A Winter's Night (24 page)

Clerice went to visit every two weeks. She had Checco take her in the cart to the station at Castelfranco and she and Maria took the train to Reggio Emilia. They would bring bread, a
salame
, a few chunks of
parmigiano
, half a
pancetta
, a couple of bottles of wine, clothes that she had mended, washed and ironed, and they'd stay as long as possible to hear how things were going, whether there would be a trial and what the lawyer had said.

Floti was locked up with other “political” prisoners coming from a number of towns in the region, including some who spoke with the same accent as poor Pelloni. Floti shared with them everything his family had brought him.

The whole ordeal was a nightmare for Clerice. She had no doubts about her son's innocence, but she was deeply saddened by a situation that had shaken her life and that of the entire family. Being involved judges, policemen,
carabinieri
and lawyers was the worst thing that could happen to you, and all this because Floti had refused to listen to her advice. She thought that youngsters always think they know more than old folk, even though the older you are, the more things you've experienced. But they never believe you until they've smashed their own heads. And when they finally do realize what's best for them, the damage is already done.

In addition to their troubles with the law, there were also problems at home: no one was capable of replacing Floti in running the family affairs and things were going very poorly. His misadventure had managed to give the whole family a bad reputation, and their relationship with the community was no longer the same. The other brothers, in Floti's absence, tended to argue more often and it was up to Clerice to try to keep the family together and defend her missing son: “Remember,” she'd tell them, “he always looked after the interests of the family before his own; when he came back from the market he always had a gift for your wives and he never treated them any differently than his own sisters. The fascists and the landowners have managed to put him in prison, but if you gang up on him as well, well, that's truly scandalous.”

The complaining around the dinner table stopped only to pick up again in the fields where their mother could not hear them. The only one who abstained from criticizing Floti was Checco and, from a certain point of view, Armando as well. He wasn't even around much; skinny as he was, he wasn't usually much help on the farm, but he also didn't have what could be called a very strong work ethic. Sometimes he would disappear early in the day and not show up again until nightfall, especially when it was time to beat the hemp at mid-day under the scorching sun. On the other hand, he was the only one of them who still enjoyed good relations with the town's people. His stories were famously entertaining and his jokes were memorable. He was unmatchable at creating and spreading good cheer, and in such miserable times, his innocent, silly banter was a relief for the people around him, sometimes even a blessing. Folks loved to be in his company because he was so amusing, but he didn't command their respect because he was so weak: the strong and the arrogant had him under their thumb, and anyone who offered him a drink had him in their pocket.

Otherwise, just about no one in town continued to keep company with the Brunis. Iofa, the carter, would show up now and then for a question of work or to get some information. Despite his failing health, his hobbling walk and his bizarre looks, he wasn't afraid of anybody, nor was anybody afraid of him.

The summer that year was even hotter and more suffocating than usual, making work in the fields tougher and more tiring. The water in the steeping ponds rotted and let off a nauseating stench which spread on the thin mist that hovered above the surface when it got dark and the air cooled down. The only things that could survive in that turbid sewer water were the catfish who hunkered down on the muddy bottom without ever moving.

When, towards the end of the autumn, the heat finally let up, they started the harvest. Golden, ultra sweet grapes that produced an extraordinary wine. The Brunis still sang as they picked, in part to forget their worries, in part because the colors, the fragrance and the light still seemed a blessing from God.

The swallows left the third week of October. By Saint Martin's day the wine was already in the barrels and the wind scattered the red and yellow leaves among the grapevines, making them swirl like butterflies. Now Armando too had decided to marry and Clerice was quite surprised indeed. What woman would agree to marry this peculiar son of hers?

“Lucia,
mamma
, Lucia Monti,” explained Armando. “Do you know her?”

Clerice regarded him with a perplexed expression: “Lucia Monti? Where's she from? Not those Montis who live at the Botteghetto?”

“That's her!” exclaimed Armando, satisfied.

Clerice scowled.

“She's beautiful, mother.”

“She is beautiful, but you do know, don't you, why no one else has chosen her yet?”

Armando dropped his head and said only: “I like her. I don't care about anything else.”

‘The Montis are a tainted breed, my son. That woman may be beautiful but she'll bring you trouble. Leave her be, let some­one else have her.'

“
Mamma
, I know her very well. It's true, she's a bit strange at times, but nothing more. As long as you don't get her angry.”

“You're a grown man, son, and you don't need someone to tell you what to do or what not to do. Remember, though, that I'm warning you: forget about her now, while you're still in time. She's not the only one with a nice bum and bosom! And anyway, you'll see, in five or six year's time the spell will be broken and you'll have a creature on your hands that you won't know what to do with.”

Armando would not listen to reason and he married Lucia Monti at the end of November, on a cold, gray day. He was afraid that she would change her mind and he didn't want to risk losing her by waiting for the spring, the season in which just about everyone got married. He knew that he'd never again find another girl so beautiful.

He was given the bedroom that had been Gaetano and Silvana's, because no one else had wanted to sleep there even though space in the house had been running out and they'd had to convert part of the hayloft into a bedroom. The wedding lunch was plain and unpretentious because with Floti gone, there wasn't much hope for anything finer. Floti's absence weighed heavily on the festivities, but there was occasion for merriment nonetheless. To make sure of this, Armando took it upon himself to tell a number of spicy stories having married life as their common theme.

“Have you heard the one about Lazzari, the hunchback?” he began. He was talking about a blacksmith who lived in town. “Well, old Lazzari gets into a fight with his neighbor, who did something to annoy him, and now he's bent on giving him tit for tat. He knows that every morning, when this neighbor gets up to go to work, it is still dark out. So Lazzari waits until he leaves, sneaks into the house behind him and, quiet as a mouse, slips into the wife's bed, with her still sleeping! While it is still dark, he does what a wife could expect from a husband in bed and then, with her all relaxed and just about to fall back asleep, Lazzari the hunchback sticks her backside with a fork and runs off in the dark before she can see who he is.

“When her husband gets back that night, dead tired, she's waiting for him behind the door with her rolling pin and she clobbers him so hard he can't go to work for three days!”

Roaring laughter and the guests, tipsy by now, added their own stories until the cake and coffee were ready to be served. The bride laughed as well, but in a coarse, unbecoming way that embarrassed the others and put a frown on her mother-in-law's face. By dusk the party was breaking up.

Clerice served some of the leftovers for dinner and then everyone retired, the men first of all, while she and Maria and a couple of the daughters-in-law cleared the table and began to wash the dishes. No sooner had they begun than they heard a scream of terror coming from the floor above them, as if someone were being murdered.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Clerice, dropping the soap into the sink. “What's happening up there?” She took off her apron and rushed up the stairs, stopping in front of the door to the newlyweds' room.

“Armando, what's happening?”

Armando came to open the door dressed in his nightshirt and looking all disheveled. Clerice could see the bride standing in a corner on the other side of the room, half-undressed, eyes wide, shivering with cold and fear.

“Out,” she said to Armando, “but what on earth did you do to her?”

“Nothing,
mamma
, I swear it, I just got close to her, to . . . ”

“I understand, I understand. Just go now, this one here is out of her mind.” She entered the room, muttering, “What did I tell him?”

Armando went into his mother's room because he was cold and he lay there under the covers waiting wide awake to be able to go back to his rightful place, but time passed and not a thing was heard. Finally Clerice appeared with a candle in hand: “Where are you?” she asked, raising the candle and looking around the room for him.

“I'm here,
mamma
. I just got into bed because I was cold.”

“Listen to me, are you sure you didn't do anything strange to her?”

“No, are you serious? I just got close and well, you know, I was ready . . . ” Armando tried to explain, embarrassed.

“I understand, I understand. You can go back to your bed now. I've told her that you won't do anything to her and you'll both sleep and that's all. Then you'll have to see, a little at a time . . . you have to treat her like a child, understand? Not jump on her like a goat.”

“
Mamma
, I didn't do that, I . . . ” Armando tried to justify himself, but Clerice stopped him.

“I'm afraid the problems are starting even sooner than I expected.” She refrained from adding ‘I told you so,' because it seemed completely useless.

The next day it snowed.

That winter, Fonso was invited to tell his stories at a number of different farms, some of them quite far from the town, but none so far that he couldn't get there on foot. He was happy to go: first of all, because he liked having an audience who were enchanted by listening to his tales, and then because they always gave him something, especially food, wine and wood for the fire, and in those times that was a lot. Some gave him a
salame
, others a plucked rooster, and others a big oak or elm log to burn in the fireplace. The most generous offered him his choice; they'd say: “Fonso, any trunk that you can manage to hoist to your shoulders and carry home is yours.” This was said with a sly smile, as if to say let's see if your shoulders are as good as your tongue. And when Fonso had finished telling his story and everyone said goodnight and went to bed, he went out into the courtyard in the moonlight and picked up the biggest trunk he could carry on his back and away he would go, trudging through the snow for as far as a kilometer. Every so often he'd lean one end on the ground, so he could rest a bit, then he'd ease himself under the trunk again until he had it solidly on his shoulders, straighten up and go on.

But he'd go to the Bruni house for nothing, because there was another, greater reward waiting there. He was crazy in love with Maria. And that year, more people had shown up seeking lodging than ever before. There was one fellow who claimed that he'd been part of the band of Adani and Caprari, the two famous bandits who, in the saddles of their Frera motorcycles like knights errant, robbed the rich to give to the poor. He'd worked with them as a highway robber for four years before his two bosses were brought down in a gunfight with sergeant Capponi's
carabinieri
in the plains north of Modena. When he'd had a couple of glasses too many, the Brunis could hear him screeching in the middle of the night:

 

“When the moon sets sail over the hill

That's when we're ready to kill, kill, kill!”

 

Maria was terrified of him; when she brought him food he would look at her and roll his eyes and say, just like some ogre in a fairy tale: “I'm starving for a bit of the nice, tender meat of a Christian!” He would burst into hysterical, burbling laughter while she swiftly put his plate of soup down on the ground and took to her heels.

No one else, obviously, gave him a second thought. Except Armando, lying still in his bed with his eyes wide open next to his cold, numb wife. When he heard the shrill voice of that braggart piercing the night, he would shiver:

 

“The first attack was all mine:

We saw a lady dressed very fine

My knife went into her neck so white

We got her money without a fight!”

 

It was bitter cold that winter. Icicles hung from the gutters like crystal daggers for weeks and the hoar frost dressed the trees in white lace that the pale foggy sun couldn't manage to melt. It was winters like this that Hotel Bruni offered shelter to a full house. The cowherd would open two or three bales of hay and spread it out in a corner of the stable where wayfarers could stretch out comfortably and warmly. At meal time, Clerice sent each of them a steaming bowl of soup and a small flask of wine, convinced that Our Lord himself might be hiding in any of those poor creatures, roaming through the night to test whose heart was hard and who instead had compassion for their fellow men.

Some of the guests even did something to deserve all of that benevolence. They helped to care for the animals or took out the manure or fixed the chairs or put a new handle on a shovel or hoe. In that case, they had dinner with the family because it was only right that someone who pitched in to help should be able to put their feet under a table.