Fonso could not resign himself: “You’re taking on a big responsibility, here, Floti, and I’m surprised at you. You, who have suffered the death of the woman you loved and were put into prison, an innocent man. You know what it means to be unhappy, to suffer. Why take it out on us? What have we done to you?”
“Nothing,” said Floti. “That’s it and there’s no changing it.”
Fonso wanted to insist, but he understood it was useless. There was nothing more to be said. His voice was trembling and he didn’t want to break down in front of Floti. He left with tears in his eyes.
He walked his bicycle out to the street and started towards home, his heart swelling, as it began to get dark. After just a few dozen meters, he heard a whispered voice calling out to him: “Fonso, Fonso . . . ”
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“It’s me, Maria,” replied a voice on the other side of the hedge.
“Maria? But then you haven’t gone to Florence!”
“Come over to this side, here, there’s a hole in the hedge.”
Fonso leaned his bicycle on the side of the ditch and leapt over to the other side.
“Where are you? I can’t see you!”
“I’m up here on the elm tree. I was picking leaves for the cows and I saw you. Wait, I’m coming down.”
“No, don’t move. I’ll come up, that way no one can see us.”
He pulled himself up swiftly along the enormous trunk and found her in the middle of the foliage. He embraced her. “What is this? Ten minutes ago your brother told me you were in Florence.”
“Well, it’s not far from the truth. I’m leaving tomorrow. He’s taking me to the station in Bologna and from there I’ll take a train to Florence. He told you I’d already left because he didn’t want us to say goodbye. He’s worried I’ll change my mind.”
“Can’t you change your mind? You know he doesn’t want us to get married, don’t you?”
Maria lowered her eyes. “I know. And he thinks that if I go to Florence I’ll forget you. Listen to what I’m saying, Fonso: I can’t disobey my brother, because he’s the head of the family and he loves me. He thinks he’s right in doing this, he doesn’t realize what a mistake it is, but if you wait for me, I’ll be back, sooner or later, and we’ll get married because I will never forget you. Whatever happens, I will never forget you, do you understand?”
“But maybe, if your mother . . . ”
“No, it won’t work, believe me. There are already enough reasons to quarrel in my family, it’s terrible and I can’t bear it any longer. I don’t want to add to them. I hope I’ll be back for Christmas, and all the time I’ll spend in Florence will be like hell and purgatory put together.”
“It will be the same for me. I swear to you that I will never look at any other woman. I’ll wait for you. And I’ll write you as soon as you send me your address.”
Both had tears in their eyes, even if no one could see them because it was dark by now, and they made love on the tree like a couple of sparrows. Then they wept, embracing each other and swearing that nothing and no one would ever separate them, like the star-crossed lovers in Fonso’s fables.
The next day Floti drove off with his sister, who was crying like a fountain. She’d never been away from home and going to Florence was like going to the ends of the earth. She didn’t manage to say a word the whole way to the station, and Floti was scowling and taciturn as well.
“Why are you sending me away, Floti?” she asked him when they got to the train.
“For your own good. You deserve much more than that storyteller. One day you’ll understand.”
“No,” sobbed Maria, “I’ll never understand.” Then she got on the train and watched as her brother got smaller and smaller . . .
The summer passed and so did the fall, and the winter began but Fonso did not come to Hotel Bruni to tell his stories because he didn’t want to embarrass anyone, and so the nights went by tedious and sad.
Word had gotten out that Floti had been acquitted and was home again scot-free. There were plenty of people who had sworn they’d get another chance at that subversive, make him pay, him and everyone around him. It wasn’t long before the day of reckoning and that was the greatest disaster in the whole history of the Bruni family. It happened just a few days before Christmas, when the novena was just rounding up. Clerice had just come home from church, all bundled up in her woolen shawl, and had started to prepare the batter for the Christmas bread and raviole: flour, honey, raisins that they’d dried from their own grapes in a warm oven, quince jam and saba, a jelly they made from red grape juice.
Since Fonso no longer came around, Hotel Bruni had lost its main attraction, and so that night everyone had already gone up to bed. Clerice was still awake, perhaps she had some presentiment or perhaps she simply wasn’t tired, because old people knew in their hearts that no matter how little they slept now, they’d soon have even too much of it.
In the deep silence, she thought she heard voices: shouting, it sounded like, or singing, or both, and the distant roar of an engine coming closer. Now she could hear them well, they were singing in unison, and they were so close now she could hear the words:
“To your weapons, men, we’re fascists,
We’ll strike terror in the souls of the communists!”
Her own heart jumped into her throat as she whispered: “Mother of God, help us!”
Clerice had never had any interest in politics, but she’d long grown used to watching squads of hotheads who would go around beating, caning and humiliating in every way possible those they considered troublemakers, defeatists and enemies of the nation. She was sure that this time they were coming for the Brunis and, in particular, one of them: her son Floti. She ran up the stairs, as fast as she could with her candle in hand, to wake him.
“Mamma, what’s happening? What are you doing here?” Floti had barely the time to say before he heard the shouts for himself and saw the look of terror in his mother’s eyes.
“Get dressed and go out the back way, now, the fascists are coming! Can you hear how close they are? They’ll be here in minutes. They’re coming for you, get moving!” She was right, and the beams of his bedroom ceiling were already echoing with their song. Floti slipped into a pair of trousers and a sweater, threw an overcoat over his shoulders and flew down the stairs. Clerice ran after him with a scarf because it was cold outside and it looked like snow. She tied it around his neck like an embrace and opened the back door for him, so he could escape into the open countryside. She stood watching for a moment as he ran off; the last thing she saw before he disappeared was the scarf, waving in the wind like a flag.
She closed the door up again and chained it and then went to the front door and did the same. She soon heard the sound of a truck stopping and a confusion of voices. It sounded like there were a lot of them and Clerice tried to peek out from a crack in the shutters. They’d left the engine running and the headlights on because it was pitch black outside. Men she’d seen before, from Sogliano, she thought, maybe the same ones who had beaten Graziano Montesi.
“Bruni, come out!” one shouted. “We know you’re in there!”
There was no doubt which Bruni they were looking for.
“Hand over Bruni!” shouted another and Clerice counted Floti’s steps in the night to figure how far he might have gotten by then.
“He’s not here!” she cried out from behind the closed window. In the meantime, all the others has woken up. The men had come down to the kitchen while the women, shivering and covered up as best they could, took the children down to the cellar, trying to get them to stop crying.
One of the wives, who had heard the fascists’ shouts, said out loud: “What does she mean he’s not here? I saw him go to bed.”
The men shut her up with a look: “If mother says he’s not here, it means he’s not here.”<
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“Turn him over to us or we’ll set fire to the house and roast you all inside!” shouted the same man as before, brandishing a lit torch. His companions, one after another, lit their own torches from his and before long the courtyard was all lit up. They wore black shirts and boots with leather or gray-green felt jackets. The shouted threat could be heard all the way down in the freezing-cold cellar, terrifying the women who had begun crying themselves.
“For the love of God!” Fredo shouted back at them from inside the house, “if the man you’re looking for is Raffaele Bruni, he’s not here. He never came home.”
“Bullshit!” shouted one of the besiegers. “Send him out or we’ll set fire to the house. This is your last warning.”
Checco looked around at all of his brothers and, apart from Savino who seemed quite calm, all he saw were terror-filled faces. “What shall we do?”
“There’s little we can do,” said Clerice, “seeing that Floti’s not here. We can only hope they believe us.”
“If he were here, he’d come out of his own free will!” shouted out Checco. “There are women and children here.”
“Then open up or we’ll break down the door and destroy the whole house. We won’t even leave you eyes to cry with!”
“All right,” said Checco. “I’m opening the door. Check for yourselves.” He pulled back the chain, but before he even had time to turn the handle, a violent shove pushed the door open and sent him rolling to the ground. Eight or ten men poured into the house, practically walking on top of him, and spread out to search every room. They went down to the cellar where the women were clinging together and shaking. The children began to cry out and scream, absolutely terrified by the uproar.
They found nothing and this made them even more furious.
“Do we want to let these subversives make fools of us?” one yelled. “I’m sure that that coward is in here someplace. Let’s set fire to the house, and he’ll come out, you’ll see!”
“Right, let’s give him a lesson! That way they’ll learn they can’t play games with us.”
“All right,” approved their leader. “Everybody out! This time you’ll save your skins, you bastards.”
The family came out the front door and Clerice, who had only been on the defensive until then, started to attack instead. She’d recognized some of them and treated them like a mother whose sons deserved a scolding. “Shame on you! You come here at night armed with clubs like the jailers of Jesus Christ! Taking it out on peaceful, unarmed men, with women and children. And you!” she said, pointing her finger at one of them. “I know you! I was with your mother in the Company of the Most Holy Sacrament. That poor woman, I am so sorry for her. Go back home with all these headstrong dolts and never come back!”
“Mamma, stop,” said Fredo, pulling her back by an arm. “You’re only making it worse.”
Savino recognized Nello, who lowered his eyes, unable to meet the shock, dismay and sorrow in his friend’s gaze.
Checco put one arm around his mother and the other around his wife, who was carrying little Vasco in her arms, and led the family in their brief exodus to the middle of the courtyard.
One of the fascists carrying a lit torch ran towards the open door and was about to throw it in when Nello stopped him: “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?” asked the man, turning towards him as if to light up his face.
“We can’t throw women and children who have no blame into the street. There are good people here, who’ve done nothing but work in the fields their whole lives without bothering anyone. It will be Christmas in a few days, do you want innocent children to be without a bed and without a home?”
“Then we’ll burn down the stable!” replied the other.
“Yes, right, let’s burn down the stable!” they all started yelling as if intoxicated, and turned with their torches towards the barn which rose, a dark mass, on the other side of the courtyard.
The Brunis looked at one another appalled and incredulous, their eyes full of tears: they wanted to burn down the place of fables and of fantastic tales, the shelter of the poor, of beggars and derelicts. They wanted to burn Hotel Bruni!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Under the petrified gaze of the Brunis, the Blackshirts approached the stable and tossed their torches into the hayloft which was packed with bales of straw. The fire spread in a matter of moments, shooting up a gigantic flame that crackled at the old wooden roof beams.
Certain that at this point not even a miracle could put out the fire, the arsonists got back into the 18 BL which was still running and drove off, singing and swearing.
The Brunis stood there for a while, stunned and practically paralyzed in the middle of the courtyard, faces reddened by the reflection of the fire and already feeling the heat of the blaze. The roar of the flames blended with the bellows of terror from the animals chained up inside the stable: ten cows and four pairs of monumental Modenese bulls, the family’s pride and joy at fair time and during the plowing season.
“The bulls!” shouted Checco. “We have to free them or they’ll burn alive.” He lurched forward into the blinding globe of fire and light.
Clerice, horrified, tried to stop him. “No, Checco, for the love of God! There’s nothing we can do for those poor animals. The stable will collapse on your head!” But her cries were completely useless: the idea of letting the animals burn alive was not even conceivable for someone who had spent his whole life working the land. Checco had already reached the drinking trough, broken the ice with a shovel, dunked his tabarro in the water and was wrapping it around his head and shoulders and rushing through the door of the burning building.
Checco’s fearless example roused his brothers who, after a moment’s hesitation, ran in after him while their mother, shaking, dropped to her knees in the middle of the courtyard, moaning: “For the love of God, for the love of God, Mother Mary, help them!”
The stable itself had not yet been damaged by the flames because they had been sucked upwards and were devouring the hayloft and the roof above it but licks of fire had already penetrated between the beams and the entire place was full of smoke. The bulls, crazed with terror, were pawing the ground and kicking, and bellowing desperately. Some were trying to free themselves, yanking at the chains that secured them in their stalls, but the ground under their feet was slippery with their own excrement. They slipped, got up and then stumbled to the ground again.
Fredo and Savino ran to open the back door to create a draft and disperse the smoke, then all the brothers rushed to the stalls to unchain the bulls. It was an almost impossible endeavor, because the animals were pulling back so hard that it was practically impossible to get the bar at the end of the chain through the iron ring so the chain could be freed. The bulls’ long horns slashed out right and left, with the risk of goring the men at any moment. But then, by dint of shouting at them and hitting them with sticks, the animals were pushed against the hayracks and then, acting swiftly and instinctively, the brothers were able to unloose the chains and set the bulls free.
They took off at a gallop, charging into the courtyard which was lit up bright as day by the fire, running furiously past the women who stared speechless as they shot off into the fields.
By this time, the roof beams over the hayloft had been burnt to a crisp and they gave way all at once, collapsing one after another into the raging fire, raising a red hot cloud of swirling sparks that rose up into the cold starry sky.
Clerice went to the door of the stable and began to cry out, calling her sons out of that inferno: “That’s enough! Enough, now! Get out of there, you’re all going to die!” Other animals galloped out as the last beams sank into the blaze, feeding the vortex that swelled up like a ball of fire and was then dispersed in a thousand flaming tongues against the dark of night.
Blackened and choking on the smoke, her sons stumbled out. Checco, who ha
d been counting the animals they’d released, realized that one was still inside. “Nero! He’s still in there!” he shouted.
“No, no,” implored his mother, crying. “If you go back in, this time you’re dead!” Checco paused, disconcerted by his mother’s pleas, but Savino pulled the tabarro from his brother’s back, dipped it in the icy water again, dunked his own head and trunk into the trough, then wrapped the wet cloak over his head and shoulders and disappeared through the open stable door.
Nero was a magnificent ungelded specimen weighing over a ton with a very dark coat. He was taller than a man at the withers and endowed with incredible strength. When he was mounting a female, she had to be put in a trestle so his weight wouldn’t crush her. Now Nero was struggling in an inferno of smoke, flames and sparks. His rear legs were planted against the hayrack and he was pulling back with great yanks, making the whole wall shake. The chain was already halfway out of the wall but, by pulling so hard, the bull was strangling itself. Savino understood immediately that if he put his hands on that chain to try to extract the iron bar from the ring they would certainly be crushed or ripped to pieces.
He yelled as loudly as he could: “Ohhhh! Ohhhhh! Good, Nero, good boy!” and tried to get closer. From the ceiling over the door a sinister crackling could be heard. Savino was about to run out the back door but right at that instant a figure stood out against the glow of the flames, holding a solid iron crowbar: “Move over. This is what you need.”
“Floti!” gasped Savino. “We have to get out of here, it’s going to all come down.” But Floti had already jumped onto Nero’s stall. He hooked the crowbar into the ring and with a hard yank pulled it out of the wall. Nero wrenched away with a last tug and took off at a gallop down the corridor. He came out bellowing, with the chain hanging from his neck between his legs and Savino close behind him. An instant later the whole building came crashing down, with a final eruption of flames, smoke and sparks that was seen by everyone for miles around.
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