The Sweetest Fruits

by Monique Truong

  God heard my prayers though. All of them.

  Charles returned. The sun shone. We met in the room near the stables. We met there again in the weeks to come.

  I was soon glowing, my skin stretched with what I thought was happiness. Kanella noticed my appearance and so did Charles. Both of them knew before I did.

  I was craving spoon sweets. I ate jars of them. Cherries were my favorite. The whole soft fruits, dripping their dark syrup, made me sigh. Giorgio, already within me, preferred the small fruits of the land.

  When I saw Kanella for the last time, she would tell me that she had been counting the days, as she wanted to be absolutely certain before she told my father. She never had the chance. Other Cerigote eyes and mouths had done it for her, just as I had prayed.

  Charles had stammered and blushed when he asked about my “menses,” which was a word that had no meaning to me. He posed his question a different way by inquiring when I had last worn “guard-napkins.” He sounded confused. Did he think that I was a soldier? Perhaps they needed these items in order to eat. I asked if he was feeling feverish. I thought he might have caught an illness during his frequent trips to the north.

  As it often happened between us, Charles and I agreed not to understand each other. I shrugged and smiled, and his questions went unanswered, as though he had never asked them. I finished tying the ribbon of my bonnet, and he kissed me goodbye. My departure from the room near the stables was always first and on my own. I opened the door, and I smelled them. Vinegar and the center of bones. That was what their rage smelled like to me.

  My brothers pushed me aside and rushed into the room of animal smells, less pungent than their own. They kicked the door closed behind them. They shouted from within. They made the loud sounds of men angered and dishonored. The washerwomen were now gathered by the door. One of them looked directly at me and told the others that I was “the poor daughter.” A taller woman next to her repeated the words, as if saying them a second time made them truer. I recognized their voices. They were the floor scrubbers, the fate tellers, the Cerigote eyes and Cerigote mouths that, as the Angels had promised, would free me.

  The Angels then feared for my life. They said that men often released their unspent fury upon women. They said my brothers were these kind of men. They told me to run and hide. Red will find you, the Angels promised.

  I ran to the overlook and to the bench. I sat there until the sun was directly above me. I heard footsteps, and I heard my name, spoken by a voice as flat as the sea that day. I turned and saw Kanella’s face. There was no arched brow of surprise, no outraged fire in her eyes, and certainly no tears. How did she know that I would be here? I asked the Angels.

  Kanella has an eye for detail, the Angels replied. The chips of middling blue paint on the back of your dress told her where to find you months ago, they said.

  Kanella placed a jug of water and a warm loaf of bread beside me on the bench and said that I should eat in my condition. She dropped a small cloth bag onto my lap and said to save these dried sultanas for my breakfast. “You will be sleeping here tonight,” she said. “Your father will not allow me to pack a valise for you. You will need new clothes soon anyway. Your surgeon will come for you tomorrow. He cannot remain at the Fortezza after the din that your brothers caused this morning. They are now telling anyone who will listen in Kapsali town that they stabbed him and that he is fighting for his life in some mountain cave. Those two could not stab a spitted lamb. They cannot hurt a man, but they will kill you, Rosa.”

  The Angels whispered in my ear, and I repeated their accusation. “You tried to kill me first.”

  “Ungrateful girl,” Kanella replied. She knew exactly what the Angels meant. “You think a convent would not be living? Having no man but God to tell you what to do is not a life? You will see.”

  You will see.

  That is how the old curse the young, Elesa.

  Before Kanella walked away, she untied her shawl, the color of ripened wheat with a fringe of carnation pink, and left it on the back of the bench. “It belonged to your mother,” she said.

  I drank the water that Kanella had brought me. I ate the bread that she had baked for my family that morning. When the sun went down, I draped the shawl over my shoulders, and I slept soundly under the light of the moon and the stars. When I awoke with the sunrise, I could not remember what my father looked like, how old my brothers were, their given names, where the family house was located. My prayers were answered yet again.

  I sat up when I heard footsteps and “Cara Rosa” spoken twice.

  Charles had not been stabbed. He had no injuries whatsoever. He looked refreshed, as if he had slept in his own bed last night, as if he had begun the day with a full breakfast and a warming cup of tea. Charles slipped English words into his speech whenever he became agitated, and that morning many of his words were in this language. “Fortuitously, the arrangement for my departure had been in the works for months now,” he began. I asked him what “fortuitously” meant.

  Charles was being transferred to the Fort of Santa Maura, on the northernmost of the Ionian Islands, and he would sail there the following week. I would remain in Kapsali town until he could make the arrangements for me to join him. Sióra Gazi, a special friend of the British commander, would take excellent care of me—Charles lowered his voice at this point as though the sea would overhear him—given my condition.

  I pieced together much of this conversation afterward, with the help of Sióra Gazi, who was not a friend but the mistress of the British commander. Before Charles walked me down to her seaside villa, I threw my mother’s shawl off the edge of the overlook. It had Kanella’s scent all over it. Onions and oil.

  What I felt for Charles in those days must have been love because I did not fault him, not even after Sióra Gazi informed me that he had known for many weeks about his transfer to Santa Maura. She said that, given my condition, he should have arranged for my travel prior to the fracas with my brothers. She puffed on a thin cigar and blew out the smoke, which for a moment fogged the star-filled sky above us. We were sitting on her terrace, and the Ionian Sea was spread before us and within it was a bobbing half-moon. As she took another puff, I asked her, “Sióra Gazi, what is my condition?”

  Charles did not sail for Santa Maura for another three months, nor did I, as we would depart on the same vessel. The delay, according to the Sióra, was due to a malarial outbreak on that island. The British commander was unwilling to transfer his men there before the all clear was given. By then I was two months from giving birth. Sióra Gazi said that she could tell from the position of my belly.

  The months, unexpected and unplanned, that I would live with the Sióra were my Padova, my university, Elesa.

  The Sióra spoke a throaty but refined Venetian and had fluency also in the English language, but she claimed that language was unnecessary for women like us. “Men do not look to us for our words,” she said. “They look to us for the body that God gave us. You can be fluent with your body, Rosa, and it will serve you equally well.” Then she showed me how.

  The tip of the tongue, the lick of the lips, the downward-cast eyes, the flicker of the lashes, the tuck of a strand of hair, the breath sharply inhaled, the breath slowly released, the shoulders shrugged, the bosom jutted, the bosom covered by modest hands, the hands trembling, the hands steady, the body walking away, the head turning back, the blush of the cheeks, the blush of the neck, the blush of what he cannot yet see.

  Sióra Gazi often laughed when she taught me these wordless confessions and denials. The Angels murmured their approval, as she continued the lessons that they had in haste begun on the morning when God had given me Charles.

  I also learned how to laugh out loud, which the Sióra said could be a woman’s charm but must be used sparingly. Rein it in, allow it to slip forth at the last moment, like the skin beneath a corset.

  S
he assured me that with these gestures, learned and practiced, my body would be understood by any man.

  “Any man?” I repeated. A man other than Charles was a thought that had not entered my head.

  “Yes, Rosa, any man,” the Sióra replied. “Your body is your way out or your way in. For now, your unborn child has made that decision for you, but you must not forget that Charles is but one man. If you believe him to be the one and only—only God is the One and Only, Rosa—then your body belongs to him. If you believe him to be one of any, then your body remains your own.

  “A woman’s body is God’s creation,” the Sióra continued. “Men will try to shame you with the story of Eve,” she warned, “and tell you that as Eve’s daughter you have sinned. These are words spoken by men who are afraid or who covet what they do not possess. There are women who will say these words to you as well, and they do so for the same reasons, Rosa.”

  I could not write down the Sióra’s words as you could, Elesa. I committed them to memory instead. No man had to teach me that skill nor could he keep it from me. Memory belongs to us all, man or woman. We are all the children of God, the Sióra said. We are all beloved in His eyes, she assured me.

  When Charles and I arrived in Lefkada town, he reported to the Fort of Santa Maura, and I stayed in a rented room above a butcher shop near the Central Square. The butcher and the butcher’s wife were the first Lefkadans whom I would meet. He spoke Venetian, albeit in a form that was a bit unusual to my ears, and Romaic, and she only the latter. We understood one another. I understood them so well that I soon despised them both. The room came with two meals a day, brought up by the wife. She smelled of flowers that had sat in a vase for too long or rather she smelled of the murky water that these flowers sat in. Her husband carried with him the odor of unwashed feet and rising yeast. Each of their five children had their own scent as well. I had not met them, but I could smell them whenever they came into their father’s shop. There was Horse Dung, Warm Milk, Fish Guts, Burnt Olive Wood, and Geranium Leaves.

  My blessed first did that to me. Patricio, you in turn would do the same. My blessed third, within me now, has cursed me of late with the opposite, a nose that cannot even smell the sea that surrounds us.

  When you and I first met, Elesa, your mourning dress had carried with it your mother’s scent. I knew that the garment must have belonged to her. I wondered whether the lavender water that clung to it soothed you as much as it soothed me.

  But now I can no longer locate the scent of her on you, Elesa.

  I can see you, and in you I can see her. But in grief and in loss, I have found that the eyes are not enough. They can see cloth. They can see skin. They cannot bring a body back to you the way that a scent can.

  In the room above the butcher shop, I closed the windows to keep out the odors of Lefkada town. The blood smells of the butcher shop I could not keep out. They seeped up from below. I tied a handkerchief moistened with lavender water around my neck, like a bib, in order to lessen the stench.

  My blessed first had brought with him other changes as well. My ankles were lost in a stocking of fat and skin. My nose was a plump shallot bulb. My earlobes lengthened. My fingers and toes thickened. My hair fell out in clumps. I had discarded my corset months ago. In Lefkada town, I was covering my swollen bosom and rounded belly with a shawl that Sióra Gazi had given me as a farewell gift. She chose one that was also the color of ripened wheat but with a fringe of midnight black. When the butcher’s wife delivered my meals, she made it a point to ask if I was warm enough. With all the windows shut, the room was stifling and hot, and she knew it.

  The wife’s evening meals were forgettable and included surprisingly little meat, but worst were the breakfasts, which every day were exactly the same. A dish of yogurt, two rusks, and a small bowl of quince spoon sweets. I was already missing the cherries of Cerigo. Soon enough, the butcher’s wife caught the dissatisfaction on my face and asked if the breakfast was not to my liking. “Perhaps you will need an egg,” she said, as she stared at my belly, barely covered by the drape of my shawl. Then she repeated what Kanella had said to me on the overlook, “You should eat in your condition.”

  The wife must have complained to her butcher husband, because by the end of that week Charles had moved me into my own house, which soon came with it the company of Old Iota and then my blessed Giorgio. My first night in that house I could not sleep. I lay in bed and swirled my hands around the full moon inside of me. I thought about the Theotokos, and whether She had touched Herself in the same way, Her body a mystery to Her. She was the only Mother I had ever known. In my condition, I felt closer to Her. I prayed for Her forgiveness. I prayed that She would welcome my blessed one into Her arms. As dawn showed itself in the windows, I heard the Angels of Cerigo, but their voices were low. I could not tell whether they were whispering words of assurances to me or taunts.

  Back in Kapsali town, my brothers had made certain that no church would perform the Sacrament of Marriage for Charles and me. They ensured that my blessed one would never be an heir to Eternal Life. They went from parish to parish exposing my shame, which was also theirs, and that fact increased their hatred for the child within me. Like their father, they were heartless. One night when they had far too much to drink, they came to the front doors of Sióra Gazi’s villa. Slurring their words, they shouted from the street for their “whore of a sister,” exposing again the details of their own shame.

  Sióra Gazi and I had finished our supper and were spending the remainder of the evening on the terrace, as was her custom. All of the lamps in the house were extinguished so that the Sióra could better see the stars. She smoked thin cigars, one after the other, and sipped a small glass of fortified wine. It was a moonless night, and her face was barely visible except for the smoke that billowed from her mouth. When she was informed about the commotion at her front doors, she asked her male servant to bring her a pen, ink, paper, and some candlelight. She wrote a brief note—her handwriting tall and slanting with its loops narrow and slim—and handed it to him. I went inside to watch from an upstairs window as my brothers ripped the note from the servant’s hands. Vinegar and the center of bones were rising from my brothers’ bodies as they read it. I felt my evening meal returning to my throat. My brothers looked at each other and without exchanging a word they ran into the night, as if dogs were after them. The Sióra never shared with me what she wrote. “Your brothers,” she said, “are never coming back.” True to her words, the night ate them whole.

  By the time that we were on Santa Maura Island, the undeniable state of my condition meant that the Sacrament of Marriage had to be delayed until after the birth of my blessed one. I cried and begged when Charles told this to me, but he calmly repeated himself, as though I had not heard him the first time. Charles said that once we were in Dublin, he would arrange for our child to be baptized. No one will know of our circumstances there, he said. He thought that this promise would ease my mind. It did until I understood that the Church of Ireland was not my religion, and Ireland was not my island.

  When Giorgio was six months in the world and my blessed second was five months within me, the promise of Dublin disappeared. Charles received his orders to sail for Dominica, and there was no set date for a return to Santa Maura.

  “George will miss his father,” I said to my husband, making sure to use the English name that he had given to my blessed one. “Who will buy George his first toy soldiers?” I asked.

  Sióra Gazi had told me that a boy child is a blessing to his mother. We did not need to discuss what a girl child would mean for me, as we both knew. The Sióra said that in times of strife or before a physical separation with the father, place the boy in front of the man. Make the father see his son. Remind the father that his blood runs through the boy’s veins. “Your body will fade, Rosa, but this being who was once a part of you will always keep his father’s attention,” advised the Sióra. “Unless
the father is a snake,” she warned. “God does not give many advantages to women, but He does give us boys, Rosa.”

  “George will need new clothes soon. He is growing so big and strong,” I cooed. “George has such an appetite. Soon he will eat only beef, like his father,” I sang.

  George was at the center of all that I said to Charles during his last week on Santa Maura.

  Elesa, you should write down the following. Patricio will want to know how he came into his names.

  I told Charles that my blessed second would be a boy.

  “How do you know, Cara Rosa, Cara Rosa?” he asked.

  “I know because I am his mother,” I replied.

  “Name him Patrick then,” Charles instructed, knowing that he would not be present for the birth or the Baptism.

  I heard “Patrick” with its ugly clipped ending, a branch that has suddenly snapped, and I was already changing it to “Patricio,” which would leave the mouth opened and rounded, a cherry freed of its stone.

  “He will be a fine lad of Ireland with that name,” Charles declared.

  When you were baptized, Patricio, I added “Lafcadio.” That was the name of Iona’s fifth and last son. Old Iota wept as she stood by our sides.

  Santa Maura became my island, Patricio. I was a married woman and the mother of two sons there, though these acts did not occur in the order that I would have preferred.

  In the early mornings, I walked along the bay when the air smelled of drying fish and fennel fronds. In the hours before noon, I visited the merchants on the Central Square and bought trinkets and little charms to keep Giorgio safe, as he was not protected by God. On days when the sun baked the flat streets of Lefkada town, I asked Old Iota to hire for us a horse and cart and a driver who would take us to the nearby hillside, where the breezes fanned the leaves of the olive trees and the scent of ginestra soothed Giorgio’s crying.

  Old Iota disappeared during these excursions. Even in her widow’s weeds, I could see that it was Iona who cradled you in her arms. Do you remember the ginestra, Patricio? The hills were golden, as if lit by a second sun when they were in bloom. A handful of thyme crushed in your hands, a butter cake, and a spoonful of light honey. Wherever you are now, my blessed second, if you can find these things, gather them together and that will be the scent of ginestra. Breathe in, Patricio, and you will remember your mother when she was at her happiest, your brother at his most hale, and the twins Old Iota and Iona who held you for the first two years of your life, as if you were their blessed own. Your father, you will not remember, because he was already afar.