I woke up every morning to the sound of Benjamin Messenger’s violin echoing through the small courtyard. “The Meditation” is a beautifully haunting and melodic piece that both stirs the heart, and moves the soul. The mood comes across as tranquil, and thoughtful, like the lingering scent of signora Rabizzi’s perfume after she’s left the room. The music followed me down the lift like a poignantly, evocative memory, bursting out onto the street where people paused briefly—hesitating for just that much longer than they normally would—wondering where the music was coming from before they continued walking through their busy lives.
I’d attend to my chores every morning, which meant I opened the store and brought in the deliveries Momma and Zia Fatima would use to make their gelato. They’d follow half an hour later, but in the meantime I’d sign invoices, carry crates of ingredients in from the alley, and load the machines with the custards they’d made the night before—basically doing all the heavy lifting for them—before returning to the apartment, eating the breakfast Momma prepared for me, and then rushing off to school. I’d come home for lunch—pausing to feed the fish before leaving once more—coming home some time before five in the afternoon. After doing whatever schoolwork I might have had, I’d start preparing dinner, which usually involved putting together whatever food Momma left out for me on the counter. Dinner would be made and on the table by seven, when Momma and Zia Fatima would come home after having closed the shop for the day.
The days were long—felt more gruelling than they were—but were usually slower in the winter months when the tourist season was over. Never one to go to Church on Sundays, I’d often walk the streets and alleyways of the Trastevere with signora Rabizzi, carrying her easel and canvas bag of paints while she sought out the perfect location for her newest project. It would sometimes take as much as ten days for her to complete a painting. I would spend all of my time watching her, remembering how she looked laying on her bed, naked. I knew when she busied herself with a project she’d often distract herself with her own self portrait, and while she wasn’t always posing naked for herself, more often than not, she was.
On a cold November morning signora Rabizzi asked both myself, and Benjamin Messenger, if we’d like to accompany her and help her search out a new subject for her next painting. She was thinking about the Trastevere, she said, down by the river, saying how the light was somehow different there at this time of the year.
“I think it’s the trees,” I said.
“The trees? What makes you think that?”
“Well, at this time of the year, a great many of the trees have turned colour, haven’t they? When the sun hits them at just the right moment, well, the leaves aren’t quite dead and brown, are they? A few are, and they’re withering on some of the branches, but for the most part, they’re still alive, and vibrant. And with the sun hitting the river and lighting them up like a pane of stained glass, and then the sun glaring off the cobblestones…well, it makes for a nice painting.”
“You’ve been paying attention?” She sounded surprised, and looked up at me with a smile as she stroked my cheek. “Do you like my paintings, Lorenzo?”
“Of course. I like the colours.”
“And you Mr. Messenger? What do you think of my paintings?”
“To be quite honest, I haven’t seen any of your paintings. Are they on the walls?” he asked. “I’m sorry if I failed to notice.”
“I understand,” she said, nodding as she reached for her sketchbook. “No one makes a conscious effort to look at a painting; it’s something they are drawn to. A person either has to have it pointed out to them, or they’re captured by the subject matter, or the colours. Most paintings are taken for granted.”
“Like music.”
“Exactly,” she smiled.
“You only hear a piece of music when it strikes a chord, if you’ll pardon the pun,” signore Messenger added with a smile.
That was an example of wit, I told myself. I have to learn that if I ever want to be well-versed in English.
“You honestly do not remember me, do you?” he asked.
“Remember you from where?”
“You were my nurse during the war.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I was a nurse,” she laughed. “I volunteered and did what I could. We all did what we could to help. Some of us read letters, or wrote them; some of us helped change dressings. I suppose you could say I picked a few things up along the way, but I wouldn’t go as fas as to say I was a real nurse.”
“How could a broken Englishman expect a beautiful Italian nurse to remember him, especially a man who had his face bandaged?”
“He couldn’t, could he?” She said it with a degree of tenderness I’d never heard from her before. There was a hint of tears threatening, and she turned her back.
“No. He could only fantasize about her, or fixate on her; maybe even obsess over her.”
“I’m sorry, signore. I truly am. I’m also truly flattered that a broken Englishman would obsess over an Italian nurse after all these years.”
“I’m not surprised you don’t remember me, in fact, I’m kind of happy. It will make leaving easier.”
“Are you leaving?” I asked. “What about your concert?”
“You need not leave on my account; or am I flattering myself assuming you’re leaving because of me?”
“I thought me being here would make things uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable? Signore Messenger, I’ve had men lust after me and obsess over me since I was a child.”
“A child?” I laughed.
“It was a long time ago,” she smiled.
“Is that when you lost your innocence?”
“No, that came later, during the war,” she said, her smile quickly fading. “Didn’t we all lose a little bit of something then? Husbands? Wives? Lovers? Parents?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories,” he said.
“Bad memories? We all have bad memories. It’s Nature’s way of reminding us that we have to learn to accept them,” she replied, looking at me.
“Accept what?” I asked.
She looked at me and smiled. It was a soft, forgiving smile I thought, as she turned away from us. She put a hand up to shade her eyes—or perhaps wipe them, I don’t know—as she looked at the trees around us. She looked down at me and smiled again. There was a tear in her eye that had escaped—I saw it reflecting in the light at she turned to look at me.
“I think you might be right, Lorenzo,” she said. “About the trees,” she added, and turning, leaned against the brick wall, focusing down the length of it. I looked at the alleyway curving off to the right, the table and chairs outside the small bistro reflecting the sunlight while green ivy meandered up the building’s wall. There was the singular arch of the ponte Rotto in the distance, the cold, grey waters of the Tiber breaking around it.
“I thought you said you lived in Livorno?” I asked.
“I did.”
“And what happened when you were a child?”
“That’s a story for another day. I doubt you’d understand.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Lorenzo,” signore Messenger said gently. “Do you remember that day when I told you sometimes it’s better not to ask, or know, some things?”
“Si?”
“This would be one of those times.”
I looked at signora Rabizzi and she smiled, nodding slowly.
“Si,” I said, not really understanding.
“Just think of it as the evil that men do,” he said, the smile on his face horribly twisted because of his scars.
It would take me years to understand the evil that men do, or can do, and I wondered how she could be so accepting of it; I told myself I would prove unforgiving.
I had no idea as to how far people will go.
Two days later I slipped my last class and came home early from school. I’d complained of a headache so severe, I’m sure the teachers were convinced I was dying of a brain hemorrhage. They wanted to call my mother but I told them she was out for the day; someone wanted to buy the galateria.
They asked me if I was lying.
I said I wasn’t.
I took the bus to the train station, and from there it was a short ten minute walk home. The streets were busy with the sounds of construction all around, the hurrying hubbub of traffic and pedestrians, and then, the closer I got to home, the melancholy sound of music echoing its lost lament. It seemed to float along the street, and I could see a few of the people walking and then slowing down, some even stopping to listen. It was as if the music had somehow captured them, for just that moment—perhaps taken them to another time, or another place—like a memory suddenly brought to light.
I opened the front gate. It was a large, brass studded monstrosity, looking more like it should be standing in a castle’s keep than as the entrance to a building. I was expecting I’d see Benjamin Messenger standing in the middle of the courtyard; he wasn’t. He must have found a place where the acoustics appealed to him, I told myself as I walked to the fish pond, putting a hand into the water before picking up the small feed bag signora Rabizzi left for me there.
I opened the second door, walking to the lift. Pushing the button, I waited. I could still hear the music, but it was distant, and with the lift coming down it was soon drowned out by the syncopated melody of clanking wheels and solid chains. When the car arrived, I pulled the gate open and stepped inside.
The sun came in through the narrow stained glass windows at a slant, painting colours up against the walls and along the floor below. I’ve always tried to find designs in the various colours as they splash up against the walls, the way signora Rabizzi showed me. The lift always seemed to rise up at a faster rate when all I wanted was the time to examine the walls on my way up. It always seemed that just as I found a picture in my mind’s eye that made sense, it would distort, pull apart, and I’d have to start all over again—but on the way down.
I sent the lift back down because that’s what signora Rabizzi expected, even though no one else bothered. I walked the short steps from the lift to our door, letting myself in and walking to the icebox where I took out the milk and drank it right from the bottle. I could imagine Momma screaming at me and so placed the bottle back into the icebox while I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. I could still hear the music playing, and after finding a left over piece of chicken I was eager to eat, closed the door of the icebox and ate the chicken standing over the sink and staring out of the window.
We lived on the top floor of the apartment building, and while the view wasn’t spectacular, it did have a view of the thick walls surrounding the Vatican. There’s always a long line of visitors queuing up for a quick run through the Vatican, and while I marvel at how people can stand in line for hours on end just so that they might say, once they returned home, that they’d been to the Vatican but were unimpressed. I’ve always thought if you were unimpressed with the Vatican, the fault is not in the art and architecture of the High Renaissance, but within yourself.
I thought perhaps signora Rabizzi was in her studio-bedroom working on the sketches she’d started the day she brought both Benjamin Messenger and myself with her on her walk through the streets of the Trastevere. We’d both watched in amazement as she sketched in the scene with deft strokes. The alleyway curved off to the right, the tables and chairs almost visible with their checkered tablecloths blowing in the wind; the ivied wall a garden of light and shadows. She’d put arrows in, swooping down from the left so she knew where the light was coming from. She scratched her charcoal in large swatches where the shadows draped over the ponte Rotto in the distance. There were people walking the street, their figures distinct, their features unclear; dresses were scribbled lines that danced in the light breeze.
I closed the closet door behind me, pulled the knot out of its hole and put my eye to the opening. I could hear voices even as I opened the door. I made certain not to bump into the brooms and mop, looked down to see where the bucket was, and then settled into place.
“You say that now, but do you I really expect me to believe you?” It was a man’s voice.
I couldn’t see him. He had his back to me. He was tying his tie, and reaching down to the chair beside him, picked up his waistcoat. It was black, with grey pinstripes. There was a large watch in the tiny pocket, with a chain running from one of the buttonholes. When he lifted the waistcoat off the chair I could see the gun and holster laying across the back of the chair. He picked it up, slipped his arms through it, and buckled it up. He put his suit jacket on and then picked up his fedora. He put his hat on, running his hand along the brim before turning to look at his reflection in the mirror.
“You don’t believe me?” she asked his reflection.
“Why should I?” he smiled, straightening his tie and turning to look at her. “You can say what you want, no one’s going to believe you.”
“You don’t really believe that,” she said. “Not really. People talk.”
“No one’s going to believe you,” he replied, his voice more threatening.
“They will if I—”
He took three long steps and grabbed her by the throat. She was shocked by the sudden attack, gasping as he began squeezing. She was grabbing at his hands, frantic, her arms flailing and windmilling. She knocked his hat off. Her face was turning red and I could see tears in her eye as she fell to her knees. I felt certain he was going to kill her. I didn’t know what to do, or say. Her hands began dropping to her sides. He let go of her and stood up, running a hand through his hair as he bent over to pick up his hat.
“Vittorio would have killed you for that,” she gasped out, her hands rubbing her throat. “So would Lorenzo.”
“But he’s dead, isn’t he? Both of them are…him and Lorenzo?”
“You’re a bastard.”
“That may be so, but you’re still a whore. You’ll always be one—you and that slut downstairs.”
“I’ll see you dead,” she said, tears in her eyes.
“That may very well be true,” he laughed, “but in the meantime, I’ll see you next week.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t refuse. I’d never allow you the satisfaction. And what if I let you? I’d have to raise the price and you’d come back to me, begging me for it.”
“I’ll never give it to you again.”
“Then I’ll simply take it. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” he laughed.
“Get out!” she screamed.
Oh wow, the music finished just as I finished the chapter!
Excellent Read, I hope with all my heart that women someday break away from this profession. it's so tragic.