The Shoemaker's Wife

Chapter 8

A FRIAR’S ROBE

Una Tonaca del Frate

It was a Tiepolo blue sky with smatters of creamy clouds the morning Ignazio Farino bid farewell to the Lazzari brothers at the train station in Bergamo before turning the horse and cart back up the mountain to return to Vilminore di Scalve.

Iggy looked back at the boys several times from his perch on the carriage bench, until the road took a turn and he could no longer see them. The boys watched Iggy go, bowed like the crook of a cane, until he had disappeared.

Orphans have many parents.

Eduardo and Ciro made their way through the station to the platforms. Eduardo’s black wool pants and white shirt were pressed. His boiled wool jacket in forest green with gold epaulets on the shoulders looked a bit like a castoff from a defunct alpine regiment, but it was clean and without moth holes, so it would do, until he made it to the seminary and was assigned vestments.

Ciro wore navy blue corduroy work pants and a mended and starched chambray shirt under a gray wool topcoat with black piping. Sister Ercolina had retrieved the coat from a donation bag left on the convent steps, and Sister Anna Isabelle had lined it in a few yards of silk paisley left over from a sewing project to make bedding for a wedding gift to the town’s mayor.

That morning, in the first light of dawn, Sister Domenica had given each boy a haircut, after which she vigorously rubbed their scalps with the juice of a fresh lemon mixed with a bit of clear alcohol. Ciro commented that when Sister Domenica was in charge, beauty hurt.

The nuns had laundered, pressed, and mended the boys’ clothes before packing them. The clean underclothes in their duffel bags, along with handkerchiefs embroidered with their initials by Sister Teresa and socks knitted by Sister Domenica, would provide them with the basics until they arrived at their destinations. The sisters did their best to prepare the boys for the outside world, at least on the surface of things.

Eduardo checked the large station clock, its black Roman numerals set on a mother-of-pearl face. Everything seemed more important in Bergamo than it did on the mountain; even the telling of time had a certain elegance.

They had already begun to miss their village. As the boys surveyed the station, they were aware of all they were leaving behind. A long black train parked on the tracks had a series of wooden step stools placed outside the open doors reminded Eduardo of the nuns’ shoes left outside their doors to be collected for polishing.

Passengers rushing to make their train gently jostled the boys. Eduardo and Ciro did their best to step out of the way, but their apologies went unheeded.

The people were so different here. The parade of well-dressed men that milled around the platform bore no resemblance to the journeymen and laborers on the mountain. The nobility of Bergamo wore custom-made three-piece suits topped with dress coats of silk wool and dapper felt fedoras wrapped with broad bands of dark grosgrain ribbon, accented with small feathers or a tucked knot. The men in Vilminore also wore hats, but they were strictly utilitarian, straw in the summer to ward off the sun and wool in the winter to keep them warm.

The elite wore shoes of dyed calfskin with insets of pebbled leather, some with laces, others with buttoned spats. They carried satchels made of the finest embossed suede. The women were also dressed stylishly, in long skirts and fitted waistcoats. They wore dramatic hats with extravagant plumes, clouds of net dolloped over the wide brims and tied under the chin with satin bows. They seemed to move slowly, as if underwater, the only sound they made the rustle of their skirts and the click of their high-buttoned shoes, which grazed the pavement in muted taps as they passed.

Eduardo looked around for the four young men who would accompany him to the seminary in Rome, checking a slip of paper to remind himself of their names.

“Here,” Ciro said, handing his brother the three lire Iggy had given him.

“No, no, put it away, Ciro.”

“Take it,” Ciro insisted.

“I don’t need money where I’m going,” Eduardo assured him.

Distraught at the thought of leaving his brother, Eduardo stared at the great clock, willing time to stand still. He wanted to give his brother something to remember him by, to bind the two together when they were apart.

Ciro looked down at his mother’s signet ring with its swirling engraved C.

“And don’t offer me your ring, either,” Eduardo said.

Ciro laughed. “How did you guess?”

“You’re the most generous person I know. You would give me your shoes if you could. And you wouldn’t complain if you had to walk to Venice barefoot.”

“Yeah, except my feet are twice the size of yours,” Ciro said.

“Lucky for me, because those are ugly shoes.”

“That’s all Sister Domenica could find in the bin.” Ciro shrugged. “Besides, when you become a priest, they’ll give you the cassock, the collar, and the black slippers. You’ll never want for clothes, that’s for sure.”

“No cassocks for the Franciscans. Just brown robes of burlap tied with an old rope. And sandals.”

“If you’re going to go to all this trouble to become a priest, I wish you’d join a fancy order. You deserve the fine linens of the Vincennes like Don Gregorio. You’re a poor orphan becoming a poor priest. You’re like a crab going sideways.”

“That’s the idea, Ciro.” Eduardo smiled. “Jesus wasn’t known for his embroidered vestments.”

“And what will become of me?” Ciro asked quietly.

“Sister Anna Isabelle’s family will take good care of you.” Eduardo’s voice broke, hoping what he said would prove true. It had always been his job to take care of Ciro. How could he trust anyone else to do it? “It goes that way, you know. There isn’t anything they can do for her as a nun who has taken a vow of poverty, so instead they will do for you, because she asked. We’re very lucky, Ciro.”

“Really? You would call us lucky?” Ciro believed fate had been against them at every turn. Had he remembered his keys that night, he would not have discovered Concetta and the priest, which had set all these horrible events in motion.

“Yes, brother. We’ve made it this far.” Eduardo looked up and down the tracks, trying not to cry.

The Lazzari boys stood on the platform, having never been apart, not for a day or night of their lives. Little had gone unsaid between them. They had been one other’s counselors and confidants. In many ways, Eduardo had been Ciro’s parent, setting his moral compass, helping him navigate convent life, prompting him to study, all the while encouraging him to see the good in people and the possibilities of the world beyond the piazza in Vilminore.

Eduardo was now seventeen, and he possessed a contemplative air and a humble attitude. For a young man, he was unusually solemn, as well as empathetic.

Ciro would turn sixteen on the ship to America. He was over six feet tall, the pugilistic stance and comedic expressions of his youth replaced with a grown-up masculine prowess that made him appear much older. Eduardo sized up Ciro and was reassured that his younger brother could take care of himself physically. But he worried that Ciro was too trusting and could be taken advantage of by people less honorable than he. It was always the young men of gentle natures who acknowledged the worst in the world; strong boys like Ciro never did.

“You know, Ciro,” Eduardo began slowly, “I never felt I really lost Papa, because you look so much like him. Sometimes when I was studying late at night and I would look over at you sleeping, I would remember him lying on the grass, taking siesta. And I would swear Papa had never really left us because he was alive in you. But you are like him in more ways than your appearance. You have a mind like him too.”

“I do?” Ciro wished he could remember more details about his father. He remembered his laugh, and the way he held a cigarette, but beyond that, very little.

“You always tell the truth. You stand up for the weak. And you’re not afraid of taking chances. When the sisters told us that we had to leave, and they told you that you had to go to America, you didn’t flinch. You didn’t cry. You didn’t try to make a better deal for yourself, you just accepted their offer.”

“Maybe that makes me a pushover,” Ciro said.

“No, it makes you wise. Like Papa, you aren’t afraid of trying something new. I don’t have that kind of daring in my nature, but you do. I’m not going to worry about you in America.”

“Liar.”

“Let’s put it this way, I’m going to try not to worry about you.”

“Well, I wish I could say the same.” Ciro said. “Keep your eyes open, Eduardo. Holy men sometimes aren’t. Don’t let them push you around or make you feel like you’re not one of them. You’re smarter than the keenest of their lot. Take charge. Show them what you can do.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll work hard because it’s all I know,” Ciro said. “But, everything we do, everything we make, is done so we might to return to the mountain. Together.”

Eduardo nodded in agreement. “Pray for me.”

“Papa said something to me the night before he left, and I wrote it in my missal, so I would never forget it.” Eduardo’s eyes glinted with tears as he opened his leather-bound black missal to the first page. He handed it to Ciro. In a young boy’s measured script, Eduardo had written:

Beware the things of this world that

can mean everything or nothing.

Ciro closed the book and handed it back to Eduardo. “You’ve never been without this missal. It belongs to you. Keep it.”

Eduardo placed it in Ciro’s hands firmly. “No, it’s your turn now. When you read it, you will think of me. Besides, I know you aren’t one for daily mass—”

“Or Sunday mass.”

“Or any mass!” Eduardo grinned. “But if you’ll read the missal, I think you’ll find some comfort.”

Ciro closed the missal. “The sisters of San Nicola, my brother, and the world conspire to turn me into a good Catholic. To all of you, I say, good luck.”

The whistles of an incoming train pierced the air. An attendant climbed a ladder and wrote the new arrival on the station’s giant blackboard:

R O M A

“I have to go,” Eduardo said, his voice breaking. “That’s my train.”

The brothers embraced. They held one another a long time, until Eduardo straightened his back and gently released his brother.

“You go to track two for the train to Venice—”

“I know, I know, then the ferry to Le Havre. Eduardo?”

Eduardo picked up his satchel. “Yes?”

“I’ve never been to France.”

“Ciro?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve never been to Venice, either.”

Ciro put his hands on his hips. “Do you think anyone can tell? Do I look like a goat herder from the Alps?”

“Only when you wear lederhosen.” Eduardo slung his satchel over his shoulder. “Be careful in America, Ciro. Don’t let anyone take advantage of you. Watch your money. Ask questions.”

“I will,” Ciro assured him.

“And write to me.”

“I promise.”

Four young men, similar in countenance and age to Eduardo, each carrying a single satchel, boarded the train for Rome. Eduardo turned to follow them. “Your new brothers are waiting for you,” Ciro said.

“They will never be my brothers,” Eduardo said. “I only have one.”

Ciro watched as Eduardo slowly disappeared into the crowd.

“And don’t you forget it!” Ciro shouted, waving the missal, before he, too, crossed the platform and boarded a train to take him to his new life.