Per Nonno, Con Amore

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Per Nonno, Con Amore

To Grandpa With Love

by Shannon Chapel

Roberto Bianchi plucked a bit of tobacco from the tip of his tongue with his left hand and flicked the spent cigarette butt with the middle finger of his right, losing it forever in the fluffy Bergamo snow. It occurred to me that his gray beret matched the circles under his sunken eyes, and I could practically hear his bones clinking together when he pulled his brown corduroy jacket tighter around them.

"Non ho tutto il giorno, il signor Trovesi,"

I do not have all day, Mr. Trovesi

  he said.

I flipped through my Italian-English dictionary, frustrated and a bit embarrassed that I still couldn't understand him. I'd been working on it, but he knew I didn't speak fluent Italian. We'd spoken numerous times over the telephone and several times in person, yet he insisted on doing this to me. I was beginning to believe he was doing it on purpose.

"Um, you can call me Tony," I said. "Is it okay if we speak English, Mr. Bianchi? Sorry, but my Italian's not the greatest--"

"Americani, non ha senso dell'umorismo."

Americans, no sense of humor.

I'd been fortunate enough to be chosen to study abroad--one year in Milan, the heart of Italy. It was an opportunity most nineteen year old kids never get to experience, and I'd jumped at the chance. My host family was nice and welcomed me as one of their own. I'd barely settled in before I started asking questions about the surrounding towns and how to best go about touring them. Studying overseas was the chance of a lifetime, but I had ulterior motives.

When my grandmother asked me to videograph Bergamo for my grandfather's sixty-ninth birthday ... well, I was only too happy to oblige. As a young man, my grandfather ventured to the Land of Opportunity, leaving his beloved Italy, and his heart, behind. Fifty years passed. Weddings were planned, children were born and life was lived. Granddad was too busy, not to mention too poor, to return to his homeland. Grandma figured this was the next best thing.

Bergamo was close--a mere 40 kilometers northeast of Milan. The first step in my quest to help Grandpa rediscover his birthplace was to find a guide, and no one came more highly recommended than Roberto Bianchi. He promised to videograph the heart and soul--the real  Bergamo. He and his vintage movie camera were exactly what I was looking for, and he was waiting for me when I stepped off the bus.

"Well, where should we start?" I asked, shoving my hands deeper into my pockets. Damn, it's cold!

On the flanks of the hillside in Città Bassa on Via San Tomaso, the fine art of the Pinacoteca dell'Accademia Carrara took my breath away. I'd never seen anything like it. Veneto Bartolomeo's Madonna con Gesù Bambino,,  Vittore Carpaccio's Paride in un paesaggio,  Vincenzo Foppa's Gesù Cristo crocifisso tra i due ladroni,  anonymous paintings like Bosco con radura, cavaliere e viandanti ... I was moved to silence as I drifted from landscape to portrait, still life to real life to religious. I could barely comprehend how such exquisite works of art, painted by men who'd lived hundreds of years before me, were capable of making me shudder with wonder generations later.

When we stepped out from under the Academy's stucco facade, the world seemed dimmer somehow; less vibrant--as if the places I'd seen inside those paintings and the people who populated them were the reality, and this ... this was some muted imitation. I inhaled deeply and watched my breath freeze before my eyes in the frigid Bergamo air. There were no words for what I was feeling. I had no idea where Roberto Bianchi intended to take me next, but I doubted anything could compare to what I'd just seen.

Roberto lit another cigarette and held it between tobacco-stained fingers. "Follow me," he said, and we climbed the steep footpath that separated the two parts of the city. We approached Le Mura, defensive walls built by the Venetians in the 1500s, passed through Porta Sant'Agostino at the top of Viale Vittorio Emanuele and into Città Alta, the historic upper city. I looked around the snow-covered Piazza Vecchia as if I'd been there before. The beautiful Contarini fountain looked exactly as Grandpa had described, standing sentry at the square's center, its ashen tritons as still as death itself. Their unseeing orbs seemed to follow me, consider me, disregard me. An unexpected chill coursed through my veins, and I averted my eyes.

I followed Roberto Bianchi through Bergamo's cobblestone streets, marveled at the Romanesque beauty of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, and stopped to caress the three spheres at the gates of Cappella Colleoni. Bianchi said they represented the three testicles of Bartolomeo Colleoni, a fifteenth century local hero, and that rubbing them guaranteed virility.

"What's that?" I asked, a bit disturbed by the shocking statue of a man hung upside-down.

"In commemorazione del movimento di Resistenza italiana,"

In commemoration of the Italian resistance movement

  Roberto said. "Even Bergamo has a dark side."

When I tired of walking, I considered taking the city's funicular. Roberto said it would provide a spectacular view of the Alps as well as a welcome respite from the cold, but as darkness fell, we descended on foot and in silence along Via della Noca to the Città Bassa and Sentierone, the lower city's main square.

Despite the late hour and low temperature, people weaved and mingled outside shops and sipped coffee on the streets. Beautiful women scurried through snow drifts in expensive heels, their new-found treasures stowed away inside huge multicolored paper sacks dangling from their delicate elbows. I could hear music and laughter from thirty directions, and delectable aromas from every corner made my mouth water.

"I can see why my grandfather misses this place so much," I said, convinced I'd give Bartolomeo Colleoni my left testicle for just one sip of hot espresso. Quello che guy non voglia quattro pietre?

What guy wouldn't want four stones?

  I thought with a chuckle, and Roberto looked at me quizzically. Hey, I guess my Italian's not so bad after all.

"Too dark to film. Regali?

gift?

  How you say ... souvenir? Shopping district--Via XX Settembre--chiudere."

close

I glanced at my watch, surprised by how late it was. "Crap, I'm out of time. My bus'll be leaving soon. Do you think we have enough footage?" I asked, gesturing toward the camera. "Do I need to come back again tomorrow?"

"Più che sufficiente.  More than enough. I will edit and ship to you. It should arrive in time for your grandfather's birthday. Che sorpresa!"

What a surprise!

I thanked him again for the tour, this time in Italian. "Grazie."  I shook his hand in the moonlight, and walked alone toward Autostradale on Piazza Marconi. The bus for Milan would be pulling out of the station any minute, and I wanted to get back before my host family started to worry. Church bells began to chime from somewhere in the distance, and I asked a passerby what they meant.

"That's the bell tower," he said. His English was excellent, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "Tradition. Every night at ten o'clock it rings one hundred times to warn farmers to come in before the walled-city doors are closed for safety. Has done since medieval times."

I thanked him and stood with my eyes closed, listening to that bell--the same bell my grandfather would have listened to when he was my age. It was the perfect end to a perfect day, and I couldn't wait to see the look in Grandpa's eyes when he saw his beloved Bergamo for the first time in over fifty years.




Grandpa's birthday finally arrived, and with it a package wrapped in plain brown paper secured with string. Everyone gathered around in anticipation as I slipped the DVD into the player and turned on the television. Debussy's haunting Suite Bergamasque  greeted us as the city of Bergamo came into focus.

"Mio Dio!"  Grandfather said, covering his mouth with his tortuous hands. "My beloved Old Square!"

I walked up behind Gramps and hugged his shoulders. "Happy birthday, Grandpa. Do you like your present?"

"It looks just the way I remember it. Thank you, my boy!"

"Wait, what was that?" Grandma asked, pressing the rewind button.

"What?" I asked.

"That!" 

The screen blurred and refocused, revealing dark shapes and transparent figures--ghosts from the distant past with gaping wounds and silent screams. Long-dead soldiers dragged themselves across the ground, their ruined legs severed and forgotten behind them. Tiny waif-like children cried, their blackened faces swollen and disfigured as they huddled against the legs of unsuspecting tourists in the village square. A mutt outside Al Vecchio Tagliere barked at one of the apparitions, but a passerby yelled, "Tranquilla, cane stupido!"

Quiet, stupid dog!

  and the stray skulked away with its tail between its legs.

Grandma gasped and Uncle Vinny reached for the remote. My aunt covered my little cousins' eyes and ushered them, scared and screaming, into the kitchen.

"The damn thing won't shut off!" Vinny said, furiously pushing buttons at random.

I plucked Roberto Bianchi's dog-eared business card from my wallet and dialed the number.

"Ciao?"

"Mr. Bianchi, this is Tony Trovesi from America. I'm the one who--"

"Sì, sì. Mi ricordo di te.  I remember you."

"I just got your package in the mail today and it's full of ... well, I don't know what, exactly. Was the film double-exposed? I mean ... it's like you filmed over someone else's footage, only now they look like spooks--you know, ghosts or dead people or something." I tried to laugh it off, but the manufactured attempt didn't do anything to quash the paralyzing fear that threatened to overwhelm me. I could see the television flickering out of the corner of my eye, and I turned my back on it.

"Gli Americani e il loro lieto fine.

The Americans and their happy ending

  Mr. Trovesi, Bergamo has a very long and somewhat violent history. We've seen wars, the Bubonic Plague, famine and drought, Attila, accidents and murder. It's part of our legacy--our tradition. Embrace the truth."

"What the ... are you serious? Are you saying the things in the film are real?"

"Genuini ed autentici. Questa è la mia specialità."

I took a deep breath and tried to wrap my mind around what he was telling me. "Look, I paid for a simple documentary for my grandfather's birthday--a video tour that would make him feel like he was home again. I was told you're the best; that's why I hired you. This  is not what I paid for!"

"You wanted heart and soul--the real Bergamo, boy, and my customers always  get what they pay for."

"Tony!" my grandmother screamed from the living room. "Call 9-1-1! I think Grandpa's having a heart attack!"

I dropped the phone.



Word count minus title (according to Microsoft Word)--1,794
Written for February 2010

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