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Overview
For Graziella, the quiet, cultured life she lived in Venice with her musician husband, Ugo, was everything she could have hoped for. But when Italy allied itself with Nazi Germany in 1940, her world changed forever. Ugo, trading in his violin for a gun, joined the Resistance, while Graziella was forced to seek refuge at his family's farm in the nearby Euganean Hills. "Just until the war is over," Ugo had promised, but it has been months now since the Nazis retreated, and no one has seen him since.
With Ugo gone, it seems as if she will be trapped forever on this remote farm with her lost husband's difficult family. So when an American soldier named Frank is stranded on the mountain, Graziella embraces this unexpected chance at being happy again. But as tempting as it is to leave behind this war-torn country and her painful memories for a new life in America, can she go without learning her husband's fate?
With quiet grace and humor, Ciao Bella explores the possibilities of love and redemption in the wake of war, showing that some of the hardest decisions come only after the fighting has stopped.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429983372 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2009 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Gina Buonaguro was born in New Jersey and now resides in Toronto, Ontario. Janice Kirk was born and lives in Kingston, Ontario. Their first novel together was The Sidewalk Artist.
GINA BUONAGURO was born in New Jersey and now resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
JANICE KIRK was born and lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. The Sidewalk Artist is her first novel.
Read an Excerpt
Ciao Bella
A Novel
By Gina Buonaguro, Janice Kirk
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2009 Gina Buonaguro and Janice KirkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-8337-2
CHAPTER 1
When Graziella heard the motorcycle laboring up the hill, her first thought was the Germans were back. She stopped to listen, the wet sheet she was hanging on the line poised above her in midair. No, not Germans. Of course not. It was Ugo. It had to be. Ugo back at last! She dropped the sheet back into the metal tub, letting the clothes-peg fall to the ground, her hands flying up to smooth her hair as she ran around the house toward the road.
"Cossa xe?" Giovanni called from his chair in the open doorway. Graziella heard the fear in his voice and knew he too was thinking of Nazis. But then he never quite believed the war was over and dreaded with every nightfall the air-raid sirens followed by the whine of the mysterious plane they called Pippo. He fumbled for his cane and attempted to rise from the chair, nearly knocking over the potted lemon trees that flanked the front door.
"It's okay, Papa. The war's over." She picked up the blanket he insisted on despite the heat and placed it back over his thin, arthritic legs. "I'm going to see. Don't worry — it's just a motorcycle." She didn't tell him it might be Ugo, knowing he would be almost as disappointed as herself if it wasn't. But nobody around here owned a motorcycle. The doctor down in II Paesino had a car, as did the Zizzo family, who owned the biggest farm in the valley, but they never came up here, so who else could it be?
She stood by the road and watched as the motorcycle appeared around the bend, the engine sounding as if it were choking on dust. But there was no identifying the rider. Helmet, jacket, goggles, scarf, face — everything as gray as the road. The motorcycle roared and swerved, fighting to stay upright as it climbed the steep hill. Its front wheel dug into the dusty road, trying to find enough grip to keep its forward momentum. Please God, please God, she prayed as she watched the motorcycle's painful progress. Let it be Ugo.
Whether in answer to her prayers or not, the motorcycle sputtered and died, collapsing in a cloud of steam and smoke on the grassy roadside. She jumped out of the way as the rider staggered free, peeling away helmet, scarf, and finally goggles, revealing bright blue eyes ringed with clean skin, like an inverse raccoon.
It wasn't Ugo. Of course not. She already knew that even as her lips formed his name again. Though it could have been him and any day now it would be him.
The man looked at her and held out his hand, but the moment he tried to speak, he was overcome with a fit of coughing. He doubled over, coughs racking his entire body. Graziella was sure she could see dust billowing from his mouth like smoke, and for one strange moment she thought it might even be coming from his ears.
When the coughs at last subsided, he straightened up, brushing at the dirt on his sleeves. It rose in little clouds before settling back into place as if comfortable to stay where it was. "I'm sorry. My name's Frank and ... I mean, mi displace.. ..." He stopped and she could see him searching for what to say, looking over her shoulder and studying the side of the house as if he would find the words written there across the gray stone and crumbling masonry. But Graziella knew even if he found the words, they were sure to be in Italian and not Venetian, the provincial dialect that still caused her trouble.
"It's okay. I speak English. Let me get you a cup of water." How easily the words came out! It was her native language, but for so long now it was only spoken in her dreams.
"Thank you. That's very kind of you, ma'am," he said, wiping his palm on his dusty pants and shaking her hand. "Frank Austen. Eighty-eighth Division. Pleased to meet you and especially pleased you speak English. They taught us some Italian on the boat on the way over. Things like 'Can you direct me to the Red Cross, please?' and 'The weather is beautiful and all the girls in the town are pretty.' They didn't seem to know there were a million different dialects. I tried to get directions this morning from an old man, but I couldn't make heads or tails of what he said."
He smiled as he spoke, and she decided it was a very nice smile, its generosity reflected in his blue eyes and the warm hints of an American accent. She noticed too the slightest bend in his nose, but far from being a defect, it added charm to his already handsome face. She wished though he hadn't called her ma'am — it made her feel much older than twenty-five. Except in her worn brown dress with her blackened feet and dirty hair she probably looked older. And him? Twenty-one or twenty-two? Not much younger than she was.
"You're lost then?" she asked him.
"No, I'm not lost. ..." He broke off in another fit of coughing.
"Let's get you that cup of water," she said, and he followed her, still coughing, to the well in front of the house. She lowered the wooden bucket by the rope, and it landed with a muted splash.
"Here. Let me do that," he said, taking the rope from her and hauling it back up, the pulley creaking in rusty protest. "It must be heavy." It wasn't, as the pulley bore most of the weight, but she didn't object. He set the pail on the ground, and she handed him the dipper.
"Don't drink too quickly," she said. "It's very cold."
He ignored her advice, watching her over the dipper as he took gulp after gulp. When his thirst was finally quenched, he put down the dipper and walked over to where the land suddenly stopped, ending in a jagged cliff face that dropped at least ten meters to rocks and shrubs below. Graziella knew the terraces had been built in ancient times, carved out of the steep hillsides to create flat areas for planting, like the steps of a giant's staircase. The house itself stood about ten meters from the edge of this cliff, facing west to the sunsets and the snowcapped Alps in the distance. Behind the house, a wooded path led to the rest of the family's homes, their farms forming a belt that wrapped halfway around the mountain. On the other side of the path, the hill rose sharply again to another terrace planted with grapes and olives. To the north of the house was her garden, the chicken coop, the barn, the woodshed, and the outhouse. Beyond that were the fruit trees: cherry, jujube, apricot, plum, apple. The cherries were long finished now, and the apricots and plums were already ripening.
"Nice view you have here," Frank said. "It's like the paintings my little sister makes at school. Perfect green triangle hills, the blue sky overhead. All that's missing is a big smiling face on the sun."
She laughed, telling him the hills were actually extinct volcanoes.
"It reminds me of Vermont," he said. "Though I don't know if the mountains near me were ever volcanoes." She could hear the homesickness in his voice, and suddenly he seemed less a stranger.
"You're from Vermont? I'm from Toronto."
"And you asked me if I was lost? What brought you all this way?"
"This is my husband's family farm. He's out helping a neighbor now." She wasn't afraid of this soldier, but it probably wasn't a good idea to let him know she was alone except for her helpless father-in-law.
Right then, Giovanni called out from the doorway. "Chi xe? Chi xe?"
"Just an American traveler, Papà," she called back in Venetian. "His motorcycle broke down. I got him some water."
"My father-in-law, Signor Nevicato," she explained, turning back to the soldier. "He was worried the Germans were back."
Now it was his turn to look a little worried. "Does your father-in-law like Americans?"
She laughed. "Better than Germans. Although he says the Americans will be the next to try and take over the world. And don't get him started on the subject of Allied bombing raids." She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. This was not something to joke about. Besides, she liked him already, and she didn't want him to change that by giving some oversimplified justification about it all being necessary to win the war. She didn't want to offend him either. She just wanted someone to talk to in English for a while, to pretend as if none of this had ever happened and they were just two travelers whose paths had crossed in a distant land. And so she smiled again as if the war had been of little importance and suggested he meet her father-in-law.
As they passed the well again, Frank splashed water from the pail onto his face, smearing the dust into muddy streaks. He dried his hands on his pants before approaching Giovanni, who had knocked the rug from his knees again. Graziella thought he did it deliberately, so she would have to pick it up for him. She did so now, ashamed that he was in need of a good shave and a haircut. A bath wouldn't have hurt either, something she relied on her brother-in-law Nino to help her with, as the old man shook his cane at her every time she came near him with a bar of soap.
"Hello, sir. Pleased to meet you. My name's Frank Austen," he said, holding out his hand. Giovanni didn't take it, though Graziella knew he probably saw it. But Frank didn't seem to mind and instead stuck his hands in his pockets. "Sorry to bother you," he said, looking to Graziella to translate. "I'm with the Eighty-eighth Division — or was. Infantry. Most of my buddies are still guarding German soldiers back at Lake Garda." As he talked, Giovanni's rug fell from his knees again, but before Graziella could bend down to retrieve it, Frank scooped it up and placed it back on the old man's lap. "A lot of guys have already gone home, but I missed that boat, so I have to wait until the end of August. ..." His voice trailed off, and Graziella used this moment to translate, knowing Giovanni would forget it all in the next ten minutes and for the next week would be asking her a hundred times a day who that American was and what division was he with. She gave a simplified version, less for him to forget.
"But it's okay," the soldier went on. "I get to see a bit of the countryside. And these hills remind me of home. My family has a dairy farm in northern Vermont." He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and removed a photograph, badly creased from being folded. Graziella told him Giovanni had bad eyesight, and so she described the photograph for her father-in-law. It showed a frame farmhouse with a porch along the front and a hill rising behind it. Under a tree, a little girl with fair curls and a big smile sat on a swing. "That's my little sister, Clara," he said. "She was six then. Now she's ten." He returned the photo to his wallet. "You've got a really nice place here, sir."
"Falling to pieces is more like it," Giovanni answered irritably. "You should stop babbling like a nervous schoolgirl and help my daughter-in-law before she destroys the grapes completely." This Graziella translated as: "It has been in the Nevicato family for hundreds of years and will soon be my son's."
"When will your husband be home?" Frank asked as they walked to the edge of the road where the motorcycle still steamed.
"Later," she said, avoiding his eyes and looking instead to the motorcycle. "Can you fix it?"
"I don't know. Does your husband have any tools?"
She pointed to the barn and told him he was welcome to whatever he found. They didn't have any machinery, as first the Italian Fascists and then the Nazis had made off with just about everything made of metal, so she doubted he'd find anything useful. She still had her cooking pots only because she'd hidden them in the cellar.
"I'll look. Maybe she just needs to cool down a bit." He stared down at the motorcycle for what seemed like a long time. Finally he shook his head and let out a long sigh. "I'm not really sure what to do." He looked at Graziella with troubled eyes as if she might have the answer. He certainly wasn't all swagger and confidence as she imagined American soldiers to be.
She pretended to study the motorcycle, at a loss as to what to do herself. She wasn't in a hurry for him to leave, though she wished she hadn't lied about Ugo's whereabouts since it would be awkward to explain the truth. But as Frank wouldn't be around long, it probably wouldn't matter, and so instead she asked him if he'd like something to eat.
"Only if you can spare it," he said very seriously, and Graziella was suddenly embarrassed by their obvious poverty. Everybody on this mountain was struggling — the war had taken its toll on them all — and Giovanni was right. The place did look like it was falling apart, and the grapes were a sprawling unpruned mess, with weeds growing up between the rows. They hadn't been sprayed either, as no one had any copper sulfate to protect against fungus, though luckily the season had been mostly dry. Really, only her garden looked cared for, and Frank hadn't seen that yet.
"Come into the kitchen. I'll give you some bread and wine."
"Thank you. You've been very kind. ... ma'am."
She knew she should tell him her name was Signora Nevicato. But it came out so easily, her name from before she knew Ugo, before he had brought her here. A name no one had called her since her brother, Westley, had died nearly seven years ago. "You can call me Grace."
* * *
Sometime in the early afternoon, Graziella remembered it was her day to feed Father Paolo. She busied herself in the kitchen, a warm breeze wafting through the front door and out the back, the room redolent with the scent of herbs hanging from the ceiling beams. Every five minutes she found herself checking at the window to see if Frank was making any progress on the motorcycle. Not that she would know what progress looked like, but the bits and pieces laid out on the grass did not look encouraging, and she took heart from this.
Father Paolo, she knew, would go home and give a full report to that horrible housekeeper of his, who wouldn't be able to sleep in anticipation of passing on the news of an American soldier to one of Ugo's sisters. No doubt by the end of tomorrow they would all know. She could almost hear them clucking: That's what he gets for marrying a foreigner.
Graziella did her best to understand them. Their lives hadn't been easy. She knew their mother had died giving birth to Ugo, leaving the then fourteen-year-old Maria Serena to raise four younger sisters and an infant brother. At sixteen, Maria Serena married Nino Zampollo and started having children of her own, leaving Maria Benedetta, the next oldest, in charge. All the Marias had cared for Ugo with no less concern than if he'd been the Baby Jesus himself, no doubt adding to Ugo's indulgent view of them even after Graziella complained about how much they hated her.
Of course they do not hate you, he protested. It is just that I am their only brother, and they are overprotective sometimes. And whether or not they like my choice of wife, you are family now, and they will defend you. Do not let them upset you.
And so she tried to ignore their criticisms and unkind remarks, in time earning at least the respect of the youngest sister, Maria Lisabetta, in whom she sensed a deep-seated unhappiness. While she wasn't to learn for some time the reasons for that unhappiness, Graziella could already see the tension between her and her husband, Lorenzo. Looking back, it was hard not to wonder if their strained home life had been a contributing factor in their deaths.
Except for Maria Teresa, who'd been sent to the convent as a child, Ugo's sisters had all married into the same family, trading the last name of Nevicato for Zampollo. With Maria Teresa out of the picture, there were just enough brothers to go around. But there were the twin Zampollo girls as well, and it was the belief of Ugo's sisters that their brother should have married one of them. Which one, Graziella didn't know, but the two girls also seemed to believe she had stolen their husband from them, and Graziella wondered if they'd thought he would marry them both. Moreover, everybody seemed to have forgotten that Ugo had never intended on marrying at all, instead planning to join the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat in Spain. It was the church she had stolen him from, not the Zampollo twins.
Of course, none of them had any problem getting her up in the night if someone was giving birth. Nor did they seem to worry about whether she kept their secrets. What would Nino say if he knew she'd given his daughter Enza an herb to end a pregnancy, even if she had been raped? Maria Serena had sworn Graziella to secrecy. She'd been grateful too. But she still didn't like Graziella as her sister-in-law.
Outside, Graziella picked up the axe from the woodshed and went to the henhouse to sacrifice one of her chickens for the priest's dinner. To keep the house cool in the summer, she cooked outdoors, and so now she built a small fire in the pit beside the woodshed, set the iron rack over it, and on top of that placed a cast-iron kettle of water. When it was hot, she dropped the now headless chicken into the pot to loosen the feathers. After changing the water and putting it back on to boil, she then cleaned and plucked the chicken, setting aside the liver, which she'd cook in the morning for Giovanni's breakfast. It was a small hen, and Graziella knew if any of her sisters-in-law were to cook it, it would be tough and stringy. But it wouldn't be when she was finished, and she took some satisfaction in knowing that Father Paolo preferred her cooking to any of the Marias'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Ciao Bella by Gina Buonaguro, Janice Kirk. Copyright © 2009 Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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About the Book
Graziella's husband Ugo fought in the Italian resistance since before the start of the war. Yet it has been months since the Germans retreated and there has been no sign of him since. She has begun to think that she has lost Ugo forever when the arrival of a young American soldier in the village offers her a chance at escape. But now that she feels free to leave, is a life in America what she wants? Is it possible to connect with a member of a military that may have left a stamp of terror and death upon her village?
Ciao Bella explores the possibilites of romance in the wake of war, showing that some of the hardest decisions come only after the fighting has stopped.