Enchantments (8 page)

For some time now I've been suffering from stomachaches, cramps that keep me in bed with my arms wrapped around my body. Mama takes me to the doctor and that is how I come to take medicine for the first time, brown pills, sweet on the outside and tasting like flour inside.

Mama tells me that I mustn't worry so much about school, and I say, yes, I'll stop worrying. But it's not school—it's Teresa who's giving me stomachaches.

She came into class one day with her darting eyes. The school year had already begun, and the principal brought her in to introduce her to the teacher and her new schoolmates. While the principal was speaking, Teresa's eyes never
stopped moving from one face to another. I thought of the pellets of mercury that run out of a broken thermometer, and I didn't notice anything else about her, just those restless eyes. After yet another frantic tour of the room, her eyes suddenly stopped at my face, examining my cheeks, mouth, and nose and at last fastening on my eyes and not letting go.

By the third day we were inseparable.

We saw each other after school almost every day, usually at her house since Teresa was an only child and her parents were always out. That way there was no one to distract us when we wrote our novel about a queen of heaven named Aurora Borealis, or to spy on us when we planned our crimes. We were going to steal four rings, three hatpins, and a rhinestone necklace from a department store. It was a robbery that we prepared meticulously, but right in the middle of it she bolted, leaving me standing in front of the display case with the open shopping bag in my hands. Of course I ran too, dropping the empty bag. I didn't speak to her for two weeks.

We were both good at schoolwork. And we made a pretty picture when we stood cheek to cheek and looked at ourselves in the mirror, though, to tell the truth, I saw that her eyes
shone more brightly than mine, as if they were lit up by the constant whirring of her mind.

Right out loud, Teresa mimicked the teacher, who pronounced the
p
in
Champs-Elysées.
Then she turned and stabbed me with a dazzling glance, while I felt envious and bewildered because just then I'd been feeling sorry for the teacher. Teresa's sassiness electrified me. And I was electrified by the way she pulled off her blue kneesocks in the school bathroom and flipped them into the air and then, with loving care, almost a caress, slipped on her fishnet stockings with the seam in back.

There were two things I couldn't stand: her way of pointing her nose in the air as if communing with who-knew-what lofty realm and then deigning to let her judgment descend. And there was the fact that she always liked the same boy I liked, so that if I said, “You know, I like so-and-so,” she would invariably reply, “Actually, I like him too.”

One afternoon—by now we were in middle school—we shut ourselves in her mother's bathroom to put on makeup, enough makeup so heads would turn. Then we went to take pictures of ourselves in a photo booth. The next day we gave the photo to a classmate whom we used as a go- between.
We enclosed a note that asked, “Who of the two do you like more?” and ordered the boy to give everything to Marco, whom we were both crazy about. But this go-between was such a dolt that he delivered the answer to us in the middle of Latin class. The teacher, who was an old spinster, confiscated everything including our photo, sent the two of us to the principal's office, and put a black mark in the class roll. As soon as I set foot in the office, I felt a knot in my stomach, and the whole time the principal was giving me a lecture all I could think of was that “Jezebel” rhymes with “Go to hell.” Teresa had dropped her great-lady act and was standing there with her head hanging down. The principal called our homes, but Teresa's parents were out and mine were away on a trip. That evening she and I phoned each other and, in the midst of tears, made a pact—we would both go to school the next day no matter what.

But Teresa didn't come—she left me to face the second part of the trial by myself. The principal stood up in front of the class and called me to the teacher's desk to shame me in front of all my classmates. I despised Teresa for not having come. But she did something even worse— another theft. This time she stole my best friend,
Anna—Anna who lived on the fifth floor of our apartment building.

One morning at school I see the two of them huddled together. They're giggling, having great fun together. When I go to join them, they barely say hello. I can tell they got together the day before, behind my back, and that my exile has just begun. That afternoon my stomachaches begin in earnest. I hardly sleep, with dreams that only add new pain or false hopes to my forlorn waking hours. This torment lasts an eternity. Then it abruptly comes to an end. One day I get on the elevator with Anna, and I get her back on my side. Without even saying hello, I start in. “Everybody says you like Paolo.”

“Who, everybody?” she asks, alarmed.

“Oh, I don't know, Maddalena, Silvia … They told me that by now even Paolo knows.”

Anna grows pale, and that's when I tell a lie, releasing the poisoned arrow. “They heard it from Teresa.”

I know Anna very well, and I can see I've hit the target.

“It's not true that I like Paolo, it's not true at all. That's just some lie Teresa made up.” And indeed, she says this with bitter resentment.

“Could be—who knows? Maybe it just
slipped out. I certainly haven't told anyone.” I say this lightly not wanting to put salt on her wound. I'm satisfied for now, but I'm savoring the revenge that's still to come. Because this is just the beginning. Teresa will pay. She'll pay for everything. She'll pay for all those things that I would like to do but don't dare.

The road is white and the fields are yellow, speckled here and there with bloodred poppies. At night there are fireflies, hundreds, maybe thousands, but now it's daytime, and what I see are Gonda's black ears, bobbing up and down across the line between Earth and sky.

Papa and I are in the buggy on our way to the Cecchinis’—the tenant farmers at Civitella, my father's best farm. But first we'll stop in the town square, where we have an appointment with the farm manager.

Gonda's hooves echo in the main street. People look at us. They're curious and admiring, but they keep clear. A mother, misinterpreting Gonda's whinny, grabs the hand of her child— it's actually the horse's greeting—but the mare
is too black, too alarming a creature. I can't help feeling a shiver of pride.

My father knows everybody, and people come up to him to say hello and compliment Gonda. Some of them pat her neck, which is shiny with sweat. There's also a brother of Papa's, Alfio, but they don't get along, they're still arguing over Grandfather's estate, even though he died years ago. Papa always pokes fun at Alfio, says that he's spiteful, greedy, and stingy, that he's not as handsome as Papa is, not as nice, and that's why no woman wanted to marry him.

And today too, after they greet each other, Papa starts poking at him: Is it true that Alfio's farm equipment was wrecked when the roof of the Montesca shed fell in because Alfio cut corners on repairs? Is it true that the farm at San Biagio will yield only a few tons because it rained too much? Strange—because on his own fields it rained just enough and now the wheat is waist high, shining, soft and golden. Is it true that at the club no one wants Alfio at the poker table because he always spoils the game, peeking at everyone's hand, whereas they've asked Papa to be president? Would Alfio like to see, here and now, which of the two of them can attract more people around him?

My father proposes that they each go to a corner of the square, and I'm to count how many people come up to talk with him and how many with Alfio.

“That's not fair,” Alfio says. “You have the horse, of course you'll win.”

“Fine. Then we'll have the girl and Gonda wait in the middle.”

So there I am in the middle of the square halfway between Papa and my uncle with Gonda's bridle tight in my hands. I'm very anxious, partly because Gonda is restless and is making the wheels of the buggy clatter back and forth, and partly because I really want Papa to win, but I don't want Alfio's losing to be a total defeat. I see Alfio's thin little body, his nervous tic. On the other side of the square I see Papa's imposing figure. I see the gleam of Alfio's bald spot. On the other side I see Papa's full head of hair. And at that moment, even though I know I should be on Papa's side, I suffer for Alfio, so much that I want to shout, “Stop! That's enough—no game!” Gonda is becoming more impatient and starts pawing the pavement with her hoof. Meanwhile people are gathering around Papa, more and more of them, while a few nod to Alfio and walk on by.

By now it's useless for me to pay attention, useless for me to keep score. The only thing I can do is hang on to Gonda's bridle as she rears, lifting me into the air to celebrate Papa's triumph.

Before the September storms, there always came a Sunday afternoon when our vacation seemed too long, when Clara and I would be sitting in the cool front hall of the villa to escape the heavy air outside, paying attention to the relentless buzzing of a fly against the window-pane, an unmistakable sign of our boredom. One of us would lazily ask, “What'll we do now?” a bit irritated at seeing the other one in the same state of listlessness. We'd pretend to think about it for an instant. And then we'd give up with a sigh and end up sitting there, doing nothing for hours.

On afternoons like that, back home after a month at Versilia on the Tuscan coast, it would sometimes happen that some of my father's cousins would come for a visit. Mariapia was a
widow, and she came with her old-maid sister, Elisabetta, and almost always with her eighteen-year-old daughter, Grazia. They came in their tiny sky blue car, the daughter at the wheel beside her enormous mother, who took up most of the space in front, and in the back, surprisingly skinny and swaying like a pendulum, was Elisabetta.

When we were all sitting around in wicker armchairs in front of the house, Grazia seemed quiet and wan, as if the imposing shadow of her mother darkened any gleam of adolescence in her.

But when the three of us, having left the grown-ups to their conversation, went for a walk in the park and Clara and I asked Grazia to tell us a story, she became a different person—she rattled on happily, and her whole face lit up.

Today she's telling us the story of
Wuthering Heights
and we're getting to the part where Heathcliff forces Cathy to marry his repulsive son, when Grazia stops and says, “If I show you something, do you swear you won't tell a soul?”

“What is it?” Clara says.

“First swear. Go on, make a cross with your fingers and kiss the cross.”

My sister and I perform this ritual. Then, from the pocket of her flowered dress, Grazia takes out a photo.

“Look,” she says with a little flutter of emotion, “this is the man I'm going to marry, my fiancé. Look how handsome he is, not a bit like Heathcliff's son. Look.”

We look. A black-and-white photo. In the foreground there's a boy in a soldier's uniform. It looks like one of those photos of a dead person in a cemetery, with the background fading into white. We're at a loss for a moment. At last I manage to say in a thin voice, “He's cute.” She doesn't notice and goes on with her story. “I kept seeing him in front of the repair shop where he works and he smiled at me, but I always looked away. But then one day I see him at the end of the street and when I go by he says, ‘Hello, beautiful signorina,’ and holds out a wonderful red rose. I look around to see if anyone's watching, then I take the rose and hide it under my coat and run away. Then I see him again at the same place, and this time we tell each other our names. And each time we meet we talk a little more, but if my mother's with me, we pretend not to know each other. I've gone with him in his car, up into the hills, and we kissed. Oh, I love him, I love him, I love him—but if my mother finds out she'll kill me, I have to think up excuses to go out, and I can't think of any more!”