Chapter 54
I WANTED TO ASK FRANCESCA more about Teo, but almost as soon as she’d dealt with the ragù, in walked a distinguished-looking man wearing a collared shirt and slacks.
Francesca said something to him in the easy language of people who are intimately familiar, and he set down his satchel and greeted me with a somewhat stilted “Hello.”
“This is my husband, Bernardo,” said Francesca, and I went to greet him.
Bernardo’s English was nowhere near as good as Francesca’s, but he could get by, so he told me it was nice to meet me and asked how I was finding life on the island.
“Good, it’s good,” I said, then switched over to Italian. “é bellissimo.” I was eager to impress him—probably because I figured that, if he liked me, Francesca might decide she liked me, too.
“Ha incontrato Teo in città,” said Francesca, and I knew she was telling him that I’d met Teo.
“Ha incontrato Bianca?”
“Non ancora, ma forse presto,” said Francesca before turning to me and explaining, “He’s asking if you’ve met Bianca. I said not yet but maybe soon.”
I already knew a little bit about Francesca and Bernardo’s two children.
Their son, Andrea, was studying engineering at the University of Cagliari, and their daughter, Bianca, was newly married—to a man named Matteo—and had returned to La Maddalena to work as a nurse at the local hospital.
Matteo had gotten seasonal work at a restaurant, but their hope was that he might eventually get something with the city.
As for Bernardo, I knew little about him other than that he taught history at the high school. “Francesca dice tu lavori in una scuola.”
The way Francesca was shaking her head, I knew I’d messed something up, but Bernardo seemed entertained. “And Francesca says you do not speak Italian.”
“Is it that obvious?” I said, and everyone laughed.
I liked meeting Bernardo in part because he gave me a fuller picture of Francesca.
They told me they had met in Sassari after the war, and that Bernardo had been born there.
He’d grown up in a family of freemasons and had spent long hours reading the writings of revolutionary socialists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Amadeo Bordiga.
This had turned him into an idealist, and as a young man, he had stopped going to Mass, then refused to fight in Mussolini’s army.
With the exception of a three-month prison stint, he had spent much of the war underground, working on behalf of the resistance.
“He must have been very handsome,” I said to Francesca.
The corner of her mouth turned up. “Ovviamente.”
The pair married in 1946 and lived together in Sassari for several years before Francesca’s mother died and her father—who had lived in La Maddalena his entire life—grew sick.
There was no convincing him to come to Sassari, so Bernardo took a job at the island’s lower secondary school, and they moved to La Maddalena to care for him.
“We thought the move might be temporary,” Francesca explained, “but that was more than twenty years ago.”
“Può essere difficile entrare in sintonia con i maddalenini, se sei un estraneo,” Bernardo said to me, then looked to Francesca to translate.
“He says it can be difficult to connect with the Maddalenini. Especially if you are an outsider.”
“Like me?”
“Sì,” said Francesca. “Or like Bernardo.”
I smiled at him, glad we had something in common, or at least that he might see it that way.
We talked a little about the divorce referendum; Italians had voted on the proposed repeal days earlier, and both Francesca and Bernardo seemed exceedingly pleased it had been voted down.
“Divorce has finally allowed Italian women control of their own destinies,” said Francesca. “We cannot go back.”
“Ora vediamo cosa succede a giugno,” said Bernardo, which was a reference to the upcoming regional elections.
I was dying to know who Bernardo and Francesca planned to vote for, but I was terrified to ask.
I think I knew even then that if I asked, they would tell me they were PCI, and I’d have a real dilemma on my hands because I’d feel obligated to tell Paul.
If I told him, I was pretty sure he’d insist I discontinue my lessons, but if I didn’t tell him, I’d walk around feeling guilty for keeping such a big secret.
You can see why it was better not to know.
Francesca was clearly ready to get us back on task, so she asked Bernardo if he wanted a cup of coffee, and when he said no, she shooed him off. “Piacere,” he said to me as he picked up his satchel and disappeared down the hall and into the bedroom.
Francesca and I took our coffees out to the balcony, as we had during each of our previous lessons.
I spent a few minutes admiring her potted plants and asking for the Italian words for basil, mint, and thyme.
“Is it you or Bernardo who gardens?” I asked, but Francesca was all done with English, and with letting me run the show.
“Vediamo i tuoi compiti,” she said, and only when she’d eyed my bag suggestively and mimed the opening of a book would I understand that she wanted to see my homework.