The books’ origins defy every explanation. I take them out of their wooden boxes, shake them out, and flip through the pages. I find the occasional photograph of happy children: a boy … a younger girl. On a day when grandfather has gone to the city and is not expected back until night, I work my way to the bottom of each box and empty the contents on the floor. I search for a name, an address.
Instead, I find a shoebox.
The box is tied with string, and I don’t know what is inside it. I shake it. The rustling of papers reminds me of letters. I hope it is something that might explain the mystery of the books. I memorize how the knots are tied so that I can re-tie them the same way later.
I am shocked to find that the box is full of something that looks to me like paper money. I jump to this conclusion for a good reason. I have never really seen paper money up close, even though I’ve picked up from men’s talk that as currency goes, paper money is worth more than silver coins. I start to become suspicious of my grandfather, who I think has tried to keep everyone, including me, out of the attic because he is hiding secrets about something far more sinister than the origin of his precious books. It is impossible to think my grandfather has been holding on to this money for years, denying his family a better life.
And yet there it is.
The bills, rectangular and stamped with a blue seal are unwrinkled, and smell as if they are brand new. Questions run at train-speed through my head. Who owns this money? Does it belong to the same person who owns the books? I decide that nonno must know, and in his madness, he has kept it hidden from his family so that he could give it back along with the books. Imagine what we could do with all that money! My father could come back from Germany. We could get a proper house. We could stay in Calabria instead of looking all over the world for another home. I could go to school as long as I want.
I don’t know what to do next. If I tell anyone about the money, I’ll have to explain where I’ve found it. My grandfather will know I’ve been rifling through his things. Who knows what he will do? The most reasonable plan is to wait for an opportunity to reveal my find without implicating myself. For months, my mother, my brother, and I go back and forth from Aquilonia to Zimpoli. Each time, I check to make sure the money is still where I found it, under the books, at the bottom of the trunk. Just when I’ve almost summoned up the courage to tell my zia Odilia about the paper money, I hear the truth.
Nonno is in an exceptionally good mood because his youngest brother Alberto, the police marshall, is visiting, along with his Roman wife. The two men are sitting at the table after dinner while the women are clearing up around them. For dessert, they are dipping sliced peaches in red wine. They barely notice me, as zio Alberto’s voice drops to a whisper.
“How are you enduring it, Già?”
“Those four years in Africa turned us backwards,” my grandfather answers.
“So, why did you volunteer to go?”
“It was either that or the military. Four small children and another on the way. You wanted me to make them orphans?”
“No, but from the army, you would at least have gotten a pension.”
“I made the sacrifice for land,” Giacomo says, his voice trembling. “That’s what we were promised when we went.”
“And then it all exploded in our faces.”
“Eh, si. A box of money in my attic, nothing more than a souvenir. Something to wipe my ass with.”
Eventually, I learn the story from my father. Immediately after my grandfather returns from Africa, he begins to search for the right piece of land for his family. He has the money, since he has saved every lira he could spare. To better transport the money from Africa to Italy, he turns it into government bonds which, he was told, were better than actual money. While denying himself everything but the absolute necessities, he dreams of the day when his sons are working alongside him, on fertile soil that will one day feed and house their families. For a landless peasant, land is better than money, better than gold.
While he is in Africa, he writes to his brother Alberto, and asks him to start looking for a good acre of land for sale, anticipating the day when he can finally be master of his own house. Alberto finds land for sale, three hours away from Zimpoli. Months later, upon his return to Calabria, Giacomo insists on seeing the land immediately. He leaves the house in Zimpoli so early in the morning that when he arrives at the farm he wants to buy, the ground is still wet with dew, and the proprietor is still asleep. Still he learns what he wants to know. He sees the lush green with his own eyes, tastes the fat honey grapes, rubs a fistful of rich earth between his fingers. For his sons’ sake, he wants his name on that deed as soon as possible.
He returns to the Zimpoli farm, and orders his two boys to saddle up the donkey as if they are on an ordinary errand on an ordinary day. He wants them to look ordinary, to avoid calling attention to themselves. Three travelers on foot could fall prey to i briganti, who would have no mercy if they knew money was changing hands. He conceals the money among all three, placing it in cloth bags and securing it around his own waist and then around the belly of each son. The long road on the way to the landowner’s house is torture. The boys are so afraid of being ambushed they don’t even stop to pee. They are relieved when they arrive at their destination and knock on the door. A man smelling of pipe tobacco opens the door.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. I am Rondinella. You know my brother, Alberto Rondinella.”
“Why are you here?”
“To buy the land.”
“With what?”
“One thousand, two hundred lire in government bonds, as we agreed. We will go to the notary and I will sign them over to you”
“Government bonds? Unless it’s gold you have, you are wasting your time.”
“Why would I have gold? What do you mean?”
“Hasn’t it been a year since I talked to your brother? The lira has fallen even further since then. Your money is worthless.”
The lira had suffered a serious decline in value and became, almost overnight, the equivalent of what a cent used to be prior to the second world war. The original amount could have bought a nice piece of land, but in a matter of months the new, devalued lira – and my grandfather’s bonds – were not even worth a pair of old shoes.
Giacomo is not used to having real doors slammed in his face, the edge barely missing the feet of my two young uncles, who are standing right in front of him.
It was September 1942.
When my grandfather launches into one of his rants against a God he doesn’t believe in, he curses the Almighty the way he thinks he has been cursed. My grandmother looks defeated every time his curses reach her ears. She is devout even though she doesn’t say so out loud. She fears the ricochet of her husband’s blasphemy. It is bound to come back as black rain on the heads of her children and her grandchildren. In her dark moments, she is sure they will never escape the weight of that malediction.
Sometimes I hear her crying in her kitchen, and I ask her what is wrong.
“No luck,” she says, her head in her hands. “We’ve been cursed.”
She has no idea, after I hear it from both sides of the family, how powerful those words become to me.