Things That Happened Before the Earthquake

by Chiara Barzini

  The former schedule of the house—lunch at noon, dinner at eight—ceased.

  “Eat when you’re hungry,” Rosalia told the girls. “Sleep when you’re tired.”

  The sisters descended the mountain with bunnies in their arms. They brought them home and kept them as pets. Rabbits chewed through electrical cords. The refrigerator broke, the TV short-circuited. Santino went wild with rage. Out of all the beings his wife seemed to have chosen to share her love with, he was not one of them.

  He took out his revenge on me because I’d started it. At first he stopped saying hello. He avoided me at all costs and if we ever crossed paths he wheezed, spat on the ground, and moved on.

  I bumped into him as he climbed the mountain one day. He was whipping Maradona’s flanks with a switch, urging him up the shaky path, loaded with water and beer for the Germans who lived on top. I was coming down with his girls, bunnies in our arms. He elbowed his way past them and kept walking up.

  “No more rabbits,” he commanded.

  The girls looked down and giggled.

  “Go back home! You look like feral children,” he screamed at them. He huffed and kept making his way up the mountain without acknowledging me.

  “Accà!” he brayed at Maradona, whipping him harder. The word meant “right here,” but it had the same sound as casa, meaning “home.” Here. At home. With me. Stay. Do as you’re told. Those small ideas were the only things he had to latch onto—the reassurance that everything had a place that could not be altered. Stick to me! his eyes cried, but he cringed inside. He clung to little convictions—home, wife, food, quiet—with all his strength, but nobody listened anymore: not his wife, not his animals, not his daughters. A silent rebellion had insinuated itself under their skin and there was no going back.

  At night Timoteo and I talked for hours while on our cots in the kitchen with mice and geckos to keep us company. Hearing his voice on the other side of the room made me feel safe and I knew it was the same for him. We couldn’t call our parents because there was only one pay phone on the island and it was expensive, but we had each other. In the darkness we spoke in English and it was like we became two different people, different siblings with different personalities. Language became an escape route. We could switch from one personality to another without being afraid of anyone’s judgment.

  Sometimes if my heart beat too fast I crawled into his cot and hugged him. He knew how to make me laugh. We were both learning how to bridge two worlds.

  “Max or Robert?” he asked.

  “Robert.”

  “Zio Antonio or grandma?”

  “Antonio, ovviamente!”

  We played our game of “Sophie’s choice.” Who would we be more willing to throw off a cliff into burning flames below? Our potential victims were always well calibrated and tough on the conscience.

  To know that humans were inevitably bound to make choices, even the hardest ones, gave us peace of mind. Someone always had to go off the cliff and if we could choose between two unbearable options, we’d be able to face any no-win situation. If we could toss grandmothers, pets, parents, and friends into the flames, then we could live anywhere in the world, pick any persona we wanted, accept our own parents’ poor judgment. We played into the morning hours, commenting on each other’s choices, mostly agreeing on them. Except that between our father’s film in LA working out and being given the chance to move back to Rome, I picked our father’s film. Timoteo said he’d move back to Italy no matter what was on the other side of the cliff.

  11

  Naked on the rocks by the sea the Germans looked like dying bulls with sagging sacs and flat asses. They brought homemade picnics with them, complaining the panini at the alimentari cost a fortune. The yolk from their soft-boiled eggs dripped from their mouths onto their naked bellies. They drank warm beer and laughed. My uncle and Alma conversed with them, sometimes partly undressed, sometimes completely nude—depending on whether my brother and I were around. They told stories from the long winters and gossiped about which islanders had stolen water from whose wells.

  I had chased Arash out of my dreams that morning. I learned to control his incursions during my sleep. I knew how to blur the edges of his face into the periphery. My rubber suit kept him mostly at bay, but sometimes not enough. It wasn’t just him. It was the feeling of him that wouldn’t go away. The packaged brick was with me and I kept waiting for the right moment to get rid of it. I reassured myself that Iran and California were far away, that I was safe on my small island. No riots or guns, just the purifying waters of the quiet Mediterranean Sea. I thought being there would cure me. I’d find a rocky alcove where I could dispose of my grief. I looked for that nook every day.

  I left my uncle and the German nudists. I swam out to the open water farther down the coast. On the isolated shore I started walking past the natural arch that divided civilization from the wilder side of the island. I walked for hours, teetering on the edge of the boulders, until I reached the ancient lava flow beneath Tindara’s house on the other side of the island. From the shore I could see the emerging red cliffs of the Scoglio Galera in the middle of the sea. They seemed taller now that the tide was low. I swam out to them and climbed up, squinting my eyes to catch a glimpse of Tindara’s cliff dwelling, hoping to see her fluttering a symbolic white flag in the middle of the canyon, proclaiming a truce. “Your duty is terminated. You and Rosalia may consider yourselves healed. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.” But Tindara wasn’t there and the only things flying in the wind were hungry birds.

  I took my bathing suit off, closed my eyes, and jumped from the tallest cliff into the water. It felt good to jump into space, so I got back up and jumped again. I did it over and over as the birds quarreled with the goats in the ancient sunlight. I closed my eyes and sprawled my body on the high rock, drying in the sun.

  When I opened them again, the tide had come in and the sun was disappearing behind the mountain. The stones I treaded upon on my way in were now submerged and the only way back was by water. It was a long stretch, a quarter of the island’s circumference. I was tired from diving, but I had no choice but to swim.

  Back in the water the black shadows underneath the sea looked like gigantic whales. I kicked harder, afraid they might emerge and eat me up. I didn’t have the strength to swim the crawl, so I turned over and tried backstrokes. I could see the dividing line of the natural arch in the distance turned upside down, still too far away. A captain’s megaphone from a tourist boat reverberated somewhere, but I could not see it. A sailboat swept by peacefully on the horizon. No other boats were in sight. I was getting cold and I was now too far from the Scoglio Galera to come out of the water. I tried to hold to a wall of shadowy rocks that hung over the sea, but the tide had risen and there was nothing to latch onto. I thrust my hips against the cliff walls and fell back in. I ran out of breath and closed my eyes, floating, too tired to do anything else.

  I drifted over the coal-black lava flows that tainted the submerged world and remembered being four, on a beach in Rome. I had told my father I was ready to swim on my own without water wings, but it wasn’t true. I wanted to test him. He had been away working for a long time and I didn’t like how little he knew about us when he returned. He didn’t know my brother had started walking and I had started swim classes. Some part of me wanted to punish him for this. He let me go in the sea alone. I swam out feeling tall and brave, but when a wave pushed me down, I didn’t make my way back to the surface and I fainted. A tall man in a red Speedo saved me. When I regained consciousness I was in his arms. I hugged him tight pretending he was my father, pretending my father had saved my life. Back on the beach the man scolded my real father and told him he’d report him to the police.

  Ettore lifted his arms defensively in the air. “Stop attacking me, man. She told me she could swim.”

  I remembered the disbelief on the face of the red Speedo man. He had gray hair and thick, buttery skin. I looked for him now instinctively, as m
y backstrokes got weaker. I was shivering and my fingers were waterlogged and wrinkled. The tide rose, making the cliffs darker. I heard the sound of a motor underwater. I looked up. In the distance was Santino on his small fiberglass boat. I waved at him with the little strength I had left. He looked straight past me, but started to veer slowly in my direction.

  I got picked up and slid on board, letting my limp body collapse on the floor over a pile of squirming fish. I wrapped my hand around Santino’s ankle to make sure things were solid. Fish wriggled up against my nose, under my legs. What were they doing there? Santino was a terrible fisherman. Everybody on the island knew it. He broke motorboats and cussed at the water. I pressed harder on his legs, smelling juniper and sweat—the acrid scent of sun, dirt, and seclusion. His body was not welcoming. It was hard and his leg hair was rough like a steel-wool pad. But I let myself go. I was shivering and the fish kept gasping and flopping over my thighs. Santino was the only warm thing, the only dry thing. I hung on to him, my savior, and pressed my lips hard against his ankle. I didn’t want to open my eyes.

  I stayed there, rescued and in shock. As the boat proceeded toward the port, the sun peeked out of the mountain again and my body began to warm up.

  I opened my eyes a few moments later. Santino smiled a forced smile I had never seen. I gathered enough strength to sit.

  “Thank you for saving my life.”

  “Thank you for saving my wife,” he replied sarcastically, keeping his gaze on the horizon. “What were you doing out there? You’re a good swimmer, why were you drowning?”

  “I didn’t realize the tide would come in so fast. I thought I could walk back.”

  “Watch out. The next time I might not see you.”

  It sounded like a threat.

  One more curve and the port would be in our reach, but Santino slowed down the boat and turned the engine off in the middle of the sea.

  “You were naked at the Scoglio Galera. I saw you. Why don’t you take your wet bathing suit off now?” he said. “Take it off. The Germans are naked. Alma is always naked and so is your uncle. It’s natural, right? If it’s so natural then why keep your bathing suit on with me? ’Cause I’m an islander? You think I can’t understand? I understand. Take it off.”

  I looked around. We were far from shore and I could not swim anywhere. I didn’t have the strength to fight back.

  I pulled down my top and looked him in the eyes, establishing that we were not to go further than that.

  “You’re pretty good at being a slut, right?”

  He got on his knees. The flopping fish slid across his legs. His face was in front of my crotch and he looked up at me.

  “Take these off or I’ll bite you.”

  I removed my wet bathing suit bottom and scrunched it in a fist.

  I looked up at the mainland. Maybe I could still swim. It wasn’t that far. Maybe I’d make it.

  “Yes,” he said, examining my naked body. “You’re pretty good at being a slut. But that doesn’t mean you have to turn everyone else into a slut. You understand?”

  I nodded yes, that I understood. He pressed his front teeth hard into my hip bone, then backed off, squishing the fish with his feet.

  “Especially not my wife or daughters,” he concluded.

  I put my bathing suit back on, keeping my eyes down. I wasn’t afraid.

  We stayed quiet until he started the motor again. The boat began to move toward the mainland.

  “Won’t you put the fish back in the water? You can’t eat them. They’re too small,” I said as we got closer to the port.

  “They keep me company,” he said and smirked.

  “They’re just piled up in here. They’re useless.”

  We passed by the dump and the animal farm. Angelina looked pregnant even from far away.

  “She’s getting there,” I mumbled.

  Santino didn’t answer.

  He raised the motor when we reached the shore so the propeller wouldn’t scrape the rocks on the bottom of the sea.

  I hopped off and looked back at him, thankful he had not hurt me.

  “You’ll throw the fish back in the water?”

  He nodded yes. “Tutti a mare!” he winked reassuringly. “All back at sea!”

  —

  That night the island shuddered with the sound of donkeys braying—a continuous, repetitive wail that went on in twenty-minute increments. It stopped and started over. Angelina was giving birth. I got up from bed, sweating in the sticky night heat, and dashed down the stairs to Santino and Rosalia’s barn. Angelina was sprawled on a patch of hay, her eyes open wide. She was dilated. Two small legs wrapped in a liquid sac were making their way out of her body. It seemed impossible that something so big could emerge from a living being. Rosalia and the girls stood by. The vigilant ostriches had developed protective sisterly instincts. Angelina stretched out more as the foal’s legs pushed out, but the baby was stuck halfway and she was too exhausted to keep pushing. She stayed on the hay, her head drooped on one side. Rosalia turned to us and signaled to help. She squatted over the donkey, grabbed the small emerging legs, and began to pull. She put a hand on Angelina’s head and kissed her forehead. The girls looked at her in awe.

  “Mom!”

  She turned back to us.

  “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”

  We awoke to a primal call of duty and grabbed parts of the baby, whatever we could get our hands on. The amniotic sac was slimy and hot. It drooped over our fingers, covering our wrists, but we didn’t care. We pulled gently and firmly until the little one slipped out in a blob. He squirmed to the ground, not knowing how to get up, engulfed in slime. Angelina pierced the sac with her teeth, then licked him to clean him off. It was her first baby yet she knew exactly what to do. The ostrich sisters grunted, impressed with everyone’s performance. The girls hugged their mother. Maradona brayed so loud he woke up half the island. We all had tears in our eyes.

  Santino didn’t come out for the birth.

  We called the baby Nerino because he was darker than the other donkeys. He emitted a sound like a loud frog croak. Angelina licked his face until his eyes opened and in no time he could walk.

  On my way home I passed by the quiet port. Santino’s boat was anchored at the end of the dock, shimmering in the dim village lights, water slapping against it.

  I walked over. I could not see much, but I caught glimpses of a dark mass at the bottom. I knew what was there. I could smell it. I pulled the boat closer with the rope and stopped it under a sliver of light. It was the fish. They were all still there, piled on top of one another, covered in flies.

  —

  Toward the end of summer, the skies turned against the sea. Thunderstorms shook the island and hailstones strafed the rocks. We thought the mountain would explode or sink under the sea. A feeling of doom and catastrophe cloaked the island. No commercial boats could get to our shores. No fishing, no food, no supplies. The storms banged against the sky for days, until finally the sun came back, ripping into the heavens, and everything turned metallic and wild. The island’s long stairway became tufted in moss—a green carpet leading to the heavens. Alma and my uncle decided it would be a good time to camp out on the crater. We had no tents, but we brought blankets, eggs, and the cans of Italian Spam we’d been feeding the cats with.

  As we made our way up, the port became smaller, the island got quieter, filled with the ghosts of the immigrants’ empty houses. At the top, a few German Vikings with shaved testicles did sun salutations on their terraces. We said hello but they didn’t respond, too immersed in their spiritual practice. The mountain was different from the seaside. Nobody smiled there. People didn’t look at each other if they crossed paths. It was the place for everyone’s personal mission.

  When we reached the crater, we felt as if we’d landed in space. The sun was setting over the sea while the full moon rose behind our backs. One side of the crater was infused in a pale, glowing light, the other blazed in warm red.
Looming fig trees, heavy with fruit, sprawled on the basin’s edges. Wild rabbits scurried from one end to the other, electrified by the day’s end. We camped next to a stone cabin overlooking the sea. In the sunset the other Aeolian Islands looked like submerged boots left behind by a giant who had walked off barefoot into space.

  We lit a bonfire. My uncle took out a banged-up guitar and prompted Alma to sing in German in front of the flames. My brother opened his first can of Italian Spam and burped.

  In the crater’s basin, glowing in the moonlight, I noticed Rosalia. She was floating toward the stairs wrapped in a silvery gown I had never seen her wear. Alone with a basket of vegetables in her hand, she looked like a new being, an island spirit. Sometimes, like the village women, I too wondered whether it was still Rosalia inside that new body, if Nunzia hadn’t taken over after all. I hadn’t spoken to her since my incident on Santino’s boat and Angelina’s birth-giving night. In truth there was nothing left for me to do or say and Santino’s warning to keep away had been enough to make me falter every time I entertained the possibility of knocking on their door. But now she was alone. I walked toward her golden, bare back. Her flowing gown scurried down the staircase.

  It was only when I took a few steps down that I realized why I had followed her. It was the presence of a sound. It chiseled its way into my ears now: Angelina’s bray. She was right below us, coming up the ramp of stairs, loaded with groceries. It was her first trip to the top since Nerino. Santino trudged next to her, flailing his switch on her buttocks. She was soaked in sweat, a shiny seal. She was too loaded and it was early to bring her all the way up. Nerino was probably suffering without her, with no milk for so many hours. From the face he made I could tell Santino hadn’t expected to meet Rosalia on the path. She was too beautiful with her loose hair falling over her shoulders. The words between husband and wife flew into the wind. I couldn’t hear anything from where I stood, but I could see they were tense. Rosalia waved her vegetables in the air defensively, as if she were smacking truth in his face.