Unto the Sons (28 page)

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Cristiani said, walking over and placing a hand on Joseph’s forehead. “There’s some fever here, I think. It would really be better if you went straight home. I’d thought of that earlier, in fact, because a storm is supposed to be on its way. I wouldn’t want you walking home in that kind of weather when it’s dark. We’ll all be working late tonight to catch up with our Christmas orders, and it will be too late then for anyone to walk you home. So leave now, Joseph, while there is still light. And tomorrow, bright and early, you will come back to us well rested, yes?”

Before Joseph could reply, Mr. Cristiani had placed his bag on his shoulder and, with a light pat on the head, escorted him to the door. Antonio looked up from his sewing and waved as Joseph passed. Joseph waved back, concealing his disappointment in not having had a chance to talk about Paris.

The streets were almost empty, the majority of villagers still being at home for their siesta. A few shops had reopened at two o’clock, like Cristiani’s, but most would remain closed until three. Joseph was very hungry as he walked through the narrow streets along the damp hills to the east end of the village, where his grandfather’s row of houses was located. Joseph had rushed off to school in the morning without breakfast, and his lunch was uneaten in his bag; but he was too cold to stop and eat along the street. He decided to run to keep himself warm, and in less than five minutes he could see the high tottering wall that bordered one side of his
grandfather’s property, a wall that had often crumbled and been rebuilt after many earthquakes and that now appeared to be held in place by the thick intertwined vines that stretched along its stone surface.

The first in the row of two-story houses that could be seen behind the wall was the one the Cristianis lived in, it being Domenico’s wedding gift to his only daughter, Maria, when she married the tailor. As religiously devout as her father, and known to be his favorite child, Maria Cristiani regularly fasted and said novenas, and she often went to church in the afternoons to crawl on her knees as she made the Stations of the Cross.

The house next to the Cristianis’ was occupied by the youngest of Domenico’s three sons—Vincenzo, an indolent man in his early thirties who worked on the farm and had married a woman Domenico had not approved of, and thus had received no house as a wedding gift. Vincenzo Talese dwelled on his father’s property with no more status than a tenant farmer—which was equally true of most other members of Domenico’s extended family and circle of acquaintances (numbering sixty-one) who were sheltered in his six other houses and four shacks that dotted the estate.

The house that Joseph lived in with his mother and her three other children was adjacent to his grandfather’s, the latter occupying the center position in the row and being somewhat larger than the other buildings. Domenico’s house had a stone balcony in the front, overlooking the wall, and a smaller wooden balcony in the back that overlooked the courtyard. Living in the house with Domenico was his sixty-four-year-old wife, Ippolita, an ethereal woman with long braided gray hair who, because of her linkage to the Gagliardi family of Pizzo, was treated deferentially by everyone in the Talese compound, and most particularly by Domenico himself. She was the only individual to whom he was never curt or demanding. Pleased with his wife and the esteem in which she was held even by the aristocrats in the village, Domenico sought all the comfort that a proud man could feel with the knowledge that he had married above his status.

As Joseph climbed the outside staircase and entered the second floor of his house, he saw his grandfather’s stable behind the courtyard, and among the returning farm workers whom he thought he recognized was his brother Sebastian, helping unload the wagons. His grandfather, on horseback, was behind them; and beyond the stable was the fenced-in barnyard where Guardacielo was assembling the sheep.

The house was quiet as Joseph entered the dining room, removing
his bag and coat. At this hour his mother was usually out with the two younger children, visiting her own parents in the valley. She was always home before nightfall, when they would have a light supper. The table was already set. At one end, as always, was a place setting for his father, although he had not occupied the chair for more than two years. The overturned wineglass and plate and the silverware were there every day, occasionally dusted but not often, awaiting use by the man who might return at any moment, unannounced. The setting was there to remind the children of their father’s existence, adding credibility to his photograph on the wall. Joseph had recently wondered if his father would be home for Christmas this year, as he had not been the last two; but today he did not give it more thought.

Suddenly feeling weak, Joseph sat on the bed. He was shivering and cold. There was no wood in the fireplace, no coal in the braziers; but even if there had been he would not have dared strike a match, for he had promised his mother that he would never do that when he was alone. Only Sebastian was allowed to strike the large matches that were kept on the mantels. So, without removing his clothes, Joseph wrapped himself in blankets and lay on the bed, drifting into a sleep from which he did not fully awaken for hours. Even as he heard voices in the house, which he recognized as his mother’s and Sebastian’s, he remained under the covers, unable to get up or reply to the questions that he faintly heard his mother asking at the side of the bed. He did not want to eat, to talk, to get up—he just lay there as the day turned dark, and his family’s voices faded in and out, mixed with a kind of howling in the distance that reminded him of wolves.

His room seemed to float, as his eyelids grew heavier and the weight of the blankets comforted him. Shaken slightly when Sebastian climbed into bed, he lay tranquil again within the familiar fabric of his father’s old bathrobe and the scent of burning wood and charcoal. When he heard a hysterical cackling of hens, followed by a strange snorting of pigs, the restless stomping of donkeys and horses in the stables, and the growls of watchdogs, he thought that he was dreaming. Then he heard his mother unhinge the shutters and open a window in her bedroom. Across his warm brow he felt a gust of chilling wind.

Marian Talese had gotten out of bed when she heard the noises rising along the back of the house; as she looked down over the window ledge into the courtyard she saw, in the hazy dim moonlight, crawling over a wooden fence, a bushy-tailed wolf poised to jump into the pen where Domenico kept the lambs.

She screamed, terrifying Joseph and the other children, and alarming as well her relatives in the two flanking buildings; and within moments the entire row was astir with confusion and panic. In bedclothes, everyone leaned out of rear windows, or hastened onto balconies with gaslamps and torches, to stare across the courtyard toward the animal pens and poultry coops. Domenico and his son Vincenzo began to fire their shotguns up into the sky, hoping to scare off the intruder. Soon other screaming female voices joined Marian’s, as there appeared in the reflected light two more wolves scaling the stone wall, then moving toward the area where the domestic animals were enclosed. Since the spike-collared watchdogs had been leashed to chains for the night, the wolves went unchallenged, attacking many lambs and fowl that died quickly; others scampered and flapped about the courtyard trying to avoid the clutches of the pursuing wolves and the flying objects that were now being thrown down by the furious, yelling people in the houses. They threw pots, pans, boots, knives, and bottles; and Domenico and his son were now directing their gunfire to the targets—but nothing seemed to distract the wolves’ continued mauling of their prey. Four wolves had now been counted in the courtyard, and two others had earlier been seen dragging off the limp carcasses of lambs into the darkness beyond the stables.

Marian, having run from room to room bolting windows, searched futilely for a pistol in her husband’s bureau. Then she exerted the full strength of her lean body to shove a china cabinet against the locked door that opened into the second floor from the outside staircase. Finally, clutching a broomstick in one hand, and cradling her crying three-year-old daughter with the other, she stood wide-eyed and ashen behind one of the windows that looked down over the staircase. Although she was within view of dozens of Talese relatives who were now gesturing toward her from their balconies, shouting inaudibly in the din, there was no connection aboveground between their buildings and her own. She was isolated with her four children, feeling, as rarely before, forsaken by her husband in America.

Her son Sebastian tried to remain calm as he sat on the edge of the bed comforting Joseph and the six-year-old Nicola, who had run in from the adjoining room. But Joseph noticed that Sebastian’s hands shook as he kneeled to place chunks of coal into the brazier, and Sebastian suddenly blessed himself as a blast heard above the roof destroyed one of the stanchioned streetlights that stood on the other side of the wall in front of Domenico’s house.

The explosions and disruptions continued for much of the night, not only on Domenico’s property but throughout the village—from the low ground near Lena Rotella’s orphanage, to the high ground near the ruined abbey and the cemetery, and into the middle ground of the town square itself. There, watching from the torchlit balconies of the palazzos, many horrified villagers saw two entangled wolves rolling on the cobblestones, using their teeth and claws to fight over the bloody remains of a tiny lamb. Nothing could distract them—until a wagon of armed men, pulled by four horses, arrived to explode fusillades at close range. Only then did the voracious rivals fall away dead from one another and from the lamb’s sundered body.

Moments later more wagons appeared, carrying spike-collared watchdogs that were released in the streets to join the attack; and a posse of black-capped equestrians in hunting attire galloped through the square, led by Torquato Ciriaco, who, saddled on a prancing horse, held a pistol in the air and carried a jeweled sword at his side. Following Don Torquato’s group, in an open carriage driven by Maida’s barrel-chested chief of police, rode the town’s newly elected monarchist mayor, accompanied by his spinster daughter, who gestured with her hands up to the crowds to put down their weapons and cease throwing things into the streets—which now were so littered with household objects, rocks, and shattered glass that the horses were forced to trot in an awkward, side-stepping gait.

As the early-morning light exposed the town in sharper focus, seven wolves and several dozens of their prey were found dead in gutters, courtyards, alleys, and in the square. Six of Domenico’s lambs had been lost, along with four chickens. No wolf was found dead on his property. One wolf, its gray mangy remains riddled with ruptures, lay bleeding in front of the Farao palazzo. The animal’s haunted, undernourished face and body showed the depth of starvation that had driven it down from the mountainside.

It took two days to scrub the streets clean with scalding water, and to burn and bury the carcasses of the wolves and their victims in a ravine beyond the valley. The monsignor led a crowd of onlookers in prayers over the charred bones of the animals, and he gave special thanks to Saint Francis of Paola—whose statue was carried down the hill by eight men, including Domenico—for protecting human life from death, injury, or other mishaps. The mayor also appeared at the site to acknowledge the courage of his fellow citizens, and to comment that Maida—which during its long history had been overrun by an infinite variety of transgressors,
although rarely before by representatives of the animal kingdom—had again proved its capacity to endure. As a precaution against the possible lingering presence in the hillside of those wolves that had not been shot, the mayor said, two new constables had just been hired to join the three-man Maida police force. Standing next to the mayor, the police chief nodded his approval. One of the new constables was his cousin.

After the wolf incident, Joseph and his family vacated their house and moved in temporarily with his grandfather next door. Joseph’s mother was still fearful of additional attacks, even though, as the cold weather passed beyond the region, there were no new reports of lurking predators. In fact, very warm weather suddenly arrived in Maida just before Christmas—hot moist winds of the sirocco returned from North Africa; and the villagers removed their capes and shawls as they swept up the last of the debris from around their doorsteps and courtyards and decorated their balconies with carved wooden religious figures and festive Christmas bunting wrapped around the railings.

The evening chorus of strolling holiday balladeers carrying guitars, mandolins, flutes and ribboned torchlights was a diverting sight to the entire community, and comforting to Joseph; and on Christmas Eve most of the village children were allowed to stay up to receive their gifts and attend the four a.m. Mass, passing along the way the Nativity scene and the bagpipers in sheepskin clothing playing their music. After Mass everyone gathered in front of the church, exchanged greetings and kisses, and visited not only the homes of friends but those of casual acquaintances as well. It was “open house” throughout the village on this night, and even the aristocrats opened their palazzos to the general public.

On entering the Ciriaco mansion, accompanied by his grandparents, Joseph saw for the first time the interior of the salon and ballroom that had been the locale of the merriment and classical music he had so often heard from the street; and he got his first close glimpse of the entire Ciriaco family in the receiving line, a dozen descendants of eminent but presently shrinking estates and depreciating dowries, dressed in timeworn gowns and tailcoats—and adorned by antique jewels and meaningless medals awarded by the now exiled Bourbon crown—welcoming warmly the effusion of local politicians, bureaucrats, artisans, farmers, and their kinfolk as if they were all cherished cousins. Then the Ciriacos’ valet, with an exaggerated bow, directed the long line of visitors toward refectory tables laden with sliced ham and stuffed eggplant, homegrown wine and imported liqueurs, a variety of fruits, cheeses, and cakes, and the crispy fried, sweet, doughnutlike
zeppole
that were a holiday specialty.