The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (175 page)

Naturally, their showy arrival at midday drew a crowd. Selvi was always happy to act the
strombazzatore.
He stood and made a speech about beauty and art. He and Violetta had returned, he said, to mourn at the graves of his beloved
madrina
and Violetta’s beloved
padre,
and so that he could capture in
chiaroscuro
for the
Santa Lucia
triptych the rich blue shades of the
Adriatico
as it looked only off the Pescaran coast. He described the terrible inconvenience of being so far from the glassworks at Torino and from his trusted glazier who bound together the pieces of his art with ribs of lead. But he had willingly taken on the trouble of doing his own firing and glazing to be in Pescara. His palette would not be limited by mere geography, he told the crowd. Only the hues found in Pescara would do for the cloak and the eyes of
Santa Lucia,
the Virgin Martyr!

Here he took Violetta’s gloved hand and kissed it and the village women sighed. All but the Monkey! She spat on the ground at the lies of that
faccia brutta.

Selvi and the Monkey’s father decided that she should stay at Ciccolina’s house and cook and clean for the
artiste
and his “fine lady” of a wife while they visited. As usual, the macaroni-maker ignored Prosperine’s protests and told her that a complaining daughter was a howling dog begging to be beaten.

On their first day in Pescara, Violetta and Selvi were polite and affectionate with each other—putting on a show for the benefit of
Padre Pomposo
and the other important visitors to Ciccolina’s little cottage. But that night, through the wall,
Prosperine heard the first of the couple’s fighting and fisticuffs.

The next morning, Selvi complained that the cornmeal Prosperine had cooked for his breakfast had no grit and was swill for pigs. He threw the cereal against the wall, barely missing the Monkey’s head, and then left to walk the seacoast.

Violetta came into the little kitchen, hiding her swollen eye with her hand. She told Prosperine that she should forget about their past friendship. That was long ago, she said, and many things had changed. Prosperine would do well to remember who was the servant and who was mistress.

“Smell your hands,
Signora Aristocratica,
” the Monkey retorted. “No doubt they still stink from fish.”

A scowl overtook Violetta’s swollen and bruised face. “Prepare me a warm bath and then leave me,” she said. Prosperine did the first thing but not the second. From the doorway, she stood watching as Violetta disrobed, exposing the pretty pink flesh that that son of a bitch Selvi had marred with welts and bruises. Violetta flinched when she turned and saw the Monkey. “Get out! Get out!” she screamed. “I won’t stand for this disobedience!” But Prosperine approached instead.

Violetta grabbed her nightgown and clutched it to herself. So many injuries, she could not cover them all. Prosperine’s heart ached to see the damage Selvi had done. “This would not have happened,” she told Violetta, “if you had not let him make you his
puttana.
”

“How dare you call me names!” Violetta shouted back. “You, who let that old hag turn you into a witch-woman!”

“Bah!” Prosperine answered. “
Puta!”

“Bah!” Violetta answered back. “
Strega!”

“
Puta!
”

“
Strega!
”

“
Puta!
”

“
Strega!
” Violetta reached out and slapped the Monkey across the face.

When Prosperine raised her hand to slap back, Violetta shrank with such fear in her eyes that her friend’s hand dropped down
again. Gallante Selvi’s cringing wife was nothing like the saucy girl who had paraded on the docks for the fishermen and explained the “dancing” horses to Prosperine and her sisters. The
artiste
had beaten all that out of her. Now Violetta seemed as doomed as the rabbits outside in the old woman’s cages—as tethered to her fate as Ciccolina’s goat.

The two women collapsed into each other’s arms, rocking back and forth and weeping. For the rest of that morning, Violetta told what her year had been. One beating after another,
umiliazione
upon
umiliazione.
Once, when she had refused Selvi in their bed, he accused her of being unfaithful—of being more slippery than the surfaces on which he painted. “Unfaithful with whom?” she had demanded, and Selvi had named half the drunks he’d invited into their
appartamento
, describing in detail the squalid acts she supposedly had performed on each. Then, as if she were guilty of those deeds of which he had wrongly accused her, he dragged her to the washing basin and held her head down in the water so long she was sure she would drown. Another time, when she had fidgeted too much while posing as
Santa Lucia,
he had thrown her against the wall and knocked her unconscious. Her left shoulder never worked right after that. “And he has a friend, Rodolpho, a dirty pig of a
fotografo
,” Violetta
whispered, amidst her sobs and pauses. “Twice Gallante made me pose for that filthy man—ordered me to take off my clothes and spread my legs and worse while that other one took pictures. The second time, I begged him no. I was in the middle of miscarriage, Prosperine! That night, Gallante accused me of enjoying what he had made me do for that photographer and burned me on the back and legs. What kind of man makes his wife do such things and burns her besides? I tell you, Prosperine, I made a tragic mistake the day I left Pescara. Many times I have thought about ending my life to be rid of him. How much worse could Hell be than marriage to that monster who paints the saints but is himself the devil?”

When Violetta had no more terrible stories left to tell, no more tears inside her head, Prosperine bathed her in almond water and rubbed olive oil onto those bruises and scars. Then she dressed
her and brushed her hair as she had done before. Violetta still had the tortoiseshell brushes—that much was the same. She told Prosperine her touch was medicine and the Monkey put her to bed in clean clothes and watched her sleep.

That afternoon in the village square, Prosperine killed and dressed many rabbits—a busy day. Never had butchering satisfied her more. Each head she hacked off, each body she watched twitch and bleed, belonged to that son of a bitch Gallante Selvi. He would suffer for what he had done to her friend. She promised herself that much. He would pay with his life.

But it was not so easy. What could she do? Stick a knife in his heart while half of Pescara watched him paint the glass? Behead him in the village square with his
madrina
’s big cleaver? He deserved such a fate, but she would not live the rest of her life in a dark cell. Not with her beloved friend returned to Pescara—not with Violetta to care for and protect.

At first she tried to inflict
il mal occhio
. Although Ciccolina had refused to teach her the art of vengeance, she hoped that, since she knew how to cure and diagnose the evil eye, she might also have the power to gaze with it, too—to give devils what they deserved when God Himself was too busy to do the job. For the next two, three days, she stared at Gallante Selvi with hatred in her soul. Stared at him while he slept and ate, painted and soldered. Glared back in defiance when he yelled out his list of complaints about her work: her sweeping raised dust and made him sneeze, her scowling face made his eyes hurt, the cornmeal she boiled for his breakfast each morning had no salt or grit.

But her staring did no good. The longer and harder she watched Gallante Selvi with wicked intent, the more powerful and healthy he seemed to become. At night, Violetta’s begging and sobbing would wake her from troubled sleep. In the morning, the suffering wife would tell Prosperine her latest shame, show off her new bruises—teeth marks, once, on her leg, as if she had married a vicious dog instead of a man! But he was a
dead
dog, that one. That much the Monkey promised herself. And when she first whispered
the word
murder
to Violetta, Violetta did not stop her. She listened quietly, her hands fidgeting. Fear and hope were in her eyes.

The triptych—Gallante’s unfinished “masterpiece”—was not going well. He was a perfectionist when he worked, always painting small studies on glass squares before adding even a fingernail or a fold to the half-completed work. When these efforts displeased him, he would throw them against the wall or kick the goat or yank his wife’s long hair or slap her face. He would melt lead cable, soldering one finished piece of glass to another, and then hate what he had joined, pulling the pieces apart and smashing a day’s or several days’ work against the iron kiln. All of his attempts to capture with paint on glass the gloomy
azzurro
of the sea were failures to his critical eye. Over and over, he mixed his pigments and lead powders and tried the results on squares of milky glass. He wrote down his recipes and waited like an expectant father for the paint to bake itself onto the glass inside the kiln. Always, when he yanked it out again and held the result to the sun, he saw
that it was wrong and flung the hot glass, shouting terrible curses: “I shit on the Virgin Mary!” he would say, or “May Jesus Christ fuck your sister!”

Prosperine was expected after these tantrums to drop her work and sweep up his mess. Selvi liked the freedom of working barefooted and warned her that he would beat her blind if he cut his feet. And so, whenever she heard the smashing, she had to grab her broom and run. Each day she added new breakage, spilled paint pots, and jumbles of lead wire to the pile out past where the goats were kept. Then one morning, a kid chewed through its rope and helped himself to some of Selvi’s wreckage. Later that day, Prosperine watched the creature vomit up glass and wire. Before the sun set, that poor goat convulsed and bled and died from what was inside him. Then she knew how she would kill Gallante Selvi.

They prepared for days, Violetta and she, whispering secretly when Gallante was near and hurrying to their preparations when he left. They decided they would do the job on Sunday—the only day of the week when Prosperine was not obliged to go to the square and
butcher. She collected Selvi’s discards of colored glass, broke the shards into chips and crumbs, and ground these to a fine powder.
Crunch crunch crunch
—she could still hear the sound of the glass between the mortar and pestle, she said. In a pot on the stove, she soaked and boiled scraps of the cable he used for glazing. Little by little, they would poison him with lead and cut up his insides with glass. They worked when he went to the tavern to drink, or to the ocean to swim. If they could only get him to swallow the food they tainted, they would be rid of his tyranny. By Saturday Prosperine and Violetta had many handfuls of fine, glittering powder.

“Tomorrow morning, his cornmeal will have grit, all right,” Prosperine whispered to Violetta. “More grit than he bargained for!” But she would take no chances: on that day, she would cook for his afternoon meal some special
braciola
rolled with ground veal and walnuts and more of their special powdered glass. For dinner, she would roast him a chicken stuffed with cornbread and
pignoli
and plenty more of that powder! By nighttime or the day after, he would be as dead as Ciccolina’s little goat. That
bastardo
would die from his own
digestione
!

Prosperine sat still in the chair and closed her eyes. Was she telling the truth? Telling a story to frighten me? Had she fallen into
torpore
from all that wine? Why had she stopped her story at this inconvenient place?

“Wake up,” I said, and shook her sleeve. Her eyes popped open.

“Tempesta,” she growled. “It
worked
!”

That next morning, Gallante Selvi ate his breakfast with no complaints—two bowls of the gritty mush made with extra salt and grit and the lead-poisoned water. Violetta and Prosperine busied themselves, holding their breath until the last spoonful had been swallowed—until they heard the sound of Selvi’s satisfied belch. An hour later, he was already complaining of thirst and nausea and a strange taste that would not leave his mouth. If he could only shit, he said, he’d feel better.

“One of Ciccolina’s laxatives will fix you,” Prosperine told him. “It tastes vile but it does the job.” She brewed him a tea of lemon-weed and fennel and lead water, with a big pinch of something extra. “Your
madrina
taught me this recipe,” she said, handing Selvi the tea. “The gravel in it will loosen you up. Drink it quick, not slow. Two cups of the stuff are better than one.”

He swallowed it gratefully in long gulps that made his
pomo d’Adamo
go up and down, up and down. “
Grazi, signorina! Grazi!
” he told Prosperine, wiping his mouth and lying back on his bed. On that last day of his life, Gallante Selvi was the politest of gentlemen!

By noontime, he was whimpering and moaning and pulling up his shirt so that Violetta and his servant-girl could watch the strange movements of his stomach. He complained that his insides felt hot, his head felt dizzy. His hands could not make fists. “A good big meal will settle that stomach of yours,” Prosperine told him. She helped him off the bed and to the table. But when she placed the plate of
braciola
in front of him, Selvi coughed a milky vomit onto the uneaten food.

While he slept fitfully, Violetta paced the floor and the field outside, sobbing and muttering to herself. Prosperine stuffed and roasted Selvi’s special chicken.

But he never ate that bird. By late afternoon, he awoke with stomach pains that made him scream. An hour later, he was shitting bloody stool. As night fell, he slept so quietly, they had to put a goose feather to his nose to see the breathing.

Somewhere in the nighttime, his thrashing began. Strings of blood and drool came out of his mouth. His stench was foul, his eyes wild. A few times, he tried to speak—to pray, perhaps—but his lips only made movement without sound. By the candlelight, his green eyes seemed lit with the suffering of his painted saints!

Toward the end, Violetta could not look. She cried and said they had done a terrible thing—a thing that would damn them both in the afterlife. “You were damned in this one!” Prosperine reminded her. “Remember the evil he did—the evil he would have
kept
doing if we hadn’t stopped him! We did what we had to do!” Still, the
Monkey took no pleasure in Gallante Selvi’s dying and death. All during that night, water poured out of the sky and she wondered if the rain was the old witch’s tears.