Last Voyage of the Valentina(85)

“You will stay with us,” Falco instructed in his deep, gruff voice. He had moved back into his mother’s house with his wife and son after Valentina’s death. Now Toto lived there too, with his own six-year-old daughter, Cosima; they had moved in when Cosima’s mother had run off with an Argentinean tango dancer.

“She can have Valentina’s old room,” Immacolata stated gravely and the air seemed to be sucked out of the little group. It was well known that Immacolata kept Valentina’s room as a shrine. For twenty-six years she had lovingly cleaned it and cared for it, but no one was allowed to use it. Not ever. Not even Cosima.

Alba sensed the significance of the gesture and thanked her grandmother. “I will be honored to have my mother’s room,” she said sincerely. “I feel I am beginning to know her through you. It is what I have longed for all my life.”

Immacolata, exhausted by the excitement, ordered Lattarullo to take her home. “I have given the people of Incantellaria a public celebration; now I would like to celebrate alone with my family.” Alba was excited to be going to the very house where her mother had lived, to sleep in the bed she had slept in. If she had known it would be as magical as this she would have come years ago.

“Where is your suitcase?” Falco asked Alba as they walked out into the evening sunshine.

“Lost,” she said casually. “It was stolen, but it doesn’t matter.”

“Stolen?”

“Good gracious, where’s Gabriele?” She turned to look about her, ashamed that she had forgotten him.

“Oh, he left.”

“He left? I never thanked him!” she exclaimed, disappointed. “He didn’t even say goodbye.” She turned to look at the harbor as if by some small chance he might still be there, waiting beside his boat.

“He gave me this to give to you.” Falco handed her the little white card. It was engraved with Gabriele’s name and telephone number.

“How smart!” she said, slipping it into her handbag.

“So you have nothing?” Falco said incredulously.

“Nothing. If it hadn’t been for Gabriele’s generosity, oh, and the unwitting generosity of the Italian railway officials, I wouldn’t have gotten here at all!” She climbed into the back of the car and leaned against the hot leather, warmed by the sun. Falco climbed in beside her. Immacolata sat in front, eager to get back to the quiet sanctuary of her home and the relics of the deceased. Lattarullo drove.

The ride up the hill was a bumpy one: the road was little more than a dusty track. “They tried to tarmac it about ten years ago but ran out of money, so it’s smooth for about half a mile out of town and then this!” Falco explained.

“I think it’s charming,” Alba replied. To her, everything about Incantellaria was charming.

“You wouldn’t think so if you had to drive up it every day!”

Alba had rolled down the car window in order to wave goodbye to the townsfolk celebrating her homecoming. Now as they neared the house she stuck her nose out to breathe in the woody scents of the countryside. From up here on the hill she could see the sea, shimmering blue in the soft evening light. She wondered how often her mother must have gazed upon that very same view. Perhaps she had seen her father motor into the bay in his MTB.

They climbed out of the car to walk down the grassy path to the house. The track had been extended in the last few years so that it now almost reached the front door. Suddenly Alba was struck with a sweet, succulent smell. “What is that?” she asked, sniffing the air like Sprout did. “It’s divine!”

Lattarullo looked at her. “Your father asked me that very same question when he arrived here for the first time.”

“He did?” she asked brightly.

“Figs,” said Immacolata gravely. “Though I defy you to find a fig tree!” Alba looked inquiringly at Falco.

Her uncle shrugged. “She’s right. It’s always smelled of figs.”

“It’s intoxicating,” she said, heaving a sigh. “Magical.”

She followed them into the sand-colored house, almost entirely obscured by heavy clusters of wisteria. Her grandmother led the way through the tiled hallway into the sitting room. There, in the corner, burned three shrines. One to Immacolata’s husband, one to the son she had lost, and the third, which appeared to blaze brighter than the other two, to Valentina. As Alba walked nearer she saw the black-and-white photograph of her grandfather in uniform, standing proud and erect. His eyes were full of zeal for the cause he naturally thought to be just, and his mouth was set in a determined grimace, not unlike Falco’s. The photograph of his son, Alba’s uncle, was also in black and white and showed him in uniform. Handsome, with the cheeky face of a prankster, he smiled out from under his cap. When her eyes settled on her mother’s shrine she caught her breath. There was no photograph. Just a portrait. Done in the same pastels as the one she had found beneath the bed in her houseboat. Valentina and Alba 1945. Thomas Arbuckle. Now my love is twofold.