Giovanna's Navel

by Ernest Van der Kwast

  Shortly after World War I, South Tyrol had been annexed by Italy. Without so much as a by-your-leave, practically overnight, as if it was perfectly natural. For the population of South Tyrol, however, it was anything but: from now on they had to speak Italian, their children had to attend Italian schools, and their surnames had to be changed to Italian names.

  On the eve of World War II, people briefly entertained the hope that Mussolini might hand over South Tyrol to Hitler. But the two parties decided otherwise. And once this second war was over, too, and the borders were redrawn and reinstated, none was drawn between Italy and the annexed part of Austria. It was taken for granted that South Tyrol was part of Italy, although the vast majority of the people never did nor would ever feel Italian.

  The battle in South Tyrol reminded Ezio of his own battle in Lecce. He’d done everything in his power to win over the beautiful Giovanna. But it hadn’t been enough. Love can’t be forced. And what’s true for love, Ezio thought to himself, is true for culture.

  He decided to withdraw and never go into battle again.

  He became an apple picker.

  The last variety to be harvested is the Morgenduft. Ezio had arrived in Bolzano in the nick of time to pick the red-and-green apple with the white freckles. On his first day in the new town, he’d gone for a walk along the Adige. He’d seen extensive orchards. Most of the trees were without fruit, but some bore large, gleaming apples. He couldn’t help himself and entered one of the orchards. He was a man in the desert and this was the oasis he’d been seeking.

  Ezio wanted to pick an apple, but a farmer wearing a blue apron stopped him from doing so. He went and stood in front of the tree as if it was the most important thing in his life: his wife, his child.

  ‘I’d like an apple, if you don’t mind,’ Ezio said in Italian. He used a conditional clause.

  ‘You guys want everything,’ the farmer replied in the only Italian he knew: accusatory.

  Ezio was tired. He’d been on the road for three weeks. He didn’t want an argument. Nor did he want to leave, to flee again. ‘I’m worn out,’ is what he wanted to say. ‘I’m hungry and thirsty and my heart aches. All I want is an apple.’ But he couldn’t get the words out.

  The farmer stayed in front of the tree. Anyone wanting to pick his apples had to get past him first.

  Ezio’s eyes filled with tears. He’d travelled the length and breadth of Italy to leave the overflowing room behind, to make a fresh start. But now, here, more than a thousand kilometres from Lecce, he’d run into a man who wouldn’t let him have an apple.

  The farmer and Ezio continued to face off. But unlike the Berlucchi sisters when they fought over their bathing costume, the two men didn’t say a word. They stared at each other in silence, their eyes blazing with hatred and misunderstanding. And if they’d had more eyes, those would have been filled with sadness and regret. But whatever a man feels deep inside rarely rises to the surface.

  And then an apple fell from the tree behind the farmer. It was a round, almost entirely red apple, which had ripened in a good spot: high up in the tree, facing the sun, at the very tip of a branch. The piece of fruit, its skin as opaque as a glass frosted from cold, had been in the process of leaving the tree since early morning. Gravity had been tugging at the branch to which it was attached. The apple swayed in the wind, caught some rays of sun, sucked a final drop of moisture from the tree, and then the stalk broke f r e e from the tree.

  It fell

  and fell

  and fell

  and was cushioned by an unsuspecting dandelion.

  Next, the apple rolled a little way across the land before coming to a halt between Ezio and the farmer.

  They looked down, their gaze followed by their inner eyes. This is what the farmer saw: the autumn of 1935; machines and men with axes and saws; fifty thousand fruit trees being cut down to make way for Italian industry. Stumps, branches, and apples everywhere he looked — hundreds of thousands of apples. It was autumn, and the harvest hadn’t been brought in yet. He asked his father what was going on. But his father said nothing. His father said nothing for weeks, not even when all the wood and apples had been cleared away. Offices, warehouses, and workshops replaced the apple orchards. Homes were built for the workers. But this is what the farmer saw, and this is what his inner eyes kept seeing: a battlefield of fallen trees and apples.

  Ezio didn’t understand the film that was being played inside himself. The picture was blurred. It had something to do with time, and with an intimation of melancholy. For a split second he saw Giovanna on her doorstep. Her skin was bronzed, her freckled shoulders looked as though they wanted to be covered in kisses, and the tip of her nose was shiny.

  Then Ezio picked up the apple and handed it to the farmer. Ezio may have fled, but he was no thief.

  The farmer said something in German. He couldn’t say it in Italian.

  On the train, Ezio had learned two unpronounceable words: Guten Tag. That’s as far as his knowledge of the farmer’s language went. So he replied in Italian.

  Both burst out laughing. In the end, the farmer used gestures to tell Ezio to come with him to the farm. There Ezio was handed an apron.

  Later that same day, Ezio found himself picking apples with six other men in blue aprons. The following days, too, he climbed ladders, reached for apples that were as cold as ice, and gathered them in large wooden crates until the last fruits of the season had all been picked and the yellow leaves on the trees began to turn an orangey-red before taking on the brown hue of the earth on which they’d be falling.

  The mornings turned colder. Polar lights were visible. The farmer’s brother arrived from Petersberg, a village higher up in the mountains. He drove back and forth with steaming cow dung. Ezio and the other men spent a week shovelling shit under the apple trees. His skin was red with frost, his back a river of sweat. Ezio worked and shovelled, day-dreamed and reflected, but there were also times when he just listened to the landscape, leaning on his shovel, motionless as a rock — until a warning from the farmer drowned out the soft, ambient sounds.

  By now, Ezio knew a few German words. Sometimes he even used one himself. He might utter a very solemn Mahlzeit, for instance. It would make his co-workers laugh, and Ezio himself laugh even harder.

  Although his heart was still bleeding, he no longer felt the pain all day long.

  Then the brown leaves started falling. They landed on the manure and together formed a fertile layer. The snow that came whirling down from the sky three days later covered it all in a thick blanket. Underneath, the fermenting compost slowly seeped into the soil, where it would ultimately feed and fortify the trees.

  Winter had come.

  Never before had Ezio felt as cold as he did during that winter in South Tyrol. Whenever he could, he’d sit in front of the fire. The farmer sent him to his brother’s farm in Petersberg, where there were cows and Ezio could work without feeling cold. A cowshed is never cold.

  So this is how Ezio spent the winter: milking cows and warming himself on the large animals. He relished the calm, the isolation. And after a while he no longer minded the pungent odour of the dung. He got used to the smell that clung to his clothes, his hair, his skin, his bed — to everything. In turn, the cows grew used to the man who’d sometimes hug them for minutes at a time.

  Once the frost only materialised under the cloak of night and Ezio began to venture out of the cowshed more and more often, the time had come to return to Bolzano.

  Ezio learned to take care of the apple trees. He staked heavy branches and thinned the crown so the light could penetrate the centre of the trees. He was initiated in the art of pruning.

  ‘Gleichgewicht,’ the blue-aproned farmer said. ‘That’s what it’s all about.’

  Ezio nodded without really understanding the word. He’d taught himself to nod whenever there was something he didn’t ge
t. If he let on that he didn’t understand, a far more difficult explanation was likely to follow.

  The farmer continued. ‘Too much pruning harms the tree, which then yields just a small volume of large apples. But prune too little and all the energy goes to the tree itself and you end up with lots of small fruit.’

  Ezio let the stream of words wash over him.

  ‘Gleichgewicht,’ the farmer repeated, as if it were something sacred, before climbing into an apple tree and showing him how to prune. Ezio then climbed the neighbouring tree and pruned it.

  ‘Naturtalent,’ the farmer said. And again, Ezio nodded without understanding the word. It was only after relieving dozens of apple trees of their branches that he realised what the farmer meant. He had a natural sense for the balance of trees. He, Ezio Ortolani, had the gift of seeing and feeling which branches should or should not be removed. It was as if he recognised something of himself in the trees, as if the branches were an extension of the arms that had held Giovanna. He knew how much there was to lose.

  Later, the air became as sweet and delicate as butterfly wings. The buds of the pruned trees produced flowers. The blossoms were either completely white, or pink with white stripes. And the warm, high wind filled everybody with restlessness.

  ‘Our work is done,’ the farmer said to Ezio. ‘Now we pass the baton to the bees and the wind.’

  Nothing happened for days, except that the blossoms closed at night and opened again in the morning. But one day, the sweet air was charged with the buzzing of bees flying from tree to tree and from flower to flower.

  Ezio leaned his back against a trunk and listened to the sounds of the land. He discovered that some apple pollen travels three kilometres on a bee’s lower abdomen before pollinating the pistil of the blossom of a different species.

  ‘Sometimes the wind will carry pollen across dozens of kilometres,’ the farmer explained.

  Ezio knew all about the wind’s exceptional carrying capacity. The contents of the overflowing room in Lecce had managed to reach him all the way in Bolzano. The longing made its way through his entire body, making him feel as if the sun illuminated his soul. His imagination ran away with his memories. In his dreams, he secretly kissed Giovanna behind a tree.

  Once the bees had done their job and the flowers in the apple orchard had all been pollinated, the sweet air rose up in slow, syrupy wingbeats. Shortly afterwards, the blossoms fell to the ground and the scent of spring was gone.

  Summer was imminent: the light became warmer, the air heavier. Apples began to form on the branches. Ezio studied the various colours that appeared, disappeared, and stayed — yellow, green, pink, and red.

  Finally, the August day arrived when the first apple of the season was ready to be harvested: the bright ruby Summer Red. The trees were picked over three times: first the sun-facing side, a week later the shaded one, and then after four more days the shadow side again.

  The Summer Red was followed by the Gravenstein. Then came the Red Delicious, Idared, Winesap, and Granny Smith. And finally the Morgenduft again.

  Ezio picked from August until November; he picked the first and the last apples of the season.

  Summer and autumn.

  Year after year after year.

  Even during the years when South Tyrol was plagued by attacks — on army barracks, on overhead lines, on statues. These were the years when Sicilians were recruited to become carabinieri in Bolzano; the years when the battle flared up and culminated in the Feuernacht of 11 to 12 June 1961. During that night of fire, bombs destroyed thirty-seven electricity pylons and brought Northern Italy’s industry to a partial standstill. Interrogations, assaults, and murders followed.

  Throughout those years, Ezio Ortolani picked apples, warmed himself on cows, and tended trees until the apples were ripe and ready to be harvested. He let the conflict pass him by.

  But when the summer rains came and the river of time burst its banks, the distant memories rose to the surface again. On winter mornings, too, when Ezio sat on a milking stool and drifted away on the warm scent of milk, his mind wandered to the woman whose heart he’d been unable to conquer.

  One conflict remained — not the one between two people, but the one within a single person: regret. And although his eyesight had deteriorated over the years, his inner eyes began to see the film that was played inside him more and more sharply. And that film felt like a stabbing pain.

  Ezio Ortolani had stopped picking apples years ago. Even apple pickers retire. Now he was waiting for death, for Charon’s boat, which had already ferried off his friends. But instead of death, a letter had arrived.

  Ezio reread the bottom half. It was as though he couldn’t understand the text, as though the meaning of the words eluded him. ‘I love you,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I love you.’ He got out of his chair and, with the letter in his hand, walked to the window, to the hallway, to the kitchen, all the while whispering, ‘I love you.’ Then, finally, the realisation hit home: Giovanna Berlucchi loved him. Giovanna, the girl who’d enchanted him with her navel and pierced his heart with the harpoon of first love. It had taken sixty years — the big middle section of his life, a slice before, and a considerable part thereafter — but now she’d answered the question that his mind had turned into the big riddle of his life.

  As a boy, he’d felt unable to stay in Lecce; he’d felt compelled to flee, further and further north. As a young man, he’d thought there was no way back. It had nothing to do with pride. Ezio was inexperienced, unaware there was a way back. Now, nearly a lifetime later, he knew there was a way, but he’d come to believe in the irreversibility of things.

  Some evenings Ezio thought that Giovanna had been ferried away as well, that unbeknown to him she’d made the crossing. He mourned her death, but it was the same sadness that washed over him when he thought of her bare feet and tanned shoulders. Was this the fate he’d inadvertently assigned to her? Whether she was young or in her eighties, whether she was dead or not, hadn’t she always been a ghost drifting through his memories, in the underworld of his imagination? He’d failed to act. Like a lazy, old Orpheus he’d sat in his chair, staring into the dark night while hearing Giovanna’s voice call out his name.

  There’d been one moment when he could have turned back, one second of mercy in which he could have looked over his shoulder without losing her.

  ‘Please stay,’ Giovanna had said. Her eyes were red. They were standing face to face at Lecce station. He wanted to wipe away her tears, wrap his arms around her. But instead he made his way to the train, unable to stay.

  ‘Ezio,’ she said.

  He stepped onto the footboard of his carriage.

  She yelled his name with tears spilling into her mouth. ‘Ezio! Ezio!’

  Little did he know — only Giovanna knew, and even she only half-knew, because the full understanding, the sense of loss, the never-ending longing, came much later — that all he had to do was turn around. She’d have come running and she’d have flung her arms around him. The whistle would have sounded, but it wouldn’t have haunted her memories. Instead, Ezio boarded the train and Giovanna walked out of the station, destined to hear that shrill signal every silent day of her life.

  Ezio, the old, the lonely, folded the letter. His hands, the hands that had picked thousands of apples and extracted thousands of litres of milk, were trembling. Had it all been for nothing — the flight, the isolation, the life among the trees and the cows? His hands were shaking just as they used to when he held hers. He’d hoped that one day he’d be as hard as steel, but he still felt the arrow in his chest.

  There had been a time when she wasn’t uppermost on his mind. He was in his fifties then; he had friends, and he wasn’t unhappy. He spent his weekends hiking in the Dolomites, while in summer he climbed their three-thousand-metre peaks. The views, with the Alps in the distance, were awe-inspiring. He signed his name in the r
egisters beside the big summit crosses: Ezio Ortolani, followed by the date and sometimes even an exclamation. Grande! He was often the last of his group to leave, lingering by the cross, taking in his surroundings: the bare tree tops, the mighty depths, the silence. None of his friends knew about Giovanna. He’d never mentioned her to anyone. They saw him eat, drink, and be merry in huts sporting the German names of flowers. He wasn’t unhappy, yet he was far from complete.

  His heart had started bleeding on the train, a loud steam train spewing out smoke and soot. It had been a dark day in October. The sun had gone into hiding, the people were quiet. Ezio looked out of the carriage window, past his own reflection. He saw vast, bare fields, alternating with the locomotive’s smoke. And he saw Giovanna’s red eyes and he heard her cries. He smelled her skin, felt her hands, and tasted the sea on her lips.

  His journey ended up lasting three weeks. He was eager to leave Lecce behind — behind the horizon and in memory — but the noisy train he’d boarded went no further than Foggia.

  Taken aback, Ezio got off and followed the other passengers along the platform. On the station concourse, he tried to get information about train times. A man in a dark-green uniform pointed to a board, in front of which a bunch of old men had gathered.

  Ezio made his way there and overheard the gripes of the people around him. ‘I can’t read those letters,’ someone said. ‘They’re too small.’ Another man complained, ‘I can’t see them at all.’ When Ezio finally got close enough, he read that the next northbound train was due to depart in two days’ time.

  ‘Please stay,’ he heard Giovanna’s voice say.

  But he walked away without looking over his shoulder. Feeling restless, he left the tiny station of Foggia. He was hungry, weary, and cold. In summer, he could have slept in the open air — under a pomegranate tree or under the starry sky. Instead, Ezio roamed the streets of Foggia, in search of a warm place where he could put his feet up. His eyes scrutinised the houses, seeing the occasional light or shadowy shape behind the windows.