by Angela Petch
I only had one ear tuned to Fra Domenico’s explanation of the importance of plane geometry. He sat close to me, his breath sour, pointing at my copy book with bony fingers, asking me how on earth I couldn’t see why my answers were wrong.
‘It’s so obvious, boy, that even a toddler could do this. You have confused adjacents and opposites. Haven’t you been taught that tan is opposite over adjacent?’ He prodded my back as he spoke. ‘And sine is opposite over hypotenuse?’
If it had been obvious to me, then I wouldn’t have needed help in the first place, I wanted to retort. I was beginning to understand why his mathematical skills were only used for weighing out ingredients in the kitchen. He had no patience as a teacher. But I said nothing.
Then, just as if a coin had been flipped, he began to explain again in precise, clear terms, his voice patient and calm. ‘Mathematics is fun, Giuseppe. If you like drawing, you should be good at geometry. I know you’re clever at cutting out shapes for your shoe repairs - I’ve watched you at work - so you should be able to grasp these rules…’
He set me half a dozen further questions and sat close to me, his hand on my shoulder while I worked them out. They were all correct and his hand strayed to my cheek, stroking it while he talked, ‘See, you are a clever boy after all, Giuseppe.’
Then he stood up and went over to the sink to scrub his hands, telling me to return the following Saturday for a further lesson on trigonometry.
I wanted to play football but I also wanted to succeed in my dream of becoming a teacher, to escape the drudgery of work as a cobbler and blacksmith. Not to mention the annual trek down to the Maremma with the shepherds and villagers looking for work. So I gave up any idea of playing football and spent an hour for several Saturday afternoons in the company of Fra Domenico.
On the last Saturday of term, he told me he wanted to show me something special that would illustrate the importance of perfecting my skills in geometry.
‘Come with me, Giuseppe. What I want to show you is in the library.’
‘But isn’t the library closed on Saturdays, Fra Domenico?’
‘Yes, but I have special permission to use it.’ He felt about in the pocket of his habit and produced an old key, a smile quivering on his thin lips.
The college library was housed in its own building, at the end of the loggia that ran along the front of the chapel. The stained glass windows were patterned like the bases of dark green wine bottles and set high up in the walls. They were small in comparison with the scale of the room, so the space was gloomy. We had been told the purpose was to prevent bright sunlight from ageing precious books arranged on library shelves around the walls.
‘Over here is where we need to be,’ whispered Fra Domenico, pointing to an arched wooden door, around which shelves had been built.
He opened it and when we were inside he shut it again. I looked round at the room lined with wooden panels, each one inlaid with delicate marquetry displaying intricate images. Fields, mountains, a river, a market place with stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables, figures dancing at a village festa. There was a school scene, a view of workers scything hay in the fields below a mountain village, another showing a priest preaching from a church pulpit, an artistic picture book of everyday life. Fra Domenico guided me round the octagonal room pointing out details, his arm round my shoulder. ‘Look at these perfect shapes! Look at the artistry - all calculated to within a millimetre.’
Finally, he pushed an oak chest away from the wall. It had been covering the only panel we had not examined and he knelt down in front of it.
‘And take a look at this, my boy.’
I knelt near him and he caught hold of my arm. His breathing was shallow and I wondered if the walk over from the library had been too taxing.
The picture on this panel was of a garden peopled with men and women wearing few clothes. Snakes coiled around fruit trees and a large lizard type creature sat atop a rock, its long tongue suckling from a girl’s breasts. Fra Domenico pointed to an image near the entrance to a cave. It was of a man and small boy. With horror, I saw they were both naked, the boy kneeling, holding the man’s erect penis in his hands.
‘That is you and me, Giuseppe.’ The friar said and grasped me tightly so I couldn’t move. With his other hand he felt inside my trousers and fondled me between my legs, eyes closed and muttering the Latin Pater Noster. I struggled to free myself but his grip was tight.
Still holding me, he lifted his habit and began to pleasure himself, his mouth open, tongue lolling on his bottom lip. Too traumatized to move, I could hardly believe what was happening. Then he shuddered and let go of me abruptly, making the sign of the cross repeatedly across his chest as I ran to the door to escape.
‘It is locked, Giuseppe.’ He held up the key. ‘Before I turn this, you must promise me on your mother’s life not to report to a living soul of what we did together. God will forgive you,’ he said, his eyes closed, ‘but Fra Angelico will not. If he hears about your lewd behaviour, you will be expelled.’
‘But I didn’t do anything…’I stammered. All I wanted to do was escape from him and the ghastly panelled room.
‘Nobody will believe that for one second.’ Fra Domenico gave me a small, twisted smile. ‘And, anyway, you owe me so much more than you can ever repay for all the lessons we’ve had over the past weeks.’ He walked over to the door and turned the key in the lock, whispering just before he let me out, ‘Remember, this is our secret, yours and mine.’
I watched him as he hurried away down the loggia and when he was no longer in view, I vomited and kept heaving until I thought I would sick up my insides.
The sinful secret would remain locked inside my mind for many years. I felt I was to blame in some way for what had taken place within that panelled octagonal room.
Chapter 8
Giuseppe and the malocchio
‘I don’t care what work you make me do – I’ll muck out everybody’s stables in Montebotolino, the whole region even. I’ll do Nonno’s cobbler work…I’ll do anything you ask…I’ll even go down to the Maremma at the end of this month and be the meo for everybody, forever… But I’m not going back to the seminary in Arezzo and you won’t make me!’
‘Why would a clever student like you want to work as a dogsbody meo,’ my mother kept asking, ‘ at the beck and call of everybody, when we’ve worked ourselves to the bone saving money, sacrificing so much for you to study? You should be ashamed of yourself, Giuseppe. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.’
Every household in the village could hear the crying and shouting issuing nightly from our house and all the women listened daily at the fountain to my mother lamenting about the grief I was causing.
‘I’m at my wit’s end,’ I heard her grumble from my hiding place within the stable. Peeping from behind the manger, I watched her scrub the life from an already worn-out cotton sheet.
‘Every night for the last week,’ she was telling her friends, ‘we have sat together and recited the rosary, beseeching Our Lady to help but he refuses to return to school. Such a waste of good money and time! He was all but promised a place to study to become a teacher for elementary school. Just one set of exams and he would have been a qualified maestro.’
Our neighbour Elena wiped soapy fingers on her apron and shrugged her shoulders, ‘You can lead a horse to water,’ she said, ‘but you can’t make him drink. He’s a country boy at heart, Vincenza. If he’s happier staying here with you, then let him be. I remember lighting a fire under a mule we used to own. The lazy creature refused to budge even when his belly was singed. There was nothing we could do.’
Elena’s husband had been found hanging from a tree in the woods behind the cemetery six years earlier. ‘Just remember what happened to my Ernesto,’ she made the sign of the cross. ‘A person can go mad if he’s forced to go against his mindset.’
Mamma apologised briefly to Elena for her lack of tact but persisted in her complaining. ‘But he’s n
ot a lazy boy and I know in my heart he’s not going to be happier staying here in the village. Don’t you see?’ She continued to pummel her washing. ‘If only Nonno Piero were still alive. He would have talked sense into him.’
I couldn’t help thinking how difficult it would have been to experience Nonno’s disappointment in me. There was no way I could have revealed to him the reason behind my decision; I would have died of shame. It was better that he lay in the cemetery oblivious to the upset I was causing.
Maria, the wife of the carpenter, intervened. ‘Aren’t you pleased he wants to stay near you? You’ve lost one son to the war, your father’s passed on and now your husband – God rest their souls. You should be pleased, Vincenza. If only our sons had been woodcutters, then they would have been excused from fighting in the war.’
Maria had lost her only son, Armando, in the campaign at Asiago too, but she never spoke directly of her own loss and refused to wear black. She believed reports of his death were a big mistake and my own mother had said more than once that Maria would lose her mind completely if she were to accept he was dead.
‘I know for certain there’s something wrong with Giuseppe, something has happened’ my mother said as she spread wet laundry onto thorny sloe bushes to dry in the sun.
‘Then, there’s nothing to do but take him to see Nanni,’ Elena concluded. ‘When our cow stopped giving us milk, it was because Gildo’s wife walked past our house and cast a spell. She’s always been jealous of what we have. Nanni sorted it out in one afternoon.’
‘Or you could make him immerse his whole body in the spring below Fresciano,’ chipped in Maria. ‘When Giuseppina’s daughter had an attack of nerves before her marriage to Alfredo, they made her strip off and wash in its cold water. She was cured almost immediately.’
‘Anybody would have an attack of nerves at the mere thought of marrying Alfredo,’ laughed Elena. ‘He’s so tiny. Do you think she has to lift him up into her arms every time he wants to give her a kiss and a cuddle? Just imagine!’
‘Height is of no importance in bed, silly’ chortled Maria, ‘only length.’
There were cackles of laughter from the pair and I saw my mother smile. I suspect she was grateful for her friends who were trying to take her mind off the problems I was causing.
After our supper of potato-stuffed pasta, Mamma asked me to come and sit beside her on the stone bench outside the house. We sat in silence for some minutes with the sun sinking behind the peak of Montebotolino. She finished a row of knitting and stuck her needles into the skeins of wool in her basket before turning to me. ‘You said you would do anything, my son, rather than go back to the seminary.’
A glimmer of hope stole into my heart but when she told me she had arranged for an appointment with Nanni in two days’ time, I knew she was still determined I should continue my studies. She was banking on his skills to reverse my decision.
Nanni lived in an isolated house on the road between Montebotolino and Fresciano, in a spot notorious for vipers lurking beneath stones and brambles. By trade he was a woodcutter and lived alone, having lost his wife and infant son to an outbreak of typhus just before the war. People had always consulted him in times of trouble and bad health for his skills as a medicone, for he was reputed to have great powers of healing and magic.
Mamma sat next to me in the gloom of his small stone outbuilding. There were no windows and the only entrance for light came through a hole in the roof which was charred and tarry from years of wood smoke. No fire was burning that afternoon and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I could make out twisted roots of dried plants hanging from hooks on a beam high up in the roof. In a large niche within the side wall, bottles of all shapes, sizes and colours were arranged: some contained liquids, others powders and what looked like dried leaves. Leaning against one wall was a thick stick. Paolo, in our village, owned one and it was known as il bastone del febbricone, I knew that in order for it to work successfully to cure fever in sheep, it would have first been used to kill a snake carrying a toad in its mouth. I couldn’t take my eyes off it and wondered what other magical possessions Nanni had in his hut.
He mumbled an incantation after ordering me to hold a saucer over a burning candle stub. He poured water into the saucer, announcing it was pure and uncontaminated and that he had collected it from a special spring in the woods, its whereabouts a secret. He knelt down, made the sign of the cross and recited three Ave Marias, followed by two invocations to Jesus.
‘Oh blessed Lord, help me rid this boy of the devil within,’ he intoned, followed by, ‘sweet Jesus, may the wicked spell cast over this boy’s spirit be driven out and crushed forever. As you rose from the dead, let him rise and be free of the Satan’s wishes.’
Then he ordered me to dip my finger into the water and added three drops of oil.
The oil separated and my mother cried out in dismay, covering her mouth with her hand
‘Don’t worry, signora,’ Nanni said. ‘It didn’t work that time but I shall repeat it once more and the evil eye will surely be dispelled for good. Have faith and patience.’
The next time the oil drops stayed together on the surface of the water and I was pronounced cured. Nanni then asked my mother for two plucked hens and one dozen eggs by way of payment.
‘Giuseppe will bring them up to you first thing tomorrow,’ my mother told him.
But I had other plans.
Chapter 9
Giuseppe
Mornings were steel edged now, water on the village font ice-crisp. Instead of clear blue skies, tatters of cloud stuck fast between firs on the mountain slopes and leaves on the beech trees dropped yellow and rust to the forest floor. Some days our village floated upon a sea of clouds, forming an island, heralding the separation from the rest of the world that winter would bring.
Before I drifted into sleep, I lay on my sack mattress stuffed with dried corn-cob sheaths and contemplated the stars. I wondered if the sky would look the same down on the Maremma plains. It was time to leave.
Tomorrow the men and older boys would be setting off. Boots had been mended; in fact I had lost count of how many old shoes I had studded with nails to help them last the eight-day journey down mule tracks and dusty mountain roads. Paolo, our other neighbour, had a new pair of goatskin breeches and had proudly shown me his stick, whittled from chestnut wood in the evenings by his fireside. On one end he had skilfully worked a hook to yank necks of wayward sheep. Rossella, his wife, had wrapped chunks of pancetta in cloth and he had bought himself a sturdy green umbrella from the fair at Ranco.
I believed Mamma had no inkling I would soon be gone. Part of me felt bad; she wanted me near her now she understood Francesco was never coming back from the battle of Asiago. One of the shepherds who had come to have his clogs repaired told us the newspapers had reported the deaths of 147,000 men. And all for what? At the seminary, during a geography lesson, Fra Alonso had shown us the range of mountains called Altopiano where the battle had been fought. I remember hoping, for my brother’s sake, that those mountains were as beautiful as the Apennines he had left behind here. On the newly-erected monument in the square in Badia Tedalda and when everybody had disappeared after the commemoration service, I had crouched down and run my fingers over the raised letters of my older brother’s name: Francesco Tommaso Starnucci. I wanted to feel close to him, have some sort of connection. But instead all I felt were twenty five cold, metal shapes.
Since the end of the episode with Fra Domenico, I vowed never to return to the seminary in Arezzo and I’d been making secret preparations. I removed Nonno’s moth-eaten wool cloak from the wooden trunk at the end of my parents’ high matrimonial bed. I’d been squirreling away morsels of pecorino cheese and wild boar sausage whilst Mamma wasn’t looking and wrapping them in a rag in readiness for my departure. And nothing was going to stop me.
That time had finally come. Angelo lay on his back fast asleep, his mouth wide open. I timed my getting up from the rust
ling mattress to coincide with my little brother’s whistling snores. Down the ladder to the kitchen I crept, where ashes glowed in the wide fireplace still holding enough heat for Mamma to blow life into and boil up chicory coffee for breakfast. Bunches of newly-stripped corn cobs hung from hooks in the beams casting ghostly finger-shapes on the plaster walls. As my head brushed against them, they swung to and fro, the shadows seeming to wave a farewell. With care I lifted the latch just far enough to avoid the squeak and then I was out into what was left of the night. The light was eerie; neither night nor day. The huddle of houses of my village seemed to press towards me and everyday objects assumed spectral shapes. A broom leaning against Paolo’s house was a spindly old witch. Moonlight glinting off a scythe hanging near his doorway was the open eye of a corpse. A cat hunting for an early breakfast pounced on its prey in long grass at the edge of our yard and my heart wanted to leap from within my ribcage. The cold took my breath away and I pulled Nonno’s long cloak tighter, hitching it up to stop it dragging in the dew. Despite being tall for my fourteen years, Nonno Piero had been considerably taller in his younger days. They still talked about him, referring to him as Pierone (Piero, the big one), despite having died a tiny wizened little man more than a year ago.
Creeping along in the lee of shadowy stone houses, I stopped to remove my clogs, muttering a prayer that the dogs wouldn’t hear me and set up alarm with their barking. Twenty metres further and I was at the start of a footpath. Milk white in the moonlight it wound its way up and down the river valley. Once I was sure I would no longer be heard, I slipped numb feet back into my wooden shoes.