* * *
—
FINALLY WE HAD ELECTRICITY. We had a chicken coop on wheels to move the hens to where they would fertilize the soil. We had vegetables all year round. We had a solar skillet to cook scrambled eggs and even tiny ceramic cylinders to purify rainwater better, a Japanese invention that Danco turned up.
Yet something was wrong below the surface. Giuliana and I barely spoke to each other. After more than a year, she still treated me like an intruder. And many of us—that is, all of us except Bern—were starting to question Danco’s role of group leader.
But the ones who showed the most disturbing signs were Corinne and Tommaso. They lived in an alternating state between anger and morbid devotion. More and more frequently Tommaso would spend the night at the Relais dei Saraceni and Corinne would refuse to join us for supper. She’d lock herself in their room until morning, alone, without eating.
One day, when it was already late August, she took me by surprise. We were washing the cups from breakfast.
“How many times do you do it, you and Bern?” she asked out of the blue. I understood, but I bought some time.
“What?”
“More than once a week? Or less?” She stubbornly kept her eyes down, looking at the stacked-up cups.
“About that,” I said.
“About what? Once a week?”
Much more often, I was about to reply, but I sensed that would have upset her.
“Yeah.”
Corinne turned abruptly, grabbed the teaspoons from the table in a single bunch, and slammed them onto the cups.
So I offered: “Tommaso works a lot.”
“What, are you trying to console me? Who the fuck do you think you are?”
She was gripping the edge of the sink with both hands.
“Anyway, you could make less noise, you two. It’s disgusting!”
She opened the tap all the way, but quickly turned it off.
“That bitch Giuliana! Let her wash her own cup. I’ve told her over and over again not to stub out her cigarettes in them. They all suck in this place!”
* * *
—
ANOTHER TIME we were gathered under the pergola for breakfast; only Tommaso was missing. We heard the screams, three of them, close together.
Bern was the first to leap to his feet. He ran behind the house, through the olive grove, like a fury. He had a precise destination in mind, as if he knew exactly what had happened, as if he had seen it. Danco had immediately rushed after him, with me behind him. For an instant Corinne was paralyzed, then she too got up and ran after us.
Giuliana, however, didn’t move until we reappeared carrying Tommaso’s disfigured body. Corinne was weeping hysterically, Bern was still wearing the beekeeper’s paper coverall, white from head to toe.
We had found Tommaso on his knees, with swarms of bees around his head, swirling and buzzing; he was trying to drive them off, waving his arms, before he collapsed to the ground, unconscious. He was wearing a short-sleeved red-and-blue-checked shirt, unbuttoned to the navel. The bees wouldn’t let him alone, they were disoriented, as if incredulous at having brought down such an enormous animal.
Bern had kept us from getting close. He’d gone to the tool shed, still running, and when he came back he was wearing the paper coverall. With his hands he swept away the bees glued to Tommaso’s hair, his clothes, and the rest of his body. Corinne was screaming so loud, I wanted to cover her mouth to stop her.
Bern dragged Tommaso toward us by his armpits. His skin had swollen visibly, as if the bees had penetrated and were shoving from inside to free themselves. He had a double nose, a dozen eyelids, deformed lips, and an unrecognizable nipple among the red welts. When Giuliana, who had stayed where she was, saw him in front of her, her expression reflected back to each of us the horror that we hadn’t fully realized.
I was the one to drive us to the hospital in Ostuni, ignoring traffic lights or right-of-way. Next to me Corinne stared straight ahead, more and more wide-eyed. She was no longer crying, but she didn’t say a word. Bern and Danco had put Tommaso between them in the backseat, and Giuliana, before watching us speed away, had been quick to give them the knife we’d used to cut the bread. “Garlic! Bring us some garlic!” Bern had ordered, and after running around in circles, she had managed to get that, too. Now Bern was scraping Tommaso’s skin with the blunt part of the blade, to extract the stingers. Danco, after peeling a clove of garlic, said, “Are you sure? It seems like a stupid peasant custom.”
“Just rub it in!”
How many stings in all? Twenty? Thirty? “Fifty-eight,” they told us at the hospital. The bees had even stung him on his scalp and inside an ear. There were bees trapped in his briefs; when they undressed him on the stretcher they rose up in flight. But we’d hear all this later from Bern, because he was the only one who followed the stretcher through the swinging doors to the emergency room. He was still wearing the paper coverall.
In the meantime, we were busy lying about the accident. No, we weren’t raising bees, that required a permit, of course we knew it . . . Tommaso had stumbled upon a nest while cleaning the gutters . . . A very big nest, yes indeed, we had never seen one like that either . . .
Several hours passed before they told us that he was out of danger but sedated, and that they would keep him under observation. We spent all day and most of the night in the waiting room, sitting on plastic chairs bolted to the floor, under the fluorescent lights.
When it was all over and we were together again beneath the pergola, Danco lit into Tommaso: “Do you mind telling us what the fuck you were trying to do?”
“They came out suddenly.”
“The fuck they did! Don’t try to take us for a ride, Tommi. Did you put your hands inside the hives? What did you intend to do, huh?”
“I didn’t put my hands inside the hives.”
“Your shirt was unbuttoned!”
“That’s enough now, Danco. Leave him alone,” Bern intervened. For once, Danco obeyed him.
* * *
—
THAT YEAR the traps failed. Maybe the flies had spread the word around. After a furious argument we voted to buy the dimethoate, but it was too late for that too. The yield was miserable, the quality of the oil inferior. We didn’t sell more than thirty bottles.
One morning we woke up without electricity. When Danco went to check the unit, he found the plates smeared with a mixture of glue and dirt. For hours we tried to figure out who could have decided to sabotage us. We had surrounded ourselves with enemies by taking field labor away from others.
The old power generator would no longer start, and we didn’t make much of an effort to get it working again. For the first time we were seized by overwhelming dejection.
Corinne had an emotional meltdown. It took Tommaso almost an hour to quiet her down, as she kept on saying, “Are you taking responsibility for this? Making me stay in this cold with wet hair, now of all times?”
That evening Bern took me to our room and told me: “We have to ask Cosimo for help. Go talk to him. Ask him if we can tap into his power grid until we resolve this problem. We’ll pay him for the extra consumption.”
“He’ll never agree. Remember how we treated him?”
“He won’t be able to refuse a favor to you. He was so attached to your grandmother.”
I decided to go alone. A fire must have been lit somewhere, the air smelled of woodsmoke.
I knocked at the door of the lodge and Rosa came to open it. She held the flaps of her robe closed and peered behind me, then let me in. Cosimo was watching television. When he saw me he tried to straighten his thinning hair that had been mussed up by leaning back in the chair.
I explained the incident regarding the solar panels, without admitting that someone had damaged them on purpose. Would he allow us to use his electricity for a
while? Only for as long as it took to find a solution.
“Everything here is yours,” he said gravely. “But you’ll need an extension cord hundreds of feet long.”
“The cables for the panels should be enough. If not, we’ll connect them to other ones.”
He looked up at me with a kindliness that I did not expect.
“You’ve become a capable young woman,” he said. “There should be several feet of cable in the cellar.”
“Thank you. We’ll pay you.”
I was ready to leave, but Cosimo took my hand.
“It’s time to decide what to do with the villa, Teresa. Rosa and I continue keeping it in order, but it will deteriorate if no one lives there. And we can’t go on doing it for free.”
“I understand,” I said, but only because I wanted to get back to the others.
Meanwhile, Rosa had prepared a basket with jars of preserves. “They’re made my own way,” she said. “I hope you and the others like them too.”
Cosimo walked me to the gate.
“Those people,” he said when we reached the boundary, “especially the curly-headed one . . .”
“Danco.”
“It’s none of my business. But you’re a young lady who was brought up properly, Teresa. Those people are different. They grew up with roots that are too short. Sooner or later a gust of wind will pull them up and sweep them away.”
But Cosimo didn’t know what we knew: that plants grown in the safety of pots, with long roots that spiral tightly around, don’t adapt to the soil. Only those whose roots are free, uprooted while young in winter, will make it. Like us.
“Tomorrow morning we’ll come with the cable,” I said. “You mustn’t worry about anything.” He nodded. In the dim light, he looked older.
* * *
—
A FEW DAYS LATER I confessed to the others that I was the owner of the villa. They were not angry as I’d expected, but strangely incredulous. They were silent for a few moments, then Danco asked: “How much is Cosimo offering?”
“One hundred and fifty thousand euros.”
“That house is worth a lot more.”
“I think that’s all he has.”
“That’s his problem.”
“What do you mean?”
But Giuliana ignored my question: “How much more, Danco?”
“At least double that, if I had to guess.”
“So now you’re also a real estate expert?” Corinne needled him.
He paid no attention to her. “It’s falling down but it’s vintage. And it comes with, what, seven or eight acres?”
I shook my head. I had no idea.
“He gave us the electricity,” I said. By now I saw what he was driving at.
“We paid him for the electricity.”
“But I promised him.”
“And does this seem like the kind of situation in which promises are worth anything?”
I looked at Bern for support, but he said, “If your grandmother had wanted to leave him the house, she would have.”
“What about all our talk about abolishing property?”
Danco gave me a sympathetic smile. “Perhaps you misunderstood certain aspects, Teresa. There is a radical difference between living equitably and acting like fools. We’re not simpletons to be taken advantage of.”
An excitement was spreading through the group, I sensed it.
“Teresa was keeping her treasure to herself,” Giuliana muttered under her breath.
* * *
—
WE GOT in touch with an agency in Ostuni and a few weeks later I met the buyer, an architect from Milan, in the notary’s office. Handing me the contract to be countersigned, he said: “Your grandmother’s villa is magnificent, it must be costing you a lot to let it go. I promise you that I will fix it up so that it’s good as new again, respecting its spirit.”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Bern had accompanied me to the appointment, but he hadn’t wanted to come in.
“This land is touched by grace,” the architect said. Then, looking up from the contract, he added: “What can you tell me about the two custodians? Are they reliable people? I was thinking of keeping them.”
A few days later Cosimo and Rosa left. And a week later the police came to the masseria. I wasn’t really surprised when the officer, a young woman not much older than us, with a ponytail sticking out of her cap, told us that a report had been made regarding our unlawful presence there. What did we expect?
Tommaso and I watched her take a notebook out of her inside jacket pocket and flip through the pages.
“I understand there are six of you, is that right? I’d be grateful if you could call the others out.”
When we were all gathered under the pergola, she asked us to provide our ID papers.
“And if we refuse?” Giuliana challenged her.
“You would have to follow us to the police station for further checking.”
So we all went up to our rooms to dig up documents that attested to our being members of society after all.
“Will they arrest us?” I asked Bern in the few moments we were alone.
He kissed me on the temple. “Don’t be silly.”
The policewoman wrote down each one’s details. In the meantime, her partner wandered around.
Giuliana tailed him, looking for any excuse to keep him away from the corner where the Super Skunk was planted. Just to distract him, she offered him a raw turnip that she tore from the ground; she eventually ate it herself, maybe to show that there was really nothing ridiculous about her overture.
Even worse than the waiting was my realization that this place, a place that for us was miraculous, aroused absolutely no sense of awe in the two strangers.
When the officer asked if anyone could claim a right to occupy the property, Bern spoke up. “The owner gave us permission to stay,” he said.
She flipped through the notebook again. “You mean Mr. Belpanno?”
“He’s my uncle.”
Since I’d been there, that was the first time I’d heard him reaffirm his blood tie to Cesare.
“I spoke with Mr. Belpanno just this morning by phone. He wasn’t aware that anyone was living here. The property is for sale and is supposed to be vacant, he said. Were you the ones who replaced the sign?”
“There was never any sign,” Danco lied.
The policewoman noted his statement in her notebook. For the report she would write up against us, I thought. In a flash I could feel my parents’ disapproval descend on me all the way from Turin.
“Do you have a warrant at least?” Giuliana asked sternly.
“We’re not conducting a search, miss,” the policewoman replied calmly. “In any case, if we did have a warrant we would be under no obligation to present it to you, given the look of things.”
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” Bern interrupted in a firm voice. “Let me talk to my uncle and I’ll prove it to you.”
“Mr. Belpanno asked that the property be vacated within a week. Otherwise he will press charges.”
She put the notebook on the table. Her tone when she continued was softer, as if she would like to be on our side, if she could: “Look, we have photographs. There is evidence of an illegal diversion of electricity from the power lines, a similarly unlawful installation of solar panels—which I would probably find myself if I were to walk in that direction,” she said, pointing to the correct location, “and undeclared beehives, not to mention the marijuana plantation.”
“‘Plantation’ is actually an exaggeration,” Tommaso carelessly corrected her. We all turned to look at him. She pretended not to register that admission of guilt.
“My advice is that when we come back in a week, we find nobody here.”
C
orinne had slipped away into the house. She came back with two jars of honey and set them on the table in front of the police officers.
“Since you already know about it. It’s a millefiori honey we produce ourselves.”
“Now you’re trying to bribe them with honey?” Danco asked angrily. “You’re really an idiot.”
The policewoman said: “I’m sure it’s excellent, but we can’t accept it.”
* * *
—
A FEW MINUTES LATER we were alone again, the six of us, beneath our pergola, near the walls of our house, surrounded by our land, by everything that was ours and that suddenly no longer belonged to us.
Bern placed six beers on the table, but nobody reached out to take one.
“Stop acting like that, all of you.”
Danco jumped on him. “It looks like you don’t give a shit.”
“We have the money that Teresa got from the sale of the villa. We can buy Cesare’s masseria. It’s for sale, isn’t it? No more sneaking around.”
“And how much would this Cesare want?” Danco asked skeptically.
“He’ll accept whatever we offer him. Especially if it’s us.”
“It doesn’t seem to me that your dear little uncle cares all that much about you.”
Bern proposed putting the purchase of the masseria to a vote: “All in favor of making this property truly ours—forever—raise your hand.”
I raised my hand, but I was the only one besides Bern.
“Well?” he persisted. “What’s going on?”
At that point Corinne decided to grab a beer, uncapped it nervously with the bottom of her lighter, took a sip, then squeezed it between her hands.
“There’s something we have to tell you,” she started. “We thought we’d do it at another time, but given the circumstances, we might as well. Tommi and I are leaving. I’m pregnant.”
She raised the bottle, as if to propose a sad toast. Tommaso was ashen.
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