Lost in the Spanish Quarter

by Heddi Goodrich

  12

  IN THE MORNING the rain was still drumming on the roof. What woke me, though, was not the rain but the muffled voices from downstairs. I threw on my clothes and went straight to the kitchen. Pietro, fully dressed and wearing a black wool hat, was clinking a teaspoon around in his coffee. I caught him midsentence as he spoke with his parents.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”

  With the same formality I greeted the whole kitchen. I noticed that his mother was still wearing her kerchief, like she’d slept with it on. In a voice meant only for Pietro, I said, “I think I’ve slept in.”

  “It’s only eight o’clock.”

  “Let’s go, boy,” said his father sternly, but it was probably just an illusion created by the dialect because his eyes were again making lovely little branches.

  “We’ve been waiting for the rain to stop, but it looks like we’ll just have to leave anyway,” said Pietro, downing his coffee. “There’s some of my mother’s biscotti on the table. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks, I’m not hungry.” I wished I could at least kiss him goodbye but I never would have dared to in front of his parents, just as he hadn’t called me baby.

  “Try to eat a little something,” he said.

  Then his mother muttered a sentence that I clearly understood in spite of the dialect. “Edda è troppu sicca.”

  Interesting, I thought to myself. So edda meant what essa did in Neapolitan (“she”), and both dialects shared the same word for “skinny,” sicca. Only afterward did I grasp the true meaning of the phrase. She’s too skinny, she’d said, and in the third person: it was that detail that hurt me more than the aesthetic judgment. She had talked about me as though I weren’t even in the room, as though I weren’t merely thin but insubstantial, like a breath melting into the cold air of that kitchen. Like a ghost.

  We women duly stood side by side as the men put on their raincoats at the door. I watched as Pietro mounted the growling tractor with his father. Even through the tulle of rain, he was painfully handsome and, judging from his embarrassed smile, wholly unaware of it as usual. As soon as he returned, I would ask him to take me for a ride.

  His mother closed the door with a thud. “Bad weather,” she mumbled as she sat by the lethargic fire. “Eat some breakfast.”

  I found it even more demoralizing that she’d gone back to addressing me with voi, the formal “you.” My mouth was dry; I hadn’t even been to the bathroom. But I pulled out a chair to face the fire and sank my teeth into a hard almond cookie. “They’re delicious, signora.”

  She answered with a painful moan. I wondered if they were time-consuming to prepare and asked her how she made them.

  “It’s nothing,” she said to the fire. “Just some old recipe.”

  “Let me see if I can guess the ingredients,” I said with fake bubbliness, in reality needing to pee. “So, let’s see, almonds of course. Then eggs, or not?”

  She seemed not to have heard my question and, in all honesty, I didn’t care to know the answer. She broke a branch on her thigh and threw it to the fire. Tiny, voracious flames ignited on the split edges like flies rushing to a wound. I spent some time watching them grow until they’d coiled their way up the entire branch.

  Fearing that the silence between us would settle in definitively, I started telling her about the cookies my mother used to bake when I was little. They were made not with sugar but molasses (not knowing the correct term, I unsuccessfully Italianized it as “molassa”) and they had a line of jam down the middle that resembled a little road. That’s why my mom had named them Jelly Roads, which I also poorly translated, even selling them at the local health food store.

  I came to a sudden stop, sensing I was rambling on nervously. Why had I chosen such an inappropriate and semantically challenging story? What was I thinking? I was already exhausted from the effort and decided it was best to quickly wrap it up. “They were quite a hit, actually. But then macrobiotic people will eat anything . . .”

  “It’s just as well,” his mother said without a clear logic and without looking at me.

  What else could I bring up that would spark, if not enthusiasm, at least a bit of interest? I racked my brains as I gnawed on the nearly unbreakable cookie. Then it came to me. “Well, Pietro . . .” I said. “He sure looks like a natural on that tractor. Has he been driving one for a long time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, since he was a boy?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you need a license?”

  “Of course not.”

  I jabbered on more rapidly than ever, due partly to my ballooning bladder, which was creating a sort of psychological pressure. At one point, I mentioned that I didn’t know how to drive a car—and, thank god, she didn’t either. A shared failure was just what I needed, and my bladder could wait. “You know,” I said animatedly, perhaps to a fault, “sometimes I think it just looks impossible to change all those gears and keep your eyes on the road at the same time. How could I ever learn?” I scanned his mother’s lined profile for the smallest sign of complicity, of sensitivity to my admission of weakness.

  “It’s probably not that hard.”

  After a little while, she announced she was going out to get some more firewood. As she stood up, I could see that her apron was, despite the early hour, already stained with tomatoes and soil. I asked if I could help; she shook her head. Hopefully soon she would tell me to stop calling her signora. I didn’t even know her name.

  This was my chance to go to the bathroom. The tiles were icy even through my socks. No wonder everyone was always in the kitchen: it was the only warmish room in the house. As the late spring rain tapped on the roof, I looked at my blotchy reflection in that silvered mirror, to make sure of my existence, however faint it might be, in that house.

  Pietro’s mother uncradled logs and branches from her apron, before sitting down to position them in the fireplace. I dared to place a couple of branches according to the pyramid structure that the boys had taught me. She let me. The fire grew, emanating a pleasant heat.

  “What do you do with the wheat you grow on your land?” I hazarded after a while.

  “We grind it into flour. I used to make my own bread with it.”

  “Why don’t you make bread anymore?”

  “Too much hard work. I’m old now.”

  I remembered the gravestone design that Gabriele had shown me. No, she wasn’t ill, he’d said. Maybe she was just a tired old woman. Encouraged by that good long sequence of words, I asked her about their olive harvest. But this time she answered in monosyllables, looking straight at the fire. I asked about their grapes, also to little effect. Still, I nodded and smiled, going along with it all, feeling like a fool. I wasn’t trying to work my way into her heart, to ferret her out or unnest her like a Russian doll. I wasn’t that ambitious. All I wanted was the most basic of conversations, a chat, and that was something that, despite the humiliation, I was unwilling to forgo.

  “So, I hear you have two beautiful grandchildren.”

  “They don’t speak the language.”

  “Young people can learn so fast.”

  “What would I know.”

  “It must be nice to see your eldest son, when he comes over from Switzerland.”

  “Vittorio?” said his mother, turning up the volume. “Eeeiihhh . . .” It was a drawn-out, mysterious interjection, followed by a gesture of annoyance, like she was shooing a mosquito. And then nothing.

  The light outside was unchanged, filtered as it was through clouds that unleashed torrents of rain like thick sheets of metal, dousing everything in sight. It was hard to tell what time it was. The hours were as sticky and sluggish as the mud in the devastated yard. All at once I became concerned about, of all things, the chickens outside. Had one of them been caught in the downpour, or had the coop flooded? Yet I didn’t go to the window to check on them. I sat stubbornly next to Pietro’s mother, diving aimlessly from subject to
subject, swallowing each of her blunt replies. Sometimes she didn’t even bother answering but just stared at the fire. Between the various attempts, I too gave in and observed the flames. After a bit, I began to see the fire as a friend, or a home base like in hide-and-seek, a safe place to go to where I was allowed to be, at least for a while, out of the game.

  A long time went by before I had the brilliant idea that I could walk away from the fireplace. I could hide away under the daisies of Pietro’s comforter with a book until he came back. But it was an extraordinarily difficult decision to make. First, I had to mentally consult with the fire on the matter, and even once I’d made up my mind it cost me a superhuman effort to stand up, push the chair back, and straighten my knees.

  “Signora, I’m going to go read for a bit.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Sit down. It’s too cold up there.”

  I was trapped. I couldn’t fathom why his mother might want me there by her side if she didn’t want to talk to me. Did she in some way enjoy the company? The many conversation starters I’d come up with had entirely drained me of words, and finally I just stared into the fire too.

  That was when I realized that there was a sort of plot unfolding in the fireplace, and that the flames were as spellbinding as television. They told gripping, but strange and unspeakable, tales. Flashy orange flames, stained blood-red in the middle, billowed and deflated like laundered sheets hung out to dry; they snapped and whipped in the hot wind. Smaller flames as yellow and eager as tendrils danced, sashayed, licked, whispered, spat. The embers smoldered with latent fire, with menacing jealousy. Now and then a collapse of wood would trigger a tiny explosion, a brief climax followed by a lavish release of heat. And all the while I didn’t move an inch. I sat as if in prayer with Pietro’s mother, incapable of shifting my gaze from the fire even for a second, for fear of missing a line, a twist, the ending.

  The rain thickened, washing the tractor shed and the neighboring houses into oblivion, and still there was no sign of Pietro and his father. I was certain he’d said the land was only an hour away. That would make the trip two hours, three at worst with the weather. I didn’t know the time, but it might have been four hours since they’d waved from the tractor. A repulsive thought wormed its way into my head—and once I’d thought it there was no ignoring it—the possibility that Pietro and his father had had an accident, that the man of my dreams was lying bloodied in a ditch under the indifferent rain. And to think the last thing I’d said to him was I’m not hungry.

  I hadn’t used my voice in a while and it came out hoarse. “It sure is raining hard.”

  Pietro’s mother mumbled an agreement, and I turned to look at her. Actually, she too looked worried. I may have been judging her unfairly. Maybe she was incapable of making small talk when all that was on her mind was the fate of her husband and son. For the first time I felt a connection between us, not a bond of affection but one of ancestral memory, a torturous affinity that only two waiting women could share.

  “Signora, do you think they’ll be all right?”

  “Of course they will.”

  “But the storm—”

  “What storm?” she snapped. “It’s just a bit of rain.” Then, tossing a branch into the fire, she announced it was lunchtime.

  We ate leftovers, even yesterday’s bread. The fire crackled by the table like a third guest. Afterward when I went to the sink to begin washing up, without a word Pietro’s mother edged me away with her hips. To be honest, though, I’d acted with little conviction and didn’t stand my ground.

  By the time Pietro and his father came back that afternoon, my cheeks were hot from the fire. When the two men walked in through the door, a gust of wind blowing in with them, I would have leaped into Pietro’s arms if I could have, even soaking my clothes in all the rain dripping off his jacket and his hands. We didn’t say a word to each other, but his face shone so brightly I could tell that he too was greatly relieved to see me again.

  He clouded over as he turned to address his mother in their harsh dialect. His father, wiping his glasses with a dry cloth, joined in on the storytelling. I picked up the most basic words: “rain,” “couldn’t see a thing,” “tractor,” “car.” I glanced out the window and saw a little white car parked behind his uncle’s car. They must have picked it up after dropping off the tractor. It was a detail I hadn’t bothered to ask the night before, nor did I know what crop, if any, was on the land or why they needed to leave the tractor there.

  Pietro’s mother began preparing cups of tea for the drenched men, without offering me one. There was a sort of intimacy in that exclusion, as if through our troubled day together we had developed an unspoken understanding. The initial awkwardness between us was gone, and now at least she no longer felt it necessary to feign any interest in her son’s girlfriend or conceal her true priorities.

  With a wink in my direction, Pietro said he first needed to get changed. Mumbling something about grabbing my book, I followed him up the stairs. We hadn’t even reached his room and already he was kissing me. In the semidarkness I could feel his face as cold as ice and his mouth as surprising and scorching as a secret love letter.

  “I’m sorry we were so late,” he whispered. “The rain really held us back. It was driving into our faces; I could hardly steer.”

  “I was so worried about you. I thought it was only an hour’s drive.”

  “An hour by car. That’s three by tractor. The land is all the way in Puglia. And the whole time all I could think about was you.” He kissed me again and led me by the hand into his room. He pulled clothes from the wardrobe and quickly changed into them. “How did it go with my mother?”

  “Not too bad.”

  He didn’t press further. He said he was tired and in desperate need of a nap. It was the last thing I wanted to hear. I wanted him to take me out, even in the rain. We could go to a café in the village or just sit in the car watching the raindrops cut tentative, idiosyncratic trails down the windshield. Anything to get out of that house. But Pietro’s hair was wet, his hands numb and clumsy as he tried to button up his jeans, and I felt for him. I went to tidy his bed that I’d left unmade that morning in my haste to get downstairs.

  “Don’t bother, baby. I’ll just lie down on the couch downstairs. Besides, it’s too cold up here.”

  “They’d think we’re up to no good anyway.”

  “Exactly. You’re catching on fast,” he said with a playful smile.

  By the time Pietro woke up, dinner was on the table. The rain was still droning on. As we ate homemade pasta with the television rigorously on, I allowed myself the luxury of disregarding his mother. It was simply too much work to try to make conversation. Instead, I focused on becoming like Pietro, on making myself as quiet and unremarkable as possible so that his parents’ lack of interest in me would appear natural.

  Just one more sleep and then in the morning we’d be on the bus back to Naples. I was so thrilled by the thought of leaving that I didn’t regret not having hunted for Roman coins or gone for a spin around the town. Gabriele had been right from the beginning: the fresh air didn’t compensate for the silence and the cold. I could almost picture the gloomy irony on his face as we walked back into the apartment, laden no doubt with hard almond cookies, aged cheese, and wine, as he had been after his last visit. I could see now that those culinary spoils were in reality reparation for the suffering endured.

  And still I couldn’t help but feel optimistic that, if I could only get back to the city—to my books, our bed, our budding collection of National Geographic—I would be able to refuel. Then I’d have the energy required to face his mother again and perhaps woo her in a more deliberate way. With this in mind, I couldn’t resist the irrational instinct to offer, for the third time, to do the dishes.

  From: tectonic@tin.it

  To: heddi@yahoo.com

  Sent: April 2

  Dear Heddi,

  You�
��ve moved to a beautiful place with beaches and palm trees, like a page out of National Geographic. I think of you over there like a bee on a flower. I’m happy that, in a way, due to the laws of chaos I too have contributed to your new life, simply by running away from you. But once again I find myself at a loss in my reply . . . where should I start?

  Last summer I had the illusion of a normal life, as normal a life as one can have in a small, isolated, and dreadful town like Monte San Rocco. It all began one night mid-June. I was in a pub when I ran into a girl I knew. I was alone and so was she. We spent an evening together, exchanging a few kisses, nothing more. But to me it felt like the start of something new . . . it was probably the alcohol mixed with the euphoria of trying to have fun in such a way that it would make a good story to tell. Anyway, nothing ended up happening with this girl. A few weeks later at the nightclub I always go to (I’m practically a wallflower), I met a girl from here who’s been living for years in Rimini. A bit of an oddball, slightly hippieish, really nice, friendly, but that’s all. So I started thinking, well, well, this summer might just turn out to be all right after all. That was my first mistake.

  But then, ever a sucker for punishment, I launched into renovating my house . . . I thought: OK, now I’ll fix up the ground floor for my old folks, they’ll be more comfortable there, they’ll move downstairs . . . second mistake.

  I went through two months of hell with builders and plaster everywhere, but my parents won’t give up the house . . . a nice empty apartment . . . Then came the fall . . . and then winter: a total void, no vacation, no flirting, nothing at all.

  A shitty life, that’s what it is. The worst part, though, is that I’m such a creature of habit. By now I think all my disappointments, mistakes, and troubles have healed over like old wounds. I think of myself as a man in voluntary exile, but my spirit is at times retching . . . I can’t see a way out.