La Brigantessa Read online

  The feelings began assailing him at night. He had one particular recurring dream of being tenderly embraced by a woman with limpid chestnut eyes and a blue veil. She had a timeless beauty. A soft, peachy glow highlighted her delicately sculpted cheeks. Her lips were the colour of wild poppies, and her hair framed her face like a silky curtain. She exuded an air of purity and grace, and as she embraced him, she would whisper, Serve those below you.

  Upon hearing the news a few days later that the southern tip of the country had been rocked by an earthquake, the woman’s words came back to him. Below you. Surely, the dream was a sign; those below must be the survivors of the earthquake that devastated seven villages in Calabria. Hundreds killed, injured and left homeless.

  And then Don Simone heard the words of his inner voice: Serve where there is poverty, suffering, devastation, and despair. Unable to control his emotion at the realization that was growing at the core of his being, Don Simone collapsed into tears, knowing that he had received his calling. When he had recovered, he sought Monsignor, who was propped up against an arc of pillows on his bed, and humbly asked for his blessing to leave the parish of San Bartolomeo in order to aid one of the parishes in the devastated zone. Monsignor Brunello, to his surprise, tried to dissuade him, citing the Calabrians as a barbaric, uncivilized people, living in a state of abject poverty and illness.

  “Their coastal villages are infested with malaria,” he rasped after a fit of catarrhal coughing. “And if you don’t die of that, you most surely will perish at the hands of brigands.” He crossed himself and his shrunken eyes widened. “It is a wild, lawless region, Don Simone, why would you want to leave all this?” He stretched out his arms feebly, indicating his ornately decorated bedchamber and the doorway that led to the hall that would eventually connect to the gilded confines of the sanctuary. “One day soon, when God receives me into His Kingdom—may His will be done—you will be head priest.” Monsignor gasped for air and sank back against the pillows. “You’re too cultured to subject yourself to a life among peasants and outlaws. Come now, son,” he entreated, slipping into their Friulan dialect, “stay with your people.” He succumbed to another spasm of coughing before grasping the brass bell by his night table.

  Don Simone kissed Monsignor Brunello’s blue-veined hand and retreated to his room as soon as the attendant arrived. As he sank into the comfort of his own bed, he pondered the words of his Superior, words that made him see the Monsignor in a new light. He felt his respect for the old priest diminishing, while his desire to leave for Calabria grew even stronger.

  Don Simone gives his mule a pat on the back. “Come on, Vittorio. You can make it. We’re almost home.” Home. The place where he intended to stay for the rest of his life. Camini. For a moment, his smile freezes at the thought of the impending loss of his church lands, and then he forces the thought out of his mind, anticipating the pork feast he will soon be sharing with his friends and neighbours.

  He doesn’t have to tell them the bad news today.

  WHEN GABRIELLA REALIZES THAT THE HEN—a faithful provider since her father purchased it at the fall fair in Locri—is singing stridently, as if to mock the old rooster who has just ceased his matinal crowing, she drops the basket of eggs with which she has been heading to the rectory and stands watching it in horror.

  “A crowing hen bodes nothing but ill luck,” Gabriella recalls her mother saying years ago, when she was twelve, helping her mother scatter feed to the scrawny group of hens in the enclosure. “It must be killed at once.” And without hesitation, Gabriella’s mother sequestered the offending bird and promptly twisted its neck, murmuring, “Death to you, and health to those who eat you.”

  Gabriella remembers how she burst into tears and scampered off into the fields beyond the rectory, where her father was hoeing the fields. She flung herself into his arms, and when the storm of her trauma was spent and the flood of her tears had subsided, she stayed with him until the clanging of the outdoor bell announced suppertime. Both brushed the earth off their clothes, washed their hands at the outside spring, and sat down to a steaming bowl of broth, which she fortunately didn’t connect to the recently killed fowl.

  And then her mother started her labour. A gush of fluid suddenly appeared on the terracotta floor beneath her mother’s skirt, and her father jumped up to hastily wipe it with a rag and shout at Gabriella to run to the neighbouring cottage to get Nicolina, who had brought more than half the children of the village into the world.

  The sky was smeared in shades of plum and amber, and as the sun began its descent into the dark strip beyond the hills into the Ionian Sea, Gabriella tried not to think of spiders, mice, snakes, and other horrid creatures skittering across the fields. It didn’t bother her during the day when the cats and the dog were present, but now that they were all in their enclosure, what would stop those stealthy, slithering field creatures from brushing against her, biting her with those sharp, vermin teeth, wrapping their scaly, serpentine bodies around her slender legs, crawling up her bare skin with their multiple legs?

  Gabriella felt her stomach tightening at the thought of the snakes that could be poised to strike: the serpa colubrida, with its fiery markings, and even worse, the vipera aspis, whose venom even Nicolina cannot weaken with her most potent herb concoctions. The chant Gabriella learned as a child reverberated in her mind:

  If you’re bitten by a serpa colubrida, church bells will be rung,

  If struck by a vipera aspis, light a candle; your life is done.

  She had no choice but to obey Papà. Her mamma’s time had come. She bolted down the narrow, weedy path through the fields, muttering the Ave Maria eight or nine times before an unknown creature scurried past her and made her squeal in terror. With a burst of speed she never thought possible, she made it to the neighbouring cottage.

  The trek back took longer, for Nicolina was not young anymore—she had actually delivered Gabriella’s mother—and she needed a cane to help support her swollen knees. But Gabriella found her fear diminishing with Nicolina’s presence and the sight of her cane, until the low grumbling of thunder that had seemed so far off suddenly reverberated threateningly around them. The amber hue of the sky had been replaced with what seemed like hundreds of purple swollen bellies like her mother’s, ready to burst. Her moon-shaped face uplifted, Nicolina started reciting the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria and the Gloria in a loud, somewhat defiant voice, as if daring the heavens to split open over the words of God.

  When they finally reached her mother’s bedside, the downpour began, and Nicolina shot a triumphant glance at Gabriella, as if to emphasize the power of her prayers over the turbulent storm. Confident that the midwife would work her same magic with her mother, Gabriella retreated to the kitchen to wait. Moments later, the baby’s first cry and her mother’s last one shattered the air.…

  By the time she was fourteen, Gabriella could wring a chicken’s neck with the same diffidence she bestowed upon any household chore. She had done it countless times since her mother’s death, initially under the experienced tutelage of Nicolina, who had patiently weathered her protestations, furious sobs, and foot-stomping. The midwife recognized that Gabriella’s rage and remorse was not so much the girl’s reaction to the killing of a fowl, but a necessary mourning for the passing of her mother, and the passing of childhood for Gabriella. The girl now had had no choice but to assume the position of cook and caretaker in the home. Her father Lorenzo had enough work to do in the fields, which earned him a roof over his head and a small plot of land for his own use, but not enough to employ a woman to take care of his children and do the cooking and cleaning for the parish priest, as Gabriella’s mother had done.

  At twelve, Gabriella had assumed all of her mother’s previous chores. She rose at dawn, awakened by the strident crowing of the old rooster, and pulling her woollen coat over her shift, she stumbled downstairs to light the fire in the kitchen. After warming her shiv
ering body for a few moments, she would go out into the courtyard and scatter feed to the chickens and hen, collect the eggs, milk the goat, and go back inside to prepare breakfast for her father and Don Simone, who by this time would be sitting by the roaring fire, chatting.

  Of the two, Lorenzo was the heartier eater, devouring the frittata Gabriella would make along with a hunk of cheese and thick bread he would dip in olive oil. He needed his strength for the demanding work in the fields, he’d declare. Whereby Don Simone would reply, after a meagre wedge of bread dipped into a cup of tea slaked with goat’s milk, “‘The joy of the Lord is your strength.’” And Lorenzo, who had little patience with the Lord since He had seen fit to take his beloved wife Elisabetta from him, would merely snort and help himself to another frittata, which Gabriella had learned to make so well with eggs, milk, parsley, and whatever tidbits she had available in the larder.

  And then Don Simone would sadly shake his head, whisper a prayer for the healing of Lorenzo’s spirit, thank Gabriella for her toil, and tucking his breviary under his arm, he would saunter off to the church, to begin the daily seven o’clock service. Lorenzo would leave shortly afterwards, with a haversack holding bread, olives, cheese, and a small flask of wine. Gabriella wouldn’t see him again until late in the evening.

  Alone, she would clean up and hope to get a few essential tasks done before Luciano woke up, whimpering for his first feed of milk of the day. In the first six months after Luciano’s birth, Lorenzo had no choice but to enlist the services of a wet nurse. After offering three hens and a baby goat that Don Simone had graciously donated for this purpose, Lorenzo readily handed Luciano into the capable and experienced hands of Genoveffa Marcucci, a buxom young villager of twenty-two who was nursing her fifth infant. Genoveffa’s breasts were overflowing with milk, her husband Umberto would declare proudly among the men in the town square. They would congratulate him for his virility and his wife’s fecundity as they exchanged knowing winks to which the strutting Umberto would be oblivious, along with the knowledge that a great number of them, even those who were married, secretly fantasized about the fertile Genoveffa, slyly eyeing her perennially engorged bosom and swollen abdomen with stifled arousal.

  Genoveffa welcomed Luciano at her breast. Umberto was working like a beast to provide for the lot of them, she told Lorenzo, and some extra hens and a goat were a godsend. To Lorenzo’s relief, Luciano latched on immediately when Lorenzo brought the infant to her. Embarrassed by Luciano’s loud, suckling noises and Genoveffa’s lack of embarrassment, Lorenzo murmured his thanks and retreated hastily back home. It was agreed that Luciano would be returned to his care after six months. At that time, Gabriella could administer goat’s milk to the infant and tend to his needs. She would be thirteen, a signorina, more than ready for the responsibility of taking care of her brother. At sixteen, many of the village girls were already betrothed or married….

  Having promptly wrung the neck of the crowing hen before placing it in the cellar, Gabriella now stirs the suffrittu. She inhales the scent of pork stew from the oversized cauldron brought out for special occasions when there would be more for supper than just her family and Don Simone. It is a tradition that Gabriella loves, the feast held the day after the slaughtering. A meal of gratitude for the abundance of food in their life and for the abundance of friends. Don Simone taught her about gratitude early in life, before she could barely pronounce the word. He would bow his head solemnly at the solid oak table in the rectory kitchen. After a few moments of silence, he would murmur: “‘Give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever.’”

  Gabriella takes a wooden spoon and dips it into the cauldron to select a chunk of pork fat to taste. She blows on it for a moment and then plops it into her mouth, savouring the pan juices covering it before compressing it satisfyingly between her tongue and hard palate.

  A feeling of warmth coils within her that she knows can’t be attributed solely to the pork she has just tasted. It is the prospect of seeing Tonino, being near him with this new awareness between the two of them.

  The shuffle of feet outside sends her heart racing, and taking a deep breath, she throws open the heavy door, an expectant smile on her face. Her spirit plummets when she sees that it isn’t Tonino, but she continues smiling—after all, he will be arriving soon.

  “Greetings neighbours, Francesca, Rocco. Come in; you’re the first to arrive. Ciao, ragazzi.” She greets their six children, who are between seven and fourteen years of age, and they enter noisily, the youngest scampering up the stairs to find his best friend, Luciano.

  “Salvatore and Beatrice are on their way,” Francesca informs her. “They wanted to get their chores done before dark. Their son Ricardo won’t be coming; his stomach is unsettled, and he thought it wise to stay home and nurse a cup of chamomile tea.”

  What about Tonino? Gabriella wants to ask but remains silent, not wishing to draw anyone’s attention.“Papà has gone to get Nicolina,” she tells them, waving for them to sit down in the kitchen. “He won’t be long.”

  “Poor Nicolina,” Francesca says, shaking her head. “The years are catching up to her. All those long walks to the cemetery, summer and winter. Those poor legs of hers have done their share of walking back and forth to the grotto at Monte Stella for the yearly pilgrimage. And bad weather has never stopped her from making the journey either. Fifty or so years, through bone-chilling rains and blistering heat—no wonder her legs are stiff with rheumatism—and now she can barely walk from her place to yours.”

  Rocco nods his head. “She has spent her life in service to others,” he says in a tone of eulogy. “It’s a good thing she never married. A woman belongs in the home.”

  “She has been too busy bringing other people’s babies into the world, including your half-dozen, to settle down and have her own,” Francesca retorts.

  Gabriella smiles. Nicolina has played a part in everybody’s life in Camini. And as a small reward to herself after a gruelling day of delivering robust or sickly babies, or dealing with distasteful but necessary procedures on disease-ridden bodies, Nicolina indulges in smoking a pipe. Her sole vice, she laughingly declares in her recognizable smoker’s rasp. She has no husband or children and nobody to please but herself. Gabriella has watched her on many a night before heading back to the rectory herself, tapping out and then refilling the pipe with her own dried hemp, tamping it down with one finger before lighting it up. She’d be enveloped by a haze that would make Gabriella wrinkle her nose, prompting her to bid Nicolina a hasty goodbye. She’d unblock her nose only when she knew she was safely out of reach of the fumes.

  “Dear Nicolina,” Gabriella says affectionately. “Her legs may have betrayed her, but her mind is still as sharp as my butchering knife.”

  A heavy knock interrupts them. Gabriella strides to the door. Tonino’s parents greet her warmly. Gabriella looks expectantly beyond them, and Beatrice, catching her glance, says, “Ricardo isn’t feeling well and Tonino hasn’t come back home yet. He had to deliver some meat to the mayor and others in Riace.”

  Gabriella masks her disappointment and invites Beatrice and Salvatore to join Francesca and Rocco in the kitchen. Tonino will miss the meal. Gabriella stirs the stew and checks the loaves of bread in the brick oven. She lifts a trap door on the far side of the kitchen floor that reveals steps to an underground cellar.

  The sight of the hen she has killed earlier, placed in an earthenware bowl and left in one corner of the cellar, makes her shiver. Something terrible is going to happen. The hen crowed this morning. Dear God in heaven, don’t let anything happen to Tonino. She grabs the bottle of wine she was seeking and returns to the kitchen.

  She turns to see Luciano boisterously tramping down the stairs with his friends to greet the neighbours. His antics evoke guffaws from Salvatore, his godfather, and Gabriella welcomes the distraction to slip outside. She watches her father and Nicolina approach slo
wly, the old midwife seated at the back of the mule cart, propped up comfortably with old blankets, and her father riding on the mule’s broad back, prodding him on with the clicking of his tongue and the occasional slap on the hindquarters.

  When they enter the kitchen, they are greeted with the sight of Don Simone already seated at the head of the table, smiling amidst the greetings and warm handshakes.

  “Ah, how blessed I truly am, to come back to such a family as I have here. I must say, I always look forward to my retreat at the monastery, but I anticipate my return here with as much, if not more, pleasure.” He waves to the children chasing each other about the rooms and chuckles. “A few days in the sanctity of silence, meditation and prayer always restores one’s spirit; however, one can’t deny that this…this exuberance of life is spiritual fodder as well.” He winks at Gabriella. “I could smell the stew from outside the village. I pushed old Vittorio to the limit to get here before it was all gone.”

  “As if we would eat it all,” Gabriella laughs. “We would have left you at least a corner of the pig’s ear.” She removes the loaves from the oven and proceeds to pass around steaming earthenware bowls. She slices the bread deftly and then turns to Don Simone.

  He nods, rises, and bows his head. Everyone falls silent. “Let us thank the Lord for the blessings He has bestowed upon us.” He crosses himself, blows his nose, and sits down.

  “And for delivering Don Simone from the hands of brigands and gypsies,” Francesca offers, crossing herself before dunking a chunk of bread into her stew.

  “Brigands? God help us!” Francesca’s ten-year-old daughter crosses herself. “Don’t even mention them. I’ll have nightmares.”

  “Papà, what is worse, gypsies or brigands?” Luciano tugs at his father’s sleeve, his voice trembling.