Chapter 26 Fon
Fon
Fon felt distanced from the spectacle even as he sat in the midst of it. Everything was colourful and bright but his world had sunk into a palette of black and white and red, of ringing silence. He kept staring down at his palms, sure they would be stained for evermore. He couldn’t stop shaking.
All around him, his neighbours and friends were celebrating, oblivious to his murderous morning.
He felt certain the stain on his soul must be as visible as the trembling of his hands, but not a single person seemed to notice his haunted eyes or pallor.
No one saw that the young man who’d walked into those trees was fundamentally different to the one who’d walked out.
He couldn’t stop the tremors from coming – it felt as if his nerve endings had been set alight. He poured himself another glass of Primitivo from a jug on the table, drinking it down quickly.
‘Ciao, Fon.’
He looked up to see Luigi standing beside him. The speeches had finally come to an end and everyone was chatting again as the band struck their first tuning notes. ‘Ciao.’
Luigi was staring into the crowd, tracking the bodies as people mingled.
Irma Parisi was laughing and talking ecstatically as the women flocked around a preening Silvana, touching her dress and cooing over her.
Even Rossanna Franchetti was nodding approvingly as the bride recounted the story of the satin procured from a Lollobrigida film set in Rome.
Like Fon, Luigi seemed unsettled. He knocked back a glass in several gulps.
‘You OK?’ Fon asked, but he already knew the source of his friend’s misery. Dante had made a beeline for Gina the moment the toasts had finished; she had been taunting him throughout the meal by flirting with Luigi, punishing him for keeping her hanging.
Now she was standing with Rafaella and Romola, her body barely contained in a jade-green dress with a hobble skirt.
Dante flanked her, talking intently into her ear, his breath hot on her neck as she jutted her chin in the air.
She was making him work for her, but it was already obvious how this evening was going to end.
‘Why’s your brother even messing with her, anyway?’ Luigi muttered.
Fon shrugged. ‘Because he can.’ Dante could do anything and get away with it.
‘He’s never given her the time of day in all these years. And now he’s all over her?’ Luigi tutted, his lip curling with contempt.
‘She never used to have a body like that.’ It was a simple truth.
‘So, what – I’m just supposed to wait for him to tire of her and hand her back? Who says I’ll even want her?’
‘No one,’ Fon shrugged, his hand still shaking as he drank down more wine. ‘It’s your choice.’
Luigi growled beside him, turning away. ‘And she was so close, too.’
‘Close to what?’
‘Giving it up. I put in all the spadework and now your brother’s getting it!’
‘I’m not sure what he’s getting yet,’ Fon mumbled.
‘No?’ Luigi asked, sounding hopeful.
Fon didn’t know the details of his brother’s romantic life, but they shared a bedroom, meaning he knew his comings and goings – and their evenings had been busy lately with the bionde.
Much of Dante’s business was conducted in the shadows and moonlight.
It didn’t leave much opportunity for dating, especially since Gina worked in her parents’ shop and at the beach caffè by day.
‘Well, at least it’s looking good for you. Rafaella forgave you when not many would,’ Luigi smirked, punching Fon’s arm. ‘Sly dog. Look at the two of them – they look good, you’ve got to say. And you’ve had them both.’
‘Watch yourself, Luigi,’ Fon snapped. He didn’t want people talking about Rafaella like that. She wasn’t like the others – Antonia, Romola … She was pure. Good. Everything the others weren’t. He wasn’t.
‘You know what I mean, though. By summer’s end, you will have done … She’s a beauty.’
Fon watched Romola and Rafaella together.
It was true they were both coming to the height of their powers: beautiful young women with hypnotic bodies, mesmerizing smiles …
He watched Rafaella in her borrowed dress, looking so demure and graceful.
She didn’t have Romola’s sophistication, but she still looked as though she belonged somewhere greater than this.
She was shy, not taking up much space as she carefully held her glass and listened to the others talk.
Romola, though, held her glass almost like a cigarette, carelessly letting it tip as she gesticulated and held court.
She knew she looked good in that spotted dress and she moved with the self-assurance of someone well used to attracting attention.
After all, parties were her milieu – he remembered her saying that, glassy-eyed and crying, the night of the party, when he’d run into her after the fireworks and she’d put her hand down his trousers …
He shook the image from his mind, not wanting to remember.
Fon kept drinking until the shaking stopped and everything began to feel numb.
His gaze kept creeping over to Antonia, watching as she laughed, her breasts too much on display in a tight dress and jiggling as she moved.
Several times she caught him staring and winked at him, mistaking his sympathy for interest. The third time, she pressed the tip of her tongue provocatively between her lips, teasing him.
He looked away, feeling nothing, remembering Francesco and Pablo laughing over last night’s escapade outside the harbourmaster’s house; remembering Dante’s plan. Did Antonia have any idea that her sexual power was about to be flipped against her?
Francesco and Pablo had arrived late, during the meal; they’d had much to do after Fon and Dante had left early, needing to be seen at the wedding.
The henchmen had gone home to thoroughly bathe and change before they could come here and Dante had made a show of bringing them ‘more drinks’ when they appeared, as if they’d been here for hours.
Fon had seen Pablo open his jacket just enough to flash the thick envelope of cash in his pocket, indicating that the cattle meat had been traded with Dante’s man in Specchia.
Business had continued as planned, in spite of the so-called ‘interruption’.
How did his brother do it? Just carry on normally in the wake of such brutality?
The dancing was beginning now, a crowd forming, the villagers holding hands in a circle as Silvana and Luchino took to the floor to dance the tarantella. Fon stayed slumped in his chair. He had neither inclination nor ability to dance.
Dante was standing, holding hands with Gina and Donatella, but Fon saw Donatella’s thumb rubbing over his brother’s in an inconspicuous motion …
A tiny but telling detail; there was an intimacy to it.
Was she the one his brother planned to pass over to Francesco next, then?
He watched Gina, too, on his other side.
She looked happy now, laughing with Dante as he gave her all his attention.
Perhaps that was his brother’s secret: escape, distraction, the comfort of the flesh.
Even in Fon’s compromised state, it hadn’t escaped his attention that Rafaella had not sought him out during the reception.
As far as he was aware, she hadn’t even looked his way.
As the bride’s sister, she had to stay with the wedding party and support her mother, who was alternately euphoric and overwhelmed.
Her father was drinking grappa with the men – including Filippo Franchetti, who had returned especially for the celebration, arriving right at the end of the speeches and causing much excitement when he unexpectedly gave a small toast to the happy couple.
Irma Parisi would be boasting for months that her daughter’s wedding had been graced by a cabinet minister.
Of course, the Franchettis knew how to be good guests.
Fon watched Cosimo join the dancing, standing on Gina’s other side and with Romola to his right – but although his feet moved in perfect time with the music, instinctively knowing when to switch direction, his gaze never lifted off Rafaella, directly across the dance floor from him.
She was laughing, watching in delight as her sister was twirled and spun in the centre of the crowd …
And yet her gaze, when it did shift, always went back to Cosimo too.
Fon watched them from a distance. He might be drunk, but he wasn’t crazy.
They never did or said anything to indicate there was more between them than friendship, but from here – looking on like the outsider he was – he could see that they were connected as if by a golden thread that only shone in certain lights.
Their attraction seemed like a secret he alone was privy to.
He could feel it inching towards them, as heavy and slow as a sloth, and he felt powerless to stop it.
Powerless to stop anything.
Images flashed through his mind again of eyes growing empty … red earth staining redder … He shook his head, dropping his face into his hands. He didn’t know how to live with this.
The music kept playing as he drank one glass after another, watching the villagers each acting out their own dramas: the nonnas gesticulating wildly with Father Tommaso; Luigi trying it on with Clara now that Dante was in the corner with Gina, her hand snaked up his neck. Feminine comfort.
Fon looked around for Rafaella as he felt a sudden surge of jealousy and anger. He needed her! Didn’t she see he was suffering? If she knew what he had seen today …!
He found her still on the dance floor, but now dancing with Cosimo – the tarantella long since finished – his eyes pinned on hers as he spun her around and her hair flew out. She was laughing, his hand splayed on her waist …