The Caviar Lady Read online

  “Rich folk always find money for caviar, don’t you worry.”

  “If things carry on the way they are, there won’t be any rich folk left,” Mario’s father replies.

  So I tell Mario’s father that Mussolini founded the empire so that everyone will be better off, even the fishermen on the riverside. For my trouble I get a kick in the backside, and I don’t even know who it was. But one of these days I’m going to go to the Militia Corps and tell them that there are no good patriots on the riverside. The sturgeon season is over for this year, that’s for sure, otherwise there would be no time for all this talk.

  XIII

  The cases that arrived in the station this morning all bear the words National Fish Stocking Program. Uncle looks at the rail car with a look that says he doesn’t know whether to be mad, or telegraph the Podestà, or write to the rail superintendent, or make a formal complaint to the Duce in person, or be glad and find a solution. I too can see that having a cargo load of tench fry landing in your station with no prior warning is a big problem.

  “Now I come to think of it,” Uncle says after a while. “They told me they would be sending material to repopulate the drainage channels, to be distributed.”

  “Who to?”

  “Someone has to sort it out. The party will know what to do. Nello, go and find the secretary and tell him to come here.”

  By the time I get to the barber’s shop I’m out of breath and it’s closing time, so I start shouting:

  “Comrade Baffoni! Comrade Baffoni!”

  “Who goes there?” comes a voice from the window.

  “It’s Nellino, the stationmaster’s nephew.”

  “What do you want at this time of day?”

  “There’s a problem at the station.”

  “Call the Railway Militia Corps.”

  “No, the Militia Corps can’t solve this problem, you need to come.”

  “Tell your uncle I’ll finish my lunch and be right along.”

  “Comrade Secretary you have to come now, or they’ll all die.”

  “All who? For the love of God, who?”

  “Come, come quickly...”

  I run back to the station, followed by Emilio Baffoni, the village’s Fascist Party Secretary. He’s the highest authority there is, though I’m not sure whether he’s above or below the mayor.

  “Scaramagli! Pompeo Scaramagli!” shouts Baffoni. “What’s all this about then? Who’s dying?”

  “Take a look there.”

  “Well? It’s a wagon-load of carboys.”

  “Ah, but you don’t know what’s inside them.”

  “Wine, vinegar, oil? Out with it Scaramagli. I was halfway through my lunch.”

  “Fish, Comrade Secretary, live tench fry for the National Fish Stocking Programme, to be distributed.”

  “And to whom, exactly? We’ve plenty of fish in the Po and the drainage channels.”

  “That’s just it: I don’t know. It’s up to you to decide, but if we leave them out here in the sun they’ll all die.”

  “Nellino!” barks Secretary Baffoni. “Go and call Donna Italia, the Secretary of the Rural Housewives Association. The women should decide.”

  “You mean your wife?”

  “Yes, yes, my wife, but tell her to come in her capacity of secretary of the Rural Housewives Association.”

  I run back to the barber’s house. When I get there I call:

  “Donna Italia! Donna Italia!”

  “What is it Nellino?”

  “Your husband wants you at the station.”

  “What kind of mess has that idiot got himself into now?”

  “Um, well, he told me you’ve to come in your capacity.”

  “In my capacity? Ah, you mean as Secretary of the Rural Housewives Association?”

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  “But what for? Has the Federal Secretary turned up?”

  “No, no, it’s not that. Come along and you’ll see.”

  “What on earth have you done now you idiot?”

  “Italia, Italia, can’t you see I’m here as Party Secretary?”

  “I’ll give you secretary. You’re good for nothing without me to sort out your problems.”

  “Take a look here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tench.”

  “Fine, let’s roast them.”

  “No, they’re too small.”

  “Then we’ll fry them.”

  “But they’re alive, they’re for the National Fish Stocking Programme, from the Duce.”

  “And what are we supposed to do with them?”

  “Distribute them to repopulate the drainage channels.”

  “Who to?”

  “That’s the question.”

  Donna Italia looks at Mother and says:

  “You’re a housewife, what would you do with these things?”

  “I don’t know,” Mother says. “Maybe we should ask Don Antonio.”

  “Of course! That’s who we need.”

  “Nellino, go and get the priest.”

  “But I’m hungry,” I complain to Mother.

  “Run and get him and then I’ll get your lunch ready.”

  I run to get the priest and he hurries along to the station too, but only after I’ve told him they’re all going to die. He’s wearing his vestments and has everything he needs for the last rites, I know because I’ve seen him visiting the dead and dying before. Perhaps I could have explained it a bit better, but I can see that when I say they’re all going to die everyone understands that it’s a serious matter.

  “Good day Don Antonio,” they all greet him.

  “Who needs to confess?”

  “No, no one. Look what’s just arrived.”

  And they all start explaining the problem again. Don Antonio listens but he looks very cross about turning up in his vestments. I think that I’ll probably have to talk about it in confession. After a long silence, he passes judgement:

  “It’s a question of fish. Ask the fishermen.”

  “Right you are,” says Uncle. “It hadn’t crossed my mind.”

  “I had thought of it, but down on the riverside we don’t have a single party member,” says Secretary Baffoni, clearly a little peeved.

  “And I’ll tell you why...”

  We hear a voice from behind the wagon with the tench. And out comes Remo the signalman. He looks at Baffoni and raises his arm:

  “Saluto al Duce!”

  “A noi!”

  We all stand to attention.

  He gives a thin smile and says:

  “We have no party members on the riverside because of that foreigner, the Turk.”

  Uncle shoots right back, almost too quickly:

  “The Turk is a good Italian and if you contact him for this business I’m sure it will be the perfect opportunity to see to his membership...”

  Remo looks at his boots. I try to hide but I can already hear the Secretary’s voice:

  “Nellino, go to the riverside and tell the Turk to come here right away.”

  I look at Mother, imploringly, but she just smiles back. I jump on my bike and race along the embankment.

  “Nicola, Nicola!”

  “Hey Nellino, want to come fishing?”

  “You’ll soon have more fish here than you know what to do with...”

  “What?”

  “Will you get your father?”

  “He’s in the woods cutting down poplars.”

  “It’s urgent, get Bechi too.”

  When we get to the woods we can hear the Turk’s axe chopping.

  “Ah, the youth of Italy!” says the Turk when he sees us.

  Whenever I see him I always think he’s making fun of me a bit. Then he says to me:

  “And to what do I owe the honor of a visit from you outside of sturgeon season?”

  “We’ve got at least a million tench in the station.”

  “Like the homeland: eight million bayonets...”


  “What did you say?”

  “No, nothing, just a joke.”

  “You joke too much.”

  “And you not enough, for your age.”

  “You’re not a member of the party.”

  “There’s no need for it down here on the riverside.”

  “That’s what you say,” I reply, and I tell him the whole story. The Turk takes it all in, frowning.

  “Come on,” he says to Nicola and Bechi. “Run home both of you and get your black shirts on quick smart.”

  “But we don’t have black shirts,” Nicola objects.

  “Bechi knows where they are...”

  And she does. The Turk takes off his woodcutter’s shirt and puts on a Fascist shirt too.

  “You look good,” I tell him.

  “I know,” he smiles back.

  We get to the station looking like a military parade.

  “Saluto al Duce!”

  “A noi!”

  “It has come to my attention that you are not a member of the party,” Baffoni snaps, right away.

  “In sturgeon season there’s never time to come and enrol, and afterwards I am afraid I forgot,” replies the Turk.

  “See? You should have gone to him,” Donna Italia scolds her husband. And she’s right.

  “Bring me my membership card, come down to the riverside one of these days and I’ll get all the fishermen to join. Every last one of them, you have my word of honor.”

  “So, what are we going to do with all these tench?”

  “We’ll restock the drainage channels.”

  “But where? And how?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Nellino, would you please run to Nena and tell her that all the fishermen are to come here, with at least two flasks each, or three, or a demijohn if they have one.”

  “Flasks of wine?” I ask, not understanding.

  “No, no, empty flasks.”

  “Empty?”

  “Yes, empty.”

  I set off at once, even though I’m starving and it’s way past lunch time now, because the Turk is the only one who said please. I’m not a kid any more. Or an errand boy. I get back on my bike and as I turn down towards the riverside I think that Remo will have to eat humble pie this time. Serves him right. Mother always buys from him what she can’t find elsewhere, but he fawns over her in a way I don’t like. By that evening all the fishermen had gone home with at least two flasks of tench fry to put in the drainage channels and ponds.

  “Not in the Po,” says the Turk. “The pike would make short work of them.”

  The Turk has joined the National Fascist Party, together with at least thirty fishermen. Uncle helped Baffoni write a letter to the Federal Secretary and the Duce to thank them for the National Fish Stocking Programme: feeding the new generations, Uncle calls it.

  XIV

  Nicola is my best friend. Actually he’s more like a brother. Because we are both nobody’s children, like the others used to say at school. I really miss him now I’m at middle school.

  But he’s my brother above all because he made me love the Po. I don’t know whether it’s sacred to the homeland like the Piave and the Tiber, but there’s no doubt that it’s the longest of them all. Seeing it from the riverside, it looks like the widest too. When it’s in full spate and the fog comes down sometimes you can’t even see over to the other side. When we talk about it I call it the Po, Nicola calls it the river. Of course he spends all his days there, and never goes anywhere else. And he believes, like pretty much all the fishermen do, that for good health you have to drink a glass of river water every morning. I, for one, am not convinced of it. On the days when the river is full to bursting, and cloudy and brown from the sand, I, for one, wouldn’t dream of drinking it. But Nicola, who’s the same age as me, does, and he’s got great muscles.

  I know that I’m fast on my bike, so fast I could be Bartali’s teammate, or almost, but Nicola swims in the river and isn’t scared of the currents, and the freezing cold water. Nicola swims like a fish. And he knows about fish, all the different kinds and how to catch them. And how to hunt with traps. And how to get the girls from the other houses on the riverside to show us their legs and panties.

  “If I take my pecker out I’ll get you all pregnant,” he says to Rita and her sister Alba. They lift up their skirts and stick their tongues out, then they run away.

  “I know where they are,” says Nicola. “And they’ll do anything with me...”

  “Anything?” I gulp.

  “Like this.” And he unbuttons his pants and starts rubbing his pecker.

  “That’s all you ever think about!” I say disapprovingly, but I can feel my pecker is getting hard too.

  “What are you two up to?”

  It’s Agnese, Rita and Alba’s mother, who has seen us behind the nets.

  “We’re getting a rod to go and catch frogs,” Nicola says right back.

  And just as well, because I don’t really know much about peckers. So we run to the drainage channel with rods and a bag for the frogs. Sometimes we catch them using our hands, but it’s more fun with a rod. We cut the rods from the reed beds and tie a piece of string on one end. At the end there’s a piece of red wool that the frogs bite on.

  “Suck on that, whore,” says Nicola, and he pulls up the string with the frog attached. We take it off and put it in the bag.

  “Frogs sure are stupid,” I say.

  “Only good for one thing,” says Nicola. “Like women.”

  “What?”

  “Stupid, but good for screwing.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Mario’s father said it.”

  “When?”

  “The other day in the shed.”

  “He was there with Remo’s wife, and she was sucking his pecker.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true you know.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “It is, I’m telling you.”

  “Come off it, no one really does those things.”

  “I’m telling you it’s true, and he kept saying ‘Suck on that, whore’.”

  “Nah, it’s just you who says that, to the frogs.”

  “What do you know? You spend all your time in the station with your books. You haven’t a clue what goes on in the real world.”

  “And you do? From spending all day on the river?”

  “What’s wrong with spending all day on the river?”

  “Then what did Mario’s father do?”

  “He pulled up his trousers and said: ‘Be off with you woman.’ Then to me he said: ‘You’ll not be telling the Fascist now, will you? That’s women for you son: stupid and only good for screwing.’”

  “Who’s the Fascist?”

  “He meant Remo, the cuckold.”

  “What’s a cuckold?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen, same as you.”

  “Ah, you’re just a baby.”

  Well that gets me really angry. I shout: “It’s not true! Not all women are like that.”

  “Oh yes they are.”

  “My Mother isn’t.”

  “Oh yes she is.”

  “Well your father’s a foreigner then.”

  “What’s it to me?”

  I land a punch on his nose, and he grabs hold of me and pushes me over. And we start grappling and rolling around.

  “Bechi’s not like that,” I shout.

  “Oh yes she is.”

  “If you lay a finger on her I’ll break your legs.”

  “We’ll see about that...”

  “You can’t, she’s your cousin.”

  “Round here cousins can have kids you know.”

  I’m on the ground and I look up and see that Nicola is about to land me the kind of punch that knocks you out, but I’ve no breath left in me to fight back. So I turn round to see if there’s anyone around I can ask for help...

  “Hell’s bells! You’ve left the bag open!”


  “What bag?”

  “The bag with the frogs, they’re getting out.”

  Nicola lets go of me and runs after the frogs that are hopping everywhere.

  “Come on, give me a hand!”

  “Still think frogs are stupid?”

  “Shut your trap and give me a hand.”

  We’re not quick enough though, and half of the afternoon’s catch is gone.

  “Now what am I going to tell my father?”

  “Tell him you were speaking ill of Bechi and God punished you. Or that you’re an idiot. Up to you. What about me though? What am I going to say to Mother turning up at the station in this state?”

  “Come back to my house and get yourself cleaned up. Oh, and y’know, Bechi doesn’t really do those things.”

  “And neither does my mother.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Nicola smiles and spits on his hand: “Friends?”

  I spit on my hand too and answer: “Yeah, friends.”

  We sing on the way home. In the copse we meet the Turk chopping down poplars for fire wood. Half for himself, half for the new doctor. That’s the deal, but at least he’ll keep warm through the winter.

  “Ah Nicola. When you get home, tell Bechi to water the roses.”

  The roses are the only thing that makes the Turk’s house different from the other huts on the riverside. All the others look like they were bu ilt in hard times. The Turk’s is different. I mean, like the others, it’s a hodgepodge of different kinds of bricks, and the wooden door is all swollen up with the damp and the roof shingles are moldering away in the fo g, but it has a row of rose bushes at the front. Beautiful, proud red roses that seem to bloom all year round.

  XV

  “How you get them to flower like that?” Mother asks him, perhaps the only time that she goes to the riverside to see Bechi, to take her something, I can’t remember what it was.

  “Because it’s my job,” smiles the Turk.

  “But aren’t you a fisherman?”

  Just like Uncle, with the Turk Mother uses the “lei” form of address, not “voi” like a good Fascist.

  “In another life I was a gardener.”

  “Abroad,” I add, proud that I know something about his life.