The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store (25 page)

‘Padre! Padre, tell him!' the captain was calling loudly, rattling his chair behind him as he stood to address Padre Ruggiero. The priest was labouring across the piazzetta in his heavy robes, having finished vespers at San Pietro's. ‘Tell him, Padre. He must see the pig fight!' The captain motioned to Otto impatiently. His accent had become thicker with the drink and Lucio could barely understand him. ‘I find the pig especially. Is good sport, yah?' He pulled out a chair for Padre Ruggiero, who sat down heavily and pressed his sweating face into a handkerchief. He had come, it seemed, with the purpose of escorting the officers to the festival — making even more effort than Captain Schlosser to ignore the tensions erupting around them.

‘Yes indeed. You must see the pig joust, Signor Otto,' Padre Ruggiero said, when he had recovered his breath. ‘It's quite a spectacle. And so generous of the captain to make sure we've been able to carry on our traditions in such lean times.'

Otto didn't seem drunk at all, and Lucio sensed from the way he sat, upright and awkward, that he was there under obligation. ‘I'm sorry, Padre. I'm not usually such a bore. I have a terrible toothache, I'm afraid —'

‘He needs a drink, yes?' the captain interrupted. ‘I tell him, drink the padre's aquavit. Tomorrow I take him to Monteferro myself to —' He put the knuckle of his forefinger to his mouth and made a ripping noise in his cheek, mimicking the extraction of the tooth. He laughed, pushing a generous glass of liquor towards Otto. Even from where he stood, Lucio could see the unmistakeable colour of Raimondi Gold. The captain said something energetic in German and took a swig from a silver hipflask on the table.

‘I'm not much of a drinker,' Otto apologised to the priest.

‘Even so, the captain is right,' Padre Ruggiero said, eyeing the size of the glass that had been poured. ‘The villagers use this grappa as medicine. It's known to cure all manner of ailments. Particularly good for toothache, as I recall. Still,' he took the glass and poured some of the liquid into another, ‘you shouldn't overdo it.' He knocked back the contents in one gulp.

The captain clapped the priest on the shoulder. ‘Komm,' he said excitedly and nudged the glass again towards Otto. ‘Komm!' Otto took it up, while Padre Ruggiero gave him a slow nod, like a benediction. He put the glass carefully to his lips, but before he could drink, the captain had tipped it upwards so that Otto was forced to gulp the whole shot or wear it down his shirtfront. Captain Schlosser wheezed as Otto grimaced, the liquor coursing down his throat.

When the joke had worn off, the captain jumped up. ‘Good!' he said, slipping the hipflask into Otto's shirt pocket and patting it. ‘Now we see the fighting pig!' And he grinned at them, innocent as a boy on the way to a country fair.

Lucio didn't go home to change. Instead he tailed the Germans and the priest, catching up with Otto when he found him alone at the edge of the campo. He was inspecting the lanterns that Lucio and his brother had hung from the trees, along the grassy hillside where most of the villagers had spread themselves, chatting before the entertainment began. In the meadow stood a semi-circle of ancient stones set about a chalk pit, partially cut into the hillside — when and by whom, nobody knew anymore. The small amphitheatre was only ever used for the Ferragosto games, or by children who staged plays and enacted feats of gladiatorial prowess while their mothers were at the washhouse. Leading the captain, Padre Ruggiero had already threaded through the crowd to take up the low stone seats set about the arena, which were always reserved for him. Behind them the soldiers from the mess were loitering in groups, set apart from the Italians, talking in their staccato voices and sending out volleys of laughter from time to time, like a flock of crows.

‘How is your toothache?' Lucio asked Otto. He could tell from the shine in his friend's cheek and the softer line of his jaw that the liquor was already working its magic.

‘Practically gone,' Otto said, surprised. ‘The priest was right about that stuff.' Lucio nodded.

‘It's beautiful,' Otto continued, gesturing at the coloured lights in the branches above them, the torches around the ring that were beginning to brighten with the falling night. ‘The people go to so much trouble. It must mean a lot to them.'

Lucio shrugged. He remembered Ferragosto as it used to be: the pig spitting on the roast, Urso and Polvere arguing over its basting; the tables where the women would serve orecchie di prete, newspaper cones of olives and nuts, and the freshly made crostoli and ciambelle. There was none of that now, only a cask of young wine that Fagiolo drew off and sold by the glass to locals, and by the jug to the Germans. Everyone had eaten before they came, he knew, unable or unwilling to spare anything for the communal feast that once was the heart of the celebration. Now everyone saved the best of their harvests to trade, and pride prevented them from bringing out the paltry remains they kept to feed themselves.

He spotted his mother on the grass bank, sitting with Fabrizia. She was watching them. Otto began to raise his hand to her, but she turned away from them to talk to her friend. As she moved, her hair fanned across her back. It was tied loosely at the nape of her neck in a single black ribbon. She had taken to wearing it this way recently. Lucio had heard women in the washhouse complain it was too girlish, disrespectful to her husband, but this didn't seem to concern his mother. He liked the way it looked. Under the light of the lanterns, the curls falling down her back reminded him of ink dropped in water.

He saw Otto's hand retreat, yet there was a satisfaction playing about his friend's mouth, as if he'd lost fifty centesimi but found a lira. ‘I can show you the best place to sit, if you want,' Lucio told him. He led Otto away from the crowd, past the washhouse, and up the track in the direction of Collelungo. When they were well above the campo, they cut through the meadow and onto a ridge, finding a spot that offered a clear view of the action in the ring and the audience below.

‘All-seeing and yet unseen?' Otto said, smiling at him.

Lucio saw his mother glance towards the hill that rose behind her. She would not be able to see them, camouflaged as they were in the dusk, but she knew him too well, knew all the places to which he removed himself. She shifted back around, ready for the entertainment, running her hand over the hair at her neck, her fingertips lingering on the knot of ribbon, as though she knew she was being watched. And she was: he noticed Otto's gaze focusing there too.

‘I nearly forgot,' his friend said suddenly, coming back to himself. He reached into the folds of his jacket and pulled out a book: a rolled journal encased in leather. He gave it to Lucio. ‘I made this for you.'

Lucio held the book in his lap uncertainly, his fingers brushing the supple nap of the leather.

‘Yes, it's for you,' Otto said. ‘To keep all your sketches together.'

He untied the leather string around the journal. The cover fell back, soft as cloth, but the paper inside was thick and blank and clean. The pages reminded him somehow of the past: freshly drawn milk; a tablecloth of pale linen handed down to his mother, cut up long ago for shirts; the whitewashed walls of his grandfather's murals.

‘Thank you,' he began, but Otto shook his head to stop him.

‘Oh, and this,' his friend said. He dropped something from his pocket into Lucio's palm. It resembled a coin, but on closer inspection he saw it was a metal disc on a ring. He ran his thumb over it and felt the engraving. He couldn't read it in the dark but he could guess what was written there:
Viviana
.

‘Where is she tonight anyway?' Otto asked.

‘I had to tie her up in the stable. She gets too excited about the piglet.'

Otto scoffed a little. ‘What do they do with this piglet that everyone's making such a fuss about?'

‘It's a game. They play it every year. Two men at a time get blindfolded. They have to chase the piglet round the arena with brooms. The one who hits it most in five minutes goes to the next round, until they get a winner.'

‘And what's the prize?'

Lucio shrugged. He thought it was obvious. ‘The piglet, of course.'

‘A rather bruised one, then.'

‘The beaters seem to hit each other mostly,' Lucio said. ‘Some people find it funny.'

His friend's grey eyes were steady under their pale lids. ‘But not you?'

He didn't answer. He didn't want to say that he'd never been able to laugh at the game.

In the amphitheatre, the competitors were lining up — a motley collection of boys and weathered old men, their shirtsleeves rolled about their arms. Vittorio stood among them, balancing barefoot on the low arena wall, brown and lean. He seemed to have grown over the summer, inhabiting his adult body with a nonchalant confidence that made Lucio feel like the younger brother. Many of the Avanguardisti had joined up over the spring, and he was one of the oldest left in the village now. But Lucio knew he didn't count, not the way Primo did. He was not a crowd-pleaser, a favourite to win.

‘My brother,' Lucio said, indicating Vittorio to Otto. ‘He's competing for our family.'

‘For your family?'

Lucio heard the question that he knew his friend was too tactful to ask:
And why not you?
He tried to explain. ‘My brother's better at things like this — better in a crowd. He'll have the audience behind him. It makes a difference. You'll see.'

Otto seemed unconvinced.

‘It's become more than a game now,' Lucio said. ‘Alive, that piglet could grow to see a family through next winter and spring. Even dead, it's the best meat anyone's likely to get all year. Vittorio has the greatest chance of winning.'

In the ring, Polvere was handing brooms to the first two competitors. Professore Centini stepped into the arena between them, the piglet under his arm. Spooked by the cheers of the crowd, the animal began to struggle and squeal, forcing the mayor to drop it and abandon his attempt at a speech. The pig skittered to the centre of the ring, sniffing the air and twitching the bell around its tail. The onlookers called out its whereabouts and jeered at the seekers for clinging to the safety of the walls. Shamed, they ventured inwards, blindly swinging their brooms, until one managed to land a sturdy smack on the backside of the other. The crowd bellowed, terrifying the animal, which did a circuit of the wall and promptly defecated.

Lucio could see the Germans exchanging coins and cigarettes, placing hurried bets. The captain was finding the game immensely entertaining, shouting in German at the top of his voice, his cheeks ablaze. His collar was unbuttoned, and he had discarded his glass, which Padre Ruggiero had given him, in favour of swigging straight from a bottle of Raimondi Gold, set on the wall before them. Every time one of the seekers hit the other, he clapped the priest on the shoulder with such force that the tuft of his biretta quivered.

From the sidelines, Polvere called time, and it was Vittorio's turn to replace the loser in the ring. The baker swung a leg down into the arena and gave the piglet a stiff kick. It screamed ridiculously, and Vittorio managed to land a few hits on its rump before it squeezed between his legs, leaving him swiping his opponent about the ankles. Someone summoned an imaginative curse that invoked both pigs and mothers-in-law, sending ribald laughter through the crowd, even among the Germans who hadn't understood a word.

At the fifth changeover, Vittorio was still undefeated in the ring, and the captain had become so excited that he could no longer stay in his seat. Stripping to his shirtsleeves, he jumped ahead of the queue of contestants, instructing the baker to tie the blindfold about him. His men seemed to think this a splendid development in the festivities, but their enthusiastic toasts fell suddenly loud in the villagers' silence.

To the side of the arena, Vittorio and Fagiolo were exchanging hushed, urgent words. His brother, still blindfolded, set back his shoulders and raised his broom tentatively. He seemed to have become a boy again, a David next to the German's towering Goliath. He sidestepped about the ring, keeping the head of his broom low to the ground and cocking his head to listen. He made a strike, short and quick, catching the calf of the captain, who lashed out in response. Vittorio took a cuff to the ear and another to the arm, which sent him sprawling across the dirt. But within seconds he was up again, this time swiping the German about the chin and drawing blood. There was a cheer from the villagers. Padre Ruggiero shifted in his seat. The captain spat and laughed, undeterred, continuing to command the space as he tried to locate his target. When the pig squealed, he jabbed his broom, striking its head with the handle and stunning it. Vittorio caught the second thrust in the stomach and doubled over. As he reached for the ground, his hand touched the pig, dazed at his feet. He scrambled to grab it, but the captain kicked his hands away and snatched up the animal by a hind leg.

A roar went up from the Germans, drowning out the pig's screams. The captain held his arms wide in victory. Still wearing his blindfold and dangling the piglet before him, he began to club it vigorously with his broom handle. The clamour of the audience gradually faded until all that could be heard were the dull thuds of the wood on limp flesh, the captain's rasping grunts.