by Lina Simoni
“How do you know?” Rosa asked.
“I know everything.”
“If you knew everything,” said Rosa, “you would know that I’m sick of taking orders for no good reason.”
“Who taught you to speak like that, Signorina? If Angela heard you, she’d die all over again.”
“I’ll be the one to die, if you don’t let me do it.”
“You’ll survive, dear. I can assure you.”
“How old were you and Angela when you started to play the game?”
“Much older than fifteen,” Madam C said.
“I’ll be sixteen in three days, you know.”
“I know. I sent out the invitations for your party. And this is the end of the conversation.”
Rosa was not ready yet to give up on the idea of becoming a Luna girl sometime soon, and that was what she had been brooding over that afternoon at the Luna while Madam C had untangled her hair and later while the girls were getting the parlor ready for the party. They were now counting plates and silverware, lining up wine bottles on the counter, and talking to Antonia in the kitchen to make sure the food would be warm and ready by seven. Rosa and Madam C were at that point on the third floor, in Madam C’s sitting room, hemming the white dress. “Just a couple of centimeters,” Madam C said. “It will make your legs look longer.”
At some point there were knocks on the Luna door. “Don’t they know how to read?” Maddalena mumbled, heading for the entryway. When she opened the door, she saw a neatly dressed young man with a pale complexion and a spiky hairdo that reminded her of the bristles of a horse brush.
“I have a message for Madam C,” the young man stuttered, staring at Maddalena’s large breasts and low neckline.
“What’s the message, dear?” Maddalena asked.
“I have orders to deliver it to Madam C personally.”
“Then why don’t you come in,” Maddalena said, pulling the young man by his tie. “We have a visitor, girls. Someone call Madam C.”
“He’s cute.” Margherita giggled, as she ruffled the young man’s spiky hair. She noticed the stains of fresh sweat under his armpits and the deathly pallor on his face. “And shy, too. My favorite type.”
Madam C came down the stairs, followed closely by Rosa. “Can I help you?” she asked.
The young man spoke falteringly. “Madam, the mayor sent me to tell you that he will attend Miss Rosa’s party tonight.”
There was a murmur in the parlor swimming from girl to girl.
“He’s coming!” Madam C said with a thready voice. “I can’t believe he’s coming!”
“You’re blushing,” Stella said, pointing at Madam C’s face. “What are you, in love?”
“I’ve never been in love in my life,” Madam C stated, regaining her composure. “He’s an old friend, as you all know. And I haven’t seen him in quite a while. The last time he was here was…five years ago, more or less.” She turned to Rosa. “You were eleven. Do you remember him? When you were little he talked to you a few times.”
Rosa shook her head.
“Thank you,” Madam C told the young man. “Tell the mayor I’m looking forward to his visit, and so is Miss Rosa.”
Rosa gave Madam C a long look.
Margherita stepped in front of the young man, who was heading quickly for the door. “Why don’t you stay a little longer? You can’t be busy this late in the afternoon.”
He took a deep breath, gathering his strength before replying. “I am busy, Signora. I’m the mayor’s secretary, and there’s a lot going on at City Hall.”
“Tell me,” Margherita said, pushing up her breasts. “What may be going on at City Hall that is more important than this?”
The young man stepped back. “Haven’t you heard? A famous American president is in town and tomorrow morning he has an official meeting with the mayor. We still have so much work to do.”
“An American president?” Stella said. “My, my.”
“What’s his name?” Maddalena asked.
“Theodore Roosevelt.”
“Theodore,” Stella whispered, her eyes dreamy. “How lovely.”
“Tell the mayor to bring him to the party,” Maddalena said. “Maybe we can give the American president a taste of Italian love.”
The young man opened the door. “I really need to go.”
“What’s your name?” Margherita yelled after him.
“Roberto. Roberto Passalacqua.” He bowed. “I…need to go. Good-bye.”
The city had been in a frenzy for a while. Theodore Roosevelt, on a trip all over Italy with his wife, had arrived in Genoa by train that morning amidst parades, musical bands, and an unusually large deployment of police. In several locations the traffic had been diverted to make space for the presidential motorcade. Deep in the caruggi, no one had heard a beep, as that part of town, in particular Vico del Pepe and the surrounding streets, was not on the list of Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt’s places to visit. When Rosa had heard from Roberto Passalacqua that an American president was in town, her heart had skipped a beat. “Can I meet him?” she asked Madam C in a frenzy. “To ask him questions about America?”
Madam C looked at her with loving eyes. “No, dear. You can’t meet a president. You can’t even get close to a president, or someone will shoot you. If you want to know about America, ask the mayor tonight. He’s a man of the world. I’m sure he knows.”
“What’s his name?” Rosa asked.
“Cesare Cortimiglia. Are you sure you don’t remember him?”
“I’m sure,” Rosa said. “You never let me meet any of the men who come here.”
“It’s for your own good, and you know it,” Madam C pointed out. “And go wash this smell of apples off you. It’s giving me a headache.”
“I don’t want a party with all these guests,” Rosa moaned. “Why can’t we just have it with the girls?”
“Nonsense. You are sixteen, and you need to meet new people. Those I invited are good friends of mine. Some of them saw you when you were born and occasionally when you were a baby, and are dying to see how grown up you are. Others never met you before, but heard of you many times. You’ll see. By the end of the night, you’ll have new friends.”
“I already have a new friend,” said Rosa.
“Who?”
“Isabel.”
“Who’s Isabel?” Madam C asked.
Rosa looked Madam C straight in the eyes. “With this wind, there’ll be no fish tomorrow at the market.”
Rosa had met Isabel two months earlier, during one of her morning walks. She had seen her shadow many times before, tucked in a dark, large booth at the corner of Vico Usodimare, blurred by a veil of vapor that often spilled out into the street. To Rosa, that shadow had always looked surreal. The booth was quite wide, half the width of the building it was in, and stuck out of the building wall about one meter, making the caruggio even narrower. It had a glass door with two windows on each side, like a store, so that some of its interior was visible from the street despite the darkness. On the rare occasions Rosa had glanced at the booth as she passed by, she had caught a faint sight of a mass of white, fleecy hair, dark skin, and a long black vest that made the shadow look as if she stood on a pedestal rather than on feet. Overall, Rosa was scared. There were rumors about the woman at the corner of Vico Usodimare, which Rosa had heard from the shopkeepers of Via San Luca and from Antonio Donegà, the chimney sweeper: that she sold spells to make a living, that she kidnapped little children and boiled them in big iron pots, that with one look she could turn a liter of milk into a sour mush. No one knew exactly who she was. The one thing everyone knew for sure was that she was a witch. “Stay away from her,” Rosa had heard one of the shopkeepers tell her children, “or you’ll grow pig’s feet.”
One day, as she was heading back to the Luna from the port all caught up in one of her dreams about the ocean, Rosa unconsciously slowed down near Vico Usodimare, coming to a halt for a short moment. She was startled by a gentle
voice that said unhurriedly in an accent Rosa had never heard before, “Your hair reminds me of the sunsets back home. If you were my child, I would name you Tramonto.”
Rosa turned toward the voice, holding her breath as she realized it could have come only from the booth. She stood there quietly, as if hypnotized. In her black vest, the witch was on the booth’s threshold, smiling at Rosa through a thick vapor cloud. “I know what they say about me,” she said in her strange accent. “Would you like to know where this steam comes from?”
Wide-eyed, Rosa turned around and ran as fast as she could to the end of the street. She arrived at the Luna panting and kneeled next to her bed with her head down. “Thank you, Angela,” she whispered, “for helping me escape a horrible death in an iron pot full of boiling water.” She took a breath. “I’m not a child anymore,” she said, “but I’m sure witches own pots of all sizes.”
The echo of the witch’s voice lingered in Rosa’s head for many days. She often wondered if she had heard that voice for real or if it had been a dream. She talked about it with her friends one afternoon.
“There are no such things as witches,” Margherita said.
“That’s what you think,” Stella rebutted. “There are plenty of witches and wizards around us. People don’t know about them, that’s all.”
“In any case,” Maddalena said, “I’m sure that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the steam. People say the meanest things, Rosa. You of all people should know.”
One week later, Rosa returned to Vico Usodimare. The witch was seated quietly by the booth door, on a black rocking chair. There was no steam blurring her figure that day, and Rosa noticed that her eyes were shiny black and the leathery skin of her face was crisscrossed with wrinkles. “Hello, Tramonto,” the witch said when Rosa stopped in front of the booth.
“Hello,” Rosa whispered. “I’d like to know about the steam.”
“Come here,” the witch said, standing up. “I’ll show you.”
Rosa moved forward very slowly, and her knees shook a little when she stepped past the booth threshold. The room in front of her was more spacious than she had imagined, with walls of bare stone and graniglia floors like those on the first floor of the Luna, only dirtier. There was a cot in a corner, behind the rocking chair.
“See all this?” the witch said, pointing at some strange equipment in the very back of the room. “I use it to make perfumes. It’s a distillery, like the one my grandmother had at home.”
Silently, Rosa stared at a wood stove much larger than the one in the Luna kitchen, a big iron box with pipes coming out of each side, a glass carafe with a pipe that looked like a pig’s tail, and two marble mortars set on the floor. She thought those would be exactly the type of tools a witch would use to cast spells on people. “Perfumes?” she said. “I don’t believe you. It stinks in here.”
“Do you know how perfumes are made?” the witch asked.
Rosa shook her head.
“You pick flowers and plants and seeds and pieces of wood, and then you boil them. If you boil them long enough, they release oil. And then,” the witch continued, pointing at the big box with the pipes, “you separate the oil from the steam and collect the oil”—she placed a hand on the carafe—“in here. Certain fruit peels you can’t steam. You must press them in the mortars. When you do all this, it stinks. But a few weeks later, the stench goes away, and you can use the oils to make perfumes and massage balms. You can also mix them with melted wax and make scented candles.”
“Where are the flowers and the plants?” Rosa asked with mistrust.
“In here,” the witch said, pointing at a small door across from Rosa, next to the wood stove. The door opened with a squeak under the pressure of the witch’s fingers.
From her position on the booth threshold, Rosa caught sight only of a deep darkness. This is it, she thought. That’s where the witch keeps the children. She uses the perfume story to lure us in, and then she boils us.
“Don’t be afraid,” the witch whispered. “Look.” She went in and returned a moment later holding a bouquet of lavender and a small cardboard box. “Hold on to this,” she said, handing Rosa the lavender. “Smells good, huh? And look in here,” she whispered, opening the box.
Rosa took a quick peak. There were white petals inside.
“They are orange blossoms,” the witch said. “This,” she added, taking a blossom in her hand, “is for you. You should put it between two sheets of paper and keep it there till it dries. It’ll last forever.”
They were both silent a while. Then Rosa stepped forward and walked cautiously toward the little door. Through the penumbra, she saw on the floor of the next room various flowers set in vases, a box filled with leaves and pieces of wood, and a second box filled with oranges, apples, and tangerines. As she slowly stepped in, she noticed shelves along one of the walls. On the shelves were boxes like the one that had the white petals inside, tiny glass bottles with cork stoppers and labels of different colors, and droppers like the one Madam C used to keep her eyes clear. Leaning against the opposite wall, filled to the top, were six cloth bags almost as tall as Rosa. “What are those?” Rosa asked.
Isabel pointed at a bag filled with purple flowers. “This is lavender,” she said, then pointed at a second bag. “And these,” she continued, taking in hand a few green leaves, “are eucalyptus leaves.” She paused. “It takes a lot of them to make a tiny amount of oil.”
“It’s beautiful in here,” said Rosa. She took a deep breath, and inhaled the strange aroma of the room. It was a combination of the stench from the booth and the perfumes of fruit and flowers.
“It still stinks a bit,” the witch said, smiling.
Rosa nodded as she took a little blue bottle from the shelf. “Can I open it?”
The witch shook her head. “Not a good idea,” she explained. “Then you’ll truly smell a stench. These are the bottles where I keep the oils after the distillation. They must rest on these shelves for at least one month in order to lose their bad odors. If you want to smell something good, come this way.”
It was then that Rosa noticed another door in the flower room. This time she followed the witch right away. It was the door to a pantry, with shelves on three walls.
“These,” the witch said, pointing at the shelves, “are the bottles you should open. Go ahead.”
Rosa took a bottle with a pink label, removed the cork, and brought it to her nose. She closed her eyes as she inhaled. It was a sweet and gentle odor, which lingered in her nostrils a long time.
“It’s a blend of rosewood and tangerine blossoms,” the witch said. She took a different bottle from the shelf. “Try this one now.”
Rosa spent a long time sniffing bottles that day, while the witch reorganized the shelves and then peeled several tangerines and bright green apples.
At a certain point, the witch asked, “Would you like to help me with the distillery sometime?”
Rosa nodded.
“I’m always here,” the witch said. “You can come back any time.”
Rosa smiled. “You said that my hair reminds you of the sunsets back home. Where is your home?”
“Far away. In a beautiful land on the other side of the ocean.”
Rosa’s eyes glimmered. “You have been on the other side of the ocean?”
“I was born on the other side of the ocean,” the witch said. “In a village called Manzanillo, on the eastern shore of Costa Rica.”
Fascinated, Rosa stared at the witch with her large blue eyes. “Is that why you talk strange?”
“Yes. In Costa Rica people speak a different language: Spanish.”
Rosa had heard the word Spanish before. Madam C had been upset one day over some men who had come to the Luna with no money. “Never let in Spanish sailors again,” she had told the girls in an angry voice, “unless they show you the money at the door.”
“Do people have money in Costa Rica?” Rosa asked.
“Sure they do,
” the witch said with a laugh. “It looks different from the Italian liras, but it’s still money.”
Rosa looked outside. “I have to go,” she said, “or Madam C will get mad.”
The witch nodded. “I’ll see you later.”
Rosa rushed to the street, then stopped and turned around. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Isabel,” the witch replied.
“I’m Rosa,” Rosa said before mingling with the crowd in motion.
CHAPTER 4
The visits to Isabel became the highlight of Rosa’s days. Between her fascination with the distillation process and the fact that Isabel had crossed the ocean, Rosa couldn’t wait to be finished with her chores to rush to Isabel’s booth and ask her questions. Over a few days, she learned that Isabel was eighty years old and had learned the art of distillation as a child, watching her grandmother, Azul, back in Costa Rica. “There was a small hill behind our village,” Isabel told Rosa, “where orchids grew year round, together with ferns and beautiful wildflowers. At least twice a week Azul would take me with her to the hill to pick what she needed to make oils. She had a distillery like this one”—Isabel pointed at the stove—“in a shack behind our house, next to the pigs and goats. No one ever complained about the stench, because it blended with the animals’ odors. The trips to the hill were the best part of my days. It was quiet up there. The meadows had thick grass, and the palm trees were tall and wide. Azul and I would pick flowers for some time, then we would sit under a palm tree and she would tell me about the oils and their healing powers.”
“Healing powers?” Rosa asked, mesmerized.
“These oils can heal all sorts of illnesses. Colds, infections, colics, fevers. Even unhappiness, melancholia, lunacy, and hallucinations. Azul used to say that the scent of these oils can make people fall in and out of love”—she snapped her fingers—“like that. You have to know how to combine them and use them. You can spread them on your skin, burn them in little glass pots, add them to your bathwater, or vaporize them and inhale them. It’s an art. I can teach you, if you’d like.”
“Yes!” Rosa shouted. “Teach me, please.”
