The Italian Affair (19 page)

“Si,” Bruno exclaimed quite indignantly. “It is Fiat car. No problem for me.”

The balmy evening air hung with expectancy as they got closer to their destination and upon arrival, Bruno leapt out of the car to open the passenger seat for Issy before leading them both into The Stars of the Night, a large restaurant that twinkled with hundreds of little candles.

Before being seated, Bruno spoke in a non-translatable dialect to a short stocky Neapolitan man with a huge belly that protruded many inches over his waistband. From his demeanour and frequently shouted orders, he looked and sounded like the owner and a walking advertisement for the food being served.

After some discussion, a lot of hand gestures and some re-arrangement of the furniture, Bruno was shown to a table which, without doubt, was the best seat in the house with the most fabulous view of the Bay of Naples.

Up above them, the sky had started to prepare itself for the night and was streaked orange and pink from the residual heat of the setting sun. The light it created bathed the restaurant and the city with a kind of salmon gold dust.

“What an amazing place” said Dan as he sat himself down “I’ve never been up here before but the views are spectacular and the food looks equally magnificent.”

“Si” said Bruno. “Naples is magnificent from here?” He puffed his chest out – a sign of the pride he had for his beloved city – another trait he had in common with Gennaro.

“Thank you for bringing us here Bruno,” Issy said wishing that it was just the two of them.

“It eez ok,” Bruno replied smiling at her before pulling out his small red plastic lighter to light himself another cigarette.

As Bruno inhaled, Dan took a good look around the restaurant. “It must be a really popular place. Just look over there at that incredible gastronomic sight,” he said as copious amounts of food came out of the kitchen on large platters hoisted high on the shoulders of white suited waiters. “Piles of fresh shell fish and exquisite looking lobsters looking just how I like them – just take a peek a boo at that” he exclaimed as a huge deep salmon pink lobster was carried out of the kitchen on a large aluminum base covered with ice with Neapolitan pride.

In quick succession, waiters brought out further delights. There were vividly colourful dishes full of roasted vegetables, salads consisting of tomato, mozzarella drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and garnished with oversized basil leaves. And then there was the bitter rocket salads and whole baked fish with garnishes of thyme and wedges of fresh lemon.

Without having to order, a bottle of Prosecco arrived with three glasses at the table, and as the waiter poured Dan got straight down to business – his inhibitions relaxing as he watched the alcohol flow.

“Bruno I am fascinated by your job,” Dan said in a slightly camp and exaggerated way. “Have you sold underpants in Pompeii for long?”

Issy moved uncomfortably in her seat. “Dan was a really kind person,” she thought as she looked at Bruno’s face for his reaction. “He very obviously wanted the best for her, but to mention Bruno’s underpant business so soon after sitting down seemed unnecessarily harsh whatever his reservations.”

“Che? What is the underpants?” Bruno said genuinely not being able to translate this word from the Italian.

“Undergarments,” Dan said helpfully pulling out his pants and pointing at them. “Issy told me you sell underpants on a market stall in Pompeii and I just wondered how long you’d done that for and whether you enjoyed it.”

Bruno sat back in his chair and looked at Dan in a way which suggested he was slightly disappointed in Dan for asking such a stupid bloody personal question. After a few minutes thought Bruno replied. “I’ve always done it, but what I do for job is not importante. What is importante is what is in my heart and in my soul.”

As Bruno said these words he beat his chest and the middle of his stomach with a clenched fist. He then got up out of his chair and walked over to a grand piano at one end of the restaurant and sat down on a carved wooden stool in front of the keyboard.

Bruno remained still for a few moments and looked upwards towards the darkening night sky and the hundreds upon thousands of tiny little stars that had suddenly appeared shining brightly like well cut diamonds. He then started to touch the piano keys. Heaving and arching his body over the piano, he rolled his fingers down and then up the keyboard to make sure they were in tune, the sign of a true maestro.

Hunching himself ever further down, his fingers hovered over the ivories as he started to play in a frenzied genius kind of way that neither Dan nor Issy was expecting.

Issy thought about her mother far away in Harrogate and the piano that sat in their living room at home. Piano playing was a big part of who she was and a piano much like the one in front of her had been in her house all the time throughout her childhood. She found it comforting and yet another undeniable connection between herself and the underpant salesman from Pompeii.

As she listened, she closed her eyes and despite being sat in a restaurant at the top of Naples, she found that her mind had wandered back to the Bronte parsonage and the peaty moors which she’d played on as a child imagining the world of Cathy and Heathcliff.

Issy had always felt at one with those moors and the rawness of the moorland. She identified with the foreboding landscape that shone in the summer, but during the winter became a desolate and wild terrain where only fools would roam.

Transporting herself back from the bleak Yorkshire moors to Naples she knew intuitively that Bruno wanted to tell her something through his music as he played.

She found out from him many years later that this is what his music was trying to tell them both. “You don’t who I am and you don’t know my story. Just because I chose to opt out of the Camorra and, therefore, the life I could have had does not make me less of a person.

“
Just because I sell underpants doesn’t make me an idiot. It means I don’t need to feed my ego. I have removed myself from the machine of life that dictates a certain way of living. I am a non-conformist. My soul is free. Can’t you see? It sweeps and swoons like a bird without a permanent landing. Never ever make the mistake of judging a book by its cover. You don’t know my story and I may never be free enough to tell you everything you need to know to understand my truth. I would play in the best orchestra in the world if I could but my life, my background makes that impossible. I live in a closed world where I know who to trust and the boundaries I can and cannot cross.”

And after those first dramatic bars of music Bruno started to play Tchiakovsky’s Piano Concerto 1 in B Flat Minor. As soon as Issy recognized it she started to shake her head silently in disbelief. As tears welled in her eyes, Bruno looked over at her as he sang the Freddy Martin song ‘Tonight we Love’ in stilted English.

Tonight we love while the moon

Beams
down in dream light tonight

We
touch the stars

Love
is ours

Night
winds that sigh

Embrace
the sky

Tonight
we love in the glow

That
glows so softly I know

This
wasn't meant to borrow but tomorrow

Will
it be gone

Or
will it always live on

Tonight
we love

Each line of the song was accompanied by hand movements as Bruno’s arms reached for the stars and drew down the moon beams one by one, creating a heavenly collision of star dust as his voice and the piano transcended the restaurant and those who dined there.

“Dan he plays so beautifully,” Issy whispered, through her tears she watched in awe as every sinew of Bruno’s lithe bronzed body focused on delivering a perfect finale.

“I’ll certainly agree on that particular point” replied Dan. “But playing like a maestro just makes it even stranger that he sells underpants. He could be in any orchestra in the world. What’s he doing playing in this restaurant? However, you must be very flattered to have been serenaded by such an Italian genius piano playing hunk though. It’s never happened to me ever but I hope it does – it’s about the most romantic thing I have ever seen. It has set all the hairs on my body on end. How do you feel now he Bruno has publicly declared his feelings for you?”

“I know that there is every possibility that I could love him and I mean truly love him,” Issy said without flinching.

“Issy for God’s sake,” Dan hissed back as Bruno stood up from the piano to a full standing ovation before walking back to the table. “It is just a song. Don’t rush into things. Enjoy the seduction, but don’t let tonight go to your head. He may be a maestro piano player but I’m still not convinced he is an authentic true man. He has the potential to destroy you”

As soon as Bruno sat down the table swarmed with gold buttoned waiters offering them the most inconceivably extravagant food leaving Dan with no other option than to dive under a waiters arm to grab hold of Bruno’s hand to congratulate him.

“That was truly magnificent Bruno. Really superb actually” said Dan rather self-consciously embarrassed for having misjudged him so badly.

“Why you no think it eez possible for the underpant salesman from Pompeii to do this eh?” replied Bruno with a long chuckle.

Dan looked flustered. “Look you play brilliantly and I really enjoyed it, and if you also enjoy selling underpants far be it from me to make any further comments on that. Oh and thank you for inviting me here to eat as well. I’ve never seen such fantastically huge pink shiny lobsters in my life and I pride myself on knowing a good lobster when I see one.”

“But of course we are in Napoli. The food here is the best. We eat now,” said Bruno surveying the gastronomic sight in front of him and smiling at Issy.

As all three of them started eating it was mostly just noises of rapture that came out of their mouths as they sucked the pink fleshy centres  ripped from langoustine after langoustine taking their time to fully savour chewy meat lightly infused with garlic and herbs.

With the first course over, Issy decided to take a breather from eating. Now Bruno had sung THAT song to her and made his intentions transparent she needed to clear her head.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said “but I’m just going to stand on the balcony for a few minutes. I think I just need a bit of air after all that food.” Walking over to the far side of the restaurant she looked up at the night sky which by now was inky black and saturated with stars. She closed one eye to see if should could get a celestial sign from her father. She did it knowing full well that whatever she saw would probably be an optical illusion but, tonight of all nights, it felt worth giving it a go.

As she scanned the dark canopy above there right in front of her was a huge star, much bigger than the others. One that glistened and shimmied and winked at her, she smiled at the sign before noticing that Bruno had left the restaurant and had started to walk towards her.

He reached out and touched her face as it if was a precious jewel and she shuddered at his touch. “What you looking for?” he said softly.

“I’m looking for my father,” Issy replied very straightforwardly. “He died many years ago and on a night like tonight I always look heavenwards to see if there is any sign of him up there in the sky. It’s just something I do and have done since I was a child. And sometimes I can feel him watching over for me.”

“How many years you lose your father?” asked Bruno, looking deeply into her eyes.

“Many many years ago” replied Issy looking back at him sadly.

“I am so sorry,” Bruno replied taking her into his arms and placing her head into his chest in the exactly the same way he’d done in the Garden of Eden. “But it eez ok, I understand and I am now here for you.”

As he held Issy she was transported back in time to the morning her father had died. He too had held her tight to his chest at the breakfast table minutes before he’d died and had stroked her hair in exactly the same way Bruno was doing now.

It was only minutes afterwards that he’d walked over to the sink in the kitchen and put on the fleecy bright yellow Marigold washing up gloves. An old Roberts radio sat on the stone window sill playing Tchiakovsky’s Piano Concerto 1 in B Flat Minor.

Bruno’s touch and his music had both come together on one evening reminding her of her father and those last moments she’d shared with him on earth. These taken together with the large shiny star were the celestial connections she’d been waiting for. Her father was there with them on the balcony she could feel it and could almost hear that he approved.

As they continued to stand along together and locked in that embrace, their bodies once again fitted perfectly together and their souls connected as one. They knew each other somehow without having to say a word.

After a few minutes Dan wandered out onto the balcony. On finding them in full on embrace, he was not sure of what to say. He had gone from being a chaperone for the evening to a total gooseberry. He cleared his throat. “Er, apologies for interrupting everyone but huge amounts of food have just arrived at our table. As nice as it is I’m unable to eat all of it and I also feel rather alone if I’m honest. Is there any chance you could both take a break and come back to me?I’d feel an awful lot better about things if you did.”