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  “I wanted to burn those things too, Tzia. Fire purifies everything.”

  Maria spoke softly, stroking the dog as she watched. The old woman raised her eyes to look at her, then stood up with an air of firm finality.

  “Come on, it’s late: Christians inside and animals outside. Put him out, then go to bed, because tomorrow it’s school for you.”

  Bonaria shook out her apron while Mosè distrustfully watched Maria open the door to the yard. Soon the little girl was asleep, but the old woman went on sitting before the fire in thought, her eyes fixed on the gradually dying embers. The round stone lay like a still heart in the midst of the ashes, its porous surface blackened by the fire, but far from purified.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE ONLY THING THAT BONACATTA, ANNA TERESA Listru’s eldest daughter, had in common with her sister Maria was her black eyes. Strong as an ox, she had worked for eight years as a servant in the house of Giuanni Asteri to save up for her trousseau, and now, even though she was wearing the most fashionable skirt in her wardrobe, she was sitting in the living room with no more grace than a ruined nuraghe.

  Members of both the engaged couple’s families were sitting on the edges of their chairs and raising their voices, as they tentatively sipped malmsey wine and laughed loudly at things that in normal circumstances they would hardly dignify with a smile. Skirts rustled along the invisible boundary between the two families; the sisters and cousins of the bride-to-be were serving amaretti and fortified wine with the falsely timid smiles and lowered gazes of well-brought-up folk. Only Maria’s curiosity kept her eyes level with her tray as she could not resist weighing up her future in-laws. They were not rich, no, because no seriously rich man would ever marry the daughter of a widow with no property. But neither were they poor, judging by the ritual gifts they had brought for the bride-to-be: a medal of Our Lady of the Assumption on a gold chain, an antique ring and a large ugly pin for the headscarves that Bonacatta never wore, drawn as she was to the new fashion from the continent. Maria was sure that not even all this gold worn together would ever be enough to make Bonacatta beautiful, but in the end that was not the point. The gifts were a sort of votive offering to the supine figure of the Madonna of the Assumption, not so much ornaments as items for barter: coral in exchange for favours, gold to balance against devotion. If Bonacatta had ever reflected on the matter, she would have realized that in reality there was no devotion whatever behind all this display-cabinet ostentation, but reflection had never been a strong point with Sisinnio Listru’s eldest daughter.

  Her betrothed, Antonio Luigi Cau, was sitting in obvious discomfort beside his mother, as motionless as a stuffed animal. He seemed tall even when sitting down and so far had said nothing at all, leaving his parents to do the talking, partly because that was the custom and partly because there was little he could say that had not already been said.

  “Is this girl another of your daughters, Anna? I thought you only had three.” The bridegroom’s mother’s eyes examined Maria’s slender figure, while her fat fingers removed two amaretti from her tray.

  “My youngest, our Mariedda. I gave her away as a fill’e anima seven years ago, but when we need help she’s happy to come and give a hand.”

  Anna Teresa Listru spoke in a self-satisfied voice, elaborating the truth to her own advantage as was her habit. This unexpected loquacity gave her daughter’s future mother-in-law a chance to address Maria directly.

  “And whose soul-child are you, my dear?”

  For a moment the hubbub of conversation dropped to a whisper as Maria answered, unaware of the flash of alarm in her mother’s eyes.

  “I was taken by Tzia Bonaria Urrai, the seamstress, who had no children of her own.”

  The silence that greeted this statement lasted long enough to reveal embarrassment, before the fiancé’s mother gave a short smile and removed another amaretto from the tray.

  “An excellent person, Bonaria, we know her. I believe she even made a suit for Vincenzo when he was president of the committee – you remember, Bissè?” She winked at her husband who was listening with interest. “Her hands are worth their weight in gold, though of course she doesn’t really need the work. She will certainly treat you well,” she said to Maria, with a sideways glance at Anna Teresa Listru.

  “She treats me as her own daughter, I lack for nothing.” Maria’s response was as automatic as it was polite, a perfect answer already used a thousand times. “Do please take another amaretto, Bonacatta made them.”

  Maria proffered her tray like a beggar anxious for alms, with a curious hint of a bow that served for a moment to conceal her expression from those round her. Everyone else seemed struck dumb as if by witchcraft, so much so that her eldest sister took the opportunity to break the silence with a trivial remark.

  “Maria’s lucky, what a great privilege to have two families. And from now on I’ll have two as well, won’t I? Because you two will be another mother and father to me as though I was your own daughter.”

  Miraculously, her smile made the bride-to-be even uglier, as it disclosed an extensive array of powerful teeth. But her comment did succeed in damping down the embarrassment and bringing out a few forced smiles.

  “It won’t do you much good, Bonacatta, because I was never one to mollycoddle my children! Ask Antonio Luigi if I was ever a loving father, just ask him!” Vincenzo Cau gave a hoarse laugh, stiff in his starched, cream-coloured formal suit that had probably fitted him nicely five years before.

  His comment reminded everyone sharply of the purpose of the meeting, but while everyone else laughed with relief, his wife confined herself to an ambiguous smile and darted one more sharp glance at the little girl still fearlessly circulating with her tray. Antonio Luigi reached out a calloused hand for the amaretti, while Maria raised her eyes to meet the gaze of the man who was to marry her sister.

  “Do you know how to make sweets?”

  It was the first time all afternoon that Maria had heard him speak; he had a deep clear solemn baritone. A farmer working his own land, Antonio Luigi Cau at twenty-five had already been an adult for at least ten years.

  Surprised by the direct question, the girl lowered her eyes to her tray. “I can make fruit shapes from almond paste. Pears, apples, strawberries . . . animals too!”

  “Clever girl, because that’s important too; it isn’t only with their mouths that people eat.”

  The sunburnt fingers of her future brother-in-law grabbed an amaretto, lightly scraping its base on the tray. Maria took a step back as if she had herself been touched, pulling the tray to herself and looking up at him again. Unaware of her reaction, Antonio Luigi Cau had already lost interest in her, chewing the amaretto with closed lips as he turned away to listen to what other people were saying. Maria stood near him for a few seconds more, then her future aunt stole another almond sweetmeat from the tray, forcing her to move on. During the rest of the engagement party Maria stayed silent and helpful, avoiding everyone’s eye when she got up to help clear away the dishes.

  She saw Tzia Bonaria again at nightfall, when she brought home a basketful of left-over amaretti as well as a raging fever she could hardly admit to.

  “How did it go?”

  “Decent people, as far as I could see.”

  “And is he a decent type?”

  “Seems to be.” Then she said quietly, with a thin smile: “He’s tall.”

  Bonaria laughed, carefully folding away her last piece of cloth for the day, some wool she had cut into the shape of a little coat.

  “Well, that’s fine then. But don’t you think it might be useful to be able to do something more than just pick figs from a tree without needing a ladder?”

  Maria laughed in her turn, but felt herself blush with embarrassment. If Bonaria noticed, she showed no sign of it.

  “They’ve fixed on the thirteenth of May, so it won’t be too close to Whitsun.”

  “Will they need you to help?”

  “Yes, they’ve
asked me for the pastries and the bread.”

  “As far as the pastries are concerned, fine. But for the bread only if it’s a Saturday. I don’t want you missing school.”

  Maria had never been eager to go and work in her old home before, but now she dug in her heels like a deaf mule.

  “I’ve hardly ever missed school, and the place won’t fall down if I have a day off because my sister’s getting married!”

  Bonaria gave way only after repeated insistence, and as she did so she felt there was some important detail she did not know about. The lack of enthusiasm for visiting her mother’s home that Maria had shown from the first had always deeply reassured Bonaria, even though she could not honestly have sworn that she had never made any attempt to encourage this indifference. Until the day she had first met Maria and her mother in the shop, Bonaria had considered herself as suffering from a perfect anguish, unique in that it could never be assuaged. She knew the world she was taking the girl from; in fact she knew it so well she had never felt any need to be aware of its every form. So she had not been surprised that Maria had never shown any obvious homesickness since deep down, in the privacy of her solitary infancy, the girl must always have known that her destiny did not lie in her old home. But now, faced with Maria’s insistence on helping with the preparations for Bonacatta’s wedding, the confidence of Bonaria Urrai wavered. She had no women friends or sisters she could have talked to about what was worrying her, but even if there had been any, she would have kept her worries to herself.

  Anna Teresa Listru had spoken the truth to her daughter’s future mother-in-law when she claimed that she really did call Maria back to her old home whenever she needed her. But what Anna Teresa had not admitted was that Maria did not always come when she was called. Bonaria Urrai examined the reasons for every request like a hawk, reserving the right to refuse if she considered it unsuitable. Not that she ever said no in so many words. It was enough to insist that the hem of some skirt had to be finished urgently, or that Doctor Mastinu was coming to perform a vital check-up, and those who were willing to understand understood. Only in exceptional circumstances did the old woman agree to the little girl going out to work in the countryside, most often for gathering in the grapes with the Bastíu family, or for the olive harvest. But the widow Listru took the view that Maria believed she had been transformed into a princess ever since she first went to live with the Urrai woman, because she never lifted a single potato from the soil or bent down to dig for a beetroot, or immersed herself in the rice-fields to be paid for piecework like her sisters; and above all, she had made it clear that she could never be called out to bake bread at four in the morning. Anna Teresa Listru never complained openly about this, but she did still feel that Maria’s privileged position should bring some extra advantage for herself, over and above the fact that one hungry mouth had been removed from the family round her table. What particularly annoyed her was the apparent obsession on the part of the elderly Urrai woman that Maria must go to school regularly. Anna Teresa Listru found this hard to understand. After all, the little girl had reached Middle School Grade Three, and had already learned more there than she would ever need in life. There was no reason why Maria should not begin to repay a little of what she had been given, remembering whose saucepan had had to fill her stomach until the age of six. So Bonacatta’s wedding had seemed to the widow Listru an ideal occasion to put a little pressure on Bonaria Urrai to allow Maria to miss a day or two of school to help with the enormous quantity of cakes and bread that would have to be baked for the occasion.

  Yet despite the widow Listru’s worst fears, the old Urrai woman seemed to make no difficulties, since Maria turned up on the afternoon set for making the almond confectionery without having to be asked for twice. Perhaps Anna Teresa would be able to make the most of this after all, taking advantage of the fact that the great central table in the living-room had become the frenetic scene of these unprecedented events.

  The ingredients necessary for the amaretti made a fine display, and a fragrant chain was formed in which every available pair of hands, including those of the bride-to-be, had its own precise moment for action. On one side, stored in a large glazed earthenware basin, were sweet almonds chopped into tiny fragments, ready to be mixed with flour and egg to produce a biscuit to be baked in the oven with an almond or half a candied cherry stuck in the middle. Anna Teresa had advised using plenty of flour and being economical with the almonds, even if this would make the sweetmeats very soft. Meanwhile, the other side of the long table was dominated by a small mountain of almonds cut into thin strips waiting to be crystallized in sugar with grated lemon peel: once cold and cut into diamonds, this would become a form of country toffee which only the strongest teeth would be able to get through. Maria’s job, while her mother and sisters chattered, was grating the lemon peel. Anna Teresa Listru wasted no time in getting to the point.

  “Are you pleased you didn’t have to go to school today?”

  “Well . . . I never mind school, but today’s a special day.”

  Regina and Giulia exchanged looks, while Bonacatta worked eggs into the dough to soften it. Giulia said, “I don’t know how you don’t get bored always sitting there, I hated every day when I had to be at school.”

  “And school got its own back and serve you right: you ended up having to do Fourth Grade twice!” Bonacatta said maliciously, strong in the authority of her twenty-five years.

  “You’re the one who did the most studying, you are!” Regina had never admitted that she had really rather liked school, and Bonacatta never missed a chance to add to her sister’s embarrassment.

  Giulia’s humiliation found unexpected relief from her mother, who usually never intervened in such squabbles for fear they might degenerate into trouble for herself.

  “There’s no point in school,” Anna Teresa said firmly. “Once you’ve learned how to sign your name and count change in the shop, that’s enough, it’s not as if you’re going to be a doctor. I only reached Third Grade in Elementary School, and no-one ever criticized me for that, not even the bookworms!”

  This was something Anna Teresa Listru loved saying, because she believed it was important not to encourage her daughters to aim too high. Giulia in particular had lived all her nineteen years with this object in mind, as her mother never failed to point out to the neighbours. “She’s like me when I was a girl, lots of common sense and no fancy ideas,” she would state, affectionately patting the shoulder of the girl who was now once more her youngest daughter.

  “But Maria enjoys school,” Anna Teresa continued, determined to pursue the subject further. “What is it you want to be, Maria, a doctor of almonds? Or a professor of hems and buttonholes like Tzia Bonaria Urrai?”

  The others laughed, but Maria refused to be intimidated; it was by no means the first time her mother had teased her in this way, so she had known what to expect from the very first.

  “School can be useful for all kinds of things, even for making cakes.”

  “Of course. Before we went to school we had no idea how to make cakes, that’s true. But what on earth are you getting at?”

  Maria stopped grating the lemon she was holding and picked up one of the balls of almond paste that Regina had just finished shaping. Then she held it out to her mother with a defiant expression.

  “Do you know why gueffus are called gueffus?”

  Anna Teresa Listru stared at her as though she had gone mad, while her sisters stopped work to enjoy the scene.

  “What a silly question! That’s what they’re called because they’ve always been called that.”

  “Yes, but why? Why aren’t they called bowler hats, for example, or . . . backgammon?”

  Bonacatta was unable to suppress a laugh, immediately provo-king a furious glare from her mother.

  “I don’t know. Do you? If you do, be so good as to instruct us, Maestra Maria. Please explain this fundamental fact for us.”

  “Because the word refers
to the Guelphs, the soldiers who backed the Pope against the Emperor in the Middle Ages.”

  “How interesting. Did they fire cannonballs made of almond paste?”

  This time they all laughed, but Maria went on regardless.

  “They got this name because, when we put them into paper cups, we cut the edges of the paper with square teeth like the battlements on the Guelph castles.”

  Anna Teresa Listru had listened to the beginning of this explanation with a mixture of irritation and amusement, but now she was just amused.

  “You can’t really believe such nonsense . . .”

  With a gesture of exaggerated elegance she picked up one of the gueffus from the flour-covered table and raised it to her mouth, biting it in half. She closed her eyes as she chewed, then suddenly opened them wide, as if astonished.

  “May I be struck by lightning! Now I know how it got its name, it even tastes different! If you hadn’t told me, Maria, I’m sure I’d never have known what I was missing!”

  Giulia and Regina who, torn between believing and disbelieving, had each furtively bitten into one of the gueffus just to enjoy the taste, nearly choked with laughter while Bonacatta, anxious not to disturb the preparation of her cakes, merely smiled at Maria’s disappointment:

  “That’s enough teaching for one day. Now we have work to do: finish the lemons for me, because I have to ice the pirichittus. And I warn you that if you ask me why they have this name, I know the reason why.”

  “She’ll tell you when you grow up.” Regina got a box on the ear for this impertinence, while Maria went back to grating lemon peel with a passion worthy of a greater cause.

  For three whole days the bride’s home became an ants’ nest of relatives and neighbours coming and going with baskets full of fresh ingredients and borrowed trays on which the finished cakes were laid. The Listru sisters worked almost without a break, alternating tasks to bring miraculously to life an army of capigliette decorated with sugar lace, kilos of tiliccas swollen with saba, baskets full of aranzadas with their spicy aroma, tin boxes full of crisp little sugar dolls, and hundreds of round almond gueffus, individually wrapped like sweets in white tissue paper with its edges fringed like the battlements of the Guelph towers. There was not a room in the house with space in it for anything more, and Giulia and Regina had to move basketfuls of finished delicacies off their beds before they could fall asleep in the gentle fragrance of orange-flower water.