Chapter 35
Talk in their small town the next few weeks was of little else—at the bakery, at the quay when the boats came in, at the post office, and when friends gathered for coffee.
So little seemed to happen on their sleepy, isolated island that the discovery of a soldier’s remains and—even more curious—the weaver’s loom in his possession was fodder for all sorts of speculation.
Families of shepherds had lived on the island for as long as anyone could remember.
Couldn’t the loom have been used for woolens?
Perhaps, but a more salacious possibility was that it had come from the island’s other weavers, its water women, whom some saw as secretive and keeping to themselves.
It hadn’t been so many decades ago that the word strega had been lobbed at them.
Truly, most of the island’s families had weavings they’d asked for, pleaded for, some of them, hoping to be blessed, wishing to be fertile or married or happy.
That was innocent enough. When faced with desperate yearnings of the heart, not many would shy away from the thinnest bracelet of golden thread if it meant fate might turn her face favorably toward you.
But the water women were no longer a bustling community.
There were only two, a mother and daughter, who kept up the craft despite all that had happened in the war.
When soldiers came to wipe out your people, who knew what you might be capable of, even quiet, gentle neighbors you spoke to in the streets of town.
Mira knew what people were saying, the outrageous stories being spun for entertainment. Her friend Carmina tutted and tsked, disgusted with the opinions and conjecture, and she told Mira so.
“Ridiculous,” she snorted. “To think that you or your mother would have anything to do with such a thing. I wish those historians, or whoever they are, would backfill all the ruins with beach sand.”
Mira wanted to agree. Since finding the box in the cave, she’d been so preoccupied, Dante had started to worry about her.
She’d told Carmina about the box and the letter from Queen Berenice, but she hadn’t told her all it contained.
“I’m not worried about it,” Mira said. “Tourists will begin to arrive soon, and all that will be forgotten. People are just bored and eager for a good story.”
Her friend wasn’t mollified. “Why must they always pin things on—” She broke off.
“Jews are the usual suspects,” Mira said with a sigh. “Don’t you remember learning that in Signora Campolo’s history class?”
“Yes,” Carmina replied. “You challenged her then, and we should challenge people now.”
“I’d rather it blow away with the sea breeze.”
“Mira, I’ve never seen you so dismissive! Where did all your spirit go?”
Mira only smiled and nodded toward the nursery. “Daniella captured every last bit of it, and I don’t begrudge her at all. How my heart doesn’t burst, I’ll never know.”
It was a constant wonder to her. With each passing week, she delighted more in how Daniella changed and in the new things her daughter learned.
Mira was insatiable when it came to Daniella.
Sometimes, when Mira held her close and the wispy down of Daniella’s hair brushed her cheek, she felt she could literally consume the child whole.
All so unexpected, she experienced a dizzying seesaw sensation of the two of them being somehow the same person and at the same time separate and unique.
Mira didn’t have the words—or the sort of relationship—to ask her mother if she’d felt the same with her as a small child.
She couldn’t imagine that she had. Her mother had never been connected to anything so strongly as she was to the byssus, she believed.
She’d been willing to bend Mira to its existence, so long as the skill would continue.
She hadn’t spoken to her mother since the day they’d found the letter, the day the officers had confronted Zaneta at the house.
When she called or stopped by, her father only shook his head and reported she hadn’t been feeling well, was resting, even in the middle of the day—the usual fare of Mira’s childhood.
She’d tried to broach the subject with her father, but as close as they were, he was not, after all, a weaver.
He knew their work but didn’t really understand the bond they’d sworn to the sea and its craft.
Her father’s first loyalty had always been to her mother.
If she had any secrets, he would not speak them.
“You’ve heard what people are saying?” she’d asked. “That the soldier was somehow associated with us, the byssus weavers. One of us was his friend and helped him hide? Or the opposite—one of us was responsible for him being at the bottom of that well.”
“Yes, yes.” He nodded. “It means nothing. You know what they did to the families in this community, Mira, your own grandparents, aunts, uncles. They were all lost. What weaver would have willingly helped one of them do anything? It was so long ago, how can anyone know the truth of it? People will talk. You know how people can be.”
“Of course,” she’d agreed. She considered how to ask the questions she had. “You saw what was in the box I found.”
He nodded.
“You don’t think it’s curious that the little loom in the box is almost identical to the one the polizia brought here?”
“Curious, yes. Definitely.”
Mira heaved a sigh. “Mamma said she’d lost one in the ruins, but I didn’t know what she meant. Then, we found the letter and got distracted. I have to wonder, Papà, is it—” she started to ask.
Her father held up a hand. “What you want to ask is understandable, Mira. But whatever the answer is, it doesn’t change anything. Makes nothing better or worse. Maybe it offers you some explanation of your mother, but it won’t change the definition of her. She is who she is.”
Mira gave up trying to ferret out answers about what might have happened in her mother’s past. Those doors had obviously been shut and locked.
No further officials appeared in anyone’s kitchen, thrusting “police evidence” in their faces.
Zaneta was no more willing to unspool stories of her childhood or her family than she’d ever been.
It was as if, by clutching the memories close to her chest, her mother must have felt that was her only way of protecting them, these people and this time that she’d somehow let slip from her grasp.
Mira sighed in frustration. Her mother had been about to say something after reading Berenice’s letter; she just knew it.
But even as moved as she’d been then, she couldn’t bring herself to open up.
By holding so desperately tight to what was, she’d never had open hands to receive much else: joy, appreciation for her—the daughter she did have—or an openness to anything but the byssus as her one path and a singular focus.
Soon enough, just as she’d told Carmina would happen, the tourists trickled in.
The nuragic ruins up in the island’s interior were a curiosity for visitors while they picnicked among the wild horses, and rumors about the bones of a German deserter added to the place’s intrigue.
Her mother eventually emerged from her room and took up the byssus work again, as if she’d just been away on a short trip. Nothing much changed.
Except Daniella, who seemed to change daily and was growing like wild myrtle.
Mira often lost herself staring at Daniella as she played happily on the floor, puzzling out, as all parents do, what parts of herself she could claim in her daughter: the way she wrinkled her nose when she concentrated on grabbing at something, the curve of her chin.
Dante would say their daughter’s love of color and textures had come from Mira.
There were other things, too, Mira noticed.
Sometimes when Daniella refused to settle before a nap, pushing against her chest with her little balled-up fists, Mira fought the surge of worry that rose.
She recognized it as the same feeling she’d felt as a child watching her mother wrestle with her moods.
In moments like these, Mira brushed her daughter’s unruly hair from her damp forehead and gave her what comfort she could—her embrace, her soft, singsong voice.
Daniella’s moods were her own, and with Mira’s guidance and assurance, she’d learn to tame them.
Nothing was as predetermined as she imagined.
Persistent ocean waves, she knew, could wear away even the deepest etchings in stone.
Later, when Daniella took her first tottering steps, arms akimbo for balance, Mira would absently raise a hand to her heart as it swelled to bursting with pride.
When Daniella grew old enough to swim in the sea and wander on the shore, pointing out the swifts and gulls, Mira wanted nothing more than to know what was churning in her young imagination.
What stories was she weaving? When Dani learned something new—mastering sums her father practiced with her—she delighted in it for its own sake, because she was proud of herself, not because it satisfied Mira.
Mira and Dante talked about it late at night, his breath warm on her shoulder. She stroked the scratchy stubble of his beard and whispered her fears to him.
“Do you think Dani is all right?” she’d ask, still sometimes second-guessing her ability to mother her well.
“Of course,” Dante reassured her. “She seems content.”
“You should have seen her when we were gathering plants near the wetlands today, amore mio. The flamingos are all gathered, nesting behind the beaches. We came upon them suddenly, and her face lit up. It was magical. She just dropped the basket and stared. They were so noisy with their squawks and calling, and then they must have realized they were being watched. All at once, a giant pink cloud rose up from the water. Thousands of them, so thick we felt the wind from their wings. Daniella just stood there with her mouth open and her eyes wide as saucers, drinking it all in. It was gorgeous.”
“You see? She’s happy.”
“I remember the first time I saw the flamingos, probably five or six, not much older than she is now.” Mira’s hand stilled on Dante’s chin.
“It was the busy season for the byssus, and Mamma seemed almost frantic at the time with so much to do. I was to carry the baskets while she gathered the plants for dyeing. She seemed so angry. We didn’t have time to pause and watch the birds. ”
Dante reached an arm up to Mira’s hair. “Love,” he said with a sigh.
“Your mother carries so much guilt about being the only one left in her family that there’s no room for happy things like flamingos.
She feels like she has to carry everything—the past and the future—on her back, and most of the time, it seems to me she added that load to you as well. ”
Mira was quiet. “Just the way she used to look at me sometimes when she was in her moods. It felt like she was always assessing me for something, sifting through me, trying to find some quality or aspect. I don’t know if she ever saw what she was looking for, or if she did, whether it was good or not.
” Her thoughts were all over the place that evening.
“What she told the police—that loom they found in the ruins was hers. Do you think she had something to do with that soldier? His being in the well?”
Dante let out a long breath. “Your mother is a small woman. I don’t think she’d have the strength to overpower a soldier, if that’s what you’re saying.
It was wartime. A lot of people saw and did things they were probably ashamed of later.
It had to have been horrible. I’m glad we weren’t around for it. ”
“So if she did have something to do with him . . .”
“Then what’s done is done. She probably had no choice, and I, for one, wouldn’t blame her for it, given what she had to have been through.
What I do blame her for is letting the fallout from it bleed all over you.
And you haven’t done a thing.” He kissed her neck.
“You’ve got to quit handing your mother the keys to your kingdom, amore. ”
Mira rolled over to face her husband. He was right, of course.
He reminded her so often that she was a different person now, with her own family, her own daughter, and her own path to walk.
As he pulled her close, the salty musk of him filling her senses, Mira had not one thought of her mother or daughter at all.