When it happened, was it mere spite that led Turì to insult Giannina’s honor…? The spite of an adolescent who loves a slightly older woman who refuses to hear him out or understand? Turì, who just said It’s because of her that I lost my ear – could he not admit, Because of her I saved the other? Why do I imagine it that way? His expression upon seeing her held no rancor. Either she stopped her brother from cutting off both or else that love has left its marks on him inside as well as out.
There’s no proper door on the house where Turì pounds an iron knocker: it’s more of a portal, so wide, perhaps, to accommodate without impediment not just the mass, but the magnitude of the matron making her appearance.
In the meantime, the children have gathered, along with women with babies and dogs.
So it had to be: we stand there, the three of us, in front of the portal, with no need for introductions. An empty half-circle divides us from the spectators, whom I take to be half the town, minus the men, who must be working.
An insubstantial greeting, mine terse, Turì’s subdued, receives no response from the massive woman. She studies me bodily with a frown of offended dignity, I imagine because nothing covers me but a short swimsuit, and there is no doubt we are at a family home and not out on the beach. Only now do I give any importance to my appearance. Turì is wearing long swim trunks and has thrown on, albeit loosely, a button-down shirt.
All this scrutiny doesn’t keep me from observing the flimflammer, whose demeanor is passive and expectant; nor does it keep me from watching the matron, who spies on me greedily, with a single eye from the side. If she has another one, she’s thrifty with it, because she keeps it covered with an eyelid. They make quite a pair: the One-Eared Man and the One-Eyed Woman!
They are talking, but it’s hard to understand them. Their Sicilian is heavily tinged with dialect and beyond that, I’m having trouble fitting in: I feel explored, perhaps condemned by the many judges there. Or else I am afraid, not of the danger Turì hinted at before we came up, but of being scoffed at, of playing the clown.
I begin to capture their words when she starts insulting him:
“Are you not ashamed of talking about my son with a stranger?”
I don’t plan on letting them trip me up again with their argumentative chicanery, so I don’t respond to her derision, instead stating:
“Ma’am, I don’t speak dialect, but you’ll be able to understand my Italian. So listen: I want my 200 francs back, and I don’t know whether your son stole them or not. If you can’t tell me anything about that money – and remember, Turì’s the one who brought me to you – then I will go straightaway to the police station, with or without the bicycle.”
She makes a show of shrugging her shoulders and waving me off, and then, without even turning her eye on me, yields slightly, answering not me, but Turì, in dialect:
“My son isn’t at home, and he’s not coming to eat, either.”
I announce, very decided:
“That’s no concern of mine. I’m going to the police station.”
Turì persists in his patient diplomacy: “Wait, my man, wait a moment. What’s the rush? Everything will get taken care of.” He’s speaking casually with me now. But I know him, and I don’t take offense, this is his natural self coming out. I even believe he will try to take care of it, because he obviously fears the police.
As he’s managed to prevent me from leaving, he sets to reasoning frantically with Fungo’s mother. He tells her the risks in store.
He compels her to acknowledge me, and she speaks to me for the first time:
“Mine is a good house, with good people. My son doesn’t do the kind of things you’re saying. He’ll come and he’ll set the record straight. But…”
(Her verdict:)
“…if he has stolen, it needs to come out. My husband’s in there…”
(She points her fat arm inside, but her husband doesn’t appear; she’s almost certainly a widow.)
“…and he’ll put the hurt on him, he’ll kill him, maybe, but he’ll get a confession out of him.”
The assembly of women and children has understood everything perfectly: the son must confess; the mother has said so, and she is clearly the authority in the family.
Now there’s a pact. Just as on the beach, once the deal is made, interest drops off and people return to minding their business.
The only laggards are a few dogs out dozing in the sun and a couple of uninformed cadgers who run after us as the bicycle speeds down the hill, with me sitting on the frame as before:
“Give me a hundred lire…”
“What about those hundred lire…?”
Turì is jubilant, he could even burst into song, and that puts me in a better mood.
Bent over on her balcony, a woman calls to me:
“Stranger…”
(And when I look at her, she heaps curses on me, on account of the coins:)
“…Swallow them with your bile!”
She continues to smile as she says this.
A pain about the money, that I don’t have it to hand out to the boys…so they’d stop thinking of me as a foreigner, a scoundrel, a cheapskate.
She hasn’t humiliated me.
(Between the bars of the balcony, the blossoming stems of geraniums emerge; next to her mother’s legs, a girl with sky blue eyes, aloof from those wars, peeks out.)
Before we make it out of the village, Guglielmino intercepts us. He’s on another, newer bike, painted green. I suppose he wants his back, and we’ll be condemned to walk.
But no, the boy alerts us energetically:
“I saw him, but when he caught sight of me, he went the other way.”
Turì is unmoved and doesn’t hasten to act. Instead, he takes time to expound to me his philosophy:
“Why rush? Why look for him…? He’ll go home, right? His mother’s waiting for him there, and that’s that.”
I almost accept his soothing conclusion, but something has happened there in the square. A person hurried off and a woman shouted: “Stop! The foreigner’s here.” I didn’t recognize him, I don’t see her.
I question Turì:
“She said: Stop! The foreigner’s here.”
“Who?” He’s surprised. “Who said stop?”
“That woman.”
“What woman?”
How can I point her out? That part of the street has emptied out; the square is empty.
Turì lavishes me with his tolerance:
“My dear Sir, you’re confused. A woman was singing, in dialect, that’s why you didn’t understand her.”
I refuse to let myself anger: but she wasn’t singing. This is pure chicanery: modulating her voice was part of the ruse.
Turì suggests:
“What if we have a glass of wine…? My treat.”
Since he sees my annoyance, and I don’t hide my inner struggle, which he comprehends, he tries to distract me:
“It’s hot, the wine’s cool, the bar is nearby.”
I don’t accept, and we get back on the bike.
The houses in the village outskirts thin out as we descend, and the sea breeze embraces us, changing the temperature and perhaps our thoughts. Turì, tenacious, picks up on it:
“You’re really not thirsty? Not now?”
I say yes, but not for wine. “A Coke, maybe…”
My censor, Turì, has worldly instincts, and says witheringly:
“Sure, a Coke, even I drink one now and again.”
I shoulder the insult and recant:
“Or maybe a coffee.”
“Maybe an iced coffee,” he suggests.
At the counter in the bar, I conform to the customs of the region, which must have their reason for being, I suppose.
Then I agree that we sit. There are tables, and the dining room is cool. I accept an almond milk, also cool, and then another, and we chat.
A rest in the shadows suffices to reinvigorate my distrust. (Why is he holding me up so long? Has he forgotten abou
t his job?)
I try to pay, forgetting that I have no money. Turì watches me root in vain through my pocket, and hands a bill to the waiter, unhurried, because I can neither beat him to the punch nor refuse his gesture.
The one who’s hurrying is I, because I remember my things are back in the tent, and I take it for granted that, with one attendant gone and the other vaguely investigating me, the tents must be unguarded and open to looting.
I tell him this as we walk toward the door, and he rejects my worries, trying to put me at my ease, his attitude suggesting such trifles are below him:
“Sir…! In places like this, we all know each other, we live in peace, no one covets what isn’t his. Criminality is unknown here. If anyone kills, Sir, it’s out of love.”
We walk outside, the sun assails me, and I come to a stop, nearly blinded.
I’ve paid no attention to what Turì is doing, until I hear him clamor:
“I’ve been robbed! I’ve been robbed! Reprobates, thieves!” and other niceties as well.
I’m half-amused, half-perturbed. I suffer his howling, then try to calm him down and get him to answer me:
“What the hell did they take from you?”
“The bicycle, don’t you see? And it wasn’t mine, as you well know.”
I find a wicker chair under an enormous yellow parasol. I give him time while he blasphemes those who have gathered round, insults those known and unknown to him, appeals to the powers above, disavows justice; and finally, after seeing him trot a half-mile up the street dodging autistic drivers who curse him or don’t pay him any mind, I force him into the seat next to mine and make him take a sip of coffee.
“Linden blossom, that’s what he needs,” the waiter says, with neither compassion nor respect for Turì.
Turì looks at him askance, piercing him with a homicidal glance, and says:
“Poison! None for me. I’d serve it to you, though, if you like, you piece of trash.”
Clearly this is a manner of speaking. They don’t take offense, and nothing indicates an urge to come to blows.
Turì forgets his rival and sips his iced coffee meditatively.
I propose:
“Why don’t you report it to the police?”
He ruminates. Smugly:
“The police…? Maybe. Later, when we get to the station.”
“Use the phone, that’s what it’s there for. If you wait, the thief will get away.”
“There’s not one here.”
“What, there’s no thief here?”
“There’s no phone.”
“Of course there is! It’s in the bar, I saw it myself.”
“There’s no point, it doesn’t work.”
“You’re making things up! Someone was using it just a moment ago.”
He gets flustered and grumbles:
“The police don’t know about these things. No one will find anything.”
Hearing his unease, I risk offending him:
“Come on, Turì…You really don’t think the police are up to it, or is that bike maybe stolen?”
He casts a sly glance at me, but his words are ingenuous:
“How, Sir, could I know if it was stolen? The bicycle doesn’t belong to me. They loaned it to me, you saw that.”
I resign myself to not leave off prying: he lies so truthfully…
Then he recovers, as though leaping up:
“In the end, what does the bicycle matter? A walk in the sun is enough! It’s so nice…”
I admire his mechanisms, his flair for living.
In the end – I tell myself, repeating his words – he’s right. He is reviving the vagabond he carries inside, or that perhaps he once was, while I have come to look for life in the open air. I’m a tourist, no? Better – even just once, with a guy like him – to be a vagabond, too.
I exaggerate. I can’t call myself a vagabond after taking a straight path for three miles into safety. If I thought this, it was due to the influence of Turì, who arranges reality to suit him.
Infected by his mood, I haven’t noticed I’m walking barefoot. The hot street’s pavement makes it clear to me. I confess: “I can’t do it.” Turì thinks I can; it’s just a question, he says, of getting off the asphalt, since the soil is sandy and won’t hurt my feet. Easy for him to say: he’s shod in what look like open-toed espadrilles, held on by laces that wind up to the top of his ankle.
I don’t want to look bad, so I make an effort. The sand is there, and though it’s hot, it doesn’t burn like the tar on the road; but it’s stippled with patches of wild herbs, some stiff and even sharp, they’re hard to dodge, and they wound me.
I’m one step away from giving up, but I hold onto the tatters of my stoicism and refuse to hitchhike. My resolve falters:
“This is the way to the sea, there must be buses that pass by here.”
He says: “They pass by,” nothing more, keeps walking, and I lag behind him, to keep from flaunting my deplorable gait.
I say:
“We could catch one.”
He assures me:
“We can’t.”
He ponders, like a hermit, and I won’t put up with it any further.
He continues dragging out the explanation, and finally he says without my urging:
“We can’t because I’m out of money. I spent it in the bar, and you don’t have any.”
He knew it, he’s known it the whole time, the cur. Or he’s known at least – I correct myself, in his favor – since I couldn’t give the hundred lire to the boys in the village.
I venture:
“We can get on the bus, tell the driver what’s happened, and pay when we get there. I’ll pay for us both.”
“They’ll take you, even without money. But not me. And it could be the driver will recognize me when he sees us along his route and he’ll keep driving, pretending he doesn’t see us. You go alone. I’ll stay on foot.”
While I wait, undecided, he takes off his shoes. He stretches out his hands, presenting his espadrilles, their laces dangling loose.
I accept.
He carries on, walking over his bare soles. He clowns around now and then, perhaps to amuse me: he jumps on the pavement, pretends it’s scalding him, pretends he’s hopping on hot coals, that he’s a human torch, returns to his natural gait, strolls with ballroom elegance, cracks up laughing, and dances with an unseen partner.
Almost there, beneath the shade of the first trees, I proclaim:
“Shade before sun, the promenade before the beach. I deserve it,” I say.
He agrees:
“Good idea.”
And he uses the opportunity to recite his part:
“The sea is rough. I think the swimmers might need me. I shouldn’t take too long, otherwise I’ll lose my job…”
(Strange that he remembers.)
“…besides, people don’t pay for their tents if there’s no attendant…”
(There’s the real reason.)
“…so you can stay here until you’re feeling better. I’m going. Bye.”
“Hey, just a moment!” I shout. “What about my clothes, my pants with the money?”
“That’s not exactly how you told it to me, Sir. You don’t trust me. Didn’t we agree that your money disappeared while you were in the sea…?”
“We didn’t agree on anything. I’ve said one thing since the beginning, and it hasn’t changed: when I went to the beach, I left my money in the tent. While I was swimming, someone stole it.”
“And now you’re saying you’ve got money in your pants inside the tent…!”
He feigns astonishment, gives me a reproachful look, as though he’s caught me in a false testimony, and pretends to censure me benevolently:
“Are you trying to drag me into some predicament, Sir…? What’s the point of these antics, anyhow? Why did you make me waste my time, my bicycle, my tips, and maybe even a friend…? No, Sir, no: you don’t play around with a Sicilian…”
I
have let him prattle, fleshing out his nonsense (he has to know they didn’t take all my money, that some of it remained in my clothes); but this hint of a threat I won’t tolerate:
“This is it! I’ve put it off all day. But now…”
I cut off our conversation and take off walking resolutely, my mind on the police station, until I realize I don’t know where it is. It won’t be difficult to find. I ask a passerby, and since it’s obvious I’m not from there, he thinks I don’t understand his language, and he directs me with gestures. They are so extravagant that if Turì is spying on us, he will realize without effort what I’m doing, though he can’t hear us and I wasn’t open or clear with him about my intentions.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows. He can likely imagine what’s awaiting him. The best thing would be for him to repent and come to me, cash in hand.
Done! There he is, calling to me from behind my back. I pretend not to pay him any mind.
“Hey, Sir. Don’t go, listen to me. Wait a minute.”
I continue, almost running.
We are attracting the attention of the passersby.
Agile as he is, I’m unsure why he doesn’t run and catch me, and though I don’t see him, I conclude he’s got a plan working in his favor. I’m not wrong. He shouts at the top of his lungs:
“You’re taking my espadrilles! Hey, stop! Those are mine!”
Now the people do look at me and gather round to witness the drama that will surely take place.
He’s done it, the bastard. I have to stop, and beyond that, I’ve now been embarrassed in public. If they know him, that’s even worse: a village pickpocket is accusing me of being a shoe thief…! And secondhand shoes, at that…!
Indignant, clumsy, violent, I try to untangle the complex knots, break a lace, and throw one espadrille to the ground, before arming myself with the other to smack him across the face.
I see him coming, with Giuglielmino at his side, cold-blooded. The people open a path for him. They have the second bicycle with them, the green one…
Calm, keeping a distance – wary of the espadrille I’m wielding – he warns me loudly:
“Keep them, I can go on without them. Anyway, I loaned them to you.”
He observes the effect of his words and steps forward, just a little, saying as he does so:
Nest in the Bones Page 17