A Shadow in Yucatan (3 page)

Guiseppe de
Steffano is weighing cornmeal with expansive fat fingers...
sniffing dust rising from the stoop, scoop-rolled sacking of
harvest.
For each creaking knee, a pound of bounty,
measureless calf nose, wet-stone, clinking bucket-and-chaff
intoxication...

There is a
granary near Lucca...
but olive oil still to be pumped, safe for the afternoon.

Women who enter
are guests at the patron’s apron of white.
The groom of autumn leads on to the half ounce paprika, two green
peppers, half-a-pound tea.

‘They have the appointaments,
sure...
They have the new bambino, and will they feed it properly?
Encora
...’

If they ask for
salami, he wraps the weight of bells in Bologna.
Pasta he sells with regret. It is so much better fresh

If they take
also Parmesano, he will show the machine that makes it
easier...

‘For the sake of the children
and the health of this God forsaken nation
!’

Of course the
kitchens have no light, the windows no cockerel burnished with
sunrise,
the walls no vines, the eaves no dipping swallows...
There is no gushing pump

‘But Santa Maria, an apron they
can make!
’

He has time for
a view of the valley, and to stand for the Angelus.
Once a master baker, he now calls himself an alchemist.

‘
Cara, I sell art,
not food...
Delicatessen! Never let me hear that word!’

He follows a
dismal ragatsa, tugging her sulky son...courteous to poverty, and
its second hesitation.
Gives
her
the apple, and slowly shuts the door.

He switches off
the lights, stands and drops his head...
The gloom of day could be his farm stone store, but mice are there
the movement that here is trickling rice.

Extinguished
hospitality turns to blunt dispatch.

He cleaves six
strokes of prosciutto, wraps it in greaseproof, hangs a clean coat
behind the door, latches and leaves for lunch.

Cara defers
exactly at noon.

She ceases
sorting index cards, slips an invitation in the entrails of a
book...
Removes some of her lipstick, but refreshes her scent, ties a token
apron...on afterthought knots her hair; unbuckles wedge-heeled
sandals, slips into something flat...
Smoothes her generous bosom, moves unthinking to her hip, catches
herself in the unperturbed glass, shrugs with sly chagrin...

Guilio will be tired.
There’s no need for anything

The provider
lets himself in backwards, gracious to the Signora in the passage
without.
Acknowledgement is a habit he cannot learn to lose.

Cara clicks,
slides waxed linen across the polished board; lays plates and large
pressed napkins, knives and silver forks, pinches a radish from the
salad, goes to bring in cheese...

Guilio appraises,
shrewdly unconcerned, tonguing his teeth with his back to the
view...

‘
Y’been
out?’

‘
Guilio, of course
not!’

‘
When do you
go?’

‘
Perhaps later...I
don’t know...Come eat the lasagne, and after, we have
veal...’

He spreads his
billboard napkin, tucks it in his tie.
She kisses him roundly, and pinches both his cheeks.

They eat in
virtual silence. Most things are understood.

*****

Cara leans
thoughtless at the window, with hip and ankle flexed, drinking
percolated coffee, with an idle cigarette...
Watching the insipid sun assault the robust haze to reach the
middle chimneys, and at her feet, the street.

Her master has
carried his plates to the sink, left his napkin on the chair
rail...
Gone for an hour’s sleep.

The day, left
to itself, drags on a butt of air, snouts papers up
contemptuously...kicks a tin can.

The garbage
awaits the three black men.

Bell blast
imperious!

The flaming
roaring telephone drags Cara from miasma to strangle it in
wool...

‘
Who is it?’

‘
Mama it’s me. Oh
Mama it’s terrible...can you hear? Stephanie.
Mama I’m pregnant...Mama don’t talk.. Wait let me tell you...Is
Papa asleep?’

‘
Pregnant Madre
Sacra, what the fuck does that mean?
Pregnant, Santissima, so we all go to hell!’

The
butter-solid silence, the metronome clock times the breathing of
Goliath on his gorse gold bed...
The satin quilt slithers, subsides upon the floor...
Do springs betray intention?
He is still asleep.

Cara winds the
long reproach of her daughter’s quiet life in a solid skein of
anger, a loop of perfect purpose, a rope, an unsheathed knife.

‘
It simply is not
possible, and I do not want to hear...’

‘
Mama who are you?
Can I...’

‘
Listen I have said.
It simply has not happened and he must never know...’

Compressed
control hisses, the diamond backed hand becomes a fist of
certainty.
There is sting in the twisting ring.

‘
Mama I
cannot’

‘
Oh yes you can, for
the sake of your father. He’s a wonderful man...
Also for Enrico who thank God is in Genoa...’

‘
Enrico mama! That
is all absurd...’

‘
It is your father’s
dearest hope...Since you gave up on College you owe him that, at
least. We must return to Lucca...Now you must do it
soon...’

‘
It is only legal in
New York’

‘
What you are going
to do no-one can legalize...but you must not come here.
Ring me when it’s over. Then you go away...I have many things to
think about but first I go to pray...’

In silence
sycophantic the apron is untied...
Swift scrolls of supplication wrought in iron bars of lace.
She hangs two rings with the duplicate keys, and carefully lets
herself out...
She will not wait for the elevator, no, she will use the
stairs.

Am I imprisoned in
this kiosk of crude history?
The crossroads of ancestral hope confounded by a pin of
chance?
Shall I carve my grief’s graffiti?
While my stomach sings like grasses by the sea, bewildered?

Am I dumb and
senseless captive creature
that I doodle with the pencil point of pain,
while the spaces roundabout
monument this mockery?

The metallic landscape
is impervious
to bubbles frothing anonymity...
There is always more of pain.
The grasses will go singing to infinity...

It is now six,
almost.

At six there
will be people in the park...
Not the drip-dry shirtwaist and neckerchief duos on the benches
leaping to arrest the wheel of imminent concussion.
Those will have packed the juice bottles and gone home.

Up in the
dog-eared shade the swings will whisper-tip in melancholy echo of
the afternoon’s brief impulse...

The static
giraffe may yet crane its neck to challenge the energies of rowdy
boys
but those are not the ones she needs.

Nor else the
Senior Citizens in banded hats, who pace the last long-fingered
ball, and bend to speculate upon a lie of grass, that elongates the
image pleasantly...

‘
Maudie y’know has
real slim wrists...If only she’d make the effort...
Arthritis ain’t the end of the world...Why, plenty of folks go
about with sticks.’

No. Below the
belt of sloping trees, the ground is flat to take the rummage of
impromptu ball.
The Hey-Here-Wow! of young blood blurring the boats, stripped to
shorts and drum beat skin...
watched by bare-back girls, with swinging breasts under scarves of
poinsettia silk.

Clay pressed
collar bone, coil of ear, a kiss of sleek sun-sculptured
hair...
Mirage-maidens collectively, the distant voices modulate...
Approached, it splinters into purses, apples, fags, quick darting
glanced appraisal, then nonchalance contrived...

They mostly
know the name of the game.
Some play for real. Some observe and grin.

Sim and Josh
are brothers, unalike, yet drawn by their acknowledged differences,
to share with tacit time-content, a garage wholly welcoming.
Music is its core, mattresses its skin,
there are good girlie posters and a broken john.
Their clothes need patching, sneakers are worn through, but there’s
coffee, wine and more often than not, Hungarian food.
Sim is no mean cook, on the primus he nicked from a chemistry
lab

‘
Nadia, god bless
her, was my inspiration. Legs like Marlene, and breasts t’make ya
sing.’

Josh is always
silent, the water to Sim’s thirst, to his cornstalk, glade.
He gently plucks ‘Petroushka’ on the ribs of his concave chest,
takes another swig of coffee and stretches his long legs.
His body is deficient from long pursued neglect.
Sim has calories enough to feed his lassitude.
They weight each other’s balance, avoid each other’s girls.
Together idly speculate upon the squawk of birds...

‘
All that flesh
yonder, and the splendid motion of those things!’

‘
Wrap it up Sim. I
have no appetite’

‘
Did ya bring the
Frisbee?’

‘
Sure thing’

‘
C’mon then...if
they join we’ll see them swing...
Halleluiah honey...Ok, Ok don’t sweat...
It was just a way of saying y’look good enough to eat.’

Stephanie
skirts the nail-buff, match-flick, lie- down, roll over
fledglings.
In no mood to reflect or disclose

She hedge hops
for the shade, where Lisa and her little son hold guttering candles
out for Sim...

Way over yonder
he removes his shirt, stretches and then throws a flawless
curvature.

The frail and
freckled mother squints against the glare, adjusts her slipping
headband, knocks the tower...all fall down.

‘
Hey, how are
you?’