Moscardino (3 page)

The abbé stood there till the dead came to life, ill augured witness of my mother's procreation.

 

Cleofe, do you like me?

A' you? replied Cleofe bashfully as if asking it of herself, Do you like me?

That was after she got over her terror, and she had not cried out, feeling resistance was useless, and even if she had wanted to, had not the strength to cry out. Love had pinned down her arms, annulled and made useless the strength of her strong body. Her breath so caught in her lungs that she had no breath, and could make no movement of denial.

Cleofe found herself in his arms as a bird willingly in the mouth of a serpent, forgetting its possession of wings. Neither wanted to weep nor could help it.

Cleofe, do you like me?

A' you?

He was calm now, and looked into her tobacco-coloured eyes, held her head firm with his two hands on her cheeks and felt the blood beat in her temples, felt it in the pads of his fingertips, felt the warm breath
coming from Cleofe's mouth that his hands distorted. Cleofe had the sea's tempest in her ears, felt the wind bringing winter now, over the house roof, in the tops of the trees that guard it.

In the courtyard was the well-curb with twisted ironwork over it, and the stone edge gone mossy, the cord looped over a hook, the well bucket hooped with iron shrunk on as a wheel-rim.

The well went a hundred yards down. Town perched on a mountain, the well, bored through clay and rock, narrow and crooked, down, down, through the cracks, through the tufts of nettle and pellatory.

When they drew water, the pulley wheel turned: Chio, kao, kao. The drops of the well bucket, coming up jerkily, echoed the clink.

Grumpy stopped his ears because the
gi-gi
of the pulley set his teeth on edge as sour lemon or when he heard pumice scraped on the marble sink. But since he was now domiciled in the courtyard he was drawn on by the curiosity to look into the well, drawn by the clear clink of the pulley that was like a bell struck by the subterranean spirits, so, little by little, with one ear, then with both he could stand hearing the turn of the pulley without feeling gooseflesh.

He looked down the well trembling and saw only darkness, not even water which the spirits had covered with lead, with a cloud-coloured mantle that was passing over the sky.

Grumpy thought he saw a river churning down there at the well-bottom,
and thought he could hear a noise like that of the mill-race when the motive wheel moves in a sawmill. But he saw only a slab of lead and heard only the wandering of his own voice losing itself in the void beneath him.

When he grew bolder he threw stones into the well and saw circles shake on the water and saw his face in frightened reflection, deformed and recomposed in the whirlpool, submerged in the ripples as little by little the spirits restrained the water under their leaden mantles.

 

He began to take his meals on the green well-curb, casting a glance now and then into the deep at the swarming of shadows heaped like clouds, but smaller, a comic dwarf leaning there on his elbows the better to hide.

And he began to wind the well cord over the hook and the well crane, a hundred yards of it, bendable but shriveled stiff like a steel wire.

Grumpy made a regular skein round and united as the circles of the well water, smiling now and again. Thus he learned to look pleasant.

The abbé preferred to dawdle about under the orange trees which were also there in the courtyard aligned at the far end, clipped low so that the branches should not spread over the wall. If he looked down
the well it made him dizzy, things swam before his eyes, he got pin-wheels as when he shut them facing the sun to see lights and glows of many colours.

 

There were the stubs of column, also, on which the old people had set the broken tubs from Montelupo that the tinker had patched up with wire and lumps of plaster, so that they now held earth as well as they had once held the washing. The old tubs from Montelupo with two masks and mottoes:

“Like to like.”

“God makes 'em, and then gives 'em mates they deserve.” Now they were full of rich earth, geraniums and daisies green in them so as to look like a shrub trunk with small flowers round it not passing the edge. Grumpy drew up the water, the abbé carried it to the old jars from Montelupo. They were painted now to conceal their age, the cracks, the snubbed noses of the masks, covered with a sort of red chalk that you use to paint tiles in a bedroom. Thus when the abbé had drowned the flowers that didn't pass the tub's edge there was a bloody wreath round the tubs.

Grumpy wouldn't come near them for fear of that spilled blood on the ground, and the abbé never looked down the well for fear of dizziness.

That was their way of passing the time, as it was now impossible for them to stay indoors. My grandfather watched Grumpy's eyes, and the abbé's hands stuffed through the unfaced slits of his soutane.

If Grumpy so much as looked at Cleofe, dinner was off. Grumpy barricaded himself in his room and the abbé had no hair left where his tonsure should have been, it was now twice the size of most priests'; and Cleofe could no longer keep my grandfather calm. Her gentleness only drove him wild and made him crazy with jealousy.

“Your brother will kill you one day.” And Grumpy shut his eyes and saw my grandfather in uniform with his eyes shining scarlet.

And “that woman's” sweetish voice crept into his ears, trembling as if with compassion, almost as if she were weeping, there were tears almost in her voice full of urgence.

Grumpy no longer had his mother to fondle him. Threats at his throat if he so much as cast an affectionate glance, he crept into the house like a sneak thief, felt like a burglar if caught, barricaded himself in his room to keep from being flayed alive; and “that woman” who came so often to the well, did she know it? Did she know, and was she afraid he would die soon?

She was perhaps his guardian angel that had watched over his childhood. A great wave of feeling swept over her that she could express only with her eyes closed, weeping: Your brother will kill you one of these days.

Grumpy shut his eyes: And you, Don Lorenzo, do you remember your mother, before she went off her head? Nobody would touch a hair of your head then.

And Don Lorenzo sniggered, as he did when Cleofe looked at him.

 

Grumpy was drawing up water, and that woman stood with her thighs close to him as if wanting to help him.

When the bucket was in reach she leant over the well-curb to take it, crushing her belly against the green stone so that her thighs seemed to hold up two antennae as the wooden braces hold up the countryside bridges.

Her breast lay heavy almost falling out of her linen dress gathered in at the neck like the tunic of a Madonna.

Grumpy looked at the freckles on her breasts; so near now he could see her heart-throbs. Her throat brushed his hand and he shut his eyes as if in terror, and if the odor of lavender, released from the fold of the linen blouse puffed out by the weight of her breasts, reached into his nostrils he closed his eyes terrified with his legs weak as if in a fit of malaria.

So they remained hung over the well-curb in abandon, Grumpy's head drawn like a weight toward the well-bottom among the shadowy spirits which took hold of the bushy hair of the reflected head and beat
it against the head of the woman reflected, so that the images were melted together, one over the other, striking and melting together.

Now her mouth was against his ear saying strange words, dizziness in his soul as in the ripples on the water beneath him.

Grumpy remained stock still with his eyes closed, he felt her mouth move away from his ear and fastened to his nape; a circle of fire, a brand to leave lasting mark.

 

But Cleofe who had brought her milky and blood-tinted face from the mountains now had circles under her eyes and there was a waxen shadow on her clear face. The dark spots that had showed her pregnant had not left with the birth.

Her mouth was no longer cool, her lips were thin now. Only her eyes seemed larger.

Perhaps her thought ran: If I had married a shepherd in my own mountains, now I would be happy. She wept in the daytime, lamenting that she had not enough milk, as have the women of her own village, they have it so that they suckle the lambs. That is abundance.

If she had married a shepherd she would be free, all that milk, all those sons, all that sky and a will to singing . . .

And now instead, she was afraid of the man who was her husband in that shadowy house.

Why do you look at yourself in the glass?

You have combed your hair to look prettier.

Why do you want to look prettier?

If someone went by in the street, if anyone stood near a window in one of the neighboring houses, if someone knocked at the door to collect a bill or bring a message, there was a bloody row.

Everything was in turmoil and chaos in my grandfather's mind.

Cleofe did not answer, ever. She obeyed, she looked terrified. Her face was full of suspicion, like that of my grandfather's, unquiet.

He wanted her not to wash, so that she would be ugly; to leave her hair uncombed, to wear the country clothes that she had brought with her, out of date, of grey flannel, plowman's shoes, canvas aprons, fichus crossed on her breast.

That she should look badly, that she should dress like an old woman so that no one would look at her.

And even so my grandfather found her more beautiful, too beautiful. It was the majesty of her figure; unsuppressible by the clumsiness of old-fashioned clothes. Taking from her the grace of fashion, her beauty shone through as a joke, almost as a dream, as if she were a girl of past time.

Sometimes he wanted to feel he was right, tortured himself, helping her to put on her good clothes.

A new dress of shot silk, with a white front and a low lace collar.

He wanted her to put on the necklace of gold beads with a cross, and with her hair coiled round her cheeks and ears as when she had come down from the hills. Then he watched her move away, his eyes fixed on her as if in a vision, as something no longer his.

He wanted her to stand on the balcony so that the sunlight could play over her dress, so the gold beads could come to life, so that her face would seem again compound of milk and blood.

He forced himself to indifference before the serenity of that wax Madonna, leapt as it were of a sudden from among the rays of God to his balcony.

But if anyone passed and turned unexpectedly, if a shadow showed at a window of a house opposite, the spell broke and his being was shattered, trembling, brute jealousy leapt back with all its instincts, he slammed shut the window to shut out the sun's kindness, he tore the gold beads from Cleofe's neck, trampled them, tore the shot silk dress to tatters, tore it with his teeth, stripped it off her.

Cleofe grew worse.

The doctor came to the house and my grandfather had a new war within him, everything in him on fire, so that if he concealed his anguish it shone terribly through his eyes.

Cleofe wanted to get well again.

And the doctor's presence increased my grandfather's torment, drop by drop, a whirling torrent, that Cleofe felt with terror.

The doctor had looked at her breasts, had felt her belly, pressed his head between her shoulders to listen, and tapped her white body all over. Cleofe felt it would drive my grandfather off his head. She wanted all the while to get well.

Her heart beat so hard, her legs trembled, now and again she felt a wave of heat pass over her face.

She wanted at all costs to get well.

She got up too soon. It was mid-September, a month of nostalgia for Cleofe, busy time in the mountains, getting ready the logs for the chestnut drying, they would smoke early this year as it had hardly rained all the summer.

The chestnuts were beginning to ripen in their burrs. The burrs had grown big, the nuts were full and meaty. They'll be smoking 'em early this year.

She stood by the window. Below was an arbor with ripe grapes hanging to the lattices. The arbor stripped of leaves with the wire braces, with the fronds and tendrils still branching, the dead branches bent with the weight of grape clusters, the shoots sticking out at the top with unopened butts.

A September already cold, though fanned with scirocco, a few reddish clouds, rain's sheeplets feeding in grassless meadow.

Heaven calm, but unlit, a grey dampness pervading the house and a will to let the eyes close.

My grandfather held her up by the balustrade, and she looked down into the courtyard or gazed at the light gallop of far clouds going mountainward.

The square orange flowers that had given fragrance in springtime were now dark balls in the lighter leaves.