Sweet Life (9 page)

Maria smiles as she closes the door. What a waste of money, all those expensive creams. Old age will capture the
Signorina
the same way it does everyone. Maria bites into a biscuit.
Oh, please, let there be no more royal summons tonight.

~

Paola gives up at the mirror. In two weeks she’ll be forty, and when she’s this tired, she looks every bit her age. She will ask the doctor for sleeping pills; she can’t risk appearing haggard. She drops onto the gold chair and takes the cup. It’s the grappa and not the coffee that warms her, the strong liquor smoothing her on the inside the way strong fingers can smooth her on the outside.

That Maria. Lately Paola has caught her sidelong looks, as though she finds something about Paola amusing. If she knew the extent of Paola’s troubles, she’d quit smirking, that old woman with nothing to lose. No hotel in Pordenone in need of modernizing, no dwindling bank accounts, no romantic assignations to juggle. And no complaints about her brother. Ah no, Maria’s brother is a paragon. Well, what Paola could tell about Enzo would give Maria a stroke.

One lesson Paola learned early is that every man has a use, but of what use has her brother been? Such an idiocy for him to join the Fascist Party during the war and go against their
papà
’s wishes. After the war, Carlo returned from Libya with scrambled brains. His shouts would rouse the household at night, and there were many times he threatened the servants with imprisonment. Once he walked to a neighbour’s, calmly stalked their chickens and shot every one.

Their
papà
turned out the tenants who lived in the farmhouse in Manna and gave the farm to Carlo. Along with raising a cow and poultry, he farms acres of wheat and corn scattered in the district outside town. Most Saturday afternoons, he calls Paola from the Silver Bar and demands more money. The ingrate. The only reason she mails him anything is to fulfill her promise to their late
mamma
to look out for him. The promise she has not fulfilled is in providing an heir for the Catelli estate, and if she continues to remain unmarried, the estate will go to male cousins.

If her fiancée had survived the war, Paola would have been married at twenty. After him there were more men than her parents realized, but few could match their requirements for a son-in-law. And her own criteria? She gazes at her wide bed with its gold and pink canopy.

When she marries, she will be forced to give up some independence. But it will be worth it to take a well-established name, one that will set her back on the higher social
footing lost to her once Carlo’s eccentricity became well known. Unfortunately, there are those who believe that insanity
is inherited.

Nothing is wrong with Paola’s brains, thank the Holy Mother. And may the Holy Mother bless the friend who arranged for Paola to meet Alberto Barbaro, a handsome man, rich and ensconced in the best society. And best of all, due to his late wife’s barrenness, childless. Although he has asked questions about Carlo and the worth of the Catelli estate,
she’s been able to put Alberto off. But he won’t propose until he visits her home and sees all for himself.

There is an answer to everything. She hasn’t seen Carlo for three years and it’s time to pay him a visit, judge his state of mind. She can’t let Alberto slip through her fingers.

Coffee finished, she gets into bed and nestles between the silk sheets. But a Catelli in an asylum? Never.

~

The twelfth ring dies. On Via Mioni, a massive figure dressed in black and wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulls open one side of a double gate. When the gate is open, the man climbs onto a wagon and flips the reins. “Hey-ho, Nero!” The mule’s black ears twitch, then the mule lunges against the harness, jerks the wagon into the street. Once through, the man pulls at the reins, leaps down and relocks the gate with a key he fastens to his belt.

“Hey-ho, Nero!” ricochets from the stone houses and their shuttered windows.

The mule plods along Manna’s crooked streets, passes in and out of the wan lamplight where bats dive and climb. The wagon’s wheels scrape continuously, the noise waking children, who pull the covers over their heads. Older boys, excited in their fear, crack open shutters. Where is he headed, this night marauder? What does he load inside his wagon, which he covers with a tarp before returning home near daybreak, wakening his neighbours as he unloads? No one will berate him. Instead, they’ll complain to each other and to the mayor.

Crazy Catelli knows about the fears, the children’s nightmares, the complaints. When others cave in to his demands, when men sight him and cross the road, Carlo can feel his chest expand and his hands swell to enormous size. He’s a giant, a colossus. He could fight the entire town with one hand tied behind his back. Let them loose the nearby garrison at him, he’d crush a hundred soldiers – no, two hundred. Stop him? They might as well try roping a locomotive or digging the rock from Mount Cavallo with bare hands. No one will ever stop him.

~

Paola parks her silver Mercedes on the narrow street outside Carlo’s gate. Her stockings whisper as she swings her legs from the red seat and drops the keys into her crocodile handbag. Hidden behind large shades, her eyes pass over the neighbours, who drift from their yards and into the street.

Carlo’s nearest neighbour leans out her window. “
Buon giorno, Signorina
. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.” Within one side of the double gate is a door. Locked, of course. And no bell. “Carlo!” How humiliating to stand in the street and be gawked at. A large bead of sweat starts at Paola’s neck, slides down her back into her white sundress.

From behind, the sound of a motorcycle.

“Hey!”

Paola turns and there is a teenager on a black Lambretta. Hair combed in the Elvis style, he wears tight jeans and a short-sleeved, white shirt. He gestures toward the gate. “That guy will eat a pretty woman like you.”

“And what do you know about pretty women,
Signor
...?”

“Gino Campin.” He sticks out his chest. “I know plenty.”

A sound at the gate’s door. “Who is it?”

“Your sister.”

The lock rattles. “Have you come to return what belongs to me?”

“Dear Carlo, I’ve come to visit.”

The door swings open. “
Sì
,
sì
,
sì
. This way. Such an honour. How long has it been since your expensive shoe stepped on my dirt?”

“Hey, ugly, step on this.” Gino Campin slaps his bent arm above his elbow, revs his bike and drives off.

Carlo runs into the road and waves his fist. “I will get you!”

Inside the yard, Paola halts. Even through her dark glasses, she’s dazzled by the reflections of light striking metal. Sheets and rods and tubes of steel. Iron, tin, copper. An army Jeep; a German motorcycle; tire rims; vehicle and machinery parts; plumbing; reels of wire: all crowding the outbuildings and farmhouse. Carlo’s state of mind must be worse than she remembered; only a very sick person would squash a rose garden and destroy the lushness of the yard they once played in as children.

“Come inside. I’ll make you coffee.”

Taking his offer to be a good omen, she ignores the manure smell when he passes and follows him when he ducks under the kitchen doorway. Inside, he waves at a chair. She lifts it to shake straw from its wooden seat, sits without touching the table that’s littered with bread crumbs and cornstalks. A pouch of tobacco, a pipe and an ashtray are arranged next to a bottle of grappa.

On the counter are a knife, bread rolls and a half round of cheese, which now provides breakfast for flies. The flagstone floor needs sweeping, and in the spaces between furniture, pails and metal basins rise in uneven stacks against the walls. Crates of empty wine bottles take up half a wall from floor to ceiling. Paola suspects the storeroom under the stairs overflows with wine bottles.

Now Carlo scoops water from a pail and pours it into the bottom of an espresso maker. He grinds the coffee by hand, and then lights the stove with a long wooden match.

To rid her nose of the room’s stink, Paola reaches into her handbag for her silver cigarette case and gold lighter. When Carlo snaps his fingers, she empties the case onto the table. Perhaps this gift will put him in a good mood. He lights a cigarette with a match he then tosses into the stove flame, drops to a chair with his black hat shadowing his eyes.

With perfectly manicured fingers, Paola smoothes the hem of her silk dress; her own hat fits like a white halo. “I hope you are well, Carlo.”

“Why? Did someone tell you I wasn’t? Who’s been shooting
off his mouth?”

“No one.”

“You would like me to get sick and die so you could take this farmhouse. I know what you are like, nothing to do all day but scheme. If I find out someone has been talking about me, I will grab his –”

Paola waves the hand holding the cigarette. “No, no, I’m only asking how you are.” Her entire back is clammy.

They don’t look at each other, smoke in silence until the coffee spurts into the pot. Carlo jumps to his feet. After setting down the small white cups and a bowl of sugar, he again drops to his chair. He sucks at the cigarette, blows smoke clear across the table and drums his thick fingers next to the ashtray. “Your coffee’s getting cold. Are you afraid to drink it? Do you think it is poisoned?”

Paola helps herself to sugar and grappa. She sips with her lips barely touching the cup, and then takes a deep breath. “My dear Carlo – ”

“‘Dear’ my ass.”

She takes another breath. “You know I’ve always had your best interests at heart.”

“Ho.”

“I know it’s difficult for you to see –”

“I see you, you dried up old maid.”

Paola stubs her cigarette in the ashtray and lifts her chin. “There have been complaints. I came here to help you.”

Carlo jumps to his feet, leans across the table. “Help me, you thief, you bitch? First you steal my house, then instead of marrying, you take lovers. Whore. If you ever come here again, I will grab your neck and squeeze until your flesh oozes between my fingers!”

The look in his eyes frightens her more than does his speech. Paola drops her lighter and cigarette case into her purse, stands, gazes past him to the pots hanging over the granite sink. Her hands tremble, but her voice is steady. “I have done my duty. Whatever happens now is not my fault.”

“Oh, what happens now. I am afraid, watch me shake. Get out of my house.”

She feels him behind her, herding her through the yard to the gate, but she walks with her head high and won’t run no matter how close he gets.

“You should send me more money, you selfish cow. How shameful to let your brother walk about in such boots.” He slides back the lock on the door. “Look at you, your ass is fatter than your head and you will never catch a rich husband.”

The street is full of strangers. The woman from next door tries to stop Paola. “
Signorina
, I must speak with you.”

This is Carlo’s doing, this circus parade, this trampling of respect until a farmer’s wife dares lay her hand upon Paola Catelli’s arm.

Not until she makes it home and drives through her own gate does she let go. She parks the car in the gravel driveway and weeps into a linen handkerchief. Now her entire family is lost to her.

Once inside, she confesses the whole mess to Maria.

“The doctor,
Signorina
. You need to call the specialist, the one who looked after your friend’s mother. He can tell you what to do.”

Paola calls and he agrees to observe Carlo, but only at her home and only with Carlo’s consent.

“But doctor, if he knows you are here, he may not come. He is unpredictable.”

“This is precisely why we must do our best not to place ourselves in an unpleasant situation.”

Paola writes a dinner invitation to Carlo, which Maria takes to the Manna post office.

Next evening, soon as the sun drops behind the mountains, Carlo halts his mule outside Paola’s locked gate. He climbs onto the wagon seat and hollers: “I tore up your invitation. Have a doctor examine your
thieving brains. It was you who made
Papà
change his will. One night I will catch you and squeeze your throat until the flesh oozes between my fingers!”

Paola stands near her open window. She expected this from him and has been half afraid he would climb the side of the house like a spider. Not until she hears, “Hey-ho, Nero!” does she dare look out. And sees Maria head for the gate.

~

To prevent her slippers from being soaked, Maria keeps to the gravel drive. The spring brought too much rain and left behind an overlying mantle of mustiness that hovers like an invisible fog, partially obscures the scent of blossoms and leaves.

She unlocks the gate and steps onto the gravel road, straining to hear the mule or the wagon’s creak. All is still but her outraged heart. When she was a girl, she and her friends chased stray cats with stones or rotten fruit, and she has the same compulsion now to race after the crazy one and clout him on the head. She had no fondness for Carlo when he was an indulged brat or when, as a teen, he slipped girls into his room. She despised him when he swaggered about in his uniform, mouthing propaganda. What would someone like him understand about promises of freedom? Freedom from what, for all those pampered rich boys, those bigheaded idiots?