by Lina Simoni
On the way back to the caruggi, Madam C stopped at the main police station. “Have you found the man who killed the sword-swallower?” she asked a young policeman with a large nose. “I have a family, and I’m concerned about this murderer walking in our streets.”
“Not yet,” the policeman replied. “But we’ll find him. We’re looking mostly downtown, but also elsewhere. He can’t hide forever.”
“Thank you,” Madam C said, then rushed back to the distillery to tell everyone the news.
Stella arrived a few moments later, having checked the Pammatone Hospital, the hospice for vagabonds, and once more the Grifone. “Nothing,” she said. “Not a trace of someone by the name of Renato Corsi.”
As for Rosa, once she understood completely that the girls and Madam C herself were willing to help her find Renato, she made a spectacular recovery in a very short time. She ate a large amount of Antonia’s food, drank bottles of water and warm tea, and slept peacefully for several hours. All along, she and Madam C exchanged uneasy glances and silences, avoided all direct conversations, and made sure they were never alone with the other. Isabel watched them with her hawk eyes. “It’s like a dam ready to give in to a sea of water,” she told Margherita when Rosa and Madam C couldn’t hear her.
Margherita nodded. “You have no idea how badly those two have hurt each other.”
“I hope they’ll find peace some day,” Isabel said.
“Sometimes, when bigger problems arise, people can face their own issues in unexpected ways. I know that from my own experience with my father. He threw me out of the house for no reason when I was very young. Accused me of having seduced a priest, can you imagine? I swore not to talk to him ever again. A year ago I learned he was in a hospital, close to dying. I went to see him, I don’t even know why.”
“Did he die?” Isabel asked.
“Yes. I’m glad I saw him before it happened. Perhaps Rosa’s problems will help her and Madam C reconcile.”
“I’ll have a word with Rosa,” Isabel said. With a sarcastic smile, she added, “Occasionally, she listens to what I say.”
Meanwhile, the girl kept gaining strength. The day after Margherita had spoken to Marco and Madam C’s investigations had established that Giacomo was likely to be safe at the farmhouse, Rosa was up and ready to go to Vercelli. “Or to the end of the world,” she said, “if that’s where Renato is.”
As for Madam C, she had by then clearly taken charge of the situation. Three days after seeing Rosa sick in the flower room, at six in the morning, she spoke to Margherita, Maddalena, and Stella in the quiet parlor of the Luna. “I need one of you to come with Rosa and me to Vercelli, and one of you to run the Luna while I’m gone.”
“I’ll come,” Margherita said.
“No way,” Maddalena stated. “It’s my black wig we’re chasing. And I’m a Gypsy. I can follow trails like no one else can.”
“All right,” Margherita conceded. “You go to Vercelli. I’ll run the Luna.”
“Fine by me,” Stella said. “I don’t travel on Tuesdays, and running things is not my forte anyway.”
Madam C turned to Margherita. “You’re in charge. But…easy with the poetry, please. I’d like to find all my customers when I return.”
Jokingly, Margherita bowed. “Everything will be in order, my queen.”
With a frown, Madam C turned to Maddalena. “Get ready. We leave in two hours.”
“I knew that Madam C would love to get involved in helping Rosa,” Stella told Maddalena later, as Maddalena was packing on the second floor of the Luna. “All she needed was a little push.”
“And a little arm twisting,” Maddalena joked.
“Do you think you’ll be able to find Renato?” Stella asked.
Maddalena shook her head. “It’s a big world. He could be anywhere, doing anything. But this trip is good for Rosa. It’s much too hard for her to sit and wait.”
Two hours later, Maddalena, Rosa, and Madam C were at the Stazione Principe, boarding a train headed for Turin. Isabel had given Rosa a small velveteen bag containing one bottle of oil to cure motion sickness, another to keep away bad dreams, and a third to build up strength and body weight. To all that Rosa had added the flask of her perfect oil. In her right pocket she had, as usual, the blue stone. “Come back safe, Tramonto,” Isabel had said, “and with Renato.”
The first leg of the trip was long and uneventful, other than for the obvious awkwardness between Madam C and Rosa. As the train tackled a hill, Rosa stepped out of the compartment. “Stop looking at Rosa that way,” Maddalena told Madam C. “Why don’t you two talk about what happened and put it all behind you?”
Madam C said, “I’m waiting for her to say something.”
“Why her?” Maddalena asked. “She’s a young girl. You’re a grown woman. Help her.”
“I am helping her,” Madam C said. “Isn’t that why I’m on this train headed for God knows where?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you are on this train because you enjoy leading this expedition.”
“I resent your insinuations. I know why I’m here.”
“Then talk to her. You two haven’t exchanged a word since we boarded. How do you think she feels?”
Madam C shrugged and stared out the window as Rosa returned quietly to her seat.
“Are you liking your first train ride?” Maddalena asked, hoping to engage Rosa in some conversation.
Sadly, Rosa shook her head.
“Why, I thought you liked to travel,” Maddalena said.
Rosa said nothing as she nervously changed positions on her seat. A moment later she stood up, then sat down, then stood up again. She asked, “Are we there yet?”
“You need to calm down, Rosa,” Maddalena said. “We’re not even close. If you keep moving around like this, you’ll drive us crazy.”
Rosa looked at her with helpless eyes. “I can’t stay still. I feel as if time had stopped passing altogether. All I can think about is Vercelli and finding Renato. I wish I had a magic wand, to make me be in Vercelli right now.”
Maddalena sighed. The train’s slowness, she thought to herself, would make anyone edgy and impatient. There were long stops at little stations and stops for apparently no reason in the middle of the countryside. “I brought my tarot cards,” she said at some point, thinking that the game might distract Rosa. “Let’s see what the cards have to say.” She slid her hand into her purse.
“Stop,” Rosa said, grabbing Maddalena’s wrist before she could take the cards out. “I’m scared of hearing bad news.”
The train continued its way north, now crossing flat plains. Suddenly the countryside became populated by houses of all sizes, and the train slowed down as it entered an urban area and then finally a station. “Turin,” Madam C said, taking her luggage off the shelf. “We have a much shorter trip ahead of us now.”
Uncomforted, Rosa followed Maddalena and Madam C off the train, along the platform, to a ticket office, where Madam C inquired about the train to Vercelli. “Platform nine,” a man in uniform said, pointing to his right. “In half an hour.”
The day was almost over when Rosa, Maddalena, and Madam C arrived in the humid and foggy city of Vercelli, known to the rest of Italy for its rice fields, which were kept flooded year-round by the many bodies of water that surrounded the town, chiefly the Sesia, one of the northern tributaries of the Po River. Off the train, outside the station, Maddalena, Madam C, and Rosa found themselves at the edge of a piazza, wrapped in wet air that was so much heavier than the clear air near the sea. Maddalena removed her hat and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She said, “It’s a steam bath.”
“This is Vercelli?” asked a dismayed Rosa. “I can hardly breathe!”
“I’m afraid so,” Madam C said as she turned to a group of coachmen standing by their horses. “Excuse me,” she asked, “could one of you take us to Mr. Valle’s farmhouse?”
“Valle who?” asked a young coachman with a pointy beard.<
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Maddalena shrugged. “They have a son named Gabriele.”
The coachmen exchanged long looks. In a deep, hoarse voice, the oldest one in the group said out of his web of wrinkles, “Valle is a common name. Where is this farmhouse?”
“We know it’s next to a rice field,” Rosa said, “marked by a tree on the road that is shaped like an amphora.”
All the coachmen laughed and shook their heads. The old coachman spit tobacco on the sidewalk. He said, “All there is around here is rice fields. And do you know how many trees we have?”
“Is there someone around here who could give us a list of all the farmhouses that belong to someone named Valle?” Maddalena asked.
“I don’t know,” the younger coachman said. “Maybe the police?”
Rosa looked at Maddalena with worry in her eyes.
Madam C addressed the older coachman. “You look like you have been in Vercelli a long time.”
“All my life,” the man said with pride.
“Then you must have some idea as to where this place could be. Drive us around the rice fields,” Madam C continued in her usual peremptory tone, stepping into the carriage and signaling Rosa and Maddalena to step in as well.
Dumbfounded, the old coachman asked, “In which direction?”
Madam C gave him a look. “You decide.”
Mumbling and shaking his head, the old coachman took the luggage and secured it with ropes in the very back of the coach. Then he cautiously took his seat in the front. “Ha!” he shouted, and the horse began to walk. “All my life I spent driving this coach,” he muttered softly, popping another tobacco ball in his mouth, “and now I’ve got to escort three lost women to a rice field and a funny-looking tree.” He stopped the horse and turned around. “I don’t have time for this!” he said in an angry voice. Madam C took two bills out of her purse and placed them on the front seat. The coachman took the bills, spit dark saliva on the ground, and led the horse toward a side street.
Ten minutes later, they were at the outskirts of the town, surrounded by rice fields and farmhouses. “There,” the coachman said in a scoffing tone. “Rice fields and trees. Just as you wanted.”
The daylight was dimming as the sun made its way slowly below the horizon. The heat of the summer day was still strong, as was the buzz of the mosquitoes feasting on the horse. The whipping of the horse’s tail kept the insects in motion. In their seats, Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa kept blotting their foreheads with handkerchiefs and fanning their hands up and down their cheeks. Their discomfort didn’t distract them from the task at hand: Madam C kept her eyes fixed on one side of the road, Maddalena and Rosa on the other, hoping to spot the tree that would take them to Gabriele’s farmhouse. They saw nothing that resembled an amphora in any way.
As the carriage came to a T in the road, Rosa looked right and left. “The land is so flat around here,” she said. “Where’s the sea?”
The coachman turned around, stared at her, and shook his head twice.
“There’s no sea in Vercelli,” Maddalena said, surprised. “We’re deep inland, in farming country, as you can see.”
Rosa’s aquamarine eyes opened wide. “No sea?” she murmured.
“No,” Madam C confirmed, amazed that Rosa could be so naive.
“Really?” Rosa asked.
Madam C pondered a moment. “Have you ever seen a map of Italy, Rosa?”
Rosa shook her head.
“Didn’t they teach you geography in school?” Maddalena asked.
Rosa shook her head for the second time.
“Are you…convinced that there’s the sea in every town?” Madam C asked, unable to hide her disbelief.
“There isn’t?” Rosa said timidly.
“No, dear,” Madam C said. “There are lots of towns on earth that don’t have the sea nearby.”
Rosa lowered her eyes, feeling the weight of the revelation. As the carriage continued its wobbly way along a street bordered by berry bushes and short trees, she wondered how life would be without looking at boats, listening to the sounds of the waves, watching the seagulls dive for food, and with no fishermen bringing fresh fish ashore. She looked at Madam C and Maddalena, realizing that there was still mockery in their eyes. What’s so funny, Rosa thought. “I can perhaps live without crossing the ocean,” she said aloud, “but I could never live in a place where I can’t look at water.” Madam C and Maddalena exchanged a glance, as the coachman shook his head again and spit tobacco one more time.
“How much longer shall we keep this going?” he asked in his harsh voice. An hour had passed since they had left the station. The sun had set, and the streets and fields were by then a blur in the darkness and hard to see. Reluctantly, Madam C asked the coachman to take them to a place where they could spend the night. “Now we’re talking,” he mumbled as he sped up the horse.
One kilometer down the road, he pulled up in front of the Locanda Dell’Orso, a hostel set back from the street in a field that smelled of freshly cut hay. A red tile roof sat on walls of thick stone studded with small patches of green and brown moss.
“Wait here,” Madam C said, getting out of the carriage, “while I make sure they’re not sold out for the night.”
The coachman mumbled something no one could hear. While he, Rosa, and Maddalena waited outside, Madam C entered the hostel lobby, a small, cozy room with an unlit fireplace carved in the stone wall and a few armchairs set around it in a half moon. The cool temperature inside was a pleasant surprise. In a corner was a desk, and behind the desk Madam C saw a middle-aged man with thick glasses busy turning pages. He lifted his head at the sound of Madam C’s steps. “Need a room?” he asked.
“I need three,” Madam C replied. “The best ones you have.”
Yawning, the man opened a drawer. “All the rooms are the same,” he slurred, handing Madam C three keys. “Second floor, to your right.” He pointed to a closed door opposite to him. “Dinner will be served in an hour.”
“They have rooms for us,” Madam C said once she was back outside. She turned to the old coachman, who kept chewing tobacco without talking. “Be back here at dawn.”
The coachman said, “No.”
Without arguing, Madam C took more bills out of her purse. “Six o’clock,” she said, pushing the bills into his hands, “and don’t be late.”
CHAPTER 10
The sleeping quarters were off a narrow hallway on the second floor, where the heat trapped below the roof overwhelmed the cooling effects of the thick stones. Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa sweated copiously as they carried their luggage to their respective rooms. The furnishings in the three bedrooms were alike: a double bed with an embroidered red cotton bedspread, an armoire, two chairs, a portable basin for water, an enameled chamber pot centered between the legs of a nightstand, and a rustic rug set on the wooden floor. With her clothes on, Rosa lay on top of the bedspread and stared at the low ceiling for a long time. Meanwhile, Maddalena joined Madam C in her room. “Forgive my asking,” she said as Madam C took a change of clothes out of her suitcase, “but what are we going to do next? We have no idea where this farmhouse is. No one does. It could be on the opposite side of town, many kilometers away, for all we know.”
“We’ll go to dinner,” Madam C said, closing her suitcase, “and question the innkeeper.”
The meal exceeded everyone’s expectations. The innkeeper’s wife served it on an elegant china set that seemed out of place in a hostel that looked so much like an old farmer’s house. She served antipasti, brasato di maiale, coniglio al forno, and a sweet meringue pie, all accompanied by a full-bodied local red wine. At the elegantly set pine table, Madam C, Rosa, and Maddalena were joined by two male guests and the middle-aged man with the thick glasses, who, everyone soon found out, was the innkeeper. The conversation proceeded casually for some time: the weather, the rice business, the soccer games. Over the antipasti, Madam C introduced herself as a landowner from Genoa, who was in town looking for land to buy. Th
e two guests introduced themselves as salesmen who often traveled the Vercelli countryside. At that, Madam C steered the chitchat her way. “Then you must know of a farmhouse owned by some Valles,” she said in a casual tone of voice. “I was told it may be for sale.”
The two salesmen looked at each other and shook their heads twice. Maddalena took the role of a skeptic. “There’s no truth to it,” she said, chewing on a piece of coniglio. She poured herself some wine. “Imagine, the person who told us about that farmhouse didn’t even know where it was. All he knew was that it’s by a tree shaped like an amphora. He must have been dreaming.”
The innkeeper’s wife, who had begun to make the rounds with the meringue pie, jumped into the conversation. “I think I know where it is,” she said, putting down the dessert plate. Her husband nodded. “I do, too. It’s not close by, but I can draw you a map from here to there. Then you’ll be able to find out if the land is truly for sale.”
Rosa could hardly contain her excitement. “Really?” she shouted. She turned to Madam C. “Can we go now?”
“What’s the hurry, young lady?” asked the innkeeper.
Maddalena bumped Rosa’s knee under the table.
“No hurry,” Madam C said calmly. “She was joking. Of course we’ll go tomorrow, in the daylight.”
“Do you really want to let these people know that there’s something in this farmhouse that cannot wait till morning?” Madam C scolded Rosa later, when they were back upstairs.
“Like someone who’s wanted by the police?” Maddalena echoed. “You know how much people gossip in little towns.”
“I’m sorry. I got excited,” Rosa admitted. “I won’t do that again, I promise. Let me see the map, Maddalena, please.”
Maddalena handed her the sheet of paper on which the innkeeper had drawn a confused maze of roads and country paths. “It’s so hard to read,” Rosa said, sounding discouraged like never before.
Madam C took the map from her hands. “Our coachman will figure it out.”
The night passed very slowly for Rosa. The anxiety that had flustered her all day long hadn’t subsided. Knowing that in a matter of hours she’d be headed with Madam C and Maddalena for the Valles’ farmhouse made her even more frantic and unable to sleep. She paced the room for an hour, she lay on the bed and got up countless times, she stood by the open window staring at the shadows of the countryside. At a certain point, she left her room and knocked on Maddalena’s door. “I can’t sleep,” she said when Maddalena appeared.
