Chapter 12
CHAPTER 12
CASALTA, 15 APRIL 1985
LUCREZIA
Everyone was in the living room, dressed in black, stiff and waiting for this day to be over. Coffee and pastries were laid out on the low table. I scanned the room until I found Gabriella, the unknown quantity.
‘Oh, you must be Lucrezia!’ Gabriella exclaimed and came to embrace me.
Gabriella wasn’t like I’d expected – Bianca had told me that she was Father’s age, and not young as I’d imagined her – but she simply didn’t look like my father’s type.
‘You look just like Bianca!’
Er, yes, we’re twins . But I refrained from a smart answer.
‘This is my son, Giulio.’ She opened her arm to indicate a quiet-looking middle-aged man.
My mum had been stunning, and Father had always liked everything showy, shining, from his clothes to his cars. Gabriella was dressed in a suit jacket and sensible shoes, she wore her hair in a grey bob and her face was clean, free of make-up. Her eyes were deep blue and calm, kind – she was looking straight at me, almost through me. I noticed that Mia, sitting on the windowsill a little removed from everyone, was watching us.
I held Gabriella’s gaze.
‘Nice to meet you,’ I told her, and nodded towards Giulio. My tone was non-committal.
So this was the woman who, according to Bianca, had changed my father for the better? First impressions weren’t always reliable, and people could be deceitful, but my impression of her was the same as my sisters’: that she was mild-mannered, calm, reassuring. She seemed grieved by her new husband’s death, but not devastated, not broken.
To think how I’d pictured her when I received Bianca’s letter in Paris: fake blonde opportunist marries old man for money . A sudden thought made its way into my consciousness: I’d been wearing grey-coloured glasses for a long time, but maybe, just like pink -coloured glasses, they lied. Not everything was potentially painful, not everyone potentially out to hurt me.
‘So, is it just us?’ I asked Bianca.
‘Just us, and a few distant relatives meeting us there,’ she said.
‘We let everyone know we preferred a private ceremony and no home visits. To give us privacy, a chance to grieve,’ Gabriella intervened while Bianca was nodding her approval.
I was sure that tongues would wag. I could hear them already: Falconeri should have a sea of flowers, authorities in attendance, a full church with latecomers left outside, what are they thinking?
‘Dad deserved better than this. I need to go and see to the horses,’ Nora said in a clipped tone. I could hear tears in her voice.
‘What? Now?’ Bianca protested. ‘You’ll smell of horse! In the church!’
‘Nobody will be there to smell it, Bianca! It’s not even a proper funeral, and it’s not even in a proper church! I still can’t believe you did this!’
‘I suppose animals don’t go by our commitments and schedules, do they? Whatever happens, they need to be seen to…’ Gabriella said mildly, but Nora looked at her with narrowed eyes and strode out. Her peacekeeping attempt had failed. Mia ran after Nora, and I could see Bianca trembling with anxiety.
‘Bianca, why don’t you sit in peace with a cup of coffee? I’ll clean all this up,’ I said.
‘I’ll help you,’ Gabriella offered, and Giulio busied himself with a cup for Bianca.
A moment later, Gabriella and I were standing at the kitchen sink together, washing cups. Who is Gabriella really trying to relieve from the ordeal of a crowd of mourners and a big family reception, us or herself? I asked myself as I looked across at her from under my lashes.
‘You know, Lulu. It’s what he would have wanted. A small ceremony, away from the village’s eyes. I can assure you.’
‘It doesn’t sound like my father, but I suppose you knew him better than me at the end. I was away for years.’
‘He’d changed.’
‘So Bianca told me. She said you changed him.’
‘Oh, no, it wasn’t me. It was guilt. And that’s the real reason for his death. He missed your mother; he missed you. Believe me. You know what he said to me, the night he died?’
‘What?’ I wasn’t quite ready to feel sorry for him.
Because of what he’d done to Mum.
Because he’d sent me away.
Because of the year I’d spent at the Istituto Lugano, the very good school.
‘That he got everything wrong. That he’d ruined his life.’
I was about to say that he was right, that he had, indeed, ruined his life, and mine, and ended my mother’s – when thankfully, Bianca interrupted us. She did a double-take, as she saw me flushed and flustered.
‘Lulu, there’s someone on the phone for you. Someone who can’t speak Italian.’ Of course, it had to be Claude. I instantly felt guilty for not having called him yet.
‘Want to take it in my room again?’ Bianca offered. ‘It’s the only private place aside from Father’s study.’
Father’s study held so much trauma for me, I never wanted to see the inside of it again.
‘It’s fine, I’ll take it in the living room. The cars are nearly here.’
I held the phone to my ear.
‘ Lucresiah? ’
Already it was strange to hear my name pronounced the French way again.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call, I…’
I… what ? I was trying to work through the idea that my father murdered my mother, to unravel years of misunderstandings, to get to know three young women who were my sisters and yet were strangers. How could I explain all that? The wall between Claude and me was higher than ever, and I had no way, no words, to confide in him. I didn’t even think he’d want to know, or be faced with all these complications.
‘I have been so busy,’ I finished the sentence.
‘I can imagine. It was busy here too. How are you?’
‘Good. It’s all a little complicated, but good,’ I said. Sophie’s forty-cigarettes-a day voice said something in the background, and Claude laughed.
‘Sophie here says to please come back, that she can’t deal with the workload all on her own. I think she means she can’t deal with me all on her own.’
‘Tell her I’m coming back soon.’ My eyes met Bianca’s, sitting on the sofa. She pretended not to hear what I’d just said.
Am I?
I supposed so. Once my father’s affairs were sorted, I’d go back to my life while staying in touch with my sisters. I’d return to the Paris apartment I shared with Claude, and there would be no daydreaming of Casalta any more, because I’d been there in person and broken the spell.
‘Anyway, I miss you. You’ll tell me all when you come back, bien ?’
‘ Bien ,’ I replied. It didn’t escape me that he’d called me with Sophie there, therefore it couldn’t be a private conversation – that there had been no I love you , nothing tender in our words or tone except a quick I miss you , more because of my absence in the workplace than because I was his girlfriend. This was the way things were between us.
‘I need to go. I’m about to go to my father’s funeral.’
‘You… what? Oh. I’m sorry. It really was a bad time to call.’
‘I’ll call you later. I probably won’t catch you at home, but I’ll try.’
But thoughts of Claude, Paris and my life there were quick to fall out of my mind as we climbed into the black cars on our father’s final journey.
Now I understood what Nora meant: the funeral firm’s cars stopped at one of the small chapels at the edge of the village, a cramped little building that was opened only once a year, in August. The rest of the year, leaves and dust accumulated on its steps, and even now that it’d been cleaned it still looked a little neglected. How different from the patron saint’s church, laden with frescoes, statues and decorations.
It was a small crowd that attended, and the whole thing was pervaded with a strange feeling, almost furtive. There were the four of us daughters, Gabriella and her son, Matilde with Diego, a few long-lost relatives – two elderly cousins and a young woman who looked eerily like Nora. Some of Father’s men were there too, but none of his old friends and associates, the people I used to see at the parties in our house.
The coffin, by contrast, was covered in flowers, and a purple and golden garland that said ‘ Amatissimo Fosco ’ – ‘Beloved Fosco’.
That had been Gabriella’s choice, for sure.
I sat between Bianca and Mia, both stony-faced, and beside them were Nora and Gabriella. Nora was the only one in tears, though Gabriella’s face was full of wistfulness… as if she was missing something that never was.
It all finished quickly. The mass was short, the walk to the cemetery a stone’s throw, and after a few words, Fosco Falconeri was gone, sealed away in our family’s marble tomb. Nora bent down and laid a little bouquet of wildflowers against the plaque with his name engraved. She looked so desolate, and I wanted to go to her and hold her, and tell her how sorry I was that she was suffering. But I knew I wouldn’t be welcome, so I just hovered there awkwardly. It was Mia who went to her, and then Bianca, one at each side of her.
I was so surprised when Nora turned her beautiful face to me, and freed one of her arms. She extended her hand to me, and I took it, and my sisters welcomed me into their embrace.
‘Emmeline McCrimmon Falconeri’, said the plaque just beside my father’s. I’d never been at my mother’s graveside until today… I’d never wanted to. She wasn’t there, anyway, for sure – not in that silent, cold place, when she’d been so vibrant and full of life.
My eyes were full of tears, and the breeze was lifting up dust and soil – I couldn’t see properly. It was definitely an illusion, the head of bright red hair that appeared behind the cypresses and disappeared just as fast. My heart galloped for a little while, but I didn’t move; I didn’t say anything.
Hello, Mum. Look at us, we’re together , I told her in my mind.
You’re gone, and I’m here, in Casalta , I said to my father. It turned out that your daughters were, ultimately, stronger than you.
It was time to go back and offer refreshments to the few relatives in attendance – that would be Bianca’s and Matilde’s territory. I wondered how the small talk with long-lost relatives would go: Yes, he sent me away for a few years, I don’t know exactly what he told you, maybe that I was unruly? Uncontrollable? Mean to my sisters and disrespectful to him? I’m back now, though. Because he’s dead.
Oh, God. I really hoped I could find a way to avoid all of this.
‘I’d like to walk home,’ I said to Bianca, and she nodded in agreement. I couldn’t face sitting in that black car again, ready to swallow us like an enormous crow, hot and claustrophobic, but mainly I was hoping to get home after everyone had already left.
‘Don’t worry. I’m holding the fort. Take your time,’ she said, and I was so grateful. Coming back to Casalta like this, with a cloud over my head, not knowing what my father had said about my absence. Soon I’d go to the village and see the people I used to know, walk in the places I used to walk… but not today, not yet.
Before taking the road home, I looked around one last time… I knew that Vanni, and any representative of the Orafi family, would not be there.
And still, I looked around me as discreetly as I could all the way to the church and then to the cemetery, hoping against hope to see him.
But it was someone else who came up to me before I could get away, someone I didn’t want to see or speak to.
‘Diego,’ I greeted him with forced cordiality, because he was Matilde’s son, and she didn’t deserve any less.
He did, though. This wiry, pinched man with cigarette-stained hands had been my father’s factotum. He wasn’t one of his friends, the men who had access to our home when Father held court – he was relegated to the kitchen, or slipped in and out of my father’s study on errands. I was always wary of him, even as a child. I remembered seeing him outside my father’s study, playing with the pocket-knife he always carried, waiting for orders. He made my skin crawl, and my sisters had always been wary of him too.
‘Lucrezia.’
Oh. He always addressed me as ‘Signorina’ when my father was alive.
‘We lost a great man,’ he said, his tone grandiose.
What should I say to that? ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, while asking myself if there was any polite or even just acceptable way to tell him to go away, without hurting Matilde’s feelings.
It seemed impossible that a kind, honest woman like Matilde had given birth to him. Matilde’s husband, also one of my father’s men, had disappeared many years before, leaving her alone and penniless to raise their son. No wonder Diego was so loyal to the Falconeri; Fosco had given his mother a job and taken him under his wing.
‘I hope you know you’re not alone. I’m here for whatever you need. I know the business inside out,’ Diego said. He didn’t know the business, not really; all he knew were the tasks my father gave him.
‘ We’ll take charge.’ What was I saying? I was going back to Paris as soon as I could. Wasn’t I?
The snort of laughter he made when I spoke about taking charge made me want to slap him. Except I would have had to touch that greasy skin.
‘Of course, we’ll make sure to look after you until you find another place to work,’ I said, summoning all my good manners. I didn’t know exactly what he’d done for my father all these years, but it certainly wasn’t about wine and oil making. As dramatic as it might sound, he was the henchman to the villain, and with my father gone, he had to go, too. No more shady business in Casalta.
Diego went pale and took a step back. ‘I’ve worked for your father since I was a boy.’
‘Please, Diego, this is not the moment… Like I said, we’ll make sure you’re looked after. And your mum is staying with us, of course.’
‘Casalta needs me.’ He now looked and sounded almost menacing.
‘My father needed you. We don’t,’ I snapped. I didn’t want to be cruel, but I also couldn’t stand the subtly threatening way he was talking to me. I didn’t want him anywhere near my sisters.
It was Gabriella who saved me the embarrassment, taking me by the arm and leading me away with a mild but firm excuse.
‘He seems bad news,’ she whispered.
He stood by the side of the church, cigarette in hand. His eyes were still on us. We would have to speak to my father’s men. We would have to take charge. Someone would. Could I really go back to Paris and let Bianca have everything on her shoulders… again?
‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’
‘No, not at all. Where’s your son?’
‘I asked him to go home. He has a family, a job; I don’t want him to be away for long. He told me to say goodbye to all of you.’
What are you going to do? I wanted to ask her, but it seemed an intrusive question, right now. And a loaded one. Now that my father was dead, who’d own Casalta? Gabriella, us sisters, all of us?
We walked together along the village borders, and up the hill. A gentle spring wind was blowing, light and fresh and new. White fluffy clouds flew in the sky, and a hint of grey over the hills told me that rain was preparing to fall.
‘Lucrezia, I have to tell you… I’m so happy you came back. For your sisters, but especially for you,’ Gabriella said.
She was being so kind to me. I was surprised – she was my father’s widow, after all; did he not convince her that I was the devil, the black sheep of the family who brought only trouble to his door? But then, he’d told her that he regretted what he’d done. That he missed my mother and me.
Should my heart soften towards him, now? Because it didn’t.
‘Thank you.’
‘I know you suffered much, Lucrezia…’
I don’t think you do. Nobody does. Unless… Had he told her? Had he told her where he sent me ?
I closed my eyes in the sunlight for a moment, and then my gaze followed a Vanessa Atalanta fluttering among the wild fennel. I didn’t want to think about that place now – it was all over, my father was in the ground and there were blooms and blossoms all around us. A new era was beginning.
‘There are easier times ahead for you, now. I’m sure,’ Gabriella continued.
‘Yes. For all of us.’
‘But if that shouldn’t be the case, you can count on me. I promise.’
It was a sweet thing to say – but I couldn’t help thinking that it sounded a little ominous. Maybe it was just my paranoia, but for a moment it seemed to me that Gabriella knew something I didn’t.
Bianca was in the kitchen, uncorking another bottle of our wine.
‘They’re still here. Hide! ’ Mia murmured with a half-smile. She’d guessed I didn’t know what to tell my father’s family. Or that I was worried I’d end up saying too much.
I slipped upstairs to Bianca’s room: I had a promise to keep. I was almost sure he wouldn’t answer – when he did, I stuttered for a moment.
‘Claude? Why are you home?’
‘Because you promised you’d call after the funeral. Why did you call home if you thought I wouldn’t be here?’
Good question.
His tone softened. ‘How are you? Has it been crazy, with the family and everything?’
‘Yes. It’s all finished.’
‘Are you coming home?’
Home? For a moment, I was confused. I was home.
I rubbed my forehead. ‘I don’t know. My sisters need me, I think. There’s a lot to sort out…’
‘I understand. But there’s a lot of work to be done here too.’ Are we together, Claude? Or are we working partners who happen to live together?
Neither of us had said anything about missing each other.
‘I know. I’m sorry. But I really have to stay a little longer.’
A sigh. ‘Fine, of course. Do you have an idea how long…?’
‘No. Not yet.’
The question burned on my tongue, but I was too overwhelmed by everything that was happening – changes that were so fast, so deep. It was just like I’d thought the night before leaving: the Lucrezia who returned to Paris wouldn’t be the same Lucrezia who left.
Silence fell: it wasn’t often that Claude was at a loss for words.
We had nothing to say.
‘Say hi to Sophie for me,’ I scrambled, and then, just as he was putting the phone down, I called his name – but it was too late. He’d gone.
I realised that what churned my stomach now wasn’t only the sense of loneliness that the conversation had given me – but guilt.
Because since I’d arrived in Casalta, I’d dreamed of seeing Vanni, as absurd as it was. A man who might have had ties to my sister, whom I hadn’t seen in twelve years, who could be married – who was still a sworn enemy of my family, and even if that meant nothing to me, it might mean something to him…
Vanni’s face had been behind my eyes every moment, since I’d arrived. I could picture him so clearly, his mellow smile, his constantly tangled brown hair, his sun-kissed skin – but I pictured a boy, the boy I knew – not the man he was now…
Right in that instant, something caught my eye.
Over Bianca’s desk, pinned to a corkboard, were postcards, tickets, photographs. One in particular made me do a double- take. I stood and stared at it. Vanni? She had a photograph of Vanni hanging on the wall?
I blinked. His hair was tamed, he looked more confident, his eyes smaller and sharper. But he hadn’t changed much. His face was still, unmistakably, an Orafi face. An Orafi face, yes; but not Vanni’s.
I unpinned the picture and looked at it more closely – that was Lorenzo! Vanni’s older brother. They looked very much alike, but I could see the difference, now. I breathed out a sigh of relief – it would have been so hard, to see him and Bianca together. But this was a true mystery – why did Bianca have Lorenzo’s picture pinned up? Was there something between them?
Now that would be a strange turn of events, if it was the good sister, the well-behaved one, falling under the Orafi boys’ spell.
A sudden noise made me jump, and I pinned the picture back. As soon as I found a good moment, I’d ask Bianca for an explanation. But I was happy that the picture wasn’t Vanni’s. That was something.
Unexpectedly I slept like a baby that night, in spite of everything. And if at some point a tear came down my cheek for the death of my father and the love I never received, the love I gave him and wasted – if I mourned him in my own way… nobody would ever know.