Le Amiche: The Lost Letters

By Anna Veneziano

Anna wakes up, but remembers nothing. An old trunk and a portrait on the wall of her study are the only clues to a past she must now reconstruct. Diaries and bundled letters tied with faded ribbons from eight Italian girls reveal the trials and deprivations of World War II, Italy.

After the discovery of these writings, Anna befriends the stranger in the mirror; thus unraveling the truth about the eight young women in war-torn Italy whose lives were fortuitously intertwined in the 60s in San Francisco, resulting in a lifelong friendship.

This novel is in part inspired by actual events during World War II.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781440199677

Anna Veneziano

Anna Veneziano Wynn lives and writes in Maui.

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Copyright © 2010 Anna Veneziano

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-9966-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9967-7 (ebook)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/13/2010

For le amiche

Antonietta, Claudia, Giulia, Mary, Mila, Mirella, Yvonne

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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APPENDIX

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks to the friends who contributed their war stories.

To Janet Allan, Dottie Crouzet-Pascal, Astrid Lepolstat, for their invaluable and tiresome task of proofreading.

To my son Steven for his constant support.

To my son Robert for the book cover and for seeing me through the final phase of the manuscript.

"I believe that peace is not merely an absence of war,

but the nurture of human life."

Jane Addams

(American Reformer 1860-1935)

  1

Sunday. Stormy day. Since morning, ominous clouds gathered on Haleakalā Crater, moved 10,000 feet down the mountain slope, blackened the sky and spewed sheets of violent rain that lash at the taxi from every side, while powerful winds hiss through the poorly insulated windows.

Hands in my lap. Delicate wrinkled hands, transparent blue veins. With trepidation, tinted with fear that gnaws at the pit of my stomach, I steal a glimpse of hopeful recognition at the countryside visible only for split seconds when the fast-paced windshield wipers lift the bleak curtain of rain.

I am on my way from the hospital to a home that I do not remember, burdened by the weight of my memory loss, determined to find out who I am.

The raucous voice of the driver, who shouts above the sound of the storm outside, jars my eardrums that beg for silence. He rattles on, about flash floods, the increasing Pacific swells due to hit the Island in a matter of hours. Nurse, whose copious frame occupies the greater part of the seat, chuckles, a deep warm sound that shakes her bosom and belly. Pay no mind to the driver, she says, and pats my hand assuring me that nothing will happen to us once we are home. The power failed since early morning, a common event on Maui, she tells me. The soaked ground causes the collapse of numerous electric poles, and the poor drainage floods some roads with rivers of water that run down from higher grounds. Nothing to worry about, she assures me, just a bad storm that will blow over in no time at all. The roads might wash out, we might have to deal with no power, but there are plenty candles in the house, and she will make us a light supper, draw a hot bath and back to bed I will go.

The car stops in front of a black, wrought-iron gate that slowly opens on a stony path that leads to a low spread-out rectangular structure with a brown rooftop, low on each window, barely visible for the vegetation. The wet green lawn runs into the path flanked on the left by a fishpond and on the right side by a bank of dripping bushes that, when I inquired later, I learned they went by the name of arecas. I inhale deeply; the scent of wet grass fills my nostrils.

Another rainy day flashes unexpected before my eyes: a funeral procession moves slowly down the cobblestones of a narrow street and a faded silhouette, a child perhaps, on tiptoes watches behind a closed window streaked by rain. A tiny hand wipes the moisture caused by her breath on the cold glass, and the hoofs of the horse harnessed to the hearse beat the wet cobblestones, the sound fainter as it goes.

Tucked in a corner of my brain, that image flickers and quickly dies. A serpentine whiteness of lightning in a black sky. More impatient than puzzled, I go over and over the images in search of clues. The doctors assured me, when I woke up from the coma, that there would be other scraps of memories and that each one would bring me closer to reconstruct my past, a process that I mean to do alone, and that in itself tells me a great deal about my nature. I must have been a very private person, and that part of me still exists; besides, since the accident I have wondered whether I care to remember the past. Loss of memory could be beneficial in some respect. It occurred to me that I might not want to know the person I once was, that I might be completely different now, and what if, per chance, I did not like her at all?

I lie awake many a night constructing various scenarios, lacking enough information to define the person I once was. I was told that my husband Tom died twenty-four years ago and that I gave birth to two sons who should visit me soon. They might fill in the gaps through their perception of things, not mine. I might not have seen our lives together as they see it. How am I to know where the truth lies, if there is any truth at all, and the mind whirls about, flaps its wings against the light from a closed window, questions the seat of truth, whether it is an imagined state to soothe man’s soul, the assurance of something permanent that ultimately does not exist. I must have considered truth relative, in constant flux, tinted by the perceiver’s point of view. I must have been a woman who questioned generally accepted beliefs; how else could I be so adamant now about wanting to define truth?

Let me help you, Nurse says as she steps out of the car with some difficulty, catches her breath, her large frame barely makes it through the door. She opens an umbrella too small to cover us both. My left leg is not responding; she hands me the cane, the detestable equipment that I intend to dispose of as soon as my leg heals.

I have no recollection of being in a car accident that robbed me, not only of my memory, but caused a broken leg, several broken ribs, a concussion, a whiplash that forces me to wear a neck-brace during the day, to name a few of the ills that disabled me for the past two months. Now I am in a nebulous state as if being trapped into an endless black tunnel without hope to reach the light.

The one thing I am certain of is my distaste for dependency. I must have been a very independent person. I am also as certain about the foods I like or dislike, about clothes, room temperature, size of pillows and the fact that I am a night person. Sleep escapes me on most nights, when the mind creates states-of-being new to me now, but that must have been a common pattern in the past I have forgotten.

So, is this my house? The question rings amusing.

Yes, Auntie. I will open the door for you. Are you all right?

As far as I know, I nod and follow her inside as if I had won the house in a lottery.

I found myself in a spacious hall with a creamy marble floor accentuated by symmetrical diamond-shaped black marble, met by a maple wooden floor that stretches in shiny splendor as far as a large picture window that frames an incredible view of the ocean.

You have a beautiful house, Auntie. Come. This is your living room.

I stop to take a good look at myself facing a presumptuously large and heavily ornate mirror that hangs in the entrance flanked by two tall armchairs that, to my surprise, I recognize to be in the Chinese style. Above each chair, ink prints of temples’ scenery in dark black and maroon frames.

From the awakening in the hospital, I refused to see my face in a mirror and could not help but question the reason for so doing. Was it fear of not liking the image reflected, was it avoidance of confrontation, or what else could it be?

The hands I could not avoid seeing, hands of an old woman, hands to keep out of sight. As if a bolt of lightning, as that thought enters my mind, a memory strikes me. The words, somewhere read, of a man who photographed old hands because they revealed their secrets: the gentle touch of a child’s cheek, the daily work in the fields, the last caress to a loved one, callous hands that knew strife, wicked hands that killed, delicate hands that touched a piano or the string of a violin.

What puzzles me more is not entirely the stubborn refusal to face my own face, but my constant search for a behavioral reason for doing so, the need to examine the motivations as if I were a separate entity. When finally my eyes meet the eyes in the mirror, I read understanding in them; the Anna of yesteryear knows me; more so, she understands my quandary; her eyes promise hope; they bring me to smile at the reflection. Tentatively, I leave the mirror behind and move into the large rectangular room with an imposing dining table and chairs on one end, a grand piano on the other, two couches, several wing chairs, a black square Chinese coffee table, another round table surrounded by Chinese arm chairs and walls covered with depressing oil paintings. Facing the piano, a forest of dark trees with a tongue of a pathway barely visible and a suggestion of light at the end of the path. Not in the least comforting. On another wall, a large eerie painting with an insignificant waterfall that pools at the feet of a charcoal-green high peaked mountain after streaking down its side; behind the piano bench, the image of a woman wrapped in a sheer garment that falls off one shoulder, vaguely familiar. The artist? What period? I should know.

Across the long side of the room that gives on a terrace, banks of floor-to-ceiling windows draw in the blackened sky and angry ocean. Incessant rain. A distant rumble of thunder. The room is disturbing, too open. I need to retreat to my cocoon, the small hospital room, the walls so close, the light so soft.

Come this way, Auntie, O.K.? I will show you your bedroom, the Nurse nudges my elbow and I follow her, a quick glance at the opposite corridor, and I wonder where it might lead.

The bedroom is very large, with a terrace on the ocean side and a wall-to-wall window on the opposite side, beyond which there is a garden area with ferns, arecas, climbing vines, beautiful flowers. In a corner, a life-size statue of a maiden with a water carafe in her left hand down by her side, and a broken right arm, and I wonder what happened to the one armed maiden, much like me, partially whole. She looks sad and alone in the rain.

A memory, rather a story, about the shivering bare maiden in the niche who waited patiently for her prince to come and bring her clothes so she could go to the palace and marry him. I must record every thing that comes to mind.

Your bathroom is lovely, the Nurse forces cheerfulness. Do you remember it? Look at the size of this tub, and it has jets. You will feel like a queen in it, don’t you think?

I do not think so. Probably I will use the shower. What might I be doing in so large a tub?

Let us go back to the living room and I will make you some tea. Would you like a cup of tea?

I would, and slowly we make our way there. The Nurse holds my arm. I sit at the edge of the sofa facing the wet terrace, feeling like a guest waiting for the hostess, unable as yet to accept that the house is mine, that I have lived for the better of six years in this house, my house, that I need to learn how to carry on living here. The not knowing does not frighten me, and I am puzzled thinking that it should, the blackboard of my memories is bare. Should I feel lost? I rather feel curious.

What is on the other side of the corridor?

Oh, yes, let me show you; come on, Auntie, the Nurse says, a tray in hand with two steaming mugs. It must be jasmine tea; the scent, I recognize the scent. She always came mid-afternoon with a cup for me and told me it was jasmine tea. Your study; I think it is your favorite room. Let us have our tea there, yeah? It does not escape me that by showing me each room, she is also forcing me to walk, and the corridors, from one side of the house to the other, are long and by the time I reach the study, I am completely exhausted.

Her condescending tone embarrasses me, and I want to tell her to dispense with using it, but what else can the poor woman do? She is doing her best to make the worst of my time a bit easier even though it is not. The worst of my time. Who said the best of my time?

My study? And I must not forget to ask her why she calls me Auntie, and I’d better face facts, the lack of retention is not helpful. Am I too old to exercise that part of the brain?

Yes it is, and takes me by the arm, helps me sit on the light brown leather sofa, and places the hot mug in my hand.

Too hot, yeah? I put it here on the coffee table now. You wait until is cool, O.K.? I nod.

The room is rather dark, paneled with bookshelves, cluttered with books and memorabilia. Pictures large and small, objects that must have meant a great deal to me, oriental vases, bowls, a clock that does not run, more large paintings, a gun-boat firing, a black bird standing on a black palisade staring at bleak nothingness, and an unusual painting of a young woman in a pale blue gown with a ruffle that barely covers her shoulders, her blond hair pulled back from the forehead with a strand resting on her right shoulder. It reflects a soft beauty, pleasant, not striking; the green eyes with gold specks hold promises, the chin tilted slightly upward, not defiant, confident.

Who is that? Someone I should know?

That’s you, Auntie. She is beautiful, yeah?

Yes, she is. I do not remember her at all, and Nurse, why do you call me Auntie?

She laughs, one of her most resonant belly laughs, and says that it is the Hawaiian way of showing respect for the elders. Sometimes she would rather call me keiki, child, especially when I do not eat or take a rest when she says so, but given my wrinkled hands and face, and my being a battered eighty years old without memory, she’d rather call me Auntie, in hopes that the attribute of seniority might put some sense in me that she finds lacking. She spreads her sunny smile that lightens her entire round face and says that in the sight of God we are all keiki, Anyhow, anyway, yeah?

The Hawaiians have a particular inflection in their speech, with the tendency for short phrases, their voice lilts upwards, ending in the mode of a question. "Don’t you worry, Tūtū. Later I learned that it means grandma. You’ll remember, I promise (another upward lilt on promise). See the trunk under the window? So much stuff you wrote is there, so much stuff. Your sons told me. You start reading and you find your memory. I promise," and I wonder how can she be so sure, does she have a special connection with unknown powers? Was I aware of them?

The evening is bleaker yet, and the candles lit all through the house are a welcomed sight of things I do not remember that are imprinted somewhere in an unopened ledger of the mind. A song, The day is dark and dreary, it rains. I hum it and search for the words that follow. It rains, it rains. How does it go?

A plane flies overhead. Another shimmer of awareness. A lonely candle at the head of a long rectangular table. A thin and pale man reads a book to, what appears to be, children and adults. Wartime; bombs; each blast a blip of heart beat; choked breath; dry mouth; fear.

I am experiencing it all now as I stare at the flicker of the candle on the coffee table, so much so that my heart skips not in fear but in the excitement of recognition. The insignificant flicker of a candle brought back memories of war. If I could only lift the curtain and look through the fog of yesteryear, the thin, pale man reading at the head of the table could have been my father; I can almost hear his voice. Those around the table could have been siblings, maybe a mother, a grandmother I do not remember, an aunt, and I wonder about the story he was reading that kept everyone leaning forward not to miss a single word. My recollection goes no farther, and it occurs to me that I could have constructed the entire scenario for the purpose of the story. Am I per chance a storyteller?

The sky is ominously darker. The house cries for light, so do I. Rumbles of thunder in the distance and more blinding rain, like a muddy torrent, overflows the down slope of the driveway from the gate and down below; nothing to be seen beyond ten feet out there, somewhere. Isolation haunts me. Run! But where to go? Run! Nowhere at all. Stay still! So I will. A bird flutters midair and crashes against the window, mistaking it for the sky; the young ones cry in their nest in the crook of the nearby palm tree.

Nurse brings in an oil lamp, and the study gains a warm glow, a smoky heaven. She fusses over me, adjusts a pillow behind my head and coaxes me in a supine state that feels comforting as soon as I allow the tension to leave the body. She covers me with a mohair plat, soft, somewhat familiar; steamy cup of jasmine tea in reach on the coffee table.

Shall I draw the curtains? More cozy this way, she says, wanting to shield us from the outside storm. She lights with a match a stick of incense; the scent fills my nostrils, sandalwood, how do I know?

A memory bursts forth. I am standing outside a closed door and knock; a woman with mahogany skin, a black tress like a crown around her head, a black mole by one nostril, a red dot on her forehead, in a beautiful red sari with multiple gold trimmings, lets me in; a sharp scent fills my nostrils, I inhale; a question in my eyes. Sandalwood, she says.

You have lots of candles in the chest in the hallway. Short and tall, white and red and green and gold and silver; some tapered, others the size of coffee cans, and Nurse describes them, sizing them with her hands. In the dining room I found two beautiful silver candelabra. What color candles should I put in them, to cheer you up? You choose, yeah?

Whatever you like, I say, keeping the conversation with her to bare essentials; besides, I seem not to care about the color of candles. Evidently, at one point in my life I did care; otherwise, why would there be so extravagant selection in the house.

She returns to the study holding two three-tiered candelabra, pretentious, I find them. I must have been inclined to flashiness, most likely a great deal of entertaining; why else would I have such obnoxious candelabra? Ghoulish I find them, to be on top of an organ that bellows a Bach sonata. I can almost hear the deafening chords played by a crazed someone with skeletal hands grappling the keys as in mortal duel, a movie perhaps seen in the past, and I cannot help but wonder why insignificant bits of knowledge come forth, while important memories remain hidden. The determination of what is important remains shrouded in frailty.

Nurse wants to know if I like to hear stories of the islands. I would prefer to close my eyes in silence, but she is determined. There is Big Island, and she chants their names, rocking back and forth. "And O’ahu, and Maui, the friendly islands, and Kaua’i, the Garden Island; there is Moloka’i; then there is Lāna’i, and when the storm moves on, you will see it when, in the evening, the sun lights its side and turns it red between bands of green. A pretty island to see from your lanai, that is what we call the terrace, yeah, we call it lanai; and then you can see Molokini, shaped like a horseshoe, that used to be a crater. Yeah, Molokini, shaped like a horseshoe. Lots of fish there. People snorkel there; they also dive 134 feet. Maybe one day when you feel better, I will take you to the Aquarium and you will see all the fish that swim in these waters. Would you like that? And behind Molokini there is ….a long pause…. there is Kaho’olawe," and she frowns and puckers her lips and shakes her head, rocking more so from side to side.

Kaho’olawe, I repeat and ask what is wrong with that island.

You forgot? Sure you forgot, but it will come back to you, I promise.

I shake my head and realize how frustrating my response might be for poor Nurse, but at present, I am unable to utter a word, as if by speaking I might find myself propelled into a desert of uncertainties.

Hard to describe the feeling, except for saying that I am lost, suspended mind and body in a foggy mist of nothingness, like the brief state of euphoria in drowning, and the analogy startles me. Like the momentary sensation after the struggle when, floating face down, pulled under water, comes the final realization of dying just before the surrender, and I wonder whether in the past I experienced drowning.

Don’t you worry none, Nurse says. "Maybe we need the kahuna to cast a spell and you will remember all; I promise."

Nurse always promises. I have no idea who or what the kahuna might be. She is a Hawaiian woman with a heart of gold and many folds in her body to cuddle in and make one feel safe. When she hugs me, and she often does, and gives me the aloha kiss, I wrap my arms around her as far as I can reach, and when she laughs, her laughter is like a waterfall, sparkling, cascading; drink, it says, partake in the merriment. She is my anchor. I would be lost without her. More often than I would rather admit, her over-protectiveness annoys me, and when I am about to withdraw, I find myself willingly sipping her cup of joy. Hawaiians are always in the aloha spirit.

I stretch on the couch and stare at the silver candelabra, the white candlewick steady, pointing upwards, a glimpse of two photos on the bamboo table next to one of the windows. I recognize myself in the photo with the dark frame, and most likely, the young man next to me is one of my sons. The other picture in a golden frame is of what I surmise to be my other son with his wife and child with leis around their necks; they must have come to visit me.

The rain has stopped for a while. The electricity has been off since nine in the morning. The incense stick is in ashes, so Nurse replaces it. The scent is different. I ask Nurse to give me the box and I read: musk-amber, patchouli, sandal, pine, rose, jasmine, lotus. I am quite sure that the stick burning now is rose.

I close my eyes. Oblivion I seek, oblivion from the not-knowing. A respite from remembering that I do not remember. A brief peaceful interlude, knowing full well that the rest of my life’s symphony is still to be played, the early themes repeated; there will be an andante cantabile followed by allegro non troppo. I definitely foresee a scherzo to add some gaiety, and it should end with an allegro vivace; I might not mind an ending with a flamboyant vivo con fuoco. Was I a music lover or a musician myself? The grand piano in the living room tells me that I must have played it, too pretentious to have it just as another piece of furniture, and why have I not asked more about the person I once was? It ends up being a matter of pride, I am aware of that, wanting to do the search on my own terms, to discover at my own pace what once was.

I ask Nurse to help me from the couch and slowly, the cane as support, I force my weak leg to take that painful first step. The wall clock seems to be the closest object to examine and I open the front glass-face and find inside a note. One blessing after my ordeal is that I can read and write and that some notions learned, most likely in school, are still with me.

This clock hung in the kitchen of the family home, (sold in 2002), that stopped ticking the moment Tom died on November 30th, 1983, and later eerily stroked eight times, the exact time of Tom’s death.

I search for a sense of sorrow, loss, or something in that vein, but I only seem to generate frustration, because I do not remember the family home; I do not remember Tom. I can only master a sense of blind emptiness.

Near the clock are two black oval frames with the silhouettes of two young children, one marked, in the back, Steven, and the other, Robert, both dated 1966–Disneyland. Next to them, a faded black and white picture of a young man. Tom, it says in the back, on his sailboat on White Rock Lake in Dallas. I cannot free myself from the sensation of being the intruder that inspects relics of past lives that do not belong to her.

On a narrow wall is a flag beautifully framed with a golden inscription, Thomas Edison Wynn, Commodore, 1974, and several Doctor Degrees. Fastened high on the doorpost, a black metal sign with faded gold letters that reads, Laboratory.

One piece of furniture in the study that seems out of place is the black trunk Nurse mentioned earlier, with tarnished brass corners and warped center latch that sits under the picture window that faces the front lawn. On one of its sides, I notice a sticker and, unable to bend over, I ask Nurse to read what it says.

This trunk traveled with me on the Gripsholm from Naples to New York in 1947, then to Texas when I was eighteen, and has remained unopened most of the time due to my reticence to revisit the past, inevitably colored by years of embellishments, additions, omissions, dictated by a momentary need. Not so, for the letters. They survive in their original form.

Puzzling, the part about the reticence to revisit the past. That is exactly what I am attempting to do. Did the person I once was wish to put a stone on her past, and why would she want to do so?

The young woman in the large gilded frame watches me.

The desk is large, double sided, cluttered with papers, two flat letter boxes, a wooden vase filled with pens, a computer and next to it a Thesaurus, a Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary, and an English-Italian dictionary with a penciled-in note saying that it belonged to VSV from the time he studied for the ministry in Rome-1928. Obvious that Anna was on a compulsive trek. She labeled each object in the room and most likely, in the entire house.

So glad you have a gas stove in the house, says Nurse. I can make us some soup. Would you like some, and then, a nice hot bath? I checked the water and it is still warm. You have solar panels on the roof, yeah? How would I know, but I nod just the same.

Desperately I try to find a voice, but the effort is too strenuous, so I eat the soup Nurse brought on a tray, oblivious of taste or bulk, postponing thoughts of surrender; defeat seems foreign to me, and with one spoonful after another I stare at the young woman in the sky-blue gown in the golden frame with the self-assured smile.

The evening is still young, but gloomy enough for Nurse to decide that it is time for my bath. She grabs a candelabrum in one hand and with the other, in a swift motion, she pulls me upright; breathe, I tell myself. A head rush has me almost back on the couch. The hall is ever so long and dark.

The scent of flowers. Plumeria, Nurse says, "the bubble soap smells like plumeria, you know, the trees with shiny dark green leaves and flowers, pink, white, red, you know, the one they make leis with."

Nurse exaggerated with the bubble soap. All I see is white foam as she removes my robe and I stand naked. I learned to be unashamed during the long stay at the hospital when the nurses handled me like an object.

Nurse has me sit down at the edge of the tub and slowly spins me around, my feet in the warm water, her hands under my arms. There you go, and I slide into the scented foam, my head comfortable on a soft inflated headrest. Bubbles to my chin, body relaxed in the sleep-inducing warmth, I could temporarily vanish the distasteful awareness of being a brain-damaged cripple buried to the neck in a foamy whiteness.

Unexpected, a song that goes "Ahi wela brings me to open my eyes and see Nurse smiling, a Sony battery-charged radio in her hand. You like?" And she tells me that the song is like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star in Hawaiian, that the singer with the magic melodious voice is named IZ, and starts singing along, and I realize that I know little or nothing about this magic woman that I called Nurse since the first day of my awareness, as if by setting a distance between us I would alleviate the reality of my dependency.

Behind closed eyelids, I see the black trunk in the study, full of papers, Nurse said. First thing in the morning I will ask her to open it so that I can start reading Anna’s papers.

Nurse leans over me, her bosom shakes like a jell-O mold under her red mu’umu’u with white and red plumerias printed on it, low ruffled neckline, sleeves midway down her arm, showing biceps the size of prosciutti, and I wonder how the word prosciutto crossed my mind. On her wrists, tiny in comparison to her formidable arms, are numerous gold bracelets, four, maybe five, with some sort of black inscriptions in Hawaiian, most likely.

I hold on to her neck, and she lifts me out of the tub and gently lowers me until my feet touch the floor. She stands a good foot over me; my nose is pressed against the many folds of her bosom; hard to breathe, and once she assures that I am steady, she helps me into a pink terrycloth robe. Anna must have liked pink; I do not.

Favoring the good leg, I manage to reach the bed, the routine familiar, first sit at the edge of the bed and lift my arms so that Nurse can slip on the nightgown. Then Nurse lifts my legs and pivots my entire body, and once the legs are in place, it is a matter of deciding on the most comfortable supine position while Nurse adjusts the pillows under my head.

What is your given name, Nurse? Since she came in my hospital room, passed her fingers from my forehead, down to my chin and back again, and said that my sons hired her to take care of me, it seemed proper, perhaps expedient, that I would call her Nurse. She called me ma’am until today when she started calling me Auntie, so in this quiet moment before sleep, I muster the courage to ask her what her given name might be.

Nalani, it means the heavens, she says.

  2

The birds are silent. The arecas, faithful sentinels lined on one side of the front lawn, are drenched and bend to touch the grass. A mammoth gravid cloud bursts with vengeance and releases a deluge on the rooftop; at the horizon, where the ocean meets the sky, a horizontal line of whiteness; the promise of a rainbow’s arch faintly forms.

Nalani brings me breakfast in bed, says that soon the wind will blow the clouds westward, that the sun will ride the sky once more and decides to tell me the story of young demigod Maui who went up Haleakalā Crater and lassoed the sun to keep it one hour longer for his mother’s taro roots to grow. I did not especially like the part about the son not helping his mother during the day hours to plant taro and chose instead to lasso the sun, but each legend has a hero who achieves the impossible.

After Nalani helps me settle in the study, she says that she must go for groceries and will return to prepare lunch.

Boredom, spirited by the rain, weighs on my shoulders. Moodiness falls like a blanket to shade perception. It envelops me in grayish light, and reality becomes hope of things imagined.

In my past, I must have had a problem knowing the real from the imagined. To lull in the imagined is familiar, comforting, the drug of forgetfulness, a blind eye for today, a withdrawal from yesterday, unfortunately not a place to retreat or hide, not now. Nothing good there, so where to go?

Someone outside calls out, Anna, Anna, and forces me to slowly venture, with the aid of the cane, down the interminable hall. When I reach the front door, a massive burly figure of a man stood there, dripping wet, in rather dirty short pants and black t-shirt, and thick curly hair straight on top of his head that made him two or three inches taller. He wiped his dark face, glistening with rain, and flashed a huge friendly smile that showed perfectly lined white teeth. Anna, he shouted, how are you? Better now? And there he was, a screen door between us, and raised his voice even more as if he were speaking to a deaf person, I was worried about you. O.K. now? Yeah?

Who is he? I have no clue. He notices my discomfort, unprepared as I am for unforeseen encounters, so he explains that he is the man who trims the coconut trees in my yard, and that the monkeypod tree in the driveway needs pruning, A lot of dead branches. I come tomorrow and take care of everything, O.K.?

I thank him and apologize for not remembering his name. No worry, he waves both hands. No worry, and sings to himself, up the driveway and out the gate that Nalani forgot to close, leaving me with a sense of not being safe, even though she mentioned that the street to the house is the safest of them all. The neighbors leave their doors and windows open, and all I need to do is to call out and someone will immediately come to my aid. The sense of insecurity and anxiety comes, no doubt, from my not remembering, and my determination to read the papers in the trunk becomes essentially urgent.

Once back to the study, I settle with great effort in the straight black swivel chair, not free from pain, my left leg straight under the desk. I stare at the computer’s keyboard, not certain of what to do next. A blip in my brain brings up the word limbo, the same word I used when I last spoke with the doctor at the hospital to describe my present sensation, to which he explained that in no time at all I should be able to retrieve long-term memory of events and information learned before the accident.

I spin the swivel chair to my left to face a cabinet next to the small table that holds a large dictionary; an interesting cabinet, dark wood heavily decorated with brass hinges and two brass pullers shaped as butterflies in the center of both doors.

A moment of hesitation, once more a vague sense of intruding, and I open the cabinet containing a collection of maroon files labeled thoughts, quotes, anecdotes, jokes, short stories, outlines, excerpts. One labeled Rome 1940. I pull it out and decide it will be a good night reading, in case sleep defies me, as it usually does.

One shelf contains sheet music, The Last Time I Saw Paris by Jerome Kern, with Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson on the cover, their faces familiar. Thinking of You with Fred Astaire; Moulin Rouge. Hundreds of them. On a shallow shelf, a brown American hymnbook with a handwritten note, To Anna from Chaplain David, 1946, and a smaller black Italian hymnbook dated 1950.

Remnants begin to surface, but they are selective and as I face the open cabinet, the word limbo flashes in my mind once more in repetitious patterns. I surprise myself in knowing that it describes a place between heaven and hell; that there is a connection with the Roman Catholic teachings about limbo and that the word is commonly used for those who find themselves in a confused state of mind as mine.

I pull out the file of short stories and find one entitled Heavenly Reward.

Tom always dismissed the possibility of an after life, but in Anna’s dreams, by an inexplicable twist of fate, the phone rings and she hears him say, I am back, and she chastises herself for indulging in brainless thoughts. There is comfort in dreams that erase her standing on the Naiad as his ashes catch the tide going out the San Francisco Gates.

The existence of a heaven was never questioned by le amiche, women friends. (The Italian language classifies words in masculine, feminine and neuter: amici–masculine/plural; amiche–feminine/plural. No neuter there).

Anna had believed in heaven and hell since birth, it seemed, her father being a Baptist minister, the family sitting on the front row twice every Sunday and once on Wednesday for the evening prayer service. She learned about the existence of those two mythical places where people went after death, always latched unto matters of behavior, not only from her father on the pulpit but at home. Obedience to the earthly father and obedience to the heavenly Father were without question her daily bread.

From what she learned as a child, she knew that heaven was somewhere up in the clouds and that hell was under ground. When she asked where heaven was, the index fingers pointed upward, clearly telling her that it must be in the sky; she could not see it now but she would when she died; so she wanted to die and see the heaven of her father’s sermons.

Death did not seem threatening; she thought it was like coming upon a door, shedding her body as she would shed her coat and winter boots, and walk in with a new body with wings like an angel so she could fly up and ever higher and forever live. That is where the immortality notion grounded itself and became an indispensable ingredient in her young life.

The illustrations of Doré in Grandfather’s enormous book of Dante’s Divine Comedy helped her visualize the place called hell. She was allowed to thumb through its pages with her younger brother only after promising to turn each page ever so carefully. Each time, her aunt repeated the mantra about the respect for books, especially Grandfather’s priceless edition of La Divina Commedia.

The illustrations of hell confirmed what she feared about hell being a horrible place, with bodies buried in the icy lakes, heads encrusted on the surface, not to mention being scalded in hot oil or being unable to escape the torture of fiery rain. Nonetheless, she and her brother were attracted to the illustrations of hell more so than the ones of heaven, but for her eternal reward, better to sit on a cloud and strum on a harp. She did not know how to play the harp, but after entering that door and getting her wings, and being able to fly, she was certain that she could also play the harp once she reached heaven. Maybe she would sit on a step of the interminable staircase leading to God, who sat on a golden throne. She would sing His praises. She loved to sing. She wanted to be an opera singer when she grew up. Most certainly, she would have to learn songs of praise and not arias, but miraculously she would be able to do almost unthinkable things once she got to heaven.

The subject of earthly deeds rewarded in heaven came up often in conversation among le amiche with the mention of the dear departed who watch from heaven.

Anna gulped bile. She would never refer to Tom as a dear departed or be tempted to lean on the possibility of his watching her from heaven, no matter how much she would like to believe it. Besides, after twenty years of introspection, she concluded that heaven is the placebo for immortality-seekers.

Spring 2002 - It was Anna’s turn to have le amiche for lunch. They always serve sherry as aperitif except for the traditional Christmas lunch at Francesca’s house, when they have champagne.

Anna prepared spinach crepe with asparagus vinaigrette, complimented by a good chardonnay, and crème caramel with raspberries for dessert. Le amiche were sipping espresso when Francesca mentioned her collecting wigs and the tedious work of washing, setting, and fitting them on women who lost their hair to cancer and received treatment at the hospital in her neighborhood.

There will be stars in your crown, Dorothy says as the others nod in unison. Inevitable, a mischievous comment from Silvia about Francesca’s floating in heaven, with a crown lit like her Christmas trees.

Laughter. What fun we had last Christmas, Anna says.

We sipped champagne, opened our gifts, and the tree was beautiful.

Francesca is such a perfectionist, Giuliana compliments.

Without a doubt, she has the largest, most ornate tree, Giovanna adds.