by Angela Petch
Alba sat on the steps to the church leaning her back against the locked doors. She loved this place. Many of the houses were in need of serious restoration but a handful were used as holiday homes. Her favourite, shaded by a gnarled apple tree and the only one possessing a traditional outside oven, was where Anna’s father had lived until his death. It had never belonged to him; he’d rented it from the Church. Although she was only eight when he came into their lives, Alba had grown to love Nonno Danilo, as she’d called him. The whole story of her step-mother discovering him to be her real father was amazing – like something from a novel. Alba really missed him. They’d formed a special bond and she’d spent many hours in his company, even staying overnight during school holidays in his tiny house. The wooden bed where she slept was built into an eave in the roof, a round window above framing a view of the church and mountains beyond. She had to climb a ladder to reach her ‘nest’, as Nonno Danilo used to call it, and he’d stand at the foot holding a candle until he was sure she was safely snuggled down. She remembered how he’d woken her one night and taken her to watch porcupines and badgers in the woods. He was a mushroom expert and locals would ask his advice about a species if they were unsure of its edibility. She’d helped him collect honey from his many hives dotted around the edges of meadows and woodland, and she’d learned respect for his hard-working bees. Nonno Danilo was a man of few words, having spent many years living alone in Montebotolino, but she knew he had adored her and his newly-discovered family and loved to join them for Anna’s famous Anglo-Italian Sunday lunches. One subject he refused to talk about was the time he’d spent as a partisan in the war. And she couldn’t blame him for that. Why dredge up painful memories? She believed war sucked anyway.
Her thoughts were full of Nonno Danilo while she tried to sketch. The view opposite of the Apennines cloaked in green, where a solitary wind turbine jutted above the peaks, was hazy. She couldn’t capture on paper the mood she wanted. And it was obvious Alfiero wasn’t coming. She was sure she’d hurt his feelings.
She thought back to the last time they’d been together. It was after the cinema at Pennabilli, where they’d laughed their way through “Scary Movie II” and sat on a wall afterwards drinking cans of Peroni.
‘I looked online again about Newcastle University,’ she’d told him. ‘I might persuade Mamma to let me go with her to England when she helps Aunty Jane move house. Then I can go to the Open Day.’
‘My parents are adamant I have to go straight to Bologna at the end of summer. They can’t afford for me to have a Gap Year.’
‘You could find a holiday job and save to pay your own way.’
‘In your dreams, Alba. Where and how? The only work round here is as a waiter and there’s only one restaurant open now in Badia. And the pay is so low it would just about cover my petrol. I couldn’t save anything.’
They’d thrown their cans in a bin and wandered down from the square to where he’d parked his motor bike, next to a large statue of Padre Pio.
Alba had wrinkled up her nose as she stood in front of the full size image. ‘Eww! Weird! Looks as if he’s about to come alive and preach to us about drinking Peroni on a Sunday night.’
‘My Nonna has three holy pictures of him on her dressing table. She adores him.’
‘I think old people turn religious in a panic,’ she’d said, swinging her leg over the back pillion, ‘as a kind of insurance policy before they die.’
Then he’d gone and ruined their lovely straightforward friendship by saying something stupid like he hoped they could grow old together and he’d turned round and tried to kiss her. She’d laughed.
‘Get off me,’ she’d said. ‘It’s like kissing my brother.’
‘I don’t feel like your brother,’ was his reply, and the drive back after that to Badia had been awkward. She’d held onto him gingerly – in case he got the wrong message - and they hadn’t seen each other since.
She threw her drawing stuff into her rucksack and decided to call it a day.
Anna escaped for an hour down by the river, leaving Francesco and Davide chatting about the book. She and Alba were similar in many ways despite having no blood ties; they both needed their own space every now and again. Anna had her own favourite spot along the water – further upstream from the mill on the other side of the bridge, a little too far off the path for day trippers to venture.
Willow tendrils brushed against her face, wiping away tears that she seemed to shed too often these days. Her knees felt bee-stung, her eyes red with fatigue and her limbs were treacle.
She arrived at the pool she called her green lagoon. Dark fronds of algae floated beneath the surface like drowned hair and the sound of the river trickling over a series of miniature waterfalls was soothing. She believed her pool to be more beautiful than any landscaped feature in a glossy Garden Design magazine. She watched the ripples as if mesmerised, willing them to carry away her tiredness and scratchiness.
The pictures in Francesco’s book were fresh in her mind. She reflected that once upon a time a woman of her age, in her mid- forties, would have had no time to sit by the river at ten in the morning. Instead she would be pummelling clothes on the rocks, gutting trout with work roughened hands, collecting twigs for the fire, gratefully harvesting these gifts carried by the river, tying them in bundles to carry home on her head. Maybe while she worked she would worry that last night’s fumble from an insistent husband might result in yet another mouth to feed.
Anna listened to the ghostly whispers of the water. They seemed to murmur to her to stop wallowing in self-pity. But she couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t felt tired. In the past, coming to this spot could have washed away her fatigue within minutes. She’d steal a half hour and return home, her soul restored, ready to face the world again. But now, even the river seemed to have lost its restorative powers.
Cancer. The word had crept into her head and the worry was preventing her from sleeping. She lay next to Francesco at night worrying how the family would cope without her. When she returned to England to help Jane with the move, she would definitely arrange to see her sister’s doctor and keep her worries from Francesco for now, until she knew the prognosis for certain. There was no need to concern him yet. He’d been a widower once already and even though his first marriage to Silvana had already turned sour by the time of the fatal car crash, it had still been hard for him bringing up Alba alone.
She slipped into the water and lay on her back, willing her body to relax, even if her mind couldn’t. The sky was mottled and blotchy, a moody grey. An egret flew overhead. She lay still, floating on the surface, watching the bird flap its wings, its long beak outstretched. Its form against the sullen clouds resembled a nun hurrying along in her white summer habit. The sun remained hidden, erasing shadow patterns from the stones, turning the water bottle green.
Her time up she gathered her thoughts together, although it felt as if she were pushing them into a string bag from where they would come tumbling out again. Slowly she picked her way over the boulders back to La Stalla.
She had a pile of sheets and pillow cases to iron for the next influx of visitors.
THEN
Chapter 3
Giuseppe - 1915
When I was eleven, I became a senior altar boy, serving most Sundays in the little church of San Tommaso in the mountain village of Montebotolino, high up in the Apennines where I was born. Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I would drag myself up fourteen steep steps, push open the heavy wooden door and avert my eyes from the gruesome image of San Tommaso inserting his fingers into Jesus’s wounds. I would turn my back on the altar and swing my thurible back and forth, cloaking the odour of unwashed bodies and damp stone in an aromatic haze of incense. With San Tommaso safely behind me, I scrutinized old ladies in black, perched like crows on a fence in the front pews. I counted only three teeth between them and wondered if that was why they were so scrawny – because they couldn’t eat their crusts.
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p; Our priest, Don Mario Darrini, was always urging us to be proud of the sixteenth century altar panel sculpted in the della Robbia style, but I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. I liked the words della Robbia, however and began to mutter them over and over under my breath.
After Mass, Don Mario congratulated me for murmuring my prayers. But he was mistaken. To me della Robbia had the sound of dirty words, like the filth shouted by simple Amadeo in our village, with his squint and ragged trousers worn back to front.
The image of the open wound in the side of Jesus and doubting Thomas poking it with his finger made me squeamish. It reminded me of the time my cousin Marco had been gored by a wild boar in the beech woods above our village, when we were out collecting firewood. Marco had squealed like the pig my father and uncles slaughtered each New Year. Fortunately he didn’t die like the pig or get strung up to have his bristles burned off by flames. Instead he was sick for weeks and nearly died from his infected wound. Marisa, our village herbalist, came round to poke her fingers into his wound to administer salves and ointments and she cured him.
On special feast days, I served in the bigger, older church of St Michael the Archangel five kilometres down the mountain, in the town of Badia Tedalda. I preferred the shining blue, green and yellow altar panels in this church. As I swung my thurible here, I was almost eye level with the brilliant white feet of a more pleasant St Thomas, kneeling barefoot before the Madonna. None of the saints or Jesus or Mary wore shoes and this made me feel close to them, although their feet were cleaner than mine. I thought they were poor like us, walking barefoot to save shoe leather. If I moved slightly closer to the wall, I could almost tickle San Tommaso’s feet. My mother used to do that to me when I was younger until I nearly wet my drawers.
On another panel, a pig peeped out from behind St Anthony Abbot, the patron saint of animals, and there were trees and flowers and a goat or maybe a dog. I felt I could step into the lush green countryside and run free and wild, play hide-and-seek and pick lilies next to the Madonna to take home to my mother, or maybe herbs, like my friend Marisa.
All these thoughts danced around in my head as I swung the incense back and forth. Don Mario told my mother later he sensed a vocation in me, because I always had an innocent, almost angelic look on my face during Mass. Little did he know!
On that last Sunday evening of August, Don Mario knocked at the door of our little house in Montebotolino and invited himself in to take part in our veglia. Family and neighbours were gathered round our table, keeping company.
My father had been telling us a grisly ghost story about Enrico Stoppa when he knocked. The women shrieked, thinking the ghost of this wicked brigand was going to steal them away. They soon calmed down when the beaming, dimpled face of Don Mario peeped round our door.
‘Come and sit in this chair, padre,’ my mother said, fussing over him, fetching the best glass from the corner cupboard and filling it to the brim with fortified vinsanto.
‘Thank you, Vincenza. But first give me a beaker of fresh spring water, I beg you.’ He pulled off the beret he always wore at an angle and mopped his brow, fanning his face with a large, linen handkerchief. ‘We could do with a night of rain to take away this heat and to water our parched vegetables,’ he said.
Everybody loved Don Mario. He visited us often and liked to sit conversing with Nonno. He and grandfather were expert hunters and would discuss the best way to catch boar; which breed of dog was ideal for truffle searches; which bullets to use in which rifle; when the moon was in the best phase for catching hares.
He had a generous appetite. Whenever he came to lunch it was a feast for us too. There would be crostini liberally spread with ground chicken livers and sage, ravioli stuffed with greens harvested from the meadows, roast chicken or rompicollo, which was a cut of meat from a cow slaughtered due to some injury. The meat was not the best quality because of the bruising, but it was always tasty and flavoured with plenty of garlic and herbs. My mother was an excellent cook and knew how to make meals out of nothing – a necessary skill during our long, harsh winters.
Don Mario himself came from a peasant family on the other side of Pieve Santo Stefano. He didn’t have airs and graces like some of the clergy and understood perfectly our way of life and hardships. We would be in stitches when, after three or four glasses of wine, he started to mimic personalities in the parish.
But that evening he was intent on business.
‘My friends,’ he said to everybody present. ‘I need to talk alone with Giuseppe’s family, so if you don’t mind…?’
Respecting his wishes our friends shuffled from our kitchen, bidding us all goodnight.
It was growing late. I picked up my three year old brother, Angelo, to make my way towards the ladder leading to our bedroom area.
‘Stay here,’ the priest ordered and turning to mother suggested my little sisters could surely take over my duties for tonight. I could tell Nadia was itching to know what was going on. She was only seven but mother was always saying she had an old head on young shoulders. Scooping Angelo onto her hip and pushing five- year-old Maria Rosa towards the step ladder, my siblings made their exits. Nadia stuck her tongue out at me just before she disappeared through the upstairs hatch and I wrinkled back my nose.
Mamma poured more wine into Don Mario’s glass and told my father to lift down the ham hanging from the beam so she could slice some for our visitor.
‘Now then,’ said the priest. ‘I want to discuss Giuseppe’s future.’
‘Giuseppe’s future is already decided,’ my father was quick to intervene.
‘Since we lost Francesco,’ my mother added, pausing to control her emotions, ‘we need Giuseppe to help us. The girls and Angelo are too young, not strong enough yet.’
We had all waved goodbye to our eighteen-year-old brother Francesco two months earlier when he marched away from the square in Badia Tedalda with seventy five local boys, to fight in the north of Italy. A letter reached us later to say he was missing. My parents were brave but there had been a change in both of them. Mother still set his place, sure that one day he would walk into the kitchen, whistling like he always did, his hunting dog snapping at his heels. When the news first filtered through, she’d uttered a scream that could surely have woken the dead, a sound like a wounded animal. Then she plummeted to the floor. We were used to our mother being always in control and it frightened us. Women in the village took turns to cook and do our washing and sat with her, their gentle voices drifting down from upstairs to the kitchen, a cold place without her presence. When she rose from her bed almost two weeks later, she was almost the Mamma we remembered, but not quite.
‘Life has to continue,’ she announced. ‘Jobs won’t go away. There is firewood to collect and store, the meadow to be cut, sheep to watch over, family and animals to feed.’
But she’d gone about her chores silently ever since that time, saying she would only sing again when Francesco returned to our hearth. Our friends and neighbours kept vigil with us in the evenings. They were kind but my parents craved more than kindness.
Don Mario continued, ‘I’m not intending to take Giuseppe away from you for the whole year, my dear friends. When he returns during the school holidays, he can help you as much as you need.’
‘School!’ my mother uttered, raising both hands to the ceiling in a gesture that asked the priest if he were mad. ‘How can we afford to send Beppe away to school? We have barely enough money to manage as it is.’
‘We need Giuseppe here with us, padre,’ my father said. ‘This idea of yours is impossible.’
‘I believe it is God’s will that he should enter the seminary in Arezzo. Giuseppe is an intelligent, sensitive young boy. Surely you can see what an honour it would be for your family?’
‘But, padre, we can’t afford school for him.’ Mamma sat down at the table, slicing bread and ham with such vigour, she was in danger of slicing off her fingers.
Don Mario placed his hand over
hers to still her. ‘You don’t need to worry about that side of things, Vincenza. I have funds set by. No need to worry about clothes or books. I even have spare shoes hardly worn and a new warm cloak the boy can have.’
I found out later these items had been given to him by another grieving mother who had lost her son to the Great War. But he was sensitive enough not to elaborate on this.
‘And with Giuseppe living in the seminary during school term,’ Don Mario added, ‘you will have one less mouth to feed.’
So my destiny was decided. My parents agreed to my being sent away for an education I couldn’t hope to receive locally. I think Mamma was secretly proud, for I heard her boasting at the village fountain next time she was bent over our laundry, scrubbing dirt from sheets and work clothes with the other women.
‘Just imagine, my son might be ordained one fine day,’ she said, pushing her hair back with soapy fingers, ‘and he won’t have to trudge down to the coast with the animals, like everybody else.’
The women agreed how lucky I was, one of them commenting it was rare to see a thin priest, how I would never have to worry about providing for a family.
‘We shall miss the boy but maybe it’s a blessing in disguise,’ I heard Mamma say as she spread washing to dry on juniper bushes near the village fountain.
Chapter 4
Giuseppe
During the evening of September 7th 1916, Mamma sat up late adjusting and lengthening a pair of my brother’s cord trousers with a piece of material she had put by. It was a different shade of grey, but it would do. When she had finished her work, she folded the trousers carefully into the cardboard suitcase used to carry her trousseau to her new home in Montebotolino nineteen years earlier. She also packed a scarf she had knitted for Francesco, whispering to me it was best to use it. If my brother returned, I would have to give it back. It was the first time I had heard her use “if” instead of “when”. Then she handed me a holy picture of Our Lady, urging me to say my prayers each night. I laughed and reminded her I would be living in a seminary where prayers were bound to be recited until they came out of my ears. She boxed mine playfully, a rare smile on her face. She, Babbo and Nonno always stressed the importance of mixing with good people and they believed their good manners would rub off on me at the seminary. They had made huge sacrifices to send me and hoped one day I would take Holy Orders and become a priest. They showed us love but they were also strict. One of my mother’s many sayings was: ‘chi va con lo zoppo impara a zoppicare.’ (If you go round with the lame, you will learn to be lame.)