The Black Madonna

by Louisa Ermelino

  Amadeo laughed. He asked Natale if there was brandy. Natale had only one bottle that had been brought back from France during the Great War. No one had ever asked for brandy before. He opened the bottle and they drank it. The sun was almost down, the brandy almost finished, when Amadeo got up to go back to Zio Carmelo’s. He had insisted to Natale that he wasn’t marrying anyone, but Natale slapped him on the back. “You’re not fooling me,” he said.

  By the time Amadeo stumbled home drunk, he believed Natale. He was convinced that he was marrying Magdalena Caparetti, the most beautiful girl in Castelfondo. The question was why he was the only one in Castelfondo who didn’t know it.

  He rang the bell outside Zio Carmelo’s house. It was the one house in the village with a doorbell but no one ever used it.

  “The devil,” Zia Guinetta cried out, startled from sleep. “Who else would ring the doorbell?” Zio Carmelo opened the door, and Amadeo fell in. Zia Guinetta pulled him close to her to smell for a woman but there was only the stink of alcohol and she held him in her arms, his weight making her stumble. She helped him over to the bed and took off his shoes. She rubbed the leather with her hands, admiring it, wondering if the shoes would fit Tommaso, and if so, could she induce Amadeo to leave them when he went back to America. Amadeo was mumbling something and trying to sit up but Zio Carmelo held him down and made him drink a tea that Zia Guinetta had brewed. She whispered that it would make Amadeo sleep until tomorrow.

  “What do you think happened?” Zio Carmelo asked his wife.

  “What do I know?” she said. “But everyone’s patience is wearing thin. It’s time to give fate a shove.”

  The next morning, when Amadeo woke up, red-eyed and ill, Zia Guinetta made a paste from the herbs in her garden and rubbed his temples. She tied a wet rag tight around his head and brought him his coffee black.

  “So,” she said, sitting near him, “you don’t feel so good. Where were you yesterday?”

  “With Natale . . .”

  “Oh, that gossip, worse than the barber . . .”

  “And I hear, Zia, that there’s going to be a wedding, a big wedding, with fireworks and a brass band, a festa as big as the festa for the Black Madonna.”

  “Eh . . .” Zia Guinetta said. She looked up when Zio Carmelo came in from the front room. “Those big mouths,” he said. “Those horses’ asses,” he said, having overheard. “Those chiacchieroni. I’ll kick their knees from under them. I’ll beat them black and blue.”

  “Zio . . .”

  “Never mind.” Zio Carmelo sank down next to Amadeo on the bed. He took his hand, and pushed his head back down on the pillow. “Don’t worry, figlio mio . . . It won’t be ruined. I’ll take care of everything.” He stood up, paced back and forth, cursing the town, the province, Mussolini, the Abyssinians. “I should have gone to America when I had the chance,” he said. “This is no place for honest men.”

  Amadeo watched his uncle pace the room. His head hurt when he moved his eyes. “Tell me, Zio, what’s this about a wedding?”

  Zio Carmelo sat down again on the bed. He put his arm around Amadeo’s shoulders, lifted him to a sitting position, and kissed his left temple. The smell of Zia Guinetta’s herbs made him gasp. “Ah, now it’s ruined.”

  “What’s ruined?”

  “The surprise . . . the wonderful surprise I’d planned. Finished . . . ruined . . .” and he raved and cursed and said he would cripple every man in the café with a shot to the ankles. He said if this was Sicily, they would pay with more than their legs.

  “Zio, one more time I’m going to ask you . . .”

  “Forgive me, figlio mio. I get too excited. If not for Guinetta’s medicine, I would be dead long ago from a nervous condition. My Guinetta. Ah, there’s nothing like love. I married her against my mother’s wishes. Poor Mama. She died of a broken heart. I left my wedding bed to close her eyelids. The things I could tell you, but forget about me. What’s important now is you.”

  Amadeo held his head. Zio Carmelo spoke in his ear. He kept his voice to a whisper. He told Amadeo that the most beautiful girl in Castelfondo, the one who lived in the house that they would pass by on their walks, that very same girl, was going to be his. “I’ve arranged the betrothal and I’ll arrange the wedding feast,” he said. Zio Carmelo told him how this girl, who loved him already, would be his wife, a mother to his infant son. She would give him more sons, Zio Carmelo said. Her own mother was gone, better this way, no apron strings to cut. Zio Carmelo burst into tears when he finished, tears of joy, he assured Amadeo, who had sat through it all without saying a word, except for an occasional moan from the pain behind his eyes.

  Zio Carmelo covered his face with his hands, his fingers open like lattice, and he looked through them to Amadeo’s face. “Then it’s settled,” he said suddenly, kissing him on the mouth with a loud noise. “Tomorrow. When do you want to see your bride? Not today. You look terrible. She’ll run away if she sees you like this. Tomorrow, then, yes? Guinetta? He’ll be fine by tomorrow?” Zia Guinetta sat in the corner. She crossed herself when Amadeo pulled himself out of the bed.

  “Are you crazy?” he said to them. The sound of his own voice, his shouting, made him stagger. He could hardly hold up his head but his fury sent the cousins, Tommaso and Maria, to crouch together by the back wall. They whispered, heads touching. “How could you think I would come here for a visit and get married just like that . . . like some old greaseball . . . Forget it, Zio. When I want a wife, I’ll find one. This is the twentieth century for chrissakes, not that anyone here knows it.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.

  Zio Carmelo stood over him. He squeezed his eyes, hoping for tears. “I was looking out for you,” he said. “Sometimes a man doesn’t know what’s good for him. That’s what family is for, to help him through life. You should be grateful, but no, Mr. Big Shot, instead you insult me.” He turned his back on Amadeo. Zia Guinetta nodded her head. She thought it was going well.

  Amadeo lay back down. “Well, I’m sorry, Zio, but forget it. I can look out for myself.”

  Zio Carmelo took this opportunity to sit next to Amadeo again and embrace him. “But, figlio mio,” he said, “you don’t understand. It’s all arranged. This is a small town.” He pointed to his head. “Small-minded people.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “Don’t you care about your uncle? How he holds up his head? I promised a festa . . . Everyone’s waiting.”

  “Zio, this is my life.”

  “And the girl . . . this poor girl . . . what about her life? Ruined, that’s what. She’ll never find a husband. ‘Abandoned by the American,’ that’s what they’ll say . . . disgraced, an old maid. She may just as well drown herself in a well.”

  “I thought she was the most beautiful girl in Castelfondo.”

  “She is. She is. Would I lie? Would I get you anything but the best?”

  “So?”

  “So, nothing. Your head is made of wood. If you leave her, no one will want her. Her poor father trusted me and now look . . .”

  “Zio . . .”

  “Never mind. There’s nothing to say.”

  “Right. Let’s forget it.”

  “You have no choice. A man of honor fulfills his obligations.”

  “I do have a choice.”

  “No. No. No. The father might even try to kill you. Tell him, Guinetta. He won’t listen to me.”

  Zia Guinetta came over to the bed and pulled on Zio Carmelo’s arm. “Let him sleep,” she said. “Let him be.”

  Zio Carmelo jumped up. “Sleep? I’ll kill him. I won’t wait for the father. I’ll do it myself. Thick, like his mother . . .”

  Amadeo shook his head. He pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. “Not now, Zio . . . Please, calm down. Later.”

  “Come, Carmelo,” Zia Guinetta said, and she took him outside into the street. She let him rave until he was tired, until he was grumbling under his breath. “Let me talk to him,” she said. “
You go.” She gave him a blanket and told him to go into the open air, take a walk, have his nap in the fields. He said he would go, only to please her, but the scent of the widow was already in his nostrils. He had done all he could with Amadeo.

  Zia Guinetta made an exceptional dinner while Amadeo slept. She woke him when it was ready and set the table for just the two of them. She poured the wine into the crystal glasses the priest had given her when she married. She put out cookies filled with almonds and dates and her secrets. She led Amadeo to the table. She put a hand out to touch his cheek and then pulled out his chair. “For you,” she said. When he sat down, she stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders. He was surprised at how long he had slept and how light-headed he still felt. “Now, we talk. You and me.”

  “Zia, you can talk from now to doomsday. Nothing’s going to change.”

  “Ah, Amadeo . . . Don’t be angry.”

  “I’m not. Let’s just forget it.”

  Zia Guinetta poured more wine. She bent over and cut Amadeo’s meat with her knife. “This is a lovely girl, a good girl. She’ll take care of your son. She’ll look out for you. And anyway, Amadeo, what’s done is done. Sometimes you just have to accept what is. You leave this girl now, she’s ruined. Her life is finished before it starts. You can live with that? Could God forgive you that?” Zia Guinetta shook her head. She crossed herself and kissed her fingers and touched them to Amadeo’s lips.

  Amadeo put down his fork. “What am I going to do with some peasant girl in New York? It would never work out. Zio made the deal. He’ll have to get out of it. It’s not my contract. Now, can we eat?”

  “She’s a good cook. You marry this girl, you’ll eat good.” Amadeo was opening his mouth to protest again when Zia Guinetta suddenly stood up. The knife she had cut his meat with was still in her hand and she waved it in his face. “You don’t marry this girl, you disgrace us. Your uncle doesn’t go to the piazza ever again. Your cousin Tommaso rots in the house. Maria never marries. If you don’t do this thing, then we all come back with you to New York. We can’t live here anymore.” She threw the knife on the table and sat down. She leaned over, put her hand on Amadeo’s arm. “Just think about it.” Her voice was suddenly soft, seductive. “One meeting . . . just one afternoon.”

  “I’m leaving,” he said.

  “Caro mio,” Zia Guinetta said. She handed him the biggest cookie on the plate. “What’s one afternoon? What is it? You can’t do that? . . . And then you go back to New York.”

  Amadeo bit into the cookie. Zia Guinetta smiled and he remembered what Terragrossa had told him on the long ride into Castelfondo. Amadeo felt the noose tighten around his neck. The cookie stuck in his throat.

  In New York, on the stoop outside the building on Spring Street, Teresa sat in the sun with the two boys. The women asked her how much longer before Amadeo Pavese came back. Teresa waved her arms in the air. She raised her voice. “I think the earth’s swallowed him,” she said. “There was a letter when he first arrived, from Naples, and then nothing.”

  “Peccato . . .” the women said. “What could have happened? Poverino,” they said, chucking Salvatore under the chin, pinching his cheek. This made tears slide down his face, which made the women sigh. “First his mother and brother, and now . . .” They turned to Teresa. “If he never comes back? What will you do?” Teresa shrugged a shoulder. She tilted her head to the side and looked up to heaven. “I’ll manage. I take care of Nicola, don’t I? What’s another?” and she kissed the tip of Salvatore’s ear.

  “You miss Amadeo?” Mary Ziganetti said, eyes narrowed. “All those Sundays, just the two of you . . .” The women on the stoop giggled.

  “Amadeo Pavese pays me to look after his son,” Teresa said, standing up. “It’s the boy I love. You forget I’m married? One man is enough for a lifetime.”

  The women put their heads together when she left. “What a fate,” Jumbo’s mother Antoinette said. “One way or the other men are forever abandoning her.”

  Rumors flew that Amadeo had been killed, bewitched, fallen into a ravine, kidnapped by brigands. They were not all wrong.

  Zia Guinetta laid her plans. The next few days found her on her knees in front of the Black Madonna. She spread out herbs and flowers to dry in the sun. Late at night, she left the house and came back at dawn with blood on her hands. She wore amulets against the wolves and the evil spirits of the unbaptized babies that roamed the countryside when the sun set. She visited Magdalena and told her about Amadeo’s reluctance.

  Magdalena cried and Zia Guinetta put her arms around the girl. “Trust me,” she said. “Let me teach you. Give me what I ask and do what I say. Tell no one.”

  Magdalena nodded, her head on Zia Guinetta’s shoulder. “Whatever you want,” she said. Zia Guinetta could feel Magdalena’s lips forming the words. She took Magdalena’s hand and closed it around the polished leg bone that she wore around her neck. Zia Guinetta kissed the top of the girl’s head. “Everything will be yours,” she told her.

  Things were happening in Castelfondo. Amadeo came down with a strange fever and was delirious for three days. Terragrossa’s car wouldn’t start. He lay under it in the hot sun and cursed the men who made it. He raised the hood and looked at the engine until his shirt was soaked with sweat. He went home in the evenings talking to himself, his face and hands streaked with dirt.

  Amadeo couldn’t eat. Zia Guinetta cooked him delicate dishes and clear soups. She boiled greens and strained the liquid. She held him upright in his bed and fed it to him with a small spoon. Tommaso told the men in the piazza that Amadeo was ill, but that his mother would make him well, and the men brought the news home.

  When Amadeo was better, still weak but strong enough to leave his bed, Zia Guinetta set up the meeting with Magdalena. She promised Giacomo Caparetti that the two would not be alone, not for a moment, and the morning of the tryst, the first thing she did was put a chair for herself in the corner near the stove.

  She put the table and two chairs near the door so there would be light, but not so near the door that anyone passing could hear what was going on inside. She woke Amadeo up and gave him tea with a red leaf in it. He took the tea but he wouldn’t put on the corduroy suit the tailor in town had made for him. Zia Guinetta shrugged her shoulders. “Never mind,” she said. “Tommaso’s wanted a suit like this for a long time.” She brushed off the dust that had collected on the shoulders of the suit and put it back on the hook near the door. She sat Amadeo at the table. “Poverino,” she said, “weak as a kitten, but you’ll see, after today, you’ll be well again.”

  Zia Guinetta opened the top half of the double door and leaned out to watch for Magdalena and her father. Amadeo was just finishing the tea when Zia Guinetta let out a long, fervent sigh. “Here, here she comes.” Zia Guinetta pulled Amadeo’s arm, never taking her eyes off the street. “Quick,” she said. “Take a look. See? Did I tell you? Have you ever seen a girl beautiful like this one?” She pointed down the twisted street.

  “I’d have to have the eyes of a hawk to see that far away, Zia.” He tried to lean farther out the door but she pushed him away.

  “Shh . . . You don’t want to look anxious.” She waved a hand at him and sighed. “Where did she get such beauty? God . . . the devil . . . her mother . . . those same eyes, light behind them . . . Quick, sit down. They’re almost here.” Zia Guinetta went and sat in the chair in the corner.

  Amadeo wondered again how he had gotten himself into this swindle but he was stuck and he knew it. He had agreed to meet the girl. He was so tired. He had been so ill. He would meet the girl and explain to her. He would give her money to add to her dowry, to make up for the misfortune of her engagement, and everyone would be satisfied. He was talking to himself when Magdalena Caparetti came into the room. Zia Guinetta hissed at him from her chair in the corner by the stove and he stood up. He shook hands with her father, who was short and a little crooked and wore a felt hat that a dog had chewed. Magdalena looked straig
ht at Amadeo when Zia Guinetta introduced them and he could see that she was very young and that her eyes were extraordinary.

  She did not put out her hand to him. He was not supposed to touch her, and he let his hands fall to his sides. The father left and Zia Guinetta motioned for them to sit down. Magdalena Caparetti sat in the chair opposite Amadeo. She put her hands on the table in front of her and laced her fingers. Amadeo could see the dirt under her nails. He could not take his eyes off her. She stared back at him.

  Zia Guinetta served them coffee and cakes she had baked that morning. Before she went back to her chair in the corner, she put a cake on Amadeo’s plate and broke it in half with her fingers. “Eat,” she said, her hand on the back of his neck. She made a sign to Magdalena. Take nothing, it said.

  “So, you’re Magdalena,” Amadeo said. He ate a piece of cake and she smiled at him. Amadeo was finished. She knew it. He was hers. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. Her father had told her to braid it but she had left it loose. Zia Guinetta had told her not to listen to her father. Magdalena’s hair was dark and wild and covered her shoulders. There was a berry stain on her cheek. Without thinking, Amadeo leaned over to wipe it off. Magdalena didn’t move.

  Zia Guinetta rocked in her chair in the corner. She wondered if this match was such a good idea after all. It was obvious to her that the girl was an occasion of sin. What had the Creator been thinking? And then there was the mother. There’s nothing to do about blood, she thought. But could they have tempted Amadeo with an ordinary girl? It was for all of them, this match. She crossed herself.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” Amadeo said to the girl sitting across from him. “Do you know what they’re proposing, your father, my uncle?” Zia Guinetta shifted in her chair. She leaned forward, but Amadeo made a movement with his hand as if to hold her back. He never took his eyes from Magdalena’s.

  Magdalena straightened her back. “You will take me to America,” she said, “to New York.”