They got out of the jeep and walked over to a half-filled fountain and splashed water on their faces. Nick surveyed the scene and chose the café as a good place to inquire about his grandfather. They entered the place and Nick noticed the customers stopped talking and silently observed them. He questioned a skinny man in his seventies who had just finished steaming the milk for a cappuccino and placed the cup on the bar, giving them a distrustful look. A large poster of il Duce hung on the wall behind him. The barista grudgingly gave Nick the directions to his grandfather’s place—Vincinu lu Baglio, vai!
Nick got lost, which made them hotter and hungrier until they came across a dusty, roadside alimentari. It had a fruit stand outside, packed with blood oranges. The roof looked like it was ready to collapse from neglect. They stopped to buy a bag of the oranges, when an elderly woman in a black dress cajoled them into sitting outside under a large cedar tree at the side of the building. She promised to cook an autenticu Sicilian meal. Her grandson carried out a table and chairs, set up everything under the shade of that lone tree, putting a white tablecloth on top of the table. She produced a four course dinner with vinu dâ casa, everything home grown, from an antipasto of roasted red peppers and fried eggplant, a pasta with a creamy, tomato sauce, grilled lamb with herbs, finishing off with figs and espresso. Afterwards, they lit up Toscano cigars.
“Feels like our last supper before an execution,” Nick commented.
“Don’t go morbid on me, will ya!” Nathan tapped the ashes onto the ground. “The Signora gave you good directions. I’ll just stay here and finish my cigar, so you can have some private time with your grandfather. Maybe even take a little nap, Sicilian style.” Nathan laughed.
“See you later, Nate.”
After almost driving past his grandfather’s place, Nick hit the brakes. He could barely notice the farm cottage at the far end of an overgrown footpath. The sound of cicadas intensified, as he approached his nannu’s home. He heard the sound of metal screeching over a stone wheel. A man with a shock of white hair and a bushy moustache sharpened a long knife, using his foot to propel the mechanism. Nick could see through the open door that the octogenarian busied himself at his task and didn’t even bother to raise his head when Nick’s shadow fell on him.
He called out: “Nannu?”
The old man stopped pedaling and turned around, but still held the knife in his hand.
“Cu è stu scanusciutu Americanu?
“Sugnu Nicolo Spataro.”
Nannu plunged the knife into a wood block. He looked the young man up and down and shouted: “Vai, vai, American stranger!” Nick stood his ground but felt anxious that he had found the wrong person. “Speak in English, if you wish. I know many languages.”
“I am Nick Spataro. I’m looking …”
“You want to take my land away! Vai!”
“I’m not interested in your land.”
“So why do you call me Nannu?”
“I’m your grandson with the same name. Gaetano and Lucia’s son from San Francisco!”
“Si. Come closer, so I can see you better.” He touched Nick’s face with his calloused hand. The old man’s blue eyes glowed and Nick kissed him on both cheeks.
“How did you find me, Nicolo?”
“The barista in town. He wasn’t too friendly.”
“Quella fascista! He spreads rumors about me. That I am a spy for the enemy. He is like the fool Giufà, but not likeable at all.” He leaned back to get a better look at Nick. “You looka like my son when he left with me for America. The same nose, the same eyes.” Nannu laughed with joy. He got up from his bench and went over to table that had rows of unlabeled bottles of red wine and some short water glasses. “Come and sit here with me and drink my wine.” He poured two glasses. “It has been many years since I left figghiu miu after your Nanna died.” He raised his arms to the ceiling. “My sons and daughter wanted to stay in America. Make their fortune.” All of a sudden, Nannu’s face darkened with a frown. “Sicilia has had so many invaders over the centuries, everyone has lost count. Why do you wear the uniform of an invader?”
“I was born in America. I am an American.”
“You speaka with your head, but not from the heart. Why you fighting against the Italians?” Nannu pressed his fingertips together as if in prayer and rocked them, as if to say: ‘Why in God’s name did you do it?’
“I’m fighting Fascists, not Italians,” he responded, a mantra he had to keep repeating to himself.
“Fascists, communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives. They all the same to me. All you need is country air, fresh food and a woman to share it with, maybe some children to help you with the harvesting and passing on our name. What does it matter what kind of government we have?” He stuck his chin out. “Minchia! The greedy always find a way to keep everything for themselves, throwing breadcrumbs to everyone who can’t sense how the world works.” Nannu’s eyes became fiery and he waved his fist. “Allura, Sicily will endure, despite all the invasions, the Greeks and Phoenicians, Romans, Saracens and Normans, Angevins, Spanish Bourbons, even this one.” Nannu’s eyes gleamed then chuckled. “Ma è veru, I am happy the Americans and British have come to kick the Germans and the fasciste out. Ma i mafiosi di cosa nostra … these so-called men of honor,” he spit on the ground, “will soon be let loose from prisons and their towns of exile, all over Sicilia …” Nick read the exasperation in Nannu’s face as he paused to catch his breath. “Lika packs of rats running down a rope dock line at every port.” Nannu’s eyes widened and he tapped his grandson’s face. “Me niputi bellu! You are a good boy, I can tell.” He held the bottle of wine up in celebration and refilled the glasses to the brim.
“Tell me some stories about my father. When he was a child.”
“Do you like my homemade wine?”
“Si, moltu bonu!”
“Bravu. I will stop telling them only when you must go back to your war.” He gulped some wine down and wiped his lips with a palm. “When your father was ten years old, we left the life of a cuntadinu in lu Baglio to become fishers of the sea, piscaturi. At first mi figgli were unhappy to leave the countryside, but your father, Gaetano, took to the water like a dolphin to the sea. His older brothers made fun of him, but one day when we set out to lay out our nets, Gaetano cried and cried to come with us, while his brothers laughed. He jumped into the water and followed our boat all the way out of the port. Then I yelled, Basta! Basta! And my oldest son, Rodolfo, turned the boat around. Pocu Gaetano waded into one of our nets that we had flung out when we were near enough and pulled him aboard. From that day on, we allowed your father to act as our cabin boy.”
“Bravu Nannu, tell me more.”
“One day I heard about our paisani from Sciacca who went to a place in America. North End, Boston! Chi sacciu? What do I know of such a place? What about Brooklyn? Alluru, we saved our money to land where money grows on trees.”
“Nannu, did you really believe that?”
Nannu laughed and filled the glasses once more. “When you are poor, miu carinu Nicolo, you will believe anything, no matter how pazzu. Bivi lu vinu di Nannu!” They drank the red wine in two gulps and Nannu refilled the glasses, as he continued his family narrative.
“Alluru, in Ameriga we found a home on Elizabetha Street. Ancora we save our money, worka in the tunnels of New Yorka, where there is no sun and Nanna does piece work in the apartment. Dig and sweat all day long. We had dreams of fishing again in our own boats. Ma, things happened in Ameriga, and la famigghia split up. My two oldest boys, Rodolfo and Rocco, they fisha out of Boston. All the Sciaccese are there, they say to me, cosi why be among scanusciuti? My daughter, Antonina, she marry a barber and stay in Brooklyn. At least he was a Sicilianu and not a Calabrese or even a Napolitana.”
“I never met my uncles and aunts in Boston and Brooklyn. Mamma says it’s too expensive to travel so far.”
“We are scattered like l’ebbraiica genti.”
“Like the Jews
from The Holy Bible, Nannu?”
“Si. Cosi, that’s is why I returned to our homeland after Nanna died. There must be some trace of the Spatoro in Sicilia.”
“So how did Papà and you wind up in San Francisco? North Beach instead of North End.”
“You ask questions, bravu. You are like miu Gaetano, always questions, questions, while his brothers are silent and looka like Fata Morgana will casta a spell on them at any moment.” Nannu laughed at his own joke. “Everyone in the world wanted to go to California to strike it rich. Cosi, I take my youngest son with me. When I left him and Lucia, they started to change sardines into gold. Ma without Nanna, I could not stay and did not want to be a burden to figghiu miu. It was too bad that you had not been born.” Nannu rubbed his hands across Nick’s cheeks and kissed him on the forehead.
“Why Nannu? Pirichi?”
“Pirichi—I would not have left after seeing you. E la verità. Iu sugnu felici e tristu a chistu momentu. At this moment, my grandson—comu the two masks of drama that we learned from our Greek ancestors— one happy, the other sad. Chista è nostra vita, Nicolo, this is our life, Nicky.”
VII
Nannu’s tales punctuated Nick’s thoughts on his drive back to retrieve Nathan. The jeep swirled in the gravel and awoke his friend. Nathan had saved the stubs of the cigars and when he jumped into the jeep, Nick lit them up.
“So how did it go with your grandfather?”
“Like listening to an epicurean and stoic at the same time.”
“I like the epicurean better.”
“He told me wonderful stories about my father. Things I never knew about him.”
“Making up for lost time, Nick.” Nathan slid the cigar to the side of his mouth. “We’d better hit the road.”
The old lady waved and her grandson ran over to the jeep and tossed a few blood oranges into Nathan’s lap. Nick flipped a Hershey’s chocolate bar to the boy and sped away.
They got back just in time, but Sergeant Ackers pounced on them from out of nowhere. “Who gave you permission to leave? You’re both AWOL.” Two MPs stood behind him. “Arrest these guys! They stole the colonel’s jeep.”
“What are you talking about, Sergeant? The colonel gave us permission,” Nathan protested, as the MPs put them in irons.
“What are you nuts? We’re not AWOL! I just spent the afternoon with my grandfather. Talk to Captain Monroe, if you don’t believe me, for Christ’s sake.”
The sergeant motioned to the MPs. “Take them away.”
“When I get out of these cuffs, we’re going to settle this once and for all,” Nick spat out.
“Listen to the thieving dago,” the sergeant snickered.
“Release those men immediately,” the captain ordered as he came from behind a supply truck. “As for you, sergeant, you’re lucky we’re in a war zone. Now do something productive!” The captain went around the truck to finish his conversation with the supply sergeant.
“Some day you guys aren’t gonna have your little savior around. Just watch out someone don’t toss a grenade into your turret while you’re star gaping.” Nathan and Nick glared at the sergeant as he strutted away.
“Why do I think that man is a Nazi in an American uniform?” Nathan asked.
In the evening Nathan’s crew sat on the ground near their tent and passed around K-rations, the highlight being canned chicken paté and two ounce chocolate bars that they nibbled on while they wrote letters. When it got dark, Nathan, Paul and Al turned in and Nick sat on the fender of the tank. There were no stars out, just clouds that cut across the full moon. The more he stared at the sky, the more he recognized images in the vapors. One of them turned into the shape of Nannu’s hair. Nick remembered the touch of his grandfather’s rough hand on his face and the gleam of recognition in his light blue eyes. Nick wished Papà had been there to share the moment. Someday he would return with Papà to see Nannu before he expired over the grinding wheel.
At dawn the armored division fired up their vehicles. The colonel gathered all the officers and tank commanders in his squadron and briefed them. “Since we’re the swiftest, our tank destroyers will lead the division. We’re heading northwest to Palermo, not, I repeat, not northeast to Messina. These orders are straight from General Patton himself. If there are no questions, mount your tanks!” As Nick steered onto the new course, he questioned Nathan on the logic of this move. His crew commander shrugged it off.
Nick kept the tank destroyer at full throttle, 32 miles per hour, while the rest of his squadron was stretched out along the main road in a column, followed by another squadron of heavier Sherman tanks and infantry battalions. They first followed the coastal road west to Agrigento and then headed north on the route to Palermo. As they proceeded north and began to climb higher, the spinning tracks of the tanks ricocheted off the short, stone walls on the sides of the road, giving off an eerie Martian-like sound, reminding Nick of the book, War of the Worlds, that he had read after listening to the chilling rendition by Orson Welles on the radio. They continued several days over dilapidated roads of serrated stones through high mountains with scary hairpin turns, as if the column following was one elongated coil of a thick-skinned serpent. They reached the extended stretch of the valley, as Nick grinded the tank tracks by farmlands that ran up hills, rectangles of once yellow harvested wheat fields now scorched brown by the Sicilian sun, the only sign of life, clusters of hard green grapes in scattered vineyards shielded by mountains. Nathan took note of a huge mountain to the left, signaling they were getting closer to the sea, later on moving west along the north coastal road to Palermo.
Nathan’s crew had been cruising so fast they lost sight of their tank column in the rear. The road ahead was littered with rusted farm machinery and Nathan ordered Nick to veer off onto a nearby secondary road. They had gone a half-mile when Nathan ordered him to stop the tank.
“What’s up Nate?”
“I have a feeling this is a setup.” Nathan aimed the 50-caliber Browning, secured on the front of the turret, and shot off a volley that detonated land mines 50 yards away.
“Holly shit!” Nick called out to Nathan. Several minutes later, stray mortar rounds from a faraway position whammed right in front of them.
“Nick, back out! Double time!”
By the time they got back to the fork, their squadron had caught up with them with Captain Monroe’s company in the lead. The captain radioed Nathan to join them ‘toute suite’!”
“The krauts must have mined the roads,” Nathan shouted out as they approached the captain’s tank.
The captain ordered his tank crews to clear away the blockade, and then a Sherman ‘Crab’ minesweeper was brought up from the rear to detonate any anti-tank mines on the road. When the Seventh Army made it to the Tyrrhenian Sea, it was a flat run to Palermo. The monotony of the road broke for Nick when he spotted the blue-green waters that met the jagged rocks along the coast. When the sun went down, they halted to eat and rest up. They were surprised by the lack of resistance from the Axis troops.
Nathan’s crew sat on the ground in a circle near their tank and had just finished their K-ration supper. They were already looking like a bunch of unshaven hobos in uniform, their fatigues filthy and bodies reeking, not having a shower since the invasion began. They unraveled their sleeping bags to get some rest before they mounted the assault on Palermo.
By oh five the next morning their squadron was moving along the coastal road. As the tank destroyers approached the edge of the foothills, the city of Palermo stretched across the plain all the way to the blue bay. They could see the dome of the Cathedral of Palermo with its Gothic campanile and, not far away, at the highest point, the crenellated wall of Palazzo dei Normanni, grand enough for General Patton to pick as his headquarters. Monte Pellegrino rose to the west of the city.
The rapid advance on Palermo made some sense to Nick after Nathan explained to his crew that the Germans had already fled to Messina, leaving the Italians alone to defe
nd the city and its important harbor. Some advance patrols had already captured key officers. On the evening of July 22nd, Nick witnessed the surrender of the capital of Sicily by Generale di Brigata Giuseppe Molinaro with the Junker-like scar across his left cheek. General Patton had got what he craved—the liberation of the first city of Europe.
The next morning the U.S. Seventh Army rolled into the center of the old city, clouds of dust hovering over the road all the way back to the hills. As Nathan’s crew followed the column of tanks, they passed under welcome banners, the crowds waving American and Italian flags. Some of the Palermitani cheered from the balconies of their apartment buildings, their bodies appearing to undulate from the rumble of the tanks. As the parade clogged up the long stretch of Via Vittorio Emanuele, their tank crunched the hard surface of the street pavement.
Nathan, Paul and Al, standing in the wide-open turret, beamed at the crowds. Paul gave the victory sign, while his cuginu steered with his head sticking out of the hatch. Nick surveyed the side streets and saw devastated buildings along the entire stretch. He had read in a newspaper that the bombing of Palermo started in May of ’43, when the B-17 Flying Fortresses dropped their payloads. By the time they reached the viewing stands, a Sicilian band played while the Cardinal watched from the Cathedral steps. Though the Sicilians may have been happy that the war was over for them after Palermo had been liberated, Nick wondered what family tragedies hid behind those smiling faces.
Somewhere in the Stars Page 9
