Papa raises his glass. “Mia famiglia.” I smile at him. No matter how much I miss John, I know that one day I will be very glad I had the chance to make this trip with my father.
“Jesus, Pop, could you stop crying? We’re gonna get a reputation,” Exodus says, playfully looking over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I toast you, my family, who I love more than anything in this world. Tomorrow we see Venice, and then to my home. Salute!”
We raise our glasses and say, “Cent’anni,” a hundred years of health and happiness for all. Now even Exodus has tears in his eyes, but I don’t tease him, because I have them too.
CHAPTER EIGHT
There are three ways to get to Godega di Sant’Urbano: by car, by horse, or by foot. Our car resembles a turn-of-the-century model with a rumble seat, like you’d see at the Smithsonian. “Any minute I expect Teddy Roosevelt to crank the engine,” Mama says when she sees it. The only member of our group excited by the A-Type Citroën is Exodus, who knows the make of this Swiss nightmare and calls it vintage. The rest of us call it a wreck.
We pile into the car on what has to be the hottest day in Italian history. The trip is so arduous, Mama says her rosary three times, asking God to let the car last long enough to get us there safely. Godega was a small farming town until the community built a new church and convinced Pope Urban XXI to come and bless it. This brought prestige to the town, renamed Godega di Sant’Urbano, and the poor farmers were held up to all of Italy as an example of piety and perseverance.
After passing what seems like the tail end of civilization itself, we see a sign that says GODEGA DI SANT’URBANO. Godega has a very short main street that looks even smaller against the expanse of the farm fields behind it. There is a church, of course, one dry-goods store, one open-air café with tables and grass-green umbrellas, and a war monument, a sleek, engraved marble obelisk in the middle of a square of grass, enclosed by a chain draped on posts. A couple of horses, untied and unsaddled, stand near a portico where a few chickens scratch in the dirt.
“This is rustic,” Mama says, her voice lilting upward hopefully. Poor Mama. Raised on the rowdy streets of Brooklyn, she doesn’t quite share Papa’s feeling of excitement for homecoming on the farm. Yet I feel like Papa’s stories over the years have prepared me. Godega is exactly as he described it.
“I love it,” Orlando says, reading my mind. “I feel like I’m home.” While the other boys horsed around, Orlando would sit with me and listen to Papa’s tales of the Veneto.
The sky is a canopy of Mediterranean blue, not a cloud anywhere to break the brilliant color. The hills and pastures roll out like raw silk on a cutting table; wave after wave of wheat blows gently in the breeze. In the distance we see the Dolomite Mountains, their rocky faces the smudged gray of a pigeon’s feathers, their peaks the color of salt.
“Domenic! Eccoci qua!” Papa waves. His cousin, who is driving an open flatbed truck—another old wreck—honks when he sees us. Domenic pulls up and jumps out of the driver’s seat to embrace my father. He is around Papa’s age, with a full head of close-cropped gray hair and the broad shoulders of my father’s people. Two stunning girls follow him out of the cab, along with a woman his age.
“Wow-ee.” Angelo whistles under his breath when he sees the girls. One is tall and slender, with hair that hangs to her waist in a shiny cascade. She wears a sleeveless navy-blue cotton dress with sandals. The confident way she holds her head leads me to believe she may be older than she looks. If she came to New York, our model Irene Oblonsky would be out of a job. “This is my niece Orsola Spada,” Cousin Domenic tells us. My brothers make jackasses of themselves trying to get introduced at once, and poor Orsola is completely confused. “And this is my daughter Domenica,” Domenic says. She is equally beautiful, petite and curvy, and obviously has guts.
“And I am Bartolomea, Domenic’s wife.” Bartolomea, oddly enough, is a redhead with deep brown eyes. She has a lovely shape, too. Whatever they eat on the farm, it shows up well on the women.
Domenic helps us up into the back of the truck, where he has built two benches that we sit on, and there’s plenty of room for all of us once we put our luggage in the center. I wave to Papa and Roberto, who follow behind us in the car.
“This is quite an adventure,” Mama says to me pleasantly.
I nudge her and direct her gaze to Angelo and Orlando, who bookend Domenica and Orsola and are full of questions about the Veneto, acting as though they are in desperate need of tour guides to show them the sights.
“Idiots. They act like they’ve never seen a girl before,” Exodus huffs.
As the truck makes a turn down a dirt road, we are jostled like bales of hay. The road is lined with stalks of wheat so high, it’s like being in a tunnel. I look up at the sky. The sun hangs low, burning pink in the surrounding blue. Everything is different in Italy: the food, the heat, Papa’s emotions, my brothers’ antics, my mother’s newfound patience; everything but me. My heart is back home with John Talbot.
Domenic pulls up to a three-story stucco box in the middle of a clearing and helps us out of the truck. Papa has not seen his home since he was seventeen years old, and he begins to cry. Domenic pats Papa on the back forcefully, as though he is trying to dislodge something stuck in Papa’s windpipe. Only once Papa has dried his tears and blown his nose does Domenic stop patting. Bartolomea and the girls gather fresh vegetables from the garden while Domenic conducts a tour.
“Come, I show you the inside.” It doesn’t look like any farmhouse I’ve ever seen before. We follow Domenic into the house through two wide wooden doors and into what can only be described as a stable. The floor is covered with straw, and the windows are covered in blinds made of thin wood slats that have been raised. Even though it is midday, the room is dark. “The animals are at my farm. The donkey, two pigs.” Domenic thinks. “You want them back?”
“Absolutely not,” Mama says firmly.
A very thin chicken rustles under the hay in the corner, startling her. Domenic smiles. “Oh yes, the hen. For some reason, she stays.
“The living quarters are this way,” he goes on, and begins climbing a rough-hewn ladder up through a hole in the ceiling. We follow him like ants climbing a branch.
“Not bad!” Roberto, who is ahead of me, says. Papa helps me through the opening, then Mama.
“Zio Antonio lived here until the day he died,” Domenic tells us.
There is one enormous room with a long table, simple and homemade, and twelve chairs that have woven seats. The stucco walls are washed in a pale peach that turns to rose around the ceilings and baseboards. A nubby beige sofa and two chairs, low and deep, sit under the windows. The entire far end of the room is taken up by a fireplace made of gray fieldstones, some as large as a hatbox. I have never seen a hearth so large—I could stand in it! A collection of old farm tools hangs over the fireplace. The black tools against the gold background give the effect of tintypes in shadow boxes. There is one floor lamp with a simple rose glass shade. After seeing the stable downstairs, I’m relieved to see they have electricity.
“See, Maria. Simple. No knickknacks,” Papa teases her. “My wife has more dishes than a restaurant,” he says to Domenic.
Ignoring the joke, Mama asks, “Where do we sleep?”
“Upstairs.” Domenic points.
“Another ladder,” Mama remarks cheerfully, climbing up to the third floor. I follow her. There are two large bedrooms. Each has two twin beds, which seem like our beds back home until we sit on them. Instead of using box springs and mattresses, the beds are large open wood crates stuffed with straw-filled sacks. With sheets and a blanket over the top, they look like normal beds.
I sit on a bed and smooth the blanket. “It’s not too bad.”
“Now we know how the chicken feels.” Mama rolls her eyes.
Papa and Mama take one room, and Rosemary and I take the other. My brothers will sleep down in the stable. Before Roberto goes downstairs with my brothers, h
e embraces Rosemary, who buries her face in his neck. Their loss has made them even closer.
The garden is full of ripe tomatoes, yellow peppers, arugula, radishes, and potatoes. Domenic has prosciutto, strips of sweet ham, and bresaola, lean beef in paper-thin slices, both of which he cured in his own smokehouse. He also brought some of his own olive oil in a black flask and plenty of wine, a hearty red Chianti, in ceramic jugs.
Bartolomea takes Mama outside and shows her a hearth made of stone, with a tall chimney. There is a short stone wall next to it (for cooling whatever has been baked, I’m guessing) and another table behind it, longer than the one indoors, with a bench for seating on either side.
“It’s too hot inside to cook, you cook here,” Bartolomea tells Mama and shows her the utensils stored neatly below the oven, which is open on both ends. Italian ingenuity, I think as I look through. You keep the uncooked dishes on one side and serve the finished product from the other.
“You are hungry now, no?” Bartolomea drapes a bright yellow cotton cloth on the table, anchoring it with small black flasks of olive oil. Orsola puts a plate, a fork, and a small wooden cup at each place setting. Out of a basket brought over from Domenic’s truck, Bartolomea unloads trays of delicacies: tiny sandwiches made with crusty bread, anchovies, a platter of blood oranges splashed with olive oil and pepper, fresh figs sliced in half with hunks of hard cheese, succulent smoked sardines, curls of Parmesan cheese, and shiny black olives. There are big, puffy oil biscuits for dessert. Orsola places bunches of fresh grapes beside each plate. It’s a feast.
Bartolomea calls us all to lunch. As we take our seats on the benches, time seems to stop; we could be any generation of Sartoris gathering to eat under the Venetian sun.
After a week of sleeping on sweet straw, walking to and from town for an afternoon cappuccino, resting and napping, and reading Goethe’s notebook about his Italian travels (my farewell gift from Delmarr), I decide I could get used to the Italian lifestyle—but not without my fiancé. My heart aches for John, and every time I see something wonderful, I wish he were here to share it with.
I receive my first letter from Ruth, who tells me that Helen is getting bigger by the second: Ruth has let out Helen’s work skirts twice already. Violet is pressuring the cop and expects a ring by Labor Day. Delmarr seems preoccupied; they are going to lunch, and Ruth will write with the details. She then mentions that John has been to the store a couple of times and came in to say hello to everybody. He told Ruth he was up in Interior Decoration to find the right drawer pulls for a walk-in closet he is designing for our bedroom suite.
“Lucia!” Ro calls, and from the sound of her voice, I can tell that something is terribly wrong. I run around the house to find her kneeling next to Papa, who has fallen to the ground.
“Mama!” I yell. She comes running out of the house with Exodus. I kneel next to Papa and feel his pulse, which seems faint. “Get water,” I tell Ro. “We have to take him to town.” Exodus and I try to revive Papa. He opens his eyes but doesn’t know where he is. “Keep him awake!” I tell Mama as we lift him into the back of the truck Domenic left for us. The rest of the boys are at Domenic’s farm this afternoon, helping him fill his silo with hay. It’s about a mile away in the opposite direction of town, so we decide to take a chance and find a doctor in Godega.
Exodus drives over the pits of the old road as fast as he can. The movement is okay because it helps Papa stay awake. We pull into town, and I see a group gathered at the café and scream, “Dottore, dottore!” The waiter rushes into the restaurant and calls for help. Mama, always calm in a crisis, asks for a cool rag for Papa’s face.
The doctor arrives, a man around forty, and directs us to a bench in the shade. He mixes a packet of powder into some water and makes Papa drink it. He explains that the powder contains potassium and other minerals, including some salt. It must taste terrible, because Papa makes a face as he drinks it.
“What happened?” he asks, clearly restored by the bitter concoction.
“Signor, you must stay out of the sun.” The doctor smiles. “Every time Americans come here, they faint in the heat.”
“It didn’t feel hot,” Papa defends himself.
“Signor, if a place is hot enough to grow oranges, it’s too hot for people.”
Exodus helps Papa stand, and we begin to walk back to the truck. Mama stops us. “Oh, no. You’re not going anywhere. Not until the sun goes down!”
“Maria,” Papa starts to argue.
“No, we are going to sit in the church. Right over there in the back pew of Saint Urbano’s. We’ll sit in the cool shade and say the rosary and thank God it wasn’t anything worse.”
Papa throws his hands up. With Mama on one side and Exodus on the other, he enters the church. Rosemary and I exchange a smile.
Papa invites the whole family to the courthouse in Godega to secure the final paperwork on his inheritance. Though the building is very small, it also seems to be the police department: the only carabiniere in town stands out front. I sit with Roberto and Rosemary. Orlando and Angelo wait by the door, as if to guard it; from whom or what, I have no idea. Exodus leans against the wall whispering with Orsola. Mama turns and motions for them to be quiet. Orsola gets up and moves away from Exodus so as not to get in any more trouble.
As the officer reads the will aloud, Papa closes his eyes and listens carefully. When Enzo’s name is mentioned, Domenic leans over to tell Papa that Enzo signed off on his portion of the estate. Papa nods. I can see that the severed relationship with his brother still bothers him. It’s the one thing about my father that I find mysterious. He’s a peaceful man. How can he bear to be angry at his brother for all these years? At the end of the proceeding, the officer rises and kisses Papa on both cheeks; it turns out that he is a third cousin to Papa on his mother’s side.
After ten days at the farmhouse, we make plans for our side trips. I want to shop in Venice, so Rosemary and I come up with an itinerary. We pack a week’s worth of clothing for our trip. It is no small feat to wash clothes in the hot sun, hang them on the line, and press them with an iron that looks like a doorstop. But there’s no other choice.
A package from John arrives just before Ro and I are about to leave. It’s from Bonwit Teller’s, sent one week before we left for Italy.
“I can’t believe he spent money at the competition!” Ro says, laughing. I open the box and lift out a small tiara made of white satin roses, with leaves made of pale green velvet on a band of dazzling Austrian crystals. “How delicate!” Ro squeals. The note reads:
My dearest love,
For your veil.
I love you, John
“Boy, you are getting a prince.”
“Don’t I know it,” I tell her. I pack the tiara away.
Most Italians are on holiday in August, so it takes a lot of bartering to get a ride down to the train station in Treviso. Papa negotiates with a car service, commenting that these rides are as expensive as our flight over. But the car trip has an up side for Papa, since the driver is like a built-in chaperone. It’s all worth it when Ro and I join the throng walking across the Rialto Bridge into the city of Venice. She points to the gondolas sailing underneath us. We stop on San Marco to look at the Palazzo Dario, its façade inlaid with colors of marble I didn’t know existed: red with turquoise veins, gold with white, green with orange, all cut and configured into a wild Byzantine pattern. The guidebook says that Venice was the gateway of trade for the world, from Africa to the Orient, and the influence of many cultures is apparent.
“Scusi,” a man says to us in Italian. He pronounces each word carefully. “Puo prendere una fotografia di me con mia moglie? Grazie.”
“Prego,” I answer. “Are you American?” I ask as I take the camera from him.
“Yes,” he says in English as he stands beside his wife. “You, too?”
“Finally, some of our own!” his wife says from under her wide-brimmed hat as she poses. She is around fifty years old and i
s lean and tall. Her blond hair is twisted into a long braid. She has patrician beauty, with wide-set blue eyes and a high forehead.
“That’s how we feel,” I tell them as I snap their picture. “We’ve been staying up in the country. I’m Lucia Sartori, and this is my sister-in-law, Rosemary.”
“I’m Arabel, and this is my husband, Charlie Dresken.” Charlie is about Arabel’s age, but he is her physical opposite, small and muscular, with red hair and a beard.
Charlie takes the camera from me and asks, “Where are you from?”
“New York City. Greenwich Village.”
“Commerce Street!” Ro adds.
“Small world,” Charlie says, smiling. “We’re from Long Island. Syosset.”
“Really?” I ask. “My fiancé and I are building a house in Huntington.”
“Oh, Huntington is fabulous!” Arabel says. “They’re building some gorgeous homes over there. What does your fiancé do?”
“He’s a businessman. Importing,” I explain.
“Where are you girls staying?”
“We’re at the Pavan Pensione at Campo San Marina,” Ro reads off of our itinerary.
“We’re at the Giudecca. Actually, we were about to have lunch. Would you like to join us?”
“We would love to!” I say.
“Meet us in the hotel lobby at two,” Arabel says as she writes down the address on our itinerary.
Rosemary and I are so excited to dress up and have lunch that we practically run through the streets to find the Pavan Pensione. We are given a room on the second floor, sparsely furnished but clean, with a shared bath down the hall. We don’t even mind sharing the bath, as all we have in Godega is an outdoor shower, which is like bathing in a wooden barrel. We put on stockings and gloves and hats, something we haven’t done since getting off the plane in Rome. I think we look very Italian; I wear a black cotton circle skirt with a white blouse and a bright red sash, and Ro wears a beige linen skirt and a pink blouse with a pink patent-leather belt. When we reach the Guidecca, we’re glad we made an effort. The lobby is marked by an old-world elegance; there are ornate crystal chandeliers and heavy Victorian furniture with velvet cushions.
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