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Lidia turns her back, wraps something in a handkerchief, then slips the little packet into her handbag. Bending at the waist, she smiles hollowly at Adele, who giggles like a schoolgirl and deposits her own dentures on a cupboard shelf. They leave the rectory in lumpy layers of black wool, taking the long way to San Mauro’s central market. Turning down a deserted side street, they age step by step. By the time they reach the crowded piazza, they’re tottering in pitiable anonymity, pinched and wrinkled faces aimed at the cobbles.
Adele tenses, rehearsing what she’ll say if someone recognizes her, but Lidia was right. It’s cold. German soldiers in greatcoats loiter with casual menace in front of what used to be the municipal hall. Wrapped to the eyes in scarves, townspeople want to finish their shopping unmolested and get back inside.
Lidia increases pressure on Adele’s arm, glancing at the latteria. Their unwitting accomplice emerges from the shop with her can of rationed milk. Dimpled knees flashing under the roll-topped skirt, legs pinked by wind and chill, coat unbuttoned despite the cold. The younger Germans grin and nudge one another. The boldest calls out a crude remark, but a blond and haughty corporal stares hard with hooded blue eyes. Favoring him with a sidelong glance, the luscious Maria Avoni slowly raises a hand to brush back heavy mahogany-colored hair, its glory undiminished by anything so sensible as a hat. The movement is intended to press her nipples more firmly against a too tight sweater, and it achieves its purpose. Head high, she feigns indifference to cheers and whistles.
With all that to enjoy, what soldier would waste a glance at two alte schwarze Krähen with their cheeks falling in, clutching each other’s arms with blue-veined and spotted hands? The old crows pass between a pair of BMW motorcycles that lean on kickstands outside the garrison office. One huddles solicitously over her toothless companion, who crouches next to the engines just long enough to… oh, tighten the laces of a high-topped shoe, perhaps? Two quick moves, and the ladies hobble on.
March is as shameless a tease as Maria Avoni, with hints of spring and reminders of winter by turns. Overnight the wind shifts, the air warms. Tuesday’s sun heats up the gravel track that leads to Decimo. Lidia Leoni is tired, her feet chilled and sore, but she does not go inside, not yet. She picks her way across the yard to the edge of a high cliff near the hunchback’s house.
“You’re back!” Mirella calls, standing in the doorway. “I was starting to worry. Is everything all right?”
“Yes, of course! Splendid sunset,” Lidia comments, without turning. Casually, she reaches into her handbag, withdraws a pair of ignition wires, and flicks them into the void with a slight movement of her wrist. She faces Mirella and smiles brightly. “Adele sends her regards.”
TABACCHERIA MARRAPODI
VALDOTTAVO
“Where’s the cash coming from?” It’s cold again today, but Tino Marrapodi’s face is pasty with sweat. “Eight years, I run this store, and I never saw so much cash!”
There’s enough of the new postman’s arm below the elbow to serve as a sort of hook, and Pierino Lovera uses it to keep the leather mail pouch open while he paws through its contents with his left hand. “N
“Look again. Maybe a postcard, down at the bottom?” The storekeeper’s older boy was sent to North Africa in 1941. Three months ago, his younger was drafted into a Republican army unit that’s been sent to Germany for training. Neither’s been heard from since. “Nobody paid cash before,” Marrapodi says worriedly. “A man would come in for kerosene, tobacco. Some corduroy. He’d pay with lard, cheese. Maybe a basket of eggs. We eat the eggs. Couple days later, I get a stack of wood for the lard. I wholesale the cheese in San Mauro. One time, I ended up with a wagonful of broom straw! What good is a wagonful of broom straw? my wife wanted to know. More good than a ledgerful of scribbling, that’s what I told her!”
The large black sign behind the counter bears the king’s crest and the Fascist sheaf of wheat. “Bertino Marrapodi is the official licensee of a state store,” the sign proclaims, “authorized to sell the monopoly goods of the Italian government: tobacco, salt, matches, stamps, and quinine.” Sale of any other goods is forbidden. To prosper in the midst of poverty, the storekeeper must make two and two equal five in accounts receivable, but only three in accounts payable. Like Jesus, he turns water into wine, making ten liters of nebbiolo into eleven, fiddling the arithmetic accordingly. Tino’s days are spent negotiating complicated deals, his nights rehearsing his defense if someone rats on him. “I have the only store on this side of the valley, Your Grace. The contadini would have to walk all day to get to San Mauro, so I make a few other items for sale. Pots, pans. Safety pins. Pasta, cloth.”
Tino is confident such infractions of his license will be overlooked, but it’s strictly forbidden to sell liquor to the old men who meet here every day to play cards. The law forbids playing cards on the premises, so Tino makes them sit outside in the cold, and they’re resentful. It’s only a matter of time before somebody puts the bite on him: “Pay me off, or I’ll make trouble for you!”
Pierino finishes his rummage through the mailbag. “N
Marrapodi presses his fingers into his belly. “Heartburn,” he says. “Keeps me awake all night! How can I sleep with so many worries?” His boys are missing. His strongbox is filled with German-printed occupation lire. There are shortages in the Roccabarbena warehouse. Without a kickback to the wholesaler, his store’s tobacco supply would dry up completely. There’ve been ugly scenes— people shouting, accusing him of profiteering— but he only raised his prices to cover the bribes. “The cash worries me,” he says again, pressing harder into his stomach. “What if someone denounces me?”
Pierino offers his left hand to Marrapodi. “Www-wa-watch mmmy b-b-bi—?”
“Your bicycle? Sì, certo.”
They step outside together. It’s chilly, but the sun is shining through a break in the clouds. The hamlet centered on Tino’s store is just a few small stone houses next to even fewer big stone barns. Tino lifts his chin toward a footpath that leads upward toward ever tinier and poorer places, where the most isolated sharecroppers scratch at thin soil and raise small, ski
Pierino shrugs and mugs: I know, but I can’t help myself. I’m a conscientious man.
Taking Pierino’s good arm, Marrapodi draws close. “Be careful,” he warns the postman quietly. “They’re Communists up there.”
In the begi
Soon, though, old taxes got higher, new ones more imaginative. The dog tax was infuriating. First a small tax on watchdogs, then a larger one on truffle dogs, and finally an impossible levy on hunting dogs. What’s next? people asked. A chicken tax? A tax on piss, like Vespasian’s?
The war is bleeding everyone dry. The contadini already split their harvest with landlords and their crooked factors. When the Blackshirts started showing up, you couldn’t slaughter a hog without a gang of enforcers demanding a quarter. Resist, and they’d open your scalp. Now it’s Germans sweeping through the valley, dragging anyone in trousers from the fields, taking anything they want. In a good year, the contadini make a bare living, and now they’re squeezed from all directions. The Germans are offering huge bounties for Jews and partisans, and they’re burning out anyone who hides them. Would you blame the contadini for informing?