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

by Francesca Scanacapra

  ‘The little mice died?’ I gasped. My father’s stories were always funny and uplifting. They never touched on death.

  ‘Yes,’ said my father solemnly. ‘And in the morning when the Mamma mouse woke up and found her babies hanging dead by their tails her heart was broken. But the big rats just sneered and said that they would do the same to any other little mouse they caught.’

  ‘Did they catch any more?’

  ‘All the mice stayed hidden in the cold ditch, except the Mamma mouse. She crept into the farmer’s larder and took bread and chunks of cheese and laid them out in a trail, knowing that the rats would soon smell the food and come to eat it. And sure enough, those greedy rats did smell the food and they followed the trail, gobbling up every morsel. And right at the end of the trail was the biggest piece of cheese. The rats rushed to get it, fighting with each other to be the first to wolf down the tasty morsel. But what they didn’t know was that the piece of cheese had been balanced on some corn stalks and that those corn stalks had been placed over a very deep drain with steep, slippery sides and deep water at the bottom. As soon as all the heavy rats stepped onto the corn stalks, the stalks snapped and the rats all fell into the drain and drowned.’

  ‘What happened to the mice?’

  ‘The little mice were free to live their lives once more. Of course, they would always be sad that five of them had died. But nobody was sad that the big, nasty rats had died - and nobody was angry with the Mamma mouse for doing what she did.’

  My father reached over and stroked my hair.

  ‘So do you understand now why in bad situations sometimes bad things are done, my little one?’ he said. I thought about the story and nodded.

  ‘Zia Mina was very brave, like the Mamma mouse,’ I said.

  ‘That’s right. And you’ve been very brave too,’ replied my father. ‘But put it all out of your head now, my little one, and try to get some sleep.’

  I wriggled across the bed to make room for my father. He got in awkwardly, wincing as he positioned himself beside me. I fell asleep cradled in his arm with my head resting on his chest.

  *

  My parents refused to let me go to school until Maestro Virgola was removed and until my welts had healed. In a show of solidarity, Rita’s parents also kept her at home. We felt like outlaws.

  We were sent a new teacher. Maestra Asinelli was very young. She was newly-qualified and slightly nervous at first, but we all behaved well for her, such was our relief at Maestro Virgola having been removed. Even Pietro and Paolo did as she asked. I think that all the boys in the class were a little bit in love with her. I think I was too.

  She pinned pictures of birds and flowers on the bare classroom walls, as well as a colourful number chart and a map of the world.

  Learning was transformed. We sang our times-tables. We learned poems. We wrote stories and even drew pictures. There was no rapping of heads, crushing of hands or eating of soap. The ruler was only ever used for its intended purpose of measuring. Maestra Asinelli believed that praise was a better form of instruction than punishment, and she was right. We learned more with Maestra Asinelli in a week than we had with Maestro Virgola in six months.

  She was kind to Miracolino. She sat him at the front of the class so that he could see the blackboard, and whenever a malodorous waft floated through the classroom, she made no fuss and would simply open a window without interrupting the lesson. In any case, his flatulence had become far less frequent. It was likely the fear of being hit, not bad fish, which caused it.

  As for Pietro and Paolo, Immacolata demanded that they should pay for their waywardness. Not being a believer in corporal punishment, she ordered that they spend every afternoon for a month under the instruction of Don Ambrogio, who would tutor them rigorously in catechism and Bible studies. They must, she insisted, have the fear of God driven into them.

  It was Immacolata’s way of punishing not only Pietro and Paolo, but also Don Ambrogio.

  Chapter 9

  Although there had been no embroidery work for my mother during the war, it was not long after its end that things began to pick up. A gentleman with a haberdashery shop in Cremona came to our house regularly, bringing linens for her to work on.

  She set aside a work area by the kitchen window and kept the space around it scrupulously clean. There she would sit for hours in deep and silent concentration, speaking only when strictly necessary as she focused on metre after metre of recurring pattern. For my mother the quiet, repetitive work resembled some kind of meditation.

  One day in late July a young girl called Fiorella arrived at Paradiso.

  ‘Signora Ponti,’ she said, ‘Signora Marchesini would like to see you about some work. She asks if you can come to Cascina Marchesini tomorrow afternoon.’

  My mother looked up from the sea of bed-sheets which surrounded her and slipped her needle through the collar of her dress. I could see that she was pleased.

  ‘Tell Signora Marchesini I shall be there at half past four, if that is convenient for her.’

  Fiorella gave a sort of curtsey and nodded. ‘She will be at home all afternoon. Come to the side door. Pull hard on the bell-rope.’

  ‘Graziella,’ said my mother, rubbing her neck and stretching her arms, ‘I’d like you to come with me tomorrow. We’ll take Zia Mina’s bicycle. We can load it up and balance it between us.’

  Cascina Marchesini was the largest farm in the area and had been in the family for many generations. The Marchesinis were not like us, or like other people in the village. They were rich.

  Signora Marchesini had a motor car. There were very few cars in the village then. It was not unusual to see an ex-military vehicle, or maybe a Fiat Topolino occasionally, but Signora Marchesini’s sleek, ultramarine-blue Alfa Romeo was an extraordinary vision. Its engine made a roaring noise which announced its approach from far away. Rumour had it that she had been given it by Mussolini himself.

  I had seen Signor Marchesini on his tractor going to market. Sometimes his son would ride along with him. He didn’t go to my school in the village.

  My father said their house was so big, it had its own church. To me, this made the family incredibly exotic and mysterious.

  I was so excited that I irritated my mother all afternoon with questions about the Marchesinis, but as she was not native to Pieve Santa Clara she knew little about them, except for the fact that they had a very big house, lots of cows and lots of money. In the end, she sent me outside to play.

  I bounded into Zia Mina’s garden bursting with excitement.

  ‘Zia Mina! Zia Mina! I’m going to Cascina Marchesini!’ I exclaimed, hopping from foot to foot.

  My aunt stopped what she was doing and scowled. ‘What would you want to go there for?’

  ‘Signora Marchesini has some work for Mamma and I’m going to help carry it and we’re going to see their house and they have a church and lots of cows and I hope I see the tractor and perhaps I’ll even have a ride on it! Have you ever been to Cascina Marchesini? What’s it like? Have you seen their church? Is it as big as our church in the village?’

  My aunt raised her hands to hush me.

  ‘I’ve no interest in that place,’ she said curtly. ‘And I certainly have no interest in those Marchesini people.’

  With that, she waved me away.

  We set off the next day. My mother sat me behind her on the saddle and told me to hold on tight as we rode northwards in the direction of Mazzolo, over the bridge and across the canal.

  The canal’s heyday was long past. Decades of neglect had left its waters dirty with effluent. Discarded items of scrap poked up above the waterline, bleeding their rust amongst the weed. I held my breath and buried my face in my mother’s dress. The canal smelled like drains. Few houses along its banks were still inhabited. Miracolino’s shack was just visible, buried beneath creepers and obscured by the long grass. The only sign of its inhabitants was a collection of tins and rags hanging from a scrubby tree.


  The North Road sliced through the landscape, flanked by fields of sunflowers and maize. Two kilometres north of Paradiso was a turning, announced by two enormous brick columns. Once upon a time, long ago, they had been gateposts. The pins were still fixed into the mortar, but the gates were long gone. The columns were an incongruous sight, rising out of nowhere, standing like old, redundant sentries at the end of the road which led to Cascina Marchesini.

  ‘Why are there gateposts and no gates, Mamma?’ I asked.

  ‘I expect the gates broke a long time ago,’ she replied.

  ‘But there are no walls or fences. Even if there were gates, you could just walk around the outside.’

  ‘There must have been walls once, or hedges maybe.’

  We made our way down a slender avenue of poplar trees. In the distance a series of long brick barns shimmered in the heat haze, their wide, arched openings like rows of huge black teeth. The avenue ended in a fork. The left-hand path led to the barns. The right-hand path was marked by two further gateposts, which were newer and far more ornate than those on the road. They were furnished with a set of elaborate iron gates which hung open, and beyond them swept a new avenue, edged with tightly-furled cypress trees.

  We dismounted and proceeded through the gates on foot. As we rounded the curve of the driveway, the Marchesini house came into view.

  I had never seen a more enormous, extravagant or embellished building, except perhaps for a church. It rose out of the flat farmland with an ostentatious presence, like a monumental terracotta-pink wedding cake. It was three storeys high, with a domed cupola and a turret. A fully grown man could have walked through its front door with another man standing on his shoulders.

  In the very centre of the vast façade was the same coat of arms as on the church in the village. It depicted two long-legged birds facing one another. The tilt of their heads and the angle of their beaks formed a letter M.

  ‘Be good,’ warned my mother. ‘If you’re spoken to, answer politely. And speak in Italian. No dialect.’

  As instructed, we made our way round the side of the house, past rows of white oleanders planted in colossal amphoral pots, to the rear door. My mother set the bicycle against the wall and pulled on the bell-rope as she kicked the dust off her shoes.

  Fiorella answered the door. ‘Signora Marchesini is waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

  My mother and I were led through the kitchen and down a passageway to a grand oval hall. The gaze of numerous ancient portraits followed us. Feeling uneasy, I reached up and took my mother’s hand.

  Signora Marchesini was in the dining room standing beside a huge table. Its colossal legs were not much smaller in girth than me.

  It was the first time I had seen Signora Marchesini at close quarters. She was extraordinarily beautiful. Her dress, which clinched around her waist and caressed her legs as she moved, was the same shade of red as her lipstick. She wore silk stockings and patent shoes with little block heels. I was mesmerised.

  I wished that my mother could have such a lovely dress and shoes. I wondered how rich you had to be, to dress like that on an ordinary July afternoon, and whether Signora Marchesini had other, even more beautiful dresses. Perhaps she even had other pairs of shoes.

  I could smell her too. She was encircled in an aura of rose, lily, face powder and other delicious scents which were unknown to me at that time, but which made me want to breathe the air around her and absorb her.

  ‘Thank you for coming so promptly, Signora Ponti,’ said Signora Marchesini. Even her voice was beautiful.

  I was completely entranced and could not stop gazing at this vision of utter loveliness. She didn’t acknowledge me at all.

  My daze was broken by my mother. ‘Graziella,’ she said sharply. ‘Don’t stare.’

  Signora Marchesini glanced at me, giving me the briefest but most intense of examinations.

  ‘Would your daughter prefer to go outside?’ she said in a tone which was more an instruction than a question.

  ‘Go and play, Graziella. And don’t get dirty,’ said my mother.

  I slipped out of the dining room, through to the oval hall and stood for a while, taking in my surroundings. A grand marble staircase curled all the way up to the first floor. I could see the sky through the glass cupola high above. I wondered where the Marchesinis’ church was, thinking that as their house was so magnificent their church must be like a cathedral.

  The garden was walled and laid out in a series of flowerbeds, lawns and paths with ornamental trees planted in symmetrical patterns. In its centre was a splendid fountain with spouts shaped like fish. It was unlike any garden I had ever seen. Our garden at Paradiso smelled of tomatoes and soil. The Marchesini garden was an intoxicating mixture of floral scents, like Signora Marchesini’s perfume.

  I was barely a twenty-minute bicycle ride from my house, but Cascina Marchesini was a whole other world. I was so enthralled that in my distracted state I walked straight into Signor Marchesini.

  ‘Good afternoon, young lady,’ he said, catching me before I toppled backwards. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Signor Marchesini was very tall, even taller than Zia Mina. He was dressed in dirty work clothes and was carrying a writhing live rabbit by its back legs. I remembered my mother’s instructions. Answer politely. No dialect.

  ‘I am here with my mother to see Signora Marchesini about some work,’ I said, craning my neck and squinting through the sun as the rabbit tried to kick itself free of Signor Marchesini’s grasp.

  ‘Ah, you’re Luigi Ponti’s little girl. What’s your name?’

  ‘Graziella.’

  He stooped down, bowed his head and took my hand. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Signorina Ponti. Amilcare Marchesini at your service.’

  I had never had my hand shaken, let alone been addressed as ‘Signorina’. I wasn’t sure whether anyone had ever been at my service. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say in return. The first thing that came into my head was, ‘It’s a pleasure to be in your garden, Signor Marchesini.’

  Amilcare Marchesini laughed and I thought that I had said something wrong, but he replied, ‘Thank you. It’s very sweet of you to say so.’

  ‘It’s not like our garden. Our garden’s full of vegetables. And we don’t have a fountain.’

  ‘We have vegetables too, just not in this part of the garden.’

  I hoped I could have a look. I presumed that as everything at Cascina Marchesini was so enormous their vegetable garden must be filled with gigantic vegetables.

  ‘Do you know my son, Gianfrancesco?’ asked Signor Marchesini and I replied, very politely, that I did not.

  ‘He’s in the plum orchard. Run along and find him. He’ll probably be glad of the company.’ Then Signor Marchesini patted my head, turned and sauntered back towards the house, whistling and swinging the struggling rabbit in his hand.

  The orchard stretched out a long way on the other side of the garden wall. The tractor was parked in its centre, its trailer stacked with full crates - but there was no sign of Gianfrancesco Marchesini, just half a dozen fat red chickens pecking at the grass.

  I went to inspect the plums to see whether they were bigger than normal plums, but they were of ordinary size. The dust on their purple skins turned them a curious shade of blue against the sunlight. They did look really good. I was tempted to taste one, but knew better than to do it without permission.

  Suddenly a boy with skinny brown legs dropped down from a tree.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Are you lost?’

  ‘I was sent to look for Gianfrancesco Marchesini.’

  He grinned. ‘Well, you’ve found him. How can I help you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I shrugged. ‘Perhaps I could help you?’

  I took my position at the foot of a tree while Gianfrancesco climbed back up and passed plums down to me. I would have climbed up too, but whenever I climbed Zia Mina’s trees to gather fruit, I would tuck my skirt into my knickers
. I knew it wasn’t polite to let a boy see my knickers.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked as I began filling the crates.

  ‘Eleven years old. I will be twelve on the fifth of December. And you?’

  ‘Nine and a half. I will be ten next March.’ Despite being only two years older than me, Gianfrancesco seemed very grown up.

  ‘Do you go to school?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course. I go to school in Cremona,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s a long way to go.’

  ‘It’s less than an hour on the train, but I board there in the week.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to school in the village? It’s much closer.’

  ‘My parents want me to have a good education.’

  I considered this, wondering how much better than Maestra Asinelli’s classes a school in Cremona could be. Perhaps it was a school especially for rich people. Perhaps rich people needed to learn different things. There were so many questions that I wanted to ask. I began with, ‘Have you got a lot of cows?’

  ‘About three hundred at the moment, I think. Do you have cows?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘We’re not rich.’

  ‘We’re not rich either,’ he laughed. ‘My parents have never got any money.’

  I hoped that they would have enough money to pay my mother for her work, but thought that if they didn’t, perhaps Signora Marchesini could give my mother her dress instead.

  ‘Do you have your own church?’ was my next question.

  ‘My own church? Oh, well, yes. We have a chapel, but we don’t use it any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My father’s an atheist. There hasn’t been a service in the chapel since my grandfather’s day. I can show you, if you like. Would you like a guided tour?’

  I wasn’t sure what an atheist was, nor had I any idea of what a guided tour might be, but I replied that I would like one very much.