A Winter's Night

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Clerice touched her cheek: “You’re right, and I understand you, daughter. If it were up to me, I’d keep you here happily because you are the wife of my son and you gave birth to his child, but it’s only right that you return to your family. If you can, make a new life for yourself. Remember, though, that whatever may happen, the doors of this house are always open to you, by day or by night, in good weather and bad. May God bless you.”

  The day of her departure was decided. Floti hitched the mare to the cart and loaded it with his sister-in-law’s dowry and her personal things. Silvana held Clerice tight in a long embrace and both women wept in silence. She hugged Maria and said goodbye to her brothers-in-law one by one. Floti helped her up, called out to the horse, and they were off.

  Silvana never came back. Her family moved to Piedmont for work and the Brunis lost touch with them, but Clerice never forgot her; she kept the girl close in her heart and her thoughts, because Silvana had loved her son with a strong, sincere love and, had God willed it, she could have made him happy.

  Gaetano’s death, so sudden and unexpected, cast a shadow of deep sadness over the family, and the death of his little daughter seemed to be a further sign of ineluctable destiny. The good fortune of the Brunis, who had all seven escaped the scourge of the war, had evaporated all at once. The inconsolable pain which was always present in Clerice’s eyes and in all of her gestures made it hard for any of the others to even think of forgetting. Savino, the youngest of them all, was the one who took it best. He was handsome and full of life; girls liked him so much he was invited to enjoy their charms even without promises of eternal love. Floti, born with a strong will and personality, tried to persevere and instill courage in the others as well and, most of all, he looked out for his mother. He took her for rides in the carriage, to visit relatives or to the market where she could buy a few little gifts. He talked to her as much as he could.

  “Mamma, these are things that happen, sadly, in every family. You still have six sons and two daughters who love you and who want to see you smile again. You who have faith know that you’ll see Gaetano again in the next world, because he was a good boy and wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “A mother can never resign herself to losing a child,” she answered. “It’s a pain that won’t kill you but it will never leave you. I pray every day that God will give me the strength to carry on and still be a good mother to all my children.”

  As time passed, Clerice managed, at least in part, to return to her old life, to take care of the everyday chores and the housekeeping. Fredo and Dante married and her daughters-in-law recognized, through their behavior, the role of authority that was due her. It was customary, when a daughter-in-law first entered her husband’s home, that she not speak at the dinner table unless her mother-in-law invited her to do so, but Clerice wanted the two girls to feel at ease and asked them to join in the conversation from the start. She treated them with affection, but in her heart Silvana remained her favorite, perhaps because she’d lost her, perhaps because she’d watched her care for her son with such loving devotion.

  Before a year and a half was up, both girls gave birth. Clerice called a midwife, even if that meant spending money, because she didn’t want to embarrass them by assisting them herself. One had a girl, the other a boy and life seemed to smile on the Brunis again.

  Until one day an event occurred that was destined to radically change the life of the whole family.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The season of the grape harvest had just begun when the mailman came by with a registered letter addressed to: ‘Esteemed Mrs. Clerice Bruni, née Ori.’ The addressee was quite flustered at receiving such a missive, which brought to mind state offices and incomprehensible language. She immediately called Floti, who she knew was capable of handling such a situation. He signed for the letter, since any member of her family could do so, and opened the envelope. The mailman had, in the meantime, mounted his bicycle and was loudly ringing the bell to warn carters and cyclists that he was on the road again.

  Floti’s expression changed considerably as he read the letter.

  “Bad news?” asked Clerice, expecting nothing less.

  “On the contrary, mamma. Let’s go in, it’s cold out here.”

  “Well?” asked Clerice again as she shut the door behind her.

  Floti sat down and laid the letter on the table: “Mother, you’ve come in to an inheritance.”

  “What?!”

  “That’s what it says here. This letter comes from a notary in Genova who is summoning you to his office so he can read you the will of one of your relatives. It seems that this person has made you his universal heir.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s left you everything he had.”

  “How much is that?” asked Clerice.

  “It doesn’t say in the letter, and that’s why they sent it to you. You’ll find out when you’re before the notary. He’ll read the will in the presence of two witnesses, so no one can dispute what’s written there.”

  “So I have to go to Genova?”

  “I would say so.”

  Clerice, who was still on her feet, sat down and fell silent as she thought about what Floti had just said, her elbows planted firmly on the table.

  “How far is Genova?”

  “Mamma, it’s not like you have to walk there. You get on the train and you go. At every stop, the stationmaster calls out the name of the place. When you hear: ‘Genova! Genova Station!’ you get out, otherwise the train will take you someplace else and it won’t stop until it gets to the next station.”

  “I have to think about it,” she said, after having thought about it for quite some time.

  “Mamma, there’s nothing to think about! We’re talking about an inheritance; this could be a very important opportunity for our family. Try to remember which relatives of yours might have been living around Genova. There must be some way we can figure it out. Your parents, or your grandparents, must have mentioned them to you. Someone who set off to seek their fortune . . . ”

  Clerice was looking more and more confused. She said again: “I have to think about it, and then we’ll talk.”

  “Take your time,” said Floti curtly, “but keep in mind that if no one shows up to claim an inheritance, after a certain time, the government will take the money and the land.”

  For several days, neither Floti nor his mother mentioned it again, and neither of them spoke with a living soul about it, not even with the family. It was Clerice who broke the silence. She stopped Floti while he was leaving with a cartload of milk cans to take to the dairy.

  “I’ve thought about that letter, Floti, and I have decided that it’s best to talk to the whole family about it. Tonight.”

  “The best thing, mother? I’m not so sure. What if one of us talks to someone in town about it? Armando, for instance: have you seen him lately? I haven’t. But I bet that if I wander over to the osteria, I’ll find him shooting the breeze with the loafers there.”

  “He’s still your brother,” replied Clerice, “even if he is more frail than you are. He has a good heart and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Tonight, Floti, after dinner. All of you must be there.”

  Floti left the house and headed towards the dairy. The fact that his mother hadn’t trusted his judgment, despite the fact that he knew more than his brothers did, annoyed him, and so did having to take orders from an old woman who had never left town her whole life long. But she was his mother and he had to respect her wishes.

  That evening they all gathered around the table, even Maria.

  Clerice waited until everyone had finished dinner before she began talking. They’d been chatting about the weather, the stable, about Lola who’d just had a calf three days before, about when they’d have to start pruning the grapevines, about Checco who had plans to marry in the fall and needed to organize
his wedding.

  At about nine o’clock, Clerice spoke up. “Something has come up,” she began, “and I want all of you to listen to me carefully. I received a letter five days ago. Only Floti knows about it, because he was there when it arrived and he helped me to understand what it said.”

  “A letter?” demanded Fredo. “What letter?”

  They all stopped to listen, even Armando who had been telling Savino the last joke he’d heard at the osteria. It wasn’t often that a letter arrived.

  “Good news or bad news?” asked Checco.

  “More good than bad, certainly,” replied Clerice, “but things are not so simple. You tell them, Floti, you can explain better.”

  Floti, thus invested with the duty that in effect put him in the role of their dead father as the family patriarch, although he was not the eldest, spoke up. “It’s a letter that a notary wrote to mother,” he told them, “saying that a relative of hers has died and left everything to her in inheritance.”

  “How much have we inherited?” asked Dante.

  “It’s mother who has inherited,” specified Floti. “We haven’t inherited anything.”

  “Yes, but . . . ” Dante protested.

  “But nothing. It belongs to mother.”

  “The inheritance is mine,” said Clerice, “but I won’t live forever and when I die it will be divided up in equal parts for each of you. Parents always live for their children.”

  The thought of an inheritance, that is, money and land falling from the sky instead of being the fruit of long, hard labor, was so unsettling to the brothers that it may even have caused niggardly thoughts to worm their way into the minds of those present; for instance, that Gaetano’s death had left a richer share for those remaining. It was neither evil nor cynical on their part, probably just automatic. But Clerice must have seen a glimmer in the eyes of some of her children that she didn’t like, although she continued without a moment’s hesitation.

  “Our feelings are the best part of each one of us and no one must forget that we are a family before anything else, and that money is not everything in life, although it may often come in handy. Remember that money creates envy, jealousy, disagreement and malice. Many people have found themselves ruined because they couldn’t be happy with what they had.”

  Floti started up again. “There are problems, in any case. To get the inheritance, mother has to go to Genova. She’ll have to sign, in the notary’s presence, that she accepts the inheritance and whatever else is involved . . . ”

  “What does that mean?” asked Fredo.

  “That you can inherit debts as well, and you have to decide if you want to do that or you don’t.”

  “What!” exclaimed Dante. “What kind of an inheritance is that, anyway?”

  “That’s the way it is. Whether you like it or not. But if you think about it, anyone who comes into an inheritance is usually happy about it, right? It almost always improves your lot in life . . . ”

  Some of the brothers, in trying to understand what Floti and Dante were saying, had already gotten lost along the way and they only thing they had clear was that it was all very confusing, stuff that you needed an education to understand. Everyone knew that if you were poor and unschooled that made you an easy mark and you could be easily fooled by notaries, lawyers, counselors and the like. They’d bleed you white if you didn’t watch out. So when Floti finally put the decision to his assembled family, reminding them that if no one went to claim the inheritance within a certain amount of time, the state would take anything there was to take, he was met with a long silence.

  Armando tried to lighten things up by cracking a joke—he had one for every occasion—but he was shushed by the others. “Stay serious, we’re talking about the family interests,” Dante chastised him.

  Armando shut his mouth, but not before he could get in a fast, “Too bad because it was a good one.”

  “Then you tell us what you think, Dante,” Floti urged, calling on the second eldest brother to provide an opinion.

  “It doesn’t seem so rich to me,” said Dante. “First of all, Genova is quite a ways away. She’d have to take a train, find a hotel, eat at an osteria. How is she even supposed to find the office of this notary and how long will it take her, unless we hire a carriage? And all of that costs money. Then, as you just said, we have to see if there’s something to be had, like money or land, or just a pile of debts. It wouldn’t be the first time! And what about the notary? He’ll want to be paid as well. And just how do we calculate if we stand to lose or to gain? We’ll have to hire an accountant to add things up for us, and there you go, another expense. There’s nothing certain about this. I would forget about it. After all, things aren’t going so badly for us: why should we go out looking for trouble?”

  Floti listened without letting out any feeling or emotion and continued making the rounds to gather his brothers’ thoughts.

  Fredo was of the same opinion as Dante. The city was far away, they’d never been there, everyone knew that city people can’t wait to make fools out of country folk, to trick them and make them look like idiots. It was all much too complicated, and the only sure thing was that they’d have to spend money. Best to let the whole thing go.

  Armando made a little speech that was actually quite sensible, and mirrored their mother’s: as long as there was nothing to split up, they all got along fine, but as soon as money and property were in the game, they’d kill each other for a dime. This inheritance didn’t seem all that great after all, and who had the money for all those expenses? None of them did, so that settled the matter, didn’t it.

  Floti expected that at least Checco would favor giving the endeavor a try, but instead he was very cool, leaning towards no rather than yes. He was more fatalistic than anything else: if you’re born poor you die poor and you’d better get used to the idea. Thinking that you can better your lot in life holds more risks than advantages. And he was honestly perplexed about how Clerice would get along in such a distant city: what if she got sick? Or if she had some kind of accident? How would they find her? How would they get her back home?

  “That makes four,” Floti thought to himself and he realized that he’d already lost, unless their mother herself spoke out in favor of the idea. He was sorry he’d thrown out both the pros and the cons; he should have emphasized the pros, certainly.

  It was his turn to talk, and he knew it would take great skill to get his mother and the others to change their minds. He hoped to sway Checco, at least, who was such an intelligent lad.

  “I think you are all mistaken: you, Dante, and you, Armando and Fredo and most of all, Checco; you’ve seen the world, you’ve been in France, I’m surprised at you! How can you say such a thing? I’ve heard of a considerable number of people who have managed to change their lot in life: some who have started out without a penny to their names and have built a fortune in a foreign country, others who have gone into debt to make an investment and earned it all back tenfold. Risk is the spice of life! Why is it that all of you only see difficulties and problems? If no one had ever dared to try something new, we’d still be savages. There are problems, I admit that, but they can be solved. Money? We can always go to a bank, show them this letter, and say: ‘This is an inheritance. If you, the bank, lend us money to go and get it, we’ll give you five percent.’ Can’t you see that?”

  “Mother may have inherited land, farms, for instance. Can you imagine us finally working our own land without having to turn over a share to anybody? Or starting up another kind of business? Always with our mother’s permission, of course, that’s clear. Just letting it go, allowing the government to scoop it all up, that’s madness, to my mind. My opinion is that we should scrape together enough money for the trip and for a hotel for mother in Genova, so that she can collect her inheritance. If you like, I will go with her. I’m sure we can do this.”

  That’s where
he made his mistake. Him taking over the role of the patriarch, without being the eldest brother, had already irked some of them. They had never said anything in the past because the results were good, but a sense of envy was already rife among them. When he offered to accompany their mother, more than one of them felt that Floti, underneath it all, must have had some personal interest of his own at heart. Had he convinced her to favor him in some way? Had he already made a deal with the notary? In a matter of moments, the idea that “better nothing for anyone than too much for one alone” spread like wildfire among the brothers. Ignorance, always the companion of diffidence, did the rest.

  Savino, on the other hand, spoke openly in Floti’s favor. He was still too young to have certain thoughts and he was fascinated by his older brother’s personality; Floti always knew what to do, seemingly without having any doubts. Or, if he did have doubts, he got rid of them by grabbing the bull by the horns. He also admired how his brother was so attractive to women, but didn’t let himself fall for a girl easily. Floti could make them suffer, all right; when he accepted a relationship it was him in the lead: he never succumbed to a woman like poor Gaetano had, destroying his own life in the bargain. The girl who would pull the wool over the eyes of Raffaele Bruni, known as Floti, hadn’t been born yet!

  “Floti is right!” Savino cried out as soon as his turn came. “He’s the one who should go with mother. He knows how to handle himself; a lawyer or a notary can’t fool him or lead him by the nose like a chump. He’s our brother: who can we trust if not him?”

  Floti even tried to pull Maria, always his favorite, over to his side. Whenever he went to the market, he’d always bring back a little something for her dowry: a bit of lace, an embroidered towel, sometimes even perfume. But Clerice stopped him: “In this household, or in any other house I’ve heard of, it’s never the women who decide the affairs of the family, except for the arzdoura; as the matriarch, I will speak for her, and you already know how I feel about this.”