And, in fact, a moment later, Achille arrived at a trot. Locanda gave some silent signal that meant nothing to me, but the porter got the message. He ducked back out of the room only to return straightaway with a huge platter of steaming spaghetti.
Once we’d all served ourselves the first course and dusted our dishes generously with pepper and Parmigiano cheese, the conversation ceased and we attacked our hunger using our flatware as weapons and napkins as shields.
“I’m worried about her,” said Tato between forkfuls of spaghetti aglio e olio. “That rash is spreading. I hope it’s not contagious.”
“Rashes are not appropriate dinner conversation,” said Locanda in a soft but stern voice.
I eyed him from my seat. Slouching in his chair in a languid, patrician manner, cigarette burning between his fingers, he’d barely touched his food. I wondered about the etiquette of smoking during a meal, but this man clearly did things his own way. He reached for the glass of wine before him—a Gavi—squinted at the pale liquid, and raised it to his nose. He sniffed, frowned, then put the glass down. He thumped the sledgehammer again.
“Mi dica, signore,” said Achille, who had been preparing some plates on the sideboard nearby.
“Sa di tappo,” said Locanda, flicking a finger under his nose. “It’s corked.”
Achille nearly threw his back out bowing and scraping and apologizing to the master. He promised to bring a new bottle immediately and began snatching the glasses from the other diners, whether they objected to the wine or not. Scarcely a minute later, he’d wrenched the cork from another bottle, poured himself a splash, and tasted the wine. Nodding smartly, he offered a few drops to Locanda in a fresh glass, of course, and our host pronounced the replacement acceptable with a slow blink and curt bob of his head. Achille filled our glasses again and withdrew.
I watched Locanda the whole time. Now, with the drama over, he took a bite of his spaghetti and a sip of the Gavi. Then his gaze crossed mine. He’d caught me staring at him. I looked away and struck up a conversation with Bernie across the table, asking him if he’d heard any baseball scores recently.
“Baseball?” he asked. “I don’t follow sports. And how would I hear about baseball here?”
“There’s the Herald Tribune,” I offered.
As noted before, Locanda sat at the head of the table to my left. Vicky was on his other side. She glared at me. I must have been too obvious in my contemplation of our host, her lover, because she seemed to have discovered a new antipathy for me. To counter my attentions, she began fawning over Locanda, offering to serve him food, fill his glass, and rub his arm, which probably didn’t need rubbing at all. But she performed all these tasks with great care, much to the visible annoyance of her man. He grumbled at her to stop—“Vittoria, basta. You’re annoying me.” He even twitched when she attempted a loving touch of his cheek with her long fingers. He asked her if there was food on his face.
Franco sat to my right and, as I’d anticipated, his inability to hold his drink had emboldened him to undertakings of awkward seduction. His hand strayed into my airspace at regular intervals, probing the vigilance of my defenses, as he soaked up more wine like a blotter. Throughout dinner, he insisted on monopolizing my attention, all the while addressing my breasts by my name. I fired repeated nasty glares at Bernie, who was marooned at the far end of the table, engrossed in a conversation with Lucio about some stupid school of Italian poets from the twelfth or thirteenth century. Or maybe they were discussing the weight of a bowling ball on Neptune, I really couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that he’d broken his pact to keep me free from Franco’s attention as promised. I vowed to have my revenge on Bernie Sanger later.
With no knight in armor to protect me, I inched away from my neighbor, unwittingly approaching Locanda on the other side until my elbow was practically planted in the center of his plate. I might as well have thrown gasoline on the flame of Vicky’s wrath. She fumed and stroked Locanda’s arm all the more vigorously to counter my perceived advances. No one was happy, except perhaps Bernie and Lucio, who were becoming fast friends over their fondness of astronomy, physics, and—presumably—inter-planetary bowling. And, of course, Tato, who was never more content than when beholding Giuliana’s beauty.
A word about language. My Italian, though functional and much improved over the past year, was nevertheless plagued by frequent gaps in vocabulary and nuance, all of which hindered fluent, trouble-free communication with my new acquaintances. To greater or lesser degrees, the Italians suffered similar difficulties with English.
Franco Sannino, for example, spoke English with the naïve lack of awareness of, say, a provincial who’s never visited the capital but thinks his Sunday best is the latest rage in fashion. He knew a good number of words, of course, and got his message across, but not without first mesmerizing whosoever was listening with his bumbling attempts at natural English accent and correct grammatical constructions. His usage was precious, at times comical, but always compelling. Even worse were his comprehension skills. As a result, our exchange of ideas never qualified as deep. In our interactions, he and I tended to stick to Italian.
Locanda spoke with great precision in both languages. While it was clear he was not a native speaker of English, he displayed remarkable fluency and command of idiomatic expressions. Mostly we communicated in English unless others less gifted in the language arts were present.
Bernie and I spoke English, of course. But his Italian, as noticed by all, was remarkable. Fluent and versatile. His accent was precise, thanks to years of study and a natural propensity for language. He quickly became the resource everyone relied on whenever a difficult phrase or an arcane term needed translating.
Lucio spoke English the way a drunken sailor might recite the Rime of the Ancient Mariner after a cursory glance at the text. The pauses, ums, restarts, and protracted searches for the simplest words would have sent even the most patient interlocutor running for the exit. A greeting as basic as hello could, and usually did, lurch into an auto wreck of limping syntax and twisted morphology. I’m not sure how I managed to understand him, but the light always seemed to blink to life in my head at the last moment and I got it. I think . . . We mostly communicated in Italian. He only seemed interested in singing me love songs anyway. And swearing a most entertaining blue streak whenever things went wrong.
After that first dinner at the villa, Vicky Hodges’s eyes did most of the talking between us, so it didn’t actually matter that we shared the same mother tongue. But her Italian was atrocious. I pitied poor Professor Crocetti who’d been sentenced to giving her lessons.
Veronica and Giuliana both spoke reasonably good English, but they preferred Italian most of the time. Tato had studied in England, and his command of the language was excellent. Since the group was mostly Italophone, however, Italian dominated as the lingua franca during our time at the villa.
As the diners savored the spaghetti, a fierce debate broke out between Lucio and Tato over the match between Italy and Chile at the previous year’s World Cup tournament, now known notoriously as the Battaglia di Santiago (Battle of Santiago). The disgraceful behavior culminated in the ejection of two Italian players from the game. When one of them refused to leave the field, he was dragged off by the Chilean police. Lucio and Tato’s disagreement escalated, though I couldn’t understand why, since they seemed to be on the same side. To wit, that the Italian team had been treated unfairly by the English referee, and Italy surely would have gone on to win the tournament if not for the cheating by the host country. And of course the aforementioned English referee.
Achille appeared and removed their plates, even as they held their forks aloft, still loaded with food. Poor Giuliana. With Lucio and Tato on either side of her, buffeting her with their raised voices, breath, and flying spittle, she bore the brunt of the misery caused by the ridiculous argument. I begged them to be more considerate and leave talk of sports and politics outdoors. Lucio and Tato apologized, promis
ing each other to settle the matter later in private.
Thirsty from having shouted himself hoarse, Lucio asked Vicky in English to pass the wine. He needed three tries to make himself understood. And with Vicky temporarily distracted, I had the opportunity to cast a few more glances Locanda’s way. It was obvious that he was still an attractive man. In his day he must have been a lady-killer. And that led me to wonder again about his past. He was of a generation that had come of age under the fascist regime after all. What had he done in the war? And during the Ventennio, Italy’s twenty-year-long fascist era? He would have been in his mid-twenties and -thirties at the time. Had he belonged to the party? Served in the army?
He was a distant, almost indifferent host. It wasn’t that he was begrudging of the largess he bestowed on his guests, nor demanding of acknowledgement of the same. Rather he seemed not to care about them at all. He was quiet, not inviting anyone inside his private world, not even his lover, Vicky, who now ate in silence beside him. It was as if he were trying to fade into the surroundings as the evening grew late.
“Do you think Veronica is all right?” I asked the others. “Maybe I’ll go check on her.”
Franco dismissed my concerns. “She’ll be fine in the morning.”
I dabbed my lips, pushed back my chair, and excused myself. Upstairs in my room, Veronica was asleep under the whirling ceiling fan. Her breathing was regular, not strained at all. I put a hand on her forehead to check her temperature, which felt normal to me. Confident she was on the mend, I returned to the table downstairs just as Achille charged into the dining room.
Bearing a tray laden with two fresh carafes of white wine and three bottles of acqua minerale, both naturale and frizzante, he moved quickly, efficiently, head-down and lips pressed tightly together, as if concentrating on a task as exacting as threading a needle. After distributing the water bottles evenly among the diners, he wiped his perspired brow with the back of his hand, huffed a couple of deep breaths as he surveyed the table for anything missing, then scampered back to the kitchen to receive the marching orders from Berenice for his next task.
A moment later he re-emerged, this time carrying a large platter loaded chest-high with plates of food. Berenice followed on his heels to supervise. Once the dishes had been doled out, she announced the menu in her thick Tuscan accent—h- for -c-, -th- for -t-. I noticed, for example, that she addressed our host as Signor Lohanda. The second course was a lombatina di vitello ai ferri (grilled loin of veal), boiled fagioli, and patate arrosto alla ghiotta (roasted potatoes in meat drippings).
“Has anyone heard from the police today?” asked Bernie as we ate. Franco, feeling ever more talkative under the influence of the wine, volunteered that he’d spoken to Inspector Peruzzi that morning to give him the address of Bel Soggiorno and the list of the guests. I wondered if he’d remembered Veronica’s name.
“Anything new?” asked Bernie.
Franco took a bite of his veal, and before he could answer, his eyes rolled back in his head and he moaned in bliss. “Che buono questo vitello.”
“The inspector?” prompted Bernie.
“Sorry. Nothing certain yet. He won’t rule out an accident, but he thinks it might have been a deliberate act. I told him that was crazy, shocking. Pazzesco. Allucinante. Alberto had no enemies. Perhaps not a lot of friends, but no one hated him. No one.”
“Really?” I asked. “How can you be sure?”
Franco shrugged. “Who would want to kill Alberto?”
“I knew him better than anyone here,” piped up Locanda, surprising us all. “He made some enemies over the years.”
Franco gulped, and it wasn’t the veal he was swallowing. “I’m sorry?”
Locanda plucked a half moon of potato with his fork, daubed it in the veal drippings, and slipped it into his mouth to chew. “Alberto was not always so pious. He was once a hard man.”
Franco couldn’t quite accept the description of his mentor. Lucio sat mouth agape. I glanced around the table to gauge reactions, and noticed Giuliana shared none of their shock at the pronouncement. She took a bite of veal and a sip of her wine and waited to see how the next act would play out.
I decided to end the awkward silence. “Tell us about his youth,” I said. “After he returned from his education in the monastery.”
If Locanda had been reluctant to speak to any of us before, he granted us a rare privilege now.
“Alberto was a troubled soul,” he began, and all other conversation ceased. “I knew him from a very tender age, of course, but he returned from his time with the brothers as a different boy. He’d lost some of his physical brutality. Not all, but some. He was just eighteen, after all, and not a full-grown man yet. But his more violent urges seemed less . . . dominant.”
“Max, amore, you’re not eating,” said Vicky when he paused to take a breath. “Let me cut your veal for you.”
“No,” he said simply and quite rudely. Then he continued. “I chanced to meet Alberto in a bookshop in Via del Castellaccio, near the university. I was shopping for some books for my classes, and ran into him doing the same. I greeted him, tried to embrace him. But he turned away. It was a jolt to me, I confess. Alberto and I had been friends as boys. Until he was sent away.”
He took a sip of wine and ran his tongue over his teeth, upper then lower, as if to dislodge a bit of veal or potato. Vicky was still flushed in reaction to his recent censure and made no moves to wipe his lips with a napkin.
“What did you say to him?” I asked.
Locanda took another bite of the veal, chewed on it for a long moment, then resumed.
“I asked after his health, of course, when he’d returned to Florence, and things of that nature. He told me he was back for good from the friars who’d been instructing him for nearly six years. Of course I was overjoyed at the news and the luck of finding an old friend again. I invited him for a coffee, and we left the shop. But not before he slipped two expensive books under his coat.”
All chewing stopped.
“You mean he stole the books?” asked Lucio.
Locanda nodded, pushed his plate to one side, and sat back in his chair. I couldn’t be sure who at the table was most upset or surprised by the news. Franco was inebriated, but he managed to summon some indignation, announcing that he, for one, didn’t believe it.
“Believe what you will,” said Locanda, clearly indifferent to Franco’s outrage.
“It’s fantastic,” added Lucio, shaking his head. “Amazing. Bondinelli was such a righteous man.”
“Sanctimonious hypocrite,” said Giuliana, nearly spitting her words. “Bigotto.”
Tato, who’d turned white, grasped her hand in attempts to silence her. His eyes darted back and forth between the object of his desire and Franco Sannino, who might well do irrevocable harm to her academic career. For her part, Giuliana appeared satisfied with having had her say. She fell quiet, offered nothing more on the subject, but didn’t retract her statement either. In fact she sat as still as a statue, and the only movement I could detect was the steady rise and fall of her breathing and the hint of a budding smile on her lips.
Franco tried to argue with her—convince her that Bondinelli had been a just man—but his faculties weren’t completely engaged and he would have lost the debate in a first-round knockout if debates were settled that way.
“What do you say to that?” I asked Locanda, wanting to know if he’d defend his friend. “Was he a hypocrite?”
He shrugged then explained in his well-marinated voice. “Alberto’s life was a long road with many unexpected turns and detours. He was a wicked boy after his sister, Cecilia, died. Then he was a tortured boy at the hands of the friars.”
He had our attention.
“Tortured? Do you mean . . . ?” asked Lucio.
“They beat him, punished him, deprived him, damned him. And, yes, even worse. Crimes against a young boy. Alberto told me that day we went for coffee. The day he stole the books.”
&n
bsp; Alcohol has a way of nudging those who are less resistant to its effects from laughter to tears in a trice. And so it was with Franco Sannino, who wiped his eyes and hung his head.
“This is too much,” he said. “Poor soul. He was a good man who suffered much.” Then he aimed a glare at Giuliana. “He lost his sister and was abused. And still he found God and righteousness. You should never have said those things about him.”
Lucio intervened, urging calm all around. “Now is not the moment.”
Tato, also eager to help, tried to pat Giuliana’s hand, but she yanked it away.
“Ragazzi, please,” said Locanda. “I shouldn’t have said anything. This is not a conversation for the dinner table. We’ll change the subject.”
But I was intrigued. Locanda had been poised to say more about Bondinelli’s life and that meeting for coffee after the book theft, but Franco’s drunken tears interrupted him. How I wanted to pose one last question about which detours the late professor’s road had taken after serving his time with the friars. There was, after all, a lot of his life still unaccounted for. But, as Lucio had said, now wasn’t the moment.
Sitting on my hands in the tense silence that followed Franco’s out-burst, I considered Giuliana from across the table. I couldn’t decide which I wanted to know more, the subsequent chapters of Alberto Bondinelli’s contradictory history or why she hated him so.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
After dinner, which had turned to ashes on at least a couple of guests’ tongues, we were invited to repair to the salone for coffee, digestivi, and conversation. I said I’d be right along, and gathered Bernie by the elbow, dragging him to a darkened room down the corridor.
“El, I’m spoken for,” he said once we were alone behind the closed door. “But if you truly can’t resist me, I’m willing to let you have your way with me.”
“I didn’t shanghai you for fun and games. Besides, after thirty seconds with me, you’d be spent like a burnt matchstick. A puff of breath away from breaking in two.” And I blew a gentle kiss at him.
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