That Summer in Sicily (3 page)

“
Posso aiutarvi?
May I help you?” I ask in several ascending registers.

Their efficiency is complete, though, and all the goods are in hand or ensconced upon the folded white cloths that they place over their pirate headdresses to cushion the burden of a wash basket full of bread or one of biscotti or of peaches and plums still nodding on their branches. And the parade begins. Out the door they walk, hips swaying, backs and shoulders arched, breasts thrust. Chanting, praying. Alone, I bring up the rear, try to walk the way they walk, swish my hips under my jeans, hold my head as though an amphora of wine rests there. It feels good. The sun is torrid upon us, the scents of the food are glorious, and as I run my hand along the prickly leaves of the yews lining the white gravel path I feel so grateful to be inside this dream of Sicily.

CHAPTER II

I
N THE DINING HALL THERE IS A PREPONDERANCE OF WOMEN
. Perhaps there are forty of them with twelve or so men scattered among the three tables. Freshly slicked hair, some sort of jacket over buttoned-to-the-throat shirts, three of the men might be under thirty, while the others—prepared in equally elegant fashion—might be a generation or so older. Save Tosca and I and two others, all the women wear mourning.

Agata shows Fernando and I to our places—his next to the lamb rescuer and mine near a woman who she presents as Carlotta. We are introduced as
i Veneziani.
The marked skin on Carlotta’s hands says she might be sixty, yet her great black fawn’s eyes and small-boned thinness make her seem a girl. Both Carlotta and a somewhat older-looking woman called Olga, who sits opposite from us and shakes hands with me across the table, wear dark print dresses of a vintage 1940s’ style. Every woman in the room wears her hair in some construction of intricate braids. I try to smooth my loose, long, too curly hair and feel barbaric.

“Where have you been?” Fernando wants to know.

“I went to see the kitchen,” I tell him grinning.

Everyone seems to be seated except Tosca and the tall, stout man with whom she confers near one of the tables. Though their backs are to us, the way they stand, almost touching, and lean to listen to each other makes them seem a couple. So Tosca has a husband, I think, and yet, when they turn to take their places at table, I see that the man, a magnificent Christopher Plummer look-alike but with those same black Arab eyes, is wearing a cleric’s collar. A priest. He seats Tosca, remains standing, and strikes a glass with a knife handle. Closes his eyes, opens his arms wide, palms upward, and begins to pray. Everyone takes the hand of the person next to her or him. Heads are bowed and lips move in loud personal thanksgiving. Pitchers of wine and water are passed and laden serving plates fly in all directions,
buon pranzo.

“Allora, come si chiama questo posto?”
I ask Carlotta, pretending to have forgotten the villa’s unforgettable name.

“
Non ha un nome veremente ma la gente locale l’ha sempre chiamata Villa Donnafugata. É una lunga storia.
It doesn’t really have a name but the local people have always called it Villa Donnafugata. The house of the fleeing woman. A long story.”

I don’t tell her that it’s precisely a long story that I’d like to hear but only smile and say,
“Ho capito, ho capito.”
I understand.

Carlotta continues, though. In a quiet, aristocratic voice that contrasts with the lusty dialect of the others ’round us, she tells me that the villa is an eighteenth-century Anjou castle built originally to be that noble family’s hunting lodge in this part of Sicily.
La signora—
as she refers to Tosca—inherited the villa from an Anjou prince whose ward she once was. She acknowledges my widened gaze.

“Yes,
la signora
’s life has often been a very romantic one,” she says, lustrous eyes flashing and, perhaps, about to spill tears.

She tells me that, bit by bit,
la signora
restored the place. For more than thirty years,
la signora
has lived here with—and at this point Carlotta hesitates as though even she is not certain who all the residents might be—a number of her friends and friends of friends.

“People in need. Of other people, mostly,” she says. “When villagers, local farmers, find themselves alone—widows, widowers—many of them come to make their home here. If they have grown children, some prefer to live together with them, but for others, well, they find that the sort of communal life we have here helps them to stay well, to stay young. And if need be, we have a health-care facility and staff nurses, visiting physicians. The women are like sisters; I’m sure you’ve already noticed that. In fact, many of them are related by blood or by marriage. Most of them were neighbors in the village or worked side by side in the fields all their lives. We are all related by affection. We are part of one another’s history. We are Sicilian.”

She says this last as though there is nothing more to say.

Wanting her to tell me more, after a while I ask her, “How many people live here?”

“It changes. People die, but also babies are born here.”

“Babies? Here?”

“Yes, babies. We have a birthing clinic here. A beautiful facility, very small, though, with room for only three or four women. Two of our widows were midwives, and they are training some of the younger women to take their place. Obstetricians from the city visit weekly, but often I think they come because they like to be here. Because they like to dine with us. By the way, we’re a bit excited today since one of our expectant mothers is very close to her time. Very close, indeed. You can imagine how many aunties and uncles and surrogate grandparents each of our babies has. Mother and child can stay for as long as a year if they like. Until they can get situated more permanently.”

I note that Carlotta does not speak of unwed mothers, of homelessness, of poverty. Rather she has said:
People who need other people. We are all related by affection. We are part of one another’s history. We are Sicilian.

My gaze is drawn over and over again to a woman who sits to the left of the priest. Carlotta looks at me looking at the woman.

“She, the one sitting next to Don Cosimo, is
la signora
Tosca’s sister. She is
la signora
Mafalda.”

So Christopher Plummer is called Don Cosimo. And to his left, the small woman with the blond braids and the beautiful profile is Tosca’s sister, the one who’d been sitting and writing in the cleft of the magnolia when we arrived.
Mafalda. Carlotta. Olga. Agata. Don Cosimo.
I look from one to the other. I want to ask Carlotta if she knows whether we’ll be staying beyond lunch but the question, any way I could pose it, might be awkward for her to answer. I must wait for word from
la signora
herself.

Instead I ask, “But how does the household function? Does everyone have a specific job?”

“We all do what we’re good at doing. And since there’s so
very much
to do to maintain a place as vast as this,” she says sweeping her arms, throwing back her head in laughter, “with so much land, the animals, the gardens, our work is almost constant. Sometimes I think the truth is another, though. That the work is only an
intermezzo, un divertimento,
to fill the scant hours between meals. We eat often and well here,
signora. . . . Io non ricordo il suo nome, scusatemi.
”

“Mi chiamo Chou-Chou e mio marito è Fernando.”

I don’t know if Carlotta has heard me, since she’s begun speaking in dialect with another of the women about, I think, the imminent birth of the baby. But perhaps it’s not that, since their faces demonstrate sorrow rather than happy anticipation. Carlotta excuses herself, rises, and together with another woman leaves the dining hall. I take a moment to look about the room. To study the people. Never have I seen or imagined anything like this. Like them. I hear the woman called Olga telling Fernando that thirty-four widows are presently in residence in the villa. Further, she tells him that during the harvests of wheat and grapes and olives, twenty or more women from neighboring villages join the widows in their work. Day by day, she says, the thirty-four resident women perform all the cooking, baking, preserving, serving, cleaning, scrubbing, polishing, sewing, mending, washing, ironing, and the tending of flower, herb, and vegetable gardens, as well as the tending of the courtyard animals. She says that the household presently counts well over half a hundred souls within its walls. Fernando asks about the men who live here.

“
Adesso ci sono ventidue uomini.
Now there are twenty-two men who live and work here, but, like the women, their numbers increase during the harvests, the threshing, the sowing, the olive pressing, the winemaking seasons. They care for the fruit orchards, see to the dairy cows, the cattle, work the land. Some tend the small herds of sheep and goats and pigs. During this season, baskets of food are brought to the men who work the land farthest from the villa, but you’ll see them all at table this evening,” Olga explains. “The men you see here now are mostly all full-time gardeners.”

“Gardeners, and also the artisans who work at the restoration of the villa,” says another of the women.

“And there are always one or two itinerant artisans who come to our table each day. The shoemaker spends every other Saturday here.”

“And the knife and tool sharpener comes on Mondays.”

“The men who come to fleece the sheep.”

“And don’t forget Furio,” says the youngest and perhaps prettiest of the widows.

“Ah, Furio,” they say in chorus. All the women laugh and shake their open hands at chest height in a gesture of extreme admiration.

Everyone at the table adds the name of another support player to the list of rotating guests and I’m already wishing the dream would last long enough so that I might know all of them. I like it here inside Tosca’s place.

Slowly, the hall is emptying. Each person methodically piles plates and silver onto large trolleys. Some gather whatever food remains on the serving pieces onto sheets of thick white paper, the ends of which they skillfully fold and twist, then pass the goods down to a widow who identifies the contents of each package with a bold black pen. She piles the packages then into wooden fruit crates, which she places on a different sort of wagon or trolley. Everyone knows his or her part in the play. No wasted steps. No wasted time. Two of the men who were at table wheel the marked packages out of the hall and I look after them, wondering the destination of all that beautiful food.

Fernando is still in conversation with Olga, and so—without asking if I might—I begin to take up one of the cloths as I see women doing at other tables. It’s Carlotta, back from her mission, who takes it from me, saying I shouldn’t bother. I stand awkwardly by until she consents, gesturing for me to take the other ends of a cloth that she has begun to remove. Together we shake and snap and carefully fold the long, magnificently embroidered piece with easy precision. It ends up in my hands, and when she takes it from me, Carlotta smiles. I see that she has been crying.

Pretending not to notice, I ask her, “Where will they take that food?”

“To the church of San Salvatore in the village. At six-thirty each afternoon, the food is distributed to the villagers. Only the people who have need come to take it. I think it’s been nearly twenty years since we began this program. In the beginning,
la signora
and Don Cosimo would deliver the food directly to the families, but now that there are so many more, it’s become necessary for the families to come fetch it. Actually it’s better this way since, before the distribution begins, everyone gathers in the church to say the rosary with Don Cosimo. He blesses them, blesses the food, the angelus rings, and everyone goes home to their suppers. I go to help whenever I can. It’s my favorite part of the day.”

Carlotta is crying openly now, wiping tears from her thin cheeks with the back of her hand, blotting her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief pulled from the bosom of her dress.

I venture, “Is it the baby?”

“No. No, the baby seems to have decided to rest where she is for a while longer. One of our women is, well, she’s very sick.
Lei, non ce la fa.
She’s not going to make it.”

“
Capisco, mi dispiace.
I understand, I’m sorry,” I say and she looks at me, brushing my cheek with the hand that brushed her own so that now my face is wet with her tears. Agata is racing toward us.

“I’ll show you to your room now, if you like,” she says.

“But we haven’t spoken with
la signora
yet, and I don’t know if . . .”

“It’s all arranged. If you would care to stay, you are welcome.
La signora
will speak with you later about the details.
Venite.
”

Touching Fernando’s arm, nodding at him to follow her, Agata leads the way out of the hall, over the uneven stone floor of another hall, and we mount a wide marble stairway. On the third landing, Agata stops.

“Ecco,”
she says in front of a beautiful if very ruined wooden door. Taking a long, flat iron key from the ring on her belt, she inserts it into the lock, flings the door wide, hands the key to Fernando.
“Buon riposo,”
she says and softly closes the door.

The room meanders over a space larger than our Venetian apartment. There are a series of short corridors, anterooms, and alcoves that are sparsely, artfully furnished with a small bench or an immense sheaf of lavender or a collection of gilt candlesticks set upon a rickety table. Up three steps made of round flat stones, the white-walled space opens upon a high-ceilinged area with a white bed, two winged chairs covered in white linen, a table with a small wrought-iron lamp, an armoire. The tips of the pines in the garden sway and creak in the hot African winds just outside a long, paned open window.

“What do you think?” I ask him.