TERESA REOPENED THE tavern in the late afternoon and caught up on the morning chores: she swept the floor, arranged the tables and lit the fireplace, before returning to the kitchen and starting on dinner. Shortly afterwards, Biccu came in to celebrate the arrival of his fourth grandchild with his friends and, given the excitement, the group stayed longer than expected.
‘Tonight’s on me!’ the old man said, raising his glass. ‘We must drink to good news. As for bad news, there’s the rest of the week.’
They responded by draining their glasses, then looking at the empty bottle on the counter and calling for another.
‘Tore, have a drink too,’ Biccu said, swaying and tapping him on the back.
‘I’d better not, thanks,’ Tore replied, raising his hand.
His refusal didn’t seem to dampen the old man’s cheerful mood, and he took another step towards Tore. ‘I’ll tell you a secret, mi’,’ he said, putting an arm around him. ‘The truth of all truths…’
‘E bai, you haven’t uttered a word of truth since you learned to walk,’ Elio said in a mocking tone from behind them.
‘Cittidì tui! Quiet! Hear me out, Tore,’ Biccu said, trying in vain to whisper so he wouldn’t be heard by the others. ‘The truth is that we enjoy acting like we’re lords. Me, you, and even the wretches behind us. But in the end we’re all guilty, without exception. Isn’t it true that we live in paradise? This island looks like the garden in the Bible, I’m telling you. When I sit down by the river, with the flock bleating in the distance, the rustling of the trees and the wind on my forehead, ah, ta cosa bella. You’d think we need nothing else, right? But no!’ Biccu slammed his empty glass onto the counter with a hollow thud. ‘We’re never happy! We always want more, always something better. But a soil that yields no fruit is useless! That’s the truth: we live in paradise, but if we’re not careful, we’ll end up dying in it. And it could turn into a damned hell overnight.’
As the old man spoke, his eyebrows drooped and he looked sad; his earlier excitement seemed to have vanished. In the silence of the room, he lifted the glass to his lips and with his tongue searched for a last drop of wine. Then, before anyone else could speak, he straightened up as though a shudder had gone through him.
‘But what’s the point in complaining? Better drunk and happy, because even in hell guests must be treated properly. And today you’re all my guests! The house may be small, but the heart is big. Teresa, bring us two more bottles!’
The room roared with approval, a sign that a sad end to the evening had just been averted. Teresa put two more flasks of red wine on the counter and looked at the group with an air of resignation, before disappearing out the back.
The tavern began to empty, and while a couple of guests had dozed off, cheeks flushed, others had decided to walk off the bender on their way home. All at once, Giovanni appeared in the doorway, looking worried. Tore, who’d stayed behind and was eating at the counter, watched him approach between the tables.
‘Where’s Rita?’ the young man asked, looking around for her.
‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘No, nothing. If you see her, tell her I’m waiting outside,’ he said hastily before leaving again.
The cold air that had come in through the open door woke one of Biccu’s friends, who’d fallen asleep in front of the fireplace. His backside had warped the wicker seat of his chair so much it was practically touching the floor. As he tried to get up, he bumped into a table and two roast eels the Cannas had just ordered fell on the floor; the sound of crashing terracotta made everybody turn to look. Still drunk, the man tried to raise a hand in apology and curled his lips in a nauseated grimace, then left the room to the sound of Biccu’s slow laughter. By the time the old man had pulled himself together, the crowd, now serious, had lost their appetite.
‘What are you all looking at? I’m fine,’ Biccu said irritably, struggling up off his chair. ‘And have a laugh—people never laugh in this damned village. You can’t even go home happy when you’ve got something to celebrate.’
Biccu pushed the door open and joined his friend; his head was lolling but his body remained still on the stone wall next to the door. They wiped their parched lips with the back of their hands before exchanging a disappointed look. The party was over. Without a word, they ventured, side by side, down the narrow dirt road that led to the church.
While Tore was standing the table back up and apologising to the Cannas for the inconvenience, Rita emerged from the kitchen.
‘Biccu and his friends,’ Tore said. ‘Where’s Teresa?’ he asked, picking up what was left of the food from the floor.
‘She’s inside. I’ll call her if you like?’
‘No, don’t worry, I’ll go. By the way, Giovanni was looking for you,’ he said, gesturing at the door, fragments of dirty terracotta in his hand.
Rita scuttled outside, just as Teresa emerged to find out what was going on. She offered the Cannas a dessert on the house to make up for the damage and immediately left the room.
While Tore was wiping down the floor, Rita came back in looking agitated. ‘Did something happen?’ he asked.
‘No, everything’s fine,’ she replied absent-mindedly. ‘I’ll be straight back,’ she added, disappearing behind the kitchen door.
She found Teresa at the sideboard, inspecting a pardula under the hot light of the lamp, holding it between her thumb and forefinger to avoid squashing it. Part of the star-shaped tip of the pastry seemed misshapen and dark, but it was the colour of the filling showing through the surface, which was, unusually, riddled with holes. She sniffed her hand to check the sweet wasn’t rotten, and a fly flew out of the ricotta inside, right into her eyes.
‘Aggittoriu!’ Teresa screamed, throwing the pardula into the air, then putting a hand on her chest. ‘They’ve all gone off,’ she said, more to herself than to the girl.
‘It happens,’ Rita replied, taking a step towards her. She stood silently for a while, plucking up the courage to speak. ‘Did Carlo give you a letter by any chance?’ she blurted out.
Teresa did not reply but couldn’t conceal her surprise. Rita stood with her interlaced fingers pressed so hard against her apron that white patches were forming around her knuckles.
‘Who told you?’ Teresa said, bending down to pick up the pastry from the floor.
‘I’ve just seen Giovanni outside the tavern. He was with Carlo and they were talking about a letter. I invited them in but Carlo said it’s you who should do it.’
Rita said all this in one breath, partly from fear of Teresa’s reaction and partly because she really wanted to satisfy her own curiosity. Apart from the noise of a few people still in the dining room, the only sound was a light gust of wind stirring the curtain on the window.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,’ Rita added. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but there’s nothing wrong about wanting to rebuild a family. Carlo loves—’
She hadn’t completed her sentence before Teresa rose abruptly and walked over to her, furious.
‘I already have a husband. If the gentlemen need an invitation to come in, then they can stay outside. If, on the other hand, they’re hungry, then we’re here and we never refuse anyone a piece of bread. They should have more dignity, and you more respect. And now you can go.’
Teresa had weighed every word to make sure the message was delivered as firmly as a slap. She went back to the table, picked up the tray of pardule and threw them away with the rest of the waste. She returned to the dining room, apologised to the Cannas for their ruined dinner and promised to give them lunch on the house the following week.
Rita remained rooted to the spot, frozen by the look on the face of the woman she’d often seen annoyed or upset, but never this angry. Teresa’s eyes had burned yellow on hearing that Rita knew something she wasn’t supposed to, and those eyes were proof enough that such a moment required witnesses.
Even though the Murru family had given her all that her own family could not, it only took that rebuke to convince her that the village was right and that her mistress was concealing something in addition to money.
Tore was collecting empty wine bottles from around the room when the last two patrons put on their jackets, said goodbye politely and left. Rita was helping him without a word, taking care not to meet her mistress’s eyes. When she remembered that Giovanni and Carlo were still waiting outside, she glanced out the front door. No one was there.
After that evening, the charcoal burners’ polite ways changed: unlike most outsiders, they grew bolder, thereby running the risk that some of the villagers might get suspicious of the change in their behaviour. In Lolai, strangers were quickly and willingly accepted, but the locals had no particular reason to seek out the company of outsiders, so it didn’t take much for their own politeness to run out.
Years earlier, the man who had most memorably formalised his entry into the community without arousing suspicion had been a politician. It was a day everybody remembered as sa die de s’incontru. The day of the gathering.
Signor Loddo, eventually rechristened tziu Lodde because of his fox-like cunning, was the son of Sardinian emigrants abroad and had returned to the island in order to enjoy the wealth he had accumulated over the years. A few months later, however, a cancer had taken his pregnant wife and left him a widower. He came across Lolai on a rainy spring night and the parish priest had taken him in without too many questions. The days turned to weeks, the weeks into months and the months into two years; at that point the man decided to invest his savings in a piece of land and move to the village permanently. Everyone treated him with courtesy and respect, but he wasn’t one of them yet.
The next summer, buoyed by the heat, tziu Lodde announced a public meeting in the parish hall. He stood up on a wooden folding chair and spoke for hours, not even pausing for a sip of water. He talked with a strange but contagious passion, of distant lands and new ideas. No one understood the identity of the enemy he was reviling, but he called those present ‘comrades’ and taught them about a fundamental but not entirely clear ‘common good’ to which they might aspire. He carried on speaking most of the day, without interruption.
When it got dark, everybody suddenly felt a part of something greater—greater than them, than their island and perhaps even than the whole of Italy. They realised they’d forgotten the passion and joy of a struggle for equality, and they returned home bewildered but nonetheless enthused. Accounts remained hazy for a long time, but nobody could deny that it had been a unique event: a stranger had succeeded in persuading an entire community that the only valid cause to die for was socialism.
After hearing of tziu Lodde’s feats, Tommaso and the other two decided that the time had come to do something similar. Instead of an assembly, they decided to organise a lunch at their own expense a few weeks later, open to all. There wasn’t much in the guesthouse apart from a long wooden table and a basin for running water, but it would suffice for a celebratory Sunday meal. It may have seemed like an odd, even a crazy gesture, but it was driven by a need for adoption, which the village, more and more each day, seemed ready to grant them.
Although it was still late summer, crisp, chilly air came down from the top of the hill. It was harder for the washing to dry quickly, and men had to wear an extra layer of clothing after dusk. Over summer, rivers had dried up and fields were parched, but soon it started to rain relentlessly, toppling the pots of succulent plants on exposed windowsills.
One morning, the windows slamming on the first floor of the Murrus’ house woke Maddalena with a start.
The little girl surfaced with difficulty from a dream she would have liked to last forever, still unsure if what she’d seen had been real or only imagined: she’d gone down the stairs to the kitchen and seen her father from behind as he was heating milk on a metal grill next to the fire. Only once before had she seen him up this early, rummaging through that woman’s sanctuary, not sure where to find the sugar and the breakfast cups. She felt a little drowsy but happy that it was just the two of them.
It was her father, there in the kitchen, in flesh and blood, hunched over the fireplace; and yet a strange sadness, like a grey sky before a storm, followed her down the steps. Maddalena was afraid that the table, the kitchen walls and her father would vanish without warning and deprive her of the opportunity to hear his voice. In her white cotton socks, she tiptoed on the timber floorboards and studied the details of the room with the precision of a detective.
The kitchen was undoubtedly that of her home, but time had a strange way of complying with space. A little disoriented, she stood still for a moment longer, watching her father.
He looked tired but in a good mood, as ever. The same dark, tousled curls and faded grey trousers with two front pockets and one at the back, his favourite ones. He was whistling and reached for a potholder to lift the red enamelled milk pan. The rest of his body shuddered as he covered his mouth with his fist to muffle a cough.
Then he turned in profile, looking for the sugar on the sideboard, and Maddalena was sure their eyes would meet, but even from his new angle he didn’t see her. She held her breath, took a few steps towards the table and sat down quietly. As soon as Bruno turned round, holding the pan, the little girl smiled and called out, ‘Oh babbu!’
He gave a start and the pan shot upwards, spilling the milk over the table and floor. Maddalena covered her mouth with both hands to suppress her laughter. He touched his chest to check his heart was still there, then looked at her sternly. ‘What are you doing up?’
‘I wasn’t sleepy.’
‘Shame, I could have slept instead of you.’
The little girl smiled and got up from the chair, watching her father as he poured what little milk was left into a cup. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To work.’
‘When will you be back?’ she asked, taking a cloth and bending down to wipe the milk from the floor. After a few seconds’ silence, she looked up from under the table; Bruno appeared not to have heard the question and kept blowing on the cup and rubbing his eyes.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, when will you be back?’
He stared at her for a moment, then his stern expression opened into a smile so brilliant Maddalena thought she’d never seen one like it. ‘Why? Do you miss me already?’
She looked at him but did not reply.
‘In any case, very soon,’ Bruno said.
The little girl bent down to the floor again. ‘What? I didn’t hear you.’
‘I said, keep close to mamma. Help her while I’m away.’
She stopped, picked up the dirty cloth from the floor and looked up from under the table again. ‘You know I’ll do it if—’
The shutter on her bedroom window slammed against the wall, leaving her words suspended in midair, together with the kitchen, her father and that moment that had belonged only to them, which the faint light of day had flooded with the perverse nostalgia of events that had never happened.
~
Maddalena came down the stairs, but instead of her father, it was Teresa in the kitchen. She stood with her back to her, holding the milk pan, looking around for something. Unlike Bruno, she turned as soon as the little girl came down the last step.
‘Good girl, you’re awake, come and help me,’ she said, noticing the distant expression on her daughter’s face.
Maddalena yawned, hoping her mother would give her a couple more minutes, but Teresa pretended she hadn’t seen and carried on talking, indicating the dresser. ‘There, in the top drawer, there’s the key to the cabinet.’
‘Where?’ Maddalena asked with another yawn.
‘At the end of the corridor. Under the bottom shelf there’s a wooden cask. Open the lid, take out two coins, go to Tonio and ask him to refill this for you.’ Teresa handed her daughter an empty glass bottle. ‘Give him the money, apologise for troubling him, then come back here.’
The little girl stood staring into space, mentally running through her mother’s instructions.
‘Ajò, hurry up!’
Teresa stepped to the side, the pan in her hand, retrieved the key from the drawer and gave it to her daughter. She told her again to hurry up and Maddalena nodded, left the kitchen and walked down the narrow corridor to the cabinet.
At the end of the house, there was a recess in the wall, about three-square metres of darkness. The space, which Bruno had intended as a broom closet, was screened off by a thin linen curtain, and Teresa had rearranged it by fitting small wooden shelves placed at equal distances. She had filled them with provisions, tools and small, obsolete kitchen utensils, and had wedged a round oak cask under the lowest shelf.
When full, the cask had held over two hundred litres of wine, but Teresa had emptied it and filled a third of it with gravel. The rest of it housed the Murru family’s entire fortune. A true scrixoxu, a treasure. On the side of the cask, where the wood was thinner, a flap had been cut out, wide enough for an arm to slide through. It wasn’t much of a safe, but good enough to stop anyone from taking away the lot without being seen.
The memory of that private breakfast with her father in her heart and sleep still in her eyes, the little girl opened the flap absentmindedly. Her eyes were drawn to the yellow of the gold like a magnet. She plunged her hand into the coins until her whole arm was inside the cask. Until that moment, the notion of being rich had been real only when playing in the square. She and the other girls would play at market every Sunday after Mass, competing at selling as many goods as they could to other children; Maddalena never failed to come home triumphant. But this was the first time the concept had taken on a tangible form, heavy and round as these hidden coins, which her little hand had effortlessly reached.
Hearing her mother calling her sharply from the kitchen, Maddalena closed her fist over the coins, pulled her arm away, closed the flap on the cask and left the storage room. She grabbed a small black shawl from the hook by the entrance, opened the front door and ran over to the slatted blind outside Tonio’s house. The door led to a small kitchen with a table, a couple of chairs and a stack of drinks under the sideboard.
Maddalena found the man hunched over coloured liqueur glasses. She cleared her throat before speaking. ‘Saludi, tziu Tonio.’
‘Sa pippìa!’ the man said, turning round. ‘What are you doing here so early in the morning?’
‘Mamma sent me. We’ve run out of milk.’
‘Let me see if I have any down here,’ the man replied, opening the wooden door of the sideboard. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked indifferently.
‘Yes, of course.’
He got up, holding an iron container with a top. ‘Here it is. Give me the bottle and I’ll fill it for you.’
Maddalena put the empty bottle on the table and looked around while Tonio tipped the container and poured the milk.
‘Thank you. Mamma gave me these to apologise for troubling you,’ she said, taking two shiny coins from the pocket of her jacket with a contented look, but four more accidentally fell on the floor.
Tonio stared at the money for a few seconds, then his eyes travelled to the girl, and back to the coins. ‘That’s a lot of money.’
Confused, Maddalena stood in silence for a moment.
‘Did your mamma tell you where she got it?’
‘No…’ she answered slowly.
‘Do you have much more?’
She grinned and nodded.
‘They should be kept somewhere safe,’ Tonio said.
‘That’s right. We’ve hidden them well,’ the little girl said, picking up the coins from the floor. Then she took the bottle of milk from the table and placed two coins on it.
‘Mamma says thank you and sorry to trouble you. Goodbye,’ she said hastily, before leaving.
‘Ciao, sa pippìa. Say hello to your mother,’ Tonio replied, his gaze following the girl until she disappeared behind the blind.
A few minutes later, while Tonio was still staring at the coins, Don Giuseppe came in.
‘Good day,’ he said, removing his discoloured hat and resting it on the table.
‘Oh, good day to you, Don Giuseppe,’ Tonio said, a look of surprise on his face. ‘Have you come for Sunday’s collection? I put it at the back here—I’ll go and get it.’
He left the kitchen. The priest, standing by the table, stared at the coins.
Shortly afterwards, Elio, too, pulled the curtain to one side and the bear of a man lumbered into the house, looking sleepy and scratching his beard. His eyes opened wide when he saw the coins.
‘What are these? Did Tonio swipe them from the sacristy, Don Giuseppe?’ he said with a sneer, approaching the table.
‘No, Teresa’s daughter gave them to me for a bottle of milk, said Tonio, as he returned to the kitchen, holding a fruit basket.’
The other two men looked at each other in silence.
‘Oh, really?’ Elio said. ‘Just as well you had the milk, then.’
‘She accidentally dropped a few other coins out of her pocket.’
Don Giuseppe kept staring at the coins, while Elio burst into uproarious laughter. ‘Then you’re a lucky bastard, that’s what you are!’
The others did not reply but looked at each other quizzically.
‘Didn’t she ask the charcoal burners for an advance?’ Elio continued.
‘Apparently, the Murrus have a lot more. So the girl told me,’ Tonio said, putting the basket with the collection on the floor. It was a matter of money, after all, and since the village couldn’t keep quiet over much smaller issues, this time there was even more of a reason to talk about it.
‘I could do with some to buy a new donkey—mine’s about to give up the ghost. Do you think I can ask her?’ Elio was partly joking and partly considering an opportunity.
Don Giuseppe was still staring at the coins, resting his chin on his knuckles, trying to put the missing pieces of the story together. If anyone knew everything in the village, it was the priest, but nobody among the faithful women parishioners had mentioned the sum Teresa had requested from the charcoal burners. A couple of weeks earlier, however, after Mass, he’d bumped into Carlo, who had told him that she seemed about to make an important purchase. The three men had delivered their payment on behalf of the company, but she hadn’t invited them in. Before she closed the door in their faces, Teresa had asked Tore to take the money out the back, and Giovanni had discovered from Rita later that this sum was only part of the wealth the Murru family jealously hid in some remote corner of the house.
Carlo had shared the news in a noncommittal way, and Don Giuseppe knew why. The man had made a formal declaration by letter, and, certain that Teresa would accept his proposal, did not want to upset her further. The prospect of such a marriage was news that would travel fast, but Carlo didn’t want to rush things and asked the priest to keep it conf idential. As a matter of fact, he clumsily suggested the priest put in a good word for him with Teresa, to persuade her to accept without his having to beg too much. In exchange, he would give a generous donation to the church and to a God about whom he’d gladly change his mind if his wish were granted. Don Giuseppe didn’t ask himself if this version of events or the man’s intentions were true, but rather how he would help this plan succeed.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said to Tonio and Elio. ‘I have to go and see her anyway, so I’ll ask a few questions while I’m there.’
Then he put his black hat back on, lifted the basket in his arms and said goodbye, promising he’d do as they’d agreed.