A letter from a father to his young son
© 1993 J. Asquini
Dear Carl,
I woke today tasting my own death: metallic, like a hammer to the skull if it's
violent. Or if I die peacefully it will taste like the lips of
Carmela Luna.
I haven't seen Carmela since that one summer 25 years ago. But
this morning the sweet odor of her damp skin, her light perfume
and the tangle of her hair pressed to my face were alive in me.
I could
feel her full lips on mine, the weightlessness of her body,
the rev of her heart.
I don't know why my life should end in this image of Carmela Luna.
So much has happened since then. But that's not why I'm writing
to you now, son.
I.
I met Carmela Luna on a trip to Italy with my grandfather. I was
14. My grandmother was supposed to go but she came up lame. Phlebitis,
the doctors called it. I thought the name ironic because my grandfather
pronounced it fly-bite-us. My dad thought it was an excuse
for her
to keep my grandfather home. But he wasn't fazed. Gramps was
determined to spend one more summer in Italy with his brothers.
He brought me
along to give me a history lesson, he said, and, I suspect,
so he wouldn't forfeit my grandmother's air fare.
In all honesty, I had no idea of what being Italian was about. I
hadn't been brought up that way. I was an American through and
through. But I was willing to give the Old Country a try. So I
cut out
of school early that year, dragging textbooks and assignments
with
me,
and headed
off to Italy excited and unaware.
I'll never forget the quiet
calm of that morning in May when we drove to Canada: buying Scotch
and
cartons of Parliaments at the duty free shop on the Ambassador
Bridge; tiny Windsor airport; the confusing wad of plane tickets
and baggage
tags stuffed in my passport; my dad kissing me on both cheeks
-- the first time I ever remember him kissing me; then the short
walk out
the terminal, up the rolling staircase and into the plane.
On board,
Gramps told me how he had broken from his brothers in the Old Country
to f ind better opportunities in the auto industry of Detroit. And
how he had changed our family name from Santini to Peoples: a figurative
translation from the Italian, which means little saints.
" Italy is a land of saints and angels," he explained, "but
the United States is a land of the people."
Then he briefed me in the language, teaching me to say Buon
giorno (good day). Ho sete (I'm thirsty). Ho
fame (I'm hungry). Basta (enough). Grazie (thanks). Sono
stanco (I'm tired). And, Ti voglio
bene (I love
you). "Ti voglio bene," he claimed, "is most important, because Italian is the language of love."
Little did I know.
My first glimpse of the Old Country came as we flew in over Venice,
which looked like a Disney fabrication from the air, and landed near
the
industrial tangle of Mestre. Then we caught a train for the two-hour,
stop-and-go ride north to the province of Friuli and our ancestral
home.
My grandfather's brothers, Dario and Mario, lived next door
to one another in Rividischia, a pea-pod of a village surrounded
by corn fields. They shared that special mix of adoration and petty
contempt
that only family members who have passed lifetimes together possess.
They welcomed us with open arms, blood-red wine and glass after
glass of grappa. I was confused but content: in Italy with Gramps
where
I could mispronounce a handful of words and understand not a one.
But the same sun was shining here as it was in Wyandotte. Clouds
floated by. Birds sang without accents. We were in the warm embrace
of family.
And we seemed, somehow, to have arrived home.
The next few days were no less comforting as we visited relatives
and friends in the prescribed and practiced fashion. Each stop
was a numbing rerun of the last: emphatic handshakes from calloused
old
men, humid hugs from buxom old ladies and the camphor-like swirl
and buzz of an impenetrable tongue and bitter wine.
During the jaunt
from
one house to another Gramps would explain to me who we were about
to visit next. That's when I first heard Carmela's name. He had
noticed my isolation and so had begun inquiring about anyone who might
be
able to speak English. He thought he had found someone, a girl
just a year older than me named Carmela Luna, the granddaughter of
a schoolmate
of his. We were to visit her the next day.
" Carmela Luna," I rolled the words in my mouth, envisioning a curvaceous girl full of frolic. But when the wine wore off I began to get worried. I sat alone in Uncle Dario's yard that evening watching the light slip from the dish of the sky above Friuli, wondering if this Carmela Luna could live up to the expectations of a 14-year-old boy or if I would be saddled with the incomprehensible companionship of an Italian country girl from which there was no graceful escape.
The next afternoon Gramps and I headed off on foot past the cemetery
where Santini is a common inscription, through the cross-roads of
Muscletto and its orderly stand of trees, on to Romans di Varmo to
buy stamps and to meet Carmela Luna.
By the time we reached Romans
the brilliant sun had made us tense from squinting. We were hot and
thirsty. The apartment of his old schoolmate was upstairs above Carmela's
home. It was dark and the air thick with the smell of over-ripe flowers.
Wine and coffee didn't sound refreshing but that's what she served
us. The buzz of wine. The swirl of language. The numbing drone of
a hot afternoon. Then someone entered the room: a silhouette lit only
by a slit of sun streaking through the shutters behind it, the curved
form of an angel -- Carmela. My heart skated for the sky.
"Hello, Joe Peoples," she said in practiced English and offered her hand. I stood up and took it. What could I say in Italian? It hadn't registered yet that she had addressed me in English.
Silence mounted.
"Ti voglio bene," I heard my voice say.
Gramps laughed, slapping the table. Carmela's grandmother snickered in her wine. The warmth of embarrassment swelled in me and flowed down my arm to where I held Carmela's soft hand.
She squeezed my hand and said, "Come, now we go to the post office." Her grasp made me think it was she who was clinging to my hand and not I clutching hers. We escaped to the street below.
The instant we stepped into the sunlight I could see just how beautiful she was, could feel the lure of her intensely brown eyes, the willowy line of her neck, the lightness of her touch, and could smell the fragrant warmth of her smooth skin. I longed for her to be my girl, for us to fall dizzily for one another.
We turned the corner into the square where some boys about my age kicked a soccer ball. They paused to fill their eyes with Carmela. When we returned from the post office they stopped again to stare, to whistle and to size me up. They exchanged a few words with Carmela, wanting to know who I was, why I was with her and how good I was at soccer. Carmela was curt, identifying me as her American friend and pointing out that my soccer prowess wasn't relevant. Nonetheless, the biggest one, Marco, challenged me to join them on the field that afternoon. I noticed that throughout the conversation he stood on one foot, cradling the ball on the top of his other foot -- something I was certain I couldn't do for a second let alone a few minutes.
But being a guy and not knowing what else to do I accepted his challenge: a skinny foreigner taking on the natives at their game. Then from the corner of my eye I spotted something familiar. Pegged to the wall of the square was a rusted basketball rim. I gestured to it and asked Carmela to explain to Marco that after soccer we would play at that. Marco cocked his head, paused and nodded. While his head was still silently bobbing Carmela hooked her arm in mine and led me away.
"I am glad you are here, Joe Peoples," she said. Our bodies bumped as we walked. Her breast pressed against my arm. "I am so tired of these boys in this town. They are animals. All they want is . . . how you say? . . . is to undress me with their eyes."
My heart raced.
"But they are so coarse," she went on, "they do not know how to ask for what they want."
My head buzzed as the wants of boys separated by generations, by custom and language, by the yawn of the Atlantic all at once became clearly and simply the same.
"Carmela," I said, but could manage nothing more.
By the time we returned to her grandmother's apartment we found
my grandfather ready to leave. Plans had been made for Carmela and
her grandmother to
join us at Uncle Dario's for dinner that evening. Signora Baci, the owner
of the
estate Uncle Dario ran, would be the guest of honor. In the meantime
Carmela needed to assist her grandmother in the garden and I had Marco
and the
boys to contend with. So Gramps and I marched home. Then I changed my shoes,
borrowed
a bike from Uncle Dario and sped back to Romans, propelled by fine thoughts
of Carmela and the glorious prospect of seeing her again that evening.
The athletic events went as you would have expected. Much to the satisfaction
of Marco I
was in over my head on the soccer field. But in those days I could run
like
the wind. Even though I couldn't carry the ball with any finesse I could
fly by those guys as if they were crumbling ruins. Still, I didn't take
the challenge
to heart. How could I with Carmela filling so much of it that day? I
just played for the fun of it. So Marco and his boys slowly began
to appreciate
me for my
speed and willingness to try.
Basketball, on the other hand, was a different matter even
if we did have to play with the soccer ball. I've never been a standout
player
but I could dribble well, drive to the basket, spin off a 360, and sink
a finger roll. Against guys who had never really played I could score at
will. The
challenge
was over before it started. We all knew it would be so I didn't press
the point. Instead, I kept feeding Marco for easy shots. He scored
big that
day,
but not
as big as I did. I made friends with all of them, not to mention Carmela,
and in a single afternoon shifted the focus of the summer's athletics
from soccer to basketball where I was a local hero. We played whenever
we could,
all
of
them eager to learn the moves of the Americano. |
II
Let me say a thing or two about girls. First of all, they can
occupy an awful lot of a guy's heart and mind. Which is not all
bad. Secondly, a sharp girl can read a guy like a book. Which,
I learned, is not saying a whole lot.
I guess everyone had noticed how I had fallen for Carmela. So before she arrived
that evening I heard from Uncle Dario, from Uncle Mario and from both of my
aunts how I shouldn't neglect the studies I had brought with me.
But the idea of neglecting them had never entered my mind. The truth is I hadn't
been able to think of much at all that evening except Carmela and how I might
best get next to her.
And someone else, it seemed, had been thinking, too.
Just as Carmela and her grandmother walked through the door Signora Baci arrived
in all her frantic splendor. She saluted us with sweeping gestures, gave robust
squeezes of hands and made flittering turns of her head to welcome kisses on
her cheeks from the ladies. She seemed to be a majestic, theatrical bird.
In no time at all La Signora had separated Carmela and me from the others.
She too spoke a little English and apparently claimed her interest in the language
as a bond to unite the three of us. She told us she liked Joyce and James,
romance and tragedy, and began quoting passionately from Thomas Hardy. "Your
eyes on me were as eyes that rove over tedious riddles of years ago," she
spouted as she twirled her streaked, matter-of-fact hair in her pale fingers
and tipped her head to deflect any contact with our eyes. When dinner was served
she gathered us both robustly by the arms and planted us at either side of
her at the head of the table. After Uncle Dario made a toast to her, she responded
with one to my grandfather for travelling so far to return to the land of his
birth, and then with one to me and the spirit of youth. As she raised her glass
her warm nature filled me like wine. We drank and the cacophony of conversation
swept over the room.
"I understand you are missing some time in school by coming here to Italy," Signora
Baci said to me.
"I am," I answered.
"And that you have brought some school work along with you."
"I have."
"Have you been tending to your lessons?" she asked.
I hesitated, even though I had been studying.
"You must not neglect your schoolwork," she insisted. "I will
not allow it. There are plenty of things to do here in Italy but not at the expense
of your studies. Starting tomorrow I will see that you have a place and time
to complete your lessons."
I frowned, looking for a way to explain, but she continued, "I'll make
all the arrangements. You can study each morning in peace at my house. Then
in the afternoon Carmela can come by after her school. You will give us English
lessons. I will talk to both of your grandparents this evening and it will
all be arranged. This is okay?" she asked.
I nodded obediently. Carmela did, too. Inside me the nausea of apprehension
wrestled with the thrill of seeing Carmela every day.
Morning seems to mean something different for everyone. For La
Signora it meant anytime after 11:30 which gave me plenty of time
to pedal a bicycle the three miles to her home.
Her house was small but noble, the yard cluttered with shrubbery. She had placed
a small desk for me by a large window in the main room. So I was constantly
interrupted by farmhands passing through the yard or calling at the front door
or whenever La Signora needed my assistance, which was often.
In the beginning the drawer of my desk contained only a stack of paper, pencils
and an Italian/English dictionary. As the days wore on, and the requests of
Signora Baci developed a pattern, a hammer, pliers, screwdrivers, and a few
other tools took up permanent residence in it. The first day I was there she
called me to fix the handle that had fallen off a large chest of drawers. That's
how I got one screwdriver. The next day a bird feeder had to be wired in place:
the pliers. Then one day it was hanging a picture: the hammer. After that a
door latch: a chisel and another screwdriver. Retrieving an earring from under
a bureau: a length of aluminum wire.
You get the idea. But you can't imagine the air of complexity that swept over
these simple projects. Before I filled my drawer with them just finding the
tools took hours. And if my corrective efforts were successful she heaped praise
and thanks on me by the bucketful, calling me a master of Yankee ingenuity.
After a morning of patching things together around the house Signora Baci would
instruct me in Italian as we dined outside at a huge cement table under the
shade of an old fig tree. By the time we were through with lunch a school bus
would approach, pause and labor off, leaving behind it the tick tick of Carmela's
footsteps on the brick drive. I'd open my text books and the three of us would
complete an assignment that had been given to me way back in Wyandotte.
Throughout every afternoon, which grew hotter as weeks progressed, the cement
table remained cool to the touch. Signora Baci smoked fragrant cigarettes,
exhaling in grand gestures to the sky. Carmela stayed alert and fresh, her
eyes filled with schoolgirl eagerness. And I -- while listening to my voice
describe each lesson -- seemed to float out of my body and hover above in the
thick green leaves of the fig tree, drinking in through every pore the beauty
and innocence of the scene below as it rose in the warmth and mystery of this
far-off land.
The upshot of it all was that I was getting my schoolwork done, learning a
ton about fixing things around the house, beginning to grasp Italian, and passing
splendid afternoons in the company of two beautiful but strikingly different
women. While La Signora seemed to spill from herself and overflow all containers,
Carmela, in contrast, was in relaxed control: well-proportioned and contained.
She was, in fact, so perfectly packaged that she seemed unaware of her overwhelming
beauty and was just great fun to be around.
After our lessons I would give Carmela a ride home on the crossbar of Uncle
Dario's bicycle. Carmela would vary our route daily, directing me off the paved
street for short-cuts through rows of grapevines and sprouting fields.
Even though these two-tracks seemed remote they were regularly travelled. We'd
meet farm workers walking, riding bikes or tractors and would have to make
way for large trucks hauling equipment or manure. And once we were nearly clipped
by a scurrying Fiat full of men in suits.
All the locals we met along the way knew Carmela and recognized me as the American
grandson of their old friend. Collectively, Carmela and I were known as I Giovani
di Baci, and I, for sharing my 9th-grade homework, as Il Professore.
We would walk the bike slowly along these trails, alone together, and talk
of things we could express with our simple words. It was near bliss. I was
only frustrated by all the things I wanted to say to Carmela which, because
of my infantile knowledge of the language, remained locked up in my head.
A limited vocabulary can be tormenting because you can't get your thoughts
from here to there in anything but the most crude and direct manner. And Marco
and the boys had already taught me that crude and direct wouldn't get me anywhere.
It's most humbling at first when the house pets understand more of the language
than you do. But even when you learn a few words and phrases you still lack
the ability to express the subtle things that seem so important.
So hanging over me all this time was a feeling of ineptness because I couldn't
say to Carmela what I was really thinking. Instead, I was reduced to tugging
at her arm and pointing at pheasants scurrying down corn rows. Or I could say, "Che
bella," then gesture toward clouds dropping curtains of rain in the distance. "Guarda," I
would say as I threw a flat stone in a wide arc around a tree or when I rode
the bike backwards while sitting on the handlebars: anything for a laugh.
One day Carmela directed us down a trail running along a small, deep stream
called the Stelle. It resembled creeks my dad and I fished back home.
"Guarda," I said as I picked up a stick and began flushing black darts
of trout from undercuts and log jams. My probing brought us to a grassy point
along the bank where we took off our shoes and dipped our feet in the cool water.
I lay back on the warm earth and turned toward Carmela. She seemed quietly content,
gazing far off across the river. And I remember thinking that if I could freeze
any moment in my life it would be this one right here: the warm grass, the cool-flowing
stream, Carmela and the azure sky.
I closed my eyes to fix the scene in my memory when Carmela broke my reverie.
"Joe Peoples," she said softly. I opened my eyes to see she was still
focused on something way off across the way. She spoke slowly, "You make
repairs for La Signora, you teach us English, you learn Italian, you find birds
and fish like a hunter, you play professional basketball, even soccer. Do you,
Joe Peoples, know everything?"
Gads, what could I say?
She turned to me. "Do you know what it is like to kiss an Italian girl?"
She didn't wait for a reply but leaned over and kissed me once, twice, three
times full on the lips. I closed my eyes and felt as if I were sinking ever
so slowly into the depths of the earth. The ground seemed to quiver. I wrapped
my arms around Carmela to carry her with me. We kissed: her warm, soft lips
open on mine. And the earth shivered and rumbled. Then it began to roar with
the sound of a passing truck. We jumped up and looked about. No truck But the
noise grew. And the ground waved beneath our feet.
"Il terremoto -- earthquake," she whispered. And we clung together,
laughing in each other's arms as the tremor passed.
Any geologist could explain what I felt during my first kiss from Carmela wasn't
just the heave-ho of passion but the grinding of plate tectonics. Italy, they
claim, is attached to the African plate which is ramming the under-belly of
the European plate, thrusting up the Alps and causing the locals to reinforce
their structures with iron rods or submit to the inevitable catastrophe.
At any rate, we hopped back on the bike and headed home, slightly shaken but
undamaged.
When I dropped Carmela at her door she gave my hand a gentle squeeze and curled
a tiny smile across her mouth in a way I hadn't seen before. I smiled broadly
back then scampered to find Marco and the boys in the square where I played
a particularly inspired game of basketball.
A week or so passed without us being able to pick up where the tremor had left
us off. Either Carmela had obligations she hurried to or Uncle Mario did us
the favor of picking us up at La Signora's and driving us home.
But summer vacation was nearly here. Carmela would complete school in a few
days and we were closing in on the end of my lessons as well. I was as excited
as ever by the freedom of the season about to begin. The possibilities seemed
as grand as the Alps that roared at the sky along the northern horizon, but
not nearly as distant.
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