“Do you mind?” he said. “This way we don’t have to lie on the dirty floor.” He took her hands and put them on the shelf in front of her, and she was unsure of what he wanted. He pulled her hips back and now she was bending over, her face in Gray, Asa, Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States, from New England to Wisconsin and South to Ohio and Pennsylvania Inclusive. She stared at the gold lettering on the dark green spine, inhaled the old leather smell, the mustiness of the pages, and didn’t understand what was happening, then thought of horses and realized. In a quick movement, he lifted her skirt and pulled her underwear down. She heard his zipper and then he pulled her hips back toward him and she felt a sharp pain and gasped, tears in her eyes.
“The flowers are blooming in the land, the time to sing has arrived, and the murmur of the turtledove is back again,” he whispered.
He held on to her hips and pulled her hard against him. She felt him deep inside her.
“I opened the door and stood erect for my beloved, my hands dripping with myrrh, and my fingers flowing with sweet myrrh, my fingers upon the lock of the door.”
Then he groaned, butted her hard like a ram with his hips, and it was over. He zipped up, gave her a pat on her behind. “Dear me,” he said. “You got me very excited there, you naughty girl. You’d better go clean yourself up.”
She stood, blushing, eyes on the ground, and awkwardly pulled up her underwear and her kneesocks and reached behind to fasten her bra.
“I’ll see you in class,” he said. He lifted her chin with his hand and stared into her eyes. “I know I can trust you to keep this our little secret.”
3.
“I got pregnant,” she said.
The color was gone from Michael’s face. The waiter, coming to take his plate, took one look at him and backed away. My marriage is over, she thought.
“That’s … awful,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.” She felt cold all over.
“The man should be beaten within an inch of his life! He should—did he ever say anything to you? Offer to take care of you?”
“I never told him.”
He stared at her, furious, not comprehending.
“It would have ruined his marriage. He would have lost his job.”
“But what about you?”
She blinked. “I never told anyone until now. I—I felt like it was my fault.”
People were laughing and chatting around them, strolling arm in arm through the piazza.
“He made it seem like it was your fault, but it wasn’t. He seduced you! A virgin!”
She had never really seen it this way before. It made her angry now, to think of it this way.
“He should have…” Michael paused. “Well, he should have helped you.”
“I was afraid that I would be disgraced. I would have been disgraced if anyone had found out.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She sighed. “I was afraid. I knew you wouldn’t marry me, wouldn’t even talk to me if you knew. No one would. I would end up…” She thought of Gina. “I had no money, no family. I would have lost my friends. Been kicked out of school. No one would have given me a job.” It wasn’t much of a choice, really, she thought. She had done what she had to do. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
They sat for a moment in silence. She kept her eyes down, ashamed. She wasn’t sure what would come next. He would send her back to America, probably. Divorce her. She didn’t cry. She just felt numb. She had no right to ask anything of him.
The world continued around them, waiters moving, people talking, plates of food going to and fro, but they were two frozen figures.
“Hey,” he said at last, and took her hands in his. “Hey. Look at me.”
She looked up. He was smiling at her.
“From this moment on, it’s our baby. Ours. Okay?”
“Really?” Again she was shocked.
“Yes. Yes.”
“Oh, Michael,” she said, and threw herself into his arms. “Let’s never keep secrets from each other again.”
He held her as she cried tears of relief and joy.
* * *
He made love to her that night. He asked her, as he always did, was he hurting her, and was he hurting the baby, and she always reassured him, but he seemed unwilling to put his weight on her. They had always followed the same pattern: some kissing, eyes tightly closed, then he eased up her nightdress and eased down his pajamas. He finished with a grunt, and then apologized. Afterward, he went to sleep.
Tonight, she closed her eyes, and just as he came, she felt a rising in her belly.
“Wait, wait,” she said, opening her eyes, grabbing him tight around the waist, lifting her legs and pulling him deep inside her, willing him to stay erect a few seconds longer. He looked surprised. She came with a long shudder that made her teeth chatter.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh. You’re sure that doesn’t hurt the baby?”
She pulled him close and kissed him tenderly. “No, it doesn’t. Thank you,” she said.
As they lay side by side in the darkness, he said, “You know Robertino well, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, pretty well,” she said.
“Do you think he likes Americans?”
“You mean do I think he’s on our side?”
“Yes.”
She thought for a moment. “Because of his parents, he’s an outsider and an insider at the same time. I’m not sure he can afford to be on anyone’s side but his own.”
He put his arms around her and they fell asleep entwined.
4.
Pisano came to see him about the missing boy and the dead hooker, fortunately at a moment when Scottie was off at the post office, a Dantesque place of swirling crowds and no lines in which one could easily lose half a day. Brigante hovered outside the Ford office, trying to eavesdrop. Michael shut the door with a loud clang.
“He taught my wife a little Italian,” he said.
“Did you ever visit the prostitute?”
“Never,” he said.
“Many men did,” said Pisano. “I am not accusing you of anything, but you are a Sicilian and an American. Perhaps you know more than you are saying.”
Michael sighed. “I never even spoke to her. And I’m not in the Mafia.”
“And you say you never had Robertino run errands for you?” Pisano pressed. “You never asked him to get women for you?”
“No,” said Michael. “I did not.”
* * *
Scottie had told him her secrets, and he had shown her that he could still love her. It felt so good to give her that gift, to see her fear and shame turn to surprise and joy. He didn’t really mind that the child wasn’t his—in some ways it was a relief. If he turned out to be a terrible father, he was still better than the one who had created the child. Besides, he thought, it was all too perfect before—the pretty, adoring, faithful wife dutifully carrying his child. This felt more like what he deserved.
5.
Being a spy, it turned out, was crushingly dull. Scottie spent a few days dutifully typing up boring summaries of articles in the local papers. Because of her struggles with reading and writing, she had to type very slowly and often made mistakes. It was heavy going, especially given the rather dry subject matter—automobile production numbers, wheat harvest, gas prices, labor unrest in the steel industry.
“Please can I include this one?” she asked Michael. “‘Traffic cop attacked by crazed bull.’ Way more interesting than these olive oil production numbers.”
Michael laughed. “They would assume it was code for something. I’d like to see what they deciphered it to be.” He had explained to her that these financial reports were essential to their mission, which was largely to figure out where Italy was in terms of economy and politics, and where it was going. Other analysts took that info and added in a layer of what America’s role in Italy’s future should be, and where the Soviets fit into all that.
“That’s th
e ‘intelligence’ part of Central Intelligence Agency,” he said. “Not the kind of thing that shows up in the movies. We’re really here to be the eyes and ears of the president and Congress, to help them make good foreign policy decisions.” Michael did not tell her that this was in fact what former CIA director Walter Bedell Smith had wanted the CIA to limit its mission to. But Angleton had argued that the ruthlessness of the Soviets and the escalating Cold War demanded the newer, self-created missions of disinformation, counterintelligence, propaganda and coups. The Dark Arts. It was amazing to Michael how an entire foreign policy could be shaped by a battle between two men, how many millions of lives were affected by decisions more influenced by ego than facts.
She was looking for staples one day when she noticed one of the cabinets was locked.
“Where’s the key for this?” she asked Michael.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s for me only.”
“What do you have in there?” she whispered. “Microcameras and exploding umbrellas? Pen guns?”
He rolled his eyes, and she laughed. “I never missed a single episode of Foreign Intrigue,” she said.
* * *
Despite Michael’s love of numbers, Scottie began to slowly change the tone of her reports. When she wrote about wheat prices, she talked about the owner of the bakery and the importance of artisan-made bread in the community, about the culture of women. When she wrote about tourism, she talked about Tommaso, the waiter, and how he was spending his tips, his dreams of a beach vacation. When she talked about health care, she wrote about Signor Banchi, but also about poor dead Gina, and the women at the bakery, and Franca and her herbs and the pervasive trust in the old ways of healing. She talked about the legacy of war. She had no idea if anyone ever read them, but in her reports she strove to capture the essence of Italian culture as she understood it. “While I am at a loss to fully explain it,” she often began her summations, “I can nonetheless speak with admiration of the Italian practice of…”
Scottie took to stopping in to see Signor Banchi on her ever-longer lunch breaks. He had moved out of the hospital, back to his little house down the hill from Porta San Marco in the olive grove. He was not improving, and kept asking for Robertino. It had been almost two weeks since he failed to show up at the tratta. It was heartbreaking. No one in town was talking about him anymore. She told Signor Banchi to not lose hope.
She found herself thinking less about Carlo. She felt grateful to him for having shown her what a romantic bond could be, though. He had taught her how to be a better wife.
I’m happy, she thought. I have a handsome, heroic spy husband who’s fighting communism, and I’m right here by his side. Life felt full of excitement and possibility again, and she finally felt close to Michael, even though she knew there were things he couldn’t tell her about his work, for her own safety. But she felt like he needed her—and he told her so. She loved that they were spreading the truth about America, the best country in the whole world.
Together they went to see a woman outside Greve who was making wine on her family’s estate. Her husband and her brothers had died in the war. Her name was Angela, and she was stout, with ruddy cheeks.
She showed Michael and Scottie the old stone cave with huge oak barrels, handmade glass vessels on top with oil in them to allow the wine to expand and contract without touching the air.
“It’s alive,” explained Angela. “Every barrel is different. If I treated them all the same, it would be a disaster.”
Michael talked to her about what a tractor could do for her, how it could save her money in the long run because she would have to hire fewer people.
Angela frowned and gestured toward the men and women hoeing weeds in the vineyard. “These people expect to work here their whole lives,” she said.
“Things change. That’s not your fault,” said Michael. “You’re running a business.” He meant to be kind, but Scottie saw Angela stiffen.
“If you’re able to farm more acres and make more wine, your business will expand and you’ll have other work for them,” said Scottie.
“No,” said Angela. “I’m sorry. We are all responsible for each other.”
In the car on the way back to Siena, Michael and Scottie puzzled over this resistance to change.
“She’s being ridiculous,” insisted Michael. “Tractors save people backbreaking labor. They can find other jobs, less exhausting ones. She’s saying the feudal system is better.”
“Maybe she’s right and we’re wrong. Maybe all of it—cars, tractors, factories—maybe they’re not making our lives better.”
“They’re making our lives easier. I don’t want to walk everywhere. Do you want to do the laundry in a stream? Cook over a fire? Watch me try to kill a deer for our dinner? I hope you’re not too hungry.”
“When we came here I thought we were right about all of it, and that they were wrong. But I do think some of the old ways are better,” she said, thinking of Banchi.
“Go work in the fields for a few days and then tell me you don’t want to ride a tractor instead.”
“I bet the horse-drawn world was more fun.”
“Not the manure. My parents talked about what it was like in New York when they arrived. Picture a blizzard of poop.”
“I’m imagining your mother saying that.” She laughed. “Do you miss them?”
He frowned. “Sometimes. I miss my mother’s lasagna.”
“I can try to make that.”
He put his hand over hers. “Let’s make it together.”
“You know how to cook?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Just a little. I mean, I sat at the kitchen table doing my homework and watched my mother.”
“No Chef Boyardee?”
“Never.” He shuddered.
“Then I guess all American conveniences aren’t better,” she said.
* * *
Michael’s lasagna was in fact exquisite—he claimed the secret was that he whipped the ricotta by hand, gently folding in the egg and nutmeg. She took some down to Signor Banchi.
“Buonissimo,” he declared, but poked at it listlessly. She felt shy about telling him that it was Michael and not her who had made it, as if somehow he would think less of both of them.
Nonna Bea came down the path as Scottie was leaving Banchi’s farm. Usually Nonna Bea wanted nothing to do with Scottie—she treated her like a Martian who might be carrying an interstellar virus, and who definitely did not speak any earthly language. Occasionally Nonna Bea made the sign of the cross when she saw her and spat on the ground when crossing paths with her, as if she were a black cat. But today, Nonna Bea not only looked at her, but reached out a claw and grabbed her arm.
“L’americano,” she said with toothless urgency and a fair amount of spittle.
“My husband?” asked Scottie, awaiting some sort of lecture from Nonna Bea that she really hoped was not about how to please a man.
“No, no, l’altro,” said Nonna Bea. “Il diavolo.” The devil. “Sta venendo qui. Venga, venga.”
The devil is coming? Scottie grappled with this. She nodded vaguely.
Nonna Bea spat a torrent of words that Scottie found hard to follow, all the while dragging her back toward Banchi’s house. For a tiny old woman, she was very strong.
“Zitto!” called Nonna Bea to Banchi, telling him to keep silent, as she dragged Scottie through his living room into the kitchen. There was a pantry with a piece of fabric for a door. Nonna Bea pulled Scottie with her behind the curtain. Scottie pointed to their feet, which showed clearly beneath the curtain, Nonna Bea’s rough old boots and Scottie’s loafers. Scottie grabbed four large tins of tomatoes and stepped up onto two of them, helping Nonna Bea up onto the other two. It was slightly precarious, to say the least—one tilt and they would go headlong into a wicker bin of onions. Scottie could smell Nonna Bea’s breath, a mix of bad teeth, garlic and cats. Did she eat them, Scottie wondered, or just lick them? Probably Nonna
Bea’s last bath had been sometime around Scottie’s birth.
They waited in the heat for a few minutes. Scottie started to move, but Nonna Bea grabbed her hand again and gestured silence as they heard a knock at the door and a “Permesso?” from the other room.
She didn’t recognize the man’s voice. He greeted Signor Banchi and introduced another man, a notaio, or notary. She heard papers shuffling, and words of encouragement. American-accented encouragement.
“This is a very good deal,” he said in English, then added to the other man impatiently, “Translate that.”
“This is enough money to buy anything you need.”
Signor Banchi was silent except for a soft moan.
After a long pause and an irritated sigh, “We can help you find your grandson if you help us,” said the man.
Scottie’s eyes widened and she nearly gasped. Nonna Bea put her finger to her lips.
“Leave the papers,” coughed Signor Banchi. “Come back tomorrow. Domani.”
They waited until they heard the men leave, then went into the living room, where Signor Banchi was sitting.
Scottie snatched up the papers. “This is disgusting,” she said. “Schiffoso! Preying on a sick old man. Do you think they kidnapped Robertino?”
Nonna Bea nodded and gave a small burp. “Bad men,” she said. “Diavoli. Americani di merda.” Shit Americans.
Scottie let that one slide. Best not to enter into a discussion of stereotyping just now. She grabbed the papers. “I’m going to take these, but I will keep them safe,” she said.
The Italian Party Page 24
