April Fool’s Day

April 1, 1976

The osteria was as filthy as Nina knew it would be. She pulled the chairs back from the tables, lined them against the wall, wiped down the seats on each one, and then swept the floor. She threw a rag on the floor and swushed it around, wringing its grayish water into her bucket, changed the water, and wrung the rag out again and again and again and changed the water in the bucket again and again and again until the water was clear. Then she put the chairs back in place. She never bothered with the tops of the tables: that was not her job; in recompense she had to clean the bathrooms. However, she let all the men know that she was the one who would be cleaning up after them. This made them pay a little more attention early in the afternoon or early in the evening when they were sober, and they aimed for the hole.

She opened the windows and saw that the weather was not promising. The customers probably wouldn’t be sitting outside even during the daytime for another couple of weeks; but that was fine. They made a mess anywhere they sat anyway. The phone rang and she answered it:

“Osteria d'la Gardela. We don’t open until twelve and no one’s here but me. Call back!”

As she was putting the phone back on the hook, she heard a voice calling: “Nina! Nina! Nina! Don’t hang up!”

Nina put the receiver back to her ear. “Well, who is it?”

“It’s Ivan Bartolini. Listen Nina, are you finished cleaning up? “

“I’m finished with my part – the bottom half. I don’t know where Bruna is and you know I don’t do the top half. So don’t even think of asking me to do it.”

“No, Little Miss Bottom Half, I wouldn’t dream of that. I know better. Have you got time to go home and get gussied up for dinner tonight? I want you to meet someone.”

“Ivan Bartolini, Good God, you’ve got to be kidding. What kind of stupid joke are you trying to play? I’m a little limited but I’m not stupid enough to forget that today is April Fool’s. And the Mayor already tried to ‘engage’ me for this evening last week. ”

“We’ll make it worth your while.”

“How much?”

“I’ll personally slip you ten 1,000-lire notes just for being there. You don’t have to do anything. Just show up. And smile.”

“Go get screwed.”

“Oh, come on, be a sport. Have you ever had a bad time with us?”

“Well, yes, I have. But let’s not go into that now. I won’t be there, and don’t expect me. You know my job is just cleaning up your mess, and that’s a plenty for me to do, but I won’t be doing it in my hours off. And I’ve got to clean the toilets in the cemetery this afternoon. Don’t expect me. I know what you want. I know what all men want from me, and they’re not going to get it. Goodbye.”

Nina hung up the phone. Ivan turned around to his brother Silvano and moaned.

“She’s not coming. We’ve been wasting our time cutting out this little April Fish to pin to the back of Ugo’s coat when he leaves the osteria tonight to show everybody what a big dumb prick he is! We’ll have to find someone else to pin the fish on.”

All day long in the town of Forlí, old ladies and little boys, the Mayor and the math teacher, bank tellers and the occasional nanny could be seen walking around the town with a paper fish tacked onto the backs of their jackets and overcoats. The trick was to pin a paper fish on the back of someone’s jacket while you were helping him or her get their wrap on. If you were particularly deft, you had the fish and a little straight pin palmed in your hand and gave the Mayor a hearty welcome with a nice big pat on the back and a couple of rubs when you came up behind him in the café. When he walked out, everyone behind him smirked as he strode to his office, and he didn’t realize he had been the butt of the April Fool’s joke. Everyone who saw the fish was behind him and he never heard their snickers. No one would say anything; it was one of the few times that true community bonding in silence, what the Italians called omerta’, was shown by all the Romagnols. Even the Mayor’s secretary solemnly helped him off with his overcoat and then retrieved it from the cloakroom so he would not see the Communist Fish with hammer and sickle that someone had pinned to the middle of the back of his overcoat. No one told the Mayor anything until he came home for lunch. His wife looked at his coat when he turned around to take it off.

“Marino! Have you been going around like that all morning?”

“Like what? I took my hat off when I walked in? What’s got into you now?”

“Marino, look at the back of your overcoat!”

Germana giggled when her husband discovered the fish, an elaborate red mullet with a glittering hammer on its side and a big curling sickle for a tail and its clear political implication.

“Goddam!” Marino stamped his foot and scowled.

“It’s the prettiest April Fool’s Fish I’ve ever seen. You know what you should do? Pin it to your lapel when you go back to the office and wear it proudly. That’ll show everyone your loyalty to the party and they won’t do it again next year.” Germana giggled and walked back into the kitchen.

Ivan and Silvano and the Mayor had another trick in mind to play on the Mayor’s brother-in-law Ugo but it was not quite so light hearted. Six months ago, Germana’s brother Ugo had moved back to Forlí after spending most of his life working near Bologna. In 1930, Ugo’s and Germana’s father Asdrubale had just committed suicide; he couldn’t face not being able to provide for his five children and wife. He couldn’t take seeing them eat the same thing day in and day out. He couldn’t stand to see the neighbors’ children better dressed and better educated. He would rather die than watch his family slowly slide into disgrace. So he stood on a chair beside their house and threw a double noose over the highest branch he could reach on the jujube tree, and stood on his tiptoes to put his head through both loops. Then he kicked the chair out from under himself.

Asdrubale was generally admired for having the balls to act like a man. Ugo’s and Germana’s father did not have an insurance policy; he did not have anything to leave them. Their mother had to sell what little they had and apprenticed the older girls to a seamstress and a baker while she kept six-month-old Germana with her. Instead her eldest Ugo found a job for himself in San Lazzaro outside Bologna and moved there where he rented a room in a boarding house. He shared a bathroom with a cobbler who introduced Ugo to his favorite niece, Mariella. Mariella was no beauty: she wore glasses and could have bobbed her hair and had a little Marcel wave instead of letting her raven locks grow past her waist and keeping everything up in a bun, but she was good-natured and she liked to cook when she could get food. Ugo’s and Mariella’s civil union in the town hall just before he left to fight in Abyssinia was not a marriage of passion or necessity or even attraction. It was just a good solution for both of them. They had given one another forty years’ of companionship and kindness.

Two years ago a teenager racing around the countryside on his brother’s Vespa had run right over Mariella as she was returning from her job at the shoe factory. By the time the ambulance picked her up and got her to the hospital she had passed away. Ugo was sorry he had never gotten the chance to tell her goodbye, but the doctor relieved him and informed Ugo that she had never regained consciousness, so even if he had been there, he would not have been able to do much more than just hold her hand, which he was doing as the orderlies came in to take her body to the morgue.

He was sorry he had not been able to give her their little 40^th anniversary present though. He knew she would have liked it; he had just given her a chain for her birthday and the anniversary present, a little pendant in rose gold in the shape of a centaur shooting an arrow was something she would have appreciated. Now she was dead and there was nothing left for Ugo to do, and no one he could give the charm, or even the chain.

Ugo worked at the factory another six months and then received his obligatory and rather healthy pension, along with Mariella’s. The empty apartment in San Lazzaro was too big for him, it reminded him too much of Mariella, and he had lived his entire life focused solely on their marriage. Ugo soon realized he did not have any friends. Mariella’s three distant cousins rarely called on him since he was not passing out money, so Ugo called his baby sister Germana in Forlí one day, to see if she could find him lodgings there. Two rooms would be enough: a bedroom and a kitchen. Ugo didn’t need a television, he didn’t need a phone. He just needed a place to hang his hat, and someone who could clean for him once a week and cook for him every other day. Ugo would not be a burden to anyone; he could easily afford everything he needed.

Germana had found was exactly what Ugo had in mind. The ground floor apartment was just far enough from her house so she would to not always bumping into him (Marino had never had much use for Ugo), but close enough so she could drop by on errands and see if he needed help or if he could help her. Ugo was pretty good with his hands, and the one thing he could do after working all those years in the factory with metal and leather was fix just about anything that went wrong with a bicycle, and alter any kind of leather. Even church shoes.

Forlí turned out to be a very good solution. Ugo would go the Romagnol Café’ every morning and have a little breakfast and read the papers after everyone else had finished with them. Then he would go for a walk and see if his nieces and nephews needed any help or errands run; his other two sisters were both in Forlí as well and they very much appreciated Ugo who was clean and kind and unobtrusive. His nieces could leave an infant with him for an hour (but no longer than that; Ugo had no idea how to change a diaper) and his nephews and great-nephews were always asking him to fix their bikes or add a new accessory to their Vespas, so they were always glad to see Ugo. Everyone was glad to see Ugo, except for his brother-in-law the Mayor.

No one ever understood what the Mayor had against his brother-in-law Ugo, not even Germana. “He just makes my skin creep,” as Marino put. The mayor simply could not stand the sight of Ugo. Ugo’s skinny legs and threadbare tie, his balding grey head and his rheumy eyes just set the Mayor off, so Ugo avoided his brother-in-law and Marino avoided Ugo.

Then the Mayor had a brilliant idea: Ugo needed to get remarried. If he did that, Ugo would leave Germana alone, Ugo would not be underfoot all the time, Marino could have some peace with his wife. Everyone knew Ugo at the Bar Romagnolo and so one day, the Mayor decided to call on his friends Ivan and Silvano and put a flea in their ears about finding a woman for Ugo.

“A woman! For him!’ He wouldn’t know what to do with a donkey, much less a woman.”

“Oh come on comrades; he’s got a good pension, he won’t live forever, and that pension has to go to someone, someone like your old maid sister who has never worked a lick in her life and wears a hole in the plate on your dining room table every day. Think about it. A well orchestrated wedding would solve a lot of problems.”

Ivan did think about it. He even tried befriending Ugo at the bar, but Ugo was very reserved and did not easily talk with strangers. Ugo was especially reticent to speak about women; it seemed that Mariella had been the only woman in his life and Ugo was not interested in women at all anymore. Ivan teased him that Ugo couldn’t get it up, and said something about sour grapes, but Ugo just turned and looked at him through his immaculately cleaned glasses.

“Why do I need a woman?”

“Well, to begin with, you could screw her, she could lick you up a little, and then …”

Ugo tried to keep his composure.

“… she could cook for you and clean and iron your shirts, and do your marketing and shine your shoes.”

“It sounds like you’re describing a whore and a maid combined.”

“Well, you could slap her upside the head, too, when you got angry at something.”

“And a scapegoat. Is that how you treat your wife?”

Ivan looked at Ugo funny. That was the wrong question to ask.

“Of course I do, when I’m home. I’m the master of the house.”

“Well, I’m the master of the house too when I’m home, but I don’t have to treat anyone like she’s some dirty trollop that needs to get knocked around.”

Ivan saw this discussion was not going anywhere and Ugo’s blunt assessment of Ivan’s marital situation insulted him. Ivan had described with bravado how things were supposed to be in a Romagnol home, at least from the men’s point of view. You did not let the woman wear the britches, and Ivan definitely did not do that. (Or at least, Ivan’s wife did not let him realize she was wearing the britches since all he actually did was work and hand over his paycheck every two weeks. She did the rest). What Ugo had said was mean, and Ivan would get back at him, one day.

What better day than April Fool’s? Ivan plotted several possibilities with Marino. They could get one of their friends to dress up like a woman and arrange a gallant appointment somewhere out in the country where everyone could hide. When Ugo got out of the car and realized the woman was a man, they could all jump out from behind the barn and have a good laugh. Or they could actually pay an old whore to pretend she was a bourgeois little lady and then take pictures of them in action when she got Ugo back to her apartment. Or they could arrange for one of the recently arrived Brazilian transvestites to drop into the bar and pay a little visit on Ugo, setting up a scene that would embarrass him in front of everyone.

The owner of the café would not agree. “No tricks, no politics, and no hookers. That’s the rule and if you try any of the three in my bar, I will escort you to the door and kick your sorry asses out!”

So it appeared the first problem was not the woman or the man, but the place.

“Ivan, what about your osteria? Aren’t you a member there? Isn’t your brother Silvano the owner? Can’t you do as you please there?”

“That Marino, is an inspired idea. I certainly can. And you know what? There’s Nina who cleans the place up who would do just about anything for money. I mean she has in the past.”

Marino looked at Ivan askance. He knew Nina. He knew what her specialty was: bordello fellatio. When they were running the closed houses back in the forties and fifties, Forlí’s House of Sport had introduced the glory hole, and it was famed for the woman who came down from Bologna on Mondays. The men never saw her face but her linguistic delicacy and cylindrical expertise were universally admired. Marino’s father once confessed to Marino that the woman was amazing. He even said she could keep a champagne cork just under the surface of a glass of water with her tongue alone. Although Marino’s father had never seen her actually do the cork trick, he had blindly sampled her expertise and was sure she could manage it. The glory hole cost less than a single in a bedroom, too.

The House of Sport was not however to be a long-term career for Nina. They outlawed the “closed” houses in the fifties and she was left without a job, and did the lowest form of tasks in town: she cleaned the toilets in offices, in cafes’, in restaurants, at the stadium, but only when no one was around. Nina could definitely use any money that Ivan and Silvano would pay her. They could easily scrounge it up somewhere and they would not even have to pay her half of what they would have to pay a real whore. The next problem was how to get Nina and Ugo together.

“A lottery. We’ll pretend we’re putting together a lottery to raise money for . . .”

“To pay for the operation to fix Orietta Zama’s harelip!”

“Who’s Orietta Zama?”

“Nobody, you big dickhead. It’s all invented. We’ll charge 500 lire, but the only person who gets a winning ticket will be Ugo. And when we draw the winning ticket out of the hat …”

“It’ll be his ticket! What a brilliant idea! That we can do at the Osteria d'la Gardela and charge 3,000 lire for dinner and lottery. Now all we need is a band of accomplices. They shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”

“This is going to be a rich, satisfying little trick. Maybe it’ll drive Ugo out of Forlí.”

Marino and Ivan wasted no time in spreading the news about the trick everyone was going to play on Ugo. Conspiracy and complicity over elaborate ruses was considered a refined endemic pleasure in Romagna by some people. The idea of presenting Ugo who seemed so proper, to Miss Gloria Hole (as the men called her behind her back), was too good a spectacle to miss.

Ivan had only needed to demonstrate a little civility to Ugo in the square on market day, to get Ugo to buy a ticket.

“… And the drawing is going to be at the Osteria of the Gridiron, on Thursday. There’ll be grilled meat too, at a good price. Everyone is chipping in to do the shopping and the cooking. Come on Ugo, it’ll be fun. And you’ve never been the Osteria have you? You’ve lived here for six months and you still haven‘t drunk a nice little glass of dry white wine with us there. It’s about time you actually became a citizen of Forlí.”

This did flatter Ugo. He would not mind having some people to talk to, someone to share a meal with occasionally, and the encounters he had made at the café were pretty dissatisfying: he didn’t play cards and he didn’t drink so there was not much for him to do but read the paper and have a cup of coffee.

“Five hundred lire? I’m sure I can do that. Here you go. And how much is dinner?

“Another twenty-five hundred. But it’s a steal and better than anything you’ll be eating at home.”

That was for sure. Three or four days a week Germana fixed him up a plate of their leftovers to warm up in the oven for dinner, and she invited him over every time there was a town council meeting and Marino would not be at home.

As Ugo put the three thousand-lira notes into Ivan’s hands, Ivan gave a knowing look to his accomplices scuffling their feet under the portico outside the café. “And here,” Ivan said offering him a slip of paper, “is your lottery ticket. I’ve got to run now. But I’ll see you at the Osteria d'la Gardela on Thursday evening at seven. Good luck.” Ivan walked out of the square.

All the men were dawdling around and now came up to Ugo with their lottery tickets. “What number did you get?” Silvano asked.

“010476,” Ugo replied.

“Let’s see, that adds up to a total of . . . nine!”

“Well, that sounds pretty promising,” added Ivan's brother, Silvano: “Mine’s 040209; that only adds up to a total of six.”

“What’s this number business?” Ugo responded.

“Oh, we forget you’re not really from here. We add up all the numbers in any series until you get a number under ten. For example, ‘1234’ adds up to one plus two plus three plus four equals ten which is one plus zero that comes to one. Not a very lucky number. Nine’s the luckiest. It’s the highest you can go.”

The other men in the café were looking at Ugo through their bright eyes, shining over their late morning Trebbiano, as they all curled their lips into cruel snarls under their mustaches. There was no such number calculation strategy in Forlí. Silvano had made the whole number story up and Ugo had swallowed the story, lottery, and numbers game, hook, line and sinker. Ugo would be the biggest April fish they had ever landed. This was certainly worth the 3,000 lire each of them had paid Ivan. There was nothing certain Romagnols enjoyed more than humiliating another man at his own expense in public. This was really going to make for quite a savory evening. They would not invite their wives. But a couple of barmaids who were good sports, would enjoy this little joke.

As each man left the square, they gave Ugo a little pat on the back of his shoulder where they would be pinning an April Fish next week.

Ugo felt warm and cozy inside. It was the first time these men had been a little nice to him, or at least smiled. Maybe moving to Forlí was not such a bad idea after all.

Marino got on the phone with Nina.

“Listen, would you like to make a quick 5,000 lire next week?”

“No!”

“It’ll only take five minutes, I swear Nina, and we’ll throw in dinner.”

“No!’

“Oh Holy Madonna in Heaven, what am I going to do now?” thought Marino. “Well, can we invite you to dinner?”

“No!”

“What’s the matter with you Nina? You used to be a little more accommodating.”

“Yeah, and look where that got me. Cleaning toilets. Being looked down by all the women in town and all the men. Laughed at by children. Why on earth do you think I would do anything you suggested me to do?

Marino would have to give in. “What if we make it 10,000 lire?”

“No.”

“Very well, I’ll call somebody else. Good-bye.”

Nina hung up the phone wearily. Could she ever get rid of that stupid nickname: Gloria Hole? She knew the Mayor wanted her to provide “services” but Nina would rather clean toilets and be left alone. None of the women in Forlí would let her clean their homes since they had heard rumors of her work in the brothel, and they wouldn’t let her clean the homes of their bachelor relatives either. If they only knew half her story, they would treat her differently, but Nina had found out long ago that people continue to believe what they want to believe, or what sounds juicier or more flattering, even when they are faced with the truth and facts.

“Ignorance is forever,” Nina thought and shook her head.

Marino put the receiver down in the mayor’s office. What was he going to do now? He had managed to raise 10,500 lira in “prize money” to give to Nina with the accomplices, giving each one of them a ticket numbered with the date of the party. He could give them the money back, or he could try to find another whore.

His phone rang.

“Marino, I just sold Ugo his lottery ticket. Everything’s all set!”

“Well, not everything. Nina’s not willing to come.”

“What? Don’t you know how to deal with her? I don’t know how we elected you Mayor.”

“I do. I’m the only one of the whole bunch our age who can speak proper Italian and wants to be mayor of this town. And I’ve got the biggest balls!”

“That’s enough of that. I want to hear no more. Let me deal with Nina. I know just what she wants.”

“Well, she turned down 10,000 lire.”

“She won’t turn me down. But we should scrounge up another 5,000 lire.”

“What do you mean, 15,000? We promised we would give her 10,000 maximum.”

“Yes, and Marino, we’ve sold twenty-one tickets, haven’t we? So if you add Ugo’s 500 lire 10,000 that makes 10,500, don’t it?”

“Well, what about your 500? That’ll make for another eight tickets we’ve got to sell.”

“Okay, that’s fine. We’ve got to sell another eight tickets, because I was going to use 500 lire to pay for the first rounds of wine, but that’s fine.”

“You old bugger, you were going to do no such thing. You just give me all the proceeds from the tickets and yours and mine and we’ll go over the accounts and pay out the money together.”

“Let’s simplify this. We’ll use the money to buy a cake. A birthday cake! We’ll get Silvano to ask Nina to come in and help with a ‘birthday’ party in the evening. Only there won’t really be a party. It’ll be us having the ‘lottery drawing.’ Silvano can keep Nina in the kitchen until the big moment so no one sees her and then – wham – she comes through the door with the cake. Ugo thinks he’s won the services of a woman for the evening, we don’t have to pay Nina 10,000 lire, and everyone enjoys the joke which now is not only played on Ugo, we get to play a joke on Nina, too. The stumpy bitch! We get to have our cake and eat it too! How about that? And we can pocket the cash. Split between the two of us, course.”

“When are you going to run for head of the party, Ivan? It sounds perfect. You get on the phone and talk to Silvano. I am sure we can arrange everything.”

In the meantime, news of the grande burla had spread through the town and among the men playing cards in the café when Ugo was not around. The idea of such a low, vulgar ruse after a parade of plates of hot grilled pork and mutton was too much to pass up, especially on a Thursday night when there was no football game. In the end, Ivan managed to sell another 15 tickets. The men now spoke to Ugo in the cafe; some of them even offered him a cup of coffee occasionally, just to make sure that he made it to the Osteria d'la Gardela on Thursday evening. The Mayor and Ivan were going to make a tidy little sum on the side.

Nina had a clear idea something was going on when Silvano appeared in the osteria a half-hour after his brother had called her that April 1 and asked her to come in and help that evening. Although she getting ready to leave and would normally simply ignore him, she stood there with her overcoat on and listened to him. She realized that whatever he wanted her to do, gave her enough leverage to get ready cash. Silvano did not usually like to have her around his customers, but this dinner would probably fill the osteria that evening and Silvano would make a pleasing sum on the dinner. If what they had to have was Nina, Silvano would be glad to oblige. Nina had the knife by the handle. Silvano was holding the blade, and he knew it.

“And get dressed up, too! There’ll be a lot of people there, and you know what Nina, if you do good and they’re happy with you, I imagine we can start hiring you in the evening to help serve the food. I know you don’t like to cook.”

Nina looked at Silvano skeptically. “Why don’t you pay me, now? All my wages for this week and next.”

“What?”

“There’s something going on here. I want to make sure I get paid before it happens.”

“Nina, that’s not possible.”

“Well then, I guess I won’t be helping out at the table tonight and you’ll need to find someone else. You don’t trust me? I’ve been cleaning this pigsty for twenty years. I’ve never asked you for an advance, and now you don’t want to pay me what I’m due? I know I’m a little person for you, maybe not worth your consideration, but I’m not a little person for myself. Let me break this down into small pieces so that it’s simple for you to chew and swallow. If you want me to come in tomorrow morning and clear up, you need to pay me this week’s wages, tonight. If you want me to come in tonight, you need to pay me next week’s wages. Now.

“Now Nina, be . . .”

“Oh, go get screwed! You need to find someone else to do your dirty work.”

With that, Nina grabbed her shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and slammed the door as she left.

Silvano was not going to back down. Nina treating him like that and telling him to go get screwed! He hardly thought so. Silvano called Ivan.

“Well, no Nina tonight.”

“What! Are you kidding? She’s the key to the whole evening.”

“Well, she wants her wages in advance and I haven’t got the money."

Ivan knew Silvano was lying but thought this one through for a minute. If Ivan handed the money over to Silvano, Ivan would never see it again, he knew that much. But he could pay Silvano an advance on the meals, pay for the cake, and pocket the leftover cash. That should be safe enough.

“I tell you what; I’ll come over right now, advance you 10,000 for the food which you can deduct from the cost and we’ll settle up tonight after dinner is over. How does that sound?

Silvano waited until he had the cash in hand and then called Nina.

“Nina, I’ve got your wages for this week, and I have an advance for you for next week. I’m going to leave it behind the salt so you can pick it up when you come in this evening in case you don’t see me.”

“How much is it?”

“Oh, it’s about ten thousand lire.”

“I’ll come get it now.”

That evening, the whole event was set. Marino had managed to keep Ugo away from his house and his wife, lest Ugo tell Germana about the harelip lottery. Silvano went to the country and laid in a glistening supply of castrated mutton and bacon and sausage and short ribs to roast over hot coals – at a great price from a down and out farmer. Ivan invited three barmaids from the cafes around town to come and laugh. The other accomplices all chuckled to themselves as they dusted off their hats to go out that evening. Ugo shaved a second time that day; he knew that was what a gentleman did when he went out in the public in the evening to look nice.

Nina dressed in a black skirt, with floral black print blouse under a black cardigan. She threaded her garnet earrings into the pierces on her wrinkled ears and tightened her hairnet before she walked out of the house. Silvano had told her to come in the back way, and to be there at eight-fifteen on the dot. She was.

The osteria echoed with curses, blasphemy, and laughter as the men sat around and drank the osteria’s Sangiovese in thick glasses and nibbled on bits of piadina and the lusciously grilled ribs and mutton Silvano had put out. The walls were barren and all the osteria’s rough tables were lined up in one line straight down the middle of the room with benches on either side. A very long, very stained oilcloth with Romagnol prints in rust had been spread over top of it and it held ashtrays and glasses and crumpled up paper towels the men had used for napkins. The dirty plates were haphazardly pushed back from the edges of the table along with the silverware and the men were all smirking and laughing and wishing one another they would get tumors.

Ugo, dressed in his dark suit, white shirt and cardigan took a sip of his wine and chatted with the man next to him.

“San Lazzaro? You lived in San Lazzaro and worked at the shoe factory? Well, how about that? What brought you to Forlí?”

“Oh, I was born in Forlí. My wife was from San Lazzaro and she passed away two years ago. Since we didn’t have any children, there was not much need for me to stay on. My sister is Marino’s wife, you know, and so I decided I would come and settle here. It’s taken me a while, but it’s starting to feel a little like home. This is really the first time I’ve been out in the evening with people who aren‘t my relatives.”

“Well, this is a great osteria. Best Trebbiano in the province. And you should taste their frizzantino – you know they bottle it when the moon is waxing and something magic makes it sparkle. . .”

“Oh, I know about that. They do that in San Lazzaro too.”

Ivan now walked up to Ugo and slapped him on the back, thus affixing the first red fish of the night.

“Well, I think we’re just about ready for the drawing.” He turned and raised his voice to the rest of the room. “Is everybody ready?” Silvano was busy taking carafes of sweet Albana wine to the tables and everyone was pouring them and conversing and drinking.

“I think we’ll let Mariangela from the Bar Della Posta here do the drawing. Mariangela!”

Mariangela walked up to Marino who was holding an old farmer’s hat, brimming with slips of paper.

“Oh Mayor, by the way, I’m drawing, but what’s the prize? Money”

“Oh no, nothing as venal as that. The prize is . . .”

The crowd suppressed their smiles

“An oral performance by our renowned citizen, Miss Gloria Hole! Now draw!”

Ugo did not understand the name or the prize.

“And the number is 01041976!”

Ugo looked down at his lottery ticket. .He would have liked to throw it away, but his new “friend” grabbed Ugo’s wrist and raised his arm.

“Here’s the winner! Ugo! “

The crowd started clapping and chanting “Ugo, Ugo, Ugo, Ugo, Ugo,” as his new friend got him to stand up. Back in the kitchen, Nina started lighting the candles on the birthday cake when she heard them all chanting the name. That was her cue.

Ugo sat down and waved with his hands for them to stop and Silvano shouted: “All right! Come on in!”

The door behind the mayor opened up but Ugo could not see anything.

“Down here at the end of the table, come on!”

Ugo now realized that this must all be a terribly silly joke. And a stupid one at that. Gloria Hole musta been the name of some hunting dog. The kitchen door opened, everyone turned and bowed their heads towards her. Ugo was quite ready to take the joke in stride and pet the barking hound dog. This wasn’t such a bad joke to be the butt of.

Then he saw a blazing birthday cake on a stainless steel tray that seemed to float behind the diners seated along the table. Ugo could see the candles all lit; there must have been sixty of them, but no one carrying it. As the cake came around the corner, Ugo saw who was carrying it: a little woman with grey hair pulled back into a neat chignon, garnet earrings, a black skirt, and flowery blouse. She walked up to Ugo, handed him the cake and he looked into her eyes. Ugo was flabbergasted. She looked just like Mariella: the same high cheeks, the same brown eyes, and the same strong chin. Ugo did not realize that the woman handing him the cake wasn’t even four feet tall. He did not notice the disproportion of Nina’s stocky dwarf’s limbs and oversized head. All he noticed was how she gently cocked her head the same way Mariella used to do when she was ready to leave.

Nina was nonplussed. She kept trying to hand the birthday boy his birthday cake but the fellow was acting like he had no sense. Or maybe he was already drunk. At any rate, she put the plate down on the table and turned to trot off to the kitchen and get dishes for the slices of cake.

“Wait, wait! Madam! What’s your name?”

“Don’t call me Madam!”

Nina disappeared unceremoniously into the kitchen and Ugo turned to the man seated beside him.

“Her last name, her last name isn’t Calzolari, is it?”

“Her last name? I didn’t even think about her having a last name.”

Ugo suddenly realized the whole crowd at the table was staring at him, some with dropped jaws, some whispering. He remembered he had won the lottery, so he stood up and smiled at everyone and thanked them.

“Well, I don’t know what to say. I suppose this is all quite a good joke, so let me drink to the health of my prize, Gloria Hole!” and he raised his glass. Just as he began his little speech, Nina pushed through the doors again with another stack of dishes and she heard her nickname spoken out loud (and not behind her back) by the simple man. She slammed the pile of plates down on the table in front of the Mayor. This caught Ugo's attention as she scurried around the table to light into him. The very nerve of the grey-haired turd. But Ugo got the first word in.

“Your last name, your last name isn’t Calzolari is it?”

Nina had not heard anyone use her last name except at the town hall, in years. She didn’t think anyone knew it.

“How did you know my last name was Calzolari?”

“You look just like my wife. My dead wife.”

“Was she from San Lazzaro?”

“Well, yes. That’s where we lived until she died two years ago.”

 Nina’s eyes teared up. For the first time in decades, she remembered her childhood, the innocence of infancy before everyone in San Lazzaro realized she was going to become a dwarf and her uncle sent her away at the age ten, to work in a bordello in Bologna. Her sister. Could this simpleton have married her sister?

“Her name wasn’t Maria Elena, was it?”

Now Ugo’s eyes went rheumy. The only person who had ever called Mariella, Maria Elena, had been her uncle, her uncle Elio, the Stakhovian cobbler of San Lazzaro. “A person is given a proper name, so you can call them properly,” Ugo had heard Uncle Elio say more than once. “And my favorite niece’s name is Maria Elena, not Mariella.”

Favorite niece? Ugo suddenly realized that Mariella had been not been Uncle Elio’s only niece. Elio’s wife only had two nephews, and Mariella always said she had no brothers or sisters to speak of. Now Ugo vaguely understood why she always said: “to speak of.” But Ugo didn’t care what the reason was, and he cared even less that Nina was so short. He could hardly believe he was this close to Mariella’s sister. It was like having Mariella alive again. The crowd around him was hushed, and listening to them.

“Madam,”

“Don’t call me madam. I’m not married. Call me Signorina.”

“Signorina, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Ugo.”

“And this is your saint’s day, ain’t it Mr. Ugo?”

“Yes, that’s true. But please call me Ugo and don’t call me Mr. May I ask you what your name is?”

“Nina. Short for Ariadne.”

“Auf Naxos?”

There was no longer any doubt in Nina’s mind. This man was her brother-in-law. Her father, her poor father, as poor as a church mouse, had only had one passion: opera. He had named Nina after the title role in Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos. Nina never had been able to understand the opera since it was sung in German and she never finished the fifth year of grade school. They nicknamed her Ariadnina at first, but it was difficult to say, so they started calling her Nina.

“Why do you say that?”

“Mariella used to keep a photograph of the singer Maude Fay as Aridane over our bed. Her father had cut it out of the paper for her when she was a little girl and she liked the picture.”

Ugo was her brother-in-law. But why was he teasing her with her other nickname?

“And so why are you toasting Gloria?”

“Gloria who?”

“Gloria Hole.”

“Oh, that. I guess you didn’t hear the whole story. They’ve been having a lottery to pay for Orietta Zama’s harelip, I mean the operation to correct it. And it looks like, I won! The prize was the services of a Gloria Hole, which must be some kind of barking truffle dog. Since it hasn’t appeared, I guess it’s all just a big joke.  I was just playing along.”

“A lottery? Orietta Zama? Services? Oh, now I understand everything. Everything. Where are the lottery tickets?”

Mariangela had slid the hat behind her back and was trying the hide it from Nina’s view. Nina whipped around the table and grabbed the hat out of Mariangela’s hand and pulled out a fistful of slips as she walked up to Ugo who had now risen to meet her.

“Let’s see Mr. Ugo, is your lottery number 01041976?”

“Yes, that’s it. But it’s not worth anything.”

“Oh Mr. Ugo, it’s worth a lot more than you think.” Nina flicked the slip in her hand out into the air pulled out another slip. “Let’s see: is your number 01041976?” Or is it,” and at this she pulled out another slip, 01041976? Maybe it’s” and she pulled out another slip: “01041976?”

Ugo looked at her dumbfounded again. He was definitely a little simple, and it was now clear to Nina he had no idea of what was going on.

“Don’t you see? They rigged the whole lottery.” Nina’s eyes flashed at the men around the table and her garnet earrings swung beneath her ears as she jerked her head back and forth.

 Ugo was hardly listening to her. He had fallen in love because this time he knew what love was. He could hardly believe he had found another woman to love. He would take Ariadne to Mariella’s grave; they could go back to San Lazzaro to live. He would have someone to look up at in the evening when he was eating his broth, and someone he could fix coffee for in the morning. He could give her the Sagittarius charm he never managed to give to Mariella. If only she would have him. He would make sure she should have him. Ugo’s vision blurred with tears and he stood there and stared at Nina, who was in an entirely different state of mind. He barely heard what she said, and when she told him later what she had said, he told her he didn’t care. As long as he could walk her home when she finished work tonight, nothing made any difference to him.

“So this is why the Mayor called me last week. Silvano, this is why you wanted me to work this evening at any cost, even paying me in advance. That’s why Ivan Bartolini called me this morning. For April Fool’s!” with this she whirled Ugo around and snatched the red goldfish off the back of his jacket. “Help me up! Now!”

Ugo put his hand out so Nina could climb onto his chair. Brandishing the red fish in one hand and Ugo’s in the other, Nina hiked her skirt just above her knee and ascended from the seat of a chair to the table where she kicked aside Ugo’s plate, which went clattering and shattering on the floor. She stomped one foot violently, rattling all the silverware and cheap osteria glasses. The men fell into silence as Nina marched down the table to Marino and Ivan, seated together at the head of the table.

“And you think this is funny? What did you do with the money you didn’t pay me?” Nina turned and looked down the table at the men who had obviously bought lottery tickets. “Did you pocket it?”

Ivan and Marino were quaking but demonstrated every sign of impassibility in their faces under their hats. Nina turned to look at Ugo.

“They didn’t tell you that I’m Gloria Hole, now did they? No one did. Mr. Ugo! Mr. Ugo! Are you listening?”

Ugo’s mouth dropped. He wasn’t listening. Nina moved exactly the same way that Mariella did, her voice hit the same acute notes and her hair was even coiffed in the same exact same French Twist that Mariella had always worn, ever since the day he met her.

“Ariadne, who cares? Come on. You don’t seem to be happy here. I’ll take you anywhere you want.”

Marino started to realize it was not going to be easy to explain this to Germana. Ugo teaming up with the Bolognese fellatio specialist. What was he going to do about that?

“You really are pretty simple, ain’t you? Well, I guess I’ll take you up on it, maybe not tonight, because I’m too angry. But I have a little April Fool’s fish to pin on someone.” It was the first time in her life Nina had had the undivided attention of more than three people. She took full advantage of the situation, guided by anger and revenge. Now they would listen.

“Everyone here thinks I was the blowjob artiste at the House of Sport Bordello, don’t you? That’s what everybody has told you. There was a hole in the men’s room wall, in the stall, a round hole, a little lower than the top button on your trousers. There was a little slit of a hole beside it, just big enough to slide a five-lira note through. And when a man did that and stood in front of the hole with his virility pushing through the hole, you all thought Nina was on the other side. Well, you’re right. I was. Except I was getting the stains out of the sheets. You see the men’s bathroom was right next to the laundry room: the bordello needed running water in both of them. I was on the other side of the wall to the men’s room because the only thing I ever did in the flophouse was clean when I came down on Mondays; the same way I clean here every day. Except the whores were cleaner than you are. Because you’re all pigs!”

“Well Nina, if it wasn’t you working the hole, then who was it?”

Nina turned and scanned the table, seeming to ignore the question.

“Ivan Bartolini. Ivan Bartolini. I remember you from the House of Sport, when you were a little boy in short pants. Your uncle Federico used to come to Bologna to get me on Monday afternoons when the bordello in Bologna was closed, and he dropped me off at the House of Sport. Then your dear Uncle Federico would go home and come back, bringing you along with him and the Mayor’s father on Monday after work. You never saw me in the bordello, but I did peek from behind the banisters when the sheets needed changing. I heard you singing at the piano with the musical girls, while your uncle and his best friend, the Mayor’s father climbed the stairs for a double or a half price special. Only after the Mayor’s father closed the door to his room, your uncle came back down the stairs, the back stairs and disappeared into the kitchen.”

Ivan laughed. “He was always was one to grab a bite to eat anywhere he went.”

Nina looked at Ivan and cocked her head. “Oh, he did like to eat, I can guarantee you that. But he didn’t stop at the kitchen. He went through the kitchen to the laundry room. There was a little chair that sat against the wall in the laundry room that was on the other side of the men’s bathroom downstairs. Your Uncle Federico would sit down, pull out a round plug as big as my fist out of the hole in the wall, and hang a little cup under the little slot next to the hole. I would be there washing the sheets and ironing them and I would pass him the clean rags he used to wipe off his hands and his chin every time I heard a five lire note come through the slot and ring the little bell over the slot before the bill dropped into his tin cup.”

Marino started to snigger and Nina handed him the red fish she had snatched off of Ugo’s back.

“Here you go Mayor. This should be some revenge for Ivan’s putting that red fish on you this morning while you were having your coffee at the Café Italia. Now, it’s time for me to go home. Silvano! Do you want me to come in and clean up tomorrow?”  

“Well, yes of course.”

“Too bad. Because tomorrow I’m going to visit my sister’s grave in San Lazzaro. And I won’t be working the rest of the week. I’ll assume that the money you paid me is for my sick leave, which you’ve never paid me. But if you want to come back next week and clean, I’ll be doing it. As long as you pay me a week in advance. There’s no reason to trust any of you.”

Ugo had maneuvered his way down to the end of the table near his brother-in-law the Mayor, with a chair.

“Ariadne. Do you want to go? Here, let me help you down. May I?”

Ugo extended his hand and Nina stepped off the table with cumbersome but measured dignity as she descended to the chair and then down to the floor.

“Ariadne, may I walk you home?” Ugo’s eyes were shining. Nina shook her head again and her garnet earrings swayed back and forth.

“You are simple, ain't you? You didn’t hear a crumb of anything I said.”

“I don’t care. I’ll try and pay more attention next time. May I walk you home?”

“No you didn’t hear nothing. Well, I think before we leave, you should get the money back for your lottery ticket. In fact, I think you should get the entire sum everyone paid.”

“Oh, I don’t care.”

“Ivan, where’s the money?”

“The Mayor has it.”

“How much was the ticket?”

“I don’t even remember. It was worth it.”

“Mayor – now let’s have the whole sum."

There was rumbling from the crowd.

“Oh, all right, just give this fellow his share, what’s your name again?”

“Ugo, Ariadne, Ugo. Call me Ugo.”

“Mr. Ugo’s lottery ticket.”

Marino dug into his pocket and pulled out a five hundred lire note and handed it to Nina. Nina strode into the kitchen and Ugo followed her like a little lap dog. When they came out of the kitchen in their overcoats, the men were lined up in front of the Mayor and Ivan. After Marino and Ivan repaid each guest’s lottery ticket, the man pinned the paper fishes intended for Ugo’s back onto Marino’s and Ivan’s lapels and knocked back a glass of frizzantino, snorting.

Rich. This had been a rich, delicious April Fool’s Day.

When Ugo and Nina arrived at Nina’s door, she turned to him and said: “Well, I suppose you want to come in, don’t you, now that you know all about me.”

“Not tonight. I have to get home. I’ll come in maybe tomorrow for coffee. We have to catch the 9:30 train to go to San Lazzaro so I can show you Mariella’s grave. I need my sleep.”

Nina looked at Ugo in the moonlight. He had lost most of his hair, his glasses were cockeyed, and he was wearing a very crumpled old silken tie. But he had good teeth and gentle manners and he did not smell bad. Nina could pick up stench at five hundred paces.

“You’ll tell me all about Maria Elena tomorrow, on the train, won’t you?”

“I’ll tell you anything you want. I’ll be anything I can be that you need. Just don’t leave me. Good night.” Ugo turned to leave and Nina spotted the mouth of the fish that was still pinned to the back of Ugo’s shoulder.

“Wait, you’ve still got some fish on you.”

Ugo turned and smiled. “Oh, leave it there. Don’t you know it’s brought me the most luck I can remember? And anyway, it is my day, today. It’s April fool’s for everyone else but it’s Saint Ugo for me, today. He doesn’t always answer every prayer, but when he does answer, that prayer stays answered. Good night. I’ll come to pick you up at half past eight. We can get the half past nine train for San Lazzaro.”

Ugo turned and walked off into the night and Nina shut the door behind her. Her home was small and as neat as a pin. She went to the cupboard and got out a rust printed tablecloth and two matching napkins, and two coffee cups and two saucers and two spoons and a matching sugar bowl. She laid the breakfast table under the picture of Maude Fay in Ariadne Auf Naxos. Ugo was bound to recognize it when he came in tomorrow morning.