Solitaria (20 page)

I walked along the road, and stopped to chat here and there with merchants and women who came out of their houses on seeing me. In his legal capacity, Sandro had helped most of them in some way or other: many of the peasants could not read or write, and Sandro filled out countless forms for them, witnessed their
X
s, settled disputes between farmers, husbands and wives, between in-laws and outlaws. He was trusted by everyone for his fairness. He charged only what they could afford, and if they could afford nothing, he helped them anyway. Often, gifts were delivered to the house — vegetables, a chicken, an embroidered tablecloth.

I cut across the old historic centre of town, down narrow passageways and small tunnels carved in the stone, around the church, out the other side, my feet tapping the flat polished Roman roads, built twenty centuries ago.

Though it was after school, when I arrived at my parents' house, I found it strangely silent. “Mamma? Renato?” I called. “Teresa? Mimí?” but no one answered.

I set down my purse, and checked in Mamma's room. She was sleeping, her face smooth, unworried. Poor Mamma, calm now, having escaped the witches and devils, the losses that had populated her past life. But beneath our feet, constant danger — tripwires every which way, landmines of misfortune — we could tiptoe all we wanted, tread as carefully as possible, but we still had to journey through our lives, and this would inevitably lead to explosions.

I leaned down and kissed my mother's forehead. I was about to head down the hallway, when I bumped into Renato.

“What are you doing here?” he said in an insolent tone.

“Shhhh!” I said, nodding toward Mamma. “What a way to greet your sister,” I said and smiled, to soften his heart, but he scowled at me. “Renato, what's happened to you?” I said. “Why are you so hostile toward me? What have I done?”

He shrugged, and pulled out a packet of American cigarettes. “I'm not a child any more,” he said. He shook a cigarette out of the package, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it. Then he inhaled long and loudly. “You can't tell me what to do.”

I sat down. “What have I ever done, other than nurture and love you as if you were my son?”

He smirked.

“You're breaking Mamma's heart with your attitude, you know,” I said.

“Mamma doesn't know what's going on around her.” He sucked loudly on his cigarette, and glared at me.

I sighed. “Where's Teresa?” I asked.

“Tidying up.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It's good you're here, Piera. You can look out for Mamma for a change.” Before I could say anything, he sauntered out.

I sighed. Perhaps he'd grow out of it. I tried to remember if Aldo had ever been like this when he was fifteen, but I didn't think so. But Vito. Yes. A shadow. I stood in the doorway and watched Renato walk down the road, into the landscape — trees, brush, flowers — that over the summer had slowly faded to sepia. I felt as if we were forever balancing between extremes — drought, hail, dust storms, family, family, family — forever doing damage control.

I headed back inside. Mamma was still asleep, her face red and puffy with heat. I found Teresa in the bedroom, combing her black hair into a long braid. A corner of her blouse puckered out of her skirt at the back, and the buttons on her cuffs were undone. She was a sultry girl of fourteen, with large ebony eyes, olive skin, and glossy wavy hair.

“Teresa! What's going on?” I said, although I understood immediately.

“Nothing.” Teresa was breathless, unable to look me in the eyes. She flipped the braid behind her, did up the buttons, then stood stiffly, shoulders curved in.

I sat on the bed. “How far has this gone?” I asked, my voice rising.

“We haven't done anything,” the girl said quickly.

“How far?” I shouted.

“Only a kiss or two. Nothing more,” Teresa said. “Please, please don't tell my mother.”

“How could you do this? I trusted you!” I wailed, more to myself than to Teresa. A darkness descended in that room, the air thin, oppressive.

“We love each other,” Teresa said, her voice tremulous. “We're going to get married.”

I marched back home, a migraine rising behind my eyelids, thinking,
everything I do is for nothing
. What was the point of trying to better all their lives, when they insisted on being contemptible? A fury began in my chest. I pressed my hand against my breast, convinced my heart was ready to stop. Over the past few months, Sandro had called in doctor after doctor, and I had swallowed pills and injected liquids that gave me little relief from pain, and even less from the enormous sadness that permeated my whole being. It's not her heart, the doctors would say, it's nervous tension. She needs to rest, to take her mind off everyone's woes.

But how could I do this, when the misery was constant? How could Renato have fallen foolishly in love with Teresa, a girl of limited education and intellect? I pressed my fingers into my temples. My siblings' faces superimposed over each other. Could they not see what I had sacrificed for their happiness, their future? Electric currents coursed inside my head.

That evening, after supper, Domenica knocked at my bedroom door. I had not come out since the afternoon, although both Domenica and Sandro had been begging me to join them. But I could not bear the thought of facing anyone, even though my migraine had subsided.

“Excuse me, Piera,” Domenica said in her timid, timid voice, opening the door a crack.

“What is it?” I said, sharply. I had swallowed a sedative, but it hadn't yet taken effect.

Domenica tiptoed in, then stood in front of me, arms tight against her body, fingers interlocked over her abdomen. “I was coming home from church and I saw Renato and Teresa together in the piazza and now everyone knows they are intended and we must quickly make sure they get married and give them a dowry so that they will be able to survive,” she said all in one breath.

“What are you talking about?” I said, pushing the covers back. “Foolish, foolish Renato. Teresa must think herself very clever to have tricked him. But I don't intend for Renato to make such a terrible match. He will go to university and he will marry someone intelligent and educated, or I will disown him.” I sat up, energized by fury. I reached on the bedside table for a cigarette and lit it.

Domenica wrung her hands. “But Piera,” she said. “The poor girl will be ruined. He must marry her.” She rushed to the dressing table, picked up an ashtray and set it on the bed, under my hand.

“If the poor girl is ruined, then it's her own fault,” I said, furious that a servant could hold us hostage. “Go and get Teresa's mother, and don't stop along the way.”

I fell back on the pillows, and let out a small scream that had Sandro rushing into the room.

“What's the matter?” he said. “Are you ill? Should I call the doctor?”

“No!” I shouted. “I don't want a doctor! I only want for everyone to stop deceiving me and to use their heads. Why oh why have I been burdened with a family of imbeciles?”

Sandro stared at me so intently, I closed my eyes. “You're being very unfair, Piera,” he said quietly. “I know you don't mean it. It's the headaches and the medication, surely, that are making you so nervous.”

“What's making me nervous,” I said, “is all of you, constantly pressuring me with your demands. I'm sick of it. I'm going to kill someone just so I can go to jail and live in peace.” I butted out the cigarette and slammed the ashtray onto the bedside table.

“And just how have I been pressuring you?” Sandro said, in a cold voice that infuriated me further, because he had made no demands at all, and perhaps this was at the core of my rage, to be twenty-one years old, married for four years, and still a virgin.

“Go away,” I said, because I had no answer. “Go away and leave me be.”

Sandro turned to go, and I felt sorry, because I didn't want him to go out and visit his friends and leave me here alone. But it was too late, and I couldn't take back the words. As soon as he closed the door behind him, I burst into sobs. Sandro didn't deserve my ire; he had given and continued to give me everything. I would have had nothing without him. My entire family would be destitute. And yet, even while these thoughts went through my head, I had no intention of apologizing or calling him back. I can't explain it. This torment I created for others was an affliction, a well of anguish I craved and wallowed in.

I sobbed in a self-pitying state until Domenica returned with Teresa's mother, a small, nervous woman, frightened at being summoned like this in the early evening.

“You can see what sorrow I'm feeling,” I said, drying my eyes. “But I cannot have your daughter working for us any more.”

The poor woman let out a little cry and raised her hand to her face. She wore a long black dress and a kerchief concealing her hair, tied at the nape of her neck.

“Teresa has been deceitful,” I continued, “and has seduced my brother, who is already promised to another young woman.” I took a deep breath. I had to save him, you understand.

“Please, Donna Piera,” Teresa's mother said, “it was he who has been pursuing her, courting her. He has asked her father for her hand in marriage.”

“Marriage?” I cried, and pressed my fists into my eyes. “He's fifteen! He was to go to university and study. I will not allow it!” I said, and slammed my hand on the bed.

“But my daughter —”

“I will arrange for a suitable gift,” I said, “to make up for this inconvenience.”

The woman stared at me with such hate in her eyes I looked away. “You cannot buy our honour,” she said. “May you burn in hell.” She strode out of the room, her head high.

“Witch,” I said to Domenica. “Who does she think she is? I'm not going to let her or anyone ruin my brother's life.” I sat up, feeling better suddenly. Domenica sadly shook her head in that martyr way of hers that exasperated me, so I waved her out of the room. How was it possible that I was surrounded by so many idiots?

Of course, Renato pushed into my bedroom, unannounced, ten minutes later, because Teresa's mother had dragged Teresa home from the piazza, after calling him a scoundrel out to ruin young girls.

“What's happened between you?” I asked.

“Nothing has happened, not in the way you mean. But I love Teresa and I'm going to marry her.”

“You'll do no such thing,” I yelled. “This is nothing but ridiculous puppy love.”

Renato watched me calmly. He didn't raise his voice and he didn't cower. “What do you know about love?” he said.

I lay back and closed my eyes.

“You can't shut me out, Piera,” Renato said. “Nor can you make me do what you want. I'm going to marry Teresa.”

“I'm telling you for your own good: you must not marry that — that nobody!” As soon as I said it, I bit my lip.

“Have you forgotten who you are?” he said.

“I'll disown you,” I said. “You'll have no money. See how far love takes you.”

“I don't want your money,” he said. “Papà was right. Money has changed you. Or maybe it's brought out the real you.”

“How dare you?” I said. “Haven't I raised you all, and cleaned you and given you everything I have? How could I belong to such an ungrateful family?”

Renato did not flinch, nor did he act contrite. “You have too big a sense of your own importance, Piera,” he said quietly and firmly. “Mamma and Papà slaved for us all. They deserve to be put on a golden pedestal and worshipped.” He walked to the door and opened it. “I feel sorry for you,” he said, before going out.

“You'll get nothing!” I shouted after him, but instead of satisfaction, I felt an empty, empty chasm in the place of my heart.

I made several phone calls, elicited the help of one of Sandro's friends, and Renato was called up for military duty.

“This is an artist's rendition of St. Humilitas. She was the abbess of the first Vallombrosan convent. She is portrayed here as a nun in a black veil, with a white wimple, a grey-brown habit and a lambskin over her head.”

‡
1952. Belisolano, Italy.
I had not slept well, a restless night, dreams in which Vito came to my bed, in which I welcomed him, sent him away. I awakened, my cheeks wet, Sandro stroking my back. I pressed myself against him, and he held me, but I felt no passion in the embrace, in his brotherly love. Six months into our marriage, during another night of restless dreams and tears, he had finally whispered that it was not my fault, that he was impotent, and had been for years. At first, I objected, citing the conquests he was known to have had, the beauty in Florence. “No,” he said, and began to weep. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't deserve you. I don't deserve anyone.” I lay beside him, stiff in the darkness, not knowing what to do. I could not go home, I could not shame him by annulling the marriage, I could not give up what he provided for us all. I thought about all this, my sacrifice, Vito. I would be like St. Humilitas, a woman just like her, born 700 years before, forced into marriage by her parents, left childless by the death of her two infants, a woman who converted her husband, and both entered a convent to live as brother and sister; a woman for whom the monastery life was not austere enough, so that she sought more punishment for her imagined sins, until she had a relative brick her into a cell adjacent to the Church and leave a small hole through which she could observe the services and receive food and water; a woman who ate only bread, and sometimes herbs, and slept kneeling in the earth, her head against stone walls. I shuddered. No, my confinement would take a different form, a chaste life in this house, beside this man. “It's all right,” I murmured. “It doesn't matter.” We never spoke of it again.

I got up, finally, at 5:30 a.m., and tiptoed to the bathroom, where I stared at my flushed face in the mirror. The sun was not yet up, and the air was chilled. I dressed quickly, made an espresso quietly so as not to wake the housekeeper and Domenica, and at 6:15 a.m., Sandro drove me to the train station in Bari. My father still worked for the Sud-Est Line, and if I were to board in Belisolano, he'd want to know why I was going to Tricase by myself to meet my brother Vito.

This much I had told Sandro, implying this was another of Vito's foolish escapades, another bailout I would effect while there. At first, Sandro wanted to accompany me, but I had managed to persuade him that I needed to speak to Vito directly, sister-to-brother, blood-to-blood, to make him understand that he could not continue to usurp our resources, that he had to live up to his responsibilities, that this was the last time. Already Papà considered him dead, and had forbidden any of the family to speak to him or about him. Only Mamma whispered his name now and then.

Once the train had departed, I opened my purse, pulled out the letters and reread them.
I must see you,
the first one said.
I'm living in Tricase. You must come to me
.

Chug-chug, chug-chug, the train wheels lulled me into their rhythm. Chug-chug,
you must
, chug-chug. My own letter in response begged him to stay away.
Don't you recall your promise?
I wrote back.
Is
it money you want?

It's you I want
, he said.
You must come
.

And when I replied once more to tell him
no
, he sent another letter —
If you don't come to me, I'll have to come to you,
he wrote.
I don't think your husband would like that
. Chug-chug, chug-chug. Rock walls flew past, black lichen spreading, like stains.

He arrived in a white car — a convertible — which he parked in front of the station. I watched him from behind glass: he was achingly beautiful, slender, his black, black hair unruly, his long fingers. Three children ran out of the station to gaze at the white Alfa-Romeo, to touch its sparkling chrome handles.

I smoothed my hair, though I had combed it six times before the train stopped at the station. I hadn't seen him since Daniela's death. Five years. I took a deep breath.

Vito threw open the station door, while I made myself remain seated inside. I was wearing a white linen skirt and shirt — like a bride — and delicate expensive sandals that clicked on the marble floor. When he saw me, he smiled, his teeth a dazzling white.

My chest ached, blood rose to my face — white fury, white noise. What did he think? That he could summon me any time he wanted, without responsibilities, carefree and laughing?

He took my arm and led me to the waiting car.

“It's not mine,” he said quickly. “I rented it for the day.” He looked like a film star, in a crisp white shirt, khaki cuffed trousers, and dark sunglasses that hid his eyes.

We drove out into the countryside, into a dream I'd had for so many years, I could hardly recognize it, the two of us below a white town on a hilltop, vineyards and olive groves, a stone house, pots of geraniums, and children's laughter rippling the sky.

He lowered the convertible top, despite my protests. I hung on tight to the kerchief around my head, feeling as I imagined Isadora Duncan did, moments before her scarf wrapped itself around the wheel of her lover's convertible, seconds before she was strangled. And I recalled her words,
People do not live nowadays. They get about ten percent out of life.

Vito's hair winnowed in the breeze. “Let it go,” he said to me, pushing the kerchief away from my head. “It's only wind. It'll do you good.”

“How do you know what's good for me?” I said. “When have you ever thought about what might be good for me?”

Vito sighed, his mouth tightening. My words hung in the air between us, hot and bloated with innuendo.

I pulled off the kerchief and let my hair tumble in the wind. He turned on the radio and we drove without speaking through a countryside studded with white stones.

Here, in Puglia, the soil is rich but shallow, and lies on large horizontal extensions of limestone bedrock.
Terra rossa
. With few water courses, in winter the rains drain through the soil into fissures in the rock, and emerge from underground springs at the sea coast, creating fantastic, magical caves. This limestone landscape — this rock beneath our feet — is actually an underground filigree of grottos, crevices, and streams, of stalactites and stalagmites, the earth in constant formation. Above, left to its own device, the land would support scrubby woodlands and brush. However, as often happens out of necessity, people have transformed this rocky terrain into fertile fields.

As we rounded a bend, Vito pointed to the right. “Look. Doesn't that remind you of
Il Vigneto
?” he said. “Do you remember? The hours we spent working out there.” He slowed down.

“How can you remember?” I said. “You were rarely home.” I saw myself beside Papà, a basket of pebbles clutched in my hand, while Papà hauled and stacked large stones along the perimeter of the field, creating stone walls.
Muri a secco
.

“
Il Vigneto,
imagine,” Vito said. “No doubt, Papà envisioned a vineyard of the finest grapes that would make us rich.” He laughed. “
Il Vigneto
, minus the grapes. Poor Papà and his silly dreams.”

“Don't you be disrespectful about Papà,” I said, my voice edgy. “He worked all day on the tracks, then went to the field to tend the tobacco. The man is a saint.”

“He could have had fewer children,” Vito said.

I shook my head. “And you could have a better memory,” I said. “What about the shop? I suppose you worked there too.” We were quibbling about petty things.

“It was hardly a shop,” Vito said. “From what I recall, bags of food stored in a corner of the kitchen and sold to peasants in miniscule amounts.” He rolled his eyes.

I crossed myself, because it was what Mamma would have done hearing Vito's blasphemy. Poor Mamma and Papà, all their sacrifices discarded. “Mamma adored you,” I said. “You were her first-born.”

He sighed. “Poor Mamma,” he said.

We continued driving along the Murge, a vast sunburned landscape of perennial grasses patched with dwarf sagebrush. Here and there, large rocks bulged out of the earth, like giant prehistoric creatures hiding in the Mediterranean steppe. Once rivers flowed here and filled lakes and marshes. Now, however, all the water had seeped down through limestone cracks, and hardly any trees broke the horizon.

In the distance, flocks of sheep grazed the burnt pastures. We drove in silence, then he turned onto a rural road. In the distance in front of us rose a magnificent basilica,
Church of the Devil
. I knew the legend well: Lucifer had built this in a single night, furnished it with lavish paintings, statues, and carved stone altars in a Faustian deal with a cruel old prince capable of executing his subjects for blocking his view. In exchange the prince was to offer a communion wafer consecrated to a goat representing Satan.

Vito parked the car and turned off the motor. I closed my eyes. “I need you,” he said. “Come away with me.” He reached across and covered my hand with his. I was tongue-tied and terrified too that I would be struck down by the hand of God, or perhaps the claws of the Devil whose church we sat in front of, smiling, as if we were already lovers.

“In the legend,” I said, “the villagers were both curious and wary of a church built overnight. Of course, they wanted the treasures. However, when the mass began, even the evil prince couldn't defy God.”

“Piera —”

“You can imagine how the Devil felt, betrayed,” I said, taking a deep breath. “He made the church disappear, then sent whirling winds that dragged the bells of the church into the Canale del Rio. And do you know,” I said, trying to still the tremors, “that during storms even today, you can hear church bells pealing from the bottom of the sea?”

“Piera, did you hear me?”

I got out, and he followed. We walked up the gravel path to the church. I looked up at the tall, blunt structure, its octagonal shape, thinking of the sun, how it moves during the year so that its shadow delineates the apses, the altars, the statues and paintings, and how such power, like love, survives through millennia, through homes and prisons. One cannot divorce the sun.

“You're my brother,” I said.

“You can't deny what's between us,” he said, touching my arm.

I moved away. “There's nothing between us.”

His eyes narrowed. He shook his head. “You love me,” he said, his voice confident.

“You're my brother,” I said again, my voice cool and controlled.

“We could go away where nobody knows us. We could live as husband and wife.”

“I already have a husband,” I said slowly.

“I can't bear to think of that man touching you,” he said.

“That man has saved our family,” I said. “Who do you think paid all your foolish bills?” I turned away and walked back to the car. “Who do you think continues to pay the endless bills this family produces?” My voice was harsh. I got in and slammed the door. “You promised to leave me alone,” I said.

“You don't love him,” he said, following me. He slid in the driver's seat and started the engine.

“You're wrong,” I said. “I do love him.”

He turned me to him, hands on my shoulders. “Say you don't love me.”

I shook my head. How could he not understand the sacrifice I had made for him? How could he not see the misery he continued to cause us all? “I want to go back to the train station,” I said.

“Piera —” he began.

“Is it money you want?”

He flinched, as if I had slapped him. I reached into my purse and pulled out the envelope Sandro had prepared. Five hundred dollars. I slapped it onto the space between us. “Here,” I said. “Take it, and don't ever threaten me again.”