That Summer in Sicily (8 page)

She knows it does.

“I know that Cosimo has been telling you tales out there in the garden every day, and . . .” She smiles. Throws up her hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Maybe it’s just a desire to speak in English while I have the chance. No, it’s not that. Not only that. I think it’s because you’re someone from the outside. Yes, I want to try out my story on someone from another place. I want to tell it to you,
leave
it with you, I guess, knowing that you’ll go away. Knowing that your return here to us is
improbable
and, since my preferred method of travel is on horseback, the chances of our ever meeting again in your territory are equally
improbable
. . .”

In the space by the side of her plate, Tosca rolls her napkin into a tight cylinder, then unrolls it, smooths it flat upon the table. She repeats this business several times, then begins rolling it from a single corner, gathering up the other edges and folding them toward the center to fashion a pouch of sorts. A pocket. A place to save her story? I look at her and understand why, a few days earlier, she’d daunted Fernando’s resolve to leave. Tourist hordes and traffic notwithstanding, it was because Tosca was not
ready
for us to leave. I recall Fernando’s early take on villa life.
I have this eerie sense that everyone here was someone else before they arrived. You know, like the island where all bad boys are turned into asses.

Why does Tosca want us to stay? Can it really be so that she can tell this story of hers? And if it is, why would she want to tell it to me? Oh, I heard her reasons: I’m an outsider, she won’t ever see me again, the story will be told yet remain as though it was never told at all. Still. Perhaps this desire of hers will fall away like the old taffeta of the silvery-brown dress. Perhaps not, though.

The next afternoon, it’s Tosca rather than Cosimo who waits for me at the table under the magnolia.

CHAPTER I

“
S
E STAI ASPETTANDO UN RACCONTO DI UNA CENERENTOLA
Siciliana . . .
If you’re waiting for a story about a Sicilian Cinderella . . .”

“I’m not waiting for any sort of story at all,” I say, still standing, uncertain whether I want to stay. “I usually sit with Cosimo at this time. To read, to talk.”

From her high-backed white iron chair with the red velvet cushion, she tugs at the less regal one next to it, beckons me to sit. I do. An assent. Into a thin, tall glass she pours out a cloudy stream of almond milk from a small pitcher, adds water from another pitcher, unscrews what looks like a medicine bottle, and with a dropper, doses the whitish swirling mixture with a few drops of neroli. Essence of orange blossoms. She stirs the drink with a long silver spoon, stirs it ferociously, removes the spoon, and lays it, bowl down, upon the table. A high priestess in full ceremony, her movements seem liturgical. She places the glass in front of me.

“The elixir of Sicily. Bitter. Sweet,” she tells me. Warns me.

I run my finger along the rim of the glass. I smile at Tosca.

“It’s like you, then. Also you are the elixir of Sicily. Bitter. Sweet.”

She begins to laugh and, I think, to blush, though it may be only a lozenge of light flitting about the leaves that ruddies her skin.

“I knew you were the right person. I mean, I’m glad you’re here. Glad you’ve landed here. Exactly here.”

I sip the drink. I like it and sip it again, feel it caressing the knob in my chest. A tightness I hadn’t known was there until now; or is it the one to which I’d grown accustomed over these past few weeks? Longer than that. I turn to Tosca as though it’s she who has the answer, but she’s busy with her potion. Pouring, stirring into her own glass. She drinks nearly half the drink in one long pull. As though to leave, she rises then, walks a meter or two to where another table sits—a rusted metal one upon which pots of herbs are piled randomly—and plucks, from here and there about them, withered leaves, holding the brown, dry things in one hand, proceeding to purge the plants with the other.

“It just never works,” she says, but whether to me or to herself I cannot say. “I mean, trying to domesticate wild herbs.”

Surely she is talking about more than the parched marjoram. Walking back to the table where I still sit, she sinks into the faded red cushion of her chair as if into some wreckage, her own wreckage I think, and crushes the dead leaves in her hand, holding out the dust of them in her palm for me to sniff. I oblige, but sense nothing but her own perfume.

Tosca begins.

“I had two childhoods. The first was spent with my family. My mother, my father, and my sister. My sister, whom my mother called
la-piccola-Mafalda,
The Tiny Mafalda—as though it were a single word—from the moment she was born and whom I’ve been calling the same ever since. When my mother died, my sister and I looked after my father as well as we might have been expected to do at ages five and eight. My father was never much good at looking after anyone save his horses. Save himself. But I was good at it and The Tiny Mafalda was good at it and so, together, we were fine. Fine enough. In our village, eating at least once a day and sleeping less than six to a broken bed and with no one beating or raping you on a regular basis meant you were fine. It was only with the perspective of the next childhood that I began to understand how poor I’d been, how poor my family had been. Not with space or silver or brocade or feather beds did that perspective come. It came with food.

“I’d never understood how hungry I’d always been until the time when I sat at the prince’s table and ate and ate until I was full. Oh, that didn’t happen on the first day and maybe not in the first week. But I’ll get to that.

“I suppose it’s true that, on the day when the prince came to fetch me from my father’s house, I acted the nine-year-old savage. I know Cosimo told you that. I was using anger and orneriness to cover my fear. Fear of a new devil. My father was the known devil, but who was this smiling yellow-haired devil who spoke in such a soft voice? And then there were his wife and his daughters, another kind of devil. His wife. The princess Simona. Neither kind nor cruel, neither beautiful nor ugly, she was a fluttering presence who interested me far less than did the young princesses, Yolande and Charlotte. They, too, were unlike anyone I’d ever known or seen. They had names I’d never heard. They wore white stockings embroidered with butterflies and white leather shoes tied with satin ribbons and, though they were seven and eight while I’d just turned nine, they seemed to be ages older as they scurried about the grand place with such purpose, curtsying to the tall yellow-haired devil with the soft voice who was their father. As though this family had come from another corner of the earth than mine rather than from across two hills and over a few kilometers of narrow white road; yes, that’s how I felt. As though they had come from another corner of the earth. We were geographical neighbors in the way Sicilians are neighbors, and yet one of their more modest drawing rooms was larger than my church, and the house where I’d lived would have been lost in the space of their pantry. And there were so many people. Not just the mother, the father, and the children but cousins, aunts, a governess who spoke even more strangely than the family, a music professor, a Latin professor, an art professor. A priest. Others whom I can’t remember now. Everywhere there were servants. And guests in arrival and departure, and so it was like living in the puppet theater I’d once seen at the market in Enna. The constant entrances and exits of splendidly dressed people reciting their lines so perfectly. I watched. I watched them all and, little by little, the savage motherless green-eyed child from the horse farm grew calm. Calm enough to become curious. And then calm enough to dare join in the show myself.

“With bells and gongs and Ave Marias to mark the hours, the household regime was rigorous, compulsory. We three girls were awakened, scrubbed, combed, braided, dressed by a thirteen-year-old maid called Agata. Our Agata. Yes, it was she. The same. You’ll get to know far more about Agata.

“The household gathered in the chapel for prayers and benediction at 7:45, breakfasted together in one of the smaller dining rooms at eight. We walked in the garden until nine when lessons began in the schoolroom. At one o’clock the household and guests assembled at table in another of the smaller dining rooms for lunch—a procession of tureens and platters and trays carried ’round by servants amidst the dull chink cut crystal makes as it collides in endless wishes of
salute, salute.
Never risking the bad fortune that comes with crossing arms, each one walked about the table until he or she was certain to have touched everyone’s glass at least once. Twice was better. Only the yellow-haired devil stood, unmoving, at his place while all of us went to him. Even the princess Simona seemed
allegra
in her stroll about the table, wishing good health, sometimes patting a face or an arm almost affectionately. I don’t recall her ever touching my face back then. I remember a gray dress of hers, though, one sewn with shiny beads at the top, and how her bobbed hair was set in tight waves and how the points of her cheeks went red and how she was almost pretty at that time of day.

“There was a mandatory
riposo
until 4:30, when tea was served in the garden or, in winter, in the schoolroom. Though lessons resumed at five, on some afternoons we girls were allowed to close our books and sit by the fire with our sewing until seven, when Agata came to rescue us, to help us dress for dinner.
Aperitivi
were served in the room where we breakfasted and then we walked, en masse—often more than twenty strong—down the long, dark corridors to the main dining hall.

“In light of the
grande bouffe
that was lunch, dinner seemed penitential—broth, cheese, glaceéd fruits, biscuits. Wine. A common, catching sulk prevailed. A whole day’s worth of grievances accumulated, carried to the silk-draped table, passed about like soured milk. Simona had perhaps quarreled with the governess or the governess with the art professor and surely there were dramas among them less perceptible to me. Nevertheless they always seemed to be played out in the evening. I would sit there in my white dress, my braids coiled so tightly above my ears that my head ached, and think how very much the same the event of supper was here at the palace as it had been at home. Always having to worry if my father was angry or why, or if it was I who caused the anger. Worse was wondering if it was I who should be at work making his anger go away. Yet here among this vast polished cast, the game of mea culpa, tua culpa was played out with far more skulk. How I would long to be alone with The Tiny Mafalda in the narrow pallet of a bed that was ours. What price this thin white dress. This supper.”

“I had a room in the children’s wing, two rooms really; the furnishings, the walls, everything was colored pale yellow and white. Even the floors were yellow and white, great marble squares laid in a pattern that made me dizzy. And a bathroom of my own with a tub big enough to swim in, or so it seemed, though I didn’t know the first thing about swimming. I didn’t know much about bathing, either. I’d never had a bath in a tub except when my mother would plunk The Tiny Mafalda and me in the washtub out in the garden on the days when the washing water wasn’t all that dirty. I missed The Tiny Mafalda.

“There was an alcove behind my bed where Agata slept, and I would talk to her about my sister. Sometimes that helped, but mostly all that helped were the times when I’d run away. Or ride away, back home. I’m sure that Cosimo has told you about my escapes, since I believe they are his favorite memories of me. My escapes and my thievings. Of course, the two were connected. They were connected to hunger, just as I think most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another.

“Every time I sat down at table with the household, all I could think about was my sister. What was she eating for lunch? Was she eating at all? Did my father remember to leave money for her to do the shopping? I was tortured by my worries for her. Time and time again, I would wait until Agata and the rest of the household were napping and then creep out of the bedroom, step lightly down the stairs and across what seemed the immensity of the halls and the corridors and out one door or another, out one passageway or another. Free. Away into the damp, cool respite of the garden. Push open the great creaking gate and don’t look back. Now run. Faster. Some sack or bag fastened to me, something good for my sister. It felt fine to run, to sweat, to feel the sack slapping against my leg. Slower, then, when I’d reached the road. Hike the white road, cross the hills back home.

“Not announcing my return as anything extraordinary, I would just pick up where I’d left off, look through the cupboard and in the baskets for whatever there was to cook and get to work. The Tiny Mafalda would be dancing ’round me, kissing me, reaching up to hold me about the waist and squeezing me with all her baby-girl’s strength, and I would start in weeping and then she would and then we’d both be laughing and crying and my father would walk in and, without so much as a word from him, or him hearing a word from me, I’d be hurled down onto the bed of his truck and, with Mafalda stamping one foot and then the other on the bottom step of the porch and screaming at him with all her might to let me stay, he’d drive, pell-mell, back across the hills. Back down the white road. Back to the palace.

“After those episodes I knew that my father, having to punish someone, would be even less tolerant of my sister. I would learn that on those evenings he would sometimes eat whatever was there and not offer anything to her. I don’t think he ever knew that the first thing Mafalda and I would do on those days when I came back home was to hide the food I’d thieved from the palace. Or did he? And if he did know, is that why he’d finish up the cabbage and the bread and never save a scrap for her? Did he know she was up there sitting on the little pallet, her steady nibbling keeping time with her snuffling?

“Once delivered back to the palace, desperate as only a child can be desperate, I’d take to my bed. Trembling, the raging inside my chest suffocating me until, as if from some faraway place, I would finally hear Agata’s voice. Until I would feel the caressing of her cool hands through my wet matted hair. She would peel off my clothes, fill the great tub with water that was always too hot, scald and scrub me red and raw, pull a shift over my head. Lay me down to sleep.

“The next day did not bring my contrition. Truth is, I loved stealing that food to take to my sister. I don’t know if it would have felt half so good if the plunder was for me, myself, but stealing for Mafalda was thrilling. I would imagine the light coming on in her big, sad eyes and I’d start right back in with my scheming and thieving. I’d take more. Always more. Oh, it wasn’t as though I had to work very hard at collecting the food. Early on, Agata understood what I’d been doing and why, and she and another maid helped me. In a wooden box in the
dispensa
they would hoard cheese, dried sausages, dried fruits. Even two of the cooks became conspirators. Whatever pie or cake or biscuit they baked, they baked a Mafalda-sized version, wrapped it in a fresh white cloth, and into the wooden box it went. Whereas I’d begun by keeping apart some of my bread at each meal and supplementing it with the meager pilfering of the cupboards—a handful of rice tied up in a handkerchief, two potatoes, things like that—it wasn’t long before the weekly or biweekly stash was more than I could carry. Additional accomplices rescued me.