‘Was there a war then or something?’
‘No.’
‘What else could be dangerous, Nonno; was La Rocca going to fall down?’
Grandfather shook his head and Ernesto saw him considering what to say next as he rolled a thin cigarette. ‘There was a very weird man living up here. I believe he shot one of my dogs,’ he said.
Ernesto moved over to the table and sat down. ‘And?’ he prompted.
‘He wasn’t Sicilian. He came with some awful looking women and some scraggy children.’
‘Did you hate him because he wasn’t Sicilian?’
‘I hated him because he did bad things, Ernesto. Very bad things.’
The boy’s heart skipped a beat or two; Grandfather had never mentioned that before. ‘Maybe he didn’t know the things were bad.’
‘You’re wrong there. He did them on purpose because they were bad.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘A lot of people knew.’
‘Yes but how, Nonno?’
‘He didn’t hide much. He used to walk about in Cefalù from time to time with his strange women trooping along behind him.’
‘What was strange about them?’
‘They coloured their hair bright red and they were mournful and terribly thin.’
‘Mournful?’
‘Yes, and somehow feeble and shabby. It’s hard to describe; you need to have lived a bit to understand it. I don’t think they had much to eat up at that house. There was a day when the man walked right into our cathedral with one of his women and he was wearing a long green silk thing like a girl’s dress, and she was as thin as a stick and all in red.’
‘Did he kill people?’ Ernesto asked, trying to think of the worst thing he knew about.
Grandfather flicked open his Zippo, and took a while lighting his cigarette before he spoke again. ‘I think he might have done. He certainly might have done,’ he muttered eventually.
‘Who do you think he killed?’
‘A young man who came here to join him around 1922.’
‘From Palermo?’
‘From England. You know where that is?’
Now the boy was really interested. ‘Not exactly,’ he answered, ‘but it’s cold there my teacher told me, and it’s where London is.’
Grandfather nodded and Ernesto realised he didn’t feel bad anymore.
‘Now, Ernestino, you go down to the big tree and wait for Rosina and Sergio. They should be on their way up. Put your shoes on if you can find them. I bet you can’t.’
Ernesto was lucky that day; he did know where his shoes were and he set out from the house trying to imagine a man who’d come all the way from England to their small piece of the earth where nothing ever happened, and why anyone would ever want to do that.
***
At the beginning of 1968, the year Ernesto was to be ten, Sergio decided to leave school and work with the goats full time. He told his brother that he was relieved to be away from the shadow of the nuns; just looking at them made him feel itchy, but he was also sad because it meant he couldn’t antagonise Antonio Puglisi anymore unless he should happen to come across him outside school. At first Ernesto was nervous about the idea of being in school without Sergio, but then he realised how much more peaceful it would be, and he was glad of it.
Supper time in the house changed too because Sergio had no stories to tell anymore, and so often the family ate in silence unless the boys’ mother should make some remarks about things that the rest of them had little interest in, such as the price of coffee or flour. Then towards the end of January, they did have something to talk about because Terremoto del Belice pounced on the town of Gibellina, and in Cefalù town square the old men were saying that at least five hundred people were dead and many thousands of houses and buildings had been destroyed. That was only eighty miles away, and some people in Cefalù swore they’d felt the tremors themselves as they lay in bed on the night of the fifteenth.
Ernesto was sad for the people in that stricken town, but the idea of beautiful houses and buildings being reduced to heaps of stone and rubble troubled him just as much, although he knew not to mention that aspect of the disaster to his family who talked sadly and at length about the numbers of people known to be injured or dead.
‘Just suppose we had an earthquake here, Nonno, would La Rocca crash down on us do you think?’ Ernesto asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Grandfather answered, ‘some of my friends have wondered the same thing.’
‘We’d all be dead, if it did,’ Sergio said.
‘Maybe we’d escape it,’ Grandfather told them, looking at Rosina whose face had turned long with worry. ‘What it might do, though, is bury that bloody house up there and it’d be a damn good thing if it did.’
‘What house, Nonno?’
‘The one that’s closer to La Rocca than we are, Sergio.’
‘But why would it be good?’
Grandfather shrugged, and moving his chair away from the table, groped in his pocket for his tobacco.
‘Is that the house the man lived in, Nonno?’ Ernesto asked.
‘Well, it’s a ruin now anyway,’ Rosina whispered. ‘The family should never have let strangers live there in the first place.’
‘The man who killed dogs?’ Ernesto persisted.
‘What man, what dogs?’ Sergio asked, pushing his plate away from him.
‘The owners were strangers to Cefalù themselves, Rosina, so I don’t suppose they cared. They’re dead now of course, but their sons should’ve dealt with the house long ago. I expect they’re too ashamed to show their faces here,’ Grandfather declared, trying to ignore the boys’ questions.
‘Or afraid, Papà.
‘Very likely, Rosina. But perhaps we should be merciful and not blame them.’
‘Afraid of dogs, Nonno?’ Sergio asked loudly.
Ernesto kicked his brother beneath the table and warned him with a look not to ask more.
‘Well, the family ought to face up to it,’ Rosina muttered. ‘They should take the place apart stone by stone like you said the Mayor was going to do once, Papà.’
‘I can’t see that happening; they are more likely pretending the place never existed. There’s nothing to be done except to wait for it to crumble away, or be obliterated in an earthquake to get back to where we started this conversation,’ Grandfather said, staring at the boys.
Ernesto knew which house they were talking about. It was a one storey white farmhouse that had been abandoned long ago. It was surrounded by tall weeds and wild looking olive trees, and was a quarter of a mile walk from their place and slightly higher up the hill. The Telecom development road that led to the football stadium had been built right behind the house and just about at the height of its roof. Ernesto had always been aware of the place, but had thought little about it.
‘So what’s the big deal about that place, Nonno?’ Sergio asked, unable to contain himself any longer.
‘When life in Cefalù was not so boring,’ Grandfather said, looking directly at Ernesto for a moment, ‘some very strange people lived in that house . . . if you can even call it a house. That’s not what they called it themselves. They called it an abbey as if it was godly.’
Sergio and Ernesto sat up straighter and silently willed the old man to go on.
‘Papà, I’m sure it was very fascinating in your day, but let’s stop talking about it now,’ Rosina said, ‘and please stop flicking that lighter all the time.’
‘Stop because of us, you mean?’ Sergio asked.
Grandfather laughed. ‘Your mother doesn’t want you to grow up with superstitious thoughts. She wants you to be modern men free of all darkness. Ha!’
Rosina shrugged, but her sons could see that she was almost squirming with discomfort. ‘It’s 1968 now, not the Middle Ages,’ she whispered almost to herself.
‘Do not dismiss superstition quite so lightly, it can save people’s lives,’ Grandfather replied, putting his Z
ippo into his jacket pocket. ‘Besides, how do you account for the football pitch?’
Ernesto gazed at his brother and lifted his shoulders a little, and Sergio grimaced in reply because he had no idea what Grandfather was talking about either. The football pitch had been constructed in 1960 when Ernesto was a baby, but by 1965 all the big kids were playing football on the beach and the grass on the pitch had turned brown and dry, and not a soul used the place.
‘What do you mean, account for the football pitch, Papà?’ Rosina asked.
‘It cost a lot of money to build. I remember the day the Mayor came up here to open that stadium,’ he replied.
Rosina stood up and began taking plates off the table. ‘I wish that for once, you could just answer a simple question,’ she said. ‘What am I supposed to be accounting for?’
Sergio and Ernesto could not help but smile because they’d only become aware lately that Grandfather drove her mad as well by always hinting at things but never really saying anything.
‘Nobody goes there,’ the old man said. ‘How do you account for that?’
‘They like the beach more?’ Ernesto suggested.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Sergio said, ‘it’s because there are snakes on the pitch.’
‘So that’s the story going about these days, is it, Sergio?’ Grandfather asked.
‘It’s what the nuns told us, Nonno.’
‘The truth is the Mayor felt guilty for not having that dirty white house knocked down. I think he had the idea that everyone in Cefalù would forget about the place if something new and interesting was happening on this hill. He could’ve asked those developers to build the stadium anywhere over this side of town, lower down the hill would’ve been better, but he chose that spot on purpose because he wanted to blot out . . .’
‘Hush, Papà, please. We don’t care about that old stuff.’
‘I care, Mamma,’ Ernesto said quickly. ‘What did he want to blot out?’
‘He means blot out the creepy white house,’ Sergio said, ‘don’t you, Nonno?’
A look passed between Rosina and the old man so swiftly that with the shadows in the kitchen Ernesto wasn’t quite sure he’d really seen it, but it was as if, while they did not agree on everything, when it came to that curious house they were solid allies. It was not the first time he’d thought the adults stupid to imagine he and Sergio were blind to significant glances just because they were kids. ‘Oh,’ Ernesto said, trying to make his face seem innocent and wondering, ‘you mean make people forget all about that house up there, Nonno?’
‘—But what would the Mayor know with his own fancy house in town?’ Grandfather announced.
‘What are you talking about now, Papà?’
‘I mean—if you’ll just listen, Rosina—that the Mayor lived in that big yellow house by the Cathedral; a long way away from here. He had no idea what it was like living on this hill back in 1920 with those people so close to us—all that shrieking and moaning and women crying and running away and being banished, and so on. I couldn’t protect your mother from the awful stories that were being told about those people, and after a while she stopped laughing and became quite timid and child-like. Then one day when I was with the goats, I got the funny feeling I was being watched intensely, and sure enough, that man with the little black eyes was just behind the olive tree up by the track, staring at me though the leaves.’
‘Was that the weird man who killed someone, Nonno?’ Ernesto asked again.
‘Papà, I don’t want to hear about it anymore,’ Rosina whispered.
‘But we do, Nonno,’ Sergio told him.
‘Why was the man with black eyes watching you, Nonno?’ Ernesto asked.
Grandfather assembled his pouch, lighter and papers on the table in front of him, and with fastidious and drawn-out attention, made a cigarette. ‘They’ll find out eventually anyway, Rosina; they’re boys.’
‘So tell us. What, Nonno? Don’t tease us!’ Sergio said. ‘You always do that.’
‘That white house is cursed,’ Grandfather explained, ‘and we used to call it the House of Ghosts—there, now I’ve said it. The Mayor was too frightened to have it knocked down, so in the end he just got a fence built around it.’
‘But did the weird man live there or not, Nonno?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘At long last,’ Ernesto muttered. ‘Simple question.’
‘I know some kids who got down the slope from the road and right into the garden of that house,’ Sergio announced.
Grandfather stood up very fast. ‘What kids?’ he shouted in his most thundery voice.
The smug look on Sergio’s face slipped away as he faced the old man. ‘Some big boys,’ he mumbled.
‘Do we know their families?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t think so.’
‘How long ago did it happen?’
‘I don’t know that either, I just heard about it when I was still in school.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Oh, Nonno, I don’t remember now; it was two years ago!’
Grandfather sat down again, and Rosina, who’d gone very pale, brought some fruit to the table which they ate in silence.
***
At the bottom of the orange grove, Ernesto told Sergio everything he’d learnt from Grandfather about the people in that house, so that in exchange, his brother would tell him about the boys who’d gone there and what had happened to them.
‘How did you get him to say stuff to you?’ Sergio asked.
‘I was upset about something. You and Mamma were down on the beach. We were waiting for you and he told me then. He said the man was really dangerous and probably killed his dogs, and even worse, he killed a man. Nonno saw him once in town and he had a green dress on and some funny women with him . . . mournful women, and there were little kids as well. They went into the cathedral.’
‘Who did the guy kill?’
‘A man from England.’
‘Oh, come on, Ernesto, now you’re making it up!’
‘I swear on the miracle of the Blessed Virgin Mary that I am not. Tell me about the boys that went into that house, Sergio.’
‘Well, when they got down there from the road, the place was boarded up, but most of the boards were rotten, so it was easy to tear them away and open up one of the windows.’
‘When did they go there?’
‘I think it was before we were even at that school. Inside there was still furniture and everything. One room had fancy wallpaper and some metal chairs and a table, and there was a huge mirror and a chandelier light hanging down, like the one in the town hall. There were double doors at the end of the room and suddenly they started to open and the boys were so frightened that they couldn’t move, and then this strange bald man in a cloak came into the room and saw them staring through the window and raised his hand, and in it he had a long green stick, and then the boys could move again and they ran like crazy chickens to get away from the place, and one of them cut his leg badly on something and it never ever healed and he probably had to have it cut off in the end.’
Sergio was breathing fast, so Ernesto waited awhile before speaking. ‘Then the man with the green stick must have been a ghost, because no one has lived in that house since Grandfather was a young man. He told me that. Maybe it was a tramp instead.’
‘Maybe,’ Sergio agreed.
Ernesto watched his brother fiddling with a spray of fallen orange blossom. The scent around them was so mesmerising that he could’ve lain down and slept had he not been so interested in their conversation. ‘Have you ever gone to the House of Ghosts, Sergio?’ he whispered.
‘Not exactly, but once Manuel and Vincenzo came with me, and we chucked some rocks onto its roof, and broke some of the tiles. It spooked us out though and we ran away.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘We were bored and we were trying to think of something exciting to do.’
‘Grandfather would’ve beaten you f
or it.’
‘I know he would’ve. I think he knows everything about that place more than most people do. Stands to reason, since we live so close to it.’
‘If he ever tells me anything about it again, I promise to tell you, if you do too,’ Ernesto said. ‘You’re working with him now, so he might talk to you if you’re lucky.’
‘Okay, it’s a deal,’ Sergio replied, getting to his feet.
Ernesto stood up too, but reluctantly, as he’d wanted to tell Sergio about how Antonio Puglisi kept staring at him and smirking, and it was getting so persistent that he was starting to feel nervous. It was pointless telling the nuns about it, they lived in a different world from their pupils, and anyway, because Ernesto was always losing stuff, he wasn’t their favourite kid and he doubted they’d help him.
***
Having spent most of April and May attempting to draw perfect circles freehand, Ernesto had moved on to practising perspective again and in his frustration at his poor efforts, he decided the pencil he was using was not fit for the job and he dreamt of being able to make a very dark, thin and sure line on dead white paper.
‘It isn’t that the pencil isn’t sharp, Mamma, it’s that the lead is too grey. I can’t explain it. The one I had before was much better.’
‘Well that was all Senor Leonardi had in his shop. Go and see if Senora Fazio in the tobacconist has better ones.’
‘I already have. I want my old one back, it was a good pencil.’
‘Where have you looked?’
‘Everywhere; all over the house and down the road and at school.’
‘You’ve only got yourself to blame, Ernesto, you should take care of your things better—you’re getting big now, time to stop losing everything. Sergio doesn’t lose things all the time.’
‘It’s not my fault, Mamma; I think I must be cursed.’
Rosina was at the boy’s side instantly. ‘Don’t ever say that in front of your grandfather, Ernesto, do you hear me?’ She’d taken his arm between her fingers and was squeezing him hard.
‘I didn’t mean anything by it,’ Ernesto told her, ‘but why is Nonno so weird about that kind of stuff?’
Seven Strange Stories Page 17