The Caviar Lady Read online

  “And the partisans.”

  “Someone should go and find out, find someone in command.”

  “But this is war business.”

  “No, this is fishy business, that’s what it is.”

  “We were out on the Po, last night, in the boat.”

  I look at the Turk but he does not look up. He looks like Michelangelo’s statue, the Pietà, but it’s not the Madonna he’s holding in his arms. The arms holding Nicola are great strong arms, arms that can hold up the world, or pull in a hundred kilo sturgeon, like the one in the boat. Everyone’s looking at the fish now.

  “But it’s white!” someone says. “It’s huge!”

  “What were they thinking of, going fishing when there’s a war on?”

  “But the war’s finished now.”

  “Yeah, and we saw how that turned out.”

  “Look at his boy.”

  “They were still shooting last night.”

  “But the Germans surrendered yesterday...”

  “No, they didn’t surrender...”

  “But they’re running away, the war is over.”

  The Turk doesn’t hear a word of it. I can see that. I just can’t bring myself to look at Nicola.

  “What were you doing out here at dawn?”

  The Turk tries to take a breath, to stop his tears and regain his dignity. He looks over at the sturgeon: “That’s his, that’s Nicola’s fish. He’s the one who dreamt it.”

  Then he kisses Nicola’s head, his hair that is all matted with blood. And holds him tighter. I feel like I’m going to cry but then I see Bechi, who’s figured it out, and she screams and throws herself on the ground, her face in the Po sand. Mother comes over to her, she hugs her tight, and pulls her to her feet. The other women join them. It’s like there has been another war here.

  I see Uncle approach the Turk, and clasp his arm. I join him. He looks at me but it’s like he’s looking straight through me.

  “I said we weren’t going to go out but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Kept on saying that he’d dreamt about it, that he’d seen it.”

  “But what happened?” Uncle asks.

  The Turk takes a deep breath before replying: “It was almost dawn and we hadn’t really slept because there was a lot of shooting during the night. Then it all went quiet and I fell asleep. I only woke up when I heard someone calling my name. It was Nicola...”

  But just saying Nicola’s name makes him crumple up, and his eyes fill with tears again.

  “Arturo!” Uncle says his name firmly: “Arturo!”

  Till then I’d never known that the Turk had a name and that someone knew it. Uncle! Uncle knew the Turk’s name was Arturo.

  “Nicola told me he’d had the dream.”

  “What dream?”

  “The dream about the sturgeon.”

  “No way,” I said. “No one’s been fishing for years!”

  The Turk continues: “He said: ‘Father, I dreamt it, I really did. There was a white horse running towards me and as it got closer it turned into a huge sturgeon.’ I asked him: ‘Then what happened?’ and he said: ‘Then the train passed through’. ‘Come again?’ I said. He said that after the sturgeon the train came through. I said that he wasn’t well, that he had a fever. But he said he’d dreamt it for real, that we had to go down to the river. I kept saying that there was a war on, that they were still shooting. He was insisting that the war was finished, that the Germans had fled, it had been on the radio, he said. I said that we’d no nets, no boat, but he insisted that everything was ready, where we’d hidden it. And it was true. Everything was in good nick, kept well out of sight of everyone round here, and the Germans.”

  “But where?”

  “Here, for the love of God, it was all here, hidden in the reeds on the island. If only this damned war had sunk our boat too Nicola would still be alive.”

  The Turk looks at me then and says: “You were right... You were all right... I should have kept him at school with Nellino.”

  Uncle is impatient. He wants to know what happened, before the soldiers turn up, the partisans, the New Zealanders, the Americans, before the news makes it to the village...

  “Then what happened?” Uncle sounds very authoritative, I’ve never heard him use that tone of voice before. Gentle but firm, like he’s giving orders but at the same time understands the Turk’s pain. I’m impressed. The Turk calms down, and speaks through his tears.

  “So we went out on the river. Not far from where the boat was hidden and you could see the anti-aircraft tracers on the other side of the river, the lights and the flares, the shooting. With every flash of light you could see the Germans running along the river bank. I told Nicola to look, to see that the war was still going on, but he said no, that the Germans were running for their lives, that the war was over, that Nena heard it on the radio. But I kept a look out,” continues the Turk, “and I could see it was war. Then Nicola said there was something in the net, pulling the net out of his hands. ‘Father help me,’ he said. ‘It’s a whopper’. It was huge, I’ve never felt anything thrashing so hard. The current was taking us downstream and the net with the sturgeon was behind us, holding us like a mooring post. I thought he’d netted a German tank! But he could feel it pulling. He said: ‘See? I told you I’d had the dream. The dream never fails’. I was worried it might break the net, or that even if we brought it in we might not manage to sell it. But he said: ‘The war’s finished. People will want to celebrate, and if not we’ll eat it ourselves, like that time with the Lady’s caviar. Don’t you remember?’ How could I forget? It was a dinner worth more than the last supper to me. When it came under the boat everything went quiet. I’d never seen a fish that big... I said to Nicola: ‘Not even in Astrakhan...’”

  The Turk starts crying again, thickly. His lip is bleeding because he’s biting down on it to try and stop the tears, and he’s digging his fingers into Nicola’s clothes, like he’s trying to hold onto the memories. His voice cracks, but Uncle wants to know more. He wants to know what happened before the news gets out, before someone gets the idea that the Turk was taking the Germans across the river.

  “It was enormous, a massive fish. Look, it’s in the boat.”

  And he points to the boat pulled up on the sand, with the huge fish lying in it, a trickle of blood running down between the bony plates on its sides. A rivulet of blood from its head. Just like Nicola. But one is a fish. And the other is a boy.

  I can feel my tears welling up, but then Uncle puts his arm round me too and says: “You listen too, another witness could come in handy.”

  “We harpooned the sturgeon, twice to make sure it wouldn’t turn the boat over, or break the net, or tip us into the river. Then we started pulling it to the boat, little by little, and we hit it again. We tied a rope around it and tried to haul it up with the gaff. It was almost impossible, but we knew we couldn’t keep it alive. Or keep it in the water. We had to get it into the boat, so we came into this creek near the woods. The sun was coming up by this time and the water is slower here, so we managed to pull it up more easily. Everything was covered in blood, including the net. Nicola said he’d never seen a white one before. Neither had I. Father and son we were...”

  At that the Turk starts crying again but Uncle doesn’t let up. He asks him more about it, forces him to keep speaking. There are other people coming down now, we have to know.

  “What’s it to you anyway Pompeo?” says the Turk, addressing him with the familiar “tu” for the very first time.

  “Just tell me! Tell me what happened!”

  “We pulled up the fish, and the net. In the old days the kids would have been running home shouting ‘A whopper!’ ‘A whopper!’ Do you remember?”

  “Yes, I remember it well... But what happened next?”

  “I heard a shot being fired. So I turned to Nicola to say ‘See? The war isn’t exactly finished, maybe we should get back home to Bechi
...’ But as I was turning round I heard a cry here, in the boat, and it wasn’t the sturgeon. Nicola fell forward. ‘Stop fooling around,’ I said to him. ‘You’ll give your old man a heart attack!’ But already he had the look of death on him. ‘Nicola, what’s wrong?’ I asked him, but he didn’t answer me. The blood started coming. At first I thought it was from the sturgeon, but then I saw it was coming through Nicola’s jacket. He didn’t speak, and there was blood coming out of his mouth too. So I started to row back to shore, screaming for someone to help me. But there are no boats in the Po these days, the Germans have taken them all. I just kept rowing and shouting for help till I got here. When we reached the bank I felt for his pulse and I looked into his eyes and I just knew. Those bastards! Those bastards killed my son!”

  The Turk pulls Nicola to him like he’ll never ever leave him. And we still can’t understand it. Why they went fishing. How it all ended like that. Then Uncle gets to his feet and offers me an American cigarette. The war really is over. Nicola was right.

  Bechi left after the funeral. I never went back to the riverside again.

  EPILOGUE

  The world has changed since then but I still like traveling by train. And that’s how I came to Italy on Christmas Day. A quick visit to Venice on the way, like a normal tourist. Then Ferrara. How small it seems to me now: when I was at school it seemed so big... The taxi from the station to the hotel cost me three euros, hardly worth it.

  This is my first visit to Italy in a very long time. I only decided to come because since Rebecca died there’s not much point to life any more. I’ve tried to keep going, of course. One day she just went. Died, I mean. I don’t even know how to put it into words, how to convince myself that she’s really gone. After a lifetime together it is so very painful. One day in front of the mirror I gave myself a stern talking to: “Nello, you’re not yet eighty. You’re a good-looking fellow, healthy. Life goes on. Get off your backside, and do something.”

  And I’ve tried, I really have, but when you’re on your own, the things you used to like just don’t hold the same appeal any more. That’s when I started to have a feeling I’d never had before: for the first time in my life I felt homesick, I felt the pull of the places of my childhood, the past I thought I had buried forever. But you can’t just wish things away. You can flutter around like a butterfly your whole life but then something or someone catches up with you. You can’t escape your destiny.

  The day I understood that, I was at a party, the usual boring fundraisers where all the do-gooders gather to smile at each other. They were raising money to save a villa in Tarabya, the old summer residence of the Italian ambassador in Istanbul. Some Italians had come along to support the cause too, as if theirs was the only run-down villa on the Bosphorus, as if it wasn’t obvious that together with these wooden houses we are losing a piece of history that has been around a lot longer than we have. And for the first time I got to thinking of the Turk, down on the riverside when I was a boy, who had been a gardener in that villa. And Nicola, whose memory I had buried. It was by chance that I found myself in Turkey: fate had taken me by the shirt.

  So after that I decided to come back to Italy. For Christmas. Now I’m all alone in the world I have no one to celebrate with anyway. We had a son, Rebecca and I – Andrea is his name - but we’ve not spoken in years. The last time we saw each other was at Rebecca’s funeral, and then it was just a quick hug, a few words, before we went our separate ways. Or rather he did. Andrea lives here in Italy, actually. Every now and then he sends me an email, but I don’t read them any more. Those contraptions, computers, are just too difficult for me. There’s a limit to this constant pursuit of progress, and it’s the years passing that is my limit. But I realize now that even though I gave him my surname and everything else, I don’t think I’ve been a better father to him than mine was to me. Or maybe it’s just the case that you don’t need a father to grow up, to live your life.

  I was at university when I met up with Rebecca again - that was Bechi’s full name: Rebecca Macchioro, the Jewish niece not of the Turk but of the caviar lady. Whose name was Clara Macchioro. Bechi, as we all realized back then, was something special. One smart cookie she was. I couldn’t believe it when I heard that after the war she’d done all her school exams in two years. That’s what all the books in the trunk were for.

  Well, I don’t want to waffle on. Rebecca and I got married. Yes, married. And we spent the rest of the twentieth century together, selling caviar. That’s how it went - I became a cosmopolitan, as we would have said back in the day - that strange word the errand boy introduced which became common usage for us. A life devoted to caviar, the river’s legacy, if you like: Beluga, Sevruga, Asetra, Asetra garabrum... Iran under the Shah, Switzerland, Turkey, the former Soviet Union, and the countries that emerged after the fall of Communism. Over the years we watched the world order break down and put itself back together, with a few adjustments now and then. But caviar remained, making the difference between the haves and the have nots. No two ways about it. Even now that the sturgeons are disappearing from the Caspian Sea, there are still people who can afford Imperial Beluga, the very finest malossol from wild sturgeon, even though fishing it is banned. The wealthy purchase it by the bucket load, vats of the stuff: two pound tins, not those piddling two ounce numbers we sell to the nouveau riche. “Illegal, impossible to get hold of!” the Americans say. The Russians agree. The Iranians swear to it. Even the Chinese get huffy, because they’re in on the act now too. But it’s all nonsense, because if you’ve got the cash you can always get caviar. Like in the days of the Tsar. Like during the war. Like in my day.

  I’ve retired now though. I’ve had everything I wanted in life, apart from ending the road with Rebecca. And this is the cross I now bear: the gaping hole she left, that has slowly filled up with memories, buried stuff from way back.

  I even remembered the photograph that explained all of it. It was Lorenzo Cavicchi who showed it to me, the day I went to Ferrara to pay my condolences for Andrea and Enrico, both killed by the Germans.

  “They died for freedom,” their father said, without a tear.

  “I should have joined the cause too,” I told him awkwardly.

  “That doesn’t matter now, you’re a good lad Nello Scaramagli, and that’s what counts.”

  So I came out and asked him what had been on my mind since our first meeting:

  “What does ‘no gods, no masters’ mean?”

  Cavicchi senior smiled and murmured: “So you no longer hate your father.”

  “No, I don’t hate him,” I mumbled, looking at my shoes.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  And he returned with a photograph - “Here you are.”

  He handed it to me. There were mountains in the background, and a lake, and in the foreground a group of young people, smiling at the photographer. They were all fairly well-dressed. I looked at it but I didn’t understand at first.

  “That’s your father,” he said, pointing to the youngest member of the group. A youngster with a shock of dark hair, light-colored eyes, like mine, I’d say, and a cocky attitude about him. He was wearing knickerbockers. He looked like he was ready to take on the world. Or maybe he was just young and stupid, like I was, with all those things I couldn’t understand.

  Standing beside him there was another lad, with fair hair, but older, almost a man, wearing a jacket, waistcoat and bow tie, with a waxed moustache and neatly done hair. Brylcreamed, it looked like. He was smoking a pipe, and had that faintly sad, dreamy air of Uncle about him... Uncle? It was Uncle! And to think I’d grown up believing my father and Uncle hated each other.

  Another one, standing with one leg bent, impeccably dressed, with a beard, little glasses and a straw boater, was Mr. Cavicchi himself. He was jokily leaning on another guy in shirtsleeves with a half-unbuttoned waistcoat, a beret on his head, a cigar clamped between his teeth and a dark handlebar moustache... The Turk! It was him alright
. Anyone would have recognized him, even just from that half smile of his.

  Slightly in front of the others was a very beautiful woman, with her hair up. She was wearing a sort of coat while the others seemed to be dressed much lighter. I recognized her without a murmur: nothing could surprise me by then. It was the caviar lady. In her hand was a book, a book that I recognized. I figured it out for myself this time, as it was none other than the poetry of John Keats.

  “We were all in love with Clara,” said Cavicchi.

  “Who?”

  “Clara Macchioro.”

  That’s how I found out the caviar lady’s name.

  “Was my father in love with her too?”

  “Who? Menandro? No, he only had eyes for your mother.”

  Then I turned the photograph over. On the back was written Lausanne, 1914, and in big letters, no gods, no masters... I should have asked what they were all doing there in 1914, but I didn’t. I thought, perhaps wrongly, that I’d got it all worked out. I looked at the photograph again: all five of them looked so strong, their expressions so focussed and determined, shining straight out of the picture. I was dumbstruck... Mr. Cavicchi realized and said: “We were young...”

  He wanted me to keep the photograph, but I didn’t take it. I didn’t take it because I had decided to forget. To forget forever.

  But now here I am, on December 27 th 2007, frost covering the trees in crystals; here I am with a ticket in my hand, ready to board the old Littorina rail car. I thought no, I wouldn’t go through with it, but then I thought: ‘Just do it, what are you afraid of?’ So I set off to see for myself. What, who knows? Well, I suppose to see whether anything was left of that world, our world, our century.

  I took a seat, upholstered now, not like the wooden benches there used to be in third class. Because I always traveled in third class: I was the nephew, not the son of the stationmaster, as most people thought. I was not entitled to travel for free. Now I’m here, on a shabby but modern train, with my eyes glued to the window, just like when I was a boy. I watch the villages that lie along the Po slip past, one after the other, but you can’t see the river from the train.