The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club

by Marlena de Blasi

  ‘“Whatever else they may or may not be, they’re a troupe of gluttons at the Curia. You’ll win them over with your pastries, especially those little round pink-iced things with the marzipan cherries on top … what do you call them?”

  ‘“Cassetine.”

  ‘“When I was a girl in Rome, I went every afternoon with my friends to eat gelato at Muzzi. I remember the boys would forsake gelato for pastries, for one sort in particular which looked very much like your cassetine. In dialect, the boys called them ‘nuns’ breasts’. Pile a plate with those and, next to it, prop a little card identifying them. Written in dialect, of course. That should strike a note familiar enough to distract the old piggish knaves from fretting over who’s who in Umberto’s family.”

  •

  ‘Earnest as an estate agent, Carolina led me through the farthest corners of the palazzo. Originally the sixteenth-century country residence of a minor branch of the noble Monaldeschi, it was a descendent of that clan who left the property – handsomely and honourably restored – to the Church during the years between the great wars. Though I’d been so often in one or another of the saloni and the library and, of late, in the cavern of a kitchen, I knew nothing of the true immensity of the place until that afternoon of wandering through it with Carolina. She’d begun by saying that I should choose whichever rooms pleased me most, but when we’d climbed to the third floor where she and Luigia were situated, she lingered longest, thrusting wide the windows in each room, opening her arms to the rooftops of San Severino and to the wheat and the olives trembling in the wind beyond.

  ‘“Ecco. Behold. Here you’ll have morning sun and …”

  ‘“What about the attic? Will you show me the attic?”

  ‘Leading the way up the shallow stone steps of a narrow corridor lit by small, high windows, she said she’d been up there only once, maybe twice, in all the years she’d lived in the house, that it would be hellish in summer under the beams, that surely all the rats in San Severino assembled there, that I was too damn tall to even stand up anywhere but right in the middle.

  ‘Nearly at the top of the stairs there was a door. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  ‘She told me it was for “storage”. An oddly small room considering the dimensions of the others, it might well have been where the women of the house were isolated during their confinements. “At least that’s what Umberto thinks,” she said. “A rather morbid idea …”

  ‘I opened the door to what would become my home for the next thirty-four years. The ceiling was high and vaulted, it’s one window was a door opening to a small balcony. The floor was made of marble laid down in a design like a carpet. Here I could be as together with them as I could be alone with my baby. I would paint it red, a clear pure red with a trace of blue to keep it soft: carmine.

  •

  ‘On the agreed-upon moving day, Carolina and Luigia and I gathered together the things to be carried to the parish house: the baby’s trunk, my books and clothes, a gilt wooden lamp with a grey-and-white-striped abat-jour from my parents’ bedroom. Photos in silver frames and linens from my mother’s chest. The Bohemian crystal. I don’t remember that I took much else. At Carolina’s insistence, we set about covering the furniture with sheets, turning off the water, the gas, unplugging the appliances. “You’re moving house, Paolina, not just coming to us for a visit.” Having arranged transport with two of the men who sometimes worked at the parish house, she was impatient when they didn’t arrive on time and so we three began to walk the few cartons and sacks across the piazza and up the hill.

  ‘On one of the trips up to the parish house, Ferrucci the baker – just returning from delivering the second bake and seeing us with our arms full – stopped his white van and loaded us and our baggage into the floured, yeast-smelling space. Leaving Carolina and Luigia at the parish house, Ferrucci and I went back to my house to fetch the baby’s trunk, the books and then, rather than taking me directly back to the parish house, he asked if I’d like to ride along with him to Orvieto where he was to make the day’s last deliveries. A kind of sentimental journey it would be since, when I was in elementary school and friends with his son, Ferrucci would often take us with him on his afternoon delivery. So I’d known Ferrucci forever, the small, sturdy white-clad figure of him racing on his wooden clogs into the shops and the trattorie, a brown paper sack of new bread in his embrace, shouting his arrival: pane caldo, pane caldo.

  ‘As though years had not passed since the last time we rode together, we drove up into Orvieto and, when he’d delivered his goods, he parked the truck in Piazza Duomo. Reaching under the seat, pulling out the half-kilo pagnotta he’d tucked away there, he slapped a clasp knife in my hand.

  ‘“Break it open, Paolina. I’ll be right back.”

  ‘I sawed the bread in two and, with the halves resting on my lap, I sat there high up in the truck, pinching off pieces of crust, thinking how, from time to time, life makes such small circles. Wielding a paper packet like a trophy, Ferrucci soon came racing back and, opening the door on my side, he stood there laying slices of wild fennel salame in perfectly overlapping circles over the bread. Pressing the pagnotta back together with the heel of his hand, he tore the giant sandwich in two.

  ‘“Andiamo.”

  ‘He led the way to the steps of the Duomo and we sat with our merindina, eating and smiling and feeling no need for words until, as we stood to leave, he said, “I can’t wait until your baby is old enough to ride in the truck with me. I can’t wait for that, Paolina.”

  ‘I looked at little Ferrucci in his white paper hat, eyes solemn behind glasses dusted in flour, more of it caked in the furrows of his cheeks.

  ‘“Anch’io, Ferruccino. I also can’t wait.”

  ‘I didn’t know back then nor do I now if Ferrucci, with his warm bread and his few words, meant to gift me my past and promise me a future. I think he did.

  •

  ‘It was the last Saturday of that September. Having pilfered Umberto’s cherished Zenith radio from his study and set it on the bedside table in the little red room, Carolina sat feverishly twisting its dials. She’d been out in the shops that morning and had returned to find me installed up there in an early stage of labour.

  ‘“You must have distraction,” she kept repeating, though it was she who gasped and trembled while I sat folding and refolding baby clothes. She came upon some music and raised the volume. “Quando, quando, quando … When, when, when …” Uncorseted in her black woollen robe, still wearing her elastic stockings and town shoes, Carolina began to dance around the bed, making delicate samba-like moves, the pearl drops of her earrings jiggling in time with her bosoms.

  ‘“Amore mio, dance with me. Vieni, vieni, come, come.”

  ‘She took my hands, strove again and again to wrench the great white bulk of me from among the pillows and each time she failed. I fell to laughing and begged her to leave me be.

  ‘“Carolina, I hurt quite enough already without your …”

  ‘“But it’s this that will lessen the pain, you must move, move, move. When the contractions begin again, then you can be still. Come, try it.”

  ‘Carolina raised the volume just as Umberto entered the room.

  ‘“I heard the music … Paolina, is there something I can …?”

  ‘“Ah, Umberto. Maybe she’ll listen to you. Tell her that she must move, she must dance. Did I ever tell you that Anna-Rosa danced me through seventeen hours of travaglio before you were born? Yes, la pizzica, la tarantella, la monferrina. I don’t remember a polka but …”

  ‘Umberto and I laughed at Carolina and the more we laughed the better she danced and, when she pulled at me another time, I got to my feet and tried to do as she was doing. I’d never tried to dance before that afternoon. Never once. A contraction interrupted my debut and I fell back onto the bed. Intense as it was, Carolina had been right: the pain seemed less. After a few moments, Quando, Quando having given way to Guantanamera, I was on my feet ag
ain while Umberto, shaken by his first gaze upon a woman in her labours, was in retreat.

  ‘“Umberto, don’t you dare to leave me alone with her; you take a turn now while I rest. Keep her moving. She’ll follow you. Forza, forza. Go, go.”

  “Neither had Umberto danced in his life yet there he was, facing me, his feet apart as though to steady himself. Tall as a cypress and pitifully thin, lank blond hair falling in his eyes – blue and wide with terror behind his wire-rimmed spectacles – Umberto took me in his arms.

  ‘Heedless of the rhythm of Guantanamera, holding me in the formal stiff position of a waltz, his lower torso arched slightly backward to accommodate my belly, I danced barefoot with Umberto the Jesuit in the small red room under the black-beamed vault, the breeze from the open balcony door ruffling his Nordic hair, shivering the hem of my nightdress. No genius with a chisel and a stone could have carved such a moment.

  ‘Carmine. Khar’-meen-eh. A beautiful word, don’t you think? My son was born on Sunday morning. Carmine Domenica. Carmine Sunday. All my sons were born in that red room and I named all of them Carmine. Carmine Mezzanotte, Carmine Midnight. Carmine Pioviggine, Carmine Rain. And my last, my baby, he’s Carmine Rovescio. Born feet first, he’s Carmine Backwards.

  ‘But I’ve gone too far ahead, haven’t I? Back to that Saturday, that Sunday morning.

  ‘The midwife and Carolina having seen to my delivery, Doctor Ottaviano arrived in time to inspect my son and to congratulate me. I recall nothing save the dancing and the moment when Carolina laid my baby across my chest.

  ‘Later that morning it was Umberto who came softly into the red room, asked me if I might sit up a moment. There was something I should see out the long window he said. I did better than that. With Carmine asleep in my arms, I walked to the balcony door to see that twenty San Severese, perhaps more than that, were walking in a free-form procession from the piazza up the hill toward the parish house. Every one carried flowers or some sort of parcel. Ferrucci had his arms around a great paper sack of bread.

  ‘“Carmine’s first visitors,” Umberto said quietly.

  ‘Through the gates they came and gathered in the front garden under my balcony, waving, shouting, “Evviva Carmine Domenica. Long live Carmine Domenica.”

  ‘In both my hands I raised the baby above my head, held him there for all to see and the shouting mounted. Carmine slept. Carolina came huffing into the room and escorted us back to bed, saying that weeping and laughing as I was would sour my milk and leave my son to wail in agony. Umberto went to meet the delegation and returned with his arms full of flowers. Luigia brought in the bread and what looked like a small sack of sea salt.

  ‘“There’s a note,” Umberto said. “Shall I read it to you?”

  Life is a search for beauty and so we bring flowers.

  And what would a life be without tears? And so we bring salt.

  And so he will never be hungry, we bring bread to your son, great loaves for him to share.

  •

  ‘No one acknowledged Niccolò as Carmine’s father and neither did any one deny that he was. Discreetly and with grace, Niccolò came and went as a visitor to the parish house. Claiming no special rights and no one offering him such, his was a mostly behind-the-scenes presence. Still, Niccolò’s attendance rankled Umberto. Though not once – not then, not ever – did either of them openly indict the other, Niccolò and Umberto clenched jaws and crossed swords back then. And for the next thirty years – until Umberto died – they sustained those postures. I know, I’m going too fast again.

  ‘Carolina, Luigia, Umberto, Carmine and I lived well together, as though we had lived well together always. There was screaming and shouting and laughing and tenderness in what felt like just doses. Emotions expressed, offences pardoned, kindnesses repaid in spades, all of it a revelation to me who, to avoid Stasia’s dismay, had grown up so nimble a ghost.

  ‘An eternal tragicomic opera, the household never numbered fewer than ten at table, what with the comings and goings of Umberto’s colleagues from Rome and the outlying parishes and the two or three live-in seminarians whose tenures rotated once a year. Catechism classes, pre-nuptial courses, child-care programs and thrice-weekly medical clinics provided the house chorus. The darling protagonist was Carmine Domenica, and Carolina, Luigia and I were his devout concubines. Though he reserved his fondest attentions for me, he did not withold affection from the others. As soon as he could tumble himself from his crib in the night or the early morning, he would go to one or another of us in our beds, tuck himself into our arms. At breakfast time, the victor in whose bed he had slept would carry the sleepy-eyed Carmine triumphantly into the kitchen. Of course, Carmine was only the first of my sons.

  ‘There was a certain symmetry over the next nine years between the various residencies of the seminarians and my birthing three more babies. Coincidence. Chance. Providence. People still speculate and I am still Delphic. Opaque. Save to Carolina, I’ve never felt the need to speak of who fathered my sons any more than I felt the need to marry him. Them. Anyone. Whenever I faltered, Carolina could tell. She would say, “It won’t matter in the end. What will matter is that you’ve wanted these babies with your whole soul.”

  ‘Yes. My whole soul. But would that suffice? Would that compensate for the affliction I am imposing on my children? And even if my love – the love of all of us – is enough for them, how would they manage outside that door? The candied faces of the adults, the open torment of their mates …

  ‘“Remember what Umberto said at the beginning … always some anomaly … always a secret. A rune too old to read. We all get a cross, Paolina. Your children will have this one.”

  ‘“A mother who is known as la virginetta di San Severino.”

  ‘“They say it endearingly. You must know that.”

  ‘“I do. I do but …”

  ‘“What you’re really worried about is whether they will love you? Whether they will forgive you? Whether your sons will forgive you. It’s that, isn’t it?”

  ‘I couldn’t answer her for the tightness in my chest. I nodded, yes.

  ‘“They may neither love nor forgive you. Be clear about that risk. Of course, they may neither love nor forgive you no matter what you do or don’t do. Be clear about that risk as well. Love them, Paolina. And not for the sake of the love they might return. Parental love, by its nature, is one-sided. Unusual as you are and as are your choices, your risk of love not returned may be greater. But as I think about it, because you and your choices are unusual, you may very well be easier to love, easier to forgive. Who knows? In any case, it has a nice ring, don’t you think? La virginetta di San Severino.”

  •

  ‘All through the years that followed, the story of la virginetta remained the pungent stuff of local folklore. Even so, the prattle it caused was mostly confined to a small, tireless cabal whose disdain seemed made more of envy than of righteousness. I think it was sexual titillation that must have fed the men who gossiped. I’d never been a beauty. There was no prettiness about me to fade. And yet my femininity, my femaleness, grew more potent over time, that particular manner of moving and speaking and gesturing, of thinking and operating which is hardly generic among women and has not a thing to do with mincing or sashaying or the batting of eyelashes. I was strong and whole and peaceful and without any need of them and thus I was seductive. I bewitched them with indifference. Politely spurning their overtures – both subtle and not – I caused their hostility, their umbrage.

  ‘The women’s malice was made of another kind of envy. Unlike many of theirs, my life was never cluttered with angst over marital fidelity. I was never beaten or threatened or – most beautiful of all to contemplate – I was never lied to. There was, unfailingly, the little leather purse, fat with lire for the week’s expenses, waiting on the kitchen table on Friday morning. A white envelope, often with a flower or a branch of herbs tucked inside it along with a generous sum of argent de poche, was slipped under the door of
the little red room on the twenty-seventh of each month. Who knows how such a personal event could have made it to the piazza? And who knows how many other personal events, less real than that, also made it to the piazza?

  ‘In winter I went to mass in a brown felt cloche with black velvet roses sewn along one side of it and wore a brown serge dress and matching coat. If it was cold, I wore a short silver fox cape. In summer my dress was of navy silk, a wisp of a thing no heavier than a handkerchief. My cloche was straw. When Umberto had business in Orvieto or Terni or Rome, my sons and I would ride along in his black Giulietta; I in front next to Umberto, the boys in back. As I’ve said, we all lived well together. More like a family or less like one, I can hardly tell you which it was.

  ‘With the shelter – and, I suppose, the prestige – of life in the parish house, my sons managed their crosses and my mystery. Not always but often enough, they managed. There were even times when I believed they thrived on the unconventional circumstances of their childhood. In a way, they set a new standard by their living with the local priest, the priest’s mother, the priest’s aunt. And by their sitting at lunch and supper every day with seminarians who taught them Greek and Latin from the time they could speak and coached them in soccer and sang the Georgics to them before they slept and accompanied them across the piazza to and from school, their long black soutanes a uniform more majestic than a father’s brown corduroy suit, my sons were elevated from their mates, their pain and embarrassment camouflaged so that their lives looked and, I think, felt ordinary. Ordinariness being the state for which children long more than all others.

  ‘They look like me, my sons do. Tawny skin and hair black as a raven’s, snub noses and good teeth. But their eyes are my mother’s: slanted, green, iridescent as the neck of a pheasant. Never a day goes by without my thinking of her, she being there in my sons’ eyes. Have I told you? Three are farmers who work the same land my father did. Niccolò’s farms. Carmine Domenica is a paediatrician. They are all married and they are all fathers. They are the loves of my life. And who am I to them?’