Kal

by Judy Nunn

  Paul was overwhelmed by Caterina’s love and the intensity of his own feelings. When he finally admitted his love to his friends and told them of his plans, they were horrified. ‘It’s insane,’ Geoffrey insisted. ‘Good God, man, surely you must see that it’s insane. Your family will never accept her.’

  But Paul refused to listen and his friends could only pray that, in the several remaining weeks of their stay at the chalet, he would either tire of Caterina or at least recognise that theirs was a holiday liaison and nothing more.

  Two days before the Americans were due to leave, however, the lovers were as inseparable as ever and Paul was still adamant about his plans. There was little Geoffrey could do but agree to send a telegraphic cable to Paul’s family before boarding the ship at Bremerhaven.

  ‘Here is the message,’ Paul said, giving him a slip of paper. ‘I shall stay at the chalet for six weeks until Caterina’s contract has expired. Then I shall meet her family and, hopefully with their blessing, we shall leave for the States.’

  ‘And if they do not wish to give their blessing?’ Geoffrey asked.

  ‘It will be unfortunate,’ Paul agreed. ‘But Caterina is prepared for that.’

  Later that evening, Caterina sat with the Americans in the music lounge and drank champagne with them. She was off-duty and the chalet staff and workers were allowed to fraternise if the guests requested it. She was careful not to appear too intimate with Paul but she was aware that the looks they shared were eminently readable and that several of the staff were casting glances in their direction. If their affair were discovered it would mean scandal and instant dismissal but, in her giddy state, that too meant little to Caterina.

  ‘To a certain couple I know,’ Geoffrey whispered as he filled Caterina’s glass for the second time. ‘May they be very happy together.’ He clinked his glass against hers and smiled.

  ‘Thank you,’ Caterina smiled back. She liked Geoffrey. He was such a good friend to Paul. ‘To America,’ she whispered as she sipped her champagne.

  Geoffrey watched her over the rim of his glass. She was a beautiful girl. She deserved a beautiful life. He felt sorry for her.

  They sang along to the piano and drank more champagne. Catarina was not used to alcohol and after three glasses, she felt very light-headed. She noticed the brief look between Paul and Geoffrey and was not surprised when, a moment later, Paul whispered to her, ‘Come to the room in five minutes.’

  A little while later, as she tapped their signal gently on the door, she felt no shame. It was not degrading to think that the Americans knew what she was doing as they sang along to the piano in the music lounge. Caterina knew no shame and felt no degradation.

  After they had made love she lay close to Paul in the narrow bed as he stroked her hair. ‘One night more your friends go,’ she whispered. He nodded and she lifted herself up onto one elbow. ‘You are no …’ She fumbled for the word. ‘No regret?’

  ‘No,’ he smiled, ‘no regret.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’

  THE FOLLOWING NIGHT Paul had agreed to join his friends for a final night of carousing in Steinach. ‘You have to help us with our hangovers,’ Geoffrey insisted. ‘It’s the done thing to sleep it off the next day on the train to Bremerhaven.’

  And carouse they did. They ate sausages with mustard and sauerkraut and drank beer in a little tavern overlooking the cobbled square. Then they bought a bottle of schnapps and swigged lustily from it as they wandered through the still, cold, gaslit laneways of the old town. They’d finished the bottle by the time they arrived at the big hotel with its whitewashed face and huge pine door and wooden shuttered windows looking out over the streets.

  In the bar, they skolled glass after glass of schnapps as Geoffrey and Barry and Chris kept toasting Paul. Then they entered into a beer-drinking competition with several of the villagers, singing along with their newfound friends and drinking more and more schnapps until Paul’s legs felt like jelly and the room was spinning away from him. They must go back to the chalet, he told himself. He pawed Geoffrey’s sleeve and tried to say something but his tongue felt several times its normal size. He had never been so drunk. How had this happened? How come the others seemed to be in control? Then Barry fell over and everyone laughed and Paul stopped feeling self-conscious. Everyone was drunk, everyone was having a good time, and he accepted the glass Geoffrey handed him. ‘Skoll,’ he said and he drained the glass to a rousing cheer and held it out to be refilled.

  Geoffrey watched him carefully. Paul had never been able to handle alcohol. He didn’t even like the taste of it. Back home he only ever got drunk when it was a mandatory exercise, like after exams to prove he was one of the boys. Paul was a brilliant student with a successful career ahead of him, provided he did not do something stupid, like saddle himself with a peasant wife before he was twenty-two.

  Geoffrey pulled his fob watch from his waistcoat pocket. Nearly time to leave for Innsbruck and the connecting train to Bremerhaven. Paul’s bags were packed and in the back of the waiting trap. He would wake up the following day and they would be halfway to Bremerhaven and Geoffrey would convince him it was all for the best. That was why he hadn’t sent the telegraph.

  Geoffrey had had nothing heavy to drink himself. Nothing but beer. The ‘schnapps’ he had skolled had been tap water with which he had filled the empty bottle he had swigged from as they wandered the streets.

  Geoffrey looked at Barry and Chris. They too were drunk, but he had not plied them with as much liquor as he had Paul and in any event they could handle it better. For secrecy’s sake Geoffrey had not told them of his plan but, if they wished to become so inebriated that they missed their connecting train, he did not much care. Barry and Chris were not his responsibility. Paul was.

  ‘Time to go home,’ he announced loudly, rising to his feet. ‘Sir,’ he waved to the innkeeper behind the bar, ‘two bottles if you please. One for the road and one for a nightcap at the chalet, yes?’ He looked at Paul who nodded and mumbled incoherently. He’s close to passing out, Geoffrey thought as he hoisted him onto his feet and started dragging him towards the door.

  ‘A LETTER FOR you, Caterina.’

  It was early morning. Caterina had finished her kitchen duties and was in her crisp chambermaid’s uniform ready to start on the rooms when the woman at the reception desk called to her.

  ‘Grazie,’ she said and took the envelope.

  A letter? For her? But she could not read. Who would write her a letter? Her name was on the front. She could read her name, and there it was: Caterina Panuzzi. She opened the envelope. Even more bewildering. It was in English.

  ‘Mary. Will you read me this letter?’

  Mary was polishing the glasses and setting up the lounge bar for the busy day ahead. She took the single piece of notepaper Caterina held out to her.

  ‘“Caterina my darling”,’ she read before glancing down to the name at the bottom of the page. ‘It is from Paul,’ she said.

  Caterina looked puzzled but not troubled and Mary’s sense of unease turned to dread as her eyes skimmed the page.

  ‘Come, Caterina, sit down.’ It was early and the bar was as yet deserted. She led Caterina to one of the large armchairs by the open fire and, seating herself opposite, she slowly began to translate.

  ‘“Caterina, my darling, I am sorry I did not say goodbye to you. It was wrong of me I know, but I could not face you. I am a …”’ As Mary struggled to find the word for coward, she glanced at Caterina. The girl still looked puzzled, as if she could not absorb what was being said to her.

  ‘“Io sono un …”’ Mary concentrated on the translation, trying not to think of Caterina’s pain. What was the Italian word for coward? There was not one, she was sure. ‘“Io sono … pauroso”,’ she said. ‘Afraid’, that would have to do. ‘“My dear it is better this way”,’ she continued. ‘“You would be unhappy in America, away from your friends and your family. You are beautiful and you deserve to
be happy. I love you and I am sorry. Paul”.’

  Mary held the piece of notepaper out to Caterina. The girl took it from her and looked at the name on the bottom of the page. ‘Paolo?’ she whispered. She had never seen his name in writing.

  ‘Paul,’ Mary answered. ‘He has signed it Paul.’

  Caterina’s mind was numb. Why had he not signed it Paolo? She rose from the armchair, the letter clutched to her breast.

  ‘Caterina …’ Mary rose to comfort her but Caterina shrugged off the embrace.

  ‘No, no, I must return to my work. Thank you for reading me the letter.’

  Mary watched as Caterina walked from the lounge. No glint of a tear, not a shred of emotion. She watched as the girl thrust the piece of notepaper into the pocket of her apron. Mary felt useless. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say. It was a cowardly letter but in essence it was right. Caterina was a sweet, simple girl, she would not have been happy in America away from her own kind. The writer of the letter knew that. And Mary knew who had written the letter. She recognised the hand. There had been many notes over the past six weeks. Always signed ‘G’.

  Mary wondered whether she should tell Caterina that Geoffrey had written the letter. What purpose would that serve? The girl would be tormented; she might even try to follow her lover. If Paul was weak enough to be so influenced by his friends, how would he ever serve as Caterina’s protector in a hostile America? She was better off without him. Mary made her decision. If Paul had been abducted against his will, and if he loved Caterina, he would come back for her. In the meantime, it was best to say nothing.

  ‘… AND ROOM 39.’

  Caterina took the key thrust to her by the housekeeper and added it to the keyring alongside the other five keys she had been given. The chambermaids were being assigned the vacated rooms to be prepared for the next wave of incoming guests.

  Room 39. Paul’s room. Caterina had been in a daze for the past two hours since Mary had read her the letter. She kept touching the sheet of paper in her apron pocket. It could not be true, she had told herself. They were only words. Only words Mary had read from a piece of paper. They were not Paolo’s words. Paolo would not say those words.

  She opened the door. The two beds on either side of the room were freshly made up. They had not been slept in. She herself had remade those beds the preceding morning. Each day, when the guests left for a morning on the slopes, the maids collected their keys from the concierge and serviced the rooms. Caterina always kissed the pillow when she changed the linen on Paul’s bed. Soon her head would be nestled next to his on that very pillow, she would think. But today the key to Room 39 had not been amongst those she had collected from the concierge. Today the housekeeper had given her the key. Could it be true? Had he gone?

  She opened the cupboard doors. Nothing. The coats and the suits that smelled of him were no longer there. Nothing but the heavy wooden hangers waiting for the next chalet guest. And the next. And the next.

  It was true. He had gone. Caterina lay down on the bunk. Paul’s bunk. The narrow bed where they had clung to each other and panted their love. Where they had caressed each other and talked of their plans, of their lives together. Of America. She stared at the ceiling and the tears rolled down her cheeks. Paolo, she thought. Paolo.

  For a long time Caterina wept. She wept for her love, and for the girl she had once been and she wept for the girl she would never be again.

  Finally there were no more tears. She finished her duties as quickly as she could and that night she went to bed early. She knew she would not sleep, but she needed to rest her body. She must be up before dawn. There was a long walk ahead.

  Giovanni was excited. Only one more month to go. Just four short weeks and his contract was over. Not that he minded working for the railroads. He enjoyed the physical labour, digging deep into the heart of the mountain. But one day he would be digging for himself. It would be his own mine and there would be gold at the end of the tunnel. That was his dream. And in one month’s time he would embark upon the first step toward the realisation of that dream.

  It had all started with a newspaper article. One morning two new workers had arrived on the site. They were replacing two men who had been injured the previous week, one in a minor tunnel collapse, the other in a rock slide. Such occurrences were common. One of the new workers had a copy of a newspaper from Milan. It was over a week old but it did not matter, the article he showed them was inspiring. ‘THE GOLDEN LAND,’ its headlines declared, ‘GOLD STRIKES IN AUSTRALIA. PEOPLE RICH OVERNIGHT.’

  Neither Rico nor Giovanni could read but the man with the newspaper could. ‘“… They flock from all parts of the globe,”’ he read. ‘“Fortunes are made by the bold and the adventurous.”’ He stumbled over the names. ‘“Bendigo, Ballarat … Recent strikes in Western Australia …”’ There was a map of the vast western State of the country with areas and placenames pinpointed. ‘“The Kimberleys, the Pilbara, and the latest discoveries to the south, Southern Cross, Coolgardie.”’ And there was a picture of the southern port of Albany which had serviced the goldfields until the building of Fremantle, the man-made port on the western coast. Huge ships. People streaming down gangplanks. ‘“They come from America, from South Africa, from Europe,”’ the article said. ‘“They flock in their ships to Albany and Fremantle to stake their claims in the golden land.”’

  ‘That is where I will go,’ the man said, folding the newspaper carefully. ‘No more digging for the railroads. I will dig for gold.’

  Rico bought the newspaper from the man for a bottle of wine. ‘He talks, Gio,’ he said to his younger brother, ‘but that is all he does. We will not talk, we will go to Australia.’

  They had lived their dream from that day on, Rico painting the pictures. ‘See it in your head, Gio,’ he would say as they crouched over the fire. ‘See it in your head. No longer will we have to dig through a mountain so that a train can get to the other side. We’ll dig for gold. Our gold. Our families will be wealthy. We’ll live in big houses, like your widow’s, and our children will grow up wanting for nothing. We will be the ones who live in the big house on the hill, eh?’

  He said it as a joke but they both knew that the widow was nothing to laugh about. Giovanni had finally confided in his brother. Sarina was becoming more indiscreet, more audacious, as if she cared nothing for the danger that surrounded them. And when his contract with the railroads was over Giovanni knew her demands would be constant. It would be only a matter of time before their affair became public knowledge in the village. Only a matter of time before the De Cretico brothers knew of her betrayal.

  Rico wanted to confront the widow but Giovanni had made him promise to keep away. ‘Then you must leave Santa Lena,’ Rico said. ‘You are a fool if you stay, Gio. They will kill you.’

  And then the man with the newspaper had arrived. The brothers saw it as a sign. God had delivered them an omen—Australia was to be their destiny.

  For weeks now Rico and Giovanni had saved every lire they could. Apart from the money they gave to their mother from their weekly pay packet, and of course the small donation to the church each Sunday, they spent virtually nothing. They stopped drinking wine and gambling with the men at the camp and already they had saved enough to purchase a single boat passage from Genoa to the port of Fremantle in Western Australia.

  It was agreed that Giovanni would go on ahead and Rico would join him within six months. ‘That will give me time to marry Teresa when she returns from the chalet,’ he said.

  ‘What if she does not want to go to Australia?’ Giovanni asked, but Rico laughed dismissively.

  ‘Teresa will go to the ends of the earth with me,’ he said.

  It had been Rico’s idea to choose Fremantle over Albany as their port of disembarkation. Fremantle serviced Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, and there would be more likelihood of job opportunities there.

  Upon his arrival Giovanni was to find work and send money hom
e to Rico and Teresa. When the brothers were reunited in Fremantle they would continue working until they had sufficient funds and then together they would set off for the eastern goldfields. These were Rico’s plans.

  One more month to go, Giovanni thought as he carefully placed the cauldron of coffee to brew on the heated stones. He squatted beside the fire and pulled the tattered newspaper from his pocket. He carried it constantly and several times a day he would pore over the map of Western Australia, accepting with good humour the derision of his workmates. ‘Giovanni and his treasure map,’ they laughed. ‘Giovanni and his gold at the bottom of the world.’ But, unperturbed, he would simply smile back at them.

  Unlike Rico, Giovanni’s voyage to the bottom of the earth was more than a bid for riches. Australia was a whole new world to be explored. It was the other side of the earth, the biggest adventure a man could undertake. Beyond Santa Lena and the mountains there was a vast, brown land. That was what the newspaper called it. Giovanni could not possibly imagine what a vast brown land looked like, but the thought of it was thrilling beyond belief.

  Giovanni checked the coffee and stoked the fire. It was late afternoon and soon the others would return from the digging. At the end of each working day one man went on ahead to the camp to build the fire and prepare the coffee. It was a pleasurable duty and they took it in turn. If the fire was not burning steadily and the coffee not well brewed when the others arrived, the man forfeited his next turn.

  The air was clear and still, but bitterly cold, the feeling of snow imminent. Yes, he thought, there would be a heavy fall tonight. He fetched his concertina from the tent, sat beside the fire and played. He loved the way the sound rang out through the stillness. He started to sing. ‘Torna a Surriento’. His favourite.