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Isabella, from Miransu
Literary Review, Fall, 2005 by Monica Sarsini
Monica Sarsini
The road to my grandmother's house was shadow and light, deserted for long stretches, and then a sparrow would appear and disappear in flight. At dawn buses of children with Down Syndrome were dropped at an old country villa that had been converted into a camp. When it rained, fog would rise from the forest and get caught in the tops of the cypress trees, the rain would fall over the fields like puffs of smoke. No one else moved in my direction, except a man on a bicycle one morning dressed in an all yellow biking outfit, who I quickly overtook so that I could plunge myself undistracted into the fluttering leaves. The broom with its aggressive stalks quickened the pace of the journey, and the wind bent the yellowed rye across the seraphic fuzz on the leaves of a fig tree. I thought of the grape vines, of soft eyes, of staying and being a comfort, and a bird cawed by the side of the path. If, at a curve in the road coining back down, I were to meet a man from when I was a little girl, somewhere in the fear of getting lost in the recognition after thirty years there would be the echo of time spent far away from this, from getting caught in the brambles.
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Through the kitchen window the fields cling to the side of the mountain, at dawn and dusk, deer and wild boar peek out from the drained splendor of oak leaves at the edge of the olive grove, they rummage for food and destroy the carpet of overturned soil. Hidden among the trunks of the thick forest lurks a hunter's cabin with a tin roof overgrown with ivy and a collapsed door that opens into a small stone room. There are crevices in the wall for looking through, for watching the array of imperceptible movements of animals timidly preparing to carve the future into the unmovable story of the earth. My father and brother, along with the farmers, lined the outside walls of the cabin with cages of hunting birds, and on Sunday skewers of impaled heads would turn slowly, glowing in the wings of the fireplace. The wind overhead would roar and sometimes a sparrow would tumble inside through a flue in one of the wood stoves in the bedrooms, leave a trail of dirt on the ground, and go to die behind a piece of furniture, where, many months later, its dried little body would be swept up with a broom. When it snows, the mountains up here are like newborn monoliths, their delicate plumages brushing through the darkness, there's a crack and the brittle color of caramelized sugar leaks through. When I look out across the fields I can see the red and orange leaves of a persimmon tree shimmering and sometimes an abandoned nest breaking up the lines of the olive tree branches, blackbirds leave bigger nests, mixed with dirt. I bring them home, in a flash, the silver strand decorating a Christmas tree, my brother died on Christmas while my mother was stringing lights up in the living room. He didn't ask permission and snuck his rifle out of the gun cabinet where my aunt's husband now keeps his crossbow. This house is a temple not only to the pain that it's witnessed, but to the landscape of our childhood. Childhood and old age, it seems to me, are the only stages of man that mean anything. The rest is time lost on dirty city streets that turn back on themselves. I grew up on this howling ground, the water rushing from one grape leaf to another, alongside my brother, who is no longer next to me, though after thirteen years of living together we are still closer than refugees who have nowhere to go and nowhere to return and who keep asking themselves and then asking others if it's the same for everyone, if it's normal to be frightened, to think that there's a force that wants to kill you and you may not make it. The gunshot that killed my brother took me by so much surprise that secretly I can't quiet this looming fear I have of being separated from someone I love and not being able to survive.
Lapo had a fondness for the farmer's son who lived at the edge of the forest. That house is empty now. Two brothers bought in and one went to America and the other died. The relatives want to sell it but the brother in America says, I'd rather buy it all over again than sell it. He wants to go there to die. It was a disaster for them when Lapo died. You can thank God that this place isn't in my name, like it. was supposed to be, or else it wouldn't be here anymore. I would have sold everything the day Lapo died and then never come back. Your grandfather wanted to build a chapel and bury Lapo here. He loved him so. He loved everyone, although you might have been his favorite. He'd say, When she puts her mind to something she doesn't stop until she's done it. Boys are more unreliable. I'm thinking of the chapel out by the entrance to the property. The architect told us, Take the white stones. Like ashes. They had pulled out the uneven stones and left them on the ground and your grandfather got it into his head to collect them all and break them up to make gravel for the driveway. He asked the boys to help, but you were the only one of all of them who stayed. It pained your grandfather's heart, he was sweating, but kept working! No matter how handsome Lapo was, in the end he was as much trouble as any boy. He killed three of my chickens playing with his bow and arrow. Your father sent him to bed without supper, but then you brought it to him, climbed up a ladder to his window. That's just the sort of thing I can't stand. What does eating have to do with anything? A slap, or a spanking, well, that's there and then it's gone. But when you miss a meal the whole organism suffers-not just your feelings. As far as I'm concerned you just turn meaner. You and Lapo were so close. You would always take this grimy old pillow to bed with you and one time your mother sewed a new cover on it and you ripped the cover off so that you could have the filthy pillow back, you liked it so much. You slept in the same room, each in your own beds. I remember one night. We had a television in the little room off the front hall and your parents had invited friends over to watch. It was practically one of the first televisions in Horence! You were tired. I can almost see you there with that little pillow in your hand. But Lapo didn't want to come to bed and you kept saying 'Apo, it's bedtime ...' Apo it's bedtime. And he'd say, I'm coming, I'm coming right away. He was like a frog. But I remember it all and I feel like I can see you there, little girl with a pillow in your hand and he wanted to watch television. You were the grown up! You know, he was attached to you too. You would have had a time of it if you'd had to grow up together. You never would have had a boyfriend! I'm telling you the truth, he never would have let you go out. Brothers are worse than husbands. My brother was the same.
