The Train to Orvieto

by Novelli, Rebecca J. ;

  “But I already told him that I was leaving and….”

  Signora Farnese held her finger to her lips, leaned forward, and whispered, “You haven’t told anyone else, have you?” Willa shook her head. “Excellent. Then, there is no risk that he will lose face or be embarrassed. He’ll forget what you said and welcome your return, especially if you return with money. Right now, it’s a matter of saving face. You must help him to do that.” Signora Farnese stood up. Willa understood this signaled the end of their visit. She didn’t want to leave.

  “How will I get money if I can’t work?”

  “You must think carefully about that. Whatever you do, you must return immediately. Your absence must not be noticed.” She looked at her watch. “It’s nearly one. If you don’t take the afternoon train, you’ll have to wait until this evening for another, so we must hurry.” She looked at Willa. “Now stand up….” She adjusted Willa’s shoulders. “Straight… that’s right…and comb your hair.” She looked Willa over. “Straighten your dress.” Willa adjusted her dress. “That’s right. Now, your best smile.” Willa’s face felt stiff and reluctant. “Here are your things.” Signora Farnese handed Willa the carpetbag and her purse. “Good,” she said guiding Willa toward the door. “We’ve had a lovely visit. Now, Antonio will take you to the station and help you find your train. In a few hours you’ll be home and no one will be the wiser.”

  Minutes later, a black car appeared at the end of the walkway. Willa got in and sat down in the back seat. The car smelled like a glovemaker’s shop. As soon as she had waved goodbye to Signora Farnese, Willa handed Mr. Bradshaw’s business card to Antonio. “I need to see this person before I go to the station.”

  Antonio looked at the card and shook his head. “The Signora said to take you straight to the station.”

  “I’ll only be a moment…really.” I must convince him, Willa thought. It’s my only chance to escape. “I left something there and I need to take it back with me.”

  Antonio shrugged. “It’s in the Oltrarno. You could miss your train.”

  “I’ll only be a moment.” They drove through the oldest streets dodging vendors with carts and workmen carrying heavy loads and turned onto the Ponte Santa Trìnita. Once across the Arno, they drove along the Lungarno following Via Sant’Onofrio to Borgo San Frediano. Antonio stopped the car at the Via del Leone and turned off the engine. A human tide engulfed the car, surging to and fro amid the warrens of tradesmen and artisans.

  “Where is it?” Willa said.

  “It’s on the left. Primo piano,” Antonio told her. “I thought you said you were here earlier.”

  “I’ve gotten turned around.” Willa got out of the car. The smells of the tanneries and lacquer and the ringing of hammers on stone filled the air and made her nauseated. She followed Antonio’s directions to the address on the card and rang the bell. A young woman opened the door. Willa noticed her stylish black dress. She felt out of place. “Signor Bradshaw, please.”

  “Did you have an appointment?”

  “He knows me.” She showed the woman the card. “I’ve just stopped by.”

  The woman looked surprised. “Will he know what this is about?” Willa shook her head. “Perhaps I could make an appointment for you. That way he could give you more of his time. He’s very busy today.”

  “I’m leaving Firenze this afternoon. I really must talk to him now. He knows me.”

  “Come in, then. I’ll see if he’s available.” Willa followed her up a narrow stairway to a dingy waiting area. The young woman excused herself and vanished behind a door that was fitted with frosted glass on which black letters edged with gold spelled out, “Bradshaw & Co., Fine Art & Antique Services: Imports and Exports, Customs.” Willa edged into to a hard chair trapped between two large wooden filing cabinets. She looked down at the worn floor. Her stomach growled just as Mr. Bradshaw emerged.

  “Well, well, look who’s here.” Willa stood up. He looked at her, confused. “Willa Carver. That’s your name?”

  “It’s nice to see you again,” Willa said.

  “Well, piacere.” He held out his hand. She shook it. He looked at her hands and then at her dress. “You say we met before?”

  “Yes, a few months ago.” He shook his head. “At Signora Farnese’s home. A luncheon last summer.” He looked at her more carefully.

  “Sorry…I always remember a face, but I can’t seem to remember yours.”

  “We sat next to each other.”

  “Well, how are you, umm…I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve met. He looked into the distance as people do when they are obliged to remember something that is long past and it returns to them in disordered fragments. “Wait! You’re that painter girl?”

  Willa plunged on. “You said you needed an assistant. I’ve come to talk to you about the job.”

  “You staying with Signora Farnese?” He looked attentive again.

  “Not right now.”

  He noticed her wedding ring. “Hey, didja get married?”

  Willa put her hands behind her. Too late, she realized. Why didn’t I think to take my ring off? “I’m looking for a place nearby so I can get to work early.”

  He made an impatient gesture. His attention wandered, leaving Willa alone with his glazed expression, a ghost of his presence.

  Willa knew he no longer saw her. “I could begin right away,” she continued. The young woman in black handed him a file. Bradshaw touched the young woman’s arm and then her hair. Willa tried to recapture his interest. “Today, I mean…I could begin this afternoon, if you like.”

  “Thank you, Renata.” Bradshaw glanced at Willa. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes, a job. I’m sorry. That job isn’t available.” He nodded to the young woman in the black dress as though she were a beautiful object that belonged to him. “Renata, will you show this young lady out, please?” He turned away and started back to his office.

  “Do you know of anything else?” Willa said. “Another job, I mean?”

  “Well, if you’re desperate, around here they hire shop girls to help in the back rooms. Usually, though, they’re family members from the country. ‘Country cousins,’ as Americans say.” He chuckled and then withdrew into his office. The young woman led Willa downstairs and let her out onto the teeming street.

  Surrounded and jostled, Willa pushed through the crowd, searching for Antonio and the car. When at last she found it, Antonio was gone. She tried the door. Locked. She waited. An hour had passed since they had left Signora Farnese’s house. He’ll come back soon, Willa thought. She looked at her watch. It was almost two-thirty. I can’t miss the three o’clock train. Nearby, she saw a bar. She walked over. Through the window she saw Antonio. She turned away and hurried to the nearest bridge where she found a taxi. “I need to go to the station. I’m going to miss my train.”

  “There’s an extra charge if I have to cross the bridge,” the driver said. Willa got in. The taxi rattled through the narrow streets, around the Piazza della Republica, and stopped in front of the station. She had only a few minutes left before her train departed. They both got out, and she handed him the money. He looked at it. “That’s not enough.”

  “It’s all I have.”

  He returned the money to her. “You need it more than I do.” He spat on the ground and got back into his taxi. “Next time walk!”

  Willa pushed through the doors of the station and past a young couple entwined in one another’s arms. A group of schoolchildren in two long lines behind a priest passed in front of her. Dizzy and hungry, she spent her last few coins on a small bottle of water, a dry sandwich, a biscotto, and a bruised apple.

  A flower seller handed her a wilted rose. “Last one,” he said. Willa took it and ran toward the train. The petals scattered. Just as she reached the platform, the conductor closed the door. “Wait!” The conductor shook his head. There was a loud whistle. Engines turned. Desperate, she climbed onto the steps of the train and held the railing. “Wait!” Alarmed, the conduc
tor opened the door and pulled her inside.

  “Pazza! You could fall under the train.” She glanced around. Is Maria Cristina on this train, too? She went into the first empty compartment and burrowed into a corner seat, not caring that the linen cover on the headrest was soiled and wrinkled or that trash flowed from the waste container onto the floor. In the glass of the curtained window she saw her reflection. Old, she thought. I already look old. As the train moved out of the station, she took out the food, put it on her lap, and bit into the mealy apple. The meat in her sandwich had turned a greyish color. She ate it anyway, thinking of what Signora Farnese had said about money: What work could I do? It might be a long time before my paintings sell. Are they good enough to attract buyers? If not, what then? She had intended to do so much more, become so much more. She bit into the biscotto. The dry flour tasted like dust. She opened the water bottle and drank. In the waning afternoon, darkening towns and villages passed outside the window and fell away one by one. She closed her eyes and allowed her body to take on the rhythm of the train.

  18

  ORVIETO, ITALY 1935

  When the train stopped, Willa looked out, searching for her suitcase and coat. They were no longer where she had left them outside the bathroom. She got off and hurried away from the station, taking care not to let anyone see her, especially Donato. Ignoring the dirt that sifted into her shoes and irritated her now swollen feet, she walked along the road back to the house. It was nearly five o’clock. If Gabriele were still out with his father and Signora Marcheschi were still visiting their tenants, perhaps they hadn’t noticed her absence yet and wouldn’t guess the fullness of her defeat. She turned the knob on the terrace door, the one with the cracked pane, lifted and held the handle, then pushed the door inward, slowly so that it didn’t squeak. She heard the sound of a metal spoon stirring in a kettle and smelled chicken roasting. It seemed almost welcoming.

  “Where do you suppose that ragazza is now?” It was Signora Marcheschi’s voice.

  “Perhaps she’s left, Signora,” Grazia said.

  “To paint her pictures, you mean? Nonsense. What could she be thinking? Having children changes everything. Besides, she won’t leave if she wants to keep her child.” Willa stopped breathing.

  “We say, ‘To help a husband, help a wife,’ Signora.”

  “How? She refuses to learn!”

  Willa let go of the door handle. The door closed with a slam.

  “What’s that?” Signora Marcheschi said. Willa took off her shoes and scurried up the tiled stairs to their bedroom. She closed the door. The latch clicked. She turned the lock and dropped her shoes on the wooden floor. Dirt and grit trickled out of them. On the bed, she saw her coat and suitcase. She pushed them under the bed. The doorknob rattled. “Willa?” Signora Marcheschi! Willa stood up, dizzy. “Willa!”

  She unlocked the door. Signora Marcheschi looked her up and down, stopping at her grimy feet. “There are dirty footprints on the stairs, and you haven’t fed the chickens.”

  Willa felt something rise up within her, something larger than concern for what happened to her or to her baby, something black and red and wild, born of unbounded disappointment, grief, and now rage. She advanced toward her mother-in-law, her body taut, ready to spring. Her voice, low and even, came from a previously unknown place within her. “Get someone with a bigger dowry to clean your filthy house and go feed the damn chickens yourself.” Signora Marcheschi held her position in the doorway. “Gabriele promised that I would be able to paint when we got married. He lied to me.”

  “He should have told you that we can’t afford an artist. We need your help just so we can live as well as we did before we had to feed you.”

  “Your life has made you old and mean. Why would I give up mine for yours?”

  “You already have.” Signora Marcheschi closed the door behind her. Willa picked up her shoes and threw them against the door with all of the strength she had left. Long black streaks marked the whitewashed wood. Dust floated in the air.

  19

  The handful of coins Willa had left amounted to less than a few lire, and Gabriele had already spent the check from her parents on a tractor. If I had enough money of my own, I could start over—perhaps in Paris or Rome or London. But in Orvieto? Suddenly, she had an idea. She remembered the tourists from that morning, the ones in the big car who wanted to buy wine. We could sell it to them. She turned her purse upside down and shook it. Mr. Bradshaw’s card fell out along with a handkerchief, a pen, some aspirin, and a lipstick in a color she disliked. She picked up the business card, turned it over. On the back she wrote, “100 cases, immediate shipment, cash” and put the card in her pocket.

  When Gabriele returned from the vineyards, he found Willa waiting for him. Smiling, she kissed him. “I want to talk to you about our plans,” she said.

  “Plans?”

  “For expanding the business…and our family, too.” She rubbed her slightly rounded belly. Gabriele smiled. “I met a group of tourists on their way to the Duomo today,” she continued, “and one stopped to ask me where to buy wine—‘a lot of it,’ he said. I had to tell him that there was no place in the entire town of Orvieto because all the winemakers are out in the countryside. I said that we would sell him as much wine as he wanted. Look, here’s his card.” She took Bradshaw’s card out of her pocket and handed it to Gabriele.

  “We don’t have a hundred cases. Anyway, he has an address in Firenze. He can get as many cases as he wants there.” Gabriele crumpled the card and dropped it on the table.

  “But we could,” she said. She picked up the card and unfolded it.

  “We could have even more than a hundred cases and we could sell to him and to people like him before they buy their wine from someone else. If we had a shop in town, we could sell our wine. Wine from other poderi, too. And we could make a profit, which we don’t do now.”

  Her enthusiasm pleased Gabriele. He laughed. “What do you know about selling so much wine, my little bird?”

  “I know that you are going to be the most successful winemaker in this region…in all of Italy.” Willa touched her belly. “Besides, we must to do everything we can for our family.” Gabriele didn’t answer, but after dinner when Grazia served the fruit, Gabriele told his father that Vino Marcheschi must open an office and shop on the Piazza del Duomo to reach “the tourist trade.” Willa sat nearby, pretending to embroider baby clothes.

  “I’ve never heard of this ‘tourist trade,’” said the elder Marcheschi. “What tourist buys a hundred cases of Orvieto? It’s not even good wine.”

  “We could make it good, just like the old Orvieto,” Gabriele said. They talked long after dinner.

  “How would you manage this shop?” Signor Marcheschi asked. “It’s too far away.”

  “We’d have to live there,” Gabriele said.

  “Sono d’accordo,” Signor Marcheschi said. I agree. “It would be the only way to handle this new business idea of yours,” inclining his head in Willa’s direction. “Perhaps it would be good for your family, too.”

  Gabriele nodded. “I think we can improve the vintage.”

  “You have an excellent mind for business, figliolo.”

  It was well past 2:00 a.m. when Gabriele came to bed. “As soon as you find a place for us to live, we’ll move into town,” he told Willa. “My father approves of my idea.” After Gabriele fell asleep, Willa slipped out of bed and wrote a letter to her parents:

  …and we hope to have a home of our own in town before our baby comes, one with a real toilet inside and a sink with running water, though most people here consider such things luxuries.

  All my love, Willa

  The next morning she took her letter to the post office while Gabriele waited for her outside.

  The clerk examined the address. “This letter is going to America.”

  “Yes, to my parents.”

  “I want to go to America one day,” the clerk said. He leaned toward her and whispered,
“Signora Marcheschi, do you think your parents could help me?”

  Later, Willa and Gabriele called on Alvaro, the accountant, who had inherited a storefront on the Piazza del Duomo. The space had been vacant for twenty-three years since the death of Alvaro’s wife. Although people believed Alvaro to be very wealthy, the mottled walls of his tiny office had not been whitewashed for decades and the planking on the floors had shrunk and separated. Spider webs hung in the corners near the ceiling. Dirt obscured the light from the two small windows. A frayed electrical wire snaked up the back wall, slithered across the ceiling, and ended in a bare bulb just above a dusty wooden desk where Alvaro sat on an old, wooden office chair with broken springs. Alvaro acknowledged Willa and Gabriele with a wave of his hand, but remained seated, cleaning his fingernails with a nail. So completely had he merged with his surroundings that, except for his sharp eyes, he appeared to be one with his office.

  “I’m expanding my business, I need new space immediately,” Gabriele told him.

  “Today isn’t a lucky day to show property,” Alvaro told Gabriele.

  “But this is very important,” Gabriele said. Alvaro put the nail in a drawer and listened to Gabriele describe “my plan to capitalize on the tourist trade. Along with my wife, of course.” Gabriele winked.

  Alvaro chuckled and rubbed his hands together. “It’s a good idea. I’ll make you a good deal.” He extracted a key from the top drawer of his desk and a can of oil from underneath. “I think this day will be fortunato for you.” He glanced at Willa. “And your wife.”

  The lock on the storefront had frozen from disuse. Alvaro squirted oil into the keyhole and on the hinges. The oil ran down the door and puddled on the ground. Alvaro turned the key and pushed the door open. Inside, cobwebs hung in sheets. Alvaro brushed them aside. Vermin droppings crunched under their feet as they walked through the rooms. Willa coughed. There were three rooms downstairs, one of which could be divided into a storeroom and a bathroom, leaving one for a showroom and one for an office for Gabriele. Upstairs, there was room for a kitchen, a bedroom, a small studio, and a baby’s room. It’s large enough, especially by Orvieto’s standards, but could it ever be clean enough for a baby? Willa wondered.