The Scent Of Rosa's Oil (18 page)

“She turned you in, and you want me to go look for her?” Renato asked in disbelief.

“If I don’t see her again,” Giacomo said, closing his eyes, “I may as well stop breathing.”

Rosa turned to Isabel. “Didn’t you tell me one day that your oils can make people snap out of love?”

“That was Azul’s claim,” Isabel said. “I have no idea if she was right.”

Renato looked at the two of them. “Giacomo is twice as stubborn as I am. Believe me, no oil will make him change his mind.”

“Then we’ll have to find this girl,” Rosa said. She took Renato’s hand. “I know how it feels when you can’t live without somebody.”

“Do you really think that any one of us could get close to her after what happened?” Renato asked.

“Not you,” Rosa said. “I, on the other hand, may be able to find her.”

Rosa and Renato returned to the circus that very same day. “We’re closed,” said the man seated by the entrance. “There are no performances today because we are mourning Manari.” He pointed to a sign—
The performances will resume tomorrow at the usual times
.

“The circus is not leaving?” Renato asked.

“Not for a while,” the man replied. “The owner decided to stay here until Manari’s killer is found.”

“This is good,” Rosa pointed out after she and Renato had left the circus’s grounds. “We have time to find the girl and talk to her.”

Renato asked, “How? We don’t even know what she looks like. What Giacomo said about her—black hair, long legs—could be true of all the dancers in this place.”

Rosa gave him a cunning smile. “I know how to lie, remember? I’ll figure something out.”

The following day Rosa returned to the circus when the afternoon show was almost over. She approached the main tent and circled it with nonchalance until she found the side entrance. When she had attended the show with Renato, she had noticed the performers going in and out of that entrance at the beginning and end of their numbers. Three clowns left the tent through that entryway as Rosa arrived. “Excuse me,” she said. “Where can I find Camila?”

The clowns gave her a stare. “Do we know you?”

“No,” Rosa said.

“You’re not supposed to be here if you don’t work for the circus,” one said.

“I’m an old friend of Camila’s from out of town,” Rosa explained.

A second clown said, “And?”

“Please tell me where she is. It’s important that I talk to her. I heard what happened.” She paused and spoke in a sad voice. “I was also a friend of Manari’s.”

The clowns looked at each other a moment, then one of them pushed aside the curtain that hung over the entryway. The show was in its final phases, with several groups of performers on the floor, moving to the rhythm of exotic music. “There,” the clown said, pointing at a group of dancers with their faces covered by veils. “She’s the last one on the right, with the white and gold dress.” As the clowns walked away, Rosa heard one say, “He was a good man, that Manari.”

She waited by the side entrance for the show to be over and the performers to begin exiting the tent and head for their homes. In the confusion, no one took notice of her. She recognized Camila by her dress and followed her through the animals’ pens to the area where the caravans were. She approached Camila as the girl was opening the door of her caravan, about to go inside. “Camila?” she called.

Camila turned around. “Yes?”

“I’m a friend of Giacomo’s,” Rosa said softly. “He misses you and sent me here to find you. Would you like to see him?”

Camila looked at Rosa with expressionless eyes. “I don’t care about Giacomo,” she whispered as she stepped inside. “I sleep with many different men in every town.”

“What a fool I’ve been,” Giacomo said when Rosa told him what she had found out. “I’m in this mess now, and for absolutely no reason.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Renato said.

“At least we solved one of your problems,” Isabel said. “The worst one of all, in my opinion.” She pointed at Giacomo’s heart. “You’re no longer sick with love.”

“What a pair you and I are,” Giacomo told Renato later, when the two of them were alone in the flower room. “Your girl pretends to be someone else, my girl pretends to love me.”

“Rosa had an excuse,” Renato pointed out, “the stigma society puts on people. I was part of it. I judged her that day outside the Grifone, along with everybody else. Camila had no reason to do what she did. I never met anyone that cruel.”

Giacomo stared at the ceiling and sighed. “I never met anyone so beautiful.”

For more than a week, Giacomo lived hidden in Isabel’s booth. During that time, as Isabel took care of his wound and pampered him with her perfumed remedies from Costa Rica, the two grew fond of each other.

“When I first saw you,” Giacomo told her one day, “I thought you were a creature from hell.”

“Don’t worry,” Isabel said. “Happens with everybody.” She reflected a moment. “When I first saw you, bleeding in that dark alley, I thought you were the ghost of Francesco Carravieri, returned to Genoa to drag me with him to hell, where he certainly is.”

“Who’s Francesco Carravieri?” Giacomo asked.

Isabel’s eyes fogged up for a moment. “Someone I wish I had never met.”

While Giacomo recovered in the flower room, Rosa slept with Isabel in the distillery and during the day continued to sell oils on Piazza Banchi as usual. Renato returned to work and to his political demonstrations, after being questioned by the police numerous times about Giacomo’s whereabouts. He and Rosa kept making love in the shack, because that was the place Rosa considered their home. They also took care of Giacomo’s mother, who had gone into a panic at the news that her only son was wanted for brutally murdering a sword-swallower and fleeing the scene. “We can’t tell her where Giacomo is,” Renato had told Rosa as they were heading for her home. “Giacomo still lives with her and says she has the biggest mouth in the neighborhood. She can’t keep a secret. We should reassure her that Giacomo will be all right, but not a word about Isabel, or the distillery, or Vico Usodimare.”

The investigation into Giacomo’s disappearance continued in full swing, until rumors began to circulate that maybe the circus people had killed him, that he had fled to Africa on a ship, that he had drowned himself because he couldn’t live with his guilt. Renato, who continued to visit Giacomo’s mother daily, implored her to ignore those rumors. “He hasn’t been killed,” he comforted her, “and you and I know all too well that he would never flee to Africa or drown himself. It’s just gossip. Don’t believe it.” After that particular conversation, and in view of all the preceding ones, Giacomo’s mother began to suspect that Renato knew more about Giacomo than he had told her, and, without specifically mentioning Renato, shared her thoughts about that matter with her neighbors. The grapevine came instantly alive, and before a day had gone by the theory spread that someone in the neighborhood was hiding Giacomo from the circus people. At that, both the police and the circus people began searching the buildings in the area where Giacomo’s mother lived, which was only a few blocks away from Vico Usodimare.

“We have to get you out of here,” Renato told Giacomo one night.

“How?” Giacomo asked.

Rosa made a worried face. “Even if he made it out of here unseen,” she said, “where would we take him?”

“I have an idea,” Renato said.

The family of Gabriele, the sailor who shared the apartment on Vico Cinque Lampadi with Marco and Renato, lived on a small farm in Vercelli, a town northeast of Turin. Renato had never been there, but Gabriele had invited him and Giacomo to visit numerous times, as a token of gratitude. A year earlier, he had gotten into a fight at the Grifone with some strangers, and Renato and Giacomo had gotten him out of the fight as the strangers had begun to pull out their knives. “Thank you,” Gabriele had said, “for saving my life. You can count on me for anything anytime.”

“We’ll take him to Vercelli,” Renato said, “to Gabriele’s farmhouse. No one will ever look for him there.”

“How would we travel?” Rosa asked.

“By train,” Renato replied, “if we can get him to the station.”

“We can’t do that,” Rosa said, alarmed. “He’ll be recognized. His picture has been on the front page of every newspaper.”

Isabel spoke in her serious face. “It’s time that Rosa’s black wig be used for a worthy cause.”

Giacomo looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“She’s right,” Renato said. “No one will pay attention to a woman.”

“You’re joking,” Giacomo said.

“Would you rather go to jail?” Isabel scolded him. “Or be lynched by the circus people?”

Several hours later, as the light of dawn began to settle on the rooftops, a woman peeked through the door of Isabel’s booth. She looked to the left, then to the right, then to the left again before stepping gingerly outside. She was Giacomo. He was wearing the black wig and clothes Rosa had borrowed the night before from Maddalena: a long brown skirt, a long-sleeved matching shirt, and a light jacket. A hand-knitted shawl hid the bandages wrapped around his shoulder. Shortly, Renato, Rosa, and Isabel joined him in the deserted street.

“Take care of yourself,” Isabel told Giacomo.

“I will,” he replied. “Thank you for everything. I owe you my life. I’ll never forget what you did for me.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Isabel said. “Just don’t scare me like that ever again, or I’ll be the one passing out. At my age,” she smiled ruefully, “things don’t get any easier.”

“Rosa, or Tramonto, or whatever name you want me to call you,” Giacomo said, hugging Rosa, “thanks for stopping by the alley that night. I’d still be behind that pile of furniture if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I’m so glad I found you,” Rosa said, hugging him back.

“I’ll be back in three days at the most,” Renato told Rosa, taking her in his arms, “as soon as I drop Miss Gattamelata at his new home.”

Giacomo elbowed him. “There’s no need to rub it in,” he said.

“Let me go with you,” Rosa said. “Please.”

Renato shook his head. “I don’t want you to be involved in this escapade if we get caught.”

“I’m already involved,” Rosa begged, “and I can’t be without you.”

“When travelers see a man and two women,” Renato said, “they wonder more. It’s safer for us if Giacomo and I go alone.”

Rosa sighed.

Renato kissed her on the lips. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

As Renato and Giacomo began walking down the street, Rosa took Isabel’s hand and clasped with the other hand Renato’s blue stone. She whispered, “I have a bad feeling.”

Isabel caressed her head. “Your Renato is a wise man. He’s doing what he has to do to help his friend. Be proud of him. You are a very lucky girl.”

T
he wait was unbearable. At the oil stall, the days passed with a slowness that made Rosa wonder if someone had by accident stopped time. Hour after hour she watched the Grifone and the longshoremen going in and out of it; she listened to the sounds of the harbor; she smelled the odors of Piazza Banchi, a mixture of food, saltwater, dampness, and spices that for months had been her daily, inseparable companion. Nothing felt good to Rosa anymore, not even the scent of her own oils. The Grifone and the longshoremen looked as if they belonged to another world; the sounds of the port were a cacophony of clanks and shrieks; and the neighborhood odors felt acrid and stale. Everything seemed to be missing Renato. And worse yet, there came the nights. Back in the flower room after Giacomo’s departure, sleepless, Rosa broke into sweats and shivers all over again, as she had done when she had first seen Renato. In the middle of the second night, weary and restless, she got up and walked to the shack by the water. The docks were deserted, the silence deep. Inside the shack, Rosa lay on the bags where she had made love to Renato so many times, sinking in memories of the smell of him, feeling the warmth of his skin. For a moment she thought she heard his voice, talking to her about their life together and the children they would make and the house by the hill they would have. She stared at the dark water and the friendly rays of the lighthouse, wondering if it had all been a dream. The rest of the night, she became a vagabond, strolling aimlessly from one
caruggio
to another, avoiding all the streets she had walked with Renato. In the silence, she could hear the echo of her steps on the cobblestones, which sounded deafening to her even though it was a barely audible sound. At a certain point she found herself at the corner of Vico del Pepe and instinctively walked down the narrow street without entirely realizing where she was going. Ahead of her, the familiar silhouette of the building that hosted the Luna appeared like a ghost sprung from the past. It was four in the morning; all the windows were dark. In front of the Luna door Rosa stood still a while, staring at the aged stone walls. She sighed deeply as a wave of melancholy took hold of her, filling her bones. Slowly, she sat on the ground, back against the door, head leaning against the marble frame, hugging her bent knees, and stayed there immobile and thoughtless, blending with the shadows, almost invisible to the naked eye. She stood up when the neighborhood awoke, at the sounds of open shutters and sleepy voices.

At the end of the third day, when Renato didn’t show up at the distillery as they had agreed, she went looking for him at his usual places. She knocked on the door of his apartment, but no one replied. She went to the cotton warehouse, but he wasn’t there. Back at her stall on Piazza Banchi, out of sorts, she watched the Grifone across the street, imagining Renato coming out of it with his friends and walking with them toward the water. Several men went in and out of the café, but not Renato. At some point, Paolo Disarto, the bar owner, stepped outside, leaned against the external wall, lit a cigarette, and puffed smoke rings up toward the sky. Hastily, Rosa crossed the piazza as the man tossed his cigarette away and walked back inside. After a short hesitation, she pushed open the door of the Grifone. It was a busy time of day, with all the café tables occupied by men talking and drinking wine. A few were sipping espresso from minuscule white cups set on matching saucers. Timidly, Rosa stopped past the door threshold and listened to the buzz of the men’s voices and the jingling sounds of glass and china. A few heads turned as she crossed the room, and curious eyes followed her as she approached the crowded counter. Paolo was behind the counter, a few meters away from Rosa, busy pouring wine from a carafe into a row of midsize glasses. He didn’t notice Rosa until some of the customers began to murmur. He gave her a half smile. “White or red?” he asked in a mocking tone.

Rosa took a deep breath and spoke to the point. “Have you seen Renato today?”

Paolo put down the carafe. “You don’t give up, do you,” he said with a second half smile.

One of the customers elbowed Rosa. “Renato, Renato. What does he have that I don’t?” Everyone laughed.

“Have you seen him or not?” Rosa burst out in anger.

“Haven’t seen him these past days,” Paolo Disarto replied in a more normal tone of voice. He turned to the customers. “You guys?”

There were several “No”s and heads shaken.

Without another word, Rosa turned around and headed outside, her heart heavy, her cheeks burning with shame.

Later, as dusk approached, in the booth, Rosa looked at Isabel with sad eyes. “I can’t find him anywhere,” she said in a raspy voice.

“It’s exactly three days since he left,” Isabel pointed out. “There’s no reason for you to worry. He’ll be here. Now you need to sleep, because you haven’t for the past two nights. Your voice is a screech, and your eyes are red and tired. You’re going to eat this soup,” she said, pointing at a pot on the stove into which she had dropped a sprinkle of her white powder from the shaker, “and go to bed.”

Contrary to her own expectation, Rosa slept peacefully through the night and didn’t wake up till noon. At that time, she came out of the flower room with eyes still dazed from the deep sleep. Isabel was seated on the rocking chair, watching the street through the open glass door. She spoke before Rosa asked. “He didn’t come.”

“Where is he?” Rosa asked in a broken voice.

“Maybe they had a hard time finding the farmhouse,” Isabel said. “Maybe the weather was bad and they got delayed. You never know when you travel. Things can be out of one’s control. Be patient. Wherever he is, he’s thinking of you, I’m sure.”

“I lost him,” Rosa murmured. “I can feel it.”

“No, you haven’t. It’s only the beginning of the fourth day.”

The sun was shining and the streets were loud and crowded when Rosa went looking for Renato all over again. After checking out once more the Grifone and his house, she stood by the port entrance hour after hour, asking every longshoreman if he had seen Renato. The answer was a no every time. Then the last longshoreman left and the docks became quiet. That sudden silence screamed at Rosa. “He’s gone,” she whispered, staring at the sea. Nearby, on the deck of a fishing boat, two seagulls spread their wings and took off, circling the water. “I wish I were a bird,” Rosa said, “so I could fly all over the earth till I’d find Renato.” One seagull dove in a hurry, disappearing underwater. Shortly, its mate followed suit. Spellbound, Rosa watched the birds resurface and dive again, over and over, till darkness hid the cloudy sky. Only then did she leave the docks, slowly making her way back to the booth. Isabel shook her head the moment she saw Rosa arrive.

“It’s because of my red hair,” Rosa cried out. “Because it’s short and ugly. And because he thinks I’m a prostitute. And because I don’t understand what he says when he talks about his books and his politics. He must have found a beautiful girl with lush dark hair who went to school.”

Isabel frowned. “And you think he would have left his job, his house, his friends, his books, and all his personal belongings without saying anything to anyone?”

“Maybe he still thinks I’m a liar and he hates me.”

“He doesn’t think you’re a liar. As for hating you, I saw how he held you the night we brought Giacomo here. And I heard what he said to you, that the only thing that matters is that you two are together. That’s love, not hate.”

“Then why?” Rosa shouted. “Why? Why? Why?”

“I don’t know, Tramonto,” Isabel said softly. “I know for a fact, though, that whatever is keeping Renato from coming back has nothing to do with you.”

“Do you think that he and Giacomo were captured by the police?” Rosa asked.

“No, or we would have heard about it. The longshoremen would have told you.”

Gingerly, Rosa took the blue stone out of her pocket. “This is all I’ve left of him,” she said, entering the flower room. She spent a sleepless night, pacing the room, rushing to the door at every little noise that came from the street, murmuring to herself and sighing. Meanwhile Isabel sat on the rocking chair, eyes closed, humming occasionally one of her Spanish lullabies. She stood up around four in the morning, certain that she had heard sobbing sounds. In the flower room, Rosa was seated on her bed, cheeks flooded with tears. Isabel sat next to her and took her gently in her arms. She held her without talking, singing at times, slowly rocking her at others, until Rosa stopped sobbing and fell asleep.

Steam was beginning to fill the curly pipes when Rosa appeared in the distillery in the morning, carrying a bag and wearing a light coat. “I’m going to Vercelli,” she said, “to look for Renato.”

Without looking at her, Isabel placed two handfuls of eucalyptus leaves in boiling water.

“Did you hear me?” Rosa said loudly.

“Ice,” Isabel ordered. “Pass it over.”

Ignoring the order, Rosa walked out the door. She heard steps behind her as she began walking down the street. “Do you even know where Vercelli is?” It was Isabel’s voice.

Rosa stopped in her tracks and turned around. “No,” she admitted, “but I’ll find it.”

“How?” Isabel pointed out. “And what if he comes while you’re gone? How would we find you?”

Rosa dropped the bag on the cobblestones. “I can’t just stay here and do nothing!” She stuck her hand in her pocket and felt for the blue stone, freezing as she realized it wasn’t there. Without a word, she ran back into the booth, to the flower room, where her eyes examined thoroughly and quickly the corner where her mattress lay. “I set my stone here last night,” she said in an agitated voice, “next to my perfect oil. Where is it?”

Isabel joined her in the flower room. “Did you put it in the bag? Or in a different pocket?”

“No. The blue stone is always on the floor next to the perfect oil or in my right pocket,” Rosa said, lifting the mattress, then shaking the sheet. “Where is it?” she screamed. “Where is it?”

“I have no idea,” Isabel said, then she watched Rosa frantically push around the fruit boxes and the flower vases and every object she could find, silently but with fast movements and an icy look in her eyes that betrayed the depth of her fury. When there was nothing left to move, Rosa grabbed Isabel by the shoulders. “Where is it?” she screamed again. Isabel said nothing while Rosa kept holding on to her. Suddenly, the girl let Isabel go, ran to the distillery room, and started her feverish search there as well, inside the cooking pots and the distillation equipment, under Isabel’s bed, and in every corner, until no space was left unexplored other than a large bag where Isabel had placed the discards of several days of distillation. The bag was full of a stinking, muddy mush of cooked, rotten leaves, into which Rosa dipped her arms to the elbows and began rummaging furiously like a starved animal, until she became certain, beyond any possible doubt, that the stone wasn’t there, either. Then she pulled her forearms out of the mush and looked at Isabel with mean eyes. “Did you take it?” she grunted.

“I think you’ve lost your mind,” Isabel said calmly.

Rosa grew more infuriated. “If you didn’t take it, where is it?” she shouted.

“I don’t know,” Isabel said. “Wash your arms,” she added, pointing at a pot full of clean water.

Isabel found the stone twenty minutes later, in a corner of the flower room, under a pile of clothes Rosa had shaken during her mad search several times. “When you look too hard, you don’t see things that are under your nose,” she said, handing Rosa the blue stone. In silence, Rosa took the stone and sat on her mattress, her lips closed tight to keep from crying.

“I’m going to the flower market,” Isabel told her. “I’ll be back in two hours.”

When she returned, Rosa was lying in bed, cuddled into a ball, arms around her stomach, shaking. Her face was pale and swollen, and her eyes had turned gray. “Dear God,” Isabel exclaimed when she saw her, “this can only be the sickness of love.”

Rosa didn’t get up for five nights and four days, during which Isabel heard no news of Renato. All along, Rosa remained motionless in her curled-up position on the bed, emitting on occasion barely audible moans. Soon, she refused food and water, and the only way Isabel could keep her hydrated was with a dropper placed at the corner of her mouth. Every hour, she dried Rosa’s cold sweat and wet her dry lips with rags dipped in water. At the same time, she tried on her all her incantations: oils, leaves, massages, and Spanish lullabies. She recalled the time of her own youth when she had been sick with a fever and Azul had spent the night at her bedside, singing and burning oils, and she repeated faithfully Azul’s healing routines for Rosa. Nothing worked, one of the reasons being that all those remedies reminded Rosa of Renato. One morning, out of options, Isabel placed the open flask of her perfect oil under Rosa’s nose. Rosa let out screams so loud that Isabel’s heart began to race. She sat on the floor and cupped her hands over her ears, praying for her heart to calm down. “I won’t do that again, I promise,” Isabel said later, after recovering from the scare, as she rubbed Rosa’s back to calm her down.

Rosa got up briefly on the fifth day, only because the old mattress and the pillow stank from being soaked in her sweat and tears. She crawled out of bed and sat on the floor like a discarded rag while Isabel took the mattress and the pillow outside and threw buckets of water on them and then scrubbed them with one of her oils. The neighbors thought it was one of her witchcrafts and made the sign of the cross repeatedly as they walked by. When nine hours later the mattress and the pillow had dried, Isabel took them back to the flower room. Rosa, who in all that time hadn’t said one word or moved from her position on the floor, murmured, “Take me to my bed. Please.”

Isabel helped her up. As Rosa struggled toward the mattress, leaning on Isabel’s arm, Isabel realized with horror that the girl had lost so much weight that she, an eighty-year-old woman, could have lifted her easily off the floor. The moment she was on the bed, Rosa curled up again and began to cry. Isabel crossed her hands on her heart. “Azul,” she prayed, “please make Renato return safely, and until then, please see Rosa through her pain.”