The Maestro

by T. Davis Bunn

  I sat and listened to my music and remembered my grandfather. There was a large cafe on our village’s central courtyard where my grandfather liked to go. On warm days chairs and tables were spread out amid the dusty grass and oak trees, and children would dart and squeal around the old men gathered there. The cafe itself was a raucous, smelly, voluminous hall, filled mostly with old men arguing politics and football around rickety tables, or watching the masters play biliardo di birilli, a form of pool where the balls are rolled by hand.

  Once again I heard my grandfather’s voice, and felt how he used to gather me up when I would come for him. He would point out things, his voice low and droning, the unexpressed chuckle always just below the surface. His hands were as rough as the rock he cut and shaped and formed and laid in place. His clothes were dusty and sweaty and smelly. His eyes were alight with the pure pleasure of enjoying that most special moment of his day as he sat and held me and watched the people around us.

  Once I asked my grandfather the questions that my grandmother would not answer, about who this God was and why He had taken my mother away from me. I asked him how I was supposed to speak to somebody I couldn’t even see, and how He could even know who I was with all the other people everywhere. I asked my silent, softly smiling grandfather with his grizzled cheeks and rough hands and shining eyes how God could love me and leave me so alone. I let him hold me in his enormously strong arms as I struggled to ask if God could find me, even after I had traveled halfway around the world to this little cottage by the lake.

  My grandfather waited until I was quiet again and all the questions were over. Then he pointed with his finger to a bird singing from the nearby shrub, and he said, “Shhh, listen. Do you hear that? God doesn’t hear just you, little one. He hears every bird in every tree all over the world. And look over there, do you see the little leaf falling? God sees every leaf falling from every tree, even in the darkest night in the strongest wind, when millions and millions of leaves are falling all at once, He sees every one of them. Now think for a moment, my Giovanezzo, if such a great God as this can see the littlest and greatest, how are we to understand why He does what He does? Our task is to love Him. To obey Him. To trust Him. When this life is over, then we will be able to stand before Him and ask Him why. For now, to obey is enough.”

  My grandfather loved people and their voices and their laughter. He would sit for hours in the cafe, talking and listening and nodding and laughing and drinking, not because he wanted to drink but because it granted him entry into the world his heart craved. He would take me in his arms when I came to call him to dinner, and he would point out people to me. “Look at the way he stands,” my grandfather would say. “Look how he favors that shorter leg. I was with him the day he was caught in the landslide. I carried him down that cursed mountain on my back. And look at that one’s eyes; see how they glitter when he laughs, and watch now, see how they cloud over when someone wants to quarrel. You must watch out for men who show swift emotions in their eyes, Giovanezzo, they’re weak and shallow and drift with every wind. They have no base, no rock to hold on to, and they’re not to be trusted. And that one there; see how he always has one eye on his dog and one on his drink. Those are the two things he lives for. Is that not a lonely life? And the old one sitting there, smiling at everyone; see how grateful he is to those who stop and say hello. He doesn’t have a little Giovanni to make his days so full, does he? Do you think maybe we should go over and say hello before we leave? Do you think he would like that? Do you think your grandmother will understand why we are so late again? Come, let us say hello to the other old man.”

  I curled up on my seat in the gently rocking, drumming train. I sat quietly and let the music and the memories lull me, careful to hide my face in the crook of my arm so that no one in the compartment could see my tears.

  The trip from Como to Dusseldorf took eleven hours. The final thirty minutes from Cologne to Dusseldorf lasted an eternity. I sat quietly in the middle seat with my grandmother between me and the window, and tried hard not to think of what would happen when we arrived.

  My grandmother’s face was set in hard lines as she stared bleakly out her window. Her chin jutted forward in grim determination. One hand clenched and knotted a small lace handkerchief in her lap. The other grasped her rosary, but the fingers did not move, and I felt none of the peace that usually accompanied her prayers.

  She wore a gray wool dress and jacket of severe style, a suit she kept folded away for important occasions. I had seen that suit a great deal since my grandfather’s funeral, and I did not like it. My grandmother was an austere woman—not tall, but shaped with the sharp chisel-strokes of determination—and the suit magnified her edges and accented the hardness of her features. Whatever softness I knew in my grandmother disappeared when she wore that suit. With her iron-gray hair pulled tightly back and held in place by a myriad of pins and clips, my grandmother looked forbidding and unapproachable.

  Our compartment had two rows of three hard seats facing each other, with a glass door opening into the hallway. All of the other seats were full. I studied the people in our compartment, with their silent unsmiling faces and blank eyes busy with papers and books and knitting. No one met my gaze; I did not exist for them. I felt the void grow and grow inside me until I felt I could not breathe.

  In the afternoon light there did not appear to be any sky outside our window. Smokestacks and factories jutted upward into the leaden grayness like dark silhouettes. The clouds were so solid and heavy that I could not tell how high they were. I wondered why it did not rain when the sky looked like that.

  My heart was thudding loudly in my ears as we entered the city. I watched the train pass along crowded avenues and flashing lights and windows darkened in ignorance of my arrival. Up and over the city streets we rose, past soot-darkened buildings that walled us in, past the long snaking tangle of railroad tracks, slower now, and we were there. My grandmother began giving me orders about taking the luggage down, brushing my breakfast and lunch from my clothes, straightening my jacket, hauling the bags through the narrow door and down the three stairs onto the platform. Once outside I stood in the cold strange-smelling air and listened to the speaker overhead blare a message I could not understand. A gust of wet wind whipped through my clothes, robbing me of the train’s warmth.

  Through the silent throngs came my father. I set the luggage down, straightened myself up, and wondered what I should do. His face was scarred with deep grooves and shadows that I did not remember. He spotted my grandmother stepping out of the train, and his lips tightened into a thin, bloodless line.

  I looked up at my grandmother. Her face was as tight and grim as my father’s. I felt a force emanating from both of them, a hard unyielding power reflected in their strong set chins and dark eyes. I looked from one to the other and felt weak and afraid and trapped by their strength.

  The struggle between them broke as my father dropped his eyes to me. He searched my face, holding me still and breathless with his gaze. Then the hardness seemed to melt away, falling like a curtain from his features to leave behind a sudden softness and pain. His eyes brimmed full of a love and longing and anguish that made him seem as helpless as I felt. His chin trembled slightly. Then my father returned his gaze to my grandmother, and I watched his face settle back into those hard lines.

  “You still don’t understand anything,” my father said. “You never will.”

  “You’re talking nonsense!” my grandmother snapped back. “Help us with the bags.”

  My father surveyed the scattered pieces of luggage and stiffened when he spotted the two at my feet. He pointed at the square black case. “What’s that?”

  “Enrico’s accordion,” my grandmother said. “The boy’s playing it now.”

  My father glared at the other case at my feet. There was no need to say anything. Its shape could hold nothing but a guitar.

  He grabbed the two bags nearest him, turned for the exit, and flung at my g
randmother, “Not in my house!”

  I stared in alarm at my father, then looked to my grandmother. She shook her head. Wait. Not now. I pushed back at rising fears and put my faith in her strength.

  My father drove the short distance in silence. I sat in the backseat, working out what I was going to tell my grandmother as soon as we were alone. My grandmother stared blindly through a dripping window at somber buildings and crowded streets. It had finally started to rain.

  My father stopped in front of a gray stucco building that stretched the entire block, with doors set at regular intervals. Three floors of small square windows faced out at the rain and the clanging streetcars and the traffic drumming by on the cobblestone street.

  “Make sure you lock the doors,” my father said, and got out of the car.

  My grandmother opened her door and called out, “What about the luggage?”

  “Leave the bags,” he called back. When he arrived at the entrance and saw we were not moving, he shouted, “This isn’t Italy, Mama! The bags are safe in the car.”

  Before my grandmother could get out of the car I said to her, “I want to go home.”

  “Not now,” she said, standing up.

  “I hate this place,” I said, scrambling out. I was desperate to stop her and turn her around. “Why are we here? He doesn’t want us—”

  “Come on!” my father shouted from the entrance.

  “Lock your door, Giovanni,” my grandmother said, and started toward my father.

  We followed him through the massive oak door and into the foyer. Large square ceramic tiles gave way to linoleum-covered stairs with a tall wooden banister. Set in the ceiling overhead were plain white lamps giving meager light. The hall was quiet and gray and spotlessly clean and smelled vaguely of disinfectant. Quiet murmurs came from behind various doors as we climbed to the second floor. My father opened the first door on the landing, walked in, and called for Anna.

  “Sit down,” he said, pointing to a doorway on his right. “I’ll make us some coffee. Anna!” He walked down a short hallway and disappeared.

  I followed my grandmother into a room with white unadorned walls and gray carpet. A stern sofa and two matching chairs sat facing a coffee table with plastic flowers in a small vase. A large television stood against the opposite wall. At the other side of the room sat a dining table with four chairs. A cupboard in the same reddish wood as the chairs and table rose almost to the low ceiling. Outside the two square windows the traffic rumbled.

  My grandmother looked slowly around the room, sighed, walked over and sat down on the sofa. I sat down beside her.

  “I want to go home,” I said. “I don’t—”

  “I know what you want and what you don’t want,” my grandmother said quietly. She looked very tired. “But we have to face realities, Giovanni. I know you are young, but we cannot put this off any longer. I am seventy-three years old. Do you understand what I am saying? Seventy-three years is too old to look after a child alone. What would you do if something happened to me?”

  “I can look after myself,” I said, leaning so far toward her I was almost on my knees.

  “No you can’t, and don’t talk nonsense,” she said crossly. “You must have someone to help care for you, and I am too old to do it alone. Finish. Do you hear me? The time for nonsense is finished.”

  She took the lace handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her lips. “That leaves us two choices, Giovanni. You can go with your uncles to Buenos Aires. They have said yes, although they don’t much like the idea. How could they? Their brother is still alive, he is healthy, he has a good job; why should they take his son? But they will.”

  She looked at me, her dark eyes deep and unblinking. “My little Giovanni, I am too old to begin a new life in South America. Germany, yes. I will be close enough to return home every now and then. But not South America. It is too far for an old woman.” She paused. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  I looked at her in horror. Slowly I nodded my head.

  “You have already lost one family,” my grandmother said. “It is too much to ask of a child to lose a second. As long as I am able, I will be here to care for you, figlio mio, but I cannot go to South America. It is too far.” Her voice was very quiet. “Now do you understand why we are in Germany?”

  Before I could say anything my grandmother focused on a sound in the hallway and reset her face into rigid lines. When my father and his new wife walked into the room, my grandmother and I were sitting silently side by side on the hard square sofa, our backs to the wall.

  “This is Anna,” my father said gruffly, not meeting our eyes. “She doesn’t understand Italian.”

  Anna was a sallow-faced thin woman with unkempt straw-colored hair. She looked much younger than my father. Eyes downcast, she set the coffee tray down on the table, said something to my father in German, and quietly left the room.

  My grandmother patted my knee. “Go out and play, Giovanni. We must talk, your father and I.”

  I looked at her. “Go,” she said quietly. “It is all right.”

  Silently I stood and walked from the room. My father did not raise his head from the cup in his hands.

  I walked out of the apartment and down the stairs, listening to my steps echo loudly through the white-walled hallway. I stopped before the massive front door, wondering how I was to open it. A shadow fell over the small pane of smoked glass set in the door’s center. I stepped back as a red-faced man pushed his way through the door, his arms heavily laden, and stopped to peer down at me. He said something in German.

  I swallowed. “Non capisco,” I said.

  He looked closer, the light glinting from his glasses. He needed a shave. And a bath. I backed away.

  He grunted, said something else, then walked up the stairs. I watched until he reached the first landing and turned to peer at me again.

  With both hands and a shoulder I managed to wedge myself between the door and its frame. As I twisted around and freed myself, I glimpsed the man still standing there, silently watching me.

  The house’s exterior was of stucco, as gray and heavy as the sky. I watched the faces of people as they went by, gray and expressionless like the man on the stairs. I shivered from the cold.

  From behind me a voice piped up in Italian, “The guy couldn’t bother to help out, I bet.”

  I whirled around. “What?”

  The kid was about my own age. He jerked a chin toward the apartment building. “With the door. It was too much trouble to help, right?”

  I nodded. “He just stood and watched me.”

  The boy spat the way an Italian woman does to show contempt, without really spitting anything. “Pazzi Tedeschi.” Crazy Germans. “I hit a stone on my bike the other day, fell into the street, almost got hit by a car. So there I am crawling around, trying to get my head back on straight, right? All shaky and everything because the wind was knocked outta me, and you know what? I look up and there on the sidewalk are a dozen fat Germans, all staring at me like they’re hoping the next car’s gonna squash me flat.” He spat again. “I hate this place.”

  I perked up. The kid was dressed in dirty patched overalls and a ratty sweater three sizes too big, and he talked like somebody I was pretty sure my grandmother would never invite into her home. His face had a hard, pinched, hungry look to it. But he hated this place and he was Italian. He was okay, this kid.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Giovanni di Alta,” I replied.

  “Okay, Gianni, you wanna candy?”

  I shrugged. Nobody had ever shortened my name like that before. And I had never met anybody who seemed so urgent about everything. He talked in staccato bursts, his body in constant motion. Twisting, arching, hooking his belt, talking with hands that stayed a blur.

  My shrug was all he needed. Swift as a dart he moved toward a grocery stall set in the corner of our building, a cellar shop like hundreds throughout Italy, with fruits and vegetables stacked in orderly r
ows along the outside walls. I did not have to look inside to know that the space would be tiny and cluttered and full from floor to ceiling with boxes and cans and bags. The kid hesitated at the point where the sidewalk descended three stone stairs to the wooden fruit stalls extending out like two overburdened arms, then jumped. He covered the distance in three strides, slid under the stalls and around the accordion-like metal doors, and disappeared into the shadow. I held my breath.

  The kid emerged, racing up the steps, did a three-point turn on the sidewalk, and flew past my nose.

  “Mario!” The woman’s scream made me jump. Dark unkempt hair and fiery eyes stuck out of the shop. “Figlio di un diavolo! You come back in here, an’ I’ll chop you up in little pieces!” The head disappeared.

  Mario danced across the curbstones, ignoring both me and the now-silent doorway. Feeling my eyes on him, he made a gesture to the shadows that my grandfather used to make to his cronies when he thought I was not looking. I was not sure what it meant, but I knew it was bad.

  The doorway remained empty.

  Mario repeated the arm movement and threw his entire body into the act. Then he strutted over, tossed me a candy bar, jerked a thumb at the grocery store, and said, “That was my mother the saint. I’d introduce you, but she’s busy blessing the congregation. You heard the way she blessed me?”

  I chewed and nodded. It was good candy.

  “She has a special way of blessing, my mother the saint does. When she’s really excited she can bless you three blocks away.” Mario grinned and attacked his candy. “I knew you were Italian ’cause I heard that old lady you were with yell at that guy. He a relative?”