Before the end of January it snowed two more times, although little more than a dusting each time. When people grumbled, old Callisto would say: “Don’t complain! If it snows there’s a reason for it, and under the snow is your bread.” He was referring to the grains of wheat sown in the fall that were swelling and swelling, and would soon sprout and push a little plant out of the ground, bright green against the brown earth.
Although it was usually mid-February before the first blade of grass would appear, hope hastened the course of the seasons and on the Feast of Our Lady, the second of the month, the women brought a candle to church and lit it in front of the image of the Virgin. They would say “On Candelmas Day / We wish the winter away.”
But everyone knew February was not to be trusted because, as the sayings went, “short but wretched” and “the wolf hasn’t eaten up the winter” and “it can always show up again when you least expect it.”
And sure enough it started to snow on Candelmas Day. Clerice went up to the bedroom of the two girls, Rosina and Maria, one seventeen and the other fifteen, to make sure they bundled up well and then, all three wrapped up in woolen shawls, they headed off to church. Rosina, who was the quickest, walked ahead of them, and Clerice could see that she’d put together a fine backside and high, wide hips and once spring came around with its light cotton dresses, there wasn’t a man in town who wouldn’t be turning his head as she passed.
It was every mother’s terror: that a daughter might get pregnant. Men were quick at professing endless love to get what they wanted and then, once they’d got a girl in the family way, they’d vanish into thin air or say things like, “If she gave it to me, lord only knows who else she gave it to” and marriage was out of the question. But if the landlord found out, he could give the whole family notice and that was the end of that. They’d have until Saint Martin’s Day in November, and then the farmer, his wife and all their children would have to pack up whatever household goods they had on a cart and good riddance.
It wasn’t rare to see that cruel scene actually happen. Entire families, men scowling and women weeping, would have to leave a house they’d lived in for many years and wander the country roads in the rain, searching for a vacant plot of land, working under any conditions in order to survive. That’s why the mothers never tired of repeating this lesson to their daughters and explaining exactly how and when it could happen: if you let him put it inside of you, nine months from now you’ll bring a bastard with no name into this world. Even if he just touches your thing with his, it can happen, understand? The mothers did their best but, although it seemed impossible, there was always some young girl who swallowed the bait.
At the footbridge over the Samoggia, there was an old house that seemed abandoned. It was covered with wild creepers and no God-loving person would ever let himself be seen there during the day. The old woman who lived there was called Malerba, and she would use her knitting needle on girls who needed an abortion. Clerice would point out that house to her daughters from a distance when they were gathering wild chicory on the banks of the river.
“They say that back there, where you see that oak, is where the girls who bleed to death end up,” she told them solemnly. “She buries them in secret, then and there, in deconsecrated ground. That’s why that oak is so big, because it thrives on the corpses of those poor girls.”
Not that she believed these stories herself, but if they helped to scare her daughters to death and keep them out of trouble, they had served their purpose. Or at least that’s what she hoped.
“If a man really loves you he’ll have the patience to wait,” was another of her lines.
“And you, mamma? Did you manage to wait until you married daddy?”
“Certainly,” she would reply. “And I did the right thing. We’ve always cared for each other, comforted each other and helped each other through hard times. That tiny sacrifice was nothing compared to the whole lifetime we’ve spent together.”
She was lying, because she had always known that the heart knows no reason and that when you’re in love, waiting is out of the question. But she’d known that her Callisto was a good person from the moment she’d met him; a fine young man who would never get her into a fix: the kind who, if anything happened, would be happy to marry her right away. And she remembered when she was first married, when she would wake up at night and light a candle just to look at him, like Psyche and Eros. He was so handsome she felt it couldn’t be true. The priest had explained that her husband’s name meant “beautiful” and that’s just the way it was. But this was a story that she kept for herself because you can never be careful enough and she didn’t want her girls running any risks.
She was a wise person, Clerice was, anyone in town could tell you that. When a woman went into labor they’d always call her to give a hand. Both because she’d had so many children herself and because she was a real expert in bolstering the courage of the first-timers, especially. Clerice was known to have uncommon skills, skills that not even doctors had. She could treat stomach ailments with a glass and a candle, cure falling sickness and shingles and even cast out worms. So many children became infected by playing on the ground and then putting their fingers in their mouths. The worms multiplied in their intestines until their stomachs became as stiff and taut as the skin of a drum and their fevers went so high it would send them into convulsions. Sometimes they died. But Clerice knew what to do. Once she’d put her hands on the child and whispered prayers under her breath, the worms were expelled, the fever went down and the convulsions stopped.
She would often have to leave the house after dark, wrapped in her shawl, murmuring invocations to ward off the spirits of the night.
Sometimes, after she’d helped a woman give birth and was walking back home down the lonely streets fingering her rosary beads, she thought of when she’d brought her own children into the world. She’d remember how she felt when they put the baby in her arms after washing and dressing it. She would look at that innocent creature and think, each time, what will become of him? What will he have to face or to bear in his life? And often, the contrary happened; she’d see a filthy, scabby raggedy beggar walking down the road and she’d think: he had a mother who brought him into the world with great hopes, who had wanted all the best for him and look here at the results of that woman’s dreams and her hopes! And she’d carry on praying.
She remembered that each one of her boys, when they were born, gave clues that she would try to interpret. Dante, her firstborn, was an easy, quiet baby, more interested in food than in play, but he would carefully observe any little thing that got into his hands. He would be a sage administrator of himself and his family. Before Raffaele was a week old, he was already grabbing and touching everything around him. He was the first to walk, and to talk as well. His place was certainly at the helm of the family, keeping his brothers together. He was just two when they started calling him by his nickname, Floti. Gaetano was the one who weighed most at birth, and he stayed big and voracious. You could tell from the start what he would be like: strong and fearsome, afraid of nothing. Armando was the first to laugh but then he’d cry for nothing. He would become the funniest, the one who would amuse them all with his stories and jokes, but also the most fragile. And Francesco—who everyone called Checco, because no one in town got away without a nickname—had barely cried when he was born, and when he could, he’d smile instead of laugh. He’d be a good observer of other people’s weaknesses and contradictions and never let on his own. And that’s the way it was with each one of them; they had their fate carved out for them. In a few years’ time, even the two younger ones, first Fredo and then even Savino, would turn twenty and they’d be old enough to be called up as soldiers. The girls in town were already stealing looks at them because, as the proverb says: “He who’s good to serve the king is good for the queen as well.”
Cleto, the umbrella mender, left one day after mid-March when he saw the first swallow enter the stable to tidy up the nest she’d abandoned in October. He slung his knapsack over his shoulder and said his goodbyes to Callisto and Clerice, the arzdour and arzdoura, patriarch and matriarch. Terms of archaic majesty that hinted at the Roman origins of their local dialect. The rule of the father and the rule of the mother.
Clerice put a freshly-baked loaf of bread in his sack and filled his flask with wine, pronouncing words with a nearly sacred sound: “Remember us, umbrella mender, when you eat this bread and drink this wine, and much good may it do you!”
“I thank you with all my heart,” he replied, “because you give without asking me for anything in return. I’m a man without a trade, a traveler with no destination. I carry heavy memories on my shoulders and I pay with my penury for the errors I have committed and have never dared to confess.”
“Why say such a thing, umbrella mender?” asked Clerice with concern. “You have given us so many stories, beautiful ones that make us dream and you know, dreams have no price. Our door is always open for you. And if there’s something you have to confess, you know that God Almighty forgives all.”
Cleto seemed to hesitate, then said: “You have seven sons and I can feel the shadow of the tempest approaching . . . ”
“Explain yourself,” Callisto broke in uneasily. “What do you mean by that?”
“A catastrophe is on its way, a bloodbath the likes of which no one has ever seen. Annihilation. No one will be spared. There will be signs, warnings . . . Try not to let them fall unawares. God warned Noah about the flood and he saved himself and his family because he was an upright man. If there’s a good man on this earth, it’s you, Callisto, and your wife is your worthy companion. She will pray for your family to be spared and I hope that God will listen . . . ”
The pearly sky of dawn was getting lighter. From the stable came the lowing of the cows and bulls and finally the rising sun touched the snow-covered flank of Mount Cimone, which blushed like the cheek of a virgin. The scent of violets permeated the clean morning air.
“As far as I’m concerned,” continued Cleto, “I already have my mission. Whether you believe me or not, I know that the apparition of the golden goat brings misfortune, and that wayfarer with the long beard who stopped to eat at the Osteria della Bassa said he’d seen it . . . There’s only one way to forestall such a dreadful prediction: find the demonic creature and destroy it or . . . ” his voice became deep and ragged, “or offer a victim in expiation.”
Callisto and Clerice couldn’t understand much of their guest’s difficult language, but his dark and gloomy mood didn’t escape them. They lowered their heads and made the sign of the cross and the umbrella mender walked out of the courtyard. Their eyes followed him as he took off down Via Celeste and then turned left towards the osteria. What could he have meant by those words?
They would never see him again.
On Sunday afternoons, on those first days of spring, their boys’ friends would come over to play bocce in the courtyard. Checco would uncork a couple of bottles of Albana and a good time would be had by all. But at five o’clock on the dot, when the priest rang Vespers, Clerice shooed them all out: she didn’t want anyone missing prayers at church because they were playing bocce in the front yard. And when the church bell tolled for the benediction of the Eucharist, she would make the sign of the cross in the middle of the courtyard and everyone would lower their heads in silence.
As the days got longer and the nights shorter, they had to work longer hours in the fields. The hemp was springing up before their eyes, as was the wheat. At night they began to hear the monotonous croaking of the tree toads and the chirping of crickets. One evening at dinner, Callisto told his children what the umbrella mender had said the morning he’d left, as he walked off towards the osteria. Words that had left a weight on his heart that he needed to share with them.
“Papà!” protested Floti. “You can’t believe such nonsense! He’s just a bloke who lives on the charity of others and he has to show he’s worth something. This legend of the golden goat has no basis in fact. People see what they want to see.”
“So then why, in your opinion, would people want to see a goat all made of gold standing on one of the four hills of Pra’ dei Monti under a snowstorm?”
Floti didn’t answer right away but he thought to himself that there had to be some kind of explanation. What do poor people worry about if not some kind of catastrophe? It was too easy to prophesy misfortune on its way. He had been an altar boy as a child and he remembered the Latin words of a certain invocation well: A peste, fame et bello libera nos, Domine! Deliver us, Oh Lord, from the plague, from hunger and from war! Apart from the plague, which hadn’t been around for centuries, hunger and war had always been rampant.
He said: “People need to believe in another world, a supernatural one, a world in which miraculous things occur. Different than the usual things that happen, day in and day out, different than a life where they’re doing the same things in the same places, one year after another. That’s what I think!”
“That may be,” replied Callisto. “All I know is that I’ve always heard tell of this story of the golden goat, since the day I was born.” And he went off to bed without saying another word.
The summer was hot and dry and, when it was harvest time, the Brunis had to bend their backs for ten hours a day in the suffocating heat, cutting the wheat with hand sickles and tying it up into sheaves. Hundreds of them. The women lowered buckets filled with bottles of watered-down wine into the well to keep them cool, and they’d carry them out to fields, where the men were sweating like animals and needed to drink continuously. And when it came time to thresh the wheat, it was even worse. The sun beat down like a hammer on their heads and shoulders. Yet threshing was a celebration, like always.
And Floti was always first, standing at the entrance to the courtyard, waiting to escort the huge thresher inside to the threshing floor. He held the white stable oxen, freshly fed and brushed, by their halters, prepared to come to the aid of the old horses who were struggling to pull the steam engine, as black as the coal at its core. In theory, the engine should have managed on its own, powered by the steam it generated, easily making it up the slight upgrade that led to the courtyard and pulling the rest of the convoy behind it, but it was already pretty winded at this point and it would be no small accomplishment if it succeeded in turning the pulley on the thresher when it was stock still. Floti, who had yoked his champions two by two, hauled the engine into the courtyard followed by the thresher and the baler made of wood and iron, painted an orangey red color and flaunting the name of the company that had built it in big letters. Behind them were at least a dozen farmhands who shouted “Ho! Ho!” to encourage the draught animals to keep pulling.
When the entire train had been hauled into place, the foreman gave a smile of satisfaction at seeing all of the parts perfectly aligned on the threshing floor, then gave orders to mount the transmission belt. The drive pulley had no edges and if the belt was not placed with precision it could fall off. If it fell inwards, towards the wall of the thresher, it was just a question of wasting a bit of time to mount it back in place. If it fell outwards it could kill. Floti had seen an accident of this kind take place once and he would never forget how it ended up. One of the workers was hit full force by the belt and he fell to the ground unconscious. A lesion to his spinal cord left him paralyzed for the rest of his days. That event had greatly impressed Floti, making him aware of the profound injustice that governs the world. He’d long realized that his father’s honesty, the balance and justice of his authority within the family, were values limited to a tiny community and that the weight of such values was entirely insignificant in a society dominated by the abuse of power.
When the foreman gave the signal, the engine let out a long whistle, sounding like a steamboat. Four men armed with pitchforks climbed on top of a pile of sheaves of wheat under the ceiling rafters of the hayloft and started to toss them into the threshing drum. There, another worker pushed them towards the mouth of the monster that swallowed them up and then vomited the clean kernels from the front and the hay and chaff from the sides straight into the baler. It always took a little while before the grain started to spurt out, and when the blonde cascade of kernels began to fill up the sacks, the porters greeted them with a cry of exultation in celebration of the miracle that had taken place for yet another year. They opened their big calloused hands to let the kernels flow through their hands and to feel their caress.
They’d have bread, for another year.
Soon the entire courtyard was invaded by a dust as dense and glittery as gold and it became nearly impossible to breathe. The workers knotted handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths and continued their work ceaselessly to the rhythm beat out by the bellowing machine. The ones who had it worst were those working up in the hayloft. When they started there was very little room between the towering stack of sheaves and the sun-scorched ceiling rafters and their sweat soaked through their dust-caked clothing. The bristly awns of the husks crushed by the threshers felt like needles splintering under their skin and created unbearable itching. Then, little by little, as the pile wore down, the air started to circulate a bit better and the distance that separated them from the scorching ceiling began to afford the workers a bit of relief.
The children were the only ones really having fun. They would pour in from all around, awed by the great collective effort and the rumbling power of the machines, which to their eyes looked like fairy tale monsters. Especially the baler, with its big toothy shears which moved up and down at an incessant rate; they called that one the “ass” because its shape reminded them of a donkey’s head.
When it was time for the midday break, the foreman slackened the transmission belt and the whole mechanism was shut down, except for the steam engine. The men went to sit somewhere in the shade, under an elm or a fig tree, and pulled out whatever food they had brought with them. The luckier ones were met by their wives, who brought them little pots of pasta. The poorest ones ate bread and onions and that paltry meal would have to suffice for them to continue that exhausting job until dusk, when the foreman would signal the end of the workday.
But the Brunis were generous folk and old Callisto had had the women cook up three or four cockerels alla cacciatora, swimming in sauce, that made your mouth water just to look at them, along with an ovenful of fresh bread. It was a great satisfaction for him to see the surprise in the eyes of the workers at the sight of all that bounty. As the men ate, the gleaners went to work, each one with a sack in hand, picking up the ears left behind by the thresher or fallen from the wagons carrying the sheaves.
Clerice always took care that the permission to glean was only given to those who really needed it: the wives of men who were unemployed, or of drunkards who were only good at getting them pregnant. Clerice would always think of the women and, more than to Almighty God, she’d pray to the Madonna, because Our Lady had worried and suffered and she had lost a son and she knew what it meant. Clerice knew what a hard lot women had in life and—as honest and religious as she was—when she heard talk about this woman or that one on the bottom of some dry canal at the hour of the noontide demon wrapped around some worker or day laborer, she’d say: good for her, at least she’s enjoying something.
That day, Iofa sent an errand boy to take a message to Floti: he’d be waiting for him that evening at dusk at the Osteria della Bassa. Specifying, strangely enough, that he should come by bicycle.
Floti got there right at the moment in which the sun was disappearing behind the tops of the cherry trees, his curly hair still full of chaff, and went to sit down with Iofa, who had ordered a quarter liter of white.
“What’s new?” Floti asked.
“You haven’t heard what happened?”
“What should I have heard?”
“A student has murdered the heir to the throne of Austria.”
“So? What difference does it make to us?”
“I say it’s a very bad sign. The kind of thing that sets off wars. It’s always students who make trouble.”
“You made me come all the way here to tell me this?”
“Well there’s something more . . . ” Iofa said with a mysterious air as he poured himself a glass of wine.
“I’m listening.”
“Did you come on foot or by bicycle?”
“On my bicycle, since I heard you were in a hurry.”
“I’ve got mine as well. Want to come with me?”
“Where?”
“Pra’ dei Monti.”
“Ohh, not this stuff again.”
“Are you coming or aren’t you?”
“All right, I’ll come, but let’s make it quick because it’s already getting dark.”
They pedaled one after the other along the creek until they got there. Four little hills in the middle of a meadow that hadn’t been cultivated in decades.
“If you start talking about this damned goat I’m going back now.”
“I don’t want to talk about anything. I just have to show you something.”
He started walking up the first and highest hill and Floti followed him up to its top. The place was completely deserted and even though Floti didn’t believe a word of the stories they told about that place he felt a shiver run down his spine.
“They say that these hills are made of the bones of the dead from a great battle that happened two thousand years ago on this very spot . . . ” said Iofa softly.
“So what? If you think you’re scaring me, you are very wrong, my friend. I’m afraid of the living, not of the dead.”
The crickets were silent and even the frogs kept quiet so the snakes wouldn’t hear them. Iofa stopped at the top of the hill and pointed to something in front of him: a hole at least a couple of meters deep.
“This one was alive until not too long ago.”
“This one who?” asked Floti, no longer so sure of himself.
“Someone who came up here looking for the golden goat and ended up not leaving. The dogs have eaten him half up. I saw him by chance when I was out looking for malva, it grows wild up here.”
“What are you saying?”
“Look down into the hole.”
Floti leaned forward and saw that there was something, someone, curled up on the bottom. The two of them looked each other in the eye without managing to talk for a moment.
“Is it him?” asked Floti finally.
Iofa nodded. “The umbrella mender,” he confirmed. “See? He tried to find the golden goat and he didn’t get away.”
“I’m not surprised. Each one of us prepares his own end.”
“You think?” shot back Iofa. “And where are the tools he used to dig this hole, then?”
“You’re asking me? How would I know?”
Iofa fell silent while the shadows of the night began to lengthen over the ground.
“Maybe we should tell the carabinieri,” he said after a while.
“Maybe not. You never know how these things will end up.”
“But if someone sees him and recognizes him, they’ll think of you right away, and then you’ll be sorry. Listen, he couldn’t have dug this hole with his fingernails. Let’s take a look around, at the base of the hill, maybe.”
Floti turned right and Iofa turned left and it was the latter, after a while, who tripped over the handle of a shovel hidden in the tall grass.
“I found it!” he exclaimed. “I knew it had to be here.”
Iofa put his back into it and before long he’d covered the remains of the umbrella mender. When he was finished he made the sign of the cross over the hasty grave and threw the shovel into the creek. In less than half an hour they were back at their table at the Osteria della Bassa.
It was the night of June 30, 1914.