The Incident at Montebello (12 page)

A door slammed and they all turned. Lelo stood on the threshold, his hat in hand. “What's going on here?” he demanded, his eyes shifting from the priest
,
to Isolina, and Amelia.

Isolina twitched with apprehension. What would she do if he didn't agree with the priest and let her marry Rodi? But before she could say anything, Amelia did a quick about-face and said, “Thank God you're home, Lelo. I prayed to Santa Maria and she told me to speak to the
padre
. He says it will be all right.”

Lelo turned to Isolina. “Leave us. We need to talk to Padre Colletti.”

“But papà,” Isolina said.

“Leave us,” he repeated.

In the hallway, she pressed her ear against the crack between the parlor doors, but she heard nothing. As the minutes passed, she tried to think, but she was at the mercy of her feelings, shifting from anger to fear and worry—all helter skelter inside her. Finally, the doors slid open and the priest said, “Better now than before it's too late.” He lifted his hand in benediction and walked out the door.

Lelo kissed her and Amelia enveloped her in an embrace. Lelo spoke first. “The
padre
's right. It's for the best. You'll be sixteen next month. Old enough to have a family of your own. And Rodi is another son to us.”

“The
padre
told us everything,” Amelia said. “We'll have the wedding right away.
Che bella
. What a bride you're going to be.”

Isolina rubbed her forehead. None of this made any sense—her parents' quick reversal most of all. While she puzzled it out, they were making plans.

“One night this week, we'll invite Rodi and his parents to come over after supper to finalize everything,” Lelo said.

“I'll bake a lemon
torta.
And I'll send the boys over to my mother. She'll want to help make the food for the wedding.”

“I'll speak to the butcher. Maybe we'll have a nice roast.”

“For all those people? How about veal? We can make some
scaloppini.
”

“True, true,” Lelo said.

Amelia told Isolina, “You can wear Nonna Angelina's gown just like I did. With a little tuck here and there, it will fit you perfectly. I was thin when I married your papà, you know.”

“I could lift her over my head,” Lelo said.

Isolina said nothing. Instead of happiness, she felt something quite different. Tears of anger and resentment welled up in her eyes at the thought of her mother's betrayal, Prefetto Balbi's treachery, and Rodi's entrapment. It was all too much. Most of all, she wanted everyone to leave her and Rodi alone so they could be happy.

Finally, Amelia stopped talking long enough to notice her tears. “What's the matter, dear? What's wrong?”

Isolina shrugged. “I don't know what to think.”

“What's there to think about? You made peace with God. You should be happy,” Amelia said.

“But I didn't expect to feel this way.”

“What way?” Lelo said, but Amelia just smiled and patted her cheek.

“You're growing up, dear,” she told Isolina. “Nothing is the way you imagined it to be.”

Sardolini propped a mirror against the windowsill and lathered his cheeks with soap. The pain in his ear had eased, but his head felt as fragile as a soap bubble. As he drew the razor down his cheek, Rodi Butasi knocked on his door, yellow envelopes in hand. Up close, his face was still puffy, bruised. As he handed Sardolini a telegram, he said, “For you,
signore
. It came today from America.”

Sardolini wiped the soap off his face and took the envelope. “America, eh?”

“Yes, from Boston.”

“Are there no secrets in this town?”

“Practically none. But you got lucky,
signore
. Prefetto Balbi didn't read it.”

“How's that?”

Rodi's voice dropped to a whisper. “It went into the delivery pile by mistake.” He winked. “I can do the same with your mail when my boss isn't looking.”

Sardolini twitched with apprehension as he studied the young man's brown eyes, transparent in their honesty, a dangerous characteristic for someone who wanted to break the law. “Why are you offering to do this? Surely, you know the risks involved.”

Rodi nodded. “I was hoping you could help me.”

“How?”

“My friend is in trouble.”

He gestured to the postman's black eye. “So are you by the looks of it.”

“It'll blow over,” Rodi said.

Sardolini had no patience for fools. “You can't be that naïve, can you?” He picked up his razor, but Rodi grabbed his sleeve.

“Please,
signore
. Tell me what you think.”

Sardolini frowned at the handsome young man. If someone didn't set him straight, he'd be dead before he was twenty. “Isn't it obvious?” he said at last. “If it's true your friend works with the anti-Fascists, that may be all they need to implicate you. For all I know, they might find a way to tie him to the accident. They're very concerned about it.”

“But Manfredo had nothing to do with it and neither did I.”

“He has a car, doesn't he? That might be all the
fascisti
need.”

Rodi's confidence ebbed and he asked, “What do you think I should do?”

“My advice is to stay out of it. And don't help me either. I don't want you arrested on my account.”

“But I have to help him.”

“Listen to me. Everyone in town knows you're friends, so they're going to assume you're guilty by association. Prefetto Balbi and his men are keeping a close watch on all of us. They might even know you're here talking to me.”

The boy looked so disheartened that Sardolini pulled a coin from his pocket, handed it to him, and patted him on the shoulder. “You can do one thing for me. Is there someone in town who can get me information about some friends jailed in Roma?”

“Sure,
signore
. That's easy. Talk to Faustino.”

Sardolini blinked. According to the priest, the humpbacked gravedigger kept to himself. “I thought Faustino didn't talk to anyone. That's what the priest told me.”

“He's wrong. He doesn't know everything.”

When the boy took off, he ripped open the envelope from his brother Sam. In his carefully worded message, Sam alluded to the news that another of Mussolini's would-be assassins was knifed to death by a crowd listening to Il Duce's Sunday speech. Mussolini also challenged the terms of the League of Nations by declaring that Italy was rearming in preparation for war. But Sam had heard nothing about the hit-and-run, which meant the news was being squelched even over there. This was odd, given the rumors that an American was the passenger.

Intrigued, he tugged on his lip.

Grabbing his rucksack, he packed a sketchbook, pen, and paper, along with some food and wine in a corked bottle. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he climbed the twisting streets, leading to a path that wound up the mountain. On the way, he knelt by a stream and drank. As he brought handfuls of water to his lips, he shut his eyes, seeing his dead friends Carlo and Nello Rosselli. With a sigh, he straightened and trudged uphill.

When he got to the top, he searched for Faustino among the tombstones, but had no luck. A short distance away, he found a spot in the sunshine, his back pressing against the stones of a crumbling Saracen fort. After sketching the blunt head of the volcano capped with plumes of steam menacing the surrounding hillsides, he had new sympathy for Moses at Mount Sinai facing God in pillars of fire and smoke.

When his stomach grumbled, he dug into his rucksack. Biting into the rustic
provolone
cheese and smoked sausage, he savored their pungent saltiness. The semolina bread, sprinkled with sesame seeds, was dense and satisfying. When he was finished, he nudged his hat over his eyes and stretched out on the grass. The sun and his full stomach lulled him to sleep, but moments later, he jerked awake to the sound of Lià's voice. “Justifiable losses?” she cried, her voice echoing in his head. Days before she died, they had fought. She tossed his words back at him as she brushed her hair with quick strokes, making it crackle and spark like electric wires. “Justifiable losses? Is that what you call it? I call it murder.”

“Sion and Chaim made a mistake,” he said, defending their friends who had planted a bomb in a high-ranking Fascist's car, which had detonated when the Fascist was driving his sons to school—killing both the official and the boys. “How can you win a war without bloodshed?”

“What would you say if it was your children?”

He hadn't backed down because he was sure Lià was wrong…up until the day she died.

He sat up. At the end of a row of tombstones, dirt sailed upward from a half-dug grave. When he peered into the hole, Faustino scowled at him in silence. “I heard you might be able to help me find some information,” Sardolini said.

Faustino shrugged. “I might. Come down here and let me get a good look at you.”

With a quick glance around him, Sardolini climbed down the ladder. Up close, the man was as grizzled and gnarled as a rough-hewn log. In a whisper, Sardolini asked, “How do I know if I can trust you?” In reply, the gravedigger whistled a tune, which shot through Sardolini like an electric jolt. “
Bella Ciao
” was the rallying cry of the anti-Fascists. He said to Faustino, “You like old folk songs, eh?”

“Of course. The new ones all sound like military marches to me.”

“Why not? We're a nation of soldiers.”

Faustino nodded. “Germany is following our lead.”

Puzzled, Sardolini eyed the gravedigger, the lump on his spine as round as a boule of
pane rustica
bread.

“Don't look so surprised,” Faustino said, straightening a little. “I'm not as stupid as I look. Before I was a gravedigger, I was a radio operator in the army.”

“You had me fooled.”

“It's a good act, eh? Well, you're right to be careful. One by one, our finest men are being arrested and killed.”

“Even the Rosselli brothers?”

“Yes.”

“Is it certain?”

“Yes.”

“In France?”

“Yes. The
fascisti
tracked them down.”

“When?”

“June.”

Sardolini couldn't speak.

“Friends of yours?”

He nodded.

“I'm sorry.”

“I need to get a message to some other friends jailed in Roma. Is it possible?”

“Anything's possible.”

Sardolini pulled out a pen and paper and wrote a few terse sentences to his comrades, who had worked in clandestine circles in Italy, Switzerland, and France before their arrest. He handed the note to the gravedigger, who slipped it into his pocket.

“There's something you can do for me,” Faustino told him. He gestured to Sardolini's sketchpad. “I see you like to draw. Are you any good at maps?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. We need some detailed sketches of the piazza and town hall.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

That was the way it worked: one hand washed the other. Sardolini wanted to know more, but he was not supposed to ask. He lifted his foot onto the ladder rung, but Faustino stopped him.

“Did you hear about the mayor?” Faustino drew his finger across his throat. “Kicked out. The higher ups in Napoli are sending one of their own to run the show. This fellow, this stuffed shirt bureaucrat, is going to shake things up, that's for certain. He's going to make sure we all keep quiet.”

“About what? The accident?”

“Of course.”

“Why are they so worried?”

“The driver is a big shot Fascist from Roma. One of our men is checking with a blacksmith from Torre del Greco who fixed a sports car with a dented front bumper covered in blood.”

Sardolini pinched his lip between his thumb and index finger. Despite his better judgment, his interest was piqued. He wondered again why the news wasn't spreading like wildfire among the anti-Fascists in Boston and Europe. “It has to be someone powerful,” he said. “Why else would they send in the OVRA unless they wanted to silence everyone?”

“Right,” Faustino said. “But they're forgetting something. Our band of resistance fighters is small but determined.”

“You shouldn't be telling me this.”

“Why not? I know you'll keep your ears open and your mouth shut.”

“Is that so?”

“A man like you? Of course you will. Fighting is in your blood.”

“Is that what you think, old man?”

Faustino laughed, showing off his yellow teeth.

He had just climbed out of the hole when he spotted Lucia Buonomano's spaniel running between the graves. She wasn't far behind, a bouquet of carnations trembling in her hands. He paused, his heart thumping as she stopped near the cliff face at the end of the cemetery, where niches had been chiseled into the rock wall and coffins slid into the openings four rows high, each marked with a capstone. She brushed her fingers across an unmarked stone. That gesture, so simple, so eloquent, lingered in his mind as she set the carnations into a tin vase mounted next to the capstone. Out of her pocket, she pulled a green sprig, which she forced into the earth near the grave. After she lit it, a powerful smell as strong as incense drifted over to him.

As she walked towards him, her dark skirt swirling around her calves, he said, “You're burning rosemary,
signora
?”

“It keeps the evil spirits away.”

“And the dog.” He gestured to the other side of the cemetery where her pet was sniffing a headstone and lifting its leg.

Lucia nodded, her eyes wet with tears. As he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her, his eyes lingered on her face. Her loveliness made his heart ache. She wiped her eyes and whistled for the dog, which raised its head and trotted towards her. After giving Sardolini's trousers a good sniff, it let him rub its ears.