The Secret of Santa Vittoria Page 18

  They seized his name and began to shout it in the Big Room, booming it off the rough stone walls, “Longo, Longo”—a miracle in their midst, one more twig for people who were drowning. One of the youngest men ran out of the cellar and started up the mountain. He ran until his legs would not go any farther, and then he cried out Longo’s name to one of the men coming down. There was now a steady line of people coming down the mountain with their burdens of wine, and the man turned and called the message back to the man behind him and that one called it back to another, and in this way the message flew up the mountain from mouth to mouth, leaping up at fifty feet a step. By the time Bombolini and the priest came out of the cave and into the sun and looked up at the city, Luigi Longo, as puzzled as most of the people in Santa Vittoria, was already on the way down.

  Longo is an example of something that can happen to a man here. When he was young he had somehow managed to get away and go to Switzerland and become an apprentice electrician. But he came home one day for his father’s funeral, and a few months later there was a letter from Constanzia Casamassima telling him that she was crrying his child and that he had better come back and make her honest or her father and her brothers would go up there and make him something she would rather not describe. Longo came back, and then there was the grape harvest and the baby was born and he had inherited a piece of a terrace and some vines, and one day Longo woke up to find that his visa had expired and he couldn’t go back to Switzerland and he was bound to the soil of Santa Vittoria as securely as were the roots of the vines he tended in a subdued rage.

  We were spoiled by Longo here. He never lost the dream of wires and when he was sober he was a genius with electrical things, a first-rate electrician with tenth-rate equipment. There was no piece of wiring that Longo had not at some time restored or re-created. The wiring here was our Lazarus, sickly and dying and dead, and to them Longo was our Christ, performing a miracle a week.

  He looked at the first of the two wine cellars, and he went into the water and walked along the walls, and in total silence he came outside and drew some pictures in the sand and then he stood up and brushed the hair out of his long, tired, ravaged face and said: “I can do this thing.”

  There is no need here to put down in detail all of the things that Longo did or started. There was an old generator here which was kept in the cellar of Santa Maria of the Burning Oven and which had been left behind by a traveling circus when a juggler had attempted to kill a tightrope walker over the love of a twelve-year-old acrobat, a boy, which confused the people here, and everyone had cut everyone else and gone to the hospital or to jail, and we were left with a set of Indian clubs and the generator for the lights. He told them to get the pump from the water tower and to cut down all of the electric wires that ran from the foot of the mountain to the Fat Gate and to bring the wire to the Big Room and after that he ordered the two best bicycles in the city to be brought down the mountain with four or five of the best young riders.

  Bombolini went back outside of the cave, because he didn’t understand what Longo was doing and it made him nervous not to understand what was happening. The wine was now spread out all over the flat sandy place and was piling up back across the flat part of the valley.

  “How’s it going?” the men who were carrying the wine would shout to the mayor.

  “Fine. It’s going well. It’s going well.”

  They would smile then. They were happy and excited. They were doing something and had some work to do. Bombolini also made marks in the sand. There were 18 hours left in this day and there were 17 hours left in the day ahead. The total was 35. He added them over and over again, as if by coming up with some new answer he could change the order of the hours. He looked very sad then.

  “What’s the matter?” Vittorini asked him.

  “Nothing is the matter. Everything is good,” Bombolini said, but the anguish was there, in the numbers: 35 and o.

  The Germans would arrive in 35 hours. Not one bottle of wine had as yet been hidden.

  AND when they put up the plaques, next to the one for Bombolini and Tufa, alongside the eternal green flame that already burns in the piazza for Babbaluche the cobbler, there should be one for Longo. The things Luigi Longo did that morning are remembered here and will always be remembered here.

  By seven o’clock the pump had been pried loose from the base of the water tower and the generator had been cleaned and the old fire hose had been carried down the mountain as if it were an old tired python and the bicycles had been taken apart and readjusted so that, when they were pumped and their wheels, which were elevated from the ground, were turned, they caused the drive wheels on the generator to turn and power was created and a dim light began to appear in the bulbs, which grew brighter and brighter as the young men drove the bicycle wheels. Fabio was among the bike riders.

  “Now you have come back,” Bombolini said.

  “Only for today and tomorrow,” Fabio said. “I won’t be here to humiliate myself when the bastards come.”

  “We’re going to do it, Fabio. We’re going to save the wine.”

  “Even if you lose your honor.”

  Bombolini was hurt by the boy’s bitterness.

  “You get on fire, Fabio. It’s no good. Fire in the heart only ends up causing smoke in the head.”

  Babbaluche, who was fashioning the leather belts that connected the generator to the bicycle wheels, had heard them.

  “It’s more peasant wisdom,” he said to Fabio. “Don’t listen to him. It’s more smooth words. What did my father say? ‘Beware of the man who makes cream with his mouth; he winds up making butter with his nose.’ You watch him, Fabio. When the krauts come he’ll wind up with butter all over his nose.”

  Fabio was disgusted. He turned away from Bombolini, who disgusted him.

  “Where are the real Italians?” he said but no one heard him, or if they did no one answered.

  “That’s exactly what I plan to do. When they come I plan to have butter all over my nose,” Bombolini said.

  When the generator had built up a store of energy Longo connected it to the pump. At first, for the first few minutes at least, there was terror in the Big Room because nothing happened to the pump. The moving parts were heavy with old oil and stubborn like an old ox, but then Longo began to move the parts by hand and they began to move on their own after that, grudgingly, only as far as they had to go, the way a snail moves when it is prodded, but then to go a little more swiftly each moment and then to gurgle and cough and burble and finally to thump now and then and all at once to go thump, thump, thump, thump, and water began to gush from the mouth of the hose. They heard the cheer from the Big Room all the way up the mountain, because the hollow roars went up the ancient air shafts out into the pastures above the cellars, and they could hear them in the town.

  When the old hose broke, which happened often, it was Longo who fixed that as well. He sent boys up onto the terraces and they came back with grape leaves and vines, and they tied them over the breaks in the tired old fabric of the hose, like crude bandages to stop the bleeding of a wound.

  Longo came out of the cave after that, and he sat down with Bombolini in the warm sun.

  “We’re going to do it,” Longo said. “The first cellar will be empty in an hour.”

  Bombolini rose and took Longo’s hand and he kissed him on both cheeks. “He says we’re going to do it,” he said to Vittorini.

  “Yes. I heard him say it. We’re going to do it.”

  Old Vines came out of the cave after that. “That was clever of you,” he said to Longo, “using the grape leaves. So the grapes will save the grapes. It is fitting.”

  “We’re going to do it,” Bombolini said.

  “Yes, we’re going to do it,” the cellar master said.

  Bombolini started back up the mountain then for Santa Vittoria, and he was conscious that never in his life had he ever felt happier than he felt right then.

  TUFA was like the others here
. He had come awake with the sun, and in the end he couldn’t stay in bed with the sun up. He wanted to stay in the bed, next to this woman, but he heard the sounds in the piazza and the oxen in the lanes and he felt that he must get out of the bed. Before he did he was conscious that she was awake also, lying next to him, looking at him.

  “You should go back to sleep,” she said. “It’s very important for you. You should lie here for days and get your strength back.”

  It caused him to laugh and that offended her. One of them was always laughing at something the other had not meant to be funny.

  “Do you really think I’d get my strength back lying here next to you all day?”

  “Oh, that. Oh, I see. Soldier talk. It was uncalled for.”

  “Why? You have no shame. You told me.”

  She smiled at him then. “It’s true. I was born outside shame. It used to worry my teachers at school. They always felt I was going to get in some terrible trouble.”

  “And did you?”

  “Of course not. Since I had no shame I wasn’t attracted to the kind of people who get you into trouble.”

  “Which is why you are here in bed with me.”

  “I don’t know why I’m here in this bed with you. Except that I want to be.” It was she who got up.

  “What are you doing?” Tufa said. “I’m the peasant here. I’m the one who gets up.”

  “I’m going to get us something to eat,” Caterina said.

  “I’m not hungry for food right now.”

  “You’re the one with no shame.”

  “I’m the one who is starved,” Tufa said.

  He watched her come back across the room toward him. She had no clothes on and there was no consciousness of herself, and he knew that no other woman in Santa Vittoria would ever be able to walk that way or do such a thing.

  “You’re so honest,” Caterina said. “I could never say a thing that way. I haven’t learned to talk that way yet.”

  He reached up and brought her to the bed.

  “No, I see it,” Tufa said. “It’s true. You have no shame.”

  When they were through he did sleep again, and it was her turn to listen to the sounds of the city and the morning. She sat in the bed and looked at his uniform, black, stained, dirty, torn. It would have to be done away with before the Germans came. The sight of the uniform saddened her, because it told by itself the ordeal Tufa must have endured. Very quietly then she got out of the bed and went into a back room and came out with a suitcase full of clothes that had once belonged to her husband. He had left them there in the event that one day he might be forced to run. They were good clothes for Tufa, outdoor clothes, estate clothes, hunting clothes.

  She went back into the room and looked down on Tufa and at that moment knew real fear. Through Tufa she had invested in life again, and to the degree you invest, to that degree are you in danger of losing your investment.

  There was no fear for herself—not that she was brave but because she was confident that men would not abuse her or be able to take advantage of her. Men were afraid of her kind of beauty. Tufa was beautiful, also, but his kind of beauty was different. Because he was a challenge to other men, she knew that he was a type that men were driven to destroy. She began to clean up the room, because she knew he would like that, and even to sweep and she was thankful that he wasn’t awake to see her handle the twig broom. When he finally did awake again he said he was hungry, truly hungry, not for her but for bread dripping with olive oil, for some good black olives and for an egg. Caterina put down the broom and went to the door.

  “I am going to get you an egg if I have to sell myself to do it,” Caterina said. She was conscious that he didn’t approve of her joke.

  “I’m going to go with you,” Tufa said. He began to get out of bed, and for the first time she was able to see him.

  “Aren’t you going to turn around?” he said.

  “If you wish.”

  “It’s what the women here do. When the man gets up they turn around.”

  “I didn’t know,” Caterina said.

  “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Tufa said.

  “I’ll make it a point to turn around,” Caterina told him.

  But she had seen him and he was the way she expected. Had he been born rich he would have to be described as beautiful, the kind of model a sculptor would use. But time had done things to Tufa. The body now showed the effects of life on beauty, the way life attempts to destroy it and bring it down to its own level. The body was too hard in places and too damaged. The arms were too heavy, too veined and muscled from too much hard work, the wrists were thick, the texture of the skin was rough from too much sun and wind and too much sweat. Everything about the body was bone and sinew, and hard. But still the beauty was there, beneath it, especially in Tufa’s face and eyes.

  “If you will look by the bed you will see some clothes,” she told him. “They belonged to my husband. I didn’t think you would mind.”

  “Mind? No, why should I mind?” He began to pick up the clothes. “He had good taste,” Tufa said.

  “He had money.”

  “You can turn around now,” he said. He was wearing brown corduroy pants with leather patches on the inside of the knees and a white linen shirt that opened at the neck and a large brown leather belt and a soft dark hat. He was very handsome and he knew it.

  “They’ll think I’m a landowner,” Tufa said.

  “It’s better than knowing you’re a Fascist officer. Come. You must be starving.”

  “I am starving.”

  When they were halfway down the hill that goes into the Piazza of the People they were able to see the piazza itself, and Tufa stopped in amazement. “What in the name of God are they doing down there?” he said.

  “Something to do with the wine we saw last night,” Caterina told him. She wanted to take the lane that cuts down and around the back side of the piazza so they would be alone and quiet, but Tufa wouldn’t allow her. When they came down into the piazza itself he stopped and watched them.

  “Look at the way they’re loading those carts,” he said to her. “They should take down the sides and then put the wine in and put the sides up again. They could go twice as fast. And look at this one over by the front of the church.”

  “Come,” Caterina said. “It’s not our concern.” She looked at him and made him take his eyes away from the scene in the piazza. “We have so little time, you know?”

  “Oh, you’re right,” Tufa said. “It’s a habit. You see them doing it wrong and you want them to do it right.” He took her by the hand, in the daylight, something that isn’t done here, and they started around the outer edge of the piazza. Not many noticed them. It was hot in the piazza then and loud, and the ox manure and mule droppings steamed on the cobblestones and there was the smell of people and wine from broken bottles and the sound of them all mingled into a thick soup.

  “I can smell this town miles away,” Tufa said. “Every town has its own smell.”

  “I don’t know if I like it or not,” Caterina said. “I used to hate coming back here.”

  “I like it.”

  “Then I think I’ll try to like it,” Caterina said. “I’ll make an effort to cultivate the smell.”

  They were in the part of the piazza where the oxen had been put, and the smell was very strong then and they pushed their way in and out between the animals.

  “Then you’ll have to fall in love with an ox first,” Tufa said. “That’s the first step.”

  “No it isn’t,” Caterina said; but he didn’t understand her.

  They went around the far side to one of the lanes that leads out of the piazza down into one part of Old Town to where the dung heaps are and the chickens are and where they might be able to get an egg. Before going down it, Tufa stopped to study the scene once more.

  “Whoever is running this is an idiot,” Tufa said and turned away from it, and so he failed to see Bombolini with several of the oth
er leaders come up into the Piazza of the People, although they saw Tufa.

  “Look at them,” the priest said. “Everyone in Santa Vittoria knows there’s only one bed in that house.”

  “Who would have believed it?” Bombolini said. “It’s hard to believe your own eyes. A Tufa with a Malatesta in one bed. That’s democracy for you.”

  For the past several hours Bombolini had refused to believe the evidence of his eyes. He had come all the way up the mountain lying to himself. The traffic in the Corso Cavour had by then backed up so far and so deeply that the river of wine had become a trickle. It was because of the turn in the road and because the men were becoming exhausted from the loads they carried and the trips back up the mountain. The ox carts locked wheels in the turn and the traffic going down had to stop entirely to allow the traffic to come back up.

  “It’s all going wrong,” Pietrosanto said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s all going wrong.”

  “It will work its way out,” the mayor said, and although he felt the cold hand on his heart again, he believed it at the moment. The Italians have made an art out of their ability to deceive themselves, a German once wrote about us. “And why not?” Babbaluche would say. “It’s the only thing that keeps the poor bastards going.”

  “It’s the thing that destroys us,” Fabio once said. “We have to face the truth.”

  “And do you have a gun to put to your head?” the cobbler said.

  There is no way of telling how long the mayor would have gone on this way if Pietrosanto had not seen Tufa pass through the piazza. “I’m going to ask Tufa,” he said.

  “We don’t need people to come in from the outside and tell us how to run our affairs,” Bombolini said. He was openly hurt.

  “Outside?” Pietrosanto shouted. “Outside? Tufa’s one of us. Tufa’s a Frog. Tufa’s our blood. What are you? A Sicilian…” He didn’t say the rest, but began running for the back lane, pushing and shoving people as he went.

  Caterina and Tufa were already far down when Pietrosanto reached the head of the lane but they didn’t stop or turn around.