The Blooms of Wisteria

by Rozanne Charbonneau

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Attilio stabs his knife into the metal container of jam, knocking congealed blackberries onto his pajamas. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

Silvana removes the offending fruit with a napkin. “You are fortunate to be alive. The doctor says that you might even be able to leave in two weeks.”

“Two weeks!” he says, jerking his body under the tray. “I am going home tomorrow!”

Silvana steadies the cup and pot. “Giuliana tells me that you played the mandolin at all the dances in the piazzetta of Dosso. I used to sing for the festivities in Le Ghiare.”

Attilio feels his eyes narrow. Without doubt, the two women were conspiring behind his back. Giuliana is shrewd. She has coached her friend to pretend that she follows the old ways.

“Is that so? Then why don’t you sing ‘Casounè’?”

“Right now?” she asks. “Here?” She glances at the man in the next bed.

Attilio calls over to him. Would he like to hear his friend sing? The man smiles. He assures Silvana that a song in this gloomy place would be most appreciated.

She takes her place in front of the two beds. Her cheeks flush, her lips part. Nothing. Finally, she begins to sing.

Attilio leans forward. Her voice is clear and strong. She hits all the notes, even the highest do re mis. Her dialect is impeccable, alive. A rod of light from the window beams onto her patent leather shoes. They glow, as if ready to carry her away. The pain in his leg disappears. This song must mean something to Silvana. While she sang these very words, did her late husband stand in the piazzetta and admire her as a young woman? At the end of the dance, did he walk her back to their house and make love to her on the kitchen table? Was she bold? Did she take hold of his sex?

* * *

His own wife slept with her back to him. After Davide was born, Bruna wore tight stockings to bed, up to her waist. Wool in the winter, cotton in the summer. The birth of their baby had ripped out her insides, but still. He took to visiting Saraghina, the whore who called out to him in the bombarded train tunnel along the beach. It was so easy to press her against the wall and pound away in the darkness. The two thousand lire were worth it. He never touched another woman in the village. He respected the old ways. Maybe he should have fought for Bruna, but how? His body seemed to disgust her.

* * *

The final lyrics lilt out of Silvana’s throat. A pregnant silence follows. Attilio and his neighbor begin to clap. Two nurses in the doorway join them in their admiration. No woman in Dosso has ever taken such command of “Casounè.”

Silvana adjusts the pillow behind his head at midday. Her fingers stay clear of his skin.

She is careful, a huntress tracking her prey. He watches her leave the room. Did I want her touch?

There is nothing to do but wait for Giuliana. A warm trickle of liquid fills his underwear with no warning. He stares at his old friend on the cross. He is naked except for a swaddling cloth around his groin. Oh man of sorrows. Is this what awaits me?

* * *

After dinner, the evening drags on. His neighbor is sleeping. He turns on the television hanging like a bat from the ceiling and mutes the sound. Rai Uno is broadcasting the national news. Rome. The state guards are standing at attention behind the President of the Republic. They could be statues outside the Palazzo Chigi. Only the ostrich feathers on top of their helmets shiver in the wind.

After the news, the show Scopri il tuo Destino fills the screen. Beauties from all over Italy strut onto the stage and shake their behinds. These amazons tower over the male hosts. The men crane their necks to flirt in their faces. But the girls make love only to the camera. Their lips are swollen-red vulvas after sex. Attilio lets the confederacy of idiots and whores wash over him. At ten o’clock, he jabs his thumb into the remote.

* * *

Attilio awakes in the morning light. He turns his head to the side. The bed of his neighbor is stripped bare. Deceased? The man looked fine yesterday.

Attilio calls the male nurse to help him use the toilet. He wants to be clean and washed before any female descends upon him.

“Yes, Signor Merani died around three this morning,” the nurse replies to Attilio’s concerns. “He did not suffer.”

Attilio holds onto the nurse’s arms to stand up. “At least that. He seemed like a good fellow.” He hobbles on his crutches into the bathroom, his helper close beside him.

“It was nice of your wife to sing for the two of you. It so brightened his final day.”

“She is not my wife.”

The nurse winks. “Then your fiancée...”

Attilio loosens the string to his pajama pants. “She is not my fiancée.”

The nurse shakes his head and helps Attilio lower his hips onto the toilet seat. “If you tell me she is your sister, I won’t bring you any breakfast.”

* * *

To his surprise, Silvana enters the room at eleven with his mandolin case. Without asking, she opens it and places the instrument on his chest.

Attilio’s fingers begin to tremble.

“What is the matter?” she asks, handing him the pick. “Surely you remember the notes to ‘Casounè.’”

He wishes he could hide underneath the bed. His labored picking will pale in comparison to her voice. “I haven’t played in a while...”

“Don’t worry. The music never leaves you.”

Attilio wraps his left hand around the neck. The wood smells of the mothballs at the back of his closet. He’d stuffed the case there before Davide’s wake. Without Davide, he’d never make music again. He runs the pick over the strings. They whine like a wet cat. He slowly twists the pegs and brings them back in tune. He hesitates, then plays the first few bars. The calluses on the fingertips of his left hand have disappeared. He ignores the pain — it is there so briefly — and bears down on the strings.

* * *

His father put the mandolin into his hands when he was twelve. He practiced every day in his room to please him. When he turned sixteen, the old man insisted he join him in the village band.

“You will command more respect than the young men begging the women for a dance. The ballo liscio is just a ruse to grope their waists.”

Attilio took his seat with the other musicians on the steps to the chapel. His father, holding an accordion on his lap like a child, smiled. His uncle waved the bow to his violin. It was Attilio’s honor to open the summer dance with a waltz. As the notes of his mandolin filled the air, the people cheered and began to dance.

But Luisa, the girl he truly desired, was twirled around the piazzetta by every young man in the village, so fast that her curls lifted like a sail in the wind. On the Feast of San Giovanni, she danced only with Lorenzo. Picking away for these turtle doves was more than he could bear. They still lived in the house closest to the well in the hill. When the bombs dropped years ago, the villagers gathered under its arch for protection. He often wondered what would have happened if he had refused to learn the mandolin. He might have had the chance to court Luisa before being sent to war. His life might have been different.

He fought against the Allies in the south for a year. Upon his return to Levanto, he looked up at the pink and yellow houses pressed into the hill like a mosaic. At that time there was no road to the village. He began the steep climb of the mulattiere, the path for mules carrying peasants’ loads back and forth to town. He whistled a tune as he thrashed a stick through the brush. Vipers and adders were the only enemies left.

He found his father in the cantina. The man smiled and wrapped his arms around him. “I prayed to Karl Marx to keep you safe.” Both men laughed at the joke.

The wine bottles on the shelves were empty. One cask of olive oil, a quarter full, stood next to the marble sink. His father handed him a Lucky Strike from the Americans.

“The family of Bruna Taddei, from the village Lavaggiorosso, have lost both sons in battle. She will inherit the strips of land close to our own.”

Attilio let the cigarette dangle from his lips. He knew where this conversation was heading. He could not even remember her face at the dances. “But I don’t know her.”

“Both Germans and partisans raided our larders and gardens. For the past year we’ve eaten nothing but chestnuts and figs.”

His father lit a match close to his face. Like the ever-dutiful son, he leaned forward and surrendered his cigarette to the flame.

“Your mother is suffering from malnourishment. I am sure you will do right by her.”

The smoke hit the back of his throat. First the trenches. Then a marriage of convenience...

* * *

His fingers fly over the frets. So many regrets. In those times, your father was the law. “Padre Padrone” he used to mutter under his breath.

Silvana begins to sing along. Today she almost whispers.

He finishes the last bars. “Why so soft? Yesterday you projected all the way down the hall.”

“You were in your youth. I wanted to honor your past.”

He smiles and lets his hand rest on top of the instrument. At home he will varnish the wood, maybe change the strings.

* * *

After dinner, he takes the mandolin out of its case. Tonight, he will skip the television. He is bored with the guards of the Republic. What sacrifices did they make to wear those ridiculous feathered helmets? And like sirens, the starlets with their vacant eyes will only lure him onto the rocks of despair.

He plucks the strings, remembering a lullaby he used to play for his infant son. He knew this child enjoyed their time together; two things especially: fishing, watching films.

* * *

It was early summer, anchovy season. Davide must have been eight years old. They waded into the sea with their nets. The fish swam near their legs, shiny as knives in the sun. A bold one kissed the boy’s ankle. He kept his foot still in the sand. They laughed about it all afternoon.

On Saturday evenings, they’d sit in the red velvet seats of the Corso Cinema in Levanto.

The Kid by Charlie Chaplin once flickered on the screen. The story was told in black, white and silence, like a dream he couldn’t forget. The Tramp, a man with a funny walk and moustache, finds a baby boy — the Kid — in a garbage can. He raises him as his own on the perilous streets. One day, the Kid is stolen from him. The Tramp searches high and low. At the end of the film, they are reunited on the doorstep of his mother’s villa. She invites the Tramp in, “to stay a while.”

When the lights came on, Attilio’s face was wet. Davide gave him his handkerchief. “Don’t cry, Papà. No one will take me away.” They hurried to the gelateria. Chocolate ice cream always sold out fast.

* * *

After two weeks, Attilio can hobble on crutches down the hall and into the garden. The doctors are thrilled with his stamina and drive. Giuliana arrives with flowers for the nurses.

She begins to pack his worn pajamas into the suitcase. “Once I wash these and hang them to dry in the fresh air, they will be as good as new.”

Attilio notices her glance at the mandolin case, notices her little smile. She chatters on about the apple cake she’s made for him this morning, how fresh eggs make all the difference, how cinnamon is a cardinal sin except in winter...

He must cut this nonsense short. “I want to thank you for your help. I couldn’t have recovered without you.”

Touched, Giuliana straightens the collar of his shirt. “Nonsense, Papà. You’re as tough as old boots.”

* * *

Attilio sits in the passenger’s seat of Giuliana’s maroon Fiat 500. Thank heavens she honks before each hairpin curve. He keeps his eyes on the road ahead. One false move to the right and the car will hurtle hundreds of meters into the brush.

Luciano waves to them from the parking lot at the top of the village. Attilio opens the car door and hoists himself up with his crutches. He tries to reach for his suitcase in the trunk, but Luciano seizes it and places it in the back of his own Ape. His three-wheeler is narrow enough to take his friend down to the house.

How many weeks before I can climb this hill by myself? Three? Four?

A bed now stands in the middle of his dining room so that he can sleep on the ground floor.

“This is an abomination,” he protests.

“Your cast will come off in a few weeks, Papà. I won’t sleep if you try to navigate the stairs alone.”

“But I can manage with the railing and one crutch.”

She kisses his cheek goodbye. “Right. Next you will want to join the circus.”

From the window, the two men watch her barrel up the hill.

Luciano turns to Attilio. “No one would speak to me in Le Ghiare,” he whispers. “In fact, the older men were quite hostile. It is as if they wanted to protect their Silvana.”

Attilio puts his hand on his forehead. He has long forgotten his Machiavellian request. “You were right. No good would come of it. I’m sorry.”

Luciano shuffles out the door toward his house. Attilio sits down at the table with his crossword booklet. The lines of empty boxes merging into one another, seem to mock him. The clock on the wall ticks away the minutes. After weeks of excitement, it is strange to be alone. His right wrist aches from picking the strings of his mandolin, but no matter. Tonight, he will play “Casounè.” Silvana will dance toward him in the piazzetta, her eyes gray as the bay in the rain.

* * *

The following morning, Attilio sits on his terrace underneath the wisteria. A cool wind blows through the olive trees. The leaves sway and reveal their sides of silver. The bus from Levanto honks around each hairpin curve toward his village. Hunting dogs in the cage on the neighboring hill begin to bark. He leans forward, trying to spot the passengers. Perhaps Silvana is coming to visit me?

If only he could meet her at the top of the village like a gentleman. He would hand her a bouquet of yellow mimosa the moment she stepped off the bus. Silvana would walk behind him down the cobblestone road, her lovely hands on his shoulders to lessen the strain on her knees.

Sure enough, as if the gods had read his mind, Silvana saunters onto his terrace. “How dare you?”

His heart sinks.

“My dear late husband did not want me to shut out the world after his death. He wanted me to live, to find someone else.”

“I made a mistake,” he says, struggling to his feet with his crutch.

She shakes her fist in the air. “I thought we had things in common, but we are two stars on opposite ends of the sky.”

Attilio hobbles toward her. “Both you and Giuliana were scheming, trying to hunt me down. I had the right to protect myself.”

Silvana bites her lip. She turns her head away from him and looks out at the sea. “Your daughter-in-law told me that you are a good man, but difficult to get to know.”

Two petals fall from above onto her hair. He can see the girl she used to be.

“Let us go to the Tumelin,” he says, taking a few steps closer. “We will eat the finest fish on the coast.”

He stumbles, sending his crutch to the ground.

Slivana’s eyes widen in alarm. “Oh, signor!” She reaches for his shoulders and eases him into his seat.

Her breasts loom over him. His last illusions of control disappear.

“I say we call a truce,” he says, touching the new calluses on his fingers.

She strolls up and down the terrace, observing the moss in the cracks. After a few minutes, she sits next to him and smooths her skirt over her knees. “Perhaps I should make coffee. Would you like that?”

A breeze crosses over the valley. The olive trees shimmer and sigh. Attilio grabs her hand. They remain still underneath the blooms of wisteria. The two of them look like a couple long married, content in the habit of love.