FOR THE ENTIRE week that followed, the village was shrouded in unusually thick fog. The low walls along the streets were frozen, and a thin layer of ice had formed between the stones; the children played at chipping it off and holding pieces in their hands on their way home, challenging one another to demanding endurance contests. Once night fell and the streets were empty, anyone with a little money or who was still too far from home would seek shelter in the tavern—the only place in Lolai where the fireplace remained lit until late.
One night, there wasn’t one empty table; the charcoal burners were sitting quietly at the end of the room, next to the fire, while the tavern was flooded with the chatter of the other patrons. Tonio wandered among the tables, offering newly bottled wine, while Biccu and Annedda, next to the door, exchanged complicit glances whenever anyone new walked in. In front of them sat Don Giuseppe and Miriam, back from Mass with Sofia in tow, and at the next two tables were the Cannas and the Loccis, the former famous for having nine children, the latter—because of a barren marriage—without even a grandson to whom to bequeath an inheritance. Finally, there was Teresa, busy giving Rita instructions from the kitchen. The only people missing were Tore, who was sorting out the firewood in the courtyard, and Bruno, still visiting his sick mother.
His face puffy from the wine, Biccu staggered to his feet and reached the fireplace in a few strides. The three charcoal burners didn’t see him coming, intent as they were on gulping down chicken broth and talking figures in the room’s half-light.
‘So how are the trees in our forests?’ Biccu asked, reaching to put his glass on the table.
Carlo didn’t stir, so the old man indicated the full carafe, gesturing for some wine. The charcoal burner brushed the tuft of brown hair away from his eyes with a huff, then calmly removed his berritta and let it dangle from his knee; only then did he pour the wine.
‘Like the lost lamb in the Gospel, tziu Biccu,’ Tommaso replied. ‘There aren’t many with good timber left, and those are the ones we’re after.’
‘They must have heard you were looking for them, so they’re hiding.’
‘And we let them believe they’re well hidden,’ Giovanni said. ‘Owls can see in the dark, we can’t. Don’t worry, tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, we’ll trick a few more. Don’t you need some supplies?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Biccu replied.
‘Then send your son to help us. Once the pile is ready, we’ll give you his share,’ Carlo concluded, his gaze roaming the room.
‘Everyone picks his friends, but especially his enemies,’ Tommaso added, putting down his spoon after a final gulp of his soup.
‘May I?’ Rita asked, reaching for Giovanni’s empty bowl. He handed it to her with one arm, while wrapping his other arm around her waist.
‘Get off, I have to work,’ she said, flustered.
‘Otherwise, who’s going to chide you? Teresa?’ Giovanni asked, amused.
On hearing that name, Carlo turned, as though someone had called him from afar.
‘Look at how the cockerel wakes up as soon as there’s a beam of sunlight,’ Giovanni said with a mocking grin. Then he turned to Rita: ‘Go and call Teresa. Tell her Carlo wants to see her—so he drops that hangdog face.’
‘Mudu,’ Carlo snarled, kicking him under the table. ‘I don’t need a messenger, I can go to the kitchen myself.’
He stood up slowly, holding his dirty soup bowl, and went over to the counter, craning his neck in the hope that Teresa would glance into the room. When he approached the door, he saw her sitting by the sink, guzzling wine.
‘You need it tonight, don’t you?’
As soon as she saw him, a gulp went down the wrong way. With the back of her hand, she wiped red drops from her chin and looked at him, embarrassed.
‘What are you doing here? This is no place for men, let alone customers.’
‘But it’s all right for friends, right?’
Carlo was staring at her with a mock guilty expression, but she focused on the bowl and took it from his hands, then turned the tap on to wash it in the sink.
‘If you marry me, I’ll do all the cleaning for you, all right?’
Teresa kept silent for a moment before replying. ‘I already have a husband, and that’s enough.’
‘Oh, and where is he? Haven’t seen him for a while. They say that, given the right livestock, you can do good business in the city.’
‘At least livestock has good manners.’
Carlo couldn’t help smiling and let his arrogant gaze linger on Teresa’s movements. Annoyed but not distracted by his remarks, she kept to-ing and fro-ing between the sink and the table. No one had ever suspected that Teresa could leave her husband for another man; despite her smugness, their children guaranteed a stability that would weather any storm. But the impact of the three charcoal burners’ arrival on the village and Bruno’s temporary absence seemed to suggest an inevitable yielding on her part, the way the profile of a mountain is eroded by the wind, and everything else slowly changes, although the name remains the same.
Carlo stepped back towards the doorway, so that everyone could see, and reached out for her. Teresa moved away brusquely and waved her hands as though to chase a fly away. Her eyes narrowed, suggesting a contempt hard to put into words.
Carlo reached out to her neck with his hand. ‘It’s just a matter of time: sooner or later you’ll fall in love with me,’ he whispered in her ear.
From a distance, they looked dangerously close to each other, as if the ambiguity of Carlo’s earlier courtship had been successful. Teresa withdrew into the kitchen without a word, while Carlo returned to the dining room with a triumphant air and the contented smile of someone about to win an impossible bet. Don Giuseppe, who had witnessed the scene from afar, turned to Miriam and Sofia, his hands joined in prayer.
‘When a man opens the doors to betrayal, faithfulness is the first to leave the house. And the jangling of gold is too dangerous a bait.’
Miriam nodded in agreement, and Sofia crossed herself to chase the unpleasant thought away. Meanwhile, across the room, Rita was reassuring her mistress, while cutting small slices of civraxiu to give out at the tables.2
‘Carlo goes a bit far but he’s a decent man. It’s the wine that sometimes plays tricks and helps to distract him from sad thoughts. Every now and then it’s good to have something unexpected to break up the boredom, don’t you think?’
‘Talk less and work more,’ Teresa replied, as she disappeared into the kitchen.
All at once, the tavern door swung open and a gust of cold wind made everybody instinctively turn their heads towards it. Tore stepped in, panting, his eyes searching for Teresa. When she came back into the dining room and realised the urgency, she motioned Rita to look after the children and followed Tore out into the darkness. Those present waited, but when Biccu had had enough, he gently elbowed his wife and stood up, shaking the breadcrumbs off his trousers.
‘When the soup has run out and the owner’s not back, it’s not nice to be a nuisance. It’s time we went home too, Annedda.’
Don Giuseppe, Miriam and all the others also got up in silence. The three charcoal burners stayed seated, Giovanni shuffling a pack of cards, Carlo rocking back and forth on his chair, and Tommaso digging between his teeth with his left index finger in an attempt to dislodge a piece of meat—the tremor in his lip had increased in the past few minutes. As Biccu and Annedda were about to open the door, Tore strode back into the main room, pale. He walked past the children, who were shadow-playing by the fire, and said something to Rita under his breath; then he turned to the others. The deep furrows on his forehead made him look even older than usual.
‘Bruno’s back. He’s very ill.’
Little Maddalena turned to look at him with a worried face, and a murmur began to circulate among the tables. Tore assured them that the physician from the neighbouring village had been called but wouldn’t be there for a couple of hours. Rita took the children away as Tore recounted that Bruno had collapsed outside the front gate, in the dark, and was alternating between moments of lucidity and feverish delirium. Teresa had gone to take care of him in the bedroom, but he kept coughing, a sign that his pneumonia had deteriorated on his journey back.
The fog grew thicker as the hours went by. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence in those parts, especially during the winter months, but it would often dissipate in just a couple of hours with a steady, light maestrale wind. That night, however, anybody roaming about the house—eyes lingering on the dark alleys and dew-covered lemon trees before closing the shutters—could hear the hissing of the wind give way to a faint, constant swishing, like the distant chirrup of cicadas on summer nights.
Tore was standing in the corridor on the first floor, one eye on the adults’ bedroom, the other on the children’s; Rita had gone down to the kitchen to fill three glasses of myrtle liqueur to make it easier to stay awake.
As she was tidying up the kitchen, she heard someone knock insistently at the front door. She opened it and saw Maria standing before her.
‘Tzia Maria, what are you doing here?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Teresa…’ the bruja muttered under her breath, fists clenched on her hips.
‘She’s upstairs with Bruno.’
‘Call her,’ Maria commanded, as her body began to shudder.
Rita briefly hesitated, then nodded and vanished into the dark courtyard.
A couple of minutes later, Teresa opened the front door and saw Maria pacing up and down the street, arms crossed.
‘Did you ask for me?’
The bruja whipped around and they stared at each other for an instant: Teresa screwed up her honey-coloured eyes to focus in the dark, while Maria’s dark eyes dilated and grew even deeper.
‘Is Bruno ill?’ the old woman asked in a faint voice.
Teresa did not reply. She studied the mysterious form, unable to read the intention behind this question. For a moment, she was tempted to send Maria away unceremoniously. ‘He’ll recover,’ she finally said.
Maria joined her hands in prayer and muttered without looking at her.
‘Why are you here?’ Teresa asked, motionless, her altered tone suggesting she expected an honest answer.
The bruja turned pale; her body seemed to disappear and her mouth opened and closed repeatedly, like a panting swimmer.
‘I will pray…’ she said. ‘I’ll pray for him,’ she added, breathless.
Then, not waiting for a response, she huddled in her shawl and walked away until she became one with the darkness.
Back home, Teresa stayed up watching over Bruno, who was wrapped in a white sheet, drenched in sweat. She rushed to him whenever his vision started clouding over and his temples were throbbing. She removed the hot cloth from his head, dipped it into the iron bowl at the foot of the bed and waited for his coughing fit to subside. She brushed the curls away from his scalding forehead with her index finger, placed the damp cloth back on his head and blew gently under the covers at regular intervals to ease his protracted shuddering.
‘Teresa, there’s something you have to do,’ Bruno said without warning. ‘You have to send for Don Giuseppe.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘I’m serious, Teresa. Tell Tore to go and get him. If anything happens—’
‘Nothing’s going to happen, it’s just a little fever.’
‘Please send for him.’
Tore ran to Don Giuseppe’s house, and they were both back within a few minutes. Teresa and Rita were in the room with Bruno: he was coughing, while the women were to-ing and fro-ing between the bowl with cool water and the towels folded on the bed.
‘Good evening, Father,’ Rita said, eyes downcast, as she opened the door to let him in.
Don Giuseppe nodded at her and looked at the bed, clutching the Bible in one hand, a bottle of holy water in the other.
‘How are you?’
Bruno didn’t reply but continued to cough, pointing to the glass of water on the bedside table. Teresa reached for it, but the priest pre-empted her. Bruno lifted himself on the pillow with difficulty and sipped at it, his eyes closed, before taking a deep breath.
‘If it’s not too late, I’d like to confess.’
Teresa said nothing, but Rita and Tore stared at him in disbelief. If what was about to happen in the Murru household was truly a conversion—unimaginable for a man like Bruno, who had professed to be as removed from faith as their island was from the rest of the world—either there truly was a God, or there was no fear greater for a dying man than remorse.
On hearing the request, Don Giuseppe gestured at everyone to leave them alone. Before stepping outside, Teresa slowly turned to her husband and, unnoticed by the others, they exchanged a smile that was fleeting but touching. The priest closed the door, sat in the chair Teresa had occupied by the bed, opened the Bible on his lap and placed his hands on the sick man, who could barely keep his eyes open.
‘I address this prayer to you, o Lord, for—’
‘It’s not the kind of confession you think, Don Giuseppe.’ The priest stopped and looked at him, puzzled. And so, with long pauses between breaths, Bruno began to speak. ‘Before she died, my mother told me she’d spent too much time getting angry over pointless things; by the time she realised that, it was too late. She said she’d been taught that’s what life was like: a struggle for bread and dignity. She reminded me of Teresa. My wife gets up angry and goes to bed angry, and it’ll be even worse after I die. I haven’t been a perfect husband, but I’m afraid of leaving her alone among these people. They are the problem, they’ve forced her into a pointless war ever since she was born. You said that we are saved by prayer, didn’t you? Then pray for me and tell God that my wife doesn’t deserve this evil. And neither do my children.’ He paused in order to cough and clear his throat. ‘You must tell her I made a proper confession. I ask you to promise me two things, Don Giuseppe. That you will lie about what we’ve just said to each other and that, in the end, it will have been worth it.’
The priest did not let go of the Bible until Bruno, holding his breath as he changed position, turned his back to him, signalling the end of the conversation. The flame of the candle flame flickered weakly on the edge of the bedside table, while the bedroom walls echoed with Bruno’s secret last will.
The funeral was held two days later. The crowd filled the church and a large part of the square outside the gate, as they listened to Don Giuseppe’s homily and shivered in the cold.
‘Bruno was a meek soul,’ the priest said, ‘and as such the Lord will let him inherit the earth. But woe to those of us on this earth who do not suffer and become meek: they are not destined for the Kingdom of God.’
After the service, an orderly procession escorted Teresa, the three children, Tore and Rita to the cemetery for the burial. As people gathered around the dark hole awaiting the coffin, a light rain began to fall on the village.
‘She’s the one who should be buried in the graveyard,’ someone whispered at the back. ‘Issu ndi bessiri corrudu e appaliau. That’s how those who can’t stand up to their wives end up: cuckolded and clubbed.’
Tore, who was holding Teresa up by the arm, whipped around but was unable to see who’d spoken. He tried to catch Don Giuseppe’s attention, but the priest ignored him. Teresa had turned to stone, her gaze glued to the sky.
All at once, she glimpsed Maria’s small form in the middle of the crowd. The bruja was looking down at the hole, her gnarled hands held together tightly in prayer, her sparse white hair strewn over her shoulders. Despite the ruthless passing of time, her contrite face hinted at her former beauty. In the midst of her grief and her anger at losing her husband, Teresa discovered another distinct, if more subtle, grudge against the old woman. Marriage to Bruno had given her the two most precious things she had in the world: three children and a surname. But now, in front of that oddly familiar face, that inheritance didn’t seem to amount to much. Unexpected and frightening, like a thunderclap in the middle of a storm, to Teresa’s grief was added her need for answers—answers she would get from this woman at all costs.
The priest shook the aspergillum to bless the coffin, performed a series of signs of the cross, then read the funeral rites from the breviary. On his last night, shortly after his confession, Bruno had stopped speaking, lost consciousness and never woke up again. By the time the doctor arrived, he had already given up the ghost, and the words confided to Don Giuseppe turned out to be his final testament. From their talk, the priest had reported only Bruno’s general repentance, sincere enough to guarantee him entry into Heaven. On hearing this, Teresa had restrained her sobs in front of the children.
The evening after the funeral, the only person who called on the widow was Gavina. About ten years older than Teresa, with ash-coloured hair and a gammy leg since childhood, she was the only resident of Lolai who had studied and specialised in the vertical loom. But after her parents’ death, she’d had to take care of the small family home not far from the village.
Years earlier, Signor Collu had insisted that Teresa go to her house to learn this ancient skill from an expert hand. It took Gavina two rather fruitless sessions to realise that the girl wasn’t fit for sedentary activities: Teresa was lively and inquisitive, different from other girls her age. The woman had suggested continuing with the afternoon meetings so that together they could fix up the back of the house, where there was a wooden tool shed, an artificial pond and a couple of dilapidated aviaries.
Although Gavina wasn’t devout, the villagers respected her. As she lived alone, without a husband, they were not particularly surprised by this new friendship. Years later, after Teresa had just had her first child, the pain in Gavina’s leg worsened to the point it prevented her from walking. Until then, Teresa had never seen in her friend’s eyes the awkward plea for help; she now took the hint and moved into Gavina’s house to give her a hand. A month later, Gavina’s leg had improved and, before returning home, Teresa asked her to be Maddalena’s godmother, thereby sealing their inestimable bond with a sacrament.
Eight years later, the roles were reversed and Gavina took the opportunity to return the favour. She came into the Murrus’ house with a tray of lasagne, a couple of bread loaves and half a mould of pecorino.
‘It’s not much, but it’ll last till tomorrow,’ she said with a kind smile. Teresa thanked her with a grateful nod and got up to light the fire. She invited Gavina to stay for dinner but the woman raised her hand and declined.
‘It was a lovely ceremony,’ she said in a low voice.
Teresa did not reply, but slumped onto the chair, put her trembling hands over her eyes and within seconds burst into inconsolable weeping—the tears she’d struggled to restrain over the past few days. Gavina pulled up her skirt and heaved her large body upright with difficulty. She limped to the table without a word, took a white cloth handkerchief from her left pocket, dried Teresa’s tears and waited for her sobs to ease.
They remained in silence until dinnertime. The warmth from the fireplace had fogged up the kitchen window and Gavina looked out, a cup of steaming milk in her hand, wondering whether it was riskier to go home in the bad weather or leave her friend on her own. Soon afterwards, Teresa mentioned that since Bruno had died, the two younger children had wanted to sleep with her, so there was a room available. Gavina realised then that friendship—like all of life’s complex things—was above all the art of reading between the lines. So she accepted the invitation with a smile.
The next morning, while the entire family was fast asleep, she decided to prepare breakfast. As she was leaving, she came across Tore, who was feeding the donkey, and asked him to make sure to let her know if they needed anything.
‘Thank you, tzia Gavina. It isn’t easy, but it always helps her to see you.’
The woman raised her plump hand without turning round and, as she limped down the empty alley, she dedicated her favourite poem to the maestrale wind.
Oh youth, with slow relentless steps
You went and left me long ago.
Your memory, though, still kisses me
And gives me strength when I am low.
Though all is past and life is sad
With hope for peace it’s not too bad.
My running days are long gone by
But some lame dance I still may try.
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2 A traditional Sardinian round bread, made with a combination of ordinary flour and semolina flour.