by Joanna Scott
“No, no, Rosella, vieni qua!”
A big dog chasing a little cat up into the mountains of Elba while my brothers shouted in desperation. It was no use. They’d never catch her. They headed back to our garden while Filiberto raced past them.
“Rosella!”
My brothers and me — the four of us. Attenzione! Was there ever a kid as stupid as me? My brothers, our mother, the taxis and their drivers, Francesca, Lidia, and, at last, Filiberto with his panting, slobbering hound named Rosella. The bliss of pursuing a creature smaller than yourself. Proud Rosella.
The grownups clucked and called in a pathetic attempt to lure Meena home, but she was gone, and we had a boat to catch. We were herded, sobbing, into the taxis. We weren’t going to leave Elba. We vowed to jump off the ferry and swim back to the island. We insisted that we couldn’t leave without our cat. We couldn’t. We just couldn’t.
We did — traveling to America on a ship called the Roma in another first-class cabin paid for with borrowed money, because Murray said we deserved the luxury after all we’d been through. We were home in time for Christmas.
LOOK AT THE SURFACE of the water. Look carefully. Look at the words on this page. Look at the tip of your pen. Look up at the clouds. Look down at the clover growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. Look at your hands. Look at a map. Look at a painting. Look at a clock. Look at the ceiling, the wall, the floor. Look at a piece of honeycomb. Look at a sign. Look at these photographs, Ollie. We’ve looked through them before, I know. But I want you to look at them again when you have a chance.
Here I am — 1956, in Marciana Marina, framed by the lens of the camera your father held. It must have been September or early October.
Look at me. My hair pulled back in a ponytail, my glasses propped above my forehead, a bra strap showing where the sleeve of my dress has slipped down my arm, my lips dark with what must have been plum-colored lipstick.
I don’t remember me. I don’t remember what I was thinking when Murray took the photograph. Probably I was thinking I wanted to look better than I knew I looked, but I’m not sure.
Look at me, Ollie. What do you think I was thinking?
Here we are, the six of us, on the beach. Lidia or Francesca must have snapped the picture. Your father in his striped boxer suit. You, Ollie, plump and brown and naked, straining to pull away from the grip of Patrick’s hand around your arm. Harry looking at something to the right of us. Nat making a silly face.
Here is Lidia, stern, stout Lidia. We could never get her to smile for the camera.
You and Nat in the little wooden cart Lorenzo’s farmhand Nino built for you. You’re on the terrace of our first house, the one in Le Foci. I think that’s Francesca’s arm cutting across the picture, reaching over to steady you, Ollie.
Look at you. What were you thinking? What are you thinking now?
Here’s the picture I thought we’d lost. A little blurry, but it gives you an idea of what our Mezza Luna property consisted of. Not much more than thick sloping woods surrounding the pool of run-off water and the gouged granite rockface in the background.
Here — these are out of order — a picture of the four of you eating gelato in Piazza Signoria in Florence. Look at all of you. Your faces masked with chocolate. Look at how happy you were.
This is Francis Cape. Old Francis Cape on our terrace in Marciana. He looks startled, doesn’t he? As though he wasn’t expecting the pop of the flashbulb.
This — oh, this is Mom and Jill on a trip to Niagara Falls. How did this one get in the box?
Here you are asleep on Murray’s lap. Murray is asleep, too. No, he was only pretending to sleep, if I’m remembering correctly.
The four of you dressed in your darling pinstriped jackets and shorts. We didn’t go to church while we were on Elba, and I’m not sure why you were dressed up. Maybe so we could take this photograph.
This — your father and me in a restaurant. Our faces lit from the glow of the candle in the cake. It must have been my birthday.
This is the view of the island from the castle at the top of Volterraio.
This is our garden in the second villa. The wall of sunflowers, the jungle of Lidia’s tomato plants. We had fresh tomatoes all year round.
Tomatoes. Fresh mozzarella from white oxen. Anchovies and octopus and squid. The kitchen counter covered with squids turned inside out. Your father couldn’t stand the sight of raw squid. Or fresh blood. Both made him weak-kneed.
Here’s one of Murray with his eyes closed, rolling a cigarette. He could roll a cigarette blind in eight seconds.
Meena and her litter of kittens. They are, count them, they are all there, all four. I don’t remember which one Patrick accidentally squashed. Do you?
Now this group includes Lorenzo, our padrone, and his wife. That’s Francis Cape again at the end of the table. The others I don’t recognize.
This is the mossy statue of Napoleon in the garden at his Palazzina dei Mulini. And here I am with Murray standing on the steps of the Roman villa above Portoferraio.
And here — this is another one of you boys at the top of Volterraio. I remember this day. Murray brought all of us to Volterraio in January to look for diamonds. It’s one of our few pictures of the island in winter. The bare vines below look like fishing nets spread across the fields, don’t they? That’s snow on the peak of Monte Capanne.
Here I am wading back to the beach after a swim. I’m lingering in the water so my legs wouldn’t show in the picture.
Here’s Nat on the Roma with the Statue of Liberty behind him. Did you know that since Elba, we never successfully paid off a loan without taking out another loan?
Did you consider what we would owe in back taxes, if that deed to the Mezza Luna land was valid?
For you, Ollie, Elba has stood in your memory as the paradise you lost because your father bungled the situation. But I’ll tell you, I was relieved to leave that island behind and to have made it home, our family intact, across the ocean and into a house with a washing machine and drier and a fenced yard. I was relieved that Murray found a job and I needed only one course to become certified as a teacher, so I’d be ready to find work when Murray was unemployed again. I was relieved that you children took pleasure in friends and books and the puppy we gave you that spring. I was relieved that though Murray kept on drinking, I knew he would never turn into one of those monsters who, after too much booze, will crash through the door you’ve locked against him and grab you by the throat. We had many years ahead together, and I was relieved that I had no reason to doubt his word anymore and could keep the old suspicions hidden in the dark stony place in the soul where love mingles with fear.
Now don’t I sound grand.
March 1, 2001
TO THE WEST, BEHIND THE HILLS, THE GRANITE CAP OF MONTE Capanne a shadow in the mist. To the east, the peak of Volterraio crowned by its ruined castle. In the fields, rain soaking the purple tips of lavender. In Portoferraio, the swollen sea lapping at the quay. Straight ahead, an archway leading to a piazza; from the piazza, steps rising, crossing narrow terraces of streets. Water streaming down furrowed stones. Clack of a woman’s heels. Wet tires. Someone standing inside an open doorway, whistling for a dog. Yellow paint on stucco. Terra-cotta trim. A pot of red geraniums. A box of white cyclamens. Another set of stairs. A man with a cane. Tap of the cane. Rise of one shoe and then another. A man with thick glasses and a useful cane.
Dopoguerra: “Poi, come per un miracolo, ecco che il successo turistico fa affluire denaro e benessere, grazie a ciò che da sempre queste isole avevano subito: l’invasione dei continentali!” — Guide d’Italia de Agostini: Isola d’Elba E Arcipelago Toscano
I am here alone. From my hotel window I can see over the roofs of the bungalows and across the bay to the water. The sea is gray today under a gray sky, though yesterday, seen from the top of Volterraio, the sky was clear and the sea was the blue of blue tourmaline.
I can hear the hum of my computer, the buzz of cont
rolled ventilation, and the television in the room next door. I have my own television on, tuned to CNN, but the volume off.
My brothers and I have always wondered what would have happened if we’d stayed another year or two. What we could have found. What we could have done. If only we’d dug a little deeper, gone a little farther into the hard earth. If we’d been more persistent.
In order to secure the finest optical effect in a cut gem, certain proportions are necessary. I forget the exact formula. The base must be twice as wide as the crown, the table half of the whole stone. Something like that.
The weather: nuvoloso domani, e molto nuvoloso dopodomani. The sun is shining in Tunisia. It is snowing in Milan. The ice cap on Kilimanjaro is shrinking at the rate of 508 feet per year.
Elba was the joke we grew up with. Whenever we wanted to make fun of Murray, we reminded him of Elba. Of Napoleon and Lambrettas. Of black and pink and blue tourmaline. Of uninhabitable acres of rocky earth. Of land that cost more to sell than it did to buy. Once upon a time our father had brought us to Elba, and he was in debt ever since. His last great gamble, from which he never recovered.
What he would call a “nonevent, Ollie, for Christ’s sake.”
Why bother to write about Elba? Make it up, for Christ’s sake. Stick to the imagination.
I’ve changed the names, haven’t I? I can’t help but take some liberties. It’s in my blood, this inability to tell the simple truth. Though it’s true that I’m sitting in a hotel room on the outskirts of Portoferraio on the island of Elba, it’s the first of March, 2001, and I was in Siena last week. It’s true that I have the television on “mute.” It’s true that I had a pastry and cappuccino for breakfast.
Untrue is the attribution of Napoleon Bonaparte to the graffito at his palazzo in San Martino: “Ubicunque felix Napoleon.” The author is anonymous.
The man with the glasses and cane is eager to talk, if you have time to listen. His brother, a barista in Rio nell’Elba, was in the navy and has been to Montreal, New Orleans, Norfolk, and San Francisco. But this man, standing on a stone landing in Portoferraio, has had poor vision all his life, and the Italian navy didn’t want him.
He’ll tell you about the difference between the wines of La Chiusa and Acquabona. He’ll tell you where to buy olive oil and what to expect from tomorrow’s weather. He’ll tell you about his cousin, who is selling her house in the village of Marciana. He thinks she’s foolish to sell it. Her son will want the house for himself someday. The son has a tumor — tumore, capito? — and goes to Firenze for treatment.
What writer committed to factual representation doesn’t miss the freedom of fiction? If I were writing a novel, I’d be writing about coming to Elba in winter of the year 2001 and visiting the Nardi villa. I didn’t look for it my first visit, and I couldn’t find it when I was here last April. But the other day I found it exactly where my mother told me it was: along the road to Magazzini. I’d describe the villa and its fresh orange stucco, the moss darkening the roof tiles, the terraces of olive groves behind the house — the surrounding land and buildings unchanged for almost fifty years, only the traffic on the street, the automatic gates, and, inside, the satellite channels on the television, to remind the occupants of the modern world.
The gate had been left open. There was a doorbell, but out of timidity I knocked — softly at first, and again with more force.
The truth is, the woman who answered the door was named Elisa Vivaldi, she was the daughter-in-law of the owner of the Vivaldi Hotel in Procchio, she came from La Spezia, and she’d never heard of the Nardi family. Which left me nothing much to do but thank her for her time and excuse myself.
If, instead, Adriana Nardi still lived there —
Buongiorno, sono Oliver Murdoch. My father owned land in the Mezza Luna region.
Sì, prego.
She’d be, what, sixty-six years old, with thin white hair, subtle blue shading around her eyes, deep red lipstick. Her clothes — black slacks and a pink wool sweater cuffed with bunched silk — would be comfortable, bright, unpretentious. Her manner would be relaxed. She’d invite me to come in. She’d offer me something to drink.
The man on the landing will compare the virtues of Portoferraio and Porto Azzurro. He’ll tell you about Marciana, if you’re interested. Have you been up to Marciana? His cousin is selling the house she grew up in, the house where his whole family hid during the night of violence in June 1944, the night the Allies met the Germans on the island of Elba. The stories this man could tell, you wouldn’t believe.
My name is Oliver Murdoch. My father owned land here in the 1950s.
Yes, come in.
Grazie.
Would you care for something to drink?
A glass of water would be fine.
Have a seat. Those pictures, by the way, the ones on the credenza, they are of my two grandchildren, Camilla and Philip. They live in London. My husband and I have a house in Redding. We’re only here to prepare our villa for summer tenants.
Her voice comes from the kitchen. For a moment I forget that she is Adriana Nardi and mistake her for her mother, though her mother has been dead for more than thirty years.
She brings me a glass of water. Just water. Secretly, I was expecting a tray piled high with meringues.
Now how can I help you, Signor Murdoch? What would I say to her? Why was I there?
I am sitting in a hotel room, looking out beyond Punta della Rena at the sea, imagining the story I would write if I were going to start over. The story of Adriana Nardi — a novel based on truth, truth based on hearsay, gossip, rumors, secondhand accounts, and dreams.
Won’t you tell me about the guard who worked at the prison on Pianosa? The professor from Bologna? The exact nature of my father’s involvement? Your four days in Portovenere? Tell me about Paris. How did you find a willing doctor? Was he really a doctor? How much did he charge? How long did it take? How did you get back to your hotel afterward? Were you alone?
How dare you, Signor Murdoch!
How dare I ask to hear about what this woman endured. My prurience. Her dignity. My disrespect. Life diminished and falsified by the simple act of transcription.
The American Express Travel Guide to Tuscany and Florence
SIGHTS AND PLACES OF INTEREST
PALAZZINA NAPOLEONICA DEI MULINI*
NAPOLEON CREATED HIS RESIDENCE IN EXILE FROM TWO OLD WINDMILLS ABOVE THE CITY NEAR FORTE DELLA STELLA. THE FURNISHINGS FOR THIS DELIGHTFUL LITTLE PALACE WERE COMMANDEERED FROM HIS SISTER ELISA’S HOUSE AT PIOMBINO; THE PLATE AND LIBRARY WERE BROUGHT FROM FONTAINEBLEAU.
I was just wondering if you remember my father.
He’s not easy to forget.
He had liver cancer and passed away in the summer of ’92. Actually, he died of pneumonia following surgery.
I study her face, watching for her unspoken reaction, but what I see I can’t decipher.
I think, Signora Nardi, that he was very much in love with you. I know, Signor Murdoch, that he loved his family.
The truth of love being its power to corrupt and divide and destroy.
Your father considered himself a lucky man. Perciò era molto fortunato.
Portoferraio in a soft winter rain. Hiss of steam frothing milk in the café. The man on the landing is wearing a hat and rarely bothers with an umbrella. This man will keep talking, if you don’t mind getting wet.
First the Germans. Then the English and French and Senegalese. And then the Americans arrived with their gifts of clothes, shoes, chocolate, peanut butter. What do you do with peanut butter? And meat in a can?
Capsized dinghies clogging the harbor, rubble blocking the streets, and all the Americans wanted to do was play football on the beach at Le Ghiaie.
You want to hear about the war? His own father, a shepherd from San Piero, bringing pecorino and fresh milk to the group of English soldiers camped on Monte Capanne.
Though it is damp and cold today, I’m told that Elba has had a mild winte
r this year. It is only the beginning of March, and finches and sparrows are singing in the hotel garden, the almond trees have already shed their blossoms, and the vines on the trellis are budding. I’ve opened my window a crack to let in the fresh air.
Still, the island at bassissima is like a theater before a show opens. Elbans are waiting for their audience, and those of us who are tourists are treated to a gentle bemusement. Why have we come to the island in winter? Don’t we know any better? What sort of people are we who at this time of year are able to leave jobs, homes, families, and come to Elba to do nothing? How did we earn such a ridiculous privilege?
Of course I remember you. You had a rock named King George.
A what?
The first time I met you, you took me into your room to show me your rock. You’d named it King George, and you kept it in a shoebox lined with black tissue paper. You’d made a little cardboard throne and filled it with chalk dust. You used a piece of wood for a table, dried leaves for the plates. King George was a piece of rose quartz.
Really? I sip my water. She smiles at me. I think about the murky passage from infancy to childhood, when the experiences we survive become confused with experiences we imagine.
Of course I remember you. Everyone who was on the island at that time would remember you and your brothers. You couldn’t have realized it, but we were looking out for the bambini Americani, making sure you didn’t get into any harm and didn’t cause too much trouble.
In Florence last week, as I crossed the piazza to enter the Baptistery, a young boy — he couldn’t have been older than seven or eight — stuck his hand in the back pocket of my jeans, searching for my wallet, which I keep in the inside breast pocket of my jacket. I grabbed his arm, pushed him away, we exchanged a glare, and that was that. He went looking for another stupido Americano, and I went into the Baptistery.
“At lower right, near some open trap doors, a red devil is tormenting some of the damned. He has a robust hairless body, claws instead of feet, and bat’s wings; his face is not strongly characterized but it is an animal’s one with a few human features. Goat’s horns emerge from the nape of his neck.” — Devils in Art, Lorenzo Lorenzi
