The Florentine Bridge

by Vanessa Carnevale

  ‘Tell me about your sister,’ I say as we stroll through a cobblestoned street lined with ceramic shops. ‘You don’t talk about the accident much.’

  ‘Rosetta? She’s several years older than me. I have two nephews, Gianluca and Michele. They’re six and four.’

  ‘You haven’t been back to see them since the funeral. Why?’

  He shrugs. ‘She wants things to go back to how they used to be, where I’d visit every month. I needed room to breathe, to get my head around what happened. Especially since …’

  I question him with my eyes.

  He shifts his weight from one leg to another and then clears his throat. ‘I was in the car with them, Mia,’ he says, a pained expression forming on his face.

  ‘You were in the accident?’

  He swallows hard. ‘I was the only one who got out alive. Without a scratch. How is that fair?’

  ‘I guess we just don’t get to decide these things.’

  We reach Rosetta’s apartment, and Luca rings the doorbell. He takes a step back from the door, runs his hand through his hair and straightens the collar on his shirt.

  ‘It’ll be fine. She’s your sister,’ I say, giving his hand a squeeze.

  ‘Chi è?’ asks the voice on the intercom.

  ‘Rosetta, sono Luca.’

  ‘Luca?’ The intercom goes silent, and a few moments later we hear the clapping of feet down the stairs. The door clicks open and Rosetta flings herself at her brother, kissing his cheeks, stepping back and hugging him again. Her sleek brown hair falls around her shoulders. She has his eyes. Brown, intense, perfectly rounded.

  Once she calms down, she notices my presence and smiles.

  ‘Who’s your friend, Luca?’

  ‘This is Mia.’

  She kisses me on both cheeks. ‘Please, come in, the boys will be home any minute. They’re out playing soccer with Francesco.’

  Rosetta fumbles around in the kitchen, pulling out a tray and biscuits. I find it amusing that every Italian kitchen has a drawer for special food, not to be touched by anyone, only to be used for visitors. The tray is, of course, a mandatory part of the formalities.

  ‘Caffè?’ asks Rosetta.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, making sure I don’t offend.

  Francesco and the boys arrive home as we’re finishing our espressos. Once the boys recognise their uncle, they hurl themselves at him. Luca lifts them into the air one by one. Francesco shakes Luca’s hand, gives him two kisses on the cheek and pats him on the back, telling him how great it is to see him. Luca makes his introductions again and the boys ask me lots of questions about life in Australia, like whether I own a pet koala and whether kangaroos roam suburban streets. I can’t help noticing the disappointment in their eyes when they discover my answer to both questions is no. The conversation turns to some heavier stuff between Luca and Rosetta about how life has been since the funeral, so when the boys ask me if I’d like to play video games with them, I leave the kitchen to join them, glad to give Luca and his sister the space they need to talk about things. Just like Rosetta and Francesco, the boys don’t speak English so I put my Italian to the test.

  ‘Are you and Luca getting married?’ asks Michele.

  ‘Idiot! You don’t ask people those things. It’s called personal,’ says Gianluca.

  ‘Are you?’ asks Michele intently.

  ‘Maybe one day.’ I laugh. ‘I’m a bit young to be getting married.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Almost twenty.’

  ‘Wow, that’s old.’

  ‘I bet I can still beat you at this game,’ I reply.

  Sometime later, after I’ve lost every game against the boys, Rosetta calls me into the kitchen for another coffee. Traces of smudged mascara lie under her glassy eyes and when I search Luca for answers he nods, letting me know that everything’s okay.

  ‘Zio Luca, Mia said you’re gonna get married.’

  Shocked, I almost drop my coffee cup. I shake my head, wishing the ground would swallow me right here, right now.

  Luca starts laughing. ‘Oh, did she? Well, I already know that one day I’m going to marry that girl, smarty pants,’ he says, poking him in the stomach and throwing him over his knee to tickle him.

  Rosetta smiles into her coffee cup. Francesco raises his eyebrows. I sit there, feeling the heat in my cheeks fire up.

  Luca looks at me and winks. In an effort to mask my embarrassment, I grip my coffee cup with an unnatural tightness and I don’t loosen it until Rosetta lifts the cup from my hands.

  ‘Luca was telling me you’re an artist.’

  ‘I like to paint mostly.’

  ‘You should see her work, Rosetta. This girl is amazing. She could turn anything into a work of art. Us sitting around here, for example. She could go home and paint every single detail of it with such perfection and vividness that you’d think it was a living, breathing thing.’

  Rosetta smiles at my embarrassment. ‘Sounds like someone’s smitten,’ she whispers to me. ‘Come, let’s chat.’

  I follow her into the kitchen, where she places the tray of coffee cups beside the sink. She leans against the sink, drops her head and takes a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve been worried about him, Mia. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him, you know.’

  I frown as I try to work out what she means.

  ‘I didn’t realise how he’d been feeling about being the only one to survive the accident. He told me that he was never able to really understand why he was the lucky one until he met you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I’m so glad you both stopped by.’ She looks up at the clock. ‘You know, it’s getting late. You two should stay for dinner and head off in the morning.’

  ‘That sounds great. Really great.’

  She reaches for her phone. ‘Let me make a few phone calls. We can’t have anyone missing out or we’ll never hear the end of it.’

  Luca enters the kitchen and wraps his arms around me from behind. ‘You know who she’s calling, right?’

  ‘Uh, no?’

  ‘The whole family.’

  ‘You mean, like extended family?’

  He laughs. ‘This place will be full within a couple of hours. Come with me. I want to show you something,’ he says, leading me into another room. He takes a photo album and sits down next to me on the sofa. ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Your mother. She’s beautiful. You have her eyes,’ I say, looking up at him. ‘And this must be your dad.’

  He nods. ‘I wish you could have known them.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘I should have come to see Rosetta sooner. She needed me as much as I needed her.’

  ‘You’re here now,’ I say, squeezing his hand. I can’t help thinking about my own parents and how I still haven’t told them how much I miss them, how much they mean to me, how much I wish I had handled things better. I make a mental note to call them as soon as we return to Florence.

  Luca rubs his cheeks and inhales. ‘After the funeral, I was so angry that something like this could have happened to our family. My parents were here, and then suddenly … they weren’t, and I became a different person overnight. I couldn’t find a single reason to smile. It was like I lost interest in everything. Stella and Paolo tried so hard, setting me up on dates, insisting I go out with them, but I just wanted to be left alone. On my days off, I’d get on my scooter and ride, not knowing or even caring where I’d end up. I’d sleep on a beach in Livorno, or sit on the steps of a church in Assisi, and contemplate what it all meant—what the reason was for everything. Why we live, why we die, why bad things happen to good people. For so long, I was desperate for answers, an explanation, or at the very least, some kind of reassurance that losing both my parents happened for one good reason.’

  ‘And? What changed?’

  ‘One day, I somehow ended up in the Sistine Chapel. There’s a fresco on the ceiling there, painted by Michelangelo. Two hands, fingers
almost touching …’

  ‘The Creation of Adam,’ I whisper, thinking back to the painting I’d seen in my mind’s eye during my meditation before leaving for Italy. ‘God reaching out to Adam.’

  ‘That’s the one. There was something about that painting that showed me I could either keep spiralling downwards, or I could move forward, towards life again. I suppose I got tired of pushing and fighting something I knew I’d never be able to change. I’d been moving away from life, from the pain, from the confusion, from all the things I wanted to understand but failed to. And shortly after I stopped searching for answers, I met you. When you told me you were an artist, I couldn’t help but think about that fresco. You made me feel alive again, Mia.’

  ‘I’m so sorry you lost them. And that you’ve been hurting like this.’

  ‘I’m fine. Honestly. You’ve made life better.’

  Soon the kitchen is buzzing. I’m peeling potatoes and Rosetta is pouring jars of tomato sauce into an enormous pot. Francesco enters the room and starts extending the kitchen table, while Luca helps by bringing in some extra chairs.

  The doorbell rings. Michele opens the door to greet the guest.

  ‘Zia Angela!’ he says.

  ‘That’s my aunt from the apartment downstairs. My mother’s sister. I guarantee she’ll have a cherry ricotta tart with her,’ says Luca.

  Sure enough, when she enters the kitchen, she’s carrying a basket in one hand and an unbaked tart in the other. She shoves the goods into Francesco’s arms and slides across the room to Luca, flinging her thick arms around him. She then proceeds to drown him in a sea of affectionate kisses. Luca winks at me from her loving embrace.

  ‘So good to see you, Zia,’ he tells her in his hometown’s dialect. I have to work a little harder to understand them. Luca’s aunt pinches his cheek before flinging her arms around him once more.

  ‘And who is this beauty?’ she asks, glancing at me and then back to Luca.

  ‘I’m Mia,’ I say, extending my arm. She ignores it and instead gives me a dose of her affectionate treatment, as if I’m part of the family, too. There is a floral scent to her, but also a floury one, as evidenced by the apron she is wearing.

  She reaches for her tart and says, ‘Just how you like it, Luca!’ He reaches for a plump cherry and she slaps his hand away, heading straight for the oven, where she slides it in with gusto. She then moves towards the kitchen sink, where she washes her hands and begins unpacking bags of flour and loose eggs from the basket she’s brought with her.

  ‘Rosetta! Pass me the sugar, please! And the vanilla!’ she orders. ‘Mia, you can crack the eggs. Eight of them. That bowl over there.’

  I glance at Luca, whose face is lit up with amusement. ‘Got it,’ I say, raising my eyebrows.

  Francesco hands Luca an olive pitter and they sit at the table filling bowls of green olives for antipasto.

  ‘Good harvest last year?’ asks Luca.

  ‘Average. We missed you,’ replies Francesco, pressing down on the pitter.

  Luca pops an olive in his mouth and nods my way, explaining, ‘It was a tough year. It hailed.’

  Someone asks about the soccer then and the kitchen fills with a heated back-and-forth discussion about the scores. Luca’s right. Within a few hours, cousins, aunts and uncles laden with dishes of the warm and cold variety, as well as sweet and savoury, fill the modest apartment. The feast ensues, and I think about how much love is infused in those dishes and how food can bring an entire family together. I’m told to try everything, and just when I think I can’t fit anything else in, Luca grabs a fork and passes me a slice of his aunt’s tart.

  ‘You need to try this,’ he says. My mouth fills with the tart flavour of the ruby-red jewels, offset by the delicateness and smooth texture of the ricotta.

  ‘It’s so good!’ I say, smiling into his eyes.

  For coffee and after-dinner drinks, we move into the lounge room, which is filled with a cacophony of music, laughter and lively conversation. There is the telling of jokes I cannot comprehend, but I’m not perturbed by this in the slightest. The hand gestures offer enough amusement for me. Luca’s uncle picks up an accordion and entertains us with his performance. A few voices, dripping with the sound of one drink too many, chime in with lyrics I can’t understand, and then Luca’s nonno, who is elderly, takes me by the hand and leads me to the centre of the room, where he twirls me around and begins dancing, leading the way so expertly that I have little time to think about what I’m doing. All I know is that this is fun, so when he looks at me with a smile on his face, I find myself grinning back at him. Applause follows, and he takes a bow and kisses my hand before leading me back to my chair. Breathless, I sit down and look for Luca. There he is, on the other side of the room, smiling at me in admiration. This is his family in all their glory, and in this space of joy and connection with each other, I think to myself that we must come back and do this again sometime.

  The next morning, after a tearful goodbye in Orvieto with promises to return sooner rather than later, we take the scenic route along the coast, stopping frequently in the various seaside towns like Sperlonga, with its whitewashed houses and alleys and clear waters brimming with tourists escaping the sweltering Rome heat. We reach Positano just as the sun is setting behind the Lattari Mountains. The coastline is surrounded by magnificent cliffs, dripping with magentacoloured bougainvillea, and it looks as though someone has picked up the pastel-coloured buildings and stuck them on the side of each limestone cliff.

  We find a spot on a private stretch of beach, where we watch the fishing boats light up the sea before their weary owners retire them for the evening. The scent of tanning oil and sticky bodies lingers in the air. The light breeze settles on my bare skin, reviving childhood memories of how I used to love licking the salt off my skin after swimming in the sea. Those were the carefree summers of endless ice creams and the absence of any kind of preoccupation other than urgency to reach the beachfront from our coastal abode each morning.

  I lick my lips and the back of my wrist for a taste of childhood innocence. Luca flashes me a look of curiosity.

  ‘I want to be in there,’ I say, staring into the sea. I flick off my sandals. ‘Race you in.’

  Luca tears off his shoes and t-shirt at lightning speed, catches up to me and grabs me around the waist, before pulling me into the water with him. I resurface with a gasp, and fling my arms around his neck, searching for his lips, my eyelids still heavy with water.

  He whispers into my ear, ‘If this is what the sea air does to you, I like it.’

  ‘I love our salty water kisses.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘This feels so good. I just want moment after moment like this with you.’

  ‘By tomorrow morning all of this will be a memory. But you can keep a memory safe, you know. You carve a space and you tuck it in and you pray you’ll never forget it. Or you could paint one, like I do, but in your mind. Because one day, days or years from now, you might be sitting on a beach somewhere and you might want to recall this exact time in your life—just to feel this way all over again.’

  ‘I never want to forget the way you kissed me just then,’ he says.

  ‘Should I do it again? Repeat the moment? Make a new one?’

  ‘What are you doing to me?’

  ‘Just making you breathless.’

  As we emerge from the water, bodies shivering and stomachs growling, Luca looks me up and down and says, ‘I was going to ask whether you wanted to join me for a candlelit dinner, you know.’

  ‘Oh, really? And what made you change your mind?’

  ‘Mainly the fact that you’re wearing a dress as a bathing suit.’

  I pretend to sound shocked. ‘Oh, so I am. How about pizza? On the beach?’

  I sit on the beach wringing the water out of my cotton dress and Luca returns a while later with a towel, a couple of pizzas and a bottle of wine. Satiated and comfortably warm, I flop on
to my back and close my eyes.

  ‘It’s hard to imagine how busy life used to be back home. Here, it’s like time has slowed down, especially for us, so we can savour every second with each other.’

  ‘Listen,’ says Luca.

  I open my eyes and turn to my side, resting my head on my hand. ‘What am I listening to?’

  He raises a finger to his mouth. ‘Shh.’

  Fluttering into my awareness comes the sound of a live band playing in the distance, along with the voices of men calling out to each other in a dialect that is foreign to me. Then comes the faint clattering of plates and cutlery from a nearby restaurant, all against the backdrop of the gentle waves that crash so effortlessly, and would remain unheard, if not consciously listened to.

  ‘That’s life happening around us,’ he says. ‘And this,’ he guides my body closer to his, ‘is us making the most of life.’

  ‘I love our life,’ I whisper, catching a glimpse of the sky full of stars that feel like they’re dotted there just for us.

  ‘I love us.’

  He stands up, brushes the sand from his pants and extends a hand to help me up.

  ‘Luca?’

  ‘Yes, amore mio.’

  ‘I never want to go back home. Ever.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for the day you’d say that, painter girl. Because I didn’t really want to have to move all the way to Melbourne.’

  SEVENTEEN

  The burning in my thighs as I roll out of bed this morning is a reminder of the hundreds of steps we took last night to reach our apartment. It’s perched on a cliff with postcard views to the sea, and the only way to reach our home from the shore is to travel up a winding staircase of seemingly endless stone steps.

  Luca is nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’s gone for an early-morning swim. The Mediterranean sun is already filtering through the bi-fold door of our bedroom, which leads to a balcony where there’s just enough room for a small stone table and two wrought-iron chairs. A number of terracotta pots are housing lemons the size of grapefruits, and there’s a heady scent of sea breeze and tang that wraps itself around me, gently awakening my senses after a deep night’s sleep.