A Winter's Night (21 page)

“How much have we inherited?” asked Dante.

“It's mother who has inherited,” specified Floti. “We haven't inherited anything.”

“Yes, but . . . ” Dante protested.

“But nothing. It belongs to mother.”

“The inheritance is mine,” said Clerice, “but I won't live forever and when I die it will be divided up in equal parts for each of you. Parents always live for their children.”

The thought of an inheritance, that is, money and land falling from the sky instead of being the fruit of long, hard labor, was so unsettling to the brothers that it may even have caused niggardly thoughts to worm their way into the minds of those present; for instance, that Gaetano's death had left a richer share for those remaining. It was neither evil nor cynical on their part, probably just automatic. But Clerice must have seen a glimmer in the eyes of some of her children that she didn't like, although she continued without a moment's hesitation.

“Our feelings are the best part of each one of us and no one must forget that we are a family before anything else, and that money is not everything in life, although it may often come in handy. Remember that money creates envy, jealousy, disagreement and malice. Many people have found themselves ruined because they couldn't be happy with what they had.”

Floti started up again. “There are problems, in any case. To get the inheritance, mother has to go to Genova. She'll have to sign, in the notary's presence, that she accepts the inheritance and whatever else is involved . . . ”

“What does that mean?” asked Fredo.

“That you can inherit debts as well, and you have to decide if you want to do that or you don't.”

“What!” exclaimed Dante. “What kind of an inheritance is that, anyway?”

“That's the way it is. Whether you like it or not. But if you think about it, anyone who comes into an inheritance is usually happy about it, right? It almost always improves your lot in life . . . ”

Some of the brothers, in trying to understand what Floti and Dante were saying, had already gotten lost along the way and they only thing they had clear was that it was all very confusing, stuff that you needed an education to understand. Everyone knew that if you were poor and unschooled that made you an easy mark and you could be easily fooled by notaries, lawyers, counselors and the like. They'd bleed you white if you didn't watch out. So when Floti finally put the decision to his assembled family, reminding them that if no one went to claim the inheritance within a certain amount of time, the state would take anything there was to take, he was met with a long silence.

Armando tried to lighten things up by cracking a joke—he had one for every occasion—but he was shushed by the others. “Stay serious, we're talking about the family interests,” Dante chastised him.

Armando shut his mouth, but not before he could get in a fast, “Too bad because it was a good one.”

“Then you tell us what you think, Dante,” Floti urged, calling on the second eldest brother to provide an opinion.

“It doesn't seem so rich to me,” said Dante. “First of all, Genova is quite a ways away. She'd have to take a train, find a hotel, eat at an
osteria
. How is she even supposed to find the office of this notary and how long will it take her, unless we hire a carriage? And all of that costs money. Then, as you just said, we have to see if there's something to be had, like money or land, or just a pile of debts. It wouldn't be the first time! And what about the notary? He'll want to be paid as well. And just how do we calculate if we stand to lose or to gain? We'll have to hire an accountant to add things up for us, and there you go, another expense. There's nothing certain about this. I would forget about it. After all, things aren't going so badly for us: why should we go out looking for trouble?”

Floti listened without letting out any feeling or emotion and continued making the rounds to gather his brothers' thoughts.

Fredo was of the same opinion as Dante. The city was far away, they'd never been there, everyone knew that city people can't wait to make fools out of country folk, to trick them and make them look like idiots. It was all much too complicated, and the only sure thing was that they'd have to spend money. Best to let the whole thing go.

Armando made a little speech that was actually quite sensible, and mirrored their mother's: as long as there was nothing to split up, they all got along fine, but as soon as money and property were in the game, they'd kill each other for a dime. This inheritance didn't seem all that great after all, and who had the money for all those expenses? None of them did, so that settled the matter, didn't it.

Floti expected that at least Checco would favor giving the endeavor a try, but instead he was very cool, leaning towards no rather than yes. He was more fatalistic than anything else: if you're born poor you die poor and you'd better get used to the idea. Thinking that you can better your lot in life holds more risks than advantages. And he was honestly perplexed about how Clerice would get along in such a distant city: what if she got sick? Or if she had some kind of accident? How would they find her? How would they get her back home?

“That makes four,” Floti thought to himself and he realized that he'd already lost, unless their mother herself spoke out in favor of the idea. He was sorry he'd thrown out both the pros and the cons; he should have emphasized the pros, certainly.

It was his turn to talk, and he knew it would take great skill to get his mother and the others to change their minds. He hoped to sway Checco, at least, who was such an intelligent lad.

“I think you are all mistaken: you, Dante, and you, Armando and Fredo and most of all, Checco; you've seen the world, you've been in France, I'm surprised at you! How can you say such a thing? I've heard of a considerable number of people who have managed to change their lot in life: some who have started out without a penny to their names and have built a fortune in a foreign country, others who have gone into debt to make an investment and earned it all back tenfold. Risk is the spice of life! Why is it that all of you only see difficulties and problems? If no one had ever dared to try something new, we'd still be savages. There are problems, I admit that, but they can be solved. Money? We can always go to a bank, show them this letter, and say: ‘This is an inheritance. If you, the bank, lend us money to go and get it, we'll give you five percent.' Can't you see that?”

“Mother may have inherited land, farms, for instance. Can you imagine us finally working our own land without having to turn over a share to anybody? Or starting up another kind of business? Always with our mother's permission, of course, that's clear. Just letting it go, allowing the government to scoop it all up, that's madness, to my mind. My opinion is that we should scrape together enough money for the trip and for a hotel for mother in Genova, so that she can collect her inheritance. If you like, I will go with her. I'm sure we can do this.”

That's where he made his mistake. Him taking over the role of the patriarch, without being the eldest brother, had already irked some of them. They had never said anything in the past because the results were good, but a sense of envy was already rife among them. When he offered to accompany their mother, more than one of them felt that Floti, underneath it all, must have had some personal interest of his own at heart. Had he convinced her to favor him in some way? Had he already made a deal with the notary? In a matter of moments, the idea that “better nothing for anyone than too much for one alone” spread like wildfire among the brothers. Ignorance, always the companion of diffidence, did the rest.

Savino, on the other hand, spoke openly in Floti's favor. He was still too young to have certain thoughts and he was fascinated by his older brother's personality; Floti always knew what to do, seemingly without having any doubts. Or, if he did have doubts, he got rid of them by grabbing the bull by the horns. He also admired how his brother was so attractive to women, but didn't let himself fall for a girl easily. Floti could make them suffer, all right; when he accepted a relationship it was him in the lead: he never succumbed to a woman like poor Gaetano had, destroying his own life in the bargain. The girl who would pull the wool over the eyes of Raffaele Bruni, known as Floti, hadn't been born yet!

“Floti is right!” Savino cried out as soon as his turn came. “He's the one who should go with mother. He knows how to handle himself; a lawyer or a notary can't fool him or lead him by the nose like a chump. He's our brother: who can we trust if not him?”

Floti even tried to pull Maria, always his favorite, over to his side. Whenever he went to the market, he'd always bring back a little something for her dowry: a bit of lace, an embroidered towel, sometimes even perfume. But Clerice stopped him: “In this household, or in any other house I've heard of, it's never the women who decide the affairs of the family, except for the
arzdoura
; as the matriarch, I will speak for her, and you already know how I feel about this.”

Talk was finished, the decision made. They'd do nothing.

That nonevent became legendary: for years in town everyone spoke of a fabulous inheritance that had been tossed to the winds due to the Brunis' stubborn simplemindedness. No one would ever learn how much it amounted to.

There was never any doubt that it had truly existed, because precisely one year later, another letter arrived from the notary in Genova to inform them that, since no one had appeared to claim the inheritance, it had been turned over to the state's coffers. Armando said that this Mr. Coffer was a very fortunate guy and that they had been idiots, but it was too late to do anything about it. Floti said nothing, because just thinking about it made his blood boil.

It wasn't long at all before life picked up again as if nothing had ever happened.

Checco married a young woman from town called Esterina. Intelligent, affectionate and uncomplicated, she immediately entered into Clerice's good graces. They had a happy marriage because they were well suited to each other and happy with what they had. Checco didn't want to be a farmer his whole life, and decided to learn a trade that would allow him to make ends meet, while his wife tended to things at home without wearing herself out too much. And that would leave him a bit of time to spend with his cronies in town. He knew he'd have to be careful about having children, because once they moved into a rented house, there wouldn't be much room. Destiny gave him a hand here because once his wife had had their first son, she never remained pregnant again.

They called the boy Vasco, a name they'd heard in the pirate stories that Fonso told at night in the stable. The war and the battle of Bligny were much more distant in Checco's memory than they were on the calendar, although he never quite forgot Pipetta belting out his song so he could be heard over the cannon fire and calling him “milord” as he merrily turned his cart in the direction of the steel monsters in a headlong race to meet his fate, like Amphiaraus in
Seven Against Thebes
, another of Fonso's tales.

Floti had also begun seeing a girl, seriously and with the most honorable intentions. But once again, as in many other ways, his behavior set him apart from all his brothers: he was the only one to break with the age-old adage that it was better to stick to your kith and kin when seeking a bride. She hailed from a nearby town on the Samoggia. Better to mix up your cards than stay local, Floti declared. Her name was Mafalda and she was lovely without being showy, the kind of beauty that lets itself be discovered and appreciated a little at a time. Only her eyes shone outright: they were black as coal, shadowed by long lashes, quick and intriguing. They spoke much more openly than her mouth did, which she often kept closed, especially when she found herself in talky company.

This was a quality of hers that Floti liked instantly; he read it as a sign of her intelligence. When he finally saw her unveiled, the first night of their marriage, her shape softly revealed in the light of a candle that she had distractedly forgotten to blow out, he reveled in her sensual perfection. Her breasts were firm and round like those of the bronze sirens in Bologna's main square. She had stepped out of her clothing, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, and the shapeless gray folds of the material contrasted with the sinuous curves of her body.

Floti, who had been brought up to be proper, was still in his underwear at this point, but encouraged by the sudden and unexpected immodesty of his bride, stripped to the buff as well. Holding her close in bed later, he said: “Why were you always hiding in such big, shapeless dresses? I could never have imagined that you were so beautiful.”

“Why would I want to be admired by men I'm not interested in? So I could go to the trouble of spurning them? I was waiting for this moment, to show myself only to you.”

So this was the kind of love, the kind of lover, that rich, powerful men could seek and hold for themselves! Floti felt that a kind of miracle had happened to him. He resolved to love her wholly, fully, deeply, and to stay beside her his whole life. He realized that he wanted that body, those eyes and that smile all for himself; he would not let her be disfigured by an endless series of pregnancies, nor worn out by toil, nor burned by the sun and the frost. He would cherish her and defend her like wheat ready to be harvested, like a cluster of ripe grapes.

But even this fact, of having a beautiful wife who remained that way, ended up sowing envy, among both his brothers and their own wives. Floti ran his life well and lived well. He didn't dirty his hands in the stable, nor did he soil his shoes with mud or dust. When he left the house he always wore a clean, pressed shirt and jacket, cotton trousers in the summer and wool ones in the winter. Practically no one remembered that he'd returned from the war with shrapnel in his lung and that the doctors had admonished him not to do heavy or tiring labor. Despite this, the well-being of the family had always depended largely on him. He sold their cheese at the best price, paying attention to the trends of the market, his hay was untouched by mold, his fruit blemish-free, his wine without a flaw. He managed this by choosing the right men for each job. All in all, he never put on airs, he treated everyone with respect and when he'd made a good deal he always remembered to bring home some prettily patterned material for his sisters-in-law and some toys for the children.