“I’ll stay—but just for dinner,” I told Rosina.
She smiled. “I thought you would.”
A feast was laid out, late that afternoon, at a table outside under the trees. Mamma Digirolamo set eight plates for the adults and then caught herself, claiming she was really setting one for Renata, who was old enough to have her own plate now rather than eating off her mother’s. There was too much food. It would have been the right amount for a normal funeral, if everyone had been invited: farming neighbors, old schoolmates, cousins from faraway, Farfalla and her family, other hope-filled young women who’d stayed available as long as they could, Enzo’s polizia colleagues and the eight or ten men in town with whom he had most frequently shared talk of fast automobiles or football. They would have filled the house and covered the terrazza. They would have emptied the cellars and the cupboards and scraped clean all the plates.
But instead, this: the only seven adults who knew of Enzo’s death, the only seven who would know for a few more days. So, the plates remained full. But there was no sense of waste. It seemed that the Digirolamo family needed the look and the smell of abundant food—the splitting crust of bread, the fruity gold of olive oil pooling at the bottom of a shallow dish of potato gnocchi—to remember that they were not the ones who had stopped living.
Pushing away her plate, Mamma Digiloramo began to tell a story about Enzo, using a deep and castigating voice, but it was clear from the reactions of her listeners that the story was more mocking than serious. Marzia erupted into laughter first, holding her daughter’s curly head loosely in her hands, playing with the silky strands as she listened; then Rosina laughed, and even Cosimo managed a crooked smile. No one translated, but there was no need. We were hearing, I could guess, about the time Enzo first got lost in a market; next, about some confusion over a farm animal; later, about an early girlfriend who—this made clear from the way Mamma pushed her own shelf of cleavage up toward her neck—was amply endowed. I didn’t struggle to understand the words; I just sat, glad to be forgotten, and studied the faces and voices of this family, the differences and similarities, the way Rosina’s throaty laugh resembled her mother’s, the way fatigue and sadness showed on Zio Adamo’s face, as they did on Cosimo’s, even when he was smiling. When they toasted some anecdote I couldn’t understand, I raised my own glass, toasting what perhaps only a stranger could see and what is so hard to appreciate in one’s life: the continuity of family; the elastic, accommodating permanence that persists despite the transience of flesh.
When even the light conversation had stopped, even the occasional mumbled request for another slice of bread or another glass of water or wine, Gianni pushed himself back from the table and began to deliver an address that I mistook as a eulogy of some kind until I saw Mamma Digirolamo’s hands go to her cheeks. Cosimo leaned forward in his own chair, then stood with a hand up, signaling Gianni to desist.
Cosimo addressed me directly for the first time since dinner had begun. “We should leave as soon as possible, but we still have to wrap the statue again, for safe transport.”
“But what did Gianni say?”
“Take your time. Finish your meal. I will go look for some blankets and padding and then meet you by the truck.”
I turned to Rosina. “What did Gianni say? What did your mother get upset about?”
“He said that the carpenter who made the coffin heard things in town. The head of the polizia is coming here again tomorrow morning, for a friendly visit.”
“If they know something, why didn’t they come today?”
“Because they had a telegram today. They are waiting for visitors coming to join them from Germany.”
One day late, and the gears were efficiently turning. I seemed to be the only one who was not surprised.
“Buona notte,” Cosimo said to his mother, but Mamma Digirolamo objected, fingers grasping at his forearm.
Marzia, with sleeping Renata clinging to her hip, began to pick up the plates, but then Gianni said something to her and she set the plates down and entered the house behind Zio Adamo. Gianni delivered terse instructions to Rosina and followed his wife, leaving only Mamma Digirolamo arguing with Cosimo, Rosina, and me.
Cosimo twisted his arm away, extracting himself from his mother’s grip, and with a regretful, tired look, turned his back. She stood, whipping the napkin out of her lap. She approached me and I stood as well, lowering my head slightly, ready to accept another of her wide-bosomed, maternal embraces.
With my eyes down and my arms slightly out, I could smell the warm blend of yeast and oregano on her approaching breath. I was starting to say “Buona notte” when she slapped me with astonishing force.
“Mamma!” Rosina shouted with horror.
Mamma Digirolamo pursed her lips and walked into the house.
Rosina ran around to my side, holding a wet napkin, which I took and touched absentmindedly to my face.
“She caught me by surprise,” I managed to say, working my jaw, still registering the heat of that small handprint on my cheek.
“She’s mad at you for taking Cosimo away so soon.”
“But he has to go. Gianni said it. The polizia are coming. We have to get the statue out of here.”
“Believe me, she wants you and the statue to go. But she doesn’t want Cosimo out of her sight. He’s in no condition to travel.”
“He isn’t, but I need him.” I touched my face again. “I thought your mother liked me.”
“She did. But now you’re going to betray her. She doesn’t forget.”
Rosina turned away and lost herself in contemplation of the table loaded with leftover food, glasses, and dirty plates. The other women had left. The men, except for Cosimo, who was occupied, couldn’t be bothered with domestic details. From the droop of her shoulders, I gathered that this was nothing new. She stood and stacked several of the dishes, moving around the table haphazardly, carrying them to a tub on an outside counter.
“Do you want me to bring the other plates?”
When she didn’t answer, I began to carry them one at a time, stacking them next to her and standing for just a moment to catch the scent of her skin before returning to the table. Another plate, stacked on top of the last; another intake of breath. It was possible that she was waiting for me to go away, that she was annoyed by my presence. But then again, her head was tilted just to one side, as if she were trying to catch something too—a sound, a smell, a memory. I lingered next to her after I’d stacked the last one.
“We shouldn’t wash them,” she said without turning, holding a plate caked with sauce. “We should break them.”
“Break the plates?”
“It’s a tradition.” She sounded distracted. “Like taking a long route to the grave. Like the picnic bread and putting mementos in the coffin.”
“Really?”
Instead of answering, she turned and flung the plate into the air, over the table, and into the stone oven at the far end of the terrazza, where it smashed into a dozen pieces. The noise woke her from her half trance. She pressed her hands to her face, horrified and gleeful.
“You’re certain this is a tradition?”
“Hand me another.”
The first had been a lucky hit. The second missed the mark and went flying to one side, landing in the soft grass unbroken.
“I’m sure you could do it better,” she said, breathing more heavily now, cheeks flushed. “Show me the correct way. Don’t you spin around, before you let go? Show me how to hit the oven again. I want the biggest possible explosion.”
I hadn’t thrown a discus in years, and these plates were too big and greasy besides. She was more likely to fling a plate into the house.
“Come on, Ernesto. Show me.”
“Your mother will be upset, seeing all this mess.”
“Let her be!” Rosina’s voice had jumped, like a violin string cranked taut, to a higher pitch. “She’s been upset with me for years. She’s never stopped being upset! An
d your time is up as well, don’t forget. She slapped you. Don’t you feel angry about that?”
“Just surprised . . .”
“Then throw one for Enzo. Throw one because he got you into this mess.”
But I’d long since stopped blaming Enzo.
My silence and inaction only enraged her more. “You should be furious!”
“I am furious,” I said, but my voice was only weary.
“You’re not!” She grabbed another plate, used the back of one hand to scrape away the messy sauce, rearranged her grip and prepared to let it fly. “I’d love to see you furious!”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Her increasing volume made me feel only more subdued. “I have to help Cosimo with the statue. I have to go.”
She returned the plate to the counter, looking disappointed. Bringing a dirty finger up to a wayward strand of her hair, she dragged more sauce across her face, which she tried to wipe away discreetly with the back of her wrist. “I saw your statue. I went and took a good look today in the back of the truck after the burial.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t worth all this.”
When I said nothing, she continued, emboldened. “That is the problem with a thing—a thing that one person owns and sells to someone else, and that everyone wants.”
“That is the world of art.”
“Not music, fortunately.” She tried to sound flippant. “You can’t own a song. It can’t be taken away from you.”
“And do you still sing your opera songs—the ones you performed in Munich?”
Her forced smile faded. “No.”
“So you lost them somehow. Or someone took them away. You let someone take them away.”
Her fiery anger, the anger I had missed the opportunity to share, had burned down to a private smolder.
“Anyway,” I continued, “The Discus Thrower is a marvelous work of art. You can’t possibly disagree with that?”
She looked down at her stained dress, as if noticing for the first time what a mess she had made, with broken crockery scattered over the terrazza, out into the yard. “I don’t know anything about art.”
“You have an opinion. Tell me.”
She reached for a cloth behind her, wiping each finger slowly. “You want an opinion? All right. The body is perfect—young, muscular, athletic, and realistic, of course. I understand all that. But the face is empty.”
“You’re not understanding. It’s an issue of development over periods. This isn’t a Renaissance—”
“See? I knew you would say that.”
“I’m sorry. Go on. Please.”
She took a breath before starting again. “The eyes are empty. The face has no personality . . .” The cloth was now balled in her hand. “There is no emotion, no intellect or individuality. For the sculptor, everything above the neck was an afterthought.”
“That’s a matter of style.”
“No, it isn’t, Ernesto. It’s a statement about ideals.”
“Well, it was ideal in its time, a very long time ago.”
“No. It is an ideal in our time—among some people, the people who were willing to pay millions of lire for it. I’m sure you have a great respect for the past, for history and art, but this isn’t about that. It’s about using an icon from the past to justify the future, don’t you think? Why else would they go to so much trouble to purchase it?”
“Are you blaming me for working for such people?”
“No.”
“Do you think those are my ideals—to be thoughtless and without emotion, to be without individuality?”
“I don’t.”
“So?”
“So I just want you to be more, for one night.”
“Be more than what?”
“I want you to be more than the reason you came here. That’s all.”
Cosimo had appeared at the edge of the terrazza. His eyes widened, taking in the yard’s broken dishes and the spatters on Rosina’s forearms.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, ignoring her brother’s silent arrival. “I’ve hurt your feelings. I’ve insulted your favorite sculpture.”
“Who said it was my favorite?”
“I’ve insulted your work.”
“Of course I’m not insulted. It’s all very interesting.” But as soon as I said it, I heard myself sounding again like the person she didn’t want me to be: detached, pedantic, single-minded, able to lecture at length without divulging anything that really mattered. But how could I, when even I hadn’t decided which parts of the past could be safely remembered, and which should only be forgotten? “Let me tell you—I’ll show you a book, my di Luca guide. A colleague—a very good friend—gave it to me. It has excellent pictures. You will see the progression, from Greco-Roman to Renaissance, including some of the same developments you’ve noted. It’s very interesting, all the same.”
Cosimo said nothing as we walked to the truck together, climbed into the back, and surveyed the statue and the remaining crate bottom. We took everything he had hauled outside—an old stained and ripped mattress, several blankets and lengths of rope—and formed a cocoon around the statue, lashing the padding down to the pallet-like bottom and stuffing extra padding between the crate and the inside walls of the truck. If anything, it was better protected now than it had been before.
“I’m glad to see you’ve washed up,” I told him. He had refused to shave until after the burial and had begun to look like a walking corpse himself. Now, there was some improvement. But still, he looked on the verge of collapse. “You didn’t sleep last night, I imagine.”
“Not really.”
“How long would you last tonight?”
Cosimo looked up at the sky, a washed-out blue. “We have maybe two good hours, then some difficulty driving in the dark, but we can go a little ways. At least we can start heading for Milan, and after Milan, tomorrow, the roads will be much better.”
“You’d have every right to stay here, to make me go alone.”
“But how would you find your way? Mechanical problems, language problems—and you’re still not such a good driver, even with practice. And then, someone has to return the truck.”
“You’re not thinking about the truck.”
“No.” Cosimo attempted a smile. “But you got my brother here. So I will get you to the border. It’s only fair.”
“Thank you, Cosimo.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “We are not leaving tonight?”
“We’re innocent, Cosimo. That should stand for something.”
His empty look told me that he stopped seeing the world in those terms long ago. Perhaps it was the policeman in him, or perhaps the Catholic, or perhaps simply the grief-stricken man who feels we’re all being punished for something.
“Domani,” I said firmly. “Meglio. Better, early domani.”
Cosimo lifted his eyebrows—whether at my slowly improving vocabulary or at my questionable decision, I’d never know.
CHAPTER 12
An hour had passed when I pushed open the barn door. Rosina looked up from her bed, startled and guilty, closing the di Luca guide with one finger still holding her place.
“You said it had excellent pictures. It was just sitting on top of your suitcase. I thought—”
But I could see it in her face. I remembered, now, sitting under the tree and then sliding it into the book, for safekeeping.
“You found the postcard.”
“Were you really going to send this to your sister?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did you write it?”
“I needed to tell someone.”
“But you weren’t going to send it.”
“I hadn’t worked that out. This entire trip has shaken my faith in the idea of planning ahead.”
I walked over to the stool next to the washtub, carried the stool across the room, placed it next to her bed, and sat down op
posite her. She was sitting with one leg folded under the other, wearing a silky gray-and-blue robe patterned with gingko leaves—out of place here, but not out of place in the world she’d once inhabited. I could imagine her in an opera-house dressing room, with her hair piled on top of her head, in front of a brightly lit mirror.
She noticed me staring at the robe and pulled her legs up to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. “Pretty wrapping for a plain box, I’m afraid.”
“You’re forgetting. I’ve already seen the box.”
“I’m not forgetting anything.”
There was an awkward moment as she scooted to a more upright position, back against the headboard. She patted the side of the bed, and I left the stool to sit closer to her, still not touching.
“Do you want to talk more, about art?”
“Not at all.”
“Va bene.” She smiled, self-consciously. “Perhaps you should tell me more about yourself. I’ve told you a lot about me.”
“Not so much.”
“I’ve told you I was married. I’ve told you I’m defective. That should frighten you away, unless you think it is a convenient defect.”
“You’re not defective, Rosina. Anyway, how long were you married?”
“Two years.”
“That’s all?”
“It was two years too long. And trust me, a man like Gianni can’t wait to see his face reflected in new faces all around him.” Now she laughed. “You have no idea. You’re so young! At least ten years younger than I am. No, don’t tell me.”
“You are trying to frighten me off, aren’t you?”
“Look at you—not a wrinkle, not a blemish.” Her fingers touched the front of my shirt. “And you probably have no idea that you are good-looking or athletic because no one your age can appreciate—”
“Now you’re being condescending. You’re trying to make me feel young and foolish, so I’ll leave you alone.” I unbuttoned my shirt, methodically, and left it hanging open. She watched, a serious look in her eyes.
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