Errands
by Nat Falkenheim
“Young Woman” by John Swofford
The spring I was 22, I stayed for three days in Menaggio, Italy, where I boarded with an elderly Italian woman in her 70s by the name of Bice Maddalena. I found her on the Internet. She spoke no English so I resorted to speaking Spanish at her with what seemed, to me, a kind of Italian cadence. It got the point across most of the time.
The finer points of the guest-host relationship were not exactly clear to me. I had my own room in Bice’s flat with two twin beds and a set of old encyclopedias. I slept under a framed painting of Christ and the Holy Mother, across from a large childhood portrait of Bice’s now-grown son. For a small fee she made me breakfast in the morning that I ate on a small balcony overlooking the lake and the blue mountains. The breakfast consisted of bread, butter, marmalade, coffee, and biscuits. She always served it on a mirrored tray with lots of small plates, saucers, and utensils, a system which to me seemed excessive and which I didn’t quite understand; I was confused as to what was meant to serve what, and was nervous to use it wrong, as if she might be doing dishes later and laugh at my incompetent, uncivilized breakfast-eating.
…
My first full day during breakfast, Bice informed me that the weather was bad, although in fact, apart from some dark clouds passing here and there, it seemed okay to me. There was some sun, but it was slated to thunder the whole week, pushing aside my plans to swim. Oh well, I figured, disappointment doesn’t kill you, especially when you’re already in an enviable life situation. In light of the day’s sunshine, I had actually thought swimming might be in the cards, but Bice informed me that it was too cold, though I had a feeling we sensed temperature differently. As she chattered to me in Italian, I managed to catch a list of errands–at least, I heard “farmacia”, “banca”, and took the rest of my assumption from context, which seemed to be that of a grandmother prepared to run through her day. It wasn’t until she appeared in my doorway, car keys in hand, impatience scribbled on her face, that I realized I was meant to go with her. Unsure exactly of my purpose but having no other plans, I got dressed in record time, foregoing brushing my teeth, and trudged along.
As I followed her in silence I became more and more disoriented every passing minute. I imagined, though, that she might be bringing me to some tourist attraction, a must-see church or piazza, something of that ilk. She led me into a garage where, with a remarkable grace and agility I would not have suspected her to possess, she leapt up and pulled down a garage door, revealing a red Fiat with rosary beads dangling from the mirror.
She pulled out of the spot and for a moment I thought she might just drive off, but no, she gestured for me to get in on the passenger side, so I did. She drove down the mountain, complaining about the roads–the word for broken, rotte, was the same in Spanish, roto, I noticed–and bitching generally about the weather. Bice seemed very happy to talk to herself, and I wondered if that was usual for her. Oh, poor Bice, I invented. She probably loves having a companion for once. She hit the gas and the car lurched into town. It was clear from Bice’s tenacity that she had other destinations in store, something I just had to see.
First we went to some kind of municipal government building. As we entered the office of ordinary white collar Italians going about their day, I began to feel underdressed. Earlier, just before we had left the flat, Bice had looked me up and down with some distaste, as if because my legs were bare and my top rose up to expose my stomach when I stretched, I was an unrepentant slut. Okay, fair enough, to her maybe I was.
…
As far as I could tell, a receptionist was telling her to go upstairs and find a woman named Giovanna. Well, we found her and were brought into a back office. Giovanna proceeded to rifle through a couple of filing cabinets and eventually handed Bice a pair of two apparently empty, unused notepads. Inexplicable. As they chatted, I looked into the eyes of a bespectacled Sergio Mattarella who, the poster informed me, was the presidente della repubblica. Maybe I should have known that, I don’t know.
At the bank, we passed through two doors through which we had to be buzzed. Following Bice’s lead, I bent over at the hips to let the electronic E.T.-esque thermometer take my temperature at the forehead. 36.1 degrees Celsius, a whole .5 degrees fewer than Bice. As I waited behind her and studied a bulletin board of various helpful numbers–dial 112 for carabinieri, 115 for polizia–I could hear her telling the lady at the desk about me. La ragazza this, la ragazza that. The lady pretended to be impressed when Bice told her that I was internazionale, from Estati Uniti, that I was staying with her for three days, but she didn’t give me a second glance.
We strode out of the bank. I thought to myself, we must now be getting close to the point of this journey. But we turned instead into a pharmacy. She explained some health predicament or another to the pharmacist while I stood around like a mute. In fact at that time I had about four weeks of built-up, compounded backpacking-related health woes and would have liked to speak to one of the pharmacists myself, if I could have summoned the courage. But now that I was no longer an anonymous foreigner and rather Bice’s boarder, an extension of Bice herself, it for some reason seemed unthinkable. As I trailed Bice out of the store I put it out of my mind and crossed my fingers that my conditions, whatever they were, wouldn’t render me permanently disabled or erode my reproductive systems.
We returned to the red Fiat. Bice drove to a more picturesque part of Menaggio, further from the town. Perfect, I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere. “Now I’ll show you something,” she said, pulling over in a bus lane and getting out of the car. She left her blinker on and shut the door behind her. I followed her across the street to a wrought-iron fence through which we could see circles of children and teachers sitting in the grass. The boy children were dressed in pastel blue and the girls in a sort of purple-pink. That’s kind of heteronormative, I thought, before wondering why we, two grown women, were studying these children through the fence almost hungrily. Bice called to one of the teachers behind the fence–where is Gabriel, where is Ginevra–and I realized that we had stopped in to see her grandchildren. One teacher pointed out a little boy of about five or six. Bice pitched her voice higher, called to the boy and said some stuff in Italian that I didn’t fully understand but I could surmise from her tone and the blown kisses that it boiled down to grandmotherly words of affection. I didn’t get a glimpse of the granddaughter. As we pulled away from the fence, Bice still waving over her shoulder and cooing–il mio gemeles, my twins–I wondered if she had a favorite and, maybe unfairly, assumed it was the boy.
Afterwards, on foot, at long last, we arrived at a massive stone archway topped by a cross. A sign overhead read “cemetario”, cemetery. Oh, God, I thought to myself. This is it, maybe this is historic, maybe Garibaldi or Puccini or Magnani is buried beyond these walls. I could see a couple of cargo-short-clad tourists disrespectfully taking photos inside. Truth be told I was intrigued by the aesthetic of the place and barring self-awareness, probably would have taken a few photos myself. But I was with Bice and she wasn’t explaining any historical facts, I realized, she was just silent then as we entered the graveyard.
Bice crossed herself. I did too, though I’m not Catholic, fearing for a moment that I was doing it wrong and that she’d catch me faking. But Bice wasn’t looking at me. She was walking with intentionality towards a corner of the graveyard by a nice clear view of the water. We stopped in front of a gravestone, a guy named Alberto. Her husband, I realized, he’d been dead ten years, how sad.
…
We left the graveyard. “Io stanca,” she said. Tired, I knew that much. She informed me that she’d be driving back up the mountain and that I’d come on foot. Finally, I was relieved of my strange duty to follow, not that I minded hanging out with Bice but the not-knowing, the muteness, had been stressing me out all day. After Bice got into the Fiat and drove off, I walked along the lake and surveyed the multicolored houses, the French balconies blooming with flowers and ivy. The light changed. I turned to the lake and looked to the sky, now unable to distinguish what was thundercloud and what was mountain. It was the most beautiful place I possibly could have imagined.
Bice didn’t bring me anywhere specific. For a day I trailed her through Menaggio without a clue what was going on. In retrospect, it might be that she had offered me a ride to the foot of the mountain so I could sightsee solo while she ran the errands of her day. It might be that I’d been intruding on her the entire day. I resign myself to the fact that I will never know for sure.
Nat Falkenheim is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. She resides in California.
John Swofford graduated from Clayton State University with an Associate of Arts degree in painting. He was selected for Aedra Fine Arts online exhibit: Rise (2024). He was featured in L’EXPOSITION Autumn exhibition and catalog. (2024)