by Angela Petch
Flagons of wine that had been stored away purposely in backs of barns were uncorked and ladles of delicious bean stew heaped onto tin platters. Giuseppe thanked me as I served him a dish piled high.
‘I’ve been dreaming of this for months,’ he said, ‘I swear I never want to see another artichoke again for the rest of my days.’
The men around him laughed and agreed, explaining they had eaten their fill of them, the fields around the town of Alberese being ideal for growing that crop and providing seasonal work for some of the men who were not shepherds.
‘That and bread-and-water soup,’ Giuseppe added, toasting his friends before knocking back a beaker of wine.
I understood what he meant about the joys of a change in diet. Through the winter months, women and children who remained up in the mountains survived on a diet of chestnut flour and polenta.
We all filled our stomachs that evening until not a crust was left. And then it was time for the dancing.
I watched as at first the only dancers on the floor were three middle-aged couples, sure-footed, their bodies used to each other’s movements. They were joined a little later by Gianni and Stefania and Piero and Manuela, two betrothed couples to be married later in June. Gianni was not a natural dancer and peered down at his feet as if not quite believing what they were doing. But Stefania guided him round to the music, encouraging him with her patient smile.
Soon the floor was crowded, colour from dresses, scarves, shirts
and ribbons whirling around in rainbows, the whiff of sweat mingling with scents of flowers and wine. The floorboards in our old kitchen bounced up and down with the rhythm of stamping feet and even dishes on the table danced in time to music spun from Loriano’s deft fingers. Save for a line of old ladies dressed in black, I was the only woman not on the dance floor. Feeling awkward I moved outside for fresh air. Beneath the branches of a crab apple tree planted by the bread oven, I sat on a stone seat and gazed up at the stars scratching the sky. It was cooler out here away from the throng of warm bodies and I pulled my shawl tighter round my bosom.
‘Let’s leave this dump and go down to Badia Tedalda.’
I recognised the voice from amongst the group of youths clustered round the wine barrel nearby. It was Ivo’s, son of the man who helped us slaughter and joint our pig each January. ‘The only free bit of meat round here is Marisa,’ he continued, ‘and who’d want to taste her?’
I heard them laugh and shrank back against the stones of the bread oven wall, wishing I could disappear.
And then Giuseppe was in front of me holding out his hand, asking me to dance.
‘You don’t have to, Giuseppe,’ I said, ‘but thank you.’
‘I know I don’t have to,’ he replied. ‘But I haven’t danced yet and I like this tune.’
It was a slow, haunting song about leaving for work down in the Maremma. All of us knew it well.
“Tutti mi dicon Maremma Maremma
Ma a me mi pare una Maremma amara,
L’uccello che ci va perde la penna
Io c’ho perduto una persona cara
Sempre mi trema il cuor quando ci vai
Dalla paura che non torni mai.”
Loriano sang the words in a deep baritone, describing the bitter life on the Maremma plains. Even birds lost their feathers there, he sang, and he had lost someone dear to him too. Every time he went down, he feared he would never again return home.
I stopped at the edge of the dance floor.
‘I can’t dance, Giuseppe,’ I whispered, tugging at his shirt. ‘I’ve never danced in my life.’
He bent down and murmured for me to place my feet on his and to hold on tight.
‘I’ll do the dancing for both of us,’ he said.
In one way it was like the flying I’d always yearned to do: I felt weightless and a freedom my crippled legs would not normally allow. Even when I’d been a toddler, no older than two or three years old, I would come hobbling out of the church after Sunday Mass in a furious rush and shuffle on my bottom down the thirteen stone steps. It was all my parents could do to stop me from rolling down the grassy slope to the fencing - the only barrier against a precipitous drop to the valley far below.
‘You’ll kill yourself, child,’ they’d shout. And I would cry, telling them I only wanted to drop off the edge to fly like a bird and dip my wings into the silver thread of river sparkling in the distance.
We danced like that for a further five tunes and I remember Giuseppe complimenting me on my fine voice as I sang along with Loriano. I could see my Montebotolino neighbours nudging each other and heard them commenting about me and my new dress.
‘Why, she almost looks pretty,’ I heard Elena say.
Finally I stepped off Giuseppe’s feet, worrying I was hurting him.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said. ‘If I could count the number of times I’ve danced like this with my little sisters, you wouldn’t worry. It’s a game we’ve played since they were tiny!’
That night, trying to find sleep in my single bed, I replayed each tune in my head. Each move, each step, each time Giuseppe held on to me tight as he twirled me round, my hand tiny in his strong grasp; how he laughed when I shrieked as he spun us faster and faster. My brain wouldn’t let go of these thoughts.
I was in love with this boy, even though he was ten years younger and thought of me as an older sister. I loved him.
Chapter 20
October 1922 – Giuseppe
When the first sprinklings of snow whitened the peak of l’Alpe della Luna across the valley from Montebotolino, I knew it was time to leave again. Despite the fact I had now made this trek down to the Maremma five times, it was still hard to leave my family, but once we were underway and had put distance between our mountain village and home comforts, the going became easier. However, little did I know how the transumanza of 1922 would change my life. I am not proud of what happened but “sbagliando s’impara” - one learns by one’s mistakes. If I had to choose an epitaph for myself, this would be the very one.
She told me later that it had been quiet in Bar Paradiso that night and she was bored - bored with her job and bored with her life. She said Bar Inferno would have been a better name for what she termed “this dump of a place”. As far as she was concerned it made no difference if customers spat on the straw-covered floor as it was never swept clean and she was not about to volunteer … not on the pay she received from mean old Augusto, the owner of the bar. She’d been working in Alberese for seven months and the malaria-infested town plus clod-hopping peasants with their rough words and even rougher hands, were getting to her. Augusto encouraged her to flirt to make the men drink more wine, but she said it was hard to flutter eyelids at toothless old men in smelly breeches. If I had not entered when I did, she would have hitched a ride out on the next cart bound for Grossetto, for she was sure there would be more excitement and a better way of life in the city. And then I never would have met her…
It was the first time I’d stepped over the threshold of Bar Paradiso but I’d wanted a change from sitting by the camp fire in the evenings. I’d changed into a clean cotton shirt that Mamma had patched for me over the summer and made an effort to scrub my hands clean. I decided at the last minute to take my copy of Orlando Furioso. There was bound to be a quiet corner in that place where I could enjoy my book, I thought.
It was about half past nine when I entered and I chose to sit myself down at a table in the corner, next to a cobweb-curtained window. A young woman was half heartedly wiping down the wooden barrels that served as table tops with a filthy rag and I caught her eye. She dawdled over. When I asked for a bowl of pasta and a pitcher of cold water, she pulled a face and told me the kitchen was shut.
‘Cook’s ill,’ she said.
Her accent was guttural, harsh. I guessed she was probably a romana. One of the monks at the seminary had been from Rome and this girl swallowed her final syllables in the same way.
She leant towards me
, revealing an ample bosom and deep cleavage. I felt my face redden.
‘I’ll see what I can do for you, darling,’ she whispered. ‘There’s yesterday’s pagnotta and some dried sausage if you’re desperate for a bite.’
Then she winked at me, saying, ‘And you could do with a bit of grease on that sunburned face too.’
I heard myself stammer a polite reply, ‘That would be kind, signorina.’
‘My name’s Luisella, tesoro,’ she said, pushing a curl behind her ear and flouncing off to the kitchen.
While she was away I opened the volume Fra Michele had given me and carefully traced the letters, mouthing the ancient words. Luisella told me, much later, that she’d watched me from the kitchen doorway. She said I reminded her of one of the paintings on the walls of the chapel back in her home village of Ponte Mammolo, north of Rome. Like one of the angels in the frescoes, she said, with the same dreamy eyes. Nobody had ever said such things to me and I was flattered, even though I thought she was talking rubbish.
She brought me over a plate piled high with sausage and despite the bread being rather dry, I tucked in with relish.
‘Not been feeding you then?’ she asked, laughter in her voice.
I stopped chewing, a hunk of bread half way to my lips. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I don’t much like camp food. I’m as hungry as a wolf.’
‘Cooked water and stale bread on their menu, right?’
I grinned and she smiled. There was a gap where one of her canine teeth should have been and she sucked at it with her tongue.
‘As I said, my name’s Luisella and…’ She broke off when Augusto shouted at her from behind the bar to get on with her work. With her back to him she stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes so that only I would notice, and smiled her gap-toothed smile.
As she walked back to the bar, I watched the sway of her hips as she skirted the tables. Her ankles were slim. My mother and sisters wore longer skirts covering their legs and I found myself wondering if Luisella’s calves and thighs were slim. But then I felt myself redden again and I concentrated on the pages of my book instead. I brushed away the breadcrumbs and was pleased I hadn’t smeared sausage fat on the ancient letters. This book was the one treasure I had salvaged from my two years at the seminary.
On the following Sunday I returned. It was certainly not for food or wine (which tasted more like vinegar) or conversation from other drinkers. I told myself it was because Bar Paradiso was a place where I could read my book in peace.
Luisella beamed a welcome and I made my way to the same corner seat. Her lips seemed redder and her breasts strained higher against her tight, grubby blouse. The plate she set before me was even bigger than last week. As she bent down to whisper to me, I felt her bosom brush my shoulder.
‘I sliced you three more pieces of salami while Augusto wasn’t looking and topped the jug up with extra wine.’
I stayed in my corner late that night, alternately glancing at my book and ogling Luisella, until Augusto started to blow out candles and pull shutters closed, ordering everybody home to their beds.
She was waiting outside in the shadows and we walked together across the deserted square, the shutters on the tall houses firmly locked. I kept my distance and we prattled about nothing in particular. She was very different from mountain women and I found I had no wish to share information about home with her. She grumbled on about Augusto, swearing in her guttural accent about how he had tried to put his filthy hands up her skirt as he climbed the cellar steps behind her.
‘The next time that dirty old porco comes near me, he’ll regret it,’ she said. ‘I’ve nicked a sharp knife from the kitchen and it’s staying in my drawers. I’ll stick it in him where it hurts and then he won’t ever be able to use his wrinkly little sausage again.’
She lifted her skirt to show me the blade tucked into her bloomers and I looked away from the sight of her thighs. They weren’t slim as I had imagined, but round - with flesh bulging above her stockings.
On the third Sunday I walked her home again. As we turned a corner she stumbled. I caught her and she pulled me to her. I felt the weight of her breasts against me once again and it made me hard.
On the fourth Sunday we walked away from the square in the direction of the beach and when I asked her if I could kiss her, she replied, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
One kiss led to another. She lifted her skirts as she leant against the wall of a house on the edge of town. I heard sounds of a family preparing for the night: somebody scraping plates clean, a man gargling and a baby crying, but when I pushed myself into her, the slippery wetness of her, I was aware of nothing else except release.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her in the days that followed and especially about the oblivion of the moment when I came inside her. People called it making love but I knew I didn’t love Luisella. It was nothing more than lust which I would have to confess before I could receive the Holy Eucharist into my mouth at Mass again.
So the next time I saw her and watched her flirting in Bar Paradiso with another customer, I knew I shouldn’t have felt anger. I shouldn’t have clenched my fists or let my stomach knot up in a jealous twist of fury. I shouldn’t have stood up so my stool crashed to the floor behind me and I shouldn’t have hit the stupid drunken lout so hard that his nose was smashed into a pulpy mess and blood streamed down his clothes.
Afterwards Luisella had smiled and cooed at me as she bathed my bloodied knuckles, kissing each one gently, telling me nobody had ever stood up for her like I had. She took me home to her attic room and sat astride me on her cheap metal bed, her plump thighs warm and soft against mine and I sucked her nipples until she moaned. I had to stop her cries by covering her mouth with my bruised hand lest Augusto heard.
For three long weeks after that I managed to keep away from Bar Paradiso. I found a derelict stable in the fields behind the camp where I could read in peace. But I found myself reading the same passage over and over, whilst images of Luisella tormented me until I had to reach inside my breeches to relieve myself. The sticky stain was there for everybody to see so I sneaked away through the trees to the shore and jumped into the salty shallows, rolling over and over fully clothed to clean myself. Across the water near the spot where we had found poor Fausto, the moon glinted on the island of Giglio and I thought of how many places there were to explore in the world and how small and lost I felt.
I needed to talk over my problem with Paolo. Our paths didn’t cross so often now I was working for Matteo – only when his mules needed new shoes.
‘What’s up?’ he asked me when I found him. ‘You look peaky, lad.’
I lowered my voice and told him how I’d met a girl and how I couldn’t stop thinking about her but I wanted to stop thinking about her - more than anything in the world.
He looked at me, scratched his chin and puffed on the pipe he never seemed to light. After a while he asked me a strange question. ‘Does your heart feel strong?’ he said.
When I shrugged my shoulders and stayed staring into the flames of the camp fire, Paolo took his pipe from his mouth and prodded me in the chest with its stem, firing off several more questions.
‘Would you want to take this girl back to Montebotolino, Giuseppe? Could you picture her at a veglia seated at your family’s hearth mending your shirts, sharing stories and jokes with everybody? Could you imagine her in the company of your mother and sisters, or hard at work, hoeing and planting seeds in your meadow?’
My silence in the face of all these questions must have spoken the truth and when Paolo asked me who the girl was and I told him, he laughed outright, ‘You must be the only one round here she hadn’t tried out, Giuseppe. She’s nothing but a puttana. You’d best make sure you’ve not picked up the pox from that one.’ And he spat into the fire and laughed even more.
With my mind made up, I waited next evening in the shadow of a lime tree outside the bar for the end of Luisella’s shift. I rehearsed over and over wh
at I would say to her and why I could no longer go on seeing her.
At midnight while she was pulling closed the shutters of the bar windows on the street side, she caught sight of me as I leant against the tree, tossing my cap from one hand to another, scuffing dirt with my clogs.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she shouted, ‘the boy from the mountains has decided to put in an appearance at long last.’
I walked over to her but before I could open my mouth to speak, she told me she was pregnant, demanding to know what I was going to do about it.
Chapter 21
May 1923 – Giuseppe
How to describe my troubled mind during those subsequent months? I retreated into myself, turning down invitations from my friends to spend time together. Even my best friend Luciano gave up on me eventually, at a loss to know why I’d changed so much. I’d told nobody about Luisella’s condition, not even Paolo. I visited her on the odd Sunday and we slept together, but I didn’t enjoy her company. She moaned and moaned at me to sort something out and bring her money.
Late one afternoon at the end of April I sat hunched on Alberese beach and it came to me to swim out towards the Island of Giglio. Tidying my clogs and clothes into a pile near the shore’s edge, I walked into the sea until I was out of my depth. I wanted to drown in the salty water and for the sea to take away my torment. I started to paddle water. Spray stung my eyes, the sea was cold and I wondered how long it would take to grow numb and sink below the surface. I turned onto my back, extending my arms and legs like a cross. The sky was a spangle of stars, the moon almost full, and a picture of my family flickered into my brain. Mamma was by our hearth, the fire unlit. She was dressed in black, wringing her hands and wailing, my siblings were clustered around her trying to offer comfort. And they were crying too.