Accabadora (6 page)

“Do you know how to make sweets?”

It was the first time all afternoon that Maria had heard him speak; he had a deep clear solemn baritone. A farmer working his own land, Antonio Luigi Cau at twenty-five had already been an adult for at least ten years.

Surprised by the direct question, the girl lowered her eyes to her tray. “I can make fruit shapes from almond paste. Pears, apples, strawberries . . . animals too!”

“Clever girl, because that's important too; it isn't only with their mouths that people eat.”

The sunburnt fingers of her future brother-in-law grabbed
an
amaretto
, lightly scraping its base on the tray. Maria took a step back as if she had herself been touched, pulling the tray to herself and looking up at him again. Unaware of her reaction, Antonio Luigi Cau had already lost interest in her, chewing the
amaretto
with closed lips as he turned away to listen to what other people were saying. Maria stood near him for a few seconds more, then her future aunt stole another almond sweetmeat from the tray, forcing her to move on. During the rest of the engagement party Maria stayed silent and helpful, avoiding everyone's eye when she got up to help clear away the dishes.

She saw Tzia Bonaria again at nightfall, when she brought home a basketful of left-over
amaretti
as well as a raging fever she could hardly admit to.

“How did it go?”

“Decent people, as far as I could see.”

“And is he a decent type?”

“Seems to be.” Then she said quietly, with a thin smile: “He's tall.”

Bonaria laughed, carefully folding away her last piece of cloth for the day, some wool she had cut into the shape of a little coat.

“Well, that's fine then. But don't you think it might be useful to be able to do something more than just pick figs from a tree without needing a ladder?”

Maria laughed in her turn, but felt herself blush with embarrassment. If Bonaria noticed, she showed no sign of it.

“They've fixed on the thirteenth of May, so it won't be too close to Whitsun.”

“Will they need you to help?”

“Yes, they've asked me for the pastries and the bread.”

“As far as the pastries are concerned, fine. But for the bread only if it's a Saturday. I don't want you missing school.”

Maria had never been eager to go and work in her old home before, but now she dug in her heels like a deaf mule.

“I've hardly ever missed school, and the place won't fall down if I have a day off because my sister's getting married!”

Bonaria gave way only after repeated insistence, and as she did so she felt there was some important detail she did not know about. The lack of enthusiasm for visiting her mother's home that Maria had shown from the first had always deeply reassured Bonaria, even though she could not honestly have sworn that she had never made any attempt to encourage this indifference. Until the day she had first met Maria and her mother in the shop, Bonaria had considered herself as suffering from a perfect anguish, unique in that it could never be assuaged. She knew the world she was taking the girl from; in fact she knew it so well she had never felt any need to be aware of its every form. So she had not been surprised that Maria had never shown any obvious homesickness since deep down, in the privacy of her solitary infancy, the girl must always have known that her destiny did not lie in her old home. But now, faced with Maria's insistence on helping with the preparations for Bonacatta's wedding, the confidence of Bonaria Urrai wavered. She had no women friends or sisters she could have talked to about what was worrying her, but even if there had been any, she would have kept her worries to herself.

Anna Teresa Listru had spoken the truth to her daughter's future mother-in-law when she claimed that she really did call
Maria back to her old home whenever she needed her. But what Anna Teresa had not admitted was that Maria did not always come when she was called. Bonaria Urrai examined the reasons for every request like a hawk, reserving the right to refuse if she considered it unsuitable. Not that she ever said no in so many words. It was enough to insist that the hem of some skirt had to be finished urgently, or that Doctor Mastinu was coming to perform a vital check-up, and those who were willing to understand understood. Only in exceptional circumstances did the old woman agree to the little girl going out to work in the countryside, most often for gathering in the grapes with the Bastíu family, or for the olive harvest. But the widow Listru took the view that Maria believed she had been transformed into a princess ever since she first went to live with the Urrai woman, because she never lifted a single potato from the soil or bent down to dig for a beetroot, or immersed herself in the rice-fields to be paid for piecework like her sisters; and above all, she had made it clear that she could never be called out to bake bread at four in the morning. Anna Teresa Listru never complained openly about this, but she did still feel that Maria's privileged position should bring some extra advantage for herself, over and above the fact that one hungry mouth had been removed from the family round her table. What particularly annoyed her was the apparent obsession on the part of the elderly Urrai woman that Maria must go to school regularly. Anna Teresa Listru found this hard to understand. After all, the little girl had reached Middle School Grade Three, and had already learned more there than she would ever need in life. There was no reason why Maria should not begin to repay a little of what she had been given, remembering whose saucepan had had to fill
her stomach until the age of six. So Bonacatta's wedding had seemed to the widow Listru an ideal occasion to put a little pressure on Bonaria Urrai to allow Maria to miss a day or two of school to help with the enormous quantity of cakes and bread that would have to be baked for the occasion.

Yet despite the widow Listru's worst fears, the old Urrai woman seemed to make no difficulties, since Maria turned up on the afternoon set for making the almond confectionery without having to be asked for twice. Perhaps Anna Teresa would be able to make the most of this after all, taking advantage of the fact that the great central table in the living-room had become the frenetic scene of these unprecedented events.

The ingredients necessary for the
amaretti
made a fine display, and a fragrant chain was formed in which every available pair of hands, including those of the bride-to-be, had its own precise moment for action. On one side, stored in a large glazed earthenware basin, were sweet almonds chopped into tiny fragments, ready to be mixed with flour and egg to produce a biscuit to be baked in the oven with an almond or half a candied cherry stuck in the middle. Anna Teresa had advised using plenty of flour and being economical with the almonds, even if this would make the sweetmeats very soft. Meanwhile, the other side of the long table was dominated by a small mountain of almonds cut into thin strips waiting to be crystallized in sugar with grated lemon peel: once cold and cut into diamonds, this would become a form of country toffee which only the strongest teeth would be able to get through. Maria's job, while her mother and sisters chattered, was grating the lemon peel. Anna Teresa Listru wasted no time in getting to the point.

“Are you pleased you didn't have to go to school today?”

“Well . . . I never mind school, but today's a special day.”

Regina and Giulia exchanged looks, while Bonacatta worked eggs into the dough to soften it. Giulia said, “I don't know how you don't get bored always sitting there, I hated every day when I had to be at school.”

“And school got its own back and serve you right: you ended up having to do Fourth Grade twice!” Bonacatta said maliciously, strong in the authority of her twenty-five years.

“You're the one who did the most studying, you are!” Regina had never admitted that she had really rather liked school, and Bonacatta never missed a chance to add to her sister's embarrassment.

Giulia's humiliation found unexpected relief from her mother, who usually never intervened in such squabbles for fear they might degenerate into trouble for herself.

“There's no point in school,” Anna Teresa said firmly. “Once you've learned how to sign your name and count change in the shop, that's enough, it's not as if you're going to be a doctor. I only reached Third Grade in Elementary School, and no-one ever criticized me for that, not even the bookworms!”

This was something Anna Teresa Listru loved saying, because she believed it was important not to encourage her daughters to aim too high. Giulia in particular had lived all her nineteen years with this object in mind, as her mother never failed to point out to the neighbours. “She's like me when I was a girl, lots of common sense and no fancy ideas,” she would state, affectionately patting the shoulder of the girl who was now once more her youngest daughter.

“But Maria enjoys school,” Anna Teresa continued, determined
to pursue the subject further. “What is it you want to be, Maria, a doctor of almonds? Or a professor of hems and buttonholes like Tzia Bonaria Urrai?”

The others laughed, but Maria refused to be intimidated; it was by no means the first time her mother had teased her in this way, so she had known what to expect from the very first.

“School can be useful for all kinds of things, even for making cakes.”

“Of course. Before we went to school we had no idea how to make cakes, that's true. But what on earth are you getting at?”

Maria stopped grating the lemon she was holding and picked up one of the balls of almond paste that Regina had just finished shaping. Then she held it out to her mother with a defiant expression.

“Do you know why
gueffus
are called
gueffus
?”

Anna Teresa Listru stared at her as though she had gone mad, while her sisters stopped work to enjoy the scene.

“What a silly question! That's what they're called because they've always been called that.”

“Yes, but why? Why aren't they called bowler hats, for example, or . . . backgammon?”

Bonacatta was unable to suppress a laugh, immediately provo-king a furious glare from her mother.

“I don't know. Do you? If you do, be so good as to instruct us, Maestra Maria. Please explain this fundamental fact for us.”

“Because the word refers to the Guelphs, the soldiers who backed the Pope against the Emperor in the Middle Ages.”

“How interesting. Did they fire cannonballs made of almond paste?”

This time they all laughed, but Maria went on regardless.

“They got this name because, when we put them into paper cups, we cut the edges of the paper with square teeth like the battlements on the Guelph castles.”

Anna Teresa Listru had listened to the beginning of this explanation with a mixture of irritation and amusement, but now she was just amused.

“You can't really believe such nonsense . . .”

With a gesture of exaggerated elegance she picked up one of the
gueffus
from the flour-covered table and raised it to her mouth, biting it in half. She closed her eyes as she chewed, then suddenly opened them wide, as if astonished.

“May I be struck by lightning! Now I know how it got its name, it even tastes different! If you hadn't told me, Maria, I'm sure I'd never have known what I was missing!”

Giulia and Regina who, torn between believing and disbelieving, had each furtively bitten into one of the
gueffus
just to enjoy the taste, nearly choked with laughter while Bonacatta, anxious not to disturb the preparation of her cakes, merely smiled at Maria's disappointment:

“That's enough teaching for one day. Now we have work to do: finish the lemons for me, because I have to ice the
pirichittus
. And I warn you that if you ask me why they have this name, I know the reason why.”

“She'll tell you when you grow up.” Regina got a box on the ear for this impertinence, while Maria went back to grating lemon peel with a passion worthy of a greater cause.

For three whole days the bride's home became an ants' nest of relatives and neighbours coming and going with baskets full of fresh ingredients and borrowed trays on which the finished cakes were laid. The Listru sisters worked almost without a
break, alternating tasks to bring miraculously to life an army of
capigliette
decorated with sugar lace, kilos of
tiliccas
swollen with
saba
, baskets full of
aranzadas
with their spicy aroma, tin boxes full of crisp little sugar dolls, and hundreds of round almond
gueffus
, individually wrapped like sweets in white tissue paper with its edges fringed like the battlements of the Guelph towers. There was not a room in the house with space in it for anything more, and Giulia and Regina had to move basketfuls of finished delicacies off their beds before they could fall asleep in the gentle fragrance of orange-flower water.

Each evening Maria went home to the house of Bonaria Urrai, and before falling asleep would enjoy innocent daydreams about the tall man her sister was going to marry.