10. Blood Is Blood Unless It Runs as Thin As Water
Chapter 10
Blood Is Blood Unless It Runs as Thin As Water
T he private plane touched down in Trapani, and after, I nodded to Donato to take the passenger seat of the black Ferrari that waited. It had the Fausti symbol painted in a small mark on the driver’s side door, a clear warning that no one was to fuck with it. Donato was not pleased that I ordered the rest of our men to take accommodations close to the landing strip, but I wanted this time alone.
Being with Donato felt that way. As if I was alone with my thoughts and could allow them to roam without having literal eyes behind my head.
Donato watched my back as if it was his own.
He was quiet as we flew through the streets, his eyes on the sea. The evening sun in Sicily reminded me of citrus—a blood orange. It seemed to bleed over the land and water, coloring the world a spectacular orange-red. The breeze was soft with sea air, and it smelled of fruit orchards, seafood, and salt. I took a cleansing breath of it, breathing out all the pollutants inside of my body.
The sea air touched my lungs, but it could not touch my heart.
That was growing dimmer and darker by the day, until I knew all that would be left inside of me would be eternal nights. My lion lost in it. An eternal slumber.
I was not sure if what I was about to do would snuff out what little light I had left, delivering me to that place of impenetrable darkness much sooner than I anticipated.
An Italian tenor gave the background music to the city unfolding in front of us. The roads were quiet, and I took the ones to the villa facing the sea with a tempo that echoed the speed my father used to reach when he was a driver.
As my foot kept pressure on the accelerator, I sped up the hill, the world going dark and the lights coming on, highlighting the dead grass on either side of us, the crude road, and the stark white villa up ahead, some of its exterior, the entire back, made of glass and overlooking the shushing sea. The water in Trapani was exotic, with swirls of blue and green creating turquoise waters.
Come morning, I would go for a swim before I attended to business.
After we arrived at the villa, we went inside and checked the property. The outside looked newer than it was. The inside reflected its true age with frescoes on the ceiling and common Italian materials, such as hand-painted tiles. The place had been kept immaculate. The house had a feminine smell to it, as if a woman had just cooked a dish with fennel, and the anise, perhaps licorice, aroma lingered in her kitchen. Perhaps on her hands and in her clothes, like perfume.
Our things were brought in ahead of us and waited in our respective rooms. Donato took his phone and went to his room, where he planned to touch base with Guido, who waited with the men closer to the landing strip. I poured myself a glass of red wine and went outside. The pool reminded me of an alcove, the water true blue highlighted by lights, shimmering with the sea breeze.
It was not the pool that had stolen my attention, but what lived beyond it—the sea. I heard its voice in the breeze and closed my eyes, absorbing all it had to say to me. It was a gentle whisper. A lover’s voice caressing my skin, as her cool arms would do come morning when I found my respite in her soothing rocking. I never truly swam but floated.
A reminder.
There was something out there bigger than me. Something that could carry me with ease. Something that could remind me that my problems were minuscule, especially if she turned testy and decided to take me out too far.
Donato met me outside.
“There is no food inside,” he reported. “Shall we dine out?”
“ Sì .”
I had been to Trapani before. I had been over every square inch of Italy. It was my honor as a Fausti to explore the land that had nurtured me, sheltered me, and grown me from its roots. To get to know each regions’ people and record them in the book of my mind was a great joy. Because all of Italy belonged to me. Just on my father’s side, I had Northern and Southern blood. My family was known to say we are Italy .
Sì , this was true. However. I did not always pay as much attention to each city, village, and commune as I could have. There were many, and even though I could speak both Italian and Sicilian, I yearned to know more about Trapani and its people beyond what I already knew.
Trapani exists on the coast of Sicily, and is known as a fishing port, its waters fertile and exotic. In the glow of the fresh morning sun, the colors would give it life, but Italians were late diners, and the city would come alive with a different feeling after dark.
Donato and I decided to dine at a trattoria , choosing to dine al fresco , and ordered a feast while we talked about the arts. We rarely discussed business while eating. And this trip was not for business, per se.
Donato did mention flying to America with my uncle, Ettore, to visit my father in prison there. We were not allowed to see him. Our grandfather’s rule. My father seemed to agree with it. Ettore would take my men every so often with him for the trip. However. I spoke to my father at least once a month. He refused to be left out of any family business, even though Nonno had decided to leave the family to Ettore instead of my father, who was the oldest son. My father had shamed the family by killing a woman and her unborn child while driving under the influence of alcohol in America.
Though the situation did not always sit right with me. We were told one thing, and were always silent about the truth of it, though I questioned the entire truth of it deep inside of my heart. I had always felt there was more to the story, branches of the truth that had been cut off and shredded into pieces. The reality of the situation my father was in was not a lie, but the facts of it were being left out on purpose.
The owner of the trattoria came out to speak to us before we left, and our plates proved how much we had enjoyed the food. Every bite had been taken, and all the sauces sopped up with bread.
We took a casual walk after, and then returned to the villa for the night.
The chasm night brought had swallowed me inside of its void, and I returned to the cucina for a glass of red wine before I settled outside by the pool, staring up at the sky. It was filled with more stars than thoughts in my head. I allowed the night to carry me with it, until the next morning, when I allowed the sea to rock me in her gentle arms.
Closing my eyes, I rested them while the sun beat down on my face and I felt refreshed enough to face the day.
Donato and I took breakfast and espresso together, and the look on his face was solemn as he drove me to town, where we switched the Ferarri for an off-road vehicle. I repeated the address on the slip of paper Monica had given me the morning I left her bed and Castello di Ballerini. The paper was tucked into my coat pocket, but I had memorized the words on it.
As good of a soldier as Donato was, he was an even better cugino , as he asked no questions but seemed to understand the severity of what I was about to do. I did not know what possessed me to come, or what had possessed Monica to give me the information, but I followed without thought. It was as if the waters of my life were about to deliver me to a shore—an unknown one with life that belonged to me but also did not.
The off-road vehicle rocked violently as we climbed up a crude road, one just wide enough for the car, and at the top, looking over the city, was a place that looked as if it were built hundreds of years ago from all that the earth around it had to offer. Bells jingled in the distance. A herd of goats. Their shepard was amid them with his dog, lifting a stick made of a fig branch as he directed them where to go.
As soon as I stepped out of the car, the shepard’s eyes narrowed on me, but he did not rush to meet me. He dealt with his goats before he came ambling up to us with the dog. He gave it a command in Sicilian to stay.
“I do not have another daughter,” he continued in the same language, “so be gone, the both of you.”
Donato cleared his throat and spoke in the same language. “What was your daughter’s name?”
The old man narrowed his eyes at us. He was tall, and at one time, probably had wide shoulders. He was sunken in, and his green eyes had turned dull, not even the sun causing them to spark with life. Wrinkles creased his face, and his hands were gnarled from arthritis. His back was crooked, and his clothes were that of a man who worked with livestock.
His narrow-eyed gaze did not stay on Donato but me. He slowly looked me up and down, his gaze catching on my eyes and stilling there, and his Adam’s apple bobbed with something he found. Something he had been missing.
“Leonarda,” he said, his voice cracking on the name. “Leonarda Maria Costa was her name.”
“Was,” I repeated.
He nodded solemnly, rubbing his chin. “She drowned ten years ago. She lived closer to the city, her home overlooking the sea. She did not prefer the company of people. She was alone at the time of her drowning.”
Donato cleared his throat. “Do you have a picture of her?”
I could only stare at the man. He stared back. After a few seconds, he nodded but told us we could not take the photo with us. He stepped inside of his home, and it was stuffy, but he seemed comfortable with the temperature. His dog went straight to a water bowl, lapping it up, and found a spot in the shade to rest. The dog’s eyes never left us. As the old man was shepard to his stock, the dog seemed to be shepard to the man.
The man, who did not give us his name, but we knew as Costa, went to a simple table set by the window, a lace cloth set underneath, where I could see frames lined up next to one another. His wife and the woman he called Leonarda. He handed me, not Donato, the frame.
The photograph was in black and white, but it did not hide how stunning his daughter was. The light in the photograph seemed to give life to her features. She was soft and hard at the same time. The picture was caught from the side when she was laughing, her dark hair about to fall over her face like a shade.
The man snatched the picture back from me and held it to his heart. “Leave now,” he said, but his voice sounded as if it had been crushed from the short walk from outside to inside.
I nodded, and Donato walked behind me. I emerged outside in the sun as if I had been in a cave my entire life, and my eyes could not stand the brightness. I squinted, almost closing them. I took a deep breath, and before I started to move toward the car, the man grabbed my hand and squeezed. His skin was rough and calloused. Cool, even though the temperature scorched.
“I had to touch you,” he said quickly, letting me go a second after. “I had to touch a part of her that I will never again.”
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Did she want me.”
The old man stared at me for a second, then shook his head. “She did not want anyone but herself.”
This was the reason my grandfather had chosen this man’s daughter for my father to bed and create heirs with. The women Nonno had vetted to be incubators did not want children but the payment they were offered for birthing a Fausti son.
My brothers and I were simply business deals.
I nodded and started to move away from the small casa.
The old man called me Signore Fausti , stopping me before I left. “She is buried not far from here.” He nodded in the direction. “She loved wild fennels.”
Halfway into my seat, he called my name again.
“You have been here. You have learned my name. The name of my daughter. You have glimpsed her face, which is not yours. Now forget. Forget and do not come back.” The dog resting against his legs bared his yellow-stained teeth at me.
As Donato took the rocky road down, stopping two minutes later at a cross in the road, I repeated the man’s words to him. “Forget, cugino. Forget our time here as if it has never happened.”
“Before or after the wild fennel will be delivered?” He did not turn his face to mine as he usually did. He kept it forward, as if turning left or right might sway me.
“After,” I said, fixing my suit.
Donato took the turn, and after the wild fennel I had picked from a field had been delivered, we both would forget.
I had only one family.
The Fausti famiglia.
Trapani was just another city in my beautiful Italia that my roots were embedded in.
Not one, but all cities to call home.