The House of Scorta (17 page)

He didn’t take his eyes off me the whole time he was talking. And when he’d finished, I felt that he was waiting for me to speak in turn. But I remained silent. I felt surrounded by his expectation. I wasn’t trembling. I was empty. I couldn’t say anything. Not a word. There was nothing inside me. I looked at him. Time had passed. We were face to face. He understood that I wasn’t going to respond. He waited a little longer. He was hoping. Then he quietly stood up, and we parted. I didn’t say a word. I just let him leave.

From that day on, I remained silent. When we saw each other the next day, we acted as though nothing had happened. Life went on, but I spoke no more. Something had broken. What could I say to him, don Salvatore? Life was already over. We were old. What could I say to him? We should start all over again, don Salvatore. I was a coward. We should start all over, but so many years have gone by.

W
hen he felt death approaching, Raffaele summoned his nephew. Donato came, and they both remained silent a long time. The old man couldn’t bring himself to begin the conversation. He watched Donato quietly drink the glass of Campari he’d handed him. He almost gave up, but finally, despite his fear that he might encounter a look of disgust or anger in his nephew’s eyes, he broke in:

“Donato, do you know why I’m your uncle?” “Yes,
zio
,” Donato replied.

“You were told how we decided to become brothers

and sister the day I helped your uncles Mimì and Peppe bury the Mute.”

“Yes,
zio
,” Donato repeated.

“And how I, in turn, gave up my original family name, which was worthless, so I could carry the name of Scorta.”

“Yes,
zio
. That’s what I was told.”

Raffaele paused briefly. The moment had come. He was no longer afraid. He was anxious to unburden his heart.

“There’s a crime I want to confess.”

“A crime?” asked the young man.

“Quite a few years ago, I killed a man of the Church. Don Carlo Bozzoni, the priest of Montepuccio. He was a nasty man, but I damned myself by killing him.” “Why did you do it?” asked Donato, stunned by this confession from the man he’d always considered the gentlest of his uncles.

“I don’t know,” Raffaele muttered. “It just rose up in me all at once. I had this enormous anger inside me,

waiting, and it got the better me.”

“Why were you angry?”

“I’m a coward, Donato. Don’t look at me that way. Believe me, I’m a coward. I didn’t have the courage to ask for what I wanted. That’s why the anger built up inside me. That’s why it exploded in front of that stupid,

good-for-nothing priest.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your mother.”

“My mother?”

“I didn’t have the courage to ask her to marry me.” Donato sat there open-mouthed.

“Why are you telling me this,
zio
?” he asked. “Because I’m going to die and it will all be buried with me. I want at least one person to know what I’ve been carrying in the pit of my stomach all my life.” Raffaele fell silent. Donato didn’t know what to say.

He wondered, for a moment, whether he should reassure his uncle or show some sort of disapproval instead.

He felt empty, stunned. There was nothing more to add.

His uncle was not waiting for him to respond. He’d spoken to get things out in the open, not to have someone else’s opinion. Donato had the feeling this conversation would change him more than he could ever foresee. He stood up, a little embarrassed. His uncle looked at him a long time, and Donato sensed that the old man almost wanted to apologize for having confided in him. As if he would rather have taken these old stories to the grave with him. They embraced warmly and parted.

Raffaele died a few days later, in his nets, on his
trabucco
, with the sound of the sea beneath him, his heart unburdened. At the funeral, his coffin was carried by his son Michele and his three nephews, Vittorio, Elia, and Donato. Carmela was there. Her face was expressionless. She didn’t cry. She stood up straight. When the coffin was presented to her, she brought her hand to her mouth and placed a kiss on the wood, and Raffaele smiled in death.

Seeing the coffin pass, everyone in town had the feeling that it was the end of an era. It wasn’t Raffaele they were burying, but the whole Scorta Mascalzone family. They were burying the old world. The one that had known malaria and the two wars. The one that had known emigration and poverty. They were burying old memories. People are nothing. They leave no trace. Raffaele was leaving Montepuccio, and as he passed, all the men took off their hats and bowed their heads, knowing that they too, in turn, would soon be gone, and that the olive trees would not weep for them.

H
is uncle’s revelation made Donato’s universe totter. Henceforth, he looked at life around him with a kind of weariness in his eyes. Everything seemed false to him. His family history now seemed like a paltry succession of frustrated existences. These men and women had not led the lives they’d wanted. His uncle had never dared declare his love. How many other secret frustrations lay buried in the family’s history? An immense sadness came over him. The company of others became unbearable to him. All he had left was the smuggling. He threw himself into it body and soul. He lived on his boat. That was all he could ever be, a smuggler. He attached no importance to the cigarettes; it could just as easily have been jewelry, alcohol, or bags full of worthless paper. The important thing was those nocturnal journeys, those moments of vast silence as he wandered over the sea.

At dusk, he would cast off the moorings, and the night would begin. He would go as far as the island of Montefusco, a tiny islet off the Italian coast that was the hub of all the illegal traffic. That was where the Albanians unloaded their stolen cargoes and exchanges were made. On the return journey, his boat laden with crates of cigarettes, he would play hide-and-seek in the night with the customs boats, and this made him smile, for he knew he was the best at this game, and that no one would ever catch him.

Sometimes he would go all the way to Albania. In those cases, he would take a larger boat. But, deep down, he didn’t like these long voyages. No, what he liked was to take his fishing boat and hug the coastline the way a cat hugs a wall, drifting from inlet to inlet in the sweet darkness of illegality.

He would glide over the waves in silence. Lying at the bottom of his boat, he navigated only by the stars. At those moments, he was nothing. He forgot himself. Nobody knew him anymore. Nobody spoke. He was a lost speck on the sea. A tiny wooden boat, swaying on the waves. He was nothing. Having learned to understand the language of the sea, the wind’s commands, the whisper of the surf, he let the world enter him.

Smuggling was all there was. He needed the whole sky, full of wet stars, to vent his melancholy. He asked for nothing else. Only to glide with the current, leaving the world’s torments behind him.

S
omething wasn’t right. It was one o’clock in the morning and Donato had berthed in the small inlet of the island of Montefusco. There was nobody under the fig tree, the spot where Raminuccio usually waited for him with the crates of cigarettes. Raminuccio’s voice rang out in the night, halfshouting, half-whispering, “Donato, over here!”

Something wasn’t right. He climbed up the slope amid pebbles and prickly pears and came to the entrance of a small grotto. Raminuccio was standing there, a flashlight in hand. Behind him, two silhouettes sat on a rock, motionless and silent.

Donato gave his friend a questioning glance, and Raminuccio hastily explained.

“Don’t worry. Everything’s all right. I don’t have any cigarettes today, but I’ve got something better. You’ll see. For you, it makes no difference. Just drop them off at the usual place. Matteo will come pick them up. It’s already arranged. Okay?”

Donato nodded. Raminuccio then stuck a fat wad of bills in his hand, whispering to him with a smile, “You’ll see, it pays a lot better than cigarettes.” Donato didn’t count the bills, but he knew from the weight that there was at least three or four times the usual sum.

The passengers took their places in silence. Donato didn’t greet them. He began rowing away from the inlet. There was a woman of about twenty-five accompanied by her son, who must have been between eight and ten. At first Donato was entirely absorbed in his maneuver and hadn’t the time to notice them, but soon the island’s shore disappeared. They were out on the open sea. Donato set the motor running and had nothing better to do than to rest his eyes on his two passengers. The child was leaning his head back over his mother’s knees, contemplating the night sky. The woman sat up very straight. She carried herself well. One could see from her clothing and her strong, callused hands that she was poor, but her whole face expressed an austere dignity. Donato could barely muster up the courage to speak. This feminine presence on his boat imposed a kind of new timidity on him.

“Cigarette?” he asked, holding out a pack. The woman smiled and gestured “no” with her hand. Donato immediately felt angry at himself. A cigarette. It’s obvious she doesn’t want one. He lit his own, thought for a moment, then spoke again, pointing his finger at himself.

“Donato. And you?”

The woman answered in a soft voice that filled the night.

“Alba.”

He smiled, and repeated “Alba” several times to show that he’d understood and found the name very pretty. Then he no longer knew what to say and fell silent. During the entire crossing, he admired the child’s beautiful face and the attentive gestures of his mother, who wrapped her arms around the boy so he wouldn’t catch cold. What he loved most was the woman’s silence. Without knowing why, he was filled with a sort of pride. He was guiding his passengers towards the shores of the Gargano, in safety. No customs boat would ever catch them. Of all the smugglers, he was the most elusive. He felt a growing desire to stay right there, on this boat, with this woman and child. Never to reach the shore again. That night was the first time he felt this temptation. Never to go back. To stay out there among the waves. So long as the night never ended. A night as vast as a whole life, under the stars, his skin salted by sea spray. A nocturnal life, taking this woman and her son from one point to another along the clandestine coast.

The sky grew less dark. Soon the Italian coast came into view. It was four o’clock in the morning. He touched shore reluctantly. He helped the woman disembark, carried the boy, then, turning to her one last time, happy-faced, he said “
Ciao
,” which for him meant a great deal more. He wanted to wish her good luck. To tell her he had loved this journey. He wanted to tell her she was beautiful, and that he loved her silence. That her son was a good boy. He wanted to tell her he wished he could see her again, that he could carry her across the sea as many times as she wanted. But all he managed to say was “
ciao
,” his eyes happy and hopeful. He was sure she would understand everything that lay behind that simple word, but she merely returned his goodbye and got into the car that was waiting for her. Matteo turned off the motor and came out to say hello to Donato, leaving the two passengers seated in the back of the car.

“Everything go all right?” Matteo asked.

“Yes,” Donato mumbled. He looked at Matteo and felt he could ask him the questions he hadn’t had the presence of mind to ask Raminuccio. “Who are these people?”

“Illegal immigrants from Albania.”

“Where are they going?”

“Here, first, then they’ll be taken to Rome by truck. From there, they spread out everywhere. Germany. France. England.”

“Her, too?” Donato asked, unable to make the connection between this woman and the networks Matteo was talking about.

“Pays a lot better than cigarettes, eh?” the man asked without answering his question. “They’re ready to bleed themselves dry to pay for the crossing. You can almost ask whatever price you want.”

He laughed, patted Donato on the shoulder, said goodbye, got back into the car and vanished with a screech of the tires.

Donato remained alone on the beach, stunned. The sun rose, monumental and slow as a sovereign. The water shimmered pink with light. He took the wad of bills out of his pocket and counted them. Two million lire. Two million lire in crumpled bills. If you added the shares of Raminuccio, Matteo, and the network boss, the young woman must have paid at least eight million lire.
²⁰
A vast sense of shame came over Donato. He started laughing. Howling the predatory laugh of Rocco Mascalzone. He laughed like a madman because he’d just understood that he’d taken that woman’s very last savings. He laughed, thinking, “I’m a monster. Two million lire. I took two million lire away from her and her child. And I was smiling at her, asking her name, thinking she was enjoying the ride. I’m the most wretched man on earth. To rob a woman like that, bleed her dry and then dare to make conversation with her. I certainly am Rocco’s grandson. No faith. No shame. I’m no better than the others. I’m even worse, a lot worse. And now I’m rich. I have the sweat of a lifetime in my pocket, and I’m going to celebrate at the café and buy all around. As her boy was looking at me with those big eyes, I could already see myself teaching him about the stars and the sounds of the sea. Shame on me and the line of degenerates that bear my thieving name.”

As of that day, Donato was never the same again. A veil had covered his eyes, and it remained there until his death, like a scar on his face.

D
onato’s disappearances became more and more frequent; his journeys grew longer and longer. He was sinking into solitude without a word, without hesitation. He still saw a little of his cousin Michele, Raffaele’s son, because he often slept in the small, cavelike room of the
trabucco
. Michele had a young son, Emilio Scorta. It was to him that Donato spoke his last words. When he turned eight, Donato invited him into his boat the way his uncle Giuseppe had done with him long before, and took him out for a ride to the slow rhythm of the waves. The sun set into the billows, lighting up the crests with a beautiful rosy glow. The child remained silent during the entire journey. He loved his uncle Donato very much but did not dare ask him any questions.