They whiled away the time playing cards or listening to stories. After the first snowfalls, wayfarers began to show up, and they had a host of tales to tell, since that was how they earned a bowl of soup and a straw mattress to sleep on. One day, a knife grinder happened by. A stranger who spoke a strange dialect, which only Floti could recognize because he’d spent months in Friuli. He was very good at his trade, sharpening knives until they cut like razors, but he also knew how to make really nice chairs. He’d take a piece of acacia wood and with four or five strokes of a bill hook he carried with him, he’d make the legs and then the rails and then last of all the spindles, and then he’d add a straw seat that was made just right. But his stories were really scary ones. And sometimes you had the impression he was a little crazy. Maybe it was the war, and what he’d experienced. Everyone said that in the house where he lived all alone up on a mountaintop he heard things and saw things. More than once, he’d seen his wife who’d died three years earlier walking across his bedroom carrying their child who’d died as well in an artillery bombing. The child was as limp as a rag doll and the woman stared at him with eyes red from weeping, but if he tried to talk to her she would not answer.
Everyone fell silent at that point because no one felt like saying, what a bunch of nonsense, or giving him a reason to go on with his tale. Clerice said, however, that maybe what he said was true and what he was seeing were souls from purgatory.
“But what about the baby?” Maria would ask. “What could such a small child need to atone for, mother? What sins could he have committed, poor creature?”
“Even if he didn’t do anything, he has to stay with his mother. He’s too little to be on his own,” Clerice said, making the sign of the cross and murmuring prayers under her breath.
Even Fonso, the storyteller, had survived the war and there was no one who could spin a tale like him. The Brunis were always happy to see him, except for Floti, who didn’t want him courting his sister Maria. He was not handsome in the least and he was just a day laborer. What’s more, he’d come back from the war half deaf, because he’d been at the Battle of Mount Montello, with those eight thousand cannons firing all together and making a horrible din, and his hearing had never been the same.
Even so, when he arrived in the evening wrapped in his long tabarro cloak, even the women started to drift into the stable, with the excuse of spinning hemp. Maria sat and listened openmouthed and his stories were so beautiful that he became beautiful as he told them. At least in her eyes. When he started up, using the set phrase, “You should know that once upon a time . . . ” the silence that fell was so complete you could hear the oxen slowly chewing on their cud. Sometimes he’d come accompanied by friends who hoped to share in his privileges: a few glasses of wine or even, when he’d finished his story, a cockerel fried right then and there, with a loaf of crusty bread. But this happened rarely and anyway, when the gang that showed up wasn’t too numerous.
And then there were certain conventions to look forward to: if the narrator, for any reason, named the king, that was the sign that it was time to down a glass of wine. So that every so often one of his buddies would lean in and whisper: “Name the king, name the king!” so that they’d all get the chance to raise their elbows.
While he had been away at war, he and Maria continued to keep in touch. When he could, he’d send her a postcard with a little rhyme:
Daisies are wild
And I love you more than
A mother loves her child
Clover grows low
And for you I’d even jump
Out of the window!
From the man who’s always thinking of you,
Alfonso
Maria would never tire of reading and rereading his words, keeping them well hidden from her parents.
The storyteller’s earnings always depended on the wealth of his listeners or of his hosts: it might be a bottle of wine, a chunk of parmigiano or even a thirty-kilo bag of wheat that he’d heave onto his shoulder and carry home in the dead of night and toss down at the threshold. His fame had spread to the nearby towns as well, and he was called upon from places far and wide, from San Giovanni and even farther out if he’d wanted to. Fonso was one of the few people in town who read books, besides the pastor, the doctor and the pharmacist. He’d read War and Peace, Salgari’s Son of the Red Corsair, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Ohnet’s Ironmaster, and he would retell them in the local dialect. Sometimes the whole story would take more than a single night, especially with long novels. War and Peace, for instance, took up three nights running.
When spring returned, Gaetano began to feel a bit better and he even began to resign himself to the fact that a girl like Iole would never have agreed to marry someone like him. She’d surely settle for nothing less than the son of a notary or a pharmacist or a landowner like Barzini, for instance. He’d let himself be fooled. There were worse things in life. But sometimes he couldn’t help but think of the last time they saw each other and the awful things she’d said. Her words had left him with no hope whatsoever but, for an instant, he would think of the look in her eyes and wonder if they were trying to say something different. Or maybe once again, he was just fooling himself.
For a long time he’d acted like a dope, just as his brother Floti had predicted. More than once he’d hidden behind the hedges to catch a glimpse of her when she went into town to do the shopping or stopped to chat with her friends or with a suitor.
He finally decided to cast off the past and one day as he was returning in the carriage from the cooperative, where he’d taken the accounts for the milk they’d delivered, he met up with a girl who was walking home along the Finaletto with a basket of linens that she’d washed at the sluice on the creek. She was a tiny thing and the basket must have been really heavy because her left hip looked like it might give out under the weight of it. But she had a certain grace about her and beautiful black hair gathered into a braid that nearly reached her waist.
“Good evening, miss,” he called out. “That basket must be awfully heavy. If you’d like I could take you to where you’re going in my carriage.”
The girl answered sharply: “Go on your way, good sir. I don’t need any favors and I’m not accustomed to talking with people I don’t know.” A bit brusque, but that was a good sign: she was surely well brought up and accustomed to hard work.
“I don’t want to be any trouble to you,” he replied, “I’m just offering to give you a hand with that heavy basket. Please, let me help you.”
The girl drew up and looked straight into his eyes: “You can’t imagine that I’d accept a ride from you just because you have a fine carriage.”
Gaetano smiled: “It’s not even mine, it belongs to my brother. But just to prove that my intentions are honorable, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll put the basket into the carriage and I’ll get out and walk you home. It’s on my way, anyway.”
He was lying since he had no idea where her house might be but he was very interested in the girl and she surely must live somewhere nearby. She accepted.
“I’m Gaetano,” he began, “and I live not far from here. Will you tell me your name?”
“Silvana,” she answered. And in the time they spent walking towards her house, she realized that he was a good man, simple and honest. She’d already admired his strong build, from her very first glance.
As far as Gaetano was concerned, he understood instantly that Silvana would be a good wife and a good mother. He was also pretty sure, from the stealthy glances he managed to take, that he would find reason to be intrigued and attracted by her intimate charms, when the right time came.
And so they continued to see each other. Gaetano helped at first with transporting the wash, but soon asked to be introduced to her parents. That was an important step, nearly akin to an engagement, because it meant that, in one fell swoop, he would enter her home, meet her fami
ly and make it clear that his intentions were serious. After that day, he came calling every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and sometimes even on Sunday, after he’d tended to the animals and shoveled the manure out of the stable. The days were getting longer, giving him more time on his own. He would wash in the tub, and Clerice would scrub his back and head with the laundry brush to get rid of the stable smell. Then she’d give him a hemp shirt, pressed and scented with lavender so that he’d make a good impression. Clerice was as eager for him to become engaged as Gaetano was himself, since she had asked around and learned that Silvana was a decent girl and very sensible.
Gaetano was preparing to ask her to marry him at the end of June. They had already spoken about it and there didn’t seem to be any hindrances, so it was time to make a decision.
“I’m getting married, mamma. Are you happy I’ve chosen Silvana?” he said one day to Clerice.
“I certainly am. The sooner you have children the better it is, so you’ll have time to see them grow up and get settled. The girl is a pearl, you couldn’t have found any better, not like that other . . .”
”Please, mamma,” Gaetano interrupted her, “let’s not talk about that. It’s personal.”
“Don’t be ridiculous: boys your age don’t understand a thing. She would have swallowed you up and spit you out in a single bite.”
“Mother, as I’ve said, that’s my own business. Stay out of it, please.”
Clerice was surprised and disappointed at getting such a rude reply from a son who’d always been kind and respectful, and she became even more convinced that certain women poison a man’s blood and get them to do whatever they want them to do. Thank goodness it was over. She didn’t say another word, because she would only have made the situation worse; talking about her would bring her even more to his mind.
Some time later, one morning at the end of April while he was returning from the Sant’Agata market, Gaetano saw her walking along the ditch where the old oak was, gathering wild chicory with a little knife and a wicker basket. She was first to say hello: “Buongiorno, Gaetano.”
He slowed down so he could answer: “Hello, Iole.”
“Long time no see.”
“Don’t say that: you were the one who never wanted to see me again.”
“That’s not true. All I said was that I didn’t feel like getting married. It wasn’t about you. I’ve always liked you, and I proved that to you, didn’t I?”
Gaetano felt his blood boil at such a direct reference to something only the two of them could remember. Very cheeky, and all the more seductive.
“I was expecting you to offer me another life, at least. We could have moved to the city, opened a shop, for example, and then once we’d earned enough, we would have gone to the theatre, walked arm in arm under the porticoes . . . ”
“How was I supposed to take you to the city, open a shop, buy things to sell? You need a lot of money to do those things: who on earth would have given me all that money?”
“That’s not my affair. That’s men’s business. I know lots who have started from nothing and done well for themselves. But you didn’t feel up to that, and I can’t blame you.”
Gaetano fell silent, tormented by thoughts he couldn’t control. Iole’s mere presence, after so much time that he hadn’t seen her, erased every other image, every other event, every other person. How lucky that he was wearing his good suit and a clean shirt; he would never have forgiven himself if she’d seen him looking unkempt. He swallowed and spoke again: “Is it true that you’ve always liked me?”
“Oh, what a question. What do you think, that I let you kiss me and caress me and touch me because I’m a bad girl? It was because I liked you. But I just couldn’t face that kind of life. When we saw each other you always looked so fine, with your shirt freshly washed and ironed, on this beautiful carriage. But then I would have seen you shoveling manure in the stable, sitting down to the table with that smell on you. I would have become a mess myself, always out in the chicken coop with the hens and the geese, trudging through the mud in the winter and the dust in the summer, having one baby after another like you peasants do, because you need more hands in the field . . . and that’s what you call light work.”
Gaetano was wounded by her merciless appraisal. Just a few words from her had upset him deeply: Iole had dangled the vision of another life in front of him; a life with her at his side, beautiful and maybe even in love with him. A life he knew he could never have: a man born a farmer had to be a farmer and that was that. Iole got closer and he felt drunk. She got even closer, close enough to brush his lips with hers: “Think of what you’re losing, Gaetano,” she whispered. And she walked off down the lane that cut through the meadow. He stood there stock still with tears brimming up, next to his horse who regarded him with big moist eyes as if trying to understand.
He was so shaken by the encounter that he could not bring himself to call on his fiancée. Days passed and she became so worried that she sent him a message through a relative of hers who was a friend of the Bruni boys: his name was Tonino.
Gaetano was in the stable milking the cows when Tonino approached him: “Gaetano, Silvana has sent me to let you know how worried she is that she hasn’t seen you. She’s wondering if you’re not feeling well, or have some other problem. She says you shouldn’t have qualms about talking to her directly and telling her the truth, no matter what it is. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Gaetano stopped, moved the stool and the milk bucket and walked over to the unannounced messenger: “Tonino . . . I’m sorry, I’ve had a bit of a tough time lately . . . tell her I need a few days to pull myself back together and then I’ll go see her myself and explain all this.”
“Aren’t you feeling well, Gaetano?” the young man asked.
“Yes . . . no, no. Just go now, go tell her what I’ve just said.”
His friend got onto his bicycle and went off to do as he had been told. A week later, it was Gaetano who entrusted a message for Silvana to Iofa, because he regularly went by the girl’s house in his cart: Gaetano asked to meet with her the next evening at the chapel of San Firmino, a quiet, isolated place not far from her house. Silvana arrived at the appointed time, just before dusk, and found her fiancé sitting on a stone bench built into the wall at the side of the front door. The air smelled of roses.
“How are you, Gaetano? I was so worried; I’ve been hoping every day that I’d hear from you.”
Gaetano got up and gave her a kiss on the cheek: “Forgive me, Silvana. I wasn’t . . . well.”
“Not well? What was wrong? Tonino told me he found you working in the stable. What kind of sickness kept you away from me?”
Gaetano realized that the reason he’d gone missing was written plainly on his face. It was just as well to be honest. ‘The other day I saw my old fiancée, Iole, by chance.’
“By chance?”
“Yes, by chance. I was coming home from Sant’Agata and there she was at the ditch, the one by the old oak tree, gathering wild chicory. Since we’ve been together, I’ve never gone looking for her, I swear it.”
“Well then? What happened?”
“Nothing. We just talked, but that was enough to get me all worked up. Since then all I can think about is her and what she told me.”
“What did she tell you, Gaetano?” asked Silvana, her eyes shiny but her voice firm.
“She led me to believe that . . . if I was willing to change my way of life, she’d have me back.” He lowered his head, reddening. He could feel Silvana’s pain and humiliation.
“Change your way of life? Why, what’s wrong with your way of life?”
“Well . . . it’s that I’m a farmer, a cowherd, and she wants a different life, she wants to live in the city and if I . . . well, if I did as she asked, she would take me back again.”
“I see . . . now, listen to me well, Ga
etano: if you want to go back to her for any reason, if you’ve found the way to make her happy, I will not stand in your way. I will release you from your promise. You owe me nothing. Nothing has happened between us, has it? You’ve kissed me a few times on the cheek, nothing more, and so you can consider yourself free. I’ll still remember you fondly. I’ll remember that day that you walked me home with the basket of the wash on your carriage. What I’m going to say now is something I’ve never said before because I’m not used to saying such things and because I’m shy. I love you, Gaetano. You are a good man and in my eyes you are handsome and gentle and I’m sure you’d be a good father if we had children. Since we’ve been seeing each other, I’ve often thought of how our life might be together. I’m not afraid of hard work, I’m used to it. And if I’m tired when I go to bed at night, all the better for me. I’ll feel like getting close to you,” and now it was her turn to blush, “so you can warm me up, and we can talk about the day we’ve had together and about our future and our hopes for our family. That was my dream, and that dream made me happy, but now things have changed. I understand that you’ve never forgotten Iole and that maybe I’ll never manage to make you forget her: I’m not beautiful like she is, I don’t have her charms. But most of all, Gaetano, I would never want you to be unhappy or to have regrets. Because I love you.”
Gaetano started to speak but she stopped him: “No, I just have a few more words to say and then I’ll have finished. Think about what you really want. I’ll wait for seven days. If you don’t come back to me by then, don’t try afterwards, because I’ll have to refuse you.” She brushed his cheek with her fingers and got up, setting off down the little road that flanked the Finaletto, towards home.
Six days later, Gaetano, dressed in the finest clothes he had, called upon her parents and asked them for her hand in marriage.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN