Tourmaline

by Joanna Scott

  Ninanina’s marito started to —

  Massimo Massimissimo, don’t even think about it!

  Adriana Nardi walked proudly — too proudly, some people thought — between her mother and Lorenzo. What secrets did she have to tell? No one really believed that she’d lived and worked inside a royal palace. But the business about the child — there must be something to it, people whispered. She’d been gone from Elba for eleven months. Why eleven months? Why not six months? Eight months? Girls who birth bastards go away from home for eleven months. And then they come back, trying to pretend that nothing has happened.

  Clippa clop clop.

  There would be a repast at the Nardi villa. Everyone knew and admired Signora Nardi’s cook, Luisa. Luisa had been working in the kitchen for two days, preparing a feast to feed the mourners. There would be acquadelle and langostini, risotto and patate and a dozen different kinds of sweet cakes. Just the thought of it made Ninanina’s husband hungry. “Are you hungry too?” he asked the reverend.

  A dead man inside a coffin. Francis Cape. Who was Francis Cape? A professor of history. A scholar of Napoleon. An Englishman who once told Lorenzo that leaving England at the age of sixty-three was like checking out of a hotel. An old man who never spoke about his family. A careful man who never locked his door. A nattily-dressed man who lived in a filthy room. A solitary man. A bachelor who smoked a pipe.

  Clippa clop clop clop. Who was Francis Cape? What do you care?

  Massimo, you’d better get back into line or your wife will be — There she goes, hitting her marito on the head with her purse again.

  A dead man inside a coffin. A wooden box to signify the security of death.

  Hai finito?

  Sì, sì.

  When will it be my turn? Murray wondered.

  When will it be my turn? Lorenzo wondered.

  When will it be my turn? Reverend Fink wondered.

  Clippa clop clippa clop.“Ciao, Roberto!”

  “Ciao, Massimo!”

  Please, people. There is a dead man present.

  Who?

  His name was Francis Cape.

  What did he do?

  Not much.

  Whom did he love?

  He loved the island and its history. He loved Adriana Nardi, Claire knew.

  And who loved Francis Cape?

  His mother, presumably. His father.

  Adriana certainly didn’t love him. Adriana was in love with a boy her age. Good for her. She would marry and have children, molti bambini to fill the Nardi villa. Good for her. And while she’s at it perhaps she could give the archival material to a museum for safekeeping. An antique cup that once belonged to Napoleon did not belong in a house full of children.

  Ninanina’s husband pointed to the butcher’s shop. In the window was a pig’s head wearing sunglasses and a bright red visor. Bravo!

  Massimo, stop it! Attenzione!

  The mourners had never processed in a procession like this. Down toward the quay instead of to the cemetery at San Giovanni. For a Protestant, no less. Mother of God, spare us.

  Who was Francis Cape? A man who felt obliged to explain to the fishermen of Marciana Marina that what the ancients thought were the voices of sirens were, in truth, the cries of the gabbiani echoing in the Cove of Barbarossa at twilight.

  Clippa clop clop clop.

  The procession slowed to a halt. They’d reached the quay, where there should have been a boat waiting to transport the coffin and the reverend to Livorno. There was no boat. Massimo, Lorenzo, Carlo, and a dozen other men gathered by the harbor master’s hut to argue about what should be done. Children approached the coffin. One girl took off a chrysanthemum and put it in her hair, but her older sister plucked the blossom free and returned it to the coffin. The mourners stood quietly, waiting for Reverend Fink to indicate the next course of action. The reverend looked at Signora Nardi for a suggestion. Signora Nardi blinked, startled at the awkward situation. People thought she looked vulnerable and gentle, and they were reminded of how much they had admired this woman over the years.

  But it was time for the mourners to go on to La Chiatta. Motorcycles and bicycles suddenly appeared out of nowhere. A couple of taxis started their engines. The mourners bid Francis Cape a safe journey to his final destination and began to disperse — and then stopped, for they noticed, or were told to notice by their friends, Murray and Claire Murdoch, i signori Americani, approaching the coffin.

  The Nardi women were standing nearby. Our parents had already let it be known that they would not continue up to La Chiatta for the meal. They had to get back to their children.

  “Arrivederla,” said Claire softly. People watched as Signora Nardi and Claire exchanged a warm three-point kiss. They watched as Claire and Adriana kissed twice. Murray just stood there. Signora Nardi offered him her hand. He pressed it weakly. Adriana offered him her hand. He held it. People watched as Adriana and Signor Americano politely shook hands. They watched as Murray bent to whisper something in Adriana’s ear while Signora Nardi and Claire stood by, patient and expressionless. They watched Adriana give a slight nod, indicating plainly that she understood. They watched as Murray kissed her lightly on the cheek and then turned toward Francis’s coffin. He bowed his head, touched the wooden lid with his fingertips.

  “Good-bye, my friend.”

  A tear shed. A touch of sarcasm visible in that shadow of a smirk. Claire put her hand over Murray’s, held it against the wood as though she wanted him to feel a heartbeat.

  Good-bye, Francis Cape.

  Our parents took a taxi back to Marciana. The rest of the mourners made their way up to the Nardi villa. The Nardi women waited with the reverend and Lorenzo while the harbormaster found another boat willing to take the coffin as cargo. Reverend Fink himself had to help carry the coffin, unadorned by flowers now. It was a difficult effort with only four men, and at one point the reverend lost his grip and the back end of the box banged down on the pier, splintering the wood at the corner. The harbor-master came to help, and the coffin was loaded onto the boat.

  At last, Francis Cape was leaving the island.

  From henceforth, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: even so saith the spirit; for they rest from their labors.

  Good-bye, Francis Cape. He did not want to go. Good-bye, Francis Cape.

  Later that evening Nat and Harry and I were in the bedroom building block towers. Patrick, hidden in the darkness of the hallway, was spying on our parents, who sat across from each other in the living room, sipping wine and talking in quiet voices that grew more animated as the evening wore on. When he’d heard enough he returned to the bedroom.

  “Hello, I have an announcement to make.” Patrick stood in the doorway, looking imperious.

  “We’re going home,” guessed Harry.

  “I was supposed to say that,” Patrick wailed. Harry smiled wickedly. Patrick jumped on him. Nat jumped on Patrick.

  I realized only then how tired I was. I pulled my pile of blankets to the corner, planted my thumb in my mouth, and watched my brothers fight.

  I don’t remember who broke up the fight or put me to bed. I woke once to throw off a blanket and then went back to sleep, tumbling into the middle of a dream that seemed to have started without me. I found myself alone, lost in the woods — not in the pineta of Elba but in the suburban woods of Connecticut. It was winter, cold enough for my breath to cloud in the air, and though there was no snow the grass was brittle with frost and the brook I came to had a fringe of ice. I remembered my brothers telling me that if I followed flowing water I’d always get somewhere, so I walked along the bank through the woods. Eventually I came to a yard, which after a moment I recognized as the backyard of our old house. The lights were off, everyone inside already asleep. I went in through the kitchen door and up to the bedroom I shared with Nat and climbed into bed with him. I fell asleep.

  That night Nat dreamt that he was asleep in our old house in Connecticut. A loud bang woke him. He clim
bed out of bed, careful not to disturb me, and went to the window. The moon was out, shining brightly, yet gale winds were shaking the trees. He tried to close the window but couldn’t budge it. The wind blew into the room, swirling papers and books and clothes into a funnel.

  Harry dreamt that he, too, was in our old house back in America. It was late at night when he heard the crash of books in our bedroom. He tried to open our door but found it locked. He heard Nat shouting for help inside. He ran to our parents’ bedroom, but though the spread had been pulled loose and the pillows dimpled, our parents weren’t there. He ran through the house looking for them.

  In Patrick’s dream, he was reading a book in bed when he heard the branches scraping against the house. He looked out. The moon was shining, the wind blowing. He saw Nat blow by like a cobweb being sucked into a vacuum. Patrick watched him disappear above the trees, then he returned to his book.

  In my dream, I woke up and found the room in terrible disarray, as if it had been turned upside down and shaken hard. Nat was gone. I started to cry.

  In Harry’s dream, he heard me crying and ran back upstairs. He banged on our bedroom door. He called to me, told me to unlock the door. On the other side I pulled and banged the knob, but the lock was jammed.

  In Patrick’s dream, he was reading a book about wild horses roaming the hills of Wyoming. The thought of Nat flying across the sky filled him with envy. Lucky Nat, he figured, had gone to Wyoming.

  In Nat’s dream, he sailed through the air high above the town. He felt gripped by both fear and pride. He shouted. He wanted witnesses.

  I was woken by Harry pounding on the bedroom door. Harry said he’d been woken by my stupid crying. Patrick said he’d been woken by Nat’s shouts. Nat said he’d been woken by the whistle of wind as he plummeted from a great height toward the earth.

  At breakfast we whined and protested when Claire told us we would be going home soon — home to America, home, hopefully, to the very same town in Connecticut where we’d lived before Elba. We said we didn’t want to go home. Harry told Claire about his nightmare. I was going to tell her about mine next but was silenced by her response to Harry.

  “A dream,” she grumbled. “What are dreams? I’m sorry, puffin, but I don’t want to hear about dreams for a while.”

  MURRAY WENT ON AHEAD of us by train to Paris and by plane from Paris to New York, where he would immediately start looking for a job. Once he found an adequate job, he’d find a house to rent. Once he found the house, he’d send for us.

  Our cat had returned after wandering off. Harry found her in the old cantina on our property. She’d made a nest for herself with a bundle of tarp behind a rusty vat, and she was nursing four new kittens. They were longhairs, with wisps of blond woven with red and black — odd offspring for our sleek, dignified seal-point Siamese.

  Before we left Elba we gave the three surviving kittens away — one to Lidia’s ten-year-old niece, one to a neighbor, and one to Francesca. Meena, in outrage, would sit outside in the yard and yowl through the night.

  In the weeks remaining, we returned to Monte Giove at every opportunity. Although our mother had given Francesca strict orders to keep us in her sight, we took advantage of the long pause of siesta, when all the adults closed themselves inside their shuttered rooms. We promised to stay inside, too, but as soon as the house was silent, we went outside.

  Up the dirt path behind the villa, up into the woods, then off the path and up the rocky slope toward the summit. The gulls drifted lazily overhead. We discovered that if we made the right scratching sound with our fingers in the gravel, the lizards would stand still for us. We always saw the same lone blackbird perched in the bare branches of a dead cork tree. It would watch us with a look that suggested it was only reluctantly giving us permission to pass. One day Nat cawed at it, and the bird squawked back in obvious indignation, then flew off with a noisy, heavy flapping.

  Jako One, smettila!

  No!

  Our attempts to revive the magic of our game was halfhearted, our success limited. Were we hearing what we expected to hear, or were we still able to hear the sound of thought? We hardly cared. We knew we couldn’t take the magic of Monte Giove away with us. We were going home. We belonged to our parents, not to this island.

  One afternoon we climbed up to the shade of Madonna del Monte, to a stone table and blocks of granite seats where, according to a sign, Napoleon had sat during his year of exile.

  “What’s the big deal about Napoleon?” Nat asked. Nat the bird. I wondered if he would ever fly again. I didn’t wonder if he could hear us when we spoke to him because I’d never known that he’d had any trouble hearing. The mysterious problem had resolved itself, and he could hear perfectly well. We didn’t realize anything had changed.

  Harry shrugged. Patrick began to reply, “He was…” and then fell silent.

  “What?” Nat asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Patrick said.

  I thought about this. I thought about other things I wanted to know.

  “Why don’t we come back next year?” I asked. My brothers gave me looks implying that my stupid question couldn’t possibly have an answer.

  I meant to urge them to reconsider and started to say, “Hey, Jakos,” but somehow it came out “Jackass.” My brothers hooted with laughter. Harry laughed so hard he fell off the stone bench. Harry lying splat on the ground with his feet in the air was something I could laugh at. I joined my brothers.

  What was Napoleon? He was. Heehaw, heehaw!

  Four little jackasses, our ears forever tipped with fur. Four little jackasses on the terrace where the king of Elba once sat, writing the future in airy words above the sea.

  Those were serene weeks for our mother. After helping Signora Nardi dismantle what was left in Francis Cape’s apartment and put his belongings into storage, she began sorting through our own accumulations. What we wouldn’t take back with us she planned to disperse between Lidia and Francesca — except for the various minerals Murray had brought home, most of which he’d never even bothered to identify. These she’d give to a collector Signora Nardi had told her about, a man up in Sant’Ilario.

  Claire and Signora Nardi spent most afternoons together, both of them relishing each other’s company with an energy neither could explain. They talked at length, in private, about Adriana. The great consuming love that the mother felt for the daughter was returned by the daughter in her abiding loyalty. That Adriana hadn’t come to her mother for help remained a source of deep pain for the Signora. No matter what her mother could say to reassure her, Adriana would always believe that she should spare her mother from her own troubles. In the girl’s scheme, secrecy was protection. Adriana, like so many people who know they are beloved, was determined to be happy for the sake of someone who wanted her to be happy.

  And now she was happy. Happy to know she had the freedom to go away and always to be welcome at home. Happy to have fallen in love with a good man, a young Englishman who arrived on the island in the last week of November.

  “Piacere, Paul.”

  A man who would never hold her past against her. You could tell by the way he looked at Adriana, the way Adriana looked at him. Love enriched by some secret understanding of what each had endured. The secrets children try to keep from their parents, Claire thought, watching the two of them sitting without awkwardness or the performance of affection on the sofa in Signora Nardi’s living room. They were in love. Love born from heartbreak. Love repairing the damage of love.

  If Claire stayed, she and the Signora would teach each other the nuances of their languages, the energy of their friendship opening up the subtleties of words. But she wasn’t staying. Signora Americana was going home, and though she promised to write, she knew their letters would be too formal to sustain this intimacy.

  As they kissed good-bye, Claire’s premonition of this friendship fading with the rest of the past — life going on, memory blurred by experience — sharpened into understanding of
the way fierce love provokes loyalty. The daughter’s loyalty to her loving mother had cast a veil of secrecy over her life. Adriana feared disclosure, not because it could lead to accusation but because it would lead to sympathy. The mother’s protective love for her child would continue to generate the daughter’s determination to protect her mother from pain.

  The mysterious nature of love and all its unpredictable outcomes. Now we know better, you and I, Signora, how to be patient. Both of us a little wiser, Claire told herself, comforted by the cliché, resisting the urge to turn around as she walked away from Signora Nardi, and then giving in to the urge, turning, facing the Signora, who was still standing at the door, and declaring, “Tu sei magnifica!”

  Two taxis came early in the morning to take us to the ferry. It was a gray day, though not yet raining. Nat refused to get dressed, and Francesca had to hold him while Lidia pulled his clothes on. Harry hid in the cantina. He was found and dragged back to the house by Francesca’s fiancé, Filiberto, who would accompany us as far as Genoa to help with the luggage. Patrick appeared with a pillowcase filled with rocks.

  Four boys — Oliver, Nathaniel, Harold, and Patrick. Sir. All accounted for, Sir. Ma’am, rather. Here we are, Mom. All four. All of us except —

  “Meena!”

  It was my fault. My crime. My stupidity. One of the many foolish acts I’ve never been able to live down. I’d opened the door of Meena’s cage to give her some grass. Good Elban grass. She needed some grass for the long journey ahead, I’d decided.

  Spark of tawny fur, black tail whipping through the air, paws outstretched, body low to the ground as she wound up the path toward Monte Giove, and she was gone.

  “Meena!” Patrick ran after her. Harry ran after Patrick, Nat after Harry. Francesca kept a firm grip on me.

  “Boys, get back here! Filiberto, help!”

  Filiberto Boschi to the rescue. Filiberto Boschi and his dog. “Vai!” The dog racing up the slope past my brothers, up along the path where Meena had gone, up Monte Giove. Look, there she is! A glimpse of cat, a dog, a dog chasing a cat.