The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (176 page)

Gallante Selvi stopped breathing in the hour before the sun. Prosperine washed the blood away from both ends of him and Violetta combed his hair, crying and kissing his yellow curls. She kept begging that poisoned devil to forgive her and, finally, Prosperine had to slap her and cover the body with Ciccolina’s quilt to make her stop.

The Monkey told Violetta that to sit and do nothing—to fail to go for priest or
dottore
—would cast suspicion. But Violetta was afraid to stay alone with him—afraid Selvi might come alive again and strangle her, or that his unholy soul would suck the air from her mouth. She stayed outside while Prosperine walked to the village.

In town, the Monkey knocked on the door of the more
stupido
of Pescara’s two
dottori
—the one whose errors had killed more patients. “Hurry, please, while he is still alive,” she said. Together they rushed to wake up
Padre Pomposo.

Through all the examination and prayer that followed, Violetta wailed her sorrow—a diva’s performance, or else real tears, Prosperine never knew which. That lazy
dottore
made a poke here, a prod there. “
Appendice,
” he said. “The poor man died of burst
appendice.
” Then he went to the kitchen while the
padre
gave that son of a bitch the Rites of the Dead.

Padre Pomposo
—that lover of pageantry and
stravaganza
—advised Violetta that she must arrange a funeral befitting the great religious
artiste
her beloved husband had been. With her permission, he said, he would contact Panetta, the
impresario di pompe funebri
, as soon as he returned to the village. Panetta would collect the body, prepare it, and transport it to the church where all of Pescara would come to mourn. Prosperine’s eyes tried to warn Violetta, “No, no!” They needed a fast burial. But Violetta’s eyes looked only at the priest, as if his foolish
ceremonia
could save her husband’s soul and hers.
Padre Pomposo
spoke on and on about holy music and special candles, a
processione
, perhaps, on Wednesday or Thursday morning, from the
ocean where the genius had worked to the church where the High Mass would be celebrated.

Prosperine made her tongue click and shook her head in a futile attempt to capture the
attenzione
of her friend and accomplice. The
padre
looked at her, then back to Violetta. Perhaps, he said, if he could have a moment of privacy with the widow . . .

Then, a shock! A thing those murdering women had not planned on—the thing that ruined them! Banished by the priest from the room where the funeral arrangements were being made, Prosperine reentered the kitchen. At the table, that stupid
dottore
sat devouring the roasted chicken she had stuffed with bread and glass!

“
Scusi, Signorina,
” he told the Monkey, waving a half-gnawed leg. “I hope your pretty
padrona
won’t mind that I had a little something for my stomach in exchange for my troubles. Do you have, maybe, a bottle of
vino
to help wash down this bird?” In front of him was a pile of bones and a spoon. The bird’s carcass was half empty of the tainted stuffing!

Panetta the undertaker and his man came that afternoon to haul away the body. Violetta hugged Prosperine, sobbing, as the wagon drove away. That stupid
dottore
had not seemed sick when he left. He hadn’t eaten nearly as much of the ground glass as Gallante had. Perhaps things would be fine.

But that greedy fool was sick by the time the wagon had returned to the village! Sick for the rest of that day, too, and through the night. When he moved his bowels the next morning, he screamed from the pain of it. His wife carried his business outside and studied it in the sunlight. The bloody
cacca
floating inside the chamber pot glittered and told on Selvi’s widow and her murdering friend!

The
dottore
and his wife carried their smelly evidence to the
magistrato
and, together, the three visited Panetta the undertaker. Then the four went to the church to cut open Gallante Selvi’s
stomaco.

It was Prosperine’s father who told all this to her, as he stood in his apron at Ciccolina’s doorway. His hair was dusty from macaroni flour, his eyes jumped with fear for his estranged daughter. Panetta
the undertaker’s wife was Papa’s
cugina.
She had run to the macaroni shop and tipped him off and Papa had beaten his mule half to death to get to Prosperine before the
polizia
arrived. “Take this, whatever you have done, and run away,” he said. He put two fistfuls of coins into his daughter’s upturned apron, then hugged her hard enough to break her bones. That was the last she ever saw of her papa, but ever since, she had been comforted by her memory of him standing there in Ciccolina’s doorway. He had felt a father’s love for her all along, and even before his arms had let go of her that day, she had forgiven him for having sold her away.

They ran! Through the woods and then down to the docks—ran to those fishermen who had lusted after Violetta. They employed the charms of the beautiful one and the money of the ugly one and got away from Pescara. They did what they had to do. It was the only way.

From boat to boat, down the coast, they traveled. Prosperine had never before been out of Pescara, but now they sailed past Bari and Brindisi, and across the
stretto
at Messina. And that was how Prosperine became
siciliana
—she had gone there to hide from murder!

For a while, the two women lived in Catania, lost among the workers on a wealthy man’s olive farm. They were safe there until the farmer’s
capomastro
became curious about what was beneath Violetta’s skirts and his suspicious wife began questioning where two young
signorini
had traveled from and why. On the same night of that jealous wife’s
interrogazione,
Prosperine and Violetta stole money and escaped again, this time by train to Palermo.

Those were terrible months in that busy city where people came and went. Violetta found work as a servant at a busy inn, and Prosperine toiled as a laundress there. Although the Monkey could hide in the back with the hot water and soiled linens, Violetta was obliged to serve meals to travelers. Her heart stopped a little each time the door of the inn opened. Prosperine, too, was afraid—forever mistaking people in the streets for traveling Pescarans! Women and men and
bambini
all seemed to look at her with familiar faces—with eyes that knew what she had done. She was homesick. She longed to see the
Adriatico,
the Pescaran square, her
papa, her sisters Anna and Teodolina. But a bigger part of her longed to be safe—to buy safety for herself and her friend Violetta. They could not be caught! They had to get further away!

One of Violetta’s regular supper customers was a fine and proper
legale
. On nights when the inn was quiet, he invited her to sit with him and talk and join him in a cognac. He was well traveled, this gentleman; three times, he told her, he had visited
la ‘Merica
. And it warmed his heart to think of the number of poor
siciliani
he had helped sail to that Land of Dreams.

Had he ever aided any poor souls, Violetta asked cautiously, who were, perhaps, in trouble with the law?

The
legale
leaned closer to the murderous widow and whispered
si,
he had from time to time assisted fellow citizens whose criminal records had needed a little whitewashing. He had a friend, he said, an
ufficiale di passaporti
. Together they sometimes made the dead come alive again, equipping them with traveling papers besides! They asked no questions of prospective emigrants, he said, except the one question they needed to know: how much was a
fugitiva
able to pay?

In the weeks that followed, Violetta began to grant her friend the
legale
certain favors. In exchange, he sent secret word back to a certain Pescaran macaroni-maker that the two fugitives were alive and well and needed money. Then they waited and waited—almost a year, long enough so that Prosperine was sure her father had disowned her for the shame she had brought on his head.

One day a young sailor came to the inn. He asked to see the laundress and was brought out back to her scrubbing tubs. Without speaking a word, he took out
fotografia,
holding it before himself and looking back and forth, back and forth, from the Monkey’s face to the likeness in his hand. Prosperine’s hands shook the water in the tub while she washed and waited. She thought, of course, that he was
agente di polizia
, but he was not. Here stood her sister Teodolina’s new husband. Her younger sister had married and it was her own brother-in-law who stood before her! The sailor handed her a leather purse. Inside was money from her father, the
amount the
legale
needed for passage and counterfeit passports, and for the fugitives’ sponsorship once they got to America, plus a little more. Prosperine’s father had sold his macaroni shop—had sacrificed his livelihood for the daughter he had first rented away to an old witch, and then to her brute of a godson.

“And so, Tempesta, I became Prosperine Tucci, a girl five years my junior who had died of
consunzione
and whose mother had been sister to those stinking Iaccoi brothers—those goddamned plumbers who tricked you. They made a nice profit from their lies, Tempesta, and made you a fool as well. And here we sit, you and me, each a curse for the other.”

I reached over and grabbed her wrist. “What is your real name then, eh?” I said. “If Prosperine is a name stolen from a dead girl?”

“
Bought
, not stolen,” she said. “Paid for with a father’s sacrifice. My other name doesn’t matter. I am
myself
, Tempesta—the woman who watches what you do. That’s all you need to know.”

“And are you planning to feed
me
glass to tear up
my
insides? Stab
me
some night with your butcher knife?”

“I have no wish to watch another man die—to be twice damned,” she said. “Gallante Selvi was the devil himself. You’re only a bully and a fool. Keep your hands off her and you’ll be safe from me.”

She stood, teetering, and then made her way to the bathroom. That one who had never drunk spirits in my house before had, that night, drunk nearly half of the jug. Now, from behind the door, I heard that witch turn her wine back to water. I heard her moan, too, and wondered if she had begun to sober herself—to realize that she had told too much.

When she came out again, I stood in front of her, blocking her way to her room. “Your friend,” I said. “Violetta D’Annunzio. What became of her?”

Fear crossed the Monkey’s face and left just as quickly. “Eh? Violetta? She stayed . . . stayed in Palermo. . . . She changed her mind and married that
legale
.”

“Eh?”

“He fell in love with her and turned her into a gentlewoman. Now she’s happy.”

“Happy to be dead?” I said.

“Eh?”

“Before, you told me she died. You said she was buried in the Old Country.”

The fear and confusion in her eyes spoke louder than her words. “She
is
buried there. I said she was happy
before
she died. . . . Maybe I misspoke, but that’s what I meant.”

“Ah,” I said. “And has her second husband maintained good health?”

The Monkey’s eyes could not look at me. “The
legale
? He was grief-stricken, poor man.”

“
Si?
”

“
Si, si
. He wrote to me with the sad news when I lived with the plumbers. Influenza is what took her, poor thing. She had a sad life.”

“Before, you said your father’s money had paid for ‘our’ escape. Did Violetta come to this country or not?”

“I said ‘my’ escape.”

“You said ‘our’ escape.
Nostro.
I heard the word come out of your mouth.”

“You heard wrong then,” she said. “
Mia, no nostra.
You must have potatoes in your ears.”

Now she looked at me and I looked at her. We stood there, watching each other, neither of us looking away. That’s when I saw the Monkey’s lip tremble. And then, in the other room, the baby cried.

I held her gaze ten, fifteen seconds more. “You’d better go,” I finally said. “Your friend Violetta needs you.”

Her drunken, frightened eyes jumped from my face to the bedroom door, then back again. “My friend Violetta is buried in Palermo,” she said—a little too loudly. “I just told you. It is a sin to mock the souls of the dead.”

I took her arm and whispered some advice into her ear. “You’re a fine one,” I said, “to talk to me about sins against the dead!”

Sheffer was late, as usual. Why was one o’clock always 1:10 or 1:15 with that woman? Why was 11
A.M.
always 11:20, with some excuse attached?

Okay, cool your jets, Birdsey, I told myself. You bite her head off as soon as she walks in the door, you won’t get what you need.

Get him tested. . . . Keep my name out of it.

Drinkwater’s phone call had kept me up all night. Just my brother’s paranoid delusions—right, Sheffer? He’s “perfectly safe” all right. Except for one minor detail: he might be infected. Someone down here at this fucking place might have given him AIDS.