Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
BIANCAMURA, 16 APRIL 1985
VANNI
Lucrezia is back.
Talk about a shock.
Twelve years is a long time, a long time growing up, growing apart. The girl I remembered is no longer there, of course; but I saw glimpses of her in the woman she is now.
I saw her astonishment when I appeared in this chair. What did she think, what did she feel ? Pity, probably. Or maybe nothing but surprise, because, for her, I’m just a distant memory of little importance.
She has no idea that our friendship, and the loss of her, was the first turning point of my life. She has a full life, a glamorous life from the look of it, in Paris: she’s left me behind like I could never do with her, even if many times I tried. I know it probably isn’t healthy to have the ghost of a gone girl shaping your relationships – or lack thereof – but this is what happened to me.
The past can be a very difficult place, impossible to leave.
Lucrezia and I were born in Casalta in the same year; we were taken to the same places when we were babes in arms. But the first time I truly saw her was a Sunday of early summer, in church, when we were eight years old. She seemed a reserved child, wrapped up in herself – almost as solemn and quiet as her elder sister, Bianca, who looked and behaved like a china doll. I thought the Falconeri daughters were lofty, aloof, with their frilly clothes and noses up in the air.
The Falconeri were the unspoken leaders of our village, not just because of their wealth and the vast vineyards and olive groves they possessed, but also because their name could be traced back hundreds of years. Their blood was mixed with the Casalta turf. My family, the Orafi, were the newcomers, having emigrated from the south only two generations before. We challenged them with a small wine business that became bigger and bigger, more and more lucrative, until we could look at them, level in the eye, and from below.
Even as rivals, our grandparents, the heads of our families, always had an unspoken agreement: that they would help each other keep the position they’d spilled blood for, and make each other stronger instead of tearing each other down. They were pragmatic. Then something happened between my father and Lucrezia’s, something my father never talked about; and the families fell out in a dramatic, awful way.
But back to that day in church, when the Falconeri daughters sat still and composedly, and I swayed and kicked my feet and turned back and forward as if being attacked by a swarm of ants. Lucrezia was in the first pew on the left, as always, and she turned around to look at me. I swear, something unspoken passed between us, a mutual understanding that I’d never experienced before and never did again. Something that even now, I can’t translate into words.
Fate decided that at that moment my mother had had enough of me. In whispery and clipped words, she sent me to play outside while my big brother sat as well-behaved as always. He was a real little Orafi, the carbon copy of my father: they were side by side, my father in a perfectly pressed suit and my brother in an equally perfectly pressed shirt. I was never so well put together, always with my shirt hanging out of my trousers or a scuffed shoe, my mop of curls refusing to stay down even when my mother tried to tame it with hair gel.
I darted out and found myself in the sunshine, blazing and blinding after the gloom of the church. Having conquered freedom, I looked around. A few other children had been evicted from the service for restlessness and sent outside. There was plenty of entertainment for us there – the stairs were the perfect grounds for a competition of who could jump the most steps, for a start. The most daring of us, and the ones with a little pocket money, could run over to the Bar Piazza and buy themselves a clandestine gelato , to be finished quickly before mass was over – it’d be a huge offence to go for ice cream after having been sent out of church, but parents often chose to ignore the telltale chocolate stains on our Sunday clothes. Also, behind the church was a small thicket of maritime pines, a pineta , where we gathered resin off the trees’ bark and then traded it between us children as if it was gold – a handful of resin could be exchanged for two hundred liras, which would pay for an ice lolly or strawberry bubble gum.
I considered my choices. A couple of boys sat on a step playing with football stickers, but it didn’t interest me much. I’d turned around to reach a few of us small rebels in the piazza across the square, when I stopped cold: in front of me, immaculate in her dress, and unsmiling, stood Lucrezia Falconeri.
A Falconeri girl was joining the naughty squadron?
Out of the blue, one of the boys, Bruno I think, threw a pebble at her. It hit her shoulder, and she gave out a small yelp. Stuck-up or not, I didn’t think throwing stones at her was fair at all.
‘Leave her alone!’ I shouted.
Lucrezia looked at me – but not with gratitude or even recognition. More like surprise. Then, all prim and proper in her dress, she went up to Bruno and punched him. Straight in the face.
Everyone fell silent, including Bruno, who was too stunned to react. So much for the quiet child.
Lucrezia broke the silence: she called me with a simple ‘Let’s go,’ like there was no need for any other words, and ran towards the thicket. I followed her, as if under a spell.
That was the beginning of our friendship. We met up the hills after school as often as we could; I built us what we called the treehouse, but was really just a few planks nailed over the middle of a hazelnut tree, which opened in a natural seat with its branches making a green, perfumed roof. We took things as they were, without asking ourselves why we fitted like two pieces of a jigsaw, why we seemed to never run out of make-believe and games to play, or even enjoyed sitting in silence while she read a book and I broke hazelnut shells in between rocks and filled her pockets with them.
A boy who couldn’t sit still and a girl who couldn’t stand wearing shoes, a boy who adored his parents and a girl who was afraid of her father; we were who we were, and didn’t mull over the whys of the bond we had. I always had this feeling, weirdly enough, that my mum was more inflexible than my dad about me befriending a Falconeri girl. Until it wasn’t a feeling any more, but a certainty, because one day my mother barged into my room and slapped me across the face. I was stunned.
‘What have I done?’ I shouted at her. I’d always been lively, maybe too lively, but I’d never got into serious trouble before. My mother and I were very close, and the guilt of having upset her was as painful as the slap.
‘Now listen to me, Vanni. They want to destroy our family!’ I knew at once who she was talking about. ‘You’ll never see that girl again, do you hear me?’
‘She doesn’t want to destroy our family! She just wants to be my friend !’
And then, something even stranger happened: my mum burst into tears and ran out of my room, leaving me confused and distressed. The next day, after school, I tried to stay home – but the thought of Lucrezia waiting for me there, trusting that I would arrive, gnawed at me. I jumped from my window to a branch of the tree below, and went. That day marked a change in my mother: she never brought up Lucrezia again, but it was as if I’d betrayed her. As if I’d made a choice between her and the Falconeri girl, which made no sense.
For Lucrezia it was the opposite: her father, the tyrannical Fosco Falconeri, was the intransigent one. She feared him and, to be honest, so did I: but not enough to obey his orders when it came to our friendship. We both defied our families, and neither of us understood why they hated each other so much.
Then, one afternoon, Lucrezia arrived at the treehouse pale and shaken, and burst into tears in front of me. She said that her mother had been found dead that morning. We sat in the tree and she leaned her head on my shoulder, in silence.
From then on, everything changed. Lucrezia began skipping school, and when I went to our tree I often found her already there, dazed and restless at the same time. She stopped bringing food, and when I tried to convince her to eat, she would refuse. She spent hours with her knees under her chin, looking out at the hills.
I was determined I would be there for her, no matter what.
I was thirteen, and my feelings for Lucrezia were beginning to colour into something deeper, something different. Not a child’s feelings, and they confused me, scared me, and made me happier than ever at the same time. Through all that turmoil, I didn’t have anyone to confide in, and maybe I didn’t want anyone, either. My mum was spending more and more time at our seaside house, where she would later unofficially move, and I could feel that all was not right between my parents – the treehouse, and Lucrezia, were a refuge for me.
One afternoon soon after, Lucrezia wasn’t there. Sometimes it happened, if the coast wasn’t clear and there was a danger of getting into trouble, or if she had something on, like family business or a doctor’s appointment, or visiting relatives. But recently she’d been at the treehouse every day – escaping from home, and from her father. The day after I waited for her all afternoon; the day after that I stayed until dark. I saw the evening swallow the trees around me, and then night fall so dark and deep I couldn’t see my own hands. No trace of her.
‘I covered for you,’ my brother hissed when I returned. ‘But I won’t do it again.’
And yet, I knew he would, and he did twice more. By now I knew that there was something wrong, but I wasn’t allowed to go near the Falconeri. I recognised Matilde, their housekeeper, in the panetteria ; but when I approached her she turned away and pretended not to see me. I knew that her whole family worked for the Falconeri, including her son, Diego, who was only a few years older than me but made me, somehow, uneasy.
‘I just want to know what happened to her! Where is Lucrezia?’ I murmured, trying not to catch anyone’s attention.
Matilde turned and left without a word. I knew there was no point in persisting with her, so I kept spending time in the square, around the piazza and the handful of little shops, hoping to hear news. Until one day, in the panetteria again, I thought I saw Lucrezia – my heart was beating in double time, and I couldn’t contain my happiness when I laid a hand on her shoulder and called her name…
Her face was identical to Lucrezia’s, but her hair was lighter – it wasn’t Lucrezia. Her twin, Bianca, was looking back at me.
She turned away at once, and I almost couldn’t believe it when she whispered: ‘At the treehouse.’
For a moment I thought it was my imagination. But no, she’d really uttered those words.
I ran to the treehouse and waited, but she didn’t come. But the day after she appeared, pale and furtive. She didn’t climb up: instead we stood at the foot of the tree. ‘Lucrezia hurt herself… her arms. She had to go to the hospital…’
I froze, silent.
‘She’s fine now, but she needs a lot of peace and quiet, so our father sent her to a boarding school.’
‘What? For how long?’
‘I don’t know.’ She seemed desolate, more so than words could convey.
I was taught that boys don’t cry, so I didn’t. The tears I had remained stuck in my throat, refusing to either melt out or disappear. Weeks and months went by, until one day the car we were travelling in swerved and took us down a slope with it. It was a miracle we all survived.
And now, I’m in this chair. A half man, I believe deep down, though I don’t say it: I don’t want anyone to feel pity for me. A boy who couldn’t sit still is now forever sitting. All my dreams involved being moving. Walking, running. My dreams have vanished, even if my father is adamant that they haven’t gone anywhere, that it’s me who disappeared the day of the accident. Retreated somewhere inside myself.
I didn’t want Lucrezia to see me like this, but I had no choice: it was this, or not seeing her at all.
She was a child when I was a child, and in my mind, she’s grown up with me. But the boy she knew could climb, jump, run. I’ll never climb the hazelnut tree with her again, or jump any steps, or run anywhere.
The only thing I can run from now is myself.