Chapter 26
ventisei
‘A proxy bride? What’s a proxy bride?’
‘It was a very common practice here in Italy during the very difficult post-war period. But in the simplest sense, a couple is married. But they are not physically together.’
‘In the same room?’
‘Not even in the same country.’ She pointed to Immacolata’s proxy wedding documentation.
‘Your Nonno Antonio was in Melbourne, and Immacolata was here in Impastino. They said their vows and signed separate papers. Someone usually stood in for the sposo. The groom. A friend of the family, a cousin, a brother. A token of respect and protection for the bride.’
Alessio shook his head. ‘Wait a sec. Did they even know each other before they got married?’
Francesca shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes they did, or knew of each other from neighbouring towns. Other times, they were perfect strangers who exchanged a few letters and photos via sea mail. Which also took months and months to arrive between the countries.’
‘So you’re saying there’s every chance Nonna married Nonno without knowing him? And then boarded that ship to Australia to meet him, completely unsure as to what awaited her. In a foreign country. Where she didn’t speak the language.’
She gave a gentle smile. ‘That was the usual scenario. And this is a big part of the migration history of southern Italian women. Nonna Maria has told me all kinds of stories over the years.’
Alessio closed his eyes, feeling winded.
His mind swirled with memories of his nonni together.
Images of respectful conversations. Kind actions.
Polite words. He searched back to the deepest recesses of his childhood and youth.
Had there been love and affection? He couldn’t remember that side of their relationship.
Nonno had died so long ago. Perhaps his memories were simply recreations of photos, and his imagination had painted in narratives and stories, knitted together fabrications of a life lived in a particular way.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and opened a new browser.
‘Are you calling your parents?’
‘Not yet.’ Into the search bar he typed proxy marriage Italy Australia effects.
What followed was a flood of words which suddenly sharpened in his mind as he pieced together some of the behaviours he had seen lived out in real life. Depression. Anxiety. Social withdrawal. Apathy. Language barriers. PTSD. Mental health conditions . . .
‘Would she have had to agree to this proxy set-up? Could she have been forced?’ He gestured to the fading ink of the signature on the proxy marriage entry.
‘Technically, I guess she would have had to agree. But by a force of hand, anyone can agree to anything. And not necessarily in spirit or heart.’
He knew his nonna had been tough beyond compare.
She had erected a high, resilient wall around herself, that even those close to her couldn’t penetrate.
See over, yes. Peer through, at times. But break through or knock down?
Never. It had gone right to her roots, which had been grounded in independence, self-reliance and resourcefulness.
Alessio suddenly had a thought; what if the fact she had never shared any of this was intentional, a deliberate act to hide the turmoil and pain of something deeper? Had she not wanted to leave Impastino? She used to actively avoid conversation about ‘Quella terra . . .’ That land.
Alessio shook himself. ‘I think there’s much more to this proxy story.’
Francesca stepped towards him. ‘Today we made great progress. Let’s focus on that. And now, let’s go ask Nonna. She might have some light to shed.’
They found Maria sitting on the balcony by her apartment door, looking out over their vegetable garden with pride and expertly top and tailing string beans with a serrated knife.
‘Nonna,’ Francesca started in Italian, keeping a supportive hand on Alessio’s shoulder. ‘We’ve just learned that Alessio’s nonna Immacolata wasn’t a Mazzotta. She was a Martino. Do you remember her?’
There was no mistaking the immediate tension in Maria’s arthritic shoulders, the way her gaze snapped up from her work. ‘That Immacolata? Of course I do.’
Maria turned to face Alessio, and he couldn’t help but see the shadow that passed across her face. ‘The nose. I should’ve recognised it. The very same. Not a Martino nose. It came from her mother’s line.’
‘Nonna Maria, you knew my nonna from her time here?’ he asked.
Francesca translated, her hand never leaving his shoulder.
‘I knew her. We all knew each other. The town emptied of most of the men during the war. We women lived together. Looked out for each other. The ones who didn’t work in the camps as nurses, that is . . .’
Francesca relayed this info to Alessio, then asked, ‘Nonna, what can you tell us about Immacolata?’
‘She was teased for her nose. She hated it.’ Maria’s hand, still clutching the knife, came down on her own nose and gave it a pull. ‘She used to wear wooden clothes pegs on it at night to thin it down. I remember her telling me.’
Alessio absently tapped his own nose, half laughing at this news and Maria’s miming. ‘Of course she did.’
Francesca squeezed Alessio’s arm. ‘And what else?’
Keeping her voice neutral, Maria descended into dialect, watching Francesca carefully. ‘Does he really want to know?’
Francesca felt her stomach flip. ‘He needs to know whatever you know.’
‘Come,’ Maria said, passing Alessio the bowl of beans and knife and ushering them inside. ‘But I can’t promise you will like this . . .’
Alessio had followed Maria’s instructions and collected a brown wooden box from within the large old-fashioned baule in her bedroom. The heavy metal-framed lid had threatened collapse, barely opening on its rusted hinges.
‘She’s going to explain the story to me first,’ Francesca said, reaching out to give his hand a squeeze when he seated himself alongside them at the kitchen table. ‘Then I’ll translate it back to you.’
Alessio nodded and watched as Maria made the sign of the cross then began apologising to the heavens. She slipped back into that thick pugliese dialect which reminded him so much of his own nonna. He caught a few words and the rough gist, but lacked any clear narrative thread.
All he could read was Francesca’s face. Her brows rose and fell in time with Maria’s inflections and hand gestures.
There was a gasp, then a dazed shake of the head.
And then Maria gestured to the wooden box.
She tapped it then pushed it across the table to Alessio.
Francesca’s eyes conveyed all that was about to come Alessio’s way.
He swallowed. ‘She did warn me.’
Francesca gave a sad nod. ‘You will get all the answers you’ve been searching for. Pronto?’ He nodded. ‘Allora . . . Your nonna was in love with a man in the town. A very tall, handsome man. A man many of the women loved. He went to war late, but was one of the lucky ones who returned.’
‘Right . . .’
‘When he returned he asked for Immacolata’s hand in marriage.
But Immacolata’s father refused. They threatened to run away and marry without his blessing, so her father panicked.
He rushed and arranged a proxy marriage for Immacolata with a friend’s cousin from a nearby town, who had already settled in Australia.
Apparently it took a month to arrange, but once the papers were filed, there wasn’t anything that could be done. ’
‘So, she never wanted to marry my nonno? Her life in Australia was forced on her?’ Alessio felt his throat constrict with sadness.
‘I am so sorry, Alessio.’ Francesca tried to smile reassuringly but couldn’t make it reach her eyes.
Alessio’s chest felt weighted down with the heaviness of this knowledge.
She lost her love and her whole world. She never wanted to go to Australia. To emigrate. She lost . . . everything. No wonder she was always so . . .
‘Does Maria remember why she wasn’t allowed to marry the man she loved?’
‘Because . . . she was a Martino. And Martinos don’t marry just anyone. Least of all a . . .’
Alessio’s eyes darted between the women. ‘A . . .? A who?’
‘A Fiore.’
‘WHAT?!’ Alessio stood up so fast he knocked his chair backwards, and stood there, confused and winded. ‘This pasta feud stretches back that far?’
‘Hundreds of years.’
‘No. Wait . . . a Fiore?’ The penny finally dropped. ‘Who was the man?’
She exhaled. ‘My nonno.’
Alessio’s mind whirred with blood and adrenaline. ‘Francesca!’
Maria piped up in dialect, her wild gesticulation seemingly in agreement with Alessio’s state of shock.
‘Your nonno? But how is that possible?’
Francesca’s eyes reddened. ‘Nonna just said . . . he became very sick after Immacolata left. He struggled with the forced separation. He tried to emigrate to Australia himself but didn’t have the money for the fare. He wanted to follow her out there for years. To get her back.’
‘But she was married by May of forty-six,’ he added.
‘Ale, they wrote letters . . .’ She pushed the wooden box across the table. ‘Secret love letters. Carried across the seas, waiting months at a time for a reply.’
Alessio flipped open the case and inside he found a bundle of twenty or so letters in aged envelopes. All addressed to Impastino.
Nonna’s letters. Her side of the story.
‘How did Nonna Maria get them?’
‘She found them after Nonno died. He’d kept them all those years in secret.’
‘And at what point did he marry Nonna Maria?’
‘In forty-nine.’
‘Ugh!’ Alessio sat back in his chair. ‘What a mess.’
Maria, who was also teary, reached out both hands and took Alessio’s.
She offered words of comfort, or at least that was what Alessio deduced them to be, judging by her soft voice and use of perdono, amore and destino.
It was then that he realised just how closely all three of them were touched by this fragment of history.
‘Did you just find this out about your nonno?’ he asked Francesca.
‘Sì. I had no idea.’
‘Does your mamma know that her father-in-law lived this double life?’
Francesca asked Maria, who simply shrugged and kissed the Madonna pendant hanging from her necklace.
‘I’m really sorry, Francesca. This has brought up stuff for both of us. If I’d have known . . .’
‘I’m sorry, too.’
After a few moments of collective weepy silence, Alessio’s eyes returned to the box.
Could he further violate his nonna’s privacy by reading those precious, secretive pages?
Hadn’t he intruded into her life far enough already?
On the other hand, she was gone, and the world was very different now.
Did he owe it to his family to understand what had happened?
‘Can we . . . read them?’ he asked tentatively.
Maria patted his hand but stood up and left the table, returning outside with her bowl of string beans and knife.
‘Did I offend her?’
‘She’s read them. I think she’s just giving us some space.’
Alessio found Francesca’s gaze and held it. ‘So you and I had a near miss in history.’
‘Perhaps history knew we were needed in the future.’
Alessio smiled at the sentiment and joined her on her side of the table. Pressing a warm kiss to her forehead, he said, ‘I have Martino blood.’
‘Explains your fire, no?’
He laughed. ‘I’m not that bad.’
But then his mind tore him from the moment and thrust him back into his kitchen. The tantrums. The tension. The behaviour that had drawn whispers and endless verbal jabs over the burners. His defensive, protective front. That unwavering desire to push, to pull, to rise above the rest.
Martino. By blood, perhaps. But no longer in spirit.
He reached for a letter from the box, and found he was already fascinated by the intricate cursive and faded ink on the envelope. ‘Can you help me?’
‘Just as long as you help me.’