Remembrance Read online

  “Beautiful, eh, signorina?” The gondolier glanced at San Marco with pride, and then back at her. But she only nodded. It was extraordinary to be back after so many years, yet nothing had changed here. The rest of the world had been turned upside down, but even the war had not touched Venice. Bombs had fallen nearby, but miraculously, Venice itself had remained untouched. He swept slowly under the Ponte di Paglia then, and rapidly under the illustrious Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs, and then drifted into the maze of smaller canals, past other less important palazzi and ancient statues carved into the magnificent facades. There were balconies and tiny piazzas and everywhere the ornate splendor that had drawn people to Venice for a thousand years.

  But now Serena was no longer fascinated by the architecture. Ever since they had turned into the maze of smaller canals, her face had been tense, and her brow furrowed as she watched familiar landmarks begin to slide by. They were coming closer now, and the answers to the questions that had tormented her for two years now were within reach.

  The gondolier turned to confirm the address with her, and then, having seen her face, he said nothing more. He knew. Others had come home before her. Soldiers mostly. Some had been prisoners of war, and come home to find their mothers and their lovers and their wives. He wondered who his young beauty could be looking for and where she had been. Whatever she was looking for, he hoped she found it. They were only a few hundred feet from the house now, and Serena had already sighted it. She saw the shutters falling from their hinges, boards over a few of the windows, and the narrow canal lapping at the stone steps just beneath the iron grille on the landing. As the gondolier approached the building Serena stood up.

  “You want me to ring the bell for you?” There was a big old-fashioned bell and a knocker, but Serena was quick to shake her head. He held her arm to steady her as she stepped carefully onto the landing, and for an instant she looked up at the darkened windows, knowing only too well the tale they told.

  She hesitated for an endless moment, and then quickly pulled the chain on the bell and closed her eyes as she waited, thinking back to all the other times her hand had touched that bell … waiting … counting the moments until one of the old familiar faces would appear, her grandmother just behind them, smiling, waiting to embrace Serena and run laughingly up the steps with her to the main salon … the tapestries, the rich brocades … the statues … the tiny miniatures of the exquisite golden copper horses of San Marco at the head of the stairs … and this time only silence and the sounds of the canal behind her. As she stood there Serena knew that there would be no answer to the bell.

  “Non, c'è nessuno, signorina?” the gondolier inquired. But it was a useless question. No, of course there was no one home, and hadn't been in years. For a moment Serena's eyes rested on the knocker, wanting to try that too, to urge someone from the familiar depths within, to make them open the door, to make them roll back the clock for her.

  “Eh! … Eh!” It was an insistent sound behind her, almost an aggressive one, and she turned to see a vegetable merchant drifting past in his boat, watching her suspiciously. “Can't you see there's no one there?”

  “Do you know where they are?” Serena called across the other boats, relishing the sound of her own language again. It was as though she had never left. The four years in the States did not exist.

  The vegetable man shrugged. “Who knows?” And then, philosophically, “The war … a lot of people moved away.”

  “Do you know what happened to the woman who lived here?” An edge of franticness was moving back into Serena's voice and the gondolier watched her face, as a mailman on a barge came slowly by, looking at Serena with interest.

  “The house was sold, signorina” The postman answered the question for her.

  “To whom? When?” Serena looked suddenly shocked. Sold? The house had been sold? She had never contemplated that. But why would her grandmother have sold the house? Had she been short of money? It was a possibility that had never occurred to Serena before.

  “It was sold last year, when the war was still on. Some people from Milano bought it. They said that when the war was over they would retire and move to Venice … fix up the house.…”He shrugged and Serena felt herself bridle. “Fix up the house.” What the hell did he mean? What did they mean? Fix what up? The bronzes? The priceless antiques, the marble floors? The impeccable gardens behind the house? What was there to fix? As he watched her the mailman understood her pain. He pulled his boat close to the landing and looked up into her face. “Was she a friend of yours … the old lady?” Serena nodded slowly, not daring to say more. “Ècco. Capisco allora.” He only thought he understood, but he didn't. “She died, you know. Two years ago. In the spring.”

  “Of what?” Serena felt her whole body grow limp, as though suddenly someone had pulled all of the bones out of her. She thought for a moment that she might faint. They were the words she had expected, the words she had feared, but now she had heard them and they cut through her like a knife. She wanted him to be wrong, but as she looked at the kind old face she knew that he wasn't. Her grandmother was gone.

  “She was very old, you know, signorina. Almost ninety.”

  Serena shook her head almost absentmindedly and spoke softly. “No, she turned eighty that spring.”

  “Ah.” He spoke gently, wanting to offer comfort but not sure how. “Her son came from Rome, but only for two days. He had everything sent to Rome, I heard later. Everything, all her things. But he put the house up for sale right away. Still, it took them a year to sell it.”

  So it was Sergio again, Serena thought to herself as she stood there. Sergio. He had everything sent to Rome. “And her letters?” She sounded angry now, as though within her there was something slowly beginning to burn. “Where did her mail go? Was it sent to him?”

  The mailman nodded. “Except the letters for the servants. He told me to send those back.”

  Then, Sergio had got all of her letters. Why hadn't he told her? Why hadn't someone written to her to tell her? For more than two years she had gone crazy, waiting, wondering, asking questions that no one could answer. But he could have answered, the bastard.

  “Signorina?” The mailman and the gondolier waited. “Va bene?” She nodded slowly.

  “Sí … sí… grazie … I was just …” She had been about to offer an explanation but her eyes filled with tears instead. She turned away and the two men exchanged a glance.

  “I'm sorry, signorina.” She nodded, her back still turned, and the mailman moved on. Only her gondolier waited.

  In a moment, after a last look at the rusting hinges on the gate, she fingered the bellpull one last time, as though making contact with some piece of her, some tangible part of the past, as though by touching something that her grandmother had touched she could become part of her again, and then slowly she came back to the gondola, feeling as though some vital part of her had died. So Sergio finally had what he wanted now—the title. She hated him. She wanted him to choke on his title, to rot in his own blood, to die a far more horrible death than her father, to …

  “Signorina?” The gondolier had watched her face contort with anger and anguish, and he wondered what agony had seized her soul to make someone so young look so tormented. “Where would you like to go now?”

  She hesitated for a moment, not sure. Should she go back to the train station? She wasn't ready. Not yet. There was something she had to do first. She turned slowly to the gondolier, remembering the little church perfectly. It was exquisite, and perhaps someone there would know more. “Take me please to the Campo Santa Maria Nuova.”

  “Maria dei Miracoli?” he asked her, naming the church where she wanted to go. She nodded, and he helped her back into the gondola and pushed slowly away from the landing, as her eyes held interminably to the facade she would always remember and never come back to see again. This would be her last journey to Venice. She knew that now. She had no reason to come back. Not anymore.

  She
found Santa Maria dei Miracoli as she remembered it, almost hidden by high walls, and as simple externally as she recalled. It was inside that Mary of the Miracles showed her wonders, inside that the marble inlays and delicate carvings startled the newcomer with its beauty and still entranced those who knew it well after seeing it for dozens of years. Serena stood there for a moment, feeling her grandmother beside her, as she had every Sunday when they had come to Mass. She stood silently for a few moments and then walked slowly toward the altar, kneeling there, and trying desperately not to think … of what to do now … of where to go.…

  Dwelling on her loss wouldn't help her. But still, the reality of it was almost intolerable and two lone tears traveled down her cheeks to the delicately carved chin. She stood up a moment later and went into the office at the back of the church, to attempt to find the priest. There was an old man in a priest's robe sitting there when she entered. He sat at a simple desk, reading from a frayed leather book of prayer.

  “Father?” He looked up slowly from what he was reading, gazing directly into Serena's green eyes. He was new to the parish, she suspected. She did not remember him from before she left. “I wonder if you could help me. I am looking for some information about my grandmother.”

  The old man in the cassock sighed and stood up slowly. There had been so many inquiries like this since the end of the war. People had died, moved away, got lost. It was unlikely that he would be able to help her. “I don't know. I will check the records for you. Her name?”

  “La Principessa Alicia di San Tibaldo.” She said it softly, not meaning to impress anyone, but nonetheless his manner changed. He became more alert, more interested, more helpful, and in spite of herself, Serena was annoyed. Did the title mean so much, then? Was that what would make the difference? Why? It all seemed so unimportant now. Titles, names, rank, money. All that mattered to Serena was that her grandmother was dead.

  He was whispering softly to himself as he shuffled through drawers of papers, and then checked a large ledger for what seemed like an interminable time, until at last, he nodded his head and looked up at Serena again. “Yes.” He turned the book toward her. “It is here. April ninth, 1943. The cause of death was natural. A priest from this church administered last rites. She is buried outside in the garden. Would you like to see?” Serena nodded and followed him solemnly out of the office, through the church, and out a narrow door, into a brightly sunlit little garden, filled with flowers and small ancient tombstones, and surrounded by small trees. He walked carefully toward a back corner where there were only a few tombstones, and all of them seemed to be new. He gestured gently toward the small white marble stone, watched Serena for a moment, and then turned and left as she stood there, looking stunned. The search was over, the answers had come. She was here, then, beneath the trees, hidden by the walls at Santa Maria dei Miracoli, she had been here all along as Serena wrote her letter after letter, praying that her grandmother was still alive. Serena wanted to be angry as she stood there, she wanted to hate someone, to fight back. But there was no one to hate, no fight left. It was all over, in this peaceful garden, and all that Serena felt was sad.

  “Ciao, Nonna,” she whispered as she turned to leave at last, her eyes blurred with the tears that filled them. She did not return to say good-bye to the priest, but as she made her way out through the beautiful little church again, he was standing in the doorway and came to her, looking solicitous and interested, and he shook her hand twice as she left.

  “Good-bye, Principessa … good-bye.…” Principessa? For an instant she stopped in her tracks, startled, and turned to look at him again. Princess, he had called her.… Princess? … And then slowly, she nodded. Her grandmother was gone now. Serena was the principessa, and as she ran hastily down the steps to the landing where she had left her gondolier, she knew that didn't matter at all.

  As the gondolier made his way away from the church, her thoughts were spinning. Sergio. What had he done with the money he got for the house? What had he done with her parents' treasures and her grandmother's beautiful things? Suddenly she wanted an explanation, a recount, she wanted the despicable man who had destroyed her family to make up to her what he had taken from her. Yet even as she thought of it she knew that he could not. Nothing Sergio would ever do would make up to Serena what she had lost. But still, for some reason, she felt an urge now to see him, to demand something of him, to make him account for what was, in a sense, hers as well. And now as she sat in the gondola, heading slowly back toward the Grand Canal and the Piazza San Marco, she knew where she was going. Venice had belonged to her grandmother. It was a part of her. It was her. But it wasn't home to Serena. It never had been. It had always been foreign and different and intriguing, exciting, a kind of adventure even during the two years she had lived there after her parents death. But now, having come this far, Serena knew that she had to go further. She had to go all the way to her beginnings. She had to go home.

  “Do you want to go to the piazza, signorina?”

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. Not to the piazza. She had finished what she had to do in Venice. Three hours after she'd got there, it was time to move on. “No, grazie. Not the piazza. Take me back to Santa Lucia.”

  They glided slowly under the Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs, and she closed her eyes. Almost instinctively, the gondolier began to sing; it was a sad, plaintive song, and he sang it well. A moment later they were back in the bright sunshine and the song went on as they rounded the bend of the Grand Canal and passed in front of the splendor of the Piazza San Marco, the Campanile, the Doges' Palace, and back down the canal, past all the miracles of Venice. But this time Serena did not cry. She watched all of it, as though drinking it in this one last time so that she could remember, as though she knew that she would never come back again.

  When they reached the station, she paid him, including a handsome tip, for which he thanked her profusely, and his eyes sought hers.

  “Where are you going now, signorina?”

  “To Rome.”

  He nodded slowly. “You haven't been back since the war?” She shook her head. “You will find it very different.” But it couldn't be any more different from what she had found here. For her everything was changed, everywhere. “You have relatives in Roma?”

  “No … I … all I had was my grandmother. Here.”

  “That was her house this morning?” Serena nodded and he shook his head.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “So am I.” She smiled softly at him then and reached out to shake his hand. He took her delicate white hand in his rough brown one, and then patted her on the shoulder as he helped her out and handed her her bag.

  “Come back to Venice, signorina.” He smiled at her, and she promised that she would, and then solemnly picked up her little suitcase and began to walk back in the direction of the train.

  3

  As the train drew into Termini Station shortly after sunset at eight that evening, there was no smile on Serena's lips. Instead she sat in her seat as though at any moment she expected something ghastly to happen, her entire body tense, her face white. She watched landmarks she hadn't seen in almost seven years begin to drift past her, and it was as though for the first time in years a door deep inside her was being torn from its hinges, as though her very soul was exposed. If someone had spoken to Serena at that moment, she wouldn't have heard them.

  She was lost in another world, as they rolled along on the edge of the city, and suddenly she felt a longing well up in her that she had not allowed herself to feel in years. It was a longing for familiar places, an ache for her parents, a hunger to come home. She could barely wait for the train to stop in the station. As it lurched the last few feet forward she stood up and pulled her suitcase out of the overhead rack, and then with rapid strides she threaded her way to the end of the car and waited, like a horse anxious to return to its stable. The moment the train stopped and the doors opened, she leaped down and began to run. It was like
a wild, instinctive gesture, this mad pounding of the pavement, as she ran past women and children and soldiers, heedless of everything except this wild, mingled feeling. She wanted to shout “Here I am everybody! I'm home!” But beneath the excitement was still the tremor … of what she would find here in Rome … and of the terrible memories of her parents' last day alive. Her emotions were wild—was coming here a betrayal? Was there reason to be scared?—oh, God, she was glad to be home. She had had to see it. Just once more. Or had she come in search of her uncle? Of an explanation? Of apologies or solace … ?

  She flagged down a small black taxi and flung her suitcase into the backseat. The driver turned his head with interest to watch her, but made no move to assist her. Instead he looked long and hard into her eyes. It was a look that startled her in its frank appraisal, and she lowered her eyes suddenly, embarrassed at the desire she saw in the man's eyes.

  “Dove?” It was a question that startled her in its directness, but it was hardly unusual for him to ask. The only problem was that she wasn't sure how to answer. He had asked her simply “Where,” and she didn't know. Where? To the house that had been her parents' and was now her uncle's? Was she ready? Could she face him? Did she want to see that house again? Suddenly all her assurance melted as quickly as it had sprung up in her and she felt her hands tremble as she smoothed her dress and averted her gaze again.

  “The Borghese Gardens.” The tremor in her voice was audible only to Serena, and the driver shrugged and thrust the car into the traffic. And as she sat in the backseat staring out at the city that had drawn her like a magnet, Serena felt suddenly like a child again, her hair loose and flowing softly in the breeze coming in the windows, her eyes wide. She knew from familiar landmarks that they were approaching the Porta Pinciana. She could see the Via Vittorio Véneto stretched out ahead, and just before them suddenly the dark expanse of the gardens, lit here and there along the walkways, the flower beds visible even in the growing dark. She realized suddenly also how strange the driver must have thought her. The Borghese Gardens at nine o'clock at night? But where else was she to go now? She already knew the answer, but tried not to think of it as she counted out the fare to the driver, tossed her hair off her shoulders, and picked up her suitcase and got out. She stood there for a long moment, as though waiting for someone, and then, as if seeing everything around her for the first time, she took a deep breath and began to walk. Not hurriedly this time as though she had somewhere to go, and someone to meet her, but slowly, aimlessly, as if all she cared about was imbibing the essence of Rome.