The Scent Of Rosa's Oil

by Lina Simoni

  Cesare nodded and took a seat by Madam C’s fireplace.

  She stood in front of him. “Tell me, Cesare, are you happy to be here? Or are you here only because I dragged you out of your house?”

  He waited a while. “I’m not sure that I know how to define happiness,” he said gravely, staring at the graniglia floor. “I know I feel like I woke up from a bad dream, and I have this certainty I can’t explain that the bad dream will not return.” He looked her in the eyes. “And when I look at you, I’m at peace. Is this happiness?”

  Madam C lowered herself into a chair next to him. “I guess so, Cesare. I guess so.”

  As life at the Luna settled into new routines with new people, Rosa and Renato took care of the distillery and the flower room, both badly in need of sprucing up after Isabel had occupied them uninterruptedly for sixty-one years. The idea was to make the space usable as a store and sell it before Isabel’s departure for Costa Rica. First, Rosa and Renato boxed all the oil bottles and brought them to the Luna, together with Isabel’s old rocking chair. Then they scrubbed the floors, washed the walls, threw away the old mattresses and the worn-out sheets, cleaned and disinfected the stove, and left the windows and the glass door open day and night to get rid of the stubborn odors. They enlisted the help of Santina, who scrubbed the place once more with a mixture of water, alcohol, and Marseille soap. Finally, following Isabel’s advice, they lit five bergamot candles and vaporized pine oil. The neighbors watched the cleaning operations vigilantly, taking due notice of Isabel’s absence as well as of the absence of the steam. Their conclusion was unanimous and was passed on from house to house in whispers and loud shouts: “The witch is dead.” Infuriated by the gossip and exasperated by the curious looks, Rosa hung a sign on the booth wall: Isabel is not a witch, the sign said, and she’s not dead either. The neighbors shrugged. “She’s dead,” they went on saying, “with prostitutes at her bedside.”

  One week after the cleaning process had been completed, a merchant offered to buy the booth for little more than half its market value. “It’s my last offer,” he told Giacomo, who was handling the sale on Isabel’s behalf. “No one in his right mind would pay a higher price for a space known to have hosted a stinking sorceress for more than half a century. Take it or leave it.” After a group consultation in the Luna parlor, the unanimous decision was to accept the offer and sell. Isabel drew a cross at the bottom of the papers with a shaky hand and let out a long, heavy-hearted sigh.

  “Well,” Madam C said with a rare relaxed smile, “now that we took care of business and Isabel is a rich woman, there’s only one thing left to do before she, Renato, and Rosa leave us.” She paused a moment and looked at the eight people—Maddalena, Margherita, Stella, Rosa, Renato, Giacomo, Isabel, and Cesare—standing around her. “Party.”

  There was an awkward silence. “You can’t be serious,” Margherita said, squinting her eyes.

  Maddalena gazed at the people in the room. “I don’t know about you,” she said with a long face, “but I’ve had enough of partying at the Luna.”

  “Oh, come on,” Madam C urged. “Would someone please be happy around here? Let’s not call it a party. Let’s call it a…family dinner.” She waited for a response. “What do you say?”

  The party/family dinner was set for the upcoming Wednesday, a day everyone had agreed on because it was three days before the ship departure and would work well with Stella’s fear of Fridays. “And there will be no libeccio blowing,” Margherita said, “so hopefully nothing will go wrong this time.”

  On that Wednesday, the only outsiders at the party were Giacomo, who had returned to work and to leading the longshoremen’s political battles; Renato, still struggling with his lack of memory but better able to come to terms with it, mostly thanks to Rosa; Marco, in brand-new, clean clothes; and Roberto Passalacqua, paler and shyer than ever. Everyone else at the gathering lived or, in Rosa’s case, had lived at the Luna. When Rosa arrived that day and stepped into the parlor, she saw Cesare Cortimiglia for the first time since the day he had left Piazza Banchi. He was standing by the counter, talking to Maddalena. She looked at him from a distance, unable to identify that deeply wrinkled, red-eyed old man with the man who had taken off his clothes and fallen asleep in her bed on the night of her sixteenth birthday. As for Cesare, he gave Rosa a quick glance, then turned away from her and poured Madam C a glass of Barbera. Isabel, in a brand-new black vest purchased for her by the Luna girls, was seated on her rocking chair in the middle of the room.

  “See?” Rosa told her. “You can go to parties after all.”

  “I guess,” Isabel said. She paused a moment. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  “What?” Madam C asked.

  “Going again on a ship across the ocean.”

  “I can’t believe I walked into your booth a year ago,” Rosa said. “I was so afraid.”

  “Attention, everybody,” Margherita shouted. “I’d like to read a poem for Renato and Rosa.”

  “Oh no,” Cesare moaned, cupping his hands over his ears.

  “I thought you had come to like poetry,” Madam C said, amused.

  “Only because I was miserable and alone,” he replied. “Now that I have you,” he added, taking her hand, “the hell with poetry and poets.”

  Despite Cesare’s protest, Margherita read one of Petrarca’s most famous poems:

  “‘Si traviato e’l folle mio desio

  a seguitar costei che ‘n fuga e’ volta

  e de’ lacci d’Amor leggiera e sciolta

  vola dinnanzi al lento correr mio;

  che quando richiamando pur l’envio

  per la secura strada men m’ascolta:

  ne’ mi vale spronarlo o dargli volta;

  ch’Amor per sua natura il fa restio.’”

  At the end, as everyone applauded, there were knocks on the door. “I have a surprise,” Madam C said. She let in a small man with a limp and a young boy who was carrying two heavy bags. “This man,” she said, “is a photographer, and I asked him to come here to take pictures of us.”

  The photographer and his helper took some time to set up their gear. Then the photographer asked everyone to stand by the counter. “Don’t breathe,” he said, disappearing behind a black cloth. A second later, a flash blinded everyone’s eyes.

  “Take more,” Madam C told the photographer, then whispered in Cesare’s ear, “In case this is the last time we’ll all be together.”

  “I want you to have this,” Maddalena told Rosa when the photography session was over. She handed her the black wig.

  “I miss it already,” Giacomo chuckled behind Maddalena’s back, “but you can have it.”

  “Thank you,” Rosa said, hugging Maddalena. “There are so many memories with it.”

  “I envy you, you know,” Maddalena said. “For a Gypsy like me, five years in the same town is a long stretch.”

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Renato asked.

  Maddalena shook her head. “And leave the Luna, Madam C’s tantrums, Stella’s prophecies, and Margherita’s poems? You must be joking.”

  Meanwhile, in a corner of the crowded parlor, Roberto Passalacqua was not handling the attention of the Luna girls too well. Margherita, intrigued by his pallor and shyness since the first time he had set foot in the brothel to announce Cesare Cortimiglia’s acceptance to attend Rosa’s party, was trying all sorts of tricks to loosen him up and make him smile: drinks, furtive caresses, jokes. The more she tried, the more withdrawn Roberto became. Stella joined her in the game. “How old are you?” she asked at a certain point.

  “Thirty-one,” he replied in a whisper.

  “You look and act like a child,” Margherita said. “When is the last time you were with a woman?”

  Nearby, Cesare overheard the question. “As far as I know,” he said, “he’s never been with one.”

  Stella turned around. “You mean to tell me he’s a virgin?”

  Cesare nodded as Roberto blu
shed all the way to the tips of his spiky hair.

  “How’s that possible?” Margherita asked.

  “I haven’t been too successful with women,” Roberto murmured. “My stomach twists whenever I see a woman I like. My legs become heavy, and I can’t speak. I open and close my mouth like a fish.”

  “You need professional help in a hurry,” Margherita said, taking him by the arm and pulling him toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  Roberto pulled back, trying to disentangle himself from Margherita’s hands. “Thank you, but no,” he babbled.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” Cesare said. “Go for it, my boy. Trust me, there’s nothing better than losing your virginity to a master of the art of love.”

  “Make it two masters,” Stella said, pushing Roberto toward Margherita.

  Caught between two fires, the young man stopped arguing and let Margherita and Stella lead him up the stairs. Everyone in the parlor whistled and applauded. “The bill is on me,” Cesare shouted, raising his glass.

  As the threesome reached the top of the stairs and disappeared down the hallway, Madam C spoke into Cesare’s ear. “Remember?”

  He turned to her. “As if it were yesterday.”

  The celebration in the parlor went on a while longer. Finally, Renato took Rosa and Giacomo aside. Rosa was still holding the black wig. “Remember what Giacomo said on the train?” Renato asked Rosa. “That you had a story to tell about this wig?”

  Rosa opened her eyes wide as Giacomo and Renato exchanged a glance of complicity.

  “Just so you know,” Renato said, “Giacomo told me everything.”

  Rosa blushed, then stared at Giacomo. “Traitor.”

  Renato chuckled. “It was clever, I must say. Would you put it on for me? So I can see whom I fell in love with the first time?”

  “No,” Rosa said.

  “Please,” begged Renato.

  Slowly, Rosa put the black wig on her head. “You are not mad?” she asked in a shaky voice.

  “My dear Tramonto,” Renato said, sliding an arm around Rosa’s shoulders. “I have decided that I will not worry about what I can’t remember. Giacomo vows that at the time I left Genoa, when I had all my memories with me, I was madly in love with you. I wasn’t upset about the black wig or anything else. That and the way I feel now are all that matter. I love you, on or off the water, black or red hair. I loved you before the accident, and I love you now, even though I can’t remember I loved you before. I can’t imagine ever falling out of love with you. All I’m asking of you is that you love me forever.”

  Madam C arrived as Rosa was wiping her tears. “Rosa?” she called. “Would you remove that silly wig and come with me to the third floor? There’s something I want to tell you. Excuse us, please,” she told Renato. “She’ll be back in a moment.”

  In the sitting room, Madam C opened a pouch and took out of it a roll of banknotes. “For you,” she said, handing them to Rosa. “You will need them. But this is not the main reason I asked you to come up here.”

  Rosa looked at her inquisitively.

  “Sit down,” Madam C said. “Do you know what cremation is?”

  Rosa shook her head.

  “It’s a process that turns a body into ashes,” Madam C explained. “The law forbids it.” She took a deep breath. “When Angela understood that she wouldn’t survive, she asked me not to bury her. She was afraid of darkness and tight spaces. She told me she wanted to stay at the Luna, as close as possible to where her child would grow up. There’s a blacksmith who lives two blocks from here and who, unknown to the authorities, cremates bodies. He does it only to help the people of the caruggi who are poor and don’t have the means to pay for a plot at the cemetery or provide for a funeral and a burial. He did it for me because he was a client.” She walked to the fireplace and picked up the vase with the lid. “In this vase are your mother’s ashes. Now you know why I got so upset when you threatened to break it.”

  Gently, Rosa took the vase from Madam C’s hands and said, “Now I know why it felt so heavy when I picked it up.” She looked at Madam C. “Can I open it?”

  “Sure.”

  Gingerly, Rosa looked inside. She whispered, “This must be the reason I always felt that Angela was near me.”

  “I never told you about these ashes,” Madam C said, “because it’s hard to explain the aftermath of death to a child. You’re no longer a child, and you’ll leave us soon, so I thought”—she dried her tears—“that you should take Angela with you.”

  Rosa said, “Can we put the ashes in two vases?”

  Madam C nodded, then smiled. “You have no idea how much I still miss her.”

  “I miss her, too,” Rosa said, caressing the rim of the vase.

  The following morning, two days before Rosa’s departure, Antonia arrived early at the Luna, carrying the largest grocery bags the girls had ever seen. In the kitchen, she took out dishes, pots, and pans and began cooking whatever food she thought Rosa should have with her on her way to Costa Rica. With her hawk eyes, Madam C supervised the preparation. “After this,” Antonia said, placing a torte in the oven, “I’m retiring. This place is not the same.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Madam C scolded her. “I’m already losing a daughter. I’d like to keep my cook, if you don’t mind.”

  “A man living in a brothel is bad luck,” Antonia grunted.

  “Cesare living here is a blessing,” Stella said, coming in with Margherita from the parlor. She pointed at Madam C. “Look at her. She’s never looked better in her life.”

  “And, most important,” Margherita added, “she doesn’t act crazy anymore. That alone is a success.”

  Madam C looked them in the eyes. “I never acted crazy in my life. I had my reasons for what I did, and they were good ones.”

  “We could argue over this for a long time,” Stella pointed out. “Why don’t we just do what’s left to do before Rosa leaves us?”

  Madam C lifted her chin and placed her hands on her hips. “Antonia and I are working, as you can see. What about you two? Is there anything you’d like to do other than waste our time?”

  Stella placed a hand on Margherita’s shoulder and laughed. “I guess love can cure bitter souls only to an extent. The essence remains.”

  “Get out of my kitchen,” Madam C growled, brandishing a bread knife.

  EPILOGUE

  The ship, half-cargo, half-passenger, would head for the Colombian port of Cartagena after one stop in Morocco and one in Portugal. On the deck, by the rail, gazing down at the pier, stood Rosa, Renato, and Isabel. Next to them were three suitcases and a cloth bag filled with packages of Antonia’s food. At the edge of the pier, among a small crowd, Madam C, Maddalena, Stella, Margherita, Antonia, Cesare, Giacomo, Marco, and Roberto stared at the ship’s deck, waving. “Do you have everything you need?” Madam C shouted.

  Rosa nodded. In her suitcase, besides clothes, she had one of the photographs taken at the Luna, the black wig, a box with half her mother’s ashes, the books Madam C had bought for her when she had stopped going to school, the dried blossom Isabel had given her, the dried petals of Renato’s rose, Angela’s earrings, and the little that was left of her perfect oil. Around her neck was a leather string with a pendant—Renato’s blue stone. Renato had packed all his books; Isabel, only her discolored black vest and a few bottles of oil. She had left most of the bottles and her rocking chair at the Luna, for the girls to use. From the pier, Maddalena, Margherita, and Stella blew kisses, crying. At some point, Maddalena waved the cardboard box with the tarot cards inside. On the deck, Rosa muttered unheard, “Yes, Maddalena, your cards were right.”

  Giacomo mouthed the words, “Write to me.” Renato nodded in silence.

  Then the siren rose above the sounds of the port, and the ship slowly detached itself from the pier like an elephant struggling to set its body in motion. Rosa held Isabel’s hand and slid her other arm around Renato. As the ship began crossing the port toward t
he exit, she was struck by the thought that the world was so immense and yet so small. All her world was there, in her suitcase, in the nine people who stood silently on the pier, and in the two she was holding at that moment. While she breathed the biting odor of the saltwater, she felt in her nostrils all the perfumes and stenches she had smelled in Isabel’s booth, the odors of the Luna kitchen, those of the parlor, and the fragrances of the flowers she had picked on the hills with Madam C when she was still a child. “Thank you, Angela,” she whispered, “for giving me my dream.”

  “I’m scared,” Isabel said. “This was a crazy idea.”

  “Crazy ideas are what make the world turn, Isabel,” Renato said. “Aren’t you glad to be going home?”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “And I’m also glad because you two are together and I get to be with you a while longer. Rosa, the day you walked into my booth was the best day I had since leaving Costa Rica sixty-one years ago. And you, Renato, are a very special man. In all my life, I never met or heard of anyone who fell in love with the same woman three times.” She took a deep breath. “I must go inside now. It’s much too difficult for me to be looking at Genoa from the water.” She began to walk away, then stopped and turned around. “My perfect oil,” she said, looking intently at Rosa, “is hyssop and sandalwood with hints of tangerine.” She opened her eyes wide. “I can tell my life is over,” she murmured to herself. “I gave all my secrets away.”

  Quietly, Renato and Rosa watched Isabel open a cabin door and step inside.

  “How are you feeling?” Rosa asked once the two of them were alone on the deck.

  “Fine,” Renato said.

  “Your stomach doesn’t hurt?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re not shaking?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad,” After a moment, she said softly. “We wouldn’t be on this boat had it not been for your accident, you know.”

  “Tell me again how we met,” Renato said. “I love that story.”

  “I dipped my handkerchief in my perfect oil and dropped it. You picked it up”—she stretched her lips in a naughty smile—“and instantly fell in love.”