The Caviar Lady Read online

  Michele Marziani

  THE CAVIAR LADY

  a novel

  The Caviar Lady

  Michele Marziani

  ISBN 9788893372329

  La signora del caviale © 2017 Antonio Tombolini Editore

  Via Villa Costantina, 61,

  60025 Loreto Ancona

  Italy

  Translated from Italian by Anna Carruthers © 2017 Antonio Tombolini Editore

  Editing by Radici Translation and Wordcraft Ltd - Canada

  email: [email protected]

  www.antoniotombolini.com

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  Cover design by Marta D’Asaro

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination.

  ISBN: 9788893372329

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  Table of Contents

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  XXXVII

  XXXVIII

  XXXIX

  XL

  XLI

  XLII

  XLIII

  XLIV

  XLV

  EPILOGUE

  In memory of

  Domenico Tommaso Marziani,

  my grandfather, station master

  I

  “A whopper! A whopper!” The cries go up and all of a sudden there are children streaming excitedly along the main embankment. I jump on my bike and pedal along to catch up with them.

  “Who caught it? Whose is it?” I question them urgently.

  “The Turk, it’s the Turk’s,” they shoot back, hardly pausing for breath. Amelia who grows hay for rabbits shouts over: “What are you lot doing going to the Turk’s house? You know he’s got no family.”

  “He’s got his niece now,” the children reply breathlessly, and when they run you can almost hear their labored breathing interspersed with the sound of their clogs: “A whopper! A whopper!”

  The blur of criss-crossing legs flashing along the embankment soon attracts the attention of other children weeding the vegetable patches by their homes or mending the nets, who rush to join us. Their muscles are not tired and they race to overtake the others, because only the first to deliver the news gets the reward, the coin. The others can expect a piece of bread if they’re lucky. But not from the Turk, now Bechi lives there. Now that’s the house we all like best: because apart from the coin there are barley sugar sweets for everyone. Sweets you suck slowly, carefully, praying they’ll last forever. Mario and the other children say there’s never been anything like it among the fishing families. But the Turk comes from the East, they always say, respectfully. He’s not really like us.

  And it’s long-legs Mario who puts on a sprint finish and gets to the Turk’s house first, pulling up short at the last minute and almost falling over his feet, stirring up a cloud of dust with his clogs. He’s beating on the door with his fists when the others rush up yelling. Bechi opens, smiling. Mario looks at her but has no breath, or strength, left to speak.

  “A whopper! A whopper!” shout the others, piling in behind him, pushing and jostling to get to the front, to be in his place, mouths open showing teeth, pulling at each other's sweaters and jackets. Mario catches his breath, swallows and blurts out:

  “We don’t know if it’s a female, but it’s big, really big. The others had to help him get it in the boat. Nicola almost fell in the river, the Turk was all red and swearing every time he pulled up the net...”

  Bechi smiles. I peek at her and I think she looks like a fairy queen: what does she care about how they caught the sturgeon? No one even knows where she’s from, I remind myself. All that counts is the money: one fish, if it’s really that big, will see you through the season. Bechi sees me and gives me a little wave:

  “Hi Nellino!”

  “Hi Bechi!”

  She tells the children to wait, then goes back into the house. She returns with the coin and barley sugar sweets for everyone. There’s never been anything like this here before, down on the riverside among the fishing families. I set off again and pedal furiously along the embankment: I have to see the look on Nicola’s face. I cross paths with the boat on its way back to the riverside. Oh my goodness it really is big: I can see it from here on the bank. It’s lying in the middle of the boat with its tail sticking up out of the net they’ve put over it to keep it still. The Turk puts a piece of wet sack cloth over its head so it can’t see, to stop it from thrashing out with its tail. Then just to make sure, he leans over it with his body, to stop it jumping out of the boat. He looks like a mother protecting her child, that’s the image that springs to my mind. But really it’s just a fish, a sturgeon. The god of fish, that’s what the Turk calls them, but everyone knows he’s not exactly a good Catholic.

  Nicola rows to the shore and shouts over to me:

  “Hey Mr. Perfect! If you don’t mind getting those white hands of yours dirty, run to my house and get two ropes so we can tie it to the pole, then go and tell your uncle.”

  “So, it’s a female?”

  “Oh yes Adam, there aren’t any males as big as this in the Po River...”

  It took me a while to figure out why the Turk calls me Adam. It means "man" in the language of the Turks. He told me the night I plucked up the courage to ask. He calls me a man, but always with that half smile so it’s like he really means mummy’s boy. But he calls me Adam all the same, at least when I have to learn something. Otherwise it’s Nello. Nellino is what everyone else calls me, but the Turk hardly ever does.

  I like it when he calls me Adam, but there’s not much that’s manly about me: I’m nearly twelve, in short trousers and my Fascist Youth uniform with the black shirt. It’s Saturday, the Fascist Saturday dedicated to the character-building activities of the youth movement. If I really was a man and not a boy I would be in the Militia Corps, even if my Uncle wouldn’t like it. And the Turk probably doesn’t either. Maybe it’s not really my kind of thing anyway, seeing that instead of going to the rally in the village I’m here tying up the fish in the stretch of river in front of the Turk’s house.

  “This’ll take us right through to the autumn if the river doesn’t carry it off,” decrees the Turk, spitting on the ground. “No doubt it would have been easier if we’d caught it on a Monday. Now we need to keep watch and make sure it stays alive till the errand boy gets here...”

  “Doesn’t the caviar Lady come herself anymore?” I ask.

  “No, not at the moment, I mean, I don’t think she’ll be coming for a while...” stutters the Turk, momentarily losing the quiet self-containment that lends him dignity even when he has sweat running down his forehead and his hands are all cut from the sturgeon’s scutes, his hair is damp with water from the Po and all sticking up, and his clothes are so threadbare and filthy he looks like a beggar. But there’s something noble in his bearing, in his wh
ole approach to fishing. He’s different from everyone else down here on the riverside, it’s probably something to do with his name, the Turk. I’m probably too young to put my finger on it exactly. I’m not really Adam, I’m just little Nellino.

  “If you want I’ll come and help guard the sturgeon,” I say, to make myself useful.

  “Yes, and in that get-up you’ll soon have it standing to attention,” the Turk laughs, and I feel awkward in my uniform even though I really like it.

  I wear it for my country, for the heirs of Rome. We are all Italian and we are all Fascists. Well, almost all of us are. Mother definitely isn’t, because of my father who went off and got himself killed in Spain. Uncle I’m not sure, because when the Federal Secretary comes to the station, or the squads pass by on their way to a parade, he puts on his black shirt to blow the whistle and hold up the signaling disk, but when we’re supposed to gather in the square to listen to the radio through the big speakers to hear the Duce’s speeches, he always has something else to do. And when he speaks to the Turk he uses the old “lei” form of address, not “voi” like Mussolini wants us to.

  But I’m just a boy, and like he says, children shouldn’t go poking their noses into certain things. I don’t think the Turk is a good patriot either, a good Fascist, he’s from too far away. He only deals with sturgeons anyway. But me and his son Nicola are friends, we went to school together. He had to leave at the end of primary school: the Turk needed a hand in the boat and Nicola’s mother died giving birth to him. When Nicola was little the Turk managed by paying a deckhand, but after elementary school it was time for Nicola to start pulling his weight.

  I tell Nicola about what we’re doing in history and geography when we’re out hunting for duck eggs or fishing for frogs. And now of course there’s his cousin Bechi, who came to live here a few months ago. Her parents died and she almost ended up with the nuns. That would have been a shame because she’s really pretty. I know, I’m still young to be saying this, but when I watch her doing the housework I sometimes feel my pecker stirring in my pants. It’s nothing to be ashamed of: a good Fascist is supposed to be virile. That’s what Orlando always says and his dad’s in the Militia Corps so he knows about these things. Bechi, as well as being pretty, arriv ed with a whole trunk full of books that she keeps in the tool shed, behind the nets. Nicola showed me: at least he’ll have the chance to read and, as Uncle says, further his education.

  II

  In the village everyone respects the Turk, but down on the riverside, by the bridge, among the fisherman, he’s a genuine institution. Uncle says that on the Po the Turk has more clout than the priest in church. Not only because he can read and write and comes from far away, but because he knows about all the different kinds of sturgeon and can tell which ones to sell to make money on and which ones are not worth much. If the Turk takes a sturgeon to the broker or auctioneer he comes back with good money and keeps nothing back for himself. He knows if it’s the size of fish that city folk like to eat, and takes it to the restaurant.

  Mr. Otello, the owner of the restaurant, who never mixes with the people from the riverside, willingly comes down from upstairs to do business with the Turk. Mr. Otello only buys sturgeon from the Turk, and sends the other fishermen packing - he says they’re time-wasters who can’t tell a tiddler from a sturgeon. That’s what people say about the Turk, though others remember that when he arrived people gave him a wide berth. There were already thirty sturgeon boats belonging to the fishermen who lived on the riverside and when the Turk turned up he didn’t look like he was used to hard work, with that blonde wife of his, who Mario’s father says couldn’t even speak Italian. They came here and bought a house, just like that. It was easy to buy a house in 1917, all the men were away fighting in the war and the houses on the riverside were empty, so it was no problem if you had the money. The Turk made a song and dance about it but I reckon that he did have money. When Mario’s dad tells the story he lights a cigarette, a cigarette that stinks, it’s not even tobacco. Then he puffs out the smoke, coughing. He likes it when I ask about the Turk, because like everyone else round here he respects him, but I think he’s a bit envious of him too, so he likes talking about him, especially if he has a bottle of wine in front of him.

  “You’re young,” he says, “but in those days everyone was away fighting in the war, and there was so much poverty here you could cut it with a knife and serve it up for dinner. I only stayed behind because of my leg.” He looks down at his twisted foot, that makes him hop and jump when he walks, but doesn’t stop him from hoisting sturgeons into his boat. Quinto, Mario’s father, is a great fisherman, I’ve seen him pulling in sturgeons that weigh almost a hundred kilos and lifting them up by himself on the harpoon. Then again, he wants Mario to go to school so he goes out in the boat with his wife who’s all skinny and doesn’t have enough strength in her arms to hoist up the big fish.

  “To cut a long story short,” he continues, “at first we didn’t like the Turk. We were sure he was hiding something. The Great War had just finished and the police went to talk to him, but all his papers were in order so they couldn’t say anything. Then the whole thing with the music started and we all thought he was a bit touched in the head. Him and his wife, a fine woman she was that’s for sure, nothing like our wives. She had eyes as blue as ice, golden hair like wheat and alabaster skin. Her arms were strong and shapely, and what legs! When she stood in the stern she looked like a captain. The Turk was always proud when he called her name. I still remember it: “Lukina, Lukina!’ I don’t know where she got a name like that, though...”

  “And the music?”

  “Ah yes, before the Turk showed up no one played music to catch sturgeon, not like it is now with people paying bands to play on their boats. No, back then we would just put down our nets, and pass them along, and if we got something, fine and good. If not, we would just have to queue up behind the other boats and wait our turn to pass along again.”

  “Yes, but the music?”

  “Be patient, I’m coming to that.”

  Mario’s father pours himself another glass of wine, leaving me on tenterhooks. I wish he’d get on with it because Mother will probably be waiting for me by now. But I have to know about the Turk, because he’s Nicola’s father, because he’s strange, and because I came here on purpose to find out. When Mother gets cross with me she says I’m as nosey as an old woman.

  “And the music?”

  “Well, he sorted out his house in that funny way of his, with roses around the vegetable patch and by the door. Then he started working on the boat. He didn’t ask any of us for any help, he got it looking spick and span all by himself. And the nets too, they were all tangled, and he bought the hemp and knotted it himself. He had money for hemp when the rest of us were dirt poor.” Mario’s father spits on the ground again, enviously.

  “We wouldn’t have helped him anyway,” he continues, taking breath. “We were scared of him, he wasn’t one of us, even though he says he comes from who knows what village on the Po, in the Delta. He mentions it from time to time but I can’t remember the name and it’s probably not even true. Anyway, spring comes round and he and his wife put the boat in the river. Now we’ll have to wait even longer to pass our nets, we all think. More mouths to feed. And people who aren’t even from around here. But in the end the Turk fed us all, there’s no two ways about it, he looked after us all. He knew we didn’t like him so he didn’t fish with us but went further downstream, where the river bed wasn’t dredged, so he risked his nets every time he went out. But then of course he didn’t pass his nets along the river bed, so there was no way they would get caught on something.

  He would stand with his boat across the current, then get out his ocarina and start playing. Then his wife would shout: “There it is! There it is!”

  And he would put down the ocarina and pull in the net. That year the Turk caught more than anyone else. We tried putting the evil eye on him, but for the whole of the se
ason he always came back to shore with a sturgeon. He would play his ocarina and catch fish, just like that. And when the buyer came the Turk would bargain with him, man to man, not just looking at his feet like the rest of us. He would talk and argue his point and hold his arms out. You could see he knew what he was talking about. We’re just simple folk Nellino, and that’s why we’re still living like beggars on the riverside.”

  And he pauses again to spit, smoke and fill his glass.

  “And then what?”

  “And then in the get-togethers on the long summer nights there would be talk of burning his house down, sinking his boat and...”

  “And what?”

  “No, these are not things for children’s ears.”

  “Tell me what.”

  “No, you’d go straight to hell.”

  “You’ll go if I tell your wife that instead of mending the nets you’re here drinking and talking to me...”

  “You dirty scoundrel!”

  “I was only joking.”

  “Show more respect to your elders.”