Last Train from Liguria

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

  Bella laughs. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

  'If Rosa is sick, they all know it. Someone would come tell us by now.'

  *

  Bella steps out onto via Romano. Heat that would skin you alive. Along the pathway, placed at intervals, there are benches under trees. Far down the road one solitary old man, the picture of peace, sits in a snooze opposite the Hotel Angst. To have to trudge all the way up to the old town now, leave the merciful shade of via Romano behind, turn onto the spiral road; round and round, up and up, further and further from the sea's constant breeze. Her mind starts to jiggle with second thoughts.

  She could always leave the matter of Rosa for later when the air has cooled down, sit on one of these benches and finish reading her letters instead, feel the shade glide like a silk slip over her face, throat, arms. Or. She could go down to the centre, have an iced coffee in the Caffè delle Onde, sit among the elite shoppers, with their small ridiculous dogs and fragile parcels of pastries. Read the letters there. Or. Stroll down to the seafront, throw a sly eye over Alec and the Almansi girls, then into Bar Atu; the brush of the sea breeze as she reads, the flimsy overseas pages in her hand trying to slip off back to Sicily, England, America. Or she could tear the wretched things into confetti, fling them over a wall; not bother to read them at all.

  A bicycle bell clucks behind her. She turns to see the water salesman on his way back up to the mineral springs at Madonna della Ruota. Big purple face breathing sharp and slow as a carpenter's saw. The tremble of bottles all around him; dangling in nets from the handlebars, crossbar, his wrists and around his neck. He passes and she reads the familiar, if unfortunate, sign on his back: 'Aqua della Madonna'.

  Bella folds the letters and shoves them into her dress pocket, then crosses to the other side of the road.

  From a side road that leads up to the colli, a large group of middle-aged hikers pour out. She stops while they pass. Brawny and pink, moist faces beaming, knapsacks hoisted on backs. They are holding their alpenstock at the ready although the rough ground is well behind them now. Germans; more this year than ever. The visitor columns in the newspaper are crammed with Herrs, Fraus, Von this and Von that. Herd-like, they continue to cross her path, hearty nods and eager grins, until it occurs to one man to call halt and, arm graciously extended, he invites her to pass.

  The road takes a bend. On her left, the rising walls of the villas: Vera, Valentina, Cordelia. A little further on Villa Capella, a sign on the gate: 'Oranges, sweet and bitter. Apply the gardener's house.' Across the way on the corner is Luzzati's old café. The 'In Vendita' notice has finally been taken down. The café sign on the ground, sun-faded and cracked. A ladder leans against the outside wall, and from inside comes the dull determined sounds of reinvention: hammers, saws, planks of wood being dragged across bare floors. Through the murky curtainless windows she sees men in overalls drift.

  A workman comes out holding a large framed picture in his hand. She crosses the road to ask him if he knows where the Luzzatis have gone.

  'Non so.' He shrugs.

  'Sono tornati a Trieste?' she asks him.

  'Non lo so, Signora.'

  A voice from inside the shop suggests, 'America?'

  'Ah sì.' The man with the picture in his hand is suddenly certain. 'Sì, sì, America. Certo. Tutta la famiglia è andata in America.'

  He adds the picture to the stack already resting on the wheel of his truck. It is a large red poster-picture of a dancing clown eating a bowl of spaghetti. It used to hang in the corner above a table where she often sat, looking up sometimes from the book by her plate, to relieve the strain in her neck. Even after she had become friendly with Mrs Cardiff and they had taken to joining each other for dinner, she would still find herself glancing up at it. She knows this picture as well as she knows the view from her own room. Bella thinks about asking him if she could buy it, but he has gone back inside before she can decide if she wants it at all.

  Under the ladder buckets of paint are covered with lace to keep the flies at bay. The lace torn from a communion dress or maybe a veil. Beside it an ormolu vase holds a quartet of damp paintbrushes. Two silver-service knives, smeared with paint, lie on the ground. In the back of the van a plump hunting dog, tongue pulsing against the dirty glass of the window, a glitter of sweat on his fur. Bella stands for a moment and considers all this. What Mrs Cardiff would call 'the small everyday brutalities of Italian life'.

  She turns to cross back. The road, so long from left to right and as far as the eye can see, is deserted. Bella notices the amount of houses that have remained vacant this summer, houses that would usually have been taken by English holidaymakers. Even the Villa Cordelia is silent, a long thick chain and lock dangling from its gate, behind which a tangle of garden shows. For years it had been rented by an extended English family. The father, a peer of the realm. Grandmothers, uncles, aunts, children who behaved like savages, throwing water bombs over the wall. They had caught her father slap on the head two summers ago. He had called to complain but had been given short shrift for his trouble. Later he had written a letter to the English Riviera Times. 'One expects more,' he had said, 'from British children.'

  A small orange Fiat turns out of a driveway and judders off towards the high road like a piece of fruit on wheels. From the opposite direction a cart returning from the San Remo market appears, baskets of unsold flowers and swaddles of palms roped in at the back. A woman drives the mule on, one foot on the rim of a smaller basket to keep it from toppling over. As it passes Bella sees there's a baby inside. The woman looks old enough to be the child's grandmother, but her heavy breasts and the stain on her blouse show that she's not. The cart and the Fiat pass each other with an exchange of rattles and jangles. Then the road is empty and silent again.

  She follows the curve into via Pineta. Above is the pine garden where she promises herself a little rest, higher again is the old town, the città alta. Looking down to the right – a shuffle of terracotta rooftops all the way to the centre and the seafront. She hears the first stirring of the parade below, sees the stragglers emerge from their different angles. Unaware of each other, yet behaving like each other – berets pressed into heads, Sam Browne belts adjusted across chests, feet lifting to buff a shoe on the back of a leg before rushing to catch up, slip in, without drawing notice.

  At the newspaper kiosk a van is parked. A man swinging low from the hips unloads bundles to the ground; another man flicks his knife through the twine that holds them together. She reminds herself to stop on the way back for Edward's newspapers. Under the curved half-wall of the gent's latrine a pair of lower legs dressed in green linen gingerly slips into position.

  Bella places her hand on the rail in the centre of the first stair alley, already hot to the touch. She braces herself for the climb. Her shoes suck on her feet; the cloth of her dress pastes itself to her legs.

  A few moments later she slips into the pine garden, where she stands with her hand for a while against the giant Indian fig tree, gently gasping for air. The Luzzatis come into her head again. The Day of the Faithful – was that the last time she had spoken to them? The café had closed soon after and about a year after that again, the For Sale sign had gone up. She had spotted them through the window a few times, but they never seemed to come out. Once she had even tried knocking on the door.

  Regaining her breath Bella wanders through the rockeries, passing the punier spits of water until she finds a good healthy rope of it, which she breaks with the cup of her hand. It fills and she sucks the water up, taking pleasure in the sound it gives her, the privacy in here that allows it. In the distance the band is warming up. Notes rub, bump, scrap off each other, jostle for a moment, then suddenly catch. Finally a tune stumbles into shape. Now voices. 'Siamo l'eterna gioventù, che conquista l'avvenire. We are the eternal youth, who will conquer the future.

  Now on a bench, surrounded by umbrella pines, chestnuts, all sorts of trees set close to each other. It's like sitting in a room
with walls made of shadow. Baubles of sunlight prowl outside. She can see downhill, a thin weave of ocean through the pines and on the verge of the via Pineta, bunches of aloe and agave, their long arms extended, like octopuses trying to crawl back to the sea.

  Bella closes her eyes and sees the Luzzatis. She does not for one moment believe they have gone to America.

  *

  The Day of the Faithful. An unusually cold day for Liguria, it had been, a day of startling December light. She had thought it might be a bit of fun for Alec, breakfast in town and then off for a look at the proceedings. Edward would have none of it. A farce without comedy, he had called it. Married women queuing for hours to donate their gold wedding rings to Mussolini's African campaign. Then receiving a steel band in its place and muttering a coy oath of fidelity on the exchange – 'as if he was marrying the whole stock and breed of them'.

  She could remember walking down to the centre that morning and the tired faces of workmen who had been up all night hooking up loudspeakers so that the speeches from Rome could be heard all over town.

  Queues since dawn. Unbelievable crowds. They had come from all over, people who hadn't been seen in years; peasants in old-fashioned suits from four valleys away, dowagers in furs who preferred to remove their jewellery slowly and in full public view rather than bring it along in a bag. Everyone anxious to throw in their lot. Or to be seen throwing in their lot, anyhow. There had been something joyless about the atmosphere, a sense of barely controlled panic. Bella had noticed this at once.

  'It's very squeezy, Signora,' Alec said as they came near the church and peered into the pack. He seemed a little shaky and pale.

  'Yes, isn't it, Alec? Would you like to go home? I know I would. Let's do that – shall we? Let's just get out of here, go home and annoy Maestro Edward. Maybe we can play cards. Make toast at the fire – would you like that?'

  As they turned to go back they saw Luzzati pushing to get through. On a day that was meant to be only for women, with men as spectators on the side. A day that was only for wedding rings. He couldn't make himself stay away, even though he had already donated a considerable amount during the previous weeks, as everyone seemed to have done, except for Signora Lami.

  The newspapers published details of all contributions and Luzzati had underlined his name and donations in red, then hung the cuttings on the café wall, alongside a framed copy of his letter praising the regime that had been published in the Popolo newspaper.

  Now here he was again, humping a bolster pillowcase on his back, looking like a thief in a child's book. Bits of candlesticks poking out of the top, bumps of other things showing through the cloth. He was shouting at the women to get out of his way. Demanding the record-keeper write every item down so it could be printed in the newspaper for all to read. People, without looking at him, stepped aside.

  Bella would never forget the face of this usually serene man, emptying the pillowcase out, the sound of the items clanging onto the ground. His wife, coatless and shivering, was standing halfway up the street, twisting this way and that, as if quite literally she didn't know which way to turn. Bella took her arm and led her back towards their café. The poor woman had tears pouring down her face. 'È impazzito, Signora,' she said to Bella, 'a causa di Trieste.'

  Eventually Bella managed to get out of Signora Luzzati why her husband had 'gone mad'. His brother's shop in Trieste had been broken into, his nephew beaten up. They were scrawling the synagogue with words the old lady could not bring herself to say.

  Bella knew so much about the Luzzatis – that the Signora had a touch of lumbago, that he had a morbid fear of the sea and couldn't even walk along the promenade, how they had moved to Bordighera to retire and had ended up buying the café. How they had first met years ago in the dentist's surgery in Trieste where their son and five grandchildren still lived, that he had been engaged to someone else at the time – there had been a scandal and talk of a lawsuit. All that. Yet until the Day of the Faithful she had no idea that the Luzzatis were Jews.

  *

  She wakes with a start, head swaying from her neck, jerks back and takes a soft crack against the bark of a tree. Her neck. Bella curls her hand over it and squeezes the ache. A dream is still whispering in her head – something from the past. 'What was it about?' she asks herself out loud, the mild shock of her own voice bringing her fully awake. She is in the pine garden, yes. Where she had stopped for a rest on the way to see Rosa.

  The bells of the midday angelus wander up from the Nervia and Roya valleys. Churches she may have seen on Sunday outings, churches she may never see as long as she lives – she listens to them all now. Down in the centre of Bordighera the peals are more rounded as if they are being weighed on the palm of a hand. Loudest at her back they come from the old town and the church of Maria Maddalena.

  Bella scratches her arm where the mosquitoes have taken advantage of her sleeping absence. She tells herself to get up and go. But she is still a little tired and the noonday heat holds her down. The smell of Sister Assumpta's orphanage soup rolls on and off the air. Brewed out of local donations: kitchen gardens, restaurants, shops, farms. Bella sniffs a guess at this week's surplus – cabbage and salumi.

  The last toll of the angelus shivers then dies and she can hear now, through the long pines, a sound of passing voices. Two men, possibly three. Occasional phrases slip out of their deep dull rumble: 'Difesa della razza.' 'La questione ebraica.' 'Demografia.' 'Manifesto.' Words she's been hearing more and more, and is sick of hearing more and more, these past weeks. Defence of the race; the Jewish debate; demography; manifesto.

  They will pass, like so many other notions and fads have passed since she first came here. This is not Germany – this is Italy, she reminds herself, yet again. Bella stands, stretches her arms over her head, pushes them against a non-existent weight, then leaves the garden.

  The old town is full of pre-lunch activity on piazza del Popolo and all the narrow streets leading into it. Women on last-minute errands press past each other in shop doorways. Street pedlars, returned from the parade, congregate around the shade of the clock tower portico and begin removing themselves from their trays like horses coming out of harness. In front of the church, men stand around in tidy groups of two or three. From the widow's bench, five soft-leathery faces stare out.

  Outside the café the three small tables are taken. Two men in a mumble over a jug of wine. At the next table a young priest sips his aperitivo under a wide-brimmed hat and reads the newspaper, pausing sometimes to make notes on the margin or to underline a phrase. At the last table a municipal official smokes a pipe and glares angrily at his plate of bruschetta. A boy in uniform sits on the church step eating a half moon of melon as if he is using it to wash his face.

  She can hear the beads on shop doors rattle and drop like Japanese fans; and the roll and grind of handcart wheels across the cobbles; and the suck of the boy on the melon. She can hear everything except voices – there is a surprising absence of those.

  The sound of a thud. When she lifts her eyes to it Bella finds herself looking straight at the window of Rosa's long kitchen – the window she knows to overlook the church and this square. It is shut. For a moment it seems the curtain has shifted, and a brief shadow falls over the lace. Bella lifts her hand to wave, but sees after all there is no one.

  A few steps around by the side of the church into piazza Fontana, the smell of the orphanage soup becoming suddenly keen. She can hear the voices of children singing grace before lunch. Bella looks at the fountain and thinks of the milk boy – a milkman now, with full beard and two small children, always careful to ignore her whenever their paths happen to cross.

  A woman leans over the fountain; darts of water dancing into a tin bucket resting on the stoop. The baker, outside his shop, swishes a broom across a small area of ground. Over his door a crick-necked Madonna peeps out of her flour-dusted niche. Bella can see now, the windows on the other side of Rosa's apartment which run the length of the
house are also unpromisingly shut.

  She crosses the piazza, returns the woman's tired half greeting, thanks the baker for his 'buona pranzo' although she doubts she'll bother with lunch today.

  Now in the house where Rosa lives. Up dim flights of stairs, past food smells and clattering kitchens. The doors of the apartments on each return are all open, giving a steamy wedge of daylight that helps her to follow the way to the top of the house. But when she gets to Rosa's the door is shut tight. She decides to knock even so.

  She knocks again. 'Rosa?' she says. 'Sono io – Signora Stuart.'

  On the landing below, a footstep. A voice calls up. Bella looks down and recognizes the bald woman who insulted Rosa's dying husband five years ago. The woman comes up a few stairs and stops, then asks if she's looking for Rosa.

  'Sì – cerco Signora Fabbri,' Bella confirms.

  'C'è. Di sicuro.' She is there. Definitely. The bald woman is gleeful, like a spiteful child telling a tale. That door was open not five minutes ago, she declares. Give it a good bang. The woman forms a fist and thumps the air in case Bella has failed to understand her. Then she climbs the last few stairs to stand beside Bella outside Rosa's door. She begins to jeer through the keyhole. 'Rosa Fabbri? Ci sei? So che ci sei. Apri la porta.'

  Bella would just as soon go now. Let Rosa pretend not to be at home, if that's what she wants. But the neighbour will not be satisfied until Rosa is thoroughly mortified. She thumps the door again.

  'Stia tranquilla. Non importa,' Bella says and turns to go.

  The woman catches her by the arm, her grip gypsy-firm. Bella watches as she flattens her other hand and bashes it off the door. She sees now the woman also lacks eyebrows and eyelashes. She remembers they call her La Testa Nuda, and wonders how she came to be that way.

  Slowly the door opens a crack, and a red-faced Rosa peeps through. 'I am sorry, Signora Stuart,' Rosa begins in her careful English.

  'Why should you be sorry?' Bella asks her.