The Italian Party

by Christina Lynch

  * * *

  They drove on into the countryside. “This is a volcanic zone like Amiata,” Carlo said as they climbed again, leaving the farms behind them and heading into a wilder zone. She found the beauty outside the car window almost unreal, mesmerizing. “The Etruscans had mines and quarries here. Cinnabar and alabaster.” He seemed relieved to have told his story. This is who he is, she thought. He is someone who moves forward. But poor Franca.

  “It feels very remote,” she said. “When we drove through Chianti in April, it reminded me of a patchwork quilt. This is more like a scratchy wool blanket at summer camp.” Carlo nodded and smiled at her, and as their eyes met she felt something inside her release.

  Carlo had lived through so much. “You must hate seeing the German tourists,” she said.

  Carlo looked confused. “The Germans?”

  “They killed your son.”

  Carlo was silent for a moment, then spoke quietly. “Italy changed sides in October 1943, and declared war on Germany, but the Germans were all over Italy and would not give up easily. The planes that bombed Poggibonsi were American planes, cutting off the German retreat.”

  “Americans?”

  “They missed the railyard and hit the center of the city.”

  Scottie felt faint. “Oh my God.” Hot tears streamed down her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Carlo put a hand on her arm. “The past is past,” he said.

  Not for everyone, she thought.

  * * *

  Raindrops started spattering the windshield as they turned up a small unmarked road. Scottie could see a perfectly cylindrical little building at the top, horizontally striped like the Duomo in Siena, except if the Duomo were the teapot, this would be the matching sugar bowl.

  “How strange and beautiful,” she said. “What’s it doing here?”

  They got out of the car. The scattered drops had turned to a light, steady rain, but it was still warm. “Wait one second,” said Carlo. He pushed open the wooden door and disappeared inside. The wind had picked up, and the views from the hilltop were spectacular, made even more so by the storm clouds massing overhead. When Carlo called, “Come now,” Scottie went in.

  Carlo had lit four tall candles in sconces on the walls, illuminating the striped, perfectly round interior of the chapel. She looked around, admiring the dome overhead, which carried on with the stripes all the way to a small disc in the center of the ceiling.

  “It’s amazing,” she said. “Like being inside a snail.”

  “Here,” said Carlo. He motioned her to the center of the room. Iron railings surrounded a large rock that emerged from a break in the floor, jutting up from the earth below.

  In the rock was a black iron sword, only its hilt showing.

  Scottie wasn’t sure what to make of it. It couldn’t be real, could it?

  “Galgano was a knight from Chiusdino,” said Carlo. “He was a good swordsman and quite the brawler and womanizer, too. But one day in 1180 an angel appeared to him and told him to change his life. His horse ran away with him and brought him here to Montesiepi. He plunged his sword into the rock and became a man of God.”

  “Like King Arthur.”

  “It predates the Arthur legend. This is the real thing.”

  Scottie reached down and touched the hilt of the sword. It felt cool to the touch, but also electric.

  She stood up. “What a magical place,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “Ah, but that is not all,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  When they got outside the rain was falling harder. Scottie wasn’t sure she wanted to go tramping around more of the countryside in her sandals.

  “Close your eyes,” said Carlo.

  She did, and he led her a few steps around the back of the chapel.

  “Okay, open them.”

  She was looking down a grassy hillside at one of the strangest things she had ever seen. A huge roofless Gothic cathedral lay below her, sitting in the middle of a field of yellow and green sunflowers.

  “It’s like something out of a ghost story,” she said.

  “Yes. I wanted you to see it before we left. I am sorry about the rain. We should probably go back. There is nothing inside except grass.”

  She couldn’t stop herself. She ran down the hill toward it, the gray stones of the cathedral looming larger and larger. All of the latticework of the rose windows was intact, but there was no glass. It was the most arresting sight she had ever seen.

  Carlo came panting up behind her.

  “What happened to it?” she asked, looking up at the ominous sky above the church.

  “Churches from this era often have lead roof tiles. Heavy, durable and expensive, they were supposed to protect them forever, and many of them have. But here, a corrupt abbot sold the lead, probably to someone who melted it down to make weapons, and took the money. Shortly after that, a bolt of lightning struck the exposed timbers and burned the place down.”

  “That sounds like the definition of ‘smiting’ to me.”

  She walked through the portal where tall wooden doors would have been. Inside was a carpet of wildflowers growing up through the stones. The rain slowed, and a ray of sunlight cracked through the black cloud overhead and shone down into the space.

  “I half think angels with duck wings are about to talk to us, too,” she said.

  He nodded. “It’s my favorite place on earth.” She looked over at him. His shirt was wet, and his hair slick. He was smiling at her, happy to share this wonderful place. He was standing at a distance, fifty feet or so away from her, looking at her, deeply, without hesitation, drinking her in.

  “I thought I lost the baby the other day,” she said. “But I didn’t.”

  “A baby is a miracle,” he said.

  She put her hands on her belly and left them there, staring down at it. Her insides were churning, her heart in her mouth, pounding.

  “I have a story, too,” she said. “But I can’t tell it. I want to, but I can’t.”

  “Then don’t,” he said, staying where he was. They were talking across a wide expanse of space, as if through a wall. “You are unhappy. I don’t want you to be unhappy. I brought you here so you could be happy for one day. Let’s be happy together for one day.”

  She saw him about to take a step back, to turn, to head toward the car. She saw the day ending with a squeeze of her hand, with the acknowledgment of friendship.

  She went quickly over to him. Put her hands on his shoulders. Stared into his eyes. He knelt in front of her and put his hands on her belly.

  Her dress was wet, and she was conscious that it clung to her. He was looking up at her, the raindrops dripping from the rim of his fedora, his eyes once more on hers. She could not look away from him. What was she looking at, for, into? She could never have put it into words, but whatever she had been looking for, she was now looking at it. She took one hand off her belly and put it over her breast, which was aching with desire. But it wasn’t her own hand that she wanted there. She reached down, keeping her eyes on his, and took his hand off her belly and put it on her breast, and it was as if a giant void in her had been filled. She sighed deeply.

  He gently rubbed the wet fabric. She inhaled, but didn’t move.

  He stood, and she thought again of what Ugo had said about power, and she decided, This time I will not be taken, I will take, and she moved into his body, feeling the warmth of it through her dress. She raised her face and kissed his mouth.

  He kissed her with such certainty it made her knees nearly buckle. His arms closed around her and she felt the whole cockeyed, askew world suddenly slide into place.

  “Cara,” he said. “Carissima.”

  * * *

  The sun came out, and it was suddenly warm. From the trunk of his car he produced a bottle of wine, and a blanket he spread out on the dry ground under a huge tree. Laughing, he removed what remained of their clothes and hung them from the branches of the tree to dry. He was lean
, and pale, and had dark brown moles. His toes were long and sensuous. They gazed at each other in the dappled sunlight under the tree, touching what was new and unfamiliar, as if each was blind and the other was a sculpture. Then she lay naked in his arms and he caressed her hair and kissed her and she climbed on top and put her hands in the air as she rode him until they shouted with joy, and then lay still again. She wanted to lie like that forever, the only two people on earth.

  “Are you sorry at all?” she asked. “Because I’m not.”

  He laughed. “Not sorry.”

  “Even though it’s a sin? Even though we’re both married, and I’m pregnant?”

  “Passion is not a sin,” he said. “Not in such a beautiful place. Are you sorry you have made love to an old man?”

  “An older man,” she corrected. “A knowledgeable man.” He kissed her and ran his hand up her leg, and as they rolled over, she wrapped it around him, hearing thunder in her ears, but as the thunder grew she realized she heard something else.

  Drums? No. Hoofbeats.

  No, she thought. No. She sat up and saw that Robertino was cantering toward them. She grabbed Carlo’s hand and he sat up, too. They pulled the blanket around them. Robertino pulled up the horse when he saw them, looming over them, the horse’s hoofs churning in the dirt, inches from them. Robertino’s face was a traffic jam of emotions.

  “Buongiorno, signori,” he said formally, coldly. The horse, feeling his anxiety, danced under him, tossing its head.

  “Ciao, Robertino, listen,” she said, trembling.

  Robertino nodded curtly and rode off. Scottie put her face in her hands. Why did the birds keep singing in the trees? She wanted to scream at them to shut up so she could think.

  “He won’t say anything,” said Carlo, standing and handing over her dress.

  “How do you know?” She thought she was shouting, but it came out as a whisper.

  6.

  Michael parked along a gravel road under an oak tree, set up a folding chair and an easel, placed his half-finished watercolor on it and settled in to wait. Anyone who came along would find just another foreign artist, in love with Tuscany’s famous light, though the light was in short supply today, and it smelled like rain. Squalls were visible in the distance. He looked out over the misty overlapping, undulating hills, the vineyards, the olive groves. It reminded him of the fresco by Lorenzetti he had mentioned to Luce during his job interview. Its title was Effects of Good Government on the Countryside, and it was part of a series of frescoes on the subject of leadership. Painted in 1339, this particular panel showed hunters, farmers, livestock and travelers all peacefully coexisting just outside the walls of recognizable Siena. Since he had moved to Siena the fresco had taken on a deeper significance. Lorenzetti’s allegory sought to illustrate for anyone passing through Siena’s city hall—citizens and politicians—the risks of tyranny and corruption and the rewards of justice and virtuous leadership, that the Common Good trumped personal advancement.

  Unfortunately, it was a short leap from Common Good to Communism.

  It was hard to believe he shared DNA with these people, and spoke their language. They didn’t just live differently, they thought differently. Backward.

  But it was still a beautiful painting.

  Robertino should be coming by soon. He had said he was riding to San Galgano today. Michael dipped his brush in water and put a tiny dab of Winsor Green in the corner, where a beech tree should go. The color immediately spread and began to pollute that entire area of the painting, turning a distant castle a sickly hue. He cursed and dabbed at it. Michael had always felt Winsor Green was like Sunday dinners with his entire extended Italian family—vile but necessary, and highly invasive. And now he would be a father himself. He would do it all differently.

  He heard hoofbeats and stood up. Robertino appeared, atop a charging brown horse. Michael felt a little nervous. He was asking a lot of the kid. Asking him to break the law, betray his people. He thought again of that Ninth Circle in Dante. Traitors, frozen forever. Would the kid feel loyal to his father, the American GI, or to his grandfather’s political party? Or would sheer greed, a sort of loyalty to his own survival, win out over all of it?

  “Do you know where Communist Party headquarters is, in Via Cavour?”

  “Sure,” said the kid.

  “Do you think you can get me the list of party members without getting caught?”

  He held his breath. The kid might say no, or threaten to tell someone.

  “Sure.” The kid gave a mean smile, his blue eyes sparking with the challenge.

  Michael blinked, startled. It was that easy? “You won’t tell Rosini?”

  The kid’s lower lip twisted. “I’ll squeeze in the back window. How much you pay me?”

  Michael hesitated. The whole thing was risky. What if the kid were caught, and told someone who he was working for? Using him at all was foolish, but he was such a good source of information, and could slip so easily into any situation. He was already known around Siena as nosy, talkative, a pest. Any questions Robertino asked would be interpreted as only serving his own interests. As part of the kid’s campaign to ride for the Porcupine contrada in the August Palio he had powerful locals to sway, and so did Michael.

  “I’ve got the first issue of Matt Slade, Gunfighter,” Michael said, producing the comic book from under a block of paper in his watercolor case. “Just arrived.”

  Robertino looked unconvinced. “How about a tractor for my grandfather? He liked the blue one.”

  “I can’t give you a tractor. They cost millions of lire. How about World of Fantasy? Devil-Dog Dugan? Yellow Claw? Pretty choice stuff.”

  “I want the tractor.”

  “I told you, I can’t give away tractors. How about tickets to the movies? You can go with Mrs. Messina.”

  Robertino gave a small snort that Michael could not understand. The kid seemed to be in some kind of foul mood, but he was fourteen, so it was to be expected. “A thousand dollars,” Robertino said, his eyes narrowing.

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Less than a tractor.”

  There was something feral about the kid that scared him a little. The ease with which he had agreed to treachery and theft. It was wrong to entrust Scottie to him. Maybe wrong to trust him at all.

  “Okay,” he said. “A thousand.” Michael sometimes had the feeling it was he who worked for Robertino, not the other way around.

  The boy reached into his pants and pulled out a small brown paper package, then dropped it on the ground in front of Michael. Dust rose from where it landed.

  “For you,” he said, then sank his heels into the horse’s side. The beast shot forward.

  Michael picked up the package off the ground and unwrapped it. It was a magazine called Physique Pictorial. He dropped it again and his stomach came up into his mouth, and he retched. He stood there for a moment, panicked, panting, staring at the thing on the ground as if it were a snake. He had seen it before, though not this issue. On the cover was a very muscular man in a Greek statue pose wearing nothing but a tiny pouch. The scrap of fabric was like something a little girl would carry to church with a quarter inside for the collection plate. Though this pouch contained more than a quarter. He knew that inside the magazine, there would be very few articles but lots of photos of men in very tight pants or even showing their bare buttocks, splashing in water troughs, demonstrating how to administer a shot, or performing wrestling moves on each other.

  Michael calmly packed up his Winsor Green and the rest of the watercolor set. He put them back in the car; then, almost as an afterthought, he picked up the magazine and put it in his briefcase and locked it. He got in the car and drove back through the narrow gate in the walls at Porta Camollia, under the inscription that read in Latin COR MAGIS TIBI SENA PANDIT. Siena opens its heart to you.

  The boy knows.

  7.

  Scottie was silent in the car on the way back to Siena. The landmarks
they passed were a rebuke. The turnoff for Franca’s. The bridge of La Pia, the scene of one of Siena’s favorite gruesome stories of infidelity and death. What if Robertino told Michael? Or told anyone? Siena was, according to everyone, a small, gossipy place. She would be branded a whore, like Gina. Maybe she was like Gina. She had taken Carlo, as much as he had taken her. She felt deeply ashamed and more than a little shocked and angry with herself. At Vassar Leona had a mare that went into heat at every horse show. The poor beast would stand in her show stall or tied to the trailer, tail up, legs spread, juice running down her hind legs. People would avert their eyes, distract their children. Leona had called the horse a “nympho” and sold her.

  The rain beat down on the little car, and Carlo had to concentrate on the road, leaning forward to see the few inches that the wipers cleaned. He parked back near the Fortezza.

  “I can’t ever see you again,” she said.

  He looked like she had spat on him. “Don’t be a child,” he said slowly.

  She walked away, furious with the entire world.

  * * *

  She took a hot bath when she got home and tried to scrub away her guilt. She was making meatloaf when she heard Michael’s key turning in the heavy lock—thunk, thunk, thunk. She had it all planned out. She would greet him as if nothing had happened between them. She would be a perfect, faithful, adoring wife, like the women in the ads. My husband loves Crest!

  “I’m sorry I was such an ass about the baby,” he said, coming up behind her and putting his arms around her, around her belly. She could feel him trembling with emotion. “Please forgive me. You caught me off guard, is all.”

  “I understand,” she said. “It was a surprise for me, too.” She turned and hugged him hard, and they stayed that way for a moment.

  “Well, I have another surprise. Guess where we’re going on Saturday?”

  She really, really hoped he wouldn’t say San Galgano.