The next morning Silvia and I string nets under the olive trees.
The team of boys follows us: Valeria’s four big brothers, under the charge of Cristiano. The oldest brother is only eleven, so they listen as attentively to Cristiano as they would to a full-grown man. And Cristiano seems full-grown. It’s as though he’s matured into a man since that day we had our sad encounter in the woods. His chest is broad. His shoulders and arms bulge. When he sees me looking at him, I flush and turn away.
The boys beat the branches of the first tree with sticks, standing on ladders for the highest ones. Little Valeria runs around rescuing the olives that fly beyond the nets.
After the boys finish their part, Silvia and I climb high into that tree and inspect. A few olives cling here and there. Faithful little things. We wrest them off by hand, calling encouragement to each other as we go, for neither of us is fond of heights.
Uccio runs around the bottom of the tree. Naaaa, naaaa. The perfect little fool.
I glance around quickly. The boys are finishing off the second tree; no one is watching us. Well, I didn’t want anyone to be watching. No, I certainly didn’t. I don’t care where Cristiano’s eyes go. I know who he is; he knows who I am; there’s nothing more to be said. We were born different. It’s just annoying, annoying and rotten, that the one man interested in me is a peasant, so he doesn’t count, he can’t count.
I declare the first tree done. We climb down and Uccio butts me. I hug him tight and lift one of his long, soft ears, and whisper to him, “Giulianuccio.”
That’s his full name: Giulianuccio—“sweet little Giuliano.” But I never call him that in front of anyone except Silvia. To the others he’s just Uccio—just the ending that means sweet and little. No one else must find out I named him after Giuliano. I don’t want people suspecting something stupid about my feelings, especially since I haven’t heard a word from Giuliano since the funeral.
Silvia gives a quick, loving pat to Uccio and we climb the next tree. Uccio goes back to bleating piteously.
Paco comes gallumphing through the grove, drawn by Uccio’s bleating, no doubt. The two have become unlikely friends. They play tug with rags that Paco steals from Valeria’s laundry line.
Uccio disappears with Paco while Silvia and I go from tree to tree, working together. It would be faster to separate, so we can work two trees at once. But it cuts the fear to share it.
We break for the midday meal. I shoo little Valeria home and pull Silvia toward the house with me, to eat separate from the boys.
Cristiano watches us go. He nods to me. Just one quick nod. Then he takes a hunk of cheese out of a sack, cuts it toward his thumb with a small knife, puts the slice in his mouth, and chews large. The whole time his eyes are on me. I know, because I keep glancing back, even as I lead Silvia inside.
Silvia enters the kitchen warily. “Your father won’t want to eat with me.”
I put cheese and bread on the table. “Papà’s gone to Florence.”
Silvia visibly relaxes. “He left you on your own to oversee the whole olive harvest, then?”
“And why not? It’s fun.”
She makes a face. “Ain’t he the lucky one that you like to work so hard.” Her tone is an accusation.
“Papà works hard, too. That’s all he does.”
Her face softens. “Sorry. I’d get mad at you, too, I would, if you said bad words about my pa.” She pulls two buns out of a hidden pouch. “I made these last night and saved a couple.”
I take a bite. It’s stuffed with chopped rucola. A memory invades: Mamma’s rucola-rich hands on my cheeks. Loss makes me instantly hot all over.
“Elisabetta?” Silvia furrows her brow. “What hurts?”
I shake my head and stare at the ceiling. “Sometimes, Silvia, sometimes I run upstairs and bury my face in the skirts of one of Mamma’s dresses and stay there till my heart slows enough to allow me to stand without fainting.”
She puts her hands behind my head and pulls me to her. We stand a moment, forehead to forehead.
Then we sit and eat quietly, till we hear Uccio at the back door, bleating to high heaven. Paco must have ditched him to chase a rabbit or a squirrel, the poor little goat. I grab what’s left of the food on the table and carry it outside to share with him.
We hunt down little Valeria and send her to round up the boys again. All together we empty nets into the two-wheeled cart. When the cart is full, we wheel it away and dump it into the wagon waiting near the road. Net after net. Cartload after cartload. Valeria and Silvia and I climb into the loaded wagon bed and pick out as many leaves and stems as we can. Uccio keeps jumping in, which means Paco jumps in, too, and we keep chasing both of them back out. I refuse to imagine what goat droppings might do to the taste of our oil.
Dark comes quickly. We’re forced to stop. We cover the wagon bed with canvas. Tomorrow Cristiano will drive this wagon to Greve to have the olives pressed. I might go with him. I haven’t decided yet.
Cristiano hardly talks to me since Mamma died, and when he does, it’s respectfully. Still, he harbors feelings for me; that much is clear no matter whether he says it or not. His eyes don’t hide it. But I can handle that; I handle it every day. My hesitancy at going with him in the wagon is due to something else entirely.
The question is the money. Papà pays the olive miller a tip to put us first in line. Would entrusting that tip to Cristiano tempt him to steal away a part for himself? I don’t want to be the instrument of his moral decay. But there’s the other side: he might rise to the occasion and be glad for the opportunity to prove himself.
I have to think this whole thing through.
Silvia stops by her home first, then she comes back and we eat together. We eat the cold strips of tripe I boiled this dawn with onions and parsley, and the mix of vegetables I lightly steamed and then seasoned with the end of last’s year’s oil. I chopped those vegetables so small, they’re close to a mash. That way the flavors blend on the tongue.
Silvia makes appreciative murmurs as she eats. When Papà is away, her mother lets her take her dusk meal with me. We don’t make a fuss over it. We sit at the counter and eat and talk and shriek now and then. The shrieking is because of Uccio. One of his favorite games is to nibble at our toes.
“This food is good, Elisabetta.”
“Your bun at lunch was good, too,” I say.
She laughs.
“What’s funny?”
“You.” She pats the back of my hand. “To talk about a simple bun as though it’s equal to such a fine meal. Tripe. It ain’t the same as game, you know, something anyone can catch. The most tripe I ever tasted before now was when I rubbed a crust of bread in a dirty cooking pot your Sandra had set out to wash. You’re very funny.” She picks something from between her teeth and looks at me thoughtfully. “It takes time to mince vegetables this small. You must have got up early to make all this.”
I did, and willingly. After last night’s success with the quail, I can’t wait to try more recipes. Maybe I’ll even try some of Mamma’s. In my head I see her beaming at that idea. “I love cooking.”
“It shows. But then you worked till dusk. You know, your day ain’t so different from mine anymore.”
I almost say I love the work, too. It felt so good today—so good to be as capable as Papà believes I am. I ran the whole olive harvest, and it went without a hitch. Well, really, Silvia and Cristiano and I ran it. Still, I was in charge. But saying I love the work would erect a wall between us again. For Silvia doesn’t love it. Why should she? Villa Vignamaggio isn’t hers.
I clear things away, then we finish off with pomegranates and goat cheese.
“Mamma handed me a sack of chestnuts.” Silvia shrugs in apology. “I better go. I have to finish them tonight for her morning baking.”
“Where are they?”
“By the back door.”
“Fetch them,” I say. “I’ll start the fire.”
“Don’t be daft. You don�
�t want to work all evening after working all day.”
“Neither do you.”
“I ain’t got a choice.”
“You think I do?” I say. “You think I want you to get all the cakes?”
She laughs. “Glutton.”
I build a fire in the living room hearth and we set the chestnuts to roast on a reed bed beside it. Silvia and I sit on chairs with our legs tucked under so Uccio can’t get at our toes. When the chestnut shells split, we husk them and grind the nutmeat into flour. Her mother will make cakes from it tomorrow. I used to think of chestnut cakes as peasant food. But Silvia has shared so many with me the past few months that now I simply think of them as good.
Food doesn’t need to be fancy in order to be worth eating. It needs to be tasty. I have to remember that as I go about my cooking from now on. Not all my recipes have to be complicated, like the quail.
I toss two burned chestnuts to Uccio, who eats them whole, shell and all.
“How long’s he gone for this time?” asks Silvia.
“I don’t know. I suspect at least a couple of days.”
“Depending on how he’s getting on with her, I guess.”
“What?” I stop grinding and hold the mortar firm in my sloping lap. “Getting on with who?”
Silvia looks at me. “I was afraid of that. You don’t know, do you? Your father’s courting.”
“That’s not possible. Mamma just died.”
“Half a year ago.”
Half a year? Lord, I’ve really lived half a year without her. Everything’s jumping around inside me. My mouth goes dry. “Tell me what you know.”
“Valeria’s father told my pa: it’s a lady from one of them really fancy families. The Rucellai.”
“Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai,” I say slowly, as certainty blooms. I’ve known it deep inside all along, or I wouldn’t remember her name.
“So you do know.”
I shake my head and hold in tears. “She caught his eye at Mamma’s funeral. Giuliano saw it. I thought he was crazy. But it’s Papà who’s crazy.”
“A man has got needs.”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s natural, Elisabetta.”
“For an animal. Men don’t act like that. It’s disrespectful of Mamma’s memory. Widowers wait a year at least.”
“To get married, sure. But they start courting the moment they eye the right girl. You know it’s true. How do you think so many widowers find a wife exactly at the end of that year? Your father ain’t no different from the rest of them.”
“But he should be! Papà should be!”
“Why?”
“Because.” Because Mamma loved him. Because he loved her. But I don’t say that—not to Silvia. She doesn’t believe in love. I’m grinding that pestle down into the chestnuts harder and faster. “It isn’t right.”
“Who are you to say what ain’t right?”
I stare at her apoplectic. “Don’t take his side.”
“I’m taking yours, you fool. Don’t make life so hard, Elisabetta. Let him do what he needs to do. He’s still your pa. He still loves you. And that’s the truth.”
“I know that.” I do, I do. I just don’t want this. Not now. Not yet. Every part of me is flying around the room, bashing into things, all wild and helter-skelter.
“He could pay a prostitute easy. But he ain’t doing that. He’s taking up with a nice lady. And at least part of why he’s doing it is you.”
“Me?”
“He doesn’t want you out here alone.” Silvia empties her mortar of flour into the big bowl on the table. She refills it with chestnuts and sits to grind again. “You got to know that. Anyone can see it. And he’s made a good choice.”
A good choice? I remember Caterina’s animated face at Mamma’s funeral. Papà didn’t make a choice—she did. “What have you heard about her?”
“Her pockets is ripping with gold.”
“She’s young, Silvia. Not much older than me.”
“Good. Maybe she’ll last a while.”
“Don’t say that. Really. I can’t stand it.”
“I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to say anyways, what with how many women die in childbirth.” Silvia sighs. “Valeria’s father said this girl’s mother died that way.”
I blink as her words sink in. “Oh, Lord, what if she wants children with him?”
“He could use a son,” says Silvia.
I drop my pestle in the pile of flour and stare at her.
“Don’t act daft, Elisabetta. His life has to go on. Just like yours does. Maybe we’ll both get lucky and marry and move away and get a chance to see something of the world beyond this piece of land.”
“No. No, Silvia. I don’t want him to forget Mamma so soon.”
“He ain’t never going to forget her. He’s just got to keep going. That girl’ll help him.”
“I don’t want to put up with a girl in my mother’s bed. A girl telling me what to do. It’s intolerable. I hate her.”
“Ain’t it early to hate her?” says Silvia. “And, anyways, in the meantime you ain’t got her. You got me. We got each other. At least for another half year. Let’s make the best of it.”
And all the swirling parts of me fall together at last, weighted by the sense of her words. Silvia’s unflinching honesty could save anyone. “You’re right.”
“Ain’t I always?” She smiles.
I’d pinch her for being so self-satisfied if I weren’t grateful right now. “I’m not in a rush to leave home, you know. Villa Vignamaggio has so many beauties. You shouldn’t be in such a rush, either.”
Silvia pauses in her grinding. “This beauty belongs to you, Elisabetta. Ain’t nothing beautiful belong to me.”
An idea comes. Oh, let it work. “Stay here.”
I go upstairs and head for my room. But when I pass Papà’s, I suddenly turn back around and go inside it. Mamma’s closet is against the inner wall. I stand still and for a moment I feel numb, like on a January day when I’ve been out in the cold too long.
I open the closet. It’s empty. In the dark, I feel around, touching the air to be sure. Mamma’s things are gone. I think back to the last time I raced up there to clutch her skirts. It couldn’t have been more than ten days ago. So in that period Papà had them whisked away. Well, of course, I tell myself. A man has to supply his bride a new wardrobe. Papà’s making room for that.
But he didn’t ask me what I might have wanted to keep. Maybe he was trying to protect me in some misguided way. Maybe. Like maybe he’s courting Caterina so that I won’t have to take care of him in his old age. Maybe that’s what he was trying to tell me last night. Maybe he’s a mess of good motives and mistaken actions. But that doesn’t excuse him. He threw out things I treasured. Pieces of Mamma, gone. I am bereft, as though someone has scraped raw my insides, leaving me as empty as this closet.
I go to my room and open my wedding chest. There are surprises in here I’ve never looked at. Mamma put them in. And I won’t look at them until I marry. But on the very top is something I put in: the sheaf of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci that Giuliano gave me. The horse one is on the bottom, I know. I ease it out.
I carry it downstairs and place it on the dining room table. “Come take a look, Silvia. Brush your hands off on your skirt first.”
Silvia comes over, wiping her hands. She stares at the drawing.
I haven’t been able to bear looking at it since the day Giuliano gave it to me. But I look now. In the flickering light cast by the fire, the lines of the drawing seem to move. It is a strange effect— a skinless horse moving.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like it,” says Silvia in a whisper. “I didn’t know you was capable of such grand drawing.”
“I didn’t do it. Leonardo da Vinci did. He’s famous. Florence’s most famous artist.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes. But he lives in Milan now. I saw him at Lorenzo de’ Medici’s funeral.”
“Did he give you this grand thing then?”
“No. Giuliano gave it to me.”
Silvia doesn’t speak. She’s got the habit of not speaking when I mention Giuliano. I appreciate that. She doesn’t press and she doesn’t laugh.
“What do you think of it?”
“Well, I don’t know. I just feel it. I feel how grand it is.”
“Is it beautiful?”
“It ain’t trying to be, is it? It’s just saying this is what the horse is. Inside and out.” She taps her right hand quickly up her left arm and across her chest and stops at her heart, letting her hand beat there for a moment. “We’re like this horse. Just skin over all that stuff inside. Yeah, Elisabetta. It’s beautiful.”
“It’s for you,” I say.
“What? But Giuliano gave it to you!”
“So I’m free to do with it what I want. Now something beautiful belongs to you.”
“I don’t want you giving me something so grand.” But her eyes stay on the drawing as she speaks.
“It hurts me to look at it, Silvia. It makes me think of Mamma’s accident. But it’s too wonderful to sell, though it would bring an enormous amount of money. It’s a perfect gift for you. My best friend.”
“It ain’t my birthday,” she says slowly and softly.
Birthdays. Mine was dreary this year. Papà and I ate quietly, then sat in the garden. We didn’t talk about how it was supposed to have been, how it would have been if Mamma hadn’t died. We just sat with our arms hooked, missing her, till it finally grew dark. Then we climbed the stairs. He went right to bed. But I changed into my nightdress and went back downstairs and outside to count the stars.
That’s when Silvia came over, carrying a bowl of cinestrata. It’s broth and beaten eggs with Marsala, cinnamon, nutmeg, and enough sugar to make your tongue sweet all night. She sat with me as I ate, then whispered, “Sogni d’oro—golden dreams.”
I made cinestrata for her on a Sunday in her birth month, too. August. In fact, I made a big meal and invited her father and mother and Cristiano, as well. We had pasta with spinach, and sautéed chicken giblets. It was too hot for such food, really, but I wanted to do something splendid. We waited till late at night to eat, after it had cooled down some. Papà didn’t object to sharing a table with Silvia’s family, because Papà didn’t know. He was in Florence.
The Smile Page 8