FOR TWO YEARS, a drought had plagued the land, and hot southern winds blew in from North Africa. Every morning, the Itria valley’s olive groves turned their leaves towards the ground, to conserve what little dampness they still had, and at dusk they looked back up towards the stars, begging for a few drops of dew. From the large terrace in Bellorotondo, it was an extraordinary sight: in the midday sun, the leaves appeared to be almost silvered, glimmering like the Adriatic Sea. Yet, up close, they were a leaden green. The olive trees were shedding their flowers from lack of water and the farmers knew that the harvest would be meagre for the second year running. Their nerves were frayed, fully aware that any stray spark could set off a tragedy.
Such sticky heat also affected everyone’s mood at the palazzo. Every morning Nonna went out on the terrace and surveyed the horizon, searching for a change in the weather that failed to materialize. The water in the tanks had come out murky all spring long and finally, one day in June, it dried up altogether. Lady Angela considered it a disgrace and, from then on, she had the garden and the square swept continuously, in the hope that when the storms finally arrived, not a single drop of water would be lost. Every morning she went up to the terrace, clutching the balustrade with tense hands, and from her privileged position, directed the maids and made sure that the channels were well cleaned. When she retired to her room, the terrace floor was scattered with dried flowers that Lady Angela had compulsively, unthinkingly, pulled off the wisteria; they too were suffering from lack of water.
At midday, she went out into the garden, through the kitchen door, looking for even the faintest of breezes to ease the oppressive heat. On one of the hotter mornings they had emptied the fish pond to save water. The next day, when Lady Angela found it filled with dry leaves and instinctively pumped the iron handle, the tap emitted a hoarse metallic sound, like an animal’s cry. Frightened, Nonna beat a hasty retreat to the terrace.
When she reached the azaleas she let out a shriek that echoed through the narrow, twisting streets of the old quarter: the ‘Queen of Bellorotondo’ had begun to lose its flowers and even its leaves were turning yellow. Her most prized azalea had a withered, sickly look and she allowed herself a few private moments of worrying that this damn drought would be the death of it, before the servants responded to her cry. The cook and the maid ran out of the house in a terrible state, and found their mistress standing stock-still in front of the azaleas. With her arms in the air and her fists tightly clenched, the Lady of Bellorotondo looked up towards the heavens and defied her creator. ‘What have I done to deserve this? What is my crime?’ she cried. ‘Am I guilty of circumventing every obstacle in order to grow the freshest flowers for Your churches? Was it a sin of pride to refuse to accept the fate of this miserable region? Was it vanity to create a paradise here in the midst of this parched land? Must I give up like all those farmers You’ve left resigned and dispirited?’
Seeing her trembling, the maids rushed to her side to make sure she didn’t collapse. She pushed them away and ordered, ‘Have them prepare the car. I’m going to the factory.’
A few minutes later, she burst into Angelo’s office and demanded that he have the palazzo’s water tanks filled.
‘Bring water from the Bradano river or the spring in Torre Canne. If that’s not enough, have some brought from Abruzzo. Have the cisterns filled with water from the Po, if necessary, or from the very heart of the Alps. I don’t care how you do it, but I want them brimming. Tomorrow! Before my entire garden dies of thirst!’
While the Lady of Bellorotondo argued with God and recriminated with Him for sentencing her azaleas to death, the farmers in the trulli were growing desperate as they watched their olive trees start to turn yellow and their flowers drop to the ground. They too anticipated a weak harvest, but they lacked a direct line to their creator, or enough familiarity to reproach him for their unfair punishment. Nor did they trust intermediaries such as Father Constanzo: for weeks, the rector of the Immacolata had been celebrating masses with the other priests in the valley and praying for rain, invoking every saint on the calendar. The men of Puglia just looked up at the sky in resignation and cursed their bad luck to be born in that parched part of the world.
The next morning, when the water from the Bradano river reached the palazzo, Nonna drenched the garden. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Donata and Giovanna were shelling fava beans in the kitchen of their house on the Piazza Sant’Anna. As they were pricking one side of the pods with a knife and dividing them in half to dry them, Dr Ricciardi came in wearing a serious expression, unable to conceal that he was the bearer of bad news.
‘Little Michele has killed himself.’
The women cried out in distress. Donata brought her hands to her face. Giovanna dropped the knife, which fell on its point and stuck in the table. When she stood up, her face was distorted in agony.
‘What do you mean, he killed himself?’ she cried out. ‘You mean he’s dead? Little Michele? My Michele?’
‘It seems for weeks now they’d been hearing him cry all night long,’ Dr Ricciardi tried to explain. ‘Yesterday morning, when he went out with the sheep, he ran away and flung himself into the ravine. When they found him at the bottom, he was crushed against the dry riverbed, and there was nothing they could do to save him.’
Giovanna felt a sudden stabbing pain and grabbed her belly with her hands; all at once, a thousand blades jabbed at her stomach, one after the other. She twisted in agony, and brought one hand up to her mouth as she began to vomit. Donata got up to support her forehead; Ricciardi wetted a rag and ran it over her face. They hugged her. She cried inconsolably and they cried with her.
‘I don’t understand how he managed to last over a year there. Didn’t they see that he was just a child and needed his mother? He was only six when they took him away, he didn’t even make it to eight. We should have stopped them!’
Ricciardi acknowledged that she was right. ‘They treated him no better than a dog.’
When they reached the Galassos’ trullo to give their condolences, the women were sobbing and shrieking over the body that had just been brought from Altamura. Giovanna didn’t dare go in; she stayed in one corner of the threshing floor, far from the local men, who sat looking at the ground in silence. Salvatore, standing in the centre of the group, addressed those shamefaced men with harsh words. He blamed them for the tragedy and condemned their fatalism, which had them all bowing their heads.
The Galasso father seemed the most resigned of all. ‘We couldn’t do anything about it: poor Michele was born so tiny; he was always clinging to his mother’s skirt.’
Inside the women screamed, more and more hysterically. Convinced their cries would end up scaring poor Michele’s soul, Giovanna decided to go inside. She stood over the little boy’s lifeless body and asked for his forgiveness. ‘I promised you that you would go far and you didn’t even make it to the age of eight.’
She walked out to the threshing floor, grabbed Salvatore by the arm, pulled him away from the group and said to him, ‘I want to join the Party. Take me to a meeting. I’ll do whatever it takes, but from now on I want to devote myself to fighting the bastards who are destroying this land.’