The House of Scorta

by Laurent Gaudé

  “Cigarette?” he asked, holding out a pack. The woman smiled and gestured “no” with her hand. Donato immediately felt angry at himself. A cigarette. It’s obvious she doesn’t want one. He lit his own, thought for a moment, then spoke again, pointing his finger at himself.

  “Donato. And you?”

  The woman answered in a soft voice that filled the night.

  “Alba.”

  He smiled, and repeated “Alba” several times to show that he’d understood and found the name very pretty. Then he no longer knew what to say and fell silent. During the entire crossing, he admired the child’s beautiful face and the attentive gestures of his mother, who wrapped her arms around the boy so he wouldn’t catch cold. What he loved most was the woman’s silence. Without knowing why, he was filled with a sort of pride. He was guiding his passengers towards the shores of the Gargano, in safety. No customs boat would ever catch them. Of all the smugglers, he was the most elusive. He felt a growing desire to stay right there, on this boat, with this woman and child. Never to reach the shore again. That night was the first time he felt this temptation. Never to go back. To stay out there among the waves. So long as the night never ended. A night as vast as a whole life, under the stars, his skin salted by sea spray. A nocturnal life, taking this woman and her son from one point to another along the clandestine coast.

  The sky grew less dark. Soon the Italian coast came into view. It was four o’clock in the morning. He touched shore reluctantly. He helped the woman disembark, carried the boy, then, turning to her one last time, happy-faced, he said “Ciao,” which for him meant a great deal more. He wanted to wish her good luck. To tell her he had loved this journey. He wanted to tell her she was beautiful, and that he loved her silence. That her son was a good boy. He wanted to tell her he wished he could see her again, that he could carry her across the sea as many times as she wanted. But all he managed to say was “ciao,” his eyes happy and hopeful. He was sure she would understand everything that lay behind that simple word, but she merely returned his goodbye and got into the car that was waiting for her. Matteo turned off the motor and came out to say hello to Donato, leaving the two passengers seated in the back of the car.

  “Everything go all right?” Matteo asked.

  “Yes,” Donato mumbled. He looked at Matteo and felt he could ask him the questions he hadn’t had the presence of mind to ask Raminuccio. “Who are these people?”

  “Illegal immigrants from Albania.”

  “Where are they going?”

  “Here, first, then they’ll be taken to Rome by truck. From there, they spread out everywhere. Germany. France. England.”

  “Her, too?” Donato asked, unable to make the connection between this woman and the networks Matteo was talking about.

  “Pays a lot better than cigarettes, eh?” the man asked without answering his question. “They’re ready to bleed themselves dry to pay for the crossing. You can almost ask whatever price you want.”

  He laughed, patted Donato on the shoulder, said goodbye, got back into the car and vanished with a screech of the tires.

  Donato remained alone on the beach, stunned. The sun rose, monumental and slow as a sovereign. The water shimmered pink with light. He took the wad of bills out of his pocket and counted them. Two million lire. Two million lire in crumpled bills. If you added the shares of Raminuccio, Matteo, and the network boss, the young woman must have paid at least eight million lire. 20 A vast sense of shame came over Donato. He started laughing. Howling the predatory laugh of Rocco Mascalzone. He laughed like a madman because he’d just understood that he’d taken that woman’s very last savings. He laughed, thinking, “I’m a monster. Two million lire. I took two million lire away from her and her child. And I was smiling at her, asking her name, thinking she was enjoying the ride. I’m the most wretched man on earth. To rob a woman like that, bleed her dry and then dare to make conversation with her. I certainly am Rocco’s grandson. No faith. No shame. I’m no better than the others. I’m even worse, a lot worse. And now I’m rich. I have the sweat of a lifetime in my pocket, and I’m going to celebrate at the café and buy all around. As her boy was looking at me with those big eyes, I could already see myself teaching him about the stars and the sounds of the sea. Shame on me and the line of degenerates that bear my thieving name.”

  As of that day, Donato was never the same again. A veil had covered his eyes, and it remained there until his death, like a scar on his face.

  Donato’s disappearances became more and more frequent; his journeys grew longer and longer. He was sinking into solitude without a word, without hesitation. He still saw a little of his cousin Michele, Raffaele’s son, because he often slept in the small, cavelike room of the trabucco. Michele had a young son, Emilio Scorta. It was to him that Donato spoke his last words. When he turned eight, Donato invited him into his boat the way his uncle Giuseppe had done with him long before, and took him out for a ride to the slow rhythm of the waves. The sun set into the billows, lighting up the crests with a beautiful rosy glow. The child remained silent during the entire journey. He loved his uncle Donato very much but did not dare ask him any questions.

  Finally, Donato turned to the boy and said in a soft, deep voice:

  “A woman’s eyes are bigger than the stars.”

  The child nodded without understanding. But he never forgot this statement. Donato had wanted to fulfil the Scortas’ vow, to pass on a world of knowledge to one of their own. He’d thought a long time about this. He’d asked himself just what he knew and what he’d learned in life. The only thing that stood out in his mind was the night spent with Alba and her son. Alba’s big, dark eyes, in which he had swum with delight. Yes, the stars had seemed tiny compared to that woman’s two pupils, which hypnotized the moon itself.

  The words he spoke to Emilio were Donato’s last. The Scortas never saw him again. He stopped coming ashore. He was but a moving point between two shores, aboat floating into the night. He no longer transported cigarettes. He’d become a clandestine ferryman and did nothing else. Constantly passing between the Albanian and Apulian coasts, picking up and dropping off foreigners come to try their luck. Young people, thin from having eaten too little, staring at the Italian coastline with famished eyes. Young people whose hands trembled, impatient to get to work. They were about to enter a new land. They would sell their working strength to anyone who wanted it, breaking their backs picking tomatoes for the big farming concerns of Foggia or craning their necks under lamps in the illegal sweatshops of Naples. They would work like beasts, consenting to sweat out every last drop in their bodies, accepting the yoke of exploitation and the violent rule of money. They knew all this. They knew that their young bodies would be forever marked by years of labor too harsh for any human being. But they couldn’t wait. And Donato would see them light up, all of them, with the same glow of voracious impatience, as the Italian coastline drew near.

  The world poured into his boat, changing like the seasons. People came to him from countries stricken by disaster. He felt as if he had his hand on the planet’s pulse. He saw Albanians, Iranians, Chinese, Nigerians. They all passed through his narrow boat. He accompanied them from shore to shore, endlessly back and forth. Never was he intercepted by Italian customs agents. He would glide over the waves like a phantom vessel, demanding silence from the people he ferried, whenever he heard a motor in the distance.

  Many women boarded his boat. Albanians who would find work at hotels along the coast as chambermaids or with Italian families as nurse’s aides for the elderly. Nigerians who would sell their bodies along the road between Foggia and Bari, under colorful umbrellas protecting them from the sun. Iranians, drained and weary, for whom the journey had only begun, since they were going much, much farther, on to France and England. Donato gazed at all these women in silence. When one of them was traveling alone, he always managed to give her back her money before she left his boat. Every time, when the woman raised her big, astonished eyes to him,
thanking him softly or even kissing his hands, he would whisper, “For Alba” and cross himself. Alba was his obsession. He had thought, at first, of asking the Albanians he ferried if they knew her, but he realized it was useless. So he remained silent, returning their bills. For Alba. For Alba, he would say. And he would think: “For Alba, from whom I took everything. For Alba, whom I left in a country that probably made her a slave.” Often, the women would then stroke his cheek with their fingertips. To bless him and commend him to heaven. They would do it gently, as one does to a child, for they clearly sensed that this silent man, this taciturn runner of human cargo, was nothing more than a child who spoke to the stars.

  Donato ended up disappearing for good. At first, Elia wasn’t worried. Some fishermen friends had seen him. They’d heard him singing, as he liked to do at night, when returning from one of his secret journeys. All this proved that Donato was still around, somewhere out at sea. He was simply taking longer to come back. But weeks went by, then months, and Elia had to face the obvious. His brother had disappeared.

  This disappearance left an open gash in his heart. On certain sleepless nights, he would pray that his brother hadn’t been swallowed up in a storm. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. He would imagine Donato’s last moments amidst the raging billows. His desperate cries. He sometimes wept while imagining this wretched, lonely death, the death of the shipwrecked who can only cross themselves before the fathomless bowels of the sea.

  Donato did not die in a storm. The last day of his life, he was gliding softly on the current. The waves rocked his boat without fury. The sun beat down and reflected off the vast expanse of the sea, burning the skin on his face. “How strange to be burnt up in the middle of the water,” he said. “I taste salt everywhere around me. On my eyelids. On my lips. At the back of my throat. Soon I will be a little white body, shrivelled up on the floor of my boat. The salt will have dried up my fluids and eaten my flesh. It will preserve my body the way it preserves fish in the stalls at the market. Salt-bitten, that’s how I will die. But it’s a slow death, and I’ve still got some time left. Time enough to let a little more water flow beside me.”

  He contemplated the shore in the distance, thinking it would still be easy for him to go back. It would require some effort, of course, because his body was weak from all the days without food. But he could still do it. Soon he would no longer be able to. Soon, even with all the willpower in the world, the coast would become an unreachable line, and the prospect of returning would become a horrible nightmare. As with a man who drowns in a few inches of water, depth meant nothing; one must have the strength to keep one’s head out of the water. Soon, he would no longer be able to. For the moment, he watched the chaotic line of his homeland dance on the horizon, and it was like saying goodbye.

  He cried out with all his might—not for help, but simply to see if anyone could still hear him. He cried out again. Nothing moved. Nobody answered. The landscape was unchanged. No lights came on. No boats approached. His brother’s voice did not reply, not even from afar. “I’m very far away,” he thought. “The world can no longer hear me. Would my brother be glad to know that I called out to him when I said goodbye to the world?”

  He felt he no longer had the strength to turn back. He had just passed the threshold. Even if he had suddenly been seized by remorse, he could not have turned around. He wondered how much time would pass before he lost consciousness. Two hours? Maybe more. And after that, how long before he passed from unconsciousness into death? At nightfall, everything would speed up. But the sun was still there, protecting him. He turned the boat so that the sun was in front of him, the coast behind him, invisible. It must have been five or six o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was setting, descending into the sea, where it would vanish. It was like a road opening up in the water. He placed his boat along the axis of the sun, at the center of the path of light. All he could do was keep going. To the end. The sun was burning his mind, but he kept on talking till the end.

  “On I go. A long shoal of octopi is my escort. Fish surround my boat and carry it on their scaly backs. I am leaving. The sun will show me the way. I have only to follow its heat and withstand its gaze. It has made itself less blinding for me. It recognizes me. I am one of its sons. It is waiting for me. We shall sink into the water together. Its great mane of fire will make the sea shudder. Big bubbles of steam will tell those I’m leaving that Donato is dead. I am the sun. The octopi are with me. I am the sun. To the end of the sea…”

  I know how I will end up, don Salvatore. I’ve had a glimpse of what my last years will be like. I’m going to lose my mind. Don’t say anything. As I’ve said, it’s already begun. I’m going to go mad. I will confuse faces and names. Everything will become a blur. My memory will go blank and soon I won’t be able to make anything out. I’ll be a withered little body with no memories. An old woman with no past. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. When we were children, a neighbor of ours, a woman, sank into senility. She could no longer remember her son’s name. She didn’t even recognize him when he was standing in front of her. Everything around her disturbed her. She forgot whole portions of her life. People would find her in the streets, wandering about like a dog. She lost touch with the world around her. She lived only with her ghosts. That’s what awaits me. I will forget the things around me and be with my brothers in my thoughts. My memories will fade. Fine. That’s one way to go that suits me. I’ll forget my own life. I’ll head into death without fear or misgivings. There’ll be nothing left to cry about. It’ll be sweet. Forgetting will soothe my pain. I’ll forget I had two sons and that one of them was taken from me. I’ll forget that Donato is dead and that the sea kept his body. I’ll forget everything. It’ll be easier that way. I’ll become like a child. Yes, that’s fine with me. I’ll water myself down slowly. Die a little each day. I’ll abandon Carmela Scorta without even thinking about it. The day of my death, I won’t even remember who I once was. I’ll no longer be sad about leaving my family; they’ll be strangers to me by then.

  All I can do is wait. The sickness is inside me. Little by little, it will erase everything.

  I’ll never get to talk to my granddaughter. I’ll die before she’s old enough. Either that, or, if I hang on a little longer, I’ll no longer remember what it was I wanted to tell her. There are so many things. They’ll get all mixed up. I won’t be able to tell any of it apart. I will babble. I will frighten her. Raffaele was right. Things need to be stated. I’ve told you everything. And you will tell her yourself, don Salvatore. After I’m dead or have become nothing more than an old ragdoll who can no longer talk, you will tell her for me. Anna. I’ll never know the woman she’ll become, but I would like for a little of myself to live on in her.

  You will tell her, don Salvatore, that it’s not so farfetched to say that her grandmother was the daughter of an old Pole named Korni. You’ll tell her that we chose to become the Scortas, and we huddled together to keep warm.

  The wind is carrying away my words. I don’t know where it will set them down. It’s scattering the hills with them. But you must make sure that at least some of them reach her.

  Iam old, don Salvatore. I’m going to stop talking now. Thank you for coming out with me. Go home now, if you like. I’m tired. Go home. Don’t worry about me. I’m going to stay a little while yet, to think about all these things one last time. Thank you, don Salvatore. And goodbye. Who knows whether I’ll recognize you the next time we meet? The night is mild. It’s nice out. I’m going to stay here. I would love it if the wind decided to carry me away.

  PART IX

  EARTHQUAKE

  One minute earlier, nothing was happening, and life went on, slow and peaceful. One minute earlier, the tobacco shop was full, like any other day since the start of this summer of 1980. The town was packed with tourists. Whole families swelled the camping sites along the coast. During the three months of summer, the town filled up with enough money to last the whole year. The population of M
ontepuccio tripled. Everything changed. Girls came, beautiful and free, bringing with them the latest fashions from the North. Money flowed like water. For three months, life in Montepuccio became crazy.

  One minute earlier, there was a joyous crowd of tanned bodies, elegant women, and laughing children jamming the Corso. The outdoor cafes were full. Carmela watched the uninterrupted flow of tourists. She was now an old woman with a withered body and a porous mind who spent her days in a small cane chair in front of her tobacco shop. She’d become the shadow she had predicted. Her memory had abandoned her, her mind had faltered. She was like a newborn in a wrinkled body. Elia looked after her. He’d hired a woman from town to feed her and change her clothes. Nobody could speak to her anymore. She saw the world through troubled eyes. Everything was a threat. At times she would start groaning as though someone were twisting her wrists, her mind teeming with obscure terrors. When she felt restless, she would often wander the streets of her neighborhood, yelling her brothers’ names. People had to persuade her to return home, trying patiently to calm her down. Sometimes she no longer recognized her son. More and more often, in fact. She would look right at him and say, “My son, Elia, is coming to see me.” At such moments, he would clench his jaw to hold back his tears. There was nothing to be done. All the doctors he’d consulted had said so. All one could do was to keep her company along the slow road to senility. Time was gradually eating away at her and had started its feast at the head. She was nothing more than an empty body, occasionally jolted by spasms of thought. Sometimes a name or a memory would come back to her, and she would ask, in her former voice, for news about town. Had anyone thanked don Salvatore for the fruit he’d sent? How old was Anna? Elia had grown used to these flashes of false lucidity. They were merely spasms. She would always fall back into deep silence. She could no longer go any distance unaccompanied. The moment she was alone, she would get lost in the town and start crying, in that maze of narrow streets she no longer recognized.