Checco woke up on a hospital cot and for a few minutes couldn’t tell whether he was dead or alive. He soon realized it was the latter, because there wasn’t a single inch of his body that didn’t hurt. He felt like a whole truckful of stones had been dumped on him.
“Well, it’s about time!” said a voice. “You’re finally awake, you worthless bag of scum! I’ve always said that layabouts have all the luck.”
Checco recognized the medical officer who was looking at him and chewing on a Tuscan cigar stub. “What happened, sir?”
“What happened is that you saved your ass. Your regiment was decimated while they were trying to stop the Germans. They fought like lions, while you were comfortably stretched out in a bed, you slacker.”
“But sir,” Checco tried to explain, “I don’t even know how I got here.” He sat up and brought a hand to his forehead, sighed, coughed, spit and started to touch himself all over. He was full of bruises, his skin looked rubbed raw, and his feet were burnt as though he’d been walking on live coals. “All I remember is that Pipetta was driving his two-mule cart straight into a tank, singing that ‘darling Spaniard’ song. And that he’d just called me milord.”
“What the fuck . . . what on earth are you saying?” burst out the doctor.
“No, really,” replied Checco. “And then a bomb went off and I said ‘I’m dead.’ And that’s all.”
He looked around him: he was in a big, open room full of cots like his own with hundreds of the sorriest looking fellows he’d ever seen. Some were missing legs, some arms, some both. They were swaddled in bloodstained gauze, heads bandaged, many were groaning, some asking for water, others yelling “Nurse! Nurse!” Some were cursing loudly and others were calling for their mothers, Jesus Christ and the Madonna. As he slowly began to regain awareness, Checco took in the hell, or the purgatory, that surrounded him. In the meantime, the doctor had put a bottle of grappa to his mouth and swigged down a good mouthful, and had disappeared down the main corridor, swearing, hawking and spitting.
Then a volunteer nurse stepped in, wearing a snow white apron and a stiff, starched cap sporting a red cross, her chest thrown out like a Bersagliere’s, carrying a tray with a syringe and some phials. She walked straight to his cot, told him to roll over and before he knew what was happening stuck a needle in his rear end.
“There you are,” she said, “You’re cured. You can go back to your regiment tomorrow.”
Checco rubbed his butt for a while, then turned on his side and tried to sleep. He thought that, after all, he was luckier than those other poor devils who were suffering the pains of hell in that bare, cold room. He thought of Pipetta who certainly was not singing anymore and it brought a lump to his throat.
The morning after, a nurse gave him his release papers. He collected what was left of his uniform and his shoes and received instructions on how to reach regiment headquarters. He got dressed, put his feet on the ground and, one step after another, made it to the exit. It was sunny outside.
His comrades had indeed stopped the Germans but many of them had met their ends doing so. His captain was gone: killed in combat. Another arrived and called them to assembly, to tell them that the French general thanked them and praised their courage because their sacrifice had served to stop the Germans from opening the road to Paris.
Next to Checco was his emigrant bricklayer friend, his partner on the munitions delivery truck. He turned to Checco and said: “That’s no small thing; the French never thank anyone, least of all the Italians. They feel entitled to everything that comes their way.”
The officer went on to say that the worst was over and that the Germans would no longer be able to break through, and announced the Italian counterattack on the Piave.
“What day is it today?” Checco asked his friend.
“The 25th of July,” the other answered.
Checco did some figuring in his head and realized he’d been in the hospital for more than three weeks, meaning that he must not have been in very good shape when they had taken him in, and if they hadn’t sent him home on sick leave they must have been banking on more trouble in store, and no small amount of it.
There were about three more weeks of trouble and then, almost suddenly, they got the news they’d be going home.
Home.
Unbelievable. He tried not to think about it, afraid that the next thing they’d hear was that there had been a mistake, that it wasn’t true. But no. One morning he said goodbye to his emigrant bricklayer friend because he was staying in France where he had a family, with a wife and son who spoke French.
“So long, Beppe!” Checco told him. “If you come back to Italy someday, come visit me. When you get to my town, just ask for Hotel Bruni, that’s what they call our place. Anyone will be able to tell you where it is.”
“So long, Checco,” replied the other, slapping him on the back. “Good luck!”
Then each went his own way.
Checco was taken to a station and put on a train all full of tricolor flags: some with blue and some with green. For hours and hours, and for dozens of stops, the station names were French. It was night and then it was day and the names became Italian: Ventimiglia, Albenga, Genova. There you go, Genova was a place he’d heard of and he even knew someone who’d been there. Was Genova where the ships that sailed across the ocean to America left from?
As the convoy proceeded, soldiers got out, some in one place and some in another, to change trains and head to other cities, other countrysides, in the mountains or at the seaside, back to the towns they’d abandoned to come to the front. And what would they find once they made it back? What would Checco find at home? It made him shudder to think about it. After the enthusiasm for the end of the war came fear, panic even, at the sole thought of the misfortunes that must have befallen his family since he’d left, roosting like crows on the roof of the house.
The entire nation was full of flags because that last piece of Italy had been reunited with the rest of the country. It had cost them dearly but what’s done is done and it was time to look ahead. In many stations, there was a band playing the royal march and rendering honors to the returning soldiers. Those who were hobbling on crutches, those who were still walking, those who wept and those who were struck dumb, incredulous at setting foot on the land where they were born. Another day and another night passed and when the train stopped, a voice shouted: “Modena! Modena Station!”
Checco startled and looked around him: many of his travel companions were getting out and stumbling, still half-asleep, past the band playing the royal march and an ode to the river Piave. He stayed on, waiting for the next stop, where there certainly would be no band to greet him.
The train started up again and the music faded away behind the last car. Checco began to recognize the places they were passing and he felt his heartbeat quicken: Fossalta, the bridge of Sant’Ambrogio; it would only be a few minutes now. A soldier with a haversack on his back walked past him. For god’s sake: it was Pio Patella! A day laborer who lived on Via Menotti.
“Hey, Pio!” he called out in their local dialect. “Pio, where you goin’?”
Pio turned. “That you, Checco?”
Of course it was him, who else could it be? Not that they had ever been great friends, but running into each other like this, after three years of war and both of them headed to the same town seemed like a miracle. A wonderful miracle. They’d walk the last kilometers together.
The train came to a halt and they got out, but Pio decided to stop in on his sister, who lived close to the station. So Checco set off on his own with his haversack on his shoulders. It was just after All Saints and All Souls; the scent of maple leaves was in the air and the red hawthorn berries sparkled amidst the rust-colored leaves of the hedges. The robins and wrens hopped from one branch to another and regarded him curiously with eyes black and bright as pinheads. Every now and then a dog would bark at him and run back and forth on his chain strung up on a line extending from the house to the shed. Once he had walked past, the dog would stop his barking and settle down with a whimper, resigned to the same old life. A dog’s life.
The air was fresh and the sun shone cold in a clear sky.
He passed in front of Pra’ dei Monti and glanced over at the four hills dug up here and there by the occasional treasure hunter. He wasn’t worried; the golden goat wouldn’t be putting in any more appearances, because no disaster could be greater than the war that had just ended. And if it ever did reappear, it would be on a night of tempest with thunder shaking the earth and lightning rending the black clouds, or in a snowstorm, with flakes falling fast through the night sky. Certainly not on a clear morning in November.
He got to the sluice on the creek and then to the spot the women favored for washing, and there they were, beating the laundry against the stones and singing to take their minds off the cold that was numbing their fingers. He reached the footbridge and then the path lined with lindens that led to Signor Goffredo’s villa. As he got closer to town, just past the San Colombano mill, he began to run into people, but no one made a fuss over him; just a little nod, or a half smile, if that. This made him very uneasy, and he took it as a sign that the end of the war had brought little joy to his town. A sign that a lot of men were still missing and perhaps would never come back, a sign that those that had made it back were not the same as when they’d left: wounded, disabled, maimed.
He finally reached the square: Poldo’s brick wall was still there, on the left, with vine shoots curling over the tiles at its top, and there was the fountain with its piston pump at the center. The church was there on the right, with its image of the Sacred Heart on the lunette over the door, as was the bell tower that marked time for the whole town: births, weddings, deaths. And right at that moment, the big bell began slowly ringing a death knell. At that same instant, four gravediggers left the oratory carrying a litter made of wood. Walking behind them was the priest, wearing a purple stole and white lace surplice over his black cassock. An altar boy carried the holy-water bucket and sprinkler.
They passed alongside the tower and then went past the People’s House and Checco had the impression they were about to turn right along the ditch, but they headed straight on instead, nearly as if they were opening the path for him. They passed the pharmacy and the Osteria della Bassa, and Checco was sure they’d continue towards Madonna della Provvidenza. He realized instantly that, more than conjecture, his thought expressed hope. Instead they turned right, walking through the fields and continuing towards the fork and Checco tried to convince himself that it would be there that they would part ways. At this point, he was less than half a kilometer from home. He would soon be hugging his mother and his father; maybe some of his brothers had already returned, Gaetano, or Floti . . .
The little funeral procession turned left precisely where he would soon be turning left himself, and he realized with great relief that just before the Via Celeste crossroads lived old Signora Preti, who had already been in sad shape when he’d left. Surely they were going to fetch her body.
Instead they turned into the Bruni courtyard.
The first one to see Checco was Maria, who was in the farmyard feeding the chickens. She ran towards him and threw her arms around him, weeping. She couldn’t manage to say a word. Clerice arrived almost immediately. She hugged him and kissed him and then lowered her head to dry her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Your father, Checco. He didn’t make it. Such a long time without hearing anything about you boys, so many terrible stories from the front. He was convinced that at least half of you wouldn’t come back because those were the numbers we were hearing from the front. Or worse. I tried time and time again to tell him we mustn’t lose heart, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Mamma, where are the others?”
“They’re not here, Checco. You’re the first to return, and you’ve found this awful welcome. Come now, come and say goodbye to your father before they take him to the cemetery.”
They went inside. Checco looked at his father and tears filled his eyes. They had arranged the body in a coffin, four elmwood boards nailed together, dressed in the only good suit he had, with a white hemp shirt buttoned all the way up and a rosary intertwined in his ashen hands. He had a two-day beard because no one had shaved him for fear of cutting his skin.
“He tormented himself. Every night I’d hear him sighing, ‘Where can our boys be, Clerice? Who knows where on earth they are.’ And he would twist and turn in his bed. He could find no peace. He hardly slept at all. How often I heard him weeping! When he saw soldiers passing by, with their haversacks and guns, looking dead tired and worn out, he’d call out to them: ‘Come inside, boys, eat and drink!’ and when they’d left, he’d say, ‘Maybe someone’s doing the same with our sons.’ Your father was a good man, Checco, I couldn’t have found a better one. He loved you boys as if he’d given birth to you himself. He died of a broken heart because you were gone.”
The gravediggers were waiting to nail on the lid and take him away. Checco put a hand on his icy forehead and said: “Why didn’t you wait for me, papà . . . at least one day, so I could say goodbye.” Clerice gave him a kiss and covered her face with her hands. The priest sprinkled holy water on the elm box and murmured some prayers, then the gravediggers put the coffin on the litter and walked out the door as the priest began loudly reciting the rosary.
Meanwhile, the courtyard had filled with people from town, friends, relatives. Clerice took off her apron, patted down her hair and began following her husband’s coffin, arm-in-arm with Checco and Maria. Behind them walked the women, kerchiefs on their heads, then the stable hand, and last of all the men wrapped in their long cloaks and carrying their hats. In church, the platform was ready, covered by a black cloth edged in yellow. The pastor said the mass and added a brief eulogy, saying that Callisto was a good Christian and that the Lord would certainly welcome him into heaven.
The procession headed to the cemetery and the gravediggers didn’t even need to be relieved of their burden, because old Callisto was skin and bones and didn’t weigh a thing. Checco didn’t have the heart to watch them put him in the ground, his father, and he left. He wandered through the fields for a long time. A bit of fog was beginning to rise, and he realized that he would be the one to worry now about who was or wasn’t coming back. He thought of when the postman would arrive with a letter carrying bad news and how he would have to tell his mother. That would be tough; as the proverb said, “A husband gets into your dress, but a child gets into your heart.”
When he got home he had a bowl of soup brought out to the stable, as if he were a traveler who had happened upon Hotel Bruni for the night, and he stretched out on the hay because he knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep in his bed. It was late when he heard Clerice come in. She pulled his army overcoat up so that it covered his shoulders, like when she would come to tuck him in when he was little, but he said nothing and pretended to be sleeping.
A week later Gaetano returned. He was all in one piece but he was dumbfounded to hear that their father had died and that they’d just buried him. He wasn’t expecting it; he’d long dreamed of the moment in which he would set foot in the courtyard and embrace his parents again before he went to see the cows and oxen in the stable, and instead it was a very sad moment, sadder than any he’d had in the war. He took it out on Secondo, the farmhand, who was not to blame, and told him he wasn’t needed anymore. When he learned that the boy had fallen in love with Maria and was crazy about her, and noticed how yellow his ears were, a sure sign that he was whacking off, he told him to pack up and get out the next day.
Checco took his brother aside: “Let it go, Gaetano, there’s nothing wrong with falling in love, and he’s never been disrespectful towards our sister. You know she’s in love with Fonso the storyteller, and she won’t even look at anyone else. Sending him away now at the beginning of the winter is dooming him to cold and hunger. His family up in the mountains is so poor that they can barely scrape by and all they eat is chestnuts. We’ve given food and drink to so many vagrants even if we didn’t know who they were. Think about it, while we were away at war he helped our parents get by here, for just a bowl of soup and a chunk of bread. He’ll give you a hand in the stables; he knows how to bottom a chair with straw and fix the tools . . . We’ll decide in the spring, all right?”
Gaetano muttered something under his breath that meant all right and they carried on. Clerice went to the cemetery every other day to pray on her husband’s tomb, and since there were no flowers to be had she put two hawthorn branches in a jar, which looked nice anyway with their red berries. When she finished praying she would let Callisto know how things were going, sure that he would be listening. That Checco and Gaetano were back and that they were well. Checco had a bit of a limp, but it wasn’t too bad. She couldn’t complain. “You can see them all, our boys, from where you are now. Help them if you can; the Lord will surely listen to you because you were always a good man and you never hurt anyone. You always acted rightly. Let them all come home to me.” Here she had to stop for a moment because she got a lump in her throat. “If . . . if by chance some of them are there with you, better for you and worse for me.” Then she blew her nose, dried her tears and step after step, went back home.
Even with all this worry and distress, there was a laugh to be had at times. Like when, a week after Checco’s return, Pio Patella showed up in the courtyard wailing like a banshee. “Clerice, Clerice, open that door wide! I’ve been cuckolded and the horns I’m wearing are so big I can’t fit through!”
Clerice knew well that when men stayed away for years, there were always some of the ladies in town who sought solace with someone else, but she also knew that horns were the least of their problems and that it was best to forget the past and start anew.
“Why would you say such a thing, Pio?” she asked.
Pio replied that when he got home he found that his family had grown without any help from him. Not one, but two children, and he was having none of it.
Clerice had him sit down and poured him a glass of wine to lighten his spirits. Goodness, a extra child was one thing, but two? She had to find a solution and a way to comfort him.
“How long were you away, Pio?”
“Eighteen months.”
Clerice’s face lit up. So? Where’s the problem? Nine plus nine is eighteen, she figured. Since one pregnancy lasts nine months, two pregnancies doubles the time. All fine and dandy.
Pio Patella looked puzzled for a moment but, considering that Clerice was a woman of experience and she knew everything there was to know about such things, he hugged her, thanked her and told her that she was the wisest and the best person in the whole town and that she had taken a weight from his heart. He returned home in an excellent mood and, now that he knew his honor was not at stake, he apologized to his wife for having thought badly of her and he pointed to the stairs that led up to the bedroom, the place where all problems were solved, or at least those that can be put right.
After Gaetano, Dante came back. Then Armando, then Savino, then Fredo and, last of all, Floti. His lung had been pierced by shrapnel during the Battle of the Solstice and he’d been kept in the hospital for a month until he was capable of travelling. None of them knew that their father had died and each of them thought it was a cruel trick of fate that poor Callisto had tortured himself to the end thinking that out of seven sons he would surely have lost two or three or maybe even more. He’d heard about battalions that were decimated, entire divisions annihilated. Why would the Black Lady spare his own, why hadn’t she swept her scythe over the field of the Brunis?
Clerice reasoned, instead, that the Madonna had listened to her and that in some way, the sacrifice of her husband had served to allow his boys to come home, one after another, none of them left behind.
Truly, all seven had survived: even Savino, the youngest and greenest. Only Floti had returned disabled, but you couldn’t see anything from the outside; he was still the good-looking boy he had always been, who girls turned to look at when he walked down the road. It was only that the doctors had prohibited him from overexerting himself or doing heavy labor of any sort, since they hadn’t been able to operate on him and the fragment, a very small piece of metal, was still stuck in his left lung.
At first no one noticed much, because it was only natural that Floti would spend his time looking after the family’s business, which meant going to the market, eating out in the osterie with livestock dealers or negotiating with the landowner. He was the brightest, after all. But as time went on, the others began to feel that he was taking advantage of his position, while they did the hard work in the fields, the stable, the farmyard. And thus the seeds of envy were sown, or at least of malcontent.
One day Floti came back from the market with a worn-out, skinny mare. Her eyes were glazed and her coat was bristly and dull, her tail smeared with excrement.
“Why on earth did you waste money on this nag?” Gaetano demanded. “She’ll die before the month is out and we won’t even be able to sell her hide.”
“No she won’t. She’s only been mistreated by a mean, stupid owner.”
“Well, I don’t know how you can say such a thing. You don’t know the first thing about livestock.”
“A horse is not a cow. But you can see it’s true; look, here and here, the signs of the whip, and these wounds at the sides of her mouth. Someone who flogs a horse and jams the bit that way is not only evil, he’s an idiot, because he’s damaging his own property.”
Gaetano clammed up but you could tell from his expression that he was skeptical.
“What’s more,” concluded Floti, “she cost me practically nothing. Give her a month and you’ll see a miracle.”
Floti saw to all her needs himself. He gave her clean well water and alfalfa hay which he knew was the most nutritious. When she started regaining strength, he started giving her a mix of fodder he made himself: barley, spelt, wheat, oats, vetch and horse beans. He even added dried peas when he could find them. After a week, her ears had straightened, her eyes were wide-open, dark and glittery, and her muzzle had become as soft as velvet. Her coat got shinier and denser day by day, and her mane and tail seemed made of silk. A miracle. Even Gaetano had to admit he’d never seen anything like it.
In a month’s time, Floti was able to saddle her up to the shafts of a little carriage he had bought from a secondhand dealer and fixed up a bit at a time. He’d sandpapered all the wood and puttied the cracks, then painted it a rich black and shined up the shafts until they gleamed. A jewel. When he hitched up the mare, everyone was speechless: a real high-class ride! Floti’s six brothers, along with Clerice and Maria, stood in a semicircle around the magnificent carriage, their hands on their hips, astonished. Not even Signor Barzini’s steward had anything like this.
“But isn’t this too much?” asked Clerice. “You’re not thinking of actually riding around on that contraption?”
“Why not, mamma?” answered Floti. “Sunday morning I want to take you to mass on this, like a real lady.”
Clerice shook her head, scandalized. “You’re not in your right mind, Floti. I won’t even consider it!”
Gaetano was even more alarmed: “When this reaches Barzini’s ear, he’ll say we stole his money.”
Floti let his head drop, irritated by the negative reaction to his success. “Signor Barzini won’t say a word when he sees that we’re increasing production and profit, for him and for us. As far as this carriage is concerned, yes, I will use it. Not only will I enjoy it, seeing all the work I put into it, but most of all, the people who I do business with will see who I am. They have to get the idea that it’s them who need me, not the other way around. If you have little, you do little. You can’t achieve anything on a shoestring. Trust me. I learned a few things in the war, I thought things through and what’s more, I talked to people who knew what they were on about, because there’s all kinds in the army.”
The words slipped out of his mouth easily and earnestly, summoning to mind his friend Pelloni and what he used to say about socialism, justice and injustice, and the rights of the working class. Floti had seen a lot during the war, and he was afraid that the victory that had cost so much blood would bring no riches to the foot soldiers who had defended the Piave and chased the enemy back to the other side. If they wanted their rights, they’d have to win them in peacetime, like they’d won back the last pieces of Italy in wartime. As he was thinking of all this, the image in his mind’s eye was Pelloni’s Frera on the ground, like a horse wounded to death, the wheel spinning and spinning . . .