by D. L. Smith
Their portly young guide wasn’t so lucky—he still had much to do. He smiled at his grim group and said . . . well, he said something. Guido had no idea what it was the guide actually said, but he perceived two things: first, many of the words he recognized as being English and second, whatever the guide’s comments, they failed to impress his charges. This chubby conductor was feeling a heat that far surpassed the warmth of a Toscana summer. The poor guy was miles from where he needed to be, in a village he didn’t know, in the midst of a heat wave with a group of discontented Englishmen and he alone knew their desperate fuel situation. Why had he sped by that last gas station outside Grosseto?
The bus had, of course, taken a wrong turn as the inexperienced guide/bus driver tried to invent a shortcut between Grosseto and Piombino. By the time he realized his mistake it was already too late. The narrow east road to Santo Fico abruptly becomes a tortuous climb skirting chalky coastal crags on one side and sheer cliffs that plunged to the sea on the other. And to add to the chagrin of so many innocent motorists, the route offers absolutely no place to turn around. Unwitting drivers must either put their vehicles in reverse and drive backward down the cliffs for some kilometers or continue on and pray that eventually the trail will widen before they either run out of gas or road. So great is the frustration and fear of what danger might lie around each hairpin curve that, by the time they finally arrive at the picturesque promontory of Santo Fico, most travelers are actually grateful. And so it was with this party of tourists and their baffled pilot.
Carmen was surveying the elderly assemblage of bloated English bodies and vacant pink faces when the poor guide started what he thought was charming repartee. But this was not the sort of invasion from the outside world a seventeen-year-old girl, sentenced to life imprisonment in Santo Fico, dreams about. With less than two words out of his mouth, Carmen scowled, turned on her heels, and walked back into the kitchen. What the guide did not need right now was some snippy waitress insulting him. His credibility with these pompous English was already dangerously depleted. He also wished the chinless fellow at the end of the bar would stop staring at him.
Guido, on the other hand, enjoyed Carmen’s haughty display. He didn’t like the arrogant confidence this stranger showed as he approached the girl. The guide leaned against the bar and offered Guido his smile.
“She’s pretty.”
Guido nodded.
“Is she coming back?”
Guido shrugged.
“Do you know how far we are from Follonica?”
Guido shook his head and sipped his wine. He actually did know the exact distance, but he wasn’t about to tell this guy anything—not after running all the way up the hill to get nothing more than a crummy glass of wine. The hell with him. Besides, he wanted to see this inflated sausage’s reaction to Marta—and he wasn’t disappointed. He knew, without turning, when Marta entered. If the guide had found Carmen attractive, he was absolutely alarmed by the voluptuous Marta and the intriguing animal glint of peril buried in her dark eyes. Guido had seen it all his life.
Marta was no stranger to the guide’s predicament and she quickly took charge, conducting their business swiftly and efficiently. He would need thirteen lunches. She would need forty minutes. The price was agreed upon. He asked about diesel fuel. She recommended a walk down to the harbor to see if any of the fishermen might sell him some. Then, just as Marta turned back to the kitchen, Guido perked up as the guide asked a significant question.
“Is there anything of particular interest here? Something that might help us pass the time?”
Marta studied him for a moment before replying, almost offhand, “No, not really.”
Then she noticed Guido sitting in the back corner. She’d forgotten about him. She wasn’t sure he had heard this last exchange, so she motioned toward his empty glass.
“Topo, you want another?”
Guido smiled broadly and shook his head. Marta returned to the kitchen.
He liked the way Marta called him Topo. It made him feel special. The casual way she said it reenforced his own perception about his lifelong nickname. It had nothing to do with diminutive stature or mousy traits. To him it was a term of endearment and an indication of his cleverness. He was totally oblivious of the fact that his narrow nose was a bit too long and arched, his chin was a bit too weak, his large brown eyes a bit too close together, his mouth a bit too small, and his front teeth a bit too prominent. Occasionally, in just the right light, if he were to simultaneously smile and wiggle his nose, one would swear he had just smelled cheese.
But at this exact moment, sitting in the shadows at the end of the bar, what Topo fancied he smelled was money. And why not? Wasn’t he one of the originators of “The Tales of the Miracle and the Mystery”—much on a par with Leo Pizzola and Franco Fortino? In fact, if pressed, Leo Pizzola would have to admit that much of the original scheme had come from Guido’s head. At least some of it . . . Or at the very least, a little of it. Yes, when it came to boldness and clever ideas, he and Leo were cut from the same bolt of cloth. That fact was proven, even now, by the birth of the excellent idea floating around inside his head.
How could he have predicted what terrible events this excellent idea would help to set in motion? How could he anticipate that such an innocent little thought would ever contribute to him becoming a criminal—a master thief? Who could foresee such a harmless notion bringing such a world of trouble?
Right now, it seemed to him that his simple little plan was an excellent one, tried and true. How could he have been so shortsighted? Hoping for a free lunch! What had he been thinking? Where was his brain? Leo Pizzola was back! It would be like old times!
Topo pushed himself away from the bar, grabbed his hat, and was out the door. He knew what he had to do. He had to find Leo Pizzola—and quickly.
THREE
As he raced down the gravel slope of the coast road north of town, Topo strained to keep his body at least one step ahead of gravity. Nobody could say that Guido Pasolini failed to recognize opportunity when it landed in his lap, and he tried to calculate how much profit there was to be made from his scheme. Unfortunately, he had no idea how much to charge. This was an area where Leo Pizzola shined—at least he used to. Of course, Leo was bound to be a bit rusty after so many years.
Topo arrived at an unassuming break in an old stone wall that bordered the road. The gap in the wall had probably once housed a handsome gate, but now it was just a broken spot in the undergrowth. He tried to make the turn, but his speed had finally combined with gravity to create an unanticipated inertia that carried him straight off the road. Like some runaway torpedo, Topo shot across a sea of brown thistles, accidentally kicking over a “FOR SALE” sign that had been crudely painted in red letters. The makeshift sign disappeared into the weeds, but Topo couldn’t worry about it now. His short piston-legs ripped through weeds and leapt over low cactuses and jagged boulders. Finally managing to slow himself, he turned back onto the rutted dirt lane and scurried on toward the Pizzola family’s pastures by the sea.
Not far from the road and up a sloping meadow, buried in the shade of a grove of cork and linden trees, loomed the ghostly figure of a once admirable house now fallen into dreary disrepair. Topo thought the dark weathered stains on the plaster walls and the branches of neighboring trees twisting themselves into the terra-cotta roof tiles gave the place the look of an abandoned old woman with her makeup smeared and her hair tangled—and she seemed sadly confused by her loveliness lost.
He panted down a road that bordered neatly planted rows of muted green olive trees. Their gnarled branches were wild and unpruned and Topo thought of how annoyed old Signore Pizzola would be to see this. The branches should be heavy by now, weighted down with fruit bursting with oil and juice. But these branches bore only a slim scattering of tiny, rock-hard olives—not worth the effort to harvest. He passed a neglected vineyard whose scant purple berries struggled against the weeds and baked under an uncaring s
un, and he kept his eyes on the path, trying to ignore the dying vines. It angered him to see the vineyard going the way of the olive grove and the house.
Puffing across a dry field inhabited by stray goats and sheep, Topo glanced nervously over his shoulder. The Lombolo family leased these fields from Leo to graze their horses, and horses made Topo nervous. The Lombolo horses were fierce and powerful Spanish thoroughbreds that, Topo was convinced, were also treacherous. Fortunately, he didn’t see them right now, so he hurried on toward the only thing to break the landscape for some distance—a small stone dwelling surrounded by a half-dozen flame-shaped cypress trees.
To call this structure a house was flattery; it was little more than a large hut that sat on a rise overlooking the sea and when the wind was right you could hear waves crashing. Probably built by some ancient Pizzola ancestor many centuries earlier, the stone and plaster walls gave the impression of snug lodgings. But for all its quaint charm, it was still just a single-room stone hut with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Why Leo chose to live here rather than in the big house on the hill where he grew up was a question Topo would someday have to ask. He knew it must somehow be connected to why Leo refused to walk into the olive grove or tend the vineyard, and he was pretty sure it had something to do with why Leo mysteriously ran away to America eighteen years ago. Someday he would ask him, but not today.
He leaned against the door and pounded only once before opening it and calling.
“Leo!”
The room was empty. This was not just bad; this was a catastrophe. Where could Leo be in the heat of the day?
Of course! It was Monday! Topo’s heart sank. Disturbing Leo today could be trouble, even dangerous. The secret that Leo had revealed to him about his Mondays was shared in confidence and no invitation had been extended. Leo was going to be angry.
“Well, let him be angry,” Topo huffed. “This is business.” And he scampered across the meadow toward the sea.
Leo Pizzola struggled to pull his lanky frame forward through the tall razor grass with some sense of stealth and still keep his knees and elbows out of the dirt. Why the hell hadn’t he changed his clothes first? It was so stupid to crawl across a field in a linen suit, and he was glad he was horizontal so he couldn’t kick himself. He was the only man in Santo Fico with enough style to even own a linen suit and here he was . . .
A sand flea jumped up his nose and his whole body spasmed at the invasion.
“The price you pay for crawling through their neighborhood with such a big nose,” he told himself.
He flopped onto his back and beat his hands against the marks smudging his elbows and his knees. Fortunately, the pale sand and dust of this region were of a similar hue to the creamy suit so Leo was able to rationalize how the delicate shadings of dust might even enhance the casual nature of the rumpled cloth.
Too late now and it was his own fault. He’d once again lost track of the days of the week, and when he dressed this morning for his usual pointless trip into town, some unexplainable whim told him to put on his suit. He was all the way to the olive grove before he remembered it was Monday, and his run back down the dusty path and then the sprint up the coast had left him sweating and out of breath. Now, here he was, thirty-six years old with grass stains on the elbows and knees of his only suit, crawling through the tall grass like some hormonal schoolboy.
With one final grunt Leo pulled himself to the edge of a low bluff of sandstone boulders that joined a white beach and led down to a peaceful lagoon. Carefully parting the blades of razor grass, Leo peeked over the edge of the cliff toward the sea.
Across the white sand beach an attractive but rather ample woman lazed back on a smooth boulder at the water’s edge. Her bleached tresses rested on a rolled towel and her thin cotton dress was hiked up revealing pleasantly plump legs. Leo realized that in his haste he was becoming careless. He still wore his soiled Panama hat and it stuck out like a white flag in the tall grass, so he swiftly swept it off his head in a strangely gentlemanly way.
At the water’s edge Angelica Giancarlo was having trouble keeping the lids of her large brown eyes from fluttering closed as she baked under the August sun. She knew this much sun wasn’t good for her skin, but at the moment her real concern was falling asleep. So she forced herself to stretch across the warm boulder in an effort to stay awake. Who was she kidding? It was obvious that Leo Pizzola had lost interest. He wasn’t coming. In all the Mondays since she first noticed him spying on her secret swims, this was the first one he’d missed.
She was tempted to stumble back up the hill to town and take a real nap. There would be plenty of time for swimming later—perhaps tonight. Angelica liked to swim at night, under a full moon. When she looked at her naked body standing on the wet sand, the silver haze of moonlight and glistening water hid the tracings of time and her perpetual losing battle with gravity and she felt younger.
Just as she decided to summon enough energy for the hike back home, she saw a small rustling in the grass at the crest of the cliff. Then there was the swift flash of a familiar straw hat.
“Well, it’s about time,” she mumbled to herself.
If this drama were something that either of them could acknowledge, she would certainly give him a piece of her mind for keeping her waiting in this heat. But her best opportunity for an indignant display was when she first saw him peeking at her through the tall grass over a month ago. She wondered sometimes why she entertained his childish peeping at all. It wasn’t like she really knew Leo Pizzola. In fact, they didn’t even speak. She wouldn’t mind it if they did— but of course, that would be too awkward now.
With a somewhat ungraceful effort Angelica hauled herself from the warm rock, and this time as she stretched in the sun, it was more deliberate. Why did she even bother? She didn’t even know him really and already he’s late; probably getting bored—they all get bored eventually. But she knew why. It was vanity. There was so little that made her feel attractive anymore; or alluring; or desired. She quickly dismissed any notion of giving him a piece of her mind, and instead she unrolled her towel and placed it across the flat boulder that jutted out into the lagoon. Then she stepped into the shallow water and delighted at its coolness on her bare feet and ankles. Ah, this was what she needed to wake her. As Angelica slowly waded deeper into the inviting sea, she lifted her light dress a little higher with each step. She wore no underclothing. Underclothing was always so clumsy and ungraceful. This economy made the dance appear much more effortless. Finally, when she was deep enough to justify it, she pulled the dress completely over her head and held it high up in the air. She deftly rolled the colorful print into a tight ball and with a practiced flick of the wrist, the wad of still dry cloth flew across the water and landed perfectly on the edge of the boulder. Angelica held her unveiled pose for just a moment before diving beneath the surface of the cool blue water.
From behind his curtain of grass at the top of the bluff, Leo rested his chin on his hands and watched Angelica’s smooth pink form glide through the translucent blue. Where Angelica Giancarlo was concerned Leo had never quite outgrown the innocent adoration he’d felt when he was a boy. Although she was only a few years his senior, how he had yearned for this full-busted “older woman” of sixteen who was willing to occasionally indulge a twelve-year-old boy with her secret smile. As boys, Leo and Topo and Franco Fortino had been unable to hide their fascination with the voluptuous Angelica. When it came down to it, every man in the village noticed Angelica when she walked by and every woman hated her because of it. But these three boys loved to follow her just to watch the way her round hips swayed as she walked up the narrow streets, the way she tossed her bleached hair when she laughed, the way her eyes flashed like tiny signal lights as she raised or lowered them, or the way she would casually stroke her rib cage just below her breast. This was all great stuff and a tremendous education for three pubescent boys.
Leo was thirteen when Angelica left home. He and every other male
in the village was sorry to discover her gone, but being the principal femme fatale for the village had probably become a little awkward for the bighearted Angelica—not to mention embarrassing for her mother and stern father. At seventeen Angelica left Santo Fico to find her fortune as a movie actress in Roma—so the story went.
About a year after she disappeared, Leo, Franco, and Topo hitched a ride into Grosseto because Topo swore that there was a movie playing that had Angelica Giancarlo in it and you could see her breasts!
The movie was about sheiks and sultans and deserts and harem girls and it was all pretty silly. But Topo swore that the plump blond harem girl was Angelica. If it was, you certainly could see her breasts and they certainly were beautiful. Unfortunately, all the harem girls wore little masks and Franco insisted it wasn’t Angelica. Topo swore it was. Leo wasn’t sure, so he sided with Franco just because that’s the way things worked back then. Even so, Leo still managed to secretly hitch a ride back into Grosseto one afternoon before that movie closed, because the odds were that Topo was right. Even as a boy Guido Pasolini knew more about movies than anyone in Santo Fico. As Leo seated himself, he spotted Topo sitting a few rows in front of him. He didn’t say a word because he suddenly felt embarrassed about being there. But also because, in the flickering shades of gray light bouncing off the screen he was startled by the expression of adoration on Topo’s face as his little friend stared up at the giant image he swore was Angelica Giancarlo. Leo felt as if he’d invaded Topo’s holy shrine and he sneaked out before the movie was over.
A rustling in the grass behind him disturbed Leo’s meditation of Angelica gliding and turning in the cool water. He turned fully expecting to have to shoo away a sheep or a goat or at worst one of the Lombolos’ horses. Instead, he discovered—a mouse.
“Topo, what the hell are you doing here?” Leo whispered angrily.
The little man could only wave his hands feebly as he tried to catch his breath.
