That Summer in Sicily by Marlena de Blasi Read Free Book Online Page A

lobby for one more move.
    “Let me be in the birthing room,” Cosettina had asked Tosca. “Let me stay there. It won’t be long and I’ll be quiet about my leaving. No fuss. Nothing. I promise. I want to give up my old soul to the next baby who’ll be born here. I think it’s just that you let me be there.”
    I guess Cosettina had been expecting Tosca to refuse or at least to put up a fight but, Nuruzzu said, this morning she was carried to her bed in the birthing room where she would lie in company with St. Anne and Demeter and
la Madonna
herself. And in the next bed, a young village woman called Viola awaited the birth of her first child. Both women were approaching their time, said Nuruzzu.
    After the visit to the birthing room, all the women stood or sat or milled about the garden. Tosca passed about the cigar box, saw that refreshments were served, and then walked past where I stood with Nuruzzu and some others and went back into the villa. When she returned only a few moments later, she quietly announced that Cosettina had gone. All was peaceful, she said. And, by the way, she said, Viola’s daughter, though she had not yet consented to appear, seemed to be making preparatory motions in that direction. Tosca passed among the women quietly, inviting all of them into the dining hall to say the rosary together for Cosettina. The men were called in to join us. Electricity is little used in any case at the villa, but that evening Tosca called for the lights to be spent, for the candles to be lit. She shut certain windows, opened others, turned the mirrors to face the walls. Finally she sat, and someone began saying the beads. Partway through the third group of Hail Marys, a shuddering wind blew through the long cavern of a room, and Tosca smiled.
    “
Ciao, Cosettina. Ti voglio tanto bene.
Good-bye, Cosettina. I love you very much.”
    No one had been crying until then, at least not so you could hear it. But by now they were all crying. Sobbing and weeping and repeating the same farewell to Cosettina. There was so much noise about us that it’s a wonder we heard that first great squealing, screeching bellow from the birthing room. Viola named her daughter Cosettina.

    The next day is Saturday. Long awake, I lie in bed waiting for the light. Waiting for the angelus. Rather than its jaunty clanging out into the mists, a fretful, tinny bell whines. For Cosettina. And with the lament still riding the air, there came then a jubilant thundering of bells. For Cosettina.
    There are fewer people at breakfast, since some have ridden or walked into the village to hear the funeral mass at San Salvatore. Many of those who remained have set to work, in one way or another, preparing for the baptismal ceremony that will take place at noon. In these mountains, there is time lost neither in sending off a soul to paradise nor in washing a new one clean for its walk upon earth. Everything is taut, clear. Embraceable.
    I rise to leave the breakfast table but then stay put. Antonio Banderas is walking my way. Walking past me. He smells of yeast. A widow rushes toward him and says, “
Ah, Furio. Hai già finito? Vieni a mangiare qualcosa adesso.
Have you finished already? Come to eat something now.”
    The itinerant baker. So Antonio Banderas roams the Madonie mountains pretending to be an itinerant baker. A magnificent cover. Where else, how else, could he find peace from that grappling Melanie Griffith? In a thin white T-shirt, jeans, work boots, a black cotton stocking cap covers his hair, stops just above the Arab eyes.
    Until now I’d wondered why the household needed another baker.
    I sit back down, lean on my elbows, drum the fingers of one hand slowly on my cheek. Carlotta comes to sit with me.
    “Have you met Furio?” she wants to know.
    I smile and shake my head, and she begins to tell me about him. Says that he arrives before dawn each Saturday, descends upon the villa in a sputtering
cinquecento,
trailing a wagon that