by Angela Petch
In that moment I asked myself how I could let my family suffer another tragedy and I struck back to shore. The current was strong and it carried me to the beach where I knelt and sobbed before pulling on my clothes.
Two weeks later in early May, disconsolate, I waved farewell to my mountain friends as they set off on the long trek back to Badia Tedalda. I invented an excuse for not accompanying the caravan. ‘I need to stay down here to make extra money for mother,’ I said ‘There’s plenty of work for me on land reclamation. Maybe I’ll manage a trip up to see you before the end of summer.’
But I wondered if I would ever see Montebotolino again and once again cursed the evening I’d wandered into Bar Paradiso.
It was six a.m. on a Sunday morning and already sweltering in the hut I was now sharing with labourers from the north, near Venice. Last night there had been celebrations for somebody’s birthday and I was the only one awake. My new acquaintances were sleeping off last night’s wine. I hadn’t joined in. These days, I kept to myself.
I’d sat far back from the camp fire, deep in worry, slumped against the trunk of a Mediterranean pine. I was still angry with myself about Luisella. Of course I hadn’t been ignorant of what our coupling might produce. I’d helped often enough to bring the huge Chianina bull to cover our neighbour’s cows and, later on I’d pulled blood-caked calves from their haunches. Luisella had always told me not to worry, that she would douche herself with vinegar afterwards. But I shouldn’t have trusted her and cursed myself for my foolishness. I felt sure she’d tricked me into getting her pregnant.
Sunday Mass was no longer part of my weekly routine since sleeping with her. I’d been once since she’d told me of her pregnancy and the downcast eyes of the plaster statue of Virgin Maria in the little chapel of Villa Gran Ducale seemed to show disappointment in me. The words from the pater noster – “and lead us not into temptation”, screamed hypocrisy as I recited them. Instead, I’d taken to spending Sunday mornings in bed with Luisella – worshipping her body instead of the Holy Eucharist. It felt more honest to take her nipples into my mouth than to receive the consecrated host on my tongue.
Two nights earlier we’d had a huge row and so this Sunday I’d decided to leave her alone. I didn’t like her waiting on tables in Bar Paradiso and told her it wasn’t a suitable job for a pregnant woman.
‘What am I supposed to live off, then?’ she’d shouted, hands on hips, mouth turned down in a sulk. ‘Just because I’m pregnant it doesn’t mean I have to stay cooped up all day and night in that hole of a room you’ve found me, waiting for you to come and see me whenever you want to get your leg over.’
She was right. And I didn’t like the person I was turning into.
Emerging from the hut, leaving the Venetians to their snores, I splashed cold water on my face from a trough and pulled on a half-clean shirt. Pulling my cap down over my curls, I set off in the direction of Alberese.
The ornate gates to the Villa Gran Ducale were wide open in readiness for the arrival of Sunday worshippers for Mass. I found myself dragging my feet towards the chapel, my boots stirring up puffs of dust.
It was a small squat building that could only house half a dozen uncomfortable pews and benches. These were always occupied by the family of the Estate and their domestic servants. Everybody else spilled out from the back and hovered near the entrance. I remembered a dark haired beauty I’d gazed on in the front pew and how I’d concentrated on her shapely back, my eyes tracing a perfect line of pearl buttons fastening her raspberry pink dress. Paolo, standing next to me, had nudged me, whispering that I should stop my drooling and dribbling, that she was the padrone’s daughter and well beyond my reach. ‘And shut your mouth,’ Paolo had hissed, ‘you look like a baby teething.’
All that seemed an innocent lifetime ago.
Padre Giacomo, the elderly parish priest, was hoeing round a neat display of lettuce plants, humming to himself as he worked. He wore a battered straw hat pulled well down over his head, the rim split at the front, affording two peep holes.
‘You’re too early for Mass, my son,’ he said, straightening up and leaning on his hoe. ‘So you can come and help me get rid of these dock roots. They seem to grow while my back is turned.’
I removed my jacket and hung it over a stack of firewood at the side of the vegetable patch. Rolling up my sleeves I set to, attacking weeds with a hoe handed me by the priest. I jabbed at the soil, the blade clanking as it scattered stones in all directions.
‘You need to dig sheep manure into this, Father,’ I said, lifting a handful of the poor, friable soil and letting it sift through my fingers.
‘Well, you can bring me plenty of that, can’t you? After you have told me what is troubling you.’
The priest moved to work on the next row of salad plants and then pronounced, ‘You are in trouble with a woman.’
He spoke in a matter of fact fashion; the statement could just as easily have been, my borlotti bean seedlings are a disaster this year.
‘How did you know?’ I asked, stopping my mutilation of the soil and shading my eyes from the already fierce sun to better view the old priest’s face.
‘I didn’t sprout wispy hairs and deep wrinkles overnight, my son.’
We worked together for another ten minutes or so. I was grateful for the priest’s silence; I couldn’t have put up with a lecture.
‘That will do for today,’ he said eventually. ‘Come inside and we’ll drink some water and then you can help me prepare for Holy Mass.’
The water was cool and slightly sweet. He told me it came from a spring behind the house and was stored in pottery bottles in a back scullery. As he poured two more tumblers of water, he asked me if the woman causing so much worry was married.
‘No, Father.’
‘Well, that’s something, at least. And are you married?’
No, Father.’
‘I thought not. How old are you?’
‘Nearly nineteen,’ I replied.
The old man sighed and then said, ‘I will marry you both.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘And now help me serve at Mass. And say an Act of Contrition and three Hail Marys for your penance.’
Five days later, in the tiny chapel of the Villa Gran Ducale I, Giuseppe Starnucci, married Luisella Sciotti.
The sole witness was the priest’s house keeper, a plump middle-aged woman called Iole. She had a streak of flour on her face, having been called away in the middle of preparing potato gnocchi for the priest’s lunch. All through the ceremony her fingers worked away at her rosary beads, her lips pursed in disapproval and every so often a deep sigh escaped from her.
I felt as if I might suffocate. My marriage should have been one of the happiest days in my life but my heart brimmed with misery. My dreams of one day becoming a primary school teacher were now shattered for good. My family wouldn’t take to Luisella, of this I was absolutely sure. They might be civil to her and my mother would help with her grandchild. In turn she would expect Luisella to join in with household chores. But they wouldn’t love her as a daughter and I knew I would always feel ashamed of her.
At the same time, my upbringing told me it was the correct and moral thing to do, to marry this girl who was expecting our child. I could hear my mother tell me, ‘You have bought your bicycle and now you must pedal it.’ I thought wryly of how many others must have used Luisella as a bike, remembering Paolo’s smile when I’d told him I’d fallen for the village tart.
I’m sure Luisella must have felt she was set up for life. Up until now she’d been like a stray cat, used to living in ditches and scavenging for scraps at the butcher’s door. Now she had found herself a roof over her head and me to protect her. I imagined her just like a cat, licking clean her whiskers, curling herself up as near to the fire as comfortable and purring herself to sleep.
Our wedding supper took place in Bar Paradiso. Grudgingly, Augusto set down a litre of rancid red wine on our corner table. ‘On th
e house,’ he announced, before placing a heel of bread and a plate of slightly off Maremma black boar next to the bottle.
Luisella had kept on her cream lace veil, set saucily on the back of her head and fastened with a gaudy clip. She told me she’d found it on the sawdust floor of the Bar one night. A few days later she admitted to having pinched it from a market stall.
I moved out of the hut into a tiny room above Augusto’s bar. In the middle stood a single bed with sagging springs that sang out squeakily whenever we coupled, which was a rare event as Luisella grew bigger. Although we were now married she found a variety of excuses to keep me off her, ‘My back hurts; you’ll hurt the baby; he’ll get a hole in his head; poo, you smell of sheep.’ And in truth I no longer felt like bedding her.
One small window, its pane cracked and held together with a piece of tape, a wobbly wash-stand with a chipped bowl and jug, my cardboard suitcase which served both as table and container for clothes: these were all the furnishings that made up our first home.
Luisella had taken to pestering me about living in Grosseto. ‘Buy me a smart new apartment in the centre,’ she whined. No matter how often I explained that there was no way on God’s earth I could afford this, she refused to believe me.
‘We’ll return to Montebotolino up in the Apennines,’ I told her, ‘that’s where we’re going to live and you had better get used to the idea.’
Then she shouted and threw things at me. My copy of Orlando Furioso landed on the floor. A handful of pages came loose and I picked them up, slamming the door to our room as I stormed out. Another pane of glass dropped to the floorboards and smashed as I clattered down the stairs.
I walked to the beach again and sat by the sea’s edge, hankering after my days of freedom with my garzoni friends. I had nobody to unburden myself to, but the rhythm of the waves lapping back and forth on the sand began to calm me down. Gradually my heart stopped its crazy thumping and hope stole back. Maybe Luisella and I would grow to like each other eventually and settle down to something resembling happiness. She was very pregnant and her hormones were all over the place. I’d heard women at veglie confide to each other about such matters and complain often enough about their men and how marriages took time and patience. My mother would help smooth the waters. Once we returned to Montebotolino life would be easier, I convinced myself.
With these positive thoughts lifting my spirits, I made my way back to Bar Paradiso. As I approached, I heard Luisella singing, accompanied by wolf whistles and raucous cheering. Peering through the smeared window, I saw my pregnant wife standing on an upturned wine barrel, hands on hips, the top buttons on her blouse undone to reveal more of her bosom than modesty allowed. She was clearly drunk and she began to sing the words of a bawdy Maremmana song:
Io me ne voglio andare in Maremma,
Mi voglio sposare una maremmana,
Non mi importa se non ha soldi,
basta che abbia una fresca fontana...
(I want to go down to the Maremma,
I want to marry a girl from there,
It doesn’t matter if she has no money,
Just as long as her fountain’s moist…)
I pushed my way through the throng of men ogling her, knocking three youths at the front sideways and yanking Luisella off her makeshift stage.
‘Take your dirty shepherd’s hands off me,’ Luisella said, slurring her words, ‘you’re a boring, spotty youth of a husband. I’d rather sleep with a sheep than with you.’
Her audience roared with laughter. I punched the man nearest to me in the mouth. As he fell, spitting teeth and blood as he collapsed to the floor, a couple more drunkards fell down with him like falling dominoes.
‘More, more, hit them some more,’ screamed Luisella, enjoying the mayhem she was causing.
I dragged her away from the laughing men towards the door. Her words were filthy and coarse. She tried to bite my hand clenched round her wrist and then she suddenly collapsed like a rag doll, clutching her hands to her belly.
At first I thought it was a trick to make me let go of her and I shouted at her to stand up, to get up from the floor.
Then she uttered a high-pitched, terrifying cry and I saw blood spreading across the soiled floor where she lay.
Chapter 22
Giuseppe
The midwife came out to me where I sat hunched on the steps. Shaking her head, she thrust a bundle of rags at me. My son.
‘It was too early,’ she muttered, ‘and she lost too much blood. And what’s more the stupid girl was wearing a chain round her neck. Did nobody warn her that the cord would wrap itself around the baby’s neck if she wore a chain? Don’t expect the infant to last the night either. And you owe me six lire.’ She held out a blood stained hand to me.
I didn’t know how I would scrape together that amount. It was more than I’d earned in the whole of March and April. I hadn’t been able to save anything, with Luisella always grabbing any money I made. In a matter of hours I had become a father and a widower. I could hardly take it in.
‘I’ll bring it in the morning, signora,’ I muttered and she brushed past me clattering down the steps in her clogs, grumbling about the folly of the young and how she would believe the money when she saw it in her hands.
I stood watching her for a few moments as she waddled down the alleyway in the early morning light. The fresh air offered little comfort as I stood cradling the baby in my arms. It weighed hardly more than a new born kitten. The last thing I had imagined was the death of Luisella; she’d always been so loud and lusty, so full of life.
And there was no way I could cope with bringing up a child. I decided to leave it at the convent. I wouldn’t be the first or the last.
But there was something I needed to do first. I pushed open the door at the top of the stairs to our room; the place where Luisella had taken me to bed and taught me so many tricks. Now she lay still, her hair tangled on the pillow. The room smelled of metal. I knew this odour, the iron smell of blood. It conjured memories of New Year when we killed our pig and Mamma would hurry to the kitchen with her basin brimming with freshly-spilled blood to make sausages. And I remembered spring in the Maremma, when the shepherds had slaughtered the first lambs and we’d eaten budelluzzi. But here in this bedroom, the smell of blood was sour.
With the baby in my arms, I knelt to pull the sheet from his mother’s face. It was waxy white, her lips were slightly parted, eyes wide open, staring at me from who knew where. I couldn’t bring myself to kiss her. Instead, I brushed back a strand of her matted hair, closed her eyes and whispered I was sorry, that she was better off without me. Her gold chain carrying the medal of the Madonna’s face caught the light from the dwindling moon through the cracked window. I put the child down beside her and supporting the weight of Luisella’s head, I removed the chain from around her neck, already marble-cold. And I took the gold earrings from her lobes. The child should have something of its mother, besides the knowledge she had died giving birth.
I hunted about for something warm, for he had started to cry, a mewling, whimpering sound. It stopped when I swaddled him in a shawl and held him close to my body. I found myself whispering words of comfort that I’d heard women at home use and which came to me from somewhere better and kinder.
‘There now, little one,’ I crooned, ‘shhh now, soon be better, there, there, there…’
The convent of Santa Maria Magdalena was not far away, in a small piazza behind the elementary school. The town was beginning to stir. It was market day and a handful of stall holders were arranging their merchandise. Under the loggia, sacks of maize leant drunkenly against each other. A bag had keeled over, spilling shiny fat chestnuts onto the cobbles. I thought back to more innocent times as a boy, nicking fistfuls of chestnuts from old Rucca in Badia, when he was looking the other way.
A pot mender sat half asleep slumped against a brick column, patched copper pots arranged around him. With one hand I pulled my cap further down on my head in a
n effort to hide my face and I clutched the bundle of rags tighter, willing the baby not to cry, hoping nobody would guess the nature of my cargo.
The ancient wheel beside the convent door stood waiting to be pushed open like the mouth of a hungry beast, ready for me to place the baby in its wooden drum and push it to the inside of the orphanage where the nuns would take over. I didn’t even need to scribble a note. The child, if it survived, would continue in life never knowing anything of its origins. I’d met a couple of orphans in Maremma. Their names – Innocenzo and Addolorato – were a giveaway. Our baby would doubtless be afflicted with a similar label. I whispered again what I had muttered to Luisella, ‘It’s for the best’ and made sure the gold chain was linked through the weave of the shawl. I stretched my arms towards the wheel and then the baby opened its large, brown eyes and yawned. I gazed down at my son, noticing for the first time his curl of dark hair and tiny mother-of-pearl fingernails. Deep in my belly I felt a pang and I was smitten.
Clutching him tightly to me, I made my decision. I had to get him home to Montebotolino before it was too late.
I knew the quickest way to return was by train to Arezzo, from where I could catch the new Appennino steam train. From there to Palazzo del Pero and onwards, to Sansepolcro. From the city I could ride on the corriera up to Badia Tedalda. It would be easy to find some means from there, even if it meant ‘borrowing’ a mule to carry us up the steep track to my home village. The journey would take the whole day, if we were lucky, and my son would need milk and napkins. I couldn’t manage this without help and I hurried back to the midwife’s house.
The door knocker was shaped like a cherub’s head. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d fetched the old crone for Luisella’s labour.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ I heard her grumble from behind the thick oak door, ‘Madonna buona, why can’t babies wait to come at a decent hour?’