He stomped back to the table. “You can mock me all you want, but you can’t hide the truth about yourself.”
“So you judge me too. I once had boyfriend, Stefano, who I met in what you would call high school. We separated after I went off to università. Ours was an innocent love. I would often think of him when I had sex with other men, so as not to think I was lost, disgraziata. And then I found you and thought only about you.”
“Non capisco! You never mentioned this young man.”
“Stefano Bonati came before you. The man you saw, Signor Parini, he secretly backed the partigiani. Allora, he had information I wanted. Stefano è morto. Killed in an American bombing raid in Milano. He was a partigiano, fighting against the fasciste. After Signor Parini wanted to give me some lire but I refused.”
Nick sat down and slid the scarf in her direction but she brushed it aside. Caterina sobbed as she poured another glass of Sambuca. He poured a glass for himself and gulped it down. They both continued drinking until the two of them passed out, heads on the table, their hands inches away from each other, their dreams shifting faster than the flicking scenes of a classical Hollywood film, except none of this was make believe for Nick or Caterina. He would now have this scene mixed in with the other scenes of his life, all their flashbacks more negative than the film itself, too sensitive to the light of the sun, the moon and the stars.
XVIII
Nick and Caterina had recently celebrated New Year ‘45, throwing a few chipped china plates out the window into the courtyard, toasting each other with chilled, crisp Prosecco, happy to be alive. Nathan’s painting of the Campidoglio hung on the wall. A week later, the projected weather forecast for Saturday was a mild 54º F, so for fun Nick suggested that they spend that day taking a gander at sites of Rome, acting like a couple of tourists on holiday. He purposely left his cane in the room. After a cappuccino and chocolate-filled cornetto at a nearby café, Nick rode around on his Paperino for an hour with Caterina wrapped around him, weaving through the streets of the centro storico. Whenever he accelerated, dodging a few camioncini and military jeeps along the way, Caterina laughed like a schoolgirl. Except for an occasional horse-drawn carriage, they had the Colosseum to themselves, circling the massive structure several times and admiring its ivory, travertine stones, almost touching the grey clouds, and other sections of arches that had collapsed after a forgotten earthquake.
“È bella but you’re making me dizzy, Nicky.”
He glanced at Caterina and laughed. “We’ll stop at Piazza Navona.” He headed across the Via Dei Fori Imperiali with the Roman Forum to the left, then parallel with the Tiber River on Vittorio Emanuele, getting off on one of the side streets to the piazza. The sound of the muffler echoed through Piazza Navona, as he slid the bike to a halt. The water in the fountains was turned off.
“Bravo. Now we can walk,” Caterina said as they got off the motor scooter.
“Let’s get some gelato in Tre Scalini.”
“It’s too early, no?”
“It’s never too early for gelato.”
Nick grabbed her hand, leading the way with an imperceptible limp to the café. At the counter he chose his favorite, pistacchio, and Caterina, the classic tartufo. They consumed the gelato and continued their adventure through the old quarter, peeking into empty shops where artisans still worked with wood, marble or glass, stumbling across the Trevi Fountain, standing sad sack without a drop of water, its marble statuary hidden somewhere underground, a not so subtle reminder of the distant war. They kept walking and Caterina placed her arm around his waist, the move encouraging Nick to put his arm over her shoulder. They passed a chiosco, a newspaper stand plastered with war headlines in a half dozen languages, but they ignored them and ambled around until they got tired. They both agreed it was time for pranzo and Caterina insisted on the famous Caffè Greco. Nick first wanted to say ‘over his dead body,’ but he remembered Nathan’s admonishment about not ruining the party, so why spoil it for Caterina.
They walked through the glittering café and sat at a table in the Sala Venezia near a wall of paintings set above the chair rail, evoking that city of canals. A short waiter in a frock coat sauntered over, took the order and returned with a carafe of red wine and acqua minerale.
“I read it’s been here since the mid 1700’s. A writer’s haunt. Did you know Keats lived in a villa right next to the Spanish Steps before he died of consumption at 25?”
“I didn’t, Nicky. Would you like to go there afterwards?” Caterina asked.
“Nah, it’s all closed up now.” He looked around the room admiring the artwork awhile, as if his mind was somewhere else, while Caterina watched him in silence. Nick caught the gaze of her eyes. “Caterina, when you think about all the crap that’s going on, it’s like we’re stealing a little time from the war. Just you and me here and loving every minute of it.”
She leaned over and kissed him, causing him to smile widely.
“I never noticed your dimples before.”
“That’s because I don’t have much to smile about.” He picked up his wine glass. “Now and in another place and time. You’re the best, Caterina.”
They clinked glasses. “Cin cin!”
A man with a salt and pepper, bushy mustache, in a rumpled suit came by their table. His gray hair was slicked back in the fashion of the thirties.
“Mi scusi, Signore e Signorina. Posso prendere il vostro photo per un buon prezzo?”
He pointed to the camera and said: “Leica.” Nick turned towards Caterina and saw how beautiful she looked, sitting so near him.
“Va bene!” Nick responded.
The man bowed his head, took a bunch of shots and promised to bring the finished results to Nick’s office ‘subito,’ which turned out to be a week later. Before leaving, he jotted down their address in his black, Moleskine notebook.
The waiter carried in steaming pasta from the kitchen, penne all’arrabbiata for Caterina and spaghetti alla carbonara for Nick. They dug into the food, mopping up the sauce with the rustic bread.
“You know, back home I would sometimes spend a day with someone special like you. I guess life’s all about time racing on, yet standing still in your memory. Like being caught in one of those movie posters with a climatic cameo of innamorati.” Nick blinked his eyes for a minute and Caterina drank some more wine.
“Was she pretty?”
“Who?” Caterina rested her jaw on the palm of her hand and stared at him for several minutes.
“Yeah, but it’s over.” His face was taut as he looked over her shoulder.
“Allora, how can time race on and stand still? Non capisco!”
“You see, things are going so fast like one of those flipping calendars in a movie. Then all you have is one, maybe two, frozen frames of film left that you remember. You know, like those movie posters I was talking about.”
“What’s going to happen to us, Nick? Will we be in one of your imaginary posters?”
“Non lo so. Nothing remains the same anymore. Just look around us.”
“Will this place be one of our frozen frames?”
“Sure, baby. You want some espresso?”
“Why don’t you get il conto?”
“Yeah, let’s keep moving. Sistine Chapel, next stop.”
They tried to retrace their steps, getting lost down some of the alleys, and inexplicably found themselves back in Piazza Navona. Nick sped away and within a short time they crossed the Ponte San Angelo to Piazza San Pietro. He applied the scooter kickstand and they strolled out of the north side of the piazza to the Vatican Museum, his limp becoming more obvious. They met two guards, one in a uniform of blue, yellow and red, who stood at attention, holding a razor sharp spear and axe on a long pole and wearing a gleaming helmet with a red plume. Nick showed his U.S Counter Intelligence card to the other Swiss Guard, who wore a black beret and had a Beretta Modella 38 submachine gun strapped over a blue version of the dress uniform. He saluted Nick and Caterina a
s they went by.
“Things are scary, Nicky, even at the Vatican.”
“Forget the Beretta. We’ve got better things to look at. Va bene!”
“Si, andiamo.”
They went straight to the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, glancing at the Last Judgement and other famous paintings in the adjoining rooms. Michelangelo’s depiction of the nine stories of Genesis would be enough for them. There wasn’t a person in the room, except for a sleepy guard at the entrance of the chapel. They contemplated the mix of muted colors—green, blue, yellow, red and many others, then felt the electricity between the finger of Adam and God the Creator. Caterina must have imagined touching the nude, muscular figures of men, while Nick traced the curvaceous bodies of women through his eyes and viscera.
“Why don’t we lie on our backs and take in the view of the master’s work? Just like Michelangelo did.”
“Are you pazzo, Nicky?”
“No. This is a private showing for the two of us. Il Pape himself gave me permission. Sent his personal courier to my headquarters.”
“You are a silly boy, but if it will make you happy, why not?” She turned towards the entryway and saw that the guard was still dozing.
They lay down together on the cold, polychrome inlaid marble floor and traced the scenes with their eyes long enough that the coldness crept into their bones. Nick rose and pulled Caterina up to him, kissing her on the lips.
“Nick, this is a holy place,” Caterina protested. She looked around and then kissed him on the forehead, pushing him out of the chapel.
The guard opened his eyes as they left for Caterina’s place. When they entered the apartment, they shed their outer layers of clothes and lay on the bed. They were both tired but almost telepathically came to the same thought—one more frozen frame of lovemaking to carry with them wherever their film script took them. They made up a storyline aloud, as if thinking alike. But they couldn’t come up with an ending. Nick didn’t care and just wanted to share the passion of the moment with Caterina, so alluring on the bed—her face, her body, her spirit—and the hell with happy endings because the images playing outside this room were too bleak to think about.
Nick wanted to give Caterina one perfect day in Rome to remember him by, something to erase any trace of guilt over their time together, his lust trumping love in these times or love unrecognized by these times. He was glad Caterina had not asked him to ride over to that legendary Bocca della Verità outside the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin and have to put his damn hand in the mouth, not that he believed that stupid myth about it biting your hand if you lied. But it would be just like him to be so sfortunato that the stone lips would have collapsed on his fingers from a sudden domino triggering of an unexploded bomb nearby.
XIX
The last Sunday morning of February brought in the remains of the chilling winds from the mountains that blew down Rome’s streets and alleys, and the dampness found its way into the joints of Nick’s body. The weather had been so bad, he left his Paperino in a garage under the CIC headquarters. He looked out the window of Caterina’s apartment, lit up a cigarette, and waited for her return with some items for breakfast. Lately he had been thinking about Deborah and imagined their reunion but in his gut he knew it was a knucklehead idea, considering she sent him a ‘Dear John’ letter that he had been trying to erase from memory. Too much time had passed between Deborah and him. Besides, there were other issues beyond his control, and yet he would like to see his old girlfriend again. It was as if a film about Caterina and him were spliced together in a continuous spin, only to unravel off the reel.
Nick observed the flowerless oleander trees, not a bird on a limb, as he puffed smoke out into the courtyard. Caterina had quit smoking and had no patience for the smell anymore. She tried to mask the burnt aroma with the scent of lavender twigs that had long lost their potent aroma. He began smoking heavily but was reluctant to attribute it to his edginess, yet it was there wherever he moved about in Rome. Nick tried to blame his irritation on the bad weather, which could change the mood of a saint, especially in the mezzogiorno, where the paesani, no matter how poor, at least had the warmth of the sun. Gray skies muted the light through the apartment window and were spreading shadows in unexpected directions. Nick had found Nate to be withdrawn because Rachele was locked into what his friend called her convent tomb and also upset that he hadn’t heard any news about cousin Carlo since he left for the front.
Bloody images of the war still rattled around in Nick’s brain. Then he recalled an incident that he had never mentioned to anyone, nor was he likely to. It was just after Nathan and he had first returned from Assisi with Carlo. Captain Smith had received transfer orders and ordered Nick to straighten out his office before he left, making sure all the files and reports were organized and secured away, ready to be shipped to a different location. He came across a bound report lying flat on the bottom of a file cabinet and proceeded to hang it up on the guide bar in alphabetical order. He noticed the words, BISCARI AIRFIELD, on the cover with a ‘confidential’ red stamp in several places. He realized that Biscari was in Sicily, not far away from where they had landed on Gela. The temptation was too much to resist, so he blocked the front door with the same file cabinet and scanned it, going back to the salient parts.
With growing despair he read that on July 14, 1943 there had been a skirmish between infantrymen from the Seventh Army and Italian soldiers who used machine guns and sniper fire. When it was all over, 12 Americans were wounded and 36 Italians were captured. The CO ordered his infantrymen to line the Italian prisoners up by a ravine and execute them on the spot. About a mile away an NCO from the same company replicated the execution, when the sergeant had his men march another 37 Italian soldiers away from the airfield for the purpose of interrogation. The sergeant took a sub-machine gun from one of his men and killed every Italian. Captain Compton and Sergeant West were court-martialed separately, the CO’s case being dismissed later, the NCO sentenced to the stockade. An addendum to the case stated that the captain was killed in action almost four months later and the sergeant released after a year, demoted to a private.
“Ah, Jesus Christ,” Nick shouted out. When he realized no one had heard him, he furtively put the report away and moved the file cabinet back. He sat at the captain’s desk and spun around the chair in slow motion trying to comprehend this double massacre. He realized that he had nothing to do with the slaughter of unarmed, Italian prisoners in Sicily, but at that time he also served in the Seventh Army under Patton, wearing one of the same patches on his uniform as the court-martialed soldiers. This was not something he would want to share with anyone, another bloody image for him to remember on his journey through Italy.
Everything seemed to be jumbled up in his head and that is why he still sought comfort in Caterina’s arms, but he already knew he would not remain in Rome when the war ended. During the first week of March, Marzo pazzarello as the Romans like to call it, Nick heard at the CIC headquarters that the Allied Powers had crossed the Rhine in Germany. Captain Smith had always maintained that the German defenses would collapse on the Northern Italian Front by the end of April. Nick felt the numbness in his bones spread, and then a shooting pain ran through his injured leg, as if it were in a wooden box where a magician had slid a razor-sharp sword the wrong way, his assistant screaming in pain. He knew that he had changed from his days with his cousin in San Francisco and could hardly recall his times there with Nathan, everything blurred by his own pain and memories of death.
Nick heard the lock turn and threw his cigarette out the window. Caterina entered and put the cornetti and a container of latte down.
“You know I don’t like cigarette smoke in our place.”
“You didn’t mind in the beginning.”
“It was different then.”
Nick offered to make caffè Americano while Caterina set the table for prima colazione. He had never been that helpful around the apartment but it
was a good excuse to busy himself.
“Was the pasticceria crowded?”
“Not like it should be.”
While they munched on a cornetti al cioccolato, Nick tasted an unusual bitterness in his pastry. He first shrugged off it as tainted cocoa seeds from Ghana, then acted peevish. “The seeds got mixed in with the leaves.” He dumped sugar on the cornetto but it didn’t help. He continued the doctoring.
“What are you doing, Nicky?” Caterina grabbed his forearm but he moved it away. “You know it’s still difficult to get sugar.”
“Everything has been tasting off since I got here.”
“What did you expect? I do my best with what we can find.” Caterina got up and stood over him. “It was you who said that we should live together. You have changed. You run hot and cold, but mostly like the water we get piped into our place during winter, only a hint of warmth.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe I should never have told you that I went to università or that I was a Milanese.” He held his right palm up. “Maybe you preferred that I was a Roman puttana whom you could discard at any moment.” Caterina sat down and crossed her legs in a tangle. “I’ll tell you another thing. My father was a barone and we lost everything. Do you not see what the war has done to me?”
“I never mentioned my family came from Sicilia. But you had to make a point of my accent when I first spoke Italian to you.” He got up and poured the remains of the coffee into the sink. “You must’ve felt so superior coming from Lombardia. And now you tell me che tu sei nobilità!”
“Why are you bringing this up now? Like I have fallen for that North-South divide you seem to be accusing me of. You are picking a fight out of thin air.” She twisted her hair into knots, a few strands hanging loose. “Non ti capisco? Non ti conosco adesso!” His eyes were blank. “I don’t understand you, Nicky. I don’t know you now! Chi sei?”
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