The Train to Orvieto

by Novelli, Rebecca J. ;

  I smiled at him. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  4

  Right after Maria and Edgardo’s wedding, mamma’s condition worsened very quickly. Dottor Lucarelli came. “A few more days at most,” he said. Papà sent for Silvana and Raffaele. I remember that the weather turned unseasonably chilly and rainy. In her bed, mamma was shivering. Grazia made a fire in the fireplace in mamma’s room. I sat in the straight, caned chair by mamma’s bed and held her hand. Her fingers fluttered against my palm. Her translucent skin clung to the bones and cartilage underneath like thin, wet paper. Her teeth chattered. I pulled the white matelasse coverlet up under her chin, but her trembling continued. She opened her eyes and looked at me.

  “I’ve lived far from my origins,” she said in English, the language she spoke only with me. “When I came to Orvieto, I intended to become someone else. I saw the green hills and valleys and I thought I could grow as an artist here.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. I wiped them away with her lace handkerchief. “I was so young. I believed everything was possible. So many mistakes.” She looked up at me. “It was my fault.” She paused, as if she wanted my encouragement to speak further, and then looked away, still trembling. “I couldn’t put down roots in such old soil.” I adjusted her coverlet.

  “It’s all right, mamma.” I felt how much she grieved for her life, for losses I didn’t fully comprehend. There was so little I could do or say to console her.

  “The Marcheschis had their memories. I was a tourist. They’ve always called me la straniera. Everyone did.” She sighed. “You children have been my consolation.” She sought a more comfortable position and exhaled slowly, as if the movement of each molecule of air brought her new distress. “It’s hard work coming into this life and it’s hard work going out.” I stroked her hand, observed the paths of the veins and delicate maps of the capillaries over her knuckles. I was about to say, “Don’t go yet, stay with us, wait,” when Grazia limped in with a pitcher of water and a glass. She put them on the table next to the bed.

  “Mamma, I have something important to tell you. I’m planning to go enroll at Cattolicà in a few weeks....” She coughed and then thrashed, trying to get her breath. “Here, let me help you sit up.”

  “Don’t let anyone look at me after I’m dead,” mamma said to me in Italian so that Grazia would hear, too. “They didn’t care to call on me in this life. Don’t let them satisfy their curiosity about how I look when I’m in the next one. Put me in my coffin and slam the lid. Do you hear?”

  “Santo cielo.” Grazia crossed herself and went out. Mamma looked up at me.

  “If it hadn’t been for me, nonno and nonna wouldn’t have lived so long,” mamma said.

  I poured some water and held the glass for her. “You’ve taken good care of all of us. We love you, mamma.”

  “Gabriele has never thanked me for taking care of his parents despite the way they treated me. He’s never noticed when I was there, but he didn’t want me to leave either.”

  Grazia returned with a bowl of broth and set it down next to the water glass. I dipped the spoon into the warm liquid and held it to mamma’s lips. “Here, try some.” Mamma took it, swallowed, took some more, and retched. The broth dribbled down her chin and onto the white coverlet leaving a yellowish trail and the smell of vomit. She leaned back on her pillow and disappeared into an unseen world. I wiped her chin with a white napkin. She opened her eyes.

  “The past can’t accept the present. Not easily.” She gasped, looked up at the ceiling, and twisted. “I wanted to live in the present.” She was silent for a moment. “Try to understand: I wasn’t a loose woman. The first time I visited Gabriele’s family I came without a chaperone. That’s all.”

  “Of course, mamma. Don’t try to talk.”

  “I was so lonely. Angry. Bitter.” Her voice grew stronger. “They refused to accept me, so I didn’t acknowledge them. And then Etto. So little and innocent. After Etto, I couldn’t bear them…this place…any longer. After Etto I didn’t care. I betrayed….” She paused and looked into my eyes. “Do you want to know?” I hesitated, afraid of what she might tell me. She sank back onto her pillow. “I don’t expect you children to understand.” She looked up at me. “Maybe Gabriele was lonely, too. But he always had his family. His ancestors. His familiars.” She closed her eyes, and whispered, “His witnesses. His place. His memories.” She reached out from under the coverlet, her hand in a fist. “Whatever you think about me, about what I’ve done, please try to remember that I had no one! Not even memories.” She brought her fist down on the bed with surprising strength, her eyes full of tears. “Gabriele has never had to drink with strangers.” I thought her frail body might break with her sobs. “He suffocated me with his rootedness. He couldn’t do anything else.” Her cold hand clutched mine. “Don’t let him suffocate you.” Just then, papà entered the room.

  “Suffocate who?” He turned away from us when he spoke as if to avoid a blow.

  “I’m suffocating.”

  “Ah, so you feel better today.”

  Mamma closed her eyes again. I adjusted the coverlet.

  “I’ll let you rest then.” Papà seemed relieved to have found a reason to leave. “Is there anything you want?”

  “Yes, Gabriele. I want to be buried next to Etto.” Mamma’s voice was clear and strong.

  “You ask this of me, too?” He meant, of course, that instead of lying next to his wife, as was proper, he would be buried at a distance from her in an eternity of shame for all to see.

  “It’s the only thing I ask of you, Gabriele.” Papà backed out of the door.

  As soon as the latch clicked behind him, mamma turned to me with a soundless laugh.

  “I’m a stranger to him. He only sees the Willa he’s invented. I don’t exist.” She gasped. “Remember, he has invented you, too.” I didn’t know what she meant because papà and I had always been very close. I held a glass of water for her, not trusting myself to say anything. “In the end, we‘re all stranieri. We have to make peace with that.”

  “Mamma. I’ve decided to go to university. In Milano.”

  “Does Gabriele know?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t want to discuss it.”

  “I’ll talk to him myself. Where did he go?” Her eyes closed and her jaw slackened. I watched the labored rise and fall of her chest and stroked her hand. She opened her eyes again and reached out, her hand claw-like, for her rosary. “Take this,” she said. “I’m past prayers.”

  I turned her rosary in my fingers, examining the beads of jet and pink quartz separated by incised platinum spheres. “I’ve always loved this rosary,” I said. “It seems magical.” For the first time, I noticed the thin, platinum tag attached to it and on it an inscription: Together in heaven.

  “Don’t let anyone else have it. Not even Silvana. I’m leaving other things for her and Raffaele, but I want you to keep this.” Mamma struggled to sit up. I put another pillow behind her. “And remember, Bruno isn’t your only chance, no matter what they tell you.” I nodded. “I want you to promise to do something for me.” She gestured toward the closet. “In my armadio, behind everything, there’s a box hidden in the wall.” She coughed and gasped. “Bring it to me.”

  I opened the doors of the painted wood cupboard, which was secured with bolts sunk into the tufa so that the latter formed the wall behind it. Pushing aside mamma’s clothes, I found a hatbox papered with faded pictures of travelers. I brushed away the dust on it with my skirt, carried it over to the bed, and set it down next to mamma. She raised herself up, seeming to revive.

  “I brought this hatbox with me when I came to Italy. I was only twenty.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “So full of dreams.” I removed the lid from the box and lifted out a green velvet hat with a drooping, iridescent feather on one side. Mamma traced her finger along the length of the feather. “I wore this one in Firenze.”

  “I don’t remember it. Was I there?”

  “Let me see the others.�
�� Her interest surprised me. I held up a pale, purple cloche streaked with faded blue. A smile spread over her face. “Firenze, too.” I held up another hat, this one of red felt with a black veil of dotted tulle. Mamma inhaled deeply, and tears came to her eyes. “Milano. His favorite.”

  “They’re beautiful, but they seem out of style, now.”

  “I kept them to remember my dreams.”

  I put the hats away and returned the hatbox to mamma’s armadio. “You have so many books in here, mamma.” I wiped the dust off of my hands with my skirt. “They’re in English.”

  “I was afraid I would forget my own language. I read and kept a diary...like a survivor of a shipwreck.”

  “Here are some paints and a notebook.” When I picked it up, the edges of the faded blue leather cover crumbled in my hands. A medal slid out onto the floor. I showed it to her. “What’s this?”

  “Just a war relic of Gabriele’s. Did you find the box?”

  I returned to the armadio again. In the wall at the back I could see the box. I lifted it out. Behind it the crumbling tufa had been scraped away to form a niche the way a prisoner might carve out a secret space or prepare for an escape. I saw a chisel and a spoon, the tools mamma must have used. I backed out of the armadio and brushed away the powdery residue on the box. “Is this what you wanted?”

  “Yes. Tell him that I’ll answer his letter as soon as I can go to Arezzo. I’ve had so much to do these last few days. I still need to get my tickets.” She seemed to be dreaming, but her eyes were open. “The letters…where are they?”

  “What letters?” I thought mamma must be delirious.

  “You’ve left my letters out where someone could see them.” She looked toward the door.

  “You asked me to get this box for you, mamma.”

  “Always lock the door first,” she whispered. I went to secure the lock.

  “In the top drawer of my bureau there’s a brass key.” I found the key hanging on a length of frayed grosgrain ribbon; its original red color had faded to shades of lavender and orange. I gave it to mamma. “I took that ribbon from a cap of Etto’s.” She held it to her nose. “For a time it smelled like his hair.” She handed it back to me. “Open the box now.” She watched me as I put the key in the lock and turned until there was a dull click. Inside was a bundle wrapped in purple velvet. “Unwrap it,” she whispered. “Remember, no one but you must see these.” I took the bundle out of the box. Inside were the letters. I looked at one envelope, then another. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. They all seemed to be addressed to someone I didn’t know... Signora Isabella Farnese…someone in Arezzo.

  “Whose are these?”

  “Mine. They’re from someone I’ve loved for many years. Michel Losine.” Was that what papà had to forgive? I had always believed that we children were the fulfillment of all of papà’s and mamma’s wishes. I had never imagined that they could have had other lives. Especially not mamma. Weren’t she and papà always together except when she went on sales trips for Vino Marcheschi?

  “Promise me you’ll take these letters to him,” mamma said, “and that you won’t let anyone know that they exist.” The fire sputtered. I didn’t want to meet mamma’s amante, who had kept an important part of her from us.

  “Let me burn them right now, mamma. Then, you won’t have to be concerned about them.” I didn’t want to keep her secrets from papà. Like an emissary on a futile errand, I had often felt caught in an unnamed and unresolved struggle between them. I didn’t want to continue their battle.

  “His address is on the envelope.” Mamma’s voice trailed off. I picked up one of the letters and saw the address. The letter was postmarked “Milano.” Mamma breathed slowly. I tied the letters and wrapped them in the cloth, returned the bundle to the box, and put the box back in its niche. Now I was complicit. Would it be a betrayal if I decided not to do what mamma had asked? Could I just burn the letters before anyone found out? Mamma awakened with a start. “He’s expecting you.” Her eyelids fluttered. “Do you have your money?”

  “What money?”

  She opened her eyes, anxious. “In the bottom drawer of my bureau, in the back, under the paper liner there’s an envelope with your name. Grandpa and Grandma Carver left this money when they died. Gabriele doesn’t know about it or he would insist on keeping it himself. Take it! Make a life for yourself away from Orvieto.”

  Even though mamma had always talked about leaving Orvieto, the possibility of my doing so had always seemed remote to me, something I might read about in a novel or a story in one of mamma’s magazines. After I went to university, I planned to come back. “I want you to have more choices than I had,” she said. I wasn’t as ambitious as mamma was. I only wanted to become a history teacher and marry Bruno. “Have you found a place to live?”

  “No, but I have a list of places where Cattolicà students board.”

  Mamma closed her eyes, breathed softly; then she stirred, a smile rising at the corners of her mouth. “Did I tell you? I’m leaving Orvieto very soon, too?” she whispered. She opened her eyes and looked toward the door. “Why has Grazia let all those people come in here? Tell them to wait for me outside.” She waved toward the foot of the bed. “I must be late!”

  “There’s no one else here.”

  “Tell Grazia to go now. I don’t need her.”

  “She’s not here.”

  Mamma fell asleep, her breathing slow and quiet. “I love you, mamma. We all do.”

  There were many more questions I wanted to ask her, but Mamma died that night. I was surprised that she could be alive and then not, surprised by the way that life leaves. Even though her body was still there, her room felt empty. Surprising, too, was my feeling that at last darkness had turned to light, that I could exhale fully without the ominous unease that until then I had thought was mine alone. It is difficult to describe this sense of relief I felt at the lifting of an unidentifiable but familiar oppression. I felt new to myself and also ashamed that these uncanny yet pleasurable feelings arose because mamma had died. I decided to read Michel Losine’s letters.

  5

  Out of respect for papà and our family’s position in Orvieto, many people felt it their duty to attend mamma’s funeral mass at the Duomo and afterwards to call on us at home and express their condolences. I’m sure that some had never had a conversation with mamma during the entire time she had lived in Orvieto, and for most, it was the first time that they had been invited inside our house on via Cavallotti. They moved about the salotto and the garden in their best clothes, studied our possessions discreetly, and remarked on our taste as they enjoyed the refreshments that Grazia had prepared.

  Though nearly a generation had passed since la Guerra, many of the guests had lived through that time and carried with them terrible memories. Some had been brought to our house for questioning themselves, and all knew someone who had been executed after these interrogations. Others remembered seeing that the occupying German soldiers had carved their initials or the Nazi symbol on the mantel in the salotto, on the cupboard in the kitchen, and on a newel of the stairway. Subsequent sanding and refinishing had failed to erase the marks entirely, and these too rekindled their memories of so many things that remained unspeakable and terrifying.

  “A great loss to all of you,” Pietro Orsini, Bruno’s father, said to us as he entered the salotto, where papà, Raffaele, Silvana and I received our guests. He bowed slightly toward me and kissed papà on both cheeks. “I can well understand. Bruno was only a baby when I lost my wife.”

  Sister Maria Cristina, Pietro Orsini’s sister, followed him into the salotto and stood next to him. The wide-winged wimple of her habit made her appear much larger than she actually was and suggested a fierce bird. “God be with you,” she murmured to papà and then turned away without acknowledging Silvana, Raffaele or me. Taking her brother’s arm, she led him through the open doors and out into the garden. Bruno stood quietly near the fireplace, the black fabric of his sui
t jacket tense against his muscular arms.

  Just then I overheard Signora Lucarelli ask papà about the fresco above the mantel. “It’s as ancient as Oriveto,” papà said. “I had it appraised by the leading antiquities dealer in Firenze. It’s priceless. I have the certificates to prove it.”

  While Signora Lucarelli was thus occupied, Dottor Lucarelli seized my hand and looked into my eyes. “Our deepest sympathy,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  He continued to hold my hand in both of his, trembling. What does he want? I wondered. “Your mother received proper care, I trust?” He ran his fingers over mine, held my eyes with his. I tried to extricate my hand, but he resisted. Did Dottor Lucarelli realize that his misdiagnosis had contributed to mamma’s death? “If Willa had been under my care, I could have saved her. It takes time. She was impatient.” Perhaps he wanted me to agree with him or to say that we understood that the delay in mamma’s care wasn’t his fault. I understood how he could have made a mistake. After all, he wasn’t a real doctor. Everyone knew that. Besides, he was old. It was a mistake for mamma to consult him in the first place, but papà had insisted. “You’ve always been a hypochondriac,” he said when she went to the doctor in Arezzo and later to a specialist in Milano. They argued about it. I don’t know why mamma finally gave in and decided not to seek further treatment. I think she just decided to accept her fate.

  “Wouldn’t you like to taste some of Grazia’s wonderful pastries?” I said to Dottor Lucarelli. At this, he let go of my hand.

  Signora Lucarelli moved toward me as she dabbed her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief of thin, black linen. “A closed casket. Very unusual.” I nodded. “I understand the burial will be private, too.” I nodded again. “Why private?” she said as though this were a decision that should have been discussed with her. “Whose idea was that?” I offered her some chocolates, hoping to distract her. She took the largest one and bit into it. “Was it your mother or your father who decided on a private burial?”