The Scent Of Rosa's Oil (20 page)

Sadly, Rosa shook her head.

“Why, I thought you liked to travel,” Maddalena said.

Rosa said nothing as she nervously changed positions on her seat. A moment later she stood up, then sat down, then stood up again. She asked, “Are we there yet?”

“You need to calm down, Rosa,” Maddalena said. “We’re not even close. If you keep moving around like this, you’ll drive us crazy.”

Rosa looked at her with helpless eyes. “I can’t stay still. I feel as if time had stopped passing altogether. All I can think about is Vercelli and finding Renato. I wish I had a magic wand, to make me be in Vercelli right now.”

Maddalena sighed. The train’s slowness, she thought to herself, would make anyone edgy and impatient. There were long stops at little stations and stops for apparently no reason in the middle of the countryside. “I brought my tarot cards,” she said at some point, thinking that the game might distract Rosa. “Let’s see what the cards have to say.” She slid her hand into her purse.

“Stop,” Rosa said, grabbing Maddalena’s wrist before she could take the cards out. “I’m scared of hearing bad news.”

The train continued its way north, now crossing flat plains. Suddenly the countryside became populated by houses of all sizes, and the train slowed down as it entered an urban area and then finally a station. “Turin,” Madam C said, taking her luggage off the shelf. “We have a much shorter trip ahead of us now.”

Uncomforted, Rosa followed Maddalena and Madam C off the train, along the platform, to a ticket office, where Madam C inquired about the train to Vercelli. “Platform nine,” a man in uniform said, pointing to his right. “In half an hour.”

The day was almost over when Rosa, Maddalena, and Madam C arrived in the humid and foggy city of Vercelli, known to the rest of Italy for its rice fields, which were kept flooded year-round by the many bodies of water that surrounded the town, chiefly the Sesia, one of the northern tributaries of the Po River. Off the train, outside the station, Maddalena, Madam C, and Rosa found themselves at the edge of a piazza, wrapped in wet air that was so much heavier than the clear air near the sea. Maddalena removed her hat and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She said, “It’s a steam bath.”

“This is Vercelli?” asked a dismayed Rosa. “I can hardly breathe!”

“I’m afraid so,” Madam C said as she turned to a group of coachmen standing by their horses. “Excuse me,” she asked, “could one of you take us to Mr. Valle’s farmhouse?”

“Valle who?” asked a young coachman with a pointy beard.

Maddalena shrugged. “They have a son named Gabriele.”

The coachmen exchanged long looks. In a deep, hoarse voice, the oldest one in the group said out of his web of wrinkles, “Valle is a common name. Where is this farmhouse?”

“We know it’s next to a rice field,” Rosa said, “marked by a tree on the road that is shaped like an amphora.”

All the coachmen laughed and shook their heads. The old coachman spit tobacco on the sidewalk. He said, “All there is around here is rice fields. And do you know how many trees we have?”

“Is there someone around here who could give us a list of all the farmhouses that belong to someone named Valle?” Maddalena asked.

“I don’t know,” the younger coachman said. “Maybe the police?”

Rosa looked at Maddalena with worry in her eyes.

Madam C addressed the older coachman. “You look like you have been in Vercelli a long time.”

“All my life,” the man said with pride.

“Then you must have some idea as to where this place could be. Drive us around the rice fields,” Madam C continued in her usual peremptory tone, stepping into the carriage and signaling Rosa and Maddalena to step in as well.

Dumbfounded, the old coachman asked, “In which direction?”

Madam C gave him a look. “You decide.”

Mumbling and shaking his head, the old coachman took the luggage and secured it with ropes in the very back of the coach. Then he cautiously took his seat in the front. “Ha!” he shouted, and the horse began to walk. “All my life I spent driving this coach,” he muttered softly, popping another tobacco ball in his mouth, “and now I’ve got to escort three lost women to a rice field and a funny-looking tree.” He stopped the horse and turned around. “I don’t have time for this!” he said in an angry voice. Madam C took two bills out of her purse and placed them on the front seat. The coachman took the bills, spit dark saliva on the ground, and led the horse toward a side street.

Ten minutes later, they were at the outskirts of the town, surrounded by rice fields and farmhouses. “There,” the coachman said in a scoffing tone. “Rice fields and trees. Just as you wanted.”

The daylight was dimming as the sun made its way slowly below the horizon. The heat of the summer day was still strong, as was the buzz of the mosquitoes feasting on the horse. The whipping of the horse’s tail kept the insects in motion. In their seats, Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa kept blotting their foreheads with handkerchiefs and fanning their hands up and down their cheeks. Their discomfort didn’t distract them from the task at hand: Madam C kept her eyes fixed on one side of the road, Maddalena and Rosa on the other, hoping to spot the tree that would take them to Gabriele’s farmhouse. They saw nothing that resembled an amphora in any way.

As the carriage came to a T in the road, Rosa looked right and left. “The land is so flat around here,” she said. “Where’s the sea?”

The coachman turned around, stared at her, and shook his head twice.

“There’s no sea in Vercelli,” Maddalena said, surprised. “We’re deep inland, in farming country, as you can see.”

Rosa’s aquamarine eyes opened wide. “No sea?” she murmured.

“No,” Madam C confirmed, amazed that Rosa could be so naive.

“Really?” Rosa asked.

Madam C pondered a moment. “Have you ever seen a map of Italy, Rosa?”

Rosa shook her head.

“Didn’t they teach you geography in school?” Maddalena asked.

Rosa shook her head for the second time.

“Are you…convinced that there’s the sea in every town?” Madam C asked, unable to hide her disbelief.

“There isn’t?” Rosa said timidly.

“No, dear,” Madam C said. “There are lots of towns on earth that don’t have the sea nearby.”

Rosa lowered her eyes, feeling the weight of the revelation. As the carriage continued its wobbly way along a street bordered by berry bushes and short trees, she wondered how life would be without looking at boats, listening to the sounds of the waves, watching the seagulls dive for food, and with no fishermen bringing fresh fish ashore. She looked at Madam C and Maddalena, realizing that there was still mockery in their eyes.
What’s so funny
, Rosa thought. “I can perhaps live without crossing the ocean,” she said aloud, “but I could never live in a place where I can’t look at water.” Madam C and Maddalena exchanged a glance, as the coachman shook his head again and spit tobacco one more time.

“How much longer shall we keep this going?” he asked in his harsh voice. An hour had passed since they had left the station. The sun had set, and the streets and fields were by then a blur in the darkness and hard to see. Reluctantly, Madam C asked the coachman to take them to a place where they could spend the night. “Now we’re talking,” he mumbled as he sped up the horse.

One kilometer down the road, he pulled up in front of the Locanda Dell’Orso, a hostel set back from the street in a field that smelled of freshly cut hay. A red tile roof sat on walls of thick stone studded with small patches of green and brown moss.

“Wait here,” Madam C said, getting out of the carriage, “while I make sure they’re not sold out for the night.”

The coachman mumbled something no one could hear. While he, Rosa, and Maddalena waited outside, Madam C entered the hostel lobby, a small, cozy room with an unlit fireplace carved in the stone wall and a few armchairs set around it in a half moon. The cool temperature inside was a pleasant surprise. In a corner was a desk, and behind the desk Madam C saw a middle-aged man with thick glasses busy turning pages. He lifted his head at the sound of Madam C’s steps. “Need a room?” he asked.

“I need three,” Madam C replied. “The best ones you have.”

Yawning, the man opened a drawer. “All the rooms are the same,” he slurred, handing Madam C three keys. “Second floor, to your right.” He pointed to a closed door opposite to him. “Dinner will be served in an hour.”

“They have rooms for us,” Madam C said once she was back outside. She turned to the old coachman, who kept chewing tobacco without talking. “Be back here at dawn.”

The coachman said, “No.”

Without arguing, Madam C took more bills out of her purse. “Six o’clock,” she said, pushing the bills into his hands, “and don’t be late.”

T
he sleeping quarters were off a narrow hallway on the second floor, where the heat trapped below the roof overwhelmed the cooling effects of the thick stones. Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa sweated copiously as they carried their luggage to their respective rooms. The furnishings in the three bedrooms were alike: a double bed with an embroidered red cotton bedspread, an armoire, two chairs, a portable basin for water, an enameled chamber pot centered between the legs of a nightstand, and a rustic rug set on the wooden floor. With her clothes on, Rosa lay on top of the bedspread and stared at the low ceiling for a long time. Meanwhile, Maddalena joined Madam C in her room. “Forgive my asking,” she said as Madam C took a change of clothes out of her suitcase, “but what are we going to do next? We have no idea where this farmhouse is. No one does. It could be on the opposite side of town, many kilometers away, for all we know.”

“We’ll go to dinner,” Madam C said, closing her suitcase, “and question the innkeeper.”

The meal exceeded everyone’s expectations. The innkeeper’s wife served it on an elegant china set that seemed out of place in a hostel that looked so much like an old farmer’s house. She served
antipasti
,
brasato di maiale
,
coniglio al forno
, and a sweet meringue pie, all accompanied by a full-bodied local red wine. At the elegantly set pine table, Madam C, Rosa, and Maddalena were joined by two male guests and the middle-aged man with the thick glasses, who, everyone soon found out, was the innkeeper. The conversation proceeded casually for some time: the weather, the rice business, the soccer games. Over the
antipasti
, Madam C introduced herself as a landowner from Genoa, who was in town looking for land to buy. The two guests introduced themselves as salesmen who often traveled the Vercelli countryside. At that, Madam C steered the chitchat her way. “Then you must know of a farmhouse owned by some Valles,” she said in a casual tone of voice. “I was told it may be for sale.”

The two salesmen looked at each other and shook their heads twice. Maddalena took the role of a skeptic. “There’s no truth to it,” she said, chewing on a piece of
coniglio
. She poured herself some wine. “Imagine, the person who told us about that farmhouse didn’t even know where it was. All he knew was that it’s by a tree shaped like an amphora. He must have been dreaming.”

The innkeeper’s wife, who had begun to make the rounds with the meringue pie, jumped into the conversation. “I think I know where it is,” she said, putting down the dessert plate. Her husband nodded. “I do, too. It’s not close by, but I can draw you a map from here to there. Then you’ll be able to find out if the land is truly for sale.”

Rosa could hardly contain her excitement. “Really?” she shouted. She turned to Madam C. “Can we go now?”

“What’s the hurry, young lady?” asked the innkeeper.

Maddalena bumped Rosa’s knee under the table.

“No hurry,” Madam C said calmly. “She was joking. Of course we’ll go tomorrow, in the daylight.”

“Do you really want to let these people know that there’s something in this farmhouse that cannot wait till morning?” Madam C scolded Rosa later, when they were back upstairs.

“Like someone who’s wanted by the police?” Maddalena echoed. “You know how much people gossip in little towns.”

“I’m sorry. I got excited,” Rosa admitted. “I won’t do that again, I promise. Let me see the map, Maddalena, please.”

Maddalena handed her the sheet of paper on which the innkeeper had drawn a confused maze of roads and country paths. “It’s so hard to read,” Rosa said, sounding discouraged like never before.

Madam C took the map from her hands. “Our coachman will figure it out.”

The night passed very slowly for Rosa. The anxiety that had flustered her all day long hadn’t subsided. Knowing that in a matter of hours she’d be headed with Madam C and Maddalena for the Valles’ farmhouse made her even more frantic and unable to sleep. She paced the room for an hour, she lay on the bed and got up countless times, she stood by the open window staring at the shadows of the countryside. At a certain point, she left her room and knocked on Maddalena’s door. “I can’t sleep,” she said when Maddalena appeared.

“Me neither,” Maddalena whispered. “Come inside.”

They sat on the bed next to each other. “Want to read me the cards?” Rosa asked after a moment.

“I thought you didn’t want to know.”

“I do now,” Rosa said. “Please.”

The tarot cards were on Maddalena’s nightstand, inside a cardboard box tied with a blue silk string two centimeters wide. Deliberately, Maddalena untied the string, opened the box, and set the cards on the bedspread in front of Rosa. “Ready?” she asked.

Rosa nodded. With quick motions, Maddalena shuffled, cut the deck, and turned up four cards.

“It can’t be,” Rosa babbled, realizing that the four cards were the Lovers, the Ace of Cups, the World, and the Fool. “These are the same cards you turned up for me months ago, when you arrived at the Luna.”

“They sure are,” Maddalena said thoughtfully.

“You’re tricking me,” Rosa said, scrunching her nose.

“No,” Maddalena said calmly. “This is your future.”

“It can’t be,” Rosa insisted. “I remember you telling me that these cards mean that I will find love and I will go on a long trip.”

Maddalena nodded.

“Well,” Rosa said in a louder, screechy voice, “it’s impossible! The love of my life has disappeared, and I’m not going anywhere without him. And even if I found him,” she shouted, “I can’t go on my trip across the ocean because he’s afraid of boats!”

“He is?” Maddalena asked, surprised.

“Yes!” Rosa yelled. “So, you see? You must be cheating!”

“There’s no cheating with tarot cards, my dear. You saw me turn up the cards. You’ll find love, and you’ll go on a long trip. That’s that.”

Angrily, Rosa lay down with her back to Maddalena. Maddalena replaced the tarot cards in the box, tied the blue string, and lay down quietly next to Rosa. They remained silent a while before Rosa spoke in a soft voice. “Are there really lots of places in the world that don’t have the sea nearby?”

“Lots,” Maddalena replied.

Rosa rolled over to face Maddalena. “I never thought it possible,” she said. “All the books I read were about the sea. And all the people I know grew up by it. Even Isabel’s village, which is so far away from Genoa, is on the water. She came to Genoa by water. And my father was a fisherman, Madam C told me, who made his living casting nets in the water.” Her voice broke down. “How was I supposed to know?”

“It’s all right, Rosa. You know now.”

“It’s not all right. I noticed how you two were making fun of me earlier today. Even the coachman was laughing. I saw him.”

“We weren’t making fun of you,” Maddalena explained. “We were surprised.”

Rosa sat up. “How do people travel to far places when there’s no sea?” she asked.

“By train. And now by automobile. They say there’ll be lots of automobiles in the streets very soon.”

“Have you ever been on one?” Rosa asked.

“I have,” Maddalena said. “One of my clients took me for a ride.”

“Did you like it?”

“I was scared at first,” Maddalena admitted, “because we were going so fast. Twenty kilometers an hour, my client told me. Then I got used to it, and I enjoyed it.”

“Maybe Renato and I could have an automobile some day,” Rosa said with dreamy eyes. “So we’ll be able to go far without boating.”

“That would be nice,” a disconcerted Maddalena replied.

Quietly, Rosa lay down again, nestling her head on the pillow next to Maddalena’s. “Do you think we’ll find Renato at the farmhouse?”

Maddalena glanced at the open window. “We’ll know very soon,” she murmured. “Dawn is coming.”

“Maybe he liked it in Vercelli,” Rosa said sadly. “Maybe he found out, too, that there are places that are not on the sea, where he doesn’t have to look at boats all the time and feel afraid.” She paused. “Do you think I’ll be able to convince him to come back to Genoa with me?”

“Rosa,” Maddalena said in her sweetest voice. “We don’t even know that he is here. I wouldn’t worry about his fear of boats now.”

“You’re right,” Rosa said disconsolately. “He may not be here. We may never find him. I may never see him again. Why?”

Maddalena patted her cheek. “See if you can sleep for a while.”

At six in the morning, with a low fog hiding the hay and dewdrops shining on the grass blades, the hostel door opened with a squeak, and Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa stepped outside. Behind them, the innkeeper and his wife set their luggage on the gravel. Maddalena thanked them, and the two went back inside. “Where’s the coachman?” asked Rosa.

“Good question,” Madam C said.

“Do you really believe he’s going to show up?” asked Maddalena.

“I paid him,” Madam C shrugged. “He seemed a bit of an ass, but not dishonest.”

“He’d better show up,” Maddalena mumbled, “or we’ll be stranded in this place for the rest of our lives.”

Time passed. Seated on her suitcase, Madam C grew more infuriated with every minute that went by. “I hate it when people don’t do what they’re supposed to do,” she grinned, stomping a foot on the gravel. As for Rosa, she acted more like a caged tiger than a young lady waiting for her ride: she kept walking up to the main road and looking right and left, only to return to the hostel door and open her arms wide to signal that the coachman wasn’t in sight. “He’s not coming,” she said despairingly. She tugged at Maddalena’s sleeve. “What shall we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do till eight,” Madam C replied dryly. “That’s when the innkeeper said we can get a different ride. If worst comes to worst, we’ll be at the farmhouse a little later.” She looked sternly at Rosa. “I suggest you calm down.”

Rosa turned away. She mumbled, “All she can do is order people around.”

“What did you say?” Madam C said with indignation.

Shrugging, Rosa walked back to the road. It was close to seven when she heard the rhythmic thumps of horse’s hooves. “There he is!” she shouted, pointing to her right.

“An hour late,” Madam C spit out from between her teeth. “If he thinks he’s getting more money from me, he’s crazy.”

In front of the hostel door, the coachman pulled on the reins. “Morning, ladies,” he said with a mocking smile. “Ready for another wild-goose chase?”

Madam C took the innkeeper’s drawing out of her purse and placed it under the coachman’s nose. He gave it a distracted look. “What’s that supposed to be?” he asked.

Madam C gave him her best victory smile. “A map to the amphora tree,” she hissed. “Take our luggage and drive.”

Soon everyone was aboard, and the foursome resumed the search for the farmhouse based on the innkeeper’s map, following a maze of quiet country roads dipped in a misty, yellow fog. It was a little past eight when Maddalena screamed, “There it is!”

“That way,” Madam C told the coachman, pointing at a small dirt road that cut into the fields next to the amphora tree.

“I’ll be damned,” the coachman said, smacking a hand on his forehead. “I thought this tree was a fantasy of three crazy women, but here it is.”

He guided the horse to a right turn, and the carriage eased onto the dirt road. For some time they crossed only fields and occasional groves of aspens and weeping willows. Then the farmhouse appeared, set in a large, dry meadow studded with horse chestnut trees. An archway led the carriage into a graveled courtyard, around which stood the two-story house, the stable, the hayloft, and the chicken coops. In the middle of the courtyard, the horse came to a halt. Madam C, Maddalena, and Rosa stepped down. “We appreciate your help,” Madam C told the coachman with a smile. She dipped her hand into her purse.

“You already paid me,” the coachman said, grinning. From his post up on the carriage, he spit tobacco onto the gravel. Then he clicked at the horse and soon became a shadow in the mist of the morning fog.

Shortly, a man came out of the house. Rosa spoke first. “Good morning,” she said. “We’re looking for Giacomo. Is he here?”

The man took a step back. He said, “I don’t know anybody by that name.”

“We are his friends,” Rosa reassured him. “We know he came here with Renato.”

The man became thoughtful, but didn’t speak.

“Show Giacomo this,” Rosa said, handing the man the blue stone. “He’ll know who we are.”

With ill-concealed interest, the man took the stone and went back inside. He returned with Giacomo two minutes later. “Rosa?” Giacomo said. “What are you doing here?” He pointed at Madam C and Maddalena. “Who are they?”

“Friends,” Rosa explained, “who came here with me to help me find Renato. Is he with you?”

Giacomo seemed surprised. “No,” he said. “He left over a week ago, as soon as we got here.”

Rosa took Maddalena’s hand. “I was hoping so much he’d be here…”

“We need to talk,” Madam C said. “Can we come inside?”

The conversation between Rosa, Madam C, Maddalena, Giacomo, and Anna and Berto Valle, Gabriele’s parents, took place in the kitchen, at a round oak table. Anna served strong, hot coffee, for which everyone was grateful.

“What’s going on?” Giacomo asked. “All this time,” he said, looking at Rosa, “I thought Renato was back in Genoa with you.”

Rosa shook her head slowly.

“Is it possible that he decided to go somewhere else?” Madam C wondered.

“I doubt that very strongly,” Giacomo said. “On the train he spoke only of Rosa and how much he missed her and how he couldn’t wait to be with her. He even said”—he smiled—“that he could smell her odor even when she was far away.”

“I insisted he spend the night here,” said Anna, “but he was in a hurry to catch the night train, and I couldn’t change his mind.”

“How did he get back to the station?” Maddalena asked.

“With Geraldo Bassi, a neighbor who was here that evening and was headed that way,” Berto explained.

“Could we talk to him?” Madam C asked. “At least we’ll know if Renato made it back to the station.”