Nonno had come to Calabria from south of Messina, where he grew up, after he lost his family in the volcanic eruption of 1904. He was still a teenager at the time, but managed to establish himself in Reggio as a sword-fisherman, which he did until an earthquake hit a few years later. The strait was washed with tidal-size waves, and his crew lost their boat. The albergo he lived in was miraculously untouched, and he paid for his luck by helping to rebuild the town. The people he met doing so later helped him to open his market, the one Bernardo would someday take over.
Nonno never let Bernardo or his father forget this story; its theme of steadfastness in the face of disaster was intended as a guiding principle for generations of the family to live by. But so persistent was the old man that the story seemed, above all, like a curse. Bernardo felt like he’d spent his entire life anticipating a catastrophe.
Of course there were other problems with the painting. The spearman’s legs didn’t seem to be part of his body, for one. They looked like a marble pedestal on which his arms and head had been precariously set. And the boat itself, which should have been listing dangerously to starboard, appeared only to be a little larger on one side. But the main thing was the undeniable and corrupting absence of hope, which Bernardo could not dispel, neither in this painting nor anywhere else.
Bernardo pointed his cigarette at the painting. Sorry, Nonno, he thought, I’m going to let you down again.
* * *
Nonno’s market was called Alimentari Patti. Bernardo’s father, a quiet, beaten man Bernardo never really felt he knew, worked there. Later, Bernardo did too, and for a few years after the war, all three generations ran the market side by side. Those were lean times—the old man developed a desperate paranoia about Communists, and he chased dozens of regular customers away with his caustic and unpredictable rants. Bernardo was often sent by his father to seek these people out and pacify them so they would come back. Nonno died in 1948, and for a while the shop prospered. And then Bernardo’s father died of a heart attack, sitting in his chair during the night, and Bernardo was left to run the business and care for his mother, Mona, who had taken ill and couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get out of bed. He was twenty years old.
For a while he wanted only to leave, perhaps go to Rome, where he could go to school and get a job. But that would mean leaving his mother or bringing her with him, and she was unlikely to agree either way. And then he started making money. The tourist trade was picking up in Reggio, and the market had a good location, just off the Corso Garibaldi. Foreign faces began to appear, and he added sandwiches, light meals, sidewalk tables. Before he knew it, running the market was his life, and in comparison to staying at home with his mother, a fairly appealing way of passing the time.
He fell in love one summer. There was an American movie at the cinema, Double Indemnity. Maria was sitting alone two rows in front of him. He watched her watch the movie. Afterward, they talked about it, about themselves and each other, until late into the night. They saw one another every day for months, and finally married in the same church his parents had. Mona left the house and her bed in order to go to the wedding, the last time she ever would.
Bernardo was quickly in over his head. Maria proved demanding and bored at home, conscious of prevailing fashions and desperate to stay in style, to offset, she said, the indignity of working in the market. When money ran low she blamed him, complained he smelled of onions and meat and foreigners, and that his business wasn’t classy enough to draw the kind of customers that would make them rich.
So he borrowed money to renovate: he bought new tables, an awning; he rebuilt the facade and had a new sign made. His idea was to hire new employees to handle an expanded stock, a waiter and a butcher. He would manage books in the mornings and run the restaurant end of things in the afternoon. He would design a new menu. The plan worked: the money came from family friends who remembered Nonno and wished his grandson well, and though Bernardo hated to involve these outsiders in his business, he had paid them off within a year and established the market as a place worth going to. Maria had gotten pregnant, and things were looking up.
They named the baby Antonio, after the grandfather it would never meet. He was a quiet, brooding child, much like the elder Antonio. Many years later, when Maria was dead and Antonio, not yet twenty, had fled to Montana with an American girl named Lila, Bernardo would remember that time as the best he had had, better even than the winter afternoons he’d spent sitting in folding chairs in the back of the market with his father and Nonno, listening to stories about the disasters and the war. He and Maria worked side by side preparing a room for the baby, and even their hours in the market together were happy. Their heads were clear and they were full of energy. Those were good days.
* * *
When he woke up he could see the first flickers of daylight glowing around the shade. He jumped up. What time was it? Five o’clock, according to the clock in the kitchen. The phone hadn’t rung once during the night. He checked his wallet, still half-asleep. There was enough money for a cab, and he called for one.
Waiting, he realized this was it, he would never see the house again or the things in it. He walked through once more: past the bedroom where he first made love, quietly, to his wife; to the room, an unused guest room, where his mother had taken her time dying. He stood a moment in the hall, looking at photos of Antonio, as a baby peeking out from between the bars of his crib; in his filthy soccer uniform, holding a ball. His high school portrait. There was one of him sitting on a fountain, the last Bernardo had taken before he left for the States. That day they had walked around like tourists, eating gelato, taking in the sights. It wasn’t much fun. Bernardo kept trying to talk him out of leaving, out of jumping into marriage, and Antonio told him to stop talking about it, but Bernardo couldn’t help himself. So his son said nothing to him for most of the day, and that’s how they parted, without a proper goodbye, without saying what they felt about one another.
And maybe this was a good thing. Bernardo wasn’t sure he wanted to know what his son thought about him. Probably that he was weak, that whatever he touched was ruined. Now they exchanged infrequent letters, and it was clear to Bernardo his son was happy, finally, in America. He wondered how happy he would be to see his father in person.
He switched off the light in the studio and looked out the window. His cab was there, waiting. He walked out, leaving the door unlocked behind him, and an envelope on the counter with Paula’s name on it. She had wanted to move into his house, and now, at last, she could. Inside there was the house key, and a note that read: It’s yours if you want it. I’m sorry. Bernardo.
* * *
On the way to the airport, the cab passed the fountain where he’d taken Antonio’s picture, past the rows of shops and churches and restaurants he’d known his entire life, that he’d been inside a hundred times each. It seemed inconceivable that he was leaving them, that he could have an existence separate from them. He felt his heart pulling from his chest, stuck as it was to this place.
No: this was foolish. He had given up such thoughts with his mistakes.
They passed, too slowly, the smoldering row of buildings where the market used to stand. He looked in spite of himself, keeping his face pulled back into the darkness of the cab. The wooden sign hung black and warped from the bent wrought-iron holder he’d installed years before. The two wide front windows and the glass pane on the door were shattered, and from them, detectable even through the closed cab window, issued the smell of meat and cheese cooked and consumed by the fire. He knew that half a mile from here the brand-new restaurant he had borrowed money to build stood unfinished and empty. It would stay like that until someone had the wherewithal to complete the job or tear it down. The land it stood on wasn’t his, and with his major asset gone, the wood, the brick, the nails, everything, belonged to his creditors.
He had been uninsured for years. This kind of recklessness would have been unthinkable to Nonno, with his carefully cultivat
ed circles of personal and business connections, his maniacal aversion to risk. But for Bernardo, every element of his life entrusted to someone else was a piece of himself lost forever to the world. He thought the new restaurant would let him take those pieces back—by creating his own success, being his own man—but it did just the opposite. Contracts, loans, permits, each spread him a little thinner, until he was wishing he could just have the market back and forget the new place completely. Then the market burned down.
He wasn’t there when it started. A couple of part-time cooks, just kids, were grilling themselves sandwiches after hours and got into a fight. They took it outside. By the time it was settled, there was no inside left to go back to. Most of the market was gone by the time Bernardo arrived. He stood on the opposite sidewalk, listening to the fire roar through the building, as the potter’s vessels in the shop next door exploded one by one and traffic jammed to a halt at the ends of the block.
There was no one to blame but himself—he knew the business had been getting away from him. He barely knew the kids he’d hired. In the end, after more than forty years as a small businessman, he could no longer deny he wasn’t cut out for business. Watching the market burn, he felt a strange calm settle over him. It wasn’t just his capital going up in smoke, but the entire lie he’d been living, the life he’d gotten himself into by mistake and had never been able to see his way out of. It was a mess of connections and obligations, finally gone.
Already he knew he wouldn’t return. They would come after him sooner or later, but he didn’t have any intention of being there for them to find. It was an act of cowardice, pure and simple. But never, he guessed, had cowardice felt so invigorating, so purifying and true.
* * *
So why, at the airport, couldn’t he stop shaking? He found a bank of pay telephones, then dug in his pocket for his son’s phone number. He didn’t know if it still worked. Antonio might have moved. He knew only three things about Antonio’s life in America: his phone number, his wife’s and daughter’s names, and that he owned and managed a carpet store. Carpet! Who could have imagined? Bernardo didn’t even like carpet in a house. He dug a phone card from his wallet, dialed for an international operator, who put the call through. He tried to breathe himself calm while the telephone clicked and stuttered. It was difficult to keep in mind that nobody would find him, that nobody knew where he was.
The phone started ringing, once, twice, six times. He was about to hang up when a little girl answered, so clear he could swear she was right beside him. “Hello?”
“Hello, your father is home?” The English was clumsy and misshapen on his tongue.
“He’s at work.”
“Ah…your mother?”
“Please can I say who’s calling?”
“Say I am…I am your father’s father.”
There was a long pause on the other end. “Really? This is my grandpa?”
“Yes.”
“Are you coming to see us?”
“Ah, yes, very soon.”
“Are you in Italy?”
“Yes, I am in Italy. Are you…Is that Angela?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I talk to your mother?”
“Why?”
“Well, ah, I talk to her, and…
“I mean why are you coming?”
“To see you.”
That seemed to do the trick. He heard the sound of a phone being set down. How old was she now? He didn’t think he’d touched a child in thirty years.
“Hello?” came a voice.
“Lila!”
“Bernardo, is that you?”
“This is me.”
“My God, Bernardo. We were thinking we’d never hear from you again.” She sounded, beyond all reason, relieved. And so comfortable with his name, as if they’d only just parted. Her voice was as he remembered it from so long ago, perhaps more weary.
“I am in aeroporto, in Reggio,” he said. “Tomorrow I come to America.”
“Marshall? You’re coming here?”
“Today Rome and Seattle, tomorrow Marshall.”
She grunted, the sound of the words trying to form themselves. “But how…Why are you coming? I mean, we’re thrilled, Antonio will be thrilled to have you, but why so sudden?”
“I have a little trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“I have no money. I…It’s no good here.”
She sighed, and it was a little while before she spoke. “We could have helped you, you know. If you’d asked.”
“No, no, I only want, ah, a vacation. You know?”
“Sure. I understand. You’re coming tomorrow?”
“Yes.” He gave her the time, the flight number. “That is your time, not Italy?”
“No, that’s our time.”
And then there was a long, empty space, which he knew she was filling with second thoughts. Why not? Of course they wanted to see him, but on their terms only, in a way that wouldn’t disrupt the fine and quiet life they’d made for themselves. It wouldn’t take long for them to start asking when he would go back to Italy, when he would straighten everything out and get on with it. He wondered if there were other places he could go. Mexico, maybe. It would always be warm. He’d heard you could live like a king for next to nothing.
“I go soon,” he said.
“I guess we’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“You tell Antonio.”
“Of course, Bernardo.” She took a deep breath. “And please don’t worry. We’ll help you with whatever you need, okay?”
“Okay. Tell Angela goodbye from Nonno.”
“I will.”
“Okay.”
* * *
He almost changed his mind. He sat in a plastic chair in the terminal, a discarded newspaper crunching underneath him, and almost decided to stay in Italy. It wouldn’t be so hard, would it? To leave the terminal, perhaps try to get a refund for his ticket; to climb into a cab and have it bring him back to the house, where it was still too early for anyone to have discovered him gone, where he could settle back into the old problems and their familiar contours. Who could expect, after all, a truly simple life? Paula would forgive him, and he would make back the money he owed, maybe even be able to retire. None of it seemed so bad.
He went back to the phones. It would be easy enough to call her, wouldn’t it? She would be sleeping now, or perhaps even awake already, worried about what might have happened to him. He held the receiver at his ear, doing nothing. The terminal was getting crowded now, as the plane was preparing to take off. A slick-haired, middle-aged businessman in a tailored suit moved up behind Bernardo, too close, and looked at his watch. He wanted the phone.
Bernardo dialed. It rang once, twice, five times, before she answered.
“Pronto?”
Paula’s voice was full of sleep, and before the word had finished leaving her mouth, he knew he could say nothing, could never admit to this awful mistake. She had probably not given him another thought.
“Pronto!” Awake now. And then a sigh, and: “Bernardo?”
He reached out and cut off the connection, then took a deep breath. He could tell from the sound of his name, she didn’t want to hear from him.
“Grandpa,” somebody was saying. He turned. It was the businessman. “Are you going to use that? Or are you going to stand there playing with it?”
“I…I’m going to use it.”
The man had a cigarette lit and was tapping ash onto the floor. “Well?”
Bernardo dialed again, this time automatically. The number of the market. He’d given it to so many people, had called it countless times from home or from out of town, to see how business was going in his absence. Always fine. Of course there was only a taped message now. He listened to it play through several times. This number has been disconnected. It was like listening to the eulogy at his own funeral. There was no going home. The only friends he had left were the ones he’d borrowed money from. A cloud of smoke filled t
he air around his face.
“Hey! Grandpa! Move along!”
Bernardo hung up the phone but left his hand on the receiver. He turned to the man. “Give me a cigarette,” he said.
The man frowned. “Why should I give you a cigarette? Get off the phone!”
“If you don’t give me a cigarette, I’ll stand here until you go away. Give me a cigarette and you can use the phone.”
There were two other telephones. A young woman cried bitterly into one, saying, “Yes, but…” over and over. A short man had the other. He listened intently, nodding and saying nothing. The businessman glared at both of them but neither noticed. Bernardo said, “You’re a businessman, right? That’s my deal. One cigarette for one telephone.”
The man’s eyes brimmed over with rage. “Motherfucker,” he said, and handed Bernardo a cigarette. They were imported, Spanish. The smoke smelled harsh and sweet.
“A light, please.” Bernardo kept his hand on the phone.
The businessman thrust out a silver lighter and flicked it to life before Bernardo’s face. Bernardo put the cigarette into his mouth and drew the flame to it. He inhaled and exhaled before releasing the receiver. “Here,” he said to the businessman, who was already crowding toward the telephone, “you can have this too.” And he handed him the spent phone card and took a seat near the terminal gate.
For the first time since the fire, he felt ready to leave.
* * *
He had flown to the south of France or to Palermo, but it had been some time now and he had forgotten what it was like. Flying was not like the train, and especially not like a car. The land did not scroll by just outside the window; familiar landmarks did not rise up on the horizon ahead and vanish behind. Flying was a kind of stasis, a nothingness a person simply existed in. There was no control, above all no sense of travel.
And for this Bernardo was grateful. He could pretend, in the air, that he was not himself, wasn’t anybody at all. Beside him slept a thick-faced man in a suit, his snoring low and steady like an enormous car’s, his head lolling toward Bernardo’s shoulder, whereupon Bernardo would push it away. How could a man sleep on a forty-five-minute flight? Finally the head came to rest on Bernardo and he left it there.
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