The Caviar Lady Read online

  “Those who fought for the freedom of Spain, like your father, were comrades,” Uncle explains.

  “I thought my father was a traitor?”

  “That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself, when you’re older. He was a man with great ideals, ideals that are different from those around today.”

  “Anyway, today the errand boy came, Nellino. We won’t be starting the factory any more. It’s April and there have been no fish. I just wanted to let you know.”

  XXIX

  April has always been the best month for fishing. The month that can sort things out or turn a bad year good. But this April there are hardly any boats left on the river. Almost all of the women are back on the riverside. They go out foraging for salad leaves instead, so at least they have something to put on the table. The Turk and Nicola fish for perch, and they even bring us some one night, a cause for great celebration.

  “It’s not time for sturgeons yet,” the Turk insists.

  Meanwhile the huts on the riverside are filling with new inhabitants. Families from the city, where it seems to be more difficult to get by. Here you can only tell that a war’s on and that it’s not going very well because of the rationing and the black aprons worn by the women in mourning. Otherwise it would just be spring. Cavicchi gives me more calamitous news than Radio Londra about the Italian forces at the front. Apparently we’re losing in Africa as well as Russia. Honorably, of course, but losing nonetheless. It’s much worse than they say on the radio, which we don’t really trust any more anyway.

  Halfway through the month Nicola comes to the railway station:

  “I’ve come to send a telegram.”

  “Who to?” I ask, because like everyone else I don’t believe the sturgeons are going to put in an appearance this year.

  “To the Lady, I mean the errand boy. Forty-four kilos, female.” Nicola looks at me and smiles.

  “Good work!” I want to say.

  But instead I just return his meaningful look. Nicola has become a man.

  “How’s life down on the riverside?”

  “Fine. Haven’t seen you for a while though, not even to read poems to Bechi.”

  “Give us a hug,” I say.

  “Ferrara’s turned you into a fairy, has it?”

  “Ah come on. Even the Roman Centurions hugged their friends.”

  “Fairies the lot of them.”

  “Listen to you!”

  “Do you know what my father says? He says that if the war doesn’t end soon we’ll get called up too.”

  “But I’m only fifteen this year.”

  “Yeah, next month.”

  “It was your birthday a few days ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Yep, you’ve got a good memory.”

  “Do you remember that day we caught the eel man’s eels?”

  “How could I forget it? Anyway my father says that they’ll lower the age of conscription if the war goes on and they’ll call us up at sixteen.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish! The war’s almost over anyway.”

  “Says who?”

  “The errand boy. I listened in one time he was talking about having friends in high places.”

  “So you’re spying on people now?”

  “No! It was just that time.”

  “I’m off home.”

  “I’ll go and send your telegram.”

  The Turk and the other men who have boats out start catching a few sturgeons, and some of the women whose husbands are at the front get their boats out too. The errand boy doesn’t come by in his Lancia Ardea any more, but sends Aldo by train. There are hardly any trains now. And Aldo has time to smoke all the cigarettes he could want waiting for the Littorina or steam train. It looks like the season is going to come good, but one day Maria and her daughter Magda catch something in their net that doesn’t struggle like a fish but drags instead.

  “The boat is getting dragged out into the middle of the river,” Nicola tells me, “and those poor creatures are shouting: ‘Turk! Turk! We’ve got a big fish but it’s not tiring and the current’s pulling it away.’ So we go over to them and my father jumps into their boat. He starts pulling and pulling and you can see that whatever it is is not moving like a fish. And in the end...” Nicola makes the sign of the cross. “It was a dead body that was tangled up in the net. It was all swollen up and just the sight of it made me puke my guts up. I mean I would have puked up if I’d had anything in my stomach, there’s hardly anything to eat even in the country now.”

  “But who was it?”

  “Who knows? The Carabinieri came to take him away. They asked us a few questions and then they told us to be more careful, as if we were actually going out looking for dead bodies.”

  XXX

  Looking or not, it is not long before the fourth body shows up, and one even has a good iron anvil tied round its neck. The women begin to say that people are better off staying at home than fishing up dead bodies. Mario’s dad is okay till the third one, when he spits on the ground and says that if he’d wanted to be an undertaker he would have gone to work in a graveyard. The fish isn’t selling any more. There’s no problem with the eggs, and the errand boy is not bothered by the dead bodies: “As long as I’m still alive what should I care?”

  “The people round here are saying that the sturgeon have a curse on them, that they’ll end up bringing pestilence and disease.”

  “Let them talk, Pompeo. The people who eat our caviar are hardly going to know that we’re fishing dead bodies out of the Po too.”

  no one knows where all the corpses are coming from. The Carabinieri take them away and don’t even ask any more questions, as if it was normal to be picking up dead bodies like that. Nicola says that if it carries on like this he’ll be spending more time in the police station reporting bodies than out on the river. And nobody wants our fish any more. The broker says that the news is doing the rounds. Even Remo, who in the beginning used the dead bodies as an excuse to lower his prices, lays it on the line: “No one wants fish from the Po any more. People say there’s a curse on them. I can’t even give it away.”

  And it’s true. The Turk, for the first time since I’ve known him, takes a sturgeon and roasts it over an open fire. He invites all the inhabitants of the riverside to partake, but half of them don’t go, even though they’re all famished. That was when he decided that enough was enough: “It’s not worth fishing for sturgeon any more. We can eat roach, tench, perch and eel - fish you can catch without pulling up someone with their throat cut.”

  The errand boy turns up in his Lancia Ardea, parking right at the top of the embankment and almost rolling down to the riverside, shouting:

  “Turk, Turk, if you stop fishing you’ll bankrupt me!”

  “Like you would think twice before ruining me?”

  The errand boy is left speechless. Then he recovers: “Name your price.”

  “Go and ask the others if they want to be corpse fishers in the river. I’ve had enough of pulling in bodies with their throats cut...”

  He’s not going to budge and the errand boy gives up without a fight. Partly because everyone knows how stubborn the Turk is. And partly because the season is almost over and most of it has already gone to pot. And partly because he has made arrangements with other fishermen in the Delta, less scrupulous than the Turk, but as the errand boy says, more businesslike. It’s Aldo that tells Mother, they’ve been friends for a while now.

  There is no news about the dead bodies. Only Cavicchi at school has some theories, that he gets from the newspaper his family reads at home. Apparently there are political groups that oppose Fascism, Communists or something, who are fighting the government.

  “So they’re against our soldiers?”

  “No, they’re against the servants of power.”

  “Who?”

  “One day I’ll explain.”

  The ones ending up in the Po would appear to be the victims of actions against Fascism, against the government and ag
ainst the war.

  “That’s why the Carabinieri aren’t saying anything,” concludes Cavicchi. “They know who the bodies are. It’s the rest of us who have to be kept in the dark.”

  “Cavicchi! Scaramagli! Stop talking or I’ll separate you,” shrieks Mrs. Boldini.

  I don’t know how Cavicchi manages to think all these things at once at the age of fifteen, but I think he might be right. Though he does like to lay it on thick with me. By now the sturgeon season is over and fortunately we are well into the school year too.

  XXXI

  There aren’t that many books at home any more. I think Uncle sold a few of his to buy the ones I need for school. None of us has made any money out of the caviar. Nothing more than a few beans to make it easier to scrape by.

  “You win some you lose some. It’s like gambling in the casino,” says the Turk, who takes his boat out of the water in June.

  “The water is dirty now too. They’re dumping stuff from the factories.”

  “But there’s nothing left in the factories.”

  “I’m telling you there’s muck going into this river. I don’t drink the water any more,” says Nicola.

  I never have, I think. The river is no longer the wonderful place it used to be. There’s something going on that we don’t understand. It’s a bit like what’s happening to me – I’ve got a face full of yellow zits. The worst ones are the neck ones, because I’ve started shaving and the razor blade often slices the top off them, spraying blood and pus everywhere. It’s really gross.

  “It’s nothing to worry about, it’s quite normal at your age,” Mother says.

  It might well be normal at my age but getting blood on the mirror is hardly nice. And I’m no great shakes in the mirror stakes either. My hair is getting less blonde and more red. When I say so to Mother she looks at me sternly and says:

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Just what I see. Under my skin, which is still as white as ever, I can see freckles rising up, not faint ones like Uncle has, but great big dark ones like Aldo’s. Cavicchi has taught me how to cup my hand to check if my breath smells. Apparently smelly breath sends the girls running.

  “Uncle can I use your Brylcream?” I shout from the bathroom.

  “Yes, but don’t overdo it, and get a move on! You’ve been in there for an hour and there are people waiting.”

  “Thanks Uncle, I’m almost done,” I shout back. I rub some Brylcream between my hands, and spread it over my hair to try and flatten it down, but it keeps springing back up again. I slick it back with a fine-toothed comb - Cavicchi told me it’s the best way to get a smart side parting. My hair starts sticking up all over the place and I think it’s going to take more Brylcream. I hope Uncle isn’t going to get mad. Okay, that should do it.

  “Nellino can you please come out! I want to go to mass!” Mother raps imperiously on the door, sounding annoyed.

  “I’m coming! Just a second!”

  “That’s what he said to me twenty minutes ago,” Uncle remarks.

  “Oh well, he’s just a boy.”

  “Just as well! If he was a girl I’d have to wash at the station pump!”

  “Oh, don’t be sarcastic Pompeo.”

  “And you stop spoiling him. You don’t think he’s got a girlfriend, do you?”

  “My little Nellino?” Mother bursts out laughing.

  I take offence at this and my hair springs up all over again.

  At last I’m standing in front of the bookcase with my glasses on and my hair slicked back, in the very latest style. Like a man. Oh fiddlesticks! I hadn’t thought about the bike ride, which will no doubt put my hair right back to square one again. How on earth am I ever going to look good?

  “What are you looking for Nellino?” Uncle surprises me, lost in thought, standing in front of his books.

  “Poems.”

  “Aha! So you do have a girlfriend!” he chuckles.

  “What? Just because I want a poem or two...”

  “Poetry is the stuff of young love, you know.”

  “That’s not true! Carducci wrote for the King!” I shoot back, but I can feel myself going red.

  “Don’t start with all your stories about king and country, the empire, Mussolini and all that jazz. Times have changed.”

  I would like to say that times have changed for me too, and I know what he means, but I can’t work myself up to it. After all I’m still an Avanguardista in the Fascist Youth Movement and I try not to miss too many Saturdays. Mr. Masini the physical education teacher told me that for my school career it’s important to be seen in the right places.

  “Certain absences will be noted,” he said, looking me up and down.

  The problem is that I can’t find the book I’m looking for. But I know it was here. I saw it not that long ago.

  “Perhaps I know what you’re looking for,” says Uncle, with a conspiratorial air. “Come with me.”

  We go downstairs, into the stationmaster’s office. Uncle gets out his big bunch of keys and opens a drawer.

  “It’s there, John Keats is there...”

  “But how did you know this is what I was looking for?”

  “Once I tried to win a girl’s heart the same way.”

  “And how did it go?”

  “Aha! So there is a girl!”

  “No, no, I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  “Fill for me a brimming bowl...” Uncle starts reciting, “And in it let me drown my soul, But put therein some drug, designed... To banish Women from my mind.”

  “It sounds like it didn’t go well.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “But do you know the whole book off by heart?”

  “Just a few poems. And how do you know it?”

  “Cavicchi told me to read it, actually he recommended it.” I bite my tongue to shut myself up.

  “So he recommended it to impress a girl,” Uncle concludes, teasing me. “Do I know her?”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Off you go then.”

  “Just one thing Uncle...”

  “What?”

  “Why do you keep the book hidden like that?”

  “I don’t really know. I just think that these days it’s better not to have an English poet in your bookcase.”

  Or carry one with you, I think, covering up the book in a page of Il Corriere della Sera. It’ll protect it too. When I get to the riverside, my hair is still almost presentable. In front of the Turk’s house I put my glasses on, clear my throat loudly and knock on the door...

  “Come in!”

  “But you don’t even know who it is!”

  “It’s you Nellino, I saw you on your bicycle up on the embankment.”

  “Are Nicola and his father not in?”

  “No, they’re out fishing for frogs.”

  I know this, and it’s why I’ve come now. I don’t tell Bechi that but she might have worked it out for herself. I stop in the middle of the dirt floor room which functions as hallway, kitchen, workshop and storeroom, basically the daytime part of the house, where a girl like Bechi can go so far as to invite in an old family friend. I can feel the blood rushing to my temples. I don’t say anything. I open the book at the page Cavicchi told me and start reading. He told me to pluck up the courage so I do:

  “You say you love; but with a voice...”

  My voice cracks a little at this, but I take a deep breath, look up from the page and hear the words echoing:

  “Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth

  the soft Vespers to herself

  While the chime-bell ringeth

  O love me truly!”

  When I get to the bit that says “love me” I think I’m going to faint, but at least I’ve plucked up my courage. I feel brave but I’m sweating. Worse than the errand boy. Now I’m afraid Bechi is going to burst out laughing, but what I really hope is that she sheds a tear or two, and says “My hero, I…”

  Or at least do
es something.

  But I look at her and she’s smiling, happy, like a little girl. I’m about to tell her that the poet is called Keats, John Keats, when she opens her mouth and I hear a sound that arranges itself into the words:

  “How fever’d is the man! Who cannot look…” she takes a breath and looks at me:

  “Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,

  Who vexes all the leaves of his life’s book,

  And robs his fair name of its maidenhood.”

  No way! This is just not fair! How is it that everyone here knows Keats off by heart as if it was boring old Arnaldo Fusinato with disease raging and no bread left.

  So much for Cavicchi. He told me she would fall at my feet! That my culture and my glasses and John Keats would win her over in a flash. What a buffoon, I think. I’m the only one round here who has to read Keats from the book, everyone else has it at their fingertips.

  “Oh Nellino,” says Bechi, who can see that I am a bit downhearted, to say the least. “What a lovely surprise! John Keats is one of my favorite poets.”

  “But... but... How do you know him? I mean you’re always here, on the riverside.”

  “I’ve got a book of his, my Aunt left it to me.”

  “The Turk has a sister?”

  “No, I mean yes, another aunt...”

  Now I’ve embarrassed her.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. But do you think this is the kind of poem you should be reading to an unchaperoned girl?”

  It’s because you’re unchaperoned that I read it, I should have answered. Instead I say that I was foolish.

  “You’re still a child, Nellino, what are you doing thinking about love?” Bechi murmurs, ruffling my hair.

  “Oh my goodness! What have you put on your hair?” she asks, sniffing her fingers.

  “Brylcream.”

  Bechi bursts out laughing: “What? Like the mayor, the chemist and all those gentlemen who give themselves airs round here?”

  “No! It’s not like that. It’s really fashionable you know. And it’s not mine, it’s Uncle’s.”