Apricot Kisses

by Winter, Claudia

  “Carlo said he had your permission.” Rosa-Maria shoots a livid look in Carlo’s direction.

  “In my opinion we shouldn’t discuss this in front of an employee,” Carlo says arrogantly. “You know that as the arm of the law I have to uphold la bella figura in front of all residents.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass whether or not you look good,” I say. “And Rosa-Maria isn’t an employee; she’s part of the family. So why was the trattoria open when we had decided otherwise?” I again address Rosa-Maria, who has started to sneeze violently.

  “It’s not her fault, honestly.” Carlo eyes Rosa-Maria’s thyme rolls. Out of pure spite, I push the bread basket out of his reach. So he mumbles, “It was my idea.” I move the basket even farther away. “Rosa-Maria was ill. She was coughing like my old Fiat that I scrapped last year. So I said to myself, ‘Carlo, why don’t you do your good friend Fabrizio a favor?’ A closed restaurant isn’t a good restaurant, eh? Nothing against your culinary skills, Rosa-Maria, but I can whip up some pasta blindfolded. There was only one guest anyway, and she tipped little Alba generously.”

  Rosa-Maria’s skin darkens another shade. She clears her throat several times and licks her hairy upper lip, but her silent cry for help gets lost in our village policeman’s sea of smugness.

  “You let the maid serve?” I say. “Where the hell was Lucia? How much did Alba get?” I ask warily—around here, an overly generous tip does not mean a compliment for the kitchen. Carlo raises two fingers triumphantly.

  “Twenty euros?”

  “As I said, it was good.”

  For a few seconds, I want to beat the magazine—which I’ve been carrying in the inside pocket of my jacket for forty-eight hours—round Carlo’s head. But the urge remains just a very satisfying image. Our house doesn’t need another troublemaker. “Don’t you realize that Tre Camini has a reputation to lose? We can’t afford botched kitchen jobs—or the tourists won’t come.”

  His black mustache trembles, a clear sign of uneasiness. He would never admit it, though. You can catch Carlo Fescale with his finger in the honey jar and he will still claim it wasn’t him. He was born without a conscience. Maybe that’s why he’s such a good custodian of the law.

  “I can’t stand foreign tourists anyway,” Carlo says. “They have no idea what al dente means. Could I have a thyme roll?”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “I meant well. Now give me a panino and tell me what’s really bothering you,” Carlo grumbles and reaches for the bread basket.

  Maybe it’s the carefree attitude of his that I’ve known since childhood. Possibly it’s the warmth emanating from the oven—or the aroma of freshly baked panini. My rage crumbles like the crumbs Carlo scatters on the table as he cuts through a roll. He smears it thickly with salted butter.

  “The urn. I lost Nonna.” My throat feels as if I’d swallowed a cup of flour.

  Rosa-Maria’s mixing bowl shatters on the terra-cotta tiles. She whimpers and crosses herself several times. Carlo scrutinizes me, chewing. It feels like an eternity, with Rosa-Maria’s sobbing as the soundtrack. Then Carlo scratches the back of his head.

  “Fabrizio?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have some more salted butter?”

  Hanna

  I’ve tried sleeping on it, but the night did nothing to help the way I feel. Since I didn’t want to leave the urn at the office, I took it with me to my apartment in Wilmersdorf, a decision I have since regretted. After all, a dead person is not your average houseguest. I didn’t sleep a wink and got up several times to move the unwelcome visitor. I couldn’t find a single spot in my six-hundred-fifty-square-foot apartment that didn’t offend either my or Signora Camini’s sense of propriety.

  Now, I sit totally bleary-eyed on a wooden bench in the Berlin zoo, my shoulders resting against the spot where I carved H.P. + D.A. four years ago with the key of Daniel’s BMW. I flushed the same key down the toilet a few months later, just to bug him. I scratched out his initials after we broke up and haven’t allowed another pair of letters into my life since then. But I held on to Sunday mornings at the zoo, even though I’m not much into animals. Birds actually scare me. On the other hand, I find meerkats cute. Daniel nastily called them “bastards.”

  “Hello, Hanna!”

  “Morning, Helmut!” I wave to the stocky man in Wellingtons who is entering the meerkat enclosure with two buckets.

  As a teenager, I used to visit the zoo almost daily—mainly to skip school, but also to secretly attach myself to Southern European extended families, people I’ve always found strangely attractive. I would simply trot behind a Turkish family and imagine that I was their adopted daughter. Unfortunately, it never went well for long. I usually ended up as a human found item in the lost and found at the zoo’s administration offices, where my name and face became well known. Eventually I moved my adventures to the Kaufhaus des Westens department store, and that had consequences. My adolescent escapades didn’t seem to particularly bother my parents, but the juvenile-court judge, who sentenced me to forty hours of community service for shoplifting, took the matter much more seriously. I will never forget how I felt in the courtroom when the intimidating, black-robed man said to me, “Child, what did you think you were doing?” while simultaneously staring down my parents. It was the first and last time I saw my father look embarrassed.

  When the zookeeper empties the bucket, the meerkats rush to devour pieces of banana, eggs, and peanuts—no chicks today, to my relief.

  Unfortunately, the diversion doesn’t last long. As the last banana disappears into a smacking mouth, my thoughts return to my strange visitor. It feels as if I’ve given shelter to the actual living Giuseppa Camini. She shuffles in slippers through my apartment and shakes her head when she sees how empty it is and how I haven’t unpacked all the boxes from my move, even though I’ve lived there for a year. She investigates cupboards and reads my mail, and she’s expecting me to bring home the Sunday paper, which I won’t be able to afford if I lose my job.

  “Salut, ma belle!”

  I look up in surprise and see a petite shape against the sun. “What are you doing here?”

  “Keeping you company.” Claire sits down next to me and fishes a croissant out of a paper bag. We sit silently for a while.

  “It’s Sunday,” I say.

  “Hmmm,” Claire responds, chewing.

  “Did you have a fight with Jan?”

  “Jan doesn’t know how to argue.” She offers me the paper bag. “Croissant or chocolate roll?”

  I suddenly have a lump in my throat. “Claire, why are you here?”

  “To stand by a friend. Isn’t that the phrase?”

  “I’m your friend?”

  “Mostly you’re a silly goose.” Swallowing the last bite, she grins. “So what are we going to do about the Caminis?”

  “I’m going to write a heart-melting letter of apology and ask Signor Camini to drop the charges.”

  “You actually intend to send poor Giuseppa to Italy in the mail?”

  “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “You really should know the answer yourself. Why do you make yourself so complicated?”

  She always says that, and I hate it. “Forget it, Claire,” I mumble.

  “It’s too late. I already called the boss and he finds my idea magnifique!” She curls a lock of hair around her finger. “And before you curse and swear like a raven—”

  “It’s ‘swear like a sailor.’”

  “Whatever.” She makes a dismissive gesture. “Before you get mad at me, listen first. Signor Camini is Italian and you are half-Italian, n’est-ce pas? So nobody is more aware that a letter does nothing to soothe the pride of a Mediterranean man. I thought carefully, Hanna. You have to go back to Italy. Talk with Signor Camini, tell him that you are sorry and that you’ll
make amends. You’ll hand over the urn, and everything will be all right.”

  “You mean the stolen urn,” I say.

  “The found urn.”

  “But I can’t do something like that. I suck at conflict resolution!”

  “Seriously, Hanna. Life is filled with conflict. It’s about time you learned how to deal with it.” Claire is unrelenting. “Hellwig already gave the go-ahead on my idea for a special Tuscany issue. Your ticket is waiting for you at the airport. You’ll go on a business trip, you’ll wrap the Caminis around your little finger, and you’ll also write a few nice—the operative word is nice—articles about local restaurants.”

  “You covered all the angles, didn’t you?”

  “Most of all, I thought of you,” Claire says softly. “Sometimes it is better to confront the ghosts that haunt you rather than running away from them. It can be healing.”

  Honestly, I don’t have the slightest idea what this French girl is talking about.

  Chapter Three

  Hanna

  “What do you mean, the car is not available?” I say. “Here’s the online confirmation from your company. It clearly states medium-size car, Florence airport car rental, reserved for Monday, June twenty-third. That’s today!”

  I thought I was prepared for anything, but I wasn’t ready for my personal Italian nightmare to start right when I arrived in Florence. First, the workers threw my luggage onto the baggage-claim conveyor belt last, as if they knew that I was in a hurry. Then, I was randomly selected for a special customs check and had to take my underwear out of my suitcase and spread it out in front of a clerk with a mustache and an Adam’s apple that jumped up and down. Next, my heart sank when the customs clerk held Giuseppa indecisively in his hands for a while. But, unexpectedly, the urn slid through as a souvenir. He shrugged his shoulders and put her back in the suitcase. I guess I don’t look like a drug smuggler.

  Of course, by then the rental-car line reached all the way to Arrivals. When I finally got to the glassed-in counter two hours later, I was ready to board the next plane back to Berlin—regardless of my job or the urn. And now this!

  The fat Italian in the bright-yellow booth looks at me nonchalantly. “No car available.”

  He must be joking.

  “Yes, you already said that,” I reply in German. “But that’s not my problem, I’m afraid.”

  “Is not a problem, signora. Just come back tomorrow, and then a car will be here.”

  “Tomorrow?” I can feel the frozen smile on my face melting.

  “Maybe late morning. But not too late, because then we have lunch break.” He is still completely indifferent.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I can do nothing. Come back tomorrow. Basta.”

  “Listen, I’m here on business and don’t have time to be the victim of your lousy organizational skills,” I say—in a much higher pitch than I planned.

  The fat guy shakes his head and starts to roll down his blinds.

  In desperation, I put both hands on the window and start screaming in Italian. “You’ll get a car for me pronto, even if you have to weld it together yourself! Otherwise your little yellow box will explode. Basta!”

  Suddenly the clerk is no longer blasé. He rushes out of his glass box. “Luigi Cartone, signora, at your service. Why didn’t you say you were Italian in the first place?”

  I cut him short. “So are we now solving the problem the Italian way, or should I sic my mother on you?” I ignore his outstretched, pudgy hand. Cartone looks at me approvingly. My reaction doesn’t seem to astonish or offend him. I push my chest out even farther and pout, something I wouldn’t do in Germany even if my life depended on it. Cartone makes a calming gesture—hands flat, paddling downwards—and scurries back into his fishbowl. He reaches for the phone, an antique with a dial, while he texts furiously on his cell phone with the thumb of his other hand.

  “Giacomo, come over here, OK? And bring the key for the Spider for a pretty signora. What? I don’t care if it’s reserved.” Ignoring the excited response on the other end, he puts down the receiver and raises a thumb. “No problem, signora”—he glances at the rental contract—“Signora Philipp. If I may give you some advice, from one countryman to another: speak Italian in Italy. That opens windows and doors for a beautiful woman—car doors, too.”

  Driving a car in an Italian city is a life-threatening activity, especially if you don’t know the rules, which aren’t posted anywhere. Basically, remember that the faster car always wins, pass in the most dangerous spot you find, and watch for motorbikes and Vespas that suddenly dash out of tiny side streets with total disregard for traffic lights. Italians also tend to tailgate, following so closely that you cannot see the grille of the car behind you in your rearview mirror.

  When I instinctively take my foot off the gas pedal, a cacophony of car horns sounds around me. Despite Cartone’s directions—both spoken and pantomimed—I miss the freeway going southwest and land in the middle of Florence. Sweating blood in what feels like a-hundred-plus degrees and feeling no appreciation for the beauty of the city, I drive around the roundabout on the Piazza della Stazione for five minutes, looking desperately at the exit signs. None of them, even after three rounds, points in the right direction. I’m in a spanking-new Alfa Romeo Spider, but it doesn’t make me feel any better in this bumper-to-bumper chaos. Besides, now I’m sorry I was too chicken to ask for a GPS. I don’t remember when I last balanced a street map on my knees while driving. Other than that, the convertible is a dream.

  “Damn it!” I start when a Vespa roars by just inches from my side mirror—the driver in shorts and sandals with his cell phone wedged between his ear and helmet.

  A blue Fiat—which has trailed me, honking, for the past two rounds—moves up to my side. Two young Italians in mirrored sunglasses call out to me, “Che bella donna! Dove vai?” Beautiful woman, where are you going? I’m at the end of my rope. So instead of swearing at them, I wave my map and shrug my shoulders.

  “Where to? Where to?” they shout.

  I start my fifth circle of the roundabout. The Fiat doesn’t move from my side.

  “South? Perugia? Montepulciano?” I scream back. It’s worth a try. The boys grin, and one raises his thumb. The Fiat’s engine revs, and the little car scoots into a space in front of me. The passenger gestures that I should follow them. Relieved, I follow them out of the traffic circle after a sixth round, heading in the exact opposite direction from the one I thought I should take. All I can hope now is that my new friends aren’t luring me into some horrible neighborhood to pinch my purse.

  Fabrizio

  I tighten the muscles in my back, inhale, and raise my arms. The axe smashes down on the log and cuts it cleanly in half. Another piece of wood—my sixty-eighth—is next. I knock it out with one blow, paying no attention to the blister on my thumb. I deserve the pain.

  I once read that one can gauge a person’s popularity by counting how many are crying at the graveside. If that’s true, my grandmother outranks soccer legend Enzo Bearzot.

  The entire village came to pay last respects to Nonna this morning. The black-clad crowd—a sighing, crying colony of ants—invaded the cemetery and reached all the way to Via Capelli, where cars, tractors, motorbikes, and bicycles were lined up like pearls on a necklace. I don’t know who was more desperate: Padre Lorenzo, fearing for the graves that were trampled by countless feet, or me, who had to offer the mob of mourners an empty urn.

  My shirt is sticking to my back. Sweat stings my eyes; I haven’t wiped them with my bandana since round fifty-seven. I wind up for the sixty-ninth blow, this one intended for the sharp-faced notary Lombardi. I couldn’t keep him from going to read Nonna’s last will right after the funeral—he didn’t want to pay the cab fare from Pisa twice. The testament will be read in public, in the community hall, this very afternoon, the way Non
na stipulated. How crazy is that? My wooden adversary topples off the chopping block, but I don’t feel triumphant.

  “So whom exactly do you want to kill, son?”

  I notice that Alberto is leaning against the shed, his thumbs wedged under the straps of his blue overalls. Thin smoke escapes from his nose—the result of a hasty secret cigarette, no doubt. Our estate manager is as immune to medical advice as Nonna was.

  I reach for another piece of wood, pretending that Alberto has not just materialized out of thin air. I have no idea how long he’s already watched me. He has almost perfected the art of creeping up on people.

  “You mean since I made a good start with Nonna?” Round seventy. Whack. Next, please.

  “Don’t talk nonsense.”

  I look for an especially impressive log instead of replying. I call the log I find Titan and fight the urge to cross myself. I’m on the outs with God lately, like I’m on the outs with everything else. Titan’s neck breaks in a fraction of a second. Amen.

  “Your granny knew that she wasn’t well.”

  “But I didn’t know it. Otherwise I’d hardly have let her fly to Germany.”

  “You better believe me that no power in the world could have kept her from taking that trip, not even being tied to a tractor.” It sounds as if Alberto wants to add something, but he only shakes his head and laughs, as if what happened was just Nonna playing one last macabre trick on us.

  “I would have thought of something,” I say. If I inherited one gene from Nonna, it’s stubbornness. The next piece of wood—but my axe misses, cuts only the edge and whizzes into the chopping block. Relieved, I let go of the wooden handle.

  “You couldn’t have prevented the heart attack. Sooner or later—”

  “I would’ve preferred later!” The words are hardly out of my mouth when I realize that, yes, I lost my grandmother, but Alberto lost the person he’s loved his entire life. Tension tightens my chest. “Sorry. I just would have loved to . . . say good-bye. Instead, I took that possibility away from me and from all of you. I will never forgive myself. Never.”