by Maria Riva
A fat bee bumped into her black-stockinged ankle, and gently she pushed it off with the tip of her shoe. Teresa sighed and began preparing her bobbins. Antonia undid the taffeta ribbon of her Sunday braid, smoothing it between her fingers before rolling it up. Then she began combing her long hair with the wide tortoiseshell comb she had bought with her lace money from the gypsy tinker.
“Antonia, can you sit on it yet?” Giovanna asked, admiring the glorious sepia-colored silk curtain being groomed, a little envious that her own hair refused to grow any further than her waist, even frizzed when it rained.
“When I lift my chin and have no clothes on, I can. Papa says it’s hereditary. All the women in his family have long, beautiful hair … but Mamma says no, it’s the olive oil that she rubbed onto my head the second after she bore me.”
“Did you see the Rossini twins?” Teresa asked in a tone heralding dramatic news.
Without interrupting her comb’s hypnotic strokes, Antonia turned in anticipation. “No, why?”
“They’re shaved!”
“NO!” her friends gasped.
“Yes! They’re BALD! Not a single hair left on their heads! Like babies’ behinds … both of them! Well, with scarletina, you have to shave off all the hair. You should know that, Antonia!”
“Of course I know that! But what I didn’t know is that they had it. Papa said it was varicella. But, Mamma said it had to be ‘the fever’ because Mario and Stephano were quarantined for so long so, when they finally came out, their hair was GONE!”
Camilla came puffing up the path, straw bonnet trailing from one listless hand, tears glistening in her pretty gray eyes.
“I lost my pillow … Well, I didn’t really … I know exactly where I left it. I had it next to me on the bench in the confessional and I couldn’t go back to get it because the Rossini twins went in … both of them at once! What they can have to confess after being locked up for weeks is beyond me … and they were in there forever! Signora Fellice was waiting to be next, tapping her cane, furious she had to wait! … So, I just have to try and find it when I confess tonight.” Out of breath, very depressed, Camilla settled herself on the wall next to Antonia and dangled her feet.
“What do you expect to do for the rest of the day so that you will still have something left to confess this evening?” Teresa asked with genuine interest.
Antonia, slipping her precious comb carefully into the wide belt at her waist, laughed. “Camilla will make up something. She always does. Of course, nothing ever really happens to her … but …”
“Sister Bertine says just thinking sinful thoughts is a sin,” Teresa observed without looking up.
“Pooh!” Antonia snorted and took up her bobbins of bone.
Camilla kicked a fuzzy dandelion with the tip of her high-buttoned Sunday shoe, watched its soft explosion drift away. In a tone filled with anguished doom, she whispered, “My papa took the widow Angelli …”
Bobbins stopped in midair! Three incredulous gasps of “What?” filled it.
“Don’t make me say it again! I can’t! I just can’t say it again … ever … ever!”
“Where?” asked Antonia.
“I don’t believe it!” Teresa had turned as white as her thread.
“And how would you even know such a thing?” Giovanna, the ever practical one, said not unkindly.
“Well … I DO know … It’s true! Mamma saw them! In the barn, when she went to collect the eggs!”
“They were there in your own barn? … In broad daylight?” Antonia shook her head in disbelief.
“And you said nothing of this yesterday?” Teresa was very put out that Camilla had kept such a shocking tragedy from her closest friends.
“How could I? It only happened this morning!” Camilla wailed.
“On a Sunday!?” Teresa crossed herself.
“But the widow Angelli has a beard! … And lives with goats!” Antonia exclaimed, very disgusted.
“Well, Mamma has gone to see Father Innocente … Sister Bertine is accompanying her up there. My second married sister, Lucia, is in early labor from the shock! All my brothers have disappeared somewhere … the rest of my sisters are weeping and lighting candles in the chapel … and Papa is getting drunk! I only came up here because I couldn’t stay hidden all day in the confessional … and I thought that my dearest friends would understand and help!”
Tears that had begun to fall at the beginning of the first sentence of this sad litany now flowed freely at the close of it. Hugs and Sunday handkerchiefs were offered, with many “There … theres” and “Easy … easys” until Camilla was able to regain her composure.
“‘Beasts!’ My mother has always said, ‘All men are beasts—deep down beasts!’ I never believed her, but now, after this, I do—I do!” sighed a thoroughly disillusioned Teresa, who crossed herself anew.
Antonia felt it was up to her to take charge. “Camilla—now don’t take this the wrong way and PLEASE, do not swoon, for I must tell you something. Something very important. It seems that men, all kinds of men, sometimes have what is described as ‘Urges’… and when these ‘Urges’ come upon them, they do all sorts of very strange things. You must also know that for men, these ‘Spells’ are considered to be … no more than … well … than eating a really fine risotto … just … a normal appetite!”
Camilla had ceased to breathe. Teresa felt faint. Giovanna thought Antonia terribly brave. A shadow fell across their shoulders and a deep male voice said, “Hi, girls!”
Camilla shrieked, sprang off the wall, ran down the path towards the village, as though the Devil himself was in hot pursuit! Teresa trembled—Giovanna patted her hand. Antonia, her black eyes sparkling, smiled up into the handsome face of the adventuresome Giovanni Ricassoli, who exclaimed, “My God! What’s wrong with Camilla? … That was Camilla, wasn’t it?”
“Yes! She had to get home. Don’t pay any attention to her. She just had a bad shock today. She didn’t mean to be rude.” Antonia patted the place newly vacated by her side. “Welcome home, Giovanni!”
“Welcome,” Giovanna joined in the greeting of one of their childhood friends. He had been the only one of the older boys who had never been mean, teased the girls as they walked, eyes downcast, two by two to their convent school, never pelted them with icy snowballs. If only in memory of that, he deserved a proper welcome. He looked a little like she remembered him—stocky and strong, like a fine plow horse, all rippling muscles and gloss, with that strange beauty of controlled power all its own. Now this seemed overlaid with a man’s self-assurance, and she wasn’t sure if she would like him as much.
“I think I should go and see to Camilla. Besides, I have to help my mamma with the babies.” Teresa rolled up her bobbins, smiled a hasty good-bye, and took the shortcut through the buttercups on her way down the hill.
Left on either side of the young man, Antonia and Giovanna worked their lace. Lying back against the grassy knoll behind, he pillowed his head in his hands, looked up at the clean, clear sky.
“When you smell grease all day … you forget …”
“Grease?” Antonia turned to look down at him lying beside her, suddenly made shy by the faint feeling of excitement this caused.
“I work with machines. They have to be lubricated to …” The young man stopped himself, as though explaining a private passion to others might defile it somehow.
Antonia thought his abrupt silence boorish. Tossing her heavy hair back over her shoulders, she slipped off the wall. The young man jumped to attention, eager to be the one allowed to accompany this village beauty back down to her front door. Antonia took stock. Camilla had been right—he was certainly not tall … that made it a bit awkward if one wanted to gaze up beguilingly, so she did the next best thing and looked deep into his level eyes, gave him her very best look of softest, helpless need. When he hesitantly touched her elbow,
she allowed him to assist her along the twisted path towards the village. At the first bend, they remembered, turned, and waved a belated friendly good-bye in Giovanna’s direction, who, watching them, waved back before slapping a bumblebee that had dared to settle on her pillow.
The next day, only Giovanna came to the piazza to work in the shade of its ancient tree. Camilla, being part of a family scandal that had the village buzzing, was too ashamed to step outside her door. Teresa, who had offered to light candles and prayers to the saint in charge of lecherous fathers, was on her tenth round of Hail Marys, and Antonia, having decided not to wait until the full moon, was busy washing her mighty mane two weeks earlier than her monthly schedule called for.
“Hi! Where’s everybody? … My God! It’s hot!” Giovanni sank down on the worn cobblestones, near Giovanna’s chair. “What a tree! It feels wonderful … like being in an icebox!”
“What did you say? What’s a … that funny first word? The other one I think I can figure out because it sounds a little like French.” The Benedictines retained their close bonds with France, taught those given into their academic care the beauty of its language. Giovanna, being a natural linguist, could not only read and write French but speak it with only a trace of her Italian cadence. Although box was close enough to its equivalent word in French for her to figure its meaning, the hissing sound of ice was a complete mystery.
Giovanni laughed, such an honest sound that it made those who heard it long for the feelings that produced it. Not at all embarrassed by her question, Giovanna laughed with him, suddenly feeling happy for no special reason. Carefully he explained what an “icebox” was, what it looked like, what it was for, what it did and how it did it. He seemed to know everything about them.
“Sometimes I’m there when the iceman comes to deliver the block for the one my landlady keeps on her back porch.” Giovanna listened, enthralled. Amazed not only that such a marvel had been invented, but that it could be owned by one of the working class.
“Oh, Giovanna—l’America is full of so many wonderful things!”
Giovanna sprang to her village’s defense. “Well, here too we can keep all sorts of things cool during the heat of summer … We hang fish in the mountain streams, keep roots and cheese in deep cellar. Still, it must be very special to own such a splendid boite.”
“No, no. The correct word is box—sharp and quick! L’America is full of quick words, like the country, like the people … fast, everything to the point. No one has time to waste … Everything must be quick … like my name. You want to hear what my name is in American?”
“Oh, yes!”
“John! Just … John. See—short and quick! Everyone where I work calls me John.” His voice held a tone of pride.
“I don’t think that sounds as nice as Giovanni!”
“Well, I like it! In America, you would be a Jane!”
“Oh, dear—that sounds just as bad.” The young man smiled. “Antonia says that in America, all the ladies wear large hats decorated with stuffed birds. Is that true?”
“I’ve seen some,” he answered with obvious disinterest.
“And long velvet coats trimmed with fine fur?”
He frowned. This girlish interest in fashionable ladies did not suit her character somehow, and it annoyed him. Afraid he considered her questions frivolous, Giovanna hastened to explain.
“Oh, I’m not interested in wearing such fine things … I want to make them! I am skilled with the needle. I wanted to go to the Institute in Torino, to learn to be a seamstress so I could get work in a fine dress shop … but Papa said he didn’t have money to waste on a girl. If he had a son, then it would have been worthwhile for him to learn a trade, but for a girl? That was just ‘senseless extravagance’!”
“In America, many young ladies are employed. I don’t know any who sew, but I know one who works in the office for our Mr. Willis. She even knows how to operate a machine that prints letters onto paper. She is a stenographer.”
Giovanna hung on his every word.
“What is the name of her machine?”
“A typing machine.”
“Does she have to wear a special uniform to work it?”
“Well, if you consider a crisp, high-necked shirtwaist and a long black skirt that just shows her ankles a special uniform, then I suppose she does. But men don’t notice such things.”
“If I were a man, I would go … make my way to Genova, stow away on a great ship bound for China … see the whole world—and maybe never ever come back!”
“Well, you’re not a man! But don’t worry, someday someone will marry you! Until then, your father needs a woman to look after him.”
Oh, why did he have to say that! She had so enjoyed the novelty of speaking without reserve, as though she were his equal. Now he had reminded her that she was not and spoiled it. When she answered him, the bitterness of her disappointment lingered. “Yes, someday, some man will take pity on me and save me from the cardinal sin of spinsterhood. Until then, Papa needs me to polish his boots, scrub his floors, wash his clothes, cook his food … a woman must know her proper place and be grateful for being given it.”
“You know, Giovanna … you are a very strange girl.”
“Yes, I know,” she answered, her voice bereft of all emotion.
He ran his fingers through his hair, uncurled his body with an athlete’s grace, stood brushing off his trouser leg. “Tomorrow—is it the chestnut or the oleanders?”
That made her smile. “The oleanders.”
“Think Camilla will be there?”
Giovanna lowered her head, flipped her bobbins, answered, “Maybe not Camilla … but Antonia will surely be.”
“See you then … Jane!”
The effect of his laugh lingered long after he had gone.
Waiting, Giovanna began pinning the first row of a newly begun collar. For no particular reason, she had decided to come especially early to the meeting place by the oleanders. Already the morning heat lay heavy, dampening sound, the jingle of her bobbins muffled, as though the effort of their twisting dance exhausted them.
“Hello!” He stood against the sun. She sat in his shadow, the sudden cooling a pleasure. “Been waiting for me?” Bracing his arms, he hoisted his body to sit beside her on the ancient stone wall. She shifted away from him. He had always been cocky! Always so sure of himself, with his dreams and his big plans—making all the girls notice him!
Without looking up, she answered, “No!” The sharpness in her voice startled her when she heard it.
“Hey!” He bent his head towards her, trying to see her face. “You angry with me? Why? I was only teasing …”
Giovanna felt silly. She usually never reacted in this way, got upset so easily and for such little things—it was not like her at all! She wondered why she had. Embarrassed by her own confusion, she smiled quickly to cover it up.
“That’s better! After yesterday, I thought we were friends.”
Giovanna stopped working, lifted her head, ready to apologize for her strange reaction to his greeting, and found that he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to her.
Like a vision drawn by Botticelli, Antonia, in thistle-mauve and eyelet petticoats, appeared along the path. Approaching, her mouth stained crimson from the juice of ripe currants she had been gathering, she said in a breathless purr, “Oh, there you are, Giovanni. What a surprise! I only came to keep Giovanna company because she is always so alone.” And allowing him to clasp her small waist, lift her up, settled herself next to him on the low wall. “Want some? They are so sweet this year …” Stretching a graceful arm across him, she offered her open palm filled with the shiny fruit to Giovanna, who selected one tiny red currant, just to be polite. “Giovanni? …” Antonia turned the full intensity of her beautiful amber eyes to lock with his. “You take some … they’re so wonderfully sweet this y
ear,” and, tipping her hand, let her bounty spill into his lap, inquired, “Are the others coming, Giovanna?”
Who murmured, “I don’t know … I came early,” very engrossed with a particular section of her lace that seemed suddenly to refuse to lie flat.
“Today, it’s much too hot to walk all the way up here … I don’t know why I even attempted it.” Sighing, Antonia removed the pins from her hair, letting it cascade down her back, raising her arms high to lift its shining weight, allow the air to touch and cool the nape of her milky white neck; that upward stretch accentuating to perfection the outline of her full breasts beneath the taut cloth of her bodice. From the moment of her appearance, the young man’s eyes had never left her, riveted, mesmerized by the delicious picture she made.
The shadow of a kestrel startled a colony of green finches to seek safety within a dark pine. The soft drone of bumblebees mingled with church bells, calling across from another valley, a lark sang. The three sat, listening to their secret thoughts.
He is still looking at me. He can’t take his eyes off me … I knew he would be here waiting for me … I was right! Antonia tingled, shivers of delight running all the way down to the very tips of her toes.
What a piece! She’s magnificent! What a whore she would make. If she keeps this up, I will … careful, my boy … Remember, this is an Italian virgin AND the physician’s only daughter … but … she may, just may … be worth the risk! If Giovanna hadn’t been there, Giovanni would surely have thrown all caution to the wind, grabbed the so seductive Antonia into his aching arms.
Temptress! If she stretches her arms any higher, she’ll split that badly stitched bodice and those big melon breasts of hers will pop out … in full view! … And look at him! … Sits there completely stunned! … Even his eyes are glazed! Really—if Father Innocente comes strolling by here now and sees this … he’ll have an apoplectic fit!