The Scent Of Rosa's Oil (9 page)

Rosa smiled a long time. “Sometimes, when I don’t know what to do, I think of my mother and ask myself what she would do. Then I find the answer. It’s strange, because I never even met her. But it’s as if I had known her all my life.”

Isabel nodded. “That’s how it is when you love someone.” She sat on the rocking chair. “Your turn, Tramonto. Tell me your story.”

Over the next half hour, Rosa told Isabel about Angela, Madam C, the Luna, the girls, her school stories, and her dream of crossing the ocean. She arrived at the Luna late that afternoon, holding a bottle of diluted eucalyptus oil Isabel had given her as a present. “Rub some in the morning on your wrists and ear lobes,” Isabel had told her. “You’ll feel energy and happiness in you.” Rosa placed the bottle on her nightstand, next to her books. In one of the books, she had the orange blossom Isabel had given her on the day they had met.

Over the next few weeks, Rosa learned as much as she could about the oils and the distillation process. When she didn’t help Isabel steam flowers or press fruit peels in the mortars, she experimented mixing the oils that were in the pantry in search of the perfect blend for her skin. One evening, at the Luna, she asked Madam C, “Can you take me to the hills to pick flowers?”

“Where does this come from, Rosa?” Madam C said. “The hills? To pick flowers?”

“Yes. I would like that very much.”

“Why?”

“I’ve never been anywhere,” Rosa explained, “other than in these
caruggi
and at the port.”

“Why the hills?”

“Could you take me there, please? For my birthday present.”

Madam C looked at Rosa for a moment. “All right,” she said. “For your birthday present.”

One week before Rosa’s sixteenth birthday, on a sunny and warm day, Madam C walked with Rosa to Piazza De Ferrari, the large round piazza that was the heart of the city. There were electric trams everywhere, some standing, some circling the piazza in slow motion. In the southwest corner, thick with the odors of hay and fresh manure, Madam C hired a carriage. “Take us to the meadows above San Nicolò,” Madam C told the driver. “I’ll guide you as we go.”

The driver nodded and helped Rosa and Madam C to their seats. He made a screeching sound with the corner of his mouth and the horse began to walk.

“Can he go faster?” Rosa asked.

The driver overheard her. “Too much traffic, miss,” he said. “Automobiles and trams make the horses all nervous. I’ve seen more crushed bodies in the past six months than in the twenty years I’ve been driving this carriage. These days, pedestrians can be thankful to make it across the street alive. I can’t be careful enough. Do you know the saying?
Chi va piano va sano e va lontano
. Sit back, and enjoy the ride.”

Rosa sank happily into her seat. It was her very first carriage ride. Up till then she had hardly ever left the
caruggi
or the port area and had been fearful of the traffic of the big town. But up there in her seat, next to Madam C, watching people and trams and the roofless automobiles pass by, she felt safe and important, and excited to be headed for the hills for the first time.

The carriage left downtown without incident. The road steepened, and the horse puffed and snorted as it proceeded slowly up the slope. Soon, the noise of the traffic subsided and the streets turned quiet, the silence broken only by the echo of the hooves on the pavement and the voices of occasional passersby. Rosa was bewitched by Genoa’s beauty: the roads, much cleaner, wider, and brighter than the
caruggi
; the elegant buildings with no pigeons huddled on the gutters or roaming in flocks by the front doors; and the view of the port and the sea she occasionally could get when she looked behind. Madam C was also in awe, even though she had spent all her life in Genoa and been on those hills many times before. That day, a light northern breeze,
la tramontana
, was caressing the top of the hills, sweeping the sky clear of all clouds and flattening the water like a mirror. With a smile, Madam C removed her hat and set it on the seat. She said, “What a wonderful day we picked for our ride.”

Rosa nodded and kept looking right and left with her curious, wondrous eyes.

At a certain point, Madam C asked the driver to make a sharp right and follow a steep path surrounded by patches of purple and pink bougainvillea. “We are almost there,” she told Rosa, pointing ahead.

The carriage stopped at the end of the path, and Rosa and Madam C continued on foot along a dirt trail that took them to an open green area set on the flank of the hill, high above the houses. In it were small meadows studded with wildflowers and areas with groves of olive trees, oleanders, orange, and lemon trees. Genoa’s temperate slow-changing climate allowed those plants to grow lushly all over the hills as well as along the riviera, near the water. The perfumes of fruit and leaves blended with the scents of the sea to form a unique fragrance that—the natives liked to say—lingered inside the Genoeses’ souls and mixed with their blood and bones. Those who had smelled that fragrance, the saying had it, were bound to it forever.

Gingerly, Rosa walked on grass for the first time. She smelled the clean earth and stared at the flowers sprouting from the ground. She sniffed and touched a long time, picked flowers, leaves, and petals, and all along thought of Isabel and Azul, together on the hill in Costa Rica, and understood how happy they must have been together. “Thank you,” she told Madam C on the way home.

“Before we go back,” Madam C said, “there’s something I want to show you.” She asked the carriage driver to make a detour on the way down and stop for a few minutes by the belvedere. It was a piazza on the lower part of the hill from where one could enjoy an unobstructed view of the city, the port, and the coastline. They sat on a south-facing bench and watched the scenery in brooding silence: streets and houses rolling steeply downhill to touch the shoreline, ships resting in the calm harbor waters, docks extending out into the sea like giant fingers pointing to reach the horizon. “It’s amazing how different the city looks from up here,” Madam C said to the stunned Rosa.

“Where is Vico del Pepe?” Rosa asked.

“Somewhere in that direction,” Madam C replied, pointing down and to her left, “but it’s impossible to pinpoint it from up here.”

Rosa had never seen rooftops before. She had never even thought of what might be at the very top of the buildings she was used to looking at from below. She stared at the slate tiles, the hanging gardens, the water reservoirs that studded the terraces, the jumble of stairways, and the swallows darting in the sky. She squinted her eyes in the direction Madam C had pointed, and couldn’t believe that down there, somewhere, were the Luna and the roads she had walked all her life. For a moment, she pretended she saw herself sitting by the port and dreaming. She whispered, “It’s almost like looking at someone else’s life.”

“We should come back here at night,” Madam C said. “Then you’d really be amazed.”

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Rosa said as they regained their seats in the carriage and headed for downtown.

“You’re welcome, dear,” Madam C nodded, unsure as to what was going on in Rosa’s mind. She had seen her happy before, but never quite this way. It was an inner happiness, she thought, much more mature than the lighthearted happiness of a girl. She asked, “What are you going to do with all these leaves and flowers?”

“You can have some for your room,” Rosa said, “and some for the parlor. The rest, I have to take somewhere.”

“When I was a child,” Madam C said after a moment, “I had this dream that on my eighteenth birthday I would ride on the hills on a white horse.”

“Did you get to do it?” Rosa asked.

“No,” Madam C replied with only a hint of sadness. “I’m happy you had your day picking flowers.”

Rosa took the flowers to Isabel that afternoon. “Thank you,” Isabel said, holding back tears. “It has been so long since I held in my hands flowers that still smell of the earth they were in. Well, let’s get to work here.”

“I think I found a blend of oils that my skin likes,” said Rosa.

“Really?” Isabel asked. “Which oils are in it?”

“Apple blossoms, lavender, and basil.”

“That’s an unusual blend,” Isabel said. “Let me smell it.”

Rosa opened a small blue bottle and placed it under Isabel’s nose.

“Interesting,” Isabel commented. “I can almost smell the apples. Rub it on your skin.”

Gingerly, Rosa poured a drop of oil on her fingertip, then turned her other hand palm up and rubbed the fingertip on the soft skin of her wrist. Isabel sniffed the wrist three times. “Very good,” she said. “It smells a lot better on you than on its own, and that’s a sign that the oil blends well with the quality of your skin. Keep rubbing it on you. If you never get tired of its odor, it means it’s your perfect oil. If after a few weeks it starts annoying you, then you’ll have to look for another one.”

Rosa nodded. “In one week,” she said, “it’ll be my sixteenth birthday. There will be a party at the Luna. I’d like you to come.”

Isabel shook her head. “Thank you, Tramonto, but no.”

“Why?”

“I never go anywhere, other than to the market looking for flowers.”

“So come to the Luna. It’s my birthday.”

“People don’t like to be with me,” Isabel said, continuing to shake her head, “and I don’t like to be with people.”

“You like to be with me, don’t you?”

“Yes, but you’re different.” She paused. “Your eyes are clear.”

“You’re wrong,” Rosa said, almost in tears. “Madam C would like you, and so would Margherita, Maddalena, and Stella. And the other Luna girls. They’re nice. Maddalena is the one who told me that there must be an explanation for your steam and I should not reach conclusions about you without asking. She reads tarots. I’m sure she’d love to read your future.”

“I love you, Tramonto,” Isabel said, “but don’t ask me to go to a party with lots of people. That’s something I cannot do. But I have an idea.”

“What?”

“We’ll celebrate your birthday right here, right now. I have a present for you.”

Carefully, Isabel pulled loose the stone that had hidden Francesco’s money years earlier and took a small glass bottle out of the wall. “This,” she said, “is the only bottle I have left from the batch I brought with me from Costa Rica. Azul and I made this oil. I want you to have it.”

Rosa took the bottle but said, “I couldn’t. You should keep it.”

“Take it,” Isabel insisted. “Azul would want you to have it.”

“What kind of oil is it?” Rosa asked.

Isabel chuckled. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. And I can’t tell what it is from its odor. For sure it was made from flowers and leaves we picked on the hill. Smell it,” she said, opening the bottle. “See if you like it.”

“I love it,” Rosa said, sniffing gently a few times. “It’s”—she paused—“very strong.”

“It’s very concentrated,” Isabel warned her. “Try adding a few drops of it to your blend. See what it feels like to you.”

With the care of a magician, Rosa poured three drops of Azul’s oil into the bottle of her blend of lavender, basil, and apple blossoms.

“Wait a few seconds to let Azul’s oil blend in,” Isabel said. “Now rub it on your wrist again, and tell me if it feels different.”

“It does,” Rosa said after a moment. “It’s more…I don’t know how to describe it. More…real.”

“Very good,” Isabel said. “Maybe your apple blossoms, basil, and lavender needed Azul’s oil to be your perfect blend. Who knows? Here, take this, too.” She gave Rosa a small glass cup set on a metal tripod. “Pour a little bit of oil in this cup, then add water. One part of oil, ten parts of water. Place a lit candle under the cup. The water will boil and evaporate, taking along the scent of the oil. You can make your room smell of your perfect blend this way. But watch out. These scents have strange effects on people. Some will be entranced by it, others will hate it.”

“I’ll watch out, I promise. Thank you,” Rosa said.

“Don’t mention it, Tramonto. Happy birthday.”

On the day of her birthday, around noon, when she was certain Santina had finished cleaning and wouldn’t go back to her room, Rosa took out of her closet Isabel’s birthday present and took it to the deserted kitchen. Quietly, she poured in the glass cup ten parts of water and one part of her blend of Azul’s oil, lavender, basil, and apple blossoms, then opened Antonia’s pantry and got hold of a small candle and a box of wooden matches. She took everything back to her bedroom, where she placed the tripod on her nightstand and the filled cup on the tripod. Seated on her bed, she lit the candle and placed it underneath the cup. Soon, her room smelled slightly of her oil. It was a delicate yet sharp smell, sweet and spicy at the same time, that startled even Rosa when she returned to her room an hour later. “This
is
my perfect oil,” she said aloud. “I have no doubt.”

Around seven in the evening, when the party was about to get started in the parlor, Madam C told Margherita, “I think we should do away with the poetry reading.”

Margherita asked, “Why? Rosa asked for it.”

“You know the mayor,” Madam C said. “He hates poetry.”

“I don’t care,” Rosa said, entering the parlor in her white dress.

“Don’t be so selfish,” Madam C said in a hard voice.

“It’s her birthday,” Stella said. “She’s supposed to be selfish. Besides, who cares if the mayor doesn’t like poetry.”

“I do,” Madam C insisted. “He’s the guest of honor.”

“If he comes to my party,” Rosa said, “he’ll have to listen to Margherita read poetry. He won’t die.”

“If I see him exhaling his last breath,” Maddalena said with a naughty smile, “I’ll give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. That he’ll like.”

“Come here, Rosa,” Madam C said, handing Rosa a small jewelry case. “This is for you.”

Rosa opened the case and saw two small gold earrings in the shape of a loop with a tiny pendant at the bottom.

“They belonged to Angela,” Madam C explained. “I gave them to her many years ago as a birthday present. When she started to feel sick after your birth, she wanted me to have them. She’d be happy to know that they are with you now.”