A Winter's Night (35 page)

“You're a sensitive man, Fonso, a diplomat, even. There's meaning in what you say. For some people, talking is just running off at the mouth.”

“Thank you, doctor. I'm honored.”

“Have you heard anything about your brother-in-law, the one who had to leave?”

“He has settled down in Tuscany. He found a job and he's made a new life for himself. I'm only sorry that it won't be easy for us to see him again: the place he's gone to is far away, and not easy to get to. He and I have had words in the past, because he didn't want me to marry his sister, but he's an honest, intelligent person and these days, that's a rare find.”

Whenever they could, Fonso and Maria went over to Dante's house to see Clerice, because she was having such problems getting around that they hardly ever met up with her coming out of church after the mass anymore. Armando was so taken up by the troubles he had at home that he thought of nothing else, and Checco refused to have anything to do with the brother his mother was living with and thus it came to be that it was Maria who kept up relations with her brothers and passed on their news. She even wrote Rosina in Florence when she could. She'd give anything to be able to go see her, or to have her come back home for a visit, but now that everyone had gone their own way, it was even harder because Rosina wouldn't have known who to stay with.

Once it was Rosina who wrote: a strange, disturbing letter that hinted at problems without saying clearly that anything was wrong. The one thing that came through was her unhappiness, a sort of dark restlessness that Maria had always connected to her sister's marriage. Before she'd left home to be married, Rosina was a joyful girl, eager to experience life, and now Maria yearned to be with her, to give her back some of that affection and warmth that Rosina had showered her with when she was staying in Florence. She even asked Fonso if it was possible to telephone her.

“It's complicated,” replied Fonso, “as well as expensive. You have to find out where the telephone office closest to her is and make an appointment. Then, when it's time, we would go into town to the post office and call her. But you get no pleasure out of it, because you know how much each minute is costing you and you can't wait for the call to be over so you don't end up broke.”

Four years passed in this way, with Lucia entering and leaving the mental hospital, Floti's reassuring letters that came less and less often, and Rosina's often melancholic letters from Florence. That fifth year, one day in mid-August, Clerice began to feel unwell and in the beginning of the fall she took to her bed. One afternoon in October, one of Dante's daughters arrived at Fonso's house on her bicycle, saying that her
nonna
was gravely ill.

Maria was first to arrive, on her bicycle. She had left a note for Fonso, who wasn't back from work yet, that she'd had to run off to see her mother, who had taken a turn for the worse. Savino was there almost as soon as she was, followed, much later, by Armando who had gotten a ride on Iofa's cart, and by Fredo. The pastor had preceded them all, because Clerice had called him first: she didn't want to appear before God without having received the sacraments.

Savino had sent his farmhand to call Checco, but he didn't show up, because of the bad blood between him and Dante.

Maria found her mother in the bedroom, practically sitting up in bed with two pillows behind her back, breathing laboriously but perfectly lucid. “She hasn't been the same since the night they burned down the stables,” whispered Dante's wife into Maria's ear. “She's never gotten over the fear she felt that night.”

Although it was still light out, the room was deep in shadow and the priest was administering extreme unction.

“
Mamma
, how are you feeling?” asked Maria, holding her hand.

“Not well, as God would have it, daughter.”

“The boys are all downstairs. Floti's not here, though. We wrote him that you weren't well, but I don't know if he can leave his work and come up . . . ”

“I know. It's better he doesn't show his face here yet. It's still too soon. But you tell him that I've always remembered him in my prayers and that I'll pray for him from up there as well, if I end up with the Lord's own.”

“What are you saying,
mamma
? You're going to get better!”

“I don't think so. It's time for me to give up the ghost. It's a very bad sign, my daughter, when they come to anoint your feet, a very bad sign,” she repeated with tears in her eyes. Maria clasped her hand more tightly. “You're never ready to abandon life, don't think otherwise. There are so many things that hold us here: our feelings, our habits, the sacrifices we've made to earn a decent life for ourselves . . . so many things.”

She didn't make it to the next morning. She died weeping because she had to go without seeing the son who was the dearest to her heart.

Checco didn't go to the funeral for the same reason he didn't run to his mother's deathbed, and that was something that, in such a small town, did not go unnoticed. People said all kinds of things, but no one ever found out the truth. The sons who did participate could not carry the coffin on their shoulders as they would have liked to, because Armando was so much smaller than the others that the coffin would not have travelled evenly. In truth, they waited until after their mother was buried to send a telegram to Floti, so that he wouldn't get it into his head to leave the safety of his shelter and show up at the funeral.

Clerice's departure was experienced as the last important event of the Bruni household since they had separated. After Clerice was gone, each one of the brothers took care of himself and raised his own children and the occasions on which the family gathered together became rarer and rarer. In the end, they met only when they happened to run into each other, except for the time when Checco set off with the intention of visiting Floti, just to see how he was doing and if he needed anything. He found that the children had grown up well and that they were very happy with their adoptive mother, who treated them just like her own in every way.

“Would you consider coming back?” Checco asked his brother the evening before he'd planned to leave, while Mariuccia was washing the dishes. “Sooner or later things will change and . . . ”

“I don't think so,” said Floti. “My life is here now.”

”Don't you miss your friends? The family?”

“Yes, but . . . I'm managing to get used to that too. Do give everyone my regards, please.”

“Yes, sure,” replied Checco. “As ordered.”

The next morning at dawn, Floti accompanied his brother to the bus stop. The air was slightly, almost imperceptibly, misty and the autumn foliage was starting to change color. The chestnut leaves, in particular, were a rich, intense orange and the husks were already opening to reveal the fruit inside, shiny as leather. The mountains that towered beyond the forests were already capped with snow.

“Bye, then,” said Checco.

“Maybe we'll see each other again, some time or other,” replied Floti. They looked into each other's eyes for a few instants, seeking something more to say, but in the meantime the bus pulled up and Checco got on. Floti stood watching until it drove out of sight.

When Savino found out about Checco's trip, it really got his back up, because he would have liked to go visit Floti as well. He promised himself he'd do so at the first possible chance, but none came up for a great number of years.

His relationship with Nello continued despite their deep differences of opinion, because friendship somehow always wins out in the end. Savino couldn't forget that, if it hadn't been for his friend, the fascists would probably have burned the house down as well. And that Nello had always warned him when Floti was in danger.

Both of them had sons. Nello's son was called Rossano and Savino's was called Fabrizio. The both attended the nursery school run by the nuns and they played happily together. Nello would often allow Rossano to go by bicycle to visit his friend at the farm where Savino worked. Rossano loved the place because there was a big soaking pond which had fallen into disuse because it wasn't profitable to plant hemp anymore. The pond had been filled with fish of every sort: catfish, tenches, carps and even goldfish, which were the ones he liked best. When they managed to catch one with a net, Fabrizio got one of the glass jars they used for canning tomatoes, filled it with clean water and put the fish in so that his friend could take it home with him.

As they grew up, the boys absorbed the attitudes and political convictions of their fathers, even if it was obligatory for both of them to sign up for the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the fascist youth organization, and wear the uniform when they did their drill exercises on Saturday afternoons.

“Do you know what
balilla
means?' Rossano asked Fab­rizio one day.

“It means a fascist child,” replied his friend.

“No. ‘Balilla' was the nickname of a boy from Genova who was as old as us. One day a group of Austrian soldiers who had occupied the city managed to get one of their cannons stuck and they wanted to force some men to help them yank it out of the mud. Balilla threw a rock at them and all the other kids followed suit and that's how they chased the Austrians out of Genova. That's why we're called
balilla
.”

Fabrizio didn't answer because his father had taught him never to repeat in public what was said at home, and that is, that the fascists had transformed all of Italy into a barracks and that sooner or later they would drag the country into war.

After they'd finished elementary school, the boys took off in different directions. Fabrizio went to work in the fields with his father. He learned to use a rake and a hoe and then, when he was a bit older and stronger, a spade and a scythe. Lastly, he learned pruning and grafting, the most difficult of a farmer's arts. And in the evening, his father sent him to take lessons from an elderly bookkeeper who taught him to keep the accounts for the farm. Savino hoped that one day his father-in-law, who didn't have any sons of his own, might entrust him with managing his properties.

Rossano, instead, was sent to a fascist party school, first in Ravenna and then in Perugia. If he studied hard and got good marks, he might go all the way to Rome.

The two boys thus had fewer and fewer occasions to see each other. Rossano did make it home during the school holidays, and they would meet up at the sports center, where they kicked around a soccer ball or even played bocce. Both tried to avoid talking about politics so as not to ruin their friendship, but it wasn't easy. The subject always came up somehow and it would be very embarrassing for both of them, especially since Rossano, after two or three years at school, took to wearing the fascist uniform, with its black shirt and silk-fringed fez.

“What do you mean by that uniform?” Fabrizio asked him one day. “Can't you wear something normal, at least when we're together?”

“This is normal for me, don't you understand? It means that I'm a volunteer for the national security militia.”

“What need is there for a militia? Don't we already have the police; aren't the
carabinieri
good enough at taking care of national security?”

“We act under the direct orders of the
Duce
and we are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for him and for our country.”

“I see you've been indoctrinated well.”

“You're the one who's been indoctrinated by the reds, the defeatists and the traitors of our country!”

Fabrizio looked down without reacting: he'd learned there was no changing him and thus no point in arguing. His friend had been raised to believe in an out-and-out cult of a supreme leader to whom he owed blind obedience.

“Do we have to fight?” asked Fabrizio.

Rossano held his tongue in the face of a question that took all the fire out of the debate.

“Well?” insisted Fabrizio.

“No . . . we don't have to, but you provoked me.”

“I was only trying to make you see that since you've been going to that school, you're not the same. You look for an enemy even where none exists, and it seems like you're always looking for a fistfight. Anyway, you've joined up with a group who goes around beating people up, the same ones who burned my father's stable down because our family didn't see things their way. You know what I'm talking about. Think about it, Rossano, turn back while you're still in time. An idea that splits apart two guys who have been friends since birth is certainly a bad one.”

They lost touch with each other. Rossano continued to attend the party school, moving from Perugia to Rome, and on the few occasions he came back to town, there wasn't much time. If they ran into each other, after a first brief moment of delight, a certain uneasiness stepped in, reflect­ing their differing conditions and convictions but even more so the sensation of no longer feeling comfortable with one another. They still felt nostalgic about their childhood, when they'd spent long hours playing together or just laying on the grass watching the clouds and the birds flying by, in absorbed, silent contemplation. They would try to change the subject to girls, but even that didn't work. So in the end they'd just say goodbye.

“See you around.”

“See you around.”

Fabrizio got along well with Bruno Montesi, even though he was quite a bit older. Bruno had opened up a shop in the area of town that people called “Madonna della Provvidenza,” since it was near the sanctuary. So everyone simply called Bruno “the Madonna's blacksmith.” When some work needed doing on his father-in-law's farm, Savino would send Fabrizio to summon Bruno because he had a forge and bellows. Sometimes it would be to make the grating for a window, or a fence for the pigsty. Or a door hinge that needed replacing. He was also good at sharpening the scythes and the blades on the hoes and spades before the spring planting season. Fabrizio would sit and watch that spry, slender boy wielding a one-kilo hammer as if it were made of wood. He always had that curious smell of the forge about him.