EIGHT HOURS EARLIER, Teresa had walked out of the church, wiping saliva from her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Wait,’ Tore said, running after her, a worried look on his face.
‘I can’t bear it anymore,’ Teresa replied, her voice full of fury.
‘You’re right. But now you must calm down, the children can’t see you like this.’
He led her to the low stone wall on the other side of the square. Maddalena, Francesco and Emilio were playing, running around, picking up the lemons still scattered on the ground, and stacking them up in the shade of a tree to build a pyramid. Tore spoke again only once he saw that Teresa’s laboured breathing had become regular again.
‘We could go on an excursion by the river, to take our mind off things.’
She looked at him wearily, but then nodded.
A few seconds later, they were joined by Gavina, dragging her leg.
‘I’m sorry, Gavina,’ Teresa said. ‘We shouldn’t have left you.’
‘E bai! Nonsense, this time I told those vipers a few home truths. Dressed up, even a walking stick looks like a baron. But they’re not about to pull the wool over my eyes.’
‘Would you like to come to the river with us and the children?’
‘No, thanks, Teresa. My leg’s aching again,’ she replied. ‘It’s probably all the malice I heard today. I’d rather go home, but I can walk with you as far as the cemetery crossroads.’
‘All right,’ Teresa said.
Tore went to call the children, who were happy to abandon their pyramid in exchange for an excursion. He didn’t tell them where they were going, only that they’d be going home to put on lighter clothes and make some food.
Gavina helped Teresa slice bread, ham and cheese, and pack some fruit left over from Tore’s most recent trip to the fair. Along the way, Gavina didn’t mention Don Giuseppe’s homily or ask her friend to comment on the events. Just before they said goodbye, however, she touched her hand, like she had done at church.
‘If you want to leave, Teresa,’ she said, her mouth a stern line, ‘go before you change your mind. But remember, freedom is no promised land—it’s a constant struggle. People will continue to act as though nothing’s happening, no matter how great the injustice. It’s up to you to keep standing firm.’
Teresa received this piece of advice with a grateful smile, like someone who, in the midst of misfortune, comes across nuggets of good fortune. ‘I don’t know if I deserve a friend like you, Gavina.’
‘Life gives us what we need, never what we deserve. Now go, or you’ll all be late.’
‘I’ll miss you,’ Teresa said, her voice quavering.
‘Me too,’ Gavina replied, and before disappearing in the shade of the walnut trees, she embraced Teresa and the children with a kiss that, like so many goodbyes, didn’t seem to last long enough.
Maddalena and Francesco waved their arms in the air to celebrate reaching their destination. The slope before them—a rocky drop—looked over the river, while the rest of the plain was a huge expanse of prickly pears and colourful freesias.
Teresa spent the rest of the morning playing with her children on the bank of the river where the water wasn’t very deep and was crossed by a row of stones arranged like a bridge. When the sun started beating down on their heads, they decided it was time to eat. Teresa told Maddalena to stay in the shade of the trees and not venture too far. At this altitude, the air didn’t seem to have shed its summer heat yet, and Teresa was sweltering in her black dress.
When Tore noticed her forehead beaded with sweat, he shook his head good-naturedly. ‘You can take your shawl off now. I’m sure Bruno won’t mind.’
Teresa looked up and, instead of removing the shawl from her head, swept a lock of sweaty hair from her forehead, convinced that this gesture alone would help her adjust her temperature.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she said, leaning towards the sun. ‘This too shall pass,’ she added under her breath.
Soon afterwards, as though her thoughts had been heard from above, the wind started to blow. She and Tore remained by the river, crouching opposite each other on the blanket, sharing the last sliver of apple.
‘Do you remember the first time we went down to the farmyard to winnow?’ Teresa said out of the blue, closing her eyes in an effort to recall as many images as possible from her past.
‘Of course,’ Tore replied.
They both smiled at this recollection.
~
On that day, too, the sun had been beating down from directly above them.
Teresa, Tore and the other local children often played hopscotch in the vineyard at the back of the Collus’ house, and the smell of grapes would sometimes get so strong that they would have to sit down and wait for their heads to stop spinning. Teresa was nine years old and Tore a bit older, but she was already acting like a grown woman. They often played hide-and-seek together, even though the boy was old enough to be out working, and that morning, while Tore was hiding behind the garden well, the master of the house walked through the wooden front gate and called out to him loudly.
As Signor Collu took off his straw hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, fat drops of sweat slid down his bony cheekbones. One ran down his nose, stopping right under his nostril, hanging there. The sight of it made Tore burst out laughing, but the man didn’t notice.
‘Where’s Teresa?’ Vincenzo asked.
‘Hiding somewhere,’ the boy replied.
‘Do you think she’s still got time for these girly games? Go and call her—I’ll wait for you outside.’
Tore got up slowly, slouching—as though he’d received not an order but a punch in the breastbone—and went to the kitchen. Margherita—the young Signora Collu, who was often there before lunch—appeared not to be at home. Teresa was standing behind the pan, dipping a finger into the tomato sauce, and hadn’t heard Tore calling her from the garden. He imitated the sharp cawing of a crow and, startled, she yanked her finger out, dripping red sauce all over the floor.
Seeing Tore’s smug expression, she narrowed her eyes and said, ‘You’ll pay for this.’
‘Come on, put on your shoes. Signor Collu needs us.’
They met Vincenzo by the well and the three of them left the Collu property. Teresa thought they must have walked for hours. Her throat was dry and, as they left the cemetery crossroads to venture down the path through the wood, she felt a sharp pain under her heels and hoped her shoes wouldn’t catch fire. She’d never been so far from Lolai. After they’d gone past the last oak trees in the middle of the forest, the wind rose without warning; Vincenzo was walking in silence, while the little girl complained at every turn.
‘Is it much further, Signor Collu? I’m hungry.’
‘Here we are,’ he said all of a sudden, as they rounded one more bend. They descended the slope and a faded yellow, horizonless expanse opened up before them, dotted here and there with holly oaks and strawberry trees. Everybody knew that this was Collu property; Vincenzo paid a group of farmers and their wives by the day to complete the work quickly. The wheat had already been cut and stacked nearby in piles taller than Teresa and Tore put together. Vincenzo explained that this work—a series of tasks passed down over generations—was long, gruelling and age-old.
It would start with su laore—preparing the ground with a plough pulled by yoked bulls—then the sowing, sa zappittadura and sa messadura—successive earthing up and gathering of the ears—took place in July, and whatever was collected was then taken to the farmyard in what was called sa carruladura. Only then was it time for the final stage, the real reason they’d come so far from home: the winnowing.
Gathered around a small group of women were the sons of the Puddus and Luigi Casu, also known as Luigeddu, who were all the same age as Tore. In the middle of the open space, ten or so donkeys pushing large wicker baskets had just finished the threshing, while the men held long rakes made of tapered iron and swept up the grains left on the ground.
‘Take a basket,’ Vincenzo said to the girl.
Other men were grasping wooden spades with a flat, laminated iron end and lifting the stemless ears of wheat from the heap into the air, until the wind blew the chaff from every grain. While the small, golden-yellow skins flew away like flakes of ash, the darker, heavier caryopses fell back down at the men’s feet.
Teresa approached the willow baskets and lifted one, turning to the women in order to mimic their moves. Once the grain-tossing was over, she gathered a large pile from the heap. Those grains would soon be turned into bread. She studied the movements of Tore and the other men for a while, thinking how perfectly the process worked, because each was playing his own part, without complaining. But she found the actual harvesting boring.
She turned to Vincenzo. ‘Signor Collu, can I try using the spade, too?’ she asked tentatively.
He looked at her and hesitated—not because of the danger for her in handling the spade, but because of the laughter her absurd request would provoke in everyone around. ‘Another time,’ he replied sternly.
‘Lassadda fai, Vincenzo—let her have a go,’ one of his friends said with a chuckle.
Realising the only way to get out of this awkward situation was to agree, Vincenzo huffed, still unsure. He took a spade and handed it to the girl, who narrowly avoided dropping it on her feet.
‘Look, this way,’ Tore said softly, showing her how to hold the handle.
Teresa followed his example and the two of them stood tossing the wheat while the wind gently dried their sweaty backs.
‘Winnow, girl, winnow!’ the men spurred her on, but their voices were lost in the wind. The girl’s eyes were watering in the harsh sunlight, as the bits of husk flew up and down in the sky in haphazard trajectories, like confetti, and the clean grains fell silently to the ground.
Vincenzo watched as Teresa worked cheerfully for hours; every now and then, some of the men would stop to drink wine from croccorigas—small, dried-out squashes painted like canteens—and when the sun was high, everybody stopped to eat olives, bread and cheese. The Puddu sons seemed relieved that a woman had spared them the trouble of some spade work, while Luigeddu Casu—fed up with the harvesting he had to do in Teresa’s place—was glaring at her, his mouth twisted in a childish sulk.
~
‘He did this, remember?’ Teresa said, kneeling on the grass and mimicking Luigeddu’s grimace.
Tore roared with laughter. ‘You were better at it than me, anyway,’ he said, toying with the stalk of a flower next to him.
Teresa shook her head sheepishly. ‘No, it takes a man to do it properly. I wasn’t strong enough, nor careful enough.’ She looked down at the grass. ‘But I was free.’
She uttered these words under her breath, as she looked around for her children in the late afternoon. They were still playing happily, their voices distant. A forgotten sensation rose from the abyss that had been her childhood, sweeping over her like an erupting volcano. She had forgotten. For years, she’d believed that she’d experienced only the inescapable weight of those grains and their fall to the ground. And yet there had been a time when she’d also known the lightness of the husks and of that obstinate maestrale wind, which was now ready to take her somewhere else.
The right moment had come when she had least expected it: she could safeguard the true fruit of that land, of a life that was dear to her, sweeping away only what was superfluous. At that moment, she understood that growing up didn’t mean stepping out of her shoes to become another person but finding the little girl she had been and reaching her hand out to her, without shame.
She closed her eyes and felt the last sunbeams caressing her face, while a golden light cast a veil over the prickly pears in the distance. A silent tear streaked her cheek and stopped on her chin, as if undecided. Teresa wiped it with the back of her hand and opened her eyes: the children’s shrill voices had resurfaced, drowning out the tuneful twitter of goldfinches and the babbling of the river.
‘We’d better go home before it gets dark,’ Tore said, kneeling on the blanket to pack up the leftovers from lunch.
The five of them walked back in silence, escorted only by the whipping of the wind that had come up. Francesco marched ahead of the group with a stick he’d found by the river, and Maddalena walked empty-handed, caressing leaves that overhung the path. Tore carried the food bag and kept his eyes on the ground, thinking about Teresa’s words—they were like a precious gift to hold on to forever. Teresa, with Emilio asleep in her arms and her shawl down around her shoulders for the first time, seemed to be watching the passage of the setting sun, which was resigned, like her, to returning home.