Yellow mud covered our leggings up to the inseams as we slogged to the spot where Father Lorenzo claims his family’s former apartment building will one day be built. Wallunda assumed he was speaking in past tense and wanted to know what sort of dwelling his parents had kept. “Was it leather like your own, or one of tree branches and mud?”
His spirit seemed to fade as he told her the place was the same as thousands of others across Italy. His family of nine lived in an apartment with two rooms. They used a community bathroom down the hall. He tried to describe the building to Wallunda, but her mind could not comprehend the image of a living building, a 30-story community farm. I understood. Many times I rode past row upon row of similar, crop-covered city blocks on the train between Milano and Venezia.
My sister and I often made up stories about the lives of the people who lived encased in glass like insects in a terrarium. The notion many residents lived entire lives without straying from the confines of the vacuum-sealed environment intrigued us to no end. We invented entire family histories, gave the residents silly, mildly pornographic names on the hour-long run to the ruins of Venezia.
Papa Bolzano took us scuba diving in Venezia’s silted waters at least once every summer. The Doge’s Palace dive was my favorite, though Rialto’s Coral Gardens rated a close second.
My reverie was broken when Wallunda earned a slap to the back of the neck for her inability to comprehend the architecture of modern man. Looking at the soggy state of the land, perhaps it is no wonder she finds it hard to picture a self-contained, symbiotic building where a liter of water may pass through 100 people and 1000 plants before it is entirely lost to the arid environment outdoors.
She sulked away to spend the afternoon gossiping with the wives of the Saints while Father Lorenzo took me on a tour of his hometown.
TRANSMISSION:
Duarte: “Tell me about your crazy cousin again.”
Kaikane: “Which one?”
Duarte: “The bull rider.”
Kaikane: “There were two, Myron and Byron.”
Duarte: “The one who fell in love with the girl from Montana.”
Kaikane: “That was Myron. He was older than me by a couple years. A salty son of a gun. Loved to fight. Nice enough guy when he was sober, but a mean drunk.”
Duarte: “What happened to him up in Montana?”
Kaikane: “You must know this story better than I do by now.”
Duarte: “I know, but I love the way you tell it. One more time, please? And leave nothing out.”
Kaikane: “I’ve got nothing else to do. OK, here goes. Myron was driving a loader at a bauxite mine when he saw this Indian woman….”
From the log of Maria Duarte
Chief Botanist
The sun is out and I’m going to give typing a try. It has been too cold and rough to do anything but bundle up and hold on tight. My computer’s thermometer reads 37 degrees Fahrenheit and falling. It already feels about zero when the sun goes behind a cloud. Judging by the barometric readings, I think we’re headed toward a snowstorm.
We picked up Malmud’s wondrous current as we once again approached the volcanoes of Sardinia. Paul now has the hang of influencing this floating helipad, and can generally steer it in the direction he chooses–as long as the wind cooperates. He made a sail by liberating two long poles from the body of the raft, cutting them in half, lashing them into a rectangle and filling the space between with leather from a trio of rolled bundles which held moldy grain until we poured the contents overboard. The sail is eight feet long and four feet high. He rigs it into position with ropes appropriated from the floats, and moves it here and there to alter its relation to the wind. He does a lot of standing and holding on to make sure the darn thing doesn’t blow away. Today it is stowed flat as we let the current do all the work.
The volcanoes were sad reminders of how far out of our way we have gone in the past three weeks. Two peaks were in full eruption, shooting geysers of lava thousands of feet into the air. Though the closest we passed was, at best, 30 miles, we had a day and a half of acrid smoke and falling ash. Paul said they used to call it “vog” in Hawaii. Volcanic smog. It made my throat burn.
Even so, nothing could dampen our joy. We were solidly in the grips of the current and headed in the proper direction. Accompanying us is a host of animals drifting north. Whales, porpoises, sharks, sea lions, turtles, krill, shrimp, jellyfish and uncountable other life forms–all using the cold water highway to carry, or at least help propel them, toward the Ligurian Sea.
A friendly pod of humpback whales spent several hours with us this morning. Drifting with the boat, they showered us occasionally with their exhales of air and salt water. Not the best breath I’ve smelled, but there was something about going eye-to-eye with those whales. I swear, we connected in some way. Rolling on its side, a leviathan thrice the length of the raft rested its barnacle-encrusted pectoral fin on the deck long enough for the three of us to touch it. Hard and smooth. Black. Now that was truly a connection.
Paul rigged a little net out of Malmud’s gear a few days ago and we have added shrimp and krill to our menu. He has become re-energized as captain of this ship. One of his first edicts was to institute mandatory exercise periods three times a day. He pointed out, correctly, we have gotten soft in our forced confinement.
He leads us in a Tai chi stretching workout in the morning, strength and fitness in the afternoon and 30 minutes of karate blocks, kicks and thrusts before dinner. Gray Beard thought we were crazy at the start, but Paul coaxed him into participating. As a man who has grown up using martial arts, Gray Beard quickly saw the benefits of sharpening ourselves before we land.
Paul and I toughed it out as long as we could, but both donned our jumpsuits last week. I have my helmet on today and feel a bit queasy. It didn’t make sense being cold and uncomfortable all the time. Although Gray Beard has seen the suits before, they have been an unspoken topic. One we have always just danced around and never addressed. I caught him staring at the sleeve of my suit yesterday. I offered my arm to let him feel the material. Turned off, it is light beige. Smooth like leather, the lightweight armor has the elasticity of rubber and tensile strength of titanium. He asked to use one of my magnifying glasses. Peering through the lens, he studied the hundreds of thousands of dots, the optic rods.
Each rod is either a receiver or projector. When activated, the receivers sample the world around the suit. Projectors on the exact opposite side of each receiver display the image which is sampled. Since vision is a straight line process, the projectors make the wearer blend with the background to appear invisible. Such a poor explanation, but my fingers are cold and it will have to do. If you’re reading this, you probably know more about the things than I do.
Anyway, Gray Beard was inspecting my jumpsuit when Paul sat down and we gave him “The Talk.” Not about sex. After all we have been through together, the guy deserved the truth. Or some version of it. Explaining how we sailed in from 32,000 years in the future is a tough concept to sell to a guy who counts in hands. We told him we came from a place far away. He shook his head and said he had figured out that much on his own.
“You once had powerful weapons. Big noise. Do you still carry them?” he signed with his hands.
I pretended to break a stick with my hands. “They broke.”
“Mertoon-Elly’s weapons? Are they broken?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Too bad.”
It transpired that Gray Beard knew a lot more than we had given him credit for. He was in the trees above the beach when the Italians gunned down the women and children from his clan. His wife was one of the victims. They had rushed to the ocean after seeing the inundation of the tsunami sweep upstream past Bear Camp.
The waves were not uncommon, he said. They hit that coast every hand or two of years. The women were so anxious to find shells, survey the destruction, they raced ahead of the group. He and the stragglers heard thunder as they approached the tre
e line. They emerged to see two men appear to walk across the debris-strewn beach with only the top half of their bodies showing. The wife and four other blood-soaked clan members lay still on the beach as the apparitions floated past. The old man’s companions fled at the sight, but he sat and watched the Italians roam the beach. Bolzano and Amacapane had pulled their jumpsuits down to their waists to cool off from carrying all the bodies and flotsam.
Gray Beard said, even then, he could make out the wavering images of their legs and the bodies of other people. One was the outline of Duarte, one was Jones and the other Martinelli. He saw Paul paddle to shore, and saw three of us leave. Later, on the river, when the Italians visited his camp, he knew it was all some sort of evil trick. He told the clans. Nobody would believe him.
That first night on the beach, he remained high in a tree well past dark, hoping to retrieve his wife’s body. He witnessed the noisy battle between the wolves and Italians, our shipmates’ retreat to the sea. By then, his spouse and family members had been consumed by the raging fire. There was nothing to do but walk back to camp.
“I know you are good people. I don’t like these clothes of yours.”
TRANSMISSION:
Martinelli: “If my father were here, he’d teach you about respect.”
Bolzano: “What sort of man was your father? You have endured hundreds of stories about my Sire and his gardens and wine cellars, yet I do not recall one mention of yours. What was his name, what did he do?”
Martinelli: “Mio papa was a small man with a small job and a small paycheck. Giuseppe Martinelli basically worked for food. For climbing the scaffolding, harvesting and planting everything from wheat to tomatoes, he earned a two-bedroom apartment with enough window to grow his own garden. We slept like cadavers on narrow shelves, seven kids in one bedroom. Until the age of 12, we never officially left the building. Of course we snuck out at night once we learned how. All schoolwork was done on the family monitor, we played in the halls and the basement tunnels.”
Bolzano: “A normal enough upbringing.”
Martinelli: “It’s true. I had friends who endured much worse. We were comfortably lower-middle class and I hated it.”
Bolzano: “What fueled such loathing?”
Martinelli: “My father, of course. Giuseppe Martinelli was the most detested man in the community. As his offspring, we too were spit upon by just about everybody.”
Bolzano: “What did he do?”
Martinelli: “Mi papa was proud his job gave him opportunity to peep and spy upon the residents of our building. He scurried about the building like a rat, collecting bits and pieces of information he sold to the building supervisor in exchange for protection, and enough money to send my younger bother Matteo to seminary in Rome.”
Bolzano: “But I thought you were the oldest. Why didn’t they send you?”
Martinelli: “I was to go. Passed the tests, suffered through two interviews and was accepted. My mother was sewing me a second set of traveling clothes when father brought home the news my admission had been withdrawn. You see, about that time in our building, a series of animals, mostly chickens and ducks, had been poisoned. He blamed me. How did you put it, Rabbit? I wished I were innocent?”
Bolzano: “Yes, we always do when the authorities play their final card.”
Martinelli: “My own old man finked me out. He drew praise from the priest for his honesty. My bright brother took my place in Rome, and I went off to the army.”
Bolzano: “How did it turn out for Matteo, did he go on to become a priest?”
Martinelli: “Matteo died in an accident. His dormitory room was consumed by fire. They thought maybe he was smoking in bed.”
Bolzano: “What a shame.”
Martinelli: “Yes, it was terrible. I was visiting him that weekend. You ever go to Pistoia?”
Bolzano: “No, I never had the pleasure. We went to Firenze fairly often, of course.”
Martinelli: “Yes, of course. Pistoia always stood in Firenze’s shadow. The churches in our historical section had the same styles of marble, the same architecture as Firenze, just less grand. The green, white and red marble you see in the Duomo in Firenze, we had the same stuff in Pistoia. Only better.”
Bolzano: “So why don’t we halt here for Easter?”
Martinelli: “You’re a lazy son of a bitch, do you know that?”
Bolzano: “So I have heard.”
Martinelli: “We said Firenze. It will be Firenze. Besides, I promised Cardinal Sellaro I would bury him some quality artifacts. We must make sure it happens.”
From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano
Firefighter II
(English translation)
Icebergs and swans float down the River Arno as the natives pitch our camp along its marshy shore. I judge we are roughly where Accademia will be built, but that is purely a guess. Without the towers of the Duomo and Uffizi Gallery to serve as reference points, I am lost.
If my father, the Great Heroic Lorenzo Martinelli, insists this is Firenze, then it is Firenze. Who am I to argue? He kept up a running commentary along the way from Pistoia. As we navigated the foothills of the Appennino, doing our best to skirt the Arno’s lowland quagmire, he described in great detail where the railroad lines passed desiccated flower farms and abandoned villages.
“Imagine wasting water on flowers, what a joke,” he said with a shake of his head. I didn’t bother mentioning how my mother so loved her weekly bouquets of peonies, roses and daffodils.
After one last bout of snowflakes and arctic winds, winter is finally yielding to spring. Though the beech, oak and hazelnut trees remain bare, millions of delicate purple flowers poke through the earth in sunlit patches, as if to cry out, “Do not give up hope! Warm weather and happy days are on their way.”
I wish I could be so certain it was true.
TRANSMISSION:
Martinelli: “These tall pines will be perfect for a cross.”
Bolzano: “I thought I would use oak.”
Martinelli: “Oak? You don’t have time for oak. The wood is too hard. Besides, pine is lighter. You need to be able to carry it.”
Bolzano: “Me, carry it? I don’t carry things. I have people to carry things. I sing and I think.”
Martinelli: “As my son, you will need to carry the cross to the Palm Sunday service.”
Bolzano: “Let us cut to the chase, Lorenzo. Are you planning to nail me to the fucking thing? Is that what this is about?”
Martinelli: “Oh, Rabbit, it’s good to hear some Bolzano spunk. I have missed your sass. Why would I nail you to the cross? You are the only person who understands me, who shares a past history with me. It’s pure theatrics, that’s all. You worry too much.”
Bolzano: “You are damn right I worry. Wouldn’t you, if you were in my shoes?”
Martinelli: “Shoes haven’t been invented yet. Sal, don’t worry about nothing. All I want you to do is make me the best cross anyone has ever seen. Your boys can help, but most of the work must be done by you. Understood?”
Bolzano: “What if I refuse?”
Martinelli: “Then I really will nail you up. There are no options. You make me a cross and I’ll find someone who deserves to hang on it for Easter Sunday Mass. It’s simple.”
From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano
Firefighter II
(English translation)
Wolves stole in from the hills to devour a pair of Tattoo children today. Poor things were harvesting grubs from rotten logs when the beasts caught them alone and unprotected less than a kilometer from camp. Even I heard the screams and savage howls.
By the time a squad of adults arrived, the dogs had reduced the brother and sister down to two heads, each dragging a bloody tail of vertebrae. The grizzly remains induced much wailing and pounding on chests as they were carried reverently into camp. The tragedy will do nothing to improve the already-flagging mood of Lorenzo’s congregation.
He casts about for a way
to rekindle the magic of those first heady weeks after his great fire. With the coming of spring, the clans long to return to the herds, to hunt and gather across the vast plains and swamps of France. They don’t call it France, of course. To them it is “Bourdqueek,” which basically translates to “The Land.”
Though lovely, the Tuscan countryside does not sustain migratory herds. It is as full of new and different plants and animals as it is devoid of many of the varieties the clans have come to know and rely upon. There seems to be plenty of deer, horse, goat, pig and lesser game like rabbit, water fowl and grouse, but Tomon laments the lack of mega-fauna like mammoth, auroch, red deer, hairy rhino and hippo. He says if the Great Father were to kill a mammoth, the people would eat well for many hands of days.
He and Gertie are having trouble finding the proper roots, mosses, and other goodies to re-stock their medicine and herbal supplies. Many of their staples are not present in this environment. “I wish Grandfather were here,” is a familiar refrain.
They have helped me fell a pair of pine trees and trim away their limbs. I expected to chop the trees down with dull, stone tools, but Tomon insisted there was an easier way. We built fires at the base of each tree and kept them fed throughout the afternoon until they toppled over. As Gertie and I fed the fires, Tomon constructed an adze out of a large chunk of flint and a piece of oak root driftwood. After flaking the stone to a keen edge, he used leather strips to attach it to the oak.
He showed me how the limbs sheared off easily with a solid chop right where they joined the trunk. We utilized the fire technique once again to size the trunks to their proper length. Tomorrow we will remove the bark and smooth the surfaces in preparation for notching the post and crossbeam.
My helpers understand what we are making. They had many chances to study the ivory cross before it cartwheeled down the hill to smash into a million bits.
The story of its demise is oft told at campfires around the camp. I imagine the Tattoos argue about whose fault it was, while the Porters and other “lesser folk” revel in the memory of how their persecutors’ faces drained of color as they ran behind the cross, shouting for it to stop. Gertie tells how Tomon yanked her off the path just in time to avoid the mammoth tusks as they bounced by.
Tuscany Page 11
