by D. L. Smith
“You know what time it is, Nico?”
The voice came from the opposite side of the fountain and it belonged to the old man whom everyone called Nonno. No response was necessary and so Leo ignored the question, but, as expected, Nonno continued anyway.
“I lost my watch when I made the water go away.”
Like so many old people who dress more out of habit than season, even in this summer heat Nonno endured a frayed coat draped over his bony frame and his tattered slouch hat still managed a jaunty angle. For as long as Leo could recall, he remembered Nonno sitting on the edge of the dry fountain. A confirmed eccentric, the old guy was always oddly selective in whom he chose to warm up to. Some people Nonno seemed to invariably regard with a mysterious affection and he sought them out whether they wanted it or not. Others, he would inexplicably shout at from across the piazza, calling them a “Fascist” or a “Nazi” or just ordering them to go to hell. Even as a boy, Leo had always fallen into that former category. Only now, since his return, for some strange reason, the old man had taken to calling him Nico.
Someone leaving the back of the hotel distracted them and Leo recognized the gracefully hesitant step of Nina Fortino carrying a basket of food across the piazza. He watched her softly count her way across the square to the church where she floated up the steps and disappeared inside. She was obviously carrying lunch to her great-uncle, Father Elio—which brought to mind another situation that Leo hadn’t considered.
He not only had to face Marta in her own hotel and remember how to tell the stories of the Mystery and the Miracle in English—he also had to get Father Elio’s permission. Leo seriously considered forgetting the whole thing and going back to the beach. Maybe Angelica would still be there, gliding and turning in the cool blue water. What was he doing trying to work a scam that he and Franco came up with when they were, what . . . twelve?
From the dining room, one of the English tourists must have said something amusing because laughter poured out the open doors and echoed around the piazza. There was a time, Leo recalled, when he was welcomed into restaurants filled with laughter and good-natured friends. Since his return to Santo Fico he’d lived like an outcast. Nowadays when he approached groups of people, conversation stopped. With the exception of Topo, no one visited his stone cell down by the sea and Leo certainly wasn’t invited into anyone’s home.
“Do you know what time it is, Nico?”
Leo looked over and discovered that Nonno had casually scooted himself around the edge of the fountain until he had finally arrived at Leo’s elbow.
“No.”
“I lost my watch when the water went away.”
Leo nodded as if he understood. Nonno’s constant companion, the skinny gray dog, joined them and plopped himself down at their feet.
“I made the water go away,” was the old man’s whispered confession.
Leo nodded again. “I know, Nonno.” But he wasn’t really listening.
“I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Some things we can’t undo,” sighed Leo, still lost in his own regret.
The old man nodded and mumbled his agreement, “Some things we just have to live with, I guess.”
Leo considered the truth of these last statements and nodded absently, “I guess.”
It was true.
Leo rose and brushed himself off. He smoothed his thick mustache and recocked his hat at a rakish angle. He straightened his lime green tie, adjusted his pale yellow pocket hankie, and pointlessly polished each worn shoe on the back of an opposing pant leg.
“Wish me luck,” and he gave Nonno a quick wink. “Sure, Nico. Why not? You’re a handsome boy. All the girls will think they love you.”
Leo chuckled to himself at the old man’s chatter. With Nonno, it was the thought that counted—although he did occasionally wonder who the hell Nico was.
Then Leo Pizzola marched resolutely across the piazza and walked right through the open front doors of the Albergo di Santo Fico for the first time in eighteen years.
FIVE
When the tour guide saw the tall fellow in a dirty linen suit saunter in and stand quietly in the shadows of the lobby, discreetly surveying the dining room, he knew immediately that there was something about this guy he didn’t like—and it wasn’t just his cheap suit. This guy wasn’t some farmer, or sheepherder, or fisherman. The calculating way Leo inspected the room indicated a brain and a purpose. Besides, that broken nose looked earned.
And the guide wasn’t the only one who noticed Leo’s entrance—Carmen saw him the second he stepped in the doorway. Standing in the lobby was bad enough, but now Leo Pizzola was actually daring to enter the restaurant and catastrophe was only as far away as her mother’s entrance from the kitchen.
Certainly all the natives of Santo Fico noticed Leo and his disheveled linen suit, and a thrilling anticipation of something dreadful seized them. “My God,” they all thought, “Leo Pizzola is walking into Marta Fortino’s hotel, in broad daylight!” This scandalous event promised a disastrous showdown—and they had ringside seats!
Fortunately for Leo, the English were too involved in their meals to notice all the elbow nudgings and head jerkings that accompanied his entrance as he strolled to a place at the bar right against the tour guide’s elbow. They exchanged strained smiles and Leo watched the sweaty guide struggle to nonchalantly focus his attention back onto his lunch. How perceptive of Topo, he thought. This guy is a pazzo.
A glass of water suddenly pounded onto the marble counter in front of him and Carmen Fortino spoke to Leo for the first time in her life.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed.
Leo considered the glass of water she was offering and wondered if she intended him to drink it or wear it. He didn’t know this older daughter of his dead best friend. Topo had pointed her out to him, of course—and her sister Nina too. He’d occasionally noticed her watching him from across the piazza or from behind a window, but he always tried to hide how much she fascinated him. It was like seeing her mother and yet at the same time it was also like seeing Franco—very strange. Now, facing her at the bar, he had to smile because he could see that her ferocity was still being learned. It didn’t have the depth and lethal passion of her mother’s. She was just a girl.
Out of the corner of his eye Leo caught the guide’s leering smirk as he reacted to Carmen’s presence—so Leo spoke what was on both their minds.
“Isn’t she beautiful.”
His voice was soft and sincere and it wasn’t a question, but a statement—he meant it. Carmen flushed and fought to smother an embarrassed smile. After six weeks of mystery, to now have such an excellent compliment be the first thing this notorious man said to her left the poor girl completely flustered. This was not the response she’d expected from this man her mother hated so perfectly; this stranger who had once been her father’s best friend; this scoundrel who had somehow betrayed everyone. All her life she’d heard rumors of the exploits of her father and his comrade, Leo Pizzola, and about their sudden bad blood, and Leo’s mysterious disappearance on the day of her mother’s wedding. There had been a fight, and rumors of a robbery, and years of anger. It was all quite mysterious—and very romantic.
Leo nudged the oily stranger on his left as if they were old friends and pointed to Carmen.
“Beautiful . . . huh?”
The guide smiled awkwardly and a bit of white sauce dripped from his lip. He grunted agreement and grinned seductively in Carmen’s direction.
She glared at Leo with all of her strength and tried to ignore his forlorn eyes and gentle smile. She heard herself say harshly, “You shouldn’t be here.” But what she meant to say was: “Tell me about my father! Tell me why your name makes my mother cry! Tell me about America! And tell me how I can escape too!”
Leo downed the water without stopping. Then he put down the glass and met Carmen’s gaze.
“Where’s your mama?”
“In the kitchen, but she’ll be
coming out here—”
Leo stopped her with a casual wave of the hand. “Don’t bother her. I’ll see her later. Could I have a glass of wine and a refill for our guest here? My treat.”
What on earth was he talking about? Was he crazy? Carmen was trying to offer a warning and he was acting like he belonged here; like he owned the place.
In fact, Leo just wanted her to leave before she said anything more. He couldn’t have this little girl challenge him in front of the plump raviolo on the adjoining stool. Any talk of Marta could only be dangerous.
When Carmen went off to get the wine, Leo nudged his neighbor, “She likes you.”
The guide almost choked again, this time on a combination of fettunta and shock.
“I don’t think so.”
“I saw the way she ignored you.”
Leo watched a spark of fantasy ignite in the back of what was probably the guide’s tiny brain.
“You think so . . . ?”
By the time Carmen returned with their wine, Leo and the guide were laughing like old friends. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, when she set the glasses down in front of them, the greasy guide smiled shamelessly at her and then, worst of all, he winked! She determined— For that insolence, he would pay.
Leo didn’t care. Carmen had been a hurdle, but he’d bought a bit of time. And in less than two minutes he could tell that this pazzo would keep his group in Santo Fico for a week if he thought he had a chance with Carmen.
As Leo prattled and joked with the guide at the bar, his attention was actually tuned in on an interesting conversation coming from a small table near the verandah. A bony Englishman with a wild shock of salt-and-pepper hair and too many teeth was posing an interesting question to two older women who might have been his sisters, but undoubtedly weren’t. The combination of food and wine, and their confidence in their alien language, had allowed the conversation an indiscreet boldness.
“It’s really quite odd, if one stops to consider. I mean— Why? Every unlikely and inhospitable bend in the road seems to present these little villages that don’t have any apparent, you know, reason for existing.”
Both women nodded in agreement. One sipped more wine, while the other added loudly, “And it seems the more treacherous and uninviting the terrain the better. Hang them off the side of some cliff or perch them on some mountaintop, or something equally nonsensical. It makes you wonder what on earth those original peasants, I mean the . . . what-do-you-call-its . . . eh, founders of these little clusters were thinking.”
“Or drinking,” piped in her tipsy friend. The three joined in a laugh, and adjacent tables chuckled their agreement.
Perfect, thought Leo. Their conversation was just a bit too loud and with just enough mockery to embarrass them if they discovered they were actually being understood. Not only that, but the table was strategically placed so that all the tourists in the room could witness, and even be included in, their humiliation. And best of all, the table was occupied by a man and two women. Leo would approach the man first. That would be proper—a gentleman addressing a gentleman. But after a few moments he would shift his focus to the women and then to the whole room.
Leo abruptly left the bar and crossed the room to the table. He deliberately cleared his throat, bowed slightly, and spoke in excellent English overlaid with a charming accent and just a bit too loud.
“Excuse’a me. I could’a not help but’a overhear your conversation.”
“I . . . I beg your . . . your pardon,” sputtered the poor fellow, choking more on the moment than on his lunch.
“I heard’a what you said about’a our town.”
The room instantly became as quiet as the proverbial tomb. Indeed, at that moment many English souls may have wished they were in their tombs and the expression of horrified mortification on the faces of the horsy-looking trio at the table told Leo that he had probably come off a bit less charming than he’d intended. In fact, what he saw was fear. He’d been told all his life that he sometimes affected people that way—it had something to do with his smile being too much of a sneer and his close-set brown eyes looking vaguely dangerous. The scar across his broken nose didn’t help either. But it was all purely unintentional—he truly meant to be charming.
Now, all around the room, he recognized that same anxious reaction as English minds raced, straining to recall what they too might have said that may have been offensive. English eyes darted around the edges of the crowd, studied the weathered faces and rough farmer hands, the provincial clothes and the innocent stares—how many more of these enigmatic Italian peasants secretly spoke their language?
Then there was this tall, dark fellow standing at their table. To the English, Leo looked like he might be willing to hurt someone. Stories about hot-tempered Italians with their exaggerated masculinity, their fierce national pride, and their knives were common knowledge. Their congenial lunchroom had suddenly become uncomfortable and frightfully awkward.
“You all wonder why this’a village even exists at’a all.” How mortifying to be overheard insulting their village. Still, the question was a fair one. Why would anyone choose such a remote and inaccessible promontory—surrounded on three sides by steep climbs of cactus and rocks and on a fourth by jagged sea cliffs—to build a town? Who, in their right mind, would ever build a village in such an insane place? It was all like some master builder’s mistake—and it was.
One summer day in 1555, shortly after conquering his rival city-state, Siena, after a terrible two-year siege, Cosimo I de Medici, the Duke of Firenze, was playing with his children in one of the smaller fountains of the Boboli Gardens when a minister approached with some maps. The Grand Duke knew he had decisions to make about his new holdings in Toscana, but playtime with his children was rare. The minister pressed the point—if he would just decide where they should invest their efforts for a defensible port.
Whether the error was due to Cosimo’s refusal to forgo his game of tag or bad eyesight or because he momentarily couldn’t remember the name of the correct town—his finger slammed down on a spot on the map with a decisive, “There!” To the minister’s surprise the wet fingerprint was on the tiny promontory of Santo Fico. To the best of his knowledge all that was there was an insignificant monastery, and the befuddled minister politely pointed out that there were probably no reasonable roads to that spot.
“Well, there should be,” roared Cosimo as he leapt back in the fountain. “And make it a fit place for my family. We want to summer there.” Then his wife, Eleonora, who was watching from the shade of a lime tree and whom he loved, teased him about the gray in his beard—and the splashing and laughter began again. So, without further protest, the adviser went off to write notes for the creation of a port, and a road, and a summer villa at . . . Santo Fico.
On that clean, warm morning neither the minister nor the Grand Duke realized his hurried finger thump missed the intended mark by a full two inches. But there was a day some years later when, exhausted with intrigues and worried about a war with France and an uneasy alliance with Spain, Cosimo requested a particular architect be sent to Livorno to inspect the harbor fortifications. When he was informed that the architect was unavailable because he was in Santo Fico picking mosaic patterns for the villa, Cosimo’s reaction was unexpectedly confused.
“Where?”
“Santo Fico, sire.”
“Where the hell’s Santo Fico?”
No matter how hard his memory was jogged, the great Duke could not remember giving any orders to build a road, or a port, or a summer villa “on some godforsaken crag, on a totally useless stretch of Tuscan coast!”
On that day his irritation quickly turned to rage when he discovered that this project had been going on for three years. And he became almost homicidal when he was told how much had already been spent on one misdirected finger. Work would stop immediately. Buildings would be deserted before completion; roads abandoned before they could be widened or even arrive at a destination.
But it would all be too late, because even as Cosimo canceled his orders, his little mistake by the western sea was already a reality. Destiny had decreed a small port with a fine road up to what might have been an excellent little cathedral, the beginnings of a handsome villa, and almost a road to the outside world . . . and houses, and people, and a village called Santo Fico.
Of course, Leo Pizzola knew nothing about Cosimo’s inability to read maps. And even if he had he wouldn’t have mentioned it, because his version served his purposes better. There’s a time for facts and a time for stories. So, Leo let his observation “You all wonder why this’a village even exists at’a all” hang like a shroud over the room, and he waited and tried out a couple of different smiles—hopefully something a bit less threatening.
At last the flustered Englishman he’d approached sputtered painfully for an apology. To the Englishman’s surprise, instead of pulling a knife, this dangerous-looking Italian stranger presented a generous smile.
“No, no. Please’a, do not apologize. You are quite’a correct. It is’a most odd for many of the villages in this region. Many times we also ask’a ourselves, how come?” And he threw his hands up with an exaggerated shrug and a laugh.
All of the relieved English visitors joined him in his joke as they realized his intention was not to brawl or even to rebuke. He was actually being congenial and the fact that he spoke English implied that if he wasn’t completely cultured, at least he was civilized—and even possibly semiliterate. He was, after all, wearing a suit and tie—such as they were.
They quickly asked him to join their table, and just as quickly Leo declined. He wasn’t about to give up his command position at center stage. He did, however, graciously accept their offer of some wine, and then right on cue someone at another table asked where he had learned such wonderful English. Leo explained about his years in America. He was disappointed that none of his audience had been to Chicago or knew anything about baseball, but he quickly reasoned that although talk of Chicago and baseball would be wonderful, it would only distract from his greater purpose. Business was business.
