Paradiso: Utterly gripping and emotional historical fiction (The Paradiso Novels Book 1)

by Francesca Scanacapra

  Beside the crate Salvatore had made a little shrine for his dead brother. He placed ferns and flowers around the photograph and a postcard of the Madonna del Carmine. The image was creased and faded, but Salvatore said that it was prayers to the Madonna that had saved his life during the war. The postcard had been in his pocket the entire time. He said that Our Lady was very special in Naples. There was a big procession in Her honour every July. In the evening there were fireworks.

  Salvatore made a sign of the cross, bowed his head and whispered words of thanks to Her every time he walked past, and out of respect, I did too.

  Chapter 6

  My father moved out of the marital bed and into a bed of his own in the corner of the kitchen. His contorted sleeping position and recurrent spasms meant that sharing a bed with my mother had become impossible. As I had outgrown the blanket box, I took over the vacant half of the double bed.

  I would be tucked in at nine o’clock every night. My mother would tiptoe in somewhere around ten and before slipping in beside me she would sit on the edge of the bed, her head bowed and her hands clasped in her lap.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked one night.

  ‘I am praying,’ she replied. ‘Go to sleep.’

  Having spent so long in the convent and having had my prayers answered, I considered myself something of an authority on prayer.

  ‘You’re supposed to kneel to pray,’ I whispered.

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Sorella Maddalena said you should kneel and cover your head.’

  ‘That’s only for when you’re in church.’

  ‘What are you praying for?’

  ‘That is between me and Jesus.’

  ‘Can I pray too?’

  ‘Of course. Just close your eyes and pray until you go to sleep.’

  ‘Do I have to sit, like you?’

  ‘No. Just stay there.’

  ‘Can I pray for Papá’s back to get better?’

  ‘Papá’s back will never get better. But you can pray that he will bear the pain.’

  ‘Have you prayed for him to bear the pain before?’

  ‘I pray for that every day.’

  ‘Do you think it’s working?’

  My mother looked at me sternly through the dim light, said, ‘Go to sleep!’ and bowed her head again.

  I knew I shouldn’t disturb my mother, but the words left my mouth before I could stop myself. ‘Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, didn’t He?’ I knew He had, because Sorella Maddalena had told us.

  My mother did not answer.

  ‘Was it God Who gave Him the power to do that? Because if He can do that, then it must be easy to make one man’s back better.’

  Again, my mother did not answer.

  ‘I prayed for the end of the war and it happened,’ I told her. ‘I think my prayer helped.’ Then as I lay still, the more I thought, the more questions filled my head.

  ‘Can I pray that there will never be a war again? I don’t want to go back to the convent.’

  My mother looked up from her contemplation. ‘It’s not all about you,’ she said.

  ‘How about I pray for Rita’s Papá to come home soon too?’

  ‘Yes. That would be a good thing to pray for. Pray that he comes home strong and in good health. Then go to sleep!’

  Rita had grown despondent. Our fruitless roadside vigils waiting for her father’s return were becoming tedious. As most soldiers had been repatriated, fewer passed along the road. Some days none passed at all. And nobody stopped at Paradiso.

  ‘Perhaps he’s not going to come back,’ she said mournfully.

  ‘Your Mamma promised he would. She said she got a letter from the government.’

  ‘Maybe they got it wrong.’

  ‘She said he was a long way away where there aren’t any trains and he would have to come home on a ship.’

  ‘But what if he can’t find his way home? What if he’s lost?’ Rita hung her head and seemed on the verge of tears.

  ‘Do you want my dolly?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I want my Papá,’ she replied.

  I sat beside her, powerless to help and grateful that my own father had not been sent to fight.

  We waited on the verge with our feet dangling in the ditch. We could see a long way up the road. The North Road, which passed between my house and Rita’s, leading to Pieve Santa Clara at one end and the village of Mazzolo at the other, was perfectly straight. It had been paved directly over an ancient Roman thoroughfare.

  I watched as a figure appeared on the horizon. Even from far away I could see it was a soldier. I could make out the shape of his haversack slung across his body.

  ‘Maybe that’s your Papá,’ I said, trying to sound as excited as I could. Rita looked up briefly, then shook her head.

  ‘It’s not him,’ she said miserably. ‘I don’t think he’s ever going to come back.’

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say which might comfort her, so I just watched as the soldier approached us.

  ‘Hello, little girls,’ he said.

  Rita, who would normally have begun her questioning immediately, didn’t even say hello, which I knew to be very rude, so I asked instead.

  ‘Excuse me, Signore, but do you know Luigi Pozzetti? He’s my friend’s Papá. We’re waiting for him to come back from the war.’

  The soldier rubbed his chin and thought hard. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘What does he look like, this Luigi Pozzetti fellow?’

  This caught Rita’s attention. ‘He’s got a moustache!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I see.’ The soldier ran his finger along his own moustache. ‘What sort of moustache?’

  Rita said that she didn’t know.

  ‘Is it one like mine?’ he asked.

  Rita shrugged. The soldier crouched down, took her little hand and smiled.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Touch my moustache and tell me whether you think it’s the same.’

  Rita stared at the soldier in bewilderment, but tentatively did as he asked.

  ‘What do you think, my darling little Rita?’ the soldier said. ‘Is my moustache as you remember it?’

  It took my friend a few moments to understand. First she trembled. Then she cried. She hadn’t forgotten her father at all. Suddenly everything was familiar, not just his moustache. He scooped her up into his arms and kissed and kissed and kissed her. Luigi Pozzetti was finally home.

  Our fathers had been friends since earliest childhood. They were apprentices together from the age of thirteen and as grown men they had become artisans in their own right; my father as a builder and Luigi Pozzetti as a carpenter. They had worked together until Papá’s accident, then Pozzetti had been called up to fight.

  Rita’s Papá had returned home thinner, but intact, from what he referred to as his ‘enforced holiday’.

  It was a happy reunion between my father and Luigi Pozzetti. I liked to think that it was due, at least in some part, to my prayers.

  *

  During the weeks following his return, Rita wouldn’t leave her father’s side. She sat at his feet, with her arms wrapped around his leg. I could not hold my father in the same way without risking a kick, as his spasms were frequent and occurred without warning. I wrapped my arms around Pozzetti’s other leg instead.

  One day shortly afterwards, Rita appeared in the yard in front of our house, calling my name at the top of her voice.

  ‘Is your Papá there?’ she asked. She seemed very excited.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘Stay where you are! Don’t move!’ With that, she turned and flew back across the road.

  A few moments later I heard the sound of a bicycle bell, the creak of the gate and the crunch of tyres on gravel.

  ‘Ponti! Come and see!’ called Pozzetti’s voice.

  I had never known my father and Pozzetti call each other by anything other than their surnames, the reason being that they shared the same Christian name, Luigi. As they had been in
separable as children, everybody referred to them by their surnames, Pozzetti and Ponti, to avoid confusion.

  I went to help my father out of his chair.

  ‘What does that madman want?’ he said, smiling.

  Luigi Pozzetti had fashioned a trailer to hook onto his bicycle. It was made from scrap wood and perambulator wheels. Attached to it was an old rope-seated dining chair, to which sturdy arms had been fixed.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ My father stared.

  Pozzetti signalled to Rita, who climbed into the dining chair. Then, taking hold of the handlebars, Pozzetti hooked his leg over the saddle and set off around the yard, cycling and towing his giggling daughter behind him.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ he said, coming to a halt in front of us.

  My father laughed. ‘Are you going to give rides to the children in the village, is that the plan?’

  ‘No. I’m going to give rides to you.’

  ‘To me? What do you mean?’

  ‘I can take you to the cemetery in the morning, and I can fetch you at the end of the day. It will save you over two kilometres’ walk.’

  My father stood scratching his chin uncertainly.

  ‘Come on then - come and try it,’ Pozzetti urged. ‘I’ve made it an easy height for you to get on and off, and I’ve nailed these handles to the side. They’re very sturdy. They should take your weight.’

  ‘There’s not much weight left to take,’ replied my father. ‘It’s been said that my weight would double if I caught a dose of head-lice.’

  With a little assistance from Pozzetti, and with myself and Rita holding the bicycle still, my father was able to step up into the trailer and to lower himself into the chair. He sat twisted in the seat, holding onto one arm with both hands.

  ‘Ready?’ said Pozzetti.

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ replied my father.

  Rita and I cheered as Pozzetti and Papá circled around the yard. Pozzetti was laughing. My father was pretending to, although I could see that really he was sucking the air in through his clenched teeth.

  Zia Mina and Salvatore came to see what all the noise was about. Salvatore joined in with our cheering, but Zia Mina just stood quietly with her eyes on my father.

  ‘It’s a tragedy to see Luigi so diminished,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘If you’d known him before his accident, you wouldn’t recognise him today. Before, there was nothing he couldn’t turn his hand to. Why, he restored this house for me. When I inherited the place, it was derelict.’

  ‘Life can be cruel and unjust, Donna Mina.’ Salvatore stroked his own clawed hand. ‘You, more than anyone, know that.’

  My aunt bit her lip and looked away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Donna Mina,’ he said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Salvatore.’

  ‘But I do believe that there’s hope, even in the deepest misfortune.’

  ‘You believe that?’ snorted my aunt. ‘It’s easy for you to say. You’ve never had a child.’ And with that, she turned and made her way back to the garden.

  *

  That first autumn of peace brought with it an abundant crop of grapes. They hung outside Paradiso in plump green bunches, sweetening as they absorbed the last of the warm sunshine. It was not just our grapes which flourished. Even those which had not been tended or pruned and had grown half wild were excellent.

  Salvatore would inspect them every morning. He would pick one or two, rolling them between the fingers of his good hand.

  ‘These are fine grapes, Donna Mina,’ he said to my aunt. ‘It would be a crime not to make them into wine.’

  ‘I don’t have any containers or bottles, Salvatore.’

  ‘Leave it to me, Donna Mina.’

  Over the following days. Salvatore visited every house and every farm within an hour’s walk of Paradiso. He told us he was organising a co-operative.

  ‘What’s a co-operative?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s when lots of people get together to do something which they couldn’t do by themselves,’ he explained. ‘Your aunt has lots of grapes, but no bottles or barrels. There are other people who have bottles and barrels, but no grapes. If everybody gets together and helps each other and shares, then everybody has grapes, bottles and barrels - and so everyone can have wine.’

  He patted my head and said, ‘And you can help too, criatura. We will need to take an account of everything that people bring. How many bottles, what containers, and most importantly of all, what quantity of grapes. I will need your help writing it down.’

  He held up his clawed right hand, sighed and said, ‘This hand can’t write any more. And my left hand writes so badly that not even I can read my own scrawl. Your aunt says you have lovely writing, so we will put that to use.’

  A wooden vat, large enough for a small man to stand in and not be visible, was delivered to Paradiso the next day. It was rolled all the way down the road from an outlying farm. Over the following week, crates of empty bottles, tubs, basins and baths began to stack up in the yard. Lines of pot-bellied, wicker-covered demijohns appeared. The baker turned up with a large set of scales. I noted down every item, as instructed by Salvatore.

  My mother, my aunt and Ada Pozzetti spent a week in a frenzy of activity, washing bottles and jamming them into bushes and any available gap to dry upside down.

  The following Saturday morning, hordes of people arrived at first light, mostly on foot, carrying between them buckets, crates and sacks of grapes. I had never seen so many people at Paradiso.

  I stood by the gate with Salvatore, recording everybody’s name. Salvatore inspected their grapes and divided them into separate colours before weighing them. I wrote down the weights. The numbers made little sense to me, but Salvatore ran his finger down my neat columns of figures, muttering sums under his breath.

  ‘When we know the weight of all the grapes combined and the number of people bringing their grapes, we will know how to divide out the wine. Each bottle of wine requires about a kilo and a half of grapes. Of course we have to allow for the weight of the skins, for evaporation.’

  The process of treading the grapes was shared out between men and children. Men took it in turns to climb into the vat, with their trouser legs rolled up above their knees. More than one lost his footing on the slippery grape skins and emerged from the vat soaked in juice. Basins were also laid out in the yard for children to tread. We took our turns eagerly, delighting in the fruit bursting between our toes. Our feet were stained purple for days.

  The scent of the grapes filled the yard with an intensely sweet and acid perfume, as though the past summer was exploding out of each fruit.

  I like to think of that day as Pieve Santa Clara’s peace celebration. People stayed long after the grapes had been pressed and brought what food and drink they had to share. Somebody played an accordion and couples danced themselves to exhaustion in our yard. Even my parents danced. My father held my mother and led her in an awkward, swaying waltz. Salvatore sang his beautiful Neapolitan songs late into the night. Everybody enjoyed ‘Carmela Mia’ so much that he was asked to sing it four times. Rita and I both fell asleep on her father’s lap.

  Over the following days, people came and went from Zia Mina’s barn, where popping vats of young wine were beginning their process of fermentation. The vats bubbled and fizzed, pushing the empty grape skins to the surface. Some were collected to be used for grappa or to be mixed with sloes to make an alcoholic preserve. The rest were mixed back into the wine. Salvatore oversaw every visit.

  ‘Don’t remove all the skins,’ he warned. ‘Or the wine will go bad.’

  The arrival of plumes of fruit flies signalled that it was time for the wine to be bottled. There was a lack of corks, so improvised systems of wooden plugs, scraps of rag and wax were used instead.

  Ideally the wine should have been left to ferment for several months, but people were impatient and many drank it anyway. Being a child I had no knowledge o
f how it should taste. The rustic home-made system and the quality of the fruit was a lottery. I was given a small glass, diluted with water. I was intensely disappointed at how foul it was and could not understand why anybody would take something as delicious as a grape and turn it into something so disgusting.

  Nevertheless, the wine-making was such a celebration that nobody really cared about its quality. It was a symbol that the return of peace could bring back small luxuries and pleasures. Even bad wine was better than no wine.

  Chapter 7

  School started in September. Those of us who had missed our first year or two because of the war were grouped into a single classroom, where I was able to display my reading and writing skills with some pride. We did have the luxury of an exercise book each, but because these were still precious commodities, the teacher, Maestro Virgola, was extremely strict about only our best and neatest work being transcribed to paper. Most of the time we worked on slippery slate boards.

  Because our names followed one another alphabetically, Rita and I were seated at adjoining desks, which was a source of great delight to us. However, we soon learned that school was not a place for enjoying oneself.

  Maestro Virgola was a small man with piercing eyes and a beard shaped like an arrow. He wore spectacles, but never seemed to look through them, only over them. We were all afraid of him.

  He punished pupils caught whispering, communicating in Cremonese dialect or not concentrating by rapping them hard on the head with his knuckles. Some children were made to kneel on their hands until their fingers turned blue. One boy was made to suck on a piece of soap as a punishment for swearing. It burned a blister onto his tongue.

  But these punishments were lenient. Serious offences merited a thrashing, delivered with the long wooden ruler that Maestro Virgola carried at all times in class. When it was not being used as a threat, it was used to point at us. Maestro Virgola never called any of us by our names. He would simply point his ruler and address us as ‘You, boy!’ and ‘You, girl!’

  At the convent, if we had known an answer, we would put our hands up. Sorella Maddalena would choose the most eager-looking child or the one she thought most likely to answer correctly. This was not the case with Maestro Virgola. He preferred to choose the child least likely to know the answer. He seemed to take pleasure in our fear and our squirming. If the unlucky pupil did answer correctly, he would ask another question, phrasing it in the most convoluted way he could in order to create confusion. Incorrect answers were rewarded with a head-rapping, which meant that eventually all answers were rewarded with head-rapping.