by Joanna Scott
My duty, I understand, is to provide Monsieur Lieutenant with useful information. First, though, I need to know what he means by useful. To some people, there is nothing more useful than a weather forecast. Typically on Elba, June is one of the driest months. But visitors need to be reminded that this is not a desert climate. Yes, in fact, it rains here. Yesterday’s squall was not untypical. And though cacti thrive and flowers bloom year-round, in winter snow falls in the mountains. It is magical in the forests on Monte Capanne. When I was a young girl I used to climb with my father up to the snow line. Once we saw a pair of wild boars shuffling together across a frosted meadow. I still remember the way their breath puffed in the cold air like white smoke blown right from their tusks.
But this is probably not something Monsieur Lieutenant needs to know. As to the whereabouts of his soldier—why, it’s possible, if not likely, that he has found a place to hide in La Chiatta. How easy it would be for an intruder to sneak into the villa and make himself at home. Even to me—and I have lived here all my life—the rooms seem joined by accordion folds, so that when I’m walking from one end to another, I’m not always sure what room I have left or entered. But I prefer it this way. I wouldn’t want to live in a home where all the bedrooms were lined behind closed doors along a single corridor extending east to west. Really, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I am not alone among my countrymen in this regard. Foreigners will often comment on the fact that so many Italians never leave the village where they were born, and some, like me, don’t even leave their childhood home. But don’t think I have stayed because I am afraid of change. To the contrary, I welcome change and am known to have a supple mind when it comes to unexpected challenges.
I can’t help Monsieur Lieutenant, however, until he clarifies his intentions. For instance, he could say something about the Allied forces’ long-term plans. How will they choose representatives for an interim government council when most members of the Ninth French Colonial Division don’t even speak Italian? When will they deliver basic supplies? When, exactly, will the war be over? Will one occupation be replaced with another? When will the accounting begin?
For the past few months the news from the mainland has been contradictory. Rome was liberated on June 4, but Florence remains under German control. Mussolini sent out a proclamation: “Workers and peasants, to your posts.” But where is Mussolini now? He left Gargnano to meet Hitler at his headquarters in East Prussia. And then where did he go? Does Mussolini believe Hitler’s assurance that victory is imminent? And what about the rumors of secret weapons powerful enough to split the earth in half?
I have listened to my brother-in-law arguing with his friends about the origin of this war. Did it begin at the end of the last war or with Franco’s victory in Spain or when the first star was cut out of yellow cloth? To think that even after it’s over those who survive will have to live with the possibility that the slaughter could have been prevented.
But Monsieur Lieutenant has many responsibilities and can’t waste his time chatting with an ignorant Elban woman about this and that. I hope you’ve had a pleasant visit. Would you like to see the library before you go? La Chiatta is full of unusual treasures. A porcelain cup that belonged to Napoleon. Geographical surveys from the eighteenth century. Letters from counts and princesses. And on his way out Monsieur Lieutenant will see at the edge of the property a furnace built in the nineteenth century, following an Etruscan design.
Arrivederla, Monsieur Lieutenant. Be sure to visit again. And if I can help in any way . . . if I hear news of the renegade soldier . . . if I can offer suggestions for the interim council . . . if Monsieur Lieutenant ever returns to Elba after the war, he shouldn’t hesitate to visit. He will always be welcome at La Chiatta.
Having somehow succeeded in distracting the lieutenant from the purpose of his visit, Giulia Nardi accompanied him and his companions into the courtyard and wished them success. When the jeep reached the road, she returned inside. She found her daughter waiting in the kitchen, eager for a report. Giulia assured her that their Senegalese guest was out of danger. He could linger at La Chiatta until he was ready to return to active duty on his own. As long as he returned voluntarily and was prepared to offer a convincing story to explain his absence, he would be spared the consequences. At least, this was Giulia’s reasoning. Without evidence, she concluded that the lieutenant who had come in search of Amdu would have treated him harshly if he’d discovered him lounging between white cotton sheets, freshly laundered and ironed, on a bed as wide as a boat. But Amdu hadn’t said anything about punishment. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to rush back to his regiment, but he didn’t say why.
Yes, he’d have to go back to his regiment. And later, much later, after the war, after the reconstruction, Giulia Nardi, who had proudly professed her ignorance to Monsieur Lieutenant, would begin to read about the war. Settling herself in the overstuffed chair in La Chiatta’s library, she would prop her glasses on her nose and read about the incremental confusion that accompanied stages of awareness, and she would realize that she hadn’t even known enough about what was happening to know what to ask. When she told Monsieur Lieutenant that she was ignorant about the subject of war, she had thought she was misleading him. Unlike some of her friends, who went out of their way to avoid learning more than they wanted to know, she’d read any newspaper she could get her hands on. Yet somehow the reality of the war had managed to elude her.
She would keep reading about the war in the years ahead until she seemed to be living half her life in other people’s memories. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself. From the liberation through to the end of her life, she would feel a driving need to grasp the truth. She wouldn’t be able to say what she meant by the truth, but she’d know that she couldn’t help but persist. Stupidly, ignorantly, she’d be drawn to a mystery that would forever evade her attempt to assess it. Her own life would grow murkier as she lost faith in her ability to measure and understand experience. And over time she would acquire a new tolerance for the uncertainty of the present, as if to make up for her earlier ignorance. As she read more and understood less of what she was reading, as she recognized the need for fostering a feeling of blankness to counterbalance horror, she would become more patient and permissive in her own life. Since she couldn’t be sure what to think about the nature of war, she couldn’t have unreasonable expectations. As she aged, she would give the impression that she was a regal, wise woman, more private than most others but at peace with herself and full of trusting love for her daughter. Even when the world gave her reason to be wildly anxious, Signora Nardi would appear ethereal in her serenity.
IN GENERAL, he had always found it easiest to see when he was wearing his mask topped with antelope horns. It was a real Diola mask made of woven matting, not one of the fake masks imported by Bambara traders from Mali. Everything became clear when he looked through the tubular eyes, especially when he was beating a tamas drum and his sisters were dancing. Everything became funny. He hadn’t watched his sisters dance in sixteen months and thirteen days. He could have calculated the equivalent number of minutes if he’d had a pencil and paper. He remembered how not long before he left for the training camp in Saint-Louis he had tried to make a khalom with a gourd and a piece of leather, but he did not succeed. He promised his sisters he would try again with another gourd when he returned home after the war.
Music was one way to praise God. Who shall not fear and glorify thy name, O Lord? All nations shall come and worship thee. Amdu would play the song of the Lamb and do good work. This was how it should be. Those who keep the commandments of God in any faith will be blessed. Of course, he did not know what was meant by blessed, exactly. But he could safely assume that it was better to be blessed than not to be blessed. Here is a call for the endurance of the saints. Each of us is the expression of the Spirit on earth. The heart is the house of God, the abode of Divine Light. In this house we learn to love jamal and jalal, beauty and rigor. Also,
it helps to acquire the wisdom of fear.
He remained where he was because he felt sure that he should be there. In this house he was learning to love beauty and rigor and to acquire the wisdom of fear. Everything was becoming clearer. The only thing missing was his mask. Also, his tamas drum. Thrump-a-chittuah, thrump-a-chittuah, choochoo, choochoo.
His room as he saw it without his mask: a bed the size of a garbage barge, layered above the board with a thin mattress and a plump feather duvet. At night the moonlight shone through the closed shutters, and the marble squares on the floor turned to bright, flashing waves. At dawn the shutters began to glow like the underside of a mushroom cap, reminding him that he’d seen plenty of mushrooms in the forest on Corsica, but he could not be persuaded to eat them. He didn’t eat anything that grew in darkness.
There was no closet in this room and no case with drawers. There was only the bed, the window, a soldier named Amdu Diop, and the changing light. He was used to a different kind of light—a playful light that bounced between metal roofs and whitewashed surfaces. Here, light soaked the varied colors, making them full and pure, giving a soul to their solidity.
He could look northeast from his window across the courtyard, down the mowed strip between the vines, through the iron gate, to a patch of pure blue sea beneath the pure blue sky. They were different blues, separated by a thin transparent band, like a belt of visible wind. At sunset, the belt turned the same red that streaked the flesh of the peaches he was served every day after his bread and soup.
These colors made him wonder briefly if he had already passed through the mist to heaven. But he knew he was alive because all day he was aware of the varied fragrances from the kitchen, along with the smell of a slow burning in the fields. No one who lived in the house seemed worried that the fields were burning. The Germans had been defeated, and the island was at peace again. Still, Amdu had reason to worry. Hour by hour, he was learning the wisdom of fear. He had learned to fear the smell of smoldering scrub. He had learned to fear the taste of soup made of eels. He had learned to fear the sound of men speaking loudly in French. Most of all, he had learned to fear his own foolishness. Here in this house that was the mirror of his heart, he was becoming who he was meant to be, but he did not yet know how to be who he was. Surely his allotment of miracles was limited, and he had already wasted one good miracle on a dove’s egg—this for the sake of a girl who played the piano badly and who sounded as if her mouth were full of pebbles when she spoke French.
Maybe this girl was a distraction. Or maybe she was the reason Amdu’s holiness was suddenly available to him. She was someone he wouldn’t have guessed he’d ever meet. Her skin reminded him of the cream inside the éclairs his mother made for the feast of the Epiphany. He couldn’t stop staring. She couldn’t stop chattering. To this girl who knew nothing about the world beyond her island, everything was interesting: pignoli and pigeons and rocks and verb forms and even African soldiers. Especially African soldiers.
She earned the right to visit him more often. She’d arrive with her mother and stay for an hour. She wanted to teach him Italian. Her mother seemed to approve. At least she gave the impression that she didn’t want to discourage their efforts at communication. If Amdu had been less trusting, he would have suspected that she was trying to trap him into a promise of marriage, since that was what most mothers did with rich, eligible young men in Dakar. But not only did Amdu have no intention of marrying anyone anytime soon, he also didn’t think to attribute to the signora any secret motives. Even if he still couldn’t see everything with perfect clarity, he was confident in his interpretive abilities. Amdu was Amdu. The signora was the signora. And the girl named Adriana could say whatever she pleased.
She appreciated the fact that Monsieur Amdu could perform small miracles. She probably hoped that his miracles would become ever more momentous. He hoped so, too, and didn’t want to disappoint her. Although he may not have been sure that he was what he wanted to be, it helped to be admired by a young girl who had no need for the wisdom of fear.
He recovered completely from his fever. By then, the lieutenant had come and gone; no one could say when he would return. The irritable man named Zio Mario brought news each day of the Allied forces: the British commandos had already left for another mission, but the warships that had brought the French Colonials to the island were still anchored in the harbors at Portoferraio and Marina di Campo. There was no sign that they would be leaving anytime soon, so Amdu could continue to enjoy his respite at La Chiatta. He’d wait until he received word that the general himself had given the order to embark. Then he would run all the way back to the place he’d been separated from his comrades. He’d arrive breathless and disheveled. To protect the family that had protected him, he would claim to have no memory of where he’d been. It would be a small but necessary deception, which God would surely forgive.
One bright morning, after he’d bathed and eaten, he was encouraged by the signora to go outside. He roamed alone around the courtyard, dressed in trousers that only reached his shins and a white shirt with long, ballooning sleeves. He hadn’t been there for long when he felt the weight of someone’s stare. Looking up, he saw Adriana watching him from an upper-floor window. She swished her open hand in a greeting, and he nodded solemnly in response. To provide her with something to admire, he moved across the cobbles with the half-stepping dignity of a prince who had decided to forget, momentarily, his important concerns.
The girl did admire him, didn’t she? Maybe. Or maybe not. He surprised himself by worrying that she would grow bored with his company. Maybe she’d already grown bored now that Amdu wasn’t a novelty anymore. Maybe she had better things to do than watch a Senegalese soldier doing nothing. He glanced up at the window. Just as he expected, the frame that had contained her was already empty.
One minute she had worshipped him. The next minute she didn’t even find him worthy enough to keep watching. Unless he was performing a miracle, he was useless. Wasn’t this typical of young girls? Their coy hints and fickle adorations. Give a girl a kerchief and she’d wrap it like a turban, signaling that from then on everything must revolve around her, and if the attention she received was less than she thought she deserved, she would go away.
Adriana had gone away, leaving Amdu to drift by himself in the same place where earlier he’d been skulking like a stray dog. He recognized the windows of the cantina, the stone wall surrounding the lemon garden, the trellis wrapped in roses, and the path cutting between the front of the villa and the thicket of junipers. Here was the place he’d hidden, waiting to be found. But the door that had sheltered him had been heaved into the bushes and lay upon the broken branches like a body that had fallen from a great height, stirring in Amdu a chilling apprehension, as if he were looking at what he would have been if he’d made other choices.
He wanted to believe that God had reason to keep sparing him for many years to come. But being spared did not necessarily assure happiness. He was wise enough to be able to think of many unhappy possibilities.
For instance, it was possible that in the future he would suffer a hunger as severe as the hunger suffered by the Peul and the Lebou every year during the soudure. It was possible that he would suffer a thirst as severe as the thirst suffered by the poor people in Grand Yoff outside Dakar when the fountains ran dry. It was possible that he would never see his sisters dance again.
In such a moment a young Senegalese man far from his home might be prone to misjudgment, and when he heard a girl’s voice calling in the distance, he might assume that she was in danger. He might think it more than possible that this girl who didn’t know the wisdom of fear needed him. In such a moment, he might remember another time not long ago when he had run toward a girl’s screaming voice. In his disoriented state, he might even confuse the past with the present. As he ran around the corner of the villa and through the vineyard, he might think he was heading through a neglected orchard. He might predict that once again he would a
rrive too late.
But when he found Adriana in the boathouse, she wasn’t afraid. She was smiling in a lazy, slightly taunting way, like a lizard basking on a rock. She’d been calling him to come and see for himself. Look, Monsieur Amdu.
No, don’t look.
Yes, look. She expected him to look.
The sunlight made a second doorway on the floor. The girl stood at the far edge of the rectangle, and Amdu had to resist the impulse to throw himself against her, pushing her backward to keep her from falling through the light into another world.
“I forget the word in French,” she said in a secretive voice.
“What word?”
“Micia.”
“What does that mean—meecha?”
“Guarda, Monsieur Amdu.” She indicated with a nod the direction he was supposed to look—into the emptiness beneath a tarp propped across two barrels. Following her gaze, Amdu heard a muffled hissing, a sound that prompted him to imagine that beneath the tarp a snake was preparing to strike.
Because it was the logical thing to do, Amdu gasped. The girl glanced at him with obvious puzzlement. Didn’t she understand? There must have been a snake hiding under the tarp, a slender, quick snake, black and red and a full meter long in Amdu’s imagination, its flat head sliding up from its coil, its tongue flickering. He didn’t want anything to do with snakes, yet he felt he should take advantage of the opportunity and demonstrate his courage. With God’s assistance, he would act before the snake could strike. He would kick the barrel and crush the snake.
Or else he would excuse himself from Adriana’s company and run in the opposite direction. Though in fact he didn’t have to run. He could walk. Like this, backward.