In Calabria

  Giorgio Malatesta, the garage owner, also came to visit, on the same errand as Falcone, and so did Domenico Amendola, the butcher, who was called Pazzo by everyone, although he was not crazy at all. Bianchi berated the one for his shameless substitution of Albanian parts for good Italian ones, the other for the prices he charged for dubious rabbits and hens who could have remembered more prime ministers than he. He also thanked them, as graciously as he knew how, for risking the wrath of the ’Ndrangheta on his behalf, which sent them both scuttling home without even stopping for coffee. Bianchi was sourly amused by this; but he was touched, as well, as he had been with Matteo Falcone. They are old men, and they are who they are—it is wrong of me to expect them to be different, this late in their lives. I am old, too, and I don’t change either.

  Yet that was wrong too: he had changed, and knew it, though more clearly than he could isolate the cause. Obstinate as he had been all his life, he would ordinarily never have dared, no more than Malatesta or Falcone, to defy the gangs who ran Calabria with more brutal thoroughness than today’s Mafia ran Sicily. What on earth got into me, in the name of God? Why did “Fuck you, with your fucking cowboy-movie cigars” come into my mind so naturally? Because of the unicorns? Because I helped a unicorn into this world, and that makes me responsible to them? To myself? Responsible to be a hero? God’s burning asshole, if I had known that!

  Was it her?

  Did I sign my own death warrant because of a woman far too young for me—practically a girl—who has funny golden specks down in her green eyes, and thinks she can drive a motorcycle, which will kill her as surely as the ’Ndrangheta? And who arches, all unknowing, like a cat if you touch the back of her neck? If that is so, I would surely be better off dead.

  But I do wish she were here.

  On those moments—always at night now—when La Signora chose to show herself to him, glowing on a hilltop like the rising moon, he sensed a restiveness in her, a disquiet that made him wonder if, as birds do in autumn or the earliest spring, she were not readying herself to fly. The black colt was not always with her; indeed, Bianchi had once or twice glimpsed him alone, casting about in different directions in short bursts of speed, then shaking his head and racing off on another path: a single slash of pure blackness against a blue-black night sky. The horn had not grown as much as he had; perhaps he will shed it every year, like antlers, and every spring it will be bigger, longer, sharper. Something else I will never know.

  He wrote a poem about that, about not knowing so many things in a life. The poem was a failure, as far as he was ever concerned; he felt so about most of the poems he wrote during that time. Which was odd, when he thought much about it, because it was really a good time, taken all in all. Everything he had planted during the strange, rainy winter was coming up strong and healthy, despite the trampling invasions of the unicorn hunters. Giovanna had absolutely refused his warnings, and kept bringing him her warm, laughing presence—though hardly ever any mail—every Friday in the blue van.

  And the monster, the Toscano-smoking ambassador of the ’Ndrangheta, had at least kept his word: there were no threatening telephone calls—no calls of any kind—and no further visits. He never allowed himself to grow less vigilant; but happiness is the old enemy of watchfulness, and Bianchi was practically happy. Growling contentment is not the same thing, but he hadn’t known.

  The dinner that he cooked for Giovanna was the first meal he had ever cooked for anyone; working up to the invitation took him a good deal longer than the execution. He made ciambatta, which involves stewed eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and the matchless red onions of Calabria, and which was the only dish he trusted himself to make for company. There was ricci di donna pasta in tomato sauce, and a bottle of the red Cirò that he had taken in trade for helping Vittorio Bava to repair his son-in-law’s chimney. He put flowers in whatever vases and empty jars he had, and set them wherever they seemed to brighten the little farmhouse, and he swept the floor and put last night’s dishes away, and he forbade Garibaldi and all three cats entry for the night, telling them firmly, “The nights are warmer now, you can sleep perfectly well in the barn. You have become so spoiled!” But he petted them all, by way of apology, before he turned them outside.

  Giovanna arrived riding pillion on her friend Silvana’s Vespa. She hopped off, kissed Silvana on both cheeks, and walked straight into Bianchi’s arms where he stood waiting at his door. Silvana, watching, waved with knowing cheerfulness as she drove away, but Giovanna did not turn her head.

  Embracing her was somewhat awkward, due to the backpack slung from her shoulders. Bianchi asked, “How will you get home?”

  “Silvana will come and get me in the morning. This is all very exciting for her.”

  “Oh,” Bianchi said. “Well. I made dinner.”

  “And I am sure it will be wonderful.” She took his hand and led him to his own bedroom, which, from that moment, seemed forever like someone else’s.

  Staring at her as she tugged her woolen shirt off over her head, he said, “Child, I remember you when you were learning to walk—”

  “Yes, I know, you keep telling me.” The sweet, shifting dance of her shoulders and collarbones made the skin of his face tingle. “And it is plain that if we delay any longer, you will simply crumble away, so we had better get to business, don’t you think?” Naked, she rose on her toes when she kissed him, which was flattering, but hardly necessary.

  Later, her voice muffled against his chest, she murmured, “You must never call me child again. I will slap you if you do. Besides, you are only twenty-three-and-a-half years older than I am. Romano told me.”

  “Romano. What will you tell him tomorrow?”

  “Oh, he thinks that I am staying with Silvana. She will come and get me early, before he comes with your mail. We know his schedule to the second.” She tangled her legs with his. “Sleep a little. We will have your lovely dinner at midnight.”

  And so they did, with Bianchi in his father’s old bathrobe, and Giovanna in the flowered nightgown she had brought in her backpack. Sitting across from him, with her legs curled under her, the gold-flecked green eyes happily heavy and her hair like a bird’s nest, she pronounced the meal exquisite, the flowers perfect, the Ciro the best wine she had ever tasted, and his ancient robe adorable. When he asked hesitantly, “Have you been . . . thinking about this for a long time?” she giggled like a schoolgirl at first; but then she looked down at the table and nodded. He said, “About me?”

  “And what is so astonishing about that, Signor Claudio Bianchi? Unicorns come to you all the time—why shouldn’t a woman?” Her eyes were not at all heavy then, but wickedly tender. Bianchi looked away from them.

  He said, “I was married once.”

  “Yes. Romano has told me. And she left you. So?”

  “She was right to leave me. I was not good at being married.”

  “Bianchi,” she said. “Claudio. Marriage isn’t like football, like bocce. One isn’t good at it, nobody has a special gift. You stumble along, and if there is enough love—” she smiled at him—“you learn.”

  Bianchi got up from the table abruptly enough that Giovanna’s eyes widened. He turned in a circle, like a captive animal—a bear or an elephant—and then he stood leaning with his hands on the back of his chair. “There is no love in me. There is nothing to be learned. She would have stayed if there were, but she knew. I am just telling you now.”

  “A unicorn has stayed.”

  Bianchi was silent for a moment. “La Signora chose my farm because she felt it would be a safe place to have her baby. Not because of me.”

  “You think not?” Giovanna’s expression was a curious mixture of exasperation and affectionate amusement. “You think a unicorn would not know—would not know—who would come out of his house in a storm to help her in her trouble? To perhaps save her child’s life? You think unicorns don’t know such things, Bianchi?”

  Bianchi turned his back to her, his shaggy he
ad lowering. “Unicorns know nothing. Otherwise she would never have let me near her.”

  Giovanna waited, unspeaking. Bianchi was doing something with his hands that she had seen him do before, the fingers of the left hand hooking over the right knuckles, squeezing rhythmically, so hard that she winced to see it. Bianchi said, “You don’t know anything, either.”

  “Well, I know exactly where you are ticklish,” she said. “How many people have ever known that?”

  When he finally sat down at the table again, she reached for his hand, but he pulled it away, folding his arms in front of him. He said, “I pulled another child from its mother’s belly once. Long ago. So long ago that it feels as though it happened to someone else. But it happened to me—and to her.”

  Giovanna placed her own hands flat on the table, close to his, but not touching. “Your child died?”

  Bianchi nodded. “If there had been a doctor . . . But it was night, and we had no money, and after all, I knew how to deliver a calf, a puppy—a goat, even. She was safe with me.”

  “And she never forgave—” Giovanna stopped herself, the green eyes widening. Slowly she said, “No . . . no, she forgave you—but you . . . ay, Bianchi. Bianchi.”

  “It was long ago, I told you,” he answered indifferently. “One goes on. One gets . . . used to things.”

  As if I could ever get used to your touch, ever get used to your lovely cold feet in my bed—get used to another person, ever again, at this table where I eat my meals and write my poems. Get used to the way I will feel when you leave in the morning.

  “But you do not go on,” she said. “You stay exactly where you were, that night when your child died.” Bianchi sat motionless, but he clenched his hands on his wrists, and she could see that he was shivering. After a silence filled with each other’s eyes, she said in a surprisingly small voice, “My friends call me Gio. You could call me that, if you like.”

  “Gio,” Bianchi said. “Gio. All right.”

  She fell asleep as soon as they went back to bed, snoring daintily on his shoulder and holding him so tightly that it was almost painful. But when hesaid, “She did not leave me because of the baby, but because of what you said—because I could not, could not . . .” she woke up immediately and answered, “E allora? More fool she.”

  “No,” he said. “No, she was not a fool, she was wise to leave,” but Giovanna was asleep again.

  Bianchi stayed awake all night, inhaling her closeness, listening to the soft sounds her body made, thinking, can you write a poem about someone’s snores? About trying not to sneeze when her hair tickles my nose? About that one tiny, barely audible fart against my leg? What will I write at my kitchen table, now that she has been there, drinking my wine and eating the dinner I made for her? Late to be discovering all this, Bianchi—all this that children know about these days. Very, very late . . .

  There would have been time for breakfast, as he had envisioned, but for the spirit in which she awoke. They were barely dressed before they heard the sputter of the motorscooter. Giovanna peeped through the door, waved to Silvana while stuffing her nightgown into her backpack, and kissed Bianchi hard enough that their teeth clattered together and brought blood from her lower lip. She touched her finger to the blood, and then to the tip of his nose. “There, so you’ll know I will come back,” and she was out and gone, smiling at him from the back of the Vespa. Silvana waved too.

  Bianchi moved slowly for the rest of the day. He let the three cows out to graze, fed the pigs and checked the security of their pen, as he did every day, and irrigated his fields and trees for the first time since the rains ended, reminding himself to replace two of the water hoses. But for all that, he was still absent from his activity, not thinking even about Giovanna . . . Gio . . . but rather savoring the calmness in his skin that had nothing to do with work, or spring, or poetry. “So you’ll know I will come back . . .” Sometimes he smiled vaguely, just for the sensation of the bruise on his own mouth.

  Romano, who arrived with an electricity bill and a new Dell’Acqua fashion catalogue, said after one glance, “It is obviously an epic that has carried you off. Something about the days of the Carbonari? About football? Unicorns?” He turned in all directions as he spoke, gazing hopefully everywhere but at Bianchi.

  “No poem.” Bianchi replied. “No unicorns.”

  “Perhaps that would be a good thing,” Romano said. “I have been hearing . . .” He did not finish, but began rooting earnestly in his mail pouch, as though in futile search of an actual letter. The back of his neck looked to Bianchi as young and vulnerable as his sister’s neck.

  “You have heard what? Tell me.” Bianchi’s stomach knew what was coming, but he himself needed the words.

  “Those people . . .” Romano still did not turn.

  “What people? The ’Ndrangheta? Say it, Romano.”

  “Barbato,” Romano mumbled. “The one who sells flowers on the Via Cavour? Marco, his son, he’s not in the ’Ndrangheta, you understand, but he does favors for them sometimes—just a few favors.” He did turn to Bianchi then, and his face was more taut and strained than the older man had ever seen it. “But it will be all right, if the unicorns are really gone. I can spread the word—I go everywhere, you know that—and they won’t want your land then. I can do that.”

  Bianchi put his hands on the postman’s shoulders. “Pace, fratello mio. The ’Ndrangheta have had plenty of time to come after me, and they have not done so. They are drug traffickers, arms dealers, extortionists—why would they waste time on rumors of a couple of mythical beasts perhaps seen on one ignorant farmer’s wretched few hectares? Whatever else they are, they are not stupid.”

  But the words sounded bodiless even to him, and he could have spoken Romano’s response along with him. “No—but you are, if you think they have finished with you. They have only begun, Bianchi.”

  Cherubino, who was afraid of the mail van, came up as it rumbled away and nudged familiarly against Bianchi, on the chance of there being something for him in the faded work shirt. Bianchi scratched him absently behind the horns, thinking, would they hurt the animals? Even the ’Ndrangheta surely wouldn’t hurt a three-legged cat. He realized that his hands were cold and trembling, and he shoved them into his pocket. Yes, they would. Yes, they would. And they would hurt her, if she were here . . .

  This time, when they spoke that night, he made it an order, not a warning. “You are not to come here again—not ever, not for any reason. If I see you here, I will send you right away, even if there is no trouble. Do you understand me?” When she did not answer, he repeated, “Do you understand me? Gio?” He was still oddly shy about using the intimate nickname.

  “I am nodding,” she said flatly. “I am not saying yes. Do you understand the difference?”

  “Oh, yes. Once I would not have, but since I have known you . . .” And then the name, and the words, did come, like a prison break from his caged heart. “Gio . . . Gio . . . I have lived all my life in this country. I know what I have, and what I can do without. I know what I will never have, and I know how to tell myself that I never wanted it anyway. But if something were to happen to you . . .” He stopped, because his mouth was very dry, and when he tried to breathe, nothing happened. “That I could not endure, if something bad happened to you. So you stay away, that’s all, è tutto. Gio—bella—stay away.”

  He was about to hang up the phone before it dropped from his shaking hand, when he heard her say quietly, “Yes. I love you too, Claudio.”

  “Giobella,” he said, when he could speak, “I think I will always call you that. No one else calls you Giobella, do they?”

  “No—no one.” She said it laughingly, but there were tears in her voice. “No one but Claudio Bianchi.”

  That afternoon, suddenly angry to find himself looking constantly around him with the quick, anxious twitches of a deer in his garden, he went searching for his father’s old shotgun in the attic. It took him some while: the Bianchis had never been
much concerned with hunting, and their family feuds tended to be carried on verbally over decades. As his Uncle Vincenzo had often said, before he lost all interest in any conversation but with his chickens, “Dead people can’t hear what you’re yelling at them.”

  He finally discovered the shotgun—doublebarreled, rusty around the breech, but apparently functional—half-hidden behind an old-fashioned clothespress, with a small bag of cartridges hanging from the trigger guard. Buckshot? Birdshot? What is a man who can’t tell the difference on sight doing with such a thing? Besides, it would most likely blow my head off before they do. His solitary laughter was kept from self-mocking melodrama only by a fit of sneezing. Beat the ’Ndrangheta off with your manure shovel, Bianchi. Better yet, an insulting poem—that should put them to flight. Giobella, your man—if that can really be what I am—is no better a guardian than my poor old toothless Garibaldi. Yet he has been brave as a bear in his time, defending his home, and so must I be now.

  He set the shotgun back where he had found it, and went downstairs, where he discovered on his doorstep the body of Third Cat, the nameless feral one who had appeared, years ago, as strangely and suddenly as the unicorn, and stayed on to eat his food and avoid his touch. The blunt brindle head had been nearly cut off and the belly split open; the intestines were still steaming in the cooling air. In death the old cat had voided its bowels, and that also was so fresh that the murder must have occurred only moments before, while he had been up in the attic, playing with guns.

  “Ay, cat,” he said softly, kneeling over the ruined body. “And you never told me your name.” He picked the dead animal up, regardless of blood and shit, and stood staring at the imprint of heavy shoes in the churned earth. “You fought them, didn’t you?” he asked the cat. “You left your mark on them.” A rage he had rarely known took hold of him then, and for longer than he ever remembered he cursed the footprints and the horizon they led back to, until his vision blurred and his voice gave out.