“I didn’t know,” I murmured instead. “Nonna didn’t tell me.”
Bern looked at me for a moment. “Really?”
I nodded. I felt weak.
“That’s odd. I was sure you knew. I thought you weren’t interested in coming anymore.”
After a pause he added: “Maybe it was for the best. Better for you.”
“Why the hell didn’t she tell me!”
“Calm down.”
But I couldn’t, I became hysterical, I kept repeating why why why, until Bern gripped my shoulder.
“Calm down, Teresa. Sit here a second.”
I sat down on a stone wall; I was breathing heavily. He waited patiently at my side. Then he bent down and broke off a leaf, rubbed it in his hands until it was crushed, and held it to my nose. “Smell this.”
I inhaled deeply, but the scent I recognized wasn’t the plant’s, it was his skin.
“Mallow,” he said, sniffing in turn. “It helps relax the nerves.”
Sitting on the wall, we gazed at the green, hushed countryside for a while. I was calmer, but with the calmness had come an overwhelming weariness, together with a kind of regret.
“Did she go swimming even then?” I asked.
“I went with her sometimes. I sat on the sand. She would swim way out to sea, on her back; all I could see was the pink dot of her bathing cap. When she returned to shore I’d be waiting for her with an open towel and she would tell me, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’ She always said that.”
I was suddenly hungry to look at him, to touch him, the desire that stirred in me was frightening. I slipped my arm under his and pressed against him.
“You’re crushing me,” he said.
I quickly drew my hands back into my jacket pockets. What right did I have to grab him that way?
“I didn’t say stop. Only to loosen your grip.”
But I kept my hands in my pockets. I stood up and started walking faster than before, as if fleeing from that moment of weakness. The landscape suddenly changed before us. We were at the edge of a grove of trees that were shorter than the olive trees and had white blossoms on their leafless branches.
“Here we are,” Bern announced, as if his intention from the beginning had been to take me there.
“What are they?”
“Almond trees. I figured you’d never seen them like this. This year they bloomed early. And now the cold is threatening to ruin everything.”
We walked into the orchard, the heels of my shoes sinking into the soft clods.
“I’ll break off a branch for you if you want.”
“No. They’re best seen from here.”
“Remember when you left me the Walkman among the almond shells? Sometimes in the tower I felt lonely, so I listened to your tape. I always listened to it from beginning to end, until it wore out.”
“It was awful music.”
Bern looked at me as if he didn’t understand. “It was beautiful music.”
After a few minutes, to my surprise, we found ourselves in front of the gate to the villa.
“When do you leave?”
“Today. Soon.”
He nodded. I thought six hundred miles of highway would be enough. There was so much waiting for me in Turin: my university courses, the exams, more courses, and a thesis to choose. Everything would fall back in place. But just then Bern looked up and his close-set eyes had the same effect on me as when I was a girl, the first time our eyes met as we stood on opposite sides of the doorway to my grandmother’s house. I’m almost certain it was I who leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
“Why?” he asked me candidly, after having kissed me back. He had a melancholy smile, which disturbed me even more. Why? Because I’d wanted nothing other since the day I went to look for him at the masseria and hadn’t found him there, as if everything had been left on hold since then. The fact that at some point I had forgotten that desire didn’t mean that it wasn’t still there, vivid, unchanged.
But instead of confessing it to him I asked: “Do you have a child, Bern?”
He pulled back a little. He glanced away for a moment.
“No. I don’t have a child.”
“And that girl?”
I lacked the breath to say her name.
“There is no girl, Teresa.”
I believed him. Every fiber in my body wanted to believe him. We would never talk about it again.
* * *
—
“WHERE WERE YOU?” my mother asked when I entered the house. “Your father wants to leave right away. He wasn’t able to sleep, poor thing. I’ll have to drive. Rosa made us some sandwiches, we’ll eat in the car.”
A number of objects had disappeared from the living room: the silver frames with the photographs inside, a vase, the clock supported by the trunks of two elephants. In an open bag beside the door I saw brass gleaming. My mother intercepted that look.
“Check if there’s anything else you want to take.”
I filled the overnight bag with the few clothes I had brought. From the window of the bedroom I watched my parents in the yard with Cosimo and Rosa, the car doors already open. My father raised his eyes in my direction, probably without seeing me. I was having a little trouble breathing. I sat on the bed, next to the already closed suitcase, and stayed there motionless for a few minutes. In that very short time, I made up my mind without really deciding. Descending the stairs, I felt weightless, as though my feet were barely touching the steps.
“Your things?” my mother asked.
“They’re upstairs.”
“And you didn’t bring them down? Wake up!”
“I’m staying here.”
My father whirled around, but it was she who spoke again: “What are you talking about? Move, hurry up!”
“I’m staying. For a couple of nights. Rosa and Cosimo can look after me, can’t you?” The caretakers nodded, somewhat incredulous.
“And what do you intend to do here, if I may ask?” My mother kept at it. “Cosimo has already turned off the heating.”
Then my father said, “You saw him.”
There was no trace of irritation in his voice, only an extraordinary weariness. My grandmother was dead and he hadn’t slept for all those hours.
“Who are you talking about?” my mother persisted. “You’re driving me crazy, Teresa. I’m warning you.”
But I was no longer listening to her. She knew nothing about that place, she didn’t understand and would never understand. My father did, however. Because the two of us had been infected with Speziale in the same way.
“Did you see him?”
I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Get in the car, Teresa.”
“Just a couple of nights. I’ll take the train back to Turin.”
“We’re leaving now!”
The caretakers watched us. My father put his hand on the car door. His eyelids were purplish.
“You knew,” I said, almost in a whisper.
He turned to me. For a moment his eyes widened.
“You knew he was here and you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know a thing,” he snapped, but there was a slight uncertainty in his voice.
“How could you?”
“Let’s go, Mavi,” he said then to my mother.
“You want to leave her here? Are you crazy?”
“Get in the car, I told you.”
He shook hands with Rosa and Cosimo, murmured some instructions, then sat down in the driver’s seat.
“I’ll expect you at home. Two days at the most.”
He started the car, then seemed to have an afterthought. He twisted in the seat to wrest his wallet out of his pants pocket, took out a few bills, and handed them to me without counting them.
A few seconds later they were gone and I was standing in the yard with the caretakers, surrounded by the silence of the countryside.
* * *
—
BETTER TO WAIT until tomorrow, I told myself, not go back right away, otherwise he’ll think I postponed my departure because of him. But there was nothing in my grandmother’s house that could detain me, only impatience, so two hours later I was back at the masseria.
They were all outside, gathered around a strange object, a kind of overturned umbrella clad in aluminum.
“Let’s see if she at least can guess what it is,” Danco said, not showing the slightest surprise at seeing me back there.
“A satellite dish?” I suggested.
“I told you so!” Corinne exclaimed. “It’s impossible.”
“Try again, come on,” Danco prodded me.
“A giant frying pan?”
Giuliana made a scornful face.
“Getting warmer,” Tommaso said.
Corinne lost her patience. “So tell her!”
“This is progress, Teresa. Innovation combined with respect for the environment. It’s a parabolic solar concentrator. If you put an egg here in the middle, you can cook it using only sunlight. In the summer, of course.”
“Too bad it’s February,” Corinne retorted.
Then she took advantage of my less-than-enthusiastic reaction to needle him some more: “You see? She thinks it’s a load of crap. Danco bought it with our communal kitty without even asking us.”
“I don’t think it’s a load of crap,” I said uncertainly.
“Maybe we can still return it,” Tommaso suggested.
“Just you try it!” Danco threatened.
Bern was watching me, but differently from the way he had that morning, as if he had suddenly remembered something.
“So you stayed,” he said softly.
Danco announced that it was time to get back to work. He waved his arms to scatter us.
“Come and help me in the food forest?” Bern asked me, and I said yes, even though I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Weren’t there oleanders here?” I asked as we walked off from the house.
“We let them dry up two summers ago,” he said. “They took too much water. Cesare was incredibly irresponsible about these things. He thought not killing anything was enough to save us.”
“Save us from what?”
Bern gave me a steady look. “By now the water supply is about to run out. Do you know what happens when you pump water from all the artesian wells there are here?” I didn’t know, of course. “The aquifer is drained and filled by seawater. If we go on like this our land will become a desert. What we have to do is regenerate,” he said, emphasizing that word “regenerate.”
It occurred to me that without electricity they couldn’t use the well anyway. Whenever the power failed at my grandmother’s, nothing came out of the taps.
I asked him how they managed, and he turned around to face me, though he didn’t stop walking.
“If you can’t steal water from the ground, where do you get it?” he said, pointing up.
“You mean you do everything with rainwater?”
He nodded.
“And you drink it too? But isn’t it full of germs?”
“We filter it with hemp. I’ll show you later, if you want.”
In the meantime, we had reached the mulberry tree. I found it hard to recognize it that way, completely bare. Vegetation had grown up all around it, which at first glance seemed out of control: saplings; artichoke, pumpkin, and cauliflower plants; and all kinds of weeds.
“It’s better to work with our hands,” Bern said, bending to the ground. “We have to clear all these away.”
He grabbed a mushy handful of rotten leaves and tossed them behind him. “We’ll pile them here. Then I’ll come back with the wheelbarrow.”
“Why did you let it go like this?” I asked, kneeling beside him a little reluctantly because those were the only jeans I had with me.
“Let what go?”
“The vegetable garden. It’s a mess.”
“You’re wrong, everything is exactly in its place. Danco spent months planning the food forest.”
“You mean you chose to plant the trees and everything else this way?”
“Don’t stop clearing the leaves while you’re talking,” Bern said, glancing at my hands. He took a deep breath. “The mulberry ensures shade in summer. And we pruned it to make it expand as much as possible. Around it are fruit trees and under them the legumes, which serve to fix the nitrogen.”
“You talk like an expert.”
He shrugged. “It’s all thanks to Danco.”
The soil beneath the decaying leaves was warm. By then the knees of my jeans were stained, so I figured I might as well get comfortable. I scooped up ever bigger armfuls and threw them onto the pile.
“We’re just about self-sufficient,” Bern said, “and soon we’ll be able to sell part of the harvest. Now everything you see is bare, but in summer the production is copious.”
“Copious,” I repeated slowly.
“Copious, yes. Why?”
“Nothing. I had just forgotten about the words you use sometimes.”
He nodded, but as if he didn’t fully understand.
“And why are we clearing away these leaves now?” I asked. I felt like laughing, I didn’t know why.
“It’s better to remove the mulch before spring arrives. So the warmth can penetrate the soil.”
“Danco says so, I imagine.”
I meant to provoke him with a joke, but he answered me with the utmost seriousness: “Yes. Danco says so.”
We spent another half hour in almost complete silence. I was beginning to sense that Bern would not ask me anything about my life in the years we’d been apart, just as he didn’t when he was a boy. As if what happened a distance away from him, far from the trunk of that mulberry tree, didn’t exist at all, or in any case had no importance. But it was fine just the same. It was enough for me to be near him, to grope among the plants and breathe that moisture-laden air together.
* * *
—
I LINGERED at the masseria until sunset, then until supper, each time telling myself that I would leave right afterward. We ate a mishmash of eggs and zucchini cooked by Corinne, completely unsalted, though I didn’t dare say anything because everyone seemed to like it. I was still hungry, but there was nothing else, so I kept nibbling on the bread; I had the impression that Giuliana was counting every mouthful.
The sole hour of electricity for the day ended with the meal, and we moved in front of the lit fireplace. In addition to that, there were only a few candles to illuminate the room, some half melted on the floor. Although we huddled as close as possible to one another and draped blankets over our shoulders, it was cold. Yet even then I didn’t really consider the idea of going home, of leaving Bern and the others and the fire that gleamed in their eyes.
Around eight o’clock Danco shrugged off his blanket and said it was time to move. They all jumped up and for a few seconds I was the only one still sitting on the floor. Looking down at me, Danco said, “Are you coming with us?”
Before I had time to ask where, Giuliana started protesting that there wasn’t enough room in the jeep. But he ignored her.
“You came on a special week, Teresa,” he went on. “We have an action planned for tonight.”
“What action?”
“We’ll explain it to you in the car. You need black clothes.”
Until a moment ago they were all numb, about to fall asleep, but now a wild excitement electrified them.
“All I have is my funeral outfit,” I said, becoming more confused, “but it’s at the villa.”
“That’s all we’d need, for yo
u to come in that!” Giuliana exclaimed. “Stay here, Teresa. Believe me, you’re better off.”
She patted my cheek, but Danco silenced her once and for all: “Stop it, Giuli. We already talked about it.”
Corinne took me by the arm. “Come on. We have a full closet upstairs.”
We went up, we three girls, and Corinne began rummaging through a pile of garments scrunched up like rags, while Giuliana undressed.
“Whose are they?” I asked.
“Ours. I mean, everyone’s. This is the girls’ side.”
“You keep your clothes mixed together?”
Giuliana laughed and said caustically, “Yeah, that’s right, mixed together. But don’t worry, they’re clean.”
Meanwhile, Corinne had extracted some black leggings. “Try these,” she said, throwing them at me. “And this,” she added, digging out a sweatshirt similar to her own.
She didn’t look away as I took off my sweater.
“You have fabulous tits. See them, Giuli? You’d only need a fourth of hers not to look like a man.”
I didn’t dare object that the leggings didn’t fit me well, that according to my mother I didn’t have the right body to wear anything close-fitting, or that I would probably freeze to death.
“Stop looking at yourself,” Giuliana said, “we’re not going to a fashion show.”
Four of us were squeezed into the backseat of the jeep: we girls and Tommaso, who stared obstinately at the dark fields beyond the edge of the highway.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Foggia,” Danco replied.
“But it will take at least three hours!”
“Roughly,” he said, his tone expressionless. “You should get some sleep.”
But I didn’t feel like sleeping. I persisted with my questions, and finally Danco decided to explain to me what the “action,” as they called it, consisted of. He spoke in a low voice, forcing me to stay focused. He said there was a slaughterhouse in San Severo, that horses were brought there from all over Europe after being made to trudge thousands of miles without food or water. And that the methods used to slaughter them were brutal.
Heaven and Earth Page 14