A sound at the gate’s door. “Who is it?”
“Your sister.”
The lock rattles. “Have you come to return what belongs to me?”
“Dear Carlo, I’ve come to visit.”
The door swings open. “Sì, sì, sì. This way. Such an honour. How long has it been since your expensive shoe stepped on my dirt?”
“Hey, ugly, step on this.” Gino Campin slaps his bent arm above his elbow, revs his bike and drives off.
Carlo runs into the road and waves his fist. “I will get you!”
Inside the yard, Paola halts. Even through her dark glasses, she’s dazzled by the reflections of light striking metal. Sheets and rods and tubes of steel. Iron, tin, copper. An army Jeep; a German motorcycle; tire rims; vehicle and machinery parts; plumbing; reels of wire: all crowding the outbuildings and farmhouse. Carlo’s state of mind must be worse than she remembered; only a very sick person would squash a rose garden and destroy the lushness of the yard they once played in as children.
“Come inside. I’ll make you coffee.”
Taking his offer to be a good omen, she ignores the manure smell when he passes and follows him when he ducks under the kitchen doorway. Inside, he waves at a chair. She lifts it to shake straw from its wooden seat, sits without touching the table that’s littered with bread crumbs and cornstalks. A pouch of tobacco, a pipe and an ashtray are arranged next to a bottle of grappa.
On the counter are a knife, bread rolls and a half round of cheese, which now provides breakfast for flies. The flagstone floor needs sweeping, and in the spaces between furniture, pails and metal basins rise in uneven stacks against the walls. Crates of empty wine bottles take up half a wall from floor to ceiling. Paola suspects the storeroom under the stairs overflows with wine bottles.
Now Carlo scoops water from a pail and pours it into the bottom of an espresso maker. He grinds the coffee by hand, and then lights the stove with a long wooden match.
To rid her nose of the room’s stink, Paola reaches into her handbag for her silver cigarette case and gold lighter. When Carlo snaps his fingers, she empties the case onto the table. Perhaps this gift will put him in a good mood. He lights a cigarette with a match he then tosses into the stove flame, drops to a chair with his black hat shadowing his eyes.
With perfectly manicured fingers, Paola smoothes the hem of her silk dress; her own hat fits like a white halo. “I hope you are well, Carlo.”
“Why? Did someone tell you I wasn’t? Who’s been shooting off his mouth?”
“No one.”
“You would like me to get sick and die so you could take this farmhouse. I know what you are like, nothing to do all day but scheme. If I find out someone has been talking about me, I will grab his –”
Paola waves the hand holding the cigarette. “No, no, I’m only asking how you are.” Her entire back is clammy.
They don’t look at each other, smoke in silence until the coffee spurts into the pot. Carlo jumps to his feet. After setting down the small white cups and a bowl of sugar, he again drops to his chair. He sucks at the cigarette, blows smoke clear across the table and drums his thick fingers next to the ashtray. “Your coffee’s getting cold. Are you afraid to drink it? Do you think it is poisoned?”
Paola helps herself to sugar and grappa. She sips with her lips barely touching the cup, and then takes a deep breath. “My dear Carlo – ”
“‘Dear’ my ass.”
She takes another breath. “You know I’ve always had your best interests at heart.”
“Ho.”
“I know it’s difficult for you to see –”
“I see you, you dried up old maid.”
Paola stubs her cigarette in the ashtray and lifts her chin. “There have been complaints. I came here to help you.”
Carlo jumps to his feet, leans across the table. “Help me, you thief, you bitch? First you steal my house, then instead of marrying, you take lovers. Whore. If you ever come here again, I will grab your neck and squeeze until your flesh oozes between my fingers!”
The look in his eyes frightens her more than does his speech. Paola drops her lighter and cigarette case into her purse, stands, gazes past him to the pots hanging over the granite sink. Her hands tremble, but her voice is steady. “I have done my duty. Whatever happens now is not my fault.”
“Oh, what happens now. I am afraid, watch me shake. Get out of my house.”
She feels him behind her, herding her through the yard to the gate, but she walks with her head high and won’t run no matter how close he gets.
“You should send me more money, you selfish cow. How shameful to let your brother walk about in such boots.” He slides back the lock on the door. “Look at you, your ass is fatter than your head and you will never catch a rich husband.”
The street is full of strangers. The woman from next door tries to stop Paola. “Signorina, I must speak with you.”
This is Carlo’s doing, this circus parade, this trampling of respect until a farmer’s wife dares lay her hand upon Paola Catelli’s arm.
Not until she makes it home and drives through her own gate does she let go. She parks the car in the gravel driveway and weeps into a linen handkerchief. Now her entire family is lost to her.
Once inside, she confesses the whole mess to Maria.
“The doctor, Signorina. You need to call the specialist, the one who looked after your friend’s mother. He can tell you what to do.”
Paola calls and he agrees to observe Carlo, but only at her home and only with Carlo’s consent.
“But doctor, if he knows you are here, he may not come. He is unpredictable.”
“This is precisely why we must do our best not to place ourselves in an unpleasant situation.”
Paola writes a dinner invitation to Carlo, which Maria takes to the Manna post office.
Next evening, soon as the sun drops behind the mountains, Carlo halts his mule outside Paola’s locked gate. He climbs onto the wagon seat and hollers: “I tore up your invitation. Have a doctor examine your thieving brains. It was you who made Papà change his will. One night I will catch you and squeeze your throat until the flesh oozes between my fingers!”
Paola stands near her open window. She expected this from him and has been half afraid he would climb the side of the house like a spider. Not until she hears, “Hey-ho, Nero!” does she dare look out. And sees Maria head for the gate.
~
To prevent her slippers from being soaked, Maria keeps to the gravel drive. The spring brought too much rain and left behind an overlying mantle of mustiness that hovers like an invisible fog, partially obscures the scent of blossoms and leaves.
She unlocks the gate and steps onto the gravel road, straining to hear the mule or the wagon’s creak. All is still but her outraged heart. When she was a girl, she and her friends chased stray cats with stones or rotten fruit, and she has the same compulsion now to race after the crazy one and clout him on the head. She had no fondness for Carlo when he was an indulged brat or when, as a teen, he slipped girls into his room. She despised him when he swaggered about in his uniform, mouthing propaganda. What would someone like him understand about promises of freedom? Freedom from what, for all those pampered rich boys, those bigheaded idiots?
Something on the other side of the road scuttles through the ruined corn. Two days ago a hailstorm cruised a straight line along this road and pummelled the fields on one side while leaving the fields on this side untouched.
It was next to such a whispering cornfield that Maria gave herself to Sandro. Stars glittered overhead while they clung to each other, not even a blanket between them and the grass. He covered her with promises, his manufactured fantasies about how he could see into her soul, see the beauty that others missed. Sì, he loved her so much that two months later he was on a train headed west. Bound for the sea and a ship to New York. He told his parents more lies, about how he was going away to look for work when the truth was he was running away. From
Maria.
She turns to the house that rises square and solid in the dusk. It was the Signorina’s grandfather who, after returning from a trip abroad, had the house built in the Moorish style. The tall, second-floor windows are arched, but the ground-floor windows are square, set out by grey stucco and pillars dividing each window in half. Next to the palazzo towers a palm with vines entwining its trunk. What would the crazy one do if he lived here? Pile junk all over the lawns and flowers; stack metal and garbage until the lemon and orange trees were crushed?
Maria locks the front door behind her. The Signorina owns this palazzo and a hotel; she has plenty of money, but she does not have a loving family like Maria’s.
~
Three days later, it’s Maria’s day off. Every Saturday she takes the Signorina’s Fiat to San Daniele, stays overnight with Enzo and his family and doesn’t return until Sunday afternoon.
Now she lets out the clutch and the car rolls to the end of the driveway before she turns the ignition. In the trunk are her overnight case and gifts, including the usual Swiss chocolate for Roberto and Rico, and Enzo’s favourite almond cake. She also packed half a cheese, a ham, a chicken and several lemons from the Signorina’s own trees. A few weeks ago she insisted Maria start taking gifts like these, a sudden generosity that still amazes Maria, who expects the offer to be retracted at any time.
Now she passes acres of corn and wheat, the tumbled stones of farmhouses bombed during the war, trees spreading where roofs once shielded families. A woman in a dress, and riding a bicycle, waves. Maria nods. She also nods to the man atop a small tractor, but she won’t risk lifting a hand; she has become especially cautious since Lidia’s car accident.
Lidia rode in the front, next to her friend, who drove. The woman took a curve too quickly; the car left the road and hit a tree. The friend flew out when her door opened, but Lidia went through the windshield. Now she tries to hide the marks on her face with headscarves pulled forward, covers the scars on her arms and legs with sleeves and long skirts.
Lidia’s not a bad wife; but she doesn’t properly respect Enzo and holds herself from him. Maria sees how they don’t touch each other, any more, how there’s no warmth of attraction in their conversation. Maria will speak to Lidia about it; it’s the wife’s duty to keep her husband happy.
A drizzle rattles against the Fiat; Maria turns on the wipers.
An hour later, she waits while an elderly shepherd guides his flock across a road on the outskirts of San Daniele. The man dips his head and winks at Maria through her window. She averts her eyes. The nerve. Yet after the last sheep scrambles to the meadow and she shifts the car into gear, she hums a tune, a love song she thought she’d forgotten.
A few minutes later, she manoeuvres the Fiat into a space in front of a stone apartment building and parks with two wheels up on the sidewalk. The building’s wide wooden door is held open by a brick, and when she enters the cool hallway, another door down the hall opens and there is her Enzo, rushing forward to kiss her cheeks. “My dear sister. Come in, come in.” He takes her bags and sets them on the floor behind the kitchen table.
Maria accepts Lidia’s peck, and then braces herself for Rico and Roberto.
But Enzo says, “The boys are visiting their grandparents for the weekend.”
“They are in Manna while I’ve come all the way to San Daniele?”
“Lidia and I were afraid you would decide not to come, and you know how much we look forward to your visits.”
Maria drops into a chair and says nothing while Lidia makes coffee. Enzo chats and smokes. He eyes the parcels she brought, no doubt waiting for her to produce the almond cake. Let him wait.
By the time Lidia sets down the cups, Maria feels better about missing the boys, and they eat cake while she tells about the crazy one. Then Enzo launches into a diatribe about the stupidity of his work supervisor and the efforts of some employees to organize a union. When he passes his hand over his thick, black hair and touches his short moustache, Maria is filled with tenderness at the familiar gestures. Dear, handsome Enzo.
Lidia moves stiffly about the kitchen, slides open the curtains along the bottom two cupboards, cuts chicken, washes lettuce at the granite sink. When she stirs the pomodoro sauce on the wood stove, the aroma of garlic and tomatoes makes Maria’s stomach growl. Such a treat to eat what she didn’t prepare and, she has to admit, Lidia is an excellent cook.
Later, after a supper of cold cuts, gnocchi, chicken and salad, Enzo smokes and sips espresso with Maria. Lidia washes the dishes. Maria doesn’t offer to help; she’s the guest, the benevolent aunt who’s brought gifts.
After Enzo finishes his cigarette, he stands. “Please forgive me for more disappointing news, but there are people I must see tonight. I hate to leave, but Lidia will be happy to have you all to herself.”
“But Enzo,” Maria says. “This is the third Saturday evening in a row that you’ve gone out.”
“No help for it, my dear sister. Men’s business.”
Maria did not pack her bags and drive all the way from Manna to spend the evening with Lidia. Enzo knows this; Lidia knows this. All these gifts, the boys not here to thank her and now Enzo deserting. Maria has a sudden premonition of a future much different from the one she’s imagined. And they’re taking advantage of her good nature. Yet when she looks into Enzo’s brown eyes, she forgives everything. “You should take the Signorina’s Fiat; it could start raining again.”
“No, no, what if I damage it? I’ll be fine with an umbrella.”
While Enzo is gone to the main floor’s common bathroom, Maria hands Lidia the coffee cups and spoons to wash. Enzo’s return fills the kitchen with the scent of Aqua Velva. He takes his toiletry bag to the bedroom, returns with a suit jacket and brown fedora, which he angles over one eye. He grabs an umbrella.
“Goodnight, ladies. Don’t wait up.” A jaunty salute with the umbrella and he’s gone.
Maria watches from a moisture-beaded window as he strides across the street and into the encroaching dusk. Whenever he walks away from her, she has an unreasonable fear that she’ll never see him again. Tears fill her eyes. She hides her face from Lidia by fussing in the suitcase for her comb and toothbrush, but by the time she steps into the hall, someone else has taken over the bathroom. She glances at her watch. Two hours until bedtime. Two hours alone with the silent saint.
~
Last night someone infiltrated Carlo Catelli’s yard and stole a Dutch blunderbuss he hadn’t yet placed inside the house. Certain the thief will return this night, he plans an ambush. He leaves the wagon several blocks away with the mule tied to a sewer grating, and then he rushes home. He crouches behind an archway and soon sees two forms at his gate. There’s a mechanical noise, and the gate’s door jerks upward. A jack! The scoundrels are jacking the hinges! On them before they can turn, Carlo easily pins his prey against the gate with one arm, holds them there while he unlocks the door and wrestles it open.
“Make a sound and I will break your necks.” He hauls the boys into the yard.
The tallest struggles, but Carlo lifts him off his feet before tossing both boys into the kitchen and kicking the door shut. There is a lantern on the floor, which he grabs and lights with a match he strikes against the rough wall. He lifts the lantern to see what he’s got. The eldest boy is no more than thirteen or fourteen; the younger still wears short pants. After he gets his gun back, he’ll kick their asses. Teach them a lesson.
The taller boy makes a fist, but can hardly speak. “L-let us go or I will tell the police.”
“Go ahead. But you broke into my yard and stole from me. They will lock you up for ten years.”
The younger boy whimpers.
“What’s this, a baby? I’ll give you something to cry about. Which of you took it?”
The taller boy hangs his head. “I took it.”
Carlo leans close. “I left the gate’s door unlocked. You run for my gun – straight there. And when you get back, I’ll
let you have the baby.”
“Don’t leave me, Rico.”
“B-be brave, Roberto.”
“Oh, ‘be brave, baby Roberto.’ What are you waiting for? Get going and be sure not to bring anyone with you.”
Rico darts through the door and races for his grandparents’ house, each echo of his footfalls terrifying him into believing Crazy Catelli’s right behind.
Meantime, Roberto balances on the edge of a wooden chair. His captor grabs another chair, sets the lamp on the table, sits back and crosses his legs. They sit in silence for a thousand years until Roberto notices the head of a silver nail in the sole of the man’s uplifted boot. Can’t a lunatic feel pain? “There is a nail in your boot.” Roberto claps a hand over his mouth.
“Thank you, Signor Genius. I put the nail there myself, and do you know why?”
Roberto keeps his mouth covered. Somewhere in the house a clock ticks.
Carlo uncrosses his legs and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. “The pain reminds me that I walk in a real world and not in a dream.” With the lamplight behind him, his face darkens, yet his eyes shine silver. “Tell me. Is there blood in my boot?”
A trickle of urine dampens Roberto’s underwear. He drops his hands to his crotch.
“There’s no blood in my boot. The blood is in my ears, in my nose, in my mouth.” Carlo jumps to his feet and flings out his arms. “My blood gushes like a river! It roars like a waterfall!” He drops his arms. Then, in a thin, hushed voice: “I carry the blood of a thousand men.”
Roberto’s bladder lets go. He can see Crazy Catelli doesn’t notice.
With heavy movements the man takes the lantern and starts for the next room. “Come. I want to show you something.”
Roberto clings to his chair with both hands.
“Come!”
Crazy Catelli lifts the lantern to reveal a tiny corridor opening into the midst of objects stacked against the four walls. From floor to ceiling: suits of armour; pistols and guns; soldiers’ helmets, both plumed and horned; bows and arrows; boxes of bullets. On a stand, a machine gun.
“The entire house is full of such riches. Some I took on my own and the rest I bought from people too stupid to know what they had.”
Sweet Life Page 7