He wonders if his brother still thinks about the sea and the days spent on board the San Francesco between Naples and Messina.
While he signs the freight receipts, he asks the man where he’ll be stopping off during the journey.
“I’m returning from Messina, so I was thinking of going to Mazara del Vallo then to Gela . . . Why?”
Ignazio looks at him from below, his chin propped up on his closed hands. “If I asked you to stop off in Marsala to deliver a letter, would you do it?”
“Caciettu. Is it important?”
He takes an envelope from the desk drawer. “Very important. You must hand it to Mattia Florio, Barbaro’s wife, and to her only. See, I’ve written down their most recent address on the paper. If they’re not there anymore, they won’t have gone far.”
The sailor nods. He frowns. He remembers something, some gossip about a brother-in-law of the Florios, whom they ousted from their business, heedless of his bankruptcy. Without looking each other in the eye, like strangers.
He slips the letter into his jacket pocket. He asks and wants to know nothing: it’s none of his business.
Ignazio follows him to the door.
“May God help you and may the Blessed Virgin be with you, Don Florio. And my greetings to your brother: I’ll pray to Saint Francis of Paola to watch over him.”
“You, too, Master Salvatore. You, too.”
He watches him walk away, swaying on the balate as though he were on the deck of a ship. He’s somewhat sorry he asked him to deliver the message, but he has no choice. He doesn’t know how much time he has.
* * *
Giuseppina’s forehead is pressed against her hand, her eyes fixed on the rectangle of sky she sees through the window. It’s a bright blue, making spring look like a willful, angry little girl.
Paolo is much worse. The cough sometimes prevents him from breathing. She’s sent Orsola to tell Ignazio, who now runs the aromateria full-time.
A hand touches her shoulder. She grabs it and kisses it. With a swish of fabric, Mattia Barbaro sits in front of her.
The two women look at each other without speaking.
Mattia arrived two days ago from Marsala with her son, Raffaele, the trip paid for by Ignazio. Their lives are increasingly hard but returning to Bagnara is out of the question: Paolo is too proud to show everybody how low he’s sunk and, above all, he can’t bear people in Bagnara constantly talking about how successful the Florios are.
Mattia had to face a blazing row with her husband—the first after years of submission—because he wouldn’t let her go, protesting that they had no money and that Paolo did not deserve this sacrifice.
But she is a Florio and the Florios do not forsake their own blood.
Mattia’s face is a mask of resignation and weariness that makes her features droop. Time and sorrows have bleached her hair white and made her eyelids heavy.
Children’s voices arrive from the other side of the room: Vincenzo is showing his cousin Raffaele, just a few years his senior, his books. Vittoria is with them, minding them and every so often trying to catch snippets of her aunts’ conversation. She, too, was very struck by how crumpled by time and hard work Mattia’s face had become.
Giuseppina looks at them, dejected. “He doesn’t realize his father’s dying.” She says this with anxiety and a drop of resentment. “Sometimes I see him standing still outside the bedroom, he doesn’t dare go in even when Paolo gestures at him to approach. It’s as though he doesn’t want to see him like this anymore and doesn’t realize it upsets the wretched man.”
“He’s a child: right now he’s scared of what’s happening. But you mustn’t give in. This is the time for being brave and asking God’s help.”
“God cares nothing about me. If we’d stayed in Bagnara, I know this wouldn’t have happened.”
“You can’t say that. Perhaps our husbands would have gotten shipwrecked or there would have been another earthquake. How can we know what’s around the corner?” She is all too familiar with this bitterness, and that’s precisely why she is aware of the harm it can do. “You must stop thinking about what was and could have been. I didn’t want to come to Marsala either, but I had to because my husband got ill. Because of my husband I had to forget my family; as far as my brother was concerned, I no longer existed. And look at us now. Here we are, together again.”
Giuseppina tries to tidy her hair but it’s no use. A lock keeps falling over her forehead. “You still have a husband and you have Ignazio. He’s your blood. I don’t have anybody anymore, my relatives are all dead . . .” Words with bile, her shawl hanging gracelessly off one shoulder, and powerlessness burning her throat. “What have I got? Tell me.”
During the ensuing silence, Mattia closes her eyes. “You have your beautiful son.” She smiles sadly. “And you also have Ignazio. Have you never noticed?”
* * *
When Giuseppina told Ignazio that Paolo had gotten worse, he called Caruso, the physician.
The latter assured him that he would go to see him as soon as he could get a cart to go to Noce. “It could be phlegm or an accumulation of humors. Let me hear his lungs and I’ll be able to tell you.”
So Ignazio hired a buggy and went to pick him up from home. He’ll take him to see his brother, and tell him Mattia’s coming. It’ll give him something to hope for, he thinks while riding through the Noce olive groves with the physician.
There must be a hope.
* * *
It’s late evening by the time he returns.
His footsteps are heavy, his eyes bloodshot. Vincenzo and Raffaele are already asleep, overwhelmed by the day’s emotions. Vittoria has swept the rooms and gone to bed.
The two sisters-in-law, though, are waiting in the kitchen.
Giuseppina sees despondency in his face. She goes to him and stops, her hands holding the corners of her shawl tight. “So?”
Mattia is with her. He shakes his head. “Nothing. He doesn’t want to see you.”
She clasps her hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs, and rocks back and forth. “What do you mean? Not even when he’s ill? His heart won’t soften even now?” Giuseppina hugs her but she pushes her away. “No heart and no conscience. Don’t I even deserve forgiveness?”
Ignazio holds her to his chest. “I’m sorry. He started shouting and blood gushed out of his mouth. I had to give him laudanum to calm him down.” He seeks reassurance in Giuseppina’s face, as she stands behind Mattia, clenching her fists, her eyes shiny.
He won’t tell them how angry his brother was, nor of the rage he spewed out. Of how hurt he was when Paolo said that Mattia was dead to him, that if she’d come for the money, she could go away and drop dead because he’d already made out his will and neither she nor that dog her husband would get anything.
He doesn’t need to tell Giuseppina. She already knows.
And he cannot tell her about how upset the physician was after he’d listened to Paolo’s chest. At least not now.
Mattia pulls away from her brother. “I will take many sins before God but not this grudge.” She beats her chest. “He’s my brother and I love him, and I pray God forgives him, because he shouldn’t have done this to me. I fell out with my husband so I could come here and now my brother sends me away like a leper?”
More sobbing. Giuseppina leads her to the bedroom. “Calm yourself, dear heart,” she mutters. “Come to bed.”
They’re sisters even though they don’t have the same blood, Ignazio thinks.
Giuseppina turns to him. “I’ve put a plate of macaroni and broccoli aside for you. It must still be warm. Why don’t you eat and rest, as well?”
He nods, but he isn’t hungry.
But Mattia stops outside the bedroom. “The harm done comes back,” she says. “There are things you pay for, generation after generation. He’s hurting not just me but all of us: he will have to remember this, forever.”
Giuseppina shivers and Ignazio also shudders.
/> Because these words sound like a magària, a curse, and once you say certain things, you can’t take them back.
They fall through time, go from one generation to another, until they come true.
* * *
Giuseppina waits for Mattia to fall asleep before she goes to tidy up the kitchen.
“I don’t deserve this,” Mattia kept repeating. “I fed him like a mother, I washed his clothes. I protected him. And now he rejects me like this?” More tears, which Giuseppina wiped away as anger rose inside her.
What now? What does she want to happen? For the husband she never loved to recover and come home?
For a woman, a man is safety, the only safety she has. It’s a plate on the table, a bucket of coal for the cufune, the engraved copper brazier.
She huddles in her shawl. No, that’s not what frightens her most. It’s something else, that concerns her alone, that’s just beyond her thoughts.
A shadow in the dark kitchen startles her.
It’s Ignazio, head on the table, his shoulders shaking.
He’s crying.
The restrained, stifled sobs of a man unable to keep his sorrow inside because it’s too great, but who’s afraid of making a sound.
She takes a step back, and returns to the bedroom.
* * *
That night, Ignazio sleeps fitfully. He had hoped to get some relief from his tears but that’s not the case. On the contrary, he’s afraid he won’t be able to do his duty. That he’ll fail.
But that’s something he cannot even let himself think, let alone tell anyone else.
He gets up and dresses carefully so nobody can say that the Florios have troubles. Never mind that it’s early, so early that dawn is only slightly more than an impression. The aromateria awaits him.
When he goes to the kitchen, though, he finds Giuseppina there. “And Mattia?” he asks.
“The poor wretch is still asleep. She had nightmares last night.”
He watches her serve him a cup of warm milk. “What about you? Did you manage to sleep?”
“A little.”
She takes the broom and starts sweeping while he dips bread into his cup.
She suddenly freezes. She speaks without looking at him. “Tell me the truth.”
He understands, like he’s always understood her. The milk in his mouth turns to poison. “He’s deteriorated. No point in hiding it from you.”
“Did the physician tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Is he dying?”
Ignazio does not reply.
A void forms in front of him. No sound, no warmth. Giuseppina seems to have dissolved, leaving a statue in her place.
Then a sob. And another. The broom comes crashing down. Despair explodes and pours out of her face and her body, from her wide-open mouth.
Ignazio has realized some time ago that when people live together, they end up bonding. You love not the person but your concept of him, the feelings he arouses, even your hatred toward him. You even grow fond of your demons. “Please . . . Don’t do this . . .” he begs her, and can do nothing but clasp her against his chest because she looks as though she’s falling apart, so violent are her sobs.
He muffles her crying against his neck. He realizes he’s also crying, and so they weep together, in each other’s arms. However, once the tears have stopped, he feels her tensing up. Giuseppina lifts her head and they almost brush against each other.
The ghost he carries within turns into a body of flesh and blood that is his at the moment.
Not his brother’s, not his nephew’s. His own.
He’s always been right behind her. He’s never touched her in any way that wasn’t respectful.
He can do it now that Paolo is far away, confined to a bed.
She also looks confused. But when he stares into her eyes, her bewilderment melts away. She puts a hand on his cheek and touches his lips.
For a moment, Ignazio imagines what would have happened if it had been him instead of Paolo.
If Giuseppina had been his woman and Vincenzo his son, and this their home. He imagines the days and nights, the children they could have had in Bagnara or here in Palermo. A small, modest life together that would have made them happy, or at least contented.
But that’s not the life he has.
Giuseppina is his brother’s wife and he is a traitor. That’s what he is: a wicked man.
He closes his eyes. For a moment longer, he holds the life he’s dreamed of. He holds her tight before letting go of her, then leaves before temptation can grab hold of him again.
* * *
A few days later, Mattia returns to Marsala on Master Salvatore’s skiff. Ignazio gave her some money, Giuseppina a long hug. Mattia leaves with a heavy heart, and nothing can ease her grief, not even Vittoria’s tenderness or Vincenzo saying goodbye with a shy, toothless smile. She knows she will never see her brother Paolo again. She knows there are wounds that cannot be healed, that the time for that is over.
* * *
In the bedroom, the illness is a suffocating stench against which the scent of orange blossoms wafting in from outside is powerless. A lemon tree stretches its branches to the window. The sun has the sound of the first crickets chirping in the branches.
By the door, Giuseppina watches Paolo’s chest rise and fall with difficulty. She bites her lips. Everything is coming to a head.
A hand touches her arm. “Here I am. I came as quickly as I could.” Ignazio is next to her, speaking into her ear. “I’ve made all the arrangements at the store. Maurizio will stand in for me for . . . for as long as need be.” But Giuseppina isn’t listening, Ignazio can see it in her bewildered eyes. “I’ve brought Vincenzo with me. He’s playing under the trees. Go and spend some time with him.”
She receives the suggestion with relief.
She wants to cry but can’t. She is suffering for this husband she’s never loved and, at the same time, suffering for herself because she will miss him. It’ll be a void she will have to come to terms with in the years to come.
She’s lived with Paolo with no love, hatred at times. She will not be able to ask forgiveness for the harm they have done to each other. Paolo is reaching a border beyond which they will not be able to speak to each other. They already can’t. The sense of guilt she carries inside her will be her share of purgatory on earth.
Ignazio comes in and dismisses the maid who’s watching in the corner. Hearing his voice, Paolo turns his head. His eyes are glistening with fever.
His brother sits on the bed. He no longer asks him how he’s feeling: they’ve done away with this last hypocritical formality ever since the physician went to the store, a few days earlier, and told him the insidious disease had devoured his lungs. “It’s a matter of days,” he said, “a couple of weeks at most.”
Ignazio thanked him, paid his fee, and carried on working.
Instead, Paolo has resisted much longer than a couple of weeks. It’s the strong constitution and the Florio stubbornness that’s kept him alive.
He grabs Ignazio by the hand. “Today, the maid made me sit under the lemon tree. I started coughing and spat out so much blood, they had to change all my clothes.” He struggles to talk. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, they say.” He attempts an embittered smile. “He’s certainly taking everything away from me.” He coughs. A long, painful fit. He starts speaking again and his voice is like iron scraping stone. “Did Leone, the notary, tell you I’ve made my will?”
Under the handkerchief, Ignazio’s lips are parched. “Yes.”
He struggles for air. Ignazio lifts his head and helps him drink. “Nobody will bother Vincenzo while I live. I found a tutor to teach him Latin and other things instead of Antonino Gagliano, who’s going to be ordained soon . . .”
Paolo’s gesture interrupts him. “All right, all right.” Paolo squeezes his arm and Ignazio feels how little strength he has left. “Listen to me, rather. You have to be what I can no longer be.”<
br />
Ignazio covers his brother’s hand with his. “You know I couldn’t love him any more if he were my own son.”
“No. More. Do you understand? You have to bring him up for me. You’ll be his father. Do you understand? His father.” He looks at him as though trying to get into his head.
Ignazio can’t bear it. He gets up. Outside, Vincenzo and Giuseppina are playing under the lemon tree. He speaks, weighing every word. He doesn’t want to upset Paolo. “I met one of Barbaro’s cousins at the harbor. He gave me a message from our brother-in-law, Paolo.”
Paolo slams his hand on the bed. “Oh, God! I’ve been thinking so much about him and Mattia.” He’s weeping now. “I’ve realized this is the punishment the Lord has sent me. When he was ill, I could have helped him. It would have been a charitable deed. When our sister came here, I could have seen her, poor wretch, but I . . . Instead, I did nothing. I even rejected her.” He dries his eyes. “You’ll tell Mattia I forgive her, won’t you? And that she must forgive me? I didn’t, I did nothing! The devil had grabbed me by the soul, damn me.”
Ignazio looks at him. He wants to say something, comfort him, but his voice refuses to come out of his throat, and his heart seems to have clamped and tightened like a child’s fist. His brother is terrified, he can see it in his face. He must feel death coming closer if he’s asking for forgiveness like this, if he’s finally repenting for his harshness.
Paolo lifts his head from the pillow. His hair, matted with sweat, sticks to his forehead. “So? What’s Barbaro’s message?”
Ignazio forces himself to reply. His voice, a prisoner at first, is freed with a sigh. “He says he’s praying for you and hopes you recover soon.” He doesn’t know why he finds these words ridiculous. He starts to laugh and, a moment later, his brother follows.
They laugh together, as though life were a huge joke, as though Paolo’s consumption is nothing but a trick played by the Creator, as though they could go back and put everything right. And yet it’s not, and that’s what’s funny: that it’s all true and there will be no peace, that everything will remain unresolved, interrupted, shattered.
The Florios of Sicily Page 9