Under a Sardinian Sky

by Sara Alexander

  At the opposite end of the piazza was another platform, upon which Cubeddu, the town’s poet, would return from the mainland to spar with hopeful local bards in their much loved poetry competition. This year, an excited customer had told Carmela that the discourse would be on whether each poet would choose his mother or wife to save in a disaster.

  Carmela was struck by the way the poets could find humor even in the darkest themes and keep the crowd hanging on every word. She loved to watch them, the bristles of their long beards twitching as they are taken over with the passion of the moment and the desire to win. One stand already had a huge metal vat of melting sugar on the go, in preparation for the almond and hazelnut brittle the confectioner would craft later for the crowd.

  In the studio the girls burrowed their heads deep into their work. The faster they sewed, the earlier they might be let go, and the longer they would have to beautify themselves for the parade.

  The Martedi Grasso moon, full, fat, and smiling, rose high in a starry, cloudless sky. The dissonant clatter of hundreds of sheep bells suddenly echoed down the viccoli toward the piazza. A hush fell over the vast carnival crowd, pressed together like salted anchovies around the perimeter of the main square. The bells rang once again, in unison. The crowd shuffled in anticipation, eyes searching for the noise coming from farther up one of the narrow viccoli. Again the bells rang out, closer this time. Several children ran from the front of the crowd to cling to their parents.

  Their shadows appeared first, folding around the corner building on the edge of the piazza, rising toward the shutters. Hooded silhouettes bowing under the weight of at least two dozen metal bells attached to their backs, on sheepskins that wrapped around their bodies. Then the Mamuthones appeared, at least fifty local men donning full costume. They wore thick, wooden masks of skewed faces, huge eyes, crooked mouths, and noses that ran almost from the forehead to the chin. Some had high-carved cheeks, and others had grave, sorrowful expressions, turned-down mouths etched deep into the wood; others still had an abstract of surprise, with long, tapered horns. The rich, dark wood lent a woe-stricken undertone to each. It was an army of demons.

  Shunt to the right, step step.

  Shunt to the left, step step.

  As they filled the square, the crowd’s expression rippled between fear and wonder. Once they had taken their positions, their leader summoned them into a semicircle and they began an elaborate answer-and-response, the leader performing a movement and the chorus of dark figures echoing. As the tempo accelerated, the cheers began. Faster and faster the macabre dance went, until the entire crowd clapped to the same beat.

  The entrance of the horses released the crowd from their frenzy and back into silent awe. Their riders were dressed in thick, woolen trousers; crisp, white shirts trimmed with elaborate lace collars; and black waistcoats embroidered in bright colors along the edges and on the breast. Their buttons were polished gold, some encrusted with coral and turquoise. They too were masked, but unlike the Mamuthones, theirs were bright white, ceramic, and expressionless—impassive faces beneath wide, black hats. Some had scarves that trailed down from the back rim. All wore thick, white gloves.

  The Mamuthones fell silent as the horses paraded into the center. It was impossible to tell which was Franco, but the rider toward the center appeared to have a gait Carmela recognized. The horses walked through the semicircle, then led the procession onward down through the cobbled streets beyond the piazza, where Simiuns hung out of their windows, wrapped in their warmest furs, and others crammed into doorways and along the street.

  As the riders and Mamuthones left the piazza, some revelers followed, and others stayed to dance as the traditional folk band wheezed into life, having accompanied several dance troupes earlier in the evening. The rituals were over—the party began in earnest.

  How very different, Carmela thought, from the celebration at the base. What on earth would Kavanagh have made of all this paganism? How would she have explained the meaning and mysteries behind each of the figures and their place on the eve of Lent? Would a crisp American from a Southern state ever comprehend what it all meant? The Americans were conspicuous in their absence. Carmela couldn’t help wondering if they had been ordered by Casler not to fraternize. He was probably riding masked himself, hoping to wind his way into some illicit embrace or other. How liberated she suddenly felt, to be free of all that. She felt proud to be Sardinian.

  Vittoria popped out from behind her. “Carmela!” she cried, waving a piece of paper in her hand.

  “Whatever is the matter? You said you would be with Gianetta. Where is she?”

  “She’s with Yolanda, buying brittle. Nonna said I can even have some. Weren’t they scary?”

  “Yes, I suppose. What have you got there?”

  It looked like a letter, a puzzling sight in the midst of the party.

  “It’s for you! The lady from the post office saw me just as she was closing up, and she said she had something for you. It had been in the post office by mistake for ages, she said, so she gave it to me and this is me giving it to you and—”

  Carmela took the letter from her sister’s hand. Who on earth would be writing to her? They had distant family in Munich and some in the outskirts of Rome but none accustomed to writing. The stamp was American. Carmela’s heart skipped. Maria’s sister had settled in Niagara Falls before the war. They wrote regularly. But this letter was not for her mother.

  She fought the urge to tear it open right there and then, instead folding it inside her coat pocket.

  “Off you go and dance, Vittoria, look, Gianetta is waving to us, see?”

  Vittoria dashed off to join her sister and Yolanda. Carmela waved to them but instead of following, her feet twisted her back uphill to where the procession had begun. When she had moved several hundred meters away she found a stone stoop and took the letter out of her pocket. The writing was not her aunt’s. She turned the envelope over and over in her hands. Then she ripped it open and pulled out the cream paper. It felt fine milled, expensive. Nothing like the almost translucent stuff her aunt used. She flipped it over and unfolded it. Her eyes raced down to the signature at the bottom of the letter.

  Her heart skipped.

  Base 16578—Washington, DC

  November 6, 1952

  Dear Carmela,

  I apologize for my sudden departure, and for not writing sooner. It’s one of the hardest letters I’ve written. My mother lost her life a month ago, in an automobile accident. I hadn’t prepared for how grief would tear me to the core, but it has. She was the gentlest, strongest woman I have known. Until I met you.

  I am a coward to write this now. But from the moment I saw you, staring at me across your father’s field, I did everything I could to forget your face. The way your lips part slightly when you are sizing up a stranger, the courage, curiosity, and intelligence you radiate, your proud stance, childlike verve, and wisdom beyond your years. I wanted to behave with propriety. I wanted to ignore my feelings. But I can’t stifle my burning need to tell you the simple truth: I love you, Carmela.

  My life is in Washington, DC now. I am stationed here indefinitely. Virginia remains down South with Seymour. We have gone our separate ways. The reasons are not for this letter. The world is quiet and solemn without an infant around.

  I am selfish to burden you like this, but I couldn’t face never telling you how you have touched me. I want nothing in return. I will not write again. In another life, another time, perhaps things might have been different. I want only to wish you well—health, wealth, and above all else, happiness. These are the riches you deserve more than anyone I know.

  Thank you for everything. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  Joe

  CHAPTER 21

  The sounds of the carnival whirled around her. She folded the letter and replaced it inside her pocket. Her feet marched her away toward the reverberating celebrations, pounding up the cobble alleys and over the ancient viccoli. Once or
twice she ducked into narrow corridors only to find Mamuthones and their chosen girls for the night in compromising positions. Was it every Sardinian girl’s tawdry dream to make love to a masked bear? Several streets had scantily clad people dancing down them with delirium, oblivious to the cold or decorum—out-of-towners. She felt faint, but couldn’t stop walking.

  At last, a tiny, deserted alley. She flew down it. At the stone doorframe of the last house, she stopped. She was dizzy now, feeling as if the whole street might tip up and slide everything and anyone on it, helpless pinballs in a loser’s game. There was drumming from the piazza and more cheers, warped by the viccoli and the pounding in her chest.

  In the half shadows, she reached inside her pocket for the letter. Her fingers were white from tightly clutching the paper. She skipped across the words like stepping stones: accident, courage, curiosity. Love.

  She felt an explosion, neither happiness nor despair. Rather, a stunned white noise jarred her mind, radio static, a tuneless frequency. The blood returned to her head with the first sting of regret, only to slip into silent confusion. She longed for a deeper breath. As she did, sobs overtook her, an unstoppable wave crashing to shore, washing away resolve and rationale. Her head dropped into her hands. Nothing in her world made any sense.

  For a moment she felt invisible, a mist of tears. She surrendered to them. As her breath shuddered through her, in the midst of her fog, she reached an eerie silence. The self-protective numbness of her autumn wafted back, like the coastal clouds before a storm.

  Her breath hovered closer to normal. She peeled open the page again, smoothing it over with gentle, apologetic fingers. For a breath or two she allowed his words to take her back to the golden memories of the summer. His bashful smile when he had first met her at the farm was more than the awkwardness of a foreigner outnumbered by formidable islanders. The way he held her gaze past politeness at the hospital. In those twilight shadows, she had chosen to interpret the electric silences as nothing more than her own skittish excitement. His desperate attempt to impress her in the ward’s kitchen was more than civil hospitality after all. The way he had stuttered over his clumsy compliments about her cooking at the picnic. The way he had insisted they work alone. That gaze, which Carmela never allowed herself to fall into the way she would have liked, might have revealed more than she could ever have imagined.

  The sharp twist of regret’s knife.

  But what was there to regret? Not having had the courage to tell a married man she had fallen in love with inexplicable passion? That he had touched something deep inside her? What courage would there have been in that? It made her sick to imagine herself back in September pouring out her feelings to him, only to run back to town and finish his wife’s hem, the final touches for the perfect couple.

  And what courage did he display toward her? Did he ever even come close to sharing any of these feelings with her? Where was his courage when he was touched by such passion? The sparkle of her intelligence had done nothing but send him running back to the States. Where was the passion in that? Did he fight to return? Five months after the fact he was living a lie—without his wife or child.

  And yet.

  Much as she tried to paint him with a coward’s brush, her heart knew he was the stronger for not burdening her with his feelings. As she wallowed through these murky thoughts, she couldn’t stop picturing him nursing his own deeper wounds, his own tragic losses. However she might try, Carmela would never be able to convince herself that he had acted with disrespect of any sort—quite the contrary.

  She ran her fingers along the words. He had touched this page. He had thought of her over every word. His tongue had touched the envelope’s fold. Those lips she had burned into memory, gazing at them while his attention was directed toward his captain, a farmer, his wife. She ached for them. Had dreamed of them. How long had she spent gazing up at her ceiling at night imagining the feel of them on her own, or on her neck, her hand, her thigh?

  What of it now? Carmela knew there to be but one chance at true love in a lifetime. She had let hers slip away. She had clung to safe, to The Plan. What intelligence could he have seen in her? That of a woman so desperate to follow the life others had created for her? Terrified of intuiting what she really wanted? Her weakness disgusted her. First, for falling for someone who was not hers to fall for; second, for watching him drift away while she held up the mask of propriety.

  She looked down at the writing. The beautiful penmanship took her breath away. Such care over every word. This was not the scrawl of someone in a downward spiral to irrecoverable despair. This was the hand of a man who never professed what he didn’t feel, a man in touch with the undercurrents of his own emotions and those of others. He wrote of being selfish, didn’t he? This wasn’t a bogus declaration. This was a measured confession.

  Carmela’s body ached. She looked up and away from the words, though she knew that every one of them would be imprinted in her mind till her dying day. She would walk up to the altar with another man in her heart, an invisible man. The only one who could have ever reached her, the only one who offered her an insight into the woman she could become.

  But how could any man believe in her and her future if she didn’t herself? If she had looked her future square in the eye, she would have found the strength to be honest with him, with herself, and with Franco. In the end, she could blame only herself for not grasping the life she had fantasized about. She couldn’t escape herself—that was the worst pain of all. No sparkling intelligence in not chasing after her dreams, shying away from standing tall in the face of repercussions, holding on to resolve even though others might be hurt. She had allowed herself to be crippled by all those expectations, and this was her punishment: the declaration of love from a man she would never set eyes on again. God had sent her a life of buried regrets to shackle her soul. She had created this mess, and no amount of deft backstitching could fix it.

  The oil street lamp at the apex of the alley flickered and then went out. Her tears began to dry on her cheeks. The purple-black night was crisp with winter. She looked up. The stars were bright, scattered across the sky like shards of gemstones. How insignificant everything felt. Nothing mattered indeed. A lifetime flits by, and then we are stardust once again. This pain would fade. This regret would be buried.

  The births of her own children would heal this wound. A sewing empire would provide a profitable, all-consuming distraction. She had known this deep attraction, and this was enough. She had felt it score her bones deeply. And now she knew it had been reciprocated all along.

  It would have been far sadder to drift through life and never feel this. She ought to be thankful for having met that elusive great love, even if it would be neither consummated nor fulfilled. He would not sit beside her in old age. But what of that? Two people had found each other, if but for a snatched moment in time. Was that not enough? Does the length of time two souls spend together make the encounter more meaningful? Does a lifetime of shared experience always make something more worthwhile? The physical expression of their love would only have been a manifestation of something far deeper, more intimate, than any touch could convey. If anything, the physical would have reduced these powerful feelings, this inexplicable connection, to the carnal, banal even.

  Yes, this was enough. She could look her future daughters in their eyes and tell them that great, burning love is possible, that there is the perfect soul for everyone in the world. She would tell them to be ready to spot it when it came, to not let it slip away. She would tell them not to look back toward their mother on the island but to spread their wings, seek their lives. She would not burden them with her own expectations. She would set them free, because freedom is the most powerful expression of love. Kavanagh had set her free. He had never forced anything on her whatsoever. His love was pure, untainted with demands.

  If a life with Franco would give her a safe home, a lifetime wanting for nothing, a brood of children who could learn from her mi
stakes and rise, like the phoenix, from the ashes of her own failings, her existence would not be wasted or stunted with missed opportunities. What would there be to regret? She would die a fulfilled woman after all.

  Carmela clung to the image of those dreamed-up daughters, so bright and clear in her mind’s eye, standing proud, bristling with curiosity, ideas, and fiery independence.

  Then she wept.

  They weren’t her daughters. They were her.

  She wept for the woman she would never become.

  The clumsy clatter of drunken footsteps snatched her out of her head. She froze in the darkness of the doorway. She heard the voices of two men. All these houses were empty, of that she was certain. The inhabitants would all be down in the piazza. Only a couple of meters separated her from two drunks on carnival night.

  What was she thinking, tearing herself away down into an abandoned street? And tonight, of all nights, when her town was awash with strangers, unaccountable drinkers in search of a good time whatever the price. Every year stories would set tongues alight about undesirable encounters. It wouldn’t be unusual for Agnes or one of her crowd to recount horrific tales of local girls being taken advantage of under the cover of carnival’s chaos. All she had cared about was a stupid, out-of-date letter. Was that worth the unspeakable that might happen if these men saw her?

  They were laughing now. One sounded a little younger. Her ears pricked up. Something about the laughter was familiar. For a second she thought it might be Franco. She didn’t move a muscle, praying they wouldn’t walk farther down the alley. What on earth would she say to him? How would she explain hiding in a doorway on carnival night while her sisters danced in the square?

  Most likely it would be Franco’s younger cousin Cristiano with him. She would wait. No doubt they would soon find their way back to the party. The men’s footsteps were getting closer. Her breaths became shallow.