The Shoemaker's Wife (2 page)

“Make yourselves useful and stay out of trouble. Be pious and pray. Sit in the front pew during mass and sit at the farthest end of the bench during dinner. Take your portions last, and never seconds. You are there because of their kindness, not because I could pay them to keep you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mama,” Eduardo said.

Caterina placed her hand on Eduardo’s face and smiled. He put his arm around his mother’s waist and held on tight. Then she pulled Ciro close. Her soft coat felt good against his face. “I know you can be good.”

“I can’t,” Ciro sputtered, as he pulled away from his mother’s embrace, “and I won’t.”

“Ciro.”

“This is a bad idea, Mama. We don’t belong there,” Ciro pleaded.

“We have no place to stay,” Eduardo said practically. “We belong wherever Mama puts us.”

“Listen to your brother. This is the best I can do right now. When summer comes, I will come up the mountain and take you home.”

“Back to our house?” Ciro asked.

“No. Somewhere new. Maybe we’ll move up the mountain to Endine.”

“Papa took us to the lake there.”

“Yes, the town with the lake. Remember?”

The boys nodded that they did. Eduardo rubbed his hands together to warm them. They were rough and pink from the cold.

“Here. Take my gloves.” Caterina removed her elbow-length black gloves. She helped Eduardo’s hands into them, pulling them up and under his short sleeves. “Better?”

Eduardo closed his eyes; the heat from his mother’s gloves traveled up his arms and through his entire body until he was enveloped in her warmth. He pushed his hair back with his hand, the scent of the brushed cotton, clean lemon and freesia, reassuring him.

“What do you have for me, Mama?” Ciro asked.

“You have Papa’s gloves to keep you warm.” She smiled. “But you want something of Mama’s too?”

“Please.”

“Give me your hand.”

Ciro pulled his father’s leather glove off with his teeth.

Caterina slid a gold signet ring off her smallest finger and placed it on Ciro’s ring finger. “This was given to me by my papa.”

Ciro looked down at the ring. A swirling, artful
C
in an oval of heavy yellow gold gleamed in the early morning light. He closed his fist, the gold band still warm from his mother’s hand.

The stone facade of the convent of San Nicola was forbidding. Grand pilasters topped with statues of saints wearing expressions of hollow grief towered over the walkway. The thick walnut door had a sharp peak like a bishop’s hat, Eduardo observed as he pushed the door open. Caterina and Ciro followed him inside into a small vestibule. They stomped the snow off their shoes on a mat made of woven driftwood branches. Caterina reached up and rang a small brass bell on a chain.

“They’re probably praying. That’s all they do in here. Pray all day,” Ciro said as he peered through a crack in the door.

“How do you know what they do?” Eduardo asked.

The door opened. Sister Domenica looked down at the boys, sizing them up.

She was short and shaped like a dinner bell. Her black-and-white habit with a full skirt made her seem wider still. She placed her hands on her hips.

“I’m Signora Lazzari,” Caterina said. “These are my sons. Eduardo and Ciro.” Eduardo bowed to the nun. Ciro ducked his head quickly as if saying a fast prayer. Really, it was the mole on Sister’s chin he wished to pray away.

“Follow me,” the nun said.

Sister Domenica pointed to a bench, indicating where the boys should sit and wait. Caterina followed Sister into another room behind a thick wooden door, closing it behind her. Eduardo stared straight ahead while Ciro craned his neck, looking around.

“She’s signing us away,” Ciro whispered. “Just like Papa’s saddle.”

“That’s not true,” his brother whispered back.

Ciro inspected the foyer, a round room with two deep alcoves, one holding a shrine to Mary, the Blessed Mother, and the other, to Saint Francis of Assisi. Mary definitely had more votive candles lit at her feet. Ciro figured it meant you could always count on a woman. He took a deep breath. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“It’s
all
I think about.”

“You have a simple mind.”

“No, I don’t. Just because I’m strong, doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were stupid. You’re
simple
.”

The scent of fresh vanilla and sweet butter filled the convent. Ciro closed his eyes and inhaled. He really
was
hungry. “Is this like the story Mama told us about the soldiers who got lost in the desert and saw a waterfall where there was none?” Ciro stood to follow the scent. He peered around the wall. “Or is there a cake baking somewhere?”

“Sit down,” Eduardo ordered.

Ciro ignored him and walked down the long corridor.

“Get back here!” Eduardo whispered.

The walnut doors along the arcade were closed, and streams of faint light came through the overhead transoms. At the far end of the hallway, through a glass door, Ciro saw a cloister connecting the main convent to the workhouses. He ran down the arcade toward the light. When he made it to the door, he looked through the glass and saw a barren patch of earth, probably a garden, hemmed by a dense gnarl of gray fig trees dusted with snow.

Ciro turned toward the delicious scent and found the convent kitchen, tucked in the corner off the main hallway. The door to the kitchen was propped open with a brick. A shimmering collection of pots hung over a long wooden farm table. Ciro looked back to see if Eduardo had followed him. Alone and free, Ciro took a chance and ran to the kitchen doorway and peered inside. The kitchen was as warm as the hottest summer day. Ciro let the waves of heat roll over him.

A beautiful woman, much younger than his mother, was working at the table. She wore a long jumper of gray-striped wool with a white cotton apron tied over it. Her black hair was wrapped tightly into a chignon and tucked under a black kerchief. Her dark brown eyes squinted as she rolled a long skein of pasta on a smooth marble work slab. She hummed a tune as she took a small knife and whittled away tiny stars of dough, unaware that Ciro was watching her. Her long fingers moved surely and deftly with the knife. Soon, a batch of tiny pasta beads began to pile up on the board. Ciro decided that all women are beautiful, except maybe the old ones like Sister Domenica. “
Corallini
?” Ciro asked.

The young woman looked up and smiled at the little boy in the big clothes. “
Stelline
,” she corrected him, holding up a small piece of dough carved into the shape of a star. She scooped up a pile of the little stars and threw them into a big bowl.

“What are you making?”

“Baked custard.”

“It smells like cake in the hallway.”

“That’s the butter and the nutmeg. The custard is better than cake. It’s so delicious it pulls angels off their perches. At least that’s what I tell the other sisters. Did it make you hungry?”

“I was already hungry.”

The woman laughed. “Who are you?”

“Who are
you
?” He narrowed his eyes.

“I’m Sister Teresa.”

“I’m sorry, Sister. But, you . . . you look like a girl. You don’t look like a nun.”

“I don’t wear a nice habit when I’m cooking. What’s your name?”

Ciro sat on a stool across from the nun. “Ciro Augustus Lazzari,” he said proudly.

“That’s a big name. Are you a Roman emperor?”

“Nope.” Ciro remembered he was speaking with a nun. “Sister.”

“How old are you?”

“Ten. I’m big for my age. I pull the rope at the water wheel in town.”

“That’s impressive.”

“I’m the only boy my age who can. They call me an ox.”

Sister Teresa reached behind the table and pulled a heel of bread from a bin. She slathered it with soft butter and handed it to the boy. As Ciro ate, she swiftly carved more stars from the dough and added them to the large bowl filled with a batter of milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg. She stirred the ingredients evenly with a large enamel spoon. Ciro watched the creamy folds of custard, now speckled with stars, lap over one another as the mixture thickened. Sister poured the custard into ceramic cups on a metal tray without spilling a drop. “Are you visiting?”

“We’ve been sent here to work because we’re poor.”

“Everyone in Vilminore di Scalve is poor. Even the nuns.”

“We’re
really
poor. We don’t have a house anymore. We ate all the chickens, and Mama sold the cow. She sold a painting and all the books. Didn’t get much. And that money has almost run out.”

“It’s the same story in every village in the Alps.”

“We won’t stay long. My mother is going to the city, and she’ll come and get us this summer.” Ciro looked over at the deep wood-burning oven and figured that he would have to stoke and clean it until his mother returned. He wondered how many fireplaces there were in the convent. He imagined there were lots of them. He’d probably spend every hour of daylight chopping wood and building fires.

“What brought you to the convent?”

“Mama can’t stop crying.”

“Why?”

“She misses Papa.”

Sister lifted the tray of custard cups and placed them in the oven. She checked the surface of several other baked custard cups on a cooling rack. What a lovely thing, to work in a warm kitchen in the cold winter and make food. Ciro imagined that people who work in kitchens are never hungry.

“Where did your father go?”

“They say he died, but I don’t think so,” Ciro said.

“Why don’t you believe them?” Sister wiped her hands on a moppeen and leaned on the table so she might be eye to eye with the boy.

“Eduardo read the letter that was sent to Mama from America. They say Papa died in a mine, but they never found his body. That’s why I don’t think Papa is dead.”

“Sometimes—,” she began.

Ciro interrupted her. “I know all about it—sometimes a man dies, and there’s no body. Dynamite can go off in a mine and people inside blow up, or a body can burn in a fire or disappear down a hole, or drown in a slag river inside the mountain. Or you get hurt and you can’t walk and you get stuck underground and you die of starvation because nobody came to find you and animals eat you and nothing is left but bones. I know every which way there is to die—but my papa would not die like that. He was strong. He could beat up anyone, and he could lift more than any man in Vilminore di Scalve. He’s not dead.”

“Well, I’d like to meet him someday.”

“You will. He’ll come back. You’ll see.” Ciro hoped his father was alive, and his heart ached at the possibility that he might never see him again. He remembered how he could always find his father easily in a crowd because he was so tall, he towered over everyone in the village. Carlo Lazzari was so strong he was able to carry both sons simultaneously, one on each hip, like sacks of flour up and down the steep mountain trails. He felled trees with an ax, and cut lumber as easily as Sister cut the dough. He built a dam at the base of the Vertova waterfall. Other men helped, but Carlo Lazzari was the leader.

Sister Teresa broke a fresh egg into a cup and added a teaspoon of sugar. She poured fresh cream into the cup and whisked it until there was a creamy foam on the surface. “Here.” She gave it to Ciro. He sipped it, then drank it down until the cup was empty.

“How’s that stomach now?”

“Full.” Ciro smiled.

“Would you like to help me cook sometime?”

“Boys don’t cook.”

“That’s not true. All the great chefs in Paris are men. Women are not allowed in the Cordon Bleu. That’s a famous cooking school in France,” Sister Teresa told him.

Eduardo burst into the kitchen. “Come on, Ciro. We have to go!”

Sister Teresa smiled at him. “You must be Eduardo.”

“Yes, I am.”

“She’s a nun,” Ciro told his brother.

Eduardo bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Sister.”

“Are you hungry too?”

Eduardo shook his head that he wasn’t.

“Did your mother tell you that you shouldn’t be any trouble?” Sister asked.

He nodded that she had.

Sister Teresa reached back into the metal bin and took a wedge of bread and buttered it. She gave it to Eduardo, who ate it hungrily.

“My brother won’t ask for
anything
,” Ciro explained. “Can he have an egg and cream with sugar too?” He turned to his brother. “You’ll like it.”

Sister smiled and took a fresh egg, sugar, and some more cream and whipped it with a whisk. She gave it to Eduardo, who slowly sipped the egg cream, savoring every drop until the cup was empty.

“Thank you, Sister,” Eduardo said.

“We thought the convent would be horrible.” Ciro placed his own and Eduardo’s cup in the sink.

“If you behave and say your prayers, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”

Sister Domenica stood in the doorway of the kitchen with Caterina. Eduardo gasped when he saw them and quickly bowed to the old nun. Ciro couldn’t understand why his brother was afraid of everyone and everything. Couldn’t he see that Sister Domenica was harmless? With her starched coutil bib and black skirts, she resembled the black-and-white-checked globe made from Carrara marble that Mama used as a paperweight. Ciro wasn’t afraid of any nun, and besides this one was just an old lady with a wooden cross hanging from her waist like a giant key.

“I have found two capable young men to help me in the kitchen,” Sister Teresa said.

“Eduardo is going to help me in the office,” Sister Domenica said to Sister Teresa. “And Ciro will work in the chapel. I need a strong boy who can do heavy lifting.”

“I need a strong boy who can make cheese.” Sister Teresa winked at Sister Domenica.

“I can do both,” Ciro said proudly.

Caterina put her hands on Ciro’s shoulders. “My boys will do whatever you need, Sister.”

Just a few miles up the mountain, above Vilminore di Scalve, the village of Schilpario clung to the mountainside like a gray icicle. Even the dead were buried on a slope, in sepulchers protected by a high granite retaining wall covered in vines.