Francesca’s sister Margherita comes out into the yard. Margherita sees the privy is occupied and goes back into the house. Francesca’s mother appears. She has Margherita’s bridal gown in her arms: Margherita is getting married today. Her mother blows invisible dust from the dress and goes back into the house. Their father goes inside carrying an enormous bouquet of white roses in his extended arms. The roses stand in a bucket of water; they are wrapped in gauze. Their father’s face is not visible at all behind the gauze. Margherita comes out of the house and asks Francesca to hurry up. Their father takes a mouthful of water from a mug and noisily sprays it over the flowers. Francesca remembers that today she dreamt of a severed head.
Margherita has only just turned eighteen. She is marrying Leonardo Antonio. Francesca has loved Leonardo for several months now. He is as supple as a leopard and his name constantly reminds Francesca of his suppleness. And of how shrewd he is, especially of soul and intelligence. Sometimes she catches Leonardo’s sad glances and it seems he is only wooing Margherita to distract attention. Just so he can be near Francesca. And if that is how things are, it is incomprehensible that he is wedding Margherita. Francesca is weeping again.
Margherita thinks Francesca is sitting in the privy for a long time on purpose, to not let Margherita in. She complains to their mother. Francesca vaguely hopes Margherita will go to the altar all soiled. Their mother drags Francesca out of the privy. She does this in a kindly way because she knows travel awaits Francesca tomorrow. Their mother wants to give her at least a little warmth for future use. Francesca was accepted at a Catholic boarding school for girls and is leaving for Florence. The parish school in Magnano is not enough if one wants to achieve something in life. Francesca is scared.
The wedding party, unhurried, comes down from the mountain. From Magnano, it goes into a valley where the Church of San Secondo stands, all alone. It is a beautiful Romanesque church from the twelfth century. There are no regular services but they open it for the weddings of Magnano’s residents. Carriages wound with garlands of flowers ride ahead, carrying the bride, groom, their parents, and the witnesses. They ride slowly, very slowly. Numerous guests surround them. The road is wide, allowing them to walk alongside a carriage. The procession moves toward a photographer who is hidden under a black cloth hung over a tripod.
Coachmen in top hats hold the horses back on the steep slope. A wind that has come up catches the bridal veil and it straightens, floating over the walkers like a spectral white banner. Trees sway and rustle over the road. Ripe chestnuts fall from the trees onto the procession. One chestnut sonorously bounces off the coachman’s top hat. Everyone laughs, including the coachman. The carriages’ wheels ride over the fallen chestnuts, crunching.
It is cold inside the Church of San Secondo. This is the coldness of the ages, which is a little frightening to those present. Of course the bride looks the most vulnerable. She looks like a butterfly that has flown into a gloomy crypt. The padre smiles. The fat man Silvio stands behind Francesca. He is breathing on her back. Breathing and snuffling. She senses the warmth of his breathing on her back and that is pleasant. It is a breath of life, despite originating from the nostrils of a fat man like him.
The crowd of attendees seems incongruous to Francesca, set against the antiquity of the church. Like a gathering of ghosts that will evanesce in a moment, leaving the church (it has seen so much!) all alone with eternity. Francesca tries to imagine everyone looking like skeletons. A church full of skeletons, one wearing a bridal veil.
Everyone squints as they go outside. The young couple is showered with small change and grain. The wedding returns to Magnano. On the way back, Francesca has time to tell the padre her dream. About blood bubbling on a headless neck. How it came pulsing out of the chopped-off aorta.
I think this concerns Ambrogio Flecchia, says the padre. It is not surprising it was you who dreamt about him, since you are, after all, relatives. If you dream anything more about him, be ever so kind as to write it down. For all intents and purposes, we still have very little factual material about Ambrogio Flecchia.
Tables with refreshments have been set up on the village square. Around the tables stand stools with boards on them. On the boards are bedspreads. Everyone is in an elated mood at seeing the bountiful table. Everyone is happy for the young couple. Grandfather Luigi rolls a cigarette, takes it between his two fingers, and inhales. Hardened calluses prevent his fingers from bending. His face looks like pumice. He says he has never seen such a sumptuous wedding. His words come out with the smoke and seem steeped in antiquity.
In the evening, they put candles on the tables. Their shadows dance on ocher-colored facades. People blow out the candles at some tables. The smoke floats for a long time in the still air. Couples keep getting up from the table and disappearing in the darkness. They do not, in reality, go far away. They stand, leaning against the buildings’ warm walls. Sometimes they return to drink a glass of wine.
Francesca gets up from the table. She knows she no longer belongs to this world and she feels unhappy. She does not know what world she belongs to. They are celebrating but she is no longer here. They are feasting but she could not swallow even a small bite. Francesca goes to stand in an alcove by a door and now nobody can see her. Darkness engulfs her. This is soothing.
Someone draws a hand along her face. Someone’s finger moves from her forehead to her nose, from her nose to her chin. Francesca is motionless. Someone strokes her hair. She feels the cold of a door handle at her back and finds it with her hand. She grasps it with all her strength. His lips touch her lips. He turns around as he leaves the darkness of the alcove. It is Leonardo.
Francesca left for Florence the next morning and never returned to Magnano again, not once. She married Lieutenant Massimo Totti when she was twenty years of age, after graduating from the Catholic school for girls. They moved to Rome. In 1915, Lieutenant Totti set off for the front and was killed in his very first combat. Francesca gave birth to Marcello, the now-deceased lieutenant’s son. Francesca studied at the university’s physics department and worked in a shoe store as she raised her son. Sometimes she felt like chucking everything and leaving for Magnano. She graduated from the university with a degree as a physics teacher. After much effort, Francesca found herself a part-time job at a school in Naples. She was disastrously short of money. To keep herself afloat, Francesca returned to Rome and went to work at a morgue. The pay was not bad at the morgue. She read Joyce in rare free moments during her shifts. Sometimes she wrote down her dreams about Ambrogio, finally publishing them under the title Ambrogio Flecchia and His Time. Among other things, Francesca developed Einstein’s theory of the relativity of time in the book, based on material from the dreams she had written down. Unlike works by the genius physicist, her book was written in simple, straightforward language and was wildly successful. Francesca became rich and famous. She left the morgue. After buying a mansion on the Ostia coast, she lived there for twenty-eight years, right up until her death. In one of her last interviews, Francesca was asked what day in her life was most memorable. After thinking, Francesca answered:
It was very likely my sister Margherita’s wedding day.