I Know This Much Is True (98 page)

“Because you are the homeliest and most responsible,” he answered. “My selecting you is a compliment to your seriousness and your domestic abilities.”

“If this is my reward, then I fart on such flattery!” she shouted back.

Her father reached back and let fly his open hand against her face. He had hit the girl before, but never this hard.

“You’ll see your sisters every day in the square if you like,” he told her later, after she had quieted again and her face had swollen up like macaroni in the pot. “The old woman’s business brings her into town each day. You know who she is: the butcher-woman who sits in that little space near the church, across from the
trattoria.

The poor hunchback.”

“Ciccolina?” Prosperine screamed. “You’ve given me away to that crazy witch?” When she heard this terrible news, the Monkey wailed loudly enough for Heaven to hear. She hugged her father’s knees, calling on the saints and the apostles to end her life and save her from this terrible fate. Now what she dreaded most was not separation from the others, but that ugly witch’s vengeance.

Surely Ciccolina would recognize the mocking voice of the girl who had so often insulted her! Surely Prosperine would die from this arrangement her father had made, or go bald, or discover that her blood had curdled!

But her father showed her no mercy.

When Violetta D’Annunzio heard of Prosperine’s fate, she shed fat tears and hugged her friend and volunteered to walk with her the next morning to the
strega
’s house near the woods and to carry I Know[649-748] 7/24/02 1:31 PM Page 658

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her basket of belongings, the better to give her a sad and proper goodbye.

Along the road the next day, the Monkey’s steps were slow and heavy, but Violetta seemed, almost, to race toward their destination. How much longer did that haughty painter say he was staying in Pescara? she asked Prosperine. What had his voice sounded like the day he had entered her father’s shop? Were those eyes of his green or blue?

As Ciccolina’s thatched roof came into sight between the trees, Violetta insisted that they stop first and wash their dirty feet in a nearby stream in case the old woman had visitors. Violetta produced the familiar tortoiseshell brushes and insisted, too, that her friend brush her long hair one last time. On that day, Violetta was wearing her prettiest blouse—the one that Prosperine herself had sewn, embroidering the bodice with wildflowers and cutting the neckline an inch or two below the
clavicola
. As Violetta bent over, the Monkey brushed and peeked inside that blouse at her friend’s pretty
tette
. Her tears fell into her friend’s long brown hair.

I drank some wine and laughed at her. “What does one girl care about peeking at another girl’s ‘pretty
tette
’?” I asked. “You sound like a man!”

She stood and went to leave the room.

“Where are you going, eh?” I said.

“To bed,” she said. “Where no one laughs at me and calls me
uomo.
”

“Stay,” I said. I pulled her by her sleeve back to the chair. “Sit and finish your story,
Signorina
Hothead. Finish my jug of wine, too, what the hell! Don’t walk away now that I’m interested.”

“Interested?” she asked. Her eyes were stupid from the wine.

“
Si,
” I said. “I want to find out what happened to you and the witch. . . . Tell me more about your friend’s ‘pretty
tette.
’ ”

She sat. “If you’re interested,” she said, “then show some respect. Keep your mouth shut while I speak. Now where was I?” I told her where and she went on.

*

*

*

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Just as Violetta and Prosperine reached the clearing where Ciccolina lived, the Monkey said, they stopped, suddenly, and gasped. There, in the adjacent field, stood Gallante Selvi, barefooted, his hair crazy, his body covered only by a nightshirt too short and flimsy to serve the cause of decency. The girls stood frozen for several minutes and watched as the
artiste
painted the air with invisible brushes, arguing with himself, bending to scribble on a tablet on the ground. “
Demente!
” the Monkey whispered, but Violetta was too mesmerized to hear.

“Ah, so here you are, you lazy girl,” Selvi said when he eyed his employee. “Lucky for you my work has put me in a good mood, or else I’d slap you for your tardiness.”

Prosperine told him she was not late—that she had arrived earlier than expected. (This was because of Violetta’s eager pace along the road!) She looked to Violetta to confirm what she had said, but that naughty girl was paying no attention to words. She was too busy watching the place where Gallante Selvi’s nightshirt ended and his privacy began.

Oblivious, Selvi began babbling about his work—about a vision that had come to him as he woke from a dream that morning. “This will be my masterpiece—my legacy to all of Italy!” he boasted.

Then he turned to Violetta, noticing her for the first time.

As Selvi looked her up and down, Violetta blushed and turned away. “And what wind carries you here, pretty one?” he asked. “I don’t remember bargaining with the macaroni-maker for
two
housekeepers for
Zia
Ciccolina.”

“Sir,” Violetta said in a squeaky voice. “I’m just escorting my friend.”

“Sir,” Gallante Selvi repeated, “I’m just escorting my friend.” He put his hands against his hips and wiggled girlishly as he mimicked her words. Shameless, he was, that one! Those
coglioni
of his flopped back and forth beneath his nightshirt.

Then, without warning, Selvi snatched Prosperine by the hand.

She let out a little scream. “See her tragic story with me, little housekeeper!” he said, dragging the Monkey through the field, pointing here and there at nothing. “See my vision! In the first panel, I Know[649-748] 7/24/02 1:31 PM Page 660

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on the left, Lucia the Innocent prays piously! Opposite that, on the right, she’s a saint in Heaven, the holy patroness of sight. In the middle—the largest window—she rips her eyes from her head!

Embraces her debasement! Blood streams down her face! Her tormentor recoils as the angels bear witness! Oh, such a tragedy to make you weep, the story of the brave little saint! I will paint my Lucia so that her
sacrificio,
depicted there before you in
vetro colorito
, will make you drop to your knees and howl with grief for that saintly girl!”

Here, that
figliu d’una mingia
of a crazy artist stopped abruptly and jerked his head back at Violetta. He circled her, making the sign of the cross and staring rudely. His breath blew against her face. “I have seen you before?” he asked.

Violetta was too afraid to answer.

“Sir,” Prosperine said. “You saw her in the village at the Feast of the Assumption, but her face was veiled. She was the clumsy girl who crowned the Holy Mother and fell off the ladder.”

He ignored the Monkey and spoke directly to Violetta. “You are the one. Yes?”

“Which one is that,
signore
?” Violetta squeaked out.

“The one delivered to me by divine intervention.”

“Delivered, sir?”

“The saints have sent you to me, have they not,
Santa Lucia
?” He reached over and fingered her hair, kneaded her cheeks as if they were bread dough. “Such eyes! Such facial bones!
Perfezione!

. . . Have the saints willed you to me, Lucia? Has Heaven itself commissioned my work?” As he stared and touched and circled her, red blotches appeared on Violetta’s face and neck. The girl was breaking out in hives!

“I must begin sketching you immediately—capture you in case you are a spirit who will dissipate.”

“A spirit,
signore
?” Violetta asked. With the sailors on the docks, my friend had a voice as loud as the fire bell that shouted to all Pescara. But with Gallante Selvi, she could only squeak like a mouse.

“Come with me,” he said, taking her hand in his. “Come down to the sea this instant. I must study your face in brilliant light—must I Know[649-748] 7/24/02 1:31 PM Page 661

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let the sun be my
collaboratore
! Inspiration is a fickle mistress, after all—keep her waiting and she may desert you for another!”

He leaned forward and kissed Violetta’s eyelids—made, with his thumb, the sign of the cross on her forehead. Reaching behind her, he gave her
cula
a little squeeze, as if she were a melon instead of a

“saint.” “My sweet Virgin Martyr,” he whispered, sniffing the air around her. From the start, Selvi acted like the dog he was in Violetta’s presence. “My Lucia, who has been sent to me by the saints themselves!”

“Her name is Violetta D’Annunzio,” the Monkey said. “Her father sells fish.”

“Shut up and go inside to your work!” he ordered, without looking away from Violetta. “Catch up on all you’ve missed by being late!”

“I was
not
late, sir,” the Monkey reminded him again. “Violetta has to walk home now and make the
baccala.
And as for you, sir, you should put on your pants.”

“
Scusa
, Lucia,” that
figliu d’una mingia
said to the fishmonger’s daughter. He took her hand and kissed each finger. “
Un minuto, un
minuto.
” He approached the Monkey and boxed her ears so hard that they rang like the church bells at Easter. He yanked her nose, too, and gave her a shove toward the old woman’s house. Then he turned back to her best friend and dropped to his knees.

“
Santa Lucia,
my blind patroness of vision, help me see! Help me see!” That crazy
artiste
was begging Violetta, praying to her as if she was a statue! Then he got up and took her hand again, leading her past Ciccolina’s goats and chickens. Over an embankment the two of them ran, that crazy painter hurrying Violetta toward the sound of the sea.

Prosperine stood staring at the place where they had disappeared, tears falling from her eyes. Should she run for Violetta’s father? For her own? She listened for Violetta’s screams, her cries for help that did not come. And when she looked back at the hut again, the old hunchback was out in the yard, standing stooped among her chickens, beckoning her.

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*

*

Prosperine pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose.

I had assumed that hard little stone incapable of tears. She had shed none over Ignazia’s troubles the day and night before—no tears for the death of my infant son. She took a gulp of wine. Another. A third.

She was talking like a husband who wears the horns! But I held my tongue and waited. Then she blew her nose again, pushed the cloth back into her sleeve, and sighed. Continued.

If the old witch recognized Prosperine as her tormenter from the village square, she said nothing, took no revenge. Compared with macaroni-making, the work was easy. Ciccolina demanded little and taught the girl much: how to peel back a rabbit’s skin in a single, untorn sheet, how to make a soothing bath of almond water, how to fashion a pipe from clay and smoke. It was from Ciccolina that the Monkey learned the comfort and pleasure of tobacco.

Each morning, she walked beside the old woman, dragging her butcher cart to the village square. The days there were long and hot and Ciccolina had few buyers for those skinny animals. Some days, only Pomaricci the schoolmaster—Ciccolina’s most faithful but most despised customer—bought meat. At noontime, Prosperine watched her sisters stroll through the square, waving quickly from the other side of the road, pretending to be deaf when she called for them to come and sit and visit. Her own sisters, whom she had loved and looked after, now forsook her because she kept company with the old
strega
. As for Prosperine’s father, he never once left the macaroni shop and walked to the square to visit his daughter or ask how she was surviving.

Having discovered in Violetta D’Annunzio the
faccia
of
Santa
Lucia,
the Virgin Martyr, Gallante Selvi changed his plans and announced that he would stay in Pescara through September. Each morning, he met Violetta at the old woman’s cottage and walked her down to the sea. There, he draped her in linen or lace or sackcloth—drawing and painting her in pose after penitent pose.

In town, word spread that that clumsy girl who had crowned the I Know[649-748] 7/24/02 1:31 PM Page 663

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Holy Mother at the Feast of the Assumption and made a shambles of things—that fishmonger’s daughter!—would now be immortalized as
Santa Lucia,
the Virgin Martyr, in a stained-glass masterpiece at a grand cathedral in the great city of Torino.

Gallante Selvi had traveled all the way to Pescara to find her, the gossips said—because only a sun-kissed Pescaran girl would do for such a work of art! It was rumored that
Santa Lucia
herself had appeared in a vision to the
artiste
and had led him to Violetta. All day long, the Monkey sat in the square and heard the buzzing about her friend.

D’Annunzio the fishmonger at first forbade his daughter’s posing for the
artiste
—not out of moral concern but because the mackeral were running. There were hundreds of those silver fish to clean, salt, and sell. Why pay for a helper when a daughter’s help was free? But Violetta’s
passione
for Gallante Selvi was so crazy that she defied her father and went anyway, and before D’Annunzio could manage the time to go after her, his business began to improve dramatically. Suddenly, everyone in Pescara wanted to buy their fish from the father of
Santa Lucia
!