Under a Sardinian Sky

by Sara Alexander

  Carmela walked away and then bent down to rinse her hands in the shallow pool. The cool of the water felt good. Antonio moved in beside her. “Someone’s got a dynamite stick shoved where it oughtn’t, eh?”

  “Shhh, you’ll get us in trouble.”

  “I’m not the one who nearly got her child flattened by a pack of wild horses,” he said, eyes smiling with mischief.

  “Stop it,” Carmela replied. “Your nephew must be doing a good job of running the bar, then, if you’re relaxed enough to tease me.”

  “Chauffeur for the day—make more than a week’s worth of espressos.”

  “You’re not in this just for the money, surely. You’re in it for the gossip.”

  “Seeing how the other half lives is what I call an education. We’ve lived by the horse and cart too long, Carmela. I’m Sardinian, but I’m no savage. Look around you, girl. We were born in paradise, and we don’t even know it. Those morons who sit at my bar and curse the foreigners don’t see the gold mine beneath us.” He looked up toward where the horses had appeared. “Antonio Comida is going to show our countrymen that there’s a difference between pride and diffidence. I love my island, Carmela, and if I can make my fortune by sharing it, I will.”

  “And if that doesn’t work, you can always consider a life on the stage.”

  Antonio chuckled.

  “Come on, let’s head back, Anto’, before any more ambushes from the wild.”

  A short while later, they left the forest behind them, and the road continued uphill toward the expanse of the Giara plains. Here, under the white midmorning sun, the grasses swayed in the fragrant thyme and rosemary breeze. The valley opened up, the formidable slopes of the Gennargentu mountain range stretching as far as the eye could see. Trees fought for survival over a blanket of rocky brush, shunting out in improbable angles from the cliffs, raising their branches as if delivering prayers of gratitude. In the near distance a waterfall spouted from behind a rock into three small pools, cascading down into a larger one below—a natural bath for anyone who would ever dare clamber up the sheer rock face to reach it. Onward they drove toward the west.

  As they left the majesty of Gennargentu behind them, the wide, wild, aquamarine expanse of the Oristano coast opened into view. Virginia squealed in delight.

  “What did I tell you?” shouted Kavanagh over the clatter of the engine and the wind. His pride in sharing the island was something Carmela would have expected only from a local.

  “My God, Joe, that is the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen!”

  The road curved slightly, unveiling the rocky ruins of Tharros, a small, ancient city sprawled along the hillside. A pair of Corinthian columns gleamed white, triumphant remnants of ancient Roman domination. Carmela gazed, wide-eyed, at the antiquity. It would be but moments before she might stand where Phoenicians once ruled the crystalline waters of her Mediterranean. Kavanagh slowed down and let Antonio drive beside him. Mr. Curwin wound down his window.

  “It’s just up here, Lieutenant—poco minuti!” Antonio shouted.

  Kavanagh followed Antonio’s taxi till he turned in and parked in the shade of a cluster of pines beside the ruins. A narrow path led off from the edge of the stone city and snaked down between dunes toward a deserted stretch of beach. It swept into the sea in a wide curve beside a fortress rising at the farthest point. The travelers stepped out of their vehicles and into a salty breeze.

  “Glorious, Lieutenant—simply breathtaking!” Mrs. Curwin called out, stretching her arms up into the welcome relief of the cool air off the sea. A cluster of rocks and a strip of pine trees sheltered the cove. Once the cars were parked, Mrs. Curwin and Virginia were the first to step out. The crystal clear water beckoned; the Curwin boys ran through the faded mosaic-lined streets of the ruins, ripping off their clothes as they ran, sliding down the sandy banks and diving headfirst into the shallows. Mrs. Curwin and Virginia, holding Seymour in her arms, sauntered between the columns, gazing up at their crumbling stone, with the same hushed awe as those walking into a huge, deserted cathedral.

  “Let us cool off in the water, then I’ll be glad to explore, won’t you?” Mrs. Curwin asked.

  “Certainly—I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Carmela, Piera, and Antonio met at the trunks, unloading the hampers, umbrellas, and the couple of Windbreakers Mrs. Curwin had insisted on bringing for the new mother and child.

  Kavanagh reached Carmela as she grappled with the last basket. “Here, let me,” he said, taking both handles in his hand. “Don’t want the master chefs to hurt themselves, do I?” He flashed her a wide grin, bristling with the enthusiasm of a little boy. “I don’t think I’m the first American to be dumbstruck by something so old.”

  “I don’t think I’m the first Sardinian either,” Carmela replied, overcome by the silent majesty of the place.

  It took little to imagine these streets, now sustaining their battle against moss and weeds, humming with merchants and sailors. The atmosphere was thick with stories. She had never been to a place where such history was so palpable. The caves near the farm were even older perhaps, but theirs was a darker, more remote history. The deep holes in the rock where those Neolithic people sepulchered their dead didn’t share this atmosphere. Here, in the delicate moldings of the Corinthian columns, were the traces of the beginnings of the new world—a physical link to modern civilization, where poets and philosophers were prized.

  “I’ve been wanting to come back here,” Kavanagh said, gazing along the stones of what looked like a wide avenue. “I’m glad it’s having the same effect on you as it did me the first time I saw it!”

  Carmela tore her eyes away from the white stone to watch him heave the load up on his head and negotiate the sandy banks down to the shore. She took a deep breath of the crisp air and began her own walk through the ruins, listening to the sound of her heels ricochet off the sides of buildings that were most intact. She pictured those ancient ships sailing to the busy port at the foot of the bay, loaded with kings and their riches. She imagined this hillside teaming with workers and dark-skinned Phoenician princesses, dripping with ruby-encrusted gold necklaces, their light robes dancing on the sea breeze.

  Shrieks of laughter drew her eye back down to the cove, where Mrs. Curwin frolicked with her sons, diving in and out of the sea, a staggering azure backdrop to the blanched bricks of the ruins and the white sand. She splashed her offspring. The light played upon the dappled water, tracing undulating flecks of sun. Carmela watched Mrs. Curwin run her hands through her hair, sweeping it off her handsome face. She wished that one day she too might swim as lady of the house, with a halter-neck suit of floral fabric clinging to the voluptuous curves of her own hips and bosom. One day she too would bring her children to this magical place. She would teach them the richness of their isle, instill a deep pride in the abundance of its natural beauty and colorful history.

  Piera tore Carmela out of her reverie with the frantic waving of her arms from behind one of the breakers, no doubt already laying out the lunch spread for after the Curwins’ swim. Carmela took big strides down to her, feeling the powdery sand fall away underfoot, marveling at how this day would ever be deemed work.

  CHAPTER 10

  Just as Carmela and Antonio finished unfolding the last of the wooden deck chairs, the rumble of a vehicle drew the gaze of the group up toward the dunes. Captain Casler appeared at its peak, grinning like an intrepid explorer on the precipice of an insurmountable mountain. His hands were fixed on his square hips; the wind blew his reddish locks off his freckled face. “I’m no church man, Kavanagh,” he boomed down to the party, “but this sure as hell makes me think there’s a guy upstairs after all!” With wide strides he barreled down the slope toward the group.

  Mrs. Curwin jumped to her feet and raced to meet him, planting kisses from her sea-cooled lips on each of his cheeks and hooking her arm in his. “So you made it after all, Captain! We are honored.”

  “Honor’s all
mine, ma’am. I brought me some locals along to help. Nice to have company on a long ride, but it looks like you already thought of that.”

  Carmela glanced up at the girl in Casler’s jeep.

  “The Chirigoni sisters are the finest cooks in town, you must know that. Wouldn’t want anything but the best picnic for our final jolly before we head back to London, Captain.”

  “You could feed me bologna, ma’am, I wouldn’t notice. Not with you dancin’ around in that swimsuit.”

  “Marito, darling! You’re to save me immediately. I fear the captain’s intentions aren’t entirely wholesome after all. . . .”

  “For once,” Mr. Curwin called up to them from where he had disappeared into a deck chair, eyes masked beneath the tipped rim of his Panama hat, “your instincts are perfectly accurate. Luckily I made a pact with the lieutenant. He has agreed to protect one and all from my violent fits of jealousy.”

  A ripple of laughter.

  Mrs. Curwin ushered Casler toward Virginia. “I assume the two of you are well acquainted.”

  “Good afternoon, Captain,” Virginia answered with a wide smile.

  The captain guffawed with a lascivious twinkle. “Good God, Kavanagh, you want to ruin me altogether, man? I can’t be responsible for my actions this afternoon. Tell me what man could be with these visions before me.”

  “Come now, Captain,” Virginia cooed, “it’s just like what Mama taught me about food. Enjoy the look of it, but you need only take one small bite.”

  “Sure. Which piece do I try first?”

  The group’s cackles flew out to sea on the welcome breeze. Carmela glanced at them as she smoothed the linen tablecloth upon the low folding table, weighed down into the sand. It pleased her to see that Kavanagh’s smile seemed a little forced, strained into coercion, by his senior. Carmela caught a fleeting streak of raw ambition in Virginia’s eyes. From her outburst by the water it was clear that she was used to playing the lady of the house. Carmela noticed Kavanagh’s protective gaze drifting toward Seymour throughout the conversation, while his wife’s was fixed firmly on the one man responsible for any possible promotion of her husband’s rank.

  An undulation of envy swelled in the pit of her stomach. Carmela tried to concentrate on the tiny, white ripples of the water as they lapped at the powdery sand, willing them to wash the feeling away.

  “Carmela?” Antonio strutted over to her. “Your grandmother keeps you girls under a tight fist, eh? One hour in the sun and you look as pained as a white Brit!”

  Carmela squinted back at him.

  “She can look after herself just fine.”

  The familiar voice pulled Carmela’s view back into sharp focus. “Agnes?”

  “Why am I surprised you’re not happy to see me?”

  “Play nicely, girls,” Antonio said, turning to go help Piera. “Some of us are here to work.”

  Carmela shifted and smoothed her skirt. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  “You think you’re the only girl in Simius who gets to hang on the arm of an American?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Heard Blue Eyes is looking for a translator. My cousin works at the hospital, told me a certain local had made quite the impression, but I’m sure he would be open to other candidates offering themselves for the job. Those who have more time to help. Those less greedy, maybe, who don’t have two jobs already, say.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Captain invited a few of us to join the party. I don’t waste time with the lower ranks myself.”

  “A married man, Agnes.”

  “Just can’t help themselves.”

  Carmela turned and began to walk over to the hampers. “I have lunch to serve.”

  “That’s how those Yanks like their women, right? Bending over for them?”

  “Some of us have pride,” Carmela said, whipping around. “Look at the beauty around you, Agnes. That’s something to be proud of. Not how quickly you can seduce a married man!”

  The suggestion of a smile curled the corner of Agnes’s mouth.

  Carmela, off-guard, felt the fire rise in her chest and flush her cheeks. For a moment Agnes had the same smug furl of her lips as Rosa did the day Carmela discovered her affair. “Hang off a uniform like a bad smell all you want, but don’t you ever, ever talk to me like that again!”

  “Hot breath from a bride-to-be.”

  Agnes turned and sauntered toward the captain, who introduced her to the other women with the roving hands of a dubious uncle.

  “What in Jesus’s name is Agnes doing here?!” Piera piped, arriving with a parcel of stuffed bread.

  “Headed to slaughter.”

  “Go put your feet in the water for a bit. Antonio said you looked pale. I’ll finish up here.”

  Carmela took the loaf from her sister and began cutting it into thick slices. The smell of mortadella and ham mixed with the marinated peppers and eggplant that she and her sister had stuffed it with drew her back to the start of the day: the cool, clean of the kitchen, the safe order of her world. She arranged the slices on a wide plate, then cut thin lengths of chicory and made a green nest at the center before trimming a couple of stalks of celery and placing those on top. “I’m fine.”

  Carmela’s thoughts drifted to her mother, as they often did when she prepared meals. She pictured Maria at the family meal, unflustered by her grandmother’s rants and stream of criticism. In the same way, Carmela focused on the salty slab of pecorino upon the chopping board, hoping that each neat cube she cut would etch away the pulsating. She didn’t dare look up at Agnes, bouncing without a care in a polka-dot bikini. She didn’t want to notice the gentle wave of her thick hair or her porcelain thighs or the way the women looked at her. Nor did she care to notice Mrs. Curwin and Virginia take in her thick eyebrows, wolf eyes, plump lips, with a mixture of admiration and masked disdain. They were unaccustomed to socializing with the local women in any capacity other than domestics.

  Agnes’s pigeon English appeared to impress them, though Carmela wondered whether she had mastered it enough to tell a joke, or if the laughter was at her expense. Either way it shouldn’t have mattered. What did Carmela care if Kavanagh flashed Agnes the same winning grin he had to her earlier? What did it matter that Agnes played into the cheap stereotype of the local girl, an easy target for the dazzle of American dreams?

  But she did care. Somewhere along the drive here, she had begun to care. Somewhere between watching Kavanagh’s tender gaze at his babe in arms and the pleasure with which the lieutenant had eaten her food, she began to care. Carmela tried to concentrate on the fresh, sea-salted air, the whisper of pine sap in the breeze, her daydreams of those Phoenicians, but her mind wouldn’t shift. It stayed fixed on that gentle face bathed in sunlight. Kavanagh looked back at her. He was about to call to her. Carmela’s chest tightened. Before he could speak, Virginia hooked her arm in his, led him to the water’s edge, and waded into the shallows. The sea would feel like a warm bath at this time of day.

  What of the palpable change that had taken place just in the few hours’ drive from the base through unchartered lands of her own island? What of the dull pang of sorrow creeping in, as she felt something close to coveting another woman’s man? Another woman’s life? What of those deep, blue eyes, bright with intelligence and curiosity and respect and gentleness that could make another forget their beginnings, futures, or plans? That could make a girl dream bigger than she’d dare and cry for an eternity—with happiness, with pain. What about Franco? What of it all? This is life, thought Carmela. We are to live, not chase, not run about without aim, nor gallop toward hell, nor catch the bait of provocateurs like Agnes. There was cheese to serve and bread to pass.

  She watched Virginia holding Seymour on her hip and began to imagine herself slinking into beautiful summer gowns a few months after delivering her own baby, not a trace of her travails on her body. Would she leap off her mother’s bed like her aunt did, running down to the fountain
within hours of her cousin slipping into the world? She tried to imagine Franco with his arms wrapped around her sweaty body, after she had pushed out a beautiful soul. But she could not feel the heat, found it impossible to imagine him holding her in that raw state. She tried to think about them making love in the days that followed, celebrating the unstoppable pulse of life, but the pictures felt forced, contrived, the figures acting out the scene like unconvincing amateur players.

  “Carmela, dear, that smells wonderful!” Mrs. Curwin waved her over toward the group.

  Carmela balanced two plates in each hand, hoping her racing thoughts were not streaked over her face for all to see.

  “What time is it, Joe?” Virginia asked.

  Kavanagh looked up at the sun. “I’d say almost midday, least my belly tells me so!”

  The women laughed. Agnes was the loudest.

  “Seymour’s nap time,” Virginia announced.

  “He looks happy to me, don’t ya, fella?” Kavanagh jiggled him up and down on his hip, besotted.

  “Ask Carmela to put him down for his sleep.”

  Kavanagh took Virginia by the arm. “Just excuse us a moment, Carmela.” They moved off toward the Windbreakers. Carmela strained to follow their whispered conversation above Mrs. Curwin and Casler’s chatter.

  “Carmela is not our help. She understands English. Don’t speak to her like an illiterate servant.”

  “Your boss is on the brink of promoting you and all you want to do is talk about some dumb local’s language skills, for Chrissakes!” she spat. “Joe: champion of the downtrodden—cute, but not the time!”

  She stomped back to the group.

  “Carmela, take Seymour to his carry cot and lay him down,” she said flatly, someone asking another to pass the butter dish.

  “Here, Captain,” Mrs. Curwin interjected, ever the sublime hostess, “let me offer you a slice of this.” She took the plates from Carmela. Her boys dashed toward her from the water, shaking their heads like dogs after a dip. “Boys! You’re getting us all wet!”