by Diana Cachey
“We go,” he said as if it was all his idea, as if he wanted to stop. It wasn’t his idea at all. He didn’t want to stop. He wanted Louisa to never leave him. Ever. He loved her. He needed a drink. Not of fucking water.
Oh well who cares if he thinks he interrupted what I wasn’t going to stop. Let him think it. Louisa realized, in just that second, she knew she no longer loved Matteo. She merely lusted for him. Lusted, lusted, lusted.
For Matteo, unfortunately, it was the other way around.
“Ma va fa culo,” Matteo muttered. He flicked his hands in the air with a glance at her quickly. She’s my baby and I love her. She fucking knows it. She always knew it.
“Where the fuck I am?” he asked her.“Cazzo,” (fuck), he said and laughed.
She loved his laugh, it made the lust stronger. Stronger. Stronger.
“Can we circle those islands over there again?” She pointed to a small group filled with trees and birds. She realized why they had stopped. Not only did he need to pass out, he was lost. If Matteo didn’t get booze, and who knows what else, he was going to get mean, fast, like a mad blaze.
Frightened, she tried to sweeten her voice,“Can we try?”
“Oh you know fucking what? You know too much. You know Venice better than a Venetian? Ma vafa.”
Louisa wasn’t going to fight this fight anymore. Not his drunk attitude. Nor would she argue that she often knew more about the lagoon than did some Venetians. Although she didn’t live it like they did, she’d studied, observed, examined it. She knew Venice.
We have to get to that cantina and get this man some booze or I am toast no matter how much he loves me.
Begrudgingly Matteo did what she suggested. Soon he pulled into a long canal. On a short dock, they saw a couple, perhaps in their fifties, waving gleefully at the sight of their charming friend, Matteo.
And his inquisitive American girlfriend.
**
“Miamoroso,”Matteo introduced her as his girlfriend. He knew Louisa understood him but didn’t care. The bitch is my girlfriend whether she wants to be or not. She is mine.
Louisa prayed as she hurried off the boat, booze, booze get this man some booze. As she scrambled off the wobbly dock, her shoes sunk into muddy shores.
Tromping towards the eagerly awaiting couple, Louisa eyed large barrels, filled with what she assumed was wine, next to their tiny dock. The man Matteo introduced as Guido motioned him over to a lawn mower, apparently broken, so they attempted to start it.
The woman, Caterina, pulled Louisa away from the two men.
**
Caterina took Louisa over to the furthest point from the men. There Caterina showed her a small garden, no more than ten feet by ten feet, where she grew food. She guided Louisa down each row, pointed at plants in various stages of growth and proudly announced each specie in proper Italian, not dialect.
“Melanzane,”(eggplant) she said, her voice rose up at the end of the last syllable, for emphasis and acknowledgment, as if asking Louisa,“You know what that is right?” The garden tour continued in a charmed and intimate manner.
“Pomodorini,” she said, pointing first to the little tomatoes, or cherry tomatoes as Americans refer to them.“Il carciofo.” (the artichoke.)
But she said one artichoke, singular not plural.
“Il carciofo, non i carciofi?” Louisa asked for clarification. One artichoke, not artichokes?
Her garden guide replied by shaking her head back and forth. With a Tsk tsk and puckered lips, she held her arms out and shrugged her shoulders.
“No lo so perche. Troppodifficile,”(I don’t know why there is only one. They are too difficult.) Louisa nodded and gave her a sympathetic smile.
“Per me.” Difficult for me, she said, laughed, thenadded,“Ma provo.” But I try. She tried to grow artichokes but only produced one.
Caterinacontinued her garden tour and language class by pointing out more vegetables like“le carrote,” (the carrots) and le patate (the potatoes).
After she called out the potatoes, she took her right hand, pressed her finger tips together, kissed them and waved the closed fingers to the sky.
“Buona e brava,”she said. Very good and very behaved. She started counting them, five at a time. There were nearly one hundred potatoes in the small plot. Louisa assumed they’d been planted in levels, stacked on top one another, although she couldn’t be sure. How on earth could so many potatoes be planted in such a tiny area?
The women sensed her confusion, leaned down to see into her eyes and said,“Non molto difficili. Le patate sono facili. Not difficult. Potatoes are easy.“E buone.” And good.
Next they went into the lettuce row, where the crops were noted,“per insalade verde.” She rambled off the greens including several luscious stalks and varieties of radicchio, a favorite salad ingredient of the Veneto region.
Louisa didn’t care for radicchio, it being too bitter for her. Every time she admitted this to someone who lived in the region, they looked at her as if she had just said,“I want to kill a lamb.”
“What? You don’t like radicchio?” they all said. She kept silent about it to Caterina who beamed with pride at her array.
Some other delicious salad ingredients grown by Caterina included ruccola (arugala), le bietola (mangold), and la lettuga (garden lettuce.) Caterina also grew i pepericini, i cipollini, il porro, il cetriolo--peppers, scallions, leek, cucumber.
Of course no Venetian vegetable garden would be complete without i finocchi, fennel, a common pleasing ingredient in many Italian meals. Caterina had plenty of it.
Louisa assumed the tour was over and they would be heading next to the cantina, which the owners had immediately announced to Matteo was complete when they exited the boat.
Caterinamotioned her instead to the rear of a structure that Louisa believed was their home. There before her in all of its glory was the most stunning strawberry garden. Louisa shook her head at how this woman could possibly have kept or even started a garden in the dead of winter, just as she’d been amazed in Rome to see citrus trees sprouting lemons, limes and oranges in late December.
Caterina presented the strawberry garden to her with a sweep of it using both arms and a curtain call bow. Fragolini.Little strawberries. Louisa, shocked, couldn’t help but show her disbelief to which Caterina confirmed it.
“Si, i fragolini, assolutemente, si.” Caterinabegan foraging through her crop, which obviously wouldn’t be ready until May.
Louisa remembered going to the lake district outside Rome where the incredibly sweet but miniature strawberries grew in the wild. It took rare soil along the lakes and the perfect climate to produce them there. People came from all over the world during harvesting season to purchase these tiny strawberries and no one bought just one box. Louisa could eat a whole box in a matter of minutes. In May, Roman lake cities put fragolini into everything -- liquors, tarts, cakes -- although rarely a jam could be seen made of them. They were just too precious.
Now here in this remote little piece of marsh out in the middle of nowhere in the Venetian lagoon, Caterina, the Verdenese, had managed to cultivate them. Caterinaobserved Louisa’s face, trying to imagine what she was thinking, and she imagined it perfectly.
When Louisa finally looked up, their eyes met, and with a broad smile, Caterinasaid,“Incredibile, no?”
“Si, si, si,” was all the practically speechless Louisa could say. Foraging paid off for both of them for Caterina and Louisa had found two small strawberries almost ripe, one for each.
“Mangia,” (You eat) said Caterina as she gleamed and handed one to Louisa.
Louisa, touched by Caterina’s persistence in finding a strawberry for her to eat from the meager patch, closed her eyes and dropped it ever so lovingly on her tongue.
Thus, the little berry forged a bond between two women of different ages, cultures and languages, instantly, next to a fertile piece of dirt.
**
Matteo and company tried starting
the allegedly broken lawn mower. Louisa suspected they were chatting about another matter, a more sinister one. The mower miraculously began to work perfect. She heard the growl of its engine synchronized suspiciously with the end of her strawberry patch tour.
**
They were building a cantina, a bar. Priorities as usual. Barely had a roof over there heads or place to sleep way out there on Verde Island. Yet they had built a sizable cantina and created an impressive vegetable garden. Food and booze, rain or shine.
She hoped to have a chance to speak with the Verdenesecouple about the clues she held in her possession but hadn’t told Matteo about them yet -- a poem and a drawing. The poem she found in a book at the Ca’ Foscari law library. Buried behind a shelf, a folded piece of paper had been right where the ghost expert had told her to go. She pulled out the poem to show Matteo along with a copy of the drawing that appeared on the receipt from her lunch with Madame De Carlo. It looked like a picture of fish but she wasn’t sure. Possibly some animal from a Greek fresco or a fragment of a Pompei wall. What is that? She pondered it again.
Matteo, drunk or not, was clever and quick. He glanced at the drawing she held and without looking away from his wine glass, said,“Delfino. Bello.” He nodded, approving its beauty.
A dolphin, thought Louisa, of course.
“Si, si, delfino. Greco. Molto bello. Mi piace,” he commented on the beauty and confirmed the Greek origin of the drawing while still not moving his eyes away from the wine he swished around in the hand-blown wine glass the Verdese insisted he use to drink it from, stupidly Louisa felt. He held the delicate glass up to the light before drinking the wine with his pinky finger out, Italian style.
Then again, thought Louisa, he can steal replacements from his family’s chest for those expensive glasses he will inevitably break when he gets more drunk.
“Why you have it?” he said. She knew he spoke this in English because he didn’t want the Verdenese couple to understand him.
Louisa did not respond. She got up and asked Caterina for directions to the bathroom.
“No, no,” he said to Louisa.“No vabene,” he shook his head and finger at her. He tried to grab the sheet of paper but missed. He laughed and looked at her as if to say,“You can trust me. You must.”
Louisa sat back down then calmly handed both clues to him after remembering the words of Muraneseghost expert, Roberto, again, who had told her in confidence:“Matteo cannot usually be trusted but this time he will have to do. Anyone else will be too risky.”
Next she pulled out her English version of the Ca’ Foscari clue to review it. Matteo read the Venetian version that she’d written, while he drank the home made Verde wine and somehow also nibbled on pastries.
Caterina offered them some of the best and freshest Carnival frittelleLouisa had ever tasted. Of course, she’d tasted plenty of the little fried dough balls. These frittelle were filled with Nutella. Her favorite.
The poem confused Louisa in its simplicity and it overwhelmed her with its ambiguity. She peeked over at Matteo, who looked not the least bit perplexed by it. He bent his head slightly at her, a signal she interpreted correctly as“leave me with it for a bit.”
Because she continued to stare at him, he glanced sideways at her and with his eyes gave her another reassuring nod.“We are a team, don’t worry,” his eyes told her, not at all bossy or with his usual gamesmanship. They were partners now. He meant business. He was serious. Although he didn’t put the wine down. Ever.
She read the English version while Matteo read the Venetian:
At night is when we walk the grounds,
To find the places all around,
Were we live a sober life,
Free from watchful eyes and strife,
We wondrous Venice ghosts abound.
Beyond the sound of tolling bells,
Not so far from Venice swells,
Lies a ship of fishing fools,
Lies a ship’s brass cutting tools,
There sits a plate with tails that tell.
The story is an ugly one
The story that is far from done.
Days after she met with the Murano ghost expert, there she was with her only two clues, both now in the hands of Matteo. With one of his muscular arms draped over her shoulder, he raised a full glass of red wine with the other.
“Drink,” he cheerfully said to the Verde couple, then turned to her and demanded,“notyou. You drink too much.” He guzzled his own wine like he was suntanning on the beach with a refreshing cola, smacked his lips, smirked and leaned to kiss her.
She pulled away but then thought better and let him. She was in this with Matteo now, whether she liked it or not. She liked it, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
He liked it too. He wanted to show it. He nodded at the piece of paper with the Ca’ Foscari clue, which he held in the hand draped over her shoulder. He raised his eyebrows at her and smiled that gorgeous grin.
Louisa knew in that instant he’d figured out the poem’s riddle. She also knew he would expect to be rewarded accordingly.
She would reward him, she would like it and she would show him that she liked it.
**
Undici (11) Phantom Man
Her pants felt looser than when she arrived, even with evening hot chocolate, morning Nutella crepes and daily fare of pizza or pasta.
This trudging over bridges is working, Barbara thought. She soon knew why.
The walk, seemingly not as long as the day she arrived, jet-lagged and sleep deprived, still dragged on from her hotel to the nearest public boat dock. She was getting good at trudging. She pulled suitcases behind her over irregular walkways, stopped at each bridge to grab handles before she lifted them slightly and climbed the steps. At the top of each bridge, she twirled the bags around to push them down the steps then twisted them back behind her again to lug to the next bridge. Seamlessly she repeated the process between and on bridges and their numerous steps. Up and down, over and over, until she reached the boat launch after a number of bridges she cared not to count.
She wedged both suitcases into a corner of the vaporetto where she could enjoy the views, smell sea foam and read a book -- all while sitting outside in the sun on the boat. She also remained out of the fray of chaotic passengers, who formed crushing lines on either sides of her, depending on which side of the Grand Canal the boat stopped to pick up and drop off more people.
Barbara ignored the perusal and disparaging glares of what she instantly recognized as French or German tourists who hoped to intimidate her into giving up some of her choice boat deck real estate. Not a chance. I may be American and usually polite but this isn’t the United States. I’m onto your games, Europeans don’t que, they push.
She stared back at them, refusing to move until they decided that she was either also a European tourist or a Venetian hauling suitcases for holiday on the mainland. They relented and moved away from Barbara’s side. She, victorious. They, surrendered.
By the end of her boat ride, she could tell the nationality of a person from the simple purse of their lips when they spoke. An actor might study it -- certain languages push the mouth in different ways. There were other signs as well. Germans and Americans were usually tall, had hips, breasts, broad bodies.And French women are‘this’ big, Barbara thought, mentally holding up her baby finger.
Brits, for the most part, laugh and joke, at least when they are on their Venetian holidays. Nordics sport rosy cheeks and stocking caps. Italians, with either jet black hair or golden ringlets, walk with confidence and flair then pose if they see someone watch or stare. Equally confident in their Latin sex appeal and fashion as any Italian, the French carried themselves with a different poise, a more feminine one, with wispy bodies and flowing scarves, while Italians wore jewelry and sunglasses. Thus, tourists who ride the Venetian boats effect the varied climates of their homelands, pondered Barbara. She silently apologized to them all for her silly generalizations but justified t
hem because she was a mutt and a seer--that is, a mixed breed as well as an intuitive who could move her mind within the nuances. And here comes a jovial bunch of Brits. Cheers.
As the Brits entered the boat, Barbara looked up and saw Piazza San Marco in all her glory, spread out for the shutterbugs who rushed to its side of the boat such that the weight shift heaved the vessel. With one glance at San Marco, she, instantly in love, anticipated her turn to disembark into the world of turning, narrow passageways. This fine city had returned to her good graces.
At times Venice could seem like a coquettish nymph, fancying the attention of every passerby while reservedly bearing her centuries old rising and falling waters. But her beauty is not a subtle one. Tired Barbara wanted to plop down her suitcase and nap. Nonetheless, she planned to put on her rambling attire and go forth in search of some Venetian mystery.
She’d need to go to Campo Santa Marguerita where the language school was located and mingle with whomever she found. Voila! Prego! Her mind began to bounce between languages, from voila to prego or prontoand plain old“bye-bye.” Or as an Italian would say,“By-eee by-eee” just as they would say,“Okaayee-ee.” Ending their words an octave higher than would be spoken in English.
Language school, a necessity. Domani mattina, tomorrow morning, she concluded.
Barbara managed to walk the long stretch from the lingerie shop near Rialto bridge and over it to the lively fish and vegetable market on the other side of the Grand Canal. Along the way, she spied a compelling reason not to travel alone. Two attractive young woman joined together -- one sported a short black bob, the other, straight and long blonde hair -- and both wearing jeans in such a way that it would make lessor mortals shutter. But the most important part? They were holding hands, not like friends but as lovers.
This display of girl-on-girl affection, minimal as it were, had the effect of stopping the human traffic. Barbara couldn’t understand how mere hand-holding befuddled her -- and others judging by the stares. One worker, who carried a bag of cement above his head, did a complete one-eighty turn when the hand-holding girls passed him.
