The Italian Romance, page 8
Gianni thrust out his. His grin was wider. ‘Good morning. How do you do?’ he said in English.
Sandy bent his head back and looked at the sky. He was almost certain it was about four in the afternoon.
Jack said, ‘Do you speak English?’
‘Perfectly,’ Gianni said. He still grasped the man’s warm hand. Jack obligingly pumped it a few more times. Released, Gianni opened his palm and circled his hand in front of face and said, ‘Hi!’, just as he’d seen an American college boy in a movie do.
Sandy looked at the sergeant. He wanted to laugh. Jack, with a curt shake of his head, stopped him.
‘Hi,’ Jack replied. ‘Do you live near here?’
Gianni smiled. The man was talking American to him.
Jack rested his hands on his hips. ‘How old are you, boy?’
Gianni wiped away another dangle of sweat. His arm and wrist were also damp and glistening.
‘Right,’ Jack said. Sandy turned his face away, and covered his mouth with his small hand; blonde down caught the sun.
‘What will we do with this boy, Sandy?’ Jack said.
Sandy sobered himself and looked down at the boy, who beamed at him before the first doubt crossed his face. ‘I say we either eat him, or ask him to get us some food.’
Jack smiled at the two furrowed frown lines that appeared above the little fellow’s nose. He put his fingers to his mouth and mimed himself eating. ‘Food,’ he said. ‘J’ai faim,’ he tried, and he chewed the pretend delicacy and rubbed his stomach. ‘Mmm,’ he said, and raised his eyes appreciatively to heaven.
Gianni’s face relaxed. ‘Ah, si,’ he said. He nodded enthusiastically and put his own fingers to his mouth, slapped his lips together. ‘Okay,’ he said. He stuck out his stomach and patted it. Jack watched his face as the boy strained for a moment and then delivered a rolling burp. His eyes glinted. He held his arms up in victory. Jack laughed, his first in a long time, a deep belly laugh.
Gianni said, ‘Okay, okay,’ looking from one face to the other. Gianni was used to being a source of enjoyment. Sandy slapped him on the back. ‘Good man, good man,’ he said. ‘Get us some food, understand?’ Sandy’s eyes withdrew from the boy. He studied the row of cypress beside the road which the two men had raced across ten minutes before. ‘Off you go, old chap,’ he said.
Gianni understood none of the words. The Americans were speaking too quickly. But he sensed they had both become tense, almost jittery. He wanted to help them. He wanted to tell them to stay right here, and he would be back with whatever he could secrete out of the kitchen. He suddenly thought of Alphonso. He might be sitting at the kitchen table, and Berta might be cooking something on the stove. He had no idea of the time. Would they be awake again, after their afternoon rest? He gazed as if he were studying the rows of young lettuce. The frown had re-appeared on his face. Jack said, ‘What is it, boy? What’s troubling you?’ Gianni didn’t realise that he’d disappeared with his thoughts. He was surprised by the man’s voice. He looked back at him.
‘Signori,’ he said. ‘Che ora é?’
‘Que ... what is it? Oro? Ora?’ Jack looked to Sandy. Sandy shrugged. ‘Hour,’ Jack said. ‘Something about time.’
Gianni heard the American word ‘time’. He nodded. ‘Si, si, tima,’ he said.
Jack examined the young boy’s face. ‘Do you want us to wait? How long?’ He glanced anxiously at his partner. Sandy also tensed.
Gianni shook his head. He could not make them understand about Alphonso and the big, booming voice which would roar at him, ‘Ragazzo, what you got in your shirt? Come over here, briccone. Have you swallowed a hen, that your abdomen takes on such a shape?’
In the end, he shrugged his shoulders, defeated. He trawled in his mind for the American words he needed. He pointed to his chest. He said, ‘I,’ and pointed again, ‘I get, si?’ He frowned at Jack.
‘Si,’ Jack said.
‘I get,’ Gianni repeated. He held up both hands and gestured to them to stay.
‘Stay here,’ Jack said. He pointed to the earth at his feet.
‘Si,’ the boy replied. He pointed to the ground, too. ‘Okay?’ he said as he walked backwards, looking at the man, and then he suddenly turned and ran, his bare feet almost bouncing on the grassy path.
The men watched him. The boy turned and waved just before he disappeared into the laneway. Jack waved back.
‘What’ll we do?’ Sandy said.
‘I’ll follow him. In case his father is the mayor.’
‘Just our luck,’ Sandy said.
‘Better safe than sorry. You duck back across the road. I’ll come and get you if all’s well.
Jack’s feet were in a bad way. The soles of his shoes had very nearly departed company from their uppers; he’d tied strips of canvas around them like bandages. When he reached the laneway, breathing hard, he held back for a few moments behind the border hedge; he could see the boy trotting down the avenue of bushes. On the other side of the lane, the land rose. He would find shelter up there, among a coppice of trees – the leaves were more grey than green in the harsh, summer light.
Jack was tired. Alone, without the breath of young Sandy at his shoulder, he was suddenly swamped with a killing desolation. There was a dark urge in him to lie down on the tough grass, the hard dry earth, and sleep and sleep and let a division of tanks caterpillar by him, drumming up a hurricane of dust, troops boot-march inches from his head, and let him sleep, sleep himself away. It had gone on too long. Alone, he was drained of life-blood. He never thought it would happen to him. He was a tough man, even a happy man by nature. He’d had his knocks. He’d picked himself up, dusted himself off. But he didn’t know himself anymore. Or if he did, he was frightened by the blackness that was him. He hadn’t known it about himself. That was what terrified him more than anything, more than being recaptured, or shot. What would his own blackness drive him to? Was there an edge that it knew, had known always, he’d be led to? And after it, there was nothing. The nothing terrified him. All the rest, the good spirits, the good deeds he had tried to do, buoying up his father all those years, the infinite excitement he’d felt in his gut when he went up to university, the patching himself together after the heartbreak of Serena’s goodbye letter, the nights of plying himself and his mates with whisky in the melancholy of young men intent on cutting out the diamond, the willing himself into life again in the army, life that would stretch his soul, and then effort after effort to protect his men, from the thirst as much as anything else in that miserable, godforsaken desert, pushing on, on. Was it for nothing? Nothing the destination after all? And all the rest the dream? Who was this, who knew this terrible thing? Jack, in his mind’s eye, saw himself drop to his knees, put his face in the dirt.
But he didn’t. He darted across the pathway, and made his way up the grassy rise. He sank to his haunches as he entered the coppice. He could hear his breath. He heard the lonely rise and fall of it. Below him he saw the house, and the boy, stopped in his tracks now, balanced on one foot while he seemed to be picking a splinter out of the other, little beggar. There was a well-tended garden. It surprised him. Bushes, and real hedges, English hedges. If he could get down to that garden before the boy reached the house, he’d see what was going on. He rose and ran at a half-crouch, his eyes on the open French doors at the side of the house.
The boy was running again, too. As Jack threw himself behind a flamboyant bush, four or five feet thick, the child looked around, hearing something. Jack tried to get his breath. He wiped his arm across his forehead. The sun was cruel, lost in its own haze. He made the mistake of gazing up at it. He was blinded for a number of seconds. ‘Christ,’ he said softly. He held his arm against his eyes, closed them. His shirt smelled of his own skin. He was so thirsty. Unconsciously, he moved his mouth to make saliva.
He reached out his fingers to hold down a branch, so he could get a clear view. The boy had moved. He’d come to the back door and he seemed to be creeping in on his toes. Jack smiled. ‘Little beggar,’ he said.
Jack’s thighs were tightening. He danced his feet around to a slightly different angle and held the branch a little firmer, trying to see in through the French doors at the side. A white, fine curtain blew out and tossed in the air. His heels were chafed; the makeshift shoes were a misery. He put his thumb into the back of his shoe, to give the heel relief. And then he saw the woman. He knelt, and concentrated. She had walked across the doorway. Was she with someone? She didn’t appear again for a full minute, then she stood still, and looked out. Her hands were by her sides. Limp by her sides, he said to himself. What was wrong with her? He could feel it from two hundred yards away. It was the way gravity pulled at her, though she stood erect, the way blood drained into her limp hands. He thought he saw some strands of her hair fall to her neck. Yes, she slowly raised her hand now and combed the hair up into the loose bun on her head. She was dark. Her white blouse threw her skin into shadow. She gave up on the hair and let it fall down again. She must be too hot to have all that hair, the dark, thick winding of it, loose about her neck and shoulders.
And then she looked straight at him. He carefully withdrew his hand from the branch. She can’t see me, he said to himself. He looked up quickly to the rise. He wouldn’t make it with her standing there.
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.
