“What can I get for you, Signori?”
Angelo understood without knowing the words. “Can she make me an American coffee?”
“Per piacere, un caffè lungo per lui, un espresso per me.”
She grunted and turned to the silver machine behind her while Angelo looked around the room. Under the glass display case were what was left of the morning pastries and a larger number of panini awaiting the lunch crowd. Lined up on the shelves behind the bar was a meager collection of grappe and digestivi, with one bottle of whiskey, unopened and gathering dust. Rick expected another disparaging comment from Angelo, but the man was silent, staring into the large mirror that ran the length of the back wall. The woman finished her preparations and put a large cup of black coffee in front of Angelo, a small one in front of Rick.
“Is this the rich American?” said the woman, stopping Rick’s sugar spoon in mid-air.
“Scusi?” Rick asked.
“The American. Our mayor went to the funeral of Roberto Rondini a few days ago and said there was some rich American cousin there who was born here. I hear a lot in this place.”
Angelo had caught the name when she spoke and asked Rick to interpret.
“She heard about the funeral, and that an American cousin of Roberto was there.” He left out rich. “So she put two and two together and thought you might be him.”
“Your cowboy boots blew my cover, Language Man.” Rick was surprised to see his boss turn to the woman and extend his hand. “Angelo Rondini, my pleasure.”
The woman shook the hand and introduced herself before giving Rick a questioning look.
“And I’m Riccardo Montoya, Signor Rondini’s interpreter.”
The woman pushed back a bit of hair that had escaped the bun. “We have something in common. I was born here, too. But I stayed.”
Rick went into his interpreting routine.
“Ask her if she knew the Rondini family.”
Rick did, and got her answer. While she spoke, Angelo waited patiently, stirring sugar into his coffee and tasting it.
“She was young when Enzo Rondini, your uncle, moved to Mantova. She never knew Roberto, and says neither of them ever came back to visit, despite being so close. She thinks the Rondinis didn’t want to be associated with the place, and people here were fine with that.”
Angelo looked at the woman while he listened, nodding his head. She stared back.
“Looking at this place, I can understand why my uncle stayed away. Don’t translate that, just tell her I found what she said interesting. Then let’s get out of here and visit the church.”
Rick complied.
A few minutes later they were back on the street. Marco was chatting with the policeman between their two cars when they noticed Rick and Angelo starting to cross the street. The cop watched them cross and then left the driver to follow at a distance. A light wind blew in from the west, taking away any vestige of the morning fog but bringing with it an equally humid chill off the river. It was like a silent signal that the market would soon be packing up, and the sound of metal canopy poles clanging to the ground followed, though a few women still poked around the open stalls for last-minute bargains.
Angelo pushed open the door to the church and was followed in by Rick, who dipped his fingers into the small font just inside and crossed himself. Angelo didn’t seem to notice; he stepped in and squinted at the darkened space. Vertical windows were cut high up into the walls, but little light was getting in thanks to the clouds, or perhaps too-long-postponed cleaning. Two small bulbs illuminated a tiered table of votive candles, some lit and adding a fluttering, eerie light to that side of the church. The only decoration on the walls was a set of stations of the cross, hung at intervals on bare nails. Rick counted eight rows of empty wooden pews, a number which likely was enough to accommodate the town’s faithful for mass. They fit easily into a single open space that lacked columns and side chapels. The only ornamentation was on the altar, raised by a few steps from the cement floor of the main church. A gold crucifix hung from the ceiling over the cloth-covered altar, flanked by silver candlesticks. Had he not known better, Rick might have thought they’d wandered into a Protestant church.
“So you think this was where I’d have been baptized?”
“There could be another church, but I doubt it. This is the only game in town, and from the exterior, I’d guess it’s been here since the nineteenth century. So, unless they took you into Mantova, which was unlikely, you were baptized right there.” He pointed to a stone font on a pedestal at one side of the altar area.
Angelo walked along one side past the pews, pausing briefly at the table of candles before coming to the altar and crossing himself. Rick watched, wondering what was going through the man’s head. In Rome, he still attended the small church where he’d been baptized—though not with enough frequency to satisfy his mother—and his Roman priest today was the same man who had sprinkled water on his head back then. Between all the diplomatic assignments of his father, the family always made regular trips back to Rome to visit relatives and attend mass in the family church. His mother insisted on it, a continuity in Rick’s life that he’d never thought much about, that he took for granted. Angelo Rondini was not as fortunate. Now he was returning to a church he never knew in a town he’d left as an infant, trying to decide what it meant for his life now. Or if it even meant anything.
A door slammed on the right side of the chancel and a bent balding man appeared, dressed in black with a stained apron and carrying a broom and dustpan. When he saw the two men standing below him, his face turned to a puzzled and annoyed frown. After a moment of thought he put down the dustpan, walked to a corner, and began sweeping as if he were the only person in the church.
“Ask him if he can show us the baptism records,” said Angelo, his voice lowered as if the man understood English.
Rick walked up the three steps and approached the sweeper. “Excuse me, we’re visiting Voglia and would like, if it’s possible, to look up a name in the records of baptism. Would that be possible?”
The man stopped and stared, making Rick wonder for a moment if he was one of the many immigrants who had come to Italy from Eastern Europe, whose Italian was not up to the task. Then the man spoke.
“That’s impossible. I’m here by myself. You’ll have to come back another day.”
Rick interpreted for his boss.
“You know the local culture, Language Man. Work some magic.”
Rick turned back to the custodian, opened his overcoat, and reached into his pants pocket. From it he pulled his money clip and took two ten-Euro notes from it. “I’m sorry you are so busy, and we don’t want to take you from such important work. By the way, is that the donation box over there?”
The man looked at the money and back at Rick before nodding. Rick walked to the box, slipped the two folded notes through the slot, and walked back to Angelo.
The man held up a hand. “Perhaps I can find the time for such a good friend of the church.” He scurried over and leaned his broom against the wall. “Come this way, please.”
“Well done,” said Angelo.
“I’ll put it on my expense account.”
The door took them from the old church to a more recent addition, though still old by American standards. After passing a kitchen and large meeting hall, they came to a closed door where the man stopped to reach into his apron and pull out a set of keys. He found the one he was looking for, and with some difficulty got the lock open. If there were windows, they were shuttered, since the room was as dark as an ancient closet, with a musty smell to match. He reached inside the doorway and found the light switch. After some buzzing from the ceiling, an uncovered florescent tube came to life, revealing a small rectangular space, not quite a room but more than a cubicle. A wood desk was wedged between rows of stuffed shelves, but no chair. On the desk stood a
single lamp with a parchment shade that looked like it had come with the original building. The custodian looked at the floor, perhaps realizing that it had been too long since it had last been swept, and then pointed to the shelves, now bathed in a pale yellow light.
“They’re by year,” he said. “Turn out the light and close the door when you leave. It locks itself.” He disappeared down the hall and Rick wondered if he was on the way to empty the donation box.
“If they really are in chronological order, you should be easy to find,” said Rick as he stepped to the shelf. The first book he pulled down was a ledger that had been filled in by hand and dated to the year 1756. So there must have been another church on this site, or somewhere else in Voglia, before the present one. The items listed showed church income from donations and fees for marriages and other services, as well as expenses, everything from fixing the roof to stipends for the priest. Rick found it fascinating, but it wasn’t what they were looking for. He replaced the ledger, brushed the dust off his hands, and moved to another section of shelves. Here he found the baptism records. Angelo told him his birth date, and Rick started pulling down books.
In the period just after the war they changed from bound volumes to hole-punched sheets kept in notebooks, but still handwritten. Everything was recorded in the elaborate script of the time, full of curls and loops. He found the year, then the month, and began leafing carefully through the pages, each with columns for the date, name of the child, names of the parents and godparents, and the officiating priest.
“Here you are. It was about three weeks after your birthday.” Rick held his finger on the page and Angelo bent closer.
“It’s hard to read in this light.”
Rick pulled out his phone and activated the flashlight mode. The page came to life.
“There are my parents. Who are the other names?”
“These two are your godparents, the other is the priest.” He read the names.
“My mother’s sister and her husband, I think. They lived in Milan. I haven’t heard those names in years, since I was a kid.”
What would have made more sense would be that the brother from right there in Voglia, Enzo Rondini, had been Angelo’s godfather. But then Rick remembered his research in the archives of the Gazzetta. Angelo’s uncle wasn’t married yet. It would be logical that a married couple be godparents. Rick turned off the bright light but kept the phone in his hand. He aimed and clicked, and the flash momentarily lit up the page again.
“For your records, Mr. Rondini.”
“Good idea.”
Rick closed the book and returned it to its slot on the shelf. “Now to City Hall to find the actual birth record?”
“Lead the way.”
They followed the instructions they’d been given, turning out the light and closing the door behind them, before retracing their steps back to the door off the altar. The custodian was not immediately visible, but when they stepped down onto the floor, he could be seen along the side wall, putting his broom to use with slow, deliberate sweeps. Rick walked over and thanked him for the help. When he turned back he saw Angelo standing directly in front of the crucifix, his hands clasped across his chest, head bowed. After a few moments he raised his eyes and he crossed himself slowly. Was Angelo Rondini a religious man? It was not something that had come up in the few days they had been together and perhaps, because of that, Rick assumed the man was not a regular at mass. But why assume that? Your faith was not something that you chatted about, especially with someone you had just met. From what Rick just witnessed, Angelo appeared to be a practicing Catholic…or had decided to become one again.
The temperature had dropped since they’d gone into the church. The sky was blocked by a pewter layer of clouds which stopped any beams of sun from reaching the ground. Rick and Angelo buttoned their overcoats and walked to the curb. A battered car passed in front of them, coming from the market. The man driving was arguing with the woman next to him, and in the rear seat a small boy looked through the car window, trying to ignore the dispute. His grim eyes moved quickly from Rick to Angelo to the church behind them. Rick watched the car as it turned off the street into a road through the fields.
They crossed the street to where Marco and the policeman stood next to their respective vehicles. Rick told the two men where he and Angelo were going next and the policeman gave him a loose salute, as if he didn’t take this bodyguard duty very seriously. Marco, in contrast, was somber, reflecting the mood of his boss. The Municipio was only a few doors down, confirming that most community activity was conveniently located on this one street. Government, church, a bar, and a market—on this day, it was all a resident would need. On side streets, houses and the occasional two-story duplex had been built on acreage that had been open fields. There had to be a pizzeria, a requirement for a population this size, but likely it was somewhere on the periphery along with a small agribusiness or two. The people living in this town had to work somewhere; they couldn’t all be public employees or pensioners.
The municipal building had a yellowed drabness that went with its vocation. Two of the parking spaces in front of it, reserved for city vehicles, were empty. Of the other four, two held small sedans: a shiny red Mini and a Fiat Cinquecento. They were dwarfed by two pickup trucks next to them, their fenders and tires caked with dark mud. Rick and Angelo went up the steps, through the door, and into a large room that served as a waiting area. Wooden chairs, perhaps dating to the inaugural year, ran along one side, their line broken only by a door in the middle. Two men who were dressed like they belonged with the trucks, sat and talked quietly, each with an official-looking folder in hand. The opposite wall was taken up by two more doors and a long bulletin board cluttered with decrees, announcements, and other official government business. Rick wondered if anyone ever read them. Maybe, when people got bored waiting for their bureaucrat, they got up and wandered over. At the opposite wall from the entrance sat a man in a blue uniform. The desk in front of him was bare except for a telephone with a rotary dial, another vestige of the building’s inauguration. Rick walked to the desk.
“Birth records?”
The man jerked a thumb toward a stairwell at the corner of the room. “Second floor.”
There was no elevator, and Angelo took his time climbing the flights of steps, stopping at the top to catch his breath. The stairs had brought them to another room equal in size to the foyer directly below it, but with a lower ceiling. Here only a few empty chairs rested against the walls. There were more doors than on the first floor and they were all closed. The side of the room facing the street was made up of windows as well as a glass door that led to a small balcony, giving the room most of its light. The balcony must have been used at one time for political speeches, but that custom had gone out of fashion and now it served as a place to anchor the flag. Rick scanned the names on the door and found the one he was looking for: Anagrafe.
Followed by Angelo, he pushed open the door and almost immediately was stopped by a counter that ran the length of the room. Behind it were shelves filled with records, as would be expected in the office that kept track of the community’s marriages, births, and deaths. He expected a cranky clerk to go along with the atmosphere of the place, but instead a woman appeared from behind the shelves, a kindly smile on her face. She was dressed in clerkly fashion in a blue skirt topped by a white blouse and dark cardigan sweater. Her glasses hung from leashes around her neck.
“Can I help you?”
“Thank you, yes,” answered Rick. “We would like to look up a birth record.”
She looked at Angelo and back at Rick, not understanding why the older man wasn’t talking. “Doing some genealogical research? I get that on occasion.”
“You could say so, yes. Signor Rondini is visiting from America, and he doesn’t speak Italian. I’m assisting him.”
“Ah.” She looked at Angelo as if he was
unable to speak at all, then turned back to Rick. “You wanted to look up a birth record? Everything is by year, of course, there is no way to search for specific names. Do you have the dates in mind?”
Rick told her.
“Interesting. There was a man in here recently looking for the same year.” Before Rick could respond, she disappeared behind the shelves.
“No problem?”
“No problem. She’s going to get the register from the year you were born.” He decided it wasn’t worth mentioning what she’d said. It was likely just a coincidence.
Angelo took a deep breath and leaned his elbows on the counter. “I had mixed feelings about coming to this town. It was something I had to do if I was going to return to Italy. My daughter insisted on it. But what I’m finding is a depressing village with not much past and a questionable future.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I’m reading too much into what we’ve seen so far.”
“You may well be, sir. This is a prosperous area. A bit drab, perhaps, especially on a day like this, but—”
“Drab? Tell me about it. This woman’s the first person we’ve seen who smiled. But I suppose it’s just as well. If it had been bustling and exciting, I might have wondered why my parents ever left.”
They heard some noise from behind the shelves and the clerk emerged carrying four books that she eased down onto the counter. The word “births” was written in faded lettering on the cover of the top one, under which were two dates indicating the period covered inside. She brushed dust from her fingers.
“These are the four for that year.” She pointed to the top of the stack. “This first one is from December of the previous year until mid-March. You can see how it’s arranged.” She smiled at Angelo. “You can take them to the end of the counter to read them. I’m sorry we don’t have room in here for a desk.”
A Funeral in Mantova Page 19