Under a Sardinian Sky

by Sara Alexander

  When Carmela’s mother finally arrived, Tomas managed to engineer an artful curtailment of Agostino’s stay. White from the panic of driving with a husband of little experience through a night fog, Maria rolled her sleeves up and scrubbed them with hot water mixed with a little cool from the jug. Her expression confirmed Carmela’s instincts. Nothing about this was going the way it should.

  “I have to push, Maria!” Rosa yelled, flailing now, standing up by the table, reaching her hips back and away from it. Her knuckles pushed down into the wood.

  “I’m going to feel inside,” Maria said.

  Rosa sucked in a breath and let out a scream that would have woken the dead.

  “I need you to breathe, Rosa. Ready? This is my hand you can feel.”

  Maria took on a look of deep, faraway concentration. She nodded to Carmela. “I feel the head, Rosa. The baby will be here soon.”

  She had almost finished the sentence when Rosa howled like a rabid wolf. Her back rose up and arched. Her knees fell open, wider than before, and her whole body bore down. Carmela watched Rosa’s nails dig into the side of the table under the cloths. When the contraction ebbed, there were tiny marks in the grain.

  Rosa’s eyes glazed over for a moment. Maria reached quickly for water. Rosa was hot to the touch and starting to shiver. A trickle of blood traced down her thigh. Carmela ripped the cloths from the table and threw them to the floor for Rosa to stand on. There were small clots by her ankles. Terror flitted across Maria’s face.

  Rosa’s face contorted, and she let out one more guttural howl that shook the room. Her body bore down once again. Maria reacted to the signals and fell to her knees, ready to catch the baby. She knew it was too soon, too rushed, but Rosa had stopped listening. She was in another world now. Her back muscles were flexing, her toes were curling, her fingers clawing at the table again. The head appeared, followed by two tiny shoulders, before the rest of the body slithered out like a fish onto a towel Maria held on her lap. She wrapped up the blue-gray baby. Rosa put her head in her hands. Her legs were shaking. Carmela helped her onto the table and propped up against her so that she could rest while they waited for the afterbirth. Rosa was panting. Carmela wiped her forehead with a damp cloth and rocked her a little as if she were soothing a child. The white sheets beneath her were blotted with droplets of red.

  Carmela looked over toward her mother, who had taken the baby to the bed. It was too quiet. She watched her mother massage the baby’s chest in firm, circular movements. She lifted it and did the same on its back. After several repetitions of this, Maria lay the bundle back down on the bed. Nothing she could do would wake this baby from its sleep. Carmela stopped swaying.

  Rosa let out a deep sigh. After a strong contraction a liverlike mass slithered onto the table.

  “If you try to get me to eat that, I’ll kill you,” Rosa muttered, slurring.

  Carmela wrapped up the afterbirth inside several layers of cloth and placed it inside a large bucket by the sink. When she returned to Rosa, she had her hands on top of her knees, with her head hung between them. Her panting was slowing down toward normal breaths. Carmela met her mother’s eyes again. Maria shook her head. Her eyes were glassy. She lifted the rosary up off her neck, kissed it, then laid it upon the baby’s chest. Carmela wrapped Rosa in a blanket and began wiping her legs and feet.

  “Don’t touch me!” Rosa said. “I will wash myself.”

  Carmela took a step back and watched for a moment. Rosa did not look toward the baby that her body had fought out of her. She fixed her attention on her clammy legs, on her pubic hair, matted together with sweat and congealed blood. Every movement expressed a deep disgust for the entire process. Carmela walked to the bed. There lay an angel, a half smile across its face. The ethereal beauty of its unmoving face was overwhelming. The eyelids were pressed together, forever stolen in a pleasurable dream. Carmela clung to her mother. Maria held her child. She wiped Carmela’s tears and whispered, “You are to be strong. Time enough for tears. Not now.”

  Carmela nodded.

  Rosa made light work of removing all evidence of what had just happened. Wet rags were stacked in a heap on the floor. She moved over to her bedside chair, wriggled into her nightgown, and pulled a heavy knit cardigan over the top. Then she stood, facing Maria. “I killed it, didn’t I?”

  A matter-of-fact exchange.

  “No, Rosa. It wasn’t his time.”

  She laughed—a mixture of bitterness and exhaustion. “I spared him. Life is overrated.”

  Carmela came to Rosa’s aid, helping her slip beneath the covers. Maria placed a hand between her shoulder blades; her fever had subsided.

  “Would you like to say good-bye?” Maria asked. Carmela thanked God for sending her mother here in time. What on earth would she have done without her? For certain she would not have been able to find these words. She could barely breathe, let alone string together a thought.

  “I never said hello,” Rosa replied. Then she turned and drew the covers over her head.

  Maria cradled the baby in her arms. She moved toward the back door and reached outside for a basket that they used for collecting eggs. She placed the baby inside and wrapped more cloth around it. Once she had said the rosary three times, Maria instructed Carmela to heat a little broth for her aunt and be sure she drank it all. As she left, Carmela saw her take Peppe’s shovel with her.

  The fire’s warmth did nothing to raise Carmela’s temperature. She watched Rosa’s shoulders rise and fall with her breath. Where was she now? A dreamless sleep? A nightmare from which she would never wake? A chill spidered up the back of her neck. She walked to the window and cupped her hands over the cold glass. Her mother was a tiny, moonlit silhouette by the cork oaks. She was kneeling now. Placing the basket and everything inside it down into the earth. Carmela wept. She prayed for forgiveness. She prayed for the floating soul of Rosa’s boy. Another ghost to light a candle for.

  She would never howl upon a kitchen table for a baby born from empty lust. Carmela began to weep again. For her aunt’s plight? For this baby that was never born? No. These hot tears that traced her cheeks were born of relief. A torrent of images from the summer ran through her mind. Kavanagh turning up at the farm, their first visit to Signor Lau, the way he had looked at her in that dappled light, the way he had fumbled for words. She pictured him in the shadows of the hospital beside Salvatore. The wide grin he greeted her with when she had turned up to accept his offer of work. Her body began to shake with the tears. But it was not grief that rippled through her body. She didn’t weep for the life she would never have, for the man who would not love her with the ferocity with which she had harbored for him. The idea of freedom was what she had fallen in love with, not the man who represented it. Freedom from the expectations imposed on her, freedom to choose a different path. Now, standing in the frigid shadows of the farmhouse, she realized that true freedom was hers already. She was not ensnared by some blind lust. She was not trailing a married man like her aunt had. She was not held captive by irrational longings, by the illusion of something. She was not, and never would be, Rosa.

  Kavanagh was where he belonged: home. With a wife he loved and a child he cherished. Carmela didn’t love him. She loved the idea of a man like him. And she prayed to God with thanks for her narrow escape.

  It was true that defeat, pain, or heartache was indeed a blessing in disguise. A prayer of thanks scored her mind, mumbled mutterings in the night. Gratitude washed over her. Amidst the horror of the evening, there was a flicker of hope in the darkness—far better a Franco than an invisible man like Rosa’s doctor, who would leave her to face this carnage alone. That was no man. Imagined men are the stuff of bad dreams—ones you never wake from.

  Carmela remembered the way Franco had looked down at her at the cemetery a few days earlier. How his expression of fear had given way to that of love. He had promised himself to her as just a boy. His simple, innocent devotion—if at times childish, unrefined, and con
trolling, even—was a love that could weather an age. This was the man she was meant to stand beside after all. A summer of questions and doubts and idle distractions had served only to reveal her true path. How glad she was to have met Kavanagh, grateful he had sparked a whirlwind inside her. It had served to prove to her what true marriage meant, and which life she was destined to live.

  A quiet peace warmed her. She prayed for that tiny soul, out there in the dark, drifting back up to the stars. Her mother’s moon shadow trudged back across the cold field.

  CHAPTER 20

  Small, uniform pieces of onion began to sizzle and soften at the bottom of the huge metal pan upon the stove. Carmela poured another glug of olive oil over them and added paper-thin slices of garlic. She watched them caramelize, lost in the purity of thoughtlessness that cooking invoked.

  The descent into the darkness of November had given way to a peaceful December. A tender equilibrium reverberated throughout the household. After a few weeks of recuperation, Rosa found that her depression ebbed; every day she behaved more like a woman grateful for the people who had stood by her rather than dwelling on those who had fled. Piera floated around with a perpetual half smile in her eyes. Even Icca softened. Carmela spotted her launching the odd snowball during the thick blanket of snow that buried Simius in early December. Then the ice froze the steep cobbled steps, and several of Icca’s contemporaries suffered grievous injuries. At this point Icca retook her seat inside and held court from there for the entire month.

  Vittoria and Gianetta were allowed to dance through the house, on account of the New Year’s Eve festivities; gallop, skip, fight, pout, repeat. Tomas sat on his oversized armchair by a new wireless that took up a significant portion of the glass-topped sideboard. He listened to a broadcast of a choral concert from the capital, Cagliari. Only music would slow her father down to a peaceful stillness. Carmela loved his faraway expression as he did so. Her mother sat beside him, her hair in a bun at the base of her head. She wore the yellow glass drop earrings from her wedding day as her fingers flew through an intricate crochet pattern, the skinny needles clicking together as the doily grew.

  Carmela returned her full attention to cubing the sausage upon the thick, wooden board. The memory of this sow’s slaughter was from another life. As the meat browned, a rich aroma rose up from the pan, sweet-salt steam thick with oregano, rosemary, thyme, and bay. Before the meat was cooked through, Carmela reached for a brown bottle of vernaccia and doused the pan. The alcohol whooshed up into steam, swirling into concentric spirals that filled the kitchen with the reassuring smell of a New Year’s feast. As the sugar of the cooking wine seeped into the meat, she scraped the onions and garlic off the bottom of the pan to coat them around the sausage. Then she reached over to the counter for a large enamel bowl and tipped its contents of dried lentils into the pan, each nutty bead like a miniature coin, the symbol for prosperity.

  She stirred them around the meat, onions, and garlic. The invocation of prosperity this year was for a spring bountiful not only with material goods or harvests but also with love. Piera and Luigi’s courtship had become official, and Carmela’s wedding would usher in the fertility of the season. She pictured herself beside Franco by the altar at the cathedral. The way he would hold her hand, assured but tender. He might look at her sideways, with a jaunty glint in his eye, forever that tireless youth who had chased her affections at the cusp of their childhood’s end. Then she imagined Piera, luminous in a light summer wedding dress, upon the steps of the same cathedral, perhaps a fine lace mantilla to cover her head and then cascade down her firm back toward her hem. Carmela’s heart swelled, even more than when she dreamed up her own wedding day. Tonight was about giving thanks. There was much to be grateful for indeed.

  Carmela dipped a ladle into the clear vegetable broth simmering on the back burner. She poured it over the lentils and meat, and continued without haste until the liquid reached halfway up the tall pan. She placed the lid on top and reduced the heat. It would simmer on this gentle flame through the entire afternoon, until Yolanda and her husband joined them after evening mass.

  “A toast!” Peppe called out from the end of the table. “To the beautiful cooks and the children we wish them!”

  Cheers. Clinks. Carmela felt her cheeks redden. Beneath the table, Franco slipped a hand on top of her knee, and then traced it almost to the tip of her inner thigh. Was this giddy feeling the wine or the unfamiliarity of simple happiness?

  All the guests around the table stood up from their seats, raising their glasses heavenward. The candles danced in their eyes. For a moment Carmela could even picture Icca as a young woman. Lucia and Peppe kissed each other. Maria and Tomas stepped closer together. Piera lowered her eyes as Luigi took her hand. The gaggle of cousins squeezed in between the adults and passed ridotto glasses between them, dipping their fingers inside, then slurping the droplet of wine from the tips.

  Yolanda tapped her glass with the tip of her fork.

  The family grew silent.

  “And now, if I may, I would like to share some news with you all. Please, you may sit back down. As you are all aware, of course, I have had Carmela beside me as my prized apprentice for several years. She came to me a scrawny goddaughter with no hips and two plaits, declaring her dream of following in my footsteps.”

  Carmela smiled, bashful.

  “To be quite frank, my dear, I did doubt whether you had it in you at all.”

  Laughter rippled around the table.

  “Ten years of dogged determination she has put in, displaying patience with even the most cantankerous customer—and let me tell you, money does not buy you class—together with a diligent approach to every task I have ever set her. And so, it is with great pleasure that I invite you, Carmela, to stand beside me at the studio, no longer as apprentice, but as partner!”

  All eyes turned to Carmela. Electricity shot through her, a brief, golden silence.

  “Zia Yolanda,” Carmela said, finding her voice at last, “I don’t know what to say. . . .”

  “Say you’re the best seamstress this town has seen!” Franco shouted, pulling her into his arms.

  More cheers.

  Carmela ran around to the other side of the table and squeezed her godmother tight, overcome.

  “Come now,” Yolanda said with a broad smile, “I expect you to keep hold of your level head, child!” The two women laughed. Yolanda wiped a tear off Carmela’s cheek and one off her own. When Carmela returned to her seat, the coffee was passed around, accompanied by a mountain of sweets. Tiricche—fig-filled pastries, and papassini—moist raisin-dotted cookies, topped with icing painted on in delicate lacelike designs, so fine that everyone agreed it was almost sinful to destroy such art by eating them.

  Carmela had never seen her mother and father look so happy.

  January slipped by in a mist. Toward the end of February, Simius shook off the endless cold and burst into frenetic preparation for the celebration of Martedi Grasso. The piazza was alive with stallholders pitching their stands along the course of the carnival procession that would take place that night. When Carmela stopped into Antonio’s bar, he was shining his polished glasses, certain to exploit the opportunity of having his town filled with salubrious, and most likely wealthy, revelers.

  “You’ll wear it down to breaking, Anto’!”

  “You see if I don’t, Carmela. If my ladies want a deluxe crème de menthe they come to me—next best thing to sipping along the Champs-Élysées. I’ll give them the service they’ve traveled half of Sardinia for.”

  Carmela leaned over the bar and kissed him on the cheek.

  “You look beautiful, Carmela. It’s like you’ve thrown off your veil.”

  “All because of you.”

  “Nothing to do with a certain partnership whatsoever, or having the wealthiest clod head in town hang off your arm?”

  Carmela shook her head with a giggle. “Here, take this tray of sweets. Mamma insisted you have them as a gift
.” She rose onto the tips of her toes and handed the loaded tray over the bar to him.

  “I told her I would pay for them! I’ll be selling them later.”

  “She wouldn’t hear of it. I think she wishes her own son would show as much ambition as you.” Carmela leaned onto the bar, lowering her voice, “Would you talk to him, Antonio? No one seems to be able to get through to him at home. From what I can see, my brother cares only about what the actors in Rome are wearing these days. He steals my fashion magazines that Yolanda buys for the studio. Of course Papa won’t hear of him training with me, though I’ve suggested it several times. He insists little Salvatore will take over the farm.”

  Antonio smirked, but Carmela couldn’t tell if it was derogative or complicit. “Tell him to stop in. I’ll see what this councilor can’t do. Chirigonis are my specialty.”

  Carmela had never felt such an intimate connection with another man, based on nothing more than an open friendship. Never had there been even the slightest hint of attraction. It puzzled her; he was beautiful, mannered, ambitious—sane. A very private person when it came to it, far more adept at drawing out the secrets of anyone who stepped into his bar than revealing his own: the consummate professional. Everyone needed to talk to Antonio. He would listen with his whole body, making the speaker feel there was nowhere he would rather be, or any other face he would care to gaze upon but theirs. Where had he learned that? His formidable mother couldn’t be more opposite. Perhaps years of battering indoors helped him hone a patience known only to saints.

  Back on the street, the last clangs of scaffold rung against the stone houses as large teams of builders erected several platforms. On one stood a thick, four-legged iron frame for a gas ring, heating an enormous copper cauldron. Three men took turns stirring the steaming broad bean stew cooking inside, using wooden spoons with handles as long as brooms. The smell was rich with smoked pancetta and the deep flavor of the salted bones from the November slaughters. The first of the aromatic wild fennel balanced the earthy starch of the harvest to perfection.