Giovanni's Gift

by Bradford Morrow

  The man I would sketch stood on the shoulder of the road, his valise beside him, his thumb raised in the hope of hitching a ride to the coast. He was tall, lean, sinewy—with dark eyes that were both calm and penetrating. Whoever might observe him through the windshield of a car that perhaps braked to pick him up would see a strapping kid with large head, a musician’s ears, abundant black hair parted on the side but tousled. They would note hollow cheeks and prominent chin before admiring his great handsome beak of a nose, raptorlike, with nostrils opened wide as if to breathe into himself the thin air of Coeur d’Alene before diving into the world. Above all, they would observe the grace of this angular creature who lifted his luggage into the back and then joined them for the ride as far west as they happened to be going. They might even find, I would imagine, that his voice, a gentle tenor, rose to mind for days after they’d let him off.

  In the box, a photograph of him from this period showed him to possess these features, and though it was taken in the year 1952, a decade before I was born, when I stared at it in the morning, before heading downstairs, I closed my eyes and listened hard and found I could without any effort remember that tenor voice, and could see him walking across the hayfield with Henry, talking, smiling, arms swinging, strides long and sure.

  Later in the day, helping Edmé harvest, then spade over and mulch spent rows in her garden, I asked how she and Henry had met Giovanni Trentas. I realized that while, on occasion, I’d spent time with him—helped with sheep shearing more than once; followed him around Ash Creek trying to get him to converse in our mysterious shared language of Italian; it was he who taught me to ride a bike, but never pushed me to ride a horse—just how Giovanni had gone from the hinterlands of one state to those of another was part of his history I would not be able to derive from the box.

  His persistent role as an outsider, however, was one with which I could identify. Edmé spoke freely about the subject, but not before noting, in a quietly disapproving way, I seemed to have disregarded her advice about Helen. There was no arguing the point, so I didn’t.

  Henry was attending the university on the other side of the mountains, down near the capitol, and was in his last year, when he had his winter epiphany and decided that designing buildings in which people would live and work was more interesting than anything else a man could do with his life. He had already made up his mind by then not to return to Ash Creek but continue on to graduate school, and had made a list of schools where he would apply after military service—which responsibility he satisfied after getting a diploma, grateful he had just missed the war, being only sixteen the year that saw both Germany and then Japan surrender.

  “Are you sure you want to hear all this?” she interrupted her story.

  “Yes, yes—please,” I said, failing to suppress my eagerness.

  Sometime during his service days, he got it into his head that the only way to understand architecture was to know how to use a saw and hammer, and given there were many jobs available to fellows who wanted to do construction work, he labored for a while building houses in the suburban outskirts of the city. This was where he met Giovanni Trentas, then an itinerant worker who had hitchhiked down the West Coast all the way to the tip of Baja, ventured across the southwestern deserts and up the front range of mountains until he arrived here, having experienced adventures that belied his years. He talked about having worked artichoke and lettuce fields, hopped freight trains in the middle of the night, served on a fishing boat out of San Felipe, even spent a week in jail in San Jose del Cabo—though he’d never say what landed him there. He must have been just twenty.

  “Well, your uncle Henry,” Edmé went on, “worked side by side with this young rambler, and proximity and time turned them into friends. It wasn’t until Henry’s accident that this friendship deepened into what I always saw as a kind of fraternal love.”

  There was nothing unusual about the accident, as such. Henry made the mistake of failing to secure the end of a roll of metal webbing that was unfurled in a rectangular crater, reinforcement grid for concrete that was to be poured for a cellar. As if it had suddenly sprung to life, the tense heavy wire he had just unrolled surged back at him the moment he let go of it to retrieve some tacks from a bucket, in order to nail it to a wooden framing. The cut tips of the reinforcement wire flew up at his face and caught him across his cheek and in the eye. Giovanni witnessed the whole horrible instantaneous event and with ice from a cooler assembled a cold compress, got Henry into a car, and drove him to the hospital, hardly before Henry had recovered from the shock enough to know what had happened. For years, the blindness was partial; later, however, it worsened, and although for reasons of pride he would likely never admit it, the deterioration of his sight might well have had something to do with the decision he made to resign from his firm in San Francisco. The immediate upshot of the injury, however, was that Giovanni Trentas and Henry Fulton got to know one another during the latter’s convalescence. Edmé had already met and begun dating Henry by then, too, of course, and so she remembered this youthful, handsome migrant as well.

  “How did he wind up here?”

  “Your great-uncle was always needing help on the ranch. Those were the days when Ash Creek still was very much an active spread, with cattle and sheep, even swine. They were always hiring seasonal workers. Giovanni came up to the mountains with me and Henry one time, met everyone, and just became part of the family. It was that simple. He lived sometimes on the ranch, sometimes in town. This place became the center of his life, I think it’s fair to say, before the days you started coming here. I remember when Henry’s father, your great-uncle Wesley, died, how upset Giovanni was. That must have been half a dozen years before you first saw Ash Creek. Henry and I’d gotten married and moved on out to the coast by then, and in a way Giovanni’d become an adopted son. More than part of the family: a real, trusted member. Well, you can see where he’s buried, right up there with the others. Your uncle dug his friend Sam’s grave with his own hands. I never saw him more sad in his life. He was as decent a soul as there ever was.”

  Margery came to mind if only by her noticeable exclusion from the story. Why had Margery left Giovanni? Not that people don’t leave decent souls every day. But still, I asked.

  Edmé said, “Well, poor Margery. Your uncle knew her better than I ever did—”

  “Knew?”

  “Knew, knows—she’s not dead, if that’s what you’re asking. But from what I gather, her situation’s almost as if. Margery used to be the most beautiful girl. But with four brothers straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, believe me. The grimmest of Grimm’s. She took care of them when their parents got older, and I think maybe one of them fell in love and moved out, but the others just stayed on. When Giovanni and Margery met, you can imagine how threatened these lugs were, not that they cared about him, or her. They would tell you a very different story, no doubt, but what it came down to was simply that they didn’t want to lose their nanny, maid, nurse, cook, aide-de-camp, mother figure, and whatever else they’d managed to make of the poor thing. I think she and Giovanni really did love each other, so after sneaking around for a year or two, one night, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I believe, she eloped with him. They had it all planned out, had Justice Phelps prepared with the license, had the wedding rings all ready in secret.”

  “And soon after that, I guess, Helen was born,” I interrupted, while wondering why they didn’t all live happily ever after.

  Edmé paused, glanced over at me from where she was gathering heaps of pungent basil leaves into a basket. She had on her face the queerest look, querying and forswearing at the same time.

  “Sorry,” believing I was being chastised for distracting her.

  Edmé continued, the look suddenly having vanished. “Margery and Giovanni lasted longer than any of us expected they would, but it was sheer willpower on their part. Those brothers are lunatics. I mean, with screws loose and bats in the belfry. They took it as a cha
llenge, almost like jilted lovers, to get her back home.”

  “They finally succeeded, I guess.”

  “I don’t know how they did it, but they did, convinced her to come home. If I remember right, they’d made some offer for Giovanni to move in, too, with Helen as well. He refused, kept Helen, and one day Margery was gone. I don’t think they ever bothered getting a divorce.”

  “That’s quite a story,” I said, wondering how Margery could leave her daughter for some covetous brothers, understanding Helen’s resentment.

  “Giovanni raised Helen by himself. She couldn’t have had a better father or even mother. Margery never treated the girl like a daughter, anyway. She resented her, I always thought. The three of them tried that winter to live in a little place they’d taken somewhere between here and town, but it didn’t go well, and by the time spring came, Giovanni was put in the position of having either to break off with Margery, or put the baby up for adoption, or something crazy. That was very near the end.”

  We each took her last words to mean that she had no more to say about Margery and Giovanni, and so were silent for a time. Then I broke the quiet with, “Can I ask a question? It might seem a little off the wall. But can you remember what kind of cigarettes Giovanni smoked? or what brand of paper he rolled with?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  I shrugged. My own exhausted cigarette dangled from my lips, and I imagined how unhealthy I must appear to my aunt, smoking in her wholesome garden, spilling worthless ash on its rich soil, the smoke fouling this pristine air—not to mention how neurotic she must have thought it was of me to ask about the cigarettes of a dead man. Edmé gave me a look, eyes smiling, lips frowning. “Not all of us share in that bad habit, Grant.”

  “I know,” I said, extinguishing it and depositing the butt in my shirt pocket. “One of these days soon I promise I’ll quit, but what are you saying—surely he must have smoked?”

  “No, he didn’t smoke. Didn’t drink, either. They both cost money, and though Giovanni was always fairly paid for his work here, he never had much. That is, never had much for himself. He always seemed to have plenty for Helen, sending her overseas, buying her nice clothes—Helen grew up like some kind of aristocrat, comparatively speaking. I don’t know how Giovanni managed it, if you want to know, except by sacrifice. Anyway, he was always too concerned about his health to do things like drink and smoke. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Just thinking maybe I’ve been doing a little too much of both recently, I guess.” Such was my lame equivocation, though her answer raised more questions than it resolved. Why the rolling papers and that handwritten recipe for dandelion wine among the preserved artifacts of an ascetic? Why an aristocrat’s daughter to a pauper father?

  What came as the strangest surprise to me—there in my sunny room, by myself in the early afternoon, this fragrance of raw basil leaves on my fingers from helping Edmé mix the basil with pignolis and garlic, olive oil and parmigiana—what came as an astonishment was that I missed Helen Trentas. No: rather, was that I missed her this much. And not merely missed her but found myself longing for her. And, again, as part of this surprise or astonishment, was just how I missed her, in what ways longed for her.

  These were not the hollow affections manufactured in my baser heart, say, or even baser parts of me than that—though I would be less than honest were I not to admit that I longed for Helen Trentas there, too. This was not the way I’d felt toward that girl I’d picked up near the Spanish Steps, and fucked—that’s the word for it, truly—in the very sheets where my wife and I slept the night before. Nor was this the sometime manipulator’s devotion kicked into life once more, as it had been when I was a boy threatened by the specter of divorce between my parents. This degree, measure, variety, manner of yearning that came over me as the trapezoid of sun poured warm and brilliant on my back was altogether of a new order. Even compared to my flawed but genuine love for the women in my past, this thing which clutched me like an exquisite fist about my heart was undeniable, wonderful, and frightening. Was it possible I unselfishly cared for Helen?

  I sensed that those several compass points in my incomplete map were about to be rendered meaningful, as this fourth direction rose into view, and to prominence. If, say, north stood for Daniella, then north had been a bit chilly. If south had been my compass point for Jude, that would mean with Jude everything had gone south, south toward the overhot tropics, south being a tormented direction. And if Mary, whom I met in the East and with whom I traveled farther east to salvage the unsalvageable, was that third point, then what was left in this personal metaphor for Helen Trentas if not west? West where my own wayward feet perhaps had come to find something more permanent, more substantial, more earnest, than what I had known in times past.

  But then, I thought, here was a unique way to leave Ash Creek: by not going. While Edmé, with the help of her deficient sous-chef, poured the fresh pesto into plastic pint containers and sealed each for the freezer, I mentioned to her that my earlier idea of leaving after Labor Day had come into question. I had nowhere really to go, I told her. “I can move to a room in town, if I’m in the way here,” hoping not to sound somehow pathetic.

  Edmé gave me a lovingly horrified look. Always her paradoxical gazes.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” I said quickly. “I don’t want to be underfoot is all. I don’t like the idea of being a burden to you two—it’s not why I came.”

  “Grant, this is your home. You stay here until you want to go elsewhere.”

  I thanked her, and as I did I recognized that what I failed to mention (though Edmé may have surmised it) was that the magnetism of this place was now irresistible to me, the curiosity it aroused in me was overwhelming, or something else altogether was at play—even I couldn’t be sure. Whatever drew me, any thought of moving on from Ash Creek, was for the moment erased by my unexpected feelings for Helen, and also by what I’d discovered tucked beneath the pretty rubble in Giovanni’s box. For once I found myself grateful that nothing and no one awaited me outside Ash Creek. It left me free to pursue phantoms as I pleased. It left me free to be with Helen.

  My fingers trembled when I opened up the box, because for the first time I began to understand there might be more to its contents than just a repository of beloved flotsam, of mere memorabilia, as I had presumed a couple days before, when I first undid those ribbons that corseted the thing. I lifted, for one, the packet of Papiers Mais and held it up in the light, studied the gold ears of corn stamped on the cover, confirming that these were the same that Noah had used, then opened the packet and saw that more than half the papers were missing. I set it on my bed, rummaged around again in the box. For no particular reason other than that it came first to hand, I read the recipe for dandelion wine, which, like the rolling papers, had no obvious place in Giovanni’s trove—Take 3 quarts dandelion blossoms, 4 qts. boiling water, 3# sugar, 4 lemons sliced. Pour boiling water over the blossoms—and winced at how horrid this weedy concoction must taste. I placed the recipe beside the Papiers Mais, and regarded them together. Neither of the little talismans made much sense to me. So, like the collage artist who must lay out his raw materials before beginning work, or the jigsaw puzzler who spreads before him all the differently shaped pieces to begin to assemble them into a coherent picture, I set out, one by one on the bed, all the other objects. Surely, I thought, there was something here for me to understand if I had but eyes to see.

  Two feathers, the joke book, pennies … all the stuff was spread out. The brass plunger, whose shiny barrel flashed sharp light straight into my eyes, did begin to seem familiar. What was this thing? I held it like a tiny rifle in the palm of my left hand and drew back the ring on the end of the plunger, then pushed forward, pulled again and pushed. It was not an air pump. The nozzle end wasn’t shaped right, I didn’t think.

  A little brass gun, I wondered, a little brass gun—

  Then memory raised an image up before me of Giovanni. H
e was crouched down next to this young boy, who had the serious role of helping the man, by holding a wrench or a can of oil. Both of us idled beside a beat-up bicycle I used to ride around on paths here during summer months. The memory was of Giovanni smiling at me, speaking gently while he worked on my bike, allowing me to believe I was helping him, greasing the chain and rusty sprockets with this little brass gun.

  —Good as new now, see here? I could almost hear his voice, as he stood, steadying the bike for me while I climbed uncertainly aboard. His front teeth were marvelously gapped.

  —Grazie, I might have said.

  —Niente, prego, as he let go and stood back to watch me ride wildly down the hill toward the horsegate and road along the creek.

  Happy, in a wistful way, at the memory and the fact that I, too, was represented among the puzzle pieces in the box—for it did seem a puzzle to me, a rebus of sorts—I laid the radiant apparatus with its companions, wishing I could ask it just one modest question, which would be, What are you doing here, my trifling friend? why on earth would Giovanni Trentas set aside and thereby memorialize such a paltry widget as you? Instead, I touched each of its companions, with a reverence one might show toward inanimate things when in church, where often the inanimate represents the animate, where wafer and wine become flesh and blood. I couldn’t help but chide myself, in the midst of all this small pleasure, with a question that could be answered, however. What if the box was simply a box, a pretty cigar box kept by a charming eccentric who used it not as a treasure chest or an assemblage of mute but eloquent symbols, but merely as a dump for discards and junk? And what kind of fool would spend time trying to make order of such chaos? Good questions, but not good enough to dampen my interest.