Chapter 1 #4
“[Italian word!]” she said, throwing her arm up.
“Then that’s even worse, because my friend Pippa comes today, and if she does not come by train she must glide here on witchcraft.
She is very amusing. Always wears her hair up with an artificial flower.
She’s done it since we were twelve. She is Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Her aunts and uncles were kings and queens. ”
This fact resonated in the chambers of my mind with bits of history as old as her collection, unreconcilable with the present day. “Baronessa—”
“You will call me Lisabetta. It’s from Boccaccio.
She is the one who keeps her lover’s severed head in a pot of basil.
I would love to do that, but life does not provide every opportunity.
Or you will call me Coco. This I leave you to decide.
” I could not imagine calling this imposing woman anything of the kind.
She gestured with her free hand and began a precarious walk across the stone floor.
“Come with me. We have to find Nimali the cook. Estelle has abandoned us.”
I informed her that Estelle had said she would return later.
She leaned her head back with a hearty “HO HO HO!” This crude laughter surprised me in someone so haughty and fragile. “Nimali!” she began to shout. “Nimali! Koo-koo!”
I informed her that Estelle had said the cook had a headache.
“Nonsense. I don’t have a headache and I am ninety-two.”
It seemed to me a strange way to diagnose others. “Ninety-two? You look wonderful.”
Her expression was that of someone at the top of a high mountain, looking down on the poor creatures just beginning the ascent.
“Baronessa,” I said, “I wanted to ask about my position—”
“Eh?”
“I have a question about the position of adjutant—”
“Eh?”
“My job!”
“This is of no concern. If not the train, I have heard tell there is also an omnibus. I am going down to the pool. Since you must for the moment remain, maybe you can bring that basket. And of course you should go for a swim.”
I told her I had not unpacked my swim trunks, as I had just arrived.
“Oh, go without,” she said, waving away my worries. “It’s more satisfying to swim in the nude. Are you concerned about this old lady seeing something? Don’t concern yourself. I am completely blind!”
She stepped close to a painting and, with a delicate pinch of her forefinger and thumb, removed a single hair. A brisk smile at me.
She was not blind in the least.
We did not make it to the pool. Like a child restless in the company of adults, the day provided its own diversion.
I was very worried about her turning me away so summarily.
So I tried all my charms; I carried the basket as she desired and listened to her speech, in which I would grasp a subject only to find it had slipped away from me and we were on to something else: “It’s a shame you don’t know Italian or you could have talked to the station manager.
These train strikes are an annoyance, but they’re sporting.
There’s always one train that gets through.
I know my chickens, and my friend Pippa, she’ll grab it.
Speaking of chickens, we must deal with our sworn enemy, the marten. ”
The Baronessa led me through the kitchen, where we found her bastone propped near the stove; the handle was carved into an elongated horse’s head, and she demonstrated its spring-loaded jaw (“You see, I’m not a liar!
”). We passed from the dining area into a room whose windows were completely shuttered, giving me little sense of it except a glimpse of low couches at the far end and a set of paintings, and I found myself caught up in another sheaf of bamboo, set precisely in my path, then banged my knee on a wicker table.
The Baronessa did not seem to notice; she maneuvered the obstacle course easily, talking all the while: “Pippa once found me in Kandahar by donkey cart. All the donkeys were busy, but one happened to have her husband’s name, and the driver had to admit it was God’s will.
I am taken by a whim to visit the little bathroom over there… ”
She swung open an enormous door and we were bathed in sunlight; before us was an arcade with a potted orange tree and, beyond it, a courtyard of paved stones set into the grass.
We stepped outside and the pugs followed us.
Every wall seemed to be covered with green vines of wisteria.
The Baronessa gestured with her bastone at a small stone building across the courtyard; a door was set in its wall, half hidden by the wisteria.
I wondered how to deal with this woman, whether to flatter or coax her or boss her around.
But the elderly lady, more spry than I imagined, had already vanished inside.
Another voice, this time distinctly male: “Signore!”
I turned and found that beside me stood a tall, mustached man in a T-shirt and shorts.
He had a proud and cautious demeanor and a protruding lower lip, which gave the sense he doubted that what you were saying was true.
Later I would learn he was the cook’s husband; they were both from Sri Lanka, and his name was Vinsanda.
The Baronessa, unable to untie this simple Sinhalese knot, called him Vinsanto, the name of a Tuscan dessert wine.
He said a single word in Italian, but he was not addressing the Baronessa. He said it to me.
“[Italian word].”
“Scusi?” I asked. I had picked this up from an Italian movie.
Vinsanda blinked his eyes, then repeated the word.
It sounded like “matzoh” but couldn’t possibly be.
He gestured gracefully to a space outside the courtyard that I understood to be a garage.
More Italian followed, but simple words, repeated, in the way one speaks to a dog.
He stepped away and, with another gesture for a canine, waved for me to accompany him, which I did, looking back at the courtyard, where I saw my duffel had been delivered.
The pugs were circling it as if it were an idol.
I worried they would “mark” it; alas, there was nothing I could do but abandon my duffel, and the Baronessa, for what might lie within the garage.
A manhole, it turned out, the cover of which had been removed and set to one side.
All around, the items typical to a garage crowded the walls—saws, screwdrivers, glass jars of nuts or bolts or screws, broken windows, broken chairs—along with items atypical to a garage, such as a bronze nude sculpture facing the wall.
I walked forward to examine it—but Vinsanda clapped to regain my attention, pointing toward the hole.
“Pozzo,” he said, this time quite clearly.
“Pozzo,” I repeated.
“Piano,” he said, or so it seemed.
A pause. I heard him repeat: “Pozzo piano.” It seemed to be a complete sentence.
I repeated these phonemes and he nodded.
Then he walked out of the garage and up a set of stairs into an apartment above, where he closed the door.
Apparently, having communicated this sentence, he had wiped his hands of the whole affair.
I approached the pozzo. A smell assaulted me, and instantly I understood Italian.
I heard a voice from the courtyard: “Koo-koo!”
It seemed the entire complex worked on some antique septic system, perhaps even one of Roman invention.
However ancient, this was not the kind of work I had come to perform, but it seemed Vinsanda felt it was not his kind, either.
If I solved it, perhaps it might win me a chance to stay—but did I want to stay on these terms?
Did I want to stay at all? I felt alarm at either option: to be thrown back into the churning ocean of possibilities or else to remain in a place disappointed that I was neither British nor blond nor bathing in the nude…
“Koo-koo!” The voice was coming closer. The pugs appeared at the garage door and stopped, staring at me. I looked into the pozzo, but it kept its own counsel. I heard her voice: “Has the American left?”
Without thinking, I shouted: “I’m here!”
Slowly, the Baronessa came into view in her white dress. “Aha! Are you interested in auto parts?”
“No, there was a man here who said—” and here I swallowed and searched my soul for strength. “Pozzo piano.”
“Really? Pozzo piano?”
“I think that’s what he said.”
“The pozzo is slow?”
“I think it’s overflowed.”
“Pieno,” she said very firmly. “Full. Pieno.”
“I know this isn’t the kind of thing—”
I felt a sharp pain on my arm; she had hit me with the horse head of her cane. “Oh, I love solving house problems! I need you to search in my basket for the little red book. There are two men who can help us with this. One, unfortunately,” she said, holding out a hand, “is in Napoli.”
I was not yet a student of Italian geography. “That’s far, isn’t it?”
She presented her other hand. “The other is dead.”
She stood, hands outspread, in a pose very similar to that of San Drogo.
“Then let’s call Napoli.”
“As you say. Find for me the little red book full of numbers. Find for me Cicciano. It will be in the old part. Luciano Cicciano.”
The red book (which was not little) turned up in her crowded basket.
I sat on a white metal bench going through it, slightly annoyed that I had been pulled into a matter at such a far remove from my job description, and yet eager to prove myself worthy.
The book seemed to be arranged, as she warned me, in an “old” section, crammed with names and numbers, many crossed out, and a newer one, starting over again at A, with room still to spare.
I was reminded of adjoining church graveyards.
“Luciano Cicciano. Here it is.”
“Now find for me the little green thing.”
“What is that?”
“It is a telephone you can walk with.”
“A cordless phone?”
“You can make it sing if you press a button on its base.”