A Winter's Night Read online

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2011 by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

  First publication 2012 by Europa Editions

  Translation by Christine Feddersen Manfredi

  Original Title: Otel Bruni

  Translation copyright © 2012 by Europa Editions

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco

  www.mekkanografici.com

  ISBN 9781609458782

  Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  A WINTER’S NIGHT

  Translated from the Italian

  by Christine Feddersen Manfredi

  In memory of my grandparents Alfonso and Maria

  and to my son Fabio, who has done so much

  to redeem the honor of Armando Bruni

  Desolina, have you opened the iron gate?

  No, madam, I have not.

  Desolina, have you opened the iron gate?

  No, madam, I have not.

  Desolina, have you opened the iron gate?

  No, madam, I have not.

  —FOLKTALE, Emilia Romagna

  CHAPTER ONE

  The night of January 12, 1914, was remembered in our town as one of the coldest that whole winter and perhaps in any winter known to man. The snow had begun to fall towards evening and what happened then was unusual if not actually impossible: the sun turned round—as the old folk used to say—just before it sank below the horizon, and reappeared, for a few short minutes, in that narrow space that separated the western edge of the snowy clouds from the earth’s curve. The vermillion rays pierced the thick curtain of white flakes to create a phantasmagorical image, an atmosphere so unreal that the peasants on their way home to dinner stopped dead in their tracks to behold the miraculous vision. Was it a sign from God, and what could He mean by it? Rooted to the spot in their amazement, they became part of a scene they’d never heard anyone describe; one day they would try to tell their children and grandchildren that they had seen it snowing on the sun.

  Before long they were mantled in white and the golden light had vanished.

  The Bruni family home was an old hipped-roof farmhouse with rusted rain gutters and oakwood shutters whose every last trace of color had been washed down to a uniform gray. It stood at a short distance from the road, about fifty yards away from the stable and hayloft. There was no manor, because the land was part of the Barzini estate, and Barzini the notary lived in his own house in Bologna. The farm was a good five hundred furlongs, if not more, and it neighbored on the east with the so-called Bastards’ Foundation set up to care for those poor fatherless babies who had been deposited in a foundling wheel at one of the monasteries or convents in the city.

  The stable was an imposing building. Half was used as a loft to store hay in the winter and wheat in the summer after the harvest. The other half was occupied by the cows with their calves, a bull for mounting and four pairs of oxen for plowing. It was there that everyone gathered in the wintertime. Rather than going to bed with the chickens at dusk, it was a place the Brunis could linger with their occasional or habitual guests, with no need to waste wood in the fireplace since the heat given off by the animals was more than enough to keep them all comfortable.

  It was going to be a long night, because with so much snow, no one but the cowherds had to get up early the next morning. A night to spend in the stable, telling stories and listening to them. And so after dinner, while the women were washing up, the men wandered over to the hayloft, one after another, carrying a bottle of the new red wine that hadn’t finished fermenting yet. There were seven Bruni brothers: Gaetano, Armando, Raffaele, who everyone called Floti, Checco, Savino, Dante and Fredo. Old Callisto didn’t take part in these evenings anymore because his back ached and he couldn’t get comfortable on the milking stools. He waited instead for the women to ready his bed. They’d fill an earthenware pot—which they called “the nun”—with embers, covered with ash. This would be slipped into a wooden frame, which they called “the priest.” Nestled under the sheets, it would heat up the whole bed nicely. The irreverent and rather indelicate analogy had its own logic in that, according to local opinion, putting a nun and a priest to bed together would generate considerable heat indeed. Every night, as he stretched out under the hemp sheets, Callisto would mutter: “What a great invention the bed is!” and he’d be snoring like a trombone in no time.

  There was an old man who was more or less a permanent guest in the stable; his name was Cleto and he mended umbrellas to earn a bowl of soup and a bed of straw. He favored a sententious style of speech meant to win him the respect and consideration of the others. He’d also seen that flaming ray of sun streak through the curtain of snow falling from the sky, and as soon as the brothers began to arrive, he opened with a proverb:

  “When at dusk the sun turns itself about,

  a bad night will follow without a doubt.”

  Gaetano, the oldest of the brothers and the family cowherd, pointed out that anyone could have guessed that there’d be a bad night, seeing that the snow had already completely filled in the footprints he had just left as he crossed the courtyard. He was still speaking when there was a knock at the door and in stepped Fredo, just back from carting their mother over to the parish church for her Saint Anthony novena prayers. His long tabarro cape was pulled up to just under his eyes and a crumpled cap lowered almost to his nose.

  “It’s snowing to high heaven,” he exclaimed as though no one had heard the news yet, stamping his feet on the floor.

  “Sit down,” said Gaetano, pulling over a stool. “A glass of wine will warm you up.”

  “I’m thinking,” said Fredo, “that tomorrow morning we’ll be ass-deep in snow.”

  “Knee-deep,” objected Gaetano. “When it falls so fast it never lasts long.”

  “That’s what you say,” broke in Cleto, the umbrella mender. “I remember that in ’94, a whole meter came down in one night in Ostiglia.”

  “A meter is not ass-deep,” shot back Gaetano.

  “Depends on where you have your ass,” snickered Fredo.

  When it was the weather they were on about, everyone had something to say, a precedent to call to mind, an incredible event to describe. In their lives everything was always the same, one day like the next, one night just like any other. Only nature could surprise them.

  “You know what I say?” said Gaetano. “When it comes down like this, with flakes so big they look like handkerchiefs and the air is so still, that’s when an earthquake can strike.”

  Floti, who hadn’t said a word until then, entered the discussion. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said. “If there were an earthquake coming we’d know from the animals. They’d warn us beforehand, you can be sure of that.”

  He hadn’t finished speaking when they heard furious barking coming from the dog outside as his chain screeched back and forth on the wire stretched from the old oak tree to the house. Their eyes all moved up to the crack-ridden vaults on the stable’s ceiling, expecting to see plaster dust falling to announce the shaking of the earth’s crust. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. The oxen and cows went on happily chewing their cuds and the cat slept peacefully curled up on a bale of hay.

  “That’s no earthquake,” said Cleto. “There’s someone outside. Go see who it is.”

  They all turned towards the door. C
hecco got up and went to open it. A blade of light projected outwards, illuminating first the millions of butterfly-sized snowflakes settling onto the already whitened ground, and then an unsteady, swaying figure who was making his way towards the stable.

  “Is that you, Iofa?”

  “It’s me,” sighed the man. “I saw the light and came into the courtyard.”

  “You did well. Come on in, then. What is it, have you been drinking?”

  Iofa walked in, shook off the snow and tossed his cape onto the hay. “Drinking? Just one glass, at the osteria. But I’ll gladly have another, if you’re offering. I need it.”

  They’d never seen him like this before: he seemed befuddled, as if he didn’t know where to start. They gathered around him as he downed the glass of wine in a single go.

  “Well then?” demanded Checco. “What happened to you? It looks as if you’ve seen the devil in person.”

  ‘You’re not far from the truth there!’ he replied, getting into his story. ‘I was just at the Osteria della Bassa with Bas­tiano, Squint-eye, and Vito Baracca, playing a hand of briscola with a half-liter of white on the table. Hardly anyone in the place . . . ”

  “On a night like this, I believe it,” interrupted Gaetano.

  “Let him finish,” said Floti, sure that the man hadn’t just happened to wander by the stable in such bad weather. He’d come because he had something inside that he wouldn’t be able to keep to himself; not for long, anyway.

  Iofa continued: “It was me and Squint-eye against Bastiano and Vito Baracca, and we were even, after two hands. Can you believe that? Sixty to sixty, even though Baracca’d had the ace, the three, the jack of trump. We were just about to lay out our trump when the door swings open and this man we’d never seen before walks in. We could barely believe our eyes. His beard was so long it nearly touched his belt and he had on this big long gray overcoat and a sack slung over his shoulder. His eyes were as red as a demon’s! He sits down, then takes a chunk of bread, dry as a stone, out of his bag, and sets it on the table.

  “‘Where are you coming from, my good fellow?’ Squint-eye asks him, calm as can be.

  “‘From the crossroads, the Corona,’ he answers.

  “‘You should have slept there, at the Corona. It’s a long way from there, with all this snow. You could have been buried alive.’

  “‘I came all this way because I knew that tonight . . . ’ and then he stops, with a look in his eyes that had us all scared to death.

  “None of us had the guts to say a word. Sitting there with our cards in our hands, looking at one another as if to say, this guy’s crazy as a loon. Well, he looks at the barkeep and tells him to bring him a glass of wine and that he has the money to pay for it. He sticks his bread in the wine and then he sticks it in his mouth, chewing on it with his mouth wide open, really disgusting, like the devil himself.”

  “Must have been the devil himself, then,” commented Fredo.

  Floti shushed him: “Don’t be an idiot, let him talk.”

  Iofa needed no encouraging. “So in the end I made him finish what he was saying, seeing that no one else would. I said: ‘What was supposed to happen tonight, good man?’

  “He lifts up his head and he says to me: “I knew that tonight . . . the golden goat would appear.”’

  Iofa stopped for a moment to take in the faces encircling him, to gauge the effect his story was having.

  “Come on, now,” Floti said, “don’t make us pull the words out of your mouth.”

  Iofa nodded and went on. “‘The golden goat?’ I ask him, ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right, my good fellow?’

  “Well, he gulps down the last chunk of bread, swallows the last drop of wine, and says: ‘Of course. I saw the golden goat appear in front of me, just as I’m seeing you now. It was on the highest of the four hills, on the left of the road . . . ’

  “‘That’s Pra’ dei Monti!’ Squint-eye says. ‘They’ve always said the golden goat was hidden there! But how could you know that, if you’re not from around here?’

  “‘It was shining in the middle of the swirling snow,” the guy goes on, ignoring Squint-eye, “encircled by a quivering halo . . . ’

  “‘And you? What did you do?’ I asked him.

  “‘I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It was all in gold, as big as life, but instead of eyes it had precious gems, as red as fire. You can’t imagine what it’s like to find yourself looking at something like that. I’ll never forget it, my whole life.’ That’s exactly what the man said.”

  Gaetano hadn’t spoken a word, nor had his brothers, as they silently envisioned the creature that the stranger had described to the card-playing men. He finally said: “I don’t believe a word of it. He’s some wise guy who comes from lord knows where, out of work and without a penny. He ends up here, hears this story somehow and thinks, I wonder just how gullible these simpletons are . . . ”

  “Right, he’s just looking for someone who will put him up for a few days so he can tell his story again and again, until the roads have cleared up and he can head back to wherever he came from,” added Checco.

  “That could be,” replied Iofa, “but just listening to his voice made shivers run down your spine. He had this rough voice, a voice that . . . sounded like it came from another world. Bastiano, who’s big and broad as a bear and not afraid of anything, was trembling like a kid. How do you explain that none of us had ever seen him around here before, and yet he knew about the golden goat . . . ”

  “So where is he now?” asked Armando, who hadn’t uttered a word until then.

  “Who knows,” replied Iofa. “He disappeared.”

  “What do you mean, disappeared?” asked Gaetano.

  “He asked for another glass of wine and gulped it down, then he left ten cents on the table and walked out. We all ran over to the glass door to look outside but he wasn’t there anymore. So what do the lot of you think it means?”

  “It means nothing,” replied Gaetano. “Tomorrow he’ll show up again. He’ll have slept it off in some hayloft.”

  “You’re just saying that to set your mind at ease,” broke in Cleto the umbrella mender. “The truth is you’re afraid.”

  “Afraid?” protested Floti. “Of what?”

  “You know what . . . the golden goat. You know well what it means when the golden goat appears suddenly, on a night like tonight, to a solitary wayfarer. It can only mean that something terrible is going to happen. Folks say that the first time was three hundred years ago. The golden goat appeared and then the next year the plague broke out and carried off five hundred people from this town alone. It appeared again sixty years later to a Capuchin friar who was directed to the monastery in Vignola. He was travelling by night to avoid the heat of the day, it was in August. A few months later the Turks invaded the eastern regions and then Austria and it was a miracle that they didn’t invade Italy to take Rome! It would have been the end of Christianity! Twenty soldiers from this very town were killed in the battle of Vienna.

  “The golden goat was last seen again just eighteen years ago on a stormy night by a swine merchant on his way back from the market at Sant’Agata. It was pitch dark, and pouring rain, but the goat was lit up like broad daylight by a bolt of lightning. Six months later his three sons died in the battle of Adwa in Abyssinia, along with thousands and thousands of our soldiers . . . ”

  “Stop that,” said Floti. “That’s all just idle talk! The superstitious prattle of ignorant people who, when some disaster happens, drag the golden goat into it. That’s all it is. It’s nothing.”

  “Really?” replied Cleto. “Well then, if that’s the way things are and if you’re not afraid of these silly superstitions, what do you say we go to take a look for ourselves? Go to Pra’ dei Monti, now?”

  “You’re crazy,” said Floti. “No way on earth! It’s too damned cold out there
and the snow’s coming too fast. We’re likely to end up falling in a ditch and freezing to death, and they won’t find us until next spring.”

  “You don’t go to church very often,” shot back Cleto, “but I remember well what Don Massimino used to say in his day, God bless him. He said that the goat is a symbol of the devil, a symbol that goes way back in time. How do you know that the golden goat wasn’t worshipped as a pagan idol around here once, long ago, maybe even right there at Pra’ dei Monti? You’ve heard what they dug up there, haven’t you? The remains of an ancient settlement, with amulets, bracelets shaped like snakes, grotesque masks. And people say that it was there, almost two thousand years ago, that a great battle was fought and that thousands and thousands of dead bodies were left unburied in the swamps that covered this territory. Nothing happens by chance, my friend. There’s always a reason why certain things take place . . . And while we’re on the subject, what do you have to say about what happened here tonight? A ray of sun the color of blood piercing through the falling snow . . . Who’s ever seen something like that before?”

  Armando, the most easily spooked of the brothers, got to his feet. “Sorry, but I don’t like the turn things are taking here! I wish you all a good night. I’m going to sleep myself.”

  “Go, go,” said Cleto, and waited for Armando to leave so he could pick up where he had left off. “Well then? Since you say all this is just idle chatter, why don’t we go take a look? We’ll cover up well, put on our long-legged clogs and we’ll head out. We can be there in less than an hour.”

  “Come on now,” said Floti with a shrug. “You really think the golden goat will be waiting there for you? Aren’t sudden appearances supposed to be brief and unexpected? Me, I’m going to bed. Good night to everyone and you, Iofa, be careful getting home. You don’t want to meet up with the goat and get strung up on his horns!”