“Well? What’s your answer to the question?”
Giuseppe remained silent, as if he had a crime to confess. He seemed to hesitate. “That’s just it,” he said shyly. “I’ve been thinking. And I’ve tried to make a list of the happiest moments I’ve known.”
“Are there many?”
“Yes, many. At least I think so. Enough. The day we bought the tobacco shop. Vittorio’s birth. My wedding.
My nephews. My nieces. Yes. There are quite a few.” “So why do you seem so sad?”
“Because when I try to pick one, the happiest memory
of all, do you know what keeps coming to mind?” “No.”
“The day you invited us all to the trabucco for the
first time. That’s the one that keeps coming up. The banquet. We ate and drank like we were blessed.” “Pancia piena?” laughed Raffaele.
“Yeah, pancia piena,” repeated Giuseppe, tears in his eyes.
“What’s so sad about that?”
“What kind of man,” replied Giuseppe, “declares at the end of his life that his happiest day on earth was the day of a meal? Aren’t there happier moments in a man’s life? Isn’t that the sign of a miserable life? Shouldn’t I be ashamed of myself? Yet, I assure you, every time I think about it, that’s the memory that comes to mind. I remember everything. There was the seafood risotto that melted in your mouth. Your Giuseppina wore a skyblue dress. She was as beautiful as could be, rushing back and forth between the table and the kitchen. I remember you, at the oven, sweating like a miner. And the sound of fish sizzling on the grill. You see? After a whole life, that’s the best memory of all. Doesn’t that make me the most miserable man in the world?”
Raffaele had listened quietly. His brother’s voice had let him relive that meal, let him see again that joyous gathering of Scortas: the dishes passing from hand to hand, the happiness of eating together.
“No, Peppe,” said his brother. “You’re right. Who can boast that they’ve known such happiness? Not too many of us. Why disdain it? Because we were eating? Because it smelled of fried food and our shirts were stained with tomato sauce? Happy are those who shared this meal. We were together. We ate, we talked, we shouted and drank like men. Side by side. Those were precious moments, Peppe. And I would give anything to savor them all over again. To hear your booming laugh and smell grilled laurel again.”
Domenico was the first to go, but Giuseppe did not survive him by much. The following year he had a bad fall in the old town and lost consciousness. The only hospital in the Gargano was in San Giovanni Rotondo, a two-hour drive from Montepuccio. Giuseppe was put in an ambulance that raced off into the hills, sirens wailing. The minutes passed slowly, like a knife over skin. Giuseppe was getting weaker. After forty minutes on the road, the ambulance was still a tiny dot in the rocky expanse. Giuseppe suddenly came to and had a moment of lucidity. He turned to the medic and said to him, with the determined voice of a dying man:
“I will be dead in half an hour. You know it’s true. In half an hour. I can’t hold on any longer. There’s not enough time to get to the hospital. So turn around and drive as fast as you can. You still have time to get me back to my village. That’s where I want to die.”
The two medics took these words to be the expression of a last will and did as they were told. The ambulance turned around in the parched expanse of hills, then resumed its mad course towards Montepuccio, sirens still wailing. It got there in time. Giuseppe had the satisfaction of dying in the main square, surrounded by his loved ones, who were dumbfounded by the return of this ambulance that had thrown in the towel in the face of death.
Carmela wore mourning for the rest of her days. She did for her brothers what she hadn’t done for her husband. Raffaele was inconsolable. It was as if someone had cut the fingers off his hand. He wandered about the village, not knowing what to do with himself. All he could think about was his brothers. He would go back to Da Pizzone every day and say to his friend, “Let’s join them soon, Peppino. They are both there and we’re here, and nobody can play cards anymore.”
He went to the cemetery every day and talked to the shadows for hours on end. One day he brought his nephew, Elia, and decided to talk to him in front of the two uncles’ graves. He had put off this moment for a long time, convinced that he, who had never traveled, had nothing to teach anyone. But he had promised to do this. Time was passing, and he did not want to die without keeping his word. So there, in front of the graves, he rested his hand on the nape of Elia’s neck and said to him:
“We were no better or worse than anyone else, Elia. But we tried. That’s all. We tried with all our might. Every generation tries to build something, to consolidate their possessions or to make them grow. To take care of their own. Everybody does his best. All you can do is try. But don’t expect anything at the end of the race. Do you know what there is at the end of the race?
Old age, nothing else. So listen, Elia, listen to your old uncle Faelucc’, who doesn’t know anything about anything and never went to school. Make the most of the sweat of your brow. That’s all I have to say. Because those are the best moments in life. When you’re fighting for something, when you’re working day in and day out like a poor devil and you don’t have time to see your wife and children, when you sweat to build what you want, you’re living the best moments of your life. Believe me. Your mother, your uncles and I cherished nothing so much as the years when we didn’t have a cent to our name, nothing, when we were fighting for the tobacco shop. Those were hard years. But for every one of us, those were the best moments of our lives, building from scratch, hungry as wolves. Make the most of the sweat of your brow, Elia. Remember that. After that, it’s all over so fast. Believe me.”
Raffaele had tears in his eyes. Speaking of his two brothers and the luminous years when they had lived together, sharing everything, moved him like a child.
“Are you crying?” asked Elia, who was touched by the sight of his uncle in such a state.
“Yes, amore di zio,”
17 answered Raffaele, “but it’s all right. Believe me, it’s all right.”
As I said, don Salvatore, I was in debt to my brothers, deeply in debt. I knew it would take years to pay it all off, maybe my whole life. I didn’t care. It was like an obligation. But what hadn’t occurred to me was that I might, one day, stop wanting to pay it back. I had sworn to myself to give them everything. Work my whole life long and give them what I’d saved. It was the least I could do for them. I swore to myself I would be a sister and only a sister. And that’s what I did, don Salvatore. I was a sister my whole life long. My marriage didn’t change a thing. The proof is that when people hear of my death, they won’t say, “Manuzio’s widow is dead.” Nobody knows who Manuzio’s widow is. They’ll say, “The Scortas’ sister died.” Everyone will know that’s me, Carmela. I’m happy that things are this way. That’s who I am. Who I’ve always been. A sister to my brothers. Antonio Manuzio gave me his name but I didn’t want it. Is it shameful to admit that? I never stopped being a Scorta. Antonio merely passed through my life.
The only happiness I’ve ever known was when I was surrounded by my brothers. My three brothers. When we were together, we could devour the world. I thought things would continue like that, up until the end. I lied to myself. Life went on, and time took it upon itself to change everything, little by little. It made me a mother.
We all had children. The clan got bigger. I didn’t realize that would change everything. My sons were born. I was a mother. From that day on I became a she-wolf, like all mothers. What I built, I built for them. What I earned, I earned for them. I kept everything for Elia and Donato. Ashe-wolf, don Salvatore, who thinks only of her young and bites anyone who comes near. I had a debt, and it remained unpaid. But I would have had to take from my sons to repay my brothers. Who could ever do such a thing? I did what any mother would have done. I forgot my debt and I fought for my brood. I can see by your expression that you almost forgive me. That�
�s basically what mothers do, you’re thinking. It’s normal to give everything to one’s children. I ruined my brothers, don Salvatore. I prevented them from leading the lives they dreamed of. I forced them to leave America, where they would have made a fortune. Idrew them back to these southern lands that offered nothing. I had no right to forget that debt. Not even for my children.
Domenico, Giuseppe, and Raffaele. How I loved those men. I am a sister, don Salvatore. But a sister who, for her brothers, was only the unsightly face of misfortune.
PART VII
TARANTELLA
Little by little, Carmela abandoned the tobacco shop. At first she started coming in less and less often, then not at all. Elia took her place. He would open and close up shop, do the accounts, and spend his days behind the counter where his mother, before him, had used up her life. He would get bored the way dogs get bored on hot days. What else could he do? Donato categorically refused to spend even a single day in the shop. He’d agreed to work for the business on one sole condition, which was non-negotiable: that he be allowed to continue his back-and-forth journeys as a smuggler. The business that had been the center of the family’s activity for so long was now like a hot potato to those in charge of it. Nobody wanted any part of it. Elia had resigned himself to taking his place behind the counter, but only because he had nothing better to do. Every morning he would chide himself for being incapable of anything else.
After living this life for a while, he became strange. He was often distracted, quick to anger. He would stare at the horizon with a dark look in his eye. He seemed to spend the day selling his packs of cigarettes without even noticing what he was doing. One day, Donato took advantage of a moment when they happened to be alone to ask his brother: “What’s wrong, fra?” 18 Elia looked at him with surprise, shrugged his shoulders, and frowned.
“Nothing,” he said.
So convinced was Elia that nothing in his behavior betrayed his inner turmoil, that he was stunned by his brother’s question. What had he said, what had he done that might make Donato think that anything was wrong? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t done anything he didn’t normally do. All he did was sell those blasted cigarettes, spending the whole day behind that goddamned counter, serving those goddamned customers. This life filled him with horror. He felt on the verge of a major upheaval, like an assassin the night before his crime. But he had repressed his anger, his need to strike out, deep inside himself, hiding it from everyone like a secret plotter, and when his brother had asked him simply, “What’s wrong, brother?”, he’d felt as if he’d been unmasked, stripped naked. And that only increased his anger.
The truth was that Elia was in love with Maria Carminella. The girl was from a rich family that owned the Grand Hotel Tramontane, the finest in Montepuccio. Maria’s father was a doctor. He divided his time between his patients and managing the hotel. Elia would feel his blood begin to boil whenever he walked past the four-star hotel. He would curse its vast swimming-pool, its curtains that flapped in the wind, its enormous restaurant with a view of the sea, its plot of beach dotted with red and gold deckchairs. He cursed all this luxury because he knew it was an insurmountable barrier between him and Maria. He was nothing but a bumpkin, and everybody knew it. He might have a tobacco shop, but that made no difference. It wasn’t a question of money, but of inheritance. What did he have to offer the doctor’s daughter? To come sweat with him on summer nights, when the tobacco shop was never empty? It was a joke, a lost cause from the start. He had gone over this same argument a thousand times during his sleepless nights. And a thousand times he’d reached the same conclusion: it was better to forget Maria than to expose himself to certain humiliation. Yet, despite this reasoning, despite all these irrefutable arguments, he was unable to forget the doctor’s daughter.
Finally, one day, he made up his mind, summoned all his courage, and went to see old man Gaetano Carminella. He’d asked if he could come by late in the morning, and the doctor had courteously replied in his calm voice that it was always a pleasure to see him and that he would wait for him on the terrace of the hotel. At that hour the tourists were already at the beach. Old man Gaetano and Elia were alone, both wearing white shirts. The doctor had ordered two Camparis, but Elia was too worried about what he had to say to touch the drink. After they’d exchanged the customary pleasantries, old man Gaetano began wondering what this young man who said nothing wanted from him. Surely he hadn’t come all this way to ask him how his family was doing. At last Elia took the plunge. He’d made and remade the speech a thousand times, weighing each word, pondering every turn of phrase, but the words that came out had nothing in common with what he’d so often repeated to himself. His eyes were flashing. He looked like a murderer admitting to his crime, who feels, as he speaks, the sweet euphoria of confession well up inside him.
“Don Gaetano,” he said, “I won’t lie to you, and I want to get right to the point. I have nothing. I own nothing but that blasted tobacco shop, and it’s more like a cross to bear than a life-saver. I’m poor, and that damned business only adds to my poverty. Not many people can understand that. But you, don Gaetano, you understand, I know you do. Because you’re a shrewd man. That tobacco shop is the crassest, most miserable thing about me, and it’s all I’ve got. When I come here and see this hotel, when I walk past your house in the old town, I realize it’s already very generous of you to sit down with me and hear me out. But in spite of this, don Gaetano, in spite of this, I want your daughter. She’s in my blood. I’ve tried to reason with myself, believe me. Any reason you can come up with for not granting my request, I’ve already thought of. I know them all. And they’re justified. I’ve repeated them to myself over and over. It’s useless, don Gaetano. Your daughter is in my blood, and if you won’t let me have her, something bad will come of this that will sweep us all away, the Carminellas and the Scortas together. Because I’m crazy, don Gaetano. Do you understand? I’m crazy.”
The old doctor was a sensible man. He understood that Elia’s last words were not a threat but quite simply a statement of fact. Elia was crazy. Women can do that to men. It was best not to provoke him. The old man with the white beard and small blue eyes took his time responding. He wanted to show that he was thinking about Elia’s request and taking his arguments into consideration. Then, in his calm, town-elder sort of voice, he began speaking about the respect he had for the Scorta family—a courageous family that had pulled itself together by dint of hard work—but he added that, as a father, he had to consider only the best interests of his loved ones. This was his sole concern in life. To look out for the well-being of his daughter and family. He would think over what Elia had said and would give him an answer as soon as possible.
On his way home, Elia went back to the tobacco shop. His head was empty. His confession had brought him no relief. He only felt exhausted. What he didn’t know was that as he was walking, head down and brows knit, commotion reigned at the Hotel Tramontane. Once the meeting was over, the women of the house, sensing some amorous intrigue, had pressured Gaetano into revealing the reasons for Elia’s visit, and the old man, assailed from all sides, had given in. He told them everything. As of that moment, a whirlwind of shouting and laughter swept over the house. Maria’s mother and sisters commented on the qualities and flaws of this surprising suitor. They had the old doctor repeat Elia’s speech word for word. “I’m crazy.” Did he really say, “I’m crazy”? Yes, Gaetano confirmed. He even repeated it. This was the Carminella family’s first marriage request. Maria was the eldest, and nobody had ever thought the question would arise so soon. While the family was having the story told to them for the thousandth time, Maria slipped out. She wasn’t laughing. She was bright red in the face, as if she’d been slapped. She exited the hotel and ran after Elia. She caught up to him as he was about to enter his tobacco shop. He was so surprised to see her, alone and chasing after him, that he just stood there, mouth agape, and didn’t greet her. When she was o
nly a few yards from him, she said:
“So, just like that, you come to our place and ask my father for my hand.” She looked in the grips of an animal fury. “I guess that’s how you go about things in your backward family. Me, you don’t ask anything. I’m sure it didn’t even occur to you. You say there will be trouble if you can’t have me. Well, what have you got to offer me? You cry to my father that you’re not rich enough. You talk about hotels, big houses. Is that what you would offer me if you had the means? Is it? A house? A car? Answer me, mule. Is that what you’d give me?”
Elia was taken aback. He didn’t understand. The girl was shouting louder and louder. So he muttered, “Yes, that’s what I’d give you.”
“Well, then, rest assured,” she replied with a scornful smile that made her more beautiful and prouder than all the other girls in the Gargano, “rest assured that, even if you owned the Palazzo Cortuno, you would have nothing. I’m more expensive than that. Hotels, houses, cars—I can brush these things away with the back of my hand. Do you hear me? I’m more expensive than that. Can you understand that, you miserable clod? Much more expensive. I want everything. And I’ll take everything.”
Having said these words, she turned around and vanished, leaving Elia stunned. At that moment, he knew that Maria Carminella was going to become a veritable obsession.
Mass had just ended and the last parishioners were coming out in disparate groups. Elia was waiting in front of the church, sad-eyed, arms dangling at his sides. Seeing him there, the priest asked him if everything was all right, and when Elia didn’t answer, he invited him out for a drink. When they were settled in at a café table, don Salvatore asked him in a tone that demanded an answer, “What’s wrong?”
The House of Scorta Page 11
