‘But Jacopo will come back, right, Nina?’
‘Of course, like they’ll all come back. Even Arminio, I’m sure of it.’
The magical balm of her certainty spurs us to keep Carmelo’s rooms ready and waiting, and nothing else exists around us, neither the unbridled joy of those to whom everyone has returned, nor the ashen, death-like grief of those who have lost everyone and wander like blind men through the ruins, the markets, the shops. It’s horrifying to meet their gaze, eyes dilated in a question that has no answer.
‘Don’t look at them, Mody. Do as you did on the island with those who were starving. It doesn’t help them or us.’
And without looking, we waited through winter, then summer. And then another winter and another summer.
85
That opulent golden summer, unforgettable for its harvest and its light … as if the earth, anticipating the end of that deluge, was ready to rejoice in a silence brimming with grain, which had suddenly fallen over the fields.
Mattia: ‘Never in living memory has such a rich harvest been seen on the island! Down in Catania everyone is wild with joy. They cheer for peace just like they called for war before.’
Modesta: ‘Always the same reckless lunatics, Mattia. Reckless and vulgar, Nonna Gaia would have said. They don’t see that, once again, it’s a foreign military rousing senseless hope in them.’
Pietro: ‘Everything has stopped, Mody…’
Bambù: ‘Not a single plane flies over anymore, Zia. I thought war would break out with all those airplanes passing over us, especially at night.’
Mattia: ‘In 1918, at the end of the Great War, we young people were joyous because we thought everything would turn out well. And it annoyed us to hear the old people who kept saying: “Peace has broken out, and it will be worse than war”.’
Pietro, on the other hand, is calm. He has managed to prevent at least one former prefect from jumping onto the platform and speaking again.
Pietro: ‘How that traitor Pasquale pleaded! “I was young when they decided to beat up Carlo. What did I know? They only intended to teach him a lesson.” And on and on, pleading and reminding us of all his good deeds. Good deeds! Five years in prison for my Mody! And he, fat and slick, keeps saying that there was nothing more he could do: “How could I have saved her from a proven charge of financing a clandestine party?” If everyone had done as I did and as signorino Jose ordered, something could certainly have changed. At least we would have got rid of the old faces, although now new ones are coming from America. Yesterday I nearly got myself in trouble; I saw the notorious D’Alcamo brothers in a jeep.’
Mattia: ‘And who are they, Pietro?’
Pietro: ‘Two mafiosi, vicious as sin, so vicious that first they were called angels. Then they disappeared. But as we know, angels fly around, and just as they vanished earlier, now they’re back in the arms of the foreigner. And this tells us that nothing is going to change.’
Bambù: ‘Oh, stop, Pietro! that’s enough! Uffa, you make me want to cry! You older people are right, but I want to be serene like Zia. I want to have hope! Hope, at least, that Prando, Jacopo and ’Ntoni will return. Oh, Zia, they must return!’
In the silence of an indifferent peace that envelops the endless fields, I find myself wandering alone in the midst of an irreverent abundance of lush fruit, vegetables and fleshy flowers that mocks the dead buried under the rubble. Like at the time of the Spanish flu, big rats (nourished by the corpses? I shudder to think of it) prowl through the half-ruined stables, menacing our livestock. Yesterday we heard about another child found at dawn with his little feet gnawed by those creatures, now as big as cats. Shotgun in hand — it’s now the rule at Carmelo — anyone who has time goes hunting for that primal enemy. And so I too skulk around to flush them out, my head deafened by the blast of the pellets, my wrists sore.
I’ve been crouching for ten minutes, smoking a cigarette, when a furtive rustling from behind the fence makes me instinctively raise the barrel of the gun.
‘Damn, it must be my fate! Wherever I go, all I find are guns pointed at me. Hey, Mody! Is this any way to welcome me back?’
‘’Ntoni!’ I hear my voice scream. ‘What on earth were you doing behind the fence?’
‘Well, I was trying to recover a little before making my appearance. I felt so fearless as I was walking here! But once I saw the house I was ashamed to show up like this … I don’t know! I was hoping I’d seem more decent if I rested up a little.’
‘What are you saying, ’Ntoni? Come here! Where are you going?’
‘But I have lice, too! They torment me, Mody, they’re a torment!’
’Ntoni runs off. He must have noticed the horror that came over me, fool that I am! What did I expect — to see them return as they were before? I mustn’t be scared by his appearance. It’s ’Ntoni, it’s his voice! I run after him and grab him by the arms. He didn’t go far; he hasn’t got the strength. All I had to do was touch him and, there, he falls into my arms crying.
‘Oh, Modesta, finally you’re holding me! So long without a woman’s face, without a woman’s arms! A man can’t live without such tenderness. He can’t live!’
’Ntoni trembles in my arms the way he trembled in Stella’s arms when he was a baby. And nothing can warm him up, not a hot bath nor a cup of honeyed chamomile tea. ‘Quannu pigghia friddu ’stu carusu diventa siccu siccu comu fussi manciatu du so stessu trimuri!.. comu a so patri’ — Stella’s words — ‘When this boy catches a chill, he becomes skin and bones, like his father, as if his own tremors were eating him up.’
Day by day, ’Ntoni grows more gaunt under the covers. And when night falls, the chill reminds him of atrocious scenes from a past known only to him, which makes him shout out orders, entreaties, words in German … Those words erect an icy barrier between him and those of us who are impotent spectators before his struggle.
Bambù: ‘Oh, Zia, it’s awful! He has a scar. What can it have been? And you, Antonio, what kind of a doctor are you? Why don’t you say something?’
Antonio: ‘It’s not clear, or rather it’s plain as day: torture, experiments … I know of some, but only he can tell us.’
Bambù: ‘Look, even his hip! It seems like he can’t move his legs properly.’
Antonio: ‘No, no Bambolina, he’s not paralysed anywhere; the scars have been closed up for some time. He’s just very malnourished, and that doesn’t help any. The physical wounds will heal soon enough, but the wounds of memory won’t! Don’t cry, Bambù, the important thing is that … well, the important thing is that there’s nothing … well, he’s still a man.’
Bambù: ‘Yesterday he asked about Stella. He must have forgotten.’
Antonio: ‘It’s possible. Probably his body couldn’t handle that other sorrow and erased it. So much the better!’
Bambù: ‘I’m afraid, Antonio, so afraid! What about Prando and Jacopo? Why haven’t they returned? So many have come back…’
Antonio: ‘Don’t get upset, Bambù. Try to stay calm like Nina. She’s waiting too. Many have yet to return. I got the numbers down at the town halclass="underline" there’s still hope.’
Bambù: ‘Oh, Antonio, it seemed like it was all over!’
Antonio: ‘War is quick to come and slow to leave. Italy looks like a heap of ruins; the fields are still mined. In Milan, they’ve allotted a kilo and a half of coal per individual, twice a month. They’re warm this winter in Milan, Bambù, in the midst of armed gangs who ransack everything. In Naples, gangs of kids, one of them ninety-strong, attacked a train: the oldest member was seventeen.’