The House of Scorta (11 page)

He further explained, late into the night, why this was a brilliant idea and how, upon his return, he would inevitably benefit from the aura of the hero. Carmela wasn’t listening. She fell asleep as her boyish husband went on about Fascist glory.

T
he following morning she woke up in a panic. She had a thousand things to do. Change, dress the two children, fix her hair up in a bun, make sure that the white shirt that Antonio had selected was wellpressed, pomade Elia’s and Donato’s hair and douse them with cologne so that they would look as beautiful as shiny new coins. And remember her fan, for it was a hot day and the air would soon become stifling. She was in the sort of nervous state one gets in before the children’s First Communion or one’s own wedding. There were so many things to do. Not forget anything. Try not to be late. She was running from one end of the house to the other, a brush in her hand and a hairpin between her lips, looking for shoes and cursing her dress, which seemed to have shrunk and was hard to button up.

At last the family was ready to leave. Antonio asked yet again where they were supposed to gather, and Carmela repeated, “Sanacore.” “Where is he taking us?” Antonio asked, worried. “I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s a surprise.” And so they left, leaving behind the heights of Montepuccio and taking the coastal route to the place of that name. There they turned onto a narrow smuggler’s trail that led them to a sort of embankment overlooking the sea. They stayed there awhile, undecided, no longer knowing which way to go, when they spotted a wooden sign on which were painted the words
Trabucco Scorta
, and which pointed to a staircase. At the bottom of an interminable descent, they came to a vast wooden platform, hanging from the cliff-face and suspended over the waves. It was one of the many
trabucchi
that still dot the Apulian coastline, fishing platforms that look like great wooden skeletons, clusters of time-whitened planks that hang from the rock and look as if they would never survive a storm. Yet, there they are and there they’ve always been. Hoisting their tall masts over the water. Resisting the wind and the rage of the waves. They were formerly used to catch fish without going out to sea. But they’ve since been abandoned and are now nothing more than strange lookout posts that give onto the water as they creak in the wind. One would think they’d been constructed haphazardly, yet these unsteady towers of wooden planks can stand up to anything. On the platform itself one finds a jumble of ropes, cranks, and pulleys. When the men put it to work, the whole thing creaks and strains. The
trabucco
raises its nets slowly, majestically, like a tall, thin man plunging his hands in the water, then pulling them slowly back up as though they held the treasures of the sea.

This
trabucco
belonged to the family of Raffaele’s wife. The Scortas knew this. Until now, however, it had always been an abandoned structure that nobody used anymore. A heap of boards and worm-eaten poles. Several months earlier, Raffaele had begun restoring the
trabucco
. He would work on it in the evening after a day of fishing, or on days when the weather was bad. But always in secret. He worked on it furiously, and to help him through those moments when he felt discouraged by the immensity of his task, he would think of what a surprise it would be for Domenico, Giuseppe, and Carmela to discover this utterly new, accessible place.

The Scortas couldn’t get over it. Not only was there a strange sense of solidity about that heap of old wood, but it had all been decorated with taste and charm. They were even more surprised when they went further inside and discovered, at the center of the platform, amidst the ropes and nets, a great, majestic dining table covered with a fine white tablecloth embroidered by hand. From one corner of the
trabucco
came the scent of grilled fish and bay laurel. Raffaele stuck his head out of a recess in which he’d installed a wood-fired oven and grill, and with a broad smile across his face, he yelled: “Sit yourselves down! Welcome to the
trabucco
! Sit down!” In response to every question people asked as they embraced him, he gave a conspiratorial laugh. “When did you build that oven?” “Where did you find this table?” “You should have told us to bring something.” Raffaele would smile and say only, “Sit down, don’t worry about anything. Make yourselves at home.”

Carmela and her family were the first to arrive, but no sooner had they sat down than they heard some loud shouting from the staircase. It was Domenico with his wife and two daughters, followed by Giuseppe, his wife, and little Vittorio, their son. They were all there. They kissed and embraced. The women complimented each other on the elegance of their outfits. The men traded cigarettes and tossed their nieces and nephews in the air, the little ones screaming with delight in the grips of these giants. Carmela sat apart from the rest for a moment, just long enough to contemplate the reunion of their small community. Everyone she loved was there, radiant in a Sunday light in which the color of the women’s dresses caressed the whiteness of the men’s shirts. The sea was soft and pleasant. She smiled a rare sort of smile, the kind that shows confidence in life. Her eyes drifted over each one of them. Over Giuseppe and his wife Mattea, the daughter of a fisherman who, in his personal vocabulary, had replaced the word “woman” with the word “whore,” so that it was not uncommon to hear him greet a female friend in the street with a resounding “
Ciao puttana!
” to the laughter of the passersby. Carmela’s gaze came softly to rest on the children: Lucrezia and Nicoletta, Domenico’s two daughters, in their beautiful white dresses; Vittorio— Giuseppe and Mattea’s boy—whose mother would give him her breast, murmuring: “Drink, little fool, drink, it’s all yours”; and Michele, the most recent member of the clan, wailing in his diapers as the women passed him around. She gazed at them all and told herself that they could all be happy one day. Simply happy.

She was roused from her thoughts by the voice of Raffaele, who was shouting, “Everyone to the table! Everyone to the table!” So she got up and did what she had resolved to do. Look after her family. Laugh with them, embrace them, lavish attention on them. Be there for each in turn, gracefully, happily.

There were fifteen of them at the table. They all looked at one another for a few seconds, surprised at how much the clan had grown. Raffaele glowed with happiness and gourmandise. He had long dreamed of this moment. Everyone he loved was there, at his place, on his
trabucco
. He kept running from one corner to the other, from the oven to the kitchen, the fishing nets to the table, without respite, making sure that everyone was served and wanted for nothing.

This day remained etched in the Scortas’ memories. For every one of them, adults as well as children, it was the first time they had ever eaten this way. Uncle Faelucc’ had really done things right. For the
antipasti
, Raffaele and Giuseppina brought some ten different dishes to the table. There were mussels as big as your thumb, stuffed with a mixture of eggs, bread and cheese. Fried anchovies. Marinated anchovies whose flesh was firm and melted in your mouth. Octopus tentacles. A salad of tomato and chicory. A few thin slices of grilled eggplant. People passed the dishes from one end of the table to the other. Everyone dug in, happy not to have to choose, happy they could eat it all.

Once the platters were empty, Raffaele brought two enormous, steaming bowls to the table. The first contained a traditional pasta dish typical of the region,
troccoli
in squid ink; the other, a seafood risotto. The dishes were greeted with a general hurrah that made Giuseppina, the cook, blush. It was one of those moments when one’s appetite seems endless and it’s as if one could keep eating for days. Raffaele also set down five bottles of local wine, a sharp red wine, dark as the blood of Christ. The heat was now at its zenith. The guests were protected from the sun by a straw mat over their heads, but they could tell, from the searing air, that the lizards themselves must be sweating.

Conversations arose amidst a din of cutlery, interrupted at moments by a child’s question or a spilt glass of wine. They spoke of everything and nothing. Giuseppina recounted how she’d made the pasta and risotto, as if it were an even greater pleasure to talk about food as one was eating. People chatted. People laughed. Each looked after his neighbor, making sure his plate was never bare.

When the big platters were empty, everybody felt sated. Their bellies were full, and they felt good. But Raffaele hadn’t made his final statement yet. Next, he brought out five huge platters filled with every manner of fish caught that same morning. Sea bass, bream, and more. A bowl full of fried calamari. Big pink shrimp grilled over a wood fire. Even a few langoustines. At the sight of these dishes, the women swore they wouldn’t have any. It was just too much. They would die. But they had to do justice to Raffaele and Giuseppina; and not only to them. They had to do justice to life, which was being offered them through this banquet, which they would never forget. In southern lands one eats with a kind of frenzy and piggish gluttony. For as long as one can. As if the worst was yet to come. As if it might be the last time one ate. One must eat as long as the food is there. It’s a kind of panic instinct. Too bad if one gets sick from it. One must eat with joy and to excess.

The fish platters made the rounds and people partook with a passion. They no longer ate for their stomachs but for their palates. Yet no matter how hard they tried, they didn’t manage to finish the fried calamari. Which left Raffaele in a state of dizzy delight. As far as he was concerned, there must always be some food on the table, otherwise it meant the guests hadn’t had enough. At the end of the meal, Raffaele turned to Giuseppe and, patting his brother’s stomach, asked, “
Pancia piena?
” Everyone laughed, unbuckling their belts or pulling out fans. The heat had subsided, but their sated bodies were beginning to sweat from all the food they’d wolfed down, all that joyous mastication. Raffaele then brought out coffee for the men and three bottles of
digestivi
: one of grappa, one of limoncello, and one of laurel liqueur. When all had been served, he said to them:

“You all know that the townsfolk call us ‘the silent ones.’ Because we’re the Mute’s children, they say that our mouths are only good for eating, never for speaking. All right, then. Let’s be proud of it. If that’s what keeps the busybodies and bumpkins away, then let’s hear it for silence. But let’s have the silence be for them, not for us. I haven’t lived through all that you’ve lived through. I’ll probably die in Montepuccio without ever seeing any of the world except for the dry hills around here, but here is where you are. You. And you know a lot more things than I do. Promise me you’ll talk to my children. That you’ll tell them what you’ve seen, so that what you gained from your trip to New York won’t die with you. Promise me that each of you will tell my children one thing, something you’ve learned, a memory, a bit of knowledge. Let’s all do that for each other, uncles to nephews, aunts to nieces. Tell a secret you’ve kept to yourself that you’ll never tell anyone else. Otherwise our children will become like all the other Montepuccians, knowing nothing about the world, knowing only silence and the heat of the sun.”

The Scortas concurred. Yes, let it be so. Let each of us speak, at least once in his life, to a niece or a nephew. Tell them what we know before we die. Speak for once to give advice, to pass on knowledge. To be something more than mere beasts, living and dying under this silent sun.

The meal was over. Four hours after they had sat down to eat, the men were leaning back in their chairs, the children had gone off to play among the cables, and the women started clearing the table.

They were all exhausted now, as after a battle. Exhausted and happy. For the battle, that day, had been won. They had taken pleasure in a bit of life, together. They had escaped the harshness of their days. The meal lived on in everyone’s memory as the great banquet of the Scortas. It was the only time the whole clan was gathered in full. If the Scortas had had a camera, they would have immortalized that afternoon of sharing. They were all there. Parents and children. It was the family’s apogee. It should all have remained that way.

Yet it wouldn’t be long before things fell apart, before the ground beneath their feet began to crack and the women’s pastel dresses darkened with the grim shade of mourning. Antonio Manuzio would go off to Spain and die there from a bad wound—without glory or fanfare— leaving Carmela a widow with her two sons. This would be the first pall cast over the family’s happiness. Domenico, Giuseppe, and Raffaele would decide to leave the tobacco shop to their sister—since it was all she had, with two other mouths to feed—so that Elia and Donato wouldn’t start out with nothing, and so they wouldn’t know the kind of poverty their uncles had known.

Misfortune would soon undermine the busy lives of these men and women. For the moment, however, nobody gave it a thought. Antonio Manuzio poured himself another glass of grappa. They basked in their happiness under the generous gaze of Raffaele, who wept for joy to see his brothers savoring the fish he had grilled himself.

At the end of the meal, they all had full bellies, dirty fingers, stains on their shirts and sweat on their brows. But they were blissful. They left the
trabucco
with regret and went back to their everyday lives.

For a long time, the warm and powerful scent of grilled laurel remained, for them, the scent of happiness.

N
ow you know why I shuddered when I realized, yesterday, that I had forgotten Korni’s name. If I forget this man, even for a second, it’s because everything is falling apart. I haven’t finished my story yet, don Salvatore. I need a little more time. Just relax and smoke.

When we got to Montepuccio, I made my brothers swear never to talk about our failure in New York. We let Raffaele in on our secret the night we buried the Mute because he’d asked us to tell him about our trip and none of us wanted to lie. He was one of us. He also swore not to tell. They have all kept their word. I didn’t want anyone to know. As far as Montepuccio is concerned, we went to New York and we lived there for a few months. Long enough to make a little money. When people asked us why we came back so soon, we answered that it wasn’t right to leave our mother here alone. We had no way of knowing she was dead. That was enough. People didn’t ask any more than that. I didn’t want them to know that the Scortas hadn’t been allowed into the country. What counts is what people say, the stories they tell about you. I wanted New York to be part of the Scortas’ story. For us to stop being a family of degenerates and paupers. I know the people here. They would have said that bad luck dogs our steps. They would have brought up Rocco’s curse. There’s no shaking off that sort of thing. We came back richer than when we set out. That’s all that matters. I’ve never said anything about this to my sons. None of the children know. I made my brothers swear to it, and they have kept their word. Everyone had to believe in New York. And we did even better than that. We talked about the city and our life there. In detail. We could do this because old Korni had done the same for us. On the return trip, he found a man who spoke Italian and asked him to translate his brother’s letters for us. We listened to him for nights on end. I still remember some of them.