8

 8

GIOVANNA SPENT SUMMERS at her aunt and uncle’s Alpine hut. Her father stayed in town because of his work: good riddance. The smell of hay and animals seeped into everything, the sun burned, and the wind bellowed too. Morning and evening, at milking time, her uncle called the cows by name and they showed up one after another like obedient dogs. Their names weren’t very imaginative: Chestnut, Red Girl, White Girl, Star, Spotty . . . Chestnut was the queen and she led the others up and down crags and slopes. At the start of the season she was pregnant, so they put her in the paddock with the leader of a neighboring herd and the two planted themselves in front of each other, horn to horn, jostling calmly for hours to see who would be dominant. They didn’t go overboard or wound each other, careful not to endanger their unborn calves. Colossa was black, and on her head she had a shock of brown hair.

“Five hundred and sixty kilos of cow!” her owner boasted. But in the end, Chestnut had run her off.

Butter was made straight after the daily milking, and toma and maccagno cheeses were started. Yellow butter came from the cream in the churn, and Giovanna’s aunt would decorate it with a wooden stamp showing scrolls, zigzags, and stylized flowers. Giovanna went at it; sweat stains splotched her dress. She sat on a stool between barrels and basins in the cool preserved by the north-facing stone walls. Her cousin Pietro would glance at her as he passed the doorway, a scythe hanging from his belt. But in the mountains she felt in charge of her own life again and she allowed herself to ignore him. She wrapped her hair in a handkerchief and pushed her fringe back mercilessly, though once freed it would stand up in a tuft on her forehead, making her look ridiculous. Tufted tit, her cousin Flora called her. So what, she was too busy to care. When the butter was ready, she had to heat the skimmed milk in copper cauldrons to make curd. Giovanna helped to pour it into molds and stamp it with designs. Her aunt also made primo sale and small toma cheeses, which she seasoned with herbs and sold in the co-op along with the butter. It took months, though, for the larger toma.

Giovanna’s brothers prodded the pig with hazelnut twigs, gave him peelings and leftover polenta or pasta to eat, caressed his soft ear bristles. Uncle never took off his hat or velvet gilet, not even on the hottest days, when all he did was roll up his shirtsleeves and curse the heavens. He’d kick his dog, Turbo, and right afterward order him to come close so he could put a reassuring hand on his black-and-white head. He behaved like that with everyone, whether people or animals.

“Scram! Come here!” A slap, an affectionate pat. You just had to get used to it. It was his version of family intimacy. He and his eldest son didn’t know how to talk about things without shouts and insults, but it didn’t mean they were angry. It was the only way they knew how to communicate, completely indifferent to the shouting, swearing, palms beating the table. Their ill-humor was a private language with no real meanness at its heart.

At least that’s how it seemed to Giovanna, who served their caffè corretto in small glasses. Uncle and cousin drank it down in one sip and then went to lie down peacefully. They’d sleep for an hour, wake up disgruntled again, bolt down another coffee. They swore at the hens scratching outside the door, jerking their heads sideways ten, a hundred times, wattles flapping. They went back to work. They had to mow and turn the grass so it would dry and become hay; cut wood; clean the stables; manage the beehives. Their honey tasted of rhododendron and Alpine flowers. They ate it all year round in town, and Giovanna’s father would swirl it in his milk with a sense of nostalgia that turned to fury.

Whenever he came up to visit, Giovanna avoided him as much as possible. He seemed to have a devil in him and he criticized everything. At night he’d sit and peer at the open fan of the Alps, looking surly. The mountains would turn purple, then light blue, and finally dark blue. The stars would come out and he’d feel them as pangs in his chest. If his wife tried to come near, he’d chase her away angrily.

“Damn it! I can’t have a moment of peace.” If he had to hit someone he didn’t offer aimless slaps like Uncle’s, easy to dodge; he made sure he hit home. Still, no one complained too much. After he’d gone, Giovanna’s mother and her aunt would say, “What a temper! What a wretched beast!” but with no bitterness. Hatred, however, often surged in Giovanna. She felt it surface in her stomach like the cream she separated from the milk every day.

She liked her sickle-carrying cousin well enough, but Giovanna had discovered in those summer months that when it came down to it, cheese interested her more than boys. Working made her feel good and she sensed her aunt’s approving glances settling on the back of her neck like butterflies on the gentians in the meadow. Once more, her legs were for running and her hands for making things, and their appearance and texture meant nothing. Her aunt had a big wobbly arse and a load of flabby skin around her arm muscles but she was unstoppable, a bulldozer, Uncle said proudly, and while she hoisted her huge behind up the ladder he’d give it two or three vigorous pats.

Flora was jealous because, unlike Giovanna, she didn’t yet have her period, and Giovanna treated her like a moron. They’d make peace at night in their shared bed. Under tented sheets, they combed each other’s blond hair with their fingers and swore undying affection, talked about when they would have children and it would be their turn to keep them in order with a “Shut up! That’s enough. It’s time to sleep.”

But August was coming to an end; it had been drizzling for days. The time had come to go back to Biella. Her cousins envied Giovanna and her brothers: winter in the village stretched before them, long and sad. And Giovanna envied her cousins: winter in town coursed through the mind like a dirty stream. Her father came to collect her with his customary ill-humor.

Father and daughter were perhaps similar, both wishing they could stay in the mountains and move from the Alps only to the farmstead farther down the mountain. But they wouldn’t have guessed this.

At school, Silvia found Giovanna somewhat surly, at war with the world but proud. She convinced herself that Giovanna would pull through by the end of the year, but within a week the girl had fallen into a strange sort of apathy. She’d flick through photoromances behind the lid of her desk, though without much interest. When she skipped school with the two boys from the Big House, instead of feeling excited, she spent those stolen hours in troubled silence, or else she’d passively obstruct all their decisions, as if to rain on their parade. Everything seemed ugly to her. Ugly Michele and Domenico, those two overgrown puppies who’d greeted her return, tails wagging—ugly; the Big House with its gray courtyard and rusty iron gate—ugly; school—ugly; pavement and flowerbeds—ugly; she herself—ugly; her father—super-ugly.

She stared at the short black hairs growing on his nose until he shouted at her to go to hell. At night she’d hear him snoring, her stomach clenched in disgust. Sometimes she wished he’d just die so she could cry at the funeral and others would console her, convince her that she’d loved him. She wished she were good at school, just to amaze him. But more than that, she wanted to make him suffer for once, to make him carry the blame.