The House of Scorta

by Laurent Gaudé

  She had never gone back to the place behind the church where the time-worn old confessional lay halfburied in the ground. She did not greet don Salvatore when she crossed him in the street. All these faces meant nothing to her. It was as though the world around her had cropped up out of thin air. She was no longer part of it. She merely sat there, on her straw chair, sometimes talking softly to herself, wringing her hands, or eating grilled almonds, given to her by her son, with a childish glee.

  One minute earlier, there she was, eyes staring into space. She could hear Elia’s voice inside, chatting with customers, and this voice was enough to let her know she was where she belonged.

  All at once, a shudder swept over the village. People in the streets stopped dead in their tracks. A rumbling made the pavement tremble. Straight out of nowhere, but there it was. Everywhere. Like a trolley running under the asphalt. Women suddenly turned pale as they felt the ground begin to move under their light summer shoes. Something seemed to be inside the walls. Glasses tinkled in cupboards. Lamps fell on their tables. Walls rippled as though made out of paper. The Montepuccians felt as if they’d built their town on the back of an animal that was now waking up and shaking itself after centuries of slumber. Tourists looked at the natives in surprise, their incredulous eyes asking:

  “What is happening?”

  Then a voice in the street cried out, a voice soon echoed by dozens more: “Terremoto! Terremoto!” 21 Disbelief gave way to panic. The rumbling was vast and drowned out all other sounds. Yes, the earth was shaking, splitting the pavement, cutting the current, opening great breaches in the walls of the buildings, toppling chairs and flooding the streets with debris and dust. The earth shook with a force that it seemed nothing could temper. People were but tiny insects scurrying across the surface of the globe, praying not to be swallowed up.

  But already the rumbling was subsiding, and the walls stopped trembling. People had barely the time to name the strange fury rising up from the earth before it all grew calm again. Stillness returned with the stunning simplicity of the calm after a storm. All of Montepuccio was out in the streets. By a kind of reflex, they had all left their houses and gone outside at once, fearing they might be imprisoned by debris should the walls collapse in a cloud of rubble. Now they wandered outside like sleepwalkers, looking up at the sky in a daze. Some women started crying. Children wailed. The great mass of Montepuccians didn’t know what to say. They were all there, gazing at one another, happy to be alive but still quaking inside. It was no longer the earth that was rumbling under their skins, but a fear which had settled in and made their teeth chatter.

  Before the streets began to echo again with shouts and cries—before everyone started counting their loved ones, before the interminable chatter of commentary and opinion on this blow of fate had begun—Elia stepped out of the tobacco shop. He’d remained inside the whole duration of the tremor. He’d had no time to think of anything, not even that he might die. He rushed into the street. His eyes ran down the sidewalk, and he started shouting, “Miuccia! Miuccia!” But nobody looked up. For at that moment, the entire Corso was awash with shouts and cries, and Elia’s voice was drowned out by the din of the crowd coming back to life.

  Carmela was walking slowly along the dust-covered streets. She walked on obstinately, as she hadn’t done in a long time. A new strength had taken hold of her. She made her way through the groups of people, around the cracks in the pavement. She was speaking in a soft voice. Everything began to blur in her mind. The earthquake. Her brothers. Old Korni’s dying moments. The past resurfaced like molten lava. She leapt from one memory to another. A crowd of faces bore down upon her. She no longer paid any attention to what was around her. Women in the street saw her pass and called to her, asking her if everything was all right, if the cataclysm hadn’t destroyed anything of hers, but she didn’t answer. She pressed on, stubbornly, engrossed in her thoughts. She walked up the Via dei Suplicii. It was a steep climb, and she had to stop several times to catch her breath. She took advantage of these rests to gaze down upon the town. She saw men outside in shirt-sleeves, ears to the walls, listening for possible damage. She saw children asking the question that no one could answer. Why had the earth shaken? Will it do so again? As their mothers didn’t answer, she, who hadn’t spoken for so long, answered for them, “Yes, the earth will shake again. The earth will shake again. Because the dead are hungry,” she said in a soft voice.

  Then she resumed her walk, leaving the village and its din behind her. She reached the end of the Via dei Suplicii, turned right onto the San Giocondo road, and continued until she reached the gates of the cemetery. This was where she’d wanted to go. She’d got up out of her wooden chair with only one idea in mind: to go to the cemetery.

  The moment Carmela disappeared into the cemetery’s alleys, a great silence fell over Montepuccio. As though, all at once, every person in town had had the same thought. One same fear gripped every heart; one same word was on everyone’s lips. “The aftershock.” Every earthquake is followed by an aftershock. There was no getting around it. Another tremor was on its way. It wouldn’t be long now. There was no point in rejoicing or going back home, so long as the aftershock hadn’t yet hit. So the Montepuccians huddled tightly together in the piazza, on the Corso, on the little narrow streets. Others went looking for blankets and a few precious objects, in case their houses didn’t withstand this second assault.

  Then they settled in for the agonizing wait for misfortune.

  Elia alone kept running about, gesticulating, plowing through the crowds, asking of all the faces he encountered, “My mother! Has anyone seen my mother?” Instead of answering him, they merely repeated, “Sit down, Elia. Stay here and wait. The aftershock is coming. Stay with us.” But he wouldn’t listen and continued his search, like a child lost in a crowd.

  In the piazza, he heard a voice cry out, “I saw your mother! She was on the road to the cemetery.” And without bothering to identify the man who had just helped him, he dashed off in that direction.

  The aftershock was so sudden that it knocked Elia face down to the ground. He lay pinned to the pavement in the middle of the street. The earth

  roared beneath him. The stones rolled under his belly, his legs, the palms of his hands. The earth was expanding and contracting, and he could feel every one of its spasms. The rumble resonated in his bones. He stayed this way for a few seconds, face in the dust, then the tremor subsided. It was but the distant echo of a past rage. The earth, with this second warning shot, was reminding people that it existed. It was there, alive, right under their feet. Perhaps the day would come when, out of weariness or rage, it would engulf them all.

  As soon as he heard the noise die down, Elia stood up. A drop of blood rolled down his cheek. The skin under one of his eyebrows had split open when he fell. Without wiping his face, he continued his race to the cemetery.

  The entrance gate lay on the ground. He stepped over it and headed down the main alley. Everywhere tombstones had been ripped from the earth. Great fissures ran along the ground like scars on a sleeper’s body. Statues had disintegrated. A few marble crosses lay in the grass, in pieces. The tremor had passed straight through the cemetery. It was as though a herd of mad horses had burst through the alleys, trampling on statues, upending urns and tall bouquets of dried flowers. The cemetery had collapsed like a palace built on quicksand. Elia came to a huge fissure blocking the lane. He gazed at it in silence. Here, the earth had not entirely closed back up. At that moment he realized there was no longer any point in calling out for his mother. He knew he would never see her again. The earth had swallowed her up. It would not give her back. In the warm air he could still smell his mother’s perfume.

  The earth had shaken and pulled Carmela’s tired old body down to its innermost depths. There was nothing more to be said. He made the sign of the Cross. He stood along time, head bowed, in the cemetery of Montepuccio, amidst the shattered vases and open graves, caressed by a warm wind that dri
ed the blood on his cheek.

  Anna, listen. It’s old Carmela whispering to you… You don’t know me… I was a senile old woman for so long, and you always kept away from me… I never talked to anyone… I didn’t recognize anyone… Anna, listen. I’m going to tell you everything this time… I am Carmela Scorta… I was born several times, at different ages… First from the caress of Rocco’s hand, when he ran his fingers through my hair… Then, later, from my brothers’ eyes, as they gazed at me on the deck of the ship carrying us back to our wretched land… And from the shame that came over me the moment I was pulled out of the queue at Ellis Island and set apart…

  The earth has split open… I know it’s for me… I hear my loved ones calling me. I am not afraid… The earth has split open… I have only to step down into the crack… I will rejoin my loved ones at the center of the earth… What am I leaving behind?… Anna… I want you to hear about me… Listen, Anna, come closer… I am afailed journey to the ends of the earth… I am days of sadness at the gates of the greatest city of all… I’ve been furious, cowardly, and generous… I am the sun’s dryness and the sea’s desire.

  I didn’t know what to say to Raffaele, and it still makes me cry… Anna… Till the very end, all I could ever be was the Scortas’ sister… I didn’t dare belong to Raffaele… I am Carmela Scorta… I am leaving… May the earth close over me…

  PART X

  THE PROCESSION OF SANT’ELIA

  Elia woke up late, his head a bit heavy. The heat had not abated during the night, and he’d had a troubled sleep. Maria prepared the espresso pot and went off to open up the tobacco shop. He got up, dull-witted, neck wet with sweat. His mind was empty of thoughts, except that today would be yet another long day. It was the feast of Sant’Elia, patron saint of Montepuccio. The cool water pouring down from the shower did him good, but no sooner did he step out, no sooner did he put on a white, short-sleeved shirt, than the heat and humidity besieged him again. It was only ten o’clock in the morning. It promised to be a stifling day.

  At that hour, his small patio was in shade. He set out a wooden chair for himself to drink his coffee outside, hoping to take advantage of a slight breath of wind. He lived in a small, white, domed house with a red-tiled roof. A traditional Montepuccian house. The patio was at ground-level, jutting out onto the sidewalk but protected by a barrier. He sat down, savoring his coffee and trying to recover his senses in full.

  Some children were playing in the street. Little Giuseppe, the neighbors’ son, the two Mariotti brothers, and a few other kids whom Elia knew by sight. They were pretending they were killing neighborhood dogs or smiting invisible enemies. They chased one another around, shouting, grabbing each other, hiding. Suddenly a sentence stuck in his mind, something one of the kids had shouted to his companions. “We’re not allowed to go any farther than the vecchietto.” 22 Elia raised his head and looked down the street. The children were chasing after each other and hiding behind the fenders of cars parked along the sidewalk. Elia’s eyes searched everywhere for the little old man marking the boundary of the field of play, but saw nobody. “No farther than the vecchietto,” one of the kids repeated, shouting. Then he understood, and it made him smile. He was the vecchietto. There, in his chair, he was the little old man who served as the boundary for the racecourse. Then his mind strayed, and he forgot the little boys, their cries and imaginary gunshots. He remembered how his uncles themselves had once sat in front of their houses, just as he was doing now. At the time, they had seemed old to him. He remembered how his mother, before dying, used to sit in this same cane chair and spend whole afternoons contemplating the neighborhood’s streets, letting their sounds fill her ears. Now it was his turn. He was old. A whole life had gone by. His daughter was twenty. Anna. A daughter he never tired of contemplating. Yes, time had passed. Now it was his turn to sit in cane chairs on street corners, watching the young hurry past.

  Had he been happy? He thought back on all the years gone by. How to weigh a man’s life? His had been like anyone else’s. Full, by turns, of joy and tears. He’d lost his loved ones. His uncles, his mother, his brother. He’d known that sorrow. Felt abandoned and useless. Yet he’d kept intact the joy of having Maria and Anna beside him, and that redeemed everything. Had he been happy? He thought back on the years that had followed the fire and his marriage. It all seemed so remote now, like someone else’s life. He thought back on those years, and it seemed to him as if he hadn’t had a second to catch his breath. He was always running after money. He’d worked until his nights became no longer than his siestas. But, yes, he’d been happy. His uncle was right. Old zio Faelucc’ was right when he said one day, “Make the most of your sweat.” That was what he’d done. He’d been happy and exhausted. His happiness was born of fatigue. He had struggled. Fought hard. And now that he’d become this little old man sitting in his chair, now that he’d succeeded in rebuilding his business, in giving his wife and daughter a comfortable life, now that he was finally safe, out of poverty’s reach, he no longer felt that keen sense of happiness. He lived in comfort and peace, which was already lucky. He had money. Yet that wild happiness, the kind one must wrest from life, that was behind him.

  Little Giuseppe was called home by his mother. Elia was roused from his thoughts by the warm and potent sound of that maternal voice. He looked up. The kids had vanished like a cloud of grasshoppers. He stood up. The day was about to begin. It was Sant’Elia’s day today. It was hot, and he had a lot of things to do.

  He went out and walked up the Corso. The town had changed. He tried to remember what it had been like fifty years earlier. How many businesses that he’d known as a child were still there? Slowly, everything had been transformed. The sons had taken over their fathers’ affairs. The signs had changed. The outdoor cafés were bigger.

  Elia walked down streets decked out for the celebration. This, in fact, was the only thing that hadn’t changed. Today, as yesterday, the townsfolk’s passion lit up the façades. Garlands of electric light bulbs hung from one sidewalk to the other. He passed a candy vendor’s stand. Two huge carts full of caramels, licorice, lollipops, and every manner of sweets turned all the children’s heads. A bit further on, a peasant’s son offered kids rides on the back of his mule, tirelessly walking up and down the Corso. The children would cling to the animal, apprehensively at first, then beg their parents to buy them another ride. Elia stopped. He thought back on old Muratti, his uncles’ smoking donkey. How many times had they climbed onto his back, he and his brother Donato, with the joy of conquerors? How many times had they begged zio Mimì or zio Peppe to let them take aride? They adored that old donkey. They used to shriek with laughter watching him smoke his long stalks of wheat. And when the old beast, a surly, mischievous glint in his eye, would spit out the butt with the nonchalance of an old desert camel, they would raucously applaud. They just loved that old donkey. Muratti died of lung cancer—which in the end proved, to unbelievers, that he really did smoke, inhaling just like a human. If the old beast had lived longer, Elia would have pampered him tenderly. His daughter would have loved him. He could imagine Anna as a little girl, bursting out laughing at the sight of the old burro. He would have taken his daughter for rides on the animal’s back through the streets of Montepuccio, and the neighborhood children would have been speechless. But Muratti was dead. He belonged to a past that only Elia seemed to remember. Tears came to his eyes. Not for the donkey, but because he had thought again of his brother, Donato. He remembered the strange, silent boy who used to take part in all his games and knew all his secrets. Yes, he had once had a brother. Donato was the only person to whom Elia could talk about his childhood and know he would be understood. The scent of dried tomatoes at zia Mattea’s house. Zia Maria’s stuffed eggplant. The stone-throwing brawls with the boys from nearby neighborhoods. Donato, like him, had lived through it all. He could remember those distant years with the same precision and nostalgia as Elia did. But today Elia was alone. Donato had never come back, and h
is disappearance had etched two long wrinkles under Elia’s eyes. The wrinkles of a brother who had lost his brother.

  The humidity made one’s skin sticky. There wasn’t a breath of wind to dry the body’s sweat. Elia walked slowly, so as not to soak his shirt, taking care to hug the walls in shade. He arrived before the great white gate of the cemetery and went inside.

  At that hour, on the patron saint’s feast day, there was nobody around. The old women had got up early to put flowers on their late lamented husbands’ graves. It was all empty and silent.

  He went down the lanes, surrounded by sunstruck white marble. He walked slowly, squinting to read the names of the dead etched in stone. All the families of Montepuccio were there. The Tavagliones, the Biscottis, the Espositos, the De Nittis. Fathers and sons, cousins and aunts. Everyone. Whole generations, co-existing in a garden of marble.