“I was a hard worker,” she continued. “A good cook and una bella ragazza. I wasn’t always so fat, you know.”
“Did you know Professor Bondinelli?” I asked, steering her away from observations of her former beauty and current corpulence to the question I’d been leading up to.
“I didn’t see him much in recent years,” she said. “But during the last war and after, when he was courting Silvana, he came here often.”
“Silvana was the signore’s sister?”
“Sì, poverina. Died seven years ago.”
“How?”
“Polmonite. Pneumonia.”
“So sad.” I paused for a moment out of respect for the departed soul before asking how Silvana and the professor had met.
“He was a friend of the signore’s. He must have met Silvana when she was a girl. In the thirties, I remember, because the professor still had his eye. Then he courted her before the war. And during, of course.”
“It must have been an uncertain time. Not a good moment to fall in love.”
“Oh, no. Signorina Silvana wasn’t in love with the professor. No, no. She was in love with someone else.”
“Why didn’t she marry the other man?”
Berenice rubbed her hands on her apron. “Perché, perché?” she replied, seemingly asking the ceiling for the answer. Or the heavens. “For the oldest reason. Because he died.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Berenice didn’t remember the young man’s name. In fact she’d never met him. He’d never come to the house. But it was the war, and dying was hardly unusual.
I asked if he’d been a soldier, but she knew nothing beyond that Silvana’s father did not approve.
“Giulietta e Romeo. Now I must get back to the kitchen.”
“Un’ultima domanda,” I said. “What’s the name of the rooster?”
“The rooster?”
“Yes, the one who makes all the noise every morning.”
“We call him Ermenegildo. Why do you want to know?”
“I’d like to have him for dinner tonight, if that’s possible.”
She uttered a little laugh. “No, no, no, signorina. Ermenegildo is twelve years old and is still going strong. The signore likes him, so his neck is safe for now.”
“Buongiorno,” came a voice from the opposite end of the room. Good God, it was Locanda.
Berenice excused herself and scurried back to the kitchen, leaving me alone with him. He took a seat opposite me at the table, a newspaper under his arm and a cigarette between his fingers.
“Where’s Vicky this morning?” I asked. “Sleeping?”
“I have no idea where she is,” he said.
“What?”
He looked at me as if I had two heads. “She’s left. What is it you don’t understand?”
“For one thing, what’s happened to her? Is she all right?”
“Non ne ho idea,” he said as he opened his paper. “She’s probably pouting about something or other somewhere. Like a cat, she’ll come back when she’s hungry.”
“But she doesn’t speak Italian,” I said. “And she’s not supposed to leave the property. Where would she have gone?”
“Non lo so. She’s an adult who acts like a child. I can’t be nursemaid to her whims.”
Berenice reappeared with a coffee for Locanda.
“Vuole qualcosa?” he asked me.
“Nothing for me,” I said.
He dismissed her, and asked me what my plans were for the day. I told him I hoped to spend some time with Mariangela to teach her some photography tricks. Truth be told, I half expected him to forbid me from seeing her. But he barely reacted, beyond sipping his coffee and making a face.
“Troppo amaro,” he said. “How many times must I tell Berenice to taste the coffee before serving it.”
“It seems fine to me.”
“Of course it does.”
“Max,” I said, stirring him from his practiced detachment. “How did your sister and Bondinelli meet?”
After a suitable period of pique, he considered my question. He said it was in thirty-five or -six. Silvana was young. Fifteen or sixteen.
“She was born in 1920?”
He nodded. “Alberto was much older than she. He didn’t court her until later. They met, they fell in love, and they married.”
“I understood it happened quite differently. Your sister, Silvana, was in love with someone else when she met Bondinelli.”
“It’s possible, yes. So?”
“Did you know the other man?”
“The one she loved? If she loved another? No. I was a prisoner of war at the time.”
“But surely you heard something later on. It’s been twenty years, after all.”
He smiled one of those condescending grins, as if he thought I was a naïve little girl, hopelessly out her depth.
“Do you think married couples discuss past love affairs? Do you think they recount them to their brothers? To their fathers? I doubt that. I arrived home in September of forty-five, finally set free by the British, and I never heard a word of any of Silvana’s former love affairs.”
“So she and Bondinelli were engaged by that time?”
“Oh, no. Not for another three, four years. But why are you asking me questions about my sister? What interest could you possibly have?”
He’d finally caught on. This was always the dicey moment when I had to convince my interviewee of the benefits of answering my questions, even when I couldn’t justify them to myself.
“I apologize,” I said. “Of course it’s none of my business. And yet . . .”
“Yes?” he asked.
“And yet, your sister had a lover. Or a betrothed. Un fidanzato. Why did she change her mind? Why did she choose Bondinelli?”
He considered my question for a long moment, then told me that I already knew the answer.
“He died, of course,” he said. “I’m not sure who told you, but I believe you were aware of that.”
I’m sure I blushed. “I meant to say why did she agree to marry Bondinelli.”
“It’s no mystery. She couldn’t marry a man who was dead, could she?”
“Of course not. But I’m still wondering who this mystery man was. I can’t ask Mariangela, and I doubt there was anyone else present at the time who might have known him. Maybe Achille? But how well?”
“You are a curious girl, signorina,” he said. “And I don’t mean that as a compliment. You ask personal questions about things you have no right to know. I find it tiring. You annoy me.”
If Locanda thought he could put me off by telling me I asked too many questions, he didn’t know me very well.
“I annoy you because I ask questions you don’t want to answer.”
“You annoy me because you do not understand hospitality. I have welcomed you into my house, and you treat me with disrespect.”
“There’s no disrespect in asking. If my questions make you feel uncomfortable, don’t answer them.”
He studied me for the longest moment, surely wondering what to make of me.
“What is it you want? What is it you hope to accomplish?”
I took pity on him. I truly didn’t want to cause him pain or be ungrateful in his house.
“As I’ve already told you, I want to know why Professor Bondinelli died,” I said in answer to his question. “Did he fall into the Arno by accident? Did someone push him into the river? Or did he take his own life?”
“Alberto never would have taken his own life. He was a Catholic. He feared God. It’s impossible.”
“Then what?” I asked. “Did he wander down to the riverbank and fall in? After fifty years of living in Florence? Or maybe a thief hit him on the head and threw him in the river. For the riches he was carrying on his person?”
“I have no idea. But you didn’t even know him. Never met the man. Why do you care?”
“He invited me here. I was his guest. It’s only natural that I care about what
happened to him.”
“No, signorina. There is more that you refuse to say. I believe it has to do with your father.”
“What? My father?”
He nodded. “You lost your father under criminal circumstances and now you see conspiracy everywhere. You want to put right the injustices of the world to soothe your soul. Alberto’s death is a convenient exercise for your nosy nature. Signorina Stone, you are a ficcanaso. A busybody.”
I wanted to slap his face. Or at least tell him off properly in Italian, but I sat there frozen in my seat, my language skills not up to the task of delivering one of my usual biting ripostes. Instead—I’m ashamed to admit—I wept. Running from the room, covering my eyes as I went, I ran like a child for the comfort of solitude. That beautiful space where one is free to mourn, to wallow in pity away from the prying eyes of others. For me, that day, that space was outside in the rainy garden. I stood there in my gloom, staring at the ground, wondering how I could break the quarantine and get away from Bel Soggiorno. I knew I could go on foot, if I trekked over hill and dale, avoiding the policeman stationed at the Via Boccaccio entrance to the property. But did I really want to lug my suitcase through the rain? And it would easily be a mile or two before I cleared the property and reached the road undetected. I kicked the wet ground in frustration and, in the process, spied two of the pennies I’d thrown at the rooster, Ermenegildo, earlier that morning. Then the brown tabby who’d welcomed us to Bel Soggiorno two days prior appeared and distracted me. Soaking wet, he stared up at me and uttered another caw-like meow. I squatted and held out two fingers to him. He, in turn, sniffed my hand and commenced to twirling around my ankles.
“Come ti chiami?” I asked him.
“His name is Benito,” called Locanda from the doorway. Then he ran toward me with an umbrella as a peace offering, scaring off the cat in the process.
“I refuse to call him by that name,” I said. “To spite you I’ll call him Antonio, after Gramsci.”
Locanda chuckled. “Fine. I, too, will call him Antonio.” A pause ensued. “Signorina. Ellie,” he said finally. “Come inside. Don’t stand in the rain. Venga dentro.”
I looked into his eyes, bloodshot, a touch yellowed, with the skin around them leathered and brown. And he studied me, the rain beating down on both of us, because he hadn’t opened the umbrella. His face was softer than I’d seen, his expression almost human.
“Mi dica,” I said. “Tell me about her.”
His expression hardened a bit but only for a second. Then it softened again. He clearly didn’t want to talk about her, but I was sure he had to.
“She was a lovely girl, my sister,” he said. “And she was heartbroken when Marco died.”
“That was his name? Marco?”
“I think so. I don’t know his family name.”
“Why did your father object to him?”
“What does it matter now? He died. Silvana’s heart broke to pieces. She became depressed, morose, inconsolable. My father had her committed to a sanitarium in France. But she swore she’d kill herself if he didn’t bring her back home. She even tried suicide once, and my father relented.”
“And that’s when Alberto came onto the scene again?”
We must have looked comical, the two of us, standing in the rain with a closed umbrella at hand and the open doors of the house just steps away. The absurdity of our nose-to-nose didn’t strike me until later, when we shared some brandy in the salone after we’d dried out and changed clothes.
“Where have you been?” I asked Bernie in the corridor near the bathroom upstairs.
“I slept in,” he said. “I see you’re dry now. Changed your clothes?”
That sounded odd. I balked at responding for a moment, wondering what he’d meant by it. “Yes, I got caught in the rain.”
“I saw you with Locanda outside. You didn’t get caught in the rain. You walked right out into it.”
“What’s your point, Bernie?”
“Nothing. I just want you to be careful.”
“Are you implying something happened between me and him? Because nothing did. He told me about his sister and Bondinelli. That’s all.”
“It sure looked like more than that. El, he’s a slippery one. Don’t let your guard down.”
“See you later for cocktails,” I said, pushing past him toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not without blushing crimson. I was, in fact, headed to the salone where I was to meet Max for that brandy.
He held a large leather-bound album on his lap. And though it was only a few minutes past ten, he poured us each a snifter of Cognac to counter the chill from our soaking. We settled into the divan’s cushions to watch the rain through the doors.
“Has Vicky surfaced yet?” I asked.
He shook his head and took the minutest sip of brandy, barely wetting his upper lip. “I assume she’s gone down to Florence. Victoria is a big girl with plenty of money. She managed just fine alone in Italy before she met me.”
“How do you mean?”
“Her family is wealthy. Money is no problem. Not that she ever spends her own. Men are always ready to feed the starving little trovatella.”
I didn’t know the word, and he couldn’t translate it. After a brief back and forth, I came to understand it meant waif. By that time, of course, the moment had passed, and the feathery cough of a laugh I produced hardly convinced anyone.
“How long have you known her?” I asked.
He seemed to count in his head, all the while looking at anything but me. “Five months,” he said finally. “I met her in Milan where she’d just had an argument with her companion. A man of questionable connections. Handsome and rich, to be sure, but not likely to stay out of jail.”
“She was lucky you came along to rescue her.”
Now he looked directly at me. “I doubt she needed rescuing. Anyway, she’ll find another rich man, I’m sure.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Dio mio, perché? Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Not for me. I told you, I am not sentimental. Whether Vicky is here or somewhere else, I truly do not care. She was an amusement. Un divertimento. Nothing more.” Even if his love affair with the beautiful young creature had failed to achieve its happily ever after, I couldn’t help thinking that not caring about anything must have been a sad way to go through life. I wondered if he really meant it or were these merely sour grapes?
“I’ve had disappointments, too,” I said.
“La Vicky is not a disappointment. Just a little story that ended.”
“Was it like that for Silvana?”
That caught his attention. “You mean with Marco?”
“Yes. Did she get over him? Did her heart heal?”
“It took a couple of years, but with the help of her friends and family, she came back to life.”
“And Alberto helped?”
“Of course. He cared for her as if for a kitten. He suffered her moods, her rudeness, her anger, never once losing his patience. She experienced wild bouts of depression, and she drank too much. It was Alberto who cured her. He simply would not allow her to slip away.”
“Did she share his passion for the Church?”
“No, not for the Church. But for God, yes. I believe she found comfort in God.”
“And your father? Did he approve of the match?”
“Assolutamente,” he said firmly. “He encouraged it. My father always liked Alberto, from the first time he met him when he was a child. And then they were in Spain, in thirty-six and -seven.”
“In Spain? Together?”
He gazed indulgently at me over the top of his eyeglasses. “I’m sure you’ve heard of the little contretemps that went on in Spain in thirty-six.” I nodded. “Franco—the generalísimo, the caudillo, not the idiot who’s staying here at Bel Soggiorno—invited the Italians and Germans to help. Both my father and Alberto were dispatched to Spain. One was more in
volved in diplomacy with the Nationalists, while the other was in the thick of the fighting.”
I didn’t need to guess which was which.
“Yes, both served in Spain. It created a strong bond between them. Naturally my father approved of Alberto as a husband for Silvana, even after he left the Black Shirts.”
“He left the Black Shirts?”
“As you know, he was gravely wounded in Spain. Lost an eye. His military career was over. He was discharged from active duty after that.”
Max opened the leather-bound tome he’d been holding in his lap and flipped through the pages. It was a photo album. A few of the white mounting corners had come unglued and slipped out of the book onto the floor, as did one photograph. He retrieved the photo, but left the little corners for someone else to sweep up.
He examined the pictures in silence but with great interest, even running his fingers over the edges, as if caressing some memory ressurected from long ago. Turning the pages with care, he seemed to have forgotten I was there. For my part, I couldn’t quite make out who or what was in the photographs. But then he turned the album toward me and offered a better view.
“This is me,” he said, pointing to a small, wrinkled photo of a toddler with curly locks of blonde hair. He was dressed in a military outfit of some kind. “And here’s another of me with Father and Mother.”
“You were quite the handsome little man,” I said.
He dismissed my flattery. “Kind of you, but who can tell in such small, dark photographs?”
He turned the page again, hesitated, then tried to close the album. I asked who it was that I’d glimpsed in the large photograph in the middle of the page. He opened the book again and showed me. It was a little blonde girl of about four standing in her Sunday finery holding the hand of an adolescent boy, also dressed for some special occasion. Or perhaps just church.
“Is that Silvana?” I asked. “And you?”
He nodded, his blue, bloodshot eyes focused intently on the image. “She was eleven years younger than I.”
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