La Brigantessa Read online

  La Brigantessa

  PRAISE FOR LA BRIGANTESSA

  This is a beautiful novel, one that vividly recreates the heartbreak and drama of one of the most turbulent periods in Italian history.

  —NINO RICCI, award-winning author of The Origins of Species, Testament, and Sleep

  In the writing and storytelling of La Brigantessa, Rosanna Battigelli reflects the very passion and glory, the suffering and hope of the times that her Gabriella Falcone must endure and over which she must triumph. La Brigantessa is written with great heart and conviction—such that, in an era when truth is at a premium, no one will question the truth of this narrative. In fact, the great achievement of this novel is that Rosanna Battigelli is able to make fiction feel truer than truth, truer than non-fiction. Bravo!

  —JOSEPH KERTES, founder of The Humber School for Writers and author of Gratitude and The Afterlife of Stars

  In this historically accurate novel, Rosanna Battigelli uses every detail from pigeon soup to Southern Italian traditions to bad omens, bad luck, and retaliation. As unpredictable as summer storm clouds, as enjoyable as homemade Calabrian sausages, you should read this book with a glass of strong red wine and a supply of Baci chocolates.

  —MARIA COLETTA MCLEAN, author of My Father Came From Italy and Summers in Supino: Becoming Italian

  Based on actual events, La Brigantessa is the triumphant, epic tale of a young woman’s incredible courage and resilience during one of Italy’s most tumultuous decades. This heart-wrenching, unforgettable novel was an addictive read that will stay with me for years.

  —MIRELLA SICHIROLLO PATZER, author of The Orphan of the Olive Tree and The Prophetic Queen

  La Brigantessa is a feast for the senses. The author’s visceral descriptions of events, both terrifying and exhilarating, instantly transport the reader to the sun-bleached hills of Post-Unification Calabria. The novel is a meditation on class, politics, and women’s roles without losing sight of intrigue and adventure.

  —MICHAELA DI CESARE, playwright and author of In Search of Mrs. Pirandello and Successions

  Copyright © 2018 Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  La Brigantessa is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Val Fullard

  eBook: tikaebooks.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Battigelli, Rosanna, 1959-, author

  La brigantessa / Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli.

  (Inanna poetry & fiction series)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77133-553-9 (softcover).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-554-6 (epub).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-555-3 (Kindle).-- ISBN 978-1-77133-556-0 (pdf).

  I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series

  PS8553.A83B75 2018 C813’.54 C2018-904361-X

  C2018-904362-8

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

  Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca

  La Brigantessa

  A NOVEL BY

  ROSANNA MICELOTTA BATTIGELLI

  INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.

  TORONTO, CANADA

  In memory of my parents,

  Assunta (née Adavastro) and Nicola Micelotta.

  Their courage and resilience continue to inspire.

  Home is where one starts from….

  In my end is my beginning.

  —T. S. Eliot

  The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

  —Lao Tzu

  Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

  mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

  ché la diritta via era smarrita.

  —Dante Alighieri

  PART I:

  CHANGES

  February-March 1862

  THE HOG IS LIMP, having shuddered its last breath after a single blow to the head with a mallet. Gabriella and some of the neighbourhood women watch her father Lorenzo and his friends, huffing and perspiring, urge each other on with cries of “Pull, pull!” as they hoist the hog with a crude rope and pulley system. The thick ropes have been drawn through a gash made in the hog’s hind legs to expose the hamstring, pulled over a log projecting from a hollow in the stone wall of the rectory, and nailed into a fork of the adjacent chestnut tree. When the beast is suspended, her father pulls out his sharpened knife and plunges it into the hog’s jugular vein. Blood gushes into a waiting bucket.

  Gabriella wrinkles her nose. In the crisp February air, the scent of sweat from the men’s exertion mingles with that of the coals smouldering in the nearby fire. She watches as several of the children, fascinated with the orange flames licking wildly out from under the huge iron cauldron, throw in small twigs they have snatched from the chestnut tree, squealing and jumping back at the crackle and leap of fiery tongues.

  Her seven-year-old brother Luciano, wearing a faded cap and well-worn knickers criss-crossed with dozens of sewing repairs, turns and cocks his head at his friend’s dare to touch the flame with his finger. A sudden breeze whips the fire at his backside and the handkerchief dangling from the back pocket of his breeches alights. Gabriella gasps and dashes through the shrieking children to get to Luciano, throws him on the ground, and rolls him back and forth on the dusty earth as if she were kneading dough to make a huge filone.

  When she is certain that the flames have been spent, she pulls Luciano to his feet and scowls at him. His tears are trickling down earth-streaked cheeks, exposing red mottled skin underneath.

  “Enough tears,” she says in her sternest voice, wiping his face with the edge of her apron. “Consider yourself lucky. If you hadn’t roasted your bottom, I’d be roasting it right now with this.” She lifts her hand menacingly. “And then you’d have reason to cry. Now get yourself into the house so I can check you.”

  One of the boys calls out, “Hey, Luciano, show us your roasted culo.”

  Gabriella reaches for Luciano’s hand, but he pulls away, his face reddening. He flashes her a look of accusation before scampering toward the back entrance of the rectory.

  “I won’t be long,” Gabriella reassures the women who are beginning to shuffle back toward the hog dressing area. She strides into the rectory. Her eyes adjust to the diminished light, and noting that her brother is not there, she grumbles under her breath and lifts her long skirts to mount the narrow stairway leading to the bedroom they share.

  Luciano is lying face down on his straw pallet, his sobs stifled by his feather pillow. She feels herself softening. The sight of her only brother with his thatch of unruly hair and spindly arms and legs always brings out the protective, mothering side of her. Her eyes fly to his si
nged breeches and her heart jolts at the thought of her brother suffering even for a moment.

  Gabriella sits on the edge of the bed and caresses the back of his head. “Come now, Lu, even the hog didn’t fuss this much. Let me see if you really have something to cry about.” She peeks into the back of his trousers. “There, there, you’re still covered in skin, thank God. Other than being as pink as a newborn piglet, you’re fine. Now wipe your face, and let’s get going. You don’t want to miss the cooking, do you? Don’t you remember how good the suffrittu tastes? Well, if we don’t get back to work, we won’t be able to enjoy your favourite stew. Hurry, let’s go.”

  Luciano sniffles loudly as he sits up, and Gabriella hands him a fresh handkerchief from her apron pocket. She smiles as he gives his face a quick swipe and then hands it back. With renewed vigour, he bolts down the stairs and tumbles into the waiting group of friends. Like a flock of sparrows, they swoop off to the hog dressing area.

  The whole spectacle holds such fascination for them, from the cornering of the alarmed beast to the slitting of its throat and the subsequent butchering. She shivers. The sight of blood always reminds her of Luciano at birth—a bellowing, unrecognizable creature matted with clots. his quivering body washed out by an endless gush of red that spread over the sheets like the Ionian Sea battering an empty beach in winter.

  Gabriella squeezes her eyes to stop the tears and memories. She reaches the area where her family’s closest neighbours and friends are gathering, as they do every year at this time, to butcher the hog of the parish priest, Don Simone. He will be back from his monthly spiritual retreat tomorrow. She smiles, knowing how much he anticipates the feast awaiting him.

  She has known Don Simone all her life. Her father has always worked the church lands, tending the priest’s animals and crops. In return, her family has never lacked food and shelter. Peasants though they be, they have been blessed with goat’s milk aplenty, and gifts coaxed from the fields, the result of her father’s daily toil: olives and figs, pears and medlars, beans and squash. What her father planted and picked, her mother Elisabetta prepared and preserved, when she wasn’t tending to other rectory chores. Don Simone was happy to have them stay at the rectory; he had left his family in northern Italy and having a young family around him made him feel less bereft.

  The village midwife Nicolina is hobbling into the church property, one hand gripping her hand-carved cane and the other clasping a cloth bag that Gabriella knows contains the spices and other ingredients for the blood pudding she is renowned for in their hamlet of Camini.

  The hog has been lowered onto a wooden pallet, and Salvatore Vitale, the village butcher and his eldest son, Tonino, are pouring scalding water on it from the nearby cauldron to loosen its bristles. Some of the women are preparing the long wooden trestle table that will be used for the sausage-making, while others are busy stoking the coals that will shortly heat the second cauldron, the one that will soon sizzle with pieces of lard and pork.

  Her glances keep returning to Tonino, who has begun to scrape off the bristles in long, experienced strokes until most of the hair is off the hide. Suddenly, he looks up and winks at her. Gabriella’s cheeks burn as a feeling of warmth spreads through her in ways that both shock and intrigue her. A quick scan of the group satisfies her that no one has caught the exchange. She takes over the stirring of the coals, determined not to look back at Tonino.

  Young and inexperienced though she might be in the ways of men and women, for months now, she has wondered if Tonino didn’t seem to be making it a point to deliver the priest’s butchered meat to her at the rectory every week instead of sending his younger brother who usually handled such jobs.

  At Tonino’s sudden exclamation, she glances up. His job is done, and he steps back as Gabriella’s father and the men rehoist the hog, head down. After another dousing of scalding water over the carcass, and the scraping of any missed spots by Tonino, her father announces that the hog is ready to gut.

  “Not the kind of work one does without a little vino,” calls out Salvatore, her father’s friend since childhood. A bottle materializes from the laughing crowd, passed man-to-man until it reaches Lorenzo. He takes a healthy swig and passes it on to Tonino, waiting until the younger man lifts the bottle to his lips before giving him an approving swat on the back. Tonino chokes on the vermilion liquid and it spills onto his linen shirt.

  The whole crowd bursts into laughter amidst cries of “To your health! Spilled wine is a sure sign of a wedding to come!”

  Gabriella finds herself laughing with the rest of her friends and neighbours, and her eyes link with Tonino’s for the second time. He holds up his hand to lick the wine off it before unbuttoning his shirt and pulling the wet cloth away from his skin. Again, she quickly looks away, trying to convince herself that she didn’t purposefully look at Tonino’s bare chest, thatched with curly, dark brown hair….

  A tug on her skirt draws her attention to Luciano, who is imploring her, “Gabriella, please, convince Papà to let me help cut the hog.”

  Gabriella looks down at shining chestnut eyes. “Now, Lu, why would you want to get yourself all covered in blood?” Without waiting for a reply, she pushes him to their father. “Papà, do you have a job for this young man? He’s ready and willing, God bless him.”

  She can tell by the look on her father’s face that he feels proud of his “Little Man,” as he often calls him. He waves to his friend. “Hey, Salvatore, bring over that wine for my helper here, before we begin.” He hands the bottle to Luciano, who starts sputtering after a tentative first swallow, tipping the bottle accidentally over his shirt. This time, Luciano doesn’t seem to mind the laughter around him. When he cockily attempts to take another drink, Gabriella’s arm flies out to stop him, but her father succeeds first and hands the bottle back to Salvatore.

  “Enough play.” Her father’s guffaws subside. “Luciano, take this knife, and I’ll help you begin.” With a firm grip on Luciano’s hand, Lorenzo makes a long cut down the underside of the hog, from the crotch to the chin. Gabriella sees Luciano’s eyes widen when the gut cavity opens and the membrane holding the intestines is sliced, allowing the red, coiled entrails to drop into a waiting tub.

  “That’s a good start,” her father says. “Now you can watch the rest of it.”

  Luciano steps back with a ready nod, his puckered face the colour of an unripened quince. His friends slap his back and take their spots around him to watch.

  With a few experienced stabs, her father cuts around the base of the hog’s head, and through the throat, until he is able to twist off the head completely. He dumps it into a pail, which is duly carried off by his other friend Rocco, who will singe off any of the hairs or bristles left, cut out the eyes, and further quarter the head and leave it to soak overnight in a pot of fresh water. Rocco’s wife Francesca will occupy herself with the rinsing and subsequent cooking of the head, tongue, and brains the first thing next morning, and they will all feast on it at suppertime, along with Don Simone, who should be back from his monastic retreat in Gerace by then.

  Gabriella lifts her skirts slightly to avoid some of the spilled hog’s blood from Rocco’s pail as he strides past her.

  In the meantime, Salvatore carves up the rest of the hog. While the carcass is still hanging, he removes the leaf lard that holds the intestines, and throws it into the cast iron cardara sitting atop the coals. He cuts the liver free and removes the gall bladder; he trims the valves, veins, and arteries off the heart; he then retrieves the stomach, kidneys, and small intestines. Once that is done, he dumps the liver, heart, stomach and intestines into a pail of clean water and hands it to Gabriella, who washes them thoroughly before throwing them into the iron cauldron with the lard, except for the small intestines, which will be thoroughly drained, and used as casings for the sausages they will make the following day. With an oversized wooden spoon, she stirs the contents of the cauldron, slightl
y raised from the ground, and around which two heaps of live coals begin the slow, even cooking of the frittuli.

  Gabriella looks up from her stirring to see Salvatore make one cut down the middle of the back into the backbone. Then, when Tonino, her father and the others have taken the carcass down and put it on its back on the chopping block, Salvatore takes his axe and chops all the way down both sides of the backbone until he can lift it out. While he cuts off the shoulders and hams and the side meat, his wife Beatrice takes over the stirring.

  Feeling hot from standing over the embers, Gabriella welcomes the break and walks away to pour herself a cup of water from the terracotta gozzarella that she has filled from the natural spring tapped thirty metres from the rectory.

  “Did you leave me a drop or two?”

  Gabriella splutters at the sudden voice behind her, flushes at Tonino’s teasing tone.

  She turns and hands him the pitcher and an unused cup. “There’s plenty left, and if that’s not enough for you, there’s more out there.” Gesturing toward the spring, Gabriella realizes how serious she sounds. She adds a smile that she hopes doesn’t seem flirtatious, and then glances beyond him.

  Her father and the others are stacking the large pieces of meat at the end of a long oak table. Luciano has run off to play in the fields with his friends, and the women are occupied with different tasks: Beatrice is tending the lard cauldron; Francesca, having left the hog’s head to soak, is now cleaning out the small intestines and rinsing them in a mixture of water, lemon, and salt; and Nicolina, the old midwife, is heading into the kitchen, where she will mix together the hog’s blood in her bucket with other ingredients for the blood pudding.

  Gabriella usually helps her make the sanguinaccio—it is one of her favourite tasks—by preparing the mixture with milk, coffee, sugar, bitter cocoa, wine must, and a dash of cloves, cinnamon, and mandarin zest.