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  Only the closest members of the family were there in the corridor, and the body had not yet been prepared for the procession of mourners that would fill the house with cries and weeping during the next few hours; there was an atmosphere of shock and incompleteness, emphasized by the table still laid for the dead and easily visible from the corridor, which made it clear to everyone that death had taken the family by surprise. Giannina, paralysed by grief, was in Nicola’s open room and was not even wearing black; when she saw the priest come in she showed no trace of her customary politeness, and went on sitting in silence by the bed, her hand in the dead hand of her son, which was cold but still soft. It was Salvatore Bastíu who received the priest; Don Frantziscu saw him come forward, pale and awkward, with no trace of his usual arrogance, like an innocent man just handed a severe sentence.

  “Thank you for coming, Don Frantziscu. I’m sure a good word will be a great help to Giannina in this misfortune . . .”

  The priest nodded, took off his skullcap and began to move tactfully towards the woman beside the bed. It was only then that he noticed someone else in the room. Andría Bastíu was standing back to the wall in the corner behind the door, with his hands behind his back and his gaze fixed on the bed where the motionless body of his brother was lying. The boy nodded stiffly to the priest, fixing him with feverish sleepless eyes.

  “Giannina . . .” Don Frantziscu turned gently to the woman, who spoke as if answering a question.

  “He wasn’t a bad boy, Nicola, he was a good son.”

  “I know, Giannina, I know.”

  “Then bless him for me . . . so the Lord can accept him as he is, because he wasn’t a bad boy, my son . . .”

  As she spoke, Giannina Bastíu lost something of the calm she had preserved until that moment, letting silent tears fall from her eyes. Don Frantziscu draped a purple stole round his neck and began to pray as a respectful form of distraction. While the priest was inflicting on the defenceless corpse what Nicola would never have accepted alive, Andría abruptly went out of the room, leaving his mother to console herself with the rhythmical Latin of the prayers. He waited outside with his father until the priest came out, listening in silence to their conversation.

  “Is it known what happened?” Don Frantziscu said.

  Old Bastíu shook his head in bewilderment. “Dr Mastinu has spoken of a heart attack. To me that doesn’t seem possible. If any part of my son was still in good shape, it was his heart.”

  “The Lord never gathers unripe fruit, Salvatore. We all leave when the time is ripe for us to depart. Be strong.”

  “I’m not short of strength, Don Frantziscu. It’s just that pain’s an ugly thing, and you can’t know that until you feel it.”

  “Be comforted in the knowledge that he is better off where he is now.”

  To crown this series of trite remarks, the priest turned to Andría, who had not responded positively to any of his invitations to resign himself. Like a shadow at Salvatore’s shoulder, the lad seemed to be waiting for something.

  “Now that you are the only one left, you must be a comfort to your mother and father.”

  “Maybe when I’ve managed to comfort myself,” Andría said drily.

  His father stared at him, surprised by his tone, but the look he got back discouraged him from venturing reproach on a day when uncontrolled speech could find easy justification. The priest tried to insist, but Andría’s attention had already been drawn over his shoulder as he caught sight of someone crossing the threshold at that moment. Turning to see what he was looking at, Don Frantziscu Pisu recognized among the new arrivals the tall gaunt figure of Bonaria Urrai and the slender one of Maria Listru, and it suddenly occurred to him that this presented him with an ideal opportunity to escape. Maria greeted him warmly as he left, but Bonaria Urrai barely deigned to glance at him as she headed for the dead man and his mother to do what she had come to do.

  Two hours later, when the procession of formal visits began, Nicola was ready to receive them, carefully laid out on the bed in the best suit that Bonaria Urrai herself had made him two years earlier for the feast of San Giacomo. It was impossible to tell the amputated leg in its carefully stuffed trouser from the other, and Nicola’s well-shaved face had such a serene and relaxed expression as to give Maria the impression that at long last he was welcoming visitors. No professional attittadora had been engaged for this vigil, but all the same many of the women who arrived dressed in black wept with loud cries, while the men waited outside for the end of this formal display of grief, before coming in to offer the family their more restrained expressions of sympathy.

  At Luvè and Illamari, which both aspired to the status of towns, it had become increasingly common not to wear black for a death, and it had been noticed ever more frequently that the more well-to-do and cultured families were dispensing with visits from mourners, but at Soreni no-one considered themselves to have yet reached such a peak of civilization as to be able to dispense with the solidarity of their fellows when a member of the family died, or not to wear black in their honour. For Maria, born to a father already dead, black was her natural everyday colour. Those who are born orphans learn from birth to live with absence, and Maria had got the idea that mourning, like such absences, should last for ever. It was only as she got older that she began to notice the wives and daughters of some people who had died changing their clothes with the changing seasons.

  Years earlier, one sunny afternoon much like the present one, when Tzia Bonaria was beginning to teach her to sew things suitable for a child, Maria had asked her to explain these wardrobe earthquakes.

  “When does mourning end, Tzia?”

  The old woman never even raised her head from the pinafore she was putting the finishing touches to.

  “What questions you ask! When grief is past, mourning is over.”

  “So mourning helps to show that there is grief,” Maria had said, trying to understand, as the conversation faded away in the slow silence of needle and thread.

  “No, Maria, that’s not the reason for mourning. Grief is naked, and black serves to cover it, to hide it.” She had watched the child for a moment, then smiled at her. “The flower you’ve sewn is crooked, let me have a look . . .”

  Maria had heard these words as an incomprehensible warning, but she often remembered them in the years that followed, as she noticed some people change the expression in their eyes more quickly than their clothes, while the rapid steps of false shame could turn to dancing with the dead person still warm in the house. On the other hand, when she saw Giannina Bastíu crouched beside her son in a gaudy flowered dress without a sign of black on it, Maria understood clearly that this was a woman in deeper mourning than anyone else who had lamented a death at Soreni, and she finally understood what Bonaria had been trying to explain. Needing fresh air, she made a sign to Tzia and went out, turning her back on the women whimpering through the rosary for the dead like a lullaby.

  Andría was outside with the men. When he saw her he broke away and came to meet her.

  “Andrí, how terrible, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then at least you can say nothing, because I’ve heard enough rubbish for one day.”

  Maria looked at her friend, astonished at his angry language, but she did not dare to make any comment. She would have preferred to change the subject, but finding nothing more suitable than silence, kept quiet. It was he who counterattacked.

  “Are you coming with us to the vineyard to harvest the grapes next week?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Andría. Your brother’s dead, and unless his friends harvest them for him, your father will leave the bunches to rot on the vines.” Maria was too disconcerted to be tactful.

  “That’s the last thing Nicola would have wanted.” As he spoke Andría gave a light kick to a stone, sending it to knock as if tired against the opposite wall.

  “There are some things Nicola would have wanted . . . but the grape-harvest’s a festival, and since
when do we celebrate festivals when someone has just died?” Maria tried to temper her refusal: “I’ll help you all next year.”

  “Next year . . .” murmured Andría almost inaudibly, staring fixedly at his foot.

  Maria waited impatiently for him to raise his eyes, but he did not do so. He stood motionless to one side of the housefront, staring at the ground as if he had lost something, trembling slightly. Maria knew what was about to happen, because she and Andría had grown up together, and while it had been a considerable problem between them, it was useful sometimes to be the first to detect even such subtle signs as this.

  “Let’s get away from here, let’s go to the yard, come on . . .”

  Maria put her arm through his and led him quickly through the house, carefully avoiding the place where the formal lamentation for Nicola was going on. They only just reached the courtyard in time. Andría placed one hand on the wall, bent over and vomited, not even bothering to move his legs apart so as not to soil his shoes. He was shaken by what seemed to Maria an endless succession of spasms, and did not raise his head till there was no bile left in him, closing his eyes and flushed with effort. They had been unobserved.

  “Feeling better? Wash your face in the basin, come on . . .”

  Andría did not bother to pretend that he felt better, but he went to the concrete bath for washing clothes without arguing, and turned on the tap to do as he was told. As he washed his face in the icy water lucidity returned to him. Deep down, in all those years, that was all he had done: he had obeyed Maria, listened to Maria, and paid attention to Maria. He had been happy to do so, because Maria was intelligent and decent; and had only ever asked him to do things that made sense for him. If Nicola had had a woman like Maria at his side, he would never have set fire to Manuele Porresu’s farm, and would not now have been lying at home on his back as cold as a frog, with twenty old women in black singing over him. As the water dripped from his face, Andría lifted his eyes and looked at Maria, she too dressed in black for the occasion, but as beautiful as if her clothes had been the colour of geraniums, or white like a bride’s. In Andría’s eyes, in all Soreni no other girl could even come near Maria for beauty, and his brother had always known that without any need for Andría to confide in him. “Have you told Maria Urrai that you’ve fallen in love with her, or shall I have to go and write it on the wall of her house?” Even with two litres of eau de vie inside him, Andría would never have had the courage to tell Maria his feelings, and Nicola knew that perfectly well, but had never let on to anyone about it, because he had concerns of his own to think about; first he had to go and set fire to a farm, and then hurry to lose his leg, and then lose his will to live too, and finally lose his breath under a pillow, because fire can cause that and other things as well, it goes on burning after it has gone out, did you not know that, Maria? Have you never seen fire really burning?

  “What are you talking about, Andrí?”

  He had not even been aware he was speaking aloud, but now that he realized it, he saw no reason not to go on. With a sleepless night behind him, and grief gnawing at his belly, he said:

  “Maria, will you be my wife?”

  She looked at him as if contemplating some slow-drying laundry, and with a practical gesture handed him a towel.

  “If I hadn’t just seen the contents of your stomach, I’d swear you were drunk. Dry yourself.”

  “I’m not drunk, I’ve never been more sober than I am now,” he said, grabbing the towel. When his dried face emerged from the towel, he looked at her again and took courage. “Will you marry me?”

  “If you’re being serious, the answer is no. For the same reason that I wouldn’t marry my sister Regina.” She was obviously not taking him seriously, and this was also familiar to Andría. Tiresomely familiar.

  “You don’t believe a word I say. You’re treating me like someone incapable of understanding.”

  “How do you expect me to treat you, when you ask me to marry you in front of your own vomit and with the dead body of your brother in the house?”

  At any other time Andría would have realized that Maria was being perfectly reasonable, but if he had been in a state to follow logic he would have simply kept quiet, and this was not the case.

  “And if I ask you again tomorrow with my brother underground, will you answer then or not?”

  Maria began to understand that Andría was very far from joking. She turned pale, but played for time.

  “I don’t think this is a good time to talk about it.”

  Andría, who knew her as well as she knew him, recognized her familiar trick of throwing him off the scent and laughed bitterly, because he knew this was a serious answer.

  “I’ve got the point. And I’m a real fool. You really think of me as your sister, you don’t even see me as a man.”

  “You’re just saying one stupid thing after another, Andría, I’ve never before heard you talk such nonsense.”

  “No, I’ve never understood things more clearly than I do now. It’s you who don’t understand, and you’ve never understood my feelings for you.”

  Maria was deeply embarrassed. Her friend’s suffering was obvious, and she would have done anything else he asked her to help him get over it, even lie. But not on a subject like that.

  “When have I ever given you reason to think I was in love with you?”

  Andría looked down at his shoes splashed with vomit. “And why have I never studied? Why did I stop after elementary school?”

  “No, what’s that got to do with . . .?”

  “But it does matter, as I see it. Maestra Luciana has always told you you’re intelligent, that you would do well, that you deserved this or that.”

  “Andría, I’m a seamstress. I shall never get engaged to the Prince of Wales. I’m just like you.”

  “Then why don’t you want me?”

  “Because I’m not in love with you. I’ve always seen myself as your sibling.”

  “But I already had a brother!” he said angrily. Then he added maliciously: “And now Bonaria Urrai has killed him for me.”

  Maria looked at him in astonishment; with his twisted face and reddened eyes Andría seemed to her to have taken leave of his senses. A sense of shame made her look away, almost as if she did not want to risk fixing him in her memory in that state.

  “Andrí, you have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, taking back the towel and beginning to fold it.”

  “No, I mean it. She killed him.”

  There was something in his insistence that worried Maria. She set aside her scruples and again concentrated her eyes on him, also removing the increasing hardness from her voice.

  “That’s enough. Feeling unwell is no excuse for disrespect.”

  She turned her back on him to go back into the house, but he had no intention of letting her have the last word with a triumphant rebuke. He caught up with her with a sudden movement and grabbed her arm.

  “Let me go. You stink of vomit.”

  “No, not till you listen to me. Ask Tzia Bonaria where she went last night,” he said, glassy-eyed, putting his face close to hers.

  “To bed, like everyone else,” Maria said bluntly.

  “Oh no, my little beauty. Not everyone. I was awake and I saw her. She came here and killed my brother by pressing a pillow on his face.”

  Maria responded with a look colder than Andría had ever seen from her, making him feel less than a worm. He immediately wished he could have run time backwards and eaten every word he had said.

  “She came here?” Maria said slowly.

  Andría immediately let go of her arm and took one step back, then another.

  “No, she never came here . . . Excuse me. I don’t know what I’m saying.” He was stammering, avoiding her eyes.

  This denial alarmed Maria more than a confirmation would have done. She bridged the distance he was trying to create between them, pressing him.

  “Tell me what you saw.”


  It was a command, and in that moment Andría knew he had passed the point at which he could have retreated and set things to rights. Crushed by his own superficiality, he let himself slip to the ground and explained in tears everything that had happened the previous night while Maria listened in disbelief, neither of them aware that in that house a funeral lament was in progress for not one but three deaths: the life of Nicola, the innocence of Andría, and Maria Listru’s trust in Bonaria Urrai.

  Upset by these incomprehensible revelations, Maria left the house without another word. Andría stayed sobbing in the courtyard, his gratified relatives interpreting this as deep grief for the death of his brother.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ALTHOUGH IMMERSED IN THE COLLECTIVE RITUAL OF the mourning, Bonaria Urrai had not failed to notice how precipitately Maria had left the Bastíu house, though she only half understood the reason for this unseemly behaviour. But the old woman could not allow herself the luxury of behaving impulsively on such an occasion, and Nicola Bastíu deserved her respect every inch of the way to his grave. Only now could she honour the secret promises she had made him, while Maria would still be at home when she got back. Thus reasoned the Soreni seamstress as she stayed close to Giannina and Salvatore Bastíu who had always treated her like a member of the family, and she sang the Requiescat together with everyone else who happened to be present, as if for her this was a dead person like any other, different only in name.

  In fact Nicola’s face, relaxed in the artificial serenity of someone who no longer had any questions to ask, seemed finally at peace, but this optical illusion could not arrest the tumult of uncertainty in the soul of Bonaria Urrai. In any case the old woman was so used to never revealing any feelings except those expected of her that she had no difficulty, in the presence of the body, in maintaining her composure just as she had always done over the years, assisting the dead man’s parents to concentrate on their many happy memories of him, recreating a healthy, laughing Nicola Bastíu, utterly respectable in body and soul. For several hours the voices of women and men round the corpse alternated in a liturgical sequence of weeping, prayer and memory. None of these sections could be left out of this code essential to the community in repairing the break between presence and absence. By this act of acceptance of individual grief, even the most controversial death could be reconciled with the tragic quality naturally inherent in every life. Thus when the priest left after pontificating on the communion of saints, the people of Soreni came together to celebrate the communion of sinners, absolving the surviving relatives of blame for their unique grief. There would be time later to answer other questions.