The Art Lover

by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  “No.”

  I was being punished, not for the big choices—refusing to drive Enzo to Farfalla’s, to save him from that dangerous and unlit journey—but for the small ones.

  “Did you sit, even once, with an espresso perhaps, and look around you?”

  “That, I did try,” I said quickly. “But I could not get a seat.”

  “All the way from Germany, and you did nothing, you saw nothing. Our country was wasted on you, don’t you think?”

  “I had a job to do.”

  “But you haven’t done the job.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t think your art office will send you back. And more than that, I don’t think you would want to come. Cosimo has already told me everything about you.”

  “Cosimo knows little about me.”

  “What doesn’t he know? Convince me.” When I didn’t respond immediately, she lifted her chin at me with a dismissive flick. “You are all business, he says. You have no interest in being here.”

  “But I do,” I said under my breath. “I am very interested in being here, not in Rome or Florence, but here . . .”

  “But you will leave today.”

  “Yes. I must.”

  “Then stop following me around like a dog.”

  Gianni came banging out of the main house, hailing Rosina. He strolled up and pushed a wadded shirt into her hand. After he headed back, she inspected the collarless pin-striped shirt, fingering a rip in the sleeve and tallying its missing buttons.

  The shirt Enzo had been wearing during the accident was unsalvageable, and this one, provided by Gianni, was only slightly better. All of Enzo’s other clothes were in town, in the apartment that he and Cosimo had shared, but Cosimo dared not go now, especially when his own superior thought he was hundreds of miles away, completing an official task for which he had been given time off. Mamma Digirolamo and Marzia were upstairs in the house, taking care of the day’s most difficult and tender duty—washing the body, preparing it, brushing out the hair, trimming the fingernails, and shaving the delicate skin. Sewing was nothing compared to all that. And they’d need another hand when it came to dressing him again.

  Rosina frowned at the long sleeves with their frayed cuffs. “It’s not a very nice shirt,” she conceded. “Gianni would never give away something he actually likes.”

  The words couldn’t tumble out of my mouth quickly enough. “I have a better one in my suitcase. It’s much closer to Enzo’s size. He once mentioned that he liked it. There’s a small stain, but I haven’t tried washing it out. It will probably be fine . . .”

  “I don’t want to go back into the house,” she said, touching my arm—a brief, electrical contact. “If I were you, I’d just get in that truck and drive away—alone, back to your home. Anywhere.”

  “I burned my map.” I said it in all seriousness, but when she laughed and brought her arm up to wipe her eyes, I laughed too.

  “And now look at the time you are losing here.”

  I shook my empty wrist. “I can’t look at the time. I have no watch. I gave it to a stranger.”

  Now her smile faded. She moved her face more closely to mine. We were alone but still within sight of the house, near an open window, never far from her family. “Did it ever occur to you that you don’t want to return to Germany at all? You burn your map. You give away your watch. Someone might think . . .”

  She hesitated when I started shaking my head violently, but then she tried again. “The truth is, you can leave anytime. You can leave now. No one is stopping you.”

  “Cosimo needs me.”

  “He has all of us.”

  The fact of that statement forced me to pause. “Then I need Cosimo.” Truly, I could not picture finding my way to the border without him. But there was that word—picture. With or without him, I had no pictures in my mind of the border anymore, or of Munich.

  “Was he helping very much, that last day?” she asked. “He told me he slept most of the way. He said he was almost incoherent. He even gave you permission to leave him and Enzo at that farm.”

  “But he wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “How do you know you are in yours? How do you know that I’m in mine?”

  I didn’t. And maybe I didn’t want her to be in her right mind. Maybe I wanted her to be so swayed with emotion that she would need an arm to lean on, something I wouldn’t have been asked to provide under normal circumstances.

  There is balance, I had once believed, in everything that happens. There is symmetry. The thrower leans forward to balance the weight of the outstretched arm and, behind him, the heavy disc. In my life, again and again, something good had been followed by something bad. Wasn’t it time for something bad to be followed by something good?

  “Go to your mother,” I told her. “I’ll bring you the shirt as soon as I have it ready.”

  An hour later, Cosimo told me they were starting the vigil inside the house. Turning to go, he remembered to ask, “Do you have Enzo’s lighter?”

  I patted my pocket with the last of the three postcards from Rome, and the lighter, which I surrendered.

  Cosimo explained, “We put a few personal items into the coffin with him—whatever he might want, whatever he might need, whatever we can’t bear to see again. Do you want to come up?”

  “I’ll wait outside, if that’s all right.”

  My family was Catholic in heritage only. I hadn’t said a Rosary for my own parents. Now, I sat under the shade of a single broad-crowned tree downhill of the main house and drew out the third and final postcard I had purchased for my sister. I’d scratched out the message I’d written on the first one and left it at the bottom of my suitcase. I’d torn up the second and lefts its shreds littering the truck cab. I began again now, thinking of Greta and remembering how kind she had been to me during the difficult end of both our parents’ lives, eighteen months apart, and how little I had appreciated her kindness at the time, how I had judged her for creating a dull life for herself and Friedrich, the man she had married. But at least she had created a life. And she had always made it clear that I was welcome to share her refuge: a small island in a sea of uncontrollable events.

  Now I wanted desperately to write something heartfelt and true to my sister. The third postcard showed a photo of the Colosseum. I had bought all three directly from the signora at the pensione upon check-in without even consulting their faces—the first had a famous bridge; the second, a crowded scene of some notable piazza. None of the postcards’ images had relevance to me or this trip or my Italy. My Italy: certain hours, certain changes of light over a landscape that reminded me, more than anything, of certain people, events, and emotions. Nothing that a postcard photograph could depict.

  I spent a while under the tree, looking at the kitchen garden near the house, the tidy vineyards further on, and the woods down below, which didn’t seem nearly as thick or off-putting as they had seemed last night. I heard, through the open window, the low, repetitive chant of prayer. Rosina came to the half-open window and pushed hard against it until it gave way and she leaned over the sill, looking as if she would have been happy to fall out or fly away. She saw me and stopped for a moment, rosary still hanging from one wrist. She lifted her palm to me slowly, nodded and half smiled, then backed away into the dark, hot room back toward the sound of reverential murmurs.

  I watched the empty window for a long while before putting pen to postcard. Then I started writing and kept going until I’d run out of space, so important did it seem to tell at least one person.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was a funeral party of eight, including Marzia and Gianni’s two-year-old daughter. Leaving Mamma Digirolamo to walk holding the toddler’s hand, it took six of us to carry the coffin—an oversized, thin-planked rectangle, twice as wide as it should have been, with insecurely hammered corners that squeaked and shifted. Zio Adamo was in the middle right position, hampering more than helping, holding onto the rope handle like it was a hand strap on
a trolley car. The two young women, Rosina and Marzia, shouldered the coffin’s front corners, proving themselves much more than mere decoration; Marzia’s biceps bulged from the loose folds of her flower-patterned dress as we walked.

  We made our way from the house, down a path alongside the fields, and up a hill, atop which was some sort of small family burial plot. But just as we were beginning to crest the hill, Cosimo gave the order to set the coffin down. We all stopped and mopped our brows, then hoisted again at his command and found ourselves unexpectedly heading left and downhill, toward the copse of woods. Gianni grunted, reminding us all of the work he was doing. Rosina’s ankle turned and she cursed but kept going. The makeshift rope handle cut into my palm.

  We crossed into the woods, where the thick green shade provided a sense of momentary relief, but only until the humidity enveloped us, and now we were trudging through green, wet heat. The path was less clear, with fallen branches and rocks underfoot. Near the house, we had been taking measured and dignified steps as best we could, trying to synchronize our gaits. But fatigue had set in. This was no parade, and there was no audience. We may as well have been carrying a big box of coal. Marzia begged for a break. We set the coffin down. Cosimo said something. We lifted it up again and took a hard right turn, and a little while later, another right.

  “He isn’t lost, is he?” I whispered to Rosina, walking just ahead of me.

  “Shhhh.”

  “Because I think we’re going in circles.”

  The toddler was crying now; Mamma Digirolamo had picked her up, but couldn’t carry her for long. Marzia would have to take her. We lost some good muscles on the right.

  We trudged out of the woods and up a hill, where we caught a tantalizing breeze, then down into the green woods again. We set down the coffin, taking a longer break.

  I was about to press Rosina for more information when an old man with a flat cap came walking toward us, walking stick over one shoulder, whistling. We gingerly lowered the coffin and stood next to it. He raised a hand in greeting. I was hoping that he was a priest in disguise, that we had been trying to rendezvous with him and that explained the circuitous route. But he approached Cosimo and Zio Adamo and Mamma Digirolamo with too much exuberance and ease for that to be the case. Hugs and kisses were exchanged; Cosimo delivered a rambling address; the neighbor lowered himself onto the coffin lid with a heavy sigh and took out a pipe. Mamma wrapped her heavy forearms around herself, under her wide bosom.

  “Are we going soon?” I whispered to Rosina.

  “He believes we’re having a picnic.”

  “I thought we were having a picnic, after the burial.”

  “Our neighbor doesn’t know about the burial.”

  “And the coffin?”

  “Does it look like a coffin to you? He believed us when we said it was a picnic table.”

  The neighbor pricked up his ears at the German and said something to Cosimo, who made a show of introducing us. “I told him that you have come,” Cosimo translated for me, “to learn more about the truffle-hunting season. You are here three months early, but he is not surprised. Bavarians aren’t always the brightest.”

  “Thank you very much, Cosimo.” And to the neighbor: “Grazie.”

  We gathered around the ersatz picnic table, wiping our foreheads, fanning ourselves with our hands. The neighbor’s eye kept flitting from person to person, eyeing Mamma’s shoulder bag, round with the bread loaf inside, and the straw-wrapped wine bottle slung over Zio Adamo’s shoulder. They hadn’t offered anything yet; the neighbor hadn’t offered to leave. Sweat glistened on our faces. The hillside promised to be cooler, but we couldn’t yet ascend. Finally, Mamma Digirolamo grunted and dropped the bag at her feet—There, fine, have at it —and Rosina took out the bread and cut everyone a slice.

  We ate in the wood, in the sultry shade, the old neighbor munching happily on his slice of festive bread, peeling his hard-boiled egg, chewing his slice of sausage, eyes squinting with pleasure, while everyone else glanced nervously from one face to the other, nibbling unhappily. Finally, the neighbor stood up and rapped his walking stick hard against the coffin top, making Mamma Digirolamo wince.

  As soon as he was out of view, Mamma Digirolamo exploded with a torrent of spitting and cursing, signs of the cross, and gestures up through the heavily leafed trees.

  “He’s joking with us, she says,” Cosimo explained over his shoulder.

  “The neighbor?”

  “No. Enzo. She says he put the neighbor in our path. She says this is just his kind of humor—to make his own funeral such an inconvenience.”

  “But Cosimo,” I said, ignoring Gianni’s scowl, “why are we taking this route? Are we hiding the body in the woods?”

  “No, back up to the hill.”

  “The one we almost climbed, just past the field?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why didn’t we go straightaway?”

  Mamma Digirolamo unleashed some kind of lament.

  “She does not like the talking—from any of us,” Cosimo explained, breathing heavily. “To do this right, we must be quiet.”

  “I know, but really, this is heavy.”

  Rosina cut in: “We are confusing his spirit. My mother is from the South, and this is her family’s tradition. Enzo died a bad death, we haven’t done a proper Mass, and he will want to stay on this earth, so we can’t make it easy for him to find his way from the grave back to the house. We go in circles—Sì Mamma, prego!—until we’ve walked enough to confuse him. Then maybe he’ll stay in the grave long enough to give up and go away to heaven.”

  She risked upsetting her mother further to add, “You wonder why I moved away to Munich? Because of things like this.”

  “Maybe we will walk all the way to Munich.”

  She pushed her face into her sleeve, stifling a small noise. “I’m not laughing.”

  “Of course you aren’t. Who could laugh at a time like this?”

  Rosina tucked her chin and cheek down into her shoulder, until she had enough composure to say, “You will stay for dinner, of course.”

  Mamma Digiloramo shushed us again before I could answer.

  I’m not sure what I expected from the burial itself. This being Italy, perhaps I expected opera—or at least oratory. Instead, there was only more work. The walls of the grave sloped and the bottom wasn’t wide enough for the poorly made coffin. We all waited as Cosimo stripped off his overshirt and, in white undershirt and dusty trousers, jumped down into the grave to square the corners better. That was the most disturbing moment of the day: seeing him down there, head lower than the level earth above, occupying the space in which his twin brother’s body would remain for perpetuity. From above, seeing his tanned shoulders, and staring at the nubby dark-gold hair that had loosened and grown curlier with the day’s work and humidity, the resemblance was more clear than ever.

  The hole was widened, the box lowered, and Zio Adamo said a slow and halting prayer. Then Cosimo picked up a shovel again and I picked up the other. It took longer than I expected, and it was different than just watching, waiting, or weeping. The physicality of loading each weighted shovelful felt like a very purposeful attempt to put a barrier between all of us and what had happened—but that barrier was not a denial or a distancing. It did not feel peaceful. But it felt necessary. There were worse ways to say good-bye to someone. And there were worse things: like not saying good-bye at all.

  With the last tamping of metal against earth, Cosimo dropped the shovel and turned to shake my hand, then pulled me into a full embrace. “Grazie, molto grazie.”

  “I’ve done nothing, Cosimo. Really—nothing.”

  But he held me still, so grateful that it only made me feel terrible for what had happened and regretful that I couldn’t do more. And still he embraced me, until my own muscles loosened and I stopped resisting, until I returned the full measure of his embrace and the touch itself seemed to change that feeling of frustration into a purer grief, a s
impler camaraderie. His strong back weakened; I felt gravity working on him. He was starting to collapse; he was choking up. He had sleepwalked through a long list of tasks, and now that he was nearing the end, there was no relief, only confusion. He stepped back and turned and stalked down the hill, back toward the house, and Mamma Digirolamo hugged me quickly before following him, her worry turned toward the surviving son, who had held up somehow through all this but might not hold up much longer.

  The rest of us stayed up on the hill. I wandered away to look at the five other gravestones—an 1896, a 1911, two 1918s, and the newest one, 1935.

  “That one is my father’s,” Rosina said, coming up behind me.

  Several paces away, just downhill from the graves, Gianni ate another piece of picnic bread, leaving the eggshells scattered in a half circle around his feet. Then he lay down with a hat over his face. Marzia lay down, too, on her side, her eyes open but glazed. In that position, I could see the draping of her loose yellow dress over her round belly. It had taken me this long to realize she was pregnant—not too pregnant to help carry a coffin, evidently. Regarding her rounded form, and imagining the new baby who would be born just when the olive harvest was coming in, I found myself envying Gianni for all he had here: the family pleasures that would coincide with the changing seasons, and the fact that he and Marzia had an imaginable future together.

  Their daughter, Renata, tried crawling over her father’s legs. When she was shooed away, she came to sit in front of Rosina, who took the child’s chubby hands in her own and played a finger game with her, acting out a story about a rabbit and a wolf. The first time, the little girl liked the attention well enough, but the third and fourth time, she was beside herself with tense glee, understanding now the fate that awaited her, once the wolf came in for the kill, snatching the make-believe rabbit, and all of it ending with a tickle. Every possible emotion flashed across the little girl’s face—from worry to joy to surprise to recognition, and just a little horror when the wolf finally pounced. But then it was all fine again, and that was the fun of it, enduring the tension to get the pleasure, understanding one couldn’t have the one without the other.