Under a Sardinian Sky

by Sara Alexander

  “Lieutenant, I couldn’t have wished for a ‘sweeter’ surprise!” Tomas declared, to chuckles from the party. “We heard you’d deserted! But you’ve been hiding away learning to talk!” Tomas shook his hand and patted him on the back. “Come in, please, Maria—lay . . .”

  Kavanagh shook his head. “No, no, my father taught me better manners than that!” His Italian was more staccato now. He had studied his opening patter more than conversational chatter.

  “You come to my house? I feed you. No one leaves empty, man—no pride in that!” The guests shunted up and down the long benches accommodating the impromptu additions to the table. Kavanagh took a seat at the far end by Tomas, and Casler sandwiched himself between two of the prettier young ladies, looking from one to the other as his face widened into a smug grin. Franco returned to his seat. Carmela stood up.

  “Sit down,” he said, face in his bowl. “You’re not paid to serve them in your own home.”

  Carmela paused for a breath. Then her legs walked her toward her mother, who was already at the dresser reaching for another couple of enamel plates, cutlery, and two napkins. “You lay,” she said, handing Carmela everything. “I’ll bring the glasses.”

  Carmela looked down at her hands. They felt like they were trembling, but the cutlery wasn’t moving. She straightened and steeled herself for the walk to the far end of the table. The house had never seemed so small. What in the world was he doing here? Was this even happening?

  His scent reached her before she did him. The woody fragrance he wore, a cologne she didn’t know. She had stifled the memory of that, and the smell of fresh air about him, and the unfamiliar soap that left a powdery undertone.

  How could this reach her from where she was standing? Impossible. It was the memory of those scents that flooded her senses. Kavanagh came rushing in like a tidal wave. The dam gave out, and the damage was immediate. Her eyes rose from the plate and fixed on her destination. It wasn’t his wide, square shoulders, immaculate posture, or the breezy countenance that forced her to hesitate. It was the palpable presence of him, like standing too close to a fire and feeling the heat scorch one’s skin. It was the clammy vise around her chest, the acute, wolflike observation of his every tiny movement. She met Piera’s eyes. Nothing about the smile she sent Carmela hinted she knew her sister’s heart was throbbing. With each step, a deluge of memories, jumbled snapshots of every drowned recollection of him crashing through like the sun-melted ice water of rapids, currents crisscrossing and colliding.

  “Carmela has your plate here, Lieutenant,” Tomas said, raising a proud arm to his daughter.

  Kavanagh twisted around and looked up at her. He didn’t cock his head, bashful. He didn’t shift in his seat. He looked straight into her. It was all she could do to keep standing.

  “Come on, now, Carme’. The man’s hungry!”

  “Yes,” he said, without shifting his gaze.

  Carmela couldn’t feel the floor.

  “It’s wonderful to see you again, Carmela.”

  He didn’t wait for a reply but returned to Tomas, and they picked up where they had left. Carmela headed back to her seat, doubting her performance of nonchalance. How could everyone fail to notice her palms clasping into involuntary clammy fists?

  She steadied herself as she returned to her place at the end of the bench. Her heart pounded. She swirled her soup, watching the liquid spiral, her reflection a watery abstract. Kavanagh was a few meters away. A thousand scalding pinpricks raced up her body. The room emptied, as if her friends and family had been smudged out of a wet watercolor sketch. All that remained was the presence of two bodies, the air alive between them, like the static of an expectant gray sky before a summer storm, tangible even, should she lift her fingers to touch it. She dare not move her gaze from the strings of melted cheese in the bowl, yet she intuited his every slight move: each time his face angled toward her end of the table, or he shifted in his seat, or his eyes lifted in her direction.

  Something had changed while he had been away. Had he hardened? Had she?

  “Where’s the ghost?”

  “What?” Carmela answered, trying to meet Franco’s question with her full attention. Kavanagh’s outline kept a stubborn hold on her peripheral—he was more compelling than she had dared remember.

  Franco’s eyes darted toward hers. A bolt of terror shot down her spine. Had he intuited the pounding heat searing through her? Why would he ask such a thing? She was ripped open, feeling the sensation of wanting to snatch at clothes, as in dreams where she found herself naked, on a busy street, with nowhere to hide. He made to speak but was interrupted by Lucia, sending a heaped fork of meat his way. She used the distraction to leave the table and bring another platter of vegetables over from the counter.

  The meal lasted an age. Never before had she counted the minutes till she could stand up and help clear the plates. She ached to move, to run, to go outside to the far edge of the fields. Twice her mother had placed a hand on her knee to stop it from knocking against hers. And all the chatter, the noise, the polite and bawdy conversations, were drowned out by the thumping of blood in her ears. She watched her world from inside a tank; a muffled life floated by. Franco spoke to her several more times. She hoped she answered with conviction. It was a queer sensation, the feeling of utter disorientation in a room of people she knew so very well.

  She felt a tap on her shoulder. Maria nodded for her to begin collecting the dirty dishes. The heat of surprise edged toward cold panic. Kavanagh’s letter fought for her complete attention now—his script, the feel of the paper, the shadows in which she sat to read it in. I love you, Carmela. The words wouldn’t leave her mind, rushing to the surface like a ball that will not sink, that can be kept down only by force.

  She took the first load of dishes to the sink, and as she turned back toward the table, she caught sight of Kavanagh laughing with one of her younger cousins. A pretty girl, with enviable high cheekbones and that blunt gaze Americans went weak for. Her cousin lowered her chin and raised her black eyes at him, thick lashes aflutter. They laughed again. Nothing about the way he looked at her was any different than how he had greeted Carmela.

  She felt a sudden, almost unbearable wave of deep embarrassment. The letter was written months ago, steeped in the first stages of grief. He had spoken of Virginia and Seymour having left home. He spoke of his mother’s tragic death. How could she have read anything into his greeting or visit other than what it was? Duty.

  Something had shifted, yes; his feelings for her. That letter reflected the words of someone in great pain. The moment had past, the madness had evaporated. He would apologize and ask her to forgive his clumsy confession. He would be crippled with embarrassment. Yes, that was what she saw flicker in his eyes.

  Piera touched her arm. “How handsome does he look?”

  “What?” she replied, jumpy.

  “Luigi. I’m falling in love all over again.”

  Carmela sighed a faint smile.

  “Are you all right, Carme’? You look pale.”

  “I’m fine,” she answered, hoping she would be.

  “Some of us are headed outside to play bocce. You coming?”

  “No. Yes. Go ahead, I’ll help Mamma.”

  Piera left with a small group of cousins after Maria waved them away from clearing up.

  “You spoil them, Mari’,” Lucia shouted from the other side of the room with a smile. “You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with the Mother Superior at the orphanage!”

  “No one wants to hear about the witches who raised you,” Peppe said, giving Lucia’s bottom a light slap.

  “And no one wants to see your hands run amuck, you cheeky bugger!”

  The remaining men and women at the table laughed, and Lucia heaved herself up from her seat over to the sink.

  “Maria,” she began, “give your eldest the day off, in the name of Jesus. She looks like linen before it’s dyed!” Maria held her hand to Carmela’s cheek. Maria loo
ked at her firstborn. Her eyes smiled.

  Carmela sent a thousand silent apologies for the thoughts swirling in her mind. “It’s fine, Mamma, I’m glad to help.”

  “Why don’t you and Franco join the others? There’s enough of us left inside to make light work of it,” Maria said.

  Franco reached for Carmela’s cold hand. “That sounds like a fine idea.” But as he started to lead her out, his father stepped through the doorway. “Papa! Signor Tomas’s lamb was superb. We saved you a rib!”

  “Well,” Tomas interjected, “when the top butcher in town hands you the meat, you know it’s going to turn out good! Please, join us.”

  Franco’s father, Silvio, nodded to Maria and Carmela, and then joined Tomas, Peppe, and Kavanagh.

  “Franco,” he called out, “come drink with your father. I want to hear some American jokes!”

  “With pleasure,” Kavanagh replied, almost knocking Silvio off his seat with his pronunciation. Franco pulled up a stool next to his father. Casler moved up toward the group, and the men clinked glasses of garnet wine to their health. “And to great beauty, gentlemen!” Casler hollered. “Sure made lunch go down good!”

  “Hey, Carmela, what’s Americano say?” Franco called over to her.

  “He said,” Kavanagh began, “that he thinks the ladies here are all bella!”

  Franco flashed him an indecipherable glance, somewhere in the no-man’s-land between pride and affront. “So, Americano, you’re Italiano now, no?”

  Kavanagh’s face creased into a wine-warmed grin, and he shook his head.

  “No, it’s good,” Franco said, “because your talker is busy every day sewing her wedding dress.”

  “What’s he say, Kavanagh?” Casler asked. “More food? I couldn’t have another bite, unless it’s of that little vixen who just stepped outside. Schmanksgiving! Here’s to Easter!”

  He lifted up his glass and all the men joined him, without knowing they were toasting their cousin.

  Franco called out to Carmela, standing at the other end of the table, as his glass touched Kavanagh’s. “What’s Capitano say?”

  The vise tightened. “He enjoyed the feast,” she replied.

  Kavanagh shot her a fleeting glance, as if he had understood her diplomacy.

  “Hey! Capitano, this is no feast,” Franco said, stretching his arms out into the air with dancing hands. “You come to the wedding, you’ll see a feast, no, Carmela?” With that, Franco rose and snaked his arm around her waist before tipping her chin around to him and placing a soft kiss upon her lips. It was the first time he had kissed her on the mouth before her father. Her cheeks flushed.

  Kavanagh twisted back to her. “Congratulations, Carmela.”

  She ripped her gaze from his face, from those blue eyes, tripping back to Franco’s. Off the look that flitted across it, she wasn’t sure her feigned normality had convinced her fiancé.

  “Before you go out and let us men talk, bring aqua vitae,” Franco said.

  She nodded and did as he asked. He took the bottle from her and gripped the base.

  “Time to find out who’s the man here,” he said, waving the bottle with a twinkle that Carmela wished was closer to mischievous than menacing.

  “Come on, Franco, enough talk, pour!” Tomas said.

  “Sì!” Casler echoed, to sniggers from the men. “Whatever the man said!”

  Carmela made her escape. Perhaps in the fading afternoon light she could collect her thoughts, dismiss the flash in Kavanagh’s eyes. Set aside the fact that every fiber in her body was yearning for him, telling her that he had come back for her, that he had fought Casler for his return every day he had been gone. A little fresh air would bring her back down to earth. Her earth. Not this made-up one, based on a few written lines from a near-broken man.

  She took a seat on the bench in front of the house. The air was still damp from the rain but without the winter chill that seeped into the bones. Her cousins looked beautiful out in the fields, laughing, playing carefree. She watched them for a moment, reminding herself that only a few hours ago she was one of them, warmed with the promise of a secure future. She replayed the journey, the singing, the ritual of feast day. She clutched those images. They trickled through her fingers.

  “Carmela?”

  She turned. It was him.

  They held their gaze a beat beyond polite.

  “I’m pretending I have to head to our vehicle for something,” he began, speaking intoxicating tones under his breath, in English. “Now I’m sitting beside you, pretending we’re about to talk about the upcoming farm visits.” She met his gaze again. There was a head’s distance between their lips, the air thick in that narrow gap. “Now I’m going to look at you straight in the eye, and I’m going to tell you that if you burned my letter and wished me dead, I would understand.”

  Carmela’s lips parted. No sound came out.

  This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

  “And if you wished I had never written any of those things, I’d understand. And if you never want to work at the base again, I’d get it. But if you would be happy to work for me again, in the month I’m stationed here before they move me to Munich, I’d be the happiest man on the island.”

  She looked into him, hoping that neither he nor her cousins nearby could read her longing. Her eyes darted to the door, expecting a bombastic Franco to charge out at any moment and insist on Kavanagh’s return inside to drink. She turned back toward the ancient trees at the far end of the field, a boat in distress searching for a place to drop anchor, somewhere back in the reality she knew was out there. The side of his hand brushed hers. The touch pounded in her ears, her belly, her back, leaving a gaping hole where her body had been.

  He stood up and looked down at her. Carmela braced herself for another speech. It didn’t come. He returned inside, his words left floating in the air behind him.

  The axis of her world shifted.

  What haunted her was the absence of any desire to shunt it back.

  CHAPTER 23

  It was dark when Carmela left the house with the flat basket of proven dough for the town ovens. She balanced the wide load on her head while taking care not to slip on the dewy cobbles. The scuff of her shoes on them was the only noise along the silent viccoli. She counted each step, as if the order of the numbers might regiment her racing thoughts after a turbulent night’s sleep.

  On the four hundredth step she reached the ovens and fell into line with the other women. The heat from inside the small bakery reached the chilled street outside. Women stepped outside with cloth bags of baked spianata. The smell didn’t have its usual comforting effect. The predictability of the line, those familiar faces, the wood-fired oven, the tireless bakers, all seemed locked in another time. Carmela looked at the narrow townhouses with their squat-columned terraces on the upper floors. The beauty of the geraniums in their terra-cotta pots along their sheltered ledges, strewn with hopeful buds, failed to touch her. Even the sky turning from midnight blue to pale yellow left her cold. It was like looking at someone else’s past.

  The woman behind nudged her. “You going in or just here for the view?” Carmela turned back toward her. She wore several underskirts that added bulk to her already stocky frame. Her hair was pulled back like an afterthought. Her breathing was labored, and she struggled with her heavy load of dough. Only a few years of grueling domestic responsibilities stood between her and this woman. Nothing in Carmela’s mind could convince her otherwise.

  Is this what a Simius life would amount to?

  Is this who she would become?

  Carmela turned away from the woman and her thoughts and stepped into the hot room. More familiar faces greeted her. It should have felt like a mother’s embrace, that toasted room. It should have felt like a welcome home. It should have served to remind Carmela of all she was grateful for. But she saw only lines and routine and a fire stoked with repetition. The women by the oven moved like machines. Carmela watche
d them and felt an inexplicable dread. She fixed her eyes on her dough being placed on the wide, round palettes and slid inside the oven by the fire. The rounds ballooned in the heat. The bakers slid the palettes back out just as they began to brown. The air escaped, leaving a perfect round spianata. Carmela stacked the bread inside her bag. Back outside the birds had launched into their dawn chorus.

  Carmela finished setting the table for breakfast, trying with little success to steady her restless hands. Her sisters began drifting down from upstairs, most of them having slept longer than usual after the excitement of yesterday’s feast. She poured large cups of warm milk for Vittoria and Gianetta, then splashed it with a lick of coffee before unwrapping the bread for them to tear. As she made to sit down, the rattle of a vehicle echoed in from the street. They looked up. No car had ever driven up to their door before. Carmela stood and walked across the terrace to peer over the wall. She felt Vittoria and Gianetta squeeze around her to catch a glimpse.

  “Go inside! You’re in your nightclothes!”

  “I want to see!” Vittoria protested.

  “You’ll see nothing when you catch pneumonia. Get in!”

  She waved her sisters back inside. As she looked down over the wall to the street, the eyes of a private caught hers. He saluted.

  “Ms. Chirigoni?”

  “Yes.”

  “Message for you, ma’am.”

  Carmela stepped back from the wall and took a breath. Then she raced down the winding steps to the front gate and opened it. He was a young man, not much older than her brother. He handed her an envelope.

  “I’ve been asked to wait, ma’am.”

  Carmela looked at him, then back down at the letter. She ripped it open.

  Dear Carmela,

  Please allow Private Simmons to escort you to the base to discuss our itinerary. I know you have duties at your studio, so I assure you I will take very little of your time, and I will make sure you are escorted back to town immediately.

  Or, do not, and I will cease to burden you. Casler is putting me under significant pressure. I’m happy to do this alone if need be.