Dalena’s Inn
I had my breakfast the way Papa always used to have it, little sardines fried crispy in crumbs and butter, coffee with three sugars and no milk, bread and vinegar and olive oil. I tipped my mug towards the rafters to reach the last drop and licked my greasy fingers like Papa would do. It's funny, when someone's gone, you do the things they did just to feel like they're back again. Magdalena watched me from the bench as she kneaded dough with red, floury knuckles. She never approved of the way Papa ate. She liked people to have respect towards her food.
The clock above the stove said six; still too early for the sun. Magdalena had hung the lamp from its usual place on the hook beside the granite bench and the open fire lit the room well enough for me to see what I was eating. The dark made itself comfortably at home in the corners and at the windows, and it was not unfriendly, but familiar. Magdalena took the pot from above the fire and poured more coffee in silence, leaving me to put the sugar in. If she wasn’t so bitter she would have done it herself, maybe even smiled a little.
“Thank you, Dalena,” I said. It seemed to fall on deaf ears. I wiped my hands on my clothes when she wasn’t looking and began to peel an orange, watching the steam from the coffee rise into the air. It was true that the lady didn’t like the way I ate and licked my fingers and spoke to her and everything else I did, but she still looked after me well. She put jasmine in my bedroom, tucked the sheets tight, made sure the jugs were full of water, fed me more than I could hold, and sent me on my way with everything I needed. On the outside, Magdalena might be looked upon as nothing more than a personified draught of chilled air; but I knew her better.
“It’s raining,” said Tino.
I hadn’t noticed him before. He sat close to the door on a tall wooden stool and clasped his hands together in his lap, big black eyes watching from a round olive face. His long hair was tousled from sleep and he had not dressed yet; he had finished his bread and milk and set his bowl down on the floor for the kitten to taste what little he had left for it. I smiled at him and he simply continued to look at me, curious and quiet, until he left his place to come to the table and look at me closer when Magdalena was busy with the frying pan, holding out one hand confidently. I put a sardine in his little palm. His browned arms and bare chest were covered in long, raised scars; but they couldn’t take away from his handsome face, not with eyes like that.
“If it’s raining, Nico can’t leave,” Tino observed, looking up at his grandmother.
“He’ll have to stay for today, then,” Magdalena spoke short and sharp, like herself. “His name is Nicodemus. Where did you get Nico from?”
“It’s easier to say,” Tino answered.
“Don’t get attached. Once you give a man a new name it’s impossible to let him go.”Magdalena's harsh face relaxed a little as she finished shaping her loaves. Sometimes it was possible to see her a little sad, and then you couldn't ever feel quite as disinterested in her, or treat her with the same coldness with which she treated you, because you felt you knew something about her that no one else did. She had been in love with Papa once. A long time ago. I wondered if maybe she called him Nico, too.
I gave Tino another sardine before he went back to his stool and he sat there nibbling it, saving the tail till last, those big black eyes sparkling with the firelight. I wanted to know who had made scars on such a gentle boy. I couldn't ask him, and I couldn't ask Magdalena, because I was afraid of the way she stared at me when I asked questions. I thought of the way Tino had saved the milk for the kitten, and I saved the last of my coffee and passed it to him because I knew Magdalena would never let him touch it. He took the mug in both hands and looked into it as though it were a never-ending well. He hesitated, then dipped one finger in and sucked it. The coffee was not warm anymore, but it was full of sugar. Boys like sugar.
"What does coffee taste like?" he asked of Magdalena, hiding the mug behind his back and looking up at her innocently.
"You wouldn't like it, Santino," she replied brusquely. "It tastes like burnt wood. Nicodemus only drinks it because he is a man and men are fools."
Tino turned back to me with his head on one side and thought for a moment. Suddenly his eyes crinkled and he smiled, a beautiful smile, so that he barely looked like a little boy anymore, but more like a dark haired angel. "I must be a fool," he whispered. “I never knew burnt wood was so sweet.” And, still grasping the mug tightly, he slipped off the stool and out of the room to find a shirt.