Floti had got it in his head that he didn’t want Fonso to court his sister Maria. He had nothing against the man personally, on the contrary, he was a serious lad who didn’t mind hard work and enjoyed a good reputation in town.
It was a gut feeling. He felt that Fonso wasn’t suited to Maria, ugly as he was, with that big, prominent jaw of his. And half deaf to boot. He knew that he and his sister had already been talking, and that talk might already have gone pretty far. He needed to break things up now if he didn’t want to find Fonso in the house one day asking for Maria’s hand in marriage.
As for Fonso, he knew that he needed to offer his fiancée and her brothers some assurances, and that meant a steady job, something that was not easy to find in that day and age. It was simply a question of supply exceeding demand; physical labor just wasn’t worth much. But that didn’t frighten Fonso: the important thing was getting an in and then showing the boss just what you could do.
An employment exchange existed, but the bosses preferred the do-it-yourself approach, which involved a visit to the “wall.” This was a brick parapet that overlooked the now dry medieval moat which surrounded the town. Four artificial mounds marked its four corners. All of the laborers looking for work would gather there in the morning and lean against or sit on the wall, chatting with the others and waiting for someone to come along and hire them for a day or two or, if they were lucky, for the entire season. Fonso didn’t go too often because if he wasn’t already working someplace, he preferred to help someone who needed it, free of charge, rather than loiter around with the others. Even if he worked for free, there was some recompense at the end of the day: a flask of wine, a piece of loin, a slice of lard to make a tasty soffritto for pasta, or some chicken feet, neck, wings and innards for broth.
One morning, as he was passing by the wall, a couple of friends who were there looking for work stopped him and just at that moment, the steward of the Baccoli estate showed up. Baccoli was a lawyer in Bologna, and he owned vast tracts of farmland just outside town. He pointed his finger at six of the men, one after another: “ . . . you, you, you and you go to over the farm on Via Emilia, there are ten furlongs of stubble to be turned over so we can sow the alfalfa.” Those who’d been called upon got onto their bicycles and rode off in a group towards their destination. At that same instant, the overseer noticed Fonso’s sturdy build and added: “And you go with them!”
Fonso thanked him and jumped on his own bicycle, pedaling hard to catch up with the others, who had a few minutes’ head start. Given his experience, he already had an idea of why they had been recruited. To prepare a stubble field for planting alfalfa, it wasn’t necessary to dig up ten furlongs of soil: a couple of oxen with a plow and then a final go with the harrow would accomplish the task much quicker and much better. This was certainly a test of strength, and Fonso knew very well what it entailed: the diggers would be lined up at the starting line and each would have to dig as fast as he could under the careful eye of the steward, who would be checking from behind whether anyone was cheating by not digging the shovel in deep enough so as to make quicker progress. In the evening, the slowest would be eliminated.
And that’s just how it went. By dusk, Fonso was a length beyond the rest; the second guy was at least twenty meters behind him. It was a ruthless test, but everyone accepted it: it was right that the best man win. But in many cases, the problem was that some of them were undernourished and didn’t have enough energy to sustain such backbreaking work. They had all figured that there was something important being tested here and had participated with all the strength and stamina they could summon up. The weakest of all proved to be a fifty-year-old farmhand named Mario. He collapsed twice that first day, pale and sweat-soaked, and when he got to the end, he had tears in his eyes, knowing that he would never be able to win the job.
He was, in fact, let go the next day. Another was sent home the day after, a third the next day, two on the fourth day and another on the fifth. On the sixth day, Fonso was the only one left.
‘We need a foreman,’ the steward told him, ‘and you’re it. We’re hiring you at a fixed salary, you’ll be paid by the week. If the landowner likes you, you’ll even get a bonus at Christmas.’
Fonso thanked him, hiding his satisfaction but, once he was out on the road, he started singing his stornelli at the top of his lungs, because he’d finally had a stroke of good luck! If his friends hadn’t stopped him in front of the wall exactly at the moment that Baccoli’s steward showed up, no one would have noticed him and he certainly wouldn’t have been called upon to dig up the land on Via Emilia. Now he was a man with a sure salary and a steady job that could last him his whole lifetime. Now he could maintain a family and he could ask for Maria’s hand in marriage, knowing that he’d be able to offer her a decent life.
Should he talk to Floti first, or Clerice? He thought it would be best to start from the toughest. If her brother said yes, the others would certainly fall in. But you could see from a mile away that Floti wasn’t thrilled about the situation; he was jealous of his sister, somehow. Clerice, on the other hand, was very fond of him and would almost certainly accept his proposal without opposition. He decided to wait a couple of days, plucking up his courage and waiting until the news got out in town that he had become the foreman of a big estate, a stable job with a fixed salary, ready cash at the end of the week.
It was a Thursday evening in late April when he walked into the Bruni courtyard and asked if Floti was there so he could have a word with him.
“He’s in the shed,” replied Fredo, “unhitching the mare from the carriage.”
Fonso went in that direction and met up with Floti as he was coming out of the shed.
“Nice evening, isn’t it, Floti?” he said.
“It’s a fine evening indeed, Fonso. What brings you here at this time of day?”
“I’d like to talk with you.”
“I’m listening,” said Floti.
“It’s about Maria.”
“Maria’s not here.”
“She’s not here? Has she gone to do the shopping?”
“No, she’s gone to Florence and she’ll be there a long time.”
“Florence? Without saying a word?”
“You know I have a married sister in Florence. She’s not well just now and needs company. We thought that it would do Maria well to have a change of air, to stay in the city for a while. In Florence, everyone speaks Italian, so she can learn some there; it may come in handy.”
Fonso lowered his head and frowned: “‘Far from your eyes, far from your heart.’ Is that what you’re aiming for, Floti?”
Floti sighed, “It’s no use playing games here, Fonso. It’s true, that’s one of the reasons I sent her to Florence. It’s not that I have anything against you, you know. You’re a good, honest man, a hard worker. I know what you’re thinking: that when I was in prison you were always here helping in the fields, beating hemp at midday when the heat and the strain are enough to kill you, pulling the water-soaked hemp out of the pond when it’s slippery and heavy as lead. See? I haven’t forgotten and I’m no ingrate; I’ll find a way to make good on my debt. You don’t have any vices, Fonso, but I don’t think you’re the right man for Maria, and there’s no way I’ll let you marry into this family. Women don’t understand a thing when they’re in love, but then . . . if someone had pointed certain things out to them while they were in time . . . ”
Fonso held up his hand: “Stop, Floti. That’s enough. I don’t understand, although I already knew you felt this way about me. You lost your own wife: she was beautiful and you were in love, just like me and your sister. It’s not our fault! We love each other and we want to marry, to have a family. It’s true, she’s much more beautiful than I am handsome, but what does it matter? And now I’m a person with a steady job and a pretty good salary that will come in regularly. You’re making a mistake here. Who says that she’d be happier with another man? You could ruin her life by giving her to someone that you like but that she doesn’t. We’ll be happy together. Why do you want to separate us?”
Floti scowled: “That’s my business, Fonso, don’t get mixed up in it. Maria’s in Florence now and we’ll see how that goes. As they say, ‘if they’re roses, they’ll bloom, if they’re thorns, they’ll prick you.’ Time will tell. But I’m against you marrying her and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
Fonso could not resign himself: “You’re taking on a big responsibility, here, Floti, and I’m surprised at you. You, who have suffered the death of the woman you loved and were put into prison, an innocent man. You know what it means to be unhappy, to suffer. Why take it out on us? What have we done to you?”
“Nothing,” said Floti. “That’s it and there’s no changing it.”
Fonso wanted to insist, but he understood it was useless. There was nothing more to be said. His voice was trembling and he didn’t want to break down in front of Floti. He left with tears in his eyes.
He walked his bicycle out to the street and started towards home, his heart swelling, as it began to get dark. After just a few dozen meters, he heard a whispered voice calling out to him: “Fonso, Fonso . . . ”
“Who’s there?” he asked.
“It’s me, Maria,” replied a voice on the other side of the hedge.
“Maria? But then you haven’t gone to Florence!”
“Come over to this side, here, there’s a hole in the hedge.”
Fonso leaned his bicycle on the side of the ditch and leapt over to the other side.
“Where are you? I can’t see you!”
“I’m up here on the elm tree. I was picking leaves for the cows and I saw you. Wait, I’m coming down.”
“No, don’t move. I’ll come up, that way no one can see us.”
He pulled himself up swiftly along the enormous trunk and found her in the middle of the foliage. He embraced her. “What is this? Ten minutes ago your brother told me you were in Florence.”
“Well, it’s not far from the truth. I’m leaving tomorrow. He’s taking me to the station in Bologna and from there I’ll take a train to Florence. He told you I’d already left because he didn’t want us to say goodbye. He’s worried I’ll change my mind.”
“Can’t you change your mind? You know he doesn’t want us to get married, don’t you?”
Maria lowered her eyes. “I know. And he thinks that if I go to Florence I’ll forget you. Listen to what I’m saying, Fonso: I can’t disobey my brother, because he’s the head of the family and he loves me. He thinks he’s right in doing this, he doesn’t realize what a mistake it is, but if you wait for me, I’ll be back, sooner or later, and we’ll get married because I will never forget you. Whatever happens, I will never forget you, do you understand?”
“But maybe, if your mother . . . ”
“No, it won’t work, believe me. There are already enough reasons to quarrel in my family, it’s terrible and I can’t bear it any longer. I don’t want to add to them. I hope I’ll be back for Christmas, and all the time I’ll spend in Florence will be like hell and purgatory put together.”
“It will be the same for me. I swear to you that I will never look at any other woman. I’ll wait for you. And I’ll write you as soon as you send me your address.”
Both had tears in their eyes, even if no one could see them because it was dark by now, and they made love on the tree like a couple of sparrows. Then they wept, embracing each other and swearing that nothing and no one would ever separate them, like the star-crossed lovers in Fonso’s fables.
The next day Floti drove off with his sister, who was crying like a fountain. She’d never been away from home and going to Florence was like going to the ends of the earth. She didn’t manage to say a word the whole way to the station, and Floti was scowling and taciturn as well.
“Why are you sending me away, Floti?” she asked him when they got to the train.
“For your own good. You deserve much more than that storyteller. One day you’ll understand.”
“No,” sobbed Maria, “I’ll never understand.” Then she got on the train and watched as her brother got smaller and smaller . . .
The summer passed and so did the fall, and the winter began but Fonso did not come to Hotel Bruni to tell his stories because he didn’t want to embarrass anyone, and so the nights went by tedious and sad.
Word had gotten out that Floti had been acquitted and was home again scot-free. There were plenty of people who had sworn they’d get another chance at that subversive, make him pay, him and everyone around him. It wasn’t long before the day of reckoning and that was the greatest disaster in the whole history of the Bruni family. It happened just a few days before Christmas, when the novena was just rounding up. Clerice had just come home from church, all bundled up in her woolen shawl, and had started to prepare the batter for the Christmas bread and raviole: flour, honey, raisins that they’d dried from their own grapes in a warm oven, quince jam and saba, a jelly they made from red grape juice.
Since Fonso no longer came around, Hotel Bruni had lost its main attraction, and so that night everyone had already gone up to bed. Clerice was still awake, perhaps she had some presentiment or perhaps she simply wasn’t tired, because old people knew in their hearts that no matter how little they slept now, they’d soon have even too much of it.
In the deep silence, she thought she heard voices: shouting, it sounded like, or singing, or both, and the distant roar of an engine coming closer. Now she could hear them well, they were singing in unison, and they were so close now she could hear the words:
“To your weapons, men, we’re fascists,
We’ll strike terror in the souls of the communists!”
Her own heart jumped into her throat as she whispered: “Mother of God, help us!”
Clerice had never had any interest in politics, but she’d long grown used to watching squads of hotheads who would go around beating, caning and humiliating in every way possible those they considered troublemakers, defeatists and enemies of the nation. She was sure that this time they were coming for the Brunis and, in particular, one of them: her son Floti. She ran up the stairs, as fast as she could with her candle in hand, to wake him.
“Mamma, what’s happening? What are you doing here?” Floti had barely the time to say before he heard the shouts for himself and saw the look of terror in his mother’s eyes.
“Get dressed and go out the back way, now, the fascists are coming! Can you hear how close they are? They’ll be here in minutes. They’re coming for you, get moving!” She was right, and the beams of his bedroom ceiling were already echoing with their song. Floti slipped into a pair of trousers and a sweater, threw an overcoat over his shoulders and flew down the stairs. Clerice ran after him with a scarf because it was cold outside and it looked like snow. She tied it around his neck like an embrace and opened the back door for him, so he could escape into the open countryside. She stood watching for a moment as he ran off; the last thing she saw before he disappeared was the scarf, waving in the wind like a flag.
She closed the door up again and chained it and then went to the front door and did the same. She soon heard the sound of a truck stopping and a confusion of voices. It sounded like there were a lot of them and Clerice tried to peek out from a crack in the shutters. They’d left the engine running and the headlights on because it was pitch black outside. Men she’d seen before, from Sogliano, she thought, maybe the same ones who had beaten Graziano Montesi.
“Bruni, come out!” one shouted. “We know you’re in there!”
There was no doubt which Bruni they were looking for.
“Hand over Bruni!” shouted another and Clerice counted Floti’s steps in the night to figure how far he might have gotten by then.
“He’s not here!” she cried out from behind the closed window. In the meantime, all the others has woken up. The men had come down to the kitchen while the women, shivering and covered up as best they could, took the children down to the cellar, trying to get them to stop crying.
One of the wives, who had heard the fascists’ shouts, said out loud: “What does she mean he’s not here? I saw him go to bed.”
The men shut her up with a look: “If mother says he’s not here, it means he’s not here.”
“Turn him over to us or we’ll set fire to the house and roast you all inside!” shouted the same man as before, brandishing a lit torch. His companions, one after another, lit their own torches from his and before long the courtyard was all lit up. They wore black shirts and boots with leather or gray-green felt jackets. The shouted threat could be heard all the way down in the freezing-cold cellar, terrifying the women who had begun crying themselves.
“For the love of God!” Fredo shouted back at them from inside the house, “if the man you’re looking for is Raffaele Bruni, he’s not here. He never came home.”
“Bullshit!” shouted one of the besiegers. “Send him out or we’ll set fire to the house. This is your last warning.”
Checco looked around at all of his brothers and, apart from Savino who seemed quite calm, all he saw were terror-filled faces. “What shall we do?”
“There’s little we can do,” said Clerice, “seeing that Floti’s not here. We can only hope they believe us.”
“If he were here, he’d come out of his own free will!” shouted out Checco. “There are women and children here.”
“Then open up or we’ll break down the door and destroy the whole house. We won’t even leave you eyes to cry with!”
“All right,” said Checco. “I’m opening the door. Check for yourselves.” He pulled back the chain, but before he even had time to turn the handle, a violent shove pushed the door open and sent him rolling to the ground. Eight or ten men poured into the house, practically walking on top of him, and spread out to search every room. They went down to the cellar where the women were clinging together and shaking. The children began to cry out and scream, absolutely terrified by the uproar.
They found nothing and this made them even more furious.
“Do we want to let these subversives make fools of us?” one yelled. “I’m sure that that coward is in here someplace. Let’s set fire to the house, and he’ll come out, you’ll see!”
“Right, let’s give him a lesson! That way they’ll learn they can’t play games with us.”
“All right,” approved their leader. “Everybody out! This time you’ll save your skins, you bastards.”
The family came out the front door and Clerice, who had only been on the defensive until then, started to attack instead. She’d recognized some of them and treated them like a mother whose sons deserved a scolding. “Shame on you! You come here at night armed with clubs like the jailers of Jesus Christ! Taking it out on peaceful, unarmed men, with women and children. And you!” she said, pointing her finger at one of them. “I know you! I was with your mother in the Company of the Most Holy Sacrament. That poor woman, I am so sorry for her. Go back home with all these headstrong dolts and never come back!”
“Mamma, stop,” said Fredo, pulling her back by an arm. “You’re only making it worse.”
Savino recognized Nello, who lowered his eyes, unable to meet the shock, dismay and sorrow in his friend’s gaze.
Checco put one arm around his mother and the other around his wife, who was carrying little Vasco in her arms, and led the family in their brief exodus to the middle of the courtyard.
One of the fascists carrying a lit torch ran towards the open door and was about to throw it in when Nello stopped him: “Wait.”
“What’s wrong?” asked the man, turning towards him as if to light up his face.
“We can’t throw women and children who have no blame into the street. There are good people here, who’ve done nothing but work in the fields their whole lives without bothering anyone. It will be Christmas in a few days, do you want innocent children to be without a bed and without a home?”
“Then we’ll burn down the stable!” replied the other.
“Yes, right, let’s burn down the stable!” they all started yelling as if intoxicated, and turned with their torches towards the barn which rose, a dark mass, on the other side of the courtyard.
The Brunis looked at one another appalled and incredulous, their eyes full of tears: they wanted to burn down the place of fables and of fantastic tales, the shelter of the poor, of beggars and derelicts. They wanted to burn Hotel Bruni!