by Genni Gunn
“Look who’s here!” Clarissa exclaims, motioning to the man beside her. He is impeccably dressed in knee-length walking shorts and crisp white shirt, sleeves rolled to mid-forearm.
“Zio Aldo,” David says, springing forward to shake his uncle’s hand.
“I can’t believe this is the boy I met years ago,” Aldo says, smiling widely, his voice a rich baritone. “So, this is what it takes to get you here.”
David is about to object when he hears a rustle in the leaves behind him. He turns and finds himself staring into the lens of a Canon XL2 Camcorder.
The young woman holding the camcorder raises her eyebrow and makes a circular motion with her hand. “Carry on. Carry on,” she says. “Just be natural.”
“Who on earth is that?” David says. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry. It’s only Oriana,” Mimí says. “My daughter.” She nods at the young woman, who now turns the camera on her mother. “Oriana! Don’t be rude. Come and at least meet your cousin before you immortalize him.”
Oriana continues to film, but advances towards the table, until Fazio puts his hand in front of her lens. “Stop,” he says.
“I take full responsibility for Oriana,” Aldo says, teasing. “I couldn’t bear the drive alone.”
“Ha!” Oriana says, moving to her uncle’s side. She is a slender girl, mid-thirties, all dark eyes, pale skin, and mahogany hair tumbling to her waist. She’s wearing jeans and a yellow halter top that reveals the curve of her breasts. “You call what you did driving?”
He puts his arm around her waist. “I brought you here to meet David.”
“My American Cousin,” she says.
“Canadian,” David says, unable to stop staring at her.
“It’s a film. A Canadian film. Sandy Wilson.” She flips one side of her hair back.
“Oh,” he says, blood rushing to his face.
“He blushes too,” she says, laughing.
“Oriana is a filmmaker/producer for La Rai,” Mimí says. “She lives in Rome and we hardly ever see her.”
“Mamma, don’t start,” Oriana says.
“Oriana wants to film our family drama,” Fazio says. “All family dramas are the same.”
“Happy families are all alike,” Oriana says, “but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
David smiles. “Tolstoy.”
“And he reads, too,” Oriana says.
“Stop teasing him; he’ll get the wrong idea,” Marco says. “Come and sit here with me. I’m much more interesting, not to mention younger, than Zio Aldo.”
“I’m not promising anything.” Oriana slides into a chair next to Marco and pecks him on the cheek. “I like to film everything and later decide if I can make something of it.”
“You’ll let us see it first, Oriana, won’t you, before you air it?” Clarissa says. “I mean, we should have the right to decide if we want this made public or not.”
Oriana gaily wags her finger at Clarissa. “Are you the artistic director here?” she asks. “Or are you the censor?” She shakes her head. “Censorship, censorship everywhere these days. How can an artist create?”
Mimí slaps her lightly on the arm. “Basta! Be serious for a moment.”
Oriana turns to David. “Hello, Canadian cousin,” she says, her eyes twinkling. She holds out her hand.
He shakes it, all the while smiling.
Clarissa taps the back of the chair at the head of the table. “Come sit here, David,” she says. “And let’s get started.”
“May I film?” Oriana asks.
They’re all nervous, unsure.
“I promise I won’t use it unless you okay it.” She gets up and reaches for the camcorder.
“I guess it’s all right,” Teresa says.
David recounts what Piera has explained and read to him. Oriana circles around them, filming from different angles, capturing reaction shots. Now and then, David thinks he sees a shadow moving across the window on the top floor. Is Piera spying on them? Is he being faithful to her telling? What can she hear through the open window?
When he’s done, they’re all quiet for a moment. Oriana films their silence.
“Be pleased if the wind that enters the orchard / brings back the surge of life: / here where a dead tangle of memories / sinks and founders,/ there was no garden, only a reliquary,” Aldo says, quoting Montale.
“She’s embellishing it for your sake,” Clarissa says finally.
“Zia Piera tells the stories the same way every time,” Marco says. “She’s amazing.”
“How can she remember all the dialogue?” Mimí says. “She’s made it up to suit her.”
“I’ve heard her tell stories since I was a child, and they never vary,” Marco says.
“She’s the elephant who never forgets.” Teresa looks better today, composed, as if their presence alone has calmed her. “Or maybe, she’s brooded over it all so much that she’s forgotten what is real and what she invented.”
“Actually, it sounds very much like it was,” Aldo says quietly. “It’s certainly what I recall, maybe not the minute details, but the events, the life, yes.”
They all reflect on that for a moment.
“I wasn’t born,” Mimí says finally, “so I can’t comment one way or the other.” She uses her spoon to sweep crumbs in front of her. “But it sounds right to me. Everyone said Vito was bad, but I bet he wasn’t. He was only reflecting the bad in others.”
Clarissa raises her eyebrows. “How perceptive of you, Mimí,” she says sarcastically.
“Mom,” David says, frowning.
“Anyway, as always, Piera is making this her story instead of Vito’s,” Clarissa says. “Self-centred as ever.”
“Let’s not be unfair,” Fazio says in a soft voice. “Piera has done so much for all of us. Perhaps all she wants is to be heard.”
Teresa reaches for the aluminium espresso maker, and pours herself half a cup. Then she fills the rest from the jug of hot milk and adds a spoon of sugar.
“For all of us?” Clarissa says. “What about all she has done to us?” The sentence hangs in the air, suspended above them all.
“It’s not a competition,” David says.
“Ha!” Clarissa says. “Piera’s the one who keeps a running total of every imagined injustice against her.”
“Maybe it’s a bit of a judgement day,” Mimí says, sneering. She pours herself half a cup of espresso, adds a generous portion of milk and sugar, and stirs it with one of the biscotti. “Weigh the good against the bad and see how Piera makes out.”
“Aldo, you’re our only hope,” Clarissa says. “Please go and see if you can get Piera to stop this nonsense. We all have busy lives. We can’t sit around waiting. It’s inhuman.”
Aldo shrugs and goes in. Teresa and Mimí get up and begin clearing the table.
The doorbell sounds; it’s the couple who live across the hall, shyly wondering if they can give their regards to La Clarissa.
“It won’t be long,” Oriana tells David, “before the entire town will show up on this doorstep, on some pretence or other, to get a look at your mother. She is legendary here.”
David smiles. “I’m sure she’ll enjoy every minute of it.”
“I would like to interview Zia Clarissa. Maybe intersperse her life story into the larger narrative of the family.”
“I don’t know if Mom would like that. For a very public person, she’s very private.”
“That’s what makes her intriguing,” Oriana says. “The mystery.” Her eyes twinkle. “She can be the metaphor for the larger mystery of Zio Vito, of Zia Piera, for the mystery of all families.” She sets her camcorder down, takes out a notebook, and starts to write.
“Good luck,” David says, watching her, trying not to be obvious, fascinated by his own fascination. He is like a schoolboy in the throes of his first crush. My Italian Cousin, he thinks, catapulting them into a movie. Marco and Fazio go out for a walk and to buy a newspap
er. Clarissa flits around the garden with a watering can, ooing and ahhing over red bougainvilleas she wishes she could grow at home. Only David and Oriana remain at the table.
“What kind of films do you make?” David asks her.
She continues to write. “Docs mostly.”
“Like what?”
She stops writing and looks up. “The last thing I did was a TV series about the cataclysmic nature of Mother Earth,” she says. “The myriad ways she can destroy us — earthquakes, floods, cyclones, avalanches, spewing volcanoes, meteors, etc.” She smiles. “It’s a miracle we’re not walking around in a state of terror.”
“You make it sound worse than it is,” he says.
“Do you know that at this very moment, while we sit here, the earth could suddenly open up and swallow us?” She widens her eyes in mock fear.
“We could be struck by a flying saucer too,” he says.
“I’m serious. This is karst territory. Last year, a couple of blocks from here, someone’s house suddenly caved in.”
“Did you film it?” he asks.
“It’s not something you can plan,” she says. “Nature doesn’t work like that.”
He says nothing, and she returns to her notebook. He watches her for a moment longer, thinking how true it is, how what’s memorable is often unplanned. A tug of guilt. Bernette. He pushes back his chair. Oriana looks up.
“Are you going in to Zia Piera?” she asks. “Can I come?”
“You’ll have to ask her,” he says. “I’m going for my run first.”
When he returns forty minutes later, he finds Mimí, Aldo, and Teresa in the kitchen.
“Is everything all right?” he asks. “Have you seen Zia Piera?”
“I’m afraid she’s impervious even to me this time,” Aldo says. “She’s calling for you, though.”
David nods. He goes to his room, hooks up the cable, and connects to the Internet. He finds an elaborate florist in Chicago and wires Bernette flowers, all the while trying to concentrate on her face, while his mind sees the young woman outside, bent over her notebook.
Oriana follows David down the hall, her camcorder rolling. Piera opens the door a crack, and on seeing Oriana, quickly retreats, despite her entreaties: “Zia, you can trust me,” and “Haven’t I always taken your side?” and “I’ll film you so your words can’t be distorted.”
David steps into the room and firmly shuts the door.
He hands her the espresso and sits down. Piera is a petite woman — four-foot ten — a size 000, with feet so tiny, she has her shoes made to measure. Botte piccola fa vino buono. A small cask makes good wine.
The church bells sound and they both look up. “Campane a martello,” Piera says and smiles. Hammer bells. Some years ago, she tells David, the town council decided to record the church bells, so they could be played at exact intervals throughout the day, without the need for a bell ringer. Now, they’re amplified, distorted, hammer against metal. “Doesn’t anyone have ears any more?” she says, rolling her eyes, irritated by change, or perhaps by the fact that she no longer influences change. “One phone call,” she says. “That’s all it would have taken in the old days.”
She pats a place next to her, and David sits down. She is picking through a handful of photos when a clang, clang, clang begins. They both look up again, turning their heads toward what sounds like construction nearby. “See what I have to put up with?” she says. “I swear, they’ll split open my head.”
They both go out on the balcony. There, on the roof next door, so close they could spit an olive pit at it, five men are building what looks like a separate house, only instead of being on the ground, it’s on someone’s roof.
“A parasite,” Piera says, “barnacles clinging to rocks. Like Teresa.” She smiles then.
The men are in constant movement, shirtless, their bodies blackened with sun and glinting with perspiration.
The foundation of the new house has been marked out with stones — the layout of the house-to-be, its walls and rooms, like the ruins of Ostia Antica or Pompei — buildings imagined from the remnants of tesserae floors and sections of walls. The workers have built crude steps to the roof, and while two men work at the top, the other three take turns carrying up stones and stacking them to one side. Piera lights a cigarette and watches their young bodies, their agile movements.
At one point, one turns and looks right at them, his hand raised to shield the sun from his eyes. He’s a handsome young man. “Vito,” she whispers.
David leans into her. “Vito?”
She turns to him, frowning, then looks back at the young man, his curly black hair and lithe body, his dark tanned chest. “No, it’s not possible,” she says. “I was remembering…” The young man continues to stare, and she flushes and steps back, looking down at her worn dressing gown, its black stripes faded to grey, a button missing. “It’s been so long since anyone searched me out,” she says. She sits heavily on the bed.
“But surely your family —” David begins.
“My family,” she repeats, in an acid tone. “Where do you see my family?”
“They want to see you,” David says.
“I gave them my life,” she says, passionate, her eyes glossy.
David says nothing, waiting.
“I need air,” she says suddenly. “Roll up the shutters a little.”
He moves to the window and pulls on the cords, lifting the outside shutters halfway, until she tells him to stop. A warm breeze billows the curtains, and he sees the bustle of life in the street below.
“What about the letters?” he asks. “Can you tell me about those? Everyone wants to know.”
She looks at him, frowns, shrugs. “My husband had relatives living in Argentina. Whenever they wrote, he let me have the envelopes.” She reaches for her cigarette pack on the bedside table. Taps out a cigarette and slides it between her lips.
David strikes a match and lights it, watching her riffle through the box of photographs. But it’s an empty displacement — she’s forgotten what she’s looking for. She frowns, closes her eyes as if to retrieve some distant memory.
“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” she says after a bit. “We didn’t have a camera when Vito was young. All of our photos begin later, as if he was never a boy.” She drops the photos in the box.
3. Photo of Aldo and Me
“In this photo, Aldo and I are in front of the Grotta di Putignano in early July, 1968. Notice behind us, the three trulli that form the entrance to the cave. Discovered in 1931, this small cave was the first grotto in Puglia to be turned into a tourist attraction, which although exquisite — filled with stalactites and stalagmites, with an arabesque of crystals — it was and is still relatively unseen by tourists because a much more famous and larger grotto exists nearby — the Grotta di Castellana near Bari. I hope you’ll get a chance to see both of them.”
‡ 1941–43. Putignano, Italy. I could not have written this all those years ago, when everything happened, because it wasn’t clear even to me, alienated as I was from myself. Some things accumulate quickly, like sunrays above storm clouds, or tobacco leaves drying in garlands in the sun, or debris on a beach after a hurricane; others, like misfortune, accumulate slowly and inadvertently, like chunks of granite collecting in your pockets, until one day, you cannot move your feet. And family, too, can become the rubble around you, the millstones and boulders, the pebbles and stones — a virtual quarry impeding your every step.
When Vito returned to school, Mamma and Papà’s expectations grew, but no matter how hard Vito tried, he was never good enough. Papà got it into his head that Vito was lazy, and what began as an occasional cuff on Vito’s ears advanced to full-fledged beatings if Vito did not perform as expected. We were all so afraid of Papà’s sudden uncontrolled savagery that we felt ourselves lucky not to be the ones singled out. As often happens in families, once a child’s character is set, he is forever viewed through that filter. So Vito became our black she
ep, the scapegoat loaded down with our frustrations and our fears. After always hearing himself accused, Vito began to do the things of which he was accused. He was the one who would skip classes, climb into the windows of an abandoned house, who would settle schoolyard arguments with his fists and win, the one who stole almonds and figs and walnuts from the fields and was viciously beaten for it by Papà, even though all of us children had eaten the stolen fruits. He became dangerous and we both loved and shunned him.
Papà, convinced that Vito would badly influence us children, sent him away time and time again: to work with Papà’s younger brother for two years, to Mamma’s cousin for another year, and, following a schoolyard brawl when Vito was thirteen, to a seminary, where Papà believed Vito could be made to change his ways.
It is important here that I explain about Papà, so you don’t get the wrong idea. Papà was a principled, honest man, idealistic in some ways and disillusioned by the state promises, by the terrible poverty we all endured. Had he been born today, he’d probably be on television expounding the predatory nature of corporations, the dangers and side effects of pesticides, of industrial waste, and of a multitude of other things he had no time to consider back then. In short, Papà had a keen sense of justice, and he wanted to better our lives and those of the other unfortunates around us. Vito became a symbol of all that Papà could not change.
Two days after he turned fifteen, Vito disappeared from the seminary.
“He has joined the army,” Papà said, although he had no proof of this. “It will do him good to have some discipline.” He had been receiving unfavourable reports from the monks at the seminary, who did not believe Vito was suited for the priesthood and wanted to send him home.
Mamma despaired — she had lit a multitude of candles to thank God that her children were too young to go to war.
Aldo imagined Vito fighting glorious battles, and being decorated as a hero.
I did not want to believe Vito had joined the army and might be in peril, or worse, dead. I preferred to imagine that he had boarded a ship for a distant land, where he would begin a new, exciting life.