Solitaria (7 page)

“But it's not fair,” Vito said. He leaned his head on Mamma's shoulder.

They sat like that for a few minutes. Then she took his face in her hands and kissed both his cheeks. “Promise Mamma that you'll be very careful,” she said. “This disease your uncle has… he's going to die. It's in his lungs, and he'll be coughing all the time. You must wash your hands always when you're around him. Promise me.” Tears sprang into her eyes.

Vito nodded. He, too, wanted to cry, not because he was afraid, but because he felt a large piece being wrenched out of his heart.

Mamma packed his few belongings into a sheet she had embroidered with his initials, and set it by the side of the door. In the morning, she kissed him and held him tight against her. He cried a little, and Papà bent down and wiped his tears with his large handkerchief. “You're a big brave boy,” he said. “You're a man now.”

Vito shivered. Mamma pulled a sweater out of the packet and pushed his arms into the sleeves. “It's only for a little while,” she whispered. “You'll be home in no time.” From her sleeve, she drew out a card. “Look,” she said. “Saint Vito, just like you. He will keep you safe.”

Vito took the card and stared at the angels and the crown of stars. He pushed the card into his pocket.

Then Papà put his hand on Vito's shoulder, and together they walked to the train station without looking back at Mamma, who gazed after them, weeping, until they had rounded the bend.

“This is a fan distributed by a clothing store in Carmiano. Look at what it reads: ‘Fascist Supplies,' as if for a few lire, one could buy the misguided ideals of a dictator, illusion, torture instruments, prisons. But no. It was simply an advertisement for a ladies' fashion shop. On the front of the fan is the fascist symbol — the fasces — a bundle of sticks which includes an axe. Within the axe, a map of Italy, over which is the word ‘Patriotic.' The fasces is an ancient Roman symbol of power and was carried by lictors in front of magistrates to symbolize power over life and death. Before the fascists adopted it, the fasces (as Fascio) was used by left-wing groups as a symbol of strengh through unity. If you turn over the fan, you'll read: ‘Elegant fascists shop here,' along with an address. Note that the word ‘fascists' has been crossed out in pen, and the word ‘ladies' written above it in Papà's handwriting.”

‡
1935. Carmiano, Italy.
Three years later, Vito stepped off the train into a sandstorm. He carried a small cardboard suitcase, which he set down on the platform. In the two days the sirocco had been blowing, the temperature had risen ten degrees and the moist air was thick with dust that had crossed the Mediterranean from the North African deserts and now covered the ground. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose and mouth. He wore a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and trousers that exposed his ankles, as if he had suddenly grown taller.

Papà saw him first and hurried along the platform. When he reached the boy, he kissed him on both cheeks and embraced him. Vito now came to Papà's shoulder, a thin, reedy boy. As soon as Papà released him, Mamma came forward and smothered the boy against one side of her breast, murmuring, “Finally you're home. We've missed you so much.” She let him go, then pushed Aldo and me forward. “This is Aldo and Piera,” she said. “Say hello to Vito. You remember your brother.”

Aldo nodded, but I shook my head and looked at the ground. Over the past several weeks, ever since Zio Tonio died, Mamma had been talking about Vito, whom I barely recalled. I leaned against Mamma's side, partly sheltered in the folds of her full skirt.

“Of course you do,” Mamma said, then pushed our little sister forward. “And this is Clarissa.”

“I'm three,” said Clarissa, “and I'm an angel.” She ran a little way up the platform, waving her arms like wings.

“Clarissa! Come here immediately,” Mamma said, but she was smiling.

We all walked the kilometre home along the railway track, a procession headed by Papà, then Vito with Clarissa beside him, holding his hand, then me, then Mamma and Aldo. The wind swirled around us in a yellow blizzard. We held kerchiefs over our noses and stared down at the ground. Now and then, a train would pass and force us into brush or flatten us against the walls of a cutting. We were not the least bit nervous, having grown up in railway huts beside the tracks.

Later, at home, when the wind had died down, there was an eerie calm. Vito opened the door and looked out. What he recalled were rolling hills, various shades of green on green, and endless leaves, like fingerprints, their delicate veins unique. He had forgotten autumn, the hills turned to brown, and the fine membrane of dust accumulated in the centre of leaves, in dried flower pods, in the indentations of stones, inside any visible crevice.

“We'll have to get the tobacco leaves in before the rain,” Papà said.

Mamma opened the window. Geckos slithered in and darted across the walls. Flies zipped through the air. She picked up a broom and tried to squash everything against the ceiling.

“Mamma, wait until we're gone,
per carità
,” Papà said. He took the broom from her and leaned it in a corner of the room. “You'd better feed Vito.”

Mamma smiled and took out two slices of bread from a wrapping of brown paper. She poured a thimbleful of oil onto the top of each and spread it. Then she handed the slices to Papà and Vito.

In the field, their bare feet were the colour of volcanic tufa, their hair stiff and chalky, and in their mouths, the air itself tasted like plaster. They gathered tobacco leaves until dark, then stacked them in a corner of the room. Most days, we children would thread them into long garlands, which Mamma would hang to dry in the sun. By today, in the perfect humidity of the siroccos — when the leaves did not crumble under our fingers — we stacked them into wooden boxes left by tobacco agents, who would come and collect them at dawn.

That night in the windowless attic, while Clarissa and I slept — me curled on my side, Clarissa on her back, arm flung above her head — Vito lay awake on the thin mattress beside us. He waited for his pupils to dilate so he could see the dark shapes of people, things. Beside him, Aldo yawned, his face turned to the wall. The wind howled against the hut, hot with moisture. Vito stared into the darkness and listened to our parents in the bed across the room.

“He'll be all right, “ Papà said, “once he gets to know us again.”

“But he seems so… serious,” Mamma said.

“He was always serious,” Papà said.

The village piazza formed a square around a water pump which jutted out of a stone basin and was flanked by a greengrocer and a butcher shop on one side, a bakery and tobacconist on the other, a church on the third side, and the village school on the fourth. The latter was a one-room rectangle of piled tufa blocks, its windows open to the sticky air. Inside, children recited in unison the multiplication tables, their eyes languid, their voices monotone and resigned. Outside, the sun cast almost no shadow. Farmers walked silently home, their faces wet with sweat. The village grocer locked up, as did the butcher and the baker. Only the tobacconist stayed open for another half hour. It could have been a black-and-white sequence, an Italian film: sullen young men on bicycles; coquettish, defiant young women leaning against the stoops of windowless huts; old men seated on chairs in the maws of doorways; children squatting in the narrow streets; donkeys braying, and chickens underfoot, squawking and pecking the dirt. Southern Italy in a perpetual cycle of poverty, abandoned by Rome, by the rest of the country, backwards and rural, superstitious and alien. In close-ups, there were immense watery black eyes, wizened cheeks, dumb animal stares. Everyone in black and white, ambiguous, so that one was never quite sure who was doing what to whom.

A trumpet blared. The tobacconist emerged from his shop, carrying a large speaker, which he set on the bench outside. He was a squat little man, with a bald head hidden under a hat. He turned back in and emerged moments later with a large framed photograph of Mussolini that he leaned against the bench, and a shortwave radio, which he plugged into the speaker. Villagers flowed out of their houses, unhurried, and stood in clumps in the piazza. A man rounded the corner with a handful of small paper fans bearing the name of his clothing store. He distributed these among the women, who gratefully accepted and waved them like butterflies in the air.

A bell pealed. The school door opened and the teacher stepped out. She stood like a sentinel beside the open door. Over her skirt and blouse she wore the school uniform now mandatory throughout Italy — a black smock, its white, starched, Peter Pan collar askew. Children filed carefully past her, then stood in rows, like crows on a wire.

I hastened out, eyes downcast, because although I loved my teacher, I had been taught it was disrespectful to stare. I was barely five, and had learned how to read and write on my own. I took my place in the row with the smallest children, but searched anxiously for Aldo and Vito. All the children wore black uniforms and were virtually indistinguishable from each other, their skin browned, their hair black, cropped. Only a couple of minutes, and already they were fidgeting, hopping foot to foot. The sundial on the church tower read three minutes to the hour. Across the piazza, Mamma, Clarissa, and Papà stood in the shade of a holm oak.

At precisely one o'clock, with the entire village now assembled, the tobacconist flicked the dial, and the Italian national anthem began amid static and the sound of soldiers marching. Everyone stood at attention. Mussolini's voice boomed from the speakers.

“
Blackshirts of the revolution! Men and women of all Italy! Italians spread throughout the world, beyond the mountains and beyond the seas! Hear me!

“A solemn hour is about to sound in the history of the fatherland. At this moment twenty million men occupy the public squares of all Italy.

“Never in the history of mankind has there been a more gigantic spectacle. Twenty million men, but one heart, one will, one resolve
.”

Mussolini paused, as if to let this thought reverberate. And sure enough, for a moment, everyone appeared enchanted by this idea, by the oratory powers of that human voice. Some of the women's eyes welled with tears, which they wiped with the corner of their aprons.

Mamma and Papà moved further into the shade. Mamma picked up Clarissa and held her in her arms. Papà scowled.

“
This gathering must and does show the world that Italy and Fascism constitute a perfect, absolute, and unalterable identity.

“For many months the wheels of destiny have been moving toward their goal under the impulse of our calm determination… It is not only an army that strives toward its objectives but a whole people of 44 million souls against whom an attempt is being made to consummate the blackest of injustice — that of depriving us of some small place in the sun…
”

Vito had managed to escape the watchful eye of the teacher and now stood at the far end of the piazza, his hair glossy and unruly. Perfectly still, he listened to Mussolini, his eyes dreamy. No doubt he was already imagining himself in Ethiopia, fighting injustices. He had told us that he would join, if only he were old enough. His chest swelled with imagined glories. He surveyed the villagers in the piazza. What fools he thought them all, peasants. He was determined not to become like them, torpid and ineffectual, like the mules and donkeys that walked the paths, their heads down in perpetual resignation. No, he would have a different life, he told us children. He would be rich and live in a city. He would have money to spend, and girls to choose from.

He didn't realize that Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia would cause international economic sanctions against Italy, that as food and fuel would become more scarce, so people would become more disenchanted with Mussolini. I've had years of understanding what was happening to us then. At the time, however, we children born after 1922 knew nothing of democracy. At school we were indoctrinated into believing that fascism was The Truth, and that we were to worship at its altar. We were told we must be proud to be fascist children, to wear our uniforms, to call ourselves Figli Della Lupa, Balillas and Giovane Italiane, to sing and dance and parade down the town's streets together. We tried our best to fulfill these expectations, but what troubled us — and the boys in particular — was the lack of external things. Fascism, you see, is for the rich, not for the poor. We lived our childhoods wanting to be the perfect fascist children, but we had no money with which to buy the uniforms and for the boys, the toy guns. Everything we owned was handmade and tawdry in our eyes. If only we had seen Mamma sewing while we all slept, or watched Papà whittle the toy guns after fourteen hours of work.

Even at home, where Papà often grumbled about fascism, we didn't understand. The newspapers — controlled by the fascists — had us believe that we were readying to become a world superpower and that it was our duty to endure the present hardships for this greater glory. But we had always been poor; hardships were part of our normal life. Military glory was not within our dictionary of needs or wants. Food, good health, a roof that didn't leak, shoes in winter, schoolbooks — these were our imagined glories.

At the far end of the piazza, Vito shifted his weight and narrowed his eyes. He was a handsome boy, like Papà, with fine features and lustrous wavy hair. Already the village girls promenaded past him, their glances coy, their lips smiling behind modest hands.

“
When in 1915 Italy exposed itself to the risks of war and joined its destiny with that of the Allies, how much praise there was for our courage and how many promises were made! But after the common victory to which Italy had made the supreme contribution of 670,000 dead, 400,000 mutilated, and a million wounded, around the hateful peace table Italy received but a few crumbs from the rich colonial booty gathered by others.

“We have been patient for thirteen years, during which the circle of selfishness that strangles our vitality has become ever tighter. With Ethiopia we have been patient for forty years! It is time to say enough
!”

“Enough!” the people said in unison. Visible in the crowd were a number of young men in black shirts, their arms crossed, their eyes surveying the people in the piazza. Vito eyed them, took in their stance, their clothes. He mimicked them, and moved a few steps closer.