Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) (3 page)

But Papa brought the creature, still secreted inside its wings, to his chest and held it there, like it was a baby.  “It’s…a little girl.” His voice was high and strange.

Mamma’s arms started twitching as her head rocked back and forth on her neck, all unnatural angles as she stared at the creature. The scarf that was wound around her head began to unknot itself. She was bouncing up and down, up and down on the balls of her feet.  
Demon possession
, the kids at school once hissed at me.

“Mamma?” I whispered, clutching her hand with all my strength.

“
It’s a little girl
,” echoed Mamma. I was horrified to hear her imitate the precise pitch and cadence of my father’s voice. “
It’s a little girl. It’s a little girl
.”

“Go to your room, Blanca,” said my father, a serene order.

“Show me,” whispered Mamma, and her hands shook as she reached out for the expanse of the wings. “Show me the little girl.” And my father opened the wings and we all held our breaths.

The hue of Mamma’s face transformed from grey to golden. “
It’s you
,” she purred, raising all the hairs on my body.

And like an obedient, radiant child, Mamma disengaged my hand and wandered away, her head still bobbing from side to side, her shoulders jerking. I was afraid that one day her neck would snap and her head would tumble to the floor, and would I have to put it on a platter, like John the Baptist? She shut the bedroom door, but I could still hear her muttering, “
It’s you, it’s you, it’s finally you
.”

My father laid the creature face-up on the kitchen table, next to a bowl of radicchio soaked in oil and vinegar
.
Instinctively, it rearranged its wings to cover its entire face and body, as if it were somehow ashamed. There was blood on the table.

“Gabriel, hot water,” instructed my father. “The pliers. Bandages and the whiskey.”

I rushed around our tiny abode easily collecting these materials, as my mother, who required consistency above all else, had meticulously categorized everything in the house. As I ran past the linen closet, I snatched up two clean rags in afterthought. I placed them gingerly on the table, a little way from the body.

Papa immediately set to work. The wound was located on the outside of its wing, just beneath the shoulder blades. He doused it in whiskey and I blocked my ears to the screams of the creature as Papa deftly dipped his pliers into the wound, removing a small steel ball. During his administrations, I could not help but admire the creature for its strength of will – for even though it flinched amidst cries of pain, it would not retract its wings. From the bedroom, we could hear Mamma imitating the bird’s squalls.

My father quartered the softest rag and soaked it in whiskey, binding it to the wound by wrapping the bandage around the creature’s shoulder and neck. But the bird’s head retreated even further into itself, making it impossible for Papa to continue. “Gabriel,” said Papa, “Come stand by me. Talk to her.”

Obediently, I trotted over to my father’s side, pleased to be essential in this task of bird-restoration. But once I opened my mouth, I felt foolish. What does one say to a wounded animal? What does one say to a creature that made one’s Mamma scream? Would it make any difference at all?

“Hello,” I stammered, and my voice wavered with self-consciousness. “My name is Gabriel Laurentis. You are in our home, on the kitchen table, to be precise. We make wine here and I help too, but I’m not allowed any until I’m fourteen.” I looked up at my father for guidance, and he flashed a wide smile that made his horn-rimmed spectacles soar up to his eyebrows.

Encouraged, I continued. “The person holding you is called Celso. He is my father. And the lady before is called Blanca. She is my Mamma. But she is in her room now and you won’t see her anymore tonight. And Papa needs to bandage you up. So remove your wings, if you please.”

The creature twitched a little and through its long, slightly bent flight feathers, which I noticed were blue and grey in the lamplight, I saw an eye blinking at me.

It was not a bird’s eye at all. It was much larger, almond-shaped, rimmed with thick black lashes. And it was bleached green, like the underbellies of pond frogs in summer.

“Go on,” murmured my father.

“You must be very scared. But you should know that it was me who saved you. You don’t have to thank me, because you probably can’t speak Italian. I want you to know that you can trust me.” But the bird’s eye disappeared again beneath her expanse of feathers. I decided to change tactics.

“My name is Gabriel,” I repeated, “in case you have forgotten. I am eleven years old. And I am a boy, although sometimes people mistake me for a girl on account of my hair.” And I blew that infernal puff of curls out of my eyes to demonstrate my point. “I want to cut it off, but Mamma won’t let me. I think the longer it is, the happier she is, because the fortune-teller told her I would be a girl, and she was sad when I was not. And I promise she will like you in the morning,” I whispered, so that Mamma could not overhear, “because
you
are a girl.”

And the creature spread her feathers apart even more widely, exposing a pink cheek and ear. “I won’t tease you,” I pressed on, “I swear. I’ve never teased anyone.  But I know what it’s like, I am always teased by the other boys because I am smaller than them and can’t play games well.”

My father fixed his eyes on me now and frowned, but I pretended not to notice.

“But you needn’t worry about them. I won’t let them see you.”

I don’t know if it was the tone of my voice or the length of my soliloquy, for I was sure the creature could not understand me, but she slowly unfurled her left wing and let it flop onto the table.

I gasped.

For inside the blanket of feathers was indeed a little girl. She could not have been more than nine years old, I judged, but she was small and wiry, yet not malnourished. She had a normal sized head, nose, and teeth, and from my limited knowledge of small females, perfectly unremarkable excepting those wings.

Papa seized his chance then, and resumed wrapping and pinning the bandage firmly over the wound. All the while, the bird did not take her eyes off me. She cocked her head to the side, like magpies do, and studied me with unblinking eyes. I imagined she was peering into my soul and understood my secrets. For a split second, it occurred to me that we had met before.

My smile froze when suddenly there was a pounding at the door. Papa immediately swept the girl up in his arms. His eyes darted around for a place of concealment. New fear rushed over me, and I wondered why I felt so panicked, so guilty. Like we were doing something horribly wrong.

“Over here, Papa!” I hissed, throwing the quilt back to expose the old cradle that was once mine that my parents never threw away.

There was an impatient, gravelly scuffing of feet outside and the urgent, authoritative hammering again. Papa silently laid the creature down and with the blanket, covered her up again. Then he removed his spectacles, placed them in his shirt pocket and strode to the front door. He already knew who our guest was. Only one person would have the indecency to knock like that.

Alfio Gallo was the kind of man who could fill a whole room with his presence. And when he left, it was as if a man had not just occupied it, but a large body of smoke, acrid and dark, that lingered long after the person had disappeared. I stood very still then, and took in his large, middle-aged frame, the woolly cap with the sheepskin earflaps that Signora Gallo undoubtedly knit, the steel-capped boots. It was then that I noticed the Winchester shotgun that swung from his fingers, in that careless way only true gun handlers dared treat their weapons.

“
Buonasera
, Signore Gallo,” greeted my father, but the former simply pushed past him and entered our house, glaring at its fixtures and the shadows of each corner with beady eyes.

La Casa di Gallo
was the largest farmland in the Umbrian countryside, not a simple vineyard like ours, and boasted a large array of
Grechetto
and
Trebbiano
wines. It was no secret that Gallo’s farm had a profit margin far greater than our own, and even our most faithful buyers were becoming persuaded by his “specials”: buying up coarse wines made from leftover grapes because tourists never knew the difference when ordering house wine at a
trattoria
in town. However, Gallo could never recreate the original
Dolce Fantasia
, and it was this obscure amber brew that the European wine connoisseurs came from all over the continent to sample. My father could not afford to lower prices on his wine, for our farm was already heavily mortgaged, and one hundred or so enthusiasts per annum purchasing a case of wine each was not enough to pay the rent.

Gallo made a yearly offer to buy the property for a small sum, much less than what it was worth. He had grand plans of
advertising
, whatever that meant, our wine to restaurants in Rome and beyond. During
Carnivale
, and when he was drunk and in good cheer, he would bully and humiliate my Papa, calling him a failure, more suited to life as a schoolteacher than a landowner. And in these moments when Papa grew quiet, Gallo would guffaw and slap him heartily on the back, and offer to pay off all his debts if he finally gave up the farm. Papa never did. I wonder if he worked the land, all those steadfast years, just to spite Alfio Gallo. In my heart of hearts, I hope so.

“Evening, Laurentis,” grunted Gallo, poking around the kitchen, and making a good show of perusing the contents of the sink and garbage can.

“May I help you?” asked my father serenely, although he could not hide his disdain from me.

Alfio Gallo stopped short when he saw me, and instantly, I blushed all over and stared at the floor. “Who’s this, then?” he growled, circling me.

“That is my son, Gabriel,” stated Papa.

“Son, is it?” demanded Gallo, glancing skeptically at my hair. “Huh.”

“As a matter of fact, you’ve met Gabriel on several occasions—”

“Enough of the pleasantries!” barked Gallo, and rounded on my father like a voracious hairy spider before strangling its prey. “I am here on serious business. Tell me, Laurentis, what do you know of the falcon?”

“The falcon?”

“The falcon,” repeated Gallo, and he raised the Winchester 12 so that its barrel gleamed in the dim kitchen light.

“I’ve seen no falcons in these parts,” replied Papa calmly.

“Then you are not a very good hunter,” stated Gallo, and wiped the gun on Papa’s nightshirt, as if it were only fit for a cleaning rag. I bristled to see my father intimidated in this way. But Papa did not seem bothered.

“That’s right,” agreed Papa amiably, “I’m a winemaker.”

Gallo guffawed. “And neither a very good one, eh, Laurentis? You’d better sell this wasteland to me and put your son through university. I very much doubt, by the looks of
him,
that he’d do a much better job himself. Looks more like a….bookish type.” Gallo looked as if he felt a “bookish type” of person was equal to a dirt-eater, and he made a very loud belly laugh, and didn’t care that he was the only one to do so.

“There is a falcon,” reminded Gallo, serious now, “that I have been stalking for a very long time. Magnificent creature. Blue and grey wings.”

“If it’s so magnificent, why don’t you leave it alone?” I was horrified by my own outburst and the sudden protective surge that swelled through my chest.

And then Gallo was upon me and I could smell the stale cigarettes on his coat, the rank wine breath. “Because, little boy,” he proclaimed, “I am very fond of taxidermy.”

“We have seen no falcons, sir,” repeated Papa firmly. “And it is getting late.”

“Something disrupt your dinner?” inquired Gallo with faux-politeness, regarding our stone-cold supper and neatly laid out tableware. “Tsk, tsk,” he clucked, regarding our meager fare with delight, “no
antipasti,
no
primi piatti
? I suppose the Laurentis family eats like heathens, not Italians.” A cold light entered his eyes when he saw the bloodstain the bird-girl had left. His stare sought me out, her dried blood all over my cardigan.

“I was helping Mamma chop the meat. I was sitting right there,” I stammered, motioning to the pot of rabbit ragout.

“He’s a clumsy boy,” added my father helpfully.

Our visitor was silent for a moment, his brow creased in thought. “I see,” he conceded. “And clumsy boys should not be permitted to play with knives. I hope you will see to this, Celso. And where is Blanca this evening?”

“She is resting,” replied Papa.

“Ah,” said Gallo. “Perhaps she has had, how can I put this, another
episode
?” And he chuckled cruelly, approaching the front door.

“Good night, Signore Gallo,” said Papa tautly.

“Back to your books then, Laurentis,” he tormented, and placed the barrel of his gun over my father’s spectacles, hidden inside his pocket. “
Bang,”
he silently mouthed, sneering.

“I hope the safety’s on!” I snapped from where I stood near the bloodstained table.