The Crooked Path

by Irma Joubert

  Three days later the second American atom bomb, Fat Man, was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. “Now Japan will have to accept America’s conditions for peace,” the nurse with the broad American accent said. “No one argues with America!”

  “I want to . . . die at home . . . please,” Marco told the doctor the next day. The doctor, a young man with dark circles under his eyes, turned wearily and walked off without a word.

  Early one morning a few days later, a man in a smart suit stood at Marco’s bedside. “Do you recognize me, Marco?” he asked.

  Marco nodded slightly. It was Pietro, son of the village doctor, who worked as a journalist in Rome. “Pietro,” he said almost inaudibly.

  Pietro nodded. “Someone called me yesterday,” he said. “I’ve come to fetch you. We’re going home.”

  He huddled in the passenger seat of the small car, shivering in spite of the bright sunlight. They kept driving, hour after hour. He dozed off, wrapped in a dark haze or a dim white fog. When he surfaced, his entire body ached.

  He did not speak. He had no idea of his surroundings.

  But just before sunset, when they reached the steep, winding road that led to the village, Marco whispered, “I’m going home.”

  “We’re almost there,” Pietro said beside him. “Before the sun goes down, we’ll be home.”

  It was twilight when they rounded the last bend. A group of boys ran from the village square to the doctor’s home.

  The villagers heard the car and came out of their houses.

  Pietro drew up in front of Giuseppe and Maria Romanelli’s home and got out.

  Exhausted, Marco opened the passenger door, struggling to get his legs out. He tried to stand, but his legs gave way and he fell back onto the seat.

  Cautiously the people approached. They stopped, stared in horror.

  Pietro bent down and hooked his arms under Marco’s armpits. “Come, let me help you up,” he said, carefully pulling him out of the car.

  Lorenzo appeared. “Marco?” he asked.

  Marco gave a slight nod.

  He leaned with his left side against Pietro’s shoulder while Lorenzo draped Marco’s right arm over his shoulders.

  Only then did Marco notice Lorenzo’s crutches.

  He was shocked all over again. It had completely slipped his mind that his lively, active younger brother was on crutches. “Half of me stayed behind on the battlefield,” Lorenzo had said a long time ago.

  Somewhere deep inside a sliver of emotion detached itself. I can still feel, Marco thought dimly. I’m still alive.

  They half dragged, half carried him across the patio to the small house. The pain in his chest was unbearable, the cold and exhaustion overwhelming. Then he knew nothing more.

  He became aware of a warm hand on his cold cheek. He was surrounded by a dense white fog and struggled to emerge from it.

  “Marco? Are you awake?” he heard his mother say.

  He forced his eyes open. Her face swam into focus. Her hands were cupped around his face. “Marco,” she said.

  “Mama,” he whispered, almost inaudibly. But she heard him.

  She turned and reached behind her. “I’ve made you some soup,” she said huskily and produced a bowl. “I’ll . . . help you,” she said.

  He tried to stop her. He knew what would happen. “No, you must eat, just a few mouthfuls,” she said.

  But it was no use. He forced himself to swallow the thin soup, his stomach cramped violently, and everything came back up. Wearily he closed his eyes. “Never mind, just rest,” his mother said. She cleaned up the mess and pressed her warm lips to his cold forehead.

  He was never alone. When he opened his eyes, his father was sitting at his bedside, quiet and rock-steady, as always. Or Lorenzo, with a book in his lap. He would get up and moisten Marco’s dry lips or cover his ice-cold body with a sheepskin.

  Or Antonio. “Tonio? You’re back too?” Marco asked softly.

  “Yes, Marco. We’re all back home.”

  Back home.

  He slept for days and nights, or a day and a night, or maybe only an hour or two. At times he awoke. Lorenzo would be standing at the small window, looking out.

  He would hear his mother’s voice in the front room. “I’m worried sick. He can’t keep anything down,” she said. “Doc’s medicine doesn’t help. I don’t know what else to do. Even my homemade barley soup comes up.”

  “Cat gut,” he heard Tia Sofia say. Tia Sofia—a voice from his childhood. “You must slaughter a cat and place the warm guts on his stomach,” she said.

  “I don’t know about that,” his mother said.

  “Or the fresh stomach contents of a young goat,” Tia Sofia suggested. “It always works.”

  “I think we’ll just follow the doctor’s advice,” his mother replied. “But we must be patient. Doc says the damage was done over many years.”

  An unusual calm descended on Marco. The women’s chatter was familiar. Something always remains, he thought. Warmed by the thought, he went back to sleep.

  When he woke again, his mother said, “I’ve strained some potato soup through a cloth. I’m going to feed it to you one spoonful at a time every half hour. Yesterday’s water stayed down. It should work.”

  At the hospital they gave up. But a mother never gives up, even if it means she has to trickle a spoonful of soup into her son’s mouth every half hour all through the night, night after night.

  Drop by drop, spoonful by spoonful, day by day, Marco’s condition improved. A week later his father carried him out to sit in the sun. “The sun gives energy,” his mother said.

  Antonio joined him, fit and strong from the healthy diet down in South Africa, his skin darkened by the sun. Antonio sat down and fed him his three spoonfuls of soup. “Before you know it, you’ll be back on your feet,” he said. “There’s peace. Your life is waiting.”

  Marco drew a sharp breath. “But . . . she’s gone, Tonio.”

  Antonio nodded and laid his hand on his brother’s arm. “Yes, Marco.”

  “She was so hopeful.” His voice faded. He was exhausted. But he desperately wanted to talk about her, his Rachel. Because her death was still an open wound. “The last time I heard from her, she was filled with hope. It was . . . just before Christmas. Someone had smuggled a letter in.”

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Antonio gripped his hand firmly. Everything hurt. “Tell me,” said Antonio.

  “She was so brave,” Marco said, his eyes still closed. He moved his hand slightly and his fingers gripped Antonio’s warm hand. “Even when her sister died.”

  “I’m . . . sorry,” Antonio said softly.

  They sat together for a long time. Somewhere in a tree a bird called its mate.

  At last Antonio said, “Come, take another sip, before Mama gets cross.”

  Marco opened his eyes, met Antonio’s gaze. They smiled and nodded.

  . . . before Mama gets cross . . .

  They were brothers.

  As Marco began to regain his strength, he had a lot of time to notice things. Everything was not as it used to be, he soon realized. The men were still bringing in their heavy bushels of fresh produce from the vegetable patches and fields and orchards, the reddest tomatoes, the fattest grains of wheat, the sweetest grapes. And the village women canned peaches and green beans and dried tomatoes and sultanas while dishing out advice on how to get him fit and strong again. Father Enrico called to tell him his classroom was waiting.

  But within the walls of their home and at the table in their front room, the tension mounted. And they—and the entire village—knew why.

  Gina Veneto, daughter of the baron, was Antonio’s fiancée. They were engaged before the war came, and Father Enrico had blessed their engagement.

  But Antonio had been away a long time. He’d spent three years in North Africa before being sent to South Africa as a prisoner of war. During that time Lorenzo had come home, injured, and his childhood friend Gi
na had been there to support him in his hour of need.

  The villagers understood. They just didn’t know whether it was right of them to understand.

  One night when Antonio began to speak, it was Marco’s turn to listen. “Maybe they were always meant for each other,” Antonio said. “Remember how they used to fight as kids? They could never leave each other alone.”

  “But . . . she’s your fiancée, Tonio, and Lorenzo is your brother.”

  Antonio nodded slowly, earnestly. “I remember Lorenzo once saying, ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ He seems to have meant it quite literally.” There was no bitterness in his voice.

  Marco was silent for a while. Then he asked, “Tonio, was there a girl down in South Africa?”

  Antonio glanced up quickly. Then he nodded. “Yes, there was. But it didn’t really come to anything.”

  Marco waited.

  “It’s different there, Marco, everything is different: the language, the food, the customs, the people, their faith. Especially their faith. They’re not Catholic. It’s just . . . too weird.”

  Marco nodded. About faith he understood. He understood perfectly. “And now?” he asked.

  “Now I’m going to break off my engagement to Gina. I must—it’s not working. When I’d just arrived, before you came back, I was angry, but not anymore. Next week I’m going back to Turin to complete my studies. Then I plan to carry on with my life.”

  They sat in silence for a while, then Marco asked, “What’s her name? The girl down south?”

  “Klara,” Antonio said softly. “Her name is Klara.”

  Winter set in and temperatures dropped. The wind howled around the corners of the houses and the first snow began to fall. As the cold gripped Marco’s body, the coughing started up again. “We’re moving your bed to the living room, near the stove. It’s warmer than the back room,” Maria decided one morning.

  Lorenzo and Antonio had returned to the university in Turin to complete their studies. Giuseppe removed the mattress and bedding from the bed and carried the bed to the front room. He moved the rough wooden table and chairs and the cabinet with the crockery and food stores out of the way and placed the bed against the wall.

  It was still hard to eat, but if he really took his time, he kept the meat and vegetable broth or softly boiled polenta down.

  One weekend in October the brothers came home. “Goodness, Marco, you look much better!” Antonio exclaimed, surprised. “One of these days you’ll be round as a ball and we’ll have to put you on a diet!”

  Maria smiled, pleased. “He’s eating solids,” she said, gently laying her rough hand on Marco’s bony shoulder.

  “I’ve been taking short walks,” said Marco. “When the wind dies down and it’s sunny outside, I walk across the square, to the doctor’s house. But these days there’s rarely any sun.”

  He had not yet ventured as far as the boarded-up store of the Rozenfelds.

  That night, when their parents and Lorenzo were asleep and Marco was in bed in the front room, Antonio sat down on the upright wooden chair at his bedside. “I’m going away, Marco,” he said.

  “Away? How . . . away?”

  “I’m going back to South Africa.”

  “South Africa?”

  Antonio nodded. “It’s a wonderful place. People call it the land of milk and honey. Cattle and sheep and goats graze on the open plains, the views go on forever, and there’s sunshine all year round.”

  “Just a few months ago you said it was too different, too weird.”

  Tonio waved it off. “It’s a prosperous country, with a strong economy. Here in Italy . . .” He shook his head. “There’s no money here, Marco. The war has ruined our country. I can’t see myself making a living here as a young architect.”

  Antonio was going, Marco thought. Far away, thousands of miles. They might not see him again for years. A tight fist clutched at his heart.

  Then he remembered something else. “And?” he asked.

  “And . . . Klara’s brother was here, in Italy. He came to see me at university. He . . . there’s a chance it could work out, Marco. I think she might be waiting for me.”

  Marco frowned and looked at his brother. Antonio’s expression had softened. His gaze was deeper, more intense—happier. Marco’s own heart contracted with a sudden, sharp longing.

  “Then you should go,” he said.

  In the spring of 1946, Marco was back in his classroom at Father Enrico’s little school. He began with only a few lessons every day. He did not have the energy to do more. He worked without a salary. No one had money—including the government. But his classroom was bursting at the seams with young people keen to learn English: Wild boys who had been kicking balls when the war broke out were sitting in front of him with slicked-down hair, eyeing the girls. Tall young men with deep voices, who had lain in the trenches and seen bombs explode, now wanted to complete their education.

  By day Maria worked in her vegetable patch. Giuseppe helped her, doing the hard digging and carrying heavy buckets to water the seedlings. In the evenings he still chiseled and carved out his marble statuettes. But he couldn’t sell them, not even to people abroad, because no one had money. During the long winter that would begin its onslaught in six months’ time they would have to sustain themselves on the produce from their own little garden.

  At the beginning of May 1946, Marco read in the paper that La Scala opera house in Milan would reopen on the eleventh with a concert by the soprano Renata Tebaldi. The conductor was Toscanini. La Scala had been rebuilt after being badly damaged by bombs in 1943. “Oh, Papa, if only we could go!” he said.

  Giuseppe Romanelli nodded and laid a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder.

  “One day you’ll go. There will be other concerts,” Maria said.

  That summer Gina Veneto married Lorenzo Romanelli. The village provided as much of a feast as was possible. Antonio sent photos of his own wedding to a strange girl, Klara, in a distant country. Maria put up the photos on the wall in the front room. The villagers came to see. “Pretty girl,” they said. “Shiny hair, rosy cheeks—there’s obviously enough food over there.”

  Marco studied the photos and took in the full cheeks, the soft arms, the feminine curves. He remembered how dreadfully thin and cold his little Rachel had been when she had clung to him during their last night together, her skeletal silhouette as she had walked away from him the next day on her way to the women’s camp. In the photograph Antonio looked happy. Marco’s heart was an aching void.

  In summer Marco perked up and was able to teach a full day. His pupils were eager to learn.

  But in winter the cold reentered his body, the coughing fits resumed, and the medicine the old doctor prescribed upset his stomach. They moved his bed back to the front room, close to the stove. He stayed there day and night, but the cold remained, and the thin layer of fat he had accumulated in summer soon disappeared. He lay on a sheepskin to prevent the formation of pressure sores on his hips and back. What strength he had gained quickly seeped out.

  From South Africa, Antonio wrote:

  Over here it’s hot—sweltering at times. The sun is bright, we’re anxious for rain, it’s very dry.

  Strange to think about Christmas when it’s so hot. It’s the only time I miss the snow.

  Klara and I are very happy. It’s wonderful over here, Mama and Papa. I miss you both, and I think of you every day and pray the Holy Mother of God will hold you in the palm of her hand. But I am blessed to have a wife who loves me.

  At work I am doing well. The firm of architects I work for was awarded a big contract for a luxury hotel complex just outside Pretoria, where Klara and I live. They have put me in charge of the project. I’m truly excited. Klara and I would like to buy a house of our own, and with this contract we should be able to afford it. Nothing fancy, but our own.

  I share your anxiety about Marco’s health. Sometimes I wonder whether he should come here. The bushveld is warm and dry—hot, even in w
inter. It would be good for his chest.

  “No,” Maria declared. “No, it’s too far.” And she stirred the steaming fagioli on the stove with an almost aggressive vigor.

  Early one morning shortly after Christmas, Maria summoned the doctor after yet another bad night.

  “I think Marco should go to the hospital in Turin,” the doctor said, shaking his head.

  “No,” Maria said firmly. “People die in the hospital. I’ll nurse my child back to health myself.”

  The doctor prescribed penicillin, a new miracle drug from Turin. The village women offered advice, proposed ancient remedies.

  By the spring of 1947, Marco was back in his classroom. Klara had given birth to a baby boy.

  Consider my proposal,

  Antonio wrote in June.

  It’s winter in South Africa now, but even now I don’t wear a coat when we spend a weekend with Klara’s parents in the bushveld. The people who live there don’t own coats. I really believe it’s the only thing that will save Marco.

  “Don’t own coats?” Maria Romanelli repeated, incredulous.

  Giuseppe nodded earnestly, breaking out of his typical silence for his son’s sake. “We m-m-must th-th-think.” His stutter was as pronounced as ever.

  “No!” said Maria.

  “F-f-for Marco,” Giuseppe continued.

  Maria closed her eyes and shook her head.

  That night Marco lay on his narrow bed in the back room. He couldn’t face another cold winter, coughing until he lay exhausted like an old man on his sheepskin. He couldn’t keep losing everything he struggled to gain.

  Wherever he went, the memory of what was, what might have been, followed him like a blind dog refusing to stray far from its master’s feet. He was lucky to be able to live with his parents. He was showered with more love and attention than he could have wished for. But a deep longing for his Rachel followed him wherever he went, waited for him at every street corner, was there at the sight of every young girl.