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Part Two
The morning found Luigia with a painful and swallowed ankle; she was able to move around clawing badly. She dreamed Frederick during the night, and remembering her dream gave her joy. She thought he was a handsome man, and hoped to see him soon. The night before, he had promised to take her to visit the city. Sure, she wouldn’t be able to go alone with him, but she was sure Ilona will be glad be with them, maybe she could come with another friend, and in that way she would possibly be alone with Frederick, even if for a sort time. Luigia remembered the special way he looked at her last night, it seemed he wanted to say something but he couldn’t get out those words. Most likely he equally liked her, and she thought how nice will be nice to hear again his voice. Maybe it would have some sweet words, maybe would have a caress for her and who ever knows? He may even try to kiss her… Yes, she had made up mind to let him kiss her. She wanted to try a real kiss, a kiss like lovers are used to exchange. Certainly it creates a great emotion thinking of receiving her first kiss from a man. What really would she feel like?
This and many other thoughts passed through her mind. She thought of the many questions she would ask him, she wanted to know more of him, his life, and perhaps he can talk of his family, where they live, how many brothers and sister he has…And, importantly, would they like her? But the more important question she made to herself was, would Frederick be interested enough in her and consider to build a family with her?
Or where those just hypothetical dreams that will never come true?
At that moment she heard a knock at the door,
‘Entrée!’
It was Antoinette, the youngest maids in the family. She carried a basket with red roses, ‘They have just been delivered for you, madam’
‘Thank you, Antoinette’
There were from Frederick. Between the roses it was a card and she read, ‘I’m sorry for what’s happen last night to you. I hope by now you’ll fell well. Unfortunately I cannot come and see you. I have to return to the Barracks, which are a couple of hours away from Buda. I will be on duty for a month. I’ll stay in touch. I wish you well.’
The roses remember to her the night before and the walk they made in the hotel park. She appreciated Frederick note, but certainly a long time waiting him for a full month; will he still remember her by then?
***
My mother seemed tired after her long narration, but I needed to know more and I asked, ‘Did Grandmother Luigia saw Frederick again? Was she possibly in love with him since the first moment they met, or was only an infatuation? And why if it was love they didn’t marry?’
‘Carlo, you are quite inpatient, why don’t you let me rest now. Tomorrow or in the next day I’ll tell you how the story developed afterward. Please give me time and then you will have all the answer you want. As I told you before, Mama Luigia was very young at that time and that was her first experience with a man.
‘She, like all the young people, had big dreams and saw things under a different prospective. Most likely, after that first night and that accident Frederick wanted to show to her only his concern about her good health. He was a well educated person and that was exactly what he was supposed to do.
‘But yes, in time I think some deeper feelings developed for Mama Luigia. Unfortunately their loving dream was disrupted by unexpected events.
Be patient, Carlo, in due time you will be able to make up your own conclusions on Mama Luigia first love affair.’
***
Yesterday I received some photos that Sergio took in Tolmezzo and in Nimis. Looking at them I realized how both these places have overgrown over the last years. They are at least three times larger then I could remember they were thirty years ago when I left Italy. Tolmezzo’s centre basically hasn’t changed in appearance. The old buildings are still there looking the same with their arched porticos as well as the piazzas, Santa Caterina and Piazza del Duomo. From an aerial view, that possibly Sergio took looking down from La Piccotta, I noticed that the fields that surrounded Tolmezzo in the past have completely disappeared giving way to a proliferation of houses and the expansion of the town.
Siore Gigia’s property has gone, wiped out. No more farm houses, no more barns no more cultivation around there. What a pity, at least for me. But how can I suddenly erase all those familiar places from my memory? Now, on his site, had been erected a large bus terminal. I felt sad, not because I don’t want the town to become larger and more modern, but simply because that was part of my most dear memories from the old good days of the past. Now what remains vividly in my mind had become history.
How many times, during the last year of World War II those cornfields had been refuge to men hiding from the Germans who suddenly had come into town to check if those young and strong people walking around town had a valid permit and if not to take them away to Germany as a forced labor in their factories?
I also sorry to see those fields, that crowned town before, wiped out because in my young days they offered us, growing boys, so much freedom to razz around and feel free in the country side. In those days those fields were also part of survival from famine to many families over those critical days when food did not exist.
For us, growing children those open fields were part of our daily fun where we could get the occasional cob of fresh and juicy corn, or a few of those baby potatoes from the ground, for then, along the river banks, lit a small fire where to roast them for the best delicious snack.
Many times we offered also our help to the farmers who were working in those fields, helping them to pick up grapes or apples, and at the end we were largely compensated with some of those fruits that proudly we took home with us.
These are now things of the past that exist only in our memories.
My mother and I are still in Nadi, Mother likes this serene place. The atmosphere is relaxing and life quite simpler. It is a return to the bucolic time of the past when world didn’t have so many problems.
Mother had suffered luck of memory over the past days. It had been a difficult week for her and she hardly remembered things from the past. She told me she had started suffering lack of memory at the time she was still a young girl, while she was in a refugee camp with her mother and brothers, during The First World War.
An epidemic of meningitis spread between the camp children and she was isolated in quarantine for the safe of the others. She was recluse for forty days, with no contacts with other children and she had nothing else to play, so to pass the time she was counting the ants passing over the courtyard paved area. Since then she said, from time to time she had difficulty to remember things or names of people.
That’s the way she is now, confused and contradicting herself. In this way I am also running nowhere, where the events are mixed and maybe presented in wrong times and locations from when or where they did really happen.
I’m talking about what is concerning my grandmother. At the time I asked Mother for how long Mama Luigia lived in Buda, I came out with quite different answers. She let me believe she had been there for a year for soon after telling that Mama Luigia didn’t stay there more then three months.
But what has become evident is that at a certain moment her father, Francesco, asked her to take a train and join the rest of the family in Transylvania. Mama told me that the family went to live there and all of them had to work hard for a period of two years. That news confused me a lot. I couldn’t understand the point and their necessity of working. I always had the idea that Francesco was a wealthy person… Those were different times and different lifestyle and ways to educate his own children.
So I resigned myself to be very patient, and to keep going back and forward to her narration and then go to a possible right judgment of how things did really developed in those days. I have been kept in suspense, just when, and more then ever, I wanted to know the straight facts. I don’t want to mislead Sergio, or else he will tell quite a different story that really was. He had already many doubts. In his last letter told me that Uncle Ferruccio and Aunty Anna had also given him contradicting statements of those days and he concluded that he was relaying mainly on my mother narration, that looks is the right way and so to use that version in his book.
Here a bit more about young Luigia’s time when she was in Buda and how her relationship developed with Frederick.
Luigia was in the drawing room when Frederick unexpectedly arrived for a visit. Kristoff, the butler, show Frederick in the drawing room while he announced him. He was still in his fatigue uniform and his face deeply suntanned,
‘My God, really he is so handsome.’ Luigia thought, seeing him.
He faced Luigia with a large smile and his eyes sparkled with joy to see her again,
‘I came as soon as I could.’
‘I’m glad you did it.’
Luigia’s felt week in his presence and her heart banged like a drum. For long seconds silence was between them and everything in the world seemed to have stop and wait.
Finally Frederick took her hand and raised it to his lips to kiss. In a mischief way he asked, ‘How are you Miss. Tullio? Know that I’ll be at your services for the next two weeks. I’m free from duties during that time.’
She looked at him, she thought to remember him well from the evening they had danced together, but she was struck by the curious way he looked back to her Maybe he was trying to rediscover the looks of the charming young lady at the time they first met.
‘I like to invite you out for dinner; I hope this is convenient for you.’
‘I have to ask permission to Auntie Alexandra. I hope she will not deny it. Certainly I need a chaperon, do you mind if my cousin Ilona will come with us?”
It was arranged in the best way. Returning she told Frederick,
‘Auntie has agreed cheerfully. She said that you have a good reputation in town. She has only one condition, she expects us to be home by eleven.’
‘Fine, I’ll take you to a cozy place that I know well, where they serve typical Hungarian food with the best Tokay. I’ll give you time to change. I’ll be back at seven.’
He rose, kissed again her hand and kicking in a military way his hills, departed.
***
They didn’t know that would have been the last time they would meet and be together. The evening was enjoyable and they had a magnificent time together and the wine they drunk made them tipsy. They were euphoric and in their way back they exchanged a kiss, light and full of promises for the future. Luigia tough that her body was melting down at the electrical sensation that descended down to her belly. She thought that could be love. But it was premature to pronounce that word, which was never been told from Frederick.
A few days later Luigia received a short note from him, telling that his regiment had been relocated in a different province for the rest of the year and he would keep in touch.
It was a few days after when Luigia receiver her father’s message, asking her to urgently join the family in Transylvania. The possible love story between her and Frederick sadly ended in that way. But it seems that Luigia never forget him through her entire life. It was her first love and she would remember him with passion and desire over the time of her life. But what about Frederick? We can’t be sure of his real sentiments. We only know that he never saw Luigia again. Possibly he forgot her and he met some other young woman and felt in love with, but would he from time to time romantically remember the time he spent with Luigia? We don’t really know it.
Luigia was young then and the future would present her with a different life. Even for her Love will come again. In the long span of anybody existence; loves appear at the horizon of life several times, creating tumults, joys, and disappointments. Loves that make anybody alternatively laugh or cry. The future reserved for Luigia moments of happiness, but was also tumultuous day of disappointments and hardship. Certainly she learned soon to be in command of her existence and fought for love of her family.
- Blog di Carlo Gabbi
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