by Jo Riccioni
On the road, she stood in her muddy stockinged feet, her bike against her hip, the hood of the mac dripping before her. ‘Thank you,’ she pointed back towards the bridle path, ‘for showing me the thrush’s nest.’ She articulated the words. He held his soaked hair back against his head and, despite the rain, considered her slowly. The skin of his forehead shone.
‘It’s a nightingale,’ he said.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he continued, ‘It will go soon.’ He squinted at the dull sky, like he was searching for something. ‘To the sun … to Africa.’
She felt ridiculous standing shoeless in the rain before him, understanding now that his silence all along had been from choice, not necessity. She hurried onto her bike, but hesitated, giving him the opportunity to speak again. When he didn’t, she pedalled off without saying goodbye.
At the top of Bythorn Rise she stopped and glanced back. He was sitting on the gate, following her progress up the hill, still unconcerned about the rain. He might have always been sitting there, like some owl on the barn gable at dusk, unnoticed and all-seeing, shifting to the measure of his own, instinctive clock. She thought about his careful English, accented but not laboured, and her naive assumptions. She had equated his silence, his foreignness, with a kind of stupidity, as Mrs Cleat or Aunty Bea would have done. Of course the bird was a nightingale. He must think her dim, not knowing the common birds of the hedgerow that bounded her in on every side. She vaguely remembered a lesson where Mr Gilbert had traced their migratory patterns on the world map. ‘From Leyton to London fifteen times over,’ he had told them, and she had been filled with awe imagining a bird’s-eye view of a vast London, not even able to picture a world that lay fifteen times beyond that.
She cycled over the crest of the hill but dismounted, bringing her bike around. She wanted to see if he was still there. She felt petty and ungrateful now and thought she should wave to him. But when she got back to the top of the rise, the gate was empty and he was nowhere to be seen, as if, with the calling crows, he had taken flight over the brooding spinney. She hadn’t even asked his name.
Montelupini
1939
Lucio squatted on the battlement walls, studying the changeover from dusk to dark. In a few blinks, the colours of the mountains all around him would submerge, the blue of night pooling up from the valley. Far down the range, the rooftops of Gavignano, grafted on the hill, caught the last light and glimmered like a spun coin. It always made him wonder whether Montelupini was ever so dazzling at sunset, but he had never been far enough away to look back and see. The moon began to show him the details of night-time in the village: the huddle of mules stirring on the campo, the cat with the broken tail stalking the washhouse roof, a bat’s shadow on the cobbles of Via del Soccorso.
Below him, at the Osteria Nettuno, the men were drinking and cursing at scopa. Through the beams of the pergola, he could make out the tops of caps, the pates of heads shining under the single bulb, the coins and cards tossed among the glasses.
‘She’s a beauty, my Valeriana. Purest Roman blood, see. No dross mixed in.’ The voice of Urso, the butcher, was always the easiest to single out. Its bass was deep and hummed like a well. Lucio could see the spread of his colossal hands, the cards dwarfed inside them. ‘I knew she’d give fine babies. But this bitch of a hand! Ma, que bruta!’ He palmed the table.
The talk stopped and the play began. Cards were scooped and flipped in quick succession, until a round of groans rose into the night, cut with the growl of the butcher’s victory. Lucio loved Urso’s laugh, with its weight of cigarettes; the way he could feel it rumble inside him, like logs down the hillside. And he liked the butcher to win at scopa, especially when he played against his father.
‘Nine of them, there were. Nine puppies, straight out, no fuss. Afterwards she looks at me, proud as if she was suckling Romulus and Remus themselves! Didn’t you, my beauty?’ Urso’s hand went to the ears of the great hunting dog at his side, who answered by resting her head on his thigh. There was a shuffling of the deck and of feet beneath the table. Someone hocked noisily, and Lucio saw it arc towards the open drain.
‘So, Urso, tell us about the puppies,’ a voice drawled. ‘Do they look like you?’ There were sniggers and wheezes, the dull applause of shoulders and legs being clapped. It was Lucio’s grandfather, the grappa already bolstering his voice. Lucio knew that, later, it would turn on Nonno Raimondi and have the last laugh, that his grandfather would be witless and blind as a whelp himself, mewling and puking in the gutter. And Lucio would have to help him home.
‘Go on and enjoy yourselves, why don’t you?’ Urso said. ‘But any good hunter can see she’s a cane corso, like in the picture.’ He raised his knee to make the dog sit tall, as in the bookplate of a Roman hunting scene he had framed behind the counter of his shop. ‘Il Duce himself would be proud to have such a beast by his side.’ He always said this when he was teased for indulging the dog, but Lucio thought it might be true. Next to the rangy curs chained to vineyards all around Montelupini, Valeriana was a gladiator among dogs. ‘You only have to look at her to know the blood of Caesar’s boarhounds flows in her veins.’
‘Beh! And the blood of the Medici masters flows in mine,’ Nonno Raimondi slurred, ‘but it doesn’t make me Botticelli.’
‘You have to admit, though, the dog is like the one in the drawing,’ Fagiolo, the innkeeper, called from the bar inside. ‘Noble jaw on her.’
‘Noble, my cock. Still shits in the street, doesn’t she?’ Nonno Raimondi was beginning to chew and drool over the words as if through a mouthful of torrone. ‘Damn what the beast looks like! What does it do?’
‘Do?’ Urso said. ‘What does any dog do?’
‘Everyone in my family has to earn their dinner.’ Nonno Raimondi belched melodiously.
‘And most of yours too, it seems, old man.’
The osteria fell quiet. Lucio felt the brittle chill of his father’s voice in his bones, like a winter wind off the eastern ranges. His words always carved a silence in the bar and seemed to hang alone in the night air. In the hush, Lucio heard Nonno Raimondi snorting back phlegm and shuffling to the bar to stew.
‘Perhaps what my father-in-law meant to ask, Urso, was when the dog will be back at work again?’
‘Back hunting, you mean?’
His father didn’t answer. In the distant orchards of the Vigna Nuova a faint clang sounded, like chain links against a metal trough, and high up on the slopes of Montemezzo, Lucio thought he heard a wolf’s bark.
Before she fell pregnant, he would spot Urso and Valeriana climbing up Via del Soccorso at sunrise with a kill: badger and rabbit, mainly; sometimes squirrel, which looked like rats when skinned and hanging in the window of the butcher’s shop. Now and again there was a young boar laid out on the counter, which would stop the jokes at the bar for a while. But since the puppies, Valeriana had been out of action, and Urso’s coddling of the dog had provided too much new material when the scopa hands were dull.
‘Santa Lucia, what are you going to do with nine puppies?’ Fagiolo asked, clearing the empty glasses from the table. ‘I’ve got a big sack and a barrel of rainwater if you need them.’
Urso ignored the sniggers. ‘I’ll have to sell them.’ He seemed regretful, but added, ‘Cane corso fetch a good price at the Monteferro markets.’
‘What kind of price?’ Nonno Raimondi called through the open doors.
‘More than you’ve got, Barilotto. Especially after that hand!’ Urso swept the coins towards him. ‘I’ll keep one of them to make a hunting pair.’ He paused, and through the pergola Lucio saw him glance uncertainly at his father. ‘Actually, Capo, I promised one to your eldest boy.’
Lucio held his breath. He shifted along the wall so he could get a better view of the two men. Urso had let him handle the puppies at the back of the shop every day since they had been b
orn, but the butcher had never said anything about giving him one. He understood now: Urso was speaking up for him, seeking the permission that Lucio would never dare ask of his father.
‘What d’you say, Capo? Your Gufo could use a dog, eh?’
His father reached for his glass and drained it.
‘What d’you think?’ Urso asked again, more timidly now.
‘What do I think?’ His father’s voice was flat, with that ominous tone he used to make people question themselves.
‘Well, what would I know?’ Urso shrugged and fanned the cards open and shut in his ruddy hands. ‘It’s just that he came by this morning before school. I’d asked him to make a likeness of Valeriana for me. You know what a skill he has with the pencil. You should see the picture he drew! I’m going to hang it in the shop.’ He squeezed his fingers together and shook them upwards. ‘A puppy, Capo, what’s a boy without a puppy, I ask you?’ The butcher was talking too fast. He laughed, but Lucio heard no rumble in it this time. There was only his father’s silence and the scrape of chairs against the flagstones.
The two figures that emerged from the pergola stood under the streetlight before the entrance to Vicolo Giotto. His father seemed no more than a boy next to the butcher’s bulk.
‘I saw the lad with one of the pups, Capo,’ Urso explained. ‘It drew him out a bit, you know, put some sparkle in his eyes.’ He waited for an answer. When it didn’t come he breathed, ‘Madosca, you said yourself, the boy needs to come out of his shell.’
‘And this runt is going to teach him to open his mouth more, to join in, make friends?’ Lucio imagined the stiffness in his father’s lips when he said one thing and meant another.
‘Maybe,’ Urso said feebly.
His father held his hands behind his back and squared himself to the butcher. ‘Urso, we’ve had our recall papers for a reason. Albania’s just the beginning. In a few months we could be in the colonies — pushing through Africa, even. War is coming, it’s just a question of when Il Duce sees fit. And then who knows when we’ll be back? That boy needs to grow up, be responsible for planting grain, bringing in fruit. He doesn’t need to waste time on a puppy. You think scribbling his pretty pictures is going to help him put food on the table?’
‘He’s got a gift for it, is all. Like his grandfather.’
‘A gift? Like Barilotto?’ Lucio could see his father nodding slowly, but his voice was as tight as a wire. ‘And that’s what I should encourage, is it? Half-finished murals and blurred effigies all through the mountains? Spending all he earns on models and only ever bringing home the clap?’ He flicked his head back towards the bar, where a liquid voice very much like Nonno Raimondi’s had begun singing a stornello. ‘Barilotto’s gift is to turn everything to drink. And he even pisses that away at the end of the night.’
Urso cleared his throat and scratched at the back of his head. ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘Understood.’
His father had this sway over men, twisting their intentions with his words, moulding them to his own purpose. They said he’d earned his nickname, Capo, the chief, as a boy; and even before he became the Fascist commissioner, everyone in the village — including Professore Centini, the mayor — went to him for advice.
‘Listen, Urso,’ his father said, his tone relenting. ‘You want to give that boy something? Take him hunting. Show him some of the skill of it. That’s what he needs.’
‘Gufo on the hunt? You mean the courses up at Montemezzo?’ His father didn’t answer. Urso wiped a palm across his mouth. ‘It’s a bit early for boar hunting. They’re still breeding, you know.’ He seemed to fidget under his father’s gaze. ‘And the boy’s still young. You sure he has the stomach for it? Gufo’s … well, Gufo’s the owl, isn’t he? He’s a loner, a watcher — those eyes of his taking everything to heart, you know? Now that Primo of yours, he’s a different cut entirely. I can see him with a pike or a skinning knife.’
‘Lucio’s the eldest. He’s eleven and it’s time he acted like it. An owl doesn’t just observe, Urso.’ His father brought the back of one hand down onto the palm of the other, and the sound slapped against the battlement walls. ‘It strikes.’ Lucio saw his pale face tilt up to the lookouts. ‘The boy needs to start earning that name.’
They began the climb up Montemezzo before sunrise. The first rays broke over the mountains, casting the woods first in silver and then in gold. A honeyed haze lingered in the trees and promised heat. ‘Bastard horseflies up at the lake can bite like demons, even in autumn,’ Urso complained. ‘Best to be getting back before midday.’ He glanced at Valeriana as he said this, and Lucio could tell he was thinking of the dog’s hungry puppies, not horseflies. She darted between them as they walked the mule track, disappearing into the tall grass at its edge and emerging further ahead, all the while softly whining, her dugs swinging heavy underneath her. He wondered whether she was excited to return to the mountain, or fretting at leaving her babies so soon. Every so often she froze mid-step, her body cleaving the breeze, her nose wet, a shudder rippling through her sleek skin.
Urso clicked his tongue to her as he walked. He wore his corduroy hunting jacket, baggy and crudely sewn with leather patches at the elbows. Its pockets bulged and swung to the measure of his stride, and Lucio puzzled at their weight. His father was next, carrying a canvas bag of the butcher’s slung across his back and strapped with a leather belt to keep its contents from rattling. From its top, a short section of rope had escaped, and it danced behind his shoulder as he walked. Lucio studied its russet patina, shiny from use, mulling on the inside of his lip until he could taste the blood in his mouth.
Valeriana crossed his path and stopped to sniff again the way they had come. ‘Cammina. Forza, su!’ the butcher coaxed, but when Lucio glanced up, Urso’s eyes were not on his dog. They were on him. Lucio snatched his gaze away. It might have been easier if he hadn’t liked the butcher so much. But he did: he liked the way Urso beckoned him into the shop to thrust a slice of guanciale in his mouth; the way his great jaw went slack as Lucio sketched the puppies; or how he grunted his satisfaction at the runt of Valeriana’s litter burrowing with translucent claws to suckle beside the others. Lucio couldn’t bear to disappoint his small, unspoken encouragements. But now, with his father there, he could feel his own failure before he had even begun. He felt it hanging over him even more than when he stood in line with the Balilla scouts at drill in the piazza. Boy by boy, battle by battle, they would shout out the chronology of Italy’s military victories, and his father’s attention would always hover somewhere nearby, restless, as Lucio stood mute, clawing a hole in the pocket of his uniform. It was even worse now, because at drill Primo was always there to yell over the void of him, appeasing their father with the jut of his chin. Urso was right. His brother should have been the one to come. Primo would have kept pace with the butcher up the mule track, asking all the right questions, discussing the lay of the grounds, what weapons they would choose. It was Primo who should have been there. They all knew it. Especially his father.
When they reached the plateau of Montemezzo, the chestnuts were tall and dense with yellowing leaves and fruit. They stood for a while, breathing hard from the climb. Lucio could taste the sweet rot of the forest on his tongue, the smell of autumn that had already arrived on the mountain. In the clearing they rested on a tumble of boulders, green with mosses and lichens. He expected they would take the path that sloped down to the lake and the tangled glades of the woods beyond. But instead they headed along the ridge, to the chain of caves where the grotto of Santa Lucia dei Boschi was set into the mountainside.
‘She has the best view in the Lepini,’ Urso murmured, nudging his head towards the saint in her chapel behind them. Lucio stood next to him on the rocky outcrop, taking in the valley shaken out before them. Far below, the walls and rooftops of Montelupini seemed cold and strangely spent, cobbled as they were between the wooded hills that w
ere beginning to glow like embers with the change of season. Even Valeriana was quiet, as if she too understood the sad majesty of summer’s passing.
Lucio charted the year from this spot. In spring, he would escape the gangs of children playing football on the campo and climb there to trace falcons or griffons wheeling their lazy circles below him. The air was sharp then, the valley hard and clean as a pencil line, so clear he could see a shed feather if it spiralled down the range. In winter he came here to see the first snows, the mists swallowing up the village below, so that all he could hear were its muted mechanics: a discordant cowbell, the tick of a saw, the tock of an axe.
His father was rattling at the lock of the chapel grille behind them. ‘Padre Ruggiero gave me a key,’ he said. ‘We’ll ask a blessing for the hunt.’ He motioned Lucio to follow him into the damp air of the cave, their steps echoing in the empty chamber. It felt odd to enter the chapel in the daylight, the hymns and candles and prayers of a hundred people replaced by the murmur of the woods. He’d only ever been inside at midnight, for the Saint’s Mass in December. He would line up then with the rest of the village in the frozen night to kiss the feet of Santa Lucia and take communion from Padre Ruggiero. His father always led the procession, one of the litter-bearers honoured with taking the effigy back down the mountain to her winter home in San Pietro’s.
The saint’s statue stood at shoulder height. It was recessed into the rendered wall, the dim light through the gate catching the gold of her diadem. It glinted like hidden treasure, which Nonno Raimondi told him it would easily have become, had the villagers not hung the grille across the grotto’s entrance in the days when the caves were the hideouts of highwaymen. Lucio watched his father take a box of matches from his pocket and light two candles on the altar. He kissed the foot of the saint and settled into a pew. Lucio fell in line behind him.