Accabadora by Michela Murgia

home, I’ll see to everything else myself.”
    But they did call him up, and Bonaria had had to spend thirty-five years praying for him, because no-one ever did come back to Soreni to report that the son of Lizio Zincu had been a hero in the trenches.
    When Giannina Bastíu returned with a tray of steaming coffee, she found Nicola alone in the sun with three empty chairs and a strange smile on his face.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    THE SOULS KNOW US, THEY ARE OUR OWN RELATIVES SO they will not hurt us, and we have even prepared a feast for them. This was what Andría Bastíu was thinking while he was getting ready in his room for the night of the first of November. He took off his outdoor shoes but did not undress since he had no intention of going to sleep. The previous year his mother had deliberately made him spend all day lifting potatoes to tire him out, so that in the evening he had fallen asleep despite himself, betrayed by his body. But this time they had not tricked him; he was awake and would be able to watch the spirits eating and taking the tobacco cut up for them from the table, where in the morning fingermarks would be found. So he would know what to say to Maria when she claimed the souls never go around tormenting people, because the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ did not allow it. If Our Lord Jesus Christ had allowed his brother to lose a leg, surely he would not prevent the dead eating a couple of culurgiones .
    So he had sat down in silence on a little bench made of rods he had used as a child, with nails which dug into his bottom, keeping an eye on the crack in his door with the determination of a frontier guard. After twenty minutes he was ready to doze off, but he went on crouching behind the half-closed door, his eye firmly on the line of the corridor leading from the front door to the table laid ready with the feast for the dead souls. There were always many souls abroad that night, Nicola had told him, having the previous year even seen the soul of Antoni Juliu, his mother’s older brother, walking down the road towards their house. Antoni Juliu had gone as an emigrant to the mines in Belgium, but when he returned he no longer seemed to feel at home: he would look about like someone afraid of his creditors, and never got rid of the black coal dust under his nails. He had been unhappy to go away, and was even less happy to be back. The third summer he had hanged himself on the Gongius’ family farm, shocking the sharecroppers who found him hanging from a branch like a rotten pear with his tongue sticking out, having emigrated from himself to heaven knew where.
    Maybe Antoni Juliu really would come that night. A dish had been prepared for him with a small glass of abbardente beside it, because he had been fond of eau de vie , rather too fond in fact. If he did not come and drink it, Andría’s father would drink it before dinner, or Nicola who, God knows, had need of it. But that black figure heading down the corridor like a curse could not be the soul of Antoni Juliu, passing Andría’s door with a swish of skirts. That head in its black scarf could not possibly be that of his uncle, that firm step was of someone who had never been forced to leave this earth.
    When Andría saw the mysterious figure come into the house he closed his eyes in disbelief, tormented by the discrepancy between faith and fact. Were there dead females in the family? He wanted to close his door at once, slamming it hard and beating against it with his fear, but the soul would have been too close not to notice. But luckily the figure stopped just after his room, in front of Nicola’s door. Andría saw it enter, then took a short breath, and in what he hoped was perfect silence performed the first reckless act of his life, and left his room to go into the corridor.
    On a night like this night of souls, the church bell did not toll. It could have been any hour, but nothing would have been any different.