The Train to Orvieto

by Novelli, Rebecca J. ;

  9

  ORVIETO, ITALY 1934

  Two weeks later, Gabriele called on Willa. He asked her to come to Orvieto to meet his parents. This time Willa consulted Signora Farnese first.

  “Such visits are considered the sign of a serious relationship,” Signora Farnese warned. “Is that what you intend?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Willa replied, “and I’ve never seen Orvieto, but if it’s as picturesque as he says, I might want to paint there.”

  “If you go, it will mean that you have a serious commitment to Gabriele.”

  “I can’t say yet, but I want to go.”

  “Very well, then. I have a friend in Orvieto. Signora Santori. We can stay with her and invite the Marcheschis to tea if she considers it advisable.”

  However, just hours before Gabriele was scheduled to come for them, Signora Farnese suffered a fall and had to go to the hospital. “You must postpone the visit to Orvieto until I’m able to travel,” Signora Farnese told Willa. “You may allow Gabriele to call on you. Assuntina will be here, but Antonio must escort you if you go out.”

  Stymied, Willa wandered about the house, snacking on the newly made tiramisu in the refrigerator. It was raining. She sat by the loggia window with her sketchbook and watercolors. She painted the olive groves as a river coursing down the hillside, then decided the painting looked like spinach soup, and began again. Hungry and bored, she returned to the refrigerator. As she nibbled at the tiramisu again, she heard a knock at the door. She waited for Assuntina or Antonio to answer. The knock became a pounding. Where was Antonio? Assuntina? Finally, she went to the door herself. It was Gabriele.

  “But my parents are expecting you,” he said when Willa explained the situation. “They will be very disappointed.”

  “Antonio must come with me. Otherwise, I can’t go.” Willa left Gabriele waiting in the salotto while she went to find the driver. When she knocked at the door to Antonio’s room, he didn’t respond, but from outside in the hallway she could hear the sound of snoring. She knocked on the door again, this time more vigorously.

  “Antonio! Wake up.” He cursed. “Antonio, I need you.” At last, he came to the door. She tried to explain.

  “Later,” he said swinging his arm in her direction. “I’m busy.” His breath reeked of alcohol. He staggered back to bed. Several empty bottles lay on the floor. She returned to the salotto.

  “He has to accompany me when I go out,” Willa told Gabriele. “He’s not well, and I can’t go without him.”

  “I’ll bring you back by this evening,” Gabriele told her. “He probably won’t notice that you’re gone.”

  “Let me ask Assuntina.” Willa found the maid doing laundry.

  Assuntina was first surprised and then frightened by Willa’s request. “It would be improper,” she said.

  What choice do I have? Willa thought. The appointment is made, Gabriele has come for me, and his parents are waiting. Should I be rude to Gabriele’s parents because Antonio is drunk and Assuntina is timid? Besides, she was curious. She wanted very much to go despite the impropriety. Finding no alternative except to stay home, she put on her coat and hat, put her sketchbook in her carpetbag, and went to Orvieto with Gabriele and without a chaperone. She noticed that several neighbors and shopkeepers observed her departure with interest. Never mind. I’ll be back by this evening.

  The Marcheschi’s home was situated on a rise in full view of the road. When Willa and Gabriele arrived in Orvieto, many people saw them riding alone together in a horse-drawn cart along the rutted dirt road all the way from the station. Though Gabriele surely must have known that people were watching them, he didn’t mention this to Willa. “We use this cart during the harvest to carry grapes,” he explained instead, emphasizing the most picturesque aspects of the vendemmia. “While you’re here, I’ll show you how we make our wine.” Ahead of them the narrow, dusty road wound around the perimeter of a high hill and led up toward the golden walls of the town. From this perspective, Orvieto appeared distant, like a mirage. Willa commented on the uncanny light that glowed from within its walls and gave the town fable-like quality. “That’s the façade of the Duomo,” Gabriele said. “It’s made of gold mosaic. The reflection can be seen for miles.”

  Willa thought Orvieto a perfect place to paint. Luckily, she had brought her sketchbook. “It’s beautiful here and it smells good, too. Like sage…and something sweet,” she said, gazing at the road ahead.

  Gabriele stopped and waited while she made brief sketches and a few notes before calling her attention to the vineyards on both sides of the road and to the orchards and woods beyond. “This land has belonged to my family for generations,” he said. “I will inherit all of it, and my children will inherit it from me.”

  Willa inhaled deeply the earthy fragrance of the countryside. “You’re certain of your destiny,” Willa said. “It must be nice to know your fate. As an artist, I can’t be sure what my future will be.”

  Gabriele stopped the cart at the foot of a low hill covered in golden grass. “Yes, you can. Your future is with me,” he said with a confidence that Willa found appealing. Ahead of them, at the crown of the hill, stood a house of stone. “That’s our home. The original one was built three hundred years ago, but we have added on and changed it. Now, there’s a wine cellar where the animals used to be kept.” Willa looked up and saw that two people had come out of the house. They waited in front. “Come and meet my parents.”

  Willa put her sketchbook away, and Gabriele helped her down from the cart. He held her arm as they walked up the dirt path. Signor Marcheschi, dignified in a black suit and white shirt, the collar too large, and Signora Marcheschi, erect and formal in her black dress with a white lace bib and collar, stood next to one another watching as Gabriele and Willa approached.

  “May I present signorina Willa Carver,” Gabriele said. “She has been looking forward to meeting you.”

  “Benvenuta,” Signor Marcheschi said, glancing at his wife, seemingly uncertain about what to do next. Then, the Marcheschis smiled at Willa and shook hands with her. “Molto piacere,” everyone said. Signora Marcheschi looked at Willa and then toward the cart and then beyond to the road.

  “Sola?” she asked. Alone?

  Willa nodded. “The person who was coming with me had an emergency and the others couldn’t come, so I had to come alone.” Signor Marcheschi stepped forward and looked closely at Willa’s face, as if he were trying to understand what sort of creature she might be.

  “Mi dispiace.” Sorry. Signor Marcheschi said loudly and pointed to his mouth. He paused and took a deep breath, then shouted, “No English!” He stepped back and stood next to his wife.

  Looking directly into his eyes, Willa said, “Parlo l’italiano.”

  “Questa ragazza e’ un’americana,” a startled Signor Marcheschi said to his wife. This girl is an American. Willa understood that in this case being an “American girl” wasn’t a compliment.

  “Let’s sit down. We’ll drink to your visit,” Gabriele told her. He waited for his parents and Willa to precede him into a windowless living room where a low fire burned in a blackened stone fireplace. The odors of smoke and wood, livestock and vinegar, wine and earth permeated the dusky atmosphere. Signor and Signora Marcheschi sat down on the heavy, worn chairs arranged next to uneven tables. Willa and Gabriele sat opposite them on a nondescript sofa. A spring from the cushion jabbed her hip, and Willa edged toward a more comfortable spot. In the dim light, Gabriele’s parents looked as if they had been carved from tree roots. Willa responded to their polite questions in the Florentine dialect, the only dialect she knew, waiting for Gabriele to translate when she didn’t quite understand what his parents were saying. Soon, a woman came into the room carrying a tray of refreshments. She appeared to be slightly older than Gabriele and was also dressed in black. Willa noticed her curious glances.

  “This is Grazia, our housekeeper and cook,” Gabriele said. “She’s been with us since she was sixt
een.”

  Willa smiled and held out her hand. Grazia looked at Willa and nodded gravely, her expression unchanged, and then placed a tray of olives on the table. She studied Willa once more. Willa smiled again, hoping to elicit a more clearly positive response. Grazia pointed to her own front teeth.

  “Lo spazio. La sfortuna.” Then she returned by the doorway though which she had come.

  “Sicilian,” Gabriele told Willa. “They don’t care for strangers. She said the space between your front teeth means bad luck.”

  Willa laughed. “Superstitious.”

  “Yes,” Gabriele agreed. “Already, it’s good luck that you are here.” Gabriele’s father served the wine.

  “Il nostro vino,” our wine, Signor Marcheschi said with obvious pride. Gabriele waited until Willa took a sip. The wine was acidic, harsh, unpleasant.

  “Our Orvieto is the best in the region,” Gabriele said. He stood up. “Come, I’ll show you.” Willa followed him through the musty kitchen where Grazia was chopping vegetables. A pot simmered on the wood-burning stove. Just outside the door was a steep, wooden stairway and next to it a large woodpile. A few feet away a hand-operated water pump dripped into an enamel basin. “Be careful. The top step is loose,” Gabriele said. He held her hand tightly as he went down the stairs ahead of her. Gabriele’s parents followed behind them. About a hundred feet beyond the house they entered a barn-like structure filled with wooden vats, casks, and pipes. The equipment reminded Willa of laboratories she had seen in science fiction movies. It occurred to her that she had not seen a movie since she had arrived in Italy; she felt momentarily homesick.

  “Nuovo,” new, Signor Marcheschi said gesturing toward the equipment.

  “Carisissimo,” very expensive, Signora Marcheschi said.

  Gabriele gestured for Willa to climb up a small ladder to a platform. “This is where we crush the grapes after the vendemmia.” She looked down into a wooden vat nearly twenty feet in diameter and inhaled its sweet-sour smell. Despite the size of the vat, the facility itself seemed small and dark, almost primitive. She backed down the ladder and followed Gabriele among the casks and barrels, accepting the tastings he gave her from each, until she admitted that she could no longer tell the difference between a new wine and a wine ready to be decanted.

  “It takes time,” he said, “but I will teach you.” Later that afternoon, Gabriele took Willa to the top of the hill next to where the woods began. She was out of breath by the time they stopped at a clearing. There, a low wall of stone surrounded an area marked with gravestones and monuments, many of which were obscured by dry grass. Above them a hawk glided on air currents. “This is our family cemetery,” Gabriele said. “All of my relatives who have ever lived on this land are buried here. Some day my parents will be buried here, and I will be too, and so will my wife and, after us, my children.”

  Willa looked toward the horizon where the sky was a deep, improbable blue, a color so beautiful, she decided, that it must be a sign that she was on the course she was meant to follow. Perhaps there really is such a thing as fate, after all, she thought. “I would like to paint here. I would put the vineyards in the foreground to show the importance of the wine and beyond them the house and the hill and the trees, and the golden glow.”

  “With me you will do this,” said Gabriele.

  When they returned to the house, Grazia lit the long, partially burned candles, suffusing the sitting room with a glow that seemed to Willa as prophetic and meaningful as the sky outside. She imagined painting this room, too, and Grazia and Gabriele’s parents, with their interesting faces, but because they maintained such a cautious formality, she feared she might embarrass them or intrude in a way that might make them uncomfortable if she drew them just yet. There would be time for that later after they had gotten to know one another.

  Grazia served dinner: salami, the preserved vegetables, sausages, gnocchi, sanguinaccio, cotechino con lenticchie, stracotto, grilled lombatina.

  “I love country food,” Willa told the Marcheschis. She searched for a word, “È perfetto.” Signor and Signora Marcheschi looked at one another, perhaps for understanding or reassurance. Willa wasn’t sure, but as the afternoon grew late, they seemed to grow more at ease with their guest and at last began to smile. “Do you grow all of your food yourselves?” she asked, her fork poised above her plate.

  “Sì.”

  “Have you always lived in Orvieto?”

  “Sì.”

  “What was it like when Gabriele was growing up?” The senior Marcheschis spoke of a life so different from her own that Willa ate a second and then a third helping followed by more wine just to keep them talking. The Marcheschi family, they said, lived by the mezzadria, a form of sharecropping in which tenant farmers exchange housing and supplies. Although many landowners treated their tenants unfairly, the Marcheschis were proud that their land was profitable and their tenants contented.

  “We take such good care of them and their children that they are happy here,” said Signora Marcheschi. “That is our job, and we want to do it well.” She described for Willa her visits to her tenants, how she helped them through illnesses and childbirth and later paid for their children to go to school. “We take care of them so they can take care of us.”

  Willa wasn’t alone in imagining the life of the mezzadri to be picturesque, a “natural” existence lived by “simple” people who tilled the land and ate their harvest under the olive trees, enjoying their own wine accompanied by music and dancing. She imagined painting the children and the families that Signora Marcheschi described, a series of paintings based on scenes from their daily lives. “That’s exactly the way I think people should treat each other,” Willa said with enthusiasm as she dipped her spoon into a dessert of preserved fruit. Gabriele is a fine man from a good family, she thought. I’m glad I came to meet his parents even without a chaperone. “Next time I come, I would like stay longer and make some drawings,” Willa said. No one replied. Perhaps they don’t understand what I said, she thought.

  Gabriele looked at his watch. “If we don’t go now, we’ll miss the last train.” They went outside to the cart accompanied by Signor and Signora Marcheschi, who gave Willa a basket filled with their wine, olive oil, and un dolce.

  “Arrivederci, signorina Willa Carver.”

  “Don’t say goodbye to her,” Gabriele told his parents, “I’m going to marry her. I’ve set the date for July.”

  “Gabriele! You haven’t even asked me yet!” Willa said.

  “Her parents must set the date,” said Signora Marcheschi, clasping her hands and looking skyward.

  Signor Marcheschi put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Our Gabriele always does things his own way.” Gabriele and Willa put the gifts in the cart and began their trip back to the station. Even Willa knew that for Gabriele to set the wedding date was quite improper. Still, she liked the fact that he felt free enough, bold enough, to do unexpected things. In his way Gabriele is very creative and original, she thought.

  When they were out of sight of the house, Gabriele turned to Willa and kissed her fully and publicly. Fortunately, it’s twilight and no one can see us, Willa thought. “The moment I saw you on the train, I saw in your green eyes the sparkle of the dew on our fields and vineyards,” Gabriele said. The evening star appeared. “I knew right away that I would marry you and bring you to Orvieto with me.” She inhaled the scents of the crisp, country night. A seagull passed overhead, far inland from its usual habitat. Yes. Orvieto must be the place where I belong, and Gabriele is the person I should be with, Willa thought. It’s always what you least expect. Gabriele put his arm around her and made another confession. “Besides, the idea of your looking at other men, even nudi, makes me pazzo with jealousy,” he told her. “I won’t let you do it.”

  “You are pazzo,” Willa laughed. She looked at Gabriele. “But I believe I might marry you just the same.”

  10

  “You are la favola della città,” the t
alk of the town, Signora Farnese told Willa a few days later. Signora Farnese was still convalescing from her fall, and she could stand and walk only if Assuntina helped her. “My friend in Orvieto, Signora Santori, tells me that your visit and speculation about your purity swept the city even before you boarded the evening train to return to us.” There was more. Several people in Orvieto claimed to have met Willa and reported in detail on what they remembered: the harlot was unable to converse in Italian; she spilled her wine on her dress, a dress that was not stylish, only immodest; she was “maleducata!” Rude. Reliable sources said that the senior Marcheschis doubted her suitability. La straniera didn’t know how to speak Italian as it is spoken in Orvieto. How could they talk to her? Indeed, she spoke in the Florentine dialect, showing that “she thinks she is better than we are.” Even more damning, she had no chaperone. Some were certain Willa had no wedding chest, no trousseau, and no dowry.

  That her behavior had elicited such gossip and speculation surprised Willa. Do people have nothing else to do? Perhaps they’re just envious. She had enjoyed her visit, liked Signor and Signora Marcheschi, liked Gabriele more the longer she knew him. Although he has been hasty in trying to arrange for our marriage, his actions were innocent and well intentioned. At worst, he is guilty of an overabundance of enthusiasm. These are hardly reasons to condemn either of us, she told herself.

  Following Willa’s visit to Orvieto, Gabriele wrote to Howard Carver asking for Willa’s hand in marriage, mentioning the marriage date, declaring his ardent love, and, finally, suggesting that they discuss Willa’s dowry. Officially, of course, Willa could not accept a proposal of marriage from Gabriele until her father had given his approval, but for Willa her own intentions were clear and governing. Despite her impatience with Italian customs, she made an effort to respect Signora Farnese’s pleas concerning the importance of appearances. When she grew frustrated with Signora Farnese’s frequent reminders that “in Italy, respectable young women do not go out freely with their fidanzati, especially if the engagement is not yet official,” Willa contained her irritation.