The Italian Letters

by Linda Lambert

  “A Dr. Andrea LeMartin. Calling from Paris.”

  CHAPTER 2

  We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

  —John F. Kennedy

  “WHO’S DR. LE MARTIN?” asked Morgan, folding his napkin and placing it on the left side of his plate.

  Does he plan to stay? Justine wondered. She had mixed feelings about the possibility.

  “A colleague of Justine’s from Egypt and long-time friend of mine,” Lucrezia answered, also taking notice of Morgan’s gesture with the napkin. “I’m sure you’ve heard us talk about her.”

  “The name’s familiar,” he said, staring appreciatively at Lucrezia, his eyes warm with memories of their youth together, making love on the summer porch in Berkeley.

  “She’s coming to Italy in a couple days,” offered Justine. “I’ve invited her to join us to discuss the codex that dropped into my lap in Egypt. As far as I know, the original hasn’t shown up in the black market. Perhaps we’ll take a little side trip to Rome.”

  “It’ll show up. Probably in Milan or Rome,” said her mother, helping Maria to clear the table.

  “Catch me up here,” demanded Morgan. He already knew about Justine’s discovery of a codex during the earthquake in Cairo and the involvement of the infamous Supreme Antiquities Director. What he wasn’t sure of was where things stood now.

  A soft morning breeze carried the fragrance of damp grasses and early spring plantings from the garden below. At Christmas, Justine had told him about his old mentor Ibrahim El Shabry’s complicity in the theft of the codex from the Supreme Director’s safe in the Egyptian Museum. At very least, Ibrahim had known about the theft and hadn’t done anything to stop it.

  “I found it hard to believe that Ibrahim was involved. Impossible, really. Not the man I know.” Morgan and Ibrahim had been colleagues during several digs in Egypt, particularly a notorious one at Darshur. Friends and colleagues for thirty years. He was pensive for several moments. “Come work with me, Justine. After the Egyptian fiasco, you could reestablish your reputation as a fine anthropologist.”

  Justine cringed at the word fiasco. “I thought you didn’t need an anthropologist. We just muddy the water.”

  “Touché. We’ll figure out a role that you’ll find appealing. Think about it.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “What can you expect from this Andrea? Will she bring more translations? Whatever you two reveal about this codex, you can expect all hell to break loose,” he said, concern washed across his face.

  “It already has. Hell, that is. No telling what will happen next.” Justine attempted to sound casual; she knew efforts to prevent further findings from surfacing could get much worse. Who am I kidding? Myself? Or am I trying to comfort my parents?

  “You haven’t tackled the Catholic Church yet, my dear,” said her mother, leaning across the table to refill the coffee cups.

  Justine sat back in her chair, watching her mother’s face closely. For several moments she watched the morning sunlight dance across the crystal glassware still on the table. Is that worry? Is she afraid of what the Catholic Church could do to me?

  “How about your own work, Dad? No small controversy there. Many Italians insist Etruscans are native to Italy. If we challenge that, maybe we’ll both be thrown out of Italy!” She reached over and patted his arm.

  Morgan squeezed her hand. “Italy tolerates controversy a little better than Egypt, my dear. What we uncover about the Etruscans might shake things up, yes. Are you ready for that? But too, Cerveteri has already been combed pretty thoroughly. And Mussolini’s long gone.”

  “What does Mussolini have to do with it?” asked Justine, slowly withdrawing her hand from her father’s grasp.

  “Mussolini and a few archaeologists, Massimo among them, tried to reestablish the Roman Empire during the 1920s and ’30s,” said Lucrezia, sitting back down at the table, taking up her coffee cup. “Part of those efforts was to portray the Etruscans, who taught the Romans how to build, as militaristic warriors . . . and indigenous Italians, of course. But I don’t think this portrayal of the Etruscans is accurate. They seem very unlike the Romans and the Greeks, I would say.” She paused and let her eyes linger on Morgan, forgiving him for the earlier slight.

  Morgan and Justine remained silent. They knew when other thoughts were simmering in Lucrezia’s mind. “I’d like to think women played a greater role in Etruscan society. And yet some things never change,” she said finally. “Look at today. We’re saddled with Berlusconi, who considers women playthings. And he’s corrupt, yet he’s bound to be elected president again next month!”

  “I doubt women held as much sway or played as powerful a role among the Etruscans as your mother suggests,” Morgan said to Justine. “The Greek and Roman women who followed them certainly didn’t have as much power as their male counterparts.”

  “We know that, Dad! But what if it really was matrilineal culture?”

  “Never!” Morgan almost shouted. “And I, for one, am willing to give Berlusconi another go.” He turned toward his ex-wife and displayed the grin that had once swept her away. “By the way, Justine. This Andrea. Is she my type?”

  “Decidedly not your type,” Lucrezia answered for her daughter. “She’s a tad independent for your taste.”

  “Buon punto!” said Morgan, grabbing the last remaining piece of banana bread as Maria left for the kitchen.

  Justine wondered when her parents’ predictable script would morph into tediousness. They could combine forces when it came to protecting her, but they couldn’t bury their individual competitive natures for long. As they sought to arouse one another’s jealousy, Justine slipped into her sandals and extricated herself from their sport.

  Gripping the warm terrace railing, Justine stood on her toes and leaned backward, drawing in the fresh scent of lemon. Exhaling slowly, she released the tension that had accumulated during breakfast. Just below, in the garden, the first hint of new growth beckoned. Creeping thyme moved up the stairwell and spread around the stepping-stones. The path led her between widely planted cypresses and the scented jasmine and honeysuckle that filled the air. Lemon and olive trees stood like soldiers on watch among the zucchini and lilies. The plantings were not random.

  Tuscans tended to separate objects of all kinds into their respective spaces. Moving further down into the garden, Justine found a newly planted herb garden of oregano, winter savory, sage, and chives, ringed by a low hedge of rosemary. This was the secret place she remembered so well . . . a small, intimate blanket of grass with table and chairs, hedges, hydrangea, and boxed topiaries. This could be the place where I write in my diary.

  She did not stop to enjoy the private place of her childhood, for this morning she was looking for Prego. Turning right through blossoming green bean and catalogna chicory, she approached the small potting shed of glass and faded oak siding. Spiders and webs drooped everywhere.

  “Ragno, spiders, keep me company. Eat the aphids and beetles,” Prego intoned, as though he were picking up in the middle of an ongoing conversation with Justine. He had not seen her for several weeks, although they had spoken briefly on her return from Egypt before Christmas.

  “Thinning the tomato seedlings?” she asked as she spied a box of uprooted sprouts.

  “Prego,” he said in agreement. “Babies need room to grow. One by one. Pomodoro-pantano Romanesco. Harvest in June if the weather keeps comin’ good. Need lots of sun.”

  “May I help?” she asked. Without waiting for permission, she buried both hands into the moist soil and lifted a fragile seedling from the flat of miniature tomato plants as one would lift a child from its cradle.

  They worked side by side in silence for some time. Justine watched as a spider descended on a long fiber of webbing. “How long have you worked here, Prego?”

  “All my life, my child. Father came as a young man. My mother, just a girl, worked upstairs. Prego.” In Italian, prego means please, and
thank you, and yes, and excuse me, and just about anything, depending on the context. Prego scattered the word about in the way some people overuse “you know”—thus he had been called “Prego” for as long as Justine could remember. She didn’t remember his real name.

  “This house, Prego. How was it used during the war?” Justine watched the spider as it crawled back up its web, a geometric tapestry. Nature! Entrancing. Sunlight caught the fibers, and they shone like stained glass windows.

  “I was a boy. No memories. Only gardens. See arugula, signorina. Seeds itself. Plants have memory, not Prego.” Blue veins on the backs of his hands bulged ever so slightly as his fingers tightened around the wooden ledge of the table.

  She watched his hands, knowing that memories were buried there, deeper than the plants he loved. “What did the visitors wear, Prego? Were there boots?”

  “Boots. Si. Many boots.”

  “Fiesole remained in German hands until the end of the war. Right? You would have been . . . what? Ten, eleven?”

  “Twelve, signorina.” His shoulders moved closer to his neck, his unkempt hair rising above his collar. A weathered hand touched his forehead as he crossed himself. “This house, so beautiful. Much art. Picasso everywhere.”

  Justine looked at the man she had known all her life. His body had grown smaller. Always short, he was now shorter. She towered over him. His coveralls with rolled up cuffs, his plaid shirt with frayed collar, were familiar to her. His face was a portrait of a wrinkled, contented man, one who didn’t allow himself to worry . . . or recall the unpleasantries of life. The twinkle in his eyes that had once signaled mischief had quieted, for he had spent those thoughts that life could be something grand. The garden was enough for him, was satisfying in the way old age brings contentment for those who are fortunate enough to embrace it.

  Prego trusted Justine. He trusted who she was. He trusted that she would always be gracious. He trusted that she would always return. Yet he trusted no one with his deep secrets—secrets that, if disclosed, could disrupt his quiet regimen.

  Justine understood this. She wiped her hands on a nearby towel, gave Prego an affectionate hug, and climbed the steps toward the terrace. Their conversation about World War II could wait for another day.

  CHAPTER 3

  The two of us are a country under embargo, living on parentheses and silences, on blackouts, so that when the lights finally come on again, we have already forgotten what to say to each other.

  —Elisa Biagini, Italian Poet

  IN 1927, TWO IMPORTANT visitors came to Cerveteri: Benito Mussolini and D.H. Lawrence. Mussolini demanded that a road be built between the village and the necropolis so that visitors could access the tombs of the great Etruscan warriors, forebears and teachers of the triumphant Romans. D.H. Lawrence came in search of Etruscan Places, his loving tale about the Etruscans he loved—destroyed, he felt, by the crude Romans. Both men were captivated by the Etruscans, but they came with different assumptions and left with disparate idealistic convictions.

  Like all Etruscan towns, Cerveteri—or Caere, as it was called then—sat on a craggy hill overlooking a valley and the sea beyond. The volcanic rock, or tufa, wall surrounding the village was now nearly smothered by trees and vines growing up the escarpment from the ravine below. Three major volcanic actions had loosened and split the tufa walls and the tumuli—domed structures that housed multiple tombs—beyond. Partially buried under these natural concealments were ancient carved lions, horses, birds, and the tools used to make them. A citadel rose above the wall, created in the classic design that has marked the Italian landscape for 2,500 years.

  During the Middle Ages, a huge iron gate secured the wall. As centuries passed, the gate opened and the town welcomed visitors—although few came. Even today, at the tourist bureau, no one spoke English. Shop owners seemed surprised by other languages, and residents watched outsiders with curiosity, even though UNESCO promoted the Necropolis of the Banditaccia of Cerveteri as the “patrimony of humanity, an exceptional testimonial to the Etruscan civilization.”

  Having spent the night in Viterbo, two hours to the northeast, Justine drove up the sharp incline to the ancient town appreciating the late March warmth. She parked her sapphire 2004 Alfa Romeo Spider across from Santa Maria Maggiore Church. She stood for a moment, examining the city map. She walked north across the bridge leading up to the Piazza Risorgimento. A Renaissance clock tower rose on the west end. To the left, a restaurant glowing pink and yellow in the morning light, matching turret and potted trees surrounding outdoor tables and umbrellas, which protruded into the square. An adjacent pharmacy and a vegetable market shared an edifice painted with elaborate murals of medieval life. A contrasting, stern gray government building towered over the piazza’s south side; Justine wondered if it still hosted dungeons and guillotines.

  She had agreed to meet her father at one of the tables under the clock tower, an imaginative structure of marble and bricks with double pillars that felt reminiscent of Disneyland. A coat of arms boasted a wide-antlered buck.

  A young woman emerged from the corner café and took Justine’s order for two double cappuccinos.

  “Love those boots,” she said as her father approached. “Cappuccino?”

  “You always know what I like,” said Morgan, sitting down and flinging one leg over his knee so she could get a closer look at the boots. “Had them made in Cuzco.”

  “Are we going out to the dig this morning?” she asked, running her palm over the polished buckskin surface. “These won’t look so new in a couple of hours.”

  “They clean up easily enough,” he said, brushing a slight residue of dust from the toes. “But let me fill you in before we head out. Yesterday big equipment was brought in to dig ten feet down around two of the tumuli identified as interesting by aerial photos. So . . . we might be able to get into the troughs today.”

  “What made the photos interesting?”

  “Formations deep under the tumuli. They look like geometrical designs. But I’ve been fooled before. From the air, ordinary rock can form outlines that look man-made.”

  “I love being in on the beginning of a mystery . . . what do you expect to find?” She moved her chair slightly to avoid the direct sun and took off her sunglasses. Her amber eyes glistened.

  “Probably not much.” Morgan was forever understating his excitement. “The tombs there already stretch over four centuries. Caere was an active community in the ninth century BCE and 200 years later it dominated the Tyrranean coast, including the Tolfa Mountains and Lake Bracciano, which you would have passed yesterday coming into Viterbo. But I’m hoping for a few surprises. Perhaps the tomb of an Etruscan king.” He laughed.

  “I didn’t think you liked surprises.” She was incredulous.

  “Only in archaeology, honey.” He grinned, finishing off his cappuccino, picking up his clipboard, and pushing back his chair.

  They rode in his jeep to the necropolis five miles away. Sycamore, oak, and cypress created a canopy over the road into grounds adorned by white narcissus and salmon and ivory lilies, once known as asphodel. Persephone, the daughter of Zeus, had claimed the asphodel lily as her own during the half of her life she could spend on Earth. Abducted by Hades, she was condemned to spend the other half in his underworld. Justine compared the fable to her own life. Maybe Egypt was my underworld. I was smothered in an earthquake, run off the road, kidnapped, and kicked out of the country. But there were exquisite moments as well. Amir . . .

  Morgan parked the Jeep near the miniature train and tourist center. They walked through the public area. Mounds of verdant earth ran wild with dandelions and green brambles. A door on each side of the tumuli led to two separate tombs. The tumuli themselves rested on four-foot-high stone foundations crusty with lichen and fungi. Set about twenty feet apart on either side of a common walkway, they fashioned a comely neighborhood. No other necropolis in Italy lived so lightly on the land.

  At the end of the path they stepped ove
r a low-lying fence and approached two tumuli whose foundations were ringed by a deep trench.

  “Olives were actually found in this one,” a young man was saying as he stepped out of a nearby tomb. “That’s why it’s called the Tomb of the Olives. Furbo, clever.” He held out his hand, stepped forward, and took Justine’s hand into his. “Riccardo,” he said.

  “Riccardo Chia, our historian,” offered her father, by way of further introduction. He dug the toe of his boot into the earth.

  Justine read her father’s fidgeting as contempt. “Delighted to meet you,” she said. “I’m always eager to meet a historian. So tell me, how difficult is it to work with my father?”

  Riccardo blanched, but quickly recovered. “He’s son of a bitch,” he said in broken English. An open khaki shirt revealed a chest of dark brown hair and a small scar near his trachea. A careless ponytail rested on his shoulder like a squirrel’s tail. His eyes were a little too close together, and that and his scraggly eyebrows, almost touching, gave him a look of intense concentration. Two days’ growth obscured his narrow chin. “But I expect to learn an enormous amount from Dr. Jenner.” He shifted his feet like a boy who has overstepped his authority.

  Another charmer, she thought. If rather odd-looking.

  Her father touched the rim of his hat and raised his left eyebrow, obviously uncomfortable with Riccardo’s portrayal of him.

  “And what is it you’re hoping to learn from this dig, Riccardo?” Justine asked.

  “In the best world, God willing, we find a house with scrolls of poetry and a few plays. But I’m dreaming, since no literature remains—burned by early Christians, mostly. And only a couple of Etruscan towns have been found.”

  “Riccardo’s a romantic,” said Morgan. “Typical historian . . .” he muttered.

  “Why do you think that is, Riccardo?” Justine asked, raising her voice to drown out her father’s rudeness. “That so few verified Etruscan towns have been found?”