by Nino Ricci
As soon as the service had finished, four husky members of the comitato squeezed their way through the crowd at the back of the church and made their way up the aisle, bearing a wooden rack that was normally used to carry coffins from the church to the cemetery. They set the rack before the arched niche to the right of the chancel that held the Madonna, a large smiling figure in starry halo and robes of bright blue, the infant Jesus cradled in her lap. We remained in our seats while she was being set down onto the rack, Father Nick waiting patiently on the chancel steps to begin the procession, aspergillum in hand. The Monsignor had sat down again in one of the chancel pews—he would not, it seemed, be taking part in the procession, but was lending it the use of his baldacchino and his altar boys, who were struggling now to re-erect the canopy in the church aisle while the committee members waited to squeeze under it with their load.
The head of that year’s committee, Alfredo Mastroantonio, had come up a side aisle to greet the Monsignor. Alfredo, an uncle of Father Nick’s, was respected in the town because he didn’t work, living off the rent from land he’d inherited; and though he wasn’t rich, didn’t own a car or a big house, he always walked around the village in a suit, and he spoke to everyone in a careful, florid Italian, because he’d been to lascuola superiore in Rocca Secca. He approached the Monsignor now on bended knee, bringing his lips to the back of the Monsignor’s proffered hand and then loudly thanking him for his presence, so that heads in the church turned towards him. When he rose his eyes shot briefly towards my grandfather a few feet away in the front pew; he seemed about to call him to the attention of the Monsignor, his hand gesturing out in our direction, but at the last instant he checked the gesture and suddenly clasped his hands together as if closing us out, then shifted position, still speaking brightly to the monsignor, until his back was to us.
The procession was underway now, Father Nick in front, walking solemnly towards the exit and sprinkling the aisle with his aspergillum, his voice rising up in song, and the Madonna, seated atop her litter like an ancient queen, the purple canopy above her, falling in behind him. Soon the aisles were crowded with people sliding out of their pews, the air filled with song:
Your eyes are more beautiful than the sea
Your skin is as white as ocean pearls
And Your cheeks, kissed by the Saviour, Your Son
Are two roses, and Your lips are flowers.
My grandfather and I brought up the rear, he grim and silent beside me as we made our way down the aisle and out the door. The procession was stretched out now along the path that sloped down behind Di Lucci’s in a switchback that opened onto the main square; it moved slowly, and even at my grandfather’s pace we were able to keep up with it. But the grey mass which had been hanging in the air before the service had thickened, the wind grown wet and cold; and by the time my grandfather and I had brought the tail end of the procession into the square, a light drizzle had begun to fall.
XI
From the square the procession moved down the S that cut towards the lower edge of town. The column had begun to swell as people who had missed the service came out of their homes to join it, lifting sweaters and jackets above their heads to shield themselves from the drizzle. In front of some houses sat tables covered with white cloth like altars and laid out with fruit and eggs and garlands of dried figs; here the procession would stop for a moment and women would come forward with their offerings, some placing fruits and eggs at the Madonna’s feet or hanging garlands around her neck, others thrusting bank notes into the plaster folds of her lap. From second floor balconies old black-cowled women tossed handfuls of grain or rice in the Madonna’s path as they did at weddings. One old woman threw out a fistful of coins, and a flurry of boys raced out suddenly from the line of the procession to gather them up. But I did not join them, too shy to leave my grandfather’s side; instead I reached instinctively into my pocket to palm my lucky one lira, passing it between my fingers to test again its texture and weight.
People had crowded in behind my grandfather and me now, though a small sphere of open space seemed to circle us, room enough for my grandfather to swing his cane freely. I had begun to sing, but beside me my grandfather’s lips remained sealed in stony silence, his cane swinging with a stiff, determined rhythm over the mud-slicked cobblestones. Finally the procession branched off via San Giuseppe onto Giovanni Battista, the poorer section of town, where Fabrizio lived, the street here unpaved, turned now into a thick imprinted paste under the rain and the marchers’ feet. The houses in this part of the village were built of the same thick stone as in the rest of the village, but were single-storied and more ramshackle, paint on door frames peeling, the wood underneath crumbled and rotting, windows covered in some houses only with yellowed oil-paper. Some of the houses were deserted, their owners gone to America, the shutters nailed closed and the doors boarded up, walls beginning to crumble, roofs caved in from rot and termites. We passed Fabrizio’s house, ramshackle like the rest, its tiled roof slanting in a single slope from back to front. I had never been inside it, because Fabrizio’s mother, a gaunt dark-eyed woman with a limp, always eyed me with suspicion and made me wait outside when I came to call; but from the doorway I’d made out a single dim room split down the centre by a soiled curtain, a few spare furnishings, a floor of plain hardened dirt, a fireplace that seemed simply a hollow in the wall. At night, Fabrizio had told me, he and his family slept on one side of the curtain, the goats and sheep on the other. The house seemed deserted now, no one standing before the doorway to make an offering; the family was likely out working in the fields, Fabrizio’s father one of the few in the village who seldom made a contribution for the festival.
But as we came to the end of the street, where it sloped down in a sharp switchback to join up again with via San Giuseppe, someone whispered to me from an alleyway.
‘Oh, Vittò.’
It was Fabrizio, motioning me towards him from the shadow of the alley, his cap drooping from the rain, his naked shins glistening with wet.
‘I had the sheep out,’ he said, grinning, ‘but I left them in the pasture to come and see the procession. I don’t have to cut wheat any more because I cut myself.’ He showed me a long black-scabbed scar across his calf where he had caught himself with his scythe.
‘Won’t the sheep get lost?’
‘Beh, whenever I want to go for a walk I make them jump in that hole near the cemetery where people used to hide during the war. But madonna! when I have to get them out later. They’re as fat as cows.’
On the street behind us the last stragglers of the procession were still filing by, their voices echoing briefly in the alley as they passed. Fabrizio, looking out towards them, ducked down suddenly and pulled me deeper into the alley.
‘Christ,’ he said, crouching in the shadows, ‘I think my aunt Carmella saw me. If she tells my father I was talking to you he’ll break my balls.’
Instinctively I crouched down now too and glanced behind me into the street, feeling suddenly fugitive.
‘It’s not because of you,’ Fabrizio said, whispering now, our voices seeming suddenly loud with the fading of the procession’s song. ‘It’s because of your mother and the snake. Lu malocchiu.’ He twisted his face into a scowl and brought two fingers up to his head as horns, to mimic the evil eye.
I crouched silently for a moment.
‘Can’t we play together tonight?’ I said finally.
‘It’s not safe,’ Fabrizio said. ‘We have to wait till school starts. Then we’ll have some laughs. My father’s smoking cigarettes with filters on them now.’
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette grown damp and soft with the rain.
‘Keep this for later,’ he whispered. ‘I have to go back to the sheep.’
The rain had stopped now, small patches of limpid blue appearing in the canopy of grey overhead. The procession had made its way back up via San Giuseppe and through the square again, Father Nicola still in fron
t, shaking his aspergillum, holy water mingling with the mud underfoot, Mother Mary still riding dry and purple-canopied above the crowd, bobbing with the movement of her bearers, though her canopy sagged now from the wet and from the rice and grain that had collected in it. A small crowd of watchers, Romans, mainly, stood waving at the procession from under the awning of Di Lucci’s terrace, not wanting to dirty their clothes in the mud and rain.
I took my place again next to my grandfather, who still plodded stiff and silent over the mud-slicked street, his heavy shoes clacking like hooves against the cobblestones. The wind had stiffened, but overhead the sky was clearing quickly, the patches of blue widening as the clouds flitted like ghosts towards the east, torn now into a thousand ragged shreds. As we approached the edge of town a cold sun appeared suddenly, reflecting gold and silver from the droplets of rain falling from the eaves of houses. As we approached our own house, I looked out from the line of the procession to see if my mother would appear at the door as the Madonna passed; but the house seemed deserted, even the curtains on the upper-storey balcony drawn.
The procession ended about a half-mile out of town, at the rusted iron gates that led down to the cemetery. The cemetery itself, which filled only a small plot of hedged-in land—the newly dead were usually buried in old grave sites, to save on land, a heap of anonymous bones unearthed each time a new grave was dug—lay on a grassy plateau at the bottom of a steeply-sloping dirt path; but at the cemetery gates, before the path sloped downward, stood a small, ancient chapel, its roof and walls overgrown with moss and creeping vines. The chapel would serve as the Madonna’s home until Easter, when another procession would bring her back to the church. Inside, the chapel was unadorned, to avoid temptation for thieves, the only spots of colour the small circular window of stained glass at the peak of the back wall and the mottled greens and browns of the slab of serpentine marble that formed the chapel’s tiny altar. Every year the Madonna was set in a fireplace-sized niche in the chapel’s back wall, from where she would have a clear view of the valley through the fans of clear glass in the upper half of the chapel door, and could watch over the greening of the slopes in the spring.
I had left my grandfather’s side and wormed my way up to the chapel doorway to watch the men setting the Madonna in her grotto. The canopy had been collapsed and two of the Madonna’s bearers had lifted the statue off the rack and were squeezing it now through the narrow chapel door, a small gasp coming up from the crowd as one of them stumbled on the chapel’s threshold and almost lost his grip.
‘Gently now,’ Father Nick said from inside, standing by officiously as the men squeezed past him. ‘The material is very fragile. Perhaps some day we will have a real Madonna, made of marble.’ He smiled at his joke.
‘With all due respect,’ one of the men said, gently forcing the statue into its niche, ‘this one is real too, if I can believe my shoulders. If you get a marble one you’ll have to leave it here the whole year, because no one will be able to carry it.’
‘If you get a marble one,’ someone beside me said, ‘you’ll have to make sure she isn’t pregnant yet, to cut down on the weight.’
‘Or she’ll have to leave the baby at home, like everyone else.’
But now an ear-splitting explosion echoed through the valley, and all eyes turned skyward, to where a wisp of white smoke was still lingering against the sky’s now almost solid blue. In a moment another small burst of white appeared, blossoming in the air like a flower, followed a split second later by its accompanying bang, and then at short intervals a third and a fourth; and finally a long series of bursts and blasts in quick succession, again, again, and again, the echoes accumulating one on top of the other until the air rang with them. These were the first of the fireworks, testaments to the power of loud noises, and announcing to all the valley that tonight there would be feasting and song in Valle del Sole.
XII
It was approaching nightfall by the time my grandfather and I returned home, the sun setting red and cold behind Castilucci, my bones chilled from the afternoon rain. Our kitchen, though, was warm, my mother sitting in front of a small fire, her body slouched forward to take in the heat. Two plates had been set on the table, a platter between them holding bread and a few thick slices of cheese, a decanter of wine at my grandfather’s place.
‘You couldn’t have made some soup?’ my grandfather said, but my mother did not turn away from the fire. My grandfather draped his jacket over the back of a chair and set it before the fire, then moved towards his room.
‘It’s all right to waste firewood to keep your feet warm, but not to feed your family.’
When we had changed from our damp clothes my grandfather and I sat down at the table to eat, my mother keeping her place by the fire. My grandfather downed his wine now the way Tatone Vittorio used to, in short quick gulps that emptied a glass in a few draughts; though the wine did not unleash his anger the way it had with my grandfather Vittorio, only seemed to wind it up more tightly inside him.
‘Mamma,’ I whispered, going up to her when I had finished eating, ‘aren’t you coming to listen to the music tonight?’
‘I’m not feeling very well,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I think I’ll just go to bed.’
‘Fool!’ my grandfather said suddenly, wheeling around in his chair. ‘You might as well make an announcement!’
My mother shifted in her chair, but did not turn towards him.
‘Like you did last night?’ she said finally.
‘What I do is my own business.’
‘And what I do,’ my mother said softly, staring into the fire as if sharing a secret with it, ‘is my business.’
‘Not while you’re living in this house, porca madonna! Not while you want to remain my daughter!’
His face flushed, my grandfather took up his cane and rose from his chair, leaving a plate of unfinished food. When he had gone into his room and closed the door my mother rose and cleared the table, tossing the remains of my grandfather’s food into the fire—something she never did: even the bread might have been saved for the pigs—and then going upstairs. I sat in front of the fire, prodding the embers; the piece of cheese my mother had thrown there sizzled richly for a moment before it burst finally into flames. At last my grandfather came out of his room, wearing a heavy sweater of dark wool, his suit jacket with its row of medals still drying before the fire.
‘Put on your coat,’ he said gruffly. ‘It’ll be cold.’ But now the door of my mother’s room opened and she came downstairs with my coat in hand, a thick shawl draped around her shoulders. My grandfather glanced up at her briefly as she came down the stairs and then stepped out into the darkening street, my mother and I following him, melting soon into the file of other villagers and visitors making their way to the square.
The street was lined now with cars and carts that had squeezed up along the gutter, mules snorting and braying in the chill, tugging against reins that had been tied to car fenders or to rings embedded in the fronts of houses. The square itself was already alive with people, small crowds of men in thick sweaters and women in shawls gathered around dim lanterns, children racing in and out of the shadows. Many of the chairs that had been set out in the square were filled, the older women sitting in front, to have a good view of the dance area: by the end of the evening they would be able to predict with accuracy the marriages of the coming spring. There was a bustle of activity around Di Lucci’s terrace, a steady flow of people moving in and out through the door with glasses of beer or wine in hand, dark-haired young men leaning up against the railing, a crowd gathered around a table where a card game was in progress.
To the side of the terrace, wedged between a corner of the bandstand and the bar, was a large bus that had somehow managed to squeeze its way up via San Giuseppe. Inscribed in large black capitals on its back door were the words ‘Capo di Molise,’ ‘Gruppo Folkloristico’ in smaller capitals beneath. This was the band that would be playing tonight, its presence a c
oup for the comitato, made possible by money from America: it was said the band was known all over Italy, its songs often played on the radio. Usually Valle del Sole hired a band from Rocca Secca or Capracotta, motley assortments of singers, sometimes of a single family, who arranged themselves in a semicircle on stage as if for a wedding photograph and followed the lead of a sole accordion player, with occasionally a drum and a horn or trombone for accompaniment. But Capo di Molise had come up all the way from Campobasso, a trip that would have taken the better part of a day; and the band’s equipment, already arranged under the stage’s canopy, gleaming silver and black and blood red under the light of a few lanterns, looked strange and unreal, like something that had no connection to the square or the people gathered there, that might have descended suddenly from the sky to impose itself among us.
Valle del Sole did not have any electrical service; but a web of wires led away from the band’s equipment, connecting finally to a large black cable that snaked along the ground towards the band’s bus. And around the bandstand, suspended from post to post, hung a string of white and orange bulbs, with two other strings stretching out from the stage over the dance area, one ending at Di Lucci’s terrace, the other at the eaves of the house across the square, the bulbs swaying like tiny balloons in the evening chill. For years now the people of Valle del Sole had anxiously awaited la luce, light, pressing my grandfather to lobby the government representative in Rocca Secca; and though a project had actually got underway once, the Communists from Castilucci, when they had learned that the line would not be extended as far as their town, had gone out in the night and set fire to the machinery doing the work, and all that remained of the effort now was a half mile of wireless poles that stretched like dead trees from the edge of Rocca Secca down the high road towards Valle del Sole. But tonight, it seemed, we were to have light, the white and amber bulbs hanging patiently above us, as if some miracle was shortly to fire them. The members of the comitato, for their part, rebuffed the questions that were put to them with indifferent authority.
