the air was cool and fresh. They carried Sibilla’s basket between them, one handle each. Shopkeepers smiled at them and women stopped to admire Sibilla.

‘Che bella bambina! Che bella coppia!’
they said. ‘What a beautiful baby! What a beautiful couple!’

Rosa didn’t know how to react to the attention. She had become used to catcalls and hostile stares. When she walked along the street it was usually with her eyes downcast. But being with Luciano made all the difference. Rosa lifted her gaze and returned the greetings with pride. Was it possible to be this happy? Was it possible to be this
normal?
She felt the black hole in her heart close a little. Maybe she didn’t know who her parents were but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a family of her own.

They reached the place on the bank of the Arno where they had first met each other.

‘You had the sun in your eyes,’ Luciano said, bending to kiss Rosa on the forehead. She was sorry that she had destroyed his passion of the previous evening. But she knew they were both still confused by her reaction. She understood Luciano would wait for her, and that made her love him more.

Luciano and Rosa sat there with their arms linked and their heads together, speaking about insignificant things, until the moon rose. Then he stood up and extended his hand to her. ‘There is something I want you to hear,’ he said.

A few streets away he stopped in front of a house and told Rosa to sit with him on the doorstep. A beautiful operatic voice drifted from an open window of one of the houses on the opposite side of the street. Rosa caught a glimpse of the woman’s blonde hair set against the blood-red wallpaper of the room. She was singing an aria. There were bars on the window. The leaves of a potted palm poked through them and quivered in the breeze. The effect was to make the woman appear like an exotic bird in a cage. Her voice was poignant and sweet.

‘Who is she?’ Rosa asked.

‘A nightwatchman’s wife,’ he answered. ‘Every evening, after her husband has left for work, she sings.’

Rosa leaned against Luciano’s shoulder. The woman’s voice was remarkable. They could have been sitting in the royal box at the Teatro Comunale and they would not have heard anything more magnificent.

They listened a while longer until Luciano nudged Rosa. ‘Orietta will be getting dinner on the table, and we’d better take Sibilla home before it gets too cold.’ He picked up Sibilla’s basket and offered his arm to Rosa.

‘The woman has an extraordinary voice,’ Rosa said, entwining her arm with his.

‘Yes, she’s missed her calling.’

They walked along the streets, which were quieter now. Rosa puzzled over what Luciano had said about the nightwatchman’s wife. If Luciano’s father had not made the mistakes he had, Luciano would probably have gone to university or taken his place in the family business. He would not have been peddling goods door to door or labouring on building sites.

‘Do you feel you’ve missed your calling?’ she asked him.

Luciano frowned. ‘Missed it? No, not missed it,’ he replied. ‘I am sure that it is coming to me. I’m impatient for it.’

Rosa studied his firm profile. He was not like other people. There was something dynamic about him. Rosa agreed that he must have some special destiny. He seemed marked out for it. Didn’t I also feel destined for something once? Rosa recalled. Now my destiny is to be a mother. But she couldn’t complain. She loved her daughter more than life and working at Antonio’s shop was more a pleasure than a job.

Not long after Rosa had begun working for Antonio, he had started taking her to auctions, markets and estate sales.

‘Liking a piece and understanding its history is one thing,’ he told her at one pre-auction viewing. ‘But appraising it is quite another. You must be confident that you will find a customer who will like it as much as you do—otherwise a dealer is in danger of filling his shop with charming but unsaleable items. I’ve noticed you are fascinated by ornate furniture, but our clients want pieces that are practical as well as beautiful.’

He led Rosa to a walnut armoire with rocaille crowns. It had three bevelled-mirror doors and cabriole legs. Rosa ran her hands over the French piece. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said.

‘No one will buy it unless they reduce the reserve price,’ Antonio told her.

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s eight feet tall. Too tall for the average maid or lady of the house to reach the top shelves. Practicality as well as beauty
must be our guide. There is a certain beauty in the utility of an item.’ He flashed her a smile.

Rosa had thought Antonio was condescending in his cynical attitude towards her ability to see the origins of things, but he obviously respected her intelligence if he was explaining his work to her. Although they used each other’s Christian names when out of the hearing of customers, their relationship was formal. Now Rosa found herself warming to him. She began to think of him as a friend.

‘Now, what about this piece?’ Antonio asked, pointing out a Spanish table in chestnut wood.

He reached into his pocket and took out a magnifying glass. He handed it Rosa. She searched the piecrust edging and lyre base for chips, cracks, scratches and discolourations as he had taught her to do. She was beginning to understand which defects were of little consequence, which reduced an item’s value and which enhanced it. She checked the maker’s mark. The legs were original, giving no indication of having been replaced or revived. She ran her fingers over the tabletop and examined it closely.

‘It’s been refinished,’ she said. ‘The original patina has been sanded back.’

‘And what does that mean?’ Antonio asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘Refinishing ruins the value of an antique.’

‘Because?’

‘Because the patina is the history of an object and shows what has happened over time. A crackled finish, a nick, a scratch—all these things give a piece character. The patina is what makes the piece a true antique. Otherwise one might as well buy new reproduction furniture.’

Antonio clapped his hands. ‘Excellent! Now you are not only lovely but knowledgeable as well!’

One of Rosa’s favourite tasks was to find an object that a customer had specifically requested, such as a particular style of mirror or
table to finish off a room. Antonio would send her out to select possible pieces and would then examine them himself before deciding which was most suitable. She was delighted one day when he told her that he had received a request to find a unique present for a girl’s twelfth birthday.

‘The customer doesn’t need it until spring,’ Antonio explained, ‘so we have some time up our sleeves. Apparently she’s a bright girl who likes to write and sketch in a journal. There is a seller in Fiesole who is in the process of redecorating. We can go there tomorrow morning if you’d like to come. The family has always had a large proportion of daughters. We might find something suitable there.’

Rosa winced at the mention of Fiesole. She could leave Sibilla with Orietta for the morning, but she had a vision of pulling up with Antonio outside the Villa Scarfiotti. She had put that world out of her mind for many months now.

‘What’s the seller’s name?’ she asked.

Antonio looked at her interestedly. ‘Signora Armelli. Do you know her?’

Rosa shook her head. ‘I just wondered,’ she said, relieved that it wasn’t the Marchesa.

Signora Armelli’s villa was an eighteenth-century affair with a panoramic view of the Florentine hills. When Antonio brought his van to a stop in the driveway, Rosa was surprised to see two other Fiat vans already parked there.

‘Not to worry,’ said Antonio, opening the door for her. ‘They aren’t competition. They belong to Signor Risoli, who specialises in rare books and maps, and Signor Zalli, who collects hatpins and buttons.’

Rosa and Antonio were led by the butler down a corridor to a room stacked with furniture and household items. Every surface was covered in knick-knacks. Antonio’s attention was taken by a mahogany corner cabinet while Rosa stood in the doorway a moment, absorbing the scene. There were oriental rugs piled on the floor, along with wrought-iron furniture, botanical prints,
chandeliers and sconces, and a pair of Venetian mirrors. She spotted a marble chessboard on an extendable table and caught a glimpse of two old men playing at it, until the vision faded away.

There were a couple of porcelain dolls and some mother-of-pearl hand mirrors, but Rosa sensed the customer seeking the birthday gift wasn’t after objects like those. She looked through a drawer of lace and ivory fans before she noticed a pair of candelabra piled on an old dresser. Between them was an object half-covered by a silk table runner. Rosa moved towards the dresser, wondering what the object could be. She lifted the runner and discovered a rosewood writing box with rounded edges. It was decorated with inlaid pewter depicting deer in a forest. Inside was an embossed velvet writing surface with compartments for paper and writing instruments. Rosa felt around the box and found a spring mechanism. She released it and gave a cry of joy when she discovered a secret drawer.

She called to Antonio: ‘I think I’ve found something for that twelve-year-old girl.’

Antonio was impressed by Rosa’s find and said that he would take her to Casa dei Bomboloni, which was famous for its doughnuts, to celebrate.

‘They have a rather ingenious system for making the
bomboloni,’
he told her, once they were in the van and heading back to Florence. ‘They are dropped down a herringbone slide to shake off excess oil before they land in the sugar tray.’

At the Casa dei Bomboloni, Rosa and Antonio took a seat by the window. Rosa, who had never eaten a doughnut before, was lost in its sweet, doughy flavour.

‘Good?’ asked Antonio, reaching across the table to wipe a crumb from her chin.

‘Very good,’ Rosa replied, embarrassed that she’d had food on her face and not noticed.

The radio was playing a popular tune of the day:

When you smile, I always laugh.

When you laugh, I always smile…

The lyrics made no sense but the tune was catchy and Rosa tapped her foot in time to the beat. The song was interrupted by a blast of the
Giovinezza
and then an announcement that Il Duce was about to speak. Everyone in the Casa dei Bomboloni stood up to attention. The counter staff stopped serving customers and doughnuts no longer fell from the chute. Antonio raised himself to his feet and Rosa did likewise, although she hated herself for doing so. But to not stand up when Mussolini spoke would draw attention and could result in her being arrested. She wasn’t going to risk that.

Mussolini’s announcement was a long-winded explanation of his concept of fascism: ‘The state is everything. The individual is only accepted as far as his interests coincide with the state’s…’

When it was over, Antonio drove Rosa back to the store. She couldn’t help dwelling on Mussolini’s statement that no human or spiritual values existed outside of the state. Luciano would not have stood up for a proclamation like that. She felt weak for having crumbled in the face of such insipid indoctrination.

Antonio could see that something was troubling her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I’m not a fascist,’ Rosa told him. ‘I want you to know that.’

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you think I am?’

She turned to him, relieved but not convinced. ‘But you have a Fascist Party card. I’ve seen it in the office files.’

Antonio shrugged. ‘Every businessman has one, otherwise the fascists will come and bust up the shop. We don our black shirts when necessary, wave our arms about as required, then go back to our work and leave the stupid buffoonery behind us. Besides, my grandparents were Jewish. I can’t take risks.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Rosa said, recalling her vision about the torcheres. ‘I thought your mother was Catholic.’

Antonio looked puzzled; he must have been wondering how she knew that. ‘My father converted to marry my mother,’ he said. ‘I was brought up Catholic. But it seems in Germany those things don’t matter, and Hitler and Mussolini are too good friends for comfort.’

Rosa remembered that while the troupe was on tour, Luciano had spoken about the boycotting of Jewish businesses that was encouraged in Germany. ‘Do you think that sort of racial discrimination will happen here?’ she asked Antonio.

He shook his head. ‘No, the Italians are
brava gente.
They are not racists like the Germans. Mussolini himself has a Jewish mistress. But the fascist thugs…well, one always has to be cautious. They could be influenced by anybody with an agenda.’

‘So you are nervous?’ Rosa asked.

Antonio laughed. ‘Life’s too short to always be worried. I say, “Take care of this day and tomorrow will take care of itself.” None of us can predict the future. Idiots like Mussolini come and go. It’s been like that since the Roman Empire. Eventually the pendulum will swing back to rampant liberalism.’

At first Rosa was shocked by Antonio’s pragmatism, but then she saw the sense behind it. Fascism was like a wildfire: it was too big to fight so it was better to let it burn out on its own. She leaned back in the seat. As guilty as it made her feel, she was glad to hear someone making light of Italy’s politics for a change. She admired Antonio’s approach to life, although she was sure Luciano would not approve of it.

Rosa often thought that her work was like a treasure hunt. She attended houses that were being redecorated and also deceased estates.

‘Don’t you find that macabre?’ Orietta asked her one day. ‘Looking through a dead person’s things?’

‘No,’ answered Rosa. ‘If you can’t take your worldly goods with you, someone else may as well enjoy them. Besides, all antiques are “dead person’s things".’