The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (8 page)

His mother got up. ‘I can't watch. Your grandfather seems intent on outdoing his own idiocy tonight,' she said. ‘Will you make sure he gets home?' Lucio nodded. She put her fingers in his hair and tugged fondly, but the piazza below drew her attention again. A silence had settled over the crowd, the shouts and laughter dampened as if by a winter fog. Even the babies seemed quiet. Lucio saw his father standing before the village, his hands clasped at his back. Behind him Padre Ruggiero had ordered two men to drag Nonno Raimondi from the stage, water trailing from one of the breasts that had burst inside his dress.

His father paused before speaking. He was wearing his commissioner's uniform: the black shirt and tie he had made Lucio's mother press for him that afternoon, even as he told her to stay in the house and rest. He brought his hands out from behind his back and ran a palm over his head before settling his fez over it. The tassel swayed hypnotically and it seemed, for a second, the only movement in the piazza. ‘People of Montelupini,' he began, his voice carrying clear to the battlements. ‘Montelupinese.' The word raised a cheer of solidarity, as it always did among the villagers. ‘We've been celebrating the Sagra dell'Uva for longer than I can remember, longer than many older than me can remember.' He nodded respectfully at Padre Ruggiero and Professore Centini, who still tugged at his cummerbund.

‘And yet,' his father continued, ‘we are on the cusp of a new era.' There was a murmur of agreement. Lucio became aware of his own held breath, his awe at the way his father spoke in public. Vittorio had inherited this gift: it dazzled Lucio, the way they could both work a crowd, whether in the schoolyard or the osteria, gathering allies as swiftly and skilfully as sheaves of wheat in the harvest.

‘Il Duce has already begun to lead us back to the glory of the empire. But rediscovering that strength requires commitment and sacrifice from us all. I, and the other men recalled to arms, are proud to perform our duty in the restoration of our great nation. And what better farewell could we ask than this festival? What greater reason to fight than to honour what we love: the traditions of our ancient culture?' His father paused to allow the crowd to cheer and clap, for his words to be shouted again into the ears of the old folk on their raffia chairs, for the women to cross themselves and mutter their prayers to Santa Lucia. Lucio heard his mother's breath beside him, saw her gaze drifting up to the mountains, which brooded like some prehistoric beast in the night.

‘In the meantime,' his father began again, stretching his hand wide to the side of the stage, ‘it falls upon our young Avanguardisti and Balilla to safeguard Montelupini. I know they'll do the job honourably, like true sons and daughters of the she-wolf.' At this, Professore Centini clapped his hands for two groups of uniformed boys to take the platform. Lucio spotted Vittorio in the middle row of Balilla, the only one among them who was bareheaded.

‘Where's your brother's hat?' his mother asked. Lucio didn't answer. She knew as well as he did that Vittorio detested the fez and would go to great lengths to avoid wearing it. She had already sewed the tassel back on twice. ‘How can Il Duce be leading us back to glory if we look like monkeys on a pianola?' Vittorio complained to the mirror when they dressed for Fascist Youth meetings. On the stage, the angle of his jaw, pointed at his father, showed what he thought of Mussolini's dress sense.

‘He'll feel your father's belt over it,' his mother said.

‘I think he'd take the belt over the hat.' Lucio saw her mouth twitch in amusement.

He picked up his own fez, dusty and discarded on the floor. He should have been the one to get the thrashing — always playing truant during festival parades, never going on stage with the other boys. Yet his father turned a blind eye when he slipped away to the battlement walls: it was the one thing they seemed to share, this unspoken pact, this understanding that they would spare the village the pain of witnessing Lucio squirming on stage.

Who could blame his father? Who in the village would notice Gufo's absence when there was Primo to enjoy? He listened to his brother open
Giovinezza
, singing a solo, his mouth wide and certain, his chest expanded with breath. And, like the rest of the crowd, Lucio could do nothing but watch him: his shining skin, his eyes rich and promising as a newly opened chestnut, his lips full enough to make grown women blush. His body was wiry, already tight as a gymnast's, so quick and agile that even the older Avanguardista boys could not best him in a tackle at football, a climbing dare, a race on the campo. The wages of the schoolyard proved it: a comb, two half-smoked Nazionale, a straight razor, a dented tin whistle, a jar of hair pomade — and a cigarette card of his namesake, the world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera. Sometimes Lucio studied these things, piled on the nightstand next to their shared bed, like offerings at the altar of some juvenile god. ‘You'll let me win it back tomorrow, won't you, Primo? Eh, Pri?' the vanquished would call as they walked home from school. Vittorio would raise his hand lazily to them without glancing back, but the collection of treasures increased. The other boys were drawn to him as they were to matches or firecrackers: the potential to be burned part of the attraction.

When the anthem ended, the soldiers filed onto the stage, and Padre Ruggiero blessed them. Lucio scanned the crowd for Urso, but he hadn't come. He felt his chest ache with guilt. He had not seen the butcher since the hunt, not at the osteria and not at the shop, where Fabrizia tended the counter alone, as if her husband had already left. But at night, in the alley behind the butcher's house, Lucio saw the great bulk of his silhouette in the window, could hear the lowing of his voice within. He wanted to call out as Fabrizia pulled the shutters, call so that Urso's face appeared at the glass. But he flattened himself against the wall, nursing his regret alone in the dark.

‘Are you worried?' his mother asked him.

He shook his head, looking not at her but at his father, full of assurance in his neat uniform. ‘Are you?'

She didn't answer at first. Instead she unpinned her hair from its combs. The curls sprang about her shoulders like unspooled twine, so thick that they dwarfed her face and made her seem a mere girl. She leaned into him. ‘You're here. Why would I be worried?'

He pulled up his knees and cupped his chin in a fist. They were both lying and they both knew it. But that was their habit; that was how they protected each other.

On the stage, Professore Centini had wound up his gramophone. Predictably,
Faccetta Nera
played as
the soldiers marched off
.
Wait and hope … the hour is near
, Carlo Buti sang in his unmistakeable tenorino.
We will give you another law, another king.
The words of the song, which Lucio had heard so many times, seemed suspended in the night above the piazza. He stood next to his mother and sensed her eyes swooping to the hills, skittish and restless as a bird's. She turned to him before she climbed down from the battlements, but her face did not show the apprehension or worry he had expected. It held something more alive and vital, something he could only compare with that thrill of release he saw in her after a seizure, that joy of being given another chance. He followed her progress down from the lookouts until he lost her in the shadows of Vicolo Giotto.

The Balilla boys and the recalled soldiers were dispersing among the people. As Vittorio jumped down, their father caught him by the hair and gave him a blow to the ear, sending him sprawling towards the fountain. But Vittorio merely brushed himself off and turned his back on him, striding into the crowd, where a huddle of boys received him at their centre, laughing and slapping him on the shoulders.

Lucio stared down at the fountain's cupola, decorated with garlands of wound vines. Its cascading pool of water was tinged red and orange and green in the light of the lanterns. The bronze figure at its centre seemed to sulk in the dimness. Something was different about the boy Cupid. Peering down, he saw that the god of love was sporting a cummerbund, and on his head, the tassel swinging jauntily over one eye, someone had cocked a Balilla fez.

It was past midnight by the time the piazza had emptied of people. Lucio heard the scratch of Fagiolo's broom on the cobbles, saw cigarette ends being brushed into the drain. He lowered himself from the battlement wall, hanging by his fingertips before landing on the pergola of the Osteria Nettuno.

‘Porca miseria!' Fagiolo cried. ‘Can't you use the street like everyone else?' The innkeeper jutted his chin towards the open doors of the osteria. ‘Take him home, Gufo, will you? The Raimondi Gold turned to lead hours ago.'

Inside, Nonno Raimondi was on the floor, slumped against the bar. Polvere stood above him, legs wide and swaying as if balancing on a moving cart. ‘Primo, my boy. Good lad, good lad,' the baker said, grabbing Lucio by the shoulder. ‘Barilo,' he yelled, a cigarette dancing in the corner of his mouth and dusting his waistcoat with ash, ‘your lad's here. Primo! Primo Carnera! Heavyweight champion of the world, eh?' He pulled on Lucio's head and attempted two quick feints to his jaw. The sudden exertion made the baker stagger: Lucio had to grab his arm and set him right again. His grandfather stirred at the scuffle.

Lucio was used to the mistaken identities, the banter, the same old stories. He'd heard them all before. Every night's conversation was new to the drunk. Sometimes, when the men were drinking his grandfather's grappa, Raimondi Gold, he felt like he was the only one left remembering. He bent to haul Nonno Raimondi up and caught the familiar scent of him — piss and ash and yeasty clothes. He held his mouth shut as he jammed himself under the old man's armpit in a practised manoeuvre. They danced for an instant, but when his grandfather got his balance, he pushed Lucio to arm's length, keeping a hand on his neck for security.

‘Look at him, Polve, would you? Eyes all over everything and a face like thunder.' Nonno Raimondi reached for Lucio's cheeks and squeezed them hard so that his lips popped open. ‘See that? That gap in his front teeth? He's a gypsy. Wild and wily, like his mother … like his grandmother.'

Lucio had heard this before too. On nights when the Gold made his grandfather sentimental, his grandmother had been half Romani; other times she was descended from mountain bandits who had lived in the caves. His mother told him not to believe everything Nonno Raimondi said, especially things intended to bait his father, who thought gypsies and brigands were the curse of the last century, part of the peasant culture that held Italy back. But sometimes Lucio liked to think there might be some truth in his grandfather's claims. For on autumn mornings when they collected mushrooms on Collelungo and the scent of bonfires carried on the thin air, he heard his mother singing snatches of folk
songs in the old mountain dialect.

Nonno Raimondi sniffed and let go of Lucio's cheeks. ‘I tell you, Polve,' he said, trying to lay a finger along his nose to signal a great secret about to be revealed, ‘this is the one to watch. This Gufo, here. Not Primo.'

‘Doesn't say much for himself, though, does he?' Polvere shouted as if Lucio was deaf as well as silent.

‘The mouth that is shut …' his grandfather began grandly, then trailed off, forgetting the proverb.

‘… catches no flies?' Polvere finished. ‘But it won't get heard either.'

‘By the saint's tits, Polve! This boy can say more with one look than you have in a whole lifetime.' But the baker had already rested his head on his arm, his eyes closed, and was dribbling on the bar.

Outside, Nonno Raimondi tried to wedge a cigarette behind Lucio's ear. ‘Don't pay any mind to Polve, boy,' he murmured. ‘When the Montelupinese talk, it's their arseholes that move. That's why they can't tell a crap from a Caravaggio!'

Lucio shuffled him towards Vicolo Giotto and stopped before the drain. His grandfather spread his legs stiffly and rocked, fighting with his fly. His piss, when it came, made a glistening arc against the wall. Lucio waited. There would be more. Nonno Raimondi sucked air through his teeth. ‘Porco Giuda! I'm dying.'

He said the same thing every night, if he hadn't already pissed himself. A draught was scuffing through the alley. Lucio could smell winter on it. He knew his mother would still be up. She never slept until they got home.

‘That's why I need to set it right,' his grandfather mumbled to the wall. Another spurt of urine wet the stones. ‘We'll do it together … Santa Lucia's fresco … you'll help me, won't you, boy?'

Lucio nodded at him from the shadows of the alley. Nonno Raimondi hadn't been able to make the climb to the saint's grotto in years, but when he reassured him, the piss seemed to come quicker. In the morning he would have forgotten all about it anyway.

‘Soon, yes? We'll do it soon … I can sober up. I can still make it. My redemption, don't you see, Gufo?' He grabbed Lucio by the collar, suddenly urgent. There was an edge of real fear in his voice that Lucio had never heard before. He placed his hand over his grandfather's, and Nonno Raimondi slowly released his grip, turning back to the wall. Lucio saw him straining to piss, the effort tight in his jaw. A last meagre droplet fell, thick as blood on the cobbles.

‘Porca puttana.' His grandfather swayed again, and Lucio wedged himself under the old man. They shuffled on, but Nonno Raimondi was slow, preoccupied, dawdling like he had forgotten something, seeming to Lucio for the first time more dotard than drunk.