Alarico’s Fathers (Aquilonia, 1954)

When Alarico is a month old, Maddalena’s husband, Cristoforo, sends word that he is returning. All these years, he has been locked up in a Carolina jail, charged with arson and murder. Someone sets fire to a fruit stand, and the owner foolishly goes back to the flames to salvage his possessions. He dies. Cristoforo, who happens to be in the vicinity, finds himself in jail with three Italians he has never met. All claim innocence, but Cristoforo cannot be sure of the others, just himself. He knows he is guilty of stealing a crate of oranges while the place is burning, and is horrified that the sentence for stealing in Carolina is life imprisonment, or even death. He can’t read or write in English, and jail is not the place to learn. It takes him a year to understand the charges against him, and two more years to clear up the misunderstanding. When they let him out of jail with the others, he thinks he is finally free, but he is wrong. He is being repatriated with the other three because the American jails are full of foreigners and the authorities don’t know where to put them.

When Maddalena receives the first message, she is desperate. What will she tell him about this baby? But Cristoforo has already been informed of his wife’s infidelity by an acquaintance from the town of Rosario. He knows the truth before he leaves American soil. As soon as he can, he sends his wife a telegram:

Dearwife STOP allwillbesolved STOP arrival1700hSept09 STOP CristoforoFerri STOP

Like all telephone calls, local or overseas, it comes to the only telephone in town, located in the General Store. Within minutes, the town is buzzing with the news. Maddalena’s lover immediately leaves for Rome on the pretext of buying a bull for his herd of prize cows. The rest of Aquilonia gets ready for blood.

On the day of the arrival, while Maddalena trembles at home, her baby at her breast, half the town shows up at the train station to find out just what Cristoforo Ferri is prepared to do to his wife.

As the train pulls into the station, a crowd gathers around. Some people are just curious. Others dare each other to see who will be the first to call Cristoforo a cuckold. They remember him as a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly, a simple man who would give you the shirt off his back if you asked him. Would he be a fool, or would he be a man today?

When the doors of the train open, there is dead silence while a few passengers make their way down the steps to stretch their legs or drink an espresso before continuing on their trip.

At last, Cristoforo shows his face, and the men begin to whistle, while the married women call his name like they would a little brother, or a starving cat. Cristò! Cristofero! Cristoferuccio! He pauses to wave from the top step of the train. He seems thinner, older. Three years in an American prison have changed his look and his temperament. He does not have the same face as when he left. He raises his hand, asking for silence, then begins fumbling with the inside pocket of his jacket.

“First of all,” he says, “I am grateful for this warm welcome from my paesani. I never expected so many of you, especially since no one came to see me off when I left.”

“Secondly,” he continues, taking out a heavy Colt 45 from his pocket, and meticulously loading bullets into it, “I am anxious to hear what you have to say to me.”

Then, pointing the loaded gun at the crowd, he adds, “But the first person to tell me my wife gave me the horns gets a bullet between the eyes.”

At home, he kisses his wife on the forehead and opens his arms to the baby.

“Show me my son,” he says.

And that is how Alarico Ferri, taken in by his mother’s husband as his own, ends up with a first name by one father, and a last name by another.

But Alarico is also cursed and the story doesn’t end there.

He never knows this father who parades him all over town, showing him off like he is made of gold, making the good people of Aquilonia cringe on his behalf. Six months later, the father who gave Alarico his own name drowns in the waters of La Sila, in the same man-made lake he is helping to build alongside my father and five hundred other men.

His other father, the one he has to get used to, the one his mother tells him is his father, comes to his house only after dark.

If, by chance, Alarico sees him on the street during the day, he is instructed to nod politely and to never call him “papà.” Like me, he is supposed to say “Buon giorno, zio Achille. Bless me, zio Achille,” and be on his way.