I was very sad to hear of Tony Bennett’s passing, a couple of weeks ago. The last of the great crooners, I thought. Crosby, Como, Bennett and, of course, Sinatra.
I was in Venice when I heard an American tourist in the street say that Frank Sinatra had just died. The news sounded incongruous, there, in a narrow calle lined with shops displaying papier mâché masks and little animals made of Murano glass. My earliest musical memory is linked to Frank Sinatra. It was almost past my bedtime and I was wearing my pink pyjamas and matching dressing gown – I must have been about four years old. My mother never dressed me in pink, so I imagine the set must have been one of my auntie Fern’s purchases from a store on Fifth Avenue, New York.
There was some commotion in the living room and I shuffled there in my slippers, dragging on a string a small, pink, plastic elephant on wheels. Funny, the things you remember.
In the living room, two delivery men were opening a large cardboard box, taking out sponge stuffing and putting together what was to become one of my mother’s and my most treasured possessions, the friend that would make it possible for my childhood to have a soundtrack: a Phillips record player, with a sapphire stylus and an F-shaped bracket that allowed ten records to drop on the turntable one after the other.
That evening, my mother tested the new record player with a 45-rpm Reprise recording of Strangers in the Night (in later years, she would play the overture to Carousel to check the quality of stereo sound).
A few months later I watched Princess Grace of Monaco in a dress that looked white on our black-and-white TV, introducing (with an Italian voice-over) Frank Sinatra at a Royal Festival Hall benefit concert.
My next musical memory took shape about a year later, courtesy of Tony Bennett – although I didn’t know it at the time. I left my heart in San Francisco. That was the only line my zio Peppino ever sang, a northern-Italian accent giving his English a touch of gravel. Zio Peppino. I wonder if small children still address close family friends as “uncle” or “aunt”. He was the husband of one of my mother’s close friends – well, as close as her fierce, at times bullying independence would allow. The marriage was on the rocks, and Peppino came to spend a few weeks on our living room sofa-bed. Naturally, unaware of all that grown-up angst, for me those weeks were a treat. For a few weeks I could play at having a dad.
Peppino was a musician in the Italian national television orchestra. In the morning, after turning his bed back into a sofa, he would open a hard black case, take out the pieces of his flute, put them together and play. Sometimes, he would practise his saxophone instead. I usually took this as an invitation to join in with my toy guitar or xylophone, strumming or bashing for a few seconds before my grandmother would rush in from the kitchen. “Katia, naughty girl! You’re disturbing zio Peppino – he’s working!”
“I’m not disturbing him –”
“It’s all right, signora, let the child stay –”
“No, no – Katia, come into the kitchen with me.”
After his practice, he would take me and Snoopy, our family dog, for a walk in the large expanse of green at the bottom of our street. There, he would unclip the lead from Snoopy’s collar, let go of my hand and let us run through the tall grass. Once, I nearly stepped on a viper and shrieked. He calmly lifted me and put me back down a few steps past the snake. There was no shouting, no warnings, no chiding.
One day, he let himself into our hall wheeling a small bicycle with stabilisers – my first bicycle. “He never gave me anything so expensive,” his soon-to-be ex-wife apparently commented. Peppino taught me to ride the bicycle.
I left my heart in San Francisco. Every day, a couple of times a day. Just that line. I thought San Francisco must be a church somewhere in Italy. “I love San Pietro!” I always protested, a proud daughter of the Roman she-wolf. Maybe he never sang anything beyond that line because I never gave him the chance.
Even after Peppino moved into a flat of his own, in the neighbourhood, he continued to drop by regularly, pick up dog and child, and take us for our walks.
The growing thickening darkness that was slowly enveloping parts of Europe and that would eventually be referred to as the Years of Lead also cast its shadow over Italy. Rome, like other Italian cities, became the scene of terrorist attacks and of child abductions for ransom. I heard my mother telling my grandmother about a case widely reported on the news: the body of a teenage girl had been found. She had been raped and murdered. Her uncle was eventually arrested and convicted. “You’d think you could trust your own brother!” my mother said angrily. “But you can’t trust anyone. You just never know.”
Zio Peppino suddenly stopped visiting. I asked after him. I cried. I started singing I left my heart in San Francisco. Decades later, my mother said, “I’m sorry, darling, but I couldn’t take the risk. One can never be too careful and with all that was happening…”
It was also decades later that, on the radio, I heard that line again. I left my heart in San Francisco. I froze.
High on a hill, it calls to me
To where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
I felt my heart bursting. I rushed to HMV in Piccadilly Circus and bought a double CD of songs by Tony Bennett.
*
In 2001 when I visited New York for the first time, my auntie Fern (my favourite adopted aunt) introduced me to a lifelong friend of hers, an actor, Larry Keith. A highly intelligent man with sparkling, thought-provoking conversation. The first American actor to have played Professor Higgins on Broadway.
He invited me to lunch at the Players and I sat opposite a framed black-and-white photograph of a young Tony Bennett. To my right, at the adjacent table, sat two elderly men. I glanced at the one sitting next to me, my attention caught by the fact that he had his napkin tucked under his chin as he ate his soup. Then I stole another glance at him as discreetly as I could because something about him looked familiar. He reminded me of… it was an older version of the portrait on the wall opposite me. I was sitting next to Tony Bennett. Oh, how I wish I could tell him, I thought. How I wish I could tell him about what that song of his meant to me.
Scribe Doll
Scribe Doll 