The Caviar Lady Read online

  “Yes, when I was young I took care of the roses in the garden of the summer residence of the Italian Ambassador in Istanbul, in Turkey.”

  “And then what?” asks Mother, almost flirtatiously.

  “Then there was the war with the Turks and the Italians had to leave.”

  “But you don’t look that old. When was the war with Turks?”

  “Mother, the Italian-Turkish war in Libya, where Uncle got his medal.”

  “The war in Libya? What’s that got to do with the Turks?”

  Perhaps Nicola was right, women are stupid. Not all of them of course - not Bechi, not the school teacher, it was her who taught me these things - but Mother yes. At least this morning.

  “What a pity,” says Mother, looking at the roses. “You must have been sad to leave. But you were lucky, you know. I’ve heard certain things about the Turks. Was your wife Turkish too?”

  The Turk is about to lose his patience. And I can understand him. But Mother keeps on, greedy for more tidbits. Me and Bechi listen in too. Nicola whistles, he must have heard it all before. He always pretends to know everything anyway.

  “No, no, Lukina was Russian.”

  His voice sounds choked when he says the word Lukina. And his expression, normally so stern, gets softer. Sometimes one word is all it takes to change a person.

  “Russian?” Mother says, taken aback. “But how come, if you don’t mind telling me?”

  “Because when I left Turkey I went to Russia.”

  “Don’t tell me you were a secret agent?”

  Mother is getting more and more stupid. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  The Turk bursts out laughing: “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “Were you a political agitator like Nellino’s poor father, then?”

  The Turk gets all serious:

  “I’ve always kept right out of politics. My life has been all work.”

  “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “No offence taken. All I did was go to Astrakhan, with another gardener from the embassy. He was Russian. He told me there was plenty of work there so I went with him.”

  “And did you find work?”

  “Oh yes, there was lots of work. We caught sturgeon that make the Po ones look like anchovies...”

  “Sturgeon?”

  “Oh yes, on the Caspian Sea, the biggest sturgeon in the world.”

  “So how did you end up here?”

  “There was a war on in Europe, but in Russia there was a revolution too. It wasn’t easy being an Italian far from home.”

  “You’re Italian?”

  “Of course. I’m from Ca’ Badessa. My poor folks, may God rest their souls...”

  Unbelievably, the Turk makes the sign of the cross, and even Nicola stops whistling at that.

  “My poor mother and father were from there. They sent me into service with a family that became the Ambassador’s family.”

  See how Mother does it? She pretends to be stupid but she draws the whole story out of the Turk.

  “And what about the roses? How did you become a gardener?”

  “I don’t know what to call it: a gift, a chance thing? The first time I saw a rose, we looked each other in the eye and came to an understanding.”

  “You’re quite the poet...”

  “No, not me. I’m just a fisherman.”

  The Turk is back to his normal self now.

  “You have to excuse me, I must be getting back to work.”

  “Do forgive me,” says Mother, who has gone all serious now too.

  Nicola goes after his father and Bechi says:

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Please think nothing of it.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye.”

  I wonder why it is that no one round here uses the proper “voi” form of address. When I ask Mother where Ca’ Badessa is, she looks at me, thinks for a bit and answers: “I’m not sure. Somewhere along the Po I think.”

  Of course that’s what you think. You think everything’s along the Po somewhere. That’s what I reckon, but I keep my mouth shut.

  It’s summer, and we’ve declared war on Russia. Victory should be imminent. At least that’s what they said at the cinema in the village. And I hope it’s true, because if people get word that Nicola’s mother was Russian they’ll start calling him a traitor too, like they do to me, because of my father. As if anyone can be blamed for the parents they get landed with. Especially because I know next to nothing about my father. I don’t even have his surname, which was Costa. When I repeat it in my head - Costa, Costa, Costa – it makes me clench my fists and think it cost him too much to give me his name. He’s not even on my birth certificate.

  “He did it for you,” Mother once told me. “He was a wanted man, and they would have been after you too.” I believed this story for as long as you believe in Saint Nicholas or the Befana bringing gifts at Epiphany. Then one day you see your mother wrapping up the gifts from the saint and you realise it was all just a lie. My moment of truth came when I went to school: Romeo’s surname is Costa but no one has ever come looking for him.

  The truth is that my father didn’t take care of me, or Mother. He didn’t even marry her. And when he got killed Mother found out in secret from old friends. She didn’t even know where her Menandro Costa was. Yes, my father had the name of a Greek comedy writer, that’s what Mother always tells me. Then she always says:

  “Do you know what a comedy writer is?”

  “Of course,” I answer patiently. “Someone who writes comedies.”

  But it’s more a tragedy than a comedy, I think, to know your father was in Spain shooting at priests and crucifixes, when there were brave Italian soldiers volunteering to free Spain from the Bolsheviks.

  I was old enough to see the Fascists march to victory. Mother and Uncle didn’t even know where my father was. By then Uncle had been living with us for ages. Or rather, we had been living with him.

  “At least this way I don’t have to pay the bachelor tax,” he said, laughing.

  I found out that my father was dead because one day Mother came home crying. And for two days all she did was cry. Uncle scolded her and told her she was being stupid.

  “What has that man ever done for you? Up and left you with this tinker. Stop crying and get on with your life.” The tinker is me. And sometimes I think that maybe Mother was wrong. Maybe my father is someone else altogether. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and he’ll come for me. Riding a white stallion, who knows. And if I dream about it I’ll tell Nicola and he’ll catch a sturgeon for us. Oh Mother, why did you have to go and fall in love with a traitor, of all people?

  XVI

  I’ve always thought Bechi is beautiful. At least ever since the day she cleaned our kitchen floor. Now that she’s grown a bit, and her chest has grown too, all the men have noticed and the Turk went to the tavern to have words with the riverside men:

  “I’ve no daughters of my own, so Bechi is like a daughter to me. If anyone round here gets any strange ideas I’m telling you to take a dip in the river to cool off, because if anyone lays so much as a finger on her...”

  And he mimes cutting his throat.

  Some of them swallowed to see if their Adam’s apples were still in place. Nena’s eyes were shining, Nicola says. Everyone heard her because she really raised her voice and said,

  “Hear hear! If only my father had spoken up for me like that... God rest his soul.”

  “Only he never did,” said Battista the eel man, giving her a slap on the backside.

  “Go to hell Battista,” Nena answered right back. She was in no mood for joking around.

  Battista is known as the eel man because he always catches loads of eels, even when there’s a full moon and they all seem to go into hiding. He always takes those black snakes of his to market. Sometimes we tag along to spy on him.

  “What do yo
u think about what your father said about Bechi?” I ask Nicola.

  “Nothing,” he answers. “Because afterwards he took me aside and gave me a father to son talk, know what I mean?”

  “Nah.”

  “He told me that things change at my age and that having girls around can be a dangerous influence. And that if I lay a finger on my cousin he’ll cut it off. And the other one.”

  “The other what?”

  “The other finger,” Nicola says, pointing down there. And he laughs.

  I think it’s really stupid the way he thinks it’s so funny to talk about the thing in his pants all the time. “Shut up, stupid,” I say. “Surely you'd never really touch Bechi?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No, just asking, that’s all. We’re friends, it’s not like I’m going to cut off your pecker.”

  “But she’s my cousin...”

  “Exactly. She’s not your sister.”

  “Yeah but for me she should be like Our Lady.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Don Antonio.”

  “The Virgin Mary! The Virgin Mary!”

  We chant it to Bechi as we go into the Turk’s house.

  She’s cleaning the house, as much as anyone can clean a shack on the riverside, and she tells us to stop it, to stop acting like little kids. Well that has an effect right away. We stand to attention, backs straight, shoulders back.

  “That’s more like it,” she says. And laughs.

  She might not be the Virgin Mary, but things have changed round here since she came. She is so like the Turk, you can see that they’re related. You always get the feeling that she’s got a secret, that she’s hiding something. But there’s no use asking her because she just smiles and leaves you hanging. Talking to girls can be really difficult. She doesn’t even do the tomboy things that all the other girls on the riverside do. With Rita, little Alba, Marta, Benedetta, we often go to collect sticks for kindling in the woods, or duck hunting even though it’s banned, or drive hares out of their dens, catch fish in the ponds and grub around for corncob husks to smoke. But as Nicola says, they don’t mind showing you their panties, they’re hardly the Blessed Virgin. To hear him talking about girls you’d think he’s Casanova in person.

  Bechi is more like the city girls, but we never see any of those round here so I don’t really know whether she’s like them or not. I think she is though, because when I’m in Ferrara and I stake out the girls’ entrance opposite the boarding school in the morning, they all look a bit like Bechi. Well, she’s prettier, but they act the same way. But Bechi is dirt poor. She’s not like other poor people, I mean she reads books and sometimes she even stops to listen to us when we talk, but she’s still dirt poor.

  I can understand, though, why Mother cares about her: Bechi is really special. The riverside people say that even the Turk’s character has improved since his niece showed up. Of course if he were able to send Bechi and Nicola to school, they would be a really nice family. He says he doesn’t have the money, but I heard the secretary of the Party saying that he’d offered to help them out so Nicola could go to school. Maybe I shouldn’t be so nosey. But what can I do? Nicola’s my best friend and Bechi’s his cousin.

  XVII

  The summer of ’41 is the summer for fish. Every morning at dawn Nicola and me go out on the water. Sometimes we go to the sandy area s of the river bank, where we try to net perch. On other days we put out pots to catch barbel, chub and roach, that Nena buys off us. She pays us in wine, sugar and coffee. It takes pounds and pounds of roach to earn a paper twist of sugar.

  The Turk is happy, and Mother too, about this sort of summer job we’ve got. Uncle hardly ever worries about how I spend my days. He has to run the station, and organise the freight wagons, and in his spare time he reads the newspapers. He always buys a lot of papers, more than anyone could need and more than a stationmaster could afford, but for him it’s like stepping into another life. He puts on his metal-framed glasses which is the signal that he won’t listen to another thing. All the newspaper readers in the village read Il Resto del Carlino. I think Uncle likes to give himself airs by reading Il Corriere della Sera. Added to that is La Domenica del Corriere, the Sunday paper, which comes with illustrations. For me Uncle buys Il Corriere dei Piccoli, and me and Nicola read that, and the comic Il Vittorioso, hidden in the reed beds on the riverside or in the coves where there are huts that get used for the summer evening get-togethers, for fishing, for making out. I think the Turk lets us do it because deep down he doesn’t really believe that there’s no point in getting an education. I think he’s glad Nicola still reads. Or that he sounds more educated than a fisherman’s son should, as Dr. Girardi once commented, disapprovingly - it was around the time he was driving around in the Isotta Fraschini.

  Apart from fishing on the Po, we also go to the drainage channels to put nets across the outflows to see if we can get any carp or tench. The fishermen, the real ones who live on the riverside, don’t even know where the drainage channels are. They never leave the riverside, except to climb to the top of the embankment. All they have ever seen in their lives is the river, from ground level or the embankment. So when we turn up with carp, that live in the Po too but are not easy to catch, everyone wonders how we did it. We don’t say how, but where, in the drainage channels, which just makes them turn up their noses.

  It’s the bicycle that makes the difference. They have their boats for going up and down the river, but we have bicycles, so we have broader horizons. Eel fishing is our real obsession. We’ve heard people say that in some markets eels fetch almost as much as sturgeon. It’s not true. Whenever we’ve caught them we’ve made good money, but not that much. But we like to believe it anyway. We follow Battista the eel man in the evening, when everyone is out on the banks or drinking wine in the tavern. He leaves his house with a bag over his shoulder and we follow from a distance, staying out of sight. There’s always the risk in the dark of stepping into a boggy patch and getting stuck in the mud. Then there’s the risk of him seeing us and getting mad. Or him playing a trick on us. But when he sees us he doesn’t get angry. He just gives us the slip. And we never manage to work out where he goes. We inspect the whole area the next day looking for his tracks, but there’s nothing. I reckon he catches his eels in the Po itself. Nicola says he must know a hidden meander in the river. But how can there be such a thing as a meander so hidden that we haven’t come across it in our travels yet?

  “Maybe we’re not going far enough.”

  “Maybe you can only get there by boat.”

  “But if you have to go by boat why does he go out on foot?”

  “To lose us he makes us walk round the woods then he goes back to the riverside to get his boat.”

  “Nah.”

  “Might be.”

  It just might be. So one night we follow him, and after we lose him we don’t go fishing as usual, but backtrack. We count the boats and the eel man’s is missing.

  “See? I was right!” Nicola whispers triumphantly. “Get in the boat and we’ll go after him.”

  “Your father will kill us if he finds out we’ve taken the launch...”

  “He won’t see us, he’s drinking with the others.”

  “And if he comes out and sees the boat’s gone?”

  “Get away with you... I’m second in command anyway.”

  “Yeah but have you ever taken the boat out in the dark?”

  “You’re scared of the river! It’s not my father, it’s the river!”

  Nicola starts teasing me and I’d like to show him what for but this time he’s right. I am scared. Scared of the river at night, of witches in the dark, of drowning, or not finding my way home, or encountering one of those monsters that are half men, half fish and half snake that the fishermen talk about during their summer evening gatherings.

  Nicola tries to reassure me:

  “There’s nothing out here at night. Just eels.”

  “Just ee
ls,” I repeat to myself.

  But as we go gliding along silently on the river current I can sense that there are all sorts of things lurking just below the surface. I’ve never been out in a boat at night. I’ve hardly even been that many times in the daytime. There’s a strange kind of light that looks like it’s coming off the water. You know you’re alive because of the mosquitoes. We used to rub diesel fuel on our skin to keep them away, but since there’s no diesel to be had for love or money these days, out on the river you get eaten alive. I can hear the water lapping against the side of the boat, which Nicola is controlling with an oar.

  “See? I was right!” he says.

  But apart from the water swirling beneath us I can’t see anything.

  “Look over there, where it’s lighter.”

  There’s a gap in the reeds. When the bow of the boat slides into the inlet we can hear waterfowl paddling on the surface of the water. And little splashes made by fish jumping.

  “Carp,” says Nicola. “This is the right inlet for the eels.”

  “The splashes are too big,” I say. “It’s sturgeon if you ask me.”

  “There’s no sturgeon around now, they’ve all gone back to the sea.”

  We try to get a feel for the layout of this long, narrow inlet that is invisible from the riverside, and just might be where the eel man comes to fish.

  Nicola approaches the bank and we hesitantly feel around for somewhere to attach the rope with all the lines and hooks on it. It has to be a safe place where no one’ll see it, because if someone steals our hooks there’ll be no fish for us tonight. A branch almost takes my eye out, but at last it’s the kind of branch we need, sticking out from an old tree trunk that’s half buried in the sand. We tie the rope to it and push it under the water so it won’t show. Then we start to put down our hooks, using an oar to push across to the other side of the inlet. The long rope, with fifty lines hanging from it, sinks out of sight under the water. Attached to every piece of line is a hook, and on every hook there is a worm, that we picked out of a heap of manure. It’s a lethal weapon. We get across to the other side and look for something to tie the other end of the rope to. We’ll come back at dawn. Fingers crossed it’s our lucky night.