he came back and the light opened up again, and it seemed to me that happiness had returned, unasked. It was hard to remember what waiting had once meant.
There were al those years I had spent in the caravan— strange, when I looked out, not to see any horses.
Enrico was not an easy nor a simple man. He did not like where he had come from and he hid it for a long time. It had never struck me that wealth could fester, but Enrico fought his. I final y learned that his was a family of famous judges and lawyers, of wealth and renown, even sympathy. He tried to leave it behind, the fine houses of Verona, the open spaces and courtyards, the white statues in the garden, but I suppose when you leave something behind it wil always fol ow you. What Enrico belonged to was nothing more or less than the mountains. He had already gone, at a young age, through a series of jobs in hotels, chairlifts, restaurants, but he real y only wanted to be alone in the peaks, and so he had found a hut on his country's side of the border, sheltered by a hil and trees kept smal by winter. He built the hut using money from odd jobs. He had few visitors and was known by some as Die Welsche, the stranger, though in truth he himself said that he was just a citizen of elsewhere.
Enrico knew he would stay in the mountains the day he gave his leather suitcase to the local cobbler and asked him to make a pair of shoes from them.
He lived beyond the reach of most people and grew to enjoy what Paoli cal ed his fine idleness. He was liked, your father— he brought his medicines across the mountain, kept himself quiet, and had no time for the bombers who wanted to level the telegraph poles in the name of Tyrol.
He stayed away from his family, sought nothing from them, and went hungry when it was time to go hungry. He did not use this as a badge of sacrifice, he was no saint, far from it. He said years later how stupid it had been to deny their existence, and yet it was my own difficulties that eventual y forced him back to his family.
I had been in his hut for just three months when the cara-binieri came up the road. Fresh uniforms, white belts, epaulets. It was like watching the approach of sadness. Don't say a word, Enrico whispered. They marched in, put me in handcuffs, stood me at the door, and then gave your father a good beating in front of my eyes. Afterwards he took the first train he could back to Verona, in his old clothes and white bandages, and, though he never told me what he gave in return—it was the first time ever he had asked a favor of his father—he returned with a document that released me from the clutches of the cara-binieri. Within a few days a car arrived with a court officer and handed me a blue passport, said it was compliments of the Italian government. He left without another word. I asked Enrico what it had taken for this, but he shrugged, said it was nothing, that what was an ordeal for me was an easy task for him. Yet even then I knew that it had taken some of the life from him— the carabinieri had never before known where, nor which family, he came from. It also pierced some of the Tyroleans who doubted him now, but Enrico said it was not his choice to care, I had the passport and that was enough—a man would always be traitor to one thing if he truly believed in another.
He laced his boots and continued his work, smuggling goods across the mountains. He knew that if ever they found him he would spend his time in jail—he would not ask for a second favor. It eventual y happened one spring and he was away for a three-month stretch. I thought my heart would scale the wal s of the hut, chonorroeja. I lay awake listening to you climb in my body.
And so it happened.
One afternoon, Enrico lifted a fine suit from a wooden chest, blue with very thin pinstripes. He held it up to the light and said: I hate this thing. He rol ed it in a bal and wrapped it in brown paper. We're going to Verona, he said. He had bought me a fine dress though it was two sizes too short and it showed my new size. It is hard to forget the oldest of customs, blood laws, territory, silence, but he would take no part in them. He put his hand to my stomach and grinned like a fool. We were driven to Bolzano by Paoli who whistled al the way. On the train Enrico ran his hands together nervously, and then al of a sudden tried to explain his family, their history, but I hushed him. Right there in the carriage he dressed in the suit, the dark tan of his neck sharp against the pale white of his body. We sat, the countryside clicking by. Once or twice he stood and laughed out loud: Here I am! he said. Here I am, going home!
A few hours later we were walking down a wide laneway together. The house in Verona put me in mind of Budermice, the light so clean it felt like it had been wrung through water.
It was the occasion of Enrico's brother's wedding and so his family was there, some outside on the lawn, others drinking on the veranda, the women arguing in preparation for supper. His father grinned and smashed a glass when we appeared. His brothers cheered. His mother, your grandmother, was a refined woman—but not so refined, chonorroeja, that she couldn't eventual y tel me so. I held my dark head high and took it in my stride, I was not going to hide in the corners.
A feast was spread out on giant silver plates, glasses of the best wine, trays of the freshest olives, the finest meat, the most colorful and exotic of fruits. I thought to myself this was just a flicker and I was going to enjoy it, who knows how long it might last. Enrico stayed close to my shoulder. He
said, Here's Zoli. Nothing more. I was glad—with him, my name was enough. More wine flowed. An opera singer stood up for an aria. We applauded and Enrico's father winked across the tables at me. He took my hand afterwards and walked me through the grounds and said that he would never know his son properly, but he had also never known him to put on such a suit, he was glad for it, something in him had shifted. You're a good influence, he said with a grin. Enrico's mother glared at us from across the lawn. I dared to smile at her and she turned away. Enrico and I were given rooms at opposite ends of the house, but he entered through my doorway late that night, drunk and singing, and fel asleep at the end of the bedspread. He woke in the morning with his tongue dry and his head thumping, and said we would be greeted at death together so why should we wait—it was his way of saying he wanted to marry.
On the train journey back, we stepped across a line while the train was stil moving and he clasped me to him, that was al the formality he wanted.
It is only a few years ago now, 1991, I think—the label of years seem so little to me now—that the Wal fel , though perhaps it has never been a wal so much as an idea grown away from its own simplicity.
We walked down from the mil house to Paoli's shop, Enrico and I, and we watched the television pictures from Berlin— how strange to think of those young men using hammers to break apart the bricks at the exact same time as Paoli cursed his little coffee machine that never worked. The scenes from Berlin seemed to me so much the work of my grandfather and his strong hatred of cement. Paoli kept the coffee shop open late that night, and your father walked me home with his arm across my shoulder.
Wil you ever go back? he asked.
