29

 29

BY THE TIME Martino got off the bus, the wind had cleared the sky and church bells were ringing. On his way home he bumped into Sandra, a heavyset woman who lived in the village. To his indifferent eyes she was identical to all other women her age except that her bosom was really pointy. Sandra still wore those projectile bras that no one had used for at least ten years and Martino had never seen on anyone else.

A trio of older boys were having a go at table football outside the bar. To Martino’s surprise, they waited for Sandra to go by and then reacted by smirking, crossing themselves, and rubbing their crotches. Now revved up, they started braying after Martino, “Turin! Oi, Turin!”

He ignored them and quickened his step. He had something else to think about: the teacher he had to get back to, soon, as soon as possible, to see if she was still alive up there. That’s what was important. And then, the game this morning and Giulia’s proximity, which had stirred his insides, like those chocolates with liqueur centers that make your teeth all dry and then burn your throat (his mother didn’t want him to eat them, but his father would say, “Oh, go on, they’re antiseptic”). Whenever he thought of Giulia he could feel his gut churning, something sloshing around, almost melting.

He had other things to think about, but as soon as he got home he wanted to ask his mother what was so odd about Sandra that those boys writhed around as they did. Lea wanted to know exactly what he’d seen, and when Martino blushed and remained vague she got some idea. She thought she should leave it there, and another mother might have done so, but she enjoyed feeling that she was different. Sandra’s story gave her a chance to teach Martino what hypocrites certain people were, particularly in provincial places like that where a woman who was neither old nor ugly and who lived alone with her asthmatic son was regarded with suspicion.

“Well,” she began, “Gianni told me the story. There was a priest who stayed here for a long time, a certain Don Franco. Basically he and Sandra saw a lot of each other.” She stopped to allow Martino to take in the information.

He moved slightly, jerking his head backward in surprise. But he didn’t say anything, so she continued.

“Sandra never married and was still living with her mother. Whenever her mother was out, Don Franco would come to see her.”

“But supposedly priests are not supposed to have anything to do, well, with—”

“With women? No. In theory they shouldn’t really get involved.” Lea put a box of cornmeal biscuits on the table and sat down across from Martino. Her son was a sprite, skinny and nervous. The more he ate the better. She pushed the box toward him to get him to fish out a biscuit and took up the story again.

“Well, if you ask me it’s contrary to nature. Or at least it shouldn’t be obligatory. The Church is afraid that love will distract a priest from God and his work. A priest who’s married and has a family isn’t so willing to move about; he has to tend to practical things like bringing up his children. But Protestants do that, did you know? The Waldensians, too, like the father of that boy Luca from your old class.”

“I know who Luca is, Mamma!” Martino was becoming irritated. “I know who he is—I was in the same class for four years.” It was the old class that touched a nerve.

“Okay, okay, sorry. But it’s a fact that Don Franco was in love.”

“With Sandra?”

“Why not? Look: it can happen with anyone.”

Martino shrugged. The story didn’t seem at all exciting to him. This was old people’s stuff. And his mother wasn’t getting to the point.

“The thing went on for years. They met in secret; their love was forbidden. Obviously, the whole village knew about it. Officially, Don Franco went for coffee and to bless her, but then he’d stay way too long. Still, no one thought there was anything funny about it. Don Franco was a nice man, an excellent parish priest. He was great at football, a mountain of a man, impossible to mark. You could ignore the fact that he had a lover. They pretended nothing was going on. The only one who appeared to be completely in the dark was Sandra’s mother. It seems she was a bigoted and overprotective old lady who kept her daughter on a short lead.”

“What does that mean?”

“That she controlled her, ordered her around. She kept her from having a life of her own.”

“Still, she saw Don Franco.”

“But secretly.”

His mother’s view was important to Martino too. But he was a boy, and he knew that growing up meant forming your own opinions. He knew it because Lea had told him so.

“Then what?”

“Well, one day her mother comes back home earlier than usual and finds Sandra with Don Franco. She has a fit or something like it, goes crazy with embarrassment. To avoid facing the scandal, she runs to the window and throws herself out of it—just like that, impetuously—while the couple stand stock-still, not knowing what to say.”

Martino’s eyes widened. That was definitely a dramatic turn of events. “Did she die?” he asked.

“Of course not! They only lived on the mezzanine floor.”

The two of them laughed and Lea wore her usual clever expression—her ferret face, as Martino’s father said. But she was suddenly startled by the similarity between that story and Giovanna’s. She regretted not having thought about it earlier and hoped her son wouldn’t notice.

“Then why did she throw herself out?” he was asking.

“I don’t know. Maybe she lost her mind. Or it was all an act. However, she injured herself in the fall. She moaned and raged against her daughter. People started to arrive. Sandra had rushed out in her slip, and Don Franco looked messy. There was no more pretending it was nothing. He was transferred. Sandra lost her beloved and had to take care of her invalid mother. She’s still alive, you know. Only she’s lame now and doesn’t leave the house.”

“Poor Sandra.”

“Yes, poor Sandra! In the end, she’s the one who was stung. Go figure.”

Martino didn’t care about this last point.

“Mamma, how is it possible for Sandra to have . . .” Martino pointed to his chest. His cheeks were red.

“You have to complete your sentence, Martino. Why does she have pointy breasts?”

“Yes.”

“She uses those cone-shaped bras you can’t get anymore. There was a time when they were fashionable.”

Who knows whether it was a sort of compensation for Sandra? Look, I’m a spinster and I’ve been humiliated but look at my breasts, see how they stick out. Or maybe Don Franco liked those bras and she couldn’t stop wearing them. As a fifteen-year-old, Lea had had one too. She’d put it on and take it off in the darkened doorway, twisting around to get it under her clothes. Her parents would not have liked it.