Lives of the Saints

by Nino Ricci

  XVII

  By Christmas my mother’s loose dresses had begun to swell around her waist, hanging like tents above her shins; and with each day the tension in our house seemed to thicken, as if the swelling itself had become the measure of it, was responding to it like a gauge or meter. Then on Christmas morning, my grandfather broke a silence that had lasted more than two months.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he said to my mother. ‘You’re coming to church.’

  My mother was standing at the side counter scrubbing a pot with fistfuls of dirt.

  ‘He’s crazy,’ she muttered, when my grandfather had gone into his room to dress; but after a moment she abruptly ceased her scrubbing, wiped her hands on her apron, and went up to her room.

  I was the first to be dressed, and stood waiting at the kitchen door in my Sunday suit and blackened shoes, staring out into the street. The morning was cold and clear and brilliant, the village coated with a thin crust of snow that had fallen in the night; the coldness crept up at my ankles and wrists, my suit grown too small, almost two years old now, not replaced that year as I’d hoped it would by a new one from Rocca Secca. Finally the bell began to toll, with all the unbridled violence and clarity of a crisp winter morning, cracking the air with its peals. The bell was coated with a layer of pure silver: during the war, it was said, Father Nick’s predecessor had smeared it with soot to protect it from the Germans, and my mother said that Father Nick had not cleaned it since; but this morning it was polished to a sheen, glinting brightly from its tower as it swung to and fro and caught the sun, seeming to silver the air with its fine hollow ringing.

  My grandfather emerged finally from his room in his fedora and baggy corduroy suit, his medals pinned in a line to his breast pocket, the silver and bronze medallions of them freshly polished. He came up to the door and stared into the street, grimacing at the light.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said finally.

  But the door to my mother’s room creaked open now and my mother appeared at the top of the stairs, dressed not in one of her loose dresses but in a white blouse and a black skirt which fit tight around her waist, the swell there rising up like a hill. She had wrapped a blue shawl around her shoulders, her hair flowing over it in loose waves, and her face was composed in a look of stern resoluteness, her eyes suddenly alive again for the first time in months, as if they had caught a glint of light and scattered it back like cut glass.

  Outside, the sun had already begun to melt the night’s snow, crystal drops falling from the eaves of houses, small icicles forming on the goat horns posted above doorways to protect against the evil eye. The bells had stopped tolling now, but up ahead some of the villagers were still passing through the square. Then behind us a door creaked open and a babble of family noises filled the street, curses and babies’ cries—the Mastronardis, late for mass. But as they came up behind us, overtaking us because of my grandfather’s slow pace, their voices went suddenly quiet. They made a small arc around us, eyes averted, mumbling holiday greetings which my grandfather returned with a stiff formality.

  We would be the last to arrive. The church would be full today, congregants spilling out into the porch; but a few places would still have been left free for my grandfather in the front pew, no one having thought yet to strip that privilege from him. In a moment the Mastronardis, too, had disappeared up the church steps, and when we came finally into the square, our shoes crunching strangely loud against the snow underfoot, it was deserted and still, the barren trees on the embankment leaning towards us like silent magi, offering down their crystal drops of melting snow.

  XVIII

  If the cock was in the fields, the men of Valle del Sole said, the hen would lay her eggs in someone else’s nest. Yet that was what the men had always done, left their wives behind while they travelled out to farm their own fields or to earn a wage, away for days or months at a time, or now, if they worked in France or Switzerland, or across the sea, sometimes for years. Their fears had given birth to a wealth of proverbs: ‘Guard your women like your chickens,’ they said, ‘or they’ll make food for the neighbour’s table;’ or ‘A woman is like a goat: she’ll eat anything she sees in front of her.’ Yet it was the women of the village who had been harshest towards my mother, and who watched hawk-eyed from their stoops for the slow progress of her disease, as if they had taken it upon themselves to keep the disease from spreading; and even at mass now, and afterwards as we filed back into the village, the men seemed merely awkward and put out by my mother’s presence, passing by us stoop-shouldered, their eyes averted almost guiltily, as if they had been forced into a posture that did not sit well with them, while the women avoided my mother still with a cold-eyed rectitude, hurrying their children around us with their backs straight and their eyes forward.

  But later, after we’d finished a sullen meal with Zia Lucia and Marta, my mother just clearing away the dishes, there was a knock at our door. Marta’s eyes darted to the door with a look of wild-eyed curiosity, but for a moment no one moved to answer it, as if we could not make sense of the sound we’d heard there.

  ‘Go on, Vittorio, open it,’ Zia Lucia said finally.

  A moment later Giuseppina and her husband and children were huddled in a close group inside the doorway, reeking of winter and looking stiff and formal in their Christmas clothing. Almost in unison they uttered a forced ‘buon natale,’ Giuseppina moving awkwardly towards the centre of the room, offering a tray she’d held in the crook of an arm towards my mother as she pulled a white cloth from it.

  ‘I brought you some pastries,’ she said. ‘You probably didn’t have time to make any yourself.’

  She’d brought a tray of ostie, paper-thin wafers like large communion hosts sandwiching a thick layer of honey and chopped almonds. Every family in the village had irons for making their ostie and their cancelle, crusty diamond-shaped waffles, at holiday times, the irons made up by the blacksmith in Rocca Secca and bearing the family name or initial on the plates, so it came out in relief on each pastry; but this Christmas our own irons had sat in their corner of the kitchen untouched.

  ‘Grazie,’ my mother said, but she didn’t reach out to take the tray. ‘Why don’t you offer some to the children?’ Giuseppina’s husband still hovered near the doorway, cap in hand, his children grouped around him awkwardly, as if for a photograph.

  ‘Come in and sit down,’ my grandfather said gruffly. ‘Cristina, get a glass for Alberto.’

  ‘It’s so nice what Father Nicola did with the church this year,’ Giuseppina was saying. ‘The wise men and the little animals and the baby. I went up after and even the diapers were made of silk. Silk diapers! The whole thing must have cost a fortune.’

  ‘You paid for it,’ my mother said.

  But now there was another knock at the door and Di Lucci burst into the room, his wife and one of his sons (he always left the other at home on Christmas, to tend the shop) hanging back behind him.

  ‘Oh, buon natale!’ he called out, plunking a bottle of brandy on the table. ‘Bicchieri, Cristina, glasses for everyone! A Christmas toast!’ And he immediately helped himself to one of the ostie.

  ‘Sit down, Andò,’ my grandfather said. ‘Cristí, bring us some more glasses.’

  And so our home, which for months had known only a lenten silence, was once again filled with a little life and conversation. Some consensus had been reached, it seemed, at dozens of houses across the village, my mother’s presence at church, debated and discussed over Christmas dinner, finally taken perhaps as some kind of a sign, the sign of the repentance and guilt which the villagers had no doubt long been waiting for; and now they felt free to flock to the sinner like comforters to Job, for the matter had passed out of their hands and into the hands of God. If anyone had noticed the cold defiance with which my mother had walked down the aisle of the church and taken her place at her pew, they had chosen to ignore it; what my mother thought, after all, was her own business, but the people had to have a sign. It was as if my mot
her had simply written a character in the air, a cipher, and those who looked on it were happy enough to give it the meaning that suited them.

  As the afternoon passed our house began to fill. Alfredo Mastroantonio came by, former head of the comitato and, it was rumoured, a candidate to fill the position of mayor my grandfather had vacated; though he stopped in only to offer an overly hearty buon natale, straining to force a little gaiety into his usual stiff formality, and to drop off a bottle of amaretto for my grandfather. But several of the neighbours stopped in too, as well as my grandfather’s nephews and nieces; and soon the tray of ostie was empty, everyone taking a ritual one as they entered the house, to be replaced by plates full of cancelle and other pastries, children flitting between the grown-ups like ghosts to dart a quick arm towards the kitchen table and then retreat to a corner with their catch. A dozen conversations buzzed at once, swelling to a peak and then lulling suddenly to build again, borne along by some secret rhythm; babies in their mother’s arms cried just loud enough to be heard above the din, until a mother interrupted herself suddenly to cry ‘Oh, basta!’ and her baby retreated into a brief whimpering silence.

  The room had gradually divided in two, the women standing near the side counter, where my mother was constantly pouring drinks and washing glasses, the men grouping around the kitchen table, straddled backwards over chairs. But a strange shift seemed to have happened since that morning: the women had dropped their straightbacked rectitude, as if they had suddenly remembered some sin or crime for which they themselves had gone unpunished, now openly solicitous towards my mother, offering to help pass out drinks and pastries, to wash glasses, even though my mother refused them each time with the same tired smile; but the men, when my mother came round to serve them, made way for her with a casual indifference, as if she were invisible, and wrapped up in their own conversations they did not bother so much as to glance up at her as they took a drink or pastry from her proffered tray. It was as if something in my mother’s misfortune had made them suddenly feel invulnerable and strong, and they joked with each other in a way that seemed strangely candid and coarse, all their timidness gone. My grandfather, though, sat by saying little, downing glasses of brandy in quick gulps. He reached an arm out feebly once to draw Giuseppina’s little girl Rosina to him as she reached out to the table for a pastry; but Rosina shied away from him, and he quickly withdrew. From a corner of the room Marta watched over us all like a fate, nibbling on a host, and when I followed her eyes they seemed always to light away from the centre of things—on my mother scrubbing glasses at the sideboard, her back to the room, her shoulders working with a restrained violence; on my grandfather turning suddenly to spit into the fire.

  But as twilight descended, the light from the fire casting long flickering shadows across the room, the guests began to take their leave. Soon the last of them had gone, leaving the same air of desolation as the village square had after the festival, the kitchen quickly reverting to its familiar heavy silence. My grandfather sat staring silently into the fire while my mother lit the lamp that hung above the table and set out some bread and cheese. She poured out a glass of wine and my grandfather reached back to take it up, his hand trembling.

  ‘They came here,’ he said, still staring into the fire, ‘to laugh at us.’

  My mother sat down at the table and took up a slice of bread, tearing it in half with a quick pull.

  ‘They’re idiots,’ she said finally. ‘It was only for your sake that I didn’t chase them out of here with a whip.’ But my grandfather wheeled round suddenly and slammed his glass onto the table.

  ‘For my sake! Was it for my sake you behaved like a common whore? Do you think you’re better than those people? They are my people, not you, not someone who could do what you’ve done. I’ve suffered every day of my life, per l’amore di Cristo, but I’ve never had to walk through this town and hang my head in shame. Now people come to my house like they go to the circus, to laugh at the clowns! You’ve killed me Cristina, you killed your mother when you were born and now you’ve killed me, as surely as if you’d pulled a knife across my throat. In all my days I’ve never raised a hand against you but now I wish to God I’d locked you in the stable and raised you with the pigs, that you’d died and rotted in the womb, that you hadn’t lived long enough to bring this disgrace on my name!’

  My grandfather had taken up his cane and risen from his chair, his face flushed. My mother flinched, as if she expected him to raise up his cane against her; but without looking back at her he crossed the room to his bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. But the silence was broken again now by muddled sounds from his room—a crash, a thud, a cry of pain. In an instant my mother was at the door; but when she had opened it a crack it wedged up against some obstacle.

  ‘My leg,’ my grandfather said, his voice tight with pain. He had fallen, his bedroom table toppled onto him and one leg stretching up at an awkward angle towards the door, blocking it. My mother knelt and reached a hand into the room to move the leg aside; but my grandfather let out another cry of pain.

  ‘Don’t move it.’

  My mother rose and stood a moment undecided, her eyes wildly searching the room till they alighted finally on the axe by the wood pile.

  ‘Stand back, Vittorio.’

  She had the axe now. She clicked the bedroom door shut again and swung the axe hard against the door frame near the bottom hinge, the wood there splintering with a sharp crack.

  ‘Go get Di Lucci,’ she said. ‘And tell him to bring the rack from the church. We’ll need it to carry him.’ But I stood for a moment frozen, awed by the force of my mother’s swings—she nearly had the bottom hinge free—until finally she turned to me and shouted, ‘Hurry, per l’amore di Cristo!’ and in a flash I was out the door and running once again up to Di Lucci’s bar.

  XIX

  By the time I returned, Di Lucci and Father Nicola hurrying behind me with the rack from the church, my mother had axed the door off its hinges. We had picked up a small crowd en route, and all along the street now the word was going round that lu podestà had been hurt; within minutes half the village had gathered, crowding into the kitchen and around the front doors, craning for a better view. Father Nick, in his black cassock and wide-brimmed cleric’s hat, stood next to my mother and me at the doorway to my grandfather’s room, rubbing his hands against the cold, while inside Di Lucci issued instructions to two of my mother’s cousins, Virginio Catalone and his brother Pastore, who had elbowed their way through the crowd and were struggling now to wedge the rack into the tight space between the bed and my grandfather’s prone form. Virginio and Pastore, identical twins, sullen and thick-set, had kept clear of our house since my mother’s troubles had started; but they had not hesitated to push their way to the front of the crowd when the word had gone out that my grandfather was hurt.

  ‘Try to slide it under him, like a spoon,’ Di Lucci was saying. But finally the two men, ignoring Di Lucci, tilted the bed up against the wall with a single thrust and laid the rack flat on the floor. My grandfather let out a grunt as they lifted him onto it, his jaw clenched with the pain.

  ‘Careful,’ my mother said sharply. ‘Can’t you see you’re hurting him?’

  ‘He’s broken his leg,’ Father Nick said.

  ‘Grazie, dottore.’

  We stood aside as Virginio and Pastore carried the rack through the crowded kitchen and into the street, where a few thick flakes of snow had begun to fall. But now it was suddenly obvious that there would be no way of getting my grandfather into Di Lucci’s cramped Fiat in his present state. Someone suggested that the front and back windshields be smashed away, and the rack slid through them.

  ‘Don’t be crazy,’ Di Lucci said, paling. ‘And anyway how would I drive, tell me, squashed under that rack like a worm?’

  ‘Vittorio,’ Father Nick said, standing by with a look of forced calmness, ‘go inside and get a blanket to cover your grandfather.’

  When I had
come out again with a blanket, my mother was coming down the street trailing Mastronardi’s mule and cart, a lantern swinging from one hand.

  ‘At this rate you’ll be here all night,’ she said, pulling up in front of the house. ‘Load him into the cart, there’s no other way. Has anyone thought to cover him?’ Then, seeing me standing with the blanket still in my hands, she took it from me and bent to drape it over my grandfather, brushing away the snow that had already begun to collect on his clothes.

  ‘Ma, Cristina,’ Di Lucci said, ‘it’ll take you half the night to get him to Rocca Secca on that cart. In this weather.’ It had begun to snow in earnest now.

  ‘Do you have any other ideas?’

  ‘At least I could drive to Rocca Secca and see if they’ll send out the ambulance.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that ambulance hasn’t left the garage since the war. And on Christmas night? They wouldn’t come out here for Christ himself. But go on, if you want to, see what you can do. In the meantime I’ll start out on my own. Someone bring some more blankets, per l’amore di Cristo.’