Lives of the Saints Read online

  Ehhhhhhh—vola vola vola vola

  E vola lu pavone

  Lu cuore tuo è buono

  E famme lu prover.

  Then suddenly the song was over, and a great clamour of shouts and applause and catcalls came up from the crowd, caps flying up into the air; but in the clamour there were only a few scattered cries for an encore, as if most of the dancers had forgotten already about the band, and were merely crying out to the air, or as if they had grown irritated now with the band’s novelty, Mario and Maria seeming to bow away from the stage with their wide forced smiles as if retreating from a threat. A moment later, the chorus still filing off the stage to the last applause, the engine in the band’s bus died and the square went black, the noise of the crowd suddenly disembodied. My mother and I still stood at the centre of the dance area; but in the sudden darkness the crowd seemed to have faded away, as if we had been left alone, the voices around us only so many ghosts. Then a small explosion sounded and the sky above the valley was suddenly filled with coloured light, small fading speckles of green, white, and red. It was midnight, and the final fireworks had begun. The Madonna, too, cloistered in her little chapel, would be watching.

  XIII

  The week after the festival I was tending the sheep by the cemetery when Fabrizio called out to me from the shadow of the chapel. His father, he told me, had locked him in the house with the goats the night of the fireworks.

  ‘Pom!’ he said, grinning, making a quick arc through the air with his hand to mimic his father’s blows. But I didn’t want to hear about his beating, wanted only to get back to the quiet of the sheep. When he offered me a cigarette I didn’t take it.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ‘It’s not your fault, it’s your mother. Because she was screwing in the stable.’

  But my head started pounding then and suddenly I couldn’t bear Fabrizio anymore and his stupid grinning. I wanted to make him stop talking, make him disappear, and I picked up a rock beside my foot and flung it squarely at his chest. He deflected the rock with an arm but I threw myself on him, arms flailing, and the two of us fell to the ground, Fabrizio holding out his elbows to ward me off.

  ‘Oh, scimunit’, have you gone crazy?’

  ‘It was the snake’s fault, you stupid! You’re just a stupid like your stupid father!’

  ‘Sí, sí, stop, it was only the snake, you’re right, it was only the snake.’

  The first day of school Fabrizio did not show up in class, nor the second or third; I thought he was staying away because of our fight, but then I overheard one of the older boys say that his father was keeping him out of school to work in the fields. I was alone now, without friends, and it quickly became clear what my status was with the other boys. For the first few days I was merely shunned, and could not make out the insults which they whispered to each other in class while they smirked at me from their desks; but by the end of the first week I had had another fight. It was Vincenzo Maiale, Maria’s son, who provoked me, as we were coming out of class on our way home, with some veiled comment about my mother which I didn’t understand; but suddenly we were on the ground, rolling in the dirt in the square in front of the church. I did not have any experience fighting, but somehow my body seemed to know instinctively how to do it, how to fling a fist, what areas to strike to cause the greatest harm; but in the midst of my attack I suddenly felt my rage ebbing, giving way to a vague fear, not simply the fear of being beaten up but a fear of my own violence, of the strange thing which was not me that had just flung itself with such dangerous force on Vincenzo Maiale.

  Vincenzo was about two years older than me, and taller and stronger; and in an instant he sensed the sudden lag in my resolution and moved from surprised defense to attack, throwing me off his chest and pinning me to ground, his fist beating my head against the dirt while the other children stood round watching or urging him on. I struggled to free myself but Vincenzo pinned my arms with his knees. Another wave of violence took hold of me like a possession, and I flailed my legs and let out a long stream of curses. But Vincenzo only laughed, to show what an easy victory I had been.

  ‘Oh, la maestra!’ someone called out, and suddenly everyone scattered, Vincenzo leaping off me to disappear down the church steps with his friends. In a moment la maestra was standing over me, her large breasts quivering. She had heard my cursing, I thought in horror; but she only pursed her lips and shook her head, then reached out a hand to pull me off the ground.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said. She pulled a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and wiped at my nose; it came away wet with blood. ‘It’s that woman’s fault, all of this, she thinks she’s as free as a bird, she doesn’t think about other people. Who did this to you?’

  But I only stared down at the ground, watching the blood that dripped from my nose splatter against the dirt.

  ‘Well, you’re probably right not to say, it would only make things worse for you. Go home and let your mother see you now.’ She handed her handkerchief to me. ‘Here, hold this under your nose, and when you get home lie down with your head hanging over the side of your bed and tell your mother to put a bit of garlic in each nostril. Make sure you drink at least three glasses of water before you go to sleep. Look, even your lip is bleeding. In the morning it’ll be as big as a melon.’

  It was only when I had begun my descent down the church steps that I allowed myself finally to begin whimpering, the whimper growing into a low drone as I started down the street past the village women knitting or shelling beans on their stoops and the classmates waiting in alleyways to see what had become of me. When I opened the door of our kitchen I broke out at last into full-fledged sobs. My mother was at the kitchen table kneading dough.

  ‘Per l’amore di Cristo, what happened?’ In an instant she was at my side, wiping at the blood under my nose. ‘Who did this to you?’

  She went to the sideboard and poured some water into a basin, coming back to wipe the dried blood from my face and daub my swelling lip with a wet cloth, the water in the pan turning a pale crimson.

  ‘Who did this to you, Vittorio, tell me! Dio mio, che figura!’

  ‘It was Vincenzo,’ I blurted out finally.

  ‘Vincenzo? Maria’s son?’

  ‘Sí.’

  ‘Quella cagna! Quella strega! She’s the one who put him up to this!’ My nose had stopped dripping now. My mother passed her cloth over my scraped elbows, then brushed at the dirt on my clothes with her hand and tucked my shirt back into my pants. She stood back from me a moment to survey me, then suddenly crouched forward to take me in her arms, rocking me gently back and forth.

  ‘I’ll make her pay for this, Vittorio, you’ll see, by the blood of Christ I’ll make her pay.’ Then, wiping at some tears in her own eyes, she took me suddenly by the hand and marched me out the door into the street. We walked up via San Giuseppe at a quick pace, some of my classmates still lurking in the shadows and a line of women still on their stoops, staring after us as we marched. Finally we reached Maria Maiale’s door, just before the square, my mother letting go of my hand to pound on the door with both fists.

  ‘Open the door, Maria, or I swear I’ll break it down!’

  Behind us, at a distance, some of the women had come off their stoops to watch us from the centre of the street, a few children dodging behind their skirts.

  ‘Open this door!’

  At last the door opened, Maria’s large form looming for a moment in the doorway; but she had time for only a surprised ‘Cristina!’ before my mother lunged at her with arms outstretched. Maria stumbled backwards openmouthed and fell with a cry to the stone floor of her kitchen, and in a moment my mother had straddled her mountainous hips, Maria struggling wildly to keep my mother’s hands from closing around her throat, writhing on the floor like a great beached fish.

  ‘Gesù bambino!’ someone behind me said. A small circle of women had moved up close to the door now for a better view. ‘She’s going to kill her!’


  And someone else whispered: ‘Remember what she did to her father-in-law, everyone says it was her that killed him, for what he said.’

  Maria had kicked up her legs now, trying to get them up around my mother’s head, her skirt hiked up high over her thighs so that her underwear showed.

  ‘Vincenzo, help me!’ she screamed, and only now I noticed Vincenzo and his small brother and sister cowering in a corner of the kitchen. ‘Cristina, what’s got into you? Have you gone mad?’

  My mother had worked her knees onto Maria’s elbows, leaving Maria’s forearms to claw helplessly at the air, and finally her hands closed around Maria’s throat. Maria grunted and gasped, her face reddening, but then with a last desperate burst of energy she pulled an arm free and lightning quick grabbed a clump of my mother’s hair and yanked sharply. My mother cried out and released her hold on Maria’s throat to free herself; but Maria, suddenly agile, pulled her other arm free and shot both fists into my mother’s stomach, sending her rolling doubled up onto the floor. In a flash Maria had scrambled up, heaving but quick, and lurched through a nearby doorway. She slammed the door shut just as my mother was lunging towards her again.

  ‘Get out of my house!’ Maria shouted, ramming a bolt into place. ‘You’ve got some devil in you! You and your proud talk, you see what it’s come to? God help us, she wants to kill me!’

  My mother glanced wildly about the room. Finally she threw open a cupboard and flung a bowl from it against the door Maria had barricaded herself behind, bits of pottery scattering across the room like spray.

  ‘You tell your Vincenzo,’ she said, flinging another bowl, ‘that if he lays another finger on my son I’ll tear out your eyes and feed them to the dogs! To the dogs!’

  My mother turned to the corner where Vincenzo still stood cowering with his brother and sister.

  ‘Do you hear that, Vincenzo? I swear I’ll kill her, even if I have to rot in hell for it!’

  More than a dozen women had gathered outside Maria’s door now, standing in a hushed semi-circle, a few of my classmates lurking among them; but they parted now like a sea as my mother stepped through the door.

  ‘And you can tell all your children the same thing,’ she said, looking around at the women. ‘If you have anything to say you can say it to my face.’

  But the women only stared on silently; and I realized with a shock that they were frightened, as if they believed my mother was as good as her threat, or that she could cast some curse against them if they crossed her. My mother held her ground but none of the women would look her squarely in the eye. Finally, under my mother’s hard stare, they began awkwardly to disperse, one by one returning like wraiths towards the safety of their kitchens.

  XIV

  Not long after my mother’s fight, some new demon took possession of her. I found her in the stable, leaning against the low wall of the pig’s stall, the pigs squealing wildly and a pool of vomit, a pale unearthly blue, sitting viscous on the stall floor. She was moaning lowly when I came up to her; then her body whipped forward and another stream of vomit splattered onto the floor. Her hands, I saw now, were covered in blood: in a moment I was up the stairs and running, up via San Giuseppe and back again to Di Lucci’s bar.

  Things went more smoothly this time. My grandfather was sitting alone in the back room; within a few minutes he and Di Lucci and I had climbed into Di Lucci’s Fiat and were back at the house. Di Lucci and I found my mother crumpled against the wall of the pig pen, moaning softly, arms clasped around her belly; but now the mystery of the blood on my mother’s hands explained itself, for on a wooden block in front of the chicken run lay the limp headless body of a chicken, a bloodstained cleaver beside it and a pan of blood resting on the ground nearby.

  Di Lucci lifted my mother up by the armpits and leaned her against the stable wall.

  ‘Dai, Cristina, what happened?’

  But she only moaned softly again, her eyes drooping, and finally Di Lucci draped one of her arms around his shoulder and lurched with her out the stable door and up the side steps. My grandfather was waiting outside Di Lucci’s car.

  ‘Go tend the sheep,’ he said to me. ‘Your mother isn’t going to die yet.’

  Di Lucci lumped my mother into the back seat, and in a moment the car was off, a cloud of dust following it until it veered onto the main road and disappeared around the hump of Colle di Papa.

  I had already decided by then what needed to be done, had begun to go over in my mind the visit that Giuseppina had paid my mother just after her snake bite. There was a chance that when Di Lucci had been in the stable he’d seen the chicken that my mother had slaughtered there, so that at some point it would have to be accounted for; and my grandfather, though he seldom went down to the stable, still kept very close count of his livestock, as if every winter brought with it the prospect of famine. But I had already accepted the risk, my mind straining now to remember Giuseppina’s instructions. It was important in these things to be very precise—wasn’t it possible that my mother herself had been preparing to follow Giuseppina’s advice (after all why had she saved the blood? or was she merely planning to use it to thicken some sauce or soup?) when some slight error had angered the very spirit she was trying to appease? But now all the lore I had ever collected, from schoolmates, from overheard conversations, from my grandfather’s stories, from the random horde of facts Fabrizio shared with me, seemed tangled in my head in a great muddled heap. There were the ways of hurting an enemy, by putting glass in his footprints or by roasting his coat over a fire; there were the birds that shouldn’t be killed except at certain times of the year, pheasants and wrens, because the killer would break a bone or his cows would give bloody milk; there were the places it was forbidden to spin or carry a spindle, along the high road or in front of a freshly seeded field, because the crops would grow up crooked and dwarfed. Then, already in the stable stuffing the chicken and its severed head into a burlap bag, I remembered my mother’s bloodied hands and the whole sequence came back to me with a sudden clarity, from the draining of the blood to the final fire; and more confident now I glanced outside the stable door to be sure no one was watching, then stole down to the ravine with the burlap bag slung over my shoulder.

  A small path led through the ravine to the pasture beyond it; I followed it to a place where the dead growth and gnarled vines and thorny bushes formed an almost solid wall, then forced myself up through the thorns and brambles to a small clearing at the base of an old chestnut tree that had long been left to the wild, the ravine grown up around it, because it was said that one of the villagers had once hanged himself from it. The sun barely penetrated here, shut out by the surrounding growth and by the thick mantle of gold and yellow leaves overhead. Hundreds of chestnuts spotted the spongy layer of rotting leaves that covered the ground, looking in their spiny husks like small furry animals.

  I cleared a patch of bare earth, my fingers catching on worms and millipedes which I shook away with a shiver, then built up a pile of dead weeds and twigs and branches nearby. Next I retrieved the pan of blood from the stable and hid it along with the burlap sack underneath the pile of branches, covering the pile with a curtain of dead leaves to camouflage it. As a last preparation I took a box of matches from the fireplace mantle up to my room, where I stuffed it under my pillow. Now I had only to wait for night, when I could carry out the burning undetected.

  When I came in from tending the sheep, a cold wind by then creeping along the fringes of nightfall, my grandfather was sitting sullen and distracted at the kitchen table, a half glass of wine in front of him.

  ‘Did my mother come back?’ I asked.

  ‘Make yourself something to eat,’ he said. ‘Your mother’s staying in the hospital a few days.’

  Later, in my room, I pulled on a heavy sweater in readiness and tried to study my books; but I returned again and again to my balcony to stare into the ravine as if expecting a sign from there, some sure proof that the spirits would be willing to accept my
offering. Finally I turned out my lamp and watched from the balcony for the lamp in my grandfather’s room to go out as well, a dozen times nodding against the railing before a blast of cold wind would make me wake with a shiver; and at last the light died, only a scattering of stars and a thin crescent moon, cold wisps of cloud flitting across it, giving any shape now to the darkness beyond the balcony. I counted to a thousand in my head, to give my grandfather time to fall asleep, then counted to a thousand again, rolling the numbers off in my mind, seeing them take shape there as if cut out of stone; then, matches and darkened lamp in one hand, I picked my way quietly down the stairs, inched open the door, and slipped into the street.

  Outside, not a single light shone along via San Giuseppe, not even up at Di Lucci’s, where card games often went on long into the night. It was strange to think of the other villagers asleep in their beds while I stood alone and unmatched in the street, all the village stilled and quiet, as if God himself had gone to sleep; some secret village seemed to be lurking there in the darkness, one that could not be seen in the light of day, as if it huddled itself away then against the noise and light. Under the light of the moon I crept down the steps next to our house and through the garden into the bramble-choked darkness of the ravine, making my way by touch now, like a blind person, feeling for the break in the bushes I had made earlier in the day. Finally I stumbled into empty space, so black and void it might have been limitless; though when I lit my lamp, keeping the flame low and squat, bright enough merely to light a small private circle of clarity around me, I found myself safely in the clearing under the chestnut tree, everything as I had left it, the pile of leaves and branches, the circle of cleared earth.

  A few dead leaves had fallen into the basin of blood; I plucked them out, one by one, then pushed up my sleeves and set my hands palm down into the blood. It was thick and cold now, oozing like mud between my fingers. I rubbed my hands together until a thin layer of it was spread evenly over them up to my wrists, then poured what remained into the centre of the bare patch of earth, where it sat for a moment in a viscous puddle before seeping finally into the dirt. Then I spoke the words, three times, ‘This is my blood, which comes out of me like a river to the sea;’ all that remained now was the burning.