The Miracles of Santo Fico (3 page)

Whenever Guido saw Carmen Fortino, the older of Marta’s two daughters, he always found it hard to breathe for a moment. It wasn’t just because of her luxurious black hair and smooth olive skin or her dark eyes that seemed to bore through him or her red lips that never required paint. It wasn’t just because of the way her full mouth always seemed about to either smile or sneer at him—he didn’t care which. It wasn’t just the haughty manner with which she carried her body or the way certain of her soft curves pushed and strained against her clothing. All of these things certainly caused his mouth to go dry and his stomach to tense, but there was also something almost mystical in her allure. Her mother, Marta, affected him in the same way and had since they were children. And really, it wasn’t just Marta and Carmen. It was all beautiful women. Beautiful women made Guido feel both insignificant and thrilled to be alive.

Carmen knew the effect she had on the funny little Topo and she enjoyed it. It was essentially the same effect she had on most men, but with Guido it was a bit more obvious and his level of adoration was sort of endearing. She’d begun to notice her power when she was only fifteen. It had something to do with the way certain boys who had always been so bold before, even cruel, all at once began to stutter. Suddenly they were unable to hold her gaze, but the instant she turned away she could actually feel the heat of their eyes silently following her. After some months of initial confusion and anxiety, Carmen realized that she was developing siren powers. She’d spent the last two years practicing her skills and, sometimes, like right now with Topo, she felt as if her abilities already surpassed her mother’s.

Carmen slowly descended the steps with her arms raised, now self-consciously working her black hair into the yellow scarf. She knew she should hurry, but she couldn’t resist the helpless look on Guido’s upturned face and she allowed her body to bounce slightly as she dropped methodically from step to step. Her voice was softly reprimanding.

“You know my mother doesn’t allow anyone back here.” “I know. I know that . . . Sorry. I was looking for her . . . Your mother. It’s important. Where is she?”

To Guido, Carmen seemed to descend the stairs in slow motion, and the way she looked directly in his eyes with that slight smile of chastisement—slow hands weaving yellow scarf through black hair—it was all like a scene from a movie. Sunlight gleamed through the eastern windows and reflected off the thin film of water on the newly mopped tile floor. The light bounced off the sheen and enveloped Carmen in a golden haze and Guido couldn’t help thinking, this is pure Zeffirelli . . .

Suddenly, an irritated question came from behind him and jolted Topo out of his reverie like a swat on the back of the head.

“Topo! What are you doing in my kitchen? Carmen, why aren’t you in the dining room?”

Carmen’s expression chilled faster than November frost. In an instant the yellow scarf was tied and she was down the stairs. Guido turned to greet the glowering eyes of Marta Caproni Fortino coming in from the garden carrying a basket of vegetables. Her tall figure was framed in the doorway and her skin glistened with sweat. The tousled waves of her thick black hair refused to be completely captured by her red scarf. Like Carmen, Marta had the brooding look of most Caproni women—dark eyes and high cheekbones, determined jaw and narrow nose and that smooth olive skin. But Marta was taller than her two daughters and possessed a powerfully sensual athlete’s body that they did not. Right now, with the morning sunlight flaring white behind her, Guido couldn’t help thinking that here was no colorful Zeffirelli nymph. Marta was earthy, with stifled passions that were best shot in black and white—much more De Sica or Rossellini.

“We need table settings. Now.”

“I’m going,” was Carmen’s indifferent response as she made a pointed effort to slow her exit.

Guido had grown up an only son surrounded by five sisters, so he long ago recognized the edgy tension of unspoken antagonism that often roils between a mother and her daughter. He’d observed with his mother and sisters that these feelings of tension were usually because the two women were so much alike. And he also knew that if he were to helpfully point this out to these two women, they would both be so insulted at being compared to the other that they would immediately join forces to burn him down where he stood—so he said nothing. But in his mind Carmen and Marta were like two different bends in the same river. The difference was Carmen found her source higher up, near the headwaters, where the ravines are narrow and the river is young and anxious. A young river is fresh and fast, crashing and cascading impatiently through rocky chasms as if it can’t wait to get to the next turn its course might take. That young river doesn’t care where it’s going. It just knows that it has to get away from where it’s been and all twists and turns are filled with promise. Marta was the same river only wide and deep. Time had run a longer course with Marta and she had experienced enough unexpected turns and twists to stop counting on the promise of the next bend in the river. The river just was. Her waters appeared smooth and still, but for those who carefully studied the surface there were eddies and swirls that announced: This water is deep and unsafe. There were dangers hidden beneath this still surface—sharp snags and jagged crags and undercurrents best not explored. Only a fool would blindly dive headfirst into these dark waters.

“Is your sister back from the bakery with the bread?” “No,” was the curt reply and Carmen disappeared into the dining room.

As Marta moved past him and set the basket on the counter, Guido caught the fragrance of her bath soap. It smelled like lavender and he took in a deep breath as his imagination smiled. He was reminded that for all of Carmen’s intoxicating power, she was still just a facsimile of the original. Carmen was enchanting, but still so young and self-indulgent. Her mother was a woman. Everything about Marta was natural and genuine—her beauty, her grace, her sensuality, her passion, her temper, her bitterness. She never toyed with him or made him feel small and homely. Of course, she never made him feel particularly welcome either, but that was all right.

“I’m busy, Topo. What do you want?”

“I wanted to warn you, a sightseeing bus is here.”

“I know. I saw it from upstairs when it was still crawling up the hill.”

“It must be lost.”

“It must be,” she replied and casually picked through the tomatoes. “So, what do you want?”

“I wanted to tell you. They might want some lunch.” Marta stopped rinsing the tomatoes and stared incredulously at the short fellow smiling expectantly at her shoulder. He wore his smile like an apology, but his dark, close-set eyes were filled with expectation.

“You ran all the way up here, in this heat, just to tell me that?”

Guido’s foolish grin grew even broader as his cheeks flushed. He shrugged and felt like an idiot, as usual. After a moment Marta went back to her tomatoes. That was it. Apparently the audience was over. Guido didn’t know how to leave and still salvage any dignity, and as the silence became more embarrassed, his absolute belief in his own idiocy compounded until a blush crept down his cheeks to his neck on its way to his toes. Finally, Marta broke the awkwardness.

“Well, you must be hot.” And she called over her shoulder to the dining room, “Carmen, give Topo a glass of wine.”

Guido moved across the kitchen toward the dining room. “Oh, that’s okay. You don’t have to.” He had hoped for lunch.

“Go on. I have a lot to do.”

And she did. This would be the largest lunch crowd the hotel had seen in months. And it wouldn’t just be the bewildered tourists, but also all of the nosy villagers who would show up to stare at the bewildered tourists. She had a lot to do and Nina should be back with the bread by now.

In the cool dining room, Carmen stopped laying out the folded napkins and silverware long enough to step behind the marble bar and pour a glass of red wine. Guido noticed the young girl’s hand shook slightly as she poured the Chianti and her eyes kept darting toward the empty lobby.

“Here, Topo. Now, stay out of the way.” She handed him the glass with a nervous smile that told him that she didn’t have time to flirt right now, but maybe later.

He nodded and quickly surveyed the empty room. He could already hear the jumbled voices of the tourists entering the lobby. Having tested the view from all of the stools and chairs in the bar many times, he chose a spot at the shadowy far end where he would have the best vantage to observe the action.

It began slowly, in the tentative manner of all lost and confused foreigners afraid of invading the wrong space. But the room eventually began to fill with a dozen sweating, shuffling, middle-aged to elderly bodies grateful to Old Giuseppe Caproni for his cool tile floors and stone walls. They found their way to tables and chairs and collapsed.

Their portly young guide wasn’t so lucky—he still had much to do. He smiled at his grim group and said . . . well, he said something. Guido had no idea what it was the guide actually said, but he perceived two things: first, many of the words he recognized as being English and second, whatever the guide’s comments, they failed to impress his charges. This chubby conductor was feeling a heat that far surpassed the warmth of a Toscana summer. The poor guy was miles from where he needed to be, in a village he didn’t know, in the midst of a heat wave with a group of discontented Englishmen and he alone knew their desperate fuel situation. Why had he sped by that last gas station outside Grosseto?

The bus had, of course, taken a wrong turn as the inexperienced guide/bus driver tried to invent a shortcut between Grosseto and Piombino. By the time he realized his mistake it was already too late. The narrow east road to Santo Fico abruptly becomes a tortuous climb skirting chalky coastal crags on one side and sheer cliffs that plunged to the sea on the other. And to add to the chagrin of so many innocent motorists, the route offers absolutely no place to turn around. Unwitting drivers must either put their vehicles in reverse and drive backward down the cliffs for some kilometers or continue on and pray that eventually the trail will widen before they either run out of gas or road. So great is the frustration and fear of what danger might lie around each hairpin curve that, by the time they finally arrive at the picturesque promontory of Santo Fico, most travelers are actually grateful. And so it was with this party of tourists and their baffled pilot.

Carmen was surveying the elderly assemblage of bloated English bodies and vacant pink faces when the poor guide started what he thought was charming repartee. But this was not the sort of invasion from the outside world a seventeen-year-old girl, sentenced to life imprisonment in Santo Fico, dreams about. With less than two words out of his mouth, Carmen scowled, turned on her heels, and walked back into the kitchen. What the guide did not need right now was some snippy waitress insulting him. His credibility with these pompous English was already dangerously depleted. He also wished the chinless fellow at the end of the bar would stop staring at him.

Guido, on the other hand, enjoyed Carmen’s haughty display. He didn’t like the arrogant confidence this stranger showed as he approached the girl. The guide leaned against the bar and offered Guido his smile.

“She’s pretty.”

Guido nodded.

“Is she coming back?”

Guido shrugged.

“Do you know how far we are from Follonica?”

Guido shook his head and sipped his wine. He actually did know the exact distance, but he wasn’t about to tell this guy anything—not after running all the way up the hill to get nothing more than a crummy glass of wine. The hell with him. Besides, he wanted to see this inflated sausage’s reaction to Marta—and he wasn’t disappointed. He knew, without turning, when Marta entered. If the guide had found Carmen attractive, he was absolutely alarmed by the voluptuous Marta and the intriguing animal glint of peril buried in her dark eyes. Guido had seen it all his life.

Marta was no stranger to the guide’s predicament and she quickly took charge, conducting their business swiftly and efficiently. He would need thirteen lunches. She would need forty minutes. The price was agreed upon. He asked about diesel fuel. She recommended a walk down to the harbor to see if any of the fishermen might sell him some. Then, just as Marta turned back to the kitchen, Guido perked up as the guide asked a significant question.

“Is there anything of particular interest here? Something that might help us pass the time?”

Marta studied him for a moment before replying, almost offhand, “No, not really.”

Then she noticed Guido sitting in the back corner. She’d forgotten about him. She wasn’t sure he had heard this last exchange, so she motioned toward his empty glass.

“Topo, you want another?”

Guido smiled broadly and shook his head. Marta returned to the kitchen.

He liked the way Marta called him Topo. It made him feel special. The casual way she said it reenforced his own perception about his lifelong nickname. It had nothing to do with diminutive stature or mousy traits. To him it was a term of endearment and an indication of his cleverness. He was totally oblivious of the fact that his narrow nose was a bit too long and arched, his chin was a bit too weak, his large brown eyes a bit too close together, his mouth a bit too small, and his front teeth a bit too prominent. Occasionally, in just the right light, if he were to simultaneously smile and wiggle his nose, one would swear he had just smelled cheese.

But at this exact moment, sitting in the shadows at the end of the bar, what Topo fancied he smelled was money. And why not? Wasn’t he one of the originators of “The Tales of the Miracle and the Mystery”—much on a par with Leo Pizzola and Franco Fortino? In fact, if pressed, Leo Pizzola would have to admit that much of the original scheme had come from Guido’s head. At least some of it . . . Or at the very least, a little of it. Yes, when it came to boldness and clever ideas, he and Leo were cut from the same bolt of cloth. That fact was proven, even now, by the birth of the excellent idea floating around inside his head.