The Gulf Between

by Maxine Alterio

  ‘Do you think the doctor missed something on his last visit?’ I asked Ben as we fetched the refreshments Rosa had left on the bench. ‘He was distracted.’

  Ben removed his wallet from his trouser pocket. It bulged with banknotes. He left it on the table and picked up the tray, balancing it like a headwaiter. ‘Ernesto can chase him up if necessary. We’ve rocked this boat too far as it is.’

  ‘I’ll bring through a jug of water,’ I said, turning on the tap.

  ‘Don’t be long or these will all be gone.’ He popped a tarallo with almond and black pepper into his mouth.

  As soon as he was out of sight, I skimmed the top layer of lire from his wallet and tucked the money into my bra. The feel of the notes against my skin set me wondering if, like me, Sergio had been burdened with self-disgust when he fleeced people to serve his needs.

  The wine Ernesto pressed upon me during and after dinner lulled me to sleep; however, the effect didn’t last. I woke at four full of dread, utterly forlorn. Unable to drift back to sleep or enter an untroubled dream-state or savour the stillness outside, I lay beside Ben stewing about my dishonesty and watching the clock hands on the nightstand move closer to daybreak.

  A guilty conscience and sleep deprivation the last week of October left me short-tempered, a shame because we had taken the children out of school to participate in the olive harvest. Ben was under pressure because, at the last minute, Ernesto had upped the quantity of oil he expected.

  On the drive to the grove, Francesca grizzled about Ben and me allowing Matteo to change schools in the New Year. ‘Boys are spoilt. Girls never are.’

  At her third outburst, Ben clouted the steering wheel. ‘Frannie, how many times I have told you there’s a three-tiered system here. Six- to ten-year-olds go to your sort of school. Eleven- to thirteen-year-olds like Mattie go to the middle type. And the last facility caters for pupils between fourteen and eighteen.’

  Like all Italian children, ours had to attend classes six days a week. No Saturdays off like we had in England.

  Francesca counted on her fingers the years it would take her to reach middle school. The answer had her pounding the heels of her sandals against Ben’s seat. ‘It’s not fair, Papa,’ she yelled. ‘I’ll never catch up.’

  Ben reached around, grabbed one of her ankles and gave it a shake. ‘Do that again and you can walk.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Matteo said, ‘only boys go to my new school, Frannie.’

  She pulled a face, but kept her mouth shut for the remainder of the journey.

  ‘Ben,’ I said as he veered off the main road and headed up a slope, ‘is there anyone in particular I should make friends with?’

  ‘I’m the overseer, Julia.’

  ‘Yes, but your family have known these people for years.’

  ‘They work for us. Nothing more.’

  Over the last half-mile, I tallied up the insults Ben had inflicted upon me since our arrival and unfairly ignored my failings. A thin coating of ice formed in a region of my heart. It didn’t thaw when Francesca leaned over the front seat, pressed her hands to Ben’s cheeks and said, ‘Will there be children for me to play with?’

  ‘Too many to count on your fingers and toes.’

  ‘I hope they like me.’

  He pouched his lips and made kissing noises. ‘How could they not?’

  ‘Francesca can make friends if she likes,’ said Matteo. ‘I’m going to work.’

  ‘Good on you, son,’ Ben said.

  While we unpacked the car, Francesca scaled a ladder propped against a tree and hid in the topmost leafy branch. Had she not pelted Matteo with olives she might have remained undetected for quite a stretch. As it was, she was in trouble on two counts, with me for hiding and with Ben for wasting valuable produce. He ordered her to climb down and count the olives on the ground while he worked out the loss in lira. ‘I’m deducting the amount from your pocket money,’ he told her.

  ‘It’ll take her weeks to pay you, Papa,’ Matteo said. And as an afterthought, ‘Are you sure she found them all?’

  Francesca made a fish-lips face and threw the last olive in her hand at him. Ben insisted she pick this one up while he recalculated the damage. He wrote the new figure on a scrap of paper he had in his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She studied the amount. ‘Fair enough,’ she said, and ran off to play.

  Ben shook his head in frustration. I apologised to the tut-tutting mothers and grandmothers of less troublesome girls. Inwardly, I admired Francesca’s feistiness, though I knew better than to show pride in front of these matriarchs who had been laced into the old ways from birth. Black-skirted and black-eyed, they roamed the grove, hitting troublemakers on the backside with their walking sticks, never missing a chance to inflict fear into young minds.

  Unlike the veteran workers who beat the older trees with sticks and shook the olives onto nets laid out below, and used a rasping tool to remove reluctant fruit from the lower branches, Ben gave Matteo a basket with straps to tie around his waist and told him to start on the juvenile trees. ‘Pick each olive gently, Mattie. If they bruise, they begin to ferment. We don’t want a fusty flavour to the oil.’ He demonstrated the technique. ‘Work fast and careful. The longer olives sit, the more they deteriorate. Our job is to get them to the mill with as little damage as possible.’

  The adult workers treated Ben with respect, but weren’t overly genial. They were also aloof with me. I don’t think it had anything to do with class. Something else was at work. Wariness whetted their eyes. I had a feeling they were sending subtle signals to one another, signals I couldn’t decipher, signals I think Ben read as easily as he could a car manual. He seemed to know when to change gears to accommodate a ribbing between rivals, when to compliment a picker, when to complain. With the human equivalent of a seismic jolt I realised he belonged to an enigmatic breed. Learning the vernacular might not lessen the gulf between us. For better or worse, I was beginning to view my husband through a less alluring lens.

  We returned to the villa, worn out. Matteo, Francesca and Ben went to find Rosa to tell her about their day. I sought out Alessia. She was on the terrace in a wicker chair, watching two birds tussle over a piece of orange peel discarded on the ground. In the fading light her skin had the transparency of tissue paper. Blood flowed through her veins like inky sentences, her life-story written under her skin. I tapped my shoe on a tile. She turned to greet me and the mirage vanished. ‘How are you, Alessia?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ she said impatiently. ‘Sit down, Julia.’ She patted the arm of the chair beside hers. ‘How was it? Who was there? No slackers, I hope.’

  ‘Everything went according to plan,’ I said. ‘Ben knew what to do.’ I went through the ins and outs of his work as the overseer.

  ‘He’ll need to pick up the pace tomorrow,’ she said dismissively. ‘Now tell me the gossip.’ Her voice lifted in anticipation. ‘Who flirted with whom?’

  ‘The widower Ubaldo tried to woo the widow Ibrosi.’

  Alessia snorted like a camel, head back, eyes wide, nostrils flared. ‘He’s been after her for years. Why, I don’t know. She has one leg shorter than the other.’ A quick puff on her cigarette and she was off again. ‘What did he tempt her with this season?’

  ‘I think it was cow’s milk cheese.’ Bébe di Sorrento, a favourite of Ben’s.

  ‘That wouldn’t impress her. Who else was on the make?’

  ‘The son of the goat-herd serenaded the daughter of the cobbler. He fared better than Ubaldo. I caught the young couple sneaking a kiss behind the packing shed.’

  ‘If he ends up with her he’ll be well shod, though not allowed to drink wine.’

  She crinkled her lips when I recounted Francesca’s exploits. ‘That girl pushes her luck,’ she said. ‘Make sure it doesn’t run out.’

  ‘I’ll always do my best for her and Matteo.’

  She flashed me a warm smile. ‘You’re a good mother.’

  Heartened, I took a gamble. ‘Do you
have a photo of yourself at Francesca’s age? I’d love to see if there’s a resemblance. Perhaps there’s one of you in your prime, too. I bet you were a looker.’

  Her face flushed melon-pink. She called over her shoulder to Rosa, who was sweeping up leaves. ‘Bring the shoebox from the bottom of my wardrobe.’

  Among the photos of Alessia, who in her glory days had thick, dark curly hair similar to Francesca’s, was one of Ben aged ten or eleven. I traced around his head with my finger. Much of the man I knew showed in the young face, including the captivating eyes. ‘He was a fine-looking boy, Alessia, but he looks nervous. Can you recall the reason?’

  Silence fell like drifts of snow around us. I was about to repeat the question when she said, ‘No idea’, and flung the photographs into the box. ‘Fetch Ernesto. I want to go inside.’

  I thought of calling Ben, whom I could hear talking with Carlo in the side garden, but, chary of her abrupt mood swing, I went in search of my brother-in-law, speculating whether he’d stirred up his sibling before the photographer took the shot. Something about Ernesto and cameras unsettled me.

  The day before we started picking I discovered him training his Leica on Francesca as she ran down the driveway chasing a piglet she had inadvertently let out of its pen while tipping kitchen scraps into the feeding trough. Her hair flared out in all directions and her skinny legs pumped up and down like pistons. When he realised I was behind him, he flipped the cap over the lens and made a feeble joke about pork on the run.

  On the fourth and final day of the harvest, the last of the olives already at the mill, Ben put on a traditional feast for the pickers. Late back to the villa, he dispatched Matteo and Francesca to bed and I made milky chocolate drinks to take to our room. Halfway up, on the second-floor landing close to Ernesto’s bedroom door, a glint of glass at knee-height caught my attention. Unable to make out the details of a photograph in a large frame propped up against the wall, I transferred both mugs to one hand and flicked on the main light. There, for anyone to see, was a streetwalker instructing a little girl to lift her dress in a suggestive manner. I couldn’t switch the light off fast enough.

  ‘Ben,’ I said, bursting into our room and shutting the door with my backside, ‘when you came upstairs did you notice an abomination outside Ernesto’s room?’ I set the mugs on a low table. He was seated in one of two easy chairs covered in sea-green brocade.

  ‘Such as?’ he said, slipping off his shoes.

  ‘A large framed photograph.’ I spread my arms to indicate the size.

  ‘No. Was it there when we left at daybreak?’

  ‘I didn’t see it. Go and take a look.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to know what you make of it.’

  ‘Jesus, can’t we just enjoy our drinks?’

  ‘Please, Ben.’

  ‘For pity’s sake,’ he said, padding out the door in his bare feet.

  He reappeared in a flash.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s nothing there. It’s all in your imagination.’

  ‘I know what I saw, Ben.’

  He reached for his mug.

  After a while I said, ‘Talk to me, dammit.’

  It were as if he hadn’t heard. His mother had ignored him as a child. Now he was using the same tactic on me. To stifle my outrage, I redirected my thoughts to an afternoon we had spent with the children on the headland of Posillipo. Sweeping his hand towards the Gulf of Pozzuoli, Ben had said, ‘Look over there.’ And at the tip of Cape Minerva we had spotted the old tower. He’d told us then that in the old days its great bell had warned ships off the rocks. This evening in our bedroom, the two of us floundering in tumultuous currents, I wondered who would save us.

  20

  New Zealand, 1994

  I wake with a start, the tick of the wall clock reverberating through me like a second heartbeat. Sunlight breaches a gap in the blinds, illuminating the stubble on Matteo’s chin. A glimmer of silver among darker whiskers brings a lump to my throat and thoughts weighted with sadness for the changes he has had to navigate without me. The monitor screen flickers. I follow the steady trace of his heart rate, take it as a sign he will pull through.

  It’s the third day since the accident. Every evening from the motel I phone Francesca with a progress report. She’s convinced he was coming to see me. I want to believe her. Certainty provides comfort. I envy this trait in her. She sailed through a double degree in marine biology and political science. These days she works off the eastern coast of South Africa on charter boats, studying the feeding patterns of sharks. If there’s a significant change in her brother’s condition, she’ll abandon her research and fly here to join us.

  I rise from the hospital chair and walk to the window. Across the road on the pavement a suited gentleman, umbrella in hand, waits for the pedestrian lights to flash green. I imagine he’s heading to the Dunedin law courts. Wiggin hoped Matteo would inherit his passion for weighing up the merits of convincing arguments, forgetting that Ben drew on equally persuasive techniques in his import-export business. Each man had wanted Matteo to grow into his likeness.

  Rubber soles squelching down the linoleum signal the arrival of a nurse with yellow teeth, pimples on her chin and tobacco-stained fingers. She pops a thermometer under Matteo’s armpit. While she waits for a reading, she says, ‘Mild autumn weather we’re having.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  At the requisite time, she checks the mercury and enters the figure on her chart.

  ‘How’s his temperature?’

  ‘Within normal range.’

  I’m about to ask whom I can talk to about my son’s progress when two more nurses come in.

  ‘We’re here to work on his legs,’ a ginger-haired lass tells me, ‘to prevent foot-drop.’

  ‘I’m not sure what that is.’

  She pulls back the bedding. ‘It’s a condition that strikes those who can’t move on their own accord. We do motion exercises to make sure the muscles don’t wither.’

  While the nurses work on Matteo’s limbs I remark on their thinness.

  ‘Yes, he’s underweight,’ says the second nurse. ‘You can fatten him up once he’s better. All the men I know love their mother’s cooking.’

  ‘He was keen on his food as a boy,’ I say.

  When they finish manipulating flesh and bone, she uses a pillow to elevate Matteo’s feet and places pads under his heels. ‘To alleviate the pressure,’ she says.

  Before leaving, her colleague checks the feeding tube. I wasn’t present when it was set up. ‘Can you please explain how it works?’ I ask. Focusing on practicalities helps divert the fears I cannot bear to confront.

  ‘A doctor passed the tube through your son’s nostril down the oesophagus and into his stomach. So we can dispense a liquid diet through it.’

  ‘Are there any risks?’

  ‘Some patients develop infections or skin irritations. The greater concern is the contents of the stomach regurgitating upwards and getting sucked into the lungs.’

  The notion terrifies me. ‘Is this common?’

  ‘It’s very rare. You needn’t worry. We’re super-vigilant.’

  ‘Nurse,’ booms a voice in the corridor, ‘a colostomy bag needs changing.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ she says, and hurries out.

  ‘I’m here to change Matteo’s dressing,’ the ward sister announces as she comes in. ‘Pop down to the family room, Mrs Moretti. Make yourself a cup of tea.’

  Instead I hover in the corridor, thinking of sensible questions to put to her. When she emerges, exuding authority and status, common sense deserts me. Rather than ask about Matteo’s condition I enquire about his hair.

  She eyes me through a pair of tortoise-shell rimmed glasses and jerks her capped head towards the blood-flecked bandages on the tray. ‘What hair?’ she says.

  How foolish of me not to realise his head would have been shaved before surgery. Humiliated, I re-enter the room, slither int
o the chair and concentrate on the large hand of the wall clock. One, five, ten minutes pass before I return to my memories of the Vomero.

  21

  Italy, 1961

  I visited the Biblioteca to firm up the dates for my lessons with Ilaria. By then I had siphoned off enough money from Ben’s wallet and from shopping trips to the market to be able to pay for them. She worked four days a week, Tuesday through to Saturday. We agreed to meet on Mondays at noon for an hour at her flat. This arrangement would let me attend to Alessia in the morning and finish in time to collect Francesca. Better still, on Mondays the men were away from daylight to dusk.

  The prospect of talking with Ilaria in a private setting appealed for reasons other than lessons. At the bookstore she had talked about the prevalence of grief in Italian literature and revealed that, like me, she had lost her parents on the same day. ‘In ’42,’ she’d said. No further details.

  Knowing she’d gone through a comparable event made me feel closer to her. Rightly or wrongly, I believed we were women with similar histories.

  Twenty-four hours before I was due at Ilaria’s flat, Alessia’s temperature spiked. Out of character, she had pleaded with Rosa to leave her bedroom window open overnight to allow a stream of cooler air to circulate, an ill-advised act I kept quiet about when Ernesto accused me of leaving his mother in a draught. ‘Have you no sense?’ he said after the doctor came and put Alessia on a course of penicillin. ‘She has a bacterial chest infection.’

  Although I suspected the doctor had missed the warning signs on a previous visit, I played dumb as I spooned lemon juice, honey and hot water into Alessia’s slit of a mouth. Each time she coughed, I feared she would crack a rib or burst her papery skin and expose her emotionally stunted heart.

  She sank and rallied. During lucid phases, I half-expected her to ask for Ben and apologise for neglecting him, but she reverted to form and barked out orders to Rosa and me. Because she viewed the infection as a personal affront, everything had to be scrubbed. Rosa and I were run off our feet. Our fingers wrinkled due to the numerous buckets of hot water we had them in. There was no chance of making it to my lessons.