Somewhere in the Stars Page 13

  “Nah, I’ll stick around here and write some letters.”

  “Why don’t you sketch the Campidoglio from the window?”

  “Sure, Nick.”

  Nathan was humoring him but Nick worried that the head injury was affecting his buddy’s moods as well. “Ci vediamo, Nate.”

  Nick and Nathan had purchased motor scooters, nicknamed the Paperino, after their first month at the CIC. Though Nick still walked with a wooden cane, he managed to operate his light green scooter. He placed his right leg around the seat putting his weight on the cane from the left side, and then thumped himself on the black leather seat. He jabbed his cane in an improvised holder on the side fender, started the engine and, in a short while, crossed the Palatino Bridge over the Tiber River.

  Nick searched for a buona trattoria in Trastevere and circled around until he found one that looked promising. The trattoria was cramped with long wooden tables lined up indoors and a few tables outside on a crooked sidewalk. Nick pulled up and worked his way through the crowded place. He sat next to an extended family munching on varied antipasti.

  “Caminiere, prego. Vorrei una pasta amatriciana.”

  “Da bere?”

  “Vino rosso. Un mezzo litro. E dell’ acqua minerale con gassata.”

  The waiter jotted the order down, never making eye contact during the transaction. It took more time than usual and Nick felt self-conscious sitting alone in the trattoria, so he pulled out a copy of Vittorini’s novel, Conversazione in Sicilia. He read a few sentences but the noise distracted him and his hunger for food brought on other desires. He knew a buono bordello where he could go. A young woman with long, golden brown hair approached him in a poised manner and stood by the empty chair opposite him. She motioned to it and he said: “Prego, signorina. È libero.” The woman sat down but did not speak to him. She ordered a fritatta ai funghi and a glass of vino bianco. Nick pretended to be absorbed in his book but caught glimpses of her when she looked sideways at some of the commotion taking place. She was a bella donna all right but her eyes were icy. The waiter placed the pasta in front of Nick who put the book down on the table. He ate fast but tried not to eat like a porcu, as his mother used to scold him for at the kitchen table.

  “Un caffè, per favore,” Nick called out to the waiter flying by. The young woman observed him briefly and then forked her frittata in a nonchalant way. She slipped her high heels off without bending over. Nick was glad he ordered the coffee. She moved her hair back with a delicate, right hand and he noticed an anxious look on her face, not out of fear for him but something else that he couldn’t discern. It was as if there were some mystery behind those green eyes but she managed to smile at him when she caught him staring at her. Her teeth were small but pearl white and symmetric.

  The espresso came sooner than he wanted, so Nick sipped from the cup, while the young woman had eaten half her frittata. She placed her right foot in his crotch and then took it away. There was nothing left in the cup but Nick still held it in midair, grateful he hadn’t dropped it.

  “You must be far from home,” the young woman said.

  “Allora, lei parla l’inglese.”

  “Yes, I studied it for many years.” She was unnerving him, as she finished the glass of wine. “You are American, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “You notice lots of things.”

  “Even if your face might throw me off, I knew you had to be an American?”

  “Come?”

  “No Italian would be reading a book while sitting alone in a restaurant.”

  “I don’t understand. Non capisco!”

  “An Italian would never be self-conscious while eating his favorite food, whether alone or with friends.”

  “I love the food but never thought of it that way.”

  “Did you know Vittorini was arrested by the fasciste for that book you’re reading?”

  “Non lo so.”

  “I can hear a slight, Sicilian accent when you speak Italian.” Nick shrugged. “Allora, sua famiglia è Siciliana!”

  “Brava, you are a detective.” The young woman smiled. “La commissaria, have you also deduced I need more than food?”

  “A man does not live by bread alone. Nor does a woman.”

  “You don’t strike me as the religious type.”

  “Neither do you.” She glanced at the group next to her and noticed that some of them were eyeing her. Her cool demeanor changed to an edgy one. “We can’t talk here with all these nosey people. We Romans love to gossip, you know.”

  “Sure, let’s get out of here. This joint is stifling anyway.”

  She left the trattoria first and he held back awhile so it would not appear she had picked him up. Some of the customers cackled as she passed the cramped tables. A rotund postman sitting by the door, who had been watching them the whole time, called out puttana as she closed the door behind her. Laughter circulated within the place, while the young woman waited for Nick to catch up. He tied up his cane and got on the Paperino in his usual manner. She bunched up her skirt and sat behind him, placing her hands around his hips. He glanced to his side to ensure her legs were in safely and gave her first-class gams the once-over.

  He revved the engine and shouted: “Don’t pay any attention to those cretini!”

  “They are invisible to me,” she responded.

  “Where to?”

  “I’ll guide you along the way.”

  Having crossed the Tevere, Nick became disoriented after a few blocks. Every turn took them in another unfamiliar direction. Her path avoided all of the usual bordellos near the Stazione Termini where the women with heavy makeup lured the wandering, drunken soldiers with their bulging cleavage, slit up skirts and molded round asses. While bouncing around on a confusing drive, which he suspected might have been intentional on her part, she pointed to an apartment building in an alley. She instructed Nick to shut the engine off as they turned in and they glided into the dark, stopping at a ten-foot wooden door. She hopped off, took out a large key, unlocked the door halfway and turned to him.

  “Vieni qui!”

  “Okay, whatever you say.”

  Nick grabbed his cane and edged off the motor scooter, not wanting to stumble, and followed at a quicker pace so as not to appear disabled, while she held the door for him. He wondered if he were walking into a dream or nightmare. She intrigued and frightened him at the same time, and this was the first time he had been sober with a Roman woman.

  He was surprised to see her room had no fanciful sexual images on the wall. It was clean and exhibited style, not garish at all, just well-thought out for someone who didn’t have a lot of liras. She poured some Strega into brandy glasses.

  “Here, drink this. You look nervous.” Nick downed his glass and she drank half of hers. “First time!” She laughed.

  “Very funny. I can show you a few things.”

  “You already have.” She pointed to his groin. “Lie down and relax.”

  Nick jumped on the tarnished brass bed while the young woman turned away and undressed in a deliberate way. Yet she didn’t look like a woman of the night. She wasn’t tarted up at all and let him initiate their contact as they lay together. He kissed her affectionately on the cheek, something he had not done before with a puttana from the street. He exhibited better control over his sexual appetite, spending some time stroking her firm breasts. She didn’t stare at the ceiling and seemed to be enjoying her time with him, not faking an orgasm for effect. When they were satisfied, he was surprised that she sprang up from the bed and put all her clothes back on. He thought that he must have mistaken her tender touches, her brilliant eyes, making up things in his head, something that Nathan had admonished him for.

  “Leave the soldi in the envelope on the night table.” She walked over to the window and looked out towards the façade of a church, its bells clanging an erratic tone.

  As he dressed, he reconstructed every moment from the serendipitous to the lascivious, from the te
nder to the enigmatic, but all Nick could say when fully clothed was: “How much?”

  “As much as you can afford. Prego, don’t forget to walk your scooter to the main street.”

  Her voice was sexy and intelligent at the same time. Nick raised his eyebrows. “Bene.” It would make his getaway more difficult but he wasn’t going to whine about it.

  The next morning Nathan and Nick ate breakfast in the interim mess hall below their room. Some partigiani from Firenze came into the room, escorted by a lieutenant from their unit. The group passed their table and sat down to eat. The lieutenant returned to their table and said to Nick: “Captain Smith needs your assistance. These Italian freedom fighters have some very important information we need. They don’t speak a word of English.”

  “I’ll take care of it, lieutenant.”

  The officer left and Nathan leaned closer to Nick. “See what you can find out about my Jewish paesani, will you?”

  “I’m not supposed to repeat anything. You know, the eyes and ears of the enemy.”

  “I don’t give a damn about Uncle Sam’s slogans. Just do it.”

  “All right, relax, will ya. I’m just kidding,” Nick said, realizing that this issue ate at his friend’s guts.

  “Grazie. By the way, how did it go last night, buddy? Bet you found some cute puttana!”

  “Vafonculo, Nathan!”

  “Hey, can’t you take a little ribbing? So what happened last night?”

  “Niente. Forget about it.”

  “I think we’re getting on each other’s nerves.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  That afternoon, the partigiani sat around a conference table with Nick and several officers, including the lieutenant from the morning. After an hour of questioning, the officers left. Nick ordered some cornetti al mandorla and espresso from the café across the street, brought in by a boy who carried the porcelain cups on a silver-plated tray. The men appreciated his gesture. He waited until they were finished eating and then inquired about the Italian Jews. They related that, once the Italians surrendered and sided with the Americans, the German SS and Gestapo made no exceptions for ebrei italiani, not even the bambini. If caught, all would be deported and sent to their deaths in concentration camps. He could see that the Italians were disgusted with the Nazis’ treatment of their countrymen.

  That evening in their room, Nick recounted what he had heard from the partigiani, knowing that this would sicken his friend. Afterwards Nathan sat at a beat up desk they had picked up in the street, scribbling designs on typing paper. Nick tried to divert his friend’s attention, reminiscing about Roman women and food.

  “That’s real swell. You and me riding around in a jazzy Paperino while my cousins get deported to an inferno.”

  “Stop beating yourself up. We’re going to win this thing. Are you coming out with me, or not?”

  “I’ll be no fun. Maybe another time, Nick.”

  “You can’t stay cooped up in this room.”

  “I think I had another seizure before, damn it.”

  “Did you see the Doc?”

  “I woke up on the floor.”

  “You should at least let him know.”

  “Leave me alone. You’re not my mother. Anyway, I need to write a letter to my father.”

  When Nick closed the door, Nathan massaged his head, a habit that Nick had noticed developing whenever he wrote a letter or tried to sketch something.

  Nathan wrote:

  Dear Father,

  I hope that Mother, Deb and you are well and that no one is worrying too much about me. As you know, I sometimes have to interrogate German prisoners of war. In the past I’ve tried not to mention the war, as I don’t want to frighten anyone. But I must tell you that a few days ago I questioned an SS officer. It was very disturbing, as this arrogant Nazi had no remorse. His face revealed a loss of affect when I questioned him about the massacre of 335 partigiani in the Ardeatine Caves just outside Rome or the deportation of Roman Jews to Auschwitz. In a moment of anger, I could have taken out my .45 pistol and blown his head off if they left me alone with him, but you would have thought less of me for not seeking justice but revenge. And yet I also felt sorrow as I questioned a regular, Germany infantryman. He seemed in a daze and scared for his life, though we clearly had no intention of taking it. I gave him a cigarette and when he relaxed, he didn’t have much to offer of strategic value, but kept on fretting about his wife and children in Germany. And to think that one man, Hitler, could have started this massive fire all over Europe and Northern Africa, convincing this conscripted, German soldier that he was just fighting to protect his beloved fatherland. Sitting across this brokendown man, I wished that I could be home, but who knows how long this war will go on. Are things still the same at …

  Love, Nathan

  Nick zoomed down the streets of Rome with no particular place to go. He couldn’t eat after talking to Nathan. He pulled his motor scooter over to a wall that follows the Tevere meandering through the city. He could see the Bridge of Angels in the distance, and instead of delighting him, it saddened him. The world needed an army of angels to stop all this madness, but that was just fantasy thinking. Things would continue to get worse before they got better. He thought about the angels in a pamphlet from his religious instruction class in grammar school.

  Nick tapped his forehead and recalled the nameless, young woman from the previous night, her shining hair sloping down her back before she put her clothes on. He had paid her plenty of dough but never said a kind word to her. She was just a hooker and what did one night with her mean? Suppose the condom was defective, this woman could have given him gonorrhea or even worse, syphilis. She could send him down the road to blindness.

  He mounted his bike in the usual way and drove around for kicks before the first rays of dawn, just like he used to do with Nathan when they first were reassigned. After a short while he got tired of aimless riding. He now had a mystery to solve, a nameless woman and an unknown address. But Nick had no clue to where she lived except for one—that beautiful, diminutive church in the alley. The only trouble was that he didn’t know the damn name of the chiesa in a city that had nine hundred of them.

  X

  Nick finished reading Zia Concetta’s letter from over 6000 miles away. He could tell that cugina Maria was her ghostwriter. His aunt recounted how Ziu Francesco had placed the Gold Star in the front window in honor of their slain son, Paolo Burgio. She asked for any mementoes of Paul’s that he might have, anything to attach a story to, keeping her son’s memory alive for family and friends. As for Nick, he could hardly relate to the world of North Beach that had become so remote now. He was concerned that if he stayed put in Rome long enough, he would lose all connection to a place he once called home. His eyes floated over her neighborhood gossip until he ended with an image of Papà and his boat. The Navy had returned his father’s purse seiner so banged up, it was unseaworthy, leaving Gaetano so distraught, Mamma could not console him. Nick’s parents had never mentioned this incident in any of their letters. Zia Concetta implored her nephew not to let on in his correspondence to them.

  Nick placed the letter next to the cigar box on his night table and opened the lid. He put his chin under his clasped hands and reimagined Ziu Francesco’s dining room—a wall of family photos hanging near an oblong table, shots of alfresco birthdays and holy days that evoked feasts of the past, and now the most prominent in a gauzzabuglio of moments, Paul dressed in uniform, the last trace of his persona, memory fading with the days, months and years. The war had brought on a new circle of hell for anyone who loved his cuginu.

  Nick riffled through the contents of the box and found a few of Paul’s letters at the bottom that his cuginu had shared with him. He grabbed a large envelope and wrote down their address. He took off Paul’s gold cross, kissed it and draped it around his cousin’s letters, sealed the contents and later mailed it to North Beach, San Francisco from the Vatican Post Office on Piazza San Pietro, Rome
. He would have liked to shrink himself to fit inside the envelope and go home too. Nick laughed to himself that he hadn’t lost the ability to fantasize yet, the one thing he had going for him against the reality of what was going on here, not some newsreel viewed in the safety of a movie house back home. He would never forget the image of Paul being sent off in that wooden box bound for a burial ground on Italian soil, his cuginu no longer be able to sing with him: “This land is your land, this land is my land from California to the New York Island.” Nick thought about this spinning planet in its solar system, the constellations of stars and Dante’s three spiritual cantiche. Where are you now Paul, in this mishmash?

  It took Nick a week of drives from the train station before he spied the small church near his mystery woman’s apartment early one evening after many wrong turns and dead ends on his motor scooter. It was the Santa Maria dei Monti, the eponymous name for the neighborhood that was one of the twelve original rioni of Rome. He waited outside the alley and planned to intercept her as she headed to the door. It wasn’t long before Nick saw her approaching arm in arm with an older Italian gentleman. He hid behind a garbage dumpster before they turned into the alley and was surprised by the anger this scene caused him.

  The next day, right after his duties at the CIC were completed, Nick made it back to the front door of her building. A woman in her late twenties wearing black let him in when she saw his uniform. Without a word she raised her arm in the direction of the apartment upstairs. He knocked on her door, then tried the lock. Niente. Nick sat on the floor and leaned against the wall, its paint chipped and flaking, figuring he would scare aware any stranger coming up the stairs. He would later find out that Caterina, for that was her name, never left the apartment key with anyone. Said it was a good business practice. She carried on how customers did not like to be discovered in the primal scene by a potential blackmailer. Caterina had learned how to earn money other ways, implying it wasn’t based on her night time activities. Nick concluded she wanted to maintain some privacy in her life. She was available during these terrible times and he needed her to escape for a while. He popped up when he heard her coming up the grungy, marble stairs.