Solitaria

by Genni Gunn

  “In here,” she says tapping the box, “is all that remains. I’ve been writing this down for years.” She pauses, leans across the bed for her cigarettes, lights one, and blows a halo of smoke towards David. “This is for you, then. For Vito. For all the forgotten and the unknown.”

  He reaches for the journal, but she pulls it back.

  “We’ll go through it together,” she says, “but I’ll read it to you. That way, I can explain what’s not written down.”

  All that remains, he thinks. A life imprisoned between covers.

  “Clarissa,” she says, “left us and rarely came back.” She takes another puff, holds it in her lungs for a moment, then exhales another blue cloud.

  “Mom was very busy,” David says, thinking how often he has excused all her neglect this way.

  Piera waves her hand in the air. “Everyone is busy. And you?” she asks. “Didn’t you wonder about us?”

  He shifts in the chair. “We tend to live in the present,” he says. “There’s hardly time for that.”

  “I knew this moment would come,” she says. “Maybe not in my lifetime, but at some point.” She draws on the cigarette, then stares at him. “No one remembers anything,” she says, despairing. She fixes a stare past him, into an invisible dimension, until she stubs out her cigarette, and opens the book to the first page.

  1. St. Vitus Card

  “Look at him, lying there surrounded by angels, wearing a crown of golden stars. He’s a martyr, you know, and so deserves adulation. If you turn the postcard over, you’ll see that taped to the back is what looks like a sliver of wood, but actually is a piece of bone. A relic. Bone collectors, that’s what Catholics are.

  “Vito. Do you know that in Latin, his name means life? Vita. Life, yes. He who has crushed ours. I have purposely not spoken about him all these years. This is how we have always dealt with him. We have tried to erase him, though he has resisted in too many ways. I will talk about him now only because it’s necessary. He is named after St. Vitus, the twelve-year-old martyr, son of a pagan Sicilian senator named Hylas.

  “The story is that when St. Vitus was converted to Christianity by his tutor Saint Modestus and his nurse Saint Crescentia, his father had all three arrested and scourged. St. Vitus was freed from prison by angels, and fled to Lucania, then to Rome, where he performed a miracle and cured the Emperor’s son of an evil spirit. When St. Vitus would not sacrifice to the pagan gods in celebration, his cure was attributed to sorcery, and he was arrested again, and tortured before being thrown to the lions, who instead of devouring him, lay at his feet and licked his hands. The Emperor, enraged, dropped him into boiling oil, along with a rooster, sacrificed as part of the ritual against sorcery. At the moment of his death, however, a violent storm destroyed several pagan temples in the region. Since then, he is invoked as protection against stormy weather as well as animal attacks, dog bites, lightning, oversleeping, wild beasts, epilepsy, rheumatic chorea, Saint Vitus’s Dance, and snake bites. Some sixteenth-century Germans believed they could obtain a year’s good health by dancing before the statue of Saint Vitus on June 15th, his feast day. This dancing developed almost into a mania, and was confused with chorea, the nervous condition later known as Saint Vitus’s Dance. His connection with such dancing led to his patronage of dancers, then extended to actors, comedians, epileptics, and dogs. Years ago, I spent some months secluded in Ostuni, in a convent of the Marcelline nuns, which was attached to the church of St. Vito Martyr. When I left, one of the nuns gave me this card. Look. Here’s the date: February 1956, Ostuni. Vito. Life, yes. You see how I am avoiding speaking about him.

  “All that you read here, I shaped from our collective memories of those days. I am the keeper of my family’s past, both real and imagined.”

  Her hand lingers on the card for a moment longer, then she turns the page and begins reading:

  ‡ 1926, San Pancrazio, Italy. In this memory, he is always alone, fragmented, a series of departures and arrivals, some planned, some unforeseen, so that we expected him always, lived between bouts of high excitement and dread, listening for the sound of his step outside.

  The first of seven children, even at birth he was solitary, fatherless, born in a one-room hut surrounded by fields and rolling hills, hedgerows and wild fichi d’India — prickly pear — three kilometres out of San Pancrazio, delivered by a midwife in early evening, a kerosene lamp and a bucket of hot water standing in for a doctor. He emerged two months premature into the stifling heat of July, a month in which Mamma would rather not have given birth, given that she believed those born during this month would be the sorrow of their families. “It’s a sign,” Mamma said to her own mother, crossing herself. She went on with her morose predictions: July children, though beautiful, with well-formed heads and long legs, will grow treacherous as they age. As adults, they will be ready to promise anything, yet rarely keep those promises; they’ll spout kind words, but they’ll be false, jealous, and vindictive. They will be fearful and impatient, and although they’ll have good fortune, they will not be able to recognize it because of their own spitefulness and evil.

  Mamma’s mother, superstitious as she was, shushed her. “You’ll bring bad luck by talking like that,” she said. But the baby embodied both their fears with his raging cries from morning to night. He was inconsolable, as if already he understood their larger destiny.

  Papà was in Sanarica, helping his own brother, who had contracted tuberculosis during World War I in a Hungarian concentration camp, where he nearly starved to death. Mamma took Vito and moved into her parents’ house. Papà remained in Sanarica, returning to see Mamma and the baby every month or two. When he came home to stay, Vito was a two-year-old, silent and timid. “Look,” Mamma said to Papà, “he is a beautiful child. He has your eyes.” The boy turned his face away and closed his eyes. He would not embrace Papà, even as Mamma pressed him forward. “Here is your father,” she said. “Give your father a kiss.”

  But the child hung back, and would not be coaxed. “I don’t want to,” he said, his lips trembling.

  Papà laughed, and knelt on the ground in front of the child. “That’s all right, ” he said kindly, touching Vito’s shoulder. He secured a job as a trackman who cleared stones and debris from the railroad, and moved his family into the trackman’s hut — a one-room cavern with a wood stove and a narrow drafty window shoulder-high.

  Papà’s father sectioned off one sixth of his field and gave it to Papà, now that he would be able to ride the trains gratis and work his plot of land.

  At six, Vito worked in the field with Papà, removing stones from the earth in the sweltering heat, though it was early Sunday morning. He wore a pair of pants, refashioned by Mamma from an old pair of Papà’s khaki trousers, and a threadbare white shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal chocolate-brown arms. He was spindly and tense, always ready to flee or pounce.

  From five in the morning till two in the afternoon, six days a week, Papà toiled for the railway, but on Sundays and after work, he was here, preparing the field for an imagined herd of grazing cattle, an imagined flock of sheep, an imagined harvest of grapes that would take away the hunger.

  Vito worked without looking up, his back curved to the earth. He picked up stones and filled the wooden wheelbarrow Papà had made. He was intent, serious, and silent, unlike Papà, who could be laughing one minute and shouting the next, who often delivered tirades against Mussolini, rants about the slow erosion of personal freedoms. At night Vito would listen from his bed in the loft of the one-room house. In the dark, Papà’s voice sounded louder. “Shush,” Mamma would say. “You’ll end up in prison.”

  They dug out stones, Papà with a spade and Vito with his hands, until mid-morning, when Papà sank the shovel half-way into the ground and straightened up. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. Vito mirrored him, although he had no spade to burrow. He watched Papà take a small bottle from a basket he had laid beside them. Papà motioned to Vito
. “Drink,” he said. Vito took one, two small gulps, then handed back the bottle.

  “Tomorrow,” Papà said, “you will go to live with my brother.” He tipped the bottle back once only, although it was almost full, then he set it back in the basket.

  Vito remained expressionless. He had already heard Mamma and Papà discuss all this in the dark of their bed, when they thought he couldn’t hear them. He looked at the ground.

  “You can come and visit us,” Papà said. “When Zio Tonio can spare you.”

  Vito said nothing. He picked at a small scab on his left forearm.

  “We would not do this unless it was absolutely necessary,” Papà said, his voice anxious.

  Vito nodded, as if he understood. A tear of blood formed on his arm.

  “It’s the war,” Papà said. “Zio Tonio would not be sick now, if he hadn’t had to stand in freezing water and eat only potato peels for months on end. Disgraziati!” Papà spit onto the ground to punctuate his disdain.

  Vito said nothing. He covered his small wound with his palm.

  “Politics,” Papà grumbled. He was no longer speaking to the boy. “This will happen here too,” he said, his voice rising. “Already we can’t speak freely unless we’re completely alone.” He reached out and shook Vito by the shoulder. “Do you understand? Completely alone.”

  Vito didn’t understand, but he nodded again, and Papà said, “Good boy,” and let go.

  They turned back to the earth. The boy walked beside Papà, and together, they hauled and stacked large stones along the perimeter of the field. On top of these, they layered smaller ones, creating stone walls. The land around them, further than they could see, was parcelled by these stone walls, built and rebuilt in different centuries by different peoples, a living testament.

  Just past noon, Mamma arrived with a basket of bread and dandelion greens, trailed by us two small children — Aldo, who was three, and me a year younger. She had walked the half kilometre from the train station and was now huffing and out of breath. She set the basket down, took off her kerchief, and shook her hair free. It fell in thick chestnut waves around her shoulders. Her cheeks were red, and her forehead glistened. Papà looked at her and smiled. She wiped her face with the kerchief, fanned herself for a moment, then tied her hair back and secured the knot at the base of her neck. Vito watched, too, his eyes on her rounded stomach. “Do you want to feel the baby kicking?” Mamma said to him, and he reached out and held his hand under hers.

  “Will it be a boy?” he asked, his voice tremulous. He felt small pulses against his palm.

  Mamma smiled, misunderstanding the question. “Would you like that?” she said. “To have another brother?”

  Vito nodded, though he didn’t mean it. More than anything, he wanted to please Mamma. She ruffled his hair and pushed him away. Already, he felt the weight of competition — he had had only three years alone with Mamma. Aldo sat on the ground and opened State Railways, a book Papà had brought home from work. He had begun to absorb history. Vito had the misfortune of being born into a family with a genius child. Mamma and Papà judged his development against his younger brother’s. “Look how Aldo walks already, at six months, while Vito took a year.” Or “Already Aldo can read and he’s only three,” Mamma would say to Papà, “while Vito only wants to play.”

  I squirmed out of everyone’s reach and stumbled along, squealing in delight, my fists clutching two small pebbles Mamma had given me. I was born on a Friday, an unlucky day, according to Mamma, because it’s the day Christ died. A day when people neither shopped, nor began new projects, nor signed contracts, nor planned feasts. On Fridays, according to Mamma, people did not marry, nor did they baptize their children. If a man shaved on a Friday, he would be betrayed by his wife, or he would become widowed at an early age, and he who cut his nails on this day would have to gather them on Judgement Day. One did not go visiting, send gifts, or buy clothes, and if the first day of the year was a Friday, there would be wars, tempests, and a thousand other natural disasters. Furthermore, children born on Fridays could expect to cry often during their lives — and this I’ve proven to be true. I was a tiny child, with pale pale skin and sable eyes, though I can see myself clearly — the determination in my face, in my outstretched arms, reaching for the world.

  Mamma followed close behind, to catch me if I lost my balance. Yet, now and then, I escaped from Mamma’s gaze, and ran a few steps, careening drunkenly into Vito’s or Papà’s legs. I’d hang on tight then, let the pebbles drop, and giggle. Vito smiled.

  “How she loves men already,” Mamma said. “See what a little flirt she is.” She picked me up and held me high over her head, making faces and tickling me with tummy kisses. Then she handed me to Papà, spread a small tablecloth on the ground, and set the bread on it. She coaxed the book out of Aldo’s hands.

  “We’ll eat now,” Papà said, pushing Vito toward the tablecloth. He placed me in the crook of his arm, sat beside Mamma, watched her spoon the dandelion greens onto a thick slab of bread, and hand Aldo the first slice. When we had all eaten, Vito looked at the empty basket, then licked his fingers, touched the few crumbs on the tablecloth, and brought them to his mouth.

  “You’ll see,” Papà said, his voice subdued. “Once the field is cleared, we’ll plant vegetables and we’ll get a cow so there will always be milk and cheese.” He patted Vito’s arm. “You’ll see. It won’t always be like this.”

  “But why?” Vito asked Mamma later that evening. He seemed smaller now in the dusk. He and Mamma were seated on the threshold, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for Papà to come home from a union meeting. Mamma reached over and took his hand.

  “It’s family,” she said. “If something happened to Papà…we must always help family, you understand?”

  Vito was silent. He had heard enough of family pride and honour to know that all his life, he would be expected to do certain things, and that if he failed to do them, he would bring shame and dishonour to the family. He imagined two dark phantoms. “Remember, you are a mirror,” Papà always said. “What you do reflects on all of us.”

  “But it’s not fair,” Vito said. He leaned his head on Mamma’s shoulder.

  They sat like that for a few minutes. Then she took his face in her hands and kissed both his cheeks. “Promise Mamma that you’ll be very careful,” she said. “This disease your uncle has… he’s going to die. It’s in his lungs, and he’ll be coughing all the time. You must wash your hands always when you’re around him. Promise me.” Tears sprang into her eyes.

  Vito nodded. He, too, wanted to cry, not because he was afraid, but because he felt a large piece being wrenched out of his heart.

  Mamma packed his few belongings into a sheet she had embroidered with his initials, and set it by the side of the door. In the morning, she kissed him and held him tight against her. He cried a little, and Papà bent down and wiped his tears with his large handkerchief. “You’re a big brave boy,” he said. “You’re a man now.”

  Vito shivered. Mamma pulled a sweater out of the packet and pushed his arms into the sleeves. “It’s only for a little while,” she whispered. “You’ll be home in no time.” From her sleeve, she drew out a card. “Look,” she said. “Saint Vito, just like you. He will keep you safe.”

  Vito took the card and stared at the angels and the crown of stars. He pushed the card into his pocket.

  Then Papà put his hand on Vito’s shoulder, and together they walked to the train station without looking back at Mamma, who gazed after them, weeping, until they had rounded the bend.

  2. A Fan

  “This is a fan distributed by a clothing store in Carmiano. Look at what it reads: ‘Fascist Supplies,’ as if for a few lire, one could buy the misguided ideals of a dictator, illusion, torture instruments, prisons. But no. It was simply an advertisement for a ladies’ fashion shop. On the front of the fan is the fascist symbol — the fasces — a bundle of sticks which includes an axe. Within the axe, a map of Italy, over whi
ch is the word ‘Patriotic.’ The fasces is an ancient Roman symbol of power and was carried by lictors in front of magistrates to symbolize power over life and death. Before the fascists adopted it, the fasces (as Fascio) was used by left-wing groups as a symbol of strengh through unity. If you turn over the fan, you’ll read: ‘Elegant fascists shop here,’ along with an address. Note that the word ‘fascists’ has been crossed out in pen, and the word ‘ladies’ written above it in Papà’s handwriting.”

  ‡ 1935. Carmiano, Italy. Three years later, Vito stepped off the train into a sandstorm. He carried a small cardboard suitcase, which he set down on the platform. In the two days the sirocco had been blowing, the temperature had risen ten degrees and the moist air was thick with dust that had crossed the Mediterranean from the North African deserts and now covered the ground. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose and mouth. He wore a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and trousers that exposed his ankles, as if he had suddenly grown taller.

  Papà saw him first and hurried along the platform. When he reached the boy, he kissed him on both cheeks and embraced him. Vito now came to Papà’s shoulder, a thin, reedy boy. As soon as Papà released him, Mamma came forward and smothered the boy against one side of her breast, murmuring, “Finally you’re home. We’ve missed you so much.” She let him go, then pushed Aldo and me forward. “This is Aldo and Piera,” she said. “Say hello to Vito. You remember your brother.”

  Aldo nodded, but I shook my head and looked at the ground. Over the past several weeks, ever since Zio Tonio died, Mamma had been talking about Vito, whom I barely recalled. I leaned against Mamma’s side, partly sheltered in the folds of her full skirt.