The Good Mayor (10 page)

“That’s my husband,” Mamma Cesare said, closing the door with a heel. “That’s Pappa. My Cesare. On our wedding day. We went straight from the mayor’s office and we had our picture taken. Made everybody wait. So grand we were.”

She put the kettle on its stand and a little water slopped on to the tray before she lit the wick of the spirit lamp. A ghost of blue flame danced in a lazy circle, sighed, burned steadily.

The little woman hopped on to the bed. Her feet waved well clear of the floor. She held out her hand to take the picture and gestured to Agathe to sit beside her while the kettle boiled.

“My Cesare,” she kissed the picture, “such a man he was. Aiyy!” Mamma Cesare bounced on the complaining bed. “Hear that? Squeak! Squeak! Squeak! Twenty-eight years we were married and we wore this bed out.” She bounced around a little more. “Not that I’m complaining. Such a life we had. Such a life you should have. This was a man. This was a real man!”

Mamma Cesare looked at the picture for a long moment and kissed it again and then she turned to Agathe at her side. “I know what you think. You are looking at me and you are seeing this tiny little old lady. Such an old lady. What does this old lady know of squeaking beds? This old lady,” she clutched the picture close to her chest, “is knowing plenty about squeaking beds and, better than that, she is knowing plenty about love. There is love and there is beds. Love is good and beds is, is, is …beds is fantastico! But, when you are getting love and beds together in the one place,” she slapped a hand down on Agathe’s thigh, “this is the best. This is the good God spitting on his fingers and rubbing on the dirty windows where the angels forgets to clean and he’s saying, ‘Look in here. See what’s waiting. See what it is I am doing for you!’”

“I haven’t had that for a long time,” said Agathe.

“Me too,” said Mamma Cesare, “but I remember.”

“And I forget.”

“I know. This is why I am worrying so much for you. Look through the window with the wrong man and what you see is not so nice.”

The little copper kettle began to splutch on its tray and Mamma Cesare jumped down from the bed to deal with it. She took tea from the painted tin, added water, stirred it and waited, stooping over the pot.

“Why did you speak to me this morning?” asked Agathe. “How do you know so much about me?”

“I am strega from a long line of strega. It’s not so hard. You see a man who is starving to death and you know he wants bread. He doesn’t have to ask. You see just by looking. Anybody looks at you, they can see you are dying of hunger.”

“But my husband can’t see it.”

Mamma Cesare poured the tea. “I think maybe he sees fine. I think maybe he is a very hungry man, a man too frightened to share what he has with you, a man frightened to starve to death so he lets you starve alone. This is a very bad thing. Here,” Mamma Cesare passed her a trembling cup and saucer, “drink this, every drop and say nothing. Not one word. Instead, listen.”

Agathe untwined her knotted fingers and took the tea. Mamma Cesare settled herself on the squeaking bed beside her. It was like sitting next to Granny when the wind rattled down the chimney and the stories began, “Once upon a time …” Agathe sipped her tea. It was hot. A slice of lemon brushed her lip.

Mamma Cesare said, “A long, long time ago, in the old country, there was a war.”

Agathe was about to ask “What war?” but Mamma Cesare quietened her with an eyebrow. “I told you to say nothing. And it doesn’t matter what war. For people like us, it never matters what war. Generals and kings and presidents, they have different wars but, for us little people, there is only one war. All the same, I hope you never learn this. So, a long, long time ago in the old country, there was a war. But we were little people living high up in the mountains and far away. We did not care for their war. It is not touching us. Maybe, one day, we hear the guns like thunder from the hills, maybe, one night, we see their fires but everything is far away. Then, one day, there is shooting on our road and, at night, when it is over, there is a red soldier lying under a bush with no head where his head should be.”

The room was quiet except for the sound of teacups on saucers. After a moment, Mamma Cesare said, “Then our village was itself again until, one night, there was fighting in our fields. Men were shouting. They hammered on our shutters and on our doors. The dogs bark. We do not open the door. In the morning, when it is quiet, there is a blue soldier sitting under a tree in my father’s orchard with no heart where his heart should be. So we chase away the pigs and take him to the graveyard and bury him. That day, all the men meet on the steps of the church to decide what to do. This one says that we should keep out of the war, that it’s none of our business. That one says the war is on our road and in our orchards and banging on our shutters at night—it’s too late to keep out. This one says that our village has always been blue and the young men should go and fight for blue but that one says that blue is finished and red is going to win so we should join red. It went on all day. It got hot. I went home to make soup.”

Mamma Cesare leaned across to check on Agathe’s tea. “You finish? Say nothing.”

Agathe tilted the cup to let her see. There was still a little left.

“Take the lemon out. Put it in your saucer. Drink every drop. So I make soup. And, the next day, when I go to the well, they tell me Cesare has gone to fight.”

Agathe drained her cup in a gulp and placed it decisively in her saucer. “Which side did he join? Was he blue or red?”

“You finished?” Mamma Cesare investigated the cup. She was satisfied. “Nobody knows what side he joined. Nobody can decide who is best—blue or red. Nobody can decide who is worst. We hate them all but they made us fight. If we are red, then the blues will come and burn the village. If we are blue, then the reds will come. So the old men say we send our boys to both sides and tell both sides it is them we like. And they leave the village, the boys, and they toss a coin and they pick a side but they never tell anybody else because one side is going to win and one side is going to lose and both sides are going to die but somebody is going to come back and nobody is going to get the blame for killing nobody else. Not never!”

“You must have been terrified,” said Agathe.

“I thought my heart was breaking,” said Mamma Cesare, “and the worst thing is I can’t say nothing because Cesare is not mine. Cesare is going to marry my best friend.”

“Your best friend!” Agathe gasped with the thrill of it. This was as good as anything you could see at the Palazz Kinema on George Street—no, it was better! This was a true story of love and war. She imagined herself in the stalls with a bag of sweets on her knee, stirring trumpet chords playing, a drum roll, looking up, seeing that flickering rectangle of blue light beaming out from the projectionist’s box, the cigarette smoke rising and curling through it, titles rolling up the screen: “The Red and the Blue. Starring …” Who should it be? Yes, “Horace Dukas as Cesare and introducing [a whisper of violins] Agathe Stopak as Mamma.” That would need work. We have to find a better name. And a best friend—we need a best friend. And Cesare needs a best friend too and they
have to leave the village together in the dead of night and then, on some moonlit road, they draw lots and—the horror—they end up on opposite sides and they try to make a deal with some other village boys so they can be on the same side but it’s no good.

And here’s Horace Dukas standing under a full moon, streaming with clouds, and he says, “Boys, this will never work. We can’t pick sides here like it was a game of football in the village square. We can’t leave the wheezy fat boy standing on his own waiting to see if he lives or dies. So you don’t want to be fighting your brothers or your cousins. So what? Who would you choose to kill? Nobody wants to kill, nobody wants to die, so let’s just take the dice as they fall and ride our luck. You are all my brothers and I wouldn’t harm one of you to save the village but each of us would gladly die for our homes, our farms and our mothers. If we have to die, isn’t it better that a friend should do it? At least then we don’t die alone!”

The camera sweeps round the little group. With grim smiles, they shake hands, embrace, clap each other on the back. They go their separate ways. Cut to lingering shot of the full moon and fade to black.

“Your best friend—what was her name?”

“Cara.”

“Pretty name.”

“Pretty girl.”

“Was she tall and blonde?”

“She was short and dark like me. Like all the girls in our village. Nobody got enough to eat. Very dark. She had a bit of a moustache.”

“That’s not so good,” thought Agathe. “We can ignore that—artistic licence. Sometimes the cinema is more real than real. I’m seeing: ‘With Aimee Verkig as Cara, her best friend.’”

Mamma Cesare said, “Turn your teacup over, spin it three times and hand it to me in your left hand.”

The cup made a grinding sound as Agathe turned it on the saucer. “So what happened next?” she asked.

“Nothing. Not for a long time.” Mamma Cesare turned the
cup over and began studying the tea leaves inside, looking for pictures, searching for stories. “Nothing here we didn’t know. See, there’s a ladder but everybody knows Stopak is a paperhanger and that drop of tea at the bottom, that’s a journey over water.”

“Oh, never mind about that. There’s always a drop left at the bottom and you told me this morning I’d cross water to meet the love of my life.”

Mamma Cesare gave her an encouraging look. “So you met him?”

“I haven’t been anywhere. Just to work. Tell me about Cesare and the village and the red and the blue.”

Mamma Cesare was quiet for a moment. She held the teacup tilted loosely in her hand as if it might slip from her fingers. Small bright eyes that had been probing Agathe’s future a moment before were gazing now at a faraway past. After a while she said, “Nothing happened. We didn’t hear anything. Of course we worried but the war stayed away so it looked like the plan was working. We stayed in the village all that summer. We had to work twice as hard in the fields with all the young men gone and then, in the winter with all the young men gone, it was twice as cold in our beds at night. The snows came. They protected us. Nothing could get through the passes. We went from house to house and sat together, telling stories and singing songs. It saved on wood when we all sat round one fire. But, always, our hearts were in the snow with our young men and Cara would sniff and sob on my shoulder about Cesare, how she loves Cesare and, please God, Cesare will come home and marry her. And I am sitting there, in front of a fire of cinders, my fingers blue, saying nothing, listening, listening to the wolves howling on the mountain, and hating her quietly.”

Agathe pictured the scene—a tiny cottage, black against the blizzard, a single light shines from a small square window, the camera closes in. We see two young women in a humble kitchen. They are wrapped in shawls against the winter storm. Aimee Verkig, as Cara, speaks softly, movingly, of her love for the heroic Cesare, tears fill her eyes, she rests her head on the breast of the beautiful Agathe Stopak, who gazes out into the storm, impassive
as marble, as cold as the blizzard, resting a motherly hand on Cara’s hair aaand CUT!

“And then it was summer again,” said Mamma Cesare, “and things started to go badly for the blues. Some of them came through the village in a hurry. They were in a bad way but they knew all about us and how loyal our village was and they told us we’d better get out because the reds were coming. We said we’d stay and they said they were very sorry but they were going to have to blow up the bridge on the far side of the village and that’s what they did. They crossed over and they blew it up. Not that it was much of a bridge and they didn’t blow it up very well, but they left a hole in the middle so we couldn’t use it. Then, the next day, the reds came.”

“I bet you fooled them. I bet you all ran into the street cheering to welcome them,” said Agathe.

The shot opens with a close-up on trees in bloom, birdsong, open out to women, children, old men, running into the street throwing flowers at marching troops.

“You must be joking! We yelled at them. We called them every name we could think of. The old men stood in the street and demanded to know where they had been. The whole world knew this was the reddest village in the whole country—none redder—but, when those blue cowards ran through here, where were the courageous red forces? How could we defend ourselves when all our young men were away with the armies of red? Every woman of the village would gladly entertain a dozen brave red soldiers but, after the horrors inflicted by the diseased blue scum, that would be a dangerous and unpatriotic act. And all us girls howled and hid our faces in our shawls.

“The Captain was very impressed. He says how sorry he is and he extends a thousand sympathies for our suffering which is as great as anything endured by his men and all of it will count as part of the great national liberation effort and did we have anything to drink? And then, when they have drunk all the wine on show and all the wine we hid for them to find, the Captain says he is very sorry but there must be one more small sacrifice. He says
they must repair the bridge and, a thousand apologies, that means they must blow up somebody’s house and throw it in the gorge.

“The whole town is holding its breath but we know what he’s going to say and, sure enough, the Captain says that the best house for blowing up, a thousand, thousand apologies, if you don’t mind, is the house of Cara’s father.”

Agathe gave a little gasp of delight which she quickly transformed to horror behind a hand at her face. “No! She must have been distraught. Did she scream? Did she faint?”

“Oh, you never knew Cara. She is like ice. She walks up to the Captain and sits on his knee with her arms round his neck and she says, ‘Oh, Captain, I know a much better house, much bigger, made with real good stones, much closer to the river and it belongs to the only lousy blue in this whole village. We chased him out of town. Now you can make sure he’s never coming back. We don’t need that sort round here.’ That’s what she said. I remember like yesterday. I see her face like I see yours.”