The Last Son’s Secret
Page 6
By the time Nonna had finished gathering the flowers and sent out her army to deliver the bouquets, the children had long since stopped paying attention to their work and were up in the cherry tree laden with red, ripe fruit. They picked the darkest cherries, one by one, and hung them over their ears, like earrings. As soon as they realized that Nonna’s helpers had left, they climbed down from the tree, gathered up the remaining flowers and petals that were strewn over the garden and started a flower fight. Giovanna had made a crown of dogwood, and still wore her red cherry earrings. Vitantonio threw handfuls of rose and peony petals at her. She responded in kind and they began a bizarre dance beneath a thick swirling veil of white petals that looked like a blizzard. Eventually, they dropped to the ground, on top of the carpet of flowers, and stretched out on their backs, panting.
When they got up they were still laughing. Franco, who had been the last to climb down from the cherry tree, crept up on the twins with a handful of blooms, threw them over Giovanna and kissed her on the cheek. She pulled away angrily. He tried to kiss her again.
‘Get off me!’ she shouted, as she pushed him away, growing more and more irritated with her cousin.
Franco threw himself at her again, pinned her down and brought his lips to her face. But he didn’t see Vitantonio coming. The boy grabbed him hard, shook him and pushed him to the ground; Franco hit his nose on the terracotta bricks of the terrace and it started to bleed.
Their grandmother, hearing shouting, came through the conservatory’s French doors and saw a trail of blood on the carpet of white flowers. At the foot of the garden stairs, Franco was crying hysterically, his shirt in tatters, his face a mess, his nose pouring blood …
An hour later, after the doctor had left, the adults called Vitantonio inside; he’d been waiting in the garden, frightened. As soon as he entered the sitting room, he knew that they weren’t going to be very understanding. His zia was there, with Father Felice, and his nonna, who spoke to him in the harshest tone he’d ever heard.
‘This year you won’t be confirmed, nor will you receive your first communion.’
‘Your behaviour this afternoon shows you aren’t ready,’ added Father Felice.
Vitantonio started to cry, but he didn’t say a word.
‘Do you have anything to say about what happened—’ his aunt started to ask.
‘There is nothing to say,’ interrupted Grandmother. ‘Such violence is simply not allowed in this house.’
‘We’ve only heard Franco’s side. We should listen to his as well,’ insisted Donata.
‘You’re spoiling him! His behaviour is unacceptable. And don’t talk back to me in front of the children.’
‘The boy might be prone to high spirits, but he always tells the truth. He’s never lied before and he wouldn’t now.’
Zia got up, held out her hand to Vitantonio, who was still sobbing, and called to Giovanna, who was waiting in the kitchen.
‘Ggiuànnin!’ This was the girl’s name in the Matera dialect of Donata’s own childhood, which she now used for the first time in many years.
Lady Angela silenced her with a furious look, but she didn’t get up from her armchair. The serenity of the month of flowers had lasted less than twenty-four hours.
On the day of the confirmations, Donata informed Lady Angela that she wouldn’t be attending the solemn service at the Immacolata, and instead she went with Vitantonio to the first mass of the day at the church of Sant’Anna. The night before she had sent Giovanna to sleep at the palazzo so that in the morning, her nonna, who was also her godmother, could dress her in the princess dress she’d had made by a tailor in Bari. When Donata returned home from mass, she found Lady Angela waiting for her, anxious, by the door to the courtyard, the one that opened on to the Piazza Sant’Anna.
‘Giovanna’s disappeared! I dressed her first thing this morning and I left her in the kitchen having breakfast. When I came back from getting Franco ready she was no longer there. We’ve been looking for her all over the house for an hour. Has she come back here?’
She sounded desperate.
They both went into the house and called for her, but there was no sign of Giovanna.
Donata knew that the girl had been furious for days about Vitantonio’s punishment and she was certain that running away was her way of making a protest. She’d surely turn up before too long, so she tried to reassure Lady Angela.
‘You go to the church. Don’t make the bishop wait. I’ll look for her and when I find her, I’ll bring her there. She can’t have gone far.’
As soon as her nonna had closed the door, Giovanna appeared at the top of the stairs, in full regalia. She’d been hiding on the first floor.
‘If Vitantonio’s not going to be confirmed, I won’t be either!’
The Family Religion
ON THE NIGHT before St John’s Day in late June, while they were packing to go to the house at Savelletri on the coast, one of the maids timidly asked Lady Angela why they weren’t taking the twins with them that summer.
‘If this is all about Franco’s nose, you should know that he was really asking for it, Lady Angela. When I came back from taking the flowers to the church of the Immacolata, I went into the garden through the side door and I saw him really pestering Giovanna.’
That evening, Nonna came to Donata’s house.
‘I’m not here to apologize. But perhaps I was a bit hasty.’
‘Vitantonio was only defending his sister, but you had no interest in listening to a seven-year-old boy. You’ve never truly accepted him …’
‘I won’t stand for this.’ The grande dame of the Convertini family was highly offended. ‘I consider him as much my grandchild as Giovanna and you can rest assured I treat them both equally. In fact, the only ones who have any right to complain are Matteo, Marco, Luca and Giovanni’s children, who live far away, and particularly Margherita’s, whom I only see in the summer and at Christmas.’
‘The problem isn’t how often you see them. It’s about how you treat them, about being kind and fair to them.’
‘Kindness is a sign of weakness. But you can be sure that I will always be fair with Vitantonio. I am fully aware that if my eldest son hadn’t been so imprudent and impetuous in the war your husband would still be alive and the young boy would have a father. I know that I am in his, and your, debt. And I will never forget what you did for Francesca when she was ill …’
‘You’ve always judged him more harshly than the others.’
‘You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying! You want him to be a Convertini? Well, now he is! That is why I push him so hard. You are too lenient with the boy. A little punishment is good for him; it teaches him that, if he doesn’t want to be passed over, he has to learn to stand up for himself. Vitantonio has to prepare himself for the future, he has to be able to act like a Convertini, which requires preparation and discipline. In this family we practise a religion that has its own rules and we are members of a church that never depends on others.’
‘Don’t you think that such boundless ambition is an offence to God?’
‘Nonsense! If God had wanted us all to be equal he would have created us that way!’
‘Well, I still think that it’s a sin of pride.’
‘Isn’t it also a sin to renounce a child?’ Lady Angela raised her eyebrows and stared straight at Donata. Then she smiled. ‘Of course it’s a sin! But you did it out of love, so God forgives you and I applaud you.’
The younger woman held her gaze. A few seconds passed and then Angela continued.
‘The boy needs to learn to fight and be a leader like a Convertini and you have to help me to teach him. You certainly don’t act like the daughter of a shepherd from Matera: you have the pride and drive of a Convertini – or, perhaps even more so, of an Orsini from Venice. That is the only reason I gave you custody of the children. God knows from where you get your strength, but they can learn more from you than from any of my sons.’
‘You hurt him! You’ll have to win his heart back,’ said Donata. ‘And you will also have to win back Giovanna’s respect.’
‘I’m not worried about the girl, she has the Convertini pride. But Vitantonio still has to learn that it’s not easy being part of a family that bears so many responsibilities. Or have you not understood the price I pay for being the Lady of Bellorotondo?’
The Summer House
THEY SPENT THE last week of June in Bellorotondo and the children missed the sea and dunes of Savelletri, where their nonna had gone for the summer. On the coast, during the languorous hours of those first days of summer, everything had more flavour, colours were more vivid, smells stronger and every feeling more intense. By the sea, their lives were much freer; Vitantonio and Giovanna created adventures out of nothing: they stretched out on the beach, covered in sand, and told each other secrets or searched for worms to use as bait; spread out by the water, they let the waves caress their bodies.
Vitantonio also missed Cousin Franco, who had always been his summer playmate. They had learned to fish by dunking a glass jar covered with a white rag into the shallow water: the fish entered through a small slit in the middle of the rag to feed on the bread and cheese they put inside as bait. When the boys dived in and pulled up the jar with some fish trapped inside, they shrieked with glee and told everyone in town about it.
The seaside was paradise. Vitantonio and Giovanna didn’t understand why their aunt wouldn’t let them go there this summer to be with their cousins, the way they always had. On the feast day of Sts Peter and Paul, 29 June, by which time they had begun to resign themselves to the fact that this summer wasn’t going to be like all the others, they left for the countryside, to the old Palmisano farmstead, and as soon as they set foot there they forgot about the sand, fish and friends in Savelletri.
Just on the outskirts of town, in the house where Zia’s sister-in-law Concetta now lived all by herself, the children discovered a life with even fewer rules than at the seaside. They took dips in the stone laundry trough, caught crickets in the garden, ran through the fields as the farmers cleared the dead leaves from the olive trees, and they ate dinner together at the kitchen table. In the evenings everyone gathered on the threshing floor and sat in the cool air: the grown-ups sang and told stories and the children played hide-and-seek until they were so worn out they fell asleep on their aunt’s lap.
The old Palmisano farmhouse was at the centre of a contrada, a cluster of trulli with a cistern, an oven, a small windmill and a large threshing floor, all used by three families: the Palmisanos, the Vicinos and the Galassos. Concetta and Donata were the only Palmisano women who had stayed in Bellorotondo after their husbands’ tragic deaths and they had inherited the shared property that included the house and three hectares of vineyards and olive groves. Since Donata had moved into town, Concetta took care of the land and the cow, pig and mare that they jointly owned with the Vicinos. The third family, the Galassos, never had enough even to have a share in an animal: they had six children, but only one hectare of land.
They called it the farmhouse, but it was just a modest square building around an old trullo. The conical stone roof that crowned the trullo was very elegant and on it the Palmisanos had painted in whitewash a large sun that gave off wavy rays of light. The house had two more trulli attached to it, one of which served as a pen for the animals and the other as storage for the tools and the olives. Successive renovations had added two rooms originally intended as bedrooms for when the various branches of the family multiplied, but the Great War had rendered the additions unnecessary. Despite the tragedy, Concetta and Donata refused to give up and, to challenge men and gods alike, they painted a big ‘P’ for Palmisano in the middle of the sun that presided over the central trullo. And they agreed that Concetta should take in the four eldest Galasso children, because that entire poor family was crammed in together in their one-room trullo.
The day they arrived, Concetta’s house smelled as good as the kitchen in the house on the Piazza Sant’Anna whenever Giuseppe ‘Skinny’ Vicino delivered the boxes of fruits and vegetables. The entrance to the house was covered with baskets and boxes of courgettes, onions and cucumbers, filling the whole space with their rich scent. The tomatoes brightened the entire house, especially the first Regina di Torre Canne variety, grown in vast quantities to hang up and conserve for wintertime. In one bucket nestled freshly picked fruits, the first plums and pears and some yellow hard-fleshed peaches, and on the kitchen sideboard sat a round tray filled with small apricots that gave off a deliciously sweet smell; of every conceivable shade of yellow and orange, they had burst in the heat and were covered in little black freckles. When the children went into the kitchen they saw also a couple of boxes of apricots on the floor, which Concetta was peeling to make jam.
The scent of the fruits and vegetables lingered long through the hot days; throughout the summer, more and more vegetables came into season, bringing new fragrances to vary slightly the perfume that infused the walls of the house. In late August they gathered boxes of aubergines to preserve in oil, they hung whole boughs of chilli peppers up to dry and let the ripest tomatoes occupy every room in the house. It was as if they had painted the house red and decorated it for a party: there were basins, baskets and buckets filled with plum tomatoes everywhere. Over the course of three days, Concetta, Zia and Skinny’s wife filled up the glass jars that would mean tomato chutney and sauce for the rest of the year.
Giovanna helped them scald the tomatoes. For every two she peeled, she ate one, biting into it like an apple, juice streaming down her whole face. Vitantonio was more attracted to the fruit, which he devoured in big bites straight from the trees. To escape the bees that chased after the bits of tomato and fruit stuck to their faces, hands and legs, Vitantonio and Giovanna would run and jump into the stone laundry basin. The day they had first discovered the rainwater reservoir in the middle of the garden, their dip had been a quick one; in fact they only went in so no one would know they were afraid to. They were scared of the slimy, half-rotted fig leaves that, along with the pond-skaters, floated on the surface, and of the toads that lived deep below. As soon as they stepped in, their feet sank into sludge and when Salvatore, Skinny’s son, told them that sometimes there were snakes in there, they decided that they’d had enough: they declared they were too cold and leapt out of the water, frightened.
Four days later, they were swimming in the large stone basin fearlessly. Salvatore helped Giovanna to stay afloat, holding her up with one arm under her stomach; Vitantonio loved watching the pond-skaters and chasing the tadpoles, convinced that when they became frogs he would be able to keep them as pets. In mid-summer, the reservoir dried up and wouldn’t be filled again until the late-August storms; but before it went dry, swimming rated second best on the list of his favourite things that Vitantonio made each evening with Zia. The first was always listening to the grown-ups tell stories after supper, as they waited for the sea breeze to come in before going to sleep.
When the level of rainwater in the reservoir was too low for swimming, they made their first trip to the Stagno di Mangiato, halfway between Martina Franca and Alberobello. They went in the cart driven by Salvatore, travelling at the pace of the mare’s slow, measured gait, which she maintained even as she lifted her tail to take a long piss and Giovanna and Vitantonio burst out laughing. The children spent all morning running through the local forest and, before lunch, jumped into the dark, thick water of the stagno. After they’d eaten and lain in the shade, they dived back in the pond, to the shock of the farmers passing by on their way to Alberobello: they went to the stagno for a stroll, but they would never have thought to swim in it. Later they
sang songs, stretched out on the meadow with the adults; and at mid-afternoon they started back and Vitantonio was allowed to hold the reins for a little while. After that first visit to the pond at Mangiato, the trips there were top of the list of the day’s best moments that the boy recited to Zia each evening.
By the end of the summer, Vitantonio and Giovanna could reach the long-necked figs that grew beside the laundry, which never made it to the table because they ate them right off the tree. When the days grew shorter they had to come inside earlier and they used that extra time to shell green almonds and sort them by size. They rolled the nuts back and forth along the kitchen table, pressing them with their hands to strip the husks, while laughing and telling stories.
On the last day of September a bit of rain fell and the fig trees were covered in fruit that had been split open by the drops, especially the Santa Croce and Dell’Abate varieties. They were no good when the water got into them like that, but the children gathered them anyway and laughed, because the figs showed their red pulpy flesh as if they had yawning mouths. At dusk they were all holed up in the kitchen and Concetta was bustling about the stove. When the children smelled the sweet scent of tomato sauce, their eyes grew wide as saucers as they tried to figure out what she was making; for days all they’d eaten was chickpeas and broadbean soup with chicory. Just then Zia came in, and when she saw the sauce she immediately guessed her sister-in-law’s plans.
‘Stuffed aubergine for Sunday dinner?’
‘You know what they say: it’s not Christmas without cream-filled apostle’s fingers; it’s not Easter without lamb and rice, and it’s not Easter Monday without sartú; it’s not a wedding banquet without sugared almonds and it’s not summer without a nice big plate of stuffed aubergine.’
‘And when have you ever eaten those things?’