The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (34 page)

In Cori they had spent every penny Otto had given them, but it bought them nothing more than a sack of army flour, some maize, a few rotten potatoes. They shared the food around and eked it out as best they could, but it didn't stop his stomach from grinding its complaint to the night every time Fagiolo tossed his chestnuts. He listened to them crackle softly in the drum, the murmur of voices below.

‘But what's so wrong with that? Why shouldn't the boy carry the litter?' he heard Fagiolo ask, his voice rising indignantly above the others. Through the pergola, he could see Professore Centini warming himself at the brazier. ‘Why shouldn't Gufo stand in his brother's place? Would you rather have Berto the goatherd tripping over the cobbles?' Fagiolo wasn't speaking to the mayor but to the two women beside him, solemn as bats in their black coats and black crocheted shawls.

‘I'm sure the blessed saint doesn't mind being carried by a mute, but it's his family I have the problem with. Do they really deserve the honour?' It was Signora Mazzocchi. Lucio recognised her voice — quick, pinched and begrudging as always. Fagiolo and Professore Centini gave her warning looks. She simply shrugged and made a half-hearted attempt to whisper, glancing at the soldiers of the Wehrmacht who stood smoking at the edges of the piazzetta. ‘I mean, a family of Fascist loyalists and German collaborators.' She sniffed pointedly at the mayor, who made a non-committal mumble. Lucio thought he had an air of uncertainty about him, only natural for someone whose own Fascist Party uniform was still wrapped in mothballs in his closet. And yet they all knew how loosely about the waist that blue cummerbund would sit these days. The war had made everyone change their opinions, but only some people allowed themselves to remember just how much. The mayor stood on one leg, bending the knee of the other several times and wincing, as if he hoped to divert the conversation to the much safer topic of his sciatica.

Signora Mazzocchi would not be dissuaded. ‘Yes, German collaborators, that's what I said.
I
dare accuse Letia Onorati of it if no one else will.' Fagiolo raised a stern face to her, and she bent a little further over the drum of chestnuts. ‘How else, tell me, has she been able to come by those supplies? How is it she always seems to have flour, or potatoes for gnocchi? Everyone in Vicolo Giotto goes begging to her, you know. They say she does … well …'

‘She does what exactly?' Fagiolo snapped. Professore Centini wiggled his leg again and sucked air through his teeth noisily. Beside him, Signora Centini sighed and elbowed her husband in the arm.

‘Come on, signora,' the innkeeper insisted, ‘why don't you tell us what you think she does?'

‘What who does?' It was Polvere. Lucio had seen the baker sidle up to the drum, taking the paddle from Fagiolo and giving the chestnuts a poke.

Signora Mazzocchi considered the two men, her cheeks red and shining in the light of the embers. ‘Letia Onorati. She performs favours for the Germans,
intimate
favours. It's obvious. Don't you see? That's why Primo ran away to the Cori gruppo. He couldn't bear seeing what his own mother had become.' She unburdened herself with such effervescent relief that Lucio was reminded of the juice bursting from a rotten tomato. Acid bubbled in his stomach, a gripe of hunger and nerves, stirred by disgust.

Fagiolo snatched back his spatula from Polvere and shoved it so roughly into the drum that one or two chestnuts bounced over the rim and rolled about Signora Mazzocchi's feet. She caught her breath and glared at him, before her expression softened into something more complacent, knowing.

‘Ah, that's right, Fagiolo,' she said. ‘I forgot. You always did have a more
noble
appreciation for her, didn't you? Always carrying her books after school, making up songs for her on your guitar. You must be very disappointed.'

Fagiolo changed the paddle to his other hand, gripping it as he might a weapon in his fist. ‘If Letia does anyone favours it's your relatives, signora.'

‘And what is that supposed to mean?' she asked.

‘Isn't Ardemira Ippoliti your aunt? And those grubby twins who are always being sent home at night by the Germans, aren't they your nieces? Didn't you know they go to Letia for food? I guess that makes your family German colluders too, Signora Mazzocchi. Doesn't it?'

‘Well now, what time is it?' Professore Centini interrupted, smiling inanely in the direction of the soldiers.

Everyone ignored him, particularly his wife, who hurried to add her own views to the discussion. ‘
I've
heard from reliable sources out of town' — by which everyone knew she meant Pettegola — ‘that things are not quite so black and white.'

‘That's the very nature of war, my dear. Nothing ever is black and white,' her husband announced, as if this platitude might round off the topic.

But she shook him off. ‘What I've been told is that Letia Onorati started colluding with the Germans so she could provide information to the Cori gruppo. And that's why Primo joined them. It makes sense, doesn't it? She's like a
double agent
.' She articulated the words with relish, and Lucio almost wanted to laugh at how his mother could push their imaginations to such heights.

‘That's even worse!' Signora Mazzocchi barked. ‘The gruppi deserve to be hanged. They're nothing more than thugs — gangs of Communists and deserters hiding in the hills and taking our supplies in the name of liberation. I can't see any actual resistance around here, can you? Between the gruppi and the requisitions of the crucchi,' she glanced over at the soldiers again, lowering her voice, ‘we'll all be dead from starvation before the Allies ever get here. We can't live on chestnuts alone.' And, with disdain, she kicked one of the fallen nuts.

‘Do you seriously think, signora,' Fagiolo hissed at her, ‘that the Allies have a chance in these mountains without the help of the gruppi?' The mayor placed a hand on his arm and cleared his throat, as though to remind him that Signora Mazzocchi wasn't worth the risk.

‘All I know is that those bandits have landed us where we are now,' she replied. ‘It's their attempts at sabotage that have brought about the German curfews, random searches and threats. If it wasn't for them, the mountain passes would be safe to walk again and our blessed saint wouldn't have to be carried down Montemezzo at the gunpoint of a Nazi guard.'

‘Well, you know, signora,' Fagiolo said, struggling to keep the emotion from his voice, ‘you certainly can blame that on Letia Onorati. Without Letia, we wouldn't be having a procession at all.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. We've had this procession come snow or storm for longer than anyone can remember. I hardly think tonight is all
her
doing. Padre Ruggiero came to an arrangement with the captain.'

Fagiolo stepped back, feigning surprise at her lack of knowledge. ‘Oh, but it is her work, signora. You see, the captain insisted on maintaining the curfew, tradition or no tradition … that is, until Letia Onorati offered him two bottles of Raimondi Gold. Apparently they were the last ones left in the entire village.'

There was truth in what Fagiolo said, but Lucio thought of the mayor's platitude: it hadn't quite been so black and white. Padre Ruggiero had come to their kitchen late at night, uncomfortable with the condescension, the red tassel trembling awkwardly on his biretta. ‘The captain has a taste for the grappa, you see,' the priest had told Lucio's mother. ‘It really is all I have left to bargain with for the procession.'

‘You mean it's all
I
have left to bargain with,' she replied. ‘And must Santa Lucia always come before our bellies, Padre?' Her voice was flat. Lucio knew she didn't expect an answer.

But the priest had approached her, cupping a naked hand towards the curve of her stomach under her apron. ‘You, of all people, ask me that?'

She turned away from him and sent Lucio to the cellar. In the dimness he had paused, breathing angry lungfuls of the musty air, his mind racing. He looked guiltily at his grandfather's empty chestnut barrels, and as he picked out the last bottles of Gold from the shelf, he'd felt the urge to smash them — one, two on the flagstones — to feel the glass shatter about his feet, the liquor splashing his ankles, the satisfying sting of alcohol in the cuts and nicks, a salve to his frustrations. And he imagined he'd heard Nonno Raimondi's laugh again, rough as splintered glass and just as sharp.

But he had returned to the kitchen with the necks of the bottles in his fists. He handed them not to Padre Ruggiero but to his mother, catching the doubt that scudded across her face: losing the grappa was more than losing a trade for food to last them through the spring; it was their only medicine, the one pain relief she might have for her delivery. She blinked at him slowly and he understood what she was doing: she wasn't giving in to Padre Ruggiero; she was giving in to the whole village. She intended to give them their procession, to allow them their prayers and ceremonies, the empty traditions that rang with the dim echo of who they once had been. It was her penance, of sorts. But Lucio also understood the villagers of Montelupini. He had been watching them for long enough now. The more she paid for her sins, the more they would damn her for them.

She had taken the bottles and set them down on the table, forcing Padre Ruggiero to help himself. It was then that the priest announced jovially, ‘I want you at the head of the saint's litter, Gufo. It's what your father would want.' Lucio caught the uncertainty in his tone, a doubt that had not been there when he had made the same request of Vittorio. He nodded to Padre Ruggiero, but his focus was on the outline of his mother standing at the window. It was for her, he reminded himself; he was doing it for her — not the priest, not the village, not his father or brother. It was the least he could do. It was what she wanted.

Under the pergola, Fagiolo had returned to tossing his chestnuts. ‘Are you saying she gave up the last bottles of Raimondi Gold just so we could have our procession?' Signora Mazzocchi asked. She glanced at the mayor to confirm Fagiolo's story, and at his nod she fingered her shawl as if grasping for purchase. ‘Then the woman truly is a simpleton,' she said with satisfaction, ‘giving the last of our precious tonic to a Nazi!' She pinned the shawl under her chin and swept through the piazzetta, ominous as a storm cloud dulling the crystal night.

Professore Centini winced. ‘I'm afraid Letia Onorati will never be able to do anything right for some people in this village,' he offered pointlessly.

Fagiolo let out an angry grunt and Lucio saw him limp away towards the door of his osteria. Once alone, he hesitated, his hand on the doorknob, throwing his head back upon his shoulders. He seemed furious, but as much with himself as with anyone else. He cursed softly into the night with the fervour of a prayer: ‘Damn them … and fuck them all!' There was always a price to be paid for loving his mother, Lucio understood. He had seen it in his father, and he suspected he saw it now in Fagiolo.

It was a slow and arduous journey back to San Pietro's, shouldering the saint's litter through the raw night. Lucio had wanted to feel uplifted, to gather some sense of meaning in the task of carrying his namesake, of being so close to the beauty of the statue he admired so much. But Professore Centini ambled stiffly behind him, blowing like a mule, and the other two bearers were skinny boys whose shoulders barely reached the handles and made the dais wobble between them. Lucio was forced to bear the brunt of its weight, steadying it down the uneven path. He thought of the boar he had carried along the same track with his father when he was not much taller than those boys. Before the procession began, the mayor had sized him up, marvelling that he was surely Aldo's height now, perhaps even taller. But Lucio doubted whether anything could ever be balanced between himself and his father. Especially now.

He craned to look behind him at the saint's face. She had become pale in the glow of so many lanterns and candles all about, blanched of the skin tones he always liked to study. The gold leaf painted into the red of her robes caught the naked flames in the night, and now seemed ghoulish and grotesque. He shivered and began to search for his mother among the marchers.

As the procession neared Rocca Re, he caught sight of her. She stood some way back from the lines of women chanting Lucia's prayer and thumbing their rosaries alongside the litter. She focused on him as he passed, and her mouth formed the shape of a word, sending it up into the night in a burst of white breath. Was it a prayer, the name of the saint? Or was it his name she offered up as he passed? He couldn't tell. He only knew, as he shouldered the weight of the dais, that all he cared about now was her. Her and the baby inside her.

She didn't come to Mass at San Pietro's. He searched for his mother along the crowded pews, but she hadn't followed. When the service was over, he went home to find her, but she wasn't there either. He climbed to the battlements, waiting to spot her walking up Via del Soccorso or coming from Fabrizia's house, but the silhouettes of the last villagers saying goodnight in the piazzetta were not hers. At the church, he saw the shapes of Padre Ruggiero and Captain Schlosser talking on the front steps; down its side alley, Fagiolo was pulling up the collar of his jacket against the freezing draught; and further on he caught the shape of Fabrizia scuttling past the fountain, her footprints small and neat in the thin snow that had begun to settle.