Solitaria (10 page)

The church bells sound and they both look up. “
Campane a martello
,” Piera says and smiles.
Hammer bells
. Some years ago, she tells David, the town council decided to record the church bells, so they could be played at exact intervals throughout the day, without the need for a bell ringer. Now, they're amplified, distorted, hammer against metal. “Doesn't anyone have ears any more?” she says, rolling her eyes, irritated by change, or perhaps by the fact that she no longer influences change. “One phone call,” she says. “That's all it would have taken in the old days.”

She pats a place next to her, and David sits down. She is picking through a handful of photos when a clang, clang, clang begins. They both look up again, turning their heads toward what sounds like construction nearby. “See what I have to put up with?” she says. “I swear, they'll split open my head.”

They both go out on the balcony. There, on the roof next door, so close they could spit an olive pit at it, five men are building what looks like a separate house, only instead of being on the ground, it's on someone's roof.

“A parasite,” Piera says, “barnacles clinging to rocks. Like Teresa.” She smiles then.

The men are in constant movement, shirtless, their bodies blackened with sun and glinting with perspiration.

The foundation of the new house has been marked out with stones — the layout of the house-to-be, its walls and rooms, like the ruins of Ostia Antica or Pompei — buildings imagined from the remnants of tesserae floors and sections of walls. The workers have built crude steps to the roof, and while two men work at the top, the other three take turns carrying up stones and stacking them to one side. Piera lights a cigarette and watches their young bodies, their agile movements.

At one point, one turns and looks right at them, his hand raised to shield the sun from his eyes. He's a handsome young man. “Vito,” she whispers.

David leans into her. “Vito?”

She turns to him, frowning, then looks back at the young man, his curly black hair and lithe body, his dark tanned chest. “No, it's not possible,” she says. “I was remembering…” The young man continues to stare, and she flushes and steps back, looking down at her worn dressing gown, its black stripes faded to grey, a button missing. “It's been so long since anyone searched me out,” she says. She sits heavily on the bed.

“But surely your family —” David begins.

“My family,” she repeats, in an acid tone. “Where do you see my family?”

“They want to see you,” David says.

“I gave them my life,” she says, passionate, her eyes glossy.

David says nothing, waiting.

“I need air,” she says suddenly. “Roll up the shutters a little.”

He moves to the window and pulls on the cords, lifting the outside shutters halfway, until she tells him to stop. A warm breeze billows the curtains, and he sees the bustle of life in the street below.

“What about the letters?” he asks. “Can you tell me about those? Everyone wants to know.”

She looks at him, frowns, shrugs. “My husband had relatives living in Argentina. Whenever they wrote, he let me have the envelopes.” She reaches for her cigarette pack on the bedside table. Taps out a cigarette and slides it between her lips.

David strikes a match and lights it, watching her riffle through the box of photographs. But it's an empty displacement — she's forgotten what she's looking for. She frowns, closes her eyes as if to retrieve some distant memory.

“I don't know what I'm thinking,” she says after a bit. “We didn't have a camera when Vito was young. All of our photos begin later, as if he was never a boy.” She drops the photos in the box.

“In this photo, Aldo and I are in front of the Grotta di Putignano in early July, 1968. Notice behind us, the three trulli that form the entrance to the cave. Discovered in 1931, this small cave was the first grotto in Puglia to be turned into a tourist attraction, which although exquisite — filled with stalactites and stalagmites, with an arabesque of crystals — it was and is still relatively unseen by tourists because a much more famous and larger grotto exists nearby — the Grotta di Castellana near Bari. I hope you'll get a chance to see both of them.”

‡
1941–43. Putignano, Italy.
I could not have written this all those years ago, when everything happened, because it wasn't clear even to me, alienated as I was from myself. Some things accumulate quickly, like sunrays above storm clouds, or tobacco leaves drying in garlands in the sun, or debris on a beach after a hurricane; others, like misfortune, accumulate slowly and inadvertently, like chunks of granite collecting in your pockets, until one day, you cannot move your feet. And family, too, can become the rubble around you, the millstones and boulders, the pebbles and stones — a virtual quarry impeding your every step.

When Vito returned to school, Mamma and Papà's expectations grew, but no matter how hard Vito tried, he was never good enough. Papà got it into his head that Vito was lazy, and what began as an occasional cuff on Vito's ears advanced to full-fledged beatings if Vito did not perform as expected. We were all so afraid of Papà's sudden uncontrolled savagery that we felt ourselves lucky not to be the ones singled out. As often happens in families, once a child's character is set, he is forever viewed through that filter. So Vito became our black sheep, the scapegoat loaded down with our frustrations and our fears. After always hearing himself accused, Vito began to do the things of which he was accused. He was the one who would skip classes, climb into the windows of an abandoned house, who would settle schoolyard arguments with his fists and win, the one who stole almonds and figs and walnuts from the fields and was viciously beaten for it by Papà, even though all of us children had eaten the stolen fruits. He became dangerous and we both loved and shunned him.

Papà, convinced that Vito would badly influence us children, sent him away time and time again: to work with Papà's younger brother for two years, to Mamma's cousin for another year, and, following a schoolyard brawl when Vito was thirteen, to a seminary, where Papà believed Vito could be made to change his ways.

It is important here that I explain about Papà, so you don't get the wrong idea. Papà was a principled, honest man, idealistic in some ways and disillusioned by the state promises, by the terrible poverty we all endured. Had he been born today, he'd probably be on television expounding the predatory nature of corporations, the dangers and side effects of pesticides, of industrial waste, and of a multitude of other things he had no time to consider back then. In short, Papà had a keen sense of justice, and he wanted to better our lives and those of the other unfortunates around us. Vito became a symbol of all that Papà could not change.

Two days after he turned fifteen, Vito disappeared from the seminary.

“He has joined the army,” Papà said, although he had no proof of this. “It will do him good to have some discipline.” He had been receiving unfavourable reports from the monks at the seminary, who did not believe Vito was suited for the priesthood and wanted to send him home.

Mamma despaired — she had lit a multitude of candles to thank God that her children were too young to go to war.

Aldo imagined Vito fighting glorious battles, and being decorated as a hero.

I did not want to believe Vito had joined the army and might be in peril, or worse, dead. I preferred to imagine that he had boarded a ship for a distant land, where he would begin a new, exciting life.

Months passed. Each week, Mamma sent a letter to the army, to inquire whether there was any word about Vito. Each week, she received no reply.

Eight months after his disappearance, a letter arrived from Malta, sent three months before, in which Vito told us he had joined the merchant marines. He was fine, he said, and sent his love.

“We must give thanks that he's all right,” Papà said one evening, when we were all seated outside the
casello
, a blazing sky of stars around us.

We read and reread his letter, and Mamma cried a little for happiness that Vito was alive and well. We all missed him, of course, but in an abstract way, because Vito had never been physically present for very long, and what we missed, perhaps, was the longing we had for him to return, and make our family whole.

We waited a year and a half before another letter arrived — no explanation; he was coming home to visit.

I see him clearly — a man now, seventeen, riding the train one April morning. He's in a uniform, crisp and ironed, his head out the window, hair lucent in the wind. He's coming to a different home, another
casello
, another rail crossing, another baby.

Papà never stayed longer than a year or two in any location. Or rather, he was transferred by the railway managers because he was constantly causing trouble among the workers. He was a loyal, conscientious employee, albeit stubborn, so they tolerated him. Vito would have been used to this by now. He had ridden these rails to and from us so often, he had come to think of trains as home — both constant and transient.

When he saw me on the platform, he smiled. I was nervous, searching for him among the travellers. I'd been sent to meet him, but I was afraid I wouldn't recognize him. That morning, I had scrubbed my face and combed my hair a hundred strokes. I wore a white blouse tucked into a navy calf-length skirt.

“You haven't changed a bit,” I said, when he was standing in front of me, a small duffel bag over his back. I smiled.

“You've changed immensely,” he said, smiling back. “You're not a girl any more.”

My face flushed. “I'm still a girl,” I said. “I'm only thirteen.” I pressed my arms against my sides, self-conscious of the bones protruding, my ribcage almost visible through my blouse.

He laughed and took my elbow. “I suppose Papà is fending off the boys.”

“If he is, then he's doing a good job.” I sneaked a look at him. “Besides, the only boys for miles around are eight and nine years old.”

“If I were not your brother, I'd be courting you no matter how far away you lived,” he said.

I flushed again, and turned my face away from him, embarrassed. My brother. I knew him only in vignettes, years apart. I had no idea who he was in his real life away from us. My other brothers — Aldo and Renato — were so uncomplicated. I easily anticipated their words, their actions. They were second nature, not like this thin young man who stared at me so intently.

We walked to the end of the platform, then I stepped off and continued along the middle of the railway tracks, through an open field among small hills. He followed.

I wanted to ask him about the merchant marines, about his life away from us. I wanted to tell him that since we'd seen him last, everything had changed. “Papà is doing all he can, but still the children have little to eat,” I said. Each morning, a half slice of bread, then at night, peas and dandelion greens for each of us children, while Mamma and Papà ate only onions. Our clothes hung from the bones of our shoulders and hips.

“It's like this all over Italy,” he said. “I am not expecting anything.”

Now and then, he stepped onto one of the rails — one arm spread for balance, while the other held the duffel bag over his back — and walked a few steps, as if he were a circus performer in a high-wire act. “Come on,” he said. “Let's race.” It was an old game we used to play as children. I stepped up on the rail, arms out for balance. He climbed the opposite one, and took my hand so that instead of racing, we moved forward in tandem for a few moments before one of us fell off.

A train horn sounded, and we both jumped off. He held me close to the ties, the train a lumbering weight roaring past us. Papà's words circled in my head:
You're not to walk on the tracks. You won't hear the train. People think they will, but they don't.
I looked at Vito. “Why did you run away?” I asked, a current between us. He personified danger in everything he did.

“I had to.” He looked out to the horizon, at all that I couldn't even imagine.

“But why?”

He ruffled my hair. “You'll understand when you're older,” he said.

We continued to walk through fields of almonds, olive groves, and vineyards, both sombre now, until when we were within thirty metres of the house, we came to three
trulli
which gleamed in the sun like gnomes.

“What's that?” he asked. “Does someone live there?”

“It's the
grotta
,” I told him. “A room twenty metres high, with walls of snow-white alabaster.”

I had never been inside, and imagined a cathedral, as something God had created, a sign for me, now that we had come to live so close to it. I knew nothing of karst caves and their complex origins. I could not envision sparkling water capable of both such destruction and such reconstructed beauty, sparkling water oozing into and widening natural cracks in the rock, dissolving enough limestone to form caves inside the layers over tens of thousands of years. I was still naïve enough to believe they had come fully formed, created by God in those seven days. “Our brothers play down there, but Mamma has forbidden us girls to go.”

As we neared it, we saw a crude sign, “
La Grotta di Putignano
,” leaning against one of the
trulli
. “Let's go see it,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

“It's dark down there. Besides, Mamma is expecting us,” I said, biting my lip. “But I would like to.”

“Another day then,” he said.

“I don't know if Mamma will allow it,” I said.

“I don't see why she wouldn't. I would protect you.” He smiled. “In any case, I won't tell her if you won't,” he said.

I shrugged, and we continued up to the trackman's hut, where I stepped aside and he entered first. Mamma turned from the basin, where she was washing clothes. She had put on a clean blouse and skirt, though they could not hide how thin she had become. She gathered him in her arms. “My boy,” she said. “My boy.”

Aldo and Renato stood to one side, suddenly shy. Renato, now seven, watched Vito with unbridled admiration. Clarissa rushed into his arms, and Mimí — who was three and had never seen Vito — stood frowning, as if she were unhappy at being overshadowed, even if it was by her long-lost brother.

Papà waited until everyone stepped back, then he stiffly embraced Vito.

The room was cramped, with an indoor stove, a wooden table, and four chairs. Upstairs, a small loft with two beds — one for Mamma and Papà, and one for Renato and Mimí; and a crawl space under the roof where Aldo, Clarissa, and I slept. In winter, the tiles rotted or blew off and it rained on us, so that we were perpetually damp.

We were all a little awkward with each other, making small talk. The previous day, Papà had bought three slices of salami on the black market, and Mamma now carefully divided them among us. Vito offered to help Papà in the field, but Mamma said, “Sit. Sit. Let me look at you.” Papà didn't know how to be — angry or happy — their common past so fractured, it was hard to decide which one to return to. The children were all seated in a circle around Vito. He was the stranger they feared and wanted to become. He was their black sheep, the disgraced one, their brother, their hero.

He waited for me on the platform, at the bottom of the hill, near the grotto, where the train stopped to pick me up and take me to school in a nearby town. Sometimes, he rode the train with me, his eyes keeping other boys away.

“I'm protecting you,” he said, but I knew there was more to his presence, to the way he looked at me.

When I returned from school in mid-afternoon, I would find him standing in the shade of one of the
trulli,
his white shirt stark against the grey, cone-shaped roofs. He often had a chocolate for me and cigarettes for himself. I was afraid to ask him where he got these luxuries, what he was doing in exchange for these gifts. I was afraid Papà would find out.

We walked home together, and he told me that once the war ended, he intended to go to America. “You could come with me,” he said, his voice intense. He reached for my hand, but I drew it back quickly.

“I have to help Mamma with Mimí,” I said.

“Yes, of course you do,” he said, smiling.

That night Mamma and I were ironing the children's clothes, when Papà and Vito came in from the field, arguing. Mamma wiped her hands on her apron and gave me a pleading look. I set the iron down in its metal cage and sighed. I'd just refilled it — red embers from the kitchen stove — the metal hot and sizzling against the dampened cloth. Mamma had dark circles under her eyes and her skin was slack and grey. Ever since Mimí's birth three years before, Mamma had been exhausted. Her hair was dull and rough; her nipples were cracked and sore; and her nerves were brittle as frozen hair. She was still suckling Mimí, but lately had been pushing her away, which made the child both terrified and furious, so that she burst into loud sobs, beat her fists against Mamma's arms, and stamped her feet. Renato tried to comfort her — imagine, he was barely seven, and suffered from coughing fits that frightened me with their ferocity and frequency.