by Gay Talese
“Mille grazie,” responded Cristiani, bowing slightly as he carefully removed the trousers from the hanger and handed them to Mr. Castiglia. Excusing himself, Mr. Castiglia walked into the fitting room. He closed the door. A few of the tailors began to pace around the showroom, but Cristiani stood near the fitting room, whistling softly to himself. The bodyguard, still wearing his cloak and hat, sat comfortably in a chair, his legs crossed, smoking a thin cigar. The apprentices gathered in the back room, out of sight, except for my nervous father, who remained in the showroom busily arranging and rearranging stacks of material on a counter, while keeping an eye focused on the fitting room.
For more than a minute not a word was spoken. The only sounds heard were made by Mr. Castiglia as he changed his trousers. First there was the thump of his shoes dropping to the floor. Then the faint whishing rustle of trouser legs being stepped into. Seconds later, a loud bump against the wooden partition As Mr. Castiglia presumably lost his balance while standing on one leg. After a sigh, a cough, and the creaking sound of shoe leather—more silence. But then, suddenly, a deep voice from behind the door bellowed: “Maestro!” Then louder: “MAESTRO!”
The door bolted open, revealing the glowering face and crouched figure of Mr. Castiglia, his fingers pointing downward toward his bent knees and the winged design on the trousers. Waddling toward Cristiani, he yelled: “Maestro—che avete fatto qui?”—What have you done here?
The bodyguard jumped, scowling at Cristiani. My father closed his eyes. The tailors stepped back. But Francesco Cristiani stood straight and still, remaining impassive even when the bodyguard’s hand moved inside his cloak.
“What have you done?” Mr. Castiglia repeated, still squatting on bent knees, as if suffering from locked joints. Cristiani watched him silently for a second or two; but finally, in the authoritarian tone of a teacher chiding a student, Cristiani responded: “Oh, how disappointed I am in you! How sad and insulted am I by your failure to appreciate the honor I was trying to bestow upon you, because I thought you deserved it—but sadly, I was wrong.…”
Before the confused Vincenzo Castiglia could open his mouth, Cristiani continued: “You demanded to know what I had done with your trousers—not realizing that what I had done was introduce you to the modern world, which is where I thought you belonged. When you first entered this shop for a fitting last month, you seemed so different from the backward people of this region. So sophisticated. So individualistic. You had traveled to America, you said, had seen the New World, and I assumed that you were in touch with the contemporary spirit of freedom—but I greatly misjudged you.… New clothes, alas, do not remake the man within.…”
Carried away by his own grandiloquence, Cristiani turned toward his senior tailor, who stood closest to him, and he impulsively repeated an old southern Italian proverb that he regretted uttering immediately after the words had slipped out of his mouth.
“Lavar la testa all’asino è acqua persa,” Cristiani intoned: Washing a donkey’s head is a waste of water.
Stunned silence swept through the entire shop. My father cringed behind the counter. Cristiani’s tailors, horrified by his provocation, gasped and trembled as they saw Mr. Castiglia’s face redden, his eyes narrow—and no one would have been surprised if the next sound were the explosion of a gun. Indeed, Cristiani himself lowered his head and seemed resigned to this fate—but strangely, having now gone too far to turn back, Cristiani recklessly repeated his words: “Lavar la testa …”—Washing a donkey’s head is a waste of water.
Mr. Castiglia did not respond. He sputtered, he bit his lips, but he said not a word. Perhaps, having never before experienced such brazenness from anyone, particularly not from a tiny tailor, Mr. Castiglia was too wonderstruck to act. Even his bodyguard now seemed paralyzed, with his hand still inside his cloak. After a few more seconds of silence, the eyes in Cristiani’s lowered head moved tentatively upward, and he saw Mr. Castiglia standing with his shoulders slouched, his head hanging slightly, and a glazed and remorseful look in his eyes. He then looked at Cristiani and winced. Finally, he spoke.
“My late mother would use that expression when I made her angry,” Mr. Castiglia confided softly. After a pause, he added, “She died when I was very young.”
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Cristiani said, as the tension subsided in the room. “I do hope, however, that you will accept my word that we did try to make you a beautiful suit for Easter. I was just so disappointed that your trousers, which are designed in the latest fashion, did not appeal to you.”
Looking down once again at the knees, Mr. Castiglia asked: “This is the latest fashion?”
“Yes, indeed,” Cristiani reassured him.
“Where?”
“In the great capitals of the world.”
“But not here?”
“Not yet,” Cristiani said. “You are the first among the men of this region.”
“But why does the latest fashion in this region have to begin with me?” Mr. Castiglia asked, in a voice that now seemed uncertain.
“Oh, no, it has not really begun with you,” Cristiani quickly corrected him. “We tailors have already adopted this fashion.” And holding up one of his trouser knees, he said: “See for yourself.”
Mr. Castiglia looked down to examine Cristiani’s knees; and then, as he turned to survey the entire room, he saw the other tailors, one after another, each lift a leg and, nodding, point to the now familiar wings of the infinitesimal bird.
“I see,” Mr. Castiglia said softly. “And I see that I also owe you my apologies, maestro,” he went on. “Sometimes it takes a while for a man to appreciate what is fashionable.”
Then, after shaking Cristiani’s hand and settling the financial account—but seemingly not wanting to linger a moment longer in this place where his uncertainty had been exposed—Mr. Castiglia summoned his obedient and speechless bodyguard and handed him his old suit. Wearing his new suit, and tipping his hat, Mr. Castiglia headed toward his carriage through the door that had been pulled wide open by my father.
10.
As Mr. Castiglia’s carriage rumbled down the gravel road and finally disappeared behind the clouds of dust that rose along the verdant slopes of the olive-clustered hillside, the jubilant tailors started to remove the dead men’s trousers and reclaim their own clothing—but Cristiani quickly stopped them with an upraised hand. “Stay dressed as you are! You heard me tell Mr. Castiglia that we have adopted this new fashion, and so now we must continue to follow it, at least for a week. We must be sure that if he returns to town, he will find us as he left us.”
Despite much demurring, Cristiani imposed his will, as usual, and so for the next several days the tailors wore the wing-kneed trousers, which the apprentices regularly sponged and pressed; and my father, who was then not yet eight years of age, worked in the front of the shop, near the large window, so that he might keep an eye on the street and alert everyone should he observe the return of Mr. Castiglia’s carriage.
Young Joseph Talese eagerly accepted this chore as part of his atonement, and he was very relieved that his uncle had retained him as an apprentice; for had Cristiani dismissed him, Joseph might have been forced to spend his nonschool hours toiling on the family farm—a place that, having worked there during the autumn harvest, he loathed with intensity. He hated its sounds and smells, its grunting, snorting animals, its horseflies incessantly buzzing around the dung-strewn stables and stalls.
On dry days, the farm roads were suffocatingly dusty. When it rained, they were ankle-deep in mud. During the harvest, when Joseph and the other students were excused from school so that they could help the farmers, they had to work in the fields among dozens of crude and bizarre-looking itinerant workers who came down from their hillside caves each morning to barter their labor for sackloads of olives and grapes, which they would later convert into cooking oil and heavy, intoxicating wine.
Joseph was repelled by the mere sight of these men from the caves. They were very
dark and their skin was craggy; they rarely wore shoes or shirts, but rather worked in filthy, loose-fitting trousers held up by thick leather belts, from which hung small sheathed daggers; and on their heads were conical felt hats that had been out of style since the Middle Ages. Whenever they opened their mouths they showed several teeth missing; and when they communicated with one another, they did so with much hand gesturing and with rasping, guttural sounds understood by no one outside their group.
There were usually a number of women among them, a few of whom were larger and taller than the men—Amazonian figures with broad shoulders, round strong-boned faces, and thick dark hair that they braided high on their heads and covered with handkerchiefs. Leaning over in the fields to gather olives and grapes, they often allowed their breasts to fall out of their blouses; and since the lower halves of their long skirts were pulled up and tied at their waists with pieces of rope, the smooth naked flesh of their thighs was exposed to whoever wished to look. Joseph had never before seen a woman’s thighs and breasts, and whenever he was sent to the fields he blushed with embarrassment even on observing this expanse of flesh from afar; and yet he was fascinated.
One day, with a bold sense of daring, he moved quietly through the cornstalks toward a partly naked woman who was working in the nearby fields under a row of olive trees. She was tall, with long muscular arms and large hands that vigorously shook the lower limbs of the trees to release the olives. When the olives had fallen onto the white sheets that she had laid along the ground, she bent over to gather them into sacks—exposing her dark-nippled breasts that protruded beyond the unbuttoned part of her white sackcloth blouse. She was working alone, there was no one near her; and as she shook the branches and filled one sack after another, Joseph could hear her heavy breathing above the sound of the flies and the rustling of the dry leaves in the hot autumn breeze that swept through the sprawling farmland.
Suddenly, she turned and glanced in Joseph’s direction. He was about fifty feet away from her, standing within the thick cluster of cornstalks that rose above his head, a cover that he had assumed provided ideal camouflage. As she looked to the left, and then to the right, he could see that she was a sturdy woman of indeterminate age with a rawboned but pleasant face that was roasted brown by the sun and contrasted with her white breasts. Hanging between them was a small wooden crucifix attached to a string around her neck.
Still not spotting Joseph, she held up a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and then stepped back a few paces, deeper into the shade of the olive tree. She gazed more intently into the cornfields. From the way she continuously looked back to where he was standing, Joseph knew that he had been caught. And yet she did nothing. She just stood there studying him silently, her blouse still unbuttoned. There was no anger in her face. Her expression was impassive. It was as if she was neither shocked nor surprised to discover a young voyeur lurking within the corn.
Too confused to move, Joseph felt a feverish perspiration trickling from his forehead and over his body, clinging to his coarse cotton gray shirt and pants, and dampening his feet, which stood unsteadily within the rag-stuffed oversized boots he had borrowed from his older brother. He tried to say something, but could not. He continued to look at her, though now more obliquely; and she, in her mysterious way, went on looking at him while also wiping her hands slowly with the small towel that dangled from the rope around the waist of her long skirt.
As Joseph continued to stare, the woman smiled at him. It was a wide smile, really a grin, which revealed two missing front teeth. Then she raised a hand indolently in front of her face, pointing toward him, and began motioning with her index finger for him to come closer. Joseph did not budge. But a moment later she was walking in his direction, and he panicked.
Suddenly energized, as if snapping out of a trance, he spun around and fled, thrashing through the sagging leaves of the stalks that flailed his face, and twice he stumbled in his loose-fitting boots while scampering along the narrow path between the rows of corn. He ran through the orange groves, through the cabbage fields, across the cow pasture, past the bewildered faces of dozens of observing farm laborers. Finally, out of breath, he paused in front of a large stone barn where his older brother, Sebastian, was stacking hay with a pitchfork.
Joseph had no intention of telling Sebastian anything about the woman. Sebastian was habitually mocking him, making fun of him; and Joseph knew that if he dared describe the woman to his brother, he would later relay the information in a distorted way to their mother and make everything seem lurid. Sebastian was their mother’s favorite child, and whatever he told her she seemed willing and eager to believe. During the two-year absence of their father in America, Sebastian had asserted himself as the masculine head of the family, and he had an almost unchallenged authority over Joseph and the two younger children. Their mother had tacitly encouraged this, welcoming Sebastian’s assistance in running the household, his filial devotion when she was lonely or depressed, and, of course, his financial contributions from his job on their grandfather’s farm.
Although Sebastian was twelve, his tall and hefty stature allowed him to convince strangers that he was at least two or three years older; and Joseph risked having his ears boxed crimson if he ever challenged Sebastian’s presumed right to exaggerate his age. Joseph tried not to challenge his older brother on any issue. He obeyed Sebastian when it was necessary; he avoided Sebastian when it was possible. And now, having escaped the woman in the olive fields, Joseph was trying to avoid Sebastian in the barnyard by stepping quickly behind a wagon loaded with hay and slipping into the nearby woodlands.
“Hey, where are you going?” Sebastian yelled from behind a haystack, just as Joseph thought that he had disappeared from view.
“I’m late for school,” Joseph called back, not stopping.
“There’s no school today, you little fool!”
Sebastian ran after Joseph with his pitchfork. Joseph stopped, eyes focused on the ground.
“And from the looks of you,” Sebastian continued, now standing over his brother, “you’ve just done something terrible.”
“I have not,” Joseph protested.
“Then how come you’re sweating like a pig, and looking like you’ve just seen a ghost?”
Joseph said nothing. Sebastian jammed his pitchfork into the dirt in front of Joseph’s feet. Then he grabbed hold of Joseph’s arms from behind and locked them across his back.
“Where have you been?” Sebastian demanded.
“In the olive fields,” Joseph replied, grimacing.
“Who with?”
Joseph remained silent.
“Who with?” Sebastian repeated, pulling Joseph’s arms up higher and twisting them so tightly up toward his neck that he soon could no longer stand the pain.
“There was a woman down there!” he blurted out.
Sebastian reduced the pressure. But when Joseph did not continue talking, Sebastian again tightened his grip.
“The woman had her blouse unbuttoned!” Joseph cried out finally. “I could see her breasts, and she called me over to her.”
Howling with laughter and disbelief, Sebastian softened his grip.
“No woman wants a skinny runt like you! And you wouldn’t know an unclothed woman if you saw one.”
As Joseph complained about spasms in his back and arms, Sebastian stopped taunting him but did not release him. He held him tightly, laughed, and pressed his face down close to Joseph’s neck and asked, in a sniggering manner: “Would you really like to see what a woman looks like with her clothes off?”
Joseph did not answer.
“You can come to the main barn with me today during the siesta,” Sebastian continued. “There’s a ladder in the back that reaches the roof, and from there you can look down and see some of the cave women and men in the hay. You want to know what they do together in the hay?”
“No,” Joseph shouted, trying to cover his ears with his hands, and still unable to free himself.
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“They do the same thing you’ve seen the animals do,” Sebastian said, pulling him tighter.
Joseph said nothing. Closing his eyes, he remained motionless, now resigned to the pinned position. He felt disgust and humiliation. Sebastian’s breath was upon his neck. Except for the chirping of the birds in the trees, and the distant mooing of cows, he heard no other sounds on the farm. He was controlled by Sebastian. Yet he was determined not to cry. He anticipated more harassment, but now Sebastian almost seemed to be getting weary or bored. His head rested on Joseph’s back for a few moments, and then he suddenly released him. Joseph slumped forward, his arms falling heavily and numbly to his sides. He crouched with his head between his knees and began to rub his arms. Sebastian came around and stood in front of him. Joseph saw Sebastian’s dusty boots but he did not look up.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Sebastian say. Sebastian handed him a handkerchief, as if Joseph were crying, but Joseph swatted it away. It fell to the ground. Joseph straightened up and turned away from Sebastian. Across the field he saw a horse-drawn wagon filled with workers, dust rising from the wheels. It was about time for the siesta. Ignoring Sebastian, though aware of his unmoving shadow slanted beside him, he walked quickly toward the woodland path that led uphill to the road back to the village, still feeling pain and numbness in his arms. At this moment, he hated his brother. He hated him, and he also pitied him. Sebastian was stuck on the farm.
While Sebastian had resented their grandfather’s forcing him onto the farm, he had also disliked going to school. In contrast to Joseph, Sebastian had been unable to keep up with the daily lessons in the classroom. He could barely read and write. He was also a troublemaker. After several complaints from the teachers, he permanently dropped out of school; and that was when their seventy-three-year-old grandfather, Domenico Talese, the patriarch of the family in Maida, had seized the opportunity to place Sebastian on the farm full-time.
Although fifty other Talese relatives and friends were already employed on the farm, Domenico often complained that they were mostly pigri, lazy, and meschini, good-for-nothing, and also too old and brittleboned for the laborious work. The younger, more energetic men of the village had been lured away by the fantasy of democracy in America, Domenico often observed sourly, neglecting to mention that among the pioneering fantasists was his firstborn son, Gaetano, the forty-year-old father of Sebastian and Joseph, who had first fled to America as an adventurous bachelor of sixteen, back in 1888, after a quarrel with Domenico. According to what Joseph had been told by his mother (who had married his father during one of his visits home, but had steadfastly refused to accompany him back to America), the early quarrel between Gaetano and Domenico had arisen from Gaetano’s resistance to his father’s determination to subjugate him to farm life. And now Domenico was trying to do the same thing to Gaetano’s oldest son, Sebastian—while seeking to pacify Sebastian with the promise that if he obeyed his grandfather and remained close enough to absorb his wisdom, he would someday become the sole inheritor of his grandfather’s estate—which included not only the farm, but also Domenico’s wheat mill, his aqueduct, his moneylending business (if Sebastian learned to emulate his shrewdness, Domenico emphasized to his grandson), and also the row of stone hillside houses that Domenico owned and the extended Talese family occupied as tenants.