by Joanna Scott
None of her crickets had ever died, though not all of them had sung for her. But this one looked as if it could be coaxed to sing. La Chiatta needed good luck right then. The insect seemed to know that it was under inspection and might even have been enjoying a moment of vanity as Adriana drew closer to it and prepared to catch it. She was quick, but the cricket was quicker—with a triple set of hops it was off the twig, out of reach, and hidden in the grass.
This was a disappointment—good, cleansing disappointment, like a bucketful of cold water thrown over a floor and then swept away with a broom! It felt fine to be disappointed by a cricket and to forget, momentarily, about Sofia Canuti and the Signori Volbiani and the corpses of soldiers in the woods. If a cricket’s escape was the worst that could happen, then war was really just a confusing idea to be debated by adults over cigarettes and coffee. There was only the here and now and the feeling of being in the world. And as though to reaffirm the value of immediate experience, the cricket, hidden in the grass, gave a long, pleasant chirp.
Sunshine. Cricket songs. The faded petals of a primrose. The unreal reality of war. Adriana would have liked to wander the little labyrinth of box hedges in the garden right then. Or she would have liked to slip through the gate and wade in the shallow water along the beach. But there was a war going on, and she was supposed to be sitting quietly with the grown-ups. Vieni, Pippa! Pippa was a good dog—usually. She had wandered off to sniff around the gate and the boathouse, and when Adriana called to her, she gave a yelp and ran in the opposite direction. Pippa! The dog ran up the aisle between the rows of vines, not in pursuit, as Adriana would have expected, but rather in flight, chased by a small calico cat whose loping gait made it seem as though the pursuit was just a game to her.
Cricket songs and yelping dogs and predatory cats. Yes, this was the patch of the world that Adriana was pleased to call home. But this bright thought provoked its grim opposite. What if the fires spread or the bombardment resumed during the night? What if La Chiatta was destroyed? The possibility aroused a childish anger. Who turned the idea of war into reality? Who invited the soldiers to the island anyway? First the Fascists, then the Germans, then the Africans. The war had been going on longer than forever, with one army arriving on the island with its bombs and guns, forcing the occupying army to retreat. As they passed across the land they left behind corpses and ruins. They burned the olive groves and let their fat horses graze in the wheat. In memory she heard Luisa’s exclamation: Madonna! And her mother’s voice: Adriana! She really should go back inside. Luisa would be serving supper, and the adults would be deciding what was safest for Adriana: her bedroom or the kitchen cabinet.
She watched the cat turn proudly back toward the boathouse, its tail standing high in victory. Adriana approached it, chucking softly, stretching out her fingers, but the animal growled, and its fur rose in a spiny ridge. In response to the growl came a soft mew from behind an old dinghy propped against the boathouse—the mew of a kitten, a puffball that Adriana caught and held in her cupped hands, a prize even better than a cricket! As small as a peach and the color of sponge cake soaked in wine, it was the best treasure Adriana had found in weeks, worth the risk of hiding in her bedroom, she thought for a moment, but decided against this when the mother cat began pushing against her ankle, bumping her head and haunches. Certo, Mamma Gatta, the little one belongs to you. And if there was one kitten, there must have been others. After a brief look around the outside of the boathouse, Adriana pushed the door, already open a crack, and, with the kitten still in her hands and the mother following at her heels, she stepped inside.
Somewhere amid the buoys and rakes and ropes, the oars and the tiers of terra-cotta pots was a cat’s den full of kittens. She listened for their mewing. She looked for a flash of tawny fur. A slice of fading sunlight fell across the center of the boathouse, but the rest was hidden in deep shadow. Everything was in place, and yet as she stood poised on the threshold, she sensed the solitude give way to a strange feeling that she recognized from her dreams. It was the feeling of standing on stage in a dark theater she’d thought was empty and slowly realizing that the audience was in the seats, waiting for her to speak her next line. It was the feeling of running down an alley and hearing footsteps behind her. It was the feeling of being watched.
No sound. No movement. Who’s there? No one. Nothing. Spot of sunblind. Blackness surrounded by light. Adriana, come along now—any minute your mother will notice that you’ve gone missing again. Chi c’è? Tiny thorns of kitten claws on her wrist. The mother cat was stationed behind her, waiting. Waiting for what? Cat’s pupils expanding to absorb the light within the darkness. What if Adriana died now, right here, on the threshold of the boathouse, age ten? Paura: the only suitable expression for this feeling of being afraid, the breathy stumble of the letters mimicking its meaning. La paura. Ha paura. The dream of seeing footprints in white powder on the floor. There were no footprints in the boathouse. The dream of finding herself alone and not alone at the same time. What did she really know for sure about anything? Help: aiuta—another good word. But to speak it aloud would be to invite danger into the open. The dream always ends before you die—until the last dream, which would be just like this: standing on a threshold, unable to go forward or back, locked in place by the eyes of someone hidden in the darkness.
And then she would wake up. The kitten would fall from her hands with a squeak and bounce against her ankle and land unhurt on the floor and scramble ahead of its furious mother beneath a tarp thrown over barrels. A kitten. A cat. A boathouse. A dream, no, a sudden recollection of watching sixteen oxen pull a wagon loaded with a block of marble across a piazza in the mainland village of Avenza. Why did she remember Avenza now? Would this be her last memory?
No, not if she could help it. She would give herself the chance to remember running up the grassy aisle between the vines toward the courtyard and La Chiatta—a foolish girl running from nothing, which was even more absurd than a big dog running from a little cat. A ten-year-old girl—almost eleven—who understood the war either as an abstract idea that made adults angry or as a monstrous something hiding in the boathouse. True, she hadn’t seen it, she hadn’t heard it, but she knew it was there in the darkness because she’d smelled it—a smell she recognized only in afterthought as the sweat of oxen.
Blame the Devil
IT WAS THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, AND THOUGH THE FIGHTING between the French Colonials and the Germans was continuing and fires were burning in the mountains, life inside La Chiatta was hardly less than ordinary, though with more coming-and-going than usual. Shortly after Adriana slipped back into the kitchen, her absence unnoticed by the adults, Lorenzo Ambrogi ground his cigarette stub against the heel of his boot and announced that he was heading back to La Lampara. He conferred quietly with Mario in the hall. Some minutes later, Adriana heard him in the courtyard calling for his dog. After Lorenzo’s departure, Paolo headed to the guest room to sleep, having been forbidden by Luisa to return home on his bicycle. Luisa sent word to his family that her nephew was safe, the message conveyed by Ulisse, the gardener, to a bold fisherman who had spent the day traveling in his boat along the northern coast of the island, gathering fish from the surface—grouper and bass and whole schools of anchovies killed by the bombs that had fallen into the sea.
Ulisse had arrived at La Chiatta earlier in the day, bringing with him his entire family: his wife, his three sons, and his eighty-three-year-old mother, the Signora Fausta, all of whom were comfortably lodged on the upstairs floor of the cantina, from where the sounds of voices raised in argument could be heard at regular intervals—first the chatter of children, then their father demanding quiet, then the children again, ignoring him, then Ulisse’s wife scolding, then the boys, each of the two older ones insisting on their innocence while the baby wailed—as if nothing at all had changed in their world.
The lamp in the kitchen remained unlit, but the shutters had been propped aslant to let in air, and there was
enough daylight to illuminate the details of features—the cracked lipstick on Giulia Nardi’s lips, the prominent mole on Luisa’s temple, the tips of gray on Mario’s mustache. The harbor of Portoferraio was carpeted with corpses, Adriana overheard her uncle say. Not just fish, he insisted. The harbor was full of human corpses! Giulia rebuked him. Don’t speak that way in front of the child! But Adriana was already imagining a carpet of dead bodies so thick that a light-footed cat could have walked across it. Bodies of soldiers, of old men and women, of girls, bobbing like so many corks in a row—a vision she could entertain only because she imagined that all of the dead had never really been alive. And even if the war was nearby, it wouldn’t come inside the safe haven of La Chiatta. That’s why the others had come here for refuge. Surrounded again by the comforts of the kitchen, where the air was filled with the sweet smell of the stove’s cold ashes, Adriana felt newly confident that she was safe, they were all safe here under the roof of La Chiatta, and her confidence made her annoyed at her mother, who continued to talk with Mario about a possible refuge. Where could they go to escape the fighting? This was the topic absorbing the adults now that night was returning. With thousands of soldiers scouring the island and the defiant Germans holed up in their concrete redoubts, the forests were no longer safe, the ports would be vulnerable again, and snipers were posted in the villages.
Hundreds of Elbans had fled into the hills, where they were hiding in caves and old mining tunnels. Some of them had been there for weeks, and a few peasant families had taken their herds of sheep and goats into the mountains when the war began and lived there ever since. But it was too late to join them, since now the fighting was heaviest in the hills. Mario suggested taking refuge in the church of Santo Stefano, but Giulia insisted that its open position in the meadow made it vulnerable. Luisa broke into mournful reminiscence: in the time of her povero papà, war stayed away from the island. In those days people feared lightning and famine, not soldiers and bombs. God did not make man in his image to be blown apart by soldiers and bombs.
Ignoring her, Mario suggested the boathouse as a hiding place.
“The boathouse,” Giulia echoed quietly, considering the prospect.
Not the boathouse! Adriana imagined blurting it aloud. Not the boathouse! What did Adriana know about the boathouse? her uncle would demand. What was wrong with the boathouse? Would she rather spend the night in the cabinet again? Sì, sì, certo, put her in the cabinet and nail the doors closed! At least the cabinet didn’t have extra space where the war could hide, biding its time. Yes, the cabinet was preferable to the boathouse. What did she know about the boathouse? the adults would demand. She didn’t know anything for sure and would only have condemned herself to punishment if she’d admitted that she left the villa while the adults were absorbed in their conversation. And even if she did confess that for a second time she’d ignored the prohibition against going outside, what could she say about the boathouse? She couldn’t say that she was afraid. Afraid of what?
The clamor of voices drifted from the cantina again—the voices of Ulisse and his family. Hadn’t Ulisse begun tying the vines just yesterday? No—it was the day before yesterday. The ashes in the stove had been cold for two days.
“What will happen to Ulisse?” Adriana offered this question as a distraction. Ulisse and the children of Ulisse, the wife of Ulisse, and old Signora Fausta? If La Chiatta wasn’t safe, then neither was the adjacent cantina. “What about Ulisse and his family?”
“Ulisse should take his family and go back to Magazzini,” Mario growled.
“Ulisse has come to us for refuge,” Giulia countered.
Mario said he didn’t think there was a law obliging a woman to provide shelter for her servants during a time of war—a remark that drew a huff from proud Luisa and sent her stomping from the room. Giulia rose to go after her and then thought better of it. Sinking back into her chair, she said that she didn’t think there was a law obliging her to provide shelter for her brother-in-law. Mario was appalled at the insinuation. He’d come to La Chiatta to offer aid and advice, not to beg for protection. Truthfully, he would have preferred to join his neighbors in the hills while Portoferraio was under attack. If his help was no longer appreciated, he would leave.
The gray edge of his mustache looked as if it were coated with the residue of foamy milk, and the web of wrinkles on his forehead made him appear perpetually displeased, even when he smiled. He hardly ever smiled. His severity might have been enough to cause Adriana to dislike him, but instead it increased the effect of the few flashes of amusement. In the years since her aunt had died, Adriana had learned to relate to her uncle with charm designed to distract him from his gruffness. And her success had made her fonder of him. Smile, Uncle! Laugh! Listen to the stories Adriana has to tell. . . . On another day he might have enjoyed listening to her, but not now. Now he had other things on his mind.
He swung his arm into the sleeve of the jacket he’d left hanging on the back of the chair. He was leaving. But first he would remind Giulia of all that he had done for her and Adriana over the years. What he had done for them? Did he have no sense of gratitude? Had he forgotten the money she had loaned him? How dare she speak of debt! Mario retorted. What insult! As if he’d used the money for himself. As if—this part he left unsaid—he hadn’t done everything possible to care for his wife, Teresa, Giulia’s sister, during the terrible final weeks of her illness.
“Come se,” Giulia echoed. As if. “Come se niente,” she said bitterly. As if nothing.
“Com’è vero Dio!”
The ugly argument was growing uglier, so Adriana decided to follow Luisa’s example and go elsewhere. She hesitated at the threshold of the dining room, half inclined to announce her exit, but then decided to slip out without a word. She wandered through the expansive rooms and settled again on the piano bench. With her right hand she began playing the opening of a little folk song she had memorized when she was eight and now remembered in bits, each phrase leading her into the next, the childish music reassuring in its simplicity, reminding her of the simple promise of time. There was yesterday and there would be tomorrow. Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, Luisa would stir together melted chocolate and eggs for budino di cioccolato, Giulia Nardi would propose a shopping trip to Livorno, and Adriana would make her uncle smile.
The thought of ordinary life brought to mind the celebration that would come at the end of the war. Crowds would gather in Piazza Repubblicà in Portoferraio; all the girls who had been hidden in cabinets during the fighting would be out dancing in wooden shoes while soldiers tossed spools of paper ribbons into the air. The tune Adriana played on the piano might soon be played in victory. Or this one for a quadrille. How did it go? She paused before trying to sound it out. Something like—no, that wasn’t right. Then try this.
Before she’d found the note to begin, she was interrupted by an abrupt sound coming from the terrace below the loggia. It was the sound of a hammer hitting a tree stump or a bucket falling from a tree. It was the sound of metal against stone or wood against metal. It was the sound that the representative of the war would make if he had wandered from the boathouse up to the terrace and accidentally knocked over a rake that had been propped against the wall.
Who was out there? It wasn’t difficult to imagine an answer. Blame the devil. The devil could make a daydreaming girl think terrible things.
She could imagine that a soldier stood in the garden outside the library’s shuttered door. Un marocchino, black as the black sand at Topinetti, with the blood of the Canuti girl caked beneath his fingernails. Thanks to the devil, Adriana could guess what she couldn’t have known otherwise—that the same man who had jumped over the wall and hidden in the boathouse was now crouching outside on the terrace. He was four meters tall, wearing only drawstring trousers, his hands were as big as rabbits, and he was waiting for an opportunity to attack a defenseless girl.
In her imagination, she could follow this possibility to its ugly en
d. And then, because she would not let herself be as easily tempted toward horror as all that, because she liked to hear people say about her, Che coraggio!, she could return in memory to the instant that the black man had tumbled over the wall into the grass, the nothing that she’d seen, a nothing that was nowhere near four meters tall, and she could remind herself that her first impulse had been to cheer for him, whoever he was, whatever he’d done.
From one perspective, the meaning she gave to the brief noise she’d heard outside the library had a magical prescience. Without adequate evidence, somehow she knew that she was right—a soldier was in the garden, drawn by the sound of the piano, and he wanted to communicate with her. But from a more pragmatic point of view, her understanding of the situation was entirely reasonable and in fact would have been reached earlier if she’d been willing to acknowledge the reality of what she’d seen. The explanation was quite simple: a solitary soldier had fled the fighting and made his way onto the Nardi estate, and now he was finding comfort in the songs Adriana played.
She played for him again—first a beginner’s version of Tosti’s “Non M’Ama Più,” and then a rendition of “La Serenata.” She played for her invisible audience of one, and because she imagined her listener had never heard anyone play the piano before and couldn’t judge the merits of her playing, she imagined that he would think her brilliant. She imagined his admiration and pleasure. She played with a confidence that previously she’d felt only when she was diving and her girlfriends who didn’t even know how to swim were watching in awe. Ma che coraggio! And when, at last, she had played all the songs she’d memorized, she swiveled on the bench to face the loggia, intending to wait as long as it took for him to open the shuttered doors from the outside, forgetting in that period of calm that the violence could resume without warning. Just when she had no interest in anything beyond her immediate experience, there was a rude banging on the door facing the courtyard, a clamor of voices in the front hall, commands in a foreign language, Luisa screaming in protest, Mario trying to reason, Giulia ominously silent, the crash of a plate swept off a table onto the marble floor, more screams, more shouts, words she didn’t understand followed by the sound of a single gunshot.