The House of Scorta

by Laurent Gaudé

  “I can’t take it any more, don Salvatore,” replied Elia. “I’m going crazy. I want… I don’t know. To do something else. Start another life, leave town, dump that blasted tobacco shop.”

  “What’s stopping you?” asked the priest.

  “Freedom, don Salvatore. You have to be rich to be free,” replied Elia, surprised that don Salvatore didn’t understand this.

  “Stop whining, Elia. If you want to leave Montepuccio or go off into I don’t know what field, all you have to do is sell the tobacco shop. You know very well that you’d get a good price for it.”

  “It would be like killing my mother.”

  “Leave your mother out of this. If you want to go away, then sell. If you don’t want to sell, then stop complaining.”

  The priest said what he thought in that tone of voice which the townsfolk loved so much. He was tough and direct and spared nobody’s feelings.

  Elia felt he couldn’t take the discussion any further without speaking of the real problem, the reason why he was cursing the heavens: Maria Carminella. But he didn’t want to talk about that, especially not with don Salvatore. The priest interrupted Elia’s thoughts.

  “Only on the last day of a person’s life can he say whether he’s been happy or not,” he said. “Until that day, you have to try to look after yourself as best you can. Follow your own road, Elia. That’s all you can do.”

  “Mine doesn’t lead anywhere,” Elia muttered, thinking hard of Maria.

  “That’s another matter. It’s another matter, and if you don’t do anything about it, you’ll be guilty.”

  “Guilty of what? Cursed, that’s what I am!”

  “Guilty,” continued don Salvatore, “of not having lifted your life as high as it could go. Forget about luck. Forget about fate. Make an effort, Elia. Make an effort. See it through. Because so far, you haven’t done anything.”

  With these words, the old man left Elia and disappeared, though not before patting him on the shoulder with his wrinkled, Calabrian peasant-hands. Elia thought about everything that had been said. The priest was right. He hadn’t done anything. Nothing at all. The first action he’d ever taken as a man was to go see Gaetano to ask him for his daughter Maria’s hand, and even there, he’d gone about it with his head down, as though defeated from the start. The priest was right. Elia hadn’t done anything. It was time to make an effort. He sat there alone, on the terrace of Da Pizzone. He was absently turning his spoon in his coffee cup, and with each turn, he murmured, as if hypnotized, “Maria, Maria, Maria…”

  After his conversation with don Salvatore, Elia was determined to try his luck again. In any case, he had no choice. He could no longer sleep. He could no longer speak. At the rate things were going, he didn’t give himself more than a month before he went completely insane and jumped off the cliffs of Montepuccio into the sea, which never gives back the bodies it takes. He couldn’t find a way to be alone with Maria. He couldn’t approach her on the beach or in the cafés. She was always surrounded. So he did what murderers and desperadoes do, he started following her one day when she was on her way home from shopping. And when she turned onto a narrow street in the old town, deserted but for a few sleepy cats, he rushed after her like a shadow, seized her by the arm and, eyes rolling as if with fever, he said, “Maria—”

  “What do you want?” she cut him off at once, without even flinching, as if she’d sensed he was behind her all along.

  Her brusque tone made him lose heart. He hung his head, then looked back up at her. Her beauty was enough to damn one’s soul. He felt himself blush, and this only infuriated him further. She was so close, he could touch her. Embrace her. But her gaze condemned him to blushing and stammering. He had to take the plunge. Make an effort. Tell her everything. Too bad if she made fun of him and laughed with the cats in the alley.

  “Maria, today I want to talk to you, not your father. You’re right. I was a fool. You told me you wanted everything. Do you remember? ‘I’ll take everything,’ you said. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s all yours to take. I’m giving you everything. Down to my last lira. Still, it won’t be enough. Others could offer you more, because I’m not the richest of men; but nobody would be ready, like me, to give you everything he owned. I don’t want to keep anything. You can have it all.”

  He was getting worked up as he spoke, his eyes screwed up in an ugly smile. Maria stood stock still, her face immobile, staring at Elia. Her gaze seemed to strip him naked.

  “You certainly come from a family of shopkeepers,” she said with a scornful grin on her lips. “Money, that’s all you know how to offer. Why do you think you can buy me like that? Do I look like a pack of cigarettes or something? You want to buy yourself a wife. The only women you can buy with gold and jewelry are whores or Milanese. That’s all you know how to do, buy. Go on, get out of my way. Go find yourself a wife at the cattle market, pay whatever price you want. Me, I’m too expensive for you.”

  Saying this, she resumed her walk home. In a sudden, unthinking gesture, Elia grabbed her arm. He was livid, lips quivering. Why he’d done this, even he didn’t know. But he held her firmly. Two thoughts clashed in his head. One said he should let her go at once, that this whole scene was ridiculous and he should let her go and beg her pardon. But a blinder impulse made him clutch that arm in rage. “I could rape her,” he said to himself. “Right here, on this street. Right now. Rape her. It doesn’t matter what happens afterward. She’s so close. Her arm, here, struggling, but not hard enough. I could take her. It would be one way to have her, at least, since she’ll never marry me.”

  “Let me go.”

  The order rang in his ears. He let go at once, and before he could recover his senses, before he could smile or beg pardon, she’d disappeared. Her voice had been so firm, so commanding, that he’d obeyed without a thought. Their eyes had met one last time. Elia’s were empty, like those of a drug addict or insomniac, and if he’d had his wits about him, he would have seen in Maria’s gaze a kind of smile that belied the coldness in her voice. A voluptuous glint had flashed in her eyes, as though the contact of his hand on her arm had succeeded in touching her more than his words. But Elia saw none of this. He stood there in the street, drained of strength, dismayed by the way this exchange, which he’d dreamed about for so long, had turned out.

  When the young man burst into the church, don Salvatore was smoking a cigarette, which he did very rarely, but always with profound pleasure. It reminded him of his life in Calabria, before the seminary, when he and his companions, aged twelve, would puff on the cigarettes they’d pinched.

  “What’s the matter?” asked don Salvatore, frightened by the look on Elia’s face.

  “I’m finished,” replied Elia, and, no longer feeling constrained by modesty, he began for the first time to tell someone about his love. He told the priest everything. The nights he had spent thinking only of this. The obsession. The terror he felt in her presence. Don Salvatore listened for a while, then, when it seemed to him he’d heard enough, he raised his hand to make Elia stop, and said to him:

  “Listen, Elia. I can be of help with the dead, because I know the prayers. I can be of help raising children, because I brought up my nieces after my brother died. But when it comes to women, there’s nothing I can do.”

  “But then?” asked Elia, at a loss.

  “Well, I’m Calabrian,” don Salvatore continued, “and in Calabria, when somebody’s eating his heart out for love, he dances the tarantella. Something always comes of it. Something happy or something tragic.”

  Don Salvatore didn’t merely advise Elia to dance the tarantella; he also gave him the name of an old woman in the old part of town, a Calabrian who would see to his needs if he showed up at her door at midnight with a tin of olive oil.

  Elia did as instructed. One evening, he knocked on the door of a small house. An eternity passed before anyone answered. Finally, a little old woman with a face like a wrinkled apple stood before him. She had p
iercing eyes and droopy lips. Elia realized he’d never seen her before in the village. She uttered a few words that he didn’t understand. It was neither Italian nor Montepuccian patois. Maybe some Calabrian dialect. Not knowing what to reply, Elia held out his tin of oil. The old woman’s face lit up. In a shrill voice she said: “Tarantella?”, as if the word itself delighted her, and she opened the door.

  The house consisted of a single room like the houses of old. There was a straw mattress. A stove. A pail for when nature called. The floor was dry earth. It resembled the house that Raffaele used to have near the port, where the Scortas had lived upon their return from New York. Without saying anything, the old woman put a bottle of liqueur on the table, gestured to him to help himself, and went out of the house. Elia obeyed. He sat down at the table and poured himself a glass. He thought he’d be drinking grappa or limoncino, but this alcohol didn’t taste like anything he knew. He emptied his glass and served himself another, hoping to identify the liqueur. It went down his throat like lava and tasted like rocks. “If the stone of the South had a flavor, this would be it,” thought Elia, now on his third glass. Could one possibly obtain a juice like this by squeezing the rocks of the hills? Elia let the drink’s dense heat sweep through him. He was no longer thinking of anything. The door then opened again, and the old woman reappeared, followed by a man, who was blind and even older than she. Elia had never seen him before either. He was thin and wizened, and as small as the woman. He sat down in a corner and took out a tambourine. The two old-timers then began singing the ancient tarantellas of the land of the sun, and Elia let the age-old chants fill his soul. They told of the madness of men and the bite of women. The little crone’s voice had changed; it was now the voice of a virgin, nasal and high-pitched, and it made the walls shake. The old man tapped the ground with his foot as his fingers thumped the tambourine, his own voice joining in with the woman’s. Elia poured himself another glass. The liqueur’s flavor had changed. It wasn’t stone they had pressed to make it; it must have been bursts of sun, the solleone, “the lion sun,” tyrannical orb of the summer months. The liqueur tasted like the sweat that beads on the backs of men working the fields. It tasted like a lizard’s heart, beating rapidly against the rock. It tasted like the earth that splits and cracks as it begs for a little water. The solleone and its power as unbending sovereign, that’s what Elia had in his mouth.

  The little old woman was now dancing in the middle of the room and she invited Elia to join her. He drank a fifth glass and stood up. They began the spider-dance to the rhythm of the chants. The music filled Elia’s head. It sounded to him as if there were a dozen musicians in the room, and as the chants crested and ebbed throughout his body, he understood their innermost meaning. His head was spinning and sweat poured down his back. He felt as if his whole life was flowing down to his feet. The crone, who only a few minutes ago had seemed so slow and weary, was now bounding all around him. She was everywhere. She encircled him, never taking her eyes off him. She smiled at him with the wizened ugliness of a fruit gone bad. Now he understood, yes, he understood everything. His blood was heating up, and he understood that this crone, laughing with her toothless mouth open wide, was the face of destiny that had laughed at him so many times before. There she was, feverish and furious. He closed his eyes, no longer following the woman’s movements. He was dancing. The repetitive, dizzying music filled him with happiness. He heard in these ancient laments the only truth he had ever known. The tarantella possessed him in full, the way it possesses lost souls. He felt as strong as a giant now. He had the world at his fingertips. He was Vulcan in his overheated cave. His every footstep gave off sparks. All of a sudden, a voice rose up inside him. It was the old woman’s voice. Unless it was the music itself. Or the liqueur. It kept saying the same thing, endlessly repeating itself, to the staccato rhythm of the music:

  “Go forth, young man, go forth, the tarantella shall go with you. Do what you must do.”

  Elia turned towards the door. He was surprised to find it open. It didn’t occur to him to turn back toward the two old people. The music was now inside him, resonating with the power of ancient processions.

  He walked down the streets of the old town like a man possessed. It was four o’clock in the morning and even the bats were asleep.

  Without having actually decided to go there, he found himself in front of the tobacco shop on the Corso. His blood was on fire. He was sweating all over. The world was spinning around him, the crone’s voice tickling his ear. Driven by the tarantella biting his heart and sucking his blood, he entered the tobacco shop, went into the storeroom and set fire to a crate of cigarettes. Then, without turning back towards the flames, which were beginning to catch, he went back outside and stood on the sidewalk across the street to enjoy the spectacle. The fire caught fast. Thick smoke poured out of the storeroom. It wasn’t long before the flames were attacking the counter. From where Elia was standing, it looked at first as if somebody had turned on the lights. Then the glow turned more orange in color and the flames appeared, licking the walls and dancing victoriously. Elia shrieked like a madman and started laughing. The Mascalzone spirit was in his veins, and he laughed the laugh of destruction and hatred which his line had passed down from generation to generation. Yes, let it all burn. What the hell. The cigarettes and the money. His life and his soul. Let it all burn. He howled with laughter and, in the glow of the fire, danced to the tarantella’s mad rhythm.

  The noise of the blaze and the smell of the smoke soon woke the neighbors, who rushed out into the street. Some of them questioned Elia, but since he didn’t answer and simply kept staring into space like a madman or simpleton, the men concluded it had been an accident. How could they have imagined that Elia had set fire to the shop himself? They organized themselves and went out in search of extinguishers. A dense crowd squeezed into the street. At that moment Carmela appeared, her face pale, hair disheveled. She looked crazed and could not take her eyes off the blazing spectacle. Seeing the poor woman staggering on the sidewalk, everyone understood it was not just a business that was burning down, but the life and legacy of a whole clan. People’s faces were sad the way they are at times of great cataclysms. After a while some charitable neighbors accompanied Carmela back home, to spare her any further exposure to the distressing spectacle of the blaze. It was pointless for her to remain there. It was needless torture.

  The sight of his mother had sobered Elia up in a hurry, and his euphoria gave way to profound anguish. He called out to the crowd, shouting to everyone gathered there:

  “Do you smell that? Do you smell the smoke? That’s the smell of my mother’s sweat. Don’t you smell it? Her brothers’ sweat, too.”

  The Montepuccians finally brought the flames under control. The fire hadn’t spread to the neighboring houses, but there was nothing left of the tobacco shop. Elia was devastated. With the flames extinguished, the spectacle had lost its hypnotic beauty. It was ugly and dismaying. Smoke rose from the stone, black and stifling. He was sitting on the sidewalk. The tarantella had fallen silent. He was no longer laughing. He gazed at the wisps of smoke, wild-eyed.

  The townsfolk were already starting to scatter in groups when Maria Carminella appeared before Elia like aghost. She was in a white dressing gown, her black hair falling onto her shoulders. She walked straight up to him. He still had the strength to stand up. He didn’t know what to say. He merely pointed at the smoldering tobacco shop. She smiled at him as she had never done before, and murmured:

  “What happened?”

  Elia didn’t answer.

  “The whole thing, gone up in smoke?” she persisted. “The whole thing,” he replied.

  “So what have you got to offer me now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That’s good,” said Maria.“If you want me, I’m yours.”

  The days that followed the fire were days of ash and toil. They had to clear away the wreckage, clean up the site, save what could be saved. That thankless task w
ould have finished off the most determined of men. It was enough to make one lose hope. The black walls, the rubble on the floor, the crates of cigarettes gone up in smoke, all this made the shop look like a city razed after a battle. Yet by dint of sheer obstinacy, Elia made it through the ordeal without apparently being affected by it. The truth was that Maria’s love swept everything else away. It was all he could think about. The state of the tobacco shop was secondary. He had beside him the woman he had so desired. Nothing else mattered.

  Maria did exactly what she had promised. She moved in with Elia. The day after the fire, as they were drinking coffee, Elia declared:

  “I didn’t sleep at all last night, Maria. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire. We’re going to get married, Maria. You know as well as I do that your father is richer than I’ll ever be. You know what people will say? That I married you for your father’s money.”

  “I couldn’t care less what people say,” Maria replied calmly.

  “Me neither. It’s myself I’m most worried about.”

  Maria looked up at her man, puzzled. She didn’t understand what he was getting at.

  “I know how all this will turn out. I’ll marry you. Your father will offer me a job as manager of the Hotel Tramontane, I’ll accept, and I’ll end up spending summer afternoons playing cards around the pool with my friends. It’s not for me. The Scortas are not made for that kind of thing.”

  “You’re not a Scorta.”

  “Yes I am, Maria. I’m more a Scorta than a Manuzio. I can feel it. That’s just the way it is. My mother passed the black blood of the Mascalzones on to me. I’m a Scorta. Who burns down what he loves. You’ll see, one day I’ll burn down the hotel Tramontane, if I end up owning it.”