La Brigantessa

by Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli

  Alfonso snorts before plopping himself down on one of the pallets. “Let’s make sure the next inn we stay at is more to our standards, va bene?” He calculates how much time it would take them to reach their destination. It is unfortunate that they cannot continue their journey by night, but he and Claudio have both agreed that they should heed the advice of fellow travellers and take the safety precautions suggested. Calabria is a wild land—this is the warning they have been given by an employee of the pharmaceutical company Claudio deals with back home in Torino.

  Ottavio Venturi, the youngest employee on staff, and therefore obliged to do the jobs the senior employees shun, takes a yearly trip to Calabria to dispense pharmaceutical supplies. He detests the trip, but he has no choice if he wants to remain in the employ of La Drogheria Manarin. And with a wife heavy with their fourth child, he has no other means of providing for their subsistence. Every trip he takes inevitably leads to one illness or another, and he curses what he calls the land of pestilence, along with God and his employer for sending him there.

  “Do whatever business you have there expediently and return north without delay. If you don’t suffocate from the pestilential air, you’ll most likely come into contact with a worse fate…such as meeting up with the brigands roaming the countryside. I’ve heard stories about them that would make even the toughest man’s coglioni shrink. Travel with an escort, if possible, and don’t forget to carry your own arms. Calabria is one place I never visit without my pistol and dagger.”

  Alfonso and Claudio decide to heed his advice and travel with all the necessary precautions and equipment. Both are skilled hunters and are quite comfortable using firearms. And they certainly have no intention of lingering in Calabria once they have inspected Alfonso’s newly acquired lands and have made the necessary adjustments and hiring of labourers to tend to the property in their absence.

  Claudio turns to Alfonso, who is splashing his face with some of the water in the basin. “If we leave early tomorrow morning after breakfast, weather permitting, and barring any attack by brigands,” he winks, “we should arrive in Reggio by nightfall. We’ll find lodgings for the night, and after breakfast the next morning, we can dismiss our driver and journey the rest of the way ourselves to Camini.”

  Alfonso wipes his face, which is now devoid of his earlier scowl and holds a grin of anticipation. He thumps Claudio’s back with one large hand, before opening a shuttered window to empty the washing bowl. “I must admit, brother, that I am quite looking forward to stepping foot on my new property.” Closing the window, he glances slyly at Claudio. “Do you think that the fact that these expropriated church lands are now mine will extend my future stay in purgatory?”

  Claudio looks up sharply after refilling the bowl. “What? A twinge of guilt for pouncing on this deal when it will obviously uproot some poor priest and his even poorer parishioners?” He shakes his head. “Oh, Alfonso, Alfonso. Perhaps you still have a conscience after all.”

  “Nonsense,” Alfonso snorts. “I don’t feel guilty in the least. I was just trying to be comical. It’s obvious who has the conscience in this family, or you would have agreed to joint ownership of these lands with me.”

  Claudio dips a towel into the bowl, wrings it out, and wipes his face. “I prefer to inspect the lands I wish to purchase before I make a deal. ‘Caveat emptor,’ as they say.” He strides to the window and opens the shutters wide to dispose of the water. “Ah, a fresh breeze from the bay. The sea air will do us good as we sleep.”

  Claudio sets down the bowl and gives Alfonso a pat on the back. “Get yourself to bed, little brother. I’ll pray for your redemption.” He smiles as he settles onto his pallet.

  Alfonso plops onto the pallet opposite him and shifts several times to get as comfortable as he can on the meagre amount of hemp placed between two scratchy linen sheets. “Caveat emptor indeed!” he grumbles between curses.

  AS MUCH AS HE HAD WANTED TO SEE GABRIELLA as soon as he returned to Camini two days ago, Tonino knew that he would have to think up an excuse to seek out Don Simone. The rules of propriety wouldn’t have changed in his absence. Tonino had planned to stop by earlier in the evening with a religious statue as a gift for the priest, but then a neighbouring farmer came by with a message that he couldn’t ignore—a quickly whispered message about a meeting, like the ones Tonino attended while in Cosenza. His stomach tightened with disappointment that a possible reunion with Gabriella would have to be delayed another day, but he nodded his thanks to the farmer and went back inside his room, thinking up an excuse to tell his parents for having to step out later that night.

  At dusk, Tonino makes his way through some back alleys toward the outskirts of Camini. The muted sounds of stray cats and dogs mingle with the plaintive cries of babies and children, followed inevitably by either a mother’s lullaby or scolding. There is no breeze tonight, and as he strides past fields both wild and cultivated, the heat of the earth seems to be rising upward, carrying the scents of plants rooted beneath. The sweet aroma of jasmine and oleander are particularly heady. By the time he reaches his destination, the back of his collar is already damp.

  Tonino steps hesitantly through a dusky grove of olive trees and onto a barely visible footpath. It comes to an abrupt stop at a horizontally-placed half-door that he lifts to proceed cautiously down a steep stairway cut into the earth. The root cellar is large but crammed, and stuffy with the mingled smells of sweat and cured sausages hanging from the rafters along with recently skinned hares.

  Tonino feels the hum of energy around him. The men stand back-to-back, elbow-to-elbow, and face-to-face. Some are listening, many are talking. Spit is flying from the mouths of the most animated. Tonino sees that most of the men are from Camini, but there is a smattering from the neighbouring hamlets as well. The owner of the place, Pietro Aji, has managed to entice a fair number of men like Tonino himself, young and hungry to change the way things are done. Some of their fathers are present, unlike his own, who has always had a complacency and a passive acceptance about life, with no desire, let alone fire in him, to become an instrument of change.

  Tonino catches sight of Davide Moschetta, who is waving a greeting across the room. He waves back with a grin.

  Davide’s tired, shadow-rimmed eyes have a spark to them. His body, usually bent and strained after working in the fields, is straight and his shoulders erect under a threadbare shirt.

  Davide is three years older than Tonino. He has been the head of his family since his father’s death two years earlier, with six younger siblings to support and a mother, Evelina, who is losing herself with grief over her dead husband and succumbing to a mysterious ailment that is causing her hands, legs, and feet to swell.

  The entire hamlet is aware of Evelina’s deterioration, and try as the neighbours might to revive her spirit, to get her out of her bed to feed her children and herself, they have retreated in frustration and resignation to God’s will for Evelina’s fate.

  While Davide labours in the neighbouring farms from dawn to nightfall, the youngsters roam about Camini. They have learned to quench their thirst at the two natural springs, and to appease their hunger with handfuls of wild blackberries or a feed of prickly pear—which they can peel expertly with a sharp stone—and the occasional handout from neighbours. Davide graciously accepts the goodwill of the villagers: the plucked pigeons wrapped in burlap at his doorstep; the rounds of bread that have hardened but will fill empty stomachs nicely after soaking in pigeon soup or a broth of cabbage and onion; the bits of meat and bone and sweetbreads that Tonino’s father saves for the neediest families.

  Tonino knows he fares a lot better than many around him; he has his father’s trade and the chance of a decent life. Hard nonetheless, he knows, but with a loving wife beside him, everything will be worth it.

  Gabriella. The memory of her eyes and the feel of her lips by the river makes his heart thrum. A sudden commotion at the c
ellar door draws everyone’s attention. Enzo Salinaro, Camini’s bread-maker, swearing as the cellar’s sturdy oak doors close behind him.

  “What manner of meeting place is this?” he huffs, his meaty face red and glistening. He tells them how he has almost gotten stuck between the damp earth walls, like a cork in a bottle. Tonino laughs with the rest of the crowd.

  “We would have eased you through with a good lathering of my oil,” Pietro laughs, gesturing at the giant ceramic urns holding the year’s supply of olive oil.

  “That I would love to witness,” chuckles a man a few feet behind Tonino, drawing another round of spirited laughs. “Enzo Salinaro, all greased up like a hog on a spit.”

  Enzo turns to the man and responds with a crude gesture and a toothy grin.

  Tonino laughs along with the crowd and feels some of the tension in the room dissipate. Before Enzo’s arrival, the groups huddled around him were much more serious, with heads bent in discussion and voices murmuring in barely suppressed anticipation. Anticipation for the arrival of a special visitor....

  “Hey, Tonino,” Pietro is suddenly next to him, patting him on the shoulder. “May God bless you for caring about the future of our homeland. Without men like you, and everyone else here tonight, our people will be crushed like the olives we harvested in January. And the consequences will be bitter, like oil turned rancid.”

  Tonino nods, not sure what to say. Pietro, unlike most of the crowd gathered in his cellar, is living well. He owns a substantial property with an olive grove and a farm, and he is not dependent on any landowner for seasonal work, unlike most of his neighbours, who travel miles every day to secure work. And when they’re hired, they work eighteen hours each day, often for a pittance. Their bodies become as gnarled and bent as the olive trees, their faces gaunt and tinged yellow with malaria. Their gangly children fare no better.

  Pietro is generous with his neighbours, but he alone cannot sustain an entire village. It is for the children, the families, that he has arranged this secret meeting tonight, he murmurs to Tonino. He has entreated those he can trust, those who have a high stake in this venture to change the way their lives are run.

  Pietro elevates his voice to command everyone’s attention. “The previous government has always controlled you. But the Bourbons are gone now. Change is coming, but it won’t happen without the will of our countrymen. Your country needs you now, while you still have some strength left in you. Now, while your tired veins are still pumping some good red blood. The Bourbons have made a shambles of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Now is the time to stitch it back together. That is why we are here tonight, my friends and neighbours.

  “We must unite, as our beloved country is uniting, and lend what strength we still have to the one that has sacrificed and continues to sacrifice himself, his life, for the unity of all. We must fling ourselves with abandon to the cause of united Italy so that our children and their children will enjoy what we are still struggling for: property rights, food, security. And we will be completely united, my friends, when Rome and Venice are freed from foreign rule and can join us.

  “Our great leader cannot do it alone; he needs you. The people answered his call in Sicily two years ago, rallying behind him to defeat the Bourbon troops in the war of independence. His Redshirts triumphed! The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were freed to join the rest of Italy! The union sealed with the plebiscite!

  “Now he needs the help of his countrymen once again for his next mission: ousting the French from Rome.” Pietro pounds his chest. “Rome belongs to us, to Italy, not to Napoleon the Third.” He pauses and swivels slowly to the right and left, his eyes challenging anyone to disagree.

  “I tell you, my dear neighbours, I have met the great leader himself, the man who would lead you out of these chains of poverty and struggle, of servitude and shame. Servitude to those who dangle you like marionettes over their vast estates, their invisible arms twisting you this way and that. They keep you from grasping hold of the land’s abundance, deprive you of your fair share, allow vast lands to stay uncultivated, when you could be tending to them, the lifeblood of your family and of generations to come.” Pietro wipes the corners of his mouth.

  “But there will be no future generations, my dear paesani, if we don’t take a stand now to change the miserable circumstances of our lives, to be strong together, to join—”

  “He’s here!” someone near the door cries out, and a hush settles over the group. Eyes and bodies shift to the figure now in the doorway.

  Tonino’s eyes freeze on the man whose gaze is sweeping over the group with the intensity of an eagle searching for food. His dark close-set eyes, however, have the benevolence and warmth that a bird of prey lacks. Tonino is but three paces away, and when their eyes meet, Tonino feels the hair on his arms rise. And then the man’s gaze shifts and breaks into a warm smile under his black conical hat.

  Tonino glances at Pietro, who is nodding and smiling back at the man. Pietro leaves Tonino’s side to join the man, who, although unimposing in size or stature, projects a controlled power and confidence. Wearing a red shirt under a multicoloured poncho, and grey trousers, he stands with the air of a commander. He clasps Pietro’s hand and shakes it vigorously, thanking him for assembling an impressive following, at least for the meeting, if nothing else. Again, the twinkle in his eyes.

  Pietro announces, puffing out his chest, “Allow me, my esteemed friends and neighbours, to introduce to you…the one with whom our destinies are intertwined…our most honoured General, Giuseppe Garibaldi!”

  Tonino realizes he is holding his breath. A few seconds of silence elapse, and he hears himself join the thunderous burst of cries and applause. “Viva, Garibaldi!”

  “Viva l’Italia unita!” The General’s eyes sweep over the men. Tonino is transfixed when they lock with his. The challenge is clear: Follow me. Join me in my cause, in our cause for united Italy. You are the future of our country.

  Tonino notices that Garibaldi is making it a point to let his gaze settle on everyone around him. He talks steadily, convincingly, his dark eyes boring into each man watching him in wonder and admiration. He tells them to go home and to think long and hard. To think of the part they can play in history. His eyes never waiver as he tells him that he will return for his supporters the following night and lead them to chart a new course for Italy.

  “Take care of your affairs tomorrow, and tomorrow night, God willing, I will see some of your patriotic faces standing here before me. I count on your discretion while making your preparations. You may tell your nearest and dearest that you plan to join me in my mission, but I beseech you to refrain from telling them that you will be leaving tomorrow night. We must leave unhindered by an anxious procession of teary mothers and ambivalent fathers. We must steal away like thieves in the night if we want our mission to proceed as it should.”

  The men shout, clap, and pass around bottles of wine, as they offer a toast to the General. Tonino feels a thundering echo in his chest that spreads along every nerve in his body. He is mesmerized, recalling the appeal in the General’s eyes. When the fever pitch in the cellar begins to subside, Tonino feels the beating of his heart subside as well, allowing him to hear the inner voice that has been only a whisper until this moment. Join, it shouts, reverberating within his chest. Join Garibaldi and his Redshirts!

  SINCE TONINO’S RETURN FROM COSENZA four days earlier, Gabriella has struggled to keep her mind on her regular tasks. These past few months have been interminable, beginning and ending each day with a prayer to the Madonna to give her patience and strength to carry on with the mundane tasks expected of her. She has tried to concentrate on baking bread and biscuits, cleaning and washing, tending the chickens and goats without thinking about Tonino, but he has always crept into her thoughts. When she is kneading the filone, she imagines him sitting at the table watching her, or afterwards, enjoying the hot, crusty bread drizzled w
ith olive oil and pecorino cheese. When she is scrubbing Luciano’s breeches and rinsing them, she remembers the day she and Tonino met by the river, sitting on the stones and looking into each other’s eyes. His fingers caressing hers. His declaration of love.

  At times, she has felt guilty for harbouring these thoughts while in the presence of her father or Don Simone. She has caught them looking at her in puzzlement after catching her daydreaming, and flustered, she has had to think up different excuses for her inattention. Not one day has gone by without her praying for Tonino’s swift return, so he can approach her father for his blessing. And then, she and Tonino can begin to plan their life together….

  On Tonino’s third night back, she was preparing a late supper when he stopped by with the excuse that he had a present for Don Simone—a statue of Saint Francis that his aunt and uncle had given him for managing the farm and eventually finding a buyer. Her father and Luciano had gone to visit old Nicolina for an herbal remedy to ease Lorenzo’s aching joints. While Don Simone attempted to find the right spot to display the statue and momentarily left the kitchen, Tonino reached for Gabriella’s hand and brought it to his lips. Gabriella was sure her cheeks were as fiery as persimmons when Don Simone came back and her hand was still clasped in Tonino’s. At Don Simone’s gentle throat-clearing, Tonino released her hand, and with his back to the priest, winked at her.

  Gabriella felt her knees weaken and stood there wordlessly while Don Simone poured Tonino some walnut liqueur. “Welcome back, Tonino. You were missed by your family and….friends.” He smiled at Gabriella. “Go fetch some of your lemon biscotti, Gabriella. And bring up some of the sausage links as well. The ones with the fennel and pepper. Tonino, come and sit at the table for a while. We won’t be having supper just yet, but I’m sure Signorina Gabriella won’t mind if we have a snack.”

  As Gabriella lifted the floor hatch and padded down the narrow steps to the cellar, she could hear Tonino talking about his time in Cosenza. She walked to the far corner where the dried sausages were hung. Tonino’s voice was a murmur. She snipped off a few links and wrapped them in a cloth before depositing them in the wide front pocket of her apron. She crossed to a rough-hewn cupboard and withdrew a tin of biscotti. She could still feel the warmth of them from her late afternoon baking. She smiled, thinking again how wonderful it would be to bake one day for her husband and children. Her husband Tonino. As she ascended the steps and set down the hatch door, she realized that Tonino and Don Simone were silent. She could only see Don Simone’s face, and his expression was solemn. When he saw Gabriella, he smiled weakly. He reached for the tin and set the biscuits onto a dish while Gabriella sliced up the sausage links. Don Simone brought over an edge of crusty bread to the table and offered it to Tonino, who broke off a piece with his fingers before reaching for some of the sausage. Don Simone chattered on about recent happenings and moments later, Tonino thanked them both and with the excuse that his mother was preparing a special meal to celebrate his return, he bade them farewell.