From PART ONE, Chapter 1
SALVATORE ROSSELLI’S life had been lived in a dreadful
bondage, beginning on a summer day in southern Italy, 1924, when the wind rose
up with the smell of the sea in it.
Salvatore knew then that a misfortune was coming: the smell of the sea
had never been a good sign in Cerignola.
He’d heard Dona Melo talking about that more than once as she sat on a
stool in her doorway. He knew the
mezzardi were coming soon; they would help with the harvesting of the grapes,
and he wondered if they were bringing the misfortune with them.
The
smell of the sea did not last long, and behind it came the familiar scents of
the limestone fields, the grass, the olive trees, and the goats that Salvatore
was herding out of their small corral.
One of the females put her head into his hand, and he rubbed the
delicately-shaped skull and looked back into the expressive eyes. He felt as if he could almost read her
thoughts. A sharp whistle came from his
father, and Salvatore closed the gate and went quickly over to him. His father’s
huge hands danced in the air, instructing him to take the goats out to
graze. A short time later he held an
olive branch in one hand, which he used to discourage strays, and in the other
he carried a sack of tomatoes, dry bread, and some goat’s cheese.
* * *
When
Salvatore returned home later that day, limping from the pain in his back, his
mother was nursing his baby sister at the kitchen table. Her breasts were big and heavy with
milk. It gave Salvatore a queer feeling
to see them. The baby sucked and sucked
with its tiny hand opening and closing on his mother’s chest. The baby had thick black hair and beautiful
brown eyes. Salvatore had wanted a
brother but even a sister would do after so many years of being an only child. He had never understood why it had taken his
parents so long to produce another child, and he was often angered by the
rumors that were spread in the village.
“Salvatore,
you are hurt!” cried Rosa Rosselli in alarm.
“O Dio, Dio!”
Salvatore’s
hand went automatically to his face. It
felt swollen and raw and hurt when he touched it.
Rosa
hustled the baby into her cradle by the fire and came instantly to him with one
hand pulling the gingham blouse over her shoulder and the other reaching out to
caress his face. Her fingertips were
like kisses that soothed wherever they touched.
“Salvatore,
my Salvatore, what has happened to you?” she murmured softly, drawing him over
to a chair and stroking the hair back from his forehead as she examined his
bruises with a pained looked in her eyes.
“It
is nothing, Mama. Just a fall.”
“Just
a fall! Were you flying? I know better than that.”
With
quick competence she soaked a cloth in a bucket of water and wrung it out, took
a bottle of antiseptic down from a high shelf, unscrewed the top and poured out
the reddish liquid on a corner of the cloth.
“It
is nothing, Mama,” Salvatore repeated almost in a daze.
“Nothing? How can cuts and bruises like this be
nothing? We must give your father a
better explanation than ‘nothing’.”
When
she had finished, she held his chin and looked into his eyes, and he knew he
could hide nothing from her.
“It
was them again.”
Rosa’s
kind face turned dark and fierce. “Damn
those pigs! The fires of hell would be
too good for them! O my Salvatore.” Rosa took her son’s head gently in her arms
and sobbed. “O Dio! No good will come of this.”
Salvatore
felt the throbbing in her neck and was ashamed to be treated like a boy with
such a fuss being made over him. He
tried to sit up and his mother released him.
“Please don’t with tears . She
turned away so that her son would not see her naked hatred and pain, stood
quietly composing herself, then picked up the crying infant and gave it her
breast again. “There, there, bambina, my
hungry bambina,” she crooned.
Salvatore
went out to the tettoia. When he
excreted, there was blood in his urine.
It frightened him, but he did not want to tell his mother.
It would cost money to see a doctor.
* *
*
Dominic
Rosselli was driving the oxen home from the fields, every few minutes removing
his old crumpled hat to wipe the sweat from his brow with his forearm. Dominic had a large simian build: stooped
shoulders and long arms and relatively short, powerful legs. It was said in Cerignola that he had once
wrestled a bull to the ground. Although
no one had actually seen this feat performed, rumor alone was enough to
establish his reputation as one of the strongest men in the province of
Foggia. This was a source of pride to the
villagers, but it also added to their distrust of him.
Dominic
drove the oxen into their corral and unyoked them. He mixed their grains with milk and set it
down for them to eat. Then he closed the
gate and walked to the house. He washed
up with water from the bucket by the door as his son had done moments before,
knocked the dirt from his heavy boots, and went in.
The
aroma of soup in the kitchen made him smile with pleasure, but the grim look on
Rosa’s face shattered that good feeling in an instant. Dominic glanced swiftly from his wife to his
son, and Salvatore knew from the look his father gave him that there was no
escape from what he must tell.
His
father came up and put his face close to him and pushed his head back roughly
to inspect the bruises. Salvatore’s head
was as delicate as an egg in the grip of that large calloused hand.
When
Dominic had seen enough, he stood back, peeled off his dusty hat, and threw it
onto a chair. His eyes were riveted onto
Salvatore’s, and they demanded, “Tell me what happened!”
Salvatore
struggled to remain calm, steeling his nerves as he stared straight into his
father’s eyes. Experience had taught him
it was better not to try to look away.
Those eyes penetrated to his soul and bled the truth from him.
Salvatore
told all the details he could remember, minimizing the beating he had taken,
and fell silent. His father continued
staring ferociously at him, his face turning purple, his eyes bulging, and then
his rage erupted in a powerful blow to the table that overturned the soup
bowls. His father’s rage made Salvatore
feel guilty for what had happened, and he cowered in fear. Guilt and fear made him a ready victim. Suddenly his father’s enormous hand was
lifted above him. Salvatore flinched,
and covered his head with his arms.
But
the blow did not come. Rosa clung to
Dominic’s arm with all her strength and prevented him from striking her
Salvatore. But Dominic’s rage had to
explode. He tore his arm from Rosa’s
grip , shaking her off as if she were a rag doll, and went at her like a wild
beast. Salvatore leapt on his father’s
back. Dominic threw him off, spun
around, and struck wildly at him.
Salvatore tried to dodge the heavy blow, but he wasn’t quite agile
enough. His father’s hand hit him in the
small of the back, just under the rib cage, where his cousins had kicked him.
* * *
“Go
get the cart!” Rosa shouted at her husband.
Dominic
had lowered his eyes and did not read her lips.
Rosa threw a spoon at him and he looked up. “Go get the cart,” she commanded. “You must take your son to a hospital in
Naples. The doctor in Foggia is an old
fool. Go!”
Large
and powerful Dominic scrambled to his feet and hurried out of the house as fast
as he could. The cart stood under an
almond tree. It was almost dark. Dominic lit a lantern and unloaded some
simple tools onto the ground. Then he
placed himself under the yoke and pulled the cart around to the front of the
house. Next he went to the corral and
roused one of the tired oxen.
In
the meantime, Rosa had wrapped Salvatore in a thick blanket and lain him in
front of the fire, whose bright light cut an opening in the night where the
cart hard been drawn up. She came out of
the house with straw and blankets, and working quickly and deftly, made up a
bed in the back of the cart.
Dominic
realized that the ox was too weary for the journey and went back for the
donkey. He now led the donkey to the
front of the cart and harnessed him between the shafts by the light of the fire
from the kitchen.
At
length the cart was ready, and Dominic and Rosa carried their maimed son
gingerly out of the warm house into the cool night air and laid him on his bed
of straw. Rosa packed more straw around
him to cushion the bumps and pulled the blankets over his shoulders. Looking into Salvatore’s heavy-lidded eyes,
she smiled reassuringly and kissed him on the forehead.
“Drive
quickly but carefully,” Rosa exhorted as Dominic tipped the cart with his
weight. Then she was gone into the house
and back in a moment. She handed Dominic
a large goatskin bag.
“Here
is water, milk, cheese, and bread. See
to your son.”
Dominic
slouched shamefully in the driver’s seat.
He waved farewell to his wife, clucked his tongue at the donkey, and
flicked the reins. The cart started
rolling with a gentle jolt. The lantern
flickered and the wheels crunched over the stones as the donkey pulled the cart
away into the darkness. The sky was
pricked with hundreds of bright stars and rent three-quarter moon, and they
shed just enough light to make out the path leading to the main road.
Rosa
looked after them. She could see the
light of the lantern bobbing and flickering like the lamp on a ship at
sea. The baby started to cry in her
cradle by the fire. Rosa went inside and
shut the door against the night.
Kneeling down beside the baby, she rocked the cradle and hummed a
lullaby. Her prayers swelled up out of
the silence towards heaven.
Copyright 2001 by Anthony S. Maulucci
