One Place

by Cara Shaw

  The driver shrugged. “I have heard the same stories a thousand times, it is all shit,” he said.

  “So, you are only interested in their money?” she asked.

  Again the sly grin crossed his face, “Yes, why not?”

  Maria giggled, at least he’s honest she thought.

  They continued south then west to Paris. Most of the road was in reasonable condition and the French countryside they drove through was beginning to regenerate. After six months of peace the spring weather was nurturing a soft wash of green over the war battered fields. Maria barely saw any people and the villages they passed through looked dormant, as if too many had died to repopulate them, or the original inhabitants were too fearful to return. They reached Paris that afternoon, and the driver let everyone off at Rue St Germaine, right in the centre of Paris. They all hurried away to their various destinations, offering only a curt ‘Avoir’ as a farewell. Maria collected her things. The St Germaine looked tattered, there had been heavy bombardment in Paris the previous year, which had officially ceased in ­September – she remembered some of the soldiers speaking about it in the wards. Clean-up had already begun and stacks of rubble and brick were piled on every street corner. Nonetheless, Paris seemed busy enough and like any city, was re-establishing itself under the continuous drive of human industry.

  She sighed, she was so tired. Roberto was asleep, so she laid him on her lap while she struggled, still seated in the cab, to put on her coat.

  “Wait,” said the driver, “I will help you.”

  He assisted her on to the footpath, then kept his arm on her shoulder.

  “You and the baby should stay with me.”

  “What!” she said shocked.

  “Stay with me. You are a good woman, I can tell. And look,” he said patting his breast pocket, “I am on my way to being very rich. I am going to buy more trucks, start a business. We would do well.”

  “I don’t even know your name!” she said.

  “I am Arnaud, and I know, you are Maria,” he held out his hand and smiled, showing a gold tooth.

  “I’m flattered, but you see,” she indicated Roberto, who was still asleep on her shoulder.

  “You have a husband?” he interrupted her.

  “Well, yes,” she replied uncomfortably.

  “You know what? My mother was a gypsy, sometimes I see things. You will never find him. I tell you now, your luck will be better if you stay with me,” Arnaud tapped the side of his truck, staring at her.

  The world rushed around Maria’s head in whirl of colour and fear. He was wrong. Nothing would stop her from finding Robbie. Nothing.

  “I must go,” and she hoisted Roberto onto her shoulder while Arnuad climbed back in the truck.

  Then he leaned through the window and pushed something onto her hand.

  “Here,” he said, “You will need this,” and he drove away.

  Maria looked down, in her palm was forty francs. Crying, she slipped it into her pocket and walked to the nearest station to book a ticket.

  Her journey from Paris to Rome was arduous, and the difficulties and obstacles that arose from travelling in war-ravaged country were immense. Sometimes the passengers had to alight from the train to walk to the next stop because of track damage, and meet a different train that would take them onward. Government repairs to the rail system were continuous and feverish in the attempt to restore the infrastructure as quickly as possible and kick-start the economy. When Maria’s train reached the Roverto railway station in the Trentino province, north-eastern Italy, she alighted nervously. Talk amongst the passengers on the train had been tense. The political climate in Italy had shifted drastically, and it appeared that a new wave of intense fanaticism had taken hold of the post-war population. Sick of war, and fed up with the Germans, a fervent Nationalism had spread through the younger set, accompanied with the desire for self-management and a vehement disdain for the international left. People craved security, regular employment and a plentiful supply of food, and saw the equal division of all resources as the only solution for a stable country.

  Heated discussions resounded throughout the carriages, the Italians bellowing their opinions over the French and any other nationality who was in disagreement. The loud politics would eventually lead the way for the small army of black-shirted militants that were to rule Italy for the next two years. By the time they reached Trentino Maria was sick of it, she was tired of the conflict and anger that had followed her everywhere for the past four years. She rushed straight out of the station to find someone, anyone, who could take her to Campania – her home province. She followed her nose to the local market where deliveries were being made, and she approached a driver who was delivering baskets of olives.

  “I need to get to Avellino – can you take me?” she asked without ceremony.

  The weedy man looked her up and down and pulled on the dirty kerchief around his neck.

  “You got money?” he said through yellow teeth.

  She held out her hand, “I have forty francs, I’ll give you thirty if you let me keep ten back for food – I’ll share it with you, I promise.”

  He looked her up and down.

  “Alright. I’ll wait here while you get the food.”

  Maria hurried off with Roberto to buy cheese, salami and bread. She also bought some ripe tomatoes and filled up her water canteen at the water pump in the piazza. When she returned the driver was already in the cab waiting for her, and with what seemed like her last ounce of strength, she and Roberto climbed in to next to the man, where they ate together then sat in silence during the five-hour trip. Meanwhile the olives danced merrily in their baskets in the back of the truck, all the way to Avellino.

  He let her off on the driveway of the family property, which was really just a packed down dirt road rutted with cart tracks and small rocks. She glanced anxiously at Roberto, who had been extremely quiet that day. His eyelids were half-closed and she knew he was not getting enough nourishment, and that his tiny body had gone in to a kind of stasis – she assumed to preserve any nutrients he had left. She walked up the road, and before long the Rosetti farmhouse came into view. She sighed with relief. It looked exactly the same, large tubs of fragrant geraniums lined the rose-coloured plastered walls on either side of the front door, and the gardens were scattered with familiar pale green olive trees. The al fresco section was covered in grapevine, and was just beginning to bear sweet red fruit. She staggered as she felt a wave of nausea overwhelm her, and for a moment everything seemed unreal to her. She knocked on the door, which opened to reveal her mother, who stood in the doorway completely shocked.

  “Mama,” said Maria, and as she thrust Roberto into her mother’s arms, Maria fainted, and passed out cold on the doorstep.

  Maria had contracted cholera. Lia, her mother frantically called out for her husband Franco, who carried his daughter into her old room and laid her on the bed. Her parents stood there looking down at their child in disbelief. Maria had changed from the buxom rosy-cheeked girl they had last seen four years earlier, to a wretched scarecrow-like form that lay unconscious on the blue and white coverlet. At only twenty-one Maria had aged well beyond her years, and as they stared at her a wet brown liquid leaked from her behind. Lia backed out of the room, covering her nose at the smell and looked incredulously at the silent, nearly black baby she held in her arms.

  “We must get a doctor,” she whispered to Franco, who ran to the stable to hitch up the buggy.

  After she was diagnosed Maria stayed in bed for the next six weeks, and then made a full recovery from the cholera which she had contracted whilst on the train from Paris to Reverto. Hers was an unusual case, not many survived the vicious and degrading disease and while she recuperated, she explained to her parents that she had been married to an Australian soldier while she was in Belgium, and that she was waiting for him to send for her and th
e child so they could immigrate to Australia. Lia and Franco had their doubts but they kept quiet and got to know their grandson instead. Lia, who had borne two boys before Maria, found Roberto to be very advanced in his development.

  “He is so strong!” she commented to her husband.

  They put him on bottles immediately – goat’s milk sweetened with sugar, and the baby could not get enough of the rich milky mix, and drinking it until he vomited then cried for more. He grew rapidly, and each time Lia brought him in to see Maria, he was bigger and bonnier than before.

  Maria didn’t fare as well. While she was sitting up in bed eating custard one morning, she felt a throbbing in one of her back teeth. She popped a finger in her mouth to check for a cavity and the tooth came away easily. Over the following days she lost all of her back teeth, until only the top and bottom front ones remained. She was devastated, how much more would this war take from her she thought. She was soon to find out. When she was able to get out of bed, she closed the door and went to look at herself – for the first time in years, in the full ­length mirror that stood in the corner of her room. What she saw made her gasp. An extremely thin woman gazed back at her from the oval frame, cheeks sunken, with heavy lines that circled her mouth and ran across her forehead. Her breasts had all but disappeared, and her nipples looked like dark flat moons on her chest. Her skin had discoloured, both on her face and body, and her hair was sparse. The poor nutrition she had endured over the past four years had taken a heavy toll on her looks, and her health.

  “I am ugly,” she said out loud and she put on her clothes and went to the kitchen to help her mother.

  It was the end of July when she received the letter from Robbie, explaining to her why he could not allow her to live with him in Australia. She read it with a certain detachment and then burnt it, tossing the ashes into the garden. She had no love left inside her anymore, and was aware that all her emotion and ability to feel deeply had been used up during the war and the terrible journey back to Avellino. Her only future lay in caring for Roberto, the reason she now believed she was put on the earth. Any personal ambitions or hopes she’d had for herself were gone forever, and she told her parents that her soldier husband had died on the ship when returning to Australia, and that she was now a widow.

  Many years later, after Vito had agreed to marry her and she had moved to the Pellegrini Estate, she stood in her room looking at the photo her husband had arranged to be taken of the three of them. In it Roberto looked so much like Robbie that surprisingly, she felt her heart lurch with love, a sensation that had become almost foreign to her. On impulse, she sat down and inserted the photo into an envelope and wrote on the front,

  Private Robert Dalton

  C/o Billington Post Office,

  Billington, NSW, Australia.

  The next time she was in the village she bought enough stamps to cover nearly the whole right side of the envelope, and pushed it through the post box that sat in the village piazza. If it reaches him, at least he will know he has a son she thought, and felt, strangely, that she had fulfilled her last duty to her lost love.

  Chapter Ten

  NOW

  Nico Pellegrini worked from a small office as a heritage restoration architect and he was busy most of the time.

  Today he stood at the open window of his studio with a glass of wine, watching the sun settle over the patterns the roof tops made in the dusky urban shadows. Rome was one of the oldest cities in the world, and in his profession he was assured of an endless supply of work, perfect for an architect who was devoted to preserving history. The project he was involved in had just been extended for eighteen months, which meant another profitable couple of years for his business. He loved his job and he found it both engaging and challenging. When he was at university his fellow students disparaged his career choice somewhat, his peers were dedicated to the power of the aesthetic, mining the opportunity to create the impossible and taking modern architecture into the next dimension.

  Nico’s heart lay in heritage buildings, each soaked with the patina of lives lived and memories made. He had a habit of running his hands over the old stone in some of his favourite buildings that he often visited, satisfied in the knowledge that an artisan had laid it with his very own hands, perhaps even cutting it himself. Classical design fascinated and invigorated him, and he saw old architecture as real evidence that men before him had reached their dreams and overseen their vision to become reality. He loved it. He saw his role as that of a custodian, a conservationist. The project he was working on now was magnificent, a restoration of a covered market on the outskirts of Rome that was well within the range of his expertise. The market had been owned for generations by the same family who were unwilling to release it from their care. It had become decrepit over the years and they didn’t have the resources to fund an extensive restoration. They donated it to their local municipo on the condition that it be restored and used again for commerce. The council happily agreed and Nico had won the tender to supervise the restoration.

  With great excitement he had travelled over to the town to assess his new project, and eased open the tall doors. The brass keys had been handed to him after he had signed the contract, and he was here to make the first inspection. The ancient market was wondrous, cavernous and beautiful. The floor was flagged with flat cool stone, and sturdy oak beams supported a slate roof – now brittle and broken with jagged holes that let in the weather. The place stank and was covered with bird droppings. He scraped the mortar away from one of the walls, it was crumbling and powdery. His research had revealed that the market had been first built in 1600’s, and over time had become the pride of the small town. It had quickly evolved into a place that buzzed with commerce and trade; the embryo of modern retail. The family had inherited the market and from the late 1700’s used it to sell the grain they harvested from their large farm. Later they saw the opportunity to make even more money, and charged market holders a fee to sell their goods there.

  He could see it all, the rivalry, the competition between stall holders, the women bringing in large baskets of cheeses and sausage, proudly produced in rural kitchens, loud noisy Italians, all trying to outdo one another while their children played and ran around with their hoops and balls. In this place he sensed clearly the essence of community and companionship, the qualities that he loved the most about his culture. The doors were huge and still in perfect condition, the heavy oak barely affected by the passing years. They were high and wide, so that sacks of flour and wheat could be carried to the waiting wagons outside and distributed to all the baking houses in Rome. Yes, thought Nico, this marvellous place was once alive, and now with a new roof and careful structural changes, it would live again.

  Nico had spent over a year researching and supervising restoration specialists to repoint the walls using a special mortar that replicated the original, and designed to withstand another hundred years of wear. He had made the decision to re-roof the market with slate sourced from outside the region, reasoning with the council that there was really no way to identify where the original material was from and they had agreed. They extended his contract so he could have the windows relined with Italian oak, and completely remake the worm ridden roof trusses. The whole project was a joy and he was a fortunate man, although today he had other things on his mind. Earlier, his mother Annalise had left message to say that she had found something that appeared to belong to Nico’s grandfather, and he returned her call.

  “Mama”

  “Are you still at work?”

  “At work, but not working.”

  “Looking at the view?”

  He laughed, she knew him well – it was when he did his best thinking, meditating across the city of Rome watching the pigeons as they fluttered from roof to roof.

  “Yes. How’s it going?” he asked.

  Annalise was moving. After all these years she was leaving the apartme
nt where he was raised. At sixty-five, she was tired of city life and had bought a small villa on the city outskirts and was now emptying out the apartment.

  “Not bad cara, all this rubbish, who knew?” she sighed.

  Nico would help her with the big move, although sorting out years of accumulation was her job.

  “You said you found something?”

  “Yes,” she said, “Very unusual. It was in your father’s concertina file, I thought I should sort through it before I threw it away… and,” she stopped.

  “What?” said Nico, curious.

  “I found old Roberto’s birth certificate. Nico, it appears he wasn’t a Pallegrini.”

  “That’s impossible Mama,” said Nico, “What does it say?”

  “Well, it says his name was Robert Dalton,” she stopped.

  “Are you sure it’s him?” said Nico.

  “Wait, I’ll look again,” there was a rustling sound.

  “Yes. Here it is. Mother: Maria Rosetti. Father: Robert Dalton. The birth date is correct. March 15, 1919. Roberto’s birthday.”

  Nico was puzzled, “Dalton, that’s an English name.”

  “I know,” said Annalise. “Nico, shall I save it for you? I know you cared for the old man. My goodness he was a character, the jokes he told, just crazy…”

  Nico was intrigued, “Yes keep it Mama. I’11 collect it when I come to move your things.”

  They chatted on, and when they said goodbye he returned to his tiny balcony to watch the sun sink easily into the dark red horizon. He was not to know then that it would be months before he would have a chance to look at the birth certificate his mother had found.

  Annalise had lived alone for many years, Nico’s father Gianni had died in car accident not long after Nico had finished university, a devastating event where Gianni had swerved his car to avoid the oncoming motorcycle and had slammed into a truck. Annalise lost her husband in an instant and Nico would never be able to share his career with his father, who was also an architect. Nico their only child, had been raised in their Rome apartment and he had only ever known city life, attending the local school and mixing with the other children from his municipio. Their lives were typical of the professional middle-class, steady, predictable.