by Judy Nunn
But no-one ever heard him. No-one ever knew that he was there in his shallow grave in the darkness. He would wedge the piece of rag in his mouth, and suffer his fits alone, his father none the wiser.
As the fits appeared less frequent, the household became happier, and Pietro grew stronger and more confident. His little sister, Caterina, no longer ran away from him in fear, and, at long last, his father accepted him.
God was not punishing him after all, Franco thought, when nearly a year had passed and there had been no sign of the madness. The boy was nine years old, he was strong now, and healthy. At last Franco had the son he had prayed for, and he lavished attention on the boy.
‘In the spring I will take you to the village with me, Pietro,’ he said, ‘and perhaps we will buy a donkey.’
His wife smiled. The old donkey had long since died, and there was not enough money to buy another, but she liked to see Franco share his dreams with his son.
She looked at the glass jar on the bench in the corner. There was barely a handful of coins in it. Each time Franco returned from the village with their meagre supplies in his haversack, Lucia would put the money left over from the purchases into the jar. But, without the old donkey, Franco could carry only one barrel of cheese down the mountain; the donkey had carried four. It was a vicious circle. They needed another donkey.
‘And we will buy a saddle,’ Franco boasted. He had never owned a saddle. ‘A real saddle, and I will teach you to ride.’
He built a fine, wooden donkey for the boy. He was an excellent builder and he had built their hut with his very own hands when he and Lucia had first come to the mountain. The donkey had stirrups made of goat hide, and for reins Franco used the strong leather belt he’d bought from the village shoemaker.
Pietro loved his wooden donkey, and he taught four-year-old Catie how to ride it, shortening the stirrups for her and holding her firmly in the cloth saddle as he rocked her back and forth.
He still had his fits, secretly under the hut, and when his mother worried about the shadows beneath his eyes, he would lie to her. He would never admit to the knife-like pain in his head that always followed a fit, fearing that she might guess the truth. But he was happy now, and the fits were indeed becoming less frequent. Perhaps one day they would leave him forever.
Pietro was eleven years old when the priest came to the house. It was winter, and he and his father had just delivered Rosa of her baby in the wooden shelter among the trees down by the river. Rosa was Pietro’s favourite goat, the one he allowed himself to love, for she was the family pet and they would never eat her. He had known for a long time that the stews his mother brewed in the big iron pot were made from the very goats he tended. His father had told him.
‘It is the way things are, Pietro,’ his father had said the day he had forced Pietro to watch the slaughter of a goat. ‘It is how we live.’ The animal had died quickly, a swift slash of the killing knife and its throat had been slit, then his father had hung the carcass up by its hind legs from the branch of a tree. The meat needed to be bled, he’d told Pietro. ‘One day you must learn to do this yourself,’ he’d said.
Pietro had had one of his fits that afternoon.
He’d come to accept now that the killings were a part of life, but he dreaded the day when he’d have to perform the task himself. And he never told Catie about the goats.
‘Pietro delivered Rosa’s baby!’ Franco announced with pride as they came in from the snow to the warmth of the hut where the fire crackled in the stone fireplace and the hearty smell of stew filled the room.
He slung his coat from his shoulders and was about to hang it on the peg beside the door, but he stopped in his tracks as he saw the man in the cassock. A priest was sitting in Franco’s own chair at the head of the wooden table, sipping a mug of hot goat’s milk.
The priest set down the mug and rose from the chair. ‘Franco,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘I am Father Brummer.’
Franco had never shaken hands with a priest before. He visited the church every time he went into the village, attending the service and offering his confession, and during confession he always assured the priest that he said his rosary regularly and begged God’s forgiveness each night. But he had never approached the priest personally when he had seen him in the street. He had been too much in awe: a priest was a man of God.
Franco handed his coat to his son and stepped forward. ‘Father,’ he said, accepting the priest’s hand with the utmost reverence. ‘It is a great honour.’
‘The honour is mine, my son,’ the priest smiled. ‘Your wife has welcomed me into your home and I am most grateful.’
The priest was a fine-looking man and he spoke beautifully; he was a gentleman, Franco could tell. A gentleman and a man of the cloth. Franco felt deeply honoured that such a man should be in his house.
‘Father Brummer is going to stay with us, Franco,’ Lucia said, beaming with pride. ‘He is in hiding from the Russians.’
Franco looked at her as blankly as she had looked at the priest when he had told her the same thing, so she turned to Father Brummer. ‘You tell him, Father, I do not have the words.’
She didn’t understand, the priest thought, neither of them did. But then the war would have had little impact on the peasants in this remote mountain area.
‘The war is over, Franco,’ he said.
‘Ah. That is good, yes?’
‘Yes, it is very good, there has been too much death. But for some, there is still cause for fear. The Russians now occupy Eastern Germany. Indeed, they occupy much of Europe,’ he added.
Franco glanced at his wife, who nodded as if she knew what the priest was talking about, and Father Brummer continued.
‘The Communists do not take kindly to a man of the cloth,’ he explained, ‘and many German priests are being sent to Siberia.’
Franco was surprised: the priest was a German? But he spoke Italian like a gentleman. ‘You do not speak like a German, Father,’ he said admiringly.
‘I shall take that as a compliment,’ the priest laughed. ‘Now, enough talk of war. This is your son, Pietro, yes? What a handsome young man.’ He held out his hand to the boy and they shook.
Franco and Lucia looked at each other incredulously. To think their young son had shaken hands, man to man, with a priest. Why the boy had only just turned eleven.
‘Now tell me about this Rosa whose baby you have delivered, Pietro.’ The priest glanced at Lucia, smiling as if he were sharing a joke with her; she had told him one of the goats was giving birth.
It was Franco who answered, proud of his son. ‘The baby was coming out the wrong way and Pietro turned it around,’ he said, patting him on the back. ‘He is a good boy.’
Pietro looked at the floor, embarrassed to be the centre of attention, but basking in his father’s praise.
They cleared the little bedroom which Pietro and Catie shared, lifting one of the beds out into the main room of the hut. Caterina would sleep there, Franco said, and they would make a bed on the floor for Pietro. The children welcomed the idea. They would be warm by the remnants of the fire.
The priest tried to insist that it should be he who slept on the floor, but Franco and Lucia would not hear of it.
‘You will be comfortable in this bed, Father.’ Franco patted the wooden head of the small bedstead. ‘I made it with my own hands.’
‘You are an excellent carpenter, Franco,’ the priest said.
That night, as the family sat down to their meal, Franco offered Father Brummer his chair at the head of the wooden table. ‘It is only right,’ he insisted.
The priest was most complimentary about the stew.
‘I grow the potatoes and turnips myself, Father.’ Lucia was not normally boastful, but she was proud of her garden. ‘Even in the winter. In the spring and the summer we have many other vegetables.’
The priest was also complimentary about the table. ‘Made by your own hands?’ he queried, and Franco nodded, but
he was distracted. He was wondering how he should broach his request.
When they’d finished eating, Lucia gave the children permission to play, so long as they weren’t noisy, and Pietro helped Catie climb up onto the wooden donkey. He had outgrown the toy now, but he derived pleasure from Catie’s enjoyment of it. He longed for the real donkey he and his father would buy on their next trip to the village. This time his father had promised, and even his mother had agreed that they now had enough money in the glass jar. She would forgo her new shoes for the donkey, she’d said.
When Lucia had cleared away the bowls and was washing them in the basin on the bench in the corner, Franco made his bid. ‘Father …’ He spoke quietly, hesitatingly, not sure if he had the right to ask. ‘We are good Catholics, we say our rosary each night and we pray always for forgiveness …’ Then he halted.
‘That is good, Franco, and God will be listening.’
‘But we do not go to church often. My wife never, the village is too far and the trip back up the mountain is too hard for her …’ He halted again, sure that Father Brummer must know what he was trying to say and hoping that he didn’t think him presumptuous.
‘God understands, Franco.’
But Father Brummer had not understood, Franco thought, and he blurted the words out. ‘Would you hear our confessions, Father?’
The priest paused, and Franco was worried. Then he said, ‘I would be honoured, my son. For as long as I am here, I will hear your confessions. Yours, and your wife’s, and those of your children.’
The priest had changed their lives, and Pietro didn’t like it. It was the priest who now sat in his father’s chair at the table each night, and each night it was the priest who said grace instead of his father. The priest told them stories as they dined, and Pietro knew that his parents were impressed. Each Sunday for the three weeks since he had been with them, the priest had heard the family’s confessions as, one by one, they knelt before him. Even little Catie, although Pietro wondered what sins she would have to confess. He worried that God might punish him for not telling the priest about his fits, as his fits were surely a sin. The thought weighed heavily upon him, and he hated confession. But he maintained his secret, and he always obeyed his father’s instructions, kissing the hem of the priest’s cassock after confession, as a sign of reverence.
Both his father and his mother deeply revered the priest, and Catie loved him. It was the priest who now played with her, rocking her on the wooden donkey. But Pietro did not like the priest.
‘He is jealous, Father, forgive him.’ His mother made excuses for his surliness, and his father berated him in private.
‘Father Brummer is a man of the cloth, Pietro,’ he said angrily, ‘and he shook your hand – that is a great honour!’
But Pietro couldn’t warm to the priest, and he couldn’t disguise his feelings. He couldn’t smile when the priest tried to charm him, telling him about the great cities he knew, about Berlin and Rome, and other places that Pietro had never heard of. And, as his father’s anger grew, Pietro became more and more unhappy.
‘Milano,’ the priest said one night after they had shared their evening meal. He and Franco had also shared a bottle of red wine, and the priest was feeling mellow. Catie was asleep in her parents’ bed, and Pietro was sitting at the table with the men while Lucia washed up the bowls at the bench. Father Brummer had insisted Pietro have a small glass of wine with them; he was nearly a man now, after all, he had said jovially.
‘When the spring thaw comes, we could take the boy to Milano and show him a big city, Franco, what do you say?’
The prospect overwhelmed Franco. He had never been to Milano himself, and to go there with the priest! He was sure Father Brummer was only humouring the boy, but the fact that he would suggest such an idea was a great compliment.
‘Perhaps we could, Father. Although Milano is many kilometres away.’
‘A hundred kilometres only,’ the priest said dismissively. ‘That is nothing – men have walked far greater distances. When you buy your donkey, Franco, we could pack our supplies and follow the river to the south. You and me and Pietro, what do you think about that?’
Franco’s eyes lit up – the priest’s enthusiasm was always infectious. But from her bench in the corner, Lucia smiled indulgently. Franco was so gullible. Father Brummer was simply trying to include Pietro in their conversation, as he so often did. She glanced at the boy, wishing he would respond, but he was staring at the priest with fear and suspicion. It embarrassed her.
‘You would like Milano, Pietro,’ Father Brummer said, and once again he conjured up images in an attempt to gain the boy’s interest.
But as the priest talked, Pietro wasn’t listening, he was lost in his own thoughts. Why would the priest suggest travelling together when the spring thaw came? The priest had said that he would be leaving their house when the spring thaw came. Did it mean that he intended to stay with them? Pietro didn’t like the thought of that at all. He looked at the priest’s handsome face, animated and confident as he painted pictures of the great city of Milano, and he disliked him more than ever. He didn’t trust the priest.
Then he heard his father’s roar and the sound of his father’s chair toppling over as Franco sprang to his feet. He felt the angry blow of his father’s hand across his face, and he sat quivering from the shock of it.
‘You will not look at Father Brummer in that way!’
His father, too, was shaking. With a rage that Pietro had never seen before.
‘You will not look at a man of the cloth with such insolence!’
Towering over him, his father raised his hand as if to strike him again, but the priest intervened. ‘No, Franco,’ he said as he stood, ‘do not hit the boy.’
Pietro could feel the vein in his temple throbbing, and the tic in his left eye starting to twitch. And he could see the priest watching him, studying him closely, as if he also recognised the signs. He knew that he must get out. He must get to his secret hiding place before the fit overtook him. He pushed his chair away and ran to the door, but his father charged after him, dragging him back into the room, shaking him roughly by the shoulders. His mother was screaming, and so was Catie who had appeared at the open doorway, and his father was yelling words at him that Pietro could no longer hear.
‘Let him go, Franco,’ the priest said. The boy’s eyes were rolling back in his head.
Lucia, too, had seen the signs. ‘He is having one of his fits,’ she cried, running to Pietro in time to catch him as he crashed heavily to the wooden floor. ‘Fetch me a piece of rag, Franco, quickly.’
Franco ran to do her bidding. But, as Lucia forced the rag into the boy’s mouth, he turned away in disgust and disappointment. His son’s madness had returned, and he was sickened by the sight. He picked up his daughter who was crying and carried her into the other room, where he sat with her, cradling her head to his chest. Through the open door, he could see the priest watching as the boy kicked and thrashed about on the floor like a demented animal, and he wished the priest would look away. But he didn’t. The priest stood silently witnessing the boy’s shame, and Franco’s humiliation was unbearable.
When the attack was finally over, and the boy lay limp and exhausted, Lucia wiping the spittle from his face, Franco tucked the little girl into bed and told her to stay there.
‘I am sorry, Father,’ he said, returning to the room.
‘Why are you sorry?’
‘That you should see such a thing. My son’s madness. The shame of it.’
‘There is no shame in his illness, Franco. I have seen seizures like his before. How long has he been suffering them?’
Lucia answered for her husband, as she sat on the floor, her arms about Pietro. ‘He used to have them often when he was a little boy, Father,’ she said. ‘They started when he was six years old. But he has not had a fit for over two years now, isn’t this so, Franco?’
Franco nodded, still not able to look at the boy whose
eyes were beseeching his forgiveness.
‘Is this true, Pietro?’ the priest asked, and when the boy remained silent he repeated the question. ‘You have had no attacks for over two years, is this true or is it not?’
Pietro slowly rose, his mother also, her arm still protectively about him, but he shrugged it away. He stood alone, unsteady on his feet, trying to ignore the sharp pain in his head. ‘Yes,’ he said, although he knew that the priest did not believe him, ‘I have had no attacks.’
‘I think that you are not telling the truth, Pietro,’ the priest said gently, and Pietro looked down at the floor, unable to meet the accusation in his parents’ eyes. His parents believed the priest, and no matter how much he denied it, no matter how hard he lied, they would continue to believe the priest. He said nothing.
The priest addressed himself to Lucia and Franco. ‘I know something of Pietro’s illness,’ he said. ‘Attacks such as his do not disappear for years and then suddenly manifest themselves again. He suffers from a condition which will likely remain with him until adulthood, and possibly for the rest of his life.’ He took Pietro’s arm. ‘Come, my boy, sit down. You are weak.’
Pietro allowed the priest to lead him to the table and seat him in a chair. The priest sat beside him, and his mother joined them, but Pietro could see his father, still glaring silently at him, and he hated the priest for ruining his life.
