by D. L. Smith
From deep inside the fountain came another low, rumbling burp—rather like an entire brass section had gas. Marta heard Leo whisper to himself, “I never should have left Topo alone.”
Obviously something had gone wrong, but maybe all was not lost. Someone just needed to seize the moment, so Marta shouted with great conviction, “Uncle Elio, you must pray for the fountain!”
Leo was inspired by Marta’s boldness and he quickly added his voice, “Yes, Father Elio, please! You must pray for the fountain!” The ancient marble belched again. “And quickly,” Leo added.
Both were astounded at how the cry was picked up by their frightened neighbors. In a matter of moments the piazza was filled with pleas for prayers from the venerable priest. He would drive away these evil spirits! He would make their fountain be quiet again!
Father Elio raised both his hands and held them sternly up to the offending fountain—much like Moses preparing to command the Red Sea. The crowd hushed and Father Elio’s brows furrowed as he prepared a harsh prayer of reproach. He opened his mouth to speak, but from off in the distance came the insistent blare of a horn. With every second it got louder, until at last, the plumber’s little white truck tore up the hill and skidded into the piazza, spilling plumbing supplies in every direction. In the back, Nonno and the gray dog peered over the cab like twin ambulance lights. The truck screeched to a stop between the fountain and the hotel and the engine died, just as . . .
The fountain belched again.
Leo, Marta, Father Elio, and everyone else in the piazza, or anywhere near the piazza, gathered around the truck. In the back Nonno sat beside the prone body of the plumber. He looked like he might be sleeping peacefully, except for the huge purple welt in the center of his forehead.
Topo stuttered in Leo’s direction, “I think we may need a doctor.”
“My God! What did you do to him?” asked Leo.
Topo shot Nonno a withering glare. Nonno looked to be on the verge of tears.
“He . . . bumped his head,” Topo offered weakly. Nonno nodded gratefully. “Really hard.”
The fountain belched twice, but no one noticed the appearance of tiny bits of mud that splattered the piazza cobblestones.
Father Elio stepped to the back of the truck and quickly took charge. In a matter of moments ice appeared from the hotel, then bandages, and then a glass of wine. In a short time the old priest had the plumber’s wound swathed in cool towels, and to the relief of all, especially Nonno and Topo, the round fellow began to stir. Within a minute or two he was trying to get up, which was no mean feat under the best of conditions. Sitting up in the back of the truck, the poor plumber was dazed, but he was going to live. And after a moment of initial bewilderment, he fixed on Father Elio, who was sitting next to him, and gave the old priest a long, strange look—and Father Elio gave it right back to him. Finally the plumber broke the awkward silence.
“Hey . . . Father Elio. You look like hell. When’d you get so old?”
“Rico . . . ? Enrico Gamboni?”
“Sure, who do you think?”
Everybody standing around the truck gasped and stepped back as if they’d met a ghost, for everyone knew the legend of the mysterious disappearance of Enrico Gamboni. If this dazed mound of humanity was actually Enrico Gamboni, then he was back from the dead. The plumber, though, was even more confused than the crowd. He looked around at the terrified faces, who watched him as if he were Lazarus stepping out of the tomb.
“Wait a second! This is Santo Fico, but . . . who are these people? What am I doing here?”
“Rico, do you know where you’ve been?” Father Elio asked as if he were questioning a dim child.
“Sure. I been . . . I been . . . I been . . . Where the hell have I been?”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember . . . I remember . . .” It was as if the fat plumber was reaching through a fog to put together some shadowy puzzle in his mind.
“I remember, I needed a new oil pump for the boat. I was gonna go to Grosseto, but as I was walking down to the bus, I had a hunch I should go to Follonica. So I did. But I couldn’t find the pump in Follonica, so I took the bus to Piombino. Now, in Piombino, I went down to the harbor . . . and I was walking . . . someplace . . . and something fell on my head . . .” His voice trailed off as his huge sausage fingers gently touched a jagged scar along the top of his bald head. “. . . Something big.”
At that moment the fountain released an enormous rude belch and huge globs of foul-smelling mud spewed from the jug of the fat cherub who was balanced on the top dish. And then again. And again, even louder. And suddenly the top of the fountain became like an exploding volcano, showering globs of reeking mud and silt down on the crowd. The villagers screamed as the black ooze rained on them, and still with each unmannerly flatulence from the fountain, more mud and gunk shot into the air.
When he saw all this, Enrico Gamboni grabbed Topo by the shirt and pointed triumphantly at the geyser of mud showering the piazza and shouted, “I told you, you got a clog!”
After a few more moments of violent burping the erupting fountain quieted and slowly the mud thinned to an oozing goo and then thinned again to a watery brown soup. Shortly all the eruptions stopped and only cool, clear water gushed merrily from the happy cherub’s jug at the top of the fountain, filling his dish, and spilling into the larger dish, and then splashing into the empty, waiting pool.
Enrico Gamboni looked around the back of the pickup truck as if he’d just discovered himself sitting on the surface of the moon.
“Hey! Wait a second . . . Am I a plumber?”
Father Elio reached around behind himself and, after some struggle, pried Maria Gamboni’s fingers loose from his black jacket. Her terrified eyes were like two great unblinking moons and, for the first time that Elio could recall, she was speechless. She was also a bit wary about getting too close to whatever it was in the back of the truck—either ghost or demon. But the priest put his arm around her trembling shoulders and firmly pulled her forward.
“Here’s someone who would like to say hello.”
Maria waved her bony fingers weakly in the phantom’s direction. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Hello, Rico . . . Remember me?”
The plumber’s face lit up like a rising moon. He climbed out of the truck and took Maria’s quivering hand.
“Well, at last somebody who looks just the same. Still as pretty as ever.” Maria Gamboni actually blushed.
That afternoon the piazza was busier than it had been in many years. There was much to do. First of all, everybody in Santo Fico felt the need to help clean the mud and the decades of dirt from their fountain. Then, every man, woman, child, and dog in town needed to spend some time sitting on the edge of the fountain, dangling their feet in the water, walking out to the cascading dishes, touching it, tasting it. Young people, like Carmen and Nina and the de Parma grandchildren, needed to dance in the pool, splash one another, and kick water at passersby. And Nonno, with the old gray dog, needed to hold court at the edge of the fountain and explain a hundred times how he found his watch and repaired the pipe—occasionally adding how he turned the valve. Enrico Gamboni needed to be patted on the back, thanked for fixing the fountain, and welcomed home. Mostly it needed to be confirmed that he was flesh and not spirit—as if at his size there could be any doubt. Father Elio had not seen this much happiness in Santo Fico for many years. In fact, there were only three people who didn’t seem to share in the joy of the day.
Topo left first. He muttered something about having work to do in his fix-it shop. Then Marta went back into the hotel; she had beef stock on the stove. Leo tried to speak to Marta, but she was so disappointed she couldn’t even glare in his direction. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t his fault; and he wanted to shout after her that even she thought it was a good plan, but the piazza was too crowded.
Next to him, Enrico Gamboni still sat on the tailgate of the little white truck next to his
reclaimed bride. Leo heard them talking softly to each other.
“You smell funny,” observed Maria.
“I’ve been a plumber.”
“Oh. Maybe that’s it.”
“Is it bad?”
Maria gave him a sniff and thought for a moment. “At least it’s not fish.”
Leo was on his way home when Father Elio, sitting on the steps of the church, motioned him over. Leo wanted to go home, but he joined the old priest for a moment.
“Thank you for what you did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” said Leo.
“Nonno says you did. I wanted to thank you.”
Father Elio patted Leo’s arm and Leo noticed that the thin hand was trembling. The old man smiled at him, but Leo only saw gaunt cheekbones and dark circles under tired eyes. Marta’s plea to save her uncle before it was too late echoed in his mind and Leo wanted to go home.
“I didn’t do anything,” he snapped and abruptly started off down the street. The last thing he needed right now was Father Elio thanking him for anything.
But Elio called after him, “Look at the happiness you brought. Look at the fountain. Look at the people. Look at Maria Gamboni. Look at the happiness you made.”
Leo just stomped down the street trying to ignore the old priest’s words. He was in no mood to hear about any good deed or the happiness of Santo Fico, and he certainly didn’t want Father Elio attributing it to him.
“Happiness,” he grumbled to himself. “Let’s see how happy Maria Gamboni is when she finds out her husband’s got another wife and five kids in Piombino.”
SIXTEEN
The next few days were difficult. Marta went to the church at least three times every day and even though her Uncle Elio always greeted her with a smile, she saw that he was weak. When he walked, his step was slow and his feet shuffled across the stones. When they talked, he was easily distracted and always seemed to be thinking of other things. But what frightened her most was the way he frowned at the plates piled with wonderful food she spent hours cooking. She filled her days wracking her brain trying to recall his favorite meals, but all of her efforts only made him unhappy. And so the third night after the episode with the fountain, she stopped bringing food and brought instead a large bowl of steaming vegetable broth and a glass of wine. It only took a few minutes of convincing before the old man accepted the broth and wine as merely variations of water. He hadn’t dis-avowed water. He finished the entire bowl, drank the wine, and went to bed. That night he slept better than he had since the earthquake. Marta switched to broths.
Nina also began visiting her great-uncle more often. She missed her turns at bringing him his lunch tray. She always volunteered, but for some reason, her mother wanted to do it. Nina could do it next time, but when it became clear that next time would never arrive, Nina started dropping by the church for no reason. She couldn’t see how thin and drawn her great-uncle had become of course, but she knew he wasn’t well. She heard it in his voice. She had often heard sadness in his voice when he talked of God and she’d even asked him about it once, a long time ago. He had explained to her that he was never sad about God, but sometimes he became sad about himself because he had let God down so much. Nina had tried to argue this with him a number of times, but he always changed the subject. What the girl heard now wasn’t just sadness, it was something else and it took a few days before she put a name to what she heard— despair. Her great-uncle Father Elio was giving up on something, but she didn’t know what. She wanted to comfort him, but she didn’t know how, so she prayed for the right words to say. Nina didn’t begrudge her blindness—what would be the point? But now she longed to sit with her uncle Elio in the evening and read to him from a great book filled with some wisdom that would answer all the questions of his troubled heart and give him peace. But she had to content herself with just being with him and loving him.
Down the road at the shepherd’s cottage by the sea, things weren’t going much better for Leo. He avoided going into town because he didn’t have any ideas for a new miracle and he couldn’t face Marta. He also couldn’t stop thinking about Father Elio. He hadn’t understood why Marta was so desperate about the old man until he sat next to him on the steps of the church. Now, when he tried to sleep at night, Father Elio’s hollow eyes faded in and out of the frozen face of Saint Francis and now both holy men stared out at him, accusingly, from the darkness of haunted dreams. He couldn’t make them go away.
He was also having trouble living with Nonno. It wasn’t Nonno’s fault. In fact, since the water returned to the fountain, Nonno had been much better. He still spent his days sitting by the fountain, but now when people happened by they seemed much more willing to stop and sit and chat with the old man. And it seemed like almost everyone in Santo Fico happened by the resurrected fountain at least once a day. Groups of children were there almost all the time. True, there weren’t that many children in Santo Fico, but those who were now seemed to live at the fountain, and Nonno had become their hero. Nonno loved the attention. And he loved the children.
Leo’s problem was that the shepherd’s hut was proving too small. It contained one pungent dog too many for Leo and he found himself spending more and more nights outside. He would have said something to Nonno, but he’d never seen anyone come to love a hovel as quickly as Nonno and that dog took to that stone hut. It was as if the ancient builder, whoever he was, had that pair in mind. Leo decided that when he returned to America, he would leave the shepherd’s hut for Nonno and the dog. But for now, he found himself spending his days, and often his nights, wandering the land where he grew up— and which he had worked so hard to ignore since his return.
It started the morning after the fiasco at the fountain. Leo woke early and found himself in a terrible humor. He had spent a troubled night. How could such a wonderful plan go so terribly wrong? He had thought a walk before breakfast might calm him, and for no particular reason, his legs took him away from the cliffs and the sea and he followed the trails that led toward town—even though he knew that Santo Fico wasn’t his destination. He stalked down one dusty trail after another, kicking at the clumps of tall grass, his mind lost in a labyrinth of frustrations. At one point he unexpectedly came upon the herd of Lombolo horses that grazed his property. Both were startled, but Leo simply pulled off his hat, waved it in the air, and shouted angrily at them. The huge beasts flared their nostrils, bulged their eyes, pounded the soft earth with their sharp hooves, and ran away.
That was when he discovered he was across the path from the olive grove and he wandered into the grove for no particular reason. The gnarled old trees were familiar, but they had changed greatly. They were bigger, fuller, and sadder. He had never seen them so untended. He knew how they liked to look—trimmed and pruned, lean and tight. These trees sprouted long sucker branches that randomly shot toward the sky or hung almost to the ground. Leo picked one of the olives. It was small and hard. He knew that it wouldn’t grow any larger. It would never fill with oil and juice, and become so full and ripe that it almost burst. These trees were thirsty. He imagined their old roots digging deeper and deeper into the sandy soil searching for water. But what water could be found was stolen by the sucker branches.
As he walked through the olive grove, Leo came upon an old pair of pruning shears sitting quite forgotten in a fork of one of the trees. They showed the rust of years. Leo imagined his father standing under that tree, using the shears. He imagined his aunt Sofia’s strong, musical voice calling his father out of the field for dinner. Aunt Sofia—she had stayed with her dead sister’s husband, and cared for him near the end. Leo imagined his father setting the shears down in the crook of the tree and walking slowly back to the house through a warm, crimson evening. His father would have had every intention of returning the next day to the shears because he was not a man who didn’t take care of his tools. But no one returned and here the shears sat.
Leo studied the tree and he tried to imagine which branch his
father might have been pruning. He picked one. He reached up and snipped it off. He liked the clean, sharp sound it made as the blade snapped through the branch. He liked the familiar pressure of the shears in his hand, and he liked the way the useless branch fell to the ground; so he snipped another. And so he began.
Leo used up the rest of his day in the olive grove, moving from tree to tree, doing again what he had done during the first half of his life, and what he had tried to deny during the second. That night he dreamed less.
The next day he awoke early again. This time he had no rage to work off, no frustration was vexing him—he just felt like going for a walk after breakfast. His stroll took him to the vineyard, and by some odd chance, he’d brought along his father’s shears. But he discovered that the greatest need of the vineyard wasn’t pruning. The thick twists of spiraled stems were healthy enough, but few tendrils trailed off and what branches had grown were thin and almost leafless. There would be no grapes this year. Vines are hearty plants that like the heat and grow well even in a dry, flinty ground, but this summer’s drought was too much for even these tenacious old plants. The vines were dying of thirst.
But what broke Leo’s heart were the rosebushes. At the head of every row of grapes was a single rosebush and they too were dying. They had been planted long before Leo was born and probably before his father’s time as well. As a boy, he was told, “The rose is like the grape, except the rose, it’s more fragile, more sensitive to some of the ailments that also harm the grape. Whatever the vine might catch, the rose catches it first.” Leo learned that by watching the roses, the vine-tender had some warning of danger and precautions could be taken to protect the vines. He remembered how his mother loved her rosebushes. Just like the workers in the fields tending to the vines, his mother would be on her knees before the roses—turning the soil, feeding them, pruning their tiny branches.