by Jo Riccioni
‘That’s Bill,’ Uncle Jack said. ‘Always clowning about at some such acrobatics.’
She peered at their faces, tipping the card closer to the firelight. ‘You’re all so young and … happy.’
Uncle Jack’s breath whistled through his nose again. ‘They were, I suppose. I were always tagging along, me. Chaperoning. That’s what we did in them days.’
‘Do you mean Aunty Bea was with —’
‘Oh yeah, she were Bill’s girl alright.’ He tapped one heel on the toe of the other foot, as if to shift some grit from his slipper.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
Uncle Jack gave a low grumble, like he was dragging the memory from the depths of him, reluctantly. ‘He always had his heart set on going overseas, Bill, even when he were young. America. Didn’t have the class system holding a man back, he reckoned.’ He drew his mouth into a pout. ‘Maybe so. Anyway, he up and did it. Well before the war, this was. Your aunt was supposed to join him once he were settled. But she never seemed to get round to it, even though he kept writing and asking. And somehow, in her mind, the fact that she didn’t go turned into him leaving her, hankering after something more, as if he’d got beyond himself. That’s the version she likes to tell, anyway.’
‘Did she love him?’
Uncle Jack lifted his chin in a faint acknowledgement.
‘So you think she was too scared to leave? You know, to take a chance on a better life?’
He paused, considering. ‘I think at first she hoped he’d come back with his tail between his legs. But after a while she gave up waiting … that’s where I came in.’ He shrugged but wouldn’t hold her gaze. ‘Like I said, he ended up with the Yanks in Italy during the war and that’s where he stayed. Maybe she thought she’d made the right decision, then. I don’t know …’ He tilted his head back against the chair again, his eyes closed. ‘Feeling justified only patches up a broken heart,’ he said. ‘It don’t mend it.’
She considered the photo again: Jack looking at Bea looking at Bill.
‘You know, I never could decide whether she married me to spite him or to spite herself,’ he said, and he reached out his hand to take the photo back from her. She watched him slip it away inside his book. ‘She were a stubborn little thing, our Bea. Still is, I reckon.’
Connie made a soft huff of agreement as she mulled over it all.
‘Bea likes a fight, sure enough,’ Uncle Jack said, ‘and most of all with herself.’ She glanced up at him when he said it, his expression knowing in the firelight. ‘Not so unlike someone else I know.’
Her cheeks were burning as she got up, but the embers in the fire were nearly dead, and the air in the room smelled ashen and old, like the great atlas in the library of the Big House, something that was becoming nothing more than a memory of childhood.
Montelupini
1943
Under the pergola of the osteria, Fagiolo was roasting chestnuts in an oil drum. Their woody sweetness wafted through the night every time the innkeeper tossed them with his paddle, and Lucio, pacing the battlements above, felt his empty stomach creak louder than his boots on the freezing stones. Above the range, the sky was clean and brittle, the stars glinting sharp as grit. The procession to Montemezzo would be slow that night, the track icy and treacherous the higher they got. He jammed his hands under his armpits and breathed warm air into the upturned collar of his jacket.
Padre Ruggiero had named him a litter-bearer for Santa Lucia’s effigy. He felt the responsibility of it, the silent resentment and reproaches of the village weighing heavy in his bones, like he was coming down with the flu. It made him miss his brother more than ever. Vittorio would have done it: borne the saint’s litter as well as the talk of the village, dispatching both with the easy swagger of his walk, a single hook of his eyebrow. It was Primo they wanted to see, Primo who could silence them, not him. He blew on his numb fingers and remembered a joke Nonno Raimondi loved to tell on the saint’s day. His grandfather would stand in the doorway of the osteria as the weary procession fogged through the piazzetta in the early hours of the morning, bringing the effigy back from the mountain to the church in the village. ‘Just imagine,’ he would slur to the litter-bearers, ‘if you’d chosen a saint with a name day in July, you’d have peaches for balls instead of little frozen raisins.’ Nonno Raimondi always said the midnight trek in the depths of winter was the greatest testament to Montelupini’s stupidity. And yet his grandfather went along with everyone else to gaze at the saint as she was raised to her dais in San Pietro’s.
The villagers were filling the piazzetta now, gathering with their lanterns and candles for the start of the march. But they kept close to the walls and huddled about each other, and Lucio knew it wasn’t only from the cold. The Germans had lifted the curfew for the saint’s feast, but the Montelupinese were awkward, already suspicious of a freedom they had so recently taken for granted. Maybe Vittorio was right: they were a village used to being told what to do. Perhaps it was in their nature, he thought. Perhaps it was in his.
He had done what Otto had told him to, without question. He had taken the money and scoured Cori to buy whatever supplies he could, while his mother tried the villagers for news of Vittorio. But neither food nor news was easy to come by these days, even if you had money. In a side alley off the town’s piazza they had found an old woman who sold them a dry finger of pecorino. ‘Madosca!’ his mother said as Lucio handed over a thousand lire. ‘What is it, gold?’
‘No, signora.’ The woman’s hands were as desiccated as the cheese itself, and her laugh rasped like a death rattle. ‘Have you tried eating gold?’
Lucio had taken the cheese and put it in his pocket carefully. The woman sucked on her toothless gums and shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t keep it there, if I were you.’
‘Why not?’ his mother asked.
‘Eat it now. Better in your stomachs than the gruppo’s.’ And she cracked phlegm into the back of her throat and spat it into the gutter. They ate the cheese while she grumbled to them about the thugs who hid in the woods and looted the villages and vineyards all around them. They wore the red scarf, she said, but their highest ideal was nothing more than filling their bellies until the war was over. Lucio and his mother listened in silence, asking no more questions. When they left, they didn’t speak to each other about what she had told them. Neither of them wanted to consider that a little power, a gun and the semblance of a cause might be enough for Vittorio.
When they got home from Cori, it seemed like half the village was waiting for them in Vicolo Giotto — the scabby Carozzi twins asking to play with Viviana even though the curfew had sounded; Maria Ventuzzi, with her crusted eyes, who hovered silently below their window as her mother had told her to; and the ancient Ardemira Ippoliti, sweeping their steps. That was how the villagers manoeuvred around their pride: sending hungry children or old women to perform unnecessary favours in return for a mouthful from their table. Neither he nor his mother had the heart to send them away. He watched her bending to them at the door, her bones moving under her dress like the alley cat’s did under its loose skin, and he had wondered that the baby could still cling inside her.
In Cori they had spent every penny Otto had given them, but it bought them nothing more than a sack of army flour, some maize, a few rotten potatoes. They shared the food around and eked it out as best they could, but it didn’t stop his stomach from grinding its complaint to the night every time Fagiolo tossed his chestnuts. He listened to them crackle softly in the drum, the murmur of voices below.
‘But what’s so wrong with that? Why shouldn’t the boy carry the litter?’ he heard Fagiolo ask, his voice rising indignantly above the others. Through the pergola, he could see Professore Centini warming himself at the brazier. ‘Why shouldn’t Gufo stand in his brother’s place? Would you rather have Berto the goatherd tripping over the cobbles?’ Fagio
lo wasn’t speaking to the mayor but to the two women beside him, solemn as bats in their black coats and black crocheted shawls.
‘I’m sure the blessed saint doesn’t mind being carried by a mute, but it’s his family I have the problem with. Do they really deserve the honour?’ It was Signora Mazzocchi. Lucio recognised her voice — quick, pinched and begrudging as always. Fagiolo and Professore Centini gave her warning looks. She simply shrugged and made a half-hearted attempt to whisper, glancing at the soldiers of the Wehrmacht who stood smoking at the edges of the piazzetta. ‘I mean, a family of Fascist loyalists and German collaborators.’ She sniffed pointedly at the mayor, who made a non-committal mumble. Lucio thought he had an air of uncertainty about him, only natural for someone whose own Fascist Party uniform was still wrapped in mothballs in his closet. And yet they all knew how loosely about the waist that blue cummerbund would sit these days. The war had made everyone change their opinions, but only some people allowed themselves to remember just how much. The mayor stood on one leg, bending the knee of the other several times and wincing, as if he hoped to divert the conversation to the much safer topic of his sciatica.
Signora Mazzocchi would not be dissuaded. ‘Yes, German collaborators, that’s what I said. I dare accuse Letia Onorati of it if no one else will.’ Fagiolo raised a stern face to her, and she bent a little further over the drum of chestnuts. ‘How else, tell me, has she been able to come by those supplies? How is it she always seems to have flour, or potatoes for gnocchi? Everyone in Vicolo Giotto goes begging to her, you know. They say she does … well …’
‘She does what exactly?’ Fagiolo snapped. Professore Centini wiggled his leg again and sucked air through his teeth noisily. Beside him, Signora Centini sighed and elbowed her husband in the arm.
‘Come on, signora,’ the innkeeper insisted, ‘why don’t you tell us what you think she does?’
‘What who does?’ It was Polvere. Lucio had seen the baker sidle up to the drum, taking the paddle from Fagiolo and giving the chestnuts a poke.
Signora Mazzocchi considered the two men, her cheeks red and shining in the light of the embers. ‘Letia Onorati. She performs favours for the Germans, intimate favours. It’s obvious. Don’t you see? That’s why Primo ran away to the Cori gruppo. He couldn’t bear seeing what his own mother had become.’ She unburdened herself with such effervescent relief that Lucio was reminded of the juice bursting from a rotten tomato. Acid bubbled in his stomach, a gripe of hunger and nerves, stirred by disgust.
Fagiolo snatched back his spatula from Polvere and shoved it so roughly into the drum that one or two chestnuts bounced over the rim and rolled about Signora Mazzocchi’s feet. She caught her breath and glared at him, before her expression softened into something more complacent, knowing.
‘Ah, that’s right, Fagiolo,’ she said. ‘I forgot. You always did have a more noble appreciation for her, didn’t you? Always carrying her books after school, making up songs for her on your guitar. You must be very disappointed.’
Fagiolo changed the paddle to his other hand, gripping it as he might a weapon in his fist. ‘If Letia does anyone favours it’s your relatives, signora.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ she asked.
‘Isn’t Ardemira Ippoliti your aunt? And those grubby twins who are always being sent home at night by the Germans, aren’t they your nieces? Didn’t you know they go to Letia for food? I guess that makes your family German colluders too, Signora Mazzocchi. Doesn’t it?’
‘Well now, what time is it?’ Professore Centini interrupted, smiling inanely in the direction of the soldiers.
Everyone ignored him, particularly his wife, who hurried to add her own views to the discussion. ‘I’ve heard from reliable sources out of town’ — by which everyone knew she meant Pettegola — ‘that things are not quite so black and white.’
‘That’s the very nature of war, my dear. Nothing ever is black and white,’ her husband announced, as if this platitude might round off the topic.
But she shook him off. ‘What I’ve been told is that Letia Onorati started colluding with the Germans so she could provide information to the Cori gruppo. And that’s why Primo joined them. It makes sense, doesn’t it? She’s like a double agent.’ She articulated the words with relish, and Lucio almost wanted to laugh at how his mother could push their imaginations to such heights.
‘That’s even worse!’ Signora Mazzocchi barked. ‘The gruppi deserve to be hanged. They’re nothing more than thugs — gangs of Communists and deserters hiding in the hills and taking our supplies in the name of liberation. I can’t see any actual resistance around here, can you? Between the gruppi and the requisitions of the crucchi,’ she glanced over at the soldiers again, lowering her voice, ‘we’ll all be dead from starvation before the Allies ever get here. We can’t live on chestnuts alone.’ And, with disdain, she kicked one of the fallen nuts.
‘Do you seriously think, signora,’ Fagiolo hissed at her, ‘that the Allies have a chance in these mountains without the help of the gruppi?’ The mayor placed a hand on his arm and cleared his throat, as though to remind him that Signora Mazzocchi wasn’t worth the risk.
‘All I know is that those bandits have landed us where we are now,’ she replied. ‘It’s their attempts at sabotage that have brought about the German curfews, random searches and threats. If it wasn’t for them, the mountain passes would be safe to walk again and our blessed saint wouldn’t have to be carried down Montemezzo at the gunpoint of a Nazi guard.’
‘Well, you know, signora,’ Fagiolo said, struggling to keep the emotion from his voice, ‘you certainly can blame that on Letia Onorati. Without Letia, we wouldn’t be having a procession at all.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve had this procession come snow or storm for longer than anyone can remember. I hardly think tonight is all her doing. Padre Ruggiero came to an arrangement with the captain.’
Fagiolo stepped back, feigning surprise at her lack of knowledge. ‘Oh, but it is her work, signora. You see, the captain insisted on maintaining the curfew, tradition or no tradition … that is, until Letia Onorati offered him two bottles of Raimondi Gold. Apparently they were the last ones left in the entire village.’
There was truth in what Fagiolo said, but Lucio thought of the mayor’s platitude: it hadn’t quite been so black and white. Padre Ruggiero had come to their kitchen late at night, uncomfortable with the condescension, the red tassel trembling awkwardly on his biretta. ‘The captain has a taste for the grappa, you see,’ the priest had told Lucio’s mother. ‘It really is all I have left to bargain with for the procession.’
‘You mean it’s all I have left to bargain with,’ she replied. ‘And must Santa Lucia always come before our bellies, Padre?’ Her voice was flat. Lucio knew she didn’t expect an answer.
But the priest had approached her, cupping a naked hand towards the curve of her stomach under her apron. ‘You, of all people, ask me that?’
She turned away from him and sent Lucio to the cellar. In the dimness he had paused, breathing angry lungfuls of the musty air, his mind racing. He looked guiltily at his grandfather’s empty chestnut barrels, and as he picked out the last bottles of Gold from the shelf, he’d felt the urge to smash them — one, two on the flagstones — to feel the glass shatter about his feet, the liquor splashing his ankles, the satisfying sting of alcohol in the cuts and nicks, a salve to his frustrations. And he imagined he’d heard Nonno Raimondi’s laugh again, rough as splintered glass and just as sharp.
But he had returned to the kitchen with the necks of the bottles in his fists. He handed them not to Padre Ruggiero but to his mother, catching the doubt that scudded across her face: losing the grappa was more than losing a trade for food to last them through the spring; it was their only medicine, the one pain relief she might have for her delivery. She blinked at him slowly and he understood what she was
doing: she wasn’t giving in to Padre Ruggiero; she was giving in to the whole village. She intended to give them their procession, to allow them their prayers and ceremonies, the empty traditions that rang with the dim echo of who they once had been. It was her penance, of sorts. But Lucio also understood the villagers of Montelupini. He had been watching them for long enough now. The more she paid for her sins, the more they would damn her for them.
She had taken the bottles and set them down on the table, forcing Padre Ruggiero to help himself. It was then that the priest announced jovially, ‘I want you at the head of the saint’s litter, Gufo. It’s what your father would want.’ Lucio caught the uncertainty in his tone, a doubt that had not been there when he had made the same request of Vittorio. He nodded to Padre Ruggiero, but his focus was on the outline of his mother standing at the window. It was for her, he reminded himself; he was doing it for her — not the priest, not the village, not his father or brother. It was the least he could do. It was what she wanted.
Under the pergola, Fagiolo had returned to tossing his chestnuts. ‘Are you saying she gave up the last bottles of Raimondi Gold just so we could have our procession?’ Signora Mazzocchi asked. She glanced at the mayor to confirm Fagiolo’s story, and at his nod she fingered her shawl as if grasping for purchase. ‘Then the woman truly is a simpleton,’ she said with satisfaction, ‘giving the last of our precious tonic to a Nazi!’ She pinned the shawl under her chin and swept through the piazzetta, ominous as a storm cloud dulling the crystal night.