The House of Scorta (16 page)

He walked down the streets of the old town like a man possessed. It was four o’clock in the morning and even the bats were asleep.

Without having actually decided to go there, he found himself in front of the tobacco shop on the Corso. His blood was on fire. He was sweating all over. The world was spinning around him, the crone’s voice tickling his ear. Driven by the tarantella biting his heart and sucking his blood, he entered the tobacco shop, went into the storeroom and set fire to a crate of cigarettes. Then, without turning back towards the flames, which were beginning to catch, he went back outside and stood on the sidewalk across the street to enjoy the spectacle. The fire caught fast. Thick smoke poured out of the storeroom. It wasn’t long before the flames were attacking the counter. From where Elia was standing, it looked at first as if somebody had turned on the lights. Then the glow turned more orange in color and the flames appeared, licking the walls and dancing victoriously. Elia shrieked like a madman and started laughing. The Mascalzone spirit was in his veins, and he laughed the laugh of destruction and hatred which his line had passed down from generation to generation. Yes, let it all burn. What the hell. The cigarettes and the money. His life and his soul. Let it all burn. He howled with laughter and, in the glow of the fire, danced to the tarantella’s mad rhythm.

The noise of the blaze and the smell of the smoke soon woke the neighbors, who rushed out into the street. Some of them questioned Elia, but since he didn’t answer and simply kept staring into space like a madman or simpleton, the men concluded it had been an accident. How could they have imagined that Elia had set fire to the shop himself? They organized themselves and went out in search of extinguishers. A dense crowd squeezed into the street. At that moment Carmela appeared, her face pale, hair disheveled. She looked crazed and could not take her eyes off the blazing spectacle. Seeing the poor woman staggering on the sidewalk, everyone understood it was not just a business that was burning down, but the life and legacy of a whole clan. People’s faces were sad the way they are at times of great cataclysms. After a while some charitable neighbors accompanied Carmela back home, to spare her any further exposure to the distressing spectacle of the blaze. It was pointless for her to remain there. It was needless torture.

The sight of his mother had sobered Elia up in a hurry, and his euphoria gave way to profound anguish. He called out to the crowd, shouting to everyone gathered there:

“Do you smell that? Do you smell the smoke? That’s the smell of my mother’s sweat. Don’t you smell it? Her brothers’ sweat, too.”

The Montepuccians finally brought the flames under control. The fire hadn’t spread to the neighboring houses, but there was nothing left of the tobacco shop. Elia was devastated. With the flames extinguished, the spectacle had lost its hypnotic beauty. It was ugly and dismaying. Smoke rose from the stone, black and stifling. He was sitting on the sidewalk. The tarantella had fallen silent. He was no longer laughing. He gazed at the wisps of smoke, wild-eyed.

The townsfolk were already starting to scatter in groups when Maria Carminella appeared before Elia like aghost. She was in a white dressing gown, her black hair falling onto her shoulders. She walked straight up to him. He still had the strength to stand up. He didn’t know what to say. He merely pointed at the smoldering tobacco shop. She smiled at him as she had never done before, and murmured:

“What happened?”

Elia didn’t answer.

“The whole thing, gone up in smoke?” she persisted. “The whole thing,” he replied.

“So what have you got to offer me now?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s good,” said Maria.“If you want me, I’m yours.”

T
he days that followed the fire were days of ash and toil. They had to clear away the wreckage, clean up the site, save what could be saved. That thankless task would have finished off the most determined of men. It was enough to make one lose hope. The black walls, the rubble on the floor, the crates of cigarettes gone up in smoke, all this made the shop look like a city razed after a battle. Yet by dint of sheer obstinacy, Elia made it through the ordeal without apparently being affected by it. The truth was that Maria’s love swept everything else away. It was all he could think about. The state of the tobacco shop was secondary. He had beside him the woman he had so desired. Nothing else mattered.

Maria did exactly what she had promised. She moved in with Elia. The day after the fire, as they were drinking coffee, Elia declared:

“I didn’t sleep at all last night, Maria. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t stop thinking about the fire. We’re going to get married, Maria. You know as well as I do that your father is richer than I’ll ever be. You know what people will say? That I married you for your father’s money.”

“I couldn’t care less what people say,” Maria replied calmly.

“Me neither. It’s myself I’m most worried about.”

Maria looked up at her man, puzzled. She didn’t understand what he was getting at.

“I know how all this will turn out. I’ll marry you. Your father will offer me a job as manager of the Hotel Tramontane, I’ll accept, and I’ll end up spending summer afternoons playing cards around the pool with my friends. It’s not for me. The Scortas are not made for that kind of thing.”

“You’re not a Scorta.”

“Yes I am, Maria. I’m more a Scorta than a Manuzio. I can feel it. That’s just the way it is. My mother passed the black blood of the Mascalzones on to me. I’m a Scorta. Who burns down what he loves. You’ll see, one day I’ll burn down the hotel Tramontane, if I end up owning it.”

“You burned down the tobacco shop?”

“Yes.”

Maria fell silent a moment. Then she spoke again, softly:

“And what are the Scortas made for?”

“For sweat,” replied Elia.

There was a long pause. Maria was contemplating what this all meant. It was as though she could see the future flash before her eyes. With her gaze, and in her mind, she embraced the life that Elia was offering her. Then she smiled gently and, in a proud, haughty tone, she replied:

“Then let’s hear it for sweat.”

Elia was solemn. As if to assure himself that his woman understood, he continued, “We won’t ask anyone for anything, and we won’t accept anything. We’ll be alone, you and me. I have nothing to offer. I’m a heathen.”

“The first thing we must do,” she replied, “is clear out the tobacco shop so we can at least store the crates of cigarettes there.”

“No,” Elia said calmly, smiling. “The first thing we must do is get married.”

The wedding took place a few weeks later. Don Salvatore blessed their union. Elia invited all the guests to a great feast at the
trabucco
. Michele, Raffaele’s son, had set up a long table amidst the nets and pulleys. The whole family came. The celebration was simple and joyous, the food abundant. At the end of the meal, Donato stood up, relaxed and smiling, asked for silence, and began to speak.

“Today, my brother, you got married,” he said. “I see you there in your suit, leaning over your wife’s neck to whisper something in her ear. I see you raise your glass to the health of all present, and you look beautiful to me. It’s the simple beauty of joy. I wish I could ask life to leave you exactly the way you are now, young and unspoiled, full of desire and strength. To let you pass through the years without changing. Show you none of the ugly faces that life has. I see you here today, and it makes me feel hungry. When times get hard, when I’m bemoaning my fate, when I’m cursing this dog’s life of ours, I’ll think back on these moments, on your faces glowing with joy, and I will tell myself: Don’t curse life, don’t bemoan fate. Remember Elia and Maria, who were happy, at least for one day in their lives, and that on this day, you were beside them.”

Elia embraced his brother with feeling. At that moment, their two cousins, Lucrezia and Nicoletta, sang an Apulian song, with all the women singing the refrain in chorus: “
Aïe, aïe, aïe / Domani non mi importa per niente / Questa notte devi morire con me
.”
¹⁹
The guests all laughed. The Scortas let these happy hours permeate their souls, and the evening went on in this fashion, in the joy of the cool summer wine.

I
n the months that followed, a strange thing happened in Montepuccio. Since the late 1950s, the town had two tobacco shops—the Scortas’ and another. The two families were fond of each other. There was enough business for everyone, and the spirit of competition never set them against one another. This, however, was not the case with the countless retail outlets that various camping sites, hotels, apartment complexes, and night clubs had opened up. Officially, they were only selling a few packs to bail out their customers, but in certain cases, they actually engaged in illegal sales.

At first, Elia and Maria didn’t have the money to do the work required to reopen the shop, and so, in the early going, they sold their cigarettes like street-peddlers.

The strangest thing was that the villagers refused to buy their cigarettes anywhere else. On Sundays, the tourists would watch in astonishment as a long queue of people waited outside the dirtiest, dustiest shop on the Corso. A shop without a sign, counter, or cash register. Just four walls, two chairs, and crates of cigarettes on the floor, into which Elia would thrust his arms to extract packs and cartons. On summer evenings, he would sell them on the sidewalk while Maria, inside, washed the walls. Yet the Montepuccians kept queuing up. Even when Elia would tell them he didn’t have their brand of cigarette (since he couldn’t buy much, he concentrated on only a few brands), they would actually laugh and say, “I’ll take whatever you’ve got!” and pull out their wallets.

The hand of don Salvatore was behind this surge of solidarity. Day after day, at Mass, he would exhort his flock to help one another. The result far exceeded his hopes.

He was ecstatic to learn that his calls for brotherhood had been taken to heart. Then, one day, passing in front of the tobacco shop and seeing a new sign hanging impressively over the entrance, he let fly:

“I guess maybe these renegades aren’t all fit to be cast into Hell.”

In fact, the bright new sign had arrived from Foggia that very day. It read:
Tabaccheria Scorta Mascalzone Rivendita no. 1
. To anyone who didn’t look closely, the sign might have looked exactly like the one that was there before. The one that Carmela, Domenico, Giuseppe and Raffaele had proudly hung there in their youth. But Elia knew that this one was different. He and the shop had come to a new understanding. The Montepuccians also realized this and now looked at the display window with pride, knowing that they too had played a part in this unexpected rebirth.

Elia’s spirit had undergone a profound transformation. For the first time, he was working happily. Never before had circumstances been so harsh. Everything had to be redone. But something had changed. He was no longer inheriting; he was building. He wasn’t managing a property handed down to him by his mother; he was struggling with all his might to grant his wife a little comfort and happiness. He was rediscovering, in the tobacco shop, the same happiness his mother had experienced working there. He now understood the obsessiveness and madness with which she spoke of her business. Everything had to be redone. And in order to do this, he had to make an effort. Yes, never before had life seemed so full and precious.

I
think often about my life, don Salvatore. What does it all mean? It took me years to build the tobacco shop. Day and night. And when it was finally there, when at last I could pass it on to my sons without worry, it got swept away. Do you remember the fire? Everything burned down. I wept in rage. All my efforts, all my accumulated nights of toil. A simple accident, and it all went up in smoke. I didn’t think I could survive it. I know that’s what the townsfolk thought as well. Old Carmela won’t survive the death of her tobacco shop. I hung on, though. Yes, I stuck it out. Elia set about rebuilding everything from scratch, patiently. It was good. It wasn’t entirely my tobacco shop anymore, but it was good. Ah, my sons, I clung to them tight, but here too everything fell apart. Donato disappeared. I curse the sea every day for taking him away from me. Donato. What does it all mean? These lives, built so slowly and patiently, with willpower and self-sacrifice, these lives swept away in one fell swoop by the winds of misfortune—these promises of joy that we dream about, torn apart. Do you know what’s most astonishing in all this, don Salvatore? Let me tell you. It’s that neither the fire nor Donato’s disappearance did me in. Any other mother would have gone mad. Or let herself die. I don’t know what I’m made of. I’m hard. I hung on. Without wanting to. Without thinking about it. I can’t help it. There’s something inside me that keeps going and won’t give in. Yes, I’m hard.

It was after Giuseppe’s funeral that I first stopped talking. I would keep silent for whole hours at a time, then days. You know all this, since you were already here by then. At first, the townsfolk were curious about my new silence. They wondered about it. Then they got used to it. Very soon, for all of you, it was as though Carmela Scorta had never spoken. I felt far away from the world. I had no more strength. Everything seemed useless to me. The town thought Carmela was nothing without the Scortas. They thought she would rather cut herself off from life than go on living without her brothers. They were wrong, don Salvatore. They always are. There was something else that kept me silent all these years. Something I’ve never told anyone.

A few days after Giuseppe’s funeral, Raffaele came to see me. It was a mild day. I immediately noticed that his gaze was clear, as though he’d washed his eyes in pure water. His smile glowed with calm determination. I heard him out. He spoke for a long time, never once lowering his eyes, and I remember every one of his words. He said he was a Scorta, and was proud to have taken this name. But he also said he cursed himself at night. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I sensed that my world was about to be turned upside down. I didn’t move. I listened. He took a deep breath, then spoke without interruption. He said that the day he buried the Mute, he had wept twice. The first time was in the cemetery, in front of us. He said he wept because we had honored him by asking him to become our brother. The second time was that evening, in bed. He wept, biting his pillow to avoid making noise. He was crying because by saying yes to us, by becoming our brother, he had also become my brother. And that was not what he had hoped. He paused a moment after saying this. And I remember praying that he would say no more. I didn’t want to hear any more. I wanted to get up and leave. But he went on, “I’ve always loved you.” That’s what he said, looking me calmly in the eye. But he’d become my brother that day, and he’d sworn to behave like one. He said that because of this, he’d had the pleasure of spending his whole life close to me. I didn’t know what to say. Everything was spinning inside me. He went on talking. He said that on certain days he would curse himself like a dog for not having said “no” in the cemetery. “No” to this brother business, and for not having asked for my hand instead, over my mother’s grave. But he didn’t dare. He said “yes.” He took the shovel we handed to him, and he became our brother. “It felt so good to say yes to you,” he said. And he added: “I’m a Scorta, Carmela, and I could never say whether I regret it or not.”