The Miracles of Santo Fico (6 page)

As Leo crossed the piazza, he heard voices coming through the open verandah doors of the hotel dining room. He decided he had time to catch his breath and count his obstacles, so he sat down on the edge of the fountain just across from the old man and the skinny gray dog. The guide, of course, was an unknown factor, but Topo had called him a
pazzo
and he would just have to go with that. A more difficult matter would be trying to finesse the
pazzo
in Marta’s hotel. He imagined the way Marta might treat him. She might throw a water pitcher at his head. It wouldn’t be the first time. She might scream at him, point to the door, and order him back out to the street like a naughty dog. She could make things complicated. His thoughts lingered on Marta for too long, remembering the disaster six weeks ago when he first returned to Santo Fico . . .

It was a long walk down the north coast road from Punta Ala. Exhausted from jet lag and bus rides and the weight of his battered suitcase, all Leo wanted was to get to Topo’s house without running into anyone he knew—especially Marta Caproni Fortino. So, it stands to reason that the first person he should run into as soon as he set foot in the piazza was Marta.

It was a little after noon when Leo trudged into the piazza, just as Marta was lugging a large basket from the hotel to the church. Leo knew her immediately. But from across the square, Marta failed to recognize the tall stranger with the cardboard suitcase held together with tape and twine. He was just some outsider with a black mustache and a rumpled linen suit plodding into town, and she wondered if he would need a room. He certainly could use a bath and a shave, she thought. His long face and broken nose were familiar, but there was something about this fellow’s sorrowful eyes and the way he watched her with a familiarity that was unsettling.

When it suddenly struck Marta that this was Leo Pizzola staring back at her she shrieked as if he were a ghost. She dropped her food basket right there in the street. Soup and bread, fruits and cheese, a pitcher of wine, plates and bowls, it all dropped and slopped and crashed onto the worn cobblestones.

“What are you doing coming back here?” Marta had screamed out across the cold stones of the piazza. “You don’t belong here . . . !”

Her voice bounced off the plaster walls and echoed off the red-tile roofs and proclaimed her indignation to the countryside. Leo stood in silence, offering no apology for his return. Tears welled up so quickly and so unexpectedly, Marta barely had time to run back into the hotel, abandoning the clutter that was to have been Father Elio’s lunch.

Leo had hoped to sneak back, take care of his business, and then quietly disappear. He was going to be the shadow of a starling—gone before you see it. Instead he had been in Santo Fico less than two minutes and had already caused a mess in the town square, frightened a woman to tears, been cursed to the surrounding hills, and caused the village priest to probably miss his lunch. But at least one nagging question had been answered—Marta had not forgiven him.

Now here Leo was, six weeks later, once again wearing his linen suit and again wondering why the hell he ever thought coming home was a good idea.

“You know what time it is, Nico?”

The voice came from the opposite side of the fountain and it belonged to the old man whom everyone called Nonno. No response was necessary and so Leo ignored the question, but, as expected, Nonno continued anyway.

“I lost my watch when I made the water go away.”

Like so many old people who dress more out of habit than season, even in this summer heat Nonno endured a frayed coat draped over his bony frame and his tattered slouch hat still managed a jaunty angle. For as long as Leo could recall, he remembered Nonno sitting on the edge of the dry fountain. A confirmed eccentric, the old guy was always oddly selective in whom he chose to warm up to. Some people Nonno seemed to invariably regard with a mysterious affection and he sought them out whether they wanted it or not. Others, he would inexplicably shout at from across the piazza, calling them a “Fascist” or a “Nazi” or just ordering them to go to hell. Even as a boy, Leo had always fallen into that former category. Only now, since his return, for some strange reason, the old man had taken to calling him Nico.

Someone leaving the back of the hotel distracted them and Leo recognized the gracefully hesitant step of Nina Fortino carrying a basket of food across the piazza. He watched her softly count her way across the square to the church where she floated up the steps and disappeared inside. She was obviously carrying lunch to her great-uncle, Father Elio—which brought to mind another situation that Leo hadn’t considered.

He not only had to face Marta in her own hotel and remember how to tell the stories of the Mystery and the Miracle in English—he also had to get Father Elio’s permission. Leo seriously considered forgetting the whole thing and going back to the beach. Maybe Angelica would still be there, gliding and turning in the cool blue water. What was he doing trying to work a scam that he and Franco came up with when they were, what . . . twelve?

From the dining room, one of the English tourists must have said something amusing because laughter poured out the open doors and echoed around the piazza. There was a time, Leo recalled, when he was welcomed into restaurants filled with laughter and good-natured friends. Since his return to Santo Fico he’d lived like an outcast. Nowadays when he approached groups of people, conversation stopped. With the exception of Topo, no one visited his stone cell down by the sea and Leo certainly wasn’t invited into anyone’s home.

“Do you know what time it is, Nico?”

Leo looked over and discovered that Nonno had casually scooted himself around the edge of the fountain until he had finally arrived at Leo’s elbow.

“No.”

“I lost my watch when the water went away.”

Leo nodded as if he understood. Nonno’s constant companion, the skinny gray dog, joined them and plopped himself down at their feet.

“I made the water go away,” was the old man’s whispered confession.

Leo nodded again. “I know, Nonno.” But he wasn’t really listening.

“I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Some things we can’t undo,” sighed Leo, still lost in his own regret.

The old man nodded and mumbled his agreement, “Some things we just have to live with, I guess.”

Leo considered the truth of these last statements and nodded absently, “I guess.”

It was true.

Leo rose and brushed himself off. He smoothed his thick mustache and recocked his hat at a rakish angle. He straightened his lime green tie, adjusted his pale yellow pocket hankie, and pointlessly polished each worn shoe on the back of an opposing pant leg.

“Wish me luck,” and he gave Nonno a quick wink. “Sure, Nico. Why not? You’re a handsome boy. All the girls will think they love you.”

Leo chuckled to himself at the old man’s chatter. With Nonno, it was the thought that counted—although he did occasionally wonder who the hell Nico was.

Then Leo Pizzola marched resolutely across the piazza and walked right through the open front doors of the Albergo di Santo Fico for the first time in eighteen years.

FIVE

W
hen the tour guide saw the tall fellow in a dirty linen suit saunter in and stand quietly in the shadows of the lobby, discreetly surveying the dining room, he knew immediately that there was something about this guy he didn’t like—and it wasn’t just his cheap suit. This guy wasn’t some farmer, or sheepherder, or fisherman. The calculating way Leo inspected the room indicated a brain and a purpose. Besides, that broken nose looked earned.

And the guide wasn’t the only one who noticed Leo’s entrance—Carmen saw him the second he stepped in the doorway. Standing in the lobby was bad enough, but now Leo Pizzola was actually daring to enter the restaurant and catastrophe was only as far away as her mother’s entrance from the kitchen.

Certainly all the natives of Santo Fico noticed Leo and his disheveled linen suit, and a thrilling anticipation of something dreadful seized them. “My God,” they all thought, “Leo Pizzola is walking into Marta Fortino’s hotel, in broad daylight!” This scandalous event promised a disastrous showdown—and they had ringside seats!

Fortunately for Leo, the English were too involved in their meals to notice all the elbow nudgings and head jerkings that accompanied his entrance as he strolled to a place at the bar right against the tour guide’s elbow. They exchanged strained smiles and Leo watched the sweaty guide struggle to nonchalantly focus his attention back onto his lunch. How perceptive of Topo, he thought. This guy is a
pazzo.

A glass of water suddenly pounded onto the marble counter in front of him and Carmen Fortino spoke to Leo for the first time in her life.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed.

Leo considered the glass of water she was offering and wondered if she intended him to drink it or wear it. He didn’t know this older daughter of his dead best friend. Topo had pointed her out to him, of course—and her sister Nina too. He’d occasionally noticed her watching him from across the piazza or from behind a window, but he always tried to hide how much she fascinated him. It was like seeing her mother and yet at the same time it was also like seeing Franco—very strange. Now, facing her at the bar, he had to smile because he could see that her ferocity was still being learned. It didn’t have the depth and lethal passion of her mother’s. She was just a girl.

Out of the corner of his eye Leo caught the guide’s leering smirk as he reacted to Carmen’s presence—so Leo spoke what was on both their minds.

“Isn’t she beautiful.”

His voice was soft and sincere and it wasn’t a question, but a statement—he meant it. Carmen flushed and fought to smother an embarrassed smile. After six weeks of mystery, to now have such an excellent compliment be the first thing this notorious man said to her left the poor girl completely flustered. This was not the response she’d expected from this man her mother hated so perfectly; this stranger who had once been her father’s best friend; this scoundrel who had somehow betrayed everyone. All her life she’d heard rumors of the exploits of her father and his comrade, Leo Pizzola, and about their sudden bad blood, and Leo’s mysterious disappearance on the day of her mother’s wedding. There had been a fight, and rumors of a robbery, and years of anger. It was all quite mysterious—and very romantic.

Leo nudged the oily stranger on his left as if they were old friends and pointed to Carmen.

“Beautiful . . . huh?”

The guide smiled awkwardly and a bit of white sauce dripped from his lip. He grunted agreement and grinned seductively in Carmen’s direction.

She glared at Leo with all of her strength and tried to ignore his forlorn eyes and gentle smile. She heard herself say harshly, “You shouldn’t be here.” But what she meant to say was: “Tell me about my father! Tell me why your name makes my mother cry! Tell me about America! And tell me how I can escape too!”

Leo downed the water without stopping. Then he put down the glass and met Carmen’s gaze.

“Where’s your mama?”

“In the kitchen, but she’ll be coming out here—”

Leo stopped her with a casual wave of the hand. “Don’t bother her. I’ll see her later. Could I have a glass of wine and a refill for our guest here? My treat.”

What on earth was he talking about? Was he crazy? Carmen was trying to offer a warning and he was acting like he belonged here; like he owned the place.

In fact, Leo just wanted her to leave before she said anything more. He couldn’t have this little girl challenge him in front of the plump
raviolo
on the adjoining stool. Any talk of Marta could only be dangerous.

When Carmen went off to get the wine, Leo nudged his neighbor, “She likes you.”

The guide almost choked again, this time on a combination of
fettunta
and shock.

“I don’t think so.”

“I saw the way she ignored you.”

Leo watched a spark of fantasy ignite in the back of what was probably the guide’s tiny brain.

“You think so . . . ?”

By the time Carmen returned with their wine, Leo and the guide were laughing like old friends. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, when she set the glasses down in front of them, the greasy guide smiled shamelessly at her and then, worst of all, he winked! She determined— For that insolence, he would pay.

Leo didn’t care. Carmen had been a hurdle, but he’d bought a bit of time. And in less than two minutes he could tell that this
pazzo
would keep his group in Santo Fico for a week if he thought he had a chance with Carmen.

As Leo prattled and joked with the guide at the bar, his attention was actually tuned in on an interesting conversation coming from a small table near the verandah. A bony Englishman with a wild shock of salt-and-pepper hair and too many teeth was posing an interesting question to two older women who might have been his sisters, but undoubtedly weren’t. The combination of food and wine, and their confidence in their alien language, had allowed the conversation an indiscreet boldness.

“It’s really quite odd, if one stops to consider. I mean— Why? Every unlikely and inhospitable bend in the road seems to present these little villages that don’t have any apparent, you know, reason for existing.”

Both women nodded in agreement. One sipped more wine, while the other added loudly, “And it seems the more treacherous and uninviting the terrain the better. Hang them off the side of some cliff or perch them on some mountaintop, or something equally nonsensical. It makes you wonder what on earth those original peasants, I mean the . . . what-do-you-call-its . . . eh, founders of these little clusters were thinking.”

“Or drinking,” piped in her tipsy friend. The three joined in a laugh, and adjacent tables chuckled their agreement.

Perfect, thought Leo. Their conversation was just a bit too loud and with just enough mockery to embarrass them if they discovered they were actually being understood. Not only that, but the table was strategically placed so that all the tourists in the room could witness, and even be included in, their humiliation. And best of all, the table was occupied by a man and two women. Leo would approach the man first. That would be proper—a gentleman addressing a gentleman. But after a few moments he would shift his focus to the women and then to the whole room.