Tuscan roots, p.16
Tuscan Roots, page 16
Everybody came to the stable not only to celebrate our marriage, but the end of the terrible years of war. In my excitement I wasn’t hungry enough to do the meal justice but my eyes feasted on the spread. I couldn’t remember when I had last seen such an amount of dishes: plates of ham, preserves of walnuts, zucchini, aubergines and mushrooms, wild salad leaves from the meadows sprinkled with grated truffles, roasted pigeons, pork, chickens and a whole boar. The wine flowed, faces grew redder, jokes became bawdier and then the music started. My father lifted his accordion onto his shoulder and after a rusty start, the music sang into the air. The planks that had served as tables were cleared from their supports, the leftovers tidied away into baskets to be carried home by our guests and the dancing started.
‘You’ll have to show me the steps,’ my husband whispered to me as we moved into the empty circle of smiling faces, ‘The dances are different from the ones I know.’
‘Just listen to the music, we’ll be fine.’
He clutched onto me as if he was about to fall and our first waltz wasn’t as smooth as it could have been but it didn’t matter as the floor soon filled up with other dancers and we were swept round in the throng.
‘Thirsty work this dancing!’ Norman stopped and a couple bumped into us. ‘And my leg is hurting.’ He led me from the dance floor to the corner of the stable where most of the men were congregated round barrels of wine. Some of them were already unsteady on their feet and they clapped him on the shoulders, congratulating him and pumping his hand up and down again. I watched him knock back a couple of beakers and then I joined Mamma. Just for today she had changed out of her black mourning clothes, worn since Davide’s death, but her best Sunday frock of polka dot blue hung off her and her face was sad. As I went over, she patted the empty chair beside her and I took her hand in mine. The music was too loud for talk but we both understood what lay in our hearts.
Norman and I were escorted to our bedroom with songs and laughter. The bed was strewn with flowers and my mother had laid out her best nightdress for me on the pillow.
‘Carry her in, Norman, carry her in,’ our guests shouted.
Norman was embarrassed too and whispered that he couldn’t wait for them to leave, to be alone with me. But when we were on our own, I was suddenly afraid, remembering my mother’s words by the river.
‘I’ll leave you for a few minutes, Ines.’
He closed the door and I undressed, shivering a little in the cooler night air. I lowered the flame on the lamp and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. There had been no mirror in the bedroom I had shared with nonna and I had never seen my naked reflection. My breasts were full and the triangle of hair between my legs was obvious in the gloomy light.
Norman came back in before I had time to put on my nightdress and I hurried over to the bed where it lay folded. He looked at me and after a sharp intake of breath, he whispered, ‘Don’t put it on. Stay how you are.’
I covered myself with my hands but he pulled them away and bent to kiss my breasts and then he knelt, his tongue licking my belly, his fingers feeling inside me, making me tremble. He moaned and stood up, pulling off his clothes, swearing as he fumbled with the buttons on his trousers and sat on the edge of the bed to remove them. I couldn’t take my eyes off his nakedness. He picked me up and carried me to the bed. It creaked as he climbed on top of me and then creaked some more as he thrust himself inside me, a strange look on his face as he moved up and down and then he cried out and lay heavy on me. Grunting, he rolled away, blew out the light and within seconds he was asleep. I lay motionless in the dark, remembering what my mother had told me about the duties of a wife. I throbbed. I was sticky and sore. I wanted Norman to talk to me and tell me everything was all right; that what I’d had to do has been done well. Turning towards him, I gently prodded his side. ‘Go to sleep,’ he mumbled.
But I didn’t feel sleepy. In the darkness, I listened to the water rushing past the mill, wondering if the same thing would happen again the following night.
Chapter 21
June 1999
Anna spends the rest of the day pottering: planting up an animal feed trough outside her front door with basil and parsley, hand-washing a silk blouse, but all the time her mind is on the diary. She goes to bed early, thinking about her mother, before falling into a fitful sleep in the early hours.
She sleeps in late. Papers are strewn about on the floor beside her bed and as she makes herself a pot of strong coffee instead of her usual tea, her first thoughts are again about her mother’s wedding. How many daughters get to read detailed descriptions of their own mother’s first night? How many women of that generation were as innocent and ignorant as her mother about what went on between the sheets? She feels uncomfortable reading about these private moments and yet, she reminds herself, her mother intended her to read her diaries. Presumably married life had improved as time went on; Ines gave birth to three babies after all.
She ponders about her own generation and the freedom she is able to enjoy. Maybe life, in some ways, had been less complicated fifty years ago. Women shouldered their lot, accepting what came along, especially in country areas where the rhythm of life only altered with the seasons and news from the outside world was slow to trickle through. But how many unhappy lives had resulted from this ignorance? And what would they have made of Anna’s own muddled love life? Surely not everybody would have stayed on the straight and narrow? The war must have turned lives upside down in so many ways.
In the early days of her stay, Francesco had shown her round a folk museum in the little village of Casteldelci, in the next valley. She was fascinated to read descriptions of how people lived from day to day; how they used ashes from the fire to wash their clothes; slept on the first floor of their houses with animals on the ground floor providing heat that wafted up through wide gaps in the floor-boards. And, as she is finding out, the war impacted heavily on these people’s lives. The museum had displayed gruesome photos of dead partisans arranged on the bridge beneath the village, a warning by the Germans not to support them.
A simple banner with the words, ‘Our past is the counterweight to our future’, hanging in the centre of the exhibition had touched a chord and given relevance to reading her parents’ story. It is dawning on her that if she can learn more about her mother and father, she might know herself a little better.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of a worried Alba at the door, with Billi clasped in her arms. As far as Alba is concerned, Anna has become an unofficial vet and cat counsellor and she holds up Billi for inspection. The cat’s tail is wrapped in a blood-stained handkerchief.
‘Oh, poor little thing!’ Anna says, bending down to stroke the cat. ‘Is he in the wars again? Come in, Alba and we’ll bathe his tail. Has he been in the wood pile again looking for mice?’
She has grown expert at this one-way conversation with Alba, feeling instinctively that she shouldn’t be forced into talking. One day, when she is ready, she will rediscover her words.
‘It’s not a deep cut,’ she tells the little girl, ‘maybe his tail got pecked by the hens - the silly things thought it was a fat juicy worm.’
Alba giggles and helps bathe Billi’s tail in boiled, salted water, holding fast to the wriggling bundle of fur.
‘How about another English lesson later on today, before you leave for Bologna,’ she suggests when they have finished with Billi, ‘we could learn some more words along the river. It’s a sunny day and I want to be outside too.’
Alba nods and Anna tells her in English what time they should meet, asking her if she has understood. Alba holds up three fingers and Anna smiles her approval. ‘Well done. See you later, alligator!’
Francesco drops her at Anna’s front door just before three, hovering on the threshold. They haven’t spoken since the morning after their supper together. She wonders if she will ever have the chance to tell him what went on with Will. She misses Francesco’s company, regrets the frosty atmosphere between them now, but doesn’t know how to break it.
‘I’ve got to go to Bologna to finalise plans for our move back,’ Francesco says, handing over Alba’s rucksack. He looks tired and refuses Anna’s offer of coffee. ‘No thanks, I’m late enough already and I heard on the radio that traffic is bad. There’s been a nasty accident on the main road and I don’t know what time I’ll be back. Teresa says she will look after Alba this evening and she’s expecting her about five.’
‘We’ll be finished well before then.’ She wants to tell him to drive safely and come back in one piece, but he’s already climbing into his car. They wave him goodbye as his old Fiat Panda disappears down the dirt track.
‘Come on then, Alba. I’ve packed us a picnic. We’re going further down the river today. New words need new places and we’re going to find a little chapel downstream that your daddy told me about. Then we’ll find a big rock to sit on and have our English afternoon tea. I’ve even baked you special English buns which we call rock cakes.’
Alba laughs and carefully pulls her rucksack onto her back. The bag wriggles.
‘Oh no, Alba, Billi can’t come. He’ll be a distraction and he won’t want to get wet. Cats don’t like water either.’
She wonders if the little girl has taken on board she will be returning to Bologna soon and if Francesco will let her keep Billi when they are back in their town apartment.
Each day now the weather is improving and the June sunshine is warm enough for dips in the river. The little girl squeals when Anna points out long necklaces of toad spawn tangled in the pools. Disturbed by their approach, a pair of egrets rise from the shallows where they have been fishing, their wing spans casting graceful shadows over the stones.
‘Let’s see how many heart shaped stones we can find and some flat ones to paint and write words on in English.’
A pleasant half hour later they reach the path leading to an abandoned chapel, a humble stone building with a corrugated metal roof. Inside is an altar and a gaudy image of the Madonna. Artificial flowers are arranged in jars on a darned altar cloth and outside, on an enamelled plaque, is a simple inscription:
In this little church where on Sundays Eliseio used to listen to the walnuts falling onto the roof, he kept his wife company as she came to clean and arrange plastic flowers in jam-jars on the altar. Now that he has passed away, the words he used to say to me about the existence of God, remain hanging in the air: “To say that God exists may be a lie but to say that He does not exist may be an even bigger lie.”
Tonino Guerra.
Anna likes the sound of this poet who feels free to leave his thoughts for people to find, scattered about the countryside. She has been brought up to button her feelings and Jane and Harry were always ready to laugh at her if she confided in them. During these past weeks she has noticed how gregarious Italians are and once again marvels at the huge cultural changes and loneliness her mother must have endured by leaving Italy.
A huge clap of thunder echoing from the next valley makes them both jump. They’d started their walk in brilliant sunshine but now the sky is overcast and the temperature has dropped several degrees.
‘Quick, Alba. Run for shelter! We’re going to get soaked any minute now.’
Looking up at the menacing clouds, she grabs the little girl’s hand and they make for a ruined barn. Half the roof has caved in, but there is a dry corner where the timbers above still bearing a few cracked tiles offer some shelter. Alba is shivering in her skimpy clothes and she pulls the trembling child into her arms.
‘It’s only thunder, nothing to be scared about,’ she whispers, ‘it’ll soon be over and then we can go home. We’ll have our picnic here and pretend it’s our own house. I’ll be the farmer’s wife and you can be my little girl and we’ll pretend we’re having a rest before milking our goats.’
Alba smiles and runs into a corner where a wood-wormed stool lies discarded on its side. She rights it, brushing off most of the dust with her hands, arranging cakes and plastic beakers on her makeshift table. Rain is falling heavily now, curtains of water blocking the view of outside. Fat drops occasionally fall on them between the broken tiles as they eat their picnic. Rock cakes in Tuscany, now there’s a cultural exchange, Anna thinks to herself.
Alba tugs at her arm, pointing at something on the wall beneath a half-rotten manger and smiles. Inside a heart, crudely scratched into the crumbling plaster, are four intertwined letters and a date:
DS & IS, agosto 1966
‘One day’, Anna tells her, ‘somebody will write your name like that and you’ll break somebody’s heart too.’
The little girl covers her mouth with her hands and laughs out loud.
‘Come on, Mrs Mummy Cat’ Anna continues, using the name that always makes Alba giggle. ‘Let’s clear up and get going. The rain’s stopped and if we don’t start back now we’ll be very late and your Aunty Teresa will be wondering where we’ve disappeared to.’
They retrace their steps along the river, Alba hopping from stone to stone. The level has risen slightly and the water has turned murky after the recent deluge. They are almost at the bridge where they should clamber up from the river bed to join the road, when a sudden roar causes Anna to looks up. A wall of muddy water is gushing towards them as it funnels through the arches of the bridge.
She has to shout to make herself heard above the water’s furious approach. ‘Quick Alba, run to the bank as fast as you can. Get out of the river bed.’ But the storm surge is upon them sooner than Anna anticipates.
The river boils, crashing over boulders, dragging tree trunks and branches in a crazy helter-skelter of water. At any minute the flood will catch them up and knock them over. Alba is already half way up the bank and Anna throws her rucksack up to lighten the load. She strains to catch up with the little girl but loses her footing on an unsteady rock and slides down into the foaming river. For what seem like minutes but are only seconds, she’s hemmed beneath the water, stones and debris crashing into her, knocking her breath away. Each time she thinks she will surface, logs catch her as they career past, bruising her, stopping her from regaining balance. Then at last her hand grasps a willow in the bank and she clings on, pulling herself up with both hands, bracing her body against the racing water. She is only yards away from the dam and if she doesn’t hang on to the tree she’ll surely be tossed over the twenty foot high wall and onto rocks below. And then she remembers Alba who was in front of her before she fell.
‘Alba, Alba,’ she shrieks, but the crazy river whips away her words. Clawing her way along thicker branches of her perch, her heart in her mouth in case it snaps under pressure of the storm water, her left foot finally makes contact with the bank and she gains a foothold. When she puts weight on her right foot she yelps with pain, almost losing her grip. It takes a few seconds to compose herself before climbing again but her right leg is useless.
Then she hears her name and looks up to see Alba, eyes huge in her ash-white face.
‘Anna, Anna!’ the little girl cries over and over.
Never has her name sounded so sweet to Anna’s ears.
‘Alba – thank God you’re safe,’ she shouts.
Her arms are sore from hanging on against the fast flowing current and she doesn’t know how much longer she can grip. She’s cold, near to panic but she tries to keep her voice calm to not frighten the little girl.
‘Alba, run back along the bank, look for my rucksack and mobile. Phone Teresa! Tell her what’s happened. Tell her to be quick.’
She can’t remember much about her rescue. Later on when she is sitting beside the stove, wrapped in Teresa’s bath-robe with Alba snuggled next to her on the sofa, Teresa explains how she had grabbed the gardener working on her vegetable plot. Together they had jumped into his truck and sped down to the river. It had taken Arnaldo no time to attach a length of thick rope to the back of the vehicle, tie the other end round his waist and scramble down to rescue Anna from the freezing water. A few minutes later and they reckoned it would have been too late. Anna had fainted just as Arnaldo reached her and he had to jump into the water to carry her out.
‘I was so frightened, I thought you were going to drown,’ Alba is bubbling with words so long unspoken, ‘I’m so glad now we didn’t take Billi.’
She starts to cry and Anna pulls her close, kissing the top of her head, wincing as she moves.
Teresa gently pulls her niece away, ‘Come and sit over here, Alba. Anna is very sore.’
‘I am a little sore,’ Anna says, ‘but it’s like medicine for me just listening to Alba speak again.’
‘When I answered my phone, I didn’t recognise you at first, Alba.’ Teresa says as she pulls her onto her knee. ‘You were fantastic. What a brave little girl you are.’
‘I’m going to find Billi and tell him all about it.’ Alba struggles from her aunt’s arms, ‘Can I go and find him upstairs, Anna?’
‘Of course. He’s probably under my bed.’
When they are alone, Anna tells Teresa how frightened she had been for Alba’s safety. ‘I never would have forgiven myself if anything had happened to her.’
‘Don’t worry – it wasn’t your fault, you weren’t to know. When it rains hard further up the valley, the river turns like that, almost without warning.’
‘It’s an awful thing to say, but it’s almost been worth it to hear her talk again. I can’t wait for Francesco to hear her.’ She shuffles her bottom to find a more comfortable position and grimaces as pain shoots up her right side.
