by Joseph Grady
“You were just dreaming,” yelled Natasha. “Go back to sleep.”
“Alright,” he lay back down.
Ten minutes later, though, it happened again.
This time Andrew didn’t sit up, but just yelled, “Bloody hell!”
All the way through Umbria the bang and shimmy would happen every ten minutes. Andrew stopped yelling and learned to sleep through it, but Natasha looked worried and Scott would scratch his chin and ask questions. Once they crossed into Tuscany, the frequency had increased to once every five minutes, and on the stretch between Florence and Bologna, Natasha spotted a sign for an Autogrill, an Italian rest stop.
“Lucy, we’re pulling over here, now now,” said Natasha. “Look, it even says there’s a service station. We absolutely must have this van looked at.”
“It’s fine. I promise. I think I know what the problem is,” said Lucy.
“I gotta piss like a race horse,” said Scott. “We gotta pull over.”
“We can stop for the bathroom. That’s fine,” said Lucy. “But the van is okay, I promise.”
She took the right lane, and decelerated onto the highway exit. Italian rest stops are closer to what most Americans would know as truck stops, just a little smaller and slightly more civilized. There’s always a coffee bar, a gas station, bathrooms, people milling around, truckers taking their afternoon naps in their cabs, and a restaurant called Autogrill, that somehow has a monopoly on all Italian rest stops. Before Lucy could park, Scott climbed over Natasha, jumped out of the van and made a beeline for the bathroom. Lucy and Natasha wandered into the restaurant, and Andrew volunteered to guard the car.
“Are you sure, Andrew?” said Lucy. “This place looks pretty safe to me.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“You can take the man out of Calabria, but you can’t take Calabria out of the man.” Lucy handed him the keys.
I started sniffing around the van, trying to find the problem. It wasn’t hard to figure out. As I’ve said a number of times already, one of the biggest disadvantages of being human is the crippling lack of a sense of smell. It makes auto repairs so much easier if you can just sniff your way straight to a problem, rather than having to look at things. After just one minute I went into the building to tell Lucy what was wrong with the van.
It was Friday on the Milano-Roma stretch of highway, which meant the line for the women’s room was out the door. I explained the problem to Lucy while she was in line, and also explained how to fix it. After the bathroom, and some time at the coffee bar, Lucy went over to the mini mart section and Scott and Natasha headed out to the parking lot. The van was not where they had left it. One hundred yards away, Andrew was having an animated discussion with a mechanic in front of the garage. The hood was open and the mechanic kept frowning and gesturing inside the engine. Scott and Natasha got closer, and Andrew put his hands on his hips.
“Hey guys. So Lucy was all like ‘It’s no problem’... my ass it’s no problem.”
“What’s up?” said Natasha.
“Yep, it’s definitely buggered. This guy says we might need a whole new transmission. Whatever it is, it’s serious.”
“Sounds bad,” said Natasha. “Where are we? Are we going to make it to Milan?”
“Not today, it doesn’t sound like. It’ll take quite a while to get this all sorted out.”
Lucy sauntered up with a new hammer, duct tape, and an open bag of chips. The other three turned and gave her accusatory looks.
“What’s going on, guys?” she asked. “Why are we talking to a mechanic?”
“It turns out the van’s in much worse condition that you thought,” said Andrew.
“Oh yeah?” Lucy was still skeptical.
“Yeah, we probably need a whole new transmission or something.”
“How long did you talk with this guy?”
“Five, ten minutes,” said Andrew. “And he can already tell it’s that bad.”
“Exactly,” said Lucy. “Did he tell you that he looked at the transmission?”
“Yeah.”
“In five minutes?” Lucy walked in front of the engine, put her back to the mechanic, and turned to Andrew. “If I were to ask you where the transmission is, would you be able to identify it?”
“Yeah,” Andrew walked up next to her. “It’s one of those things in there. Maybe that one there.”
“I guess they don’t teach you auto-mechanics in the architecture faculty,” Lucy put her forehead on Andrew’s shoulder and giggled at him. She forced the hammer and duct tape into his hands. “Come on, let’s go. Give me the keys. I’m gonna move the car.”
She gave a knowing smile to the mechanic, trying to say, you almost ripped off a group of foreigners. Well done. But not good enough. The mechanic shrugged his shoulders back at her with a guilty smirk that said, You win some, you lose some. She got behind the wheel, and drove the van to an empty spot. Natasha, Scott and I sensed that we weren’t going to be leaving for a while, so we escaped back to the Autogrill. Lucy got on her back on the pavement behind the van and shimmied her way behind the back tire.
“Andrew, give me the hammer,” her hand appeared from underneath the van.
His left eye was healed, but he was still slightly hesitant to hand her a hammer. Given her position on the ground, Andrew judged that she didn’t pose an immediate threat to him, and gave it to her. She banged away at something metal on the underside of the car, striking repeatedly on a hollow spot, and then asked for the duct tape. While Andrew was staring across the highway, someone tried to park in the spot next to the van, and Lucy almost had to fight the car off with just her legs – the only thing visible from underneath the van. Just in time, Andrew came back to his senses, and wagged his finger at the driver with one hand, and gestured at Lucy’s legs with another.
“Okay, now help me up,” said Lucy, shimmying out from underneath the car.
“What did you do down there?” Andrew put his toes on top of hers, grabbed both her hands, and brought her up to his level.
“I fixed the problem.” Their noses were level and just an inch apart.
“What was the problem?”
“The muffler. Didn’t you hear it keep backfiring?”
“Yeah... so you mean that’s what that sound is?”
“That’s what that sound was. It’ll stop now.”
“You mean that sort of sound... on the van or on any other sort of vehicle is always the muffler?”
“Yeah.” Lucy let go of his hands and took a step back. “Haven’t you ever heard an engine backfire? In fact, I should have a look at your scooter some time.”
“That guy told me it was the transmission.”
“No.” Lucy was amazed. “How much money were you about to pay this guy to fix a transmission that he didn’t even look at?”
“What was wrong with the muffler?”
“The pipe going into it was slightly bent, and the back part was rubbing up against the back bumper. It kept overheating.”
“So what did you do?”
“I bent the pipe back and shoved a few balls of duct tape between the bumper and the muffler. It should stop overheating for now. Problem solved. Fifteen euros.” She ran her fingers through her wavy black hair, stopping here and there to remove small pebbles. “And the parking lot of an Italian rest stop in my hair.”
“Wow. But you never looked underneath the car after you parked. How could you tell that was the problem?”
“I’ve got good ears. Come on, let’s go. I’ll pull up to the front. Go get Scott and Natasha. Oh, and here.” She handed him the hammer and duct tape and winked. “You can even keep these.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
COSA VUOI?
Lucy didn’t wake up until nine in the morning. Where the hell am I? It was always jarring to wake up outside of the Palazzo, which, aside from prison a few weeks earlier, had been a very rare occurrence since her arrival in Rome. Her eyes jumped around the assortment of objects
in the poorly illuminated room, and she let the memory of the journey slowly return: a tiny desk, a rigid chair, a rickety iron bed with only one pillow, a Brady Bunch style crucifix, high corniced ceilings, and – the room’s one saving highlight – a connected bathroom, which must have been added whenever the orphanage had been turned into a retreat center.
Oh the glory of spending an entire weekend in a place where you don’t have to shuffle all the way down a public hallway in a bathrobe and sandals just to get to the shower! It’s amazing how modern humans – especially Lucy – can experience such a change in mood with a slight adjustment in bathing habits. She stretched in bed, slouched over to the curtains, and peaked outside. It was foggy out. Fair enough. In the bathroom she cranked the knob marked caldo in the shower and stayed there long enough that the inside turned foggy as well.
Well over an hour after waking up, she finally moseyed down to the massive dining hall, where there was only one place set remaining at the breakfast table. An eager Filipino sister poured her coffee and hot milk, set a tray of biscotti, juice, and fruit in front of her, and stood by the kitchen door, twenty yards away, watching Lucy eat. She nibbled on a few cookies as quickly as possible and escaped the dining room to explore the retreat center grounds. It was a large complex of many residential wings all connected to each other around a number of courtyards. At the center there was a big church and dining room. Outside it was chilly and still foggy. You could barely see one building from the next one over, which gave the impression that the campus was much larger than it really was. She found Natasha, bundled up like the Michelin tire man, in one of the courtyards, seated next to an ancient nun in a grey habit and a wheel chair. They were clucking away at each other in a language Lucy didn’t understand.
“Lucy, this is Sister Madelon.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, sister.” Lucy shook the old nun’s hand and sat down on the bench next to Natasha.
The nun looked back at Natasha with a blank expression.
“Lucy, she doesn’t speak English,” said Natasha. “Try and use some of the Afrikaans that I taught you.”
“Okay, let me see if I can remember anything,” Lucy looked into the air in concentration, then turned to the nun and said, “Sama sama.”
Natasha and the nun sat in silence for a second before turning to each other and laughing.
“I’m sure that was very funny,” said Lucy.
“Oh, it was.”
“Did you ever teach me Afrikaans or just ways to make a fool of myself?”
“Yes and yes.”
“But what are the chances there’d be a South African nun in the middle of northern Italy?”
“She’s not South African. She’s Dutch. More than half the old sisters here in the retirement home are Dutch. I guess their order, or whatever you call it, was from the Netherlands.”
“Have you been able to find out anything about this place?”
“Yeah, I was just talking to her about it. It’s a little slow going, though.”
“Well then, keep going. I shouldn’t interrupt.”
“No it’s fine. She’s only mostly there,” Natasha tapped on the side of her forehead that wasn’t facing the old nun. “I’ve been sitting here for an hour and I’ve already had to introduce myself five of six times. Long term memory still seems to be mostly intact, though.”
“Wow. That’s perfect. Well, no, I mean, that’s not perfect, but for us, it’s like, perfect.”
“I suppose so.”
“So this place is a retirement home too?” said Lucy.
“This wing here is.”
“Sure feels great to get out of the Palazzo Mortimer retirement home for the weekend, doesn’t it?”
“It’s partially a retirement home. It’s also a novitiate and a retreat center. Oh, you missed it, Lucy. It was absolutely stunning. For an hour and a half this morning, there were perhaps forty or fifty novices – girls from all over the world, but in identical grey habits – and they all got out buckets with heaps of bleach and other things. They swept and they mopped and they scrubbed every inch of this entire facility. I asked sister Madelon and she told me they do that every morning. It was incredible, absolutely incredible. You must wake up earlier tomorrow to see it.”
“Sounds like someone might have a vocation.”
“After all that spectacle, I’m beginning to wonder.”
“Have you asked her about Ginevra or Eugenio?”
“I don’t know if we need to be that direct yet.”
“What has she told you so far?”
“Yeah. Like I was saying, I’ve just been asking her about this campus. It was entirely an orphanage when it was built in the 1920’s. Then in the ’40’s it became the Italian novitiate too. Around the ’60’s no more Dutch sisters were entering, so it became the only novitiate. Then around the ’70’s they stopped accepting children at the orphanage, and started all sorts of foster programs through the eighties. In the ’90’s they started making it into a retirement home and retreat center. And here we are today. I mean, there was quite a bit more to it, but that’s the essentials.”
“So Eugenio must’ve been one of the last generations to grow up here,” said Lucy.
“I suppose so.”
“And that explains why he spoke Afrikaans.”
“He didn’t, really. He spoke Dutch. But they’re just about the same.”
“Have you found out who’s in charge, or who’d have access to records?”
“Madelon told me that Mother Superior is the grumpy one we met last night at the gate.”
“No,” moaned Lucy. “Not her. I saw her glaring at me from reception this morning too.”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, whatever. It’s alright, we’ll figure something out.”
The day before, traffic on the stretch of highway between Rome to Milan hadn’t been that bad, but once in Milan itself, the highway became a parking lot. What made things worse was Natasha’s insistence that they stop in Milan’s city center and have a look around. Parking, at first, was a nightmare, until Scott remembered the name of the Italian patron saint of parking – San Pancrazio, facci spazio – and they found a free spot immediately. Lucy was surprised that she liked Milan. She liked it a lot. But she wasn’t sure how to feel about that attraction. Over the years she had absorbed too much of the central Italian inferiority/superiority complex to go in with objective eyes. It was organized. Calm. Everyone was beautiful and they were dressed exactly as they should be dressed. People walked with purpose on sidewalks that were much cleaner than those in Rome.
While Rome has a unique and undeniable heart-piercing beauty that makes you long with existential nostalgia for the infinite, Milan’s beauty is more intuited, perceived through its thick skin and its classy locals. For example, people say New York is beautiful, but if you actually take a look around, not many of the particular things in New York are really all that beautiful. It’s a confluence of factors that makes it beautiful. Milan is the same. Even more. Some people say Milan is ugly. These people have no personality. There’s a certain character that pervades the city and that tells you that life is life. Milan is Milan. You’re in Milan. This is how it’s done. Sure, we’re Italy. But we’re Milan.
They all hoofed the two hundred and fifty steps up to the roof of the Duomo, the second largest gothic cathedral in Europe, and spent an hour just above the city skyline with the Madonnina, amid a forest of gothic spires, watching the sun light up the horizon through the evening smog of industrial no-nonsense northern Italy. After finding dinner and before heading back to the car, Lucy bought a lighter with the words written on it: Milano è la città più europea del mondo. È ancora più europea di New York.
Varese is only forty miles north of Milan, squeezed between a giant lake and the foothills of the Alps, right up against the border with Switzerland. Like I said, Lucy doesn’t get out of Rome much. What’s a bear to do? That weekend was not exactly my finest hour as a
spirit animal. The Alps! I mean, come on, the Alps! And you want me to spend the weekend closed up in a retreat center looking for old records? Nature called, and I was drawn to the mountains, to the fresh air, to the smell of other animals in the forest. I wasn’t completely absent from Lucy’s life, but I’d be lying if I said I was completely present.
After the sun set, it took them an hour to find the place where they parked the van in Milan, and with traffic and poor navigation skills it took them two hours to get to Varese, and another hour of being lost in Varese before finding the retreat center. The old Italian nun who had to wake up to let the car through the gate was not happy. She showed the group their rooms, gave them their keys, and Lucy collapsed into her bed. I headed for the hills. Alpine Italy. Switzerland. It was too good to be true.
“So what do you think we should do?” asked Natasha. “We’ve only got today and tomorrow.”
“I don’t know. For the time being, see if you can get any more information out of sister Madelon here. We’re on retreat, right? I’m gonna go see if Mother Superior’s available for spiritual direction.”
Lucy went to another courtyard, and sat in a park bench by herself. She placed her head in her hands and worked herself up into a spiritual crisis that would require the immediate attention of an Italian nun. If police detectives could crumble at her feet, any old crotchety nun wouldn’t offer much resistance, right?
After just ten minutes of concentrated reflection, she had turned herself into a spiritual and moral wreck, and because she was on “retreat”, she went straight to the authority. Mother Superior was still at the reception desk in the large lobby, leaning back in a captain’s chair and reading a collection of Leopardi’s poems. Lucy’s moccasins made little noise on the stone floor, and by the time she was standing in front of the desk looking down at the nun, Mother Superior was still looking at her book.
“Good morning,” Lucy began in English. The night before, the nun had spoken to them only in English, but with a bizarre accent that pronounced every word very clearly and slowly, and gave an exaggerated weight to the vowels. Lucy figured that in English she’d have an advantage over the nun.