Solitaria (11 page)

“Where did he get money for cigarettes?” Papà bellowed, arm sweeping to indicate Vito, who was sulking against the doorframe, in a white shirt, sleeves turned up, exposing tanned forearms whose muscles strained against skin.

Mamma shook her head, and finished folding a cotton hanky, the corner of which she'd embroidered with M. S. She was curved over the ironing board, and I reached over and massaged her upper back. Poor Mamma. Thirty-three. She seemed so old, not like people of this same age today.

Upstairs, Clarissa began to sing. Already at eleven, she had a spectacular natural soprano, and had learned many classical arias from various
cantori
— troupes of musicians who travelled town to town in their small caravans, giving outdoor performances in clearings. Clarissa had begun to use her singing as a buffer between herself and anything unpleasant.

Mamma crossed to the stove and busied herself stoking the fire. I followed and stood beside her. Her hands trembled; she wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve. Earlier, after swearing me to secrecy, she had told me she believed Vito was stealing money from her purse. “Papà will kill him if he finds out,” she said. As well, other things were missing from her drawer — Mamma's gold chain given to her by her mother, her silk change purse, her tiny gold confirmation ring — Mamma's treasures sold to buy cigarettes, or worse, gamble. Mamma and Papà had hardly anything of value, and it broke my heart to think that Vito could do such a dishonourable thing. I refused to even consider it.

“What business is it of yours?” Vito said. He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes, then leisurely tapped one into his palm.

Papà slapped his hand, sending the cigarette rolling across the floor. “
Disgraziato
!” he said. “To speak to your father like this.” And he walked to the table and sat down, resigned.

Mamma turned, unsure who to comfort. “Papà,” she said, “I'm sure Vito didn't really mean to offend you.” She looked imploringly at Vito. “Vito, apologize to your father this minute.”

Vito raised his head in an impertinent gesture, then he bent down, picked up his cigarette and stuck it between his lips. He walked to the stove, reached around Mamma for a match, which he struck against the stovetop, and lit his cigarette.

“Is this how you treat your superiors?” Mamma said. “Is this how you intend to dishonour this family?”

“I won't be here long,” Vito said calmly, “so you needn't worry about honour or dishonour.”

Mamma sat down beside Papà, as if the news were too heavy for her to bear. “But where are you going?” she said, bewildered. “Papà and I have been working all our lives to make yours better —”

“I always knew it,” Papà shouted suddenly. “You're lazy and irresponsible. I've tried to look the other way, because I didn't want my son to shame me.” He spat on the ground. “But you're a disgrace. You'll bring dishonour to this family!”

“Papà, please,” Mamma began. She stood and touched Vito's arm. “Won't you think about it?” she said. “I'm sure Papà can help find you a job with the railway.”

Vito shook Mamma's hand off his arm as if it were barbed. “What do you care, anyway?” He laughed an ugly, sarcastic laugh. “When have any of you ever cared about me?”

Papà leapt across the room and slapped Vito, hard, across the face. Then he stomped into the night.

Mamma now began to wail, and I felt an excruciating pain shoot through my head. I had begun to get migraines. I pressed my fingers into my temples.

“Piera,” Mamma said, suddenly aware of my condition. “Sit down before you fall down. I'll get you some water.”

Vito came forward and took my hand. “Come outside,” he said. “We'll walk a bit. You'll feel better in the cool air.”

We walked away from the house, along a fallow field. In the distance, the town's lights twinkled. Here, silence.

“Why can't you get along with Papà?” I said. “Why must you always upset him?”

“I'm not trying to,” he said. “After all this time away, in a matter of a couple of days, he's treating me as if I can't ever do anything right. What does he know about me? He hasn't even asked about my life.” He tossed the cigarette into the darkness, where it landed and gleamed like a glow-worm. Then he thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

“Will you really go away again?” I asked.

“Soon. Tomorrow or the day after.”

“Why can't you stay?” I asked.

He turned to me. “If I tell you something, you must promise to keep it a secret.”

I nodded.

“Our ship was captured by the British when we were in Malta. We were taken prisoners.” Then he went on to explain that the British had asked the merchant marines if they would help in the fight against fascism. Already trained as a communications specialist, Vito had begun to work for British Intelligence, with a new name and a Maltese nationality. “I can't tell any of this to anyone,” he said. “But now you understand, don't you, why I can't stay?”

“Are you a spy?” I asked.

He laughed. “Nothing so glamorous. You've been reading too many novels.”

“Will you be living in England?” I asked. I imagined palaces and governesses.

“I'll go wherever I'm sent,” he said. “I can't tell you, and you mustn't ask. No one can know that I'm Italian, you understand? That's why I won't be telling Mamma and Papà. And you must keep this secret, for it could harm all of us otherwise.”

I stared at the ground, although the night was black and the soil obscured. “You didn't steal money from Mamma and Papà, did you?” I asked.

He stopped, and turned toward me. “Is that what you think? That I'm a thief?” His hands grasped my shoulders, shaking me, his voice tense.

“No, no, I… Mamma said—”

“I've been running errands for one of the shopkeepers. That's how I get the cigarettes.” He let me go abruptly.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean to—”

“Forget it. It's ok.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and stuck it between his lips. He lit it and drew long and hard on it, staring into the darkness. Finally, he sighed, and turned to me. “Tomorrow we'll go see the grotto,” he said. “I want to keep my promise before I go.”

All morning, I had had an upset stomach, and on my return home from high school in Locorotondo, in preparation for Vito's arrival, I changed into a clean white blouse and scrubbed my hands and under my fingernails. I had washed my hair before dawn, and it shone in the afternoon sun. I walked along the tracks past our
casello
, my mind filled with possibilities.

I followed the track to the three
trulli
that formed the entrance to the cave. Stopped in the sun, and looked toward the field, expecting Vito at any moment. It was not only that Mamma had forbidden me to go down. I was afraid of the darkness. My brothers spent much time there, along with the grotto custodian's three children, scaling the metal circular stairway down into the cave, hoping to make a few lire from any passing visitors. This was a happy year for the children, because for the first time ever, they had friends their own age with whom to play and socialize. The air was cool — mid-December now — and I wrapped my arms around my chest. I waited only six or seven minutes.

When Vito rounded the corner with Clarissa, I took a deep breath to disguise my disappointment, and my lips grimaced into a smile.

“I picked her up at the elementary school,” Vito said, “so she wouldn't miss this adventure.”

Clarissa stared up at Vito with undisguised adoration. She had hardly left his side since he returned.

I followed them both down into the grotto, into a cool fifteen degrees, down the circular staircase, and with each step, I had the sense I was descending into Dante's circles of Hell, the red stone and deformed creatures there. At the bottom, I stopped to catch my breath, partly afraid, though Vito was speaking in soothing tones about the bottom of the sea 80 million years ago, which was a number so vast, I couldn't conceive of it. Thunder sounded overhead, not that I heard it, rather I felt it in the slight tremor of the earth. Vito, sensing my rising panic, took my arm and asked, “What's wrong?” but I didn't know exactly whether the thunder scared me, or the grotto being so beautiful took my breath away, or whether I was experiencing claustrophobia, which had plagued me ever since I was a young child, when Mamma and Papà used to go out at night to religious celebrations and lock us in those dark, airless lodges.

He held up the lantern and searched my face. “Are you all right?” he asked.

I nodded. Clarissa took his arm and pulled him along, asking questions, pointing to this and that particular formation, anxious to monopolize him.

My throat constricted. I made myself ignore Vito and Clarissa, and concentrated instead on the coral, mineral outblooms encrusted on the translucent walls, the ornate daggers that hung from the roof and rose from the ground, their beauty so exquisite, tears sprang from my eyes.

Vito handed Clarissa the lantern and slowed his pace so that he was beside me, both of us in semi-darkness. He leaned down into me. “Why are you crying?” he asked.

I shook my head and brushed my eyes with the back of my sleeve.

“So sensitive,” he murmured. He put his arm around me and drew me close. He was thin and warm against my side. He touched my face, wiped away a tear.

I let a few more fall. Clarissa was three steps ahead of us, leaving us almost in darkness. She began to sing, her voice mournful, reverberating against the stone walls. On the last note, she stopped and turned the lantern on us. We sprang apart too quickly. “It's too cold,” Clarissa said suddenly. She stepped back and reached for Vito's hand. “Let's go. I want to go up.” And she began to pull him along towards the staircase.

Flushed and unsettled, I followed them slowly up the ladder, annoyed at Clarissa.

When he had reached the top, Vito pushed Clarissa ahead of him and turned to take my hand and help me up the last few steps. Sunlight elbowed through one of the windows above, and I could see his face, his eyes intent on mine. I looked away, but did not take my hand out of his. Then Clarissa was pulling, pulling. “Come on, come on,” she said, and we were all outside, standing beside the
trulli
sentinels, the light too harsh, everything too bright.

I shielded my eyes and focused on the limestone wall. Vito stood beside me and pointed to the holes which appeared to have been bored by termites. “Litodomi,” he said. “These organisms lived in the sea and died and fossilized so that when the bones fell out, all that remained of them were holes.” He continued to explain the marine biology of millions of years ago, while I thought about Mamma and Papà and all of us children, our family a solid mass, infallible, and how our skeletons would all dissolve into gaping absences no one would recall one generation hence.

“Papà whittled this little gun out of wood for Renato. Look at how crude and yet detailed: the hollow for the finger, the barrel carefully carved.

“As you can hear from this, I was ignorant about the war both here and in the Pacific, though it loomed, monumental, in our lives in the form of a pervading hunger that followed us everywhere. Everything was rationed. After work, Papà walked for hours, picking wild dandelions. Once he chanced upon a field filled with snails. What a feast we had! And how sick we were afterwards! It seems unimaginable now that we were obsessed with food, while elsewhere millions of Jewish people were being rounded up and sent to death camps. We must have heard about Pearl Harbour, about the Allies' Declaration by the United Nations, about the German occupation of countries around us, but I have no recollection of knowing about any of this at the time. Aldo tells me that during these years, while he was poring over newspapers each night, trying to understand what was happening and explaining to Renato as much as he could, Clarissa and I concerned ourselves only with poetry and romance. Renato's interest in the war was fuelled by the fantasy that he could join, even though he was only seven. He ran wild through the fields, blowing up imaginary targets, shooting his wooden gun at everyone, and he convinced a small group of friends to begin to prepare for a partisan war against the British and Americans. Every day, they met and plotted who knows what silliness. I remember them, the troupe of seven- to fourteen-year-old boys squatting in the dirt outside our casello, just out of earshot, their faces serious and determined.”

‡
1943. Locorotondo, Italy.
This time, Mamma did not write to the army, and Papà did not mention Vito's name in front of us. Only I knew where he had gone, and although I had limited understanding of his role, I believed it was something noble.

On July 10, seven divisions of the Allied Forces — three American, one Canadian, and three British — landed in Sicily and began their sweep across the island. Two weeks later, Papà came home one evening from a neighbour's house where he had been listening to a shortwave broadcast from London. “He has fallen,” he said. “Mussolini has fallen.”

We children had no idea what he meant by this, but assumed Mussolini must have fallen down the stairs. We thought no more about it until the next day, when Aldo and I went to the station to buy a newspaper, and there, on the front page we read:
Sono finite le pagliacciate del fascismo
.
The folly of fascism is over
. Aldo sat on the ground and read article after article, while I waited impatiently. Finally, he looked at me and said, “My God, now I understand,” and I could see the epiphany in his eyes, but it wasn't until later, when he patiently explained it all to me and Clarissa, that I felt as if the sky had opened and revealed what a terrible deception we had all been a part of. In town, Mussolini's face mocked us from posters. People ran in the streets, although we didn't know where they were headed. In an alley, a shoemaker dipped a rag into black polish, and smeared it across one of the Mussolini posters. Overnight, all of Mussolini's staunch supporters evaporated or declared themselves anti-fascists. Mussolini was stripped of power and the Italian government entered into secret negotiations with the Allies. The Americans, Canadians, and British continued to advance, and in a little over a month, overtook four Italian and two German divisions, thus ending Axis resistance. On September 3rd, while some of the British Army crossed the Strait of Messina from Sicily to the toe of the Italian boot, the Italian government secretly signed an armistice agreement with the Allies, an agreement not made public until September 8th.The next day, the Americans landed near Salermo, and by October 12, the British and Americans had a fairly solid line across the peninsula from the Volturno River north of Naples, to Termoli on the Adriatic coast.

Papà was ecstatic that finally Italy was on the right side of this war. Although we had not seen any fighting, we were all excited by the troops of British and American soldiers who began to arrive in their handsome uniforms, their young faces victorious. I wondered if Vito would be one of them, and whether he would be in disguise. I dared not say anything to Mamma or Papà, or even Clarissa, who washed her hair, put on her best skirt and blouse, and rushed out into the street to see the commotion. Mamma and the children followed, all except Mimí, who already, at three, went off wherever she pleased.

I, too, wanted to join the procession following the soldiers through the town, but Papà was out on the tracks, and I knew Mamma would expect me to look after Mimí. I stepped outside and there, on either side of one of the railway tracks, were two halves of snake, as if someone had neatly sliced it and placed it there for me, as a warning, an evil omen, something from God, or more likely, Satan, dressed in his usual disguise.

“Mimí!” I called, but there was no reply.

From the distance came the rumble of a train, or perhaps it was only the soldiers marching through town, or a bomb dismembering women and children.

“Mimí!” I called again, my heart like thunder, sure the next time I saw her, she'd be across the rails, cut in half… “Mimí!” I ran up and down the tracks calling her name, ever more desperate; searched at the side of the
casello
, in the brush. No Mimí.

I had no idea what to do, but I remembered the signal we used when any of the children were ill — to put tables onto the track — so that Papà would see them and come. I rushed into the house, swept clean the table with a brush of my elbow, then began to drag it outside. If anyone had seen me, they would have thought I was crazy, but all I could think of was Mimí, her sweet mischievous face, her dear little smile. When I got the table onto the tracks, I kneeled down beside it and closed my eyes in prayer. Dear God, I prayed, I'll do anything, but please, please…

“What in heaven's name are you doing?” Papà's voice was angry. “There'll be a train along soon. Do you want to be responsible for a derailment? What kind of delinquent behaviour is this? And from you, Piera!”

I looked up. Papà was staring at me, a most astonished look on his face. Beside him, Mimí stepped up on a rail then jumped down, up and down, up and down.

I ran to her and shook her. “Where have you been?” I shouted. “And why didn't you answer me?”

Mimí's lip began to tremble, and this infuriated me even more. “You spoiled little brat,” I said. “You made me crazy with worry.”

“Papà,” Mimí wailed, and ran into his arms.

“Piera, what's gotten into you?” Papà said. “She's just a baby.”

I stood looking at both of them, my chest tight, then turned and went into the house.

Everything went black, as if I were blind. All I could hear was Papà dragging the table off the tracks, Mimí's whining, and these sounds were mingled with the roar of military convoys, the whistling and cheering of a crowd far removed from me, both physically and mentally.