The Black Madonna (11 page)

Amadeo put down his fork. “What am I going to do with some peasant girl in New York? It would never work out. Zio made the deal. He'll have to get out of it. It's not my contract. Now, can we eat?”

“She's a good cook. You marry this girl, you'll eat good.” Amadeo was opening his mouth to protest again when Zia Guinetta suddenly stood up. The knife she had cut his meat with was still in her hand and she waved it in his face. “You don't marry this girl, you disgrace us. Your uncle doesn't go to the piazza ever again. Your cousin Tommaso rots in the house. Maria never marries. If you don't do this thing, then we all come back with you to New York. We can't live here anymore.” She threw the knife on the table and sat down. She leaned over, put her hand on Amadeo's arm. “Just think about it.” Her voice was suddenly soft, seductive. “One meeting . . . just one afternoon.”

“I'm leaving,” he said.

“Caro mio,”
Zia Guinetta said. She handed him the biggest cookie on the plate. “What's one afternoon? What is it? You can't do that? . . . And then you go back to New York.”

Amadeo bit into the cookie. Zia Guinetta smiled and he remembered what Terragrossa had told him on the long ride into Castelfondo. Amadeo felt the noose tighten around his neck. The cookie stuck in his throat.

I
n New York, on the stoop outside the building on Spring Street, Teresa sat in the sun with the two boys. The women asked her how much longer before Amadeo Pavese came back. Teresa waved her arms in the air. She raised her voice. “I think the earth's swallowed him,” she said. “There was a letter when he first arrived, from Naples, and then nothing.”

“
Peccato
. . .” the women said. “What could have happened?
Poverino,
” they said, chucking Salvatore under the chin, pinching his cheek. This made tears slide down his face, which made the women sigh. “First his mother and brother, and now . . .” They turned to Teresa. “If he never comes back? What will you do?” Teresa shrugged a shoulder. She tilted her head to the side and looked up to heaven. “I'll manage. I take care of Nicola, don't I? What's another?” and she kissed the tip of Salvatore's ear.

“You miss Amadeo?” Mary Ziganetti said, eyes narrowed. “All those Sundays, just the two of you . . .” The women on the stoop giggled.

“Amadeo Pavese pays me to look after his son,” Teresa said, standing up. “It's the boy I love. You forget I'm married? One man is enough for a lifetime.”

The women put their heads together when she left. “What a fate,” Jumbo's mother Antoinette said. “One way or the other men are forever abandoning her.”

Rumors flew that Amadeo had been killed, bewitched, fallen into a ravine, kidnapped by brigands. They were not all wrong.

Z
ia Guinetta laid her plans. The next few days found her on her knees in front of the Black Madonna. She spread out herbs and flowers to dry in the sun. Late at night, she left the house and came back at dawn with blood on her hands. She wore amulets against the wolves and the evil spirits of the unbaptized babies that roamed the countryside when the sun set. She visited Magdalena and told her about Amadeo's reluctance.

Magdalena cried and Zia Guinetta put her arms around the girl. “Trust me,” she said. “Let me teach you. Give me what I ask and do what I say. Tell no one.”

Magdalena nodded, her head on Zia Guinetta's shoulder. “Whatever you want,” she said. Zia Guinetta could feel Magdalena's lips forming the words. She took Magdalena's hand and closed it around the polished leg bone that she wore around her neck. Zia Guinetta kissed the top of the girl's head. “Everything will be yours,” she told her.

Things were happening in Castelfondo. Amadeo came down with a strange fever and was delirious for three days. Terragrossa's car wouldn't start. He lay under it in the hot sun and cursed the men who made it. He raised the hood and looked at the engine until his shirt was soaked with sweat. He went home in the evenings talking to himself, his face and hands streaked with dirt.

Amadeo couldn't eat. Zia Guinetta cooked him delicate dishes and clear soups. She boiled greens and strained the liquid. She held him upright in his bed and fed it to him with a small spoon. Tommaso told the men in the piazza that Amadeo was ill, but that his mother would make him well, and the men brought the news home.

When Amadeo was better, still weak but strong enough to leave his bed, Zia Guinetta set up the meeting with Magdalena. She promised Giacomo Caparetti that the two would not be alone, not for a moment, and the morning of the tryst, the first thing she did was put a chair for herself in the corner near the stove.

She put the table and two chairs near the door so there would be light, but not so near the door that anyone passing could hear what was going on inside. She woke Amadeo up and gave him tea with a red leaf in it. He took the tea but he wouldn't put on the corduroy suit the tailor in town had made for him. Zia Guinetta shrugged her shoulders. “Never mind,” she said. “Tommaso's wanted a suit like this for a long time.” She brushed off the dust that had collected on the shoulders of the suit and put it back on the hook near the door. She sat Amadeo at the table.
“Poverino,”
she said, “weak as a kitten, but you'll see, after today, you'll be well again.”

Zia Guinetta opened the top half of the double door and leaned out to watch for Magdalena and her father. Amadeo was just finishing the tea when Zia Guinetta let out a long, fervent sigh. “Here, here she comes.” Zia Guinetta pulled Amadeo's arm, never taking her eyes off the street. “Quick,” she said. “Take a look. See? Did I tell you? Have you ever seen a girl beautiful like this one?” She pointed down the twisted street.

“I'd have to have the eyes of a hawk to see that far away, Zia.” He tried to lean farther out the door but she pushed him away.

“Shh . . . You don't want to look anxious.” She waved a hand at him and sighed. “Where did she get such beauty? God . . . the devil . . . her mother . . . those same eyes, light behind them . . . Quick, sit down. They're almost here.” Zia Guinetta went and sat in the chair in the corner.

Amadeo wondered again how he had gotten himself into this swindle but he was stuck and he knew it. He had agreed to meet the girl. He was so tired. He had been so ill. He would meet the girl and explain to her. He would give her money to add to her dowry, to make up for the misfortune of her engagement, and everyone would be satisfied. He was talking to himself when Magdalena Caparetti came into the room. Zia Guinetta hissed at him from her chair in the corner by the stove and he stood up. He shook hands with her father, who was short and a little crooked and wore a felt hat that a dog had chewed. Magdalena looked straight at Amadeo when Zia Guinetta introduced them and he could see that she was very young and that her eyes were extraordinary.

She did not put out her hand to him. He was not supposed to touch her, and he let his hands fall to his sides. The father left and Zia Guinetta motioned for them to sit down. Magdalena Caparetti sat in the chair opposite Amadeo. She put her hands on the table in front of her and laced her fingers. Amadeo could see the dirt under her nails. He could not take his eyes off her. She stared back at him.

Zia Guinetta served them coffee and cakes she had baked that morning. Before she went back to her chair in the corner, she put a cake on Amadeo's plate and broke it in half with her fingers. “Eat,” she said, her hand on the back of his neck. She made a sign to Magdalena. Take nothing, it said.

“So, you're Magdalena,” Amadeo said. He ate a piece of cake and she smiled at him. Amadeo was finished. She knew it. He was hers. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. Her father had told her to braid it but she had left it loose. Zia Guinetta had told her not to listen to her father. Magdalena's hair was dark and wild and covered her shoulders. There was a berry stain on her cheek. Without thinking, Amadeo leaned over to wipe it off. Magdalena didn't move.

Zia Guinetta rocked in her chair in the corner. She wondered if this match was such a good idea after all. It was obvious to her that the girl was an occasion of sin. What had the Creator been thinking? And then there was the mother. There's nothing to do about blood, she thought. But could they have tempted Amadeo with an ordinary girl? It was for all of them, this match. She crossed herself.

“Do you know what's going on?” Amadeo said to the girl sitting across from him. “Do you know what they're proposing, your father, my uncle?” Zia Guinetta shifted in her chair. She leaned forward, but Amadeo made a movement with his hand as if to hold her back. He never took his eyes from Magdalena's.

Magdalena straightened her back. “You will take me to America,” she said, “to New York.”

“And what do you think about that? You're a young girl. How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? I could be your father. I have a son in America, a baby. New York is a big city, nothing like here. Everyone speaks English. You won't have your father, your friends, no one, nothing that you're used to.”

Magdalena's eyes filled up with tears. “You don't like me,” she said. “You hate me.” She covered her face with her hands and she started to cry.

“Hate you?” he said. “That's ridiculous. How could I hate you?”

“You don't want me, then. You think I'm ugly.” Magdalena Caparetti sobbed into her hands.

“Ugly? You're beautiful. Why wouldn't I want you? Any man in his right mind would want you. You're a beautiful young girl. Why are you crying like this? Please . . .” Amadeo looked over at his aunt, but Zia Guinetta's eyes were closed. She was fingering her rosary. Her lips moved without a sound.

Amadeo shook his head as if to clear it. “Where am I?” he said. “Sitting here in some ancient betrothal ritual trying to make sense with a teenage girl.” He stared across the table. Magdalena sat very still. She wouldn't take her hands from her face but she had stopped crying. “You're just a little girl and this is a terrible idea,” he said. “Believe me . . .”

Magdalena uncovered her face and put a hand up to his lips to silence him. “Not such a little girl,” she said.

In her chair in the dark corner near the stove, Zia Guinetta moved her fingers along the beads of her rosary and smiled to herself. “Everyone has a story, no?” she heard Magdalena say to Amadeo. “I'll tell you mine. Then you decide.”

Zia Guinetta nodded in the corner. She watched Amadeo watching Magdalena. She watched how he sat, leaning forward, how he listed into her words like a sinking ship. The button on Magdalena's blouse was open, whether through carelessness or design, who could know? But Zia Guinetta could see Amadeo losing strength. She could see him falling. Magdalena's beauty was as potent as Zia Guinetta's magic. The combination was deadly. His food had been filled with that magic. It had made him ill and it had made him well. The scent of female power filled the kitchen.

“My mother . . .” Magdalena began, and Amadeo listened. His eyes never left her face. “My mother was very beautiful,” Magdalena said. “She was married and already had me when a friar came to Castelfondo from Naples. She went to work in his kitchen. He had wine from France that was sealed in bottles. He had a room where sausage and cheese hung on ropes from the ceiling. He had traveled. He would tell my mother about the places he had been.”

Magdalena stretched her arms above her head and pulled her hair into a knot. Her hair was red where the light from the open door caught the color.

“She went to live with him,” Magdalena said. “And then she disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“They say she had a son and the friar sent her away.”

“Where did she go?”

Magdalena rested her elbows on the table. She opened her hands, shrugged her shoulders.

“I'm sorry,” Amadeo said. “And your father?”

“It would be better for him if I went away.” In the corner, Zia Guinetta sat very still.

Amadeo opened his hands. Magdalena put her hands inside his and she held his wrists. “You see, there's nothing for me here. All I have here is the reputation of my mother.” She tightened her grip on him. Her nails cut into the skin on the underside of his wrists. “The Madonna sent you to me,” she said, “to fulfill my destiny, don't you see? There's nothing else to do.”

She stood up and came toward him. He saw points of gold in her eyes. He saw her lips part and then she spun around, away from him. His skin burned where the hem of her dress brushed his arm. He thought he would never leave this spot, never get up from this chair. He suspected he would die.

Zia Guinetta thanked the Black Madonna from her corner by the stove. She and Carmelo and Maria and Tommaso would never worry again.

“Whatever you want,” Amadeo said to her.

She touched her fingers to her lips, then her heart. She smiled at him and turned away. He could see the muscles in her back where her blouse was cut low. He watched her walk through the door into the street and he didn't move until Zia Guinetta came over and spoke in his ear.

“Well?” she said.

“Tell me what you need.” Amadeo ran his hands through his hair. He pressed his fingers into the bone above his eyes. “I have things to do . . . go to Matera . . . Dammit, Terragrossa's car won't start. How do I get there?” He slammed his fist on the table. He felt his strength coming back.