Lives of the Saints (12 page)

Cat calls and cries for an encore followed Silvio as he bowed away, his face beaming, from centre stage; but when he seemed about to return the chairman of the
comitato
, waiting in the shadows on the other side of the stage, frowned at him and shook his head disapprovingly. After a last round of fitful
applause, the chairman came up to centre stage.

‘
Per favore
,’ he said, ‘the band has asked that we turn out all the lamps before they come out.’

Hesitantly at first, but more surely under, the chairman’s remonstrances, the lamps went out and darkness slowly swallowed the square. The audience sat for a moment in utter silence; but when nothing happened people began to fidget in their seats, wondering aloud whether it would be all right to light the lamps again. Then everything happened very quickly: an engine sputtered into life from the direction of the band’s bus, the sound growing to a high hum and then dropping again to a groan, and finally a gasp came up from the audience as the bulbs above us burst into light, the square suddenly bright as day. There was hardly time to adjust to the shock before an explosion of sound rolled out from the stage like thunder, the band members, already behind their instruments, starting in on a vigorous overture. In a moment the chorus members had filed up and arranged themselves on stage, three women on the left, three men on the right, all dressed in bright costumes of green, white, and black and keeping up a synchronized marching movement in time with the music as a final couple emerged into the stage’s halo of lights and sashayed hand in hand up to centre stage, a young dark-skinned woman whose arms were adorned with a dozen golden bangles like a gypsy’s, and a man in wide sequined sleeves, his dark hair groomed to a silver sheen.

‘
Buonasera, signor’ e signori
. We are
Capo di Molise.
’

The crowd, it seemed, was still in a trance from the sudden rush of light and sound, Valle del Sole’s medieval square transformed in an instant into a pocket of rich modernity, as bright and alive as any street in Rome or Naples; but on stage the singers, picking up the tune of the overture, embarked at once
on a singing duel:

Only slowly now did people begin to recover from their shock, shaking their heads and moving slowly towards the stage as towards an oracle. It seemed as if we had been transported into one of
la maestra’s
stories of the saints, the world suddenly filled with light, and all possibilities open again; but beside me my mother sat unmoved, still as a sentry, her arms folded tight over her chest against the cold, though around us the seats soon emptied, only the older villagers staying behind, everyone else pressing up closer to the lights of the stage for a better view. Gradually couples began to filter into the dance area.

‘As if no one had ever seen a light bulb before,’ my mother said.

All through the first set my mother sat still and silent beside me, staring up towards the stage as if still expecting some secret to be revealed there. Behind us the square lay dark and empty now, a cold wind biting at our backs; a small group of men hung back at the terrace of Di Lucci’s bar, but the rest of the crowd had moved up to the warmth and light of the stage. The band’s songs seemed strange and foreign to me, even the few local ones it played rendered unfamiliar by the twang and blare of its equipment, which filled the air so totally that in the hush at the end of each song it seemed the square had suddenly been sucked free of all sound, despite the continued hum of the crowd and of the engine in the band’s bus; but the peasants by
now seemed to have taken to the blare as if born to it, the dance area always filled, the couples adapting their
saltarelli
and
tarantelle
to the band’s strident rhythms. In between songs the lead singers—Mario and Maria, they introduced themselves—joked with the audience.

‘Tell me, Maria, honestly, how many times have you been unfaithful to me?’

‘Look up at the sky. How many stars do you see?’

‘Ah, Maria, that many! You should be careful, you know—a wronged man can turn into a devil.’

‘Not everything with horns is a devil. Goats have horns too.’

During one of these pauses Di Lucci appeared suddenly beside us, emerging like a ghost from the shadows to squat next to my mother’s chair.

‘
Crist’ e Maria
, have you ever seen such a festival? The lights! I knew all about it, of course, because they wanted to hang them from my terrace, so it was only right that I should know, but still I was just as surprised as everyone else. Like a miracle! What happened to your father, didn’t he see it?’

‘He went home,’ my mother said tonelessly.

‘Home? Yes, yes, now that you mention it I saw him going that way before, I thought maybe he was sick—he looks thin these days.’

‘We can’t all be fat.’

‘Eh? Ah,
sí
, it’s true, it’s true,’ Di Lucci said, patting his belly and forcing a laugh, ‘maybe some of us have to be thin to make up for the ones that are fat, eh? So I see Alfredo Pannunzio is back, maybe he had some news from your husband, no?’

‘He told me he’s living in a stable.’

‘Ha,
sí
, in a stable, I know how they live in America, just look at that suit Pannunzio was wearing. Though maybe your husband is saving his money to bring you over, no? Just old men
like me and your father,’ shaking his head now, ‘that’s all there’ll be left in Valle del Sole. And no one to take care of us in our old age.’

The band stopped now for an intermission, and the crowd around the stage began to disperse, small groups moving in the direction of Di Lucci’s bar. With a sudden bound Di Lucci rose up off his haunches, surprisingly agile.

‘Well, back to my place,’ he said. ‘For you a festival means enjoyment. For me it means work.’

‘What a jackass,’ my mother said, when he had gone.

The band’s second set started out on the same high pitch as the first, but as the evening wore on the tempo seemed gradually to slow, modern songs giving way more and more to local ones, the band’s accordion beginning to take centre stage, its melancholy notes seeming all in a minor key, riding out over the sound of the other instruments to hang on the wind like the threat of a frost. Eventually I drifted into sleep, the glitter and noise of the square receding: I had a sudden image of what the square looked like in winter, after a snowfall, silent, the cobblestones covered in a thin blanket of white, icicles hanging from the eaves of houses and from the branches of the crooked trees that rose up from the embankment. But a hand reached out suddenly to pull me back into the light and noise, and I opened my eyes to see my mother standing over me. The band was announcing the last song of the evening.

‘Come on, Vittorio,’ my mother said. ‘We’re going to dance.’

She took me by the hand and led me up towards the stage, heads turning as we passed, couples in the dance area edging away as we approached, clearing a small circle as if to cordon us off. But as soon as the band had begun to play we seemed to be forgotten, the crowd of other dancers slowly closing in around us, as if the music had made us suddenly anonymous,
invisible. The singers had arranged themselves now in the familiar semi-circle, the musicians abandoning their instruments to join them, leaving only the accordion player to pick out the tune; though Mario and Maria still held centre stage, singing alternately the verses of a familiar local song, no longer the duelling lovers of the evening’s first set but a happy couple remembering their days of courtship:

But the energy of the crowd seemed to have reached some strange peak now, many of the men drunk with beer and wine, whirling their partners around the dance area at a speed that was out of all time with the music, with a kind of joyless intensity that bordered on violence, as if they were anxious to spend before the end of the evening some anger or resentment that had been bottled up inside them. One couple stumbled out onto the circle of old women who had pulled their chairs up close to the perimeter of the dance area; but the man righted himself with a stagger and a laugh, ignoring the shrieks and curses of the old women, and quickly pulled his partner back into the crowd of other dancers. A crush of bodies churned around my mother and me like the wheels of some great machine, jostling us to the centre of the dance area; but my mother too seemed suddenly infected by the crowd’s strange energy, twirling with me at a breathless pace, faster and faster, the crowd around me fading to a dizzy blur. The audience had begun to sing along with the band, and a thousand voices started in now on the final refrain:

Then suddenly the song was over, and a great clamour of shouts and applause and catcalls came up from the crowd, caps flying up into the air; but in the clamour there were only a few scattered cries for an encore, as if most of the dancers had forgotten already about the band, and were merely crying out to the air, or as if they had grown irritated now with the band’s novelty, Mario and Maria seeming to bow away from the stage with their wide forced smiles as if retreating from a threat. A moment later, the chorus still filing off the stage to the last applause, the engine in the band’s bus died and the square went black, the noise of the crowd suddenly disembodied. My mother and I still stood at the centre of the dance area; but in the sudden darkness the crowd seemed to have faded away, as if we had been left alone, the voices around us only so many ghosts. Then a small explosion sounded and the sky above the valley was suddenly filled with coloured light, small fading speckles of green, white, and red. It was midnight, and the final fireworks had begun. The Madonna, too, cloistered in her little chapel, would be watching.

The week after the festival I was tending the sheep by the cemetery when Fabrizio called out to me from the shadow of the chapel. His father, he told me, had locked him in the house with the goats the night of the fireworks.

‘Pom!’ he said, grinning, making a quick arc through the air with his hand to mimic his father’s blows. But I didn’t want to hear about his beating, wanted only to get back to the quiet of the sheep. When he offered me a cigarette I didn’t take it.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s your mother. Because she was screwing in the stable.’

But my head started pounding then and suddenly I couldn’t bear Fabrizio anymore and his stupid grinning. I wanted to make him stop talking, make him disappear, and I picked up a rock beside my foot and flung it squarely at his chest. He
deflected the rock with an arm but I threw myself on him, arms flailing, and the two of us fell to the ground, Fabrizio holding out his elbows to ward me off.

‘Oh,
scimunit’
, have you gone crazy?’

‘It was the snake’s fault, you stupid! You’re just a stupid like your stupid father!’

‘
Sí, sí
, stop, it was only the snake, you’re right, it was only the snake.’

The first day of school Fabrizio did not show up in class, nor the second or third; I thought he was staying away because of our fight, but then I overheard one of the older boys say that his father was keeping him out of school to work in the fields. I was alone now, without friends, and it quickly became clear what my status was with the other boys. For the first few days I was merely shunned, and could not make out the insults which they whispered to each other in class while they smirked at me from their desks; but by the end of the first week I had had another fight. It was Vincenzo Maiale, Maria’s son, who provoked me, as we were coming out of class on our way home, with some veiled comment about my mother which I didn’t understand; but suddenly we were on the ground, rolling in the dirt in the square in front of the church. I did not have any experience fighting, but somehow my body seemed to know instinctively how to do it, how to fling a fist, what areas to strike to cause the greatest harm; but in the midst of my attack I suddenly felt my rage ebbing, giving way to a vague fear, not simply the fear of being beaten up but a fear of my own violence, of the strange thing which was not me that had just flung itself with such dangerous force on Vincenzo Maiale.

Vincenzo was about two years older than me, and taller and stronger; and in an instant he sensed the sudden lag in my resolution and moved from surprised defense to attack,
throwing me off his chest and pinning me to ground, his fist beating my head against the dirt while the other children stood round watching or urging him on. I struggled to free myself but Vincenzo pinned my arms with his knees. Another wave of violence took hold of me like a possession, and I flailed my legs and let out a long stream of curses. But Vincenzo only laughed, to show what an easy victory I had been.

‘Oh,
la maestra
!’ someone called out, and suddenly everyone scattered, Vincenzo leaping off me to disappear down the church steps with his friends. In a moment
la maestra
was standing over me, her large breasts quivering. She had heard my cursing, I thought in horror; but she only pursed her lips and shook her head, then reached out a hand to pull me off the ground.

‘Look at you,’ she said. She pulled a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and wiped at my nose; it came away wet with blood. ‘It’s that woman’s fault, all of this, she thinks she’s as free as a bird, she doesn’t think about other people. Who did this to you?’

But I only stared down at the ground, watching the blood that dripped from my nose splatter against the dirt.

‘Well, you’re probably right not to say, it would only make things worse for you. Go home and let your mother see you now.’ She handed her handkerchief to me. ‘Here, hold this under your nose, and when you get home lie down with your head hanging over the side of your bed and tell your mother to put a bit of garlic in each nostril. Make sure you drink at least three glasses of water before you go to sleep. Look, even your lip is bleeding. In the morning it’ll be as big as a melon.’