“Didn’t Paolo know?” Ignazio whispers.
She shakes her head. She keeps crying, and all he can do is murmur an apology into her hair, damp with sweat. He helps her lie on the bed and is about to leave but turns back, takes her hand and kisses the palm. Then he walks away before the midwife notices the hell he carries inside him.
* * *
When Paolo comes home, Vittoria is on her knees, cleaning the floor.
“Auntie’s next door,” she says softly. She plunges her hands in the red-stained water, wrings the rag, and wipes the floor again.
Paolo goes up to her. “You shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing . . .”
“And who’s going to do this if I don’t?” she says harshly, a hint of reproach in her voice.
He suddenly realizes how much she’s grown, almost a woman now. But she doesn’t let him continue. “She’s been unwell for days. Vomiting, always tired. Didn’t you notice?” She is serious, severe.
Paolo stutters, shakes his head. A feeling of guilt clumps around his heart, squeezing it like a fist. Only now does he understand many things. Like her rebelling the night before.
Vittoria watches him without saying a word. She gets up and throws the dirty water out the door. But there’s no more blame in her dark, calm eyes. Sorrow, yes. Compassion. Maybe even understanding.
“Where’s Ignazio? And Vincenzo?”
She grabs a dish and starts dicing the vegetables to make a meat broth, like they do for women who have just given birth. “Uncle Ignazio took him out so he wouldn’t get in Donna Mariuccia’s way while she was working.” Her voice becomes gentler. “Go to Auntie. She shouldn’t be left alone, poor thing, or she’ll think it’s her fault.”
Is it my fault, then? Paolo thinks. My fault, because I didn’t even notice she was unwell?
On the threshold of the bedroom, he looks at his wife with painful regret. If he’d known, he wouldn’t have insisted the night before.
He approaches gingerly. “You could have told me.” No reproach, just bitterness. He’s devastated. Now that his eyes are filled with her pain, he’s devoured by guilt. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.
Teardrops pool out from his wife’s eyelids and run down her cheeks, following a set path. He sits next to her on the bed. “Now, don’t cry. Maybe it would have been another boy. It obviously wasn’t meant.”
Giuseppina is motionless, staring at the wall. Not a word about forgiveness, not a single apology, unlike Ignazio.
Mariuccia slips out of the room.
* * *
La Cala is half-deserted. It’s cold. There are just a few porters and sailors bustling around the ships. The wind violently lashes the city walls, slamming window shutters and twisting laundry hung out to dry.
“That boat over there?”
Clinging to his uncle’s neck, Vincenzo points at a ship. Ignazio covers him with his cloak to shield him from the tramontana wind. The church of Piedigrotta is closed, and there aren’t even any beggars outside the entrance. On the Castello a Mare walls, a sentry is doing his rounds, holding on to his hat.
“It’s called a skiff. We arrived here on a boat like that, when you were little.”
“How little?”
“Very little. You fit in a basket.”
Vincenzo wriggles. Ignazio puts him down and he goes to the stone edge of the pier and looks down at the dark, choppy water. The tip of an anchor covered in algae is immersed in the darkness. “How deep is the sea?”
“Very deep,” Ignazio replies. He takes him by the hand. Vincenzo has dark, trusting eyes and fair hair like Paolo’s. “More than you can imagine. Do you know that beyond the sea, where we can’t see, there’s another land?”
“Yes, I know. There’s Bagnara. Mamma’s always telling me.”
“No, not Bagnara. Even farther, there’s France and England and Spain, and, even beyond them, there’s India, China, and Peru. There are countries where much bigger ships than this one go, and they have spices like the ones your papà and I sell, and silks and cloth, and things you can’t even imagine.”
Wonder fills the child’s face. His hand quivers in his uncle’s. He wants to run but Ignazio holds it tight: the ground is slippery and Ignazio is afraid he might fall into the water.
“What’s silk, Uncle Ignazio?” His s’s are still unsure of themselves.
“Silk . . .” he echoes. “It’s an expensive fabric for wealthy people.”
“Silk . . .” The word takes on a sound of discovery on the child’s lips. “I also want to wear silk someday. I want to make a silk dress for Mamma.”
Ignazio picks him up again. The child smells his clothes and inhales the scent of spices: a warm, familiar smell that makes him feel safe. Together, they walk toward Via dei Materassai. “Then you’ll need to work,” Ignazio explains. “These things cost a lot of money.” He has no difficulty in speaking like this to the little boy. Vincenzo is intelligent. Very intelligent.
“I will, Uncle Ignazio,” he replies after a long pause, in a strange way, softly.
Like a promise.
* * *
The door of the spice store keeps making that annoying squeaking sound but there’s a new counter, as well as jars for the herbs and spices.
The shutters, too, have been repainted. They carry only the name Florio.
It’s February 1803, and the Paolo Barbaro and Paolo Florio company hasn’t existed for a month.
After the row at customs, there were others. The last one, a few weeks ago, was about a consignment of buffed ivory and cinnamon.
Paolo went to La Cala because he’d heard from Michele that his brother-in-law had arrived and yet not gone to the store, as usual. He found him talking to a storekeeper, a man called Curatolo. He’d made a deal with him and just sold him the consignment for a ridiculous price.
Curatolo left without saying goodbye, embarrassment written all over his face. Paolo could do nothing but watch his spices leave with him. But shortly afterward, he attacked Barbaro. “What the hell are you doing? All our ivory to him, our competitor?” He could not believe it. “And what are we supposed to do now?”
“Ours? Is there such a thing as ‘ours’?”
“It was our consignment. What did you do that for?”
“Isn’t that what you do?” Barbaro replied in a nasty voice. “You don’t give a damn about what I need and I don’t give a damn about what you need.” He jangled the coins in his pocket. “And I’m keeping these.”
Paolo turned away from him and went home, his pride shattered. He told Ignazio and Giuseppina everything. He forbade her from having anything to do with the Barbaros, Mattia included.
Their company died before a notary. They sold the skiff and part of the goods still in the warehouses, and split the money between them. A sheet of paper, two or three signatures without even looking each other in the face, as Paolo bought the aromateria and Barbaro left him Via dei Materassai to look for another place in Via dei Lattarini, next to the warehouses of other Bagnara people.
It was a war, and they still bore its wounds. He still carried the icy anger that had taken the place of rage.
* * *
Vincenzo walks behind his mother, and stops to look around. Absorbed, he is sucking a licorice stick. Of course, now that he can walk and run by himself, the world looks huge.
He’s about to step into a puddle when Giuseppina yanks him. “Careful! Can’t you look where you walk? You’re four, not a baby anymore.”
He looks at her guiltily. She melts into a sigh. Vincenzo is still the one and only love of her life.
There are different accents around them. A peasant is trying to sell his load of citrus fruit to a British trader in a cloth tailcoat and boots. The cart is blocking passersby, and people are complaining.
“No, I won’t buy these . . . arance. They are rotten.”
“What are you on about? They’re all good. See how good they smell!” He picks one and shows it to the Englishman but the latter
keeps protesting, pointing at a host of feasting fruit flies.
Seeing the scene, a Neapolitan sailor raises his hands to the sky. “You think people are stupid? There’s too many fruit flies . . .”
People from many countries, new languages. Ever since the French started scampering about the Tyrrhenian Sea, peace had ended. The British declared war on the French again, and Napoleon resumed hostilities, attacking ships sailing across the Mediterranean. Merchant ships were no longer safe and the British, who used to be masters of the sea, were pushed into a corner. Palermo and Sicily turned into a free port, removed from French influence and, above all, at the center of the Mediterranean. This has turned Palermo into a city bursting with merchants and sailors from all over Europe. French spices come from ports in northern Italy, British ones from Malta, but that’s not all. Goods are arriving from Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, and Spain.
Giuseppina doesn’t know and understands little of all this. It’s not a woman’s business, as she often tells Vittoria, who, even so, insists on knowing and tortures Ignazio with questions.
Giuseppina arrives at the aromateria. Through the window, she sees Paolo behind the counter, with a man dressed in velvet. A little farther, almost outside the church, stands a sedan painted in green and gold.
Mother and son walk in. Paolo sees them and signals to Vincenzo to keep quiet and continues to talk to the customer.
“Our bark is very pure, Baron. It comes straight from Peru and we supply most of the apothecaries in Palermo . . . Smell the aroma.” He takes a handful of bark. It’s dark and crumbly. Chips fall on the worktop.
The man wrinkles his nose. “What a strong smell.”
“That’s because we store it correctly.” Paolo drops his voice. “Would you like me to mix you some with iron, am I right?”
“Yes, please. You know what it’s like . . . My spirit is young but my body, alas, won’t keep up with me. I don’t fire as powerfully as I once did and you can imagine how unpleasant it can be to retire in certain circumstances,” he concludes with a note of embarrassment.
“In this case, the iron will restore your vigor. We’ll add a few fennel seeds and lemon peel, to protect you from fevers. Shall I add this to last week’s bill?”
“No, not at all.” Embarrassment, followed by pride. “Here’s payment for the recent purchases. This way we won’t have anything outstanding anymore.” Coins shine in his hand. “Here you are. I know I can rely on your discretion. I came here instead of going to some of your better-qualified colleagues because I’ve been told you keep things to yourself.”
“Just think of me as your confessor.”
Paolo is polite but not servile. Palermo nobility are a strange breed. Attached to their privileges like nails to flesh, in debt down to their pants, and yet clad in velvet and jewels. They sell houses and property they are no longer able to maintain, exchanging them like packs of rigged cards.
Vincenzo picks this moment to disengage himself from his mother. “Papà! Papà!” he calls, clutching at the edge of the counter. He reaches out with his hand.
Paolo turns to his son, looking annoyed. “Not now, Vincenzo.”
The child’s fingers slide off the wood. He goes behind the worktop and slips into the back room, where he knows he will find Ignazio. He finds him hunched over the accounts books.
“Uncle!”
“What are you doing here?” He sits him on the table, moves the inkwell away, and resumes writing, running the tip of his finger down stacks of bills. “Did you come with Mamma?”
“H-hm.” The child sucks on his licorice, swinging his legs. “It smells good. Is it carnations?” he adds, sniffing the air.
“Cloves, yes. They arrived yesterday. Keep still.” Ignazio puts a hand on his knee and the gesture becomes a caress. “Where’s Mamma gone to?”
“They brought a paper. It was a sailor. She got all upset when she saw it.”
“A paper? You mean an envelope?”
“H-hm.”
At this point, Ignazio looks up. A strange agitation runs up his back. “Who did she take it to? I mean to read it.”
“To one of the Palazzo Fitalia maids, the one who knows all her mistress’s business and is always telling her and Aunt Mariuccia.”
Ignazio puffs. “Right. She’s all we need.” He holds his breath and his thoughts in a single sigh. Giuseppina had her miscarriage more than two years ago, and ever since he’s watched her and his brother drift apart. They live together but their lives barely touch, not belonging to each other and not seeking each other. An existence of strangers sharing a house.
Giuseppina has slowly resigned herself. She’s grown fond of Mariuccia, who has become the nearest thing she can have to a friend. Then two other Calabrian girls arrived, among them Rosa, the maid Vincenzo mentioned. He and Paolo think she’s a big gossip. As a matter of fact, Paolo can’t stand her.
“So what happened?”
The child lets go of his licorice. He takes on a serious, reproachful expression. “She started crying. Then she dragged me all the way here so she could talk to my father.”
Ignazio pauses. The quill hangs in midair for a moment before he puts it back into the inkwell.
It’s not like Giuseppina to cry for no reason.
He listens and hears Paolo saying goodbye to the customer, then, straight afterward, his sister-in-law’s voice. He signals to his nephew to be quiet. He approaches the entrance, keeping in the shadow of the door.
“So what’s the matter?” Paolo says.
Giuseppina takes out an envelope and hands it to him. “It’s from Mattia. She’s desperate. She’s asking us to help her husband. He’s in town, sick and alone, with no one to look after him. We’re here in Palermo . . .”
The store plunges into silence.
Giuseppina’s hand remains outstretched for a long time before Paolo takes the letter.
He tears it into pieces.
“But you . . . you didn’t even read it,” she stutters, aggrieved more than surprised. “She’s your sister!”
Paolo turns his back to her. “She was my sister. She chose to take the side of that crook she decided to marry.”
Giuseppina opens her arms. “Decided to marry? She had no choice! She was fourteen when your father married her off to get rid of her. No woman has a choice when she gets married. Could I rebel when you dragged me here?”
Paolo does not expect this accusation. “Are you still throwing that back at me? Our lives have improved, or are you too blind to notice? Did you want to stay in Bagnara and be a peasant? And here? Can’t you see I’m making good money? Where do you think your new clothes or the new chest I had made for you come from?”
“Of course! And we’re still living in a pigsty. The house is—”
“We’ll get a new one soon!”
“When? I feel like a servant in my own home!”
“Watch what you say or I swear to God—I’ve never laid a finger on you but—”
Giuseppina clenches her fists against her hips. “Mattia has nothing to do with the row you had with Barbaro and, whether you like it or not, Paolo Barbaro is still your brother-in-law. You’ve worked with him, shared bread and sweat . . . and now? Damn it! Can’t you two try to forgive each other? Your sister—”
Paolo darts her a look that freezes her. His posture, his gestures, his face, everything shows unyielding resentment. Even Ignazio senses his rage. “His own fault. If you betray my trust even once, it’s once too many. You know what he wants from me? Money. My money, that I bring home after breaking my back, while he wants to act the master. There’s my sweat and blood on these coins, mine and my brother’s. You don’t remember what he did, do you?” The venom rises as he raises his voice with every sentence. “He made us fall out with suppliers. He told other merchants we were accountable to him. That I had to be accountable to him. I, who turned this place into what it is now.”
Giuseppina is afraid now. She steps back against the shelves. “But your sist
er . . .”
“How dare you ask me to read a letter from a woman who’s betrayed her own blood? As far as I’m concerned, they’re dead, all of them.”
By now, she is trapped between her husband and the shelves.
“Wait . . . your grandmother was a Barbaro. What? Have they come to ask for your help? I’d forbidden you from having anything to do with them.”
“Paolo, that’s enough.” Ignazio comes into the store and puts a hand on his shoulder. He knows how to calm him down.
He cannot forgive Barbaro either. Not so much because of how he vexed him or because of the insinuations that threatened to ruin the business, but because of the rift he caused between them and Mattia.
Giuseppina’s bewildered eyes drift from her husband to Ignazio. She runs to Vincenzo and picks him up. The last thing they see of her is the hem of her cloak slapping against the door.
“Why did you have to pick on your wife? She and Mattia love each other.”
“Love!” Paolo gives an embittered laugh. “But she doesn’t care about what they said and did to her husband.” He runs his fingers through his hair, concealing his bitterness.
Ignazio wishes he could hug his brother. Placate him. But he knows it’s no use: Paolo is clinging to his resentment.
He bends down to collect the shreds of Mattia’s letter. He sees her name on one of the fragments, and Paolo’s on another. His family has fallen to pieces just like these sheets of paper, and he was unable to prevent it.
* * *
Giuseppina returns home, holding her son’s hand tight. He doesn’t say anything and watches her silently, the licorice stick once again tight between his teeth.
When they walk in, Vittoria runs toward him, takes him into her arms, tickles him, and covers his neck with kisses.
Giuseppina, however, collapses into a chair. “Nothing.” She mimes Paolo’s gesture. “He tore it up right in front of me. He doesn’t even care about your aunt.” She puts her hands over her mouth to restrain herself because a woman mustn’t talk ill of her husband, especially not in front of his relatives, even though, as God is her witness, she could scream like a madwoman.
The Florios of Sicily Page 6