by Genni Gunn
Months passed. Each week, Mamma sent a letter to the army, to inquire whether there was any word about Vito. Each week, she received no reply.
Eight months after his disappearance, a letter arrived from Malta, sent three months before, in which Vito told us he had joined the merchant marines. He was fine, he said, and sent his love.
“We must give thanks that he’s all right,” Papà said one evening, when we were all seated outside the casello, a blazing sky of stars around us.
We read and reread his letter, and Mamma cried a little for happiness that Vito was alive and well. We all missed him, of course, but in an abstract way, because Vito had never been physically present for very long, and what we missed, perhaps, was the longing we had for him to return, and make our family whole.
We waited a year and a half before another letter arrived — no explanation; he was coming home to visit.
I see him clearly — a man now, seventeen, riding the train one April morning. He’s in a uniform, crisp and ironed, his head out the window, hair lucent in the wind. He’s coming to a different home, another casello, another rail crossing, another baby.
Papà never stayed longer than a year or two in any location. Or rather, he was transferred by the railway managers because he was constantly causing trouble among the workers. He was a loyal, conscientious employee, albeit stubborn, so they tolerated him. Vito would have been used to this by now. He had ridden these rails to and from us so often, he had come to think of trains as home — both constant and transient.
When he saw me on the platform, he smiled. I was nervous, searching for him among the travellers. I’d been sent to meet him, but I was afraid I wouldn’t recognize him. That morning, I had scrubbed my face and combed my hair a hundred strokes. I wore a white blouse tucked into a navy calf-length skirt.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I said, when he was standing in front of me, a small duffel bag over his back. I smiled.
“You’ve changed immensely,” he said, smiling back. “You’re not a girl any more.”
My face flushed. “I’m still a girl,” I said. “I’m only thirteen.” I pressed my arms against my sides, self-conscious of the bones protruding, my ribcage almost visible through my blouse.
He laughed and took my elbow. “I suppose Papà is fending off the boys.”
“If he is, then he’s doing a good job.” I sneaked a look at him. “Besides, the only boys for miles around are eight and nine years old.”
“If I were not your brother, I’d be courting you no matter how far away you lived,” he said.
I flushed again, and turned my face away from him, embarrassed. My brother. I knew him only in vignettes, years apart. I had no idea who he was in his real life away from us. My other brothers — Aldo and Renato — were so uncomplicated. I easily anticipated their words, their actions. They were second nature, not like this thin young man who stared at me so intently.
We walked to the end of the platform, then I stepped off and continued along the middle of the railway tracks, through an open field among small hills. He followed.
I wanted to ask him about the merchant marines, about his life away from us. I wanted to tell him that since we’d seen him last, everything had changed. “Papà is doing all he can, but still the children have little to eat,” I said. Each morning, a half slice of bread, then at night, peas and dandelion greens for each of us children, while Mamma and Papà ate only onions. Our clothes hung from the bones of our shoulders and hips.
“It’s like this all over Italy,” he said. “I am not expecting anything.”
Now and then, he stepped onto one of the rails — one arm spread for balance, while the other held the duffel bag over his back — and walked a few steps, as if he were a circus performer in a high-wire act. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s race.” It was an old game we used to play as children. I stepped up on the rail, arms out for balance. He climbed the opposite one, and took my hand so that instead of racing, we moved forward in tandem for a few moments before one of us fell off.
A train horn sounded, and we both jumped off. He held me close to the ties, the train a lumbering weight roaring past us. Papà’s words circled in my head: You’re not to walk on the tracks. You won’t hear the train. People think they will, but they don’t. I looked at Vito. “Why did you run away?” I asked, a current between us. He personified danger in everything he did.
“I had to.” He looked out to the horizon, at all that I couldn’t even imagine.
“But why?”
He ruffled my hair. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” he said.
We continued to walk through fields of almonds, olive groves, and vineyards, both sombre now, until when we were within thirty metres of the house, we came to three trulli which gleamed in the sun like gnomes.
“What’s that?” he asked. “Does someone live there?”
“It’s the grotta,” I told him. “A room twenty metres high, with walls of snow-white alabaster.”
I had never been inside, and imagined a cathedral, as something God had created, a sign for me, now that we had come to live so close to it. I knew nothing of karst caves and their complex origins. I could not envision sparkling water capable of both such destruction and such reconstructed beauty, sparkling water oozing into and widening natural cracks in the rock, dissolving enough limestone to form caves inside the layers over tens of thousands of years. I was still naïve enough to believe they had come fully formed, created by God in those seven days. “Our brothers play down there, but Mamma has forbidden us girls to go.”
As we neared it, we saw a crude sign, “La Grotta di Putignano,” leaning against one of the trulli. “Let’s go see it,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
“It’s dark down there. Besides, Mamma is expecting us,” I said, biting my lip. “But I would like to.”
“Another day then,” he said.
“I don’t know if Mamma will allow it,” I said.
“I don’t see why she wouldn’t. I would protect you.” He smiled. “In any case, I won’t tell her if you won’t,” he said.
I shrugged, and we continued up to the trackman’s hut, where I stepped aside and he entered first. Mamma turned from the basin, where she was washing clothes. She had put on a clean blouse and skirt, though they could not hide how thin she had become. She gathered him in her arms. “My boy,” she said. “My boy.”
Aldo and Renato stood to one side, suddenly shy. Renato, now seven, watched Vito with unbridled admiration. Clarissa rushed into his arms, and Mimí — who was three and had never seen Vito — stood frowning, as if she were unhappy at being overshadowed, even if it was by her long-lost brother.
Papà waited until everyone stepped back, then he stiffly embraced Vito.
The room was cramped, with an indoor stove, a wooden table, and four chairs. Upstairs, a small loft with two beds — one for Mamma and Papà, and one for Renato and Mimí; and a crawl space under the roof where Aldo, Clarissa, and I slept. In winter, the tiles rotted or blew off and it rained on us, so that we were perpetually damp.
We were all a little awkward with each other, making small talk. The previous day, Papà had bought three slices of salami on the black market, and Mamma now carefully divided them among us. Vito offered to help Papà in the field, but Mamma said, “Sit. Sit. Let me look at you.” Papà didn’t know how to be — angry or happy — their common past so fractured, it was hard to decide which one to return to. The children were all seated in a circle around Vito. He was the stranger they feared and wanted to become. He was their black sheep, the disgraced one, their brother, their hero.
He waited for me on the platform, at the bottom of the hill, near the grotto, where the train stopped to pick me up and take me to school in a nearby town. Sometimes, he rode the train with me, his eyes keeping other boys away.
“I’m protecting you,” he said, but I knew there was more to his presence, to the way he looked at me.
When I returned from s
chool in mid-afternoon, I would find him standing in the shade of one of the trulli, his white shirt stark against the grey, cone-shaped roofs. He often had a chocolate for me and cigarettes for himself. I was afraid to ask him where he got these luxuries, what he was doing in exchange for these gifts. I was afraid Papà would find out.
We walked home together, and he told me that once the war ended, he intended to go to America. “You could come with me,” he said, his voice intense. He reached for my hand, but I drew it back quickly.
“I have to help Mamma with Mimí,” I said.
“Yes, of course you do,” he said, smiling.
That night Mamma and I were ironing the children’s clothes, when Papà and Vito came in from the field, arguing. Mamma wiped her hands on her apron and gave me a pleading look. I set the iron down in its metal cage and sighed. I’d just refilled it — red embers from the kitchen stove — the metal hot and sizzling against the dampened cloth. Mamma had dark circles under her eyes and her skin was slack and grey. Ever since Mimí’s birth three years before, Mamma had been exhausted. Her hair was dull and rough; her nipples were cracked and sore; and her nerves were brittle as frozen hair. She was still suckling Mimí, but lately had been pushing her away, which made the child both terrified and furious, so that she burst into loud sobs, beat her fists against Mamma’s arms, and stamped her feet. Renato tried to comfort her — imagine, he was barely seven, and suffered from coughing fits that frightened me with their ferocity and frequency.
“Where did he get money for cigarettes?” Papà bellowed, arm sweeping to indicate Vito, who was sulking against the doorframe, in a white shirt, sleeves turned up, exposing tanned forearms whose muscles strained against skin.
Mamma shook her head, and finished folding a cotton hanky, the corner of which she’d embroidered with M. S. She was curved over the ironing board, and I reached over and massaged her upper back. Poor Mamma. Thirty-three. She seemed so old, not like people of this same age today.
Upstairs, Clarissa began to sing. Already at eleven, she had a spectacular natural soprano, and had learned many classical arias from various cantori — troupes of musicians who travelled town to town in their small caravans, giving outdoor performances in clearings. Clarissa had begun to use her singing as a buffer between herself and anything unpleasant.
Mamma crossed to the stove and busied herself stoking the fire. I followed and stood beside her. Her hands trembled; she wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve. Earlier, after swearing me to secrecy, she had told me she believed Vito was stealing money from her purse. “Papà will kill him if he finds out,” she said. As well, other things were missing from her drawer — Mamma’s gold chain given to her by her mother, her silk change purse, her tiny gold confirmation ring — Mamma’s treasures sold to buy cigarettes, or worse, gamble. Mamma and Papà had hardly anything of value, and it broke my heart to think that Vito could do such a dishonourable thing. I refused to even consider it.
“What business is it of yours?” Vito said. He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes, then leisurely tapped one into his palm.
Papà slapped his hand, sending the cigarette rolling across the floor. “Disgraziato!” he said. “To speak to your father like this.” And he walked to the table and sat down, resigned.
Mamma turned, unsure who to comfort. “Papà,” she said, “I’m sure Vito didn’t really mean to offend you.” She looked imploringly at Vito. “Vito, apologize to your father this minute.”
Vito raised his head in an impertinent gesture, then he bent down, picked up his cigarette and stuck it between his lips. He walked to the stove, reached around Mamma for a match, which he struck against the stovetop, and lit his cigarette.
“Is this how you treat your superiors?” Mamma said. “Is this how you intend to dishonour this family?”
“I won’t be here long,” Vito said calmly, “so you needn’t worry about honour or dishonour.”
Mamma sat down beside Papà, as if the news were too heavy for her to bear. “But where are you going?” she said, bewildered. “Papà and I have been working all our lives to make yours better —”
“I always knew it,” Papà shouted suddenly. “You’re lazy and irresponsible. I’ve tried to look the other way, because I didn’t want my son to shame me.” He spat on the ground. “But you’re a disgrace. You’ll bring dishonour to this family!”
“Papà, please,” Mamma began. She stood and touched Vito’s arm. “Won’t you think about it?” she said. “I’m sure Papà can help find you a job with the railway.”
Vito shook Mamma’s hand off his arm as if it were barbed. “What do you care, anyway?” He laughed an ugly, sarcastic laugh. “When have any of you ever cared about me?”
Papà leapt across the room and slapped Vito, hard, across the face. Then he stomped into the night.
Mamma now began to wail, and I felt an excruciating pain shoot through my head. I had begun to get migraines. I pressed my fingers into my temples.
“Piera,” Mamma said, suddenly aware of my condition. “Sit down before you fall down. I’ll get you some water.”
Vito came forward and took my hand. “Come outside,” he said. “We’ll walk a bit. You’ll feel better in the cool air.”
We walked away from the house, along a fallow field. In the distance, the town’s lights twinkled. Here, silence.
“Why can’t you get along with Papà?” I said. “Why must you always upset him?”
“I’m not trying to,” he said. “After all this time away, in a matter of a couple of days, he’s treating me as if I can’t ever do anything right. What does he know about me? He hasn’t even asked about my life.” He tossed the cigarette into the darkness, where it landed and gleamed like a glow-worm. Then he thrust his hands deep in his pockets.
“Will you really go away again?” I asked.
“Soon. Tomorrow or the day after.”
“Why can’t you stay?” I asked.
He turned to me. “If I tell you something, you must promise to keep it a secret.”
I nodded.
“Our ship was captured by the British when we were in Malta. We were taken prisoners.” Then he went on to explain that the British had asked the merchant marines if they would help in the fight against fascism. Already trained as a communications specialist, Vito had begun to work for British Intelligence, with a new name and a Maltese nationality. “I can’t tell any of this to anyone,” he said. “But now you understand, don’t you, why I can’t stay?”
“Are you a spy?” I asked.
He laughed. “Nothing so glamorous. You’ve been reading too many novels.”
“Will you be living in England?” I asked. I imagined palaces and governesses.
“I’ll go wherever I’m sent,” he said. “I can’t tell you, and you mustn’t ask. No one can know that I’m Italian, you understand? That’s why I won’t be telling Mamma and Papà. And you must keep this secret, for it could harm all of us otherwise.”
I stared at the ground, although the night was black and the soil obscured. “You didn’t steal money from Mamma and Papà, did you?” I asked.
He stopped, and turned toward me. “Is that what you think? That I’m a thief?” His hands grasped my shoulders, shaking me, his voice tense.
“No, no, I… Mamma said—”
“I’ve been running errands for one of the shopkeepers. That’s how I get the cigarettes.” He let me go abruptly.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Forget it. It’s ok.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and stuck it between his lips. He lit it and drew long and hard on it, staring into the darkness. Finally, he sighed, and turned to me. “Tomorrow we’ll go see the grotto,” he said. “I want to keep my promise before I go.”
All morning, I had had an upset stomach, and on my return home from high school in Locorotondo, in preparation for Vito’s arrival, I changed into a
clean white blouse and scrubbed my hands and under my fingernails. I had washed my hair before dawn, and it shone in the afternoon sun. I walked along the tracks past our casello, my mind filled with possibilities.
I followed the track to the three trulli that formed the entrance to the cave. Stopped in the sun, and looked toward the field, expecting Vito at any moment. It was not only that Mamma had forbidden me to go down. I was afraid of the darkness. My brothers spent much time there, along with the grotto custodian’s three children, scaling the metal circular stairway down into the cave, hoping to make a few lire from any passing visitors. This was a happy year for the children, because for the first time ever, they had friends their own age with whom to play and socialize. The air was cool — mid-December now — and I wrapped my arms around my chest. I waited only six or seven minutes.
When Vito rounded the corner with Clarissa, I took a deep breath to disguise my disappointment, and my lips grimaced into a smile.
“I picked her up at the elementary school,” Vito said, “so she wouldn’t miss this adventure.”
Clarissa stared up at Vito with undisguised adoration. She had hardly left his side since he returned.
I followed them both down into the grotto, into a cool fifteen degrees, down the circular staircase, and with each step, I had the sense I was descending into Dante’s circles of Hell, the red stone and deformed creatures there. At the bottom, I stopped to catch my breath, partly afraid, though Vito was speaking in soothing tones about the bottom of the sea 80 million years ago, which was a number so vast, I couldn’t conceive of it. Thunder sounded overhead, not that I heard it, rather I felt it in the slight tremor of the earth. Vito, sensing my rising panic, took my arm and asked, “What’s wrong?” but I didn’t know exactly whether the thunder scared me, or the grotto being so beautiful took my breath away, or whether I was experiencing claustrophobia, which had plagued me ever since I was a young child, when Mamma and Papà used to go out at night to religious celebrations and lock us in those dark, airless lodges.