Chapter 29 Rafaella
Rafaella
Rafaella sat on her bed, staring out at the treetops. Stray birds flew past the open doors, the cicadas at full pitch as dusk rode in on a fiery chariot. The sky was alive with defiant streaks of coral and peach, but darkness was coming, and already stitched to its far side was tomorrow.
The day when the rest of her life began.
Whispers tiptoed beneath the balcony, suppressed laughter leaking out as everyone gathered outside, the attempt at secrecy little more than a charade; they all knew she knew they were there but la serenata was the final ritual before she walked down the aisle, and as she looked around at her bedroom, she could scarcely believe this would be her last night ever sleeping here.
Tomorrow she would cut the white ribbon pinned across the farmhouse door, symbolizing her abandonment of this, her home as a Parisi, and she would become a wife. Her childhood would be over.
She looked across at the dress hanging on the mannequin Silvana had brought over from her studio.
The hem hovered less than a centimetre off the ground, the puffy, bell-shaped skirt ballooning from a narrow waist, cinched with a pleated cummerbund and topped with a tight lace bodice.
Silvana had fashioned a scalloped lace cap that would be pinned to the back of Rafaella’s head so that the veil bunched at the nape of her neck and splayed over her shoulders.
This bride would be a model of propriety, not a fashion mannequin.
Her sister had outdone herself. Her own dress, last year, had been a sensation, albeit not without its detractors – the nonnas had taken some time to recover – but this was a step up again: zibeline silk from Paris and lacework embellished with real pearls, which the local women had worked on for months.
Thrice weekly since February they had been meeting in Silvana’s atelier above the cobbler’s, armed with needles and thread, gathering in a large circle as they talked and worked on the tulle base.
Rafaella had tried to resist any extravagance – the pearls were too much!
– but she was told this was what it was to marry into money.
No expense would be spared, just as no moment would pass uncelebrated.
Everyone was determined it should be a happy day, but their dogged resolve to laugh and celebrate was like a steel lining on a rainbow.
It was the villagers’ first wedding since the Franchetti Tragedy (as it had come to be known in the papers) and a scar from that night ran like a seam through the port now.
Rafaella could still remember the keening chaos of her sister’s wedding morning, when their mother had cried and wrung her hands, despairing of God’s wrath – until Romola had burst in with smiles and solutions.
The calm tomorrow would feel funereal by contrast, her mother sitting doll-like in the chair and watching as Silvana fastened the silk buttons of her modest dress in near silence.
But it had to be endured. The world had continued to turn against all odds.
Outside, the first few notes rose up as the tambourine was shaken and the accordion squeezed, and any lingering attempt at discretion was abandoned.
Rafaella flattened her palms on the bedsheet as la serenata began, the villagers giving her betrothed a backing voice, and custom was observed.
She rose after the first verse, knowing her part too, and walked towards the balcony, to her groom.