“I’ll help.”
“We have only two shovels.”
“There’s a tool in Rosina’s barn, near her dresser.” I’d spotted it as I bathed—a long-handled implement ending in a small, sharp-edged blade, halfway between a trowel and a hoe. It wouldn’t take much dirt with each scoop, but at least it would be something.
Cosimo puzzled over my statement. “That won’t be any good for digging a grave. It’s only for pushing around leaves and a little dirt, for digging truffles. Forget that. If you want to help, eat something, then take apart the top of the crate. Stack the wood just outside the truck, and then go to the main house and try to get some sleep.”
I had wanted to see it so desperately: in Munich, at mission’s end, and before that, in Rome, on that morning that now seemed like years ago, and in the back of the truck, trying to peer through a narrow gap in the slats. But now, facing the crate with a crowbar in my hand, I was no longer sure that I wanted to see the statue. I might notice a chip off a finger, a crack etched by the vibration of rural roads. I might be overcome by the beauty of the statue and feel again the immense failure of not delivering it on time, in a dignified manner, to its proper owner. Or I might feel nothing. That was the most terrifying possibility.
The statue had remained essential in the face of tragedy, in the face of death. But here, on this farm, in the light of an accidental encounter and a single conversation and the simple movement of a family tending to essential obligations—in the face of life —the statue seemed, or might seem, like something less than it really was. We fall out of love, or we see behind a veil. A myth collapses. Purpose vanishes. That is what I feared most.
But it did not matter what I feared or what I felt. I’d been assigned a chore and now I busied myself with it: prying off one slat of wood at a time, starting at the top and moving around to each side, leaving only the bottom of the crate as a low-walled pallet. I worked hard, prying and sweating and slipping, trying to keep each board whole and undamaged. In the middle of the work, Cosimo brought me a shallow bowl of oily polenta and I shoveled it into my mouth, hardly tasting it, because it was only fuel for this effort of which I did not quite approve. But I would worry about protecting the statue later, when there was hope of being on the road again. I set aside the bowl and the spoon and returned to work. And as I proceeded to loosen more slats—hardly even looking at the object my work was uncovering, so disillusioned and confused were my thoughts at that moment—my memories loosened as well, splintering unpredictably.
Gerhard had been the only one of my colleagues to show up at my father’s funeral in December. He had stood next to me during the perfunctory service and had asked me how I was managing. Later, outside the church, after thanking him for coming, I had let it slip that I’d never understood my father, had never even felt like I’d known him.
“Your father had different experiences,” Gerhard had said, expressing gentle understanding toward us both. “The war, a lot of struggle since, just getting by—it’s all hard.”
“But you’ve been through all those things?”
He considered carefully: “Yes.”
“And none of it made you into a brute.”
We were at the top of the steps, and two older men walked past and tipped their hats. They were drinking buddies of my father’s, paying their respects. His funeral hadn’t been well attended.
“It could have, yes. It might have. But I had joy in my life, too. Things I loved doing and learning. People I loved.” This was one of the times—there were more to follow—when he had begun to talk about his memories of Italy. The girl in Perugia, or Pisa. The importance of mere days; the importance of hours. I had countered, argumentative young man that I was, with a point about the importance of the eternal. He had mentioned—before there was even talk of a government trip—that I should make a trip south.
“To see art?”
“Well, yes. But I don’t want you to go just to evaluate the art. I want you to go in order that you might experience the art. Photographs and sketches can’t do the sculptures justice—or the frescoes, or the cathedrals. I want you to stand there, in the light of Tuscany, in the noise and heat of Rome, and see the work of ages.”
I started to answer him, but he put one arm around me and lowered his voice to a whisper: “And then, my friend, I want you to forget what you see and know, just for a moment. I want you to experience Italy as the sculptors themselves did. Live as they lived, feel as they felt, on those days when they looked at a block of marble and believed in the humanity that was imprinted even on that cold surface—even inside stone.”
I stumbled into the Digirolamo house an hour or so later and found the uncle’s room at the top of the staircase where Cosimo said I would find it. There were splinters in my fingertips that I could feel but not see, and though Cosimo had left me a candle affixed with melted wax to an overturned jar lid, I was too tired to light it. I didn’t even take off my clothes. Zio Adamo was already asleep on his own twin bed across the room, snuffling quietly.
When the door opened some time later, my eyelids popped open. My heart was beating fast, even before I remembered where I was. Gianni, framed by weak light, stood in the open doorway, legs apart and arms lifted off his side, ready to shoot or duel. He crossed the bedroom and sat down hard at my side, jabbing me in the arm.
“Yes?”
When he pointed to the floor and yanked the top of my sheet, I extracted myself from the warm pocket of bedclothes and stood, confused. He scooted into my place, drawing his long legs up and pushing them under the covers, before turning away from me, face to the wall. His room had been the one converted temporarily into a funeral parlor, so I didn’t blame him for leaving it. Ejecting me was understandable, but his dislike for me was so evident that I decided I’d rather be outside on the cold, hard ground than sleeping on the floor at his feet.
I tiptoed down the stairs and downhill to the barn, where the truck was parked, and where at least I wouldn’t wake to an inhospitable stranger’s face. The next hour crept by as I tried to sleep with my head turned to one side, tightly wedged under the steering wheel, my legs bent, my stocking feet pushed up against the window. Impossible. I was shifting yet again, thinking of trying the back of the truck where there would be less padding but more space, when suddenly there was the sound of frantic clawing coming from the other side of the truck door. Sitting up, I banged my ear against the steering wheel and listened hard, trying to distinguish the scratch of a wild animal from that of a tame one. I tapped back three times.
Tartufa heard me and barked once, then launched into a series of agonizing whines. I rapped at the door, opened it a crack, cursed—all to no avail. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind, alternating between a low, wet growl and a needy whimper. Now, the back of the truck wouldn’t work at all. With the retractable door open, she’d either jump inside or stand just below the threshold, barking. As for sleeping in there with the door closed, I’d had enough of that.
I was sitting upright, head in my hands against the steering wheel, when a quick rap against the window startled me all over again. Rosina pressed her face against the glass, her hand cupped above her eyes, squinting. “Ernesto,” she whispered. “Come.”
She clapped her hands once and cursed at the dog, who ran off, allowing me to exit the truck and follow, unmolested. In the barn, Rosina refused to hear my objections and pointed to a pile of blankets in a corner, diagonal from her own sagging bed. She, too, was exhausted and tired of hearing Tartufa whining and growling outside.
“Why isn’t Cosimo keeping her locked up?”
“She makes a good watchdog. He’s anxious about unwanted visitors coming around the farm tonight.”
“I can’t intrude upon your privacy like this.”
“Stop,” she said, turning down the lantern next to her bed. “I’m too tired for all that.”
But a moment later, she asked quietly, “Why was Enzo visiting Farfalla?”
“Cos
imo didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
So I explained to her about the failed proposal and about Cosimo’s revelation that he and Farfalla had been a couple, before Enzo came along.
“Poor liebling,” she said. And a little later: “Speak to me. About anything. I like the sound of your voice.”
“You like the sound of German?”
“I miss it very much.”
“But Italian is more passionate—isn’t that what people say?”
“There is romance, and then there is urgency.” She paused, and I listened to the whisper of moving sheets and the creak of her bed as she shifted toward me. “The sound of German reminds me of—well, never mind.”
“I think . . . I think you are thinking not of me, but of the man from your past.”
“What if I am? Given your fascination with classical art, you are living in the past all the time. Who are you to judge?”
The dark made it easier to speak without inhibitions. “It’s not very flattering, to have a woman sound interested because you remind her of someone else.”
“Isn’t arousal usually about memory?”
“I’m sorry?” It wasn’t the concept that had stopped me in my tracks; it was the provocative word, arousal—a bit more explicit, I was guessing, than she intended, but that is what happens when you are speaking in a second language. It is hard to soften the edges of things, and that is why, perhaps, things can sometimes progress more quickly than they otherwise might. To talk flirtatiously with a foreigner can be like riding in a truck with no brakes.
Then again, perhaps she was not the kind to use brakes, wherever—or whatever—she was riding.
“Come on now,” she said, thinking I needed to be convinced. “You see something that excites you, and maybe it’s because it reminds you of when you were a boy and looking in a woman’s window, or some photograph you saw, or another lover, or all of it together. So what is wrong with that?”
“It leaves one feeling . . . rather left out.”
“But maybe later, you will be the memory.”
“When the woman is with someone else, you mean.”
“With someone else, or alone. Who knows?”
“You are an outspoken woman, Rosina.”
“And this bothers you?”
“Not at all. You are remarkable.”
“Don’t say that.” Her voice had turned cold. I was reminded of the woman in Cosimo’s picture, the woman who did not want to be photographed, who did not seem to desire adoration, who perhaps did not feel that she deserved it.
“I can’t say that you are exceptional?”
“No, you cannot. Gutenacht.”
At breakfast, though I followed her into the house and sat next to her through a tense family breakfast—only Cosimo was missing, off helping the coffin maker—she would not speak to me. I tried a question or two, in German, but she ignored me, and each time I opened my mouth, Gianni stifled me with his dark glare.
“The old jealousy has died hard. He does not like to hear German,” Rosina finally said under her breath, standing to remove her plate from the table. “None of them do.”
“So you won’t speak to me at all?” I followed her toward the counter where the dirty dishes were stacked.
“Basta.”
Mamma Digirolamo and Rosina were wearing black dresses, but Marzia, Gianni’s wife, seemed to have a special exemption and was wearing a loose, yellow, flower-spotted dress. All three were puffy-eyed, as if they’d been up for hours, tending to all the normal chores in addition to the new ones imposed by this day’s necessary rituals.
When Gianni left the room, Marzia carried the dishes just outside where there was an outdoor kitchen established around the paved terrazza with a water spigot and a washtub. The uncle sat quietly at the table, plaiting strands of straw into what would become, in the next hour, a woven cross. Mamma Digirolamo and Rosina began filling pots with water, rolling out dough, cutting up pieces of a long, bright-red sausage.
“Can I help with anything?”
Rosina broke her silence. “You’d better.”
“But what can I do?”
Gianni scowled.
“You can help with the coffin, I suppose,” Rosina said.
“I know nothing about carpentry.”
“And you know more about cooking?”
“Not really.”
“Then we’ll keep things simple. Go find us eggs. At least six, in the henhouse.”
After pantomiming with Marzia outside, I found my way around the cascina’s various outbuildings: a pigsty; a storage shed full of barrels and jars; the half-finished foundation of a small house—one Gianni was originally building for Marzia and himself before he lost steam and decided the main house would be more comfortable. Finally, I stumbled into the henhouse and fulfilled my mission, returning with a dirty armload of eggs, one of them cracked and dribbling. Back in the kitchen, I helped pound dough; I cut thin strips of dried tomatoes; I crossed the room to fetch plates or reach hanging pots whenever Rosina pointed wordlessly to them. I watched as a lump of risen dough became an elaborate picnic bread, with latticework pieces woven over hard-boiled eggs, still in their shells, and bits of sausage. This last small, sculptural masterpiece, baked in the outdoor oven, would be the afternoon meal eaten at the family cemetery—a shame that so few would get to see it.
Over the next two hours, I yearned to hear Rosina speak. There she was, sitting across the table, and there were so many things I wanted to ask—about her years singing opera, about her perceptions of Munich, about her life here on the farm—but she did not want to hear from me and this seemed the wrong time to make repeated overtures. We were living a relationship in reverse, from the intimacy of nudity to candid conversation, to terse communication, and now to silence. Another hour, and she would look up from the bread she was shaping and fail to recognize me.
At one point, Marzia’s eyes happened to meet mine and she offered a tentative smile. Throughout the silent afternoon, I had been struggling to piece together the little Italian I did know, and now I tried a sentence. “This is a big farm.”
Mamma Digiloramo looked my way, expression blank.
I tried again, aware that I sounded like a child or an idiot: “I see pigs and chickens. Many.”
Marzia giggled into a cupped hand.
“Good buildings,” I said. “Hills. Trees. Beautiful.” So what if they were single words? They were better than this cursed silence. I had relied on Cosimo and Enzo too much; I hadn’t even tried. And I realized now, as all travelers do, that speaking is not just about exchanging information or the essentials of getting by. It makes you feel like a different person.
“Bello,” I said again, because it was a word I was more confident about, and it felt good to say it. “You have . . . grapes?” There was a phrase I could use again, with infinite modifications. “You have . . . corn?”
Marzia laughed again, without answering.
I was exhausted from the effort, but Rosina smiled. That smile was more important than my dignity.
Just then, Gianni passed through the kitchen and delivered a message that I couldn’t understand, except to catch Enzo’s name. Mamma Digirolamo exhaled through pursed lips as he talked, head swinging side to side in a pendulum of maternal regret. She turned and put a hand on Gianni’s arm. He stood a little taller, ennobled by this bad news he’d brought. Rosina kept her eyes down, cutting a pile of black olives with much more force than the soft little garnishes required.
“Rosina . . .” I tried after Gianni left, when my latest cooking task was complete and there was nothing more for me to do.
She sighed, stood, and left the kitchen, exiting the house without explanation, and I followed, thinking this was a coded way for us to talk privately. My stomach felt queasy with anticipation—an intoxicating thrill I hadn’t felt in years. I pictured our moment alone: closing the barn door; or perhaps down in the woods, near some clear-running creek. I pictured reaching a
hand out to her shoulder and running a finger across her clavicle toward the soft hollow at the base of her throat. But halfway down the hill, toward the barn, she turned on me, muttering in German.
“I can’t talk with you right now. I need some time, before the funeral.”
“Of course.”
But I followed her a few steps more.
“Cosimo says you didn’t want to bring Enzo here, for the funeral.”
“I didn’t at first. But we’re here, aren’t we?”
“He says you will leave soon and he’ll help get you to the border.”
“This afternoon, as soon as the burial is complete.”
“This afternoon?”
Cosimo had explained the missed deadline and the importance of delivering the statue. But not wanting to worry her, he hadn’t explained the full extent of Keller’s intrigues or the scale of the consequences facing us, which even in my acceptance of recent delays had never been far from my mind.
“You can’t be serious,” she said now. “These are unusual circumstances. What does it matter if you take another day or two? No one could fault you.”
“No,” I said a little too sharply. “You don’t understand. Things in Germany aren’t the same as they are in Italy. People have expectations.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “We don’t have expectations?”
“About getting things done. About things going according to plan.” But this was a wrong turn. I hadn’t meant to lecture. “I may visit again, though. I hope to.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve always wanted to visit Florence.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that so?”
“It would be”—I could almost hear Enzo’s teasing voice—“very tempting.”
“Of course—you enjoy art,” she said flatly. “What did you see in Rome?”
“There wasn’t any time.”
“Did you see the Sistine Chapel?”
“No.”
“The Pantheon? The Trevi Fountain? Not in your priorities? Not in your plans, even though you are so devoted to history and to art?”
The Art Lover Page 17
