Chapter 38
By the time Dante was released from the hospital, his bruises fading from purple to green, Mira had freshened up the spare room for Daniella, and Carmina had stocked their kitchen with hearty meals for his homecoming.
Mother and daughter flanked him as he walked stiffly from the car to the comfortable chair Mira had moved to the main room for his benefit.
“I’m not an invalid,” he groused, a good-natured smile playing on his lips.
“You’ve had surgery, Papà,” Daniella pointed out. “You’re going to need help for a bit. Don’t be such an uomo macho.”
Mira raised an eyebrow at her daughter. Her time at the university had granted her liberties they weren’t used to.
With Dante ensconced in his chair, Mira gave him his medication, and they let him rest. It would be a couple of weeks before he was back to teaching, the doctors had told her.
He would need care and rest, and she would gladly provide that.
Daniella had come for a bit of moral support and for reassurance that her father was out of the woods, and Mira was grateful for the time with her.
“Will Nonni be coming for dinner?” Daniella asked as she poked through the wrapped dishes in the refrigerator. “Zia Carmina has left enough for the whole neighborhood.”
“I can ask them if you like,” Mira said. “I’m sure they’d love to see you while you’re here. Nonna might like to hear what you’re working on at school.”
Daniella brightened. “I didn’t have the chance to tell you yet.
” She glanced into the other room as Dante’s snoring rose in volume, and she lowered her voice to a whisper.
“I’ve been selected to present at the antiquities conference in Roma this summer.
A professor from the archaeology department there is leading a group to the nuragic ruins this spring, and they think some of my research on the origins of the byssus and Berenice might tie in. ”
“That sounds important,” Mira said.
“I don’t know where it’ll lead. You know how digs can go.” Mira, in fact, didn’t know. She knew as much about archaeology as outer space. “It may be nothing, but I’m excited to be included.”
“Maybe Nonna can add some perspective?” she offered.
“I’ve tried to get her to tell her stories, especially since her mother was the historian of the weaver community.
With her memory slipping, and a lot of things being lost or destroyed in the war .
. .” Daniella shrugged. Mira sighed. Her mother’s memory was indeed fading.
She and her father had both noticed some disturbing lapses lately.
Trying to flush her glasses down the toilet, constantly opening drawers in the studio and taking all the items out for no reason.
Twice, her father had awakened to find the bed empty and the front door open, her mother trying to unlock the fenced yard.
They were worried she’d wander toward the sea in the night.
She’d kept most of this from Daniella. What could she do but worry?
The two of them spent the afternoon puttering around the studio and catching up.
Mira loved seeing Daniella as a woman apart from herself.
She was amazed at her daughter’s confidence and assured manner.
She’d grown into a beauty; her dark hair and brown eyes seemed to reflect the Mediterranean light so that she almost shone as she bent to pick a bouquet of wildflowers for the table.
For Mira, it was a dizzying sensation watching her grown daughter, this person who had come from her in the most intimate ways yet sprang forward with her own uniqueness, beauty, and purpose.
She was in constant motion. There was no pinning her down to define her as weaver or scholar, daughter or signora.
Daniella was a shape-shifting work in progress, and it was both thrilling and a little startling to behold, given the molded expectations of her own life.
A great bustle entered the house when Mira’s parents arrived.
Daniella jumped up to kiss their cheeks, while Dante gave a wave from his seat.
Mira helped her mother with the threshold—steps were more difficult for her these days—and took the steaming dish from her father’s hands.
He shrugged and exchanged a look with her.
The food was unnecessary, but of course, they would not arrive empty-handed.
A bottle of Cannonau was uncorked, and glasses clinked as they laughed and settled at the table.
As Mira always did, she dipped her fingers in the red wine and flicked the drops across the white tablecloth.
It was a sign of hospitality so that the guests would be comfortable enough not to worry about spilling or finery.
There were more important things when gathered together for a meal.
Mira was grateful to Carmina for her delicious spread of seafood fregola and culurgiones, the dumpling pasta stuffed with potatoes that was Daniella’s favorite.
With some vegetable soup and crusty bread, no one went hungry.
Dante joined them for as long as he was able, and then they helped him to the back porch, where they sat to watch the moon rise.
Zaneta was doting on Daniella, offering her sweets and more wine, nudging her to indulge, asking her about her studies. Mira marveled at their interaction. It was as if all the urgency surrounding the byssus and its care had vanished when it came to Daniella.
“You know what I thought the other day, Dani?” her mother said. “What you’re doing at school with your research is also a kind of weaving. Have you ever considered that?”
“What do you mean, Nonna?”
“You’re telling the story of us. You’re tracing our history. What do we say about telling stories? You’re weaving a tale, spinning a yarn, following a thread, like we do when we’re at the loom. It’s kind of the same thing, but different, no?”
Daniella laughed. “Yes, I see that. I’m a word weaver or a history weaver, and you’re a thread weaver, but it’s all about the byssus either way.”
Zaneta shook a crooked finger at her granddaughter. “You can’t escape it, my dear. It’s in your blood one way or another. I’m just happy you’re happy.”
Mira doubted her mother would have seen it so generously had it been Mira’s desire to break the line of byssus weavers.
Somehow, when it came to her granddaughter, Zaneta was much more openhanded and relaxed.
The rules were less rules and more suggestions.
Mira had often expressed her astonishment at this change of character with Dante.
He’d made a joke of it to calm her down.
“Don’t you think if Abraham had been asked to sacrifice his grandson instead of the petulant teenager Isaac, the story would have played out completely differently?
No way they would have made it to the altar that day.
That’s how grandparents are when they have all the benefits and none of the responsibility. ”
“Nonna, do you know of any connections between the weavers and the nuragic ruins?” Daniella asked. “That may be something I’m starting to look into for some of my research. Because of the things I’ve published so far, I’ve been asked to join a research team.”
Zaneta waved her hand and smiled. “Oh, the German soldier, you mean? I gave him the mad honey and pushed him into the well.” She shrugged and reached for her wineglass.
A hush fell over the room, and Luccio cleared his throat with a nervous laugh. “Zaneta, amore, I think we’ve had enough wine, don’t you? Think what you’re saying.” He took the glass and shook his head at Dani. Mira sat frozen in the dark, her hand gripping Dante’s leg. What did she just say?
Zaneta gave Luccio an annoyed look and pulled her wrap closer around her shoulders. “It’s not the wine, dear, you know that. The Allies were days away, and time was up. I had to survive so the byssus could go on.”
“Nonna?” Daniella put her hands on her grandmother’s and leaned to look into her eyes. “You mean during the war?”
She nodded. Talk of those days used to be taboo, guaranteed to bring on one of her headaches or days of depression.
This time, she laughed. “Yes, of course, dear. When the whole community of weavers, all those in the Jewish neighborhood, were taken.” She leaned in and whispered loudly to Dani as if it were a great secret. “Killed.”
Mira couldn’t move. Something riveted her to her seat and rendered her unable to stop her daughter’s questions.
“What else?” Daniella probed. Her grandmother, goodness knows, had never been so forthcoming.
“He insisted I weave for him, small things he could peddle on the quay. I used the last of the byssus my mother had saved to make a golden swastika that he sold to an officer in town. Byssus can’t be sold—you know that. And it was never meant to weave things of evil.”
“Of course not, Nonna. That must have been terrible.”
Mira suddenly remembered the earthquake the day Daniella was born, how she braced herself between the beams of the doorway. Something in her was bracing like that now. She felt as if the ground might just give way beneath her.
“I used that little loom, Mira, you remember? Like the one in the box? I had one just like it that I’d use to weave little things and then pick apart and weave again. It got so lonesome and tedious all those months.”
Months? She’d known her mother had hidden during the war, but her imagination had always had to fill in the details. She hadn’t known where or for how long. She’d lived in the ruins for months? Questions swirled in Mira’s head, but she feared asking them might stop her mother’s words.
“Dani,” her father interrupted. “Your nonna is tired, confused.”
“I’m not,” she barked. “I see it like it was this very morning. I knew then I was of no more use to him. The byssus was gone, and I couldn’t very well dive for more.
Then I saw the bees, and that was my gift.
We ate fish and honey that night. Well, one of us did.
” She paused, her eyes unfocused and far away.
“Then, he was in the well. But the little loom had fallen in, too. I was very sad about that.”
Mira stared at her mother. She’d known it.
On some level, she’d known something like that had happened when the police had visited all those years ago.
And her father had been right. What difference did knowing make?
Her aged mother had no idea the story she was recounting was even shocking.
She was still her mother. How awful it must have been, being trapped there with someone like that after her family had been taken away.
She might have done the same thing herself.
Who could know how you’d react when faced with those circumstances?
Her father stood and started to gather their things. “It’s late,” he said. “Dante, you’re probably exhausted on your first night home.”
Mira saw the look on her father’s face, the lines of worry. Perhaps he’d kept more from her about her mother’s state than he’d let on. She would have to speak to him about that soon. Clearly. Her mother stood as well, balancing against him for support.
Mira rose, kissing her father on the cheek. “Thank you for coming, Papà.”
“Mira, Mira.” Her mother laughed and patted her father on his arm. “No, don’t you see? Your papà is at the bottom of a well.”