The House of Scorta (3 page)

“I almost died a happy man… If not for a few seconds, at most. A few seconds too many… I felt the hot stones strike my body, and it felt good… It was how I thought it would be. Blood flowing. Life escaping. And me smiling to the very end, taunting them… It almost happened, but now I’ll never know that satisfaction. Life tripped me up one last time… I can hear them laughing all around me. The men of Montepuccio are laughing. The earth drinking up my blood is laughing. The donkey and the dogs are laughing. ‘Look at Luciano Mascalzone. He thought he was taking Filomena and deflowered her sister instead. Look at Luciano Mascalzone, who thought he would die in triumph. Look at him lying there in the dust, grimacing like a clown…’ Fate has made a fool of me. The sun is laughing at my mistake… My life is a failure. My death is a failure… I am Luciano Mascalzone and I spit on fate, which makes a mockery of men.”

The woman Luciano had made love to was indeed Immacolata. Filomena Biscotti had died of a pulmonary embolism not long after Mascalzone’s arrest. She was survived by her younger sister, Immacolata, who moved into the family home, the only remaining bearer of the Biscotti name. Time passed, fifteen years of imprisonment. Little by little, Immacolata began to resemble her sister. She had the face that Filomena might have had if she’d been allowed to age. Immacolata never married. She felt as if life had lost interest in her and she would never experience anything more thrilling than the changing of the seasons. In her years of boredom, she often thought back on the man who had courted her sister when she herself was still a child, and it was always with a kind of quiver of pleasure. He was terrifying. His roguish smile haunted her. The memory of him made her drunk with excitement.

Fifteen years later, when she opened the door and saw that man standing before her, asking for nothing, everything seemed clear. She had no choice but to submit to the blind force of destiny. The scoundrel was right in front of her, within her reach. Later, in the bedroom, when, at the sight of her nude body, he whispered her sister’s name, she paled. She suddenly understood that he thought she was Filomena. She hesitated a moment. Should she resist him? Point out his mistake? She hadn’t the slightest desire to do so. There he stood before her. If taking her for her sister would bring him greater pleasure, she would grant him this luxury. There was no lie in it. She gave in to everything he wanted, without complication. Simply to be, for once in her life, a man’s woman.

Don Giorgio had begun to administer last rites to the dying man. But Luciano could no longer hear him. He was doubled up with rage.

“I am Luciano Mascalzone and I am dying in ridicule. My whole life for this bad joke. But it doesn’t matter. Filomena or Immacolata, it makes no difference. I am satisfied. Can anyone understand that? Fifteen years I thought of that woman. Fifteen years I dreamed of her embrace and the comfort it would bring me. The minute I got out, I did what I had to do. I went to that house and made love to the woman I found there. Fifteen years, thinking only of that. Fate decided to play a trick on me, but who can fight that? It’s not in my power to reverse the course of rivers or put out the stars in the sky. I am only a man. I did all a man can do. I went all the way there, knocked on that door, and made love to the woman who opened it… I am only a man. If fate wants to make a fool of me, I can do nothing about it… I am Luciano Mascalzone and I’m sinking into death, far from the noisy world sniggering over my body…”

He died before the village priest had finished praying. He would have laughed if he had known, before dying, what would come of this day.

Immacolata Biscotti became pregnant. The poor woman would give birth to a son. Thus the Mascalzone line was born. From a blunder. A misunderstanding. From a scoundrel of a father, murdered two hours after the embrace, and an old maid who gave herself to a man for the first time. A family was born. From a man who’d made a mistake and a woman who’d played along with the lie because her knees were clattering with desire.

A family was born of this day of burning sunlight, because destiny felt like toying with people the way cats, using the tips of their paws, sometimes do with injured birds.

T
he wind is blowing. It flattens the dry grass and makes the rocks whistle. It’s a hot wind carrying the sounds of the village and the smells of the sea. I am an old woman. My body creaks like the windblown trees. I am burdened by fatigue and the wind is blowing. Let me lean on you to keep from tottering. Kindly give me your arm. You are a man in your prime. I feel it in your body’s calm strength. Clinging to you, I won’t give in to exhaustion. The wind whistles in our ears and carries away some of my words. You can hardly hear what I’m saying. Don’t let it bother you. I prefer it this way. Let the wind bear away a little of what I’m saying. It’s easier for me. I’m not used to speaking. I am a Scorta. My brothers and I were the children of the Mute, and the whole town of Montepuccio used to call us “the silent ones.”

You are surprised to hear me speak. It’s the first time I’ve spoken in such a long time. You’ve been in Montepuccio for twenty years, maybe more, and you’ve always seen me deep in silence. You thought, like all of Montepuccio, that I had slipped into the icy waters of old age and would never return. Then this morning I appeared and asked for a word with you, and you gave a start. It was as if a dog or the front of a house had begun speaking. You didn’t think it was possible. That’s why you agreed to meet with me. You want to know what old Carmela has to say. You want to know why I had you come here, at night. You give me your arm and I lead you down this little earthen path. We have passed the church on our left. As we turn our backs to the village, your curiosity grows. I thank you for your curiosity, don Salvatore. It helps me not to change my mind.

I’ll tell you why I’ve started speaking again. It’s because yesterday I began to go mad. Don’t laugh. Why are you laughing? You think that someone can’t be lucid enough to know she’s going mad, if she really is going mad? You’re wrong. On his deathbed, my father said, “I’m dying,” and he died. I’m going mad. It began yesterday, and now my days are numbered. Yesterday I thought back on my life, as I often do, and I couldn’t remember the name of a man I once knew rather well. I’ve thought of him almost every day for the past sixty years. Yesterday his name escaped me. For two seconds, my memory became a vast white desert. It didn’t last long. Then the name resurfaced. Korni. That was the man’s name. Korni. I found it again, but if I could forget his name for even a second, it means my mind has cracked and soon everything will slip away. I know it. That’s why I came to you this morning. I must speak before everything is lost. That’s why I brought you this gift. It’s something I want you to keep. I will tell you about it. I will tell you its story. I want you to hang it in the nave of the church, among the ex-votos. It has to do with Korni. It will look good hanging on the wall of your church. I can’t keep it at home. I risk waking up one morning, having forgotten the story behind it and the person I intended it for. I want you to keep it in your church, and when my granddaughter Anna is old enough, you must give it to her. I will be dead. Or senile. You must do this. It will be as if I’m speaking to her across the years. Look. Here it is. It’s a little piece of wood I had cut, sanded and varnished. In the middle I had them put this old ticket for the Naples to New York line and, under the ticket, a copper medallion engraved with the words: “In memory of Korni. Who guided us through the streets of New York.” I’m entrusting it to you. Don’t forget. It’s for Anna.

I’m going to talk now, don Salvatore, but there’s one last thing I must do. I brought some cigarettes for you. I like the smell of tobacco. Smoke, I beg you. The wind will blow the swirls of smoke to the cemetery. My dear departed love the smell of cigarettes. Smoke, don Salvatore. It will do us both good. Smoke a cigarette for the Scortas.

I’m afraid to speak. The air is warm and the sky hangs low so it can listen to us. I will tell you everything. The wind will carry my words away. Let me imagine that I’m speaking to the wind, and that you can barely hear me.

I
mmacolata never recovered from the birth. It was as if all her spinster’s strength had been drained by this exertion of the flesh. A birth was too great an event for this hapless soul, whom life had accustomed to the unbroken calm of empty days. Her body succumbed in the days following the delivery. She grew thinner before everyone’s eyes, staying in bed all day, casting fearful glances at the cradle of an infant she didn’t know what to do with. She had only enough time to name the newborn child: Rocco. That was all. The idea of being a good or bad mother did not trouble her in the least. Things were much simpler than that. A creature lay beside her, squirming in its diapers, a creature that was all demands, and to whose infinite appetite she didn’t know how to respond. The simplest thing was to die — and die she did, one dark September day.

Don Giorgio was called in and kept vigil over the spinster’s body all night, as was the custom. Neighborhood women offered to wash and dress the body. Little Rocco was put in the next room and the night was spent in prayer and somnolence. At dawn, when four young men arrived to carry the body away—she was so thin that two would have sufficed, but don Giorgio, for the sake of appearances, had insisted—the women keeping watch approached Father Zampanelli and one of them asked:

“So, Father, are you going to do it?”

Don Giorgio did not understand.

“Am I going to do what?” he asked.

“You know what I mean, Father.”

“What are you talking about?” the priest asked impatiently.

“Put the child down. . . are you going to do it?” The priest was speechless. The old woman, emboldened by his silence, explained that the people in town thought this was the best thing to do. This was the child of a scoundrel. His mother had just died. It was certainly a sign that the Lord was punishing their unnatural union. The best thing was to kill the child, who, in any case, had entered life through the wrong door. But it was not a question of revenge. That was why they had all thought of don Giorgio. His hands were pure. He would simply be giving back to the Lord this little monster who did not belong here. The old woman explained this in all innocence. Don Giorgio was livid. His anger got the better of him. He rushed to the town square, screaming.

“You pack of heathens! The fact that your minds could think of such a heinous thing shows that you have the devil in you! Immacolata’s son is a child of God. More than any of you! A child of God, do you hear me? May you rot in Hell if you touch a single hair on his head! You say you are Christians, but you’re animals! You deserve for me to leave you to your squalor and God’s retribution. This child is under my protection, do you hear? Whoever dares so much as touch this child will have to answer to the wrath of God. This whole village stinks of filth and ignorance. Go back to your fields. Sweat like dogs, since that’s all you know how to do. And thank God for a little rain from time to time, since even that is more than you deserve.”

When he had finished addressing the stunned inhabitants of Montepuccio, don Giorgio went to fetch the child. That same day he took him to San Giocondo, the closest village, a bit to the north, on the coast. The two towns had always been enemies. Rival gangs fought legendary battles. The fishermen had regular confrontations on the water, cutting each other’s nets or stealing the day’s catch. He entrusted the child to a fisherman and his wife and returned to his parish. When a poor soul inquired one Sunday, on the town square, what he had done with the child, the priest answered:

“What do you care, you brute? You were ready to sacrifice him and now you’re concerned? I brought him to the people of San Giocondo, who are better than you are.”

For a whole month, don Giorgio refused to perform his functions. There was no Mass, Communion, or confession. “I’ll do my duties the day there are Christians in this town,” he said.

Time passed and don Giorgio’s wrath subsided. The people of Montepuccio, as sheepish as schoolchildren caught red-handed, crowded around the doors of the church every day. The village was waiting, heads hanging. When All Soul’s Day arrived, the priest threw open the doors of the church, and, for the first time in a long while, the bells rang out. “I’m not about to punish the dead just because their descendants are cretins,” grumbled don Giorgio. And Mass was said.

R
occo grew up and became a man. He had a new name—a combination of his father’s surname and that of the fisherman and his wife who had taken him in—a name that was soon etched in every mind in the Gargano: Rocco Scorta Mascalzone. While his father had been a good-for-nothing scoundrel who lived on petty plunder, Rocco was a genuine brigand. He didn’t return to Montepuccio until he was old enough to sow terror. He attacked the peasants in the fields. Poached livestock. Killed burghers on the roads when they lost their way. He pillaged farms and robbed fishermen and merchants. Several
carabinieri
were sent after him, but were later found by the roadside, a bullet in the skull, pants down, or flung like dolls over the prickly pears. He was violent and insatiable. It was rumored that he had at least twenty women. When his reputation had been made and he ruled the whole region like a lord over his people, he returned to Montepuccio like a man without shame, his head held high. The town had not changed in twenty years. Everything seemed fated to remain forever the same in Montepuccio. It was the same little cluster of houses huddled together. Long winding staircases led down to the sea. There were a thousand possible paths to take through the maze of narrow streets. Old men came and went from the port, climbing up and down the steep staircases, slow as mules pacing themselves in the sun, while groups of children scampered tirelessly up and down the steps. The village looked out on the sea. The façade of the church faced the waves. Year after year, the wind and sun polished the marble streets smooth.