48

48

MARTINO WAS TURNING that conversation over in his head on the way home from school. It seemed like a long and meaningful one. He accepted the bus’s jolts as affectionate pats. Traffic lights blazed against the gray sky and pylons seemed to him miracles of latticed beauty festooned with high-tension cables.

He jumped out in front of the church and recognized Sandra, the lady with the pointy bosom, maneuvering to get an unsteady figure down on the bench. She planted herself in front of the elderly lady, legs akimbo, keeping her own arms loose and leaning back in order to set her down as slowly and gradually as possible, and then rearranged her cardigan, which had climbed up her back, and went to the chemist’s.

The elderly lady noticed right away that Martino was looking at her. “Do I know you? Come a bit closer. Come here.”

Of course she must be Sandra’s mother, the one who’d thrown herself out of the window. The metal stick her daughter had placed beside her slipped to her feet and Martino reluctantly bent over to pick it up while she grumbled, “She’s really not good at anything, that one.” The woman held the stick, her hand speckled with age spots, and put it next to her as if it were a sword. Her sparse white hair had been backcombed and gathered in a tiny bun, revealing her pink skull through her parting.

“Whose son are you?” she asked.

“I’m not from this village.”

“From where then?”

“Turin.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“I’ve come for my health.”

“You! You seem fit as a fiddle.”

Martino was half listening to her and half imagining her unstrung and in the act of clambering over the windowsill. Once again he was struck by the similarity with Giovanna’s story and he thought that, of the two, it would have been better if the girl had survived.

“Okay, I don’t get out much, but completely senile I am not,” said the elderly lady. “I knew yours wasn’t a face I recognized.”

She had a leather handbag in her lap with a snap clasp and she started working it with twisted fingers until she got it open.

“And yet you are definitely flesh and bone.”

She felt around in her bag and huffed. Her gold chain with a medallion of the Madonna swung back and forth.

“Beastly arthritis. You don’t know how many dollars.”

“Dollars?” Martino leaned toward the handbag, expecting to see a handful of banknotes.

“I meant how dolorous it is.”

“Oh.”

“What’s my daughter doing in there? It must be half an hour since she went in.” The woman was growing impatient.

“Well, no, it can only be five minutes.”

The elderly lady brandished the watch on her scrawny wrist. “Half an hour, I’m telling you.” She went back to rummaging in her bag and soon took out a Cri-Cri, a chocolate hazelnut praline wrapped in shiny paper. “Wait, I have some more.”

Martino had a weakness for Cri-Cri. Usually he bit them in half with his teeth to relish the hazelnut center followed by the chocolate, then the hundreds and thousands.

“So are you going to eat it or not?”

A man with a bushy mustache stopped to say hello. Like many men his age, serious drinkers, his cheeks were hatched with rosacea and the tip of his nose was a network of broken capillaries. “How are we getting along, Miranda?” he asked the old lady.

“How am I getting along? With a stick.”

“I see you’re in good company.”

“From Turin.”

“Fancy that.”

“Well! It’s not that big a deal.”

Martino was itching to be on his way but was worried about bumping into the Leader and his two sidekicks. He wanted to shelter at home, bask in the details of Giulia’s proximity—the golden down on her knees, for example, though her hair was chestnut—and go up to the woods later taking a roundabout route to avoid any unfortunate encounters—and talk to Silvia about Giulia, tell her how much Giulia felt her absence. One scene was etched in his mind: him coming down from the woods on Saturday, supporting the teacher and taking her to Giulia.

The old lady noticed that he wasn’t really there with them. She said, “I think I’ve tormented you enough,” and, moving her entire face, she managed to give him a wink.

“Thank you for the chocolates.”

“Go, go on. Don’t stand there thanking me.”

To avoid the café, Martino walked along the vineyard where the last harvest of the year was taking place. The grape pickers laid clusters of grapes in plastic buckets as they sang:

On the hat, on the hat we wear

There’s a long black, long black feather

It serves, it serves as our flag

Up the mountains, to the mountains we go

To wage war.

Tralala!

As he turned toward the church, Martino saw that Sandra had come out of the chemist’s. She stood behind the bench with a hand on her mother’s shoulder. Her mother wound her own fingers through Sandra’s and, thus interlaced, they continued chatting with the man.