for an hour with he and Mother Church. The old goddesses were their confidantes, their undisputed authorities and, being so familiar with them, theyâd call upon Hera and Hestia, Aphrodite, Artemis and Demeter, as they would neighbours from a village down the mountain. They knew too much, the women of Acquapendente di Sopra. They knew that the clans and the Church and the State were as united a family as the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. But there I go again, wandering.
âIn any case, the womenâs toilettes were enhanced on Thursdays, all of them primping in their way, patting
Borotalco
from a green and gold tin over freshly bathed bodies, braiding hair or twisting it into intricate knots, festooning themselves with bits of matriarchal jewels and a change of dress. The eldest was forty-eight, the youngest perhaps forty and it was she who, with a sharpened wedge of wood burnt to charcoal, would, always on a Thursday, draw black lines along the slant of her eyelids and I swear those two lines changed how she moved, how she spoke and smiled.
âOh, yes, does it surprise you how young they all were? Had you been conjuring a bevy of ancients? And have you been wondering about their children?
âWell, those whoâd mothered sons had seen them off to their labours by then, down the mountain or to a marriage with a girl from the cities, while their daughters had, likewise, followed their husbandsâ paths. Just as Iâd done. For some, visits to or from their children were rare enough. Life in the mountains is often lived in epochs â clearly marked â one ending, the next beginning, in a succession natural as the seasons, children yearning sometimes to forget from whence they came, their parents, having loved them well, trusting their babies to the Fates, to the old goddesses. Now, all that about children, that wasnât what youâd call meandering, was it? Maybe just a little.â
â¢
By now I am captive to Ninuccia. I know nothing of the present. How long have we been sitting here at the long wooden table in the mill? Someone has lit candles in the lanterns, which hang from iron hooks here and there about the place. I know that Ninuccia has placed a string of those half-dried figs near to my hand, that she has pushed toward me the roasted bread that one of the cousins brought to the table. From the tail of my eye, I am aware of men and women who come and go, lugging sacks of olives, carrying away wooden boxes filled with two-litre bottles of new oil. I hear the sound of stones crushing the fruit, the gentle brays of the velvet-eyed she-ass. Ninuccia stops only to eat a fig.
â¢
âCosima. Cosima wore the same dress every Thursday. The colour was of a kind of pewter iridescence that shimmered gold when she moved in it, the heavy silk falling like warmed metal and sheathing the long, skinny frame of her. Her husband had brought it home on the night of her twenty-first birthday. She said she knew it had been thieved, that dress â a spoil from some larger plundering. She said sheâd been sure his treachery was greater than that which would yield the humble haul of a pewter-coloured dress.
âOn a January dawn less than a month later, while she was still abed with two-year-old Pierangelo asleep beside her, Cosima heard the dull thud her husbandâs corpse made as it smite the lane outside the cottage door. Sheâd always expected it, she knew, she said. She pulled at the bed cover, wadded it up her arms and, barefoot, went to him, covering him, swaddling him, dragging and pushing and pulling him into the house. Not meaning to, she said, she lay down on top of him and rocked and wept until she noticed that Pierangelo, also rocking and weeping, had lain down next to her, next to his father. In that truculent way of hers, Cosima told me this and then never spoke of it again. When once I asked Pierangelo to tell me of his fatherâs death, he looked at me, held
âIn any case, the womenâs toilettes were enhanced on Thursdays, all of them primping in their way, patting
Borotalco
from a green and gold tin over freshly bathed bodies, braiding hair or twisting it into intricate knots, festooning themselves with bits of matriarchal jewels and a change of dress. The eldest was forty-eight, the youngest perhaps forty and it was she who, with a sharpened wedge of wood burnt to charcoal, would, always on a Thursday, draw black lines along the slant of her eyelids and I swear those two lines changed how she moved, how she spoke and smiled.
âOh, yes, does it surprise you how young they all were? Had you been conjuring a bevy of ancients? And have you been wondering about their children?
âWell, those whoâd mothered sons had seen them off to their labours by then, down the mountain or to a marriage with a girl from the cities, while their daughters had, likewise, followed their husbandsâ paths. Just as Iâd done. For some, visits to or from their children were rare enough. Life in the mountains is often lived in epochs â clearly marked â one ending, the next beginning, in a succession natural as the seasons, children yearning sometimes to forget from whence they came, their parents, having loved them well, trusting their babies to the Fates, to the old goddesses. Now, all that about children, that wasnât what youâd call meandering, was it? Maybe just a little.â
â¢
By now I am captive to Ninuccia. I know nothing of the present. How long have we been sitting here at the long wooden table in the mill? Someone has lit candles in the lanterns, which hang from iron hooks here and there about the place. I know that Ninuccia has placed a string of those half-dried figs near to my hand, that she has pushed toward me the roasted bread that one of the cousins brought to the table. From the tail of my eye, I am aware of men and women who come and go, lugging sacks of olives, carrying away wooden boxes filled with two-litre bottles of new oil. I hear the sound of stones crushing the fruit, the gentle brays of the velvet-eyed she-ass. Ninuccia stops only to eat a fig.
â¢
âCosima. Cosima wore the same dress every Thursday. The colour was of a kind of pewter iridescence that shimmered gold when she moved in it, the heavy silk falling like warmed metal and sheathing the long, skinny frame of her. Her husband had brought it home on the night of her twenty-first birthday. She said she knew it had been thieved, that dress â a spoil from some larger plundering. She said sheâd been sure his treachery was greater than that which would yield the humble haul of a pewter-coloured dress.
âOn a January dawn less than a month later, while she was still abed with two-year-old Pierangelo asleep beside her, Cosima heard the dull thud her husbandâs corpse made as it smite the lane outside the cottage door. Sheâd always expected it, she knew, she said. She pulled at the bed cover, wadded it up her arms and, barefoot, went to him, covering him, swaddling him, dragging and pushing and pulling him into the house. Not meaning to, she said, she lay down on top of him and rocked and wept until she noticed that Pierangelo, also rocking and weeping, had lain down next to her, next to his father. In that truculent way of hers, Cosima told me this and then never spoke of it again. When once I asked Pierangelo to tell me of his fatherâs death, he looked at me, held
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