by Lina Simoni
“What?” Giacomo asked.
Rosa spoke in a whisper, “What if he’s dead?”
“Don’t even think about it. Renato is a tough guy. It’d take ten sword-swallowers to take him down.”
Rosa said, “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Get some sleep,” Giacomo said. “Tomorrow is another day.”
“Angela,” Rosa prayed that night by her bed, head on the scented sheets, “if Renato is in heaven with you, please let me know. But it would be even better if you could send him back here, because he belongs in Genoa with me and Giacomo and the longshoremen and all the other port people.” She kept her hands crossed as she lay down and closed her eyes, falling inadvertently into a shallow sleep.
There hadn’t been ten sword-swallowers to take down Renato, only a couple of bandits along the road. He had boarded Geraldo Bassi’s wagon late that night, after parting from Giacomo and the Valles at the farmhouse. The wagon had gone swiftly down the dirt path, headed for the intersection with the main road that would take it eventually to town. The road and the fields were dark, the only light far above that of the moon and the stars. At a certain point, in that dimness, Renato thought he saw something ahead lying in the middle of the path. Geraldo Bassi stopped the horse, and Renato got out. “It’s a man,” he said, approaching the figure and bending down. “He seems unconscious.”
Geraldo Bassi joined him on the road. “We should call for help,” he said.
“Strange,” Renato murmured. “He has a sock on his face.”
At that very moment, a masked man came out of the bushes behind them and hit Renato on the head with a bat. At the same time, the man who was lying on the road stood up and punched Geraldo Bassi in the face. Renato dropped facedown on the dirt while Geraldo Bassi fell backward screaming. “Shut up,” one of the men said, “and give us your wallet!”
Hands shaking, Geraldo Bassi did as he was told. The man snatched the wallet from his hands while his accomplice searched Renato. When the accomplice found what he was looking for, he dragged Renato to the side of the road and kicked him into a ditch. “As for you,” the first bandit told Geraldo Bassi, “we won’t kill you tonight. But one word about what happened and we’ll come for you and your family. We know where you live, so don’t even think of betraying us. Get on your wagon, and don’t look back.”
Terrified, Geraldo Bassi obeyed. Once the wagon was no longer in sight, the bandits stepped into the ditch. One of them lifted Renato’s arm and let it go; the arm dropped in the mud with a squishing sound. Then he lifted Renato’s eyelid. “He’s dead,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Renato regained consciousness five hours later, in the dead of the night, smelling the wet earth at the bottom of the ditch and tasting the blood in his mouth. Ten minutes passed before his arms and legs could move. Slowly, he came to a seated position. At once, dizziness overcame him, and his head hurt so badly he thought it was split in two. He tried to open his eyes, but all he could see were black stains. One bone at a time, he lay down at the bottom of the ditch again, where he fell instantly asleep.
He awoke again before day dawned, with the same splitting headache and an unbearable burning in his chest. With fatigue, he pushed himself to his knees and after taking several deep breaths, he stood up and walked unsteadily toward a tree. He leaned against it for a while, looking around. There was fog, and he had no idea where he was and why. In the dim light of dawn, he began to walk, stumbling and leaning occasionally against poles and trees. Feet in the water, he made a beeline across a rice field and kept walking straight in the same direction without a clue as to where he was going.
A group of mondine, women who worked in the rice fields, spotted him as he approached them slowly from the east. They were all wearing the customary wide-brimmed hats and light pants rolled up above their knees. The water was up to their calves, their backs were bent forward, and their hands worked swiftly underwater to collect the grains. One of them lifted her head at the sound of steps splashing in the field. She pointed in Renato’s direction, and all the mondine stood up and began to whisper to each other. As Renato moved closer, they retreated, frightened by his appearance: he had blood and dirt all over his head and face, and his clothes were filthy and wet, as if they hadn’t been changed in years. He passed the mondine and continued on, without even taking notice of their presence. Later, as he emerged from the wet field onto a road, two farmers approached him and asked him if he was sick. Renato nodded.
“Can we take you somewhere?” one farmer asked.
“Where do you live?” the other added.
Renato stared at them without talking.
“What’s your name?” the first farmer asked.
Again, Renato stood silent.
“If you ask me,” the second farmer said, “this fellow escaped from prison. Let’s call the police.”
“Don’t bother,” the first farmer said. “He’s probably just a bum who had a large dose of booze last night.”
With weary steps, Renato resumed his aimless walk along the road.
“Stick your head in the water, pal,” the second farmer yelled after him. “You’ll scare the shit out of everybody looking like that.”
That’s what Renato did as soon as he saw water. It was a small pond on the side of the road which its owners used to quench the thirst of the cows. The water stank of manure and was covered with mosquitoes and dragonflies. Nevertheless, Renato washed off his face and hands, then removed his shirt, rinsed the dirt off it, and set it on the grass to dry. The morning fog had lifted by that time. In a daze, Renato sat next to the shirt at the edge of the pond, face in the sun, breathing the warm air. That was when he realized that he hadn’t answered the two farmers’ questions because he didn’t know who he was. In his aching, muddy head there were only two things he was aware of: the scent of Rosa’s oil and the sound of the sea waves.
He stood up as soon as his shirt had dried. The sound of the waves rang in his ears and Rosa’s scent tingled in his nose. He had no clue what either one was. There was, however, one thing he remembered about the odor: he knew that he had smelled it the first time while a breeze was blowing into his face. So he walked against the breeze, looking for the source of the odor. He walked all day long, slowly but constantly, stopping only on two occasions to eat grapes from a vine and drink water from a fountain he encountered behind a farmhouse. When darkness arrived, he lay in a meadow looking at the sky. At dawn, he stood up. His headache had partially subsided. The breeze had changed direction, so he changed the direction of his walk. He zigzagged through the fields for days, stopping occasionally for water and fruit, always walking into the breeze. When there was no breeze, he imagined one. All along, he looked desperately for the source of that spicy-sweet odor.
CHAPTER 11
The news that there were strangers at Berto Valle’s farmhouse who were looking for a friend who had disappeared spread quickly through the countryside. The market women and the mondine took it upon themselves to establish if the Genoese man had ever left town. They passed on information from stall to stall and from one rice field to the next, until soon people were knocking on Berto Valle’s door with all kinds of tales about strange individuals who had been spotted in various locations throughout the plains. Over the next few days, Maddalena, Rosa, Giacomo, and Madam C obstinately followed every single lead: they chased down a vagabond without an eye, a businessman who was in town looking for land, the rider of a limping sorrel horse, and a French merchant who had set a tent in front of the Church of Sant’Andrea and sold hot stones that made one see the saint when held in a hand for one hour. All was in vain. Meanwhile, Madam C had sent a telegram to the Luna, asking Margherita to check with Isabel if Renato had by any chance shown up at her door. Margherita’s reply was a no. As for the Valles, they checked the hospital and the jail, and heard back from Anna’s brother that no one at the station remembered a man who matched Renato’s description in any way. The mondine who had recoiled
at the sight of the wounded Renato reported having seen the devil crossing on foot one of the rice fields and then spreading his black wings and vanishing in the fog without a sound. “There’s no way,” Rosa stated with firmness, “that anyone could mistake Renato for the devil.” On that note, the talk of the mondine was dismissed as superstition.
That evening, when everyone convened for dinner around the oak table, Rosa saw only long faces. Madam C was the first to speak.
“What options do we have left,” she asked, “other than involve the police?”
There was a long silence in the room.
“I hate to give up,” Maddalena said after a moment, looking sadly at Rosa, “but I must agree with Madam C that the police is all we’ve got left.”
“So much for your tarot cards,” Rosa grumbled, “which said twice that I’ll find love.”
Maddalena said firmly, “The tarot cards said what they had to say.”
“If we call the police,” Anna hinted with worry in her eyes, “we must send Giacomo elsewhere.”
At one end of the table, Giacomo slumped his shoulders. “I don’t understand,” he said. “There must be a reasonable explanation.”
No one said anything else for quite a while. Eyes on her plate, Rosa kept stirring her minestrone with a spoon. The silence was broken by knocks on the door just as Anna had begun to collect the dirty dishes. Berto stood up. “I hope it’s not another crazy story about the devil,” he mumbled, exiting the kitchen with a tired gait. He returned a moment later accompanied by a man in his sixties. Berto said, “I think you should all listen to what this man has to say.”
At the kitchen table, over a glass of red wine, the man introduced himself as Daniele Marzio and explained that he was a gardener, with a weekly job on the grounds of the Benedettini. “The monks,” he said, “are taking care of a man who wandered to their monastery. Apparently this man was hurt and in a lot of distress when they found him.”
“Did you see him?” Rosa asked.
“Yes,” Daniele Marzio replied. “This morning. I was helping the monks groom one of their gardens, and he was seated on a bench. Quiet man. Didn’t speak or move the whole time I was there.”
“What does he look like?” Giacomo asked.
“I’m not sure I can describe him. I didn’t pay much attention, because I wasn’t aware that you were looking for a man who disappeared. This evening my wife told me about your search, and that’s why I came here. I can take you to the monastery if you want. It’ll have to be tomorrow, though, because the monks don’t let anyone in at night.”
Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa looked into each other’s eyes. “As strange as this story may sound,” Maddalena said, “it sure seems more reasonable than all the tales we’ve heard so far.”
“Very well, then,” Madam C said, raising her glass. “We’ll go to the monastery first thing in the morning.”
Giacomo whispered in Madam C’s ear, “I hope this is not another popular invention. For Rosa’s sake.”
The monastery was ten kilometers northeast of the Valles’ farmhouse, at the top of a small elevation. It was enclosed on three sides by a tall stone wall and accessible through a wrought-iron gate. Maddalena and Madam C entered the compound on Daniele Marzio’s wagon, followed by a second wagon carrying Anna, Berto, Giacomo, and Rosa. Inside, the wagons followed an aspen-lined path, soon reaching a three-story building with a cross and an inscription in Latin over the front door. The door opened, and a monk watched the group get off the wagons. “I’m Brother Nunzio,” he said as he approached them. “How can I help you?”
“I brought these people,” Daniele said, “because they may know the man you found in the fields.”
“I hope you do, because we have no idea who he is. Please follow me,” Brother Nunzio said, pointing at the monastery door. “I’m the one who found him,” he continued, “in our vegetable garden, seated by the tomato vines. He was dirty and scared. He wouldn’t talk or move. All he did was sniff the air. I called for help, and two of my brothers joined me outside.”
“Was he hurt?” Rosa asked, as they all stepped inside. She sneezed as wafts of burnt incense filled her nostrils.
“We weren’t sure at first,” Brother Nunzio said. “He sure looked sick. That’s why we kept trying to convince him to go inside with us. When we tried to help him up, he kicked us, but we kept trying. I think his body gave in, and that’s how we managed to bring him to one of our rooms. It took all three of us to do that.” He was leading the group through a long corridor with floors of polished white marble. “He had a wound on his head, we found out. We cleaned the wound, bathed him, fed him, and he has been sitting in our garden ever since, without talking, continuing to sniff the air. I think he likes the smell of our flowers.”
“Doesn’t sound like Renato at all,” Rosa said.
“I agree,” Giacomo nodded. “Renato would never kick anybody—or sit by a tomato vine.”
“We came all the way here,” Madam C said. “We should at least meet this poor man. I’m intrigued.”
At the end of the corridor, Brother Nunzio opened a door that led to a flower garden with benches set around a small fountain. “There he is,” he said, pointing to a man seated on one of the benches.
“Renato!” Rosa screamed, running toward him.
Renato looked at her with spent eyes.
“Renato?” Giacomo called. “It’s me.”
Without talking, Renato kept looking at the people around him with bewilderment but not the least hint of curiosity or fear.
“What happened to you?” Rosa cried out. Then her eyes widened. “You don’t know who I am?”
Renato didn’t reply.
Rosa turned to Giacomo. “What’s going on?”
“Looks like he doesn’t recognize anybody,” Madam C said. “How long has he been here?” she asked the monk.
“Four days,” Brother Nunzio replied. He paused. “Who is he?”
“Renato Corsi,” Giacomo said. “He lives in Genoa, with us.”
“We need to call a doctor,” Maddalena said.
“Brother Costante is a doctor,” Brother Nunzio explained. “He visited him several times. Obviously the hit this man took on the head affected his memory, and in a very bad way.”
“We would like to take him with us, if you don’t mind,” Madam C said. “Maybe we’ll be able to help him.”
“Sure,” the monk agreed. “I’m glad you came. It’s better for him to be with people he knows, or, at least, he knew at one time.”
Giacomo placed his hand on Renato’s arm. “Let’s go home,” he said. “Remember? Genoa. The port.”
Renato didn’t reply. Giacomo pulled on his arm, and Renato recoiled, letting out a short scream.
“Renato,” Rosa begged, “look at me. How can you not remember who I am? Remember this?” she said, showing him the blue stone.
Quietly, Renato took the stone, turned it in his fingers, and gave it back to Rosa.
“And this?” Rosa asked, taking the flask of her perfect oil out of the velveteen bag. She opened it and set it under his nose.
The moment Renato smelled the oil, his lips stretched in a happy smile. “I have been looking for this odor all along,” he said. “What is it?”
“My perfect oil,” Rosa replied with an equally happy smile. “It’s lavender, basil, apple blossoms, and Azul’s oil. Azul is Isabel’s grandmother. Remember Isabel? With the black vest?”
Empty-eyed, Renato kept staring at Rosa.
“You don’t remember anything, do you?” Rosa said in a disconsolate voice.
Renato shook his head.
“Come with us, “Giacomo said. “We’ll help you figure out what happened. And we’ll take you home.”
Renato nodded, then pointed at Rosa’s flask. “Can you open it again, please?”
They spent the rest of the day and that night at the farmhouse, where Renato rested and everyone else tried to figure out what had happened to him either at the s
tation or on the way to it. Too afraid, Geraldo Bassi never told anyone what he knew, even though he was questioned many times. To his credit, he had returned to the ditch early in the morning after the fact, looking for Renato, but when he hadn’t seen him anywhere, he had concluded that either the bandits had kidnapped him or he had found his way to the station. In either case, he had figured, there was nothing for him do at that point in time. As for Renato, he had stood up from the garden bench holding tight in his hand the flask of Rosa’s oil and docilely followed the group to the monastery door. He had taken his place on the wagon with surprised eyes. As the wagon had hobbled its way to the main road along the aspen-lined path, he had handed the flask back to Rosa. He had said, “It’s good that I don’t have to walk anymore.”
A doctor came to the farmhouse and examined Renato carefully from head to toe. “He was obviously hit on the head with a hard object,” the doctor said, “and that’s why he can’t remember anything. There’s nothing else wrong with him as far as I can tell. The monks took good care of his wound. All he needs is rest and time. And caring people who can help him through this difficult moment. Talk to him,” he told Rosa, Giacomo, and the Valles, “about things he did and knew. The more he hears familiar voices and sees familiar places, the better his chances to start remembering.”
“Can he travel by train?” Giacomo asked.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Traveling will not be a problem.”
That evening, in Rosa’s room, Renato lay on Rosa’s bed as Rosa and Giacomo sat next to him and told him about his life. They told him about Genoa, his job at the warehouse, the political demonstrations, the Grifone, Isabel, and the story of the sword-swallower, Camila, and Giacomo’s disguise. Renato listened to their tales with marveled eyes. “It all sounds made up, you know,” he said.
“It’s not,” Rosa said. “And there’s more.” She spoke slowly. “Behind the warehouse there’s a shack by the water where you and I used to make love every night.”
He looked at her with his deep blue eyes. “I must be crazy not to remember that.”
