Bitter Greens

by Kate Forsyth

  ‘Pascalina.’

  ‘An Easter child, are you?’

  I nodded, though my eyes stung with sudden tears as I thought of my parents, who had loved me and named me, now gnawed bones lying tumbled in a death-pit.

  ‘You’re a very vision of springtime beauty,’ he said gently as he gave me the coin.

  As I passed him the flowers, my fingers brushed his. I jumped, feeling a spark arc between us like the static I get when I brush my hair.

  He looked at me intently. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘But you must live somewhere.’

  ‘Wherever I can sleep. Inside a church, or in a doorway, or under a bridge.’

  ‘Have you no family?’

  ‘They’re all dead.’

  ‘You poor thing.’ He sounded genuinely sorry.

  ‘God must have had his reasons. I can’t think what they could be, but I have to believe this else I’d hate him. For taking them, I mean.’

  He nodded, looking grave.

  ‘I wish I’d died too,’ I said with passion.

  ‘Don’t say that. It’s better to be alive, isn’t it?’

  I shook my head and looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry. I hope … I’m sure things will get better.’

  I shrugged. After a while, he walked away, leaving me clutching his coin.

  A week later, I waited for him again, another bunch of daisies in my hand. This time, he came towards me eagerly, saying, ‘Pascalina, I’ve been worried about you. Is all well with you?’

  My heart was warmed. I smiled at him and nodded.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile.’

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve felt like smiling. Will you buy my flowers?’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  We stood talking a while, of the weather, and the flowers, and what I planned to buy with my coin, and then he said, ‘I must go, I’ll be late. Will you … will you be here again?’

  I nodded. As he walked away, he glanced back over his shoulder and our eyes met. He smiled, and I smiled back.

  A week later, it was Midsummer’s Eve. I went to the meadows and picked as big a bunch of daisies as I could find, then I waited for him on the bridge. He came hurrying towards me, smiling eagerly.

  ‘I was wondering,’ I said, after we had talked for a while, ‘if you would like to see where I live.’

  He stepped back, frowning.

  I drew myself up proudly. ‘I was not wanting to … to sell you my body, if that’s what you think. Would I be here on the streets, selling meadow flowers, if that was my game? I’d be living in a fine house, dressed in silk and eating larks’ tongues. I could make a fortune as a courtesan. I know, one told me so. Yet here I am, in rags, and barefoot, eating scraps from the gutter.’ My eyes full of tears, I turned to go.

  He caught my arm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.’

  ‘You’ve been kind,’ I said, not looking at him. ‘You didn’t need to buy my flowers. I wanted to thank you.’

  He let go of my arm and bowed. ‘I’m sorry. Of course I’ll come with you.’

  As we walked down the bridge, I said shyly, ‘I don’t know your name.’

  He smiled at me. ‘It’s Alessandro.’

  ‘That’s nice. I like it.’

  ‘It was my father’s father’s name,’ Alessandro said. ‘And probably his father’s father’s name too.’

  ‘Come to the market with me. I’ll show you what I do with the coin that you give me.’

  I bought fresh bread, a head of garlic, a small pat of butter in muslin and a fish from the fishmonger. He carried this for me, and I smiled to see him with a bunch of daisies in one hand and a fish dangling from the other. He smiled back, then laughed, and almost, almost, I laughed too.

  I took him to the little nest I had made for myself in a disused porch of an old church. The doorway was locked, with dusty cobwebs swaddling the keyhole. I had dragged an old door to cover the entrance, and other old bits of timber and slate so it looked just like a rubbish pile. Alessandro had to crawl inside on his hands and knees. He stood up, dusting off his hose, and looked about him, a strange expression on his face.

  I had done my best to clean the porch, making a broom from twigs and finding an old bucket to fill with water at the well in the square. To one side, I had made a hearth from a circle of old stones, and there I had laid a fire. On the other side was a bed of old curtains and cushions, as clean as I could contrive. There was a bunch of flowers in an old jar on the window alcove above the bed – daisies, yarrow, fennel, lovage and wild roses – which I had gathered in the woods and meadows of the mainland. All were flowers of love and longing, the courtesan had told me. She had also given me a squat red candle, and some myrtle and rose oil to rub into it.

  ‘You’ve made a proper little home here.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m afraid someone will find it and will throw me out. Each day I come back, expecting to find it cleared away.’

  ‘It’ll be cold in winter.’

  ‘Not as cold as sleeping on the streets.’

  I lit the candle with my flint and steel, and used the candle to light the fire. Then I nestled a little iron pot in the coals. Inside were two handfuls of fresh parsley from the courtesan’s garden, which had been steeping there for the past two hours. While the water came to the boil, I cut up the fish on an old board and then tossed it and a little minced garlic and some melted butter in my battered old frying pan, one of many things I had found in the rubbish tip. When the fish was properly sautéed, I scraped it into the water and parsley, and put the pot back on the fire to simmer.

  Soon, a fragrant smell filled my little house. Alessandro had spread his cloak to sit on the tiles. I crouched on my little bed. He asked me gentle questions about my home and family. I answered them, in a voice that cracked with pain. Once, he held out his hand to me. I took it, and he cradled my hand in his.

  I had only one bowl and one spoon, so we took turns to eat, dipping our bread in the clear green broth and scooping out small pieces of sweet white fish. It grew dark, and the light of the red candle and the small fire flickered over the planes of his face. I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen. My heart swelled with painful tenderness. I thought that if I could just make him love me, I’d be happy for ever after. When our soup was gone, I drew his face to mine and kissed him.

  Oh, my darling piccolina, I loved him truly. Maybe you think I should not have asked the courtesan’s help to make him love me. Maybe he would have loved me anyway, without the parsley I picked from her garden, without the red candle she gave me. But how could I know? I was a beggar girl, dressed in rags. It was Midsummer’s Eve, so it was warm enough to sleep on the streets. But soon winter would come, and I’d have frozen to death. I needed him to love me.

  I think you were conceived that night, my darling girl, my daisy. I would not know that for a while yet, though. What I do know is that Alessandro and I lay together on that little pile of rags, and we loved each other as totally and as truly as any man and woman have ever loved each other. And when we rested in each other’s arms, I laughingly pulled a daisy from the bunch we had put in the bucket and tucked one behind his ear.

  ‘Where I come from, we call daisies “he loves me, he loves me not”,’ I said.

  ‘Do you? That seems a strange name.’

  ‘You are such a city boy. Don’t you know what you do?’ I laid my head on his chest and took another daisy. I pulled one petal off and chanted, ‘He loves me.’ I pulled another petal and chanted, ‘He loves me not.’ One by one, each of the small white petals fluttered down to the ground till there was only one left. I pulled it off, saying triumphantly, ‘He loves me.’

  ‘I do,’ Alessandro said and bent his head to kiss me.

  BITTER GREENS

  Venice, Italy – January 1583

  We should have been happy. We very nearly were.

  When we were married, you wer
e still a little mouse in my tummy. No one but me and your father knew that you were there, though I think your nonna may have guessed.

  She insisted we have this house, and she went and moved in with your Zia Donna, who had just had the twins. Nonna left everything for us, the shop, all the masks, the moulds and the paint and the feathers and the crystals, most of the furniture, even her own bed. I had everything I had dreamt of, even the carpet that needed to be beaten clean on the line over the street.

  Yet every time I stood at my window and looked down on the courtesan’s garden, I felt a squirming feeling of shame in my stomach.

  We weren’t rich, not like she was, with her grand house and her own gondola and her gowns and servants. Yet, a few months after Alessandro and I were married, I took to her door all the housekeeping money I had managed to save, and I tried to give it to her. ‘There’s a cost for everything,’ she had said.

  She only looked at me coldly. ‘I have no need of money,’ she said.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you.’

  ‘I have no need of thanks.’

  ‘You helped me, please let me thank you.’

  ‘There’ll come a time when I want something, and you’ll be able to help me.’ Her eyes caressed the curve of my stomach. Instinctively, I drew my shawl closer about me. ‘Keep your money. You’ll be needing it all too soon.’

  It was after that visit to the courtesan that I began to long for green things. Venice no longer seemed an enchanted city to me, but a place of cold barren stone. It was winter, and the domes and spires were wrapped in grey mist, muffling the sound of the bells and the warning cries of the gondoliers. A cruel wind from the sea struck through every crevice, and the calli were awash with icy water so that my shoes and the hem of my skirt were always damp. I could not get warm.

  I wanted to rest my eyes on green meadows. I wanted to sit on green grass under the shade of a green tree. I wanted to eat cool green salads. I longed for arugula tossed with olive oil and parmesan, for asparagus tips dripping with melted butter, for a salad of sweet and bitter green leaves. Most of all, I longed for fish and parsley soup.

  When I first moved into the house above the mask shop, I kept the shutters of my bedroom closed so I could not see the courtesan’s garden. Now, I sat there all day long, staring down at the evergreen rosemary hedges, surrounding garden beds that still flourished, despite the cold, with hellebore and self-heal, wintercress and field garlic, wintersweet and witch-hazel. How I wanted to devour that wintercress. Snow blew in on me, but I sat there, shivering, in my woolly brown shawl, gazing at the courtesan’s garden. Alessandro would come and beg me to go to bed, but I’d stay until darkness closed in and only then would I let him draw me up and help me away from the window. He would tuck me up in bed, a stone bottle filled with hot water at my feet, the faded old carpet-rug laid over me, but still I could not get warm.

  And nothing could tempt me to eat.

  The midwife clucked her tongue and talked with my husband in low voices in the next room. ‘The baby will not grow properly if she doesn’t eat,’ she said. So Alessandro searched the markets for food he hoped would appeal to me. But it was winter, and times were lean. I grew thin and pale.

  Lent had never seemed so long. Alessandro said a mouse would have eaten more. He even bought me meat, going to a butcher in the ghetto, risking being paraded around the square with a leg of lamb strung about his neck. He almost wept when I turned my face away and refused to eat it.

  Spring came, and the courtesan’s gardeners shovelled away the snow and unswaddled the trees from their sacking. I lifted my head to watch. Over the next few days, seeds were sown, and soon a fine mist of green floated over the beds of freshly turned earth. I watched, sick with longing. Each day, green sprang to life in the courtesan’s garden. I recognised parsley, chives, wintercress, nasturtium leaves, dandelions – a strange plant for a rich woman to grow, I thought – and the pretty bellflower my mother always called rapunzel, which made a delicious salad.

  ‘I must eat some or I shall die,’ I told Alessandro.

  He chewed his lip and clenched his fists, and when the midwife came to see me – for my baby was late and she was worried – he told her what I had said.

  ‘You must let her eat what she wants,’ the midwife said. ‘Don’t you know that it will harm the baby if you let her cravings go unsatisfied? You must never frighten or upset a pregnant woman for the child will be misshapen by her imaginings. If she longs for milk, and does not drink it, her child will be born with white hair. If a hare jumps across her path, the baby will be born with a harelip. If you do not give her parsley, your child will be born with a parsley-shaped birthmark disfiguring his face, mark my words.’

  I lay in my bed, listening to the rain beat against the shutters, my hands cradling the warm bulge of my stomach. Who are you? I thought. What little life flutters in there? Have I cursed you by using magic to make your father love me?

  The door banged open. Alessandro stood there, dripping wet, his eyes exultant. His hands were full of fresh green leaves. ‘I picked them for you. The door to the garden was ajar. Someone must have forgotten to close it. I sneaked in and grabbed these, and ran.’

  I leant on my elbow, raising myself with difficulty. I had not realised how weak I had grown.

  ‘Wait, I’ll dress them for you. Some oil, some lemon, some salt. It’ll be delicious.’

  It was. I ate with intense pleasure, loving the crunch in my mouth, the sudden unexpected bitterness. Then Alessandro brought me fish soup, made with handfuls of parsley. I ate it all, then, smiling, I slept.

  Later that night, I felt sharp stabbing pains in my groin. I cried out, raised myself, bent over my bulging stomach. The pains faded, came again, faded, came again, each time coming faster, stronger, more intense. The day came, but I barely noticed. Alessandro did all he could to help me, but something was wrong. My baby – you, my piccolina – did not want to be born.

  Daylight faded into a fig-coloured dusk. The midwife came and tried to help me. I felt as if I was drowning, black waves of pain crashing over me. Around midnight, I clutched Alessandro’s hand. ‘I’m dying. Help me.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Alessandro begged.

  ‘I need …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘More …’

  ‘More salad? More parsley?’

  ‘Parsley is said to ease the difficulties of childbirth.’ The midwife bathed my anguished face with rose water. ‘But where could we get some at this time of night?’

  Alessandro ran down the stairs. I hardly noticed he was gone. I was lost in a hell of fire and pain. Sometime later, he came back, clutching a handful of greens in his hand. ‘I’ve got it!’

  The midwife boiled up the green leaves on the little stove and soon had a cup of dark green liquid for me. Alessandro lifted me up to drink. It tasted bitter, so bitter, but I swallowed it down. You were soon born, my darling, my daisy. You slid into the world and gulped a breath, and screamed, and I wept and laughed together, unable to believe the miracle I had wrought in my own body.

  When the midwife washed you, we found a head of fiery curls. ‘Just like your mother’s,’ Alessandro said, cradling you in his big hands.

  ‘And look, a little birthmark shaped just like a sprig of parsley.’ The midwife pointed to a small red stain on the skin of your chest, just above your heart. ‘If you hadn’t brought that bunch of parsley for her, it would have been all over the babe’s sweet face, for sure.’

  She held out her hand for her money, packed up her things and went home. Alessandro lay on the bed, cradling you and me in his arms. ‘Pascadozzia,’ he said tentatively, as dawn began to blush in the sky above the city. ‘She was waiting for me in the garden. I’m so sorry.’

  I was dazed and exhausted. ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘The woman … the whore they call La Strega Bella. I stole the leaves from her garden the night before last, when you said you would die … and then I went back there again last nigh
t, to steal some more. She was waiting for me.’

  Cold dread filled me. I sat up, wincing with pain, and looked into his face. ‘What … what happened?’

  ‘She said I was a thief. She said she would have me charged, and that I’d be lucky not to hang. I pleaded with her. I said you were dying and that the child would die with you. She said that words were nothing but wind and that the best I could hope for was to have my hands chopped off. I was in despair. I fell to my knees before her and begged for mercy. She said …’

  He stopped, and there was a long silence. All I could hear was the wind, and the little nuzzling sounds you made at my breast. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘She said she would let me go if I promised her the baby.’

  ‘The baby?’ I looked down at your precious little head, covered with the most adorable little red curls, and clutched you closer.

  Alessandro nodded. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do. You were dying. If you died, the baby would die, and I’d be dead too, or maimed horribly, unable to work or keep myself or you. So …’ Again, he was silent. I did not speak, waiting, tears already sliding down my cheeks. ‘So I agreed,’ he said in a flat tone. ‘She let me take the handful of leaves I had grabbed, and she let me come back here to you. And she said … oh, Pascadozzia, I do not understand it, but she said that everything has a cost, and the time had come for you to pay. What did she mean?’

  I could only weep and clutch you close to me.

  Selena Leonelli came the next day to take you away, but I would not let you go. I begged her, ‘Just let me have her a little while, please, please. I’ll do anything.’

  She caressed your shining curls with one finger. ‘You may have her for seven years, but you must promise me to give her up then. I’ll be like a mother to her. I’ll guard her and keep her safe, don’t you fear.’

  Seven years seemed like a long time. Anything could happen in seven years. So I agreed. And now the seven years have gone by, and she has come for you …