The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
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then."
Sandor dived into a dark closet with ageing cheeses, which smelled so ripe and strong on their shelves that he could hardly breathe. With his instilled self-discipline, one of the few achievements of his five years of outpost assignments in some of the poorest and muddiest parts of the Empire, he concentrated on drawing each next breath without coughing or gagging, so as not to give himself away. He didn't understand or have time to understand the miracle of why the cheese maker was hiding him; he just listened. Now came the banging on the shop shutters. Then the screeching metal hinges as the cheese-maker pulled the shutters open and unlocked the door. Three Austrians, an officer and two foot soldiers, he reckoned from the voices, stomped into the shop, making arrogant and angry comments that the cheese maker couldn't understand.
Goffredo's hands, dangling at his sides, closed repeatedly into fists, when the Austrians started touching and poking at his young cheeses on the table by the whey vat. Abruptly the officer asked in Italian if he'd seen an Austrian deserter in officer dress like his.
"No," Goffredo answered. He couldn't abide the idea of Austrian soldiers galloping through Piedmont as if they owned it. The man he was hiding was running from them. That man was doing the right thing. There was a good reason for not giving them that man—revenge.
"Vino? Vino?" the officer demanded.
Goffredo responded that he didn't have any wine.
The officer looked him in the eye and said something to the effect that he was a liar. Then he pointed at his mouth; the sense was that he could smell the wine on Goffredo's breath. The row of small toma cheeses fell under his gaze, and he indicated to one of his men to snatch them up. On their way out, the officer snarled something else; presumably that they would come back. Goffredo closed and bolted the shutters behind them.
It was dead quiet in the shop. He could almost believe himself to be alone. Time to liberate—what to call him?—his guest? It was very late now. He supposed that his Austrian deserter was probably still hungry…and thirsty.
When the closet door opened, Sandor emerged from the cheeses with Goffredo's inherited copy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Right in hand and a grin on his face.
"Rousseau!" he exclaimed, adding something enthusiastic in French, then in German, then interrupting himself and apologizing ("Excusez-moi!") for that tactless choice, finishing in yet another language Goffredo couldn't fathom in the least, but he was very glad that he liked Rousseau so much. He just wondered why he had deserted the Austrian army, or for that matter, joined it in the first place.
"You come with me," he said, imitating the act of eating. He led the way up the stairs.
Sandor sat at the table in the chair the cheesemaker wanted him to use. It was a chair with arms and padding; it was the best chair in the small room.
"Austrians win," he said.
"And you deserted after having won?" Goffredo set another opened bottle of red wine on the table.
"Me Hungary. Forced to Austria Army." Sandor bit into another piece of cheese; he wanted to express much more but couldn't. He had loved Rousseau and his grand notion of a General Will, and yet as an Austrian officer he had had to put down revolts by starving peasants fighting not for political rights but for a crust of bread. Up to now, his only consolation for such a humiliating fate had been that when the Hungarian national hero, Lajos Kossuth, would finally be in a position to call for an army to fight for Hungarian freedom from Austria, he would be ready to make an immediate contribution to the cause.
"Hungry, eh?" said Goffredo, watching him chew. He pushed the bottle closer to the other's elbow. "Try this."
Sandor drank a long sip of wine. Then he gazed at Goffredo thoughtfully. "Warm." He drew circles in the air with both arms, to signify well-being.
"Where do you want to go?" Goffredo asked.
"Rome." His narrow blue eyes smouldered with intensity.
Goffredo gave a guffaw. "Why?"
"All hope dead. Only Rome and Venice have government liberty."
"You Austrians are the ones that took that freedom away."
"No, me Hungary! Me Budapest! Grand river there, like here. Same river, but different people."
"What's the name of your river?"
"Dunai."
"Our river's the Po."
"Rome also, river."
"And so?"
"I go Rome," said Sandor.
"But how can the Romans hope to defend the city? Besides, there's the Pope."
"No. New Pope escape Rome after revolt. Liberty at Rome now. At Rome is Garibaldi."
"Garibaldi's in Rome?"
"Also Mazzini. They want volunteers."
"Mazzini wants volunteers! I've read things that he's written about founding a republic…" Goffredo's voice trailed off.
Sandor waited with a light-hearted patience that he hadn't felt in a long time. He liked this Italian. He liked being here. He had been given a chance to hang his old life up in the wardrobe and choose a new one. Yesterday, a bored commissioned officer in God-forsaken places, today a deserter from the Austrian Army, and tomorrow? In the past he'd managed to accept the contradictions of his condition, but now he felt motivated, and GLAD, GLAD, GLAD.
His cheesemaker was mumbling something:
"A s'sa duv'a a s'nas ma a s'sa pa 'nduv a s'meuir."
"Comment?" he asked, puzzled, in French.
"It means 'you know where you were born but not where you'll die'."
"My name Sandor." He paused for effect. "I born Budapest. I die Rome?"
"My name Goffredo. I born Bassignana. I die Rome with you?"
Their eyes locked. Then they broke into laughter and toasted with wine.
Before they went to bed for the night, Goffredo gave Sandor a set of peasant clothes and burned his officer's uniform in the fireplace. In the morning after breakfast, he brought out his father's shoes. Fortunately they fit, because the Austrian-issue boots would have been a sure give-away. Then he went down into his cellar and returned with strange hay-encrusted balls about the size of large stones.
"Kill Austrians?" asked Sandor in high-spirits.
"No, it's cheese you eat, sarass del fen!" Goffredo knew the Hungarian wouldn't understand that in standard Italian this meant 'ricotta under hay' so he didn't even try to explain. "Cheese!" he repeated merrily. "Soldiers who come to look and steal don't find it." A sarass del fen looked like a wad of hay, not something to eat.
"Here, catch!" he added, throwing one to Sandor and, freed of more than one weight, feeling in the best of spirits himself.
This was food that kept for a long time. This was food for long journeys.
Like theirs to Rome.
Gettysburg - July 6, 2008
"How are you feeling, Ms. Cebrelli?"
At the hospital, a boyish-faced blond policeman smiled at her from over the head of the petite Asian nurse, who was repositioning the metal fang in her un-bandaged arm, the one that was attached to the bedside drip bottle.
"Woozy," Angie rasped.
The nurse looked up from her work questioningly.
Angie cleared her throat; she had just woken up and hadn't spoken since yesterday. "But I don't feel pain," she added, pushing her hair out of her eyes.
The jolting sensation of returning to herself that she felt was the same she'd had as a child at the end of the shocking cold shower her parents had given her to drive the high fever from her body.
"Did you take my