by Lina Simoni
“It’s not easy. And it takes time.”
“I have time. I don’t go to school.”
“Why not?”
“Because people say things about me. They call me Prostitutes’ Daughter.”
“People are mean,” Isabel nodded, “but you shouldn’t listen to what they say.”
“They say things about you, too—that you’re a witch.”
“I know,” Isabel said. “But I don’t listen. I do my things, as if these people weren’t there.”
“It’s hard,” Rosa sighed.
Isabel shook her head. “It’s not hard if you love what you do.”
“Do you love what you do?” Rosa asked.
“Very much. I take flowers and leaves, which are beautiful things, and I transform them into something even more beautiful.”
“But when you steam the flowers, you kill them!” Rosa exclaimed.
“No.” Isabel pointed at the bottles. “The flowers live in the scents of these oils. Oils are the hearts of the plants. They know everything about the plants they came from, their days of sun and rain, their skies, cloudy or blue. It’s a miracle. And when I make the miracle happen, I feel rich, even if I’m poor. And I don’t care what the people of this town think or say about me.”
“Do you have any friends?” Rosa asked.
“The flowers and the leaves and the oils are my friends.” Isabel smiled. “And you, Tramonto.”
“I like it when you call me Tramonto.”
“I used to watch sunsets with Azul from the back porch of our house,” Isabel said. “The sun set behind the hill, and Azul used to tell me that the sun went to sleep inside the hill and while it slept it gave its energy to the plants and flowers, and that’s why they had such beautiful colors in the morning.”
“Where is Azul now?” Rosa asked.
“She’s dead. We buried her in a meadow, under her favorite palm tree. I was your age when she died. I thought my whole world had ended.”
“Did you cry?”
“I cried a lot,” Isabel said. “But then I had to help my parents with the goats and other chores around the house, so I started crying less and less, and then I stopped. But I have thought of Azul every day.”
“I do chores, too,” Rosa said. “And I think of my mother every day. She died when I was born.”
“Keep thinking of her. This way she’ll never be alone.”
“That’s what Madam C told me.”
“What do you have in there?” Isabel asked, pointing at a bag Rosa had brought along.
“Books,” Rosa said. “I take them with me when I go to the port. I sit down somewhere and read. The books are my friends.”
Isabel looked at her with surprise. “You know how to read?”
“I do.”
“If I teach you what I know about oils,” Isabel asked, “will you read me stories?”
“I can teach you how to read, if you want,” Rosa offered.
“I’m too old for that. My eyes aren’t good anymore. But you have good eyes. Will you read to me?”
“Sure. I love to read, anyway. And it’s more fun to read to someone than by myself. At the Luna Margherita reads me poetry every day.”
“Lesson one,” Isabel said. “You must steam the flowers while they are fresh, or they’ll lose their magic.”
“Where do you find flowers around here?” Rosa asked. “And the wood and the petals?”
“Years ago, when I was much younger, I used to go to the hills behind Genoa to pick flowers. It’s a long walk, much longer than the walk Azul and I had to take to reach our hill in Costa Rica. Then my legs got tired, so now I go down the street and hire a carriage once in a while.” Isabel shook her head. “It’s getting more complicated every day. The city has grown so much up there. The meadows are farther and farther away. Sometimes I buy what I need at the flower market, sometimes I find it in the streets nearby. You have no idea how many useful ingredients people discard as garbage. In the evening, when the market closes, I look behind the stalls and underneath the counters. It’s not the same as picking flowers in a meadow, but you’d be surprised how much you can collect this way. Dried leaves, discarded stalks, twigs. You can make oils out of all of them, if you know how.”
“What about the tall bags?” Rosa asked.
“Two sailors from Sevilla,” Isabel said, “come by whenever their ship anchors in the harbor and bring me the eucalyptus leaves, which make good medicinal oils. I like their visits a lot, because I get to speak in my native language. For a few moments, it’s as if I were back in Costa Rica. And”—she continued—“a woman who lives in the countryside brings me lavender once a month. The sailors from Sevilla also buy my oils and perfumes and take them on their ship. Azul and I used to sell our oils once a week at the market on the main plaza of the town up the coast from Manzanillo. It was a lot of fun, with all the other sellers and with the children and their families coming by.”
“Why didn’t you get a shop in Sottoripa?” Rosa asked.
“Years ago I tried,” Isabel replied, “but the shopkeepers didn’t want me there. They thought I would keep their customers from coming.”
“They are stupid,” Rosa said, angrily.
“Maybe. But I sell to the sailors from Sevilla, two Portuguese ship captains, a businessman from Tangiers, and a few rich women from Milan who send their maids here when they come to Genoa on vacation.” She looked out of the booth at the narrow street. “Genoa is a strange place. I sell my perfumes all over the world, but I can’t sell them to the people of this town. Anyway, I make enough money to keep buying flowers, the wood I need for the stove, and the ice blocks I need to cool down the steam.”
“Your voice is sweet,” Rosa said. “You don’t sound like an old woman. Antonia is an old woman, and she has a deep voice that fades at the end of the sentences.”
“Thank you,” Isabel said. “Would you like to see one of the miracles of these oils?”
“Sure.”
“Here,” Isabel said, lifting the sleeve of her black vest to expose her arm. “Feel it.”
Rosa placed a finger on Isabel’s arm and slowly grazed her skin. “It’s so soft! It feels like…a baby’s skin.”
“That’s right,” Isabel said. “Now smell it.”
Rosa hesitated. She loved Isabel, but she always thought that she looked dirty. Her hair was all tangled, she always wore the same black vest, and the sheets on her cot looked like they hadn’t been changed or washed in quite some time. Rosa had no desire to place her nose anywhere close to Isabel’s skin.
“Smell it,” Isabel said in a tone Rosa couldn’t disobey.
So Rosa sniffed, and what she sniffed was the sweetest odor she had ever sniffed in her life, sweeter than Antonia’s chocolate cakes, sweeter than Margherita’s incenses, sweeter than the oils she had smelled in the pantry that first day.
Isabel noticed the surprise in Rosa’s eyes. “These oils have marvelous qualities,” she explained. “They produce different odors on different people. There’s a perfect oil for everyone, and it’s an oil that makes your skin smell like a meadow.”
“How do you find your perfect oil?” Rosa asked.
“You try.”
“When do you stop trying?”
“When you find your perfect oil,” Isabel explained, “you’ll know it. The oil will tell you.”
“Can you help me find my perfect oil?”
“You’ll have to find it yourself,” Isabel said. “You can start with the ones in the pantry. Or you can make your own oils after you learn how.”
“What’s in your perfect oil?” Rosa asked.
Isabel cocked her head. “I’m not quite ready to give my secrets away.”
“I’ll read you all my books,” Rosa implored.
Isabel smiled. “Come back tomorrow morning. You’ll read me ten pages, and I’ll show you how to make lavender oil.”
Punctually, Rosa returned the following morning after her shopping duties. She rea
d Isabel ten pages of a dragon story, then helped her place lavender bouquets inside the steamer. “How did you cross the ocean?” Rosa asked as they watched the mix of steam and oil fill the pipes.
“When I was twenty,” Isabel began, “a foreigner and his crew arrived in Manzanillo on a small ship stranded by a storm. His name was Francesco Carravieri. He was from Genoa, he told us, where he had a successful import-export business, and he was always sailing seas and oceans in search of goods to buy. He stayed in Manzanillo one month, waiting for his ship to be repaired. He was tall, with dark, sparkling eyes and long brown hair that danced on his shoulders when he walked. I fell in love. He fell in love with me. Before the month was over, he told my father he wanted to marry me. So we married. It was a beautiful ceremony by the water. The whole village was there. After the ceremony we ate good food, danced, and lit fires on the docks. I was very happy. Help me with the ice, will you? We need to make sure the steam turns to water right away. See? The oil is lighter than the water, and that’s how you separate them.”
“What happened next?” Rosa asked, still wide-eyed.
“A few days after the wedding the ship was repaired, and Francesco told me we’d board and go to Genoa. I said good-bye to my family and my friends.”
“Were you sad?”
“Yes, but also happy. I was so much in love I couldn’t even think of being without Francesco for a moment. And I was excited about this long trip across the ocean. All along Francesco had told me how beautiful Genoa was, with its port and steep hills falling deep into the water. I couldn’t wait. Before leaving, I went to the hill behind our house, to Azul’s tomb, to say good-bye. Now, Rosa, put another block of ice over the serpentine. Like that. Good. Anyway, we took off. I brought with me a trunk filled with my clothes, oil bottles, and a jewelry box. The jewels in it were my parents’ wedding present. They had belonged to my mother and to Azul and to Azul’s mother. I looked at the jewels many times during the trip, especially when I became sad. They helped me feel better, because it was as if Azul and my mother were close to me, even though they were getting farther away as we kept sailing. From Manzanillo we sailed a long way south to the Colombian port of Cartagena, where we stopped for a few days for food and water. Then from Cartagena we crossed the ocean. I was sick most of the time, so I don’t remember much other than water, water, water. Some days I felt so bad I thought I’d never see land again. By the time we arrived here, I had lost so much weight my clothes didn’t fit anymore, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I thought I saw a ghost.” She paused. “I’ll always remember the first time I saw Genoa. It was a crisp September day, the sea was calm, and as Francesco’s ship entered the port I caught sight of the hills, falling steeply toward us, and I felt like they were welcoming me home.”
“And then?”
“Francesco turned out to be a monumental liar,” Isabel said. “The ship was not his. It belonged to a company that had financed that expedition. The ship captain had died in the storm. Francesco was his cabin boy. He didn’t own any import-export company. He didn’t own anything, other than these two rooms. That’s where we lived, although he was hardly ever here. He had no money. The first thing he did after we disembarked was to take my jewels out of the trunk and sell them on the black market. Then he bought liquor and got himself drunk. He told me he had put the rest of the money away. Where, he never said. When he was sober, he went out looking for jobs and occasionally worked at the docks for a few days. Most of the time, he was a thief. One night he got into a fight with one of his accomplices over the price of some stolen merchandise, and the accomplice stabbed him in the heart. I was left alone.”
Rosa took Isabel’s hand. “What did you do?”
Isabel sighed. “I wanted to go back to Costa Rica, but I had no money to pay for the trip. Even if I had had the money, I had no idea which ship to take. I was so afraid. And I didn’t want to go back to my parents without the jewels. They had been in my family for so long. I felt terrible about having lost them. I tried to find a job. I could speak some Italian by then, because Spanish and Italian have similar words, but people heard my accent and saw my dark skin and turned me away. No one would hire me. I felt ready to die.”
“But you didn’t die,” Rosa said.
“No, Tramonto. I didn’t.” She pointed at the stone wall on the east side of the booth. “One morning I saw a loose stone in this wall. I had never noticed it before, and I have no idea why I noticed it that day. I wiggled it, and the stone came off.” She pulled a stone off the wall. “It’s this one, see? Inside this hole there was a bundle of money. I don’t know if it came from the jewels or from Francesco’s burglaries. With it, I tried to buy a passage to South America on a cargo ship, thinking that from there I would find my way north to Costa Rica. No one would take me on board. They said women were bad luck, and women with dark skin were even worse luck. So I came back to these rooms and cried for a few days. Then I wondered what Azul would have done in my situation, and I figured she wouldn’t be crying at all. She would build a distillery, no matter where she was, and make a living doing what she loved.” She pointed at the stove and containers and pipes. “That’s when I decided to use Francesco’s money to build this. Some parts I bought, other parts I had made by a blacksmith down the street. I have been here ever since.”
Rosa smiled a long time. “Sometimes, when I don’t know what to do, I think of my mother and ask myself what she would do. Then I find the answer. It’s strange, because I never even met her. But it’s as if I had known her all my life.”
Isabel nodded. “That’s how it is when you love someone.” She sat on the rocking chair. “Your turn, Tramonto. Tell me your story.”
Over the next half hour, Rosa told Isabel about Angela, Madam C, the Luna, the girls, her school stories, and her dream of crossing the ocean. She arrived at the Luna late that afternoon, holding a bottle of diluted eucalyptus oil Isabel had given her as a present. “Rub some in the morning on your wrists and ear lobes,” Isabel had told her. “You’ll feel energy and happiness in you.” Rosa placed the bottle on her nightstand, next to her books. In one of the books, she had the orange blossom Isabel had given her on the day they had met.
Over the next few weeks, Rosa learned as much as she could about the oils and the distillation process. When she didn’t help Isabel steam flowers or press fruit peels in the mortars, she experimented mixing the oils that were in the pantry in search of the perfect blend for her skin. One evening, at the Luna, she asked Madam C, “Can you take me to the hills to pick flowers?”
“Where does this come from, Rosa?” Madam C said. “The hills? To pick flowers?”
“Yes. I would like that very much.”
“Why?”
“I’ve never been anywhere,” Rosa explained, “other than in these caruggi and at the port.”
“Why the hills?”
“Could you take me there, please? For my birthday present.”
Madam C looked at Rosa for a moment. “All right,” she said. “For your birthday present.”
One week before Rosa’s sixteenth birthday, on a sunny and warm day, Madam C walked with Rosa to Piazza De Ferrari, the large round piazza that was the heart of the city. There were electric trams everywhere, some standing, some circling the piazza in slow motion. In the southwest corner, thick with the odors of hay and fresh manure, Madam C hired a carriage. “Take us to the meadows above San Nicolò,” Madam C told the driver. “I’ll guide you as we go.”
The driver nodded and helped Rosa and Madam C to their seats. He made a screeching sound with the corner of his mouth and the horse began to walk.
“Can he go faster?” Rosa asked.
The driver overheard her. “Too much traffic, miss,” he said. “Automobiles and trams make the horses all nervous. I’ve seen more crushed bodies in the past six months than in the twenty years I’ve been driving this carriage. These days, pedestrians can be thankful to make it across the street alive. I can’t be careful enou
gh. Do you know the saying? Chi va piano va sano e va lontano. Sit back, and enjoy the ride.”
Rosa sank happily into her seat. It was her very first carriage ride. Up till then she had hardly ever left the caruggi or the port area and had been fearful of the traffic of the big town. But up there in her seat, next to Madam C, watching people and trams and the roofless automobiles pass by, she felt safe and important, and excited to be headed for the hills for the first time.
The carriage left downtown without incident. The road steepened, and the horse puffed and snorted as it proceeded slowly up the slope. Soon, the noise of the traffic subsided and the streets turned quiet, the silence broken only by the echo of the hooves on the pavement and the voices of occasional passersby. Rosa was bewitched by Genoa’s beauty: the roads, much cleaner, wider, and brighter than the caruggi; the elegant buildings with no pigeons huddled on the gutters or roaming in flocks by the front doors; and the view of the port and the sea she occasionally could get when she looked behind. Madam C was also in awe, even though she had spent all her life in Genoa and been on those hills many times before. That day, a light northern breeze, la tramontana, was caressing the top of the hills, sweeping the sky clear of all clouds and flattening the water like a mirror. With a smile, Madam C removed her hat and set it on the seat. She said, “What a wonderful day we picked for our ride.”
Rosa nodded and kept looking right and left with her curious, wondrous eyes.
At a certain point, Madam C asked the driver to make a sharp right and follow a steep path surrounded by patches of purple and pink bougainvillea. “We are almost there,” she told Rosa, pointing ahead.
The carriage stopped at the end of the path, and Rosa and Madam C continued on foot along a dirt trail that took them to an open green area set on the flank of the hill, high above the houses. In it were small meadows studded with wildflowers and areas with groves of olive trees, oleanders, orange, and lemon trees. Genoa’s temperate slow-changing climate allowed those plants to grow lushly all over the hills as well as along the riviera, near the water. The perfumes of fruit and leaves blended with the scents of the sea to form a unique fragrance that—the natives liked to say—lingered inside the Genoeses’ souls and mixed with their blood and bones. Those who had smelled that fragrance, the saying had it, were bound to it forever.
