The Italian Party

by Christina Lynch

  20.

  They were of course both children, Scottie and Robertino, Michael thought as he walked across the beautiful intarsia floor of the Duomo, stopping as he always did to admire the figure of Fortuna. It wasn’t surprising that they got along so well, though he was startled at how much Robertino had learned about her. The bond of horses knit them together. That made sense. For both of them the horse was a way to bound upward across class lines, though neither of them would have seen their hippophilia—he loved that word, and made a note to himself to look up what the word was for people who love hippos—as anything so socioeconomic. For them it was just a deeply rooted passion, profound and inexplicable. He envied them that.

  He had never had that kind of friend. Even as a child he had been guarded, already aware that he was different in a way that others found distasteful. When he allowed himself to be excited about something, like when he shouted with joy as he unwrapped a Christmas present from Marco, a picture book of castles, his father had frowned and his sisters had teased him, fake shouting as they opened their own gifts of socks and pickled olives. Marco had tried to help, telling him not to be “such a girl about everything.” He dragged him over to meet the boy next door, but the boy had a bike and other friends, and ignored him. Michael had not felt hurt for long—when that same boy sat next to him in math class, he had reveled in watching him fail.

  He kneeled to pray and, as he had been instructed since childhood, reviewed what his sins were, both mortal and venial, made sure he felt sorrow and resolved not to sin again. Then he stood, crossed himself, passed under the gaze of winged cherubs, pushed aside the curtain and entered the ornately carved confessional. He had a lot to say today.

  FIVE

  LA GIRAFFA, THE GIRAFFE

  “THE HIGHER THE HEAD, THE GREATER THE GLORY”

  1.

  On a beautiful day in June when the last of the scarlet poppies were like a sea of fading valentines in the fields, Michael drove the repaired Ford through Porta Camollia and down the hill to the outskirts of town, through the gates of the new zona industriale, and parked in front of his Ford Tractors office, which was attached to a warehouse, perhaps the only unattractive building in all of Siena. The car showed no signs of its brush with the walls of the city. Michael was impressed with the care the mechanic had taken. The man had made sure every single dent was perfectly hammered out, taking hours more than he was paid for. “Tutt’ a posto,” he announced when the job was done. Gelso Brunetti was his name. He was grateful for Michael’s appreciation of his work, and they had shared an espresso together and talked cars.

  Though Michael had learned what he assumed was Italian from his parents, it turned out it wasn’t the same Italian as that spoken here in Siena, which Brunetti emphasized was the Italian spoken by Dante. Michael’s accent and vocabulary marked him not as an American but as a southerner, un Siciliano, and the Sienese were incredibly snobbish about people from anywhere below mid-calf on Italy’s boot.

  The industrial zone was home to several businesses hoping to capitalize on Italy’s rapidly mechanizing landscape. Michael’s main competition was Macchinari Agricoli di Siena, run by the clever and industrious Signor Brigante from Milan, who favored shiny green suits that reminded Michael of beetle carapaces.

  “Buongiorno, Americano,” called Signor Brigante. “A good day to sell tractors to the damned Tuscans, eh?”

  With the Italians’ legendary distrust of anyone born more than ten miles from themselves, it was a toss-up whether farmers would buy from Signor Brigante or l’Americano, though “neither” seemed to be the case at present. Though Michael felt uncomfortable when Signor Brigante sidled into his showroom to rail against the stingy, balky, truculent Sienese, he could hardly disagree with him. Everyone around here seemed to have a nemesis, and when he and Brigante squeezed into the local bar after work one night to watch the enormously popular game show Lascia o Raddoppia (Double or Nothing), the men were all slapping each other’s backs and calling each other “Maremma Pig,” “Ball-less Prick,” “Mother-loving Fool” and “Sainted Idiot.” It was the kind of testosterone-laden jocular aggression that had made Michael deeply uncomfortable at Yale, and even Brigante, from uptight Milan, looked startled. They had not repeated the outing.

  Signor Brigante stocked gas-powered tractors made by Landini, Fiat and Pietro Orsi, plus a new model from a family-owned firm in Padua, Antonio Carraro, that had been making carts and farm equipment since the 1600s and had wisely come up with a compact tractor well suited for the Mediterranean landscape. Heavy-duty diesels based on tank technology were the wave of the future, though, and Signor Brigante had foreign models, too, including the DT-54, a bright blue tread design from the Stalingrad Tractor Company.

  “This is the tractor that built the glorious USSR,” he boasted.

  Just the acronym triggered another of Michael’s many visions of mushroom clouds and radiation levels, of how unpleasant it would be to have one’s flesh burned off.

  Inside the warehouse Michael rented sat a row of shiny new Ford tractors that had been shipped from the company’s factory in England, arranged in increasing size like a display of dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History in New York. They looked honest and hardworking, but also large and ungainly compared to the small Italian models. Michael ran through the product numbers and key features in his mind, as he did every morning. He had spent several weeks at Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, training. The other reps in his training group there had seen through him, he thought, had sensed he wasn’t one of them, so he had worked doubly hard to learn everything he could. They were the sons of Ford dealers, and had spent their whole lives immersed in the world of engines, carburetors, tires and spark plugs. This was their college, their transition to their adult lives, which would be spent patrolling remote asphalt lots in Spokane and Des Moines and Jacksonville. They would do battle with Chrysler and Dodge, while he would fight other enemies.

  Benzedrine came to the rescue, as it was doing frequently these days. He popped the small white pill and instantly felt mental clarity returning.

  Fordson New Major 45 horsepower. Hydraulics. Disc brakes. Locking differential. He had painstakingly translated all of the information into Italian. The brochures were being printed up in Rome.

  Rome. He could justify taking the train down tomorrow, maybe. Maybe he and Duncan would have some time alone.

  Except for a few curious lookyloos, he had not had many customers come to the warehouse yet, but that was okay. The ads had only just begun to run in the local papers. And besides, that left more time for his real work.

  The best case officers melted neatly into their posting. They had a knack for talking to people, lending a sympathetic ear. Some officers never paid any of their assets, which made the Agency nervous about the validity of the information. HQ was always pressing officers to get signed contracts, information in exchange for this many dollars every month, but that was a very American-centric point of view. In most places in the world, including Italy, it would be insulting if not dangerous to offer someone money and a contract with the CIA. It was much more acceptable to get a little, give a little.

  He dropped an armload of newspapers on his desk, then unlocked a filing cabinet. He removed a file, sat down at his desk and stared at the list of names. Finally, he circled one. He then took out a clean index card, removed the cover from his typewriter and typed on the card.

  Brunetti, Gelso

  Via Pia di Sopra, 22

  Born 1930 (approx.). Mechanic. Married to Maria, born 1930 (approx.). Father of Ilaria (1950) and Gianluca (1952).

  Communist.

  He put the card into a box in the filing cabinet that also contained the names of Tenente Pisano (Monarchist), Signor Barco the property manager (Catholic) and Signor Brigante (Socialist), along with many others. Robertino had turned out to be very useful. In exchange for some American comic books, he had innocently divulged the party affiliations and kinship relationships of v
irtually everyone in his contrada, including his grandfather, Signor Banchi (Communist).

  That was the good news, the news he had included in his reports to Rome. The bad news was that in the weeks since he had arrived in Siena, Michael had continually tried to locate and talk to the so-called opinion molders, but had found the Sienese distant and snobbish, especially to someone with a Sicilian accent. He had gathered lots of information, but Robertino was his only asset. He was getting a little panicky. If he got lucky, the election would go his way and he could take the credit. But if it didn’t … He didn’t want to think about that.

  He wanted to be a hero. To show his father that he was someone worthy of—what, love? No, he really just wanted his father to feel bad about not having loved him. He wanted to make his father feel small, and mean, which is what he was. That would never happen, he knew, but it was pleasant to imagine it. Michael told himself he wanted to honor Marco, whom he missed, but really he wanted to be a bigger hero than Marco was. You saved Europe. I saved the world! He really hoped there was an afterlife in which he could affectionately, eternally lord that over Marco. He also wanted, right now, to make Scottie glad that she had married him. The problem was that, because it was all top secret, no one would ever know what he had done. Though if he pulled it off, he would definitely tell Duncan.

  2.

  One day Robertino and Scottie passed the busty woman Scottie had seen the day of their arrival. She was smoking, and had a pile of cigarette butts at her feet. Robertino averted his eyes as they passed, just as everyone else had.

  “Eh, Robertino,” the woman called to him, laughing, grinding out another cigarette.

  “Who is that?” Scottie asked.

  “Nessuno,” he said. No one.

  “Come on, she knows your name. I think she’s a pros—prosti—”

  “Prostituta,” whispered Robertino, mortified.

  Scottie thought of the hookers she had seen in New York, women with painted faces and tarted-up fashions.

  “She looks like everyone else. How do they know?”

  “They know her. We all know Signora Gina. Please, missus, is not nice to talk about.” He was squirming.

  3.

  Michael opened the top newspaper, La Nazione, and began reading. He sent Luce weekly summaries of how events were covered in the local press, whether stories seemed to be slanted against the U.S., and if so, who wrote them. There was a reporter named Rodolfo Marchetti who bashed America on a regular basis, ridiculing its films as treacle, its products as flimsy and its presence in Europe as imperialist. The worst part was, he was an excellent satirical writer, and the pieces were nothing short of brilliant. Michael had a wild longing to flip him, to get him to write a lengthy piece about the joys of Mickey Mouse, or Superman, or NATO. But it seemed impossible.

  The front page today was about the uprisings in Poland, where a hundred thousand workers had taken to the streets to protest the policies of the Communist leadership. They called on their fellow Poles to be loyal to their sovereign nation, while the Soviets saw them as disloyal to the empire. La Nazione took the Poles’ side, and the Communist daily L’Unita took the Soviet side, no surprise. Last week the shocking news had hit the world press that Khrushchev had denounced Stalin in a four-hour tirade at the Party Congress, openly criticizing his cult of personality, mass executions and military and agricultural blunders. What did it mean, the papers kept asking, and everyone had a contradictory answer. Some said it was the beginning of a loosening of Soviet control over the Eastern Bloc. Others said it was a consolidation of power in new hands. Things had begun to shift and change in ways that Michael found unnerving. It felt to him like the entire world was having a migraine.

  He turned the page to “News of Siena”: Ugo Rosini, the Communist mayor, was predicted to win an easy reelection. Siena would go to the polls in four days.

  Damn it.

  He reached for the book to encode a telegram to Rome.

  “Permesso?” called a quavering voice that startled him. He slammed the code book back into the drawer and went to the door. A small man in a battered black hat was standing just back from the doorway. Robertino was in front of him, bouncing up and down on his heels.

  “You remember my grandfather?” he said. “He wants to see the tractors.” Robertino seemed almost embarrassed by the old man’s presence.

  Michael greeted Banchi, who doffed his hat and spoke nervously and formally to Michael. The old man stood in awe in front of the gleaming line of tractors.

  “Troppo belli,” he said, as if looking at a line of can-can dancers. He ran a rough hand over the grille of the Ford 600.

  “Can I see it go?”

  Michael liked putting the tractors through their paces—they were so loud and huge and strong—and he did get a nice cut of each sale.

  “Certo,” he said, and removed his jacket, leaving his tie on. He rolled open the large warehouse doors, retrieved the keys from the box in his desk and climbed up on the blue tractor, careful not to get dirt on his trousers or his freshly polished oxblood wingtips, and settled himself into its metal seat. He pushed in the clutch and turned the key, and (thank goodness) the tractor started up. “It has a pressurized cooling system, so it stays cool even during the hardest jobs.”

  “I told you,” said Robertino to his grandfather. The old man looked delighted as Michael put the tractor in gear and drove it out of the warehouse into the sun, across the parking lot and up and over the curb into the adjacent empty field. He was distressed to see that Brigante was out there, too, showing a buyer a shiny red tractor.

  The old man shaded his eyes as he watched. “I do like red,” he said.

  Robertino squinted as he looked at the red tractor. “How fast is that one?”

  “Ford’s live-action hydraulic system sends five gallons of oil pumping through the system at all times, making implement response time immediate.”

  The old man continued gazing dreamily at Brigante’s shiny red model, and Robertino went over to look at it. Michael saw it was a Belarus MTZ-2, made by the Minsk Tractor Works. A piece of Commie crap if he ever saw one.

  “The headlights on that tractor are all the way back by the steering wheel,” Michael pointed out. “And it has half the engine power.”

  Brigante putted past, dropping a disc harrow into the soil. “Bello, eh? Forte!” he called, lifting his hat in salute as the machine churned up the soil.

  Robertino and Banchi whispered to each other. The boy was obsessed with speed, but Michael wanted to prove to him that strength was what mattered. American strength.

  “Hey, Brigante,” Michael called, and waved him over. When the red Soviet tractor rumbled up, Michael waved to a chain on the rear of his tractor and threw down a challenge. “How about a duel? Strongest tractor wins.”

  Robertino whooped, and Michael saw that he had gone up several notches in the boy’s estimation. It was absurd to feel happy about that, but he did.

  Brigante immediately agreed. He jumped down, and the chain was used to affix one tractor to the other, rear to rear. Robertino drew a line in the dirt. The two men jumped back into their seats.

  “Ready?” called Michael.

  “Prontissimo,” called Brigante.

  Robertino dropped his arm, and they both hit the gas. The two tractors, red and blue, strained at each other. The huge rear wheels began to cut deep into the earth. Engines roared, and black smoke filled the air. Michael looked down and saw the gauges on his instrument panel all at maximum. The front wheels of his tractor began to rise up under the strain. Then, with a boom, the Ford lurched forward, towing its prey behind it. I am defeating communism, he thought, elated. I am defeating communism. Just before he crossed the line of victory, the chain broke with a hideous snap and both tractors shot forward. Michael was thrown off the tractor and landed facedown in the dirt, the wind knocked out of him. Brigante, who narrowly missed being decapitated by the broken chain, lay bruised and bloodied on his side of the line in th
e sand.

  Michael finally caught his breath and saw that he and Brigante were alone, Robertino and Banchi nowhere in sight.

  “Toscani di merda,” growled Brigante, wiping the blood off his face. “Let them go back to their oxen.”

  Back in his office, brushing the mud off his clothes, Michael remembered the telegram he had been encoding. It was still sitting on the desk. It’s going to take a miracle to get our guy to win this election. He’s going to have to rescue a baby from a burning building or something. With a heavy sigh, he sent it off to Luce.

  4.

  Scottie loved the little donkeys that the local people used to transport almost anything. One day as she and Robertino were going down to Fontebranda so he could show her Siena’s oldest fountain, in use for washing since 1081, a donkey was coming up the steep, narrow street, led by a woman who seemed old, but whose face was ageless. She might have been forty or eighty; Scottie could not guess. She had curly copper hair pulled into a bun. She was beautiful, elegant, tall—not the typical tiny tradeswoman with the shy smile and the black cardigan.

  The donkey was old, with white hairs around its muzzle and eyes. Both it and the woman were panting. The baskets on either side of the beast’s spine were full, though the contents appeared to be dried herbs, so perhaps the load was not so heavy after all.

  “Che carino,” she said. “How cute.” She reached out to rub the donkey’s face between its eyes, and a hand grabbed hers. She found herself staring into the dark eyes of a very angry woman, face twisted in a grimace.

  “Non si tocca!” shouted the woman. Don’t touch!

  “Eh, eh!” shouted Robertino, coming between them. Scottie pulled her hand away. It stung where the woman had clenched it.

  “Via, via,” shouted Robertino to the woman, shooing her off.

  “Americani di merda,” said the woman, spitting on the ground.

  “Via!” shouted Robertino once again, slapping the donkey on the rump. The woman continued up the road, not looking back, but Scottie heard her muttering something about Robertino.