Chapter 6
Aside from some unfortunate bouts of malaria in their first year of marriage, Allegra and Johann quickly grew into their own rhythms. Each morning, he enjoyed a breakfast of fish and bread that Allegra warmed in the small oven.
Afterward, he placed a kiss on Allegra’s forehead and flashed his bright smile as he bid her a good day.
Then he left for the quay and his cheerful blue boat that danced where it was moored just offshore.
She’d sweep the floors, always sandy no matter how careful they were to leave their shoes at the threshold; do some light mending; and then head to her childhood home to join her mother and sister and help them with their tasks of weaving and dyeing.
Some days she spent combing the landscape for a particular plant that was in season, gathering saffron or mixing dyes that would render the perfect shade of blue or purple.
While there was no particular agenda or schedule, they each had their own goals for the day, and they whiled away the time chatting and singing until the shadows lengthened across the floor and Allegra took her cue to return home to make dinner for her handsome husband.
She treasured the predictability and the small pleasures of simple routines.
Allegra didn’t mind the repetition. It comforted her like a worn blanket, soft on the edges and frayed, just so.
She loved lighting their lamp in the evening, laughing with Johann as he hung his vest on the peg by the door, a door he’d made with his own rough hands.
Another kiss as he returned from his day at sea, salt on his lips, his skin still warm from the sun.
Often, he surprised her with a sack of amaretti cookies he’d picked up from the baker’s before heading home or a bouquet of yellow broom or pink pea flowers he’d thought to gather along his way.
They both liked to brighten the rooms with the colors and beauty from the outdoors.
Once, Allegra came home to find Johann had layered their bed in petals—white, pink, yellows.
When she arrived at the shore early the next morning, sleepy and rumpled, she shrugged, hiding a secret smile as her mother pulled a few stray petals from the tangle of her hair. “What have you gotten into?” she asked, letting the petals fall to the ground.
“I was in a hurry and didn’t do a braid this morning,” Allegra answered, avoiding the question. Her mother leaned into her and bumped her with her hip, teasing.
“Be sure to shut your windows at dusk,” she mentioned as an afterthought. “The mosquitoes are thickening with the rain.”
After their swim and morning harvest, when they were back at her mother’s home sharing a midmorning meal, Allegra glanced at Lora.
She’d been absent from the morning’s gathering and was just now well enough to sit at the loom after two weeks of malarial fever.
They’d all had the tiresome sickness this year.
The island’s boggy wetlands drew swarms of the infernal pests.
Wearing their long-sleeved shirts, scarves, and hats helped some, but the weaver women couldn’t swim in such attire, and everyone was vulnerable at night.
“I hate to wish for no rain, but wouldn’t it be lovely if things dried up and all the mosquitoes went away forever?” Allegra mused.
“Perhaps,” her mother agreed. “But it’s not really for us to decide which creatures can live or die.”
“We take care of the mollusks. We give them special treatment.”
“But they don’t rely on us. They would continue without us. It’s about what they offer us.” She gestured at the loom with her strong hands. “Such a delicate and unique sort of beauty for the world.”
Lora perked up from her seat at the loom. “Signora Dona mentioned recently she’d heard of another remarkable material, one seen at a World’s Fair in America.”
Mamma nodded. “Yes, I know about that. The Spanish princess, Eulalia, saw a dress there and commissioned one for herself. It was a dress made of glass.”
“Glass?” Allegra was astounded. The sea silk was delicate, but not so fragile it would shatter like glass.
Lora explained, “I know what you’re thinking, but it was made like the Venetian glass. Its fibers are spun from a rod dipped in fire and then woven on a loom like we do.”
“Not like the sea silk,” Mamma corrected.
“They mix in other fabrics with the glass fibers so the cloth won’t shatter.
” She wrinkled her nose and waved a dismissive hand.
“It may sparkle, but it’s heavy and costly.
Cloth made with byssus is so light it feels invisible, and its shine is like the sun, not a showy diamond.
Don’t be fooled, girls. There’s nothing like our byssus in all the world. ”
“Which is why our family will always do this,” Allegra said, pride in her voice.
“Us and our daughters after us. With all that’s going on in the world, isn’t it lovely to have something beautiful to do?
” It was the fall of 1911, and Etna had erupted in neighboring Sicily, leaving thousands homeless.
Lately, if she went to meet the boats with their catches down at the main quay, all the talk in town was of Italy’s brewing war with Libya.
Allegra didn’t want to think of politics and battles, of volcanoes creating chaos.
She didn’t want to imagine Johann doing anything but fashioning his bell-shaped fish traps and tugging off her headscarf to bury his face in her hair at the end of each day.
“Many things in life are beautiful, cara,” Mamma reminded her. “A warm house, a mouthful of seada washed down with limoncello, and the love and comfort of family.”
Lora chimed in. “I’m sure the pescatori think a school of sardo is beautiful,” she said. “And the shepherds are smitten with their smelly sheep. People must think we’re crazy for spending our time with the beards of mussels.” She laughed at the absurdity, and soon all of them were giggling.
Allegra knew their profession—if you could call it that—was unusual.
When she tried to picture herself baking cakes all day, sinking clay jars to trap octopuses, or standing behind a counter selling wares to blundering tourists like in the capital city, she simply couldn’t conjure it.
It was magical, like Johann had teased the first time they’d spoken.
Weaving the golden fiber was an alchemy that drew her in, working its magic each time she wove the fine threads into some new geometry.
She wouldn’t admit it to Lora and Mamma, but when she collected and worked the sea silk, Allegra felt the same sort of connection and satisfaction as when she and Johann were tangled together in their bed.
It made her feel transcendent, part of something bigger and more important than anything that might happen on their tiny island.
A participant in creation, making something beautiful from what most people considered ordinary.
Allegra rose and crossed the room to fetch some salted dried fish.
She was hungry again, and she placed a hand on her stomach.
Soon she would tell Mamma that she and Johann had begun a new work, a different sort of weaving that made her heart flutter with excitement.
She imagined the tiny bean of life swimming inside her like a fish, submerged in the salty water of her womb, completely at home without breath, tossed to and fro by the waves of her own movements.
The thought made her smile, and she had a sudden longing to wade into the shallows of the sea herself, to feel the tide’s tug against her calves.
The next morning, Allegra rose before the first pink of dawn lit the panes in the window near her bed.
Leaving Johann snoring under the blankets, she nibbled on a crust of bread and some sliced cheese as she walked to the shore.
Humming to herself, she smiled at the scuttling crabs hurrying to dive into the sand before the hungry gulls came searching for breakfast. The sky’s pink and soft lavender was beginning to mute the morning into a dreamy haze, and Allegra slipped off her shoes and stockings.
The sand was still damp from dew and the recent high tide, cool between her toes.
A movement caught her eye up the beach, just below the dunes—a large brown shape near a scraggly hunk of driftwood.
It was too far from shore to be a monk seal.
Curious, she picked up her skirt and headed toward it.
Ah, she’d come upon a nesting loggerhead.
The turtle was intent on her task, her mottled flippers sweeping back and forth to dig a hole she judged deep enough to hold her eggs. Allegra crouched to watch.
When the turtle was satisfied, she positioned herself to face the ocean, her huge body covered in sand in the pit she’d dug.
She grew still, her jaws slightly open. Utterly silent and her dark eyes dripping tears, the turtle focused on her life’s task with Allegra as her sole witness.
Allegra knelt in the sand nearby, her hand cupping her own abdomen.
Already she mothered the baby she carried, imagined what it would be like holding her—she imagined it a girl—for the first time.
“Excellent, Mamma,” she whispered. “Well done. Good for you.”
When the turtle finished, she flung sand in all directions to hide the nest, burying the small, white eggs.
Allegra estimated there must have been a hundred or more.
Dawn had broken wide open, the sun rising orange above the horizon, and the turtle seemed to take her cue.
Off toward the water she went, retracing the path she must have made hours earlier.
Allegra walked beside her as she lumbered, awkward on land and crusted with damp sand.
A sadness crept over her, although she knew this was nature’s way.
This turtle would never see her eggs hatch, would never know if her babies survived their dash toward their instinctual sea home.
Did turtles feel these things? Or did they do their duty and carry on?
Allegra waded in with the turtle, then reached out a hand and brushed it along its ridged shell as the turtle ducked into the breaking waves, swimming into the deep.
She stayed in the surf, unable to shake the melancholy, until she breathed a sigh and headed back to make breakfast for her sleeping husband.