Kal (3 page)

His life had changed since that night. He had tried to reason with her. He had even tried to pretend that she was joking, although he knew she was not.

‘But how can there be any joy in our meeting?' he had finally argued.

‘It is not joy I want from you, Giovanni,' she said. ‘If you value your life you will come to me.' Sarina did not want to sound hard and ruthless, she knew it was not attractive. She would much prefer to have beguiled him. To have sat on his strong young thighs, her legs linked around his waist, running her tongue along his perfect boy's lips and pretending surprise as she felt him become rigid beneath her. But that would not work, not this time. He was too frightened. Everyone was too frightened of the De Creticos. So she had to be hard. If she remained celibate until the brothers found her the husband they promised, she might never know a man again. ‘And you will continue to come to me for as long as I wish,' she said.

From that night on Giovanni's entire existence had become one of self-loathing. He loathed the fact that Sarina continued to excite him. He loathed the fact that he served her like a stallion. He wished he could make himself impotent—then the widow would quickly be rid of him.

But as he crept around the outskirts of the village, passing his family's cottage in the dark, even as his pulse quickened with fear at the thought of discovery, Giovanni could feel the contemptible fire in his groin.

Sarina had started prowling the house shortly after sundown, impatient for Giovanni. There was no sense going outside to wait in the bitter cold, he would not come for hours yet.

She looked down from the balcony at the courtyard below. In the soft dusk light the paving stones shone deep ochre. The walls and the wide stone steps were terracotta—upon Marcello's instructions, the building materials had been transported from Tuscany—and in the very centre of the courtyard stood the beautiful marble statue. The woman on the pedestal dominated the house. Lifesize: face upturned, arm upstretched, fingers curled as if to capture something from the air—a bird or a butterfly. With her other hand she clasped loose drapes about her milky shoulder, leaving one perfect breast exposed. Marcello had bought the statue for Sarina in Rome. It reminded him of her, he had said.

It was a magnificent statue. It was a magnificent house. Just the house Sarina had wanted when they had married. It stood on the hill above the village looking down at the squat little cottages carved from the rock of the mountains and it symbolised her position of importance.

She hated the house now. Now it mirrored the emptiness of her life. What value beauty when there was no one to share it with?

As darkness descended, Sarina continued to prowl the balconies. She did not care if the servants wondered at her restlessness. Let them. Old fools. So what if they suspected something? Let them tell their tales, she would denounce them as liars and dismiss them. But they would not dare tell. They were too old to find work elsewhere; they would not dare threaten their comfortable existence.

Sarina's was a mock bravado. She trembled with fear at the thought of her brothers-in-law discovering her betrayal. Her blackmail threat to Giovanni had been an empty one. She would never tell Mario and Luigi that he had raped her. They would not believe her. They had always thought her a whore and she knew it. Certainly, if she dared cry rape they would punish Giovanni for having known their dead brother's widow. They might even castrate him. But she was the one they would kill, of that she was certain.

 

G
IOVANNI WAS NOT
the only one to whom life was loathsome. Sarina hated her existence. She had hoped that marrying into the wealthy De Cretico family might buy her happiness but she had been wrong.

She could remember being happy once. At twenty-three, when she had married Carlo, her first husband. They had been poor but that had not seemed to matter; they loved each other with a deep abiding passion. She surrendered her virginity to him joyfully, glad that she had not succumbed to any of her other suitors, of whom there had been many. Her body ached for him when he was away working on the railroads, and when they were reunited they did not leave the bed for days, eating and laughing and making endless love amongst the dishevelled linen.

Then the baby had come. A son. Carlo was so proud of her. Their lives were complete. Until the morning nine
months after the birth when she found the baby dead in its cradle. There was not a mark on him and there had been no warning sign of sickness. He had simply stopped breathing during the night. Grief and guilt and torment followed but ultimately they still had one another. ‘Do not cry, my love. We will make another baby, there is plenty of time.
Non piangere, cara
,' Carlo would say to her over and over.

But there was not plenty of time. Six months later Carlo was dead, one of six men killed in a tunnel collapse. The whole village gathered in the piazza to grieve, but that did not help Sarina. She herself was dead. Cold and dead inside. God had taken her child and her husband from her and to what purpose? Why? She still went to church on Sunday but it meant little to her.

At twenty-five Sarina's life was over and she wondered why she did not kill herself. She supposed she was frightened. To take one's life was a mortal sin after all and, as God was obviously intent upon making her suffer, she did not dare risk the fires of hell and the damnation of her immortal soul.

She did, however, risk taking a lover. Discreetly. After a year of celibacy she decided it was the lesser of the mortal sins. The only time she could lose herself was in the throes of sexual passion and she decided she would risk God's punishment for that. She knew that it was highly unlikely that anyone would marry her. She was no longer a virgin and it was only the widows with money who were granted a second chance.

And then she met Marcello De Cretico.

 

‘A
H,
S
ARINA, MY
favourite
cameriera
.' She had just arrived at the tavern and Armando, the jovial innkeeper, waved her over. ‘Come, meet our landlord,' he cried. ‘Sarina is the very best girl I have,' he boasted to the young man at his side, ‘and the prettiest too.'

Sarina smiled dutifully as Armando draped a proprietorial arm about her shoulders. She did not allow her irritation to show, but she detested it when he referred to her as a
cameriera
. She was not a serving girl, she was a ‘hostess'—that was the arrangement they had made. Armando was showing off.

Armando knew that she was displeased but he'd had enough chianti not to let it bother him—he was the boss after all. He made a show of kissing her hand by way of mollification. Sarina was an asset and he certainly did not want to lose her. ‘This is Mr De Cretico, Sarina.'

‘Marcello, please.' The man smiled and Sarina thought he looked very young.

‘You fetch us another bottle of chianti, there's a good girl.' Armando ignored the flash of rebuke in Sarina's eyes as she took off her coat and hung it on one of the pegs beside the open fire. The innkeeper was having a fine time.

When Marcello had first arrived Armando had worried that a visit from one of the De Creticos might mean a rise in the rent. The family must have heard of the excellent business he had been doing over the past year. But his worries had been unfounded. Marcello was an exceedingly pleasant young man who appeared to want nothing from him.

‘This is a very pretty place you have,' he had said as he admired the solid timber bar and the heavy dining-room tables and chairs all made from local pine. ‘Very pretty indeed,' he had repeated as he gazed out at the stone courtyard overlooking the piazza.

‘Pretty, yes. But she is hard work too. To keep her so pretty costs a lot of money.' Armando always referred to his tavern as a woman. ‘Very, very much money she costs.'

Marcello was quick to realise that the man was worried about a rise in rent and equally quick to put his
fears to rest. Those had not been Mario's instructions. Thirty-five-year-old Mario was head of the family business and his orders had been precise.

‘You are twenty-one now, Marcello. You are of age and it is time you stopped living the good life.' They had been too easy on their little brother, Mario thought; they had spoilt him. The boy seemed to think there was nothing in life but women and wine. ‘It is time you took on some business obligations of your own.'

Mario considered Santa Lena a very easy assignment. Simply a case of inspecting the family's real estate. It must all be done under the guise of caring landlords, of course—‘Is everything satisfactory? Is there anything you need?' Marcello was to ask—but he was really there to ensure the tenants were not abusing De Cretico property.

‘Make yourself known and liked,' he was instructed. ‘Mingle with the peasants,' Mario had said. And that was exactly what Marcello was doing.

As soon as the innkeeper's fears were quelled he had played the happy host with gusto and the two of them spent the afternoon in the courtyard eating and drinking, Armando proudly introducing Marcello to the passers-by. It was only when the spring sun had faded and the first chill of evening swept down from the mountains that they had come inside. Just as Sarina had arrived.

Yes, she is certainly pretty, Marcello thought, very pretty indeed. Fair-haired, average height, a slim but well-rounded figure. As Sarina walked away to get the wine he admired her back and her buttocks. Although her high-necked, ankle-length dress was modest enough, it was different from the customary shapeless skirts worn by most of the peasant girls. It was cut to fit her body and Marcello had no difficulty imagining the perfect pear shape of the buttocks beneath.

‘You stay and drink and eat some more,' Armando
was saying expansively. ‘Soon it will be night and my musician will be here and we will all sing.' Armando's ‘musician' was an old man who played a battered piano accordion for free chianti and pasta but he was a big attraction to the customers.

Armando's joviality had started to tire him, and Marcello had been about to leave, but Sarina had changed his mind. There had been something in her smile. Something playful, suggestive.

‘I am not sure if I could eat anything more, Armando,' Marcello demurred, ‘but perhaps another glass of chianti …'

‘Ah you have not tasted our
quagli con polenta
, you cannot refuse our
quagli con polenta
.'

Marcello stayed. And he ate the quails. And he was back the next night. And the night after that. He could not resist Sarina and she knew it. So did Armando and he was quick to encourage the flirtation. Anything that pleased Marcello could only be to his advantage.

Marcello tried to bed Sarina for the next six weeks, but his efforts were in vain. Had he not been a De Cretico she might have allowed him to seduce her that very first night but she had other plans. She saw in Marcello her saviour. At first it had been just wishful thinking—she had not seriously considered it possible she could rise so far above her station—but as Marcello's obsession with her grew, she found herself wondering. Sarina De Cretico … why not?

After one month of holding her hand and seeing her to her cottage door, being granted one kiss and feeling her body against his, Marcello was in agony. But each time he tried to press his suit further, she was adamant.

‘Because I am a widow you think I am not virtuous?' she asked. ‘There has been only my husband for me and I remain true to him and to the memory of our marriage.' Sarina said it with utter conviction. In a way she believed
it. The several lovers she'd had since Carlo's death had been necessary. They had distracted her, they had assuaged her frustration, but nothing more. They had never replaced her husband. The memory of Carlo and the love she had shared with him remained unsullied.

Marcello believed her. He was bewitched by her, captivated by the unfathomable mystery which seemed to surround her. He had never known a woman like Sarina. She was from peasant stock, like the other village girls, but she did not behave like the others. She did not look like them, she did not talk like them, she did not dress like them. And she was certainly not like the high-class prostitutes he had slept with in Milano and Roma. She seemed to be in a class of her own. Neither peasant nor aristocrat. And it fascinated him.

During the four years of her widowhood Sarina had indeed changed. It had been a conscious decision on her part. If there were ever to be the remotest possibility of her remarrying it would be because a man found her irresistible—she had nothing else to offer.

She started with her dress. Like many of the villagers Sarina made her own clothes and was a deft seamstress. From the wealthy local merchant who owned the general store, she now purchased finer fabrics than the coarsely woven wool favoured by the locals. And she placed an order with the merchant for magazines from Paris detailing the latest fashions. No matter that she could not read; the pictures sufficed. Of course she could not afford the expensive laces and velvets and brocades the models in the pictures were wearing but the basic shape and style of the designs she was more than capable of reproducing.

It was not long before eyebrows were raised at the sight of Sarina, her head held high, her hair swept up with a comb and a velvet bow, parading the streets of Santa Lena in dresses which hugged her back and waist
and fitted snugly over her hips before flaring to the ground. And as she walked she held her skirts to one side, just as the models in the pictures did.

Some thought Sarina vain and proud with ideas above her station, some were envious and others impressed; but the male population, each and every one of them, found her attractive.

It was the merchant's wife who paved the way for Sarina's final acceptance. She considered herself the village doyenne of fashion and, in criticising the lack of bustle in Sarina's design, she found herself politely but firmly corrected.

‘Bustles are no longer fashionable in Paris,' Sarina answered. ‘They have not been fashionable for a year or more.'

Far from being insulted, the merchant's wife was fascinated by Sarina's knowledge of the latest trends. So much so that she commissioned the young woman to design her some garments. It was this endorsement that saw, not only the end of the criticism levelled at Sarina, but the beginning of a lucrative small business, and over the next year or so she acquired several other clients from among the few wealthy families who lived on the hill. They included the mayor's wife and daughter which very much impressed her former critics.

Sarina's self-improvement plans gradually took shape. She started mingling with her wealthier clients, even visiting their homes for fittings. She dressed well, she spoke well and, because of her constant study of the Paris magazines, the villagers even believed she could read. But the whole exercise was expensive. As her obsession with her appearance grew, so did her demand for bonnets and fans and gloves. And although the merchant's wife more often than not agreed to a barter arrangement-a dress for a pair of satin slippers or a blouse for a selection of velvet ribbons-Sarina needed
to seek regular employment to keep up with her expenditure.

That was where Armando came in. Sarina, with her saucy smile and elegant appearance, would be a definite asset to the tavern and he needed another serving girl. If she wanted to be called hostess, then so be it. He agreed that she would not be required to clear tables or wash glasses but apart from that her duties would be the same as the other girls'.