Blackbird Days

January 29, 1995

          The only place the blackbird could fall asleep for two minutes was that hole with the warm, rough, grey stones way up high. A hot wind came out of the hole and stung her eyes so the blackbird buried her head in her feathers to breathe: it was better to burn a little than to freeze everywhere. Nearby, all kinds of food flew into the air several times a day and sprinkled over the snow so the blackbird swooped down, pecked up a bite and flew back to her roost until she was warm enough to forage some more.

         The blackbird was turning as grey as the invisible ash spewing forth from the house’s chimney smoke. Isabella stood at the kitchen window and watched the bird flying up to the chimney and down to the crumbs on the ground beneath her kitchen window. She took the tablecloth off the breakfast table and shook it out the window. While the pink fabric flapped in the icy air, nine blackbirds swarmed around the bird she had been watching. They all swooped down as one to peck at the bread crusts scattering across the ground.

          Brrr, it was freezing.  Isabella clicked the television on and pulled a white mohair blanket around herself on the sofa while she channel surfed for something interesting: cartoons. That was what she wanted, not the break up of some political party which was all they were talking about this morning.

         “Bella, aren’t you ready yet to go into town and go shopping with me? Now that everything’s on sale we can get that magenta sweater you’ve been looking for.”

         “Oh Mamma, it’s too cold to go out today.”

         “I guess you really don’t want that sweater after all, do you?”

          “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes you know I’m dying to have one, but …”

         “Well if you really want that magenta sweater, you’re going to have to come out with me today. Oh Bella, let’s go out! We’ll have fun! Half the stuff is on sale! Who knows what bargains we’ll find! So we’ll leave in about twenty minutes. If you want that sweater. And we can get some hot chocolate too.”

        Isabella’s mother went back into her bedroom to finish dressing. Sabrina Francesconi knew it was cold, one of the coldest days of the year, the days her father always called the blackbird days. She had never really noticed the birds’ roosts, but the legend ran that the blackbirds sat over the chimneys the last days of January to keep warm. The ash rising from the chimneys dusted the blackbirds completely, turning them into whitebirds.  As Sabrina sat at her vanity and brushed her hair and steadily lipsticked her mouth, she looked out the window and did indeed see a blackbird sitting on her window ledge. Well, that must be a good omen!         

           Sabrina turned to her image in the mirror and selected a white gold Pomellato chain with its jointed princess charm and a black scarf to set off her pale blond hair. She wrapped a smart, warm nubby black and white tweed skirt around her middle and reached her arms into its matching jacket. She went back to the living room, expecting her daughter to be dressed. She saw Isabella still wrapped in the soft white throw, watching Olive Oyl and Popeye. The sight dismayed her but Sabrina gave her daughter one last chance.

          “Isabella, don’t you even want a cup of chocolate at the café?”

        “Oh Mamma, I’m not going out.”

        “That means no magenta sweater.”

        “It’ll be out of style next year anyway. Thanks, but no thanks.”

         This peeved Sabrina. Her daughter had been whining about that goddamned sweater for the least three weeks and now that Sabrina was ready to buy it for her, Isabella was just too lazy to face the biting cold. Sabrina decided she was not going to buy it for her, even if that meant listening to Isabella’s moaning for another week. Sabrina realized she had been giving in to her daughter’s whims far too much of late; Isabella had been turning her bellyaching into little fits of lower-lipped pique that were lengthy and unpleasant. It irked the hell out of Claudio when he saw his daughter pouting all evening long.  The time was clearly coming for Sabrina to put her foot down and make her stand, or Isabella would be completely spoiled. The first step to prevent that, was not buying that magenta sweater for Isabella. It was high time Isabella straightened up and took on some responsibility.

         Sabrina opened the door and walked to her car into the invigorating air.  As she drove from her cozy little villa in the tiny village of Cotignola into town, her mouth moistened at the thought of having a nice warm cappuccino dusted with bitter cocoa powder and a flaky little pastry at that adorable little bar outside the gates to the city. Shopping required all Sabrina’s energy and to focus on it, she had to be appropriately fuelled and awake. Sabrina adored window shopping, even in this arctic cold. 

        She found a parking space near the large travertine square dedicated to a Fascist aviator, ideally located close to her little bar with its particularly good, freshly baked pastries. The café had just changed hands, which meant it had yet to establish a reputation and Sabrina could sip her cappuccino there without worrying about people gossiping, and without seeing anyone that she didn’t want to see inside or outside her usual social circle. The luxury of anonymity always came in short gasps in Sabrina’s provincial cosmos.

         As she walked up to the counter she noticed the mousy backside of a woman dressed in pale faded greens, with wanly colored auburn hair. The woman’s Ferragamo shoes immediately registered in Sabrina’s brain however and she realized it was Isabella’s mathematics teacher Antonietta Mazzavillani,  the wife of their dentist. Sabrina half hoped Signora Mazzavillani would not notice her because Sabrina just didn’t feel like chatting, but there was no way Sabrina could get a brioche, which she desperately needed, without running smack dab into the woman face to face. Antonietta Mazzavillani wasn’t all that unpleasant, really; Sabrina just wanted these seven coffee minutes to herself as images of what she wanted to buy would rise and bounce merrily around her brain in while she delicately shredded the fragrant pastry with her hands and teeth. But there was no way around this Mistress of Arithmetic, so Sabrina plastered on a bright smile that made her earrings swing.

       “Ah Signora Mazzavillani! How are you?”

        Signora Mazzavillani turned and looked at Sabrina straight in the eye. She lazily forced an amusedly quizzical smile.

        “Oh, I’m fine. And you’re looking quite chic, as always. I adore your little Pomellato princess. Speaking of which, how is Isabella’s dental work going? Of course, we were a little miffed when she didn’t come to Germano for her fillings after all these years, but we understand, now that your cousin has opened his own practice in Cotignola.”

          (Fillings? Cousin? What was this all about? Sabrina braced her poised smile and pretended nothing was askew).

          “Oh everything’s going beautifully, although just between you and me, I for one would have been much happier if Isabella had come to Germano.  He’s the best dentist for fifty kilometres around, but you know family!”

          “Oh, yes, I understand completely. You really don’t need to explain, but do remind Isabella that I am going to have to interrogate her on binomial equations one of these days. Aren’t Germano and I a pair? The dentist married the calculus teacher: the two people everyone avoids - professionally. I’m not surprised Isabella prefers the tangible drill to the algebraic unknown. One must think of one’s health first, anyway. Oh, look at the time! Are you going to the sale at Irma’s? I want to get there early. I’ve had my eye on a winter coat that was far too much to pay for – until it went on sale.”

          “Oh, I’m so glad you told me. I hadn’t walked by in several days. I wonder if they have any magenta sweaters on sale.”

“Isabella wants one of them too, doesn’t she? I wonder who starts these fads at school. Anyway, it was nice to see you. Have a nice Sunday.”

          Signora Mazzavillani smiled and walked out into the opaque grey morning with a slight smirk on her face. She knew perfectly well that Isabella had been forging the notes to go to the dentist on the days that Signora Mazzavillani was going to interrogate her during math class. She also knew perfectly well that Sabrina Francesconi would defend that lying little trollop in training with her teeth. Isabella thought she was so clever and bold, when behind it all she had only a saucy manner and a cute butt. A very charming manner, and a very shapely backside, but that was all there was to Isabella. Although these two attributes would certainly be enough for her to get along in life, they were not going to get her through Algebra I. And if Isabella Baroncelli did not pass algebra this year, there was no way she was going to graduate from high school next year.

       Signora Mazzavillani had reached the central square of Lugo, a neoclassical rectangular arcade of bare brick porticoes with elegant pediments and architraves that framed its central open square paved with river stones. The interiors of the porticoes were glittering with white frost and hot pink columbines in pots that the shopkeepers had set out before the large fogged-up shop windows flanking the sides of the entrances to their shops. A magenta sweater, she could have guessed that Isabella would have to have one of those too, as long as Isabella didn’t have to do anything to get it. And Isabella would get one too, that was for sure. 

        Over the last thirty years Signora Mazzavillani had noticed every silly fad, from black rubber jewellery to miniature plastic pacifiers in iridescent clusters hanging from girls’ necks.  She had also run across all the standard 40 personality types in her students and Antonietta Mazzavillani had seen where each one ended up in the society of Lugo and its satellite country villages. Antonietta was rarely off the mark, although, once in a great while someone did manage to make a complete change in their lives. Sabrina Francesconi herself had done it. Everyone knew Sabrina had been ruled by a terrible cocaine habit that her parents had been wealthy enough to ignore, afford and treat. But La Francesconi was clean now, and she had been clean for the last twenty-odd years.

Sabrina Francesconi’s addiction had surfaced in the most typical of manners. Her high school classmates and friends started to accuse her of stealing their things and stopped frequenting her. About a month after her ostracism among her peers, Sabrina’s parents had realized that money was missing around the household, from their wallets and purses, and their secret hiding places. Accounts started not to add up and then they started to add up.

          Local gossips had spread two deliciously juicy versions of what went down. Despite her mathematical acumen Signora Mazzavillani had never been able to decide which one was more likely. It was hard to decide which tale gave greater satisfaction, like trying to decide between Chantilly cream or custard, so she repeated the more appropriate theory to her intimates and the uninitiated, based on which story would titillate the listener more.

          Signora Mazzavillani told her daughter Ivana that one day Sabrina’s mother, the formidable Signora Luliana had purposely left a 100,000 lira note under the mirror of her vanity before she asked Sabrina to come help her pick out what jewellery to wear to the theater that evening. From bits and pieces of gossip, Antonietta Mazzavillani had discovered exactly what happened after that (or at least, what someone said happened):

          “Oh, Sabrina darling, wait a second, I think I have the perfect earrings in the bathroom. Let me go get them.”

         When Luliana returned, she found Sabrina rummaging among her bracelets, trying one on.

          “Do you really like that?”

          “Oh yes Mama’. It’s so retro.”

          “Well, then why don’t you keep it? It’s just paste and pewter and I never wear it.”

         “Oh, thank you! Look at the time; I’ve got to get going.”

          “Darling, just wait a minute.” Sabrina’s mother went to the door to the bedroom and locked it. Sabrina paled.

          “We need to talk.” Sabrina’s mother moved aside the scarves and necklaces and bottles of perfume spread out over her vanity and nonchalantly turned the mirror over. Sure enough there was a bill underneath it, but it was a fifty thousand lire bill, printed with the same faded rose ink as a hundred thousand lira bill. Sabrina backed away towards the bathroom.

          “We both know there was a hundred thousand lire bill under that mirror. Where do you think it is now?”

          “Mama’, what are you talking about?”

          “Empty your pockets, Sabrina. Right now.”

          Sabrina groaned and emptied her pockets onto the vanity: a crumpled tissue, a tampax, house keys, and eight dirty mauve one thousand lira notes.

          “Are you accusing me of taking that money? Are you really?”

          Sabrina’s mother took her gently by the shoulders and sat her down at the vanity.

         “Look in the mirror, look at yourself and look at me. Where is that bill? We know you’ve been pilfering from us.”

          “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this. I wouldn’t steal anything off anyone. It was probably the maid. Now let me go. I have to meet Renato in the square for a coffee in ten minutes. I can’t believe my own mother is accusing me of being a thief and actually laid a trap for me, in her bedroom.”

          Luliana was now entirely convinced that Sabrina had taken the money; Sabrina should never have grasped so quickly that a trap had been laid for her. Luliana was about to ask Sabrina to strip down to her panties but discarded the idea because it was so debasing that it could not have produced results. As Sabrina gently swept her hand towards the contents of her pockets strewn over the vanity, Luliana looked in the mirror and noticed a tilted head showing through the tampax wrapper. It was a woman’s face. Indeed it was Barbara Vespucci in Botticelli’s Primavera who gazed out of all the current hundred thousand lira notes. Luliana gently took Sabrina’s hand before it could reach the tampax.

        “All right. You’re right, I am accusing you of thievery and I did lay a trap for you. I must have mistakenly put a fifty thousand-lira note under my mirror. I will apologize and forgive you on one condition.”

          Sabrina was smug at having the upper hand at this point. She looked at her mother with pained hauteur. “Well Mama’, what is it? What’s your condition?”

        “It’s a little silly,” she laughed. “You let me have that tampax. I’ve run out and I need to put one in my bag for this evening. You know, just in case.”

         “Oh, no way. No, I need it to go out right now.” Sabrina grabbed the items on the vanity, standing and turning to leave the room. But as she did so, she brusquely knocked her Mother off balance and Luliana fell, full length on the salmon and beige Aubusson carpet at the foot of the bed.  Though Luliana hadn’t planned it, this was the perfect chance to prove once and for all that Sabrina had stolen the money.  Luliana pretended to lose consciousness and lay perfectly immobile in a painfully awkward sprawl.

          Sabrina gasped and looked down at her mother. What had she done? She bent over her mother and cried: “Oh, Holy Mother of Jesus! Mama’, Mama’, I didn’t mean to hurt you. All you all right?”

         Luliana groaned, her eyes shut and her head turned. She let her mouth fall open for good effect and allowed a tiny trickle of saliva to dribble onto the carpet.  Sabrina freaked out. She threw her arms around her mother and shook her slightly. She seemed to be coming to.  The mother groaned again and started to move her arms. Sabrina hugged her tighter and her mother deftly patted the floor to see where the Trojan Tampax had fallen. Sabrina jerked, realizing she had been tricked again, and her hand shot out, grabbing the tampax and clenching it in her hand.

        “You tricked me!”

          Luliana had the other end of the tampax, and when the packaging popped open, the pink of the 100,000 lira note brightly shone at both of them.

          “I did, but not nearly as well you have deceived me, and your father, and your Aunt Milli and even your grandmother.”

Sabrina started to cry. Her mother picked her up by the shoulders sat her on the vanity stool, raised her Sabrina’s chin, and shook her by the shoulders once, and very hard.

          “This is no time for tears. Where’s the money you are stealing going to? For clothing? For food when you go out? For alcohol? Or is it going into your arm?”

          Sabrina shot darts at her mother with her eyes. Then, very slowly, she rolled up her sleeves and showed her the smoothly pristine insides of her elbows. There were no tracks.

          “I can’t believe you’d accuse me of that.  I just can’t believe it.”

          “Well, then, you can tell me the truth.”

          There was a knock at the door. Her mother looked at her again and asked: “Where is that money going to?”

        Sabrina turned her head while her Mother went to the door and unlocked it. Three men in white lab coats entered the room.

         “Now, you can take your pick. You can tell me, or Dr. Zauli here is going to sedate you and we will take you to the hospital for a complete check-up.”

          “I’ll scream!”

          “Go ahead. That will make it easier to explain when the ambulance arrives in ten minutes. Nello, call for the ambulance now.”

          When Sabrina awoke, all she could see was white. Had she died? As she tried to straighten up, she realized she was in bed and something was around her wrists. She screamed again. Her mother walked in.

          “Where am I? What have you done to me?”

          “Your father and I have discovered your little habit; they tell us it has something to do with snow. Well, you’ll find enough snow here to keep you satisfied for a very long time. You’re at the Villa Alaska in Montenegro. And I will stay here beside you, until you are clean.”

         

           That was the basic version of the story. It had made the rounds over tea and cookies in people’s homes at first; by the time Sabrina had returned eight months later, all the men and boys were talking about in the cafes and discothèques. Everyone knew Signora Luliana was a force to be reckoned with. She did not have many friends in Massa Lombarda, which is why the gossip about the money hidden in the tampax was so particularly appetizing as it was repeated again and again. Everybody admired Luliana’s resolve. Fittingly however, it was admired most of all by her daughter, who had at least acquired her resolve vicariously and kicked her cocaine habit. Signora Mazzavillani knew that Luliana was a lady with balls and she had firmly put Sabrina in her tracks from then on. If Luliana had still been alive today, things might different with her granddaughter Isabella, but that would be hard to say. The raw material of Sabrina was far more promising than the meagre amalgam that her own daughter, Isabella had to offer.

Instead, Signora Mazzavillani told her husband the story that circulated about Sabrina’s father Nello Francesconi. Nello Francesconi, like Signora Mazzavillani’s dentist husband Germano, did not believe a great many things, but they both knew that arithmetic was not an opinion. Nello was now certain he was missing fifty thousand lire from the book of Guerrini’s poems where he kept his undeclared income. He knew his wife hadn’t taken it; the only publication Luliana ever opened was Vogue, and she never spent all the allowance he gave her, anyway.  It had to be Sabrina. When he realized she was stealing from him, it made him sick to his stomach. Now he only had to catch her doing it. It would not be difficult, but it was not going to be pleasant.

          After Sunday dinner, he walked into the living room, turned on the television set, and watched the Formula One races in Imola. He turned up the volume so that all you could hear was the crescendo and decrescendo of the Ferraris as they buzzed around the track. This was sure to keep Sabrina and his wife out of the living room and in the kitchen. Pretty soon he closed his eyes and let his mouth droop open slightly. It didn’t take long before he heard the click of the door to his studio. He knew Sabrina had gone in to take the bait.

          Nello jumped up noisily, straightened his tie and confidently strode into his sombre study, filled floor to ceiling with the leather bound books of a successful notary. When he opened the door, there was Sabrina sitting at his desk, poring over a copy of The Divine Comedy.

          “Well, what are you doing, studying on a Sunday afternoon? Shouldn’t you be out with – what’s his name - Renato?”

          “Oh Papa', I have an exam next week and I know they’re going to interrogate me on canto 33 from the Inferno. So, I thought I should at least run through it once before I go out.”

          “Dante? Well, here’s something you can use to spice up your interrogation. Are you familiar with Stecchetti’s piece on Dante’s tomb, in Ravenna? It’s pretty Dantesque, as they say.”

          Nello walked over to the bookcase. The seven poppy seeds he had placed on the shelf between between Guareschi’s Notes of Anybody and Guerrini’s Collected Works were not where he had left them before their midday meal. Dante Alighieri was on the shelf above them. He pulled Guerrini’s book from the shelf and sat opposite Sabrina, on the client side of his desk. This lying, thieving little vixen of his daughter was losing the blood in her cheeks.

          “Do you remember it?”

“Oh Papa', you know I don’t like poetry in dialect. And I need to go.”

          “Oh no, just sit and listen. It isn’t very long.” Nello opened the book to the Ode to Dante’s Tomb, pulled the stack of bills from it and laid them on the desk. He started to read:

          “Morigia? vera gloria romagnola,

           Che fu un patacca e mica un architetto

           E pisciò sino sangue, poveretto,

           Per fabricarmi questa pivirola ...

          “Morigia? One of the true glories of Romagna

          Who had piles and then built them,

          The poor fellow even pissed blood

          To build me this pepper mill of a tomb!”

          Sabrina twitched once and then settled back into her father’s easy chair to listen to the end of the sonnet. Her legs started to perspire ever so slightly as her father finished. She even threw out a nervous little laugh when Dante’s ghost compared his perfect little neoclassical tomb to a public latrine.  When Nello finished, Sabrina stood up and moved toward the door.

          “Wait my little hen. Here, wouldn’t you like a little bonus to your allowance this week?” Nello took the bills up in his right hand and in a ruffling flash he counted them between his thumb and forefinger in five seconds.

          “Or have you already taken it upon yourself to make a withdrawal? There were 20 bills in here before lunch. Now there are only 19. Where do you think the other bill has flown away to, without wings?”

          Sabrina sat perfectly still. Now her arms were swathed in an alternating warm and cool bath of perspiration.  She could do one of two things: burst into tears and confess everything, or she could start screaming. Her father looked her straight in the eye.

          “Well my little hen, why did you take the money? At your age? Don’t you remember the difference between right and wrong? Or does it just not matter to you anymore? Is this what I have reared?” Nello raised his arm up high with the nineteen notes clutched in his fist. A violently sudden swoop brought his fist down into his daughter’s face across the table. Sabrina’s mouth gaped open. Though she expected a huge backhanded smack on the face, at the last minute her father had released his grip on the money that fluttered around her head in a fuchsia fog and drifted to the floor.

          “Take it. Take it all and leave my roof. And don’t come back asking for more.” Nello stormed out of the room.

          Sabrina sat there astonished for a moment. She could not believe he had not hauled off and slapped her upside the head. She was completely dumbfounded and unable to move. Slowly, as her senses returned, she grasped what had just happened to her. She had lost her home: for a little white powder, just because she was chic and sophisticated, and slightly superior to the other girls at the discotheques and backrooms where she snorted away her reputation.  Now her body turned cold as her perspiration turned her whole body clammy.

          Her father re-entered the room with a suitcase.

          “So, little hen, the time has come to decide to go out pecking for what you want in the wide world, where you can scratch for crumbs all by yourself. I won’t have a thief living in my house. Good-bye.”

          With this, Nello strode from the room, this time slamming the door. Her mother now entered. Luliana was the picture of calm and poise.

          “So, you’ve been stealing. Your father won’t let you stay with us. Well, you’re an adult; the time would have to come sooner or later.  There’s nothing I can do about him, that you know. So, where are you going to go? Do you have friends you can stay with while you look for a job?”

          Sabrina could not believe the cold detachment her parents were showing her. They were just going to throw her out, just like that. Where would she go? Now she decided to cry.

          “Oh Mama’, I have no idea. Can’t I stay with Aunt Milli?”

“You wretched little cretin! Aunt Milli knows you’ve been stealing from her. Everyone does. Even Granny knows! The only place you’re going to be able to stay is a community for heroin addicts. I’ve already called and they’ll take you in. Shall I drive you there?”

          Sabrina clenched her teeth and now screamed: “I am not a heroin addict! I AM NOT A HEROIN ADDICT! THAT IS NOT THE PLACE FOR ME!”

          The theatrics nonplussed Luliana. “Well, then where is all the money going? Not for clothing or gas, nor for charity for that matter. Where is it going?”

           Her mother strode to the wall and pulled a mirror off it.

“Look at yourself. Look at me! Now, you can tell me the answer to that question, the honest answer and I will help you find someplace to live. Or you can ignore me and I will pack your bag for you. Choose!”

          “Coke.”

          “This no time to ask for a soft drink.”

          “I’m not talking about the soft drink. I’m talking about cocaine. I just do a little bit when I go out.  Everyone does it. There’s no real harm in it.”

          “No, there’s no real harm except in losing your parents’ respect. And your relatives’. And your friends’. And losing your reputation. There’s no real harm in it at all. Except that you are going to lose everything that has any real value. So, the time has come to choose. Don’t you know? Haven’t you realized? The only people who will have you right now, for yourself, for who you really are, are recovering heroin addicts. At any rate, that’s what everyone in town thinks you are: a heroin addict. If you ever want to move past all of this, you’re going to have to clean up and come clean. It’s up to you. So, do I help you pack, or pack for you?”

          Sabrina had stayed in the community in Rimini for over six months and Luliana rented a room in a home nearby. The first night, they physically chained Sabrina to her bed. Then they gave her real work to do. She had started by slopping the hogs and then she moved on to cleaning the toilets. She was grateful she was promoted to cleaning the toilets and not to be slopping the hogs any more. She had received insult upon insult; she had been dissected as a human being down to her smallest, pettiest, falsest thought and mannerism. She had been forced to go without bathing for a week and used corn husks instead of toilet paper. Sabrina found out who she really was. She kept her maiden name like many Romagnol women, as tribute to her father decisiveness, so there would be no mistaking whence she had come and to whom she was indebted.

         Both stories ended with Sabrina coming back from the sanatorium in Montenegro or the community in Rimini accompanied by her inscrutable mother who changed the subject every time anyone asked where they had both been since February. Her daughter was clean and ready to take up her place in Massalombarda’s society, and then escape Massalombarda on the earliest possible husband.

          Signora Mazzavillani knew that Sabrina Francesconi had touched the absolute bottom, the coldest place of her life, the loneliest corner of her personality, and that Sabrina had grasped what was important for her: a comfortable home, beautiful clothing, and people who would leave her alone. The truth, she would never be able to avoid that again, Sabrina knew what she had done to her reputation. She realized the whole community knew she had been forced to clean up, she could not deny it, but she sure as Hell avoided bringing it up and never spoke about it to anyone, not even her husband. Sabrina Francesconi was clean now and she had gotten back the things she wanted, the things that were important to her, and she held onto them for dear life.

          Sabrina never achieved any semblance of spiritual humility, but she had learned compassion and not to criticize other people. Sabrina knew she had almost enough resolve to face her situation and overcome it, but that she needed someone to prod her in that direction and be there when she fell. That was the crux of her personality.  Sabrina had learned it was easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of it.

          Sabrina’s daughter Isabella was a different story altogether. Signora Mazzavillani quickly discerned that Isabella’s respect for truth and honesty was easily smothered by her sloth, and that Isabella’s measly ambition completely suffocated her sense of right and wrong. Isabella and her mother shared a common little trait: they were such slaves to caprice that they spoiled themselves recklessly at the price of their independence.  Self indulgence had led to Sabrina’s addiction but Sabrina had overcome her habit; personal responsibility had been ingrained in her deep down when her parents acted stalwartly to end her addiction.

          Signora Mazzavillani liked Sabrina even if she did not particularly care to frequent her; Signora Mazzavillani liked Sabrina despite Sabrina’s condescending ways because Sabrina Francesconi had worked through her own nature to face herself with razor sharp honesty and determination.

          She doubted however that Sabrina Francesconi would ever instil even a pale nuance of anything near that degree of integrity and candour with her daughter Isabella. Signora Mazzavillani also predicted that Isabella Baroncelli would eventually have a marriage or two and then settle down with someone a lot older than she was, but definitely a lot wealthier. At that point in her life, Isabella would have learned that if she wanted people to keep spoiling her, she would have to toe the line, and that her natural good looks and perky hiney weren’t going to hold up forever. Isabella had very little to offer beyond a handsome figure and very limited, self serving charm. Even Great Charm alone cannot easily overcome Morality. Only Clear Advantage or Inherited Power or Humble Shrewdness allied to Great Charm can accomplish the truly divine miracle, or get away with the reprehensively blasphemous obscenity.

          Like the overcoat Antonietta Mazzavillani saw hanging in the window: mint green lambswool edged with gilded leather piping. Its fashion appeal would never last three winter seasons. The asking price of 900,000 lire was immoral as far as Signora Mazzavillani was concerned, but a discount of 60 percent, which she would charmingly whittle down to the end of season’s Clear Advantage of 70 percent off, brought this charming coat which she really did not need or have to have, into the realm of the morally feasible velleity. Signora Mazzavillani was an algebra teacher and knew exactly how all the formulas worked.

          Sabrina was furious. She stomped down the cobblestones, clenching her teeth and inhaling the piercing air sharply as she thought about what she was going to do.  Speak to her husband Claudio that was an idea, and let him handle it. That would be the easiest way out. In the meantime, she was going to go shopping; she did want to buy some clothes and shopping was something that she enjoyed. She could attend to Isabella later.

          But the whole scenario kept playing through her head. Antonietta Mazzavillani had known perfectly well that Isabella had been playing hooky, and she probably knew that Isabella had been forging Sabrina’s signature. But Antonietta Mazzavillani never got the chance to see the written excuse, since another teacher would have handled the request to leave school. “Why didn’t she tell me before, the smarmy bitch?” However Sabrina knew Antonietta hadn’t said anything, because Antonietta couldn’t even intimate a suspicion of Isabella avoiding school; she had no direct proof. Isabella was seventeen years old and not a child anymore much as she continued to act like a kindergartener. At this point, it was unlikely Isabella would pass mathematics this year unless she really buckled under and got to work.

          Sabrina stopped and looked at the Fendi window. A striking scarf of Russian inspiration hung above gold and silver bags, all marked down 30 percent. Little blackbirds flitted against the lush boughs of a summer garden, and great circles of stylized Ukrainian garlands radiated outwards between black borders. It was just the sort of thing that your husband’s business associates gave you for Christmas: you recycled it and gave it to the cleaning woman for her birthday, without ever wearing it. But this one, this one was as beautiful as any Hermes scarf. It would be stunning in Sabrina’s wardrobe of bright cranberry, off white and charcoal. She went into the store.

          The shop assistant was a young woman Sabrina had seen around here and there. Though not particularly pretty, she always smiled with a guileless candour that made up for her irregular teeth, and she was always perfectly groomed so no one ever dwelt on the fact that she was a little pigeon toed. Indeed, today the shop assistant was wearing this winter’s must: the magenta v-neck sweater. On this, the most Siberian day of winter, looking at this smiling young woman blossom in a magenta sweater was like diving into a warm tulip. Sabrina suddenly understood why all the teenagers were clamouring for these goddamned magenta sweaters. Sabrina immediately wanted one for herself.

          “Good Morning. I had come in to take a look at that scarf in the window, but I don’t think I can live without a sweater like yours (and it would serve Isabella right!) Is it Fendi?”

           The girl smiled and looked Sabrina straight in the eye. “Oh ma’am, it’s not Fendi, and it’s not even in the line they’re coming out with this spring, I can tell you that.” She looked furtively left and right and out the door. It was too early for the owner to arrive and it did not look like any other customers were going to come into the shop.

          “This color was nowhere in the winter palette of even one of the designers, not even Coveri. But somehow, it just popped out in the stalls of the open-air markets about three weeks ago, and all the girls are buying them.  You won’t find a single one that has any quality whatsoever because the cheapest manufacturers are turning them out as fast as they can. The major designers won’t even bother to try and incorporate the color, because it isn’t going to last more than two months. You won’t see anybody wearing it this spring. But now, in the dead of winter, well, you simply have to have one. It makes you feel like you’re glowing, and the boys’ eyes just naturally float toward you when you’re wearing it. But I’m ashamed to tell you how much I paid for it. I went through the whole pile of them at the market in the biting cold this morning early while the sky was still pink, before I opened the shop. Half of the sweaters were ripped, and most of the rest had small flaws in the knit.  So look at them carefully if you go to buy one today.”

          Signora Mazzavillani stopped and stared at the window display outside. Sabrina waved cheerfully and the shop assistant changed tack since the woman standing outside the shop window might come in.

          “But I really should be showing you this scarf that caught your eye in the window, now shouldn’t I? It’s based on a Russian folk tale that I can’t remember, but it’s beautiful and handsomely made. It’s not on sale, at least not today. But it would look fabulous rippling between your chains and white overcoat, don’t you think?

Sabrina smiled at the girl as she handed her the scarf. Sabrina wrapped the luxurious black silk around her neck and looked in the mirror. The scarf was stunning and it looked perfect on her. Then she looked down at the price: 180,000 lire. Whew! For a hemmed rag.

          The shop’s owner came into the store, roughly pulling off her overcoat as Sabrina unwound the scarf from her neck. “I don’t think I’ll take this gorgeous foulard, today, but thank you for showing it to me.” The shop assistant folded the scarf and as she told Sabrina goodbye, she added. “Oh, and you’ll find those shoes you wanted in our other shop, they’re on the second shelf when you walk in. Somewhere in the middle. And do come back next week; we’ll definitely have more items on sale.”

*  *  *

          When Sabrina got to the second row at the market, she immediately saw which stall was selling the sweaters. Five teenage girls were rummaging through a blot of fuchsia and taking off their coats to try then on. There wasn’t a garment that hadn’t been pawed over eighteen times, and the thought of wearing something touched by so many hands repulsed Sabrina. The woman running the stall recognized Sabrina; they had both been party girls and bumped into one another often in their wild days. The woman looked her straight in the eyes and said:

          “Francesconi? Bri’?”

           No one had called Sabrina that name in at least twenty years. Then the woman’s name popped into Sabrina’s head: “Loretta! Why what ever happened to you?”

          “Oh, nothing ever happened to me. Well, not at least nothing good. We had a little dress shop in Russi, but I’m afraid my husband shot that up his arm last year, and now I’m doing the markets to keep body and girdle together. You remember Renato, don’t you?”

          “With his white vespa? Who could forget him?”

          “Well, he’s still got the same white vespa but it’s not so white no more. Anyhow, he drives the van in and gets me set up and then takes off for most of the morning. He comes back at ten so I can take a pee, and then he’s back again at one. At least he takes things down and sets things up and drives. He keeps his hands off the cash, that’s for sure.”

          As Loretta spoke, she made three transactions with different customers and Sabrina felt slightly in the way.

          “Oh well, I must let you get on with your work. Nice to . . . “

          “Not so fast. Didn’t you want to buy something? I was almost certain you wanted one of those magenta sweaters.”

          “Oh I did, but . . .”

          “But they’re a ragged heap now and you want something clean. You always were a little prisspot. Here, I’ve got one of each size in a plastic bag in the truck. They’re forty thousand lire, if you’re interested.”

           “Forty?”

           “Or you can have one off the table for twenty-five and take it home and wash it and maybe wear it next week. Take your pick.”

          “Size four in the plastic bag.”

          “I thought so! Here you go! It was nice to see you again.”

Loretta lit up a cigarette as she watched Sabrina walk away. Bri’ Francesconi had not changed very much.  She was a little bit older, but then again everyone was. Her manner had not changed much: snooty bourgeois and hypocritical enough to smile at everyone and then stab them behind their backs – if it behoved her. But Bri’ was not unpleasant.

          Bri’ had been a savvy addict, choosing cocaine over heroin. She had always had enough money to support her habit and hold her head high. She never lost her dignity which showed through in her perfect grooming: her outfits had always been impeccably understated, never too expensive, never too cheap. Bri’ had never been a great beauty or sexy, even in her twenties, so the worst guys (who were always the best looking ones) had not chased after her, unless of course, they wanted to push more cocaine up her nose and turn a profit. Loretta had heard the story of Sabrina’s mother’s iron will in cleaning in her daughter up. Having a mother like that around, a person who wouldn’t let you get away with a thing, well, that made a difference in your life.  A big difference. Even a mediocre mother made a big difference though it was not always for the better.

          Loretta has seen that the real problem of drug addiction was not really what the chemicals did to your brain, or what the alkalis did to your nose, or what the needles did to your arms. The real problem of addiction was quite simply money. As long as you could afford it, you really never had much of a problem: that was why Bri’ Francesconi had come out clean and why she never mentioned her addiction to cocaine even though the whole town knew about it, her move from Massalombarda to Cotignola notwithstanding.

          If you didn’t have the money to support your habit then you started to steal, first from abandoned pocket books in cafes and discos, and then your friends' wallets at the very first opportunity. Next you expanded inward where the risk was lower and the return was higher: your relatives. You started with your mother’s purse, then your father’s wallet, then the places around the house where your parents hid money in case of an emergency.  It was insidious because what you stole at the beginning was usually not much more than the cost of one of these magenta sweaters, just enough for a hit or three one night and then you were going off it the next day. But every day you got better at stealing those tidy little sums all through the arc of the day Most people whose wallets contained a couple hundred thousand of lire did not notice initially that they were missing forty thousand lire, or they justified it to themselves: “Oh, I must have spent the money on something I didn’t remember buying, but I must have spent the other day in the beauty parlour.”  And they wrote the discrepancy off to their own absent-mindedness.

          Thus had Loretta lost her shop to a hole in Renato’s arm. Bri’ Francesconi had been so smart to stay away from heroin. Loretta easily imagined why: cocaine had a far more chic halo around it. After all, wasn’t Umberto Agnelli known as Mr. Golden Nose? That was just the sort of thing Bri’ Francesconi would have given a great deal of importance. Bri’ came from money and although it did not solve all her problems, it calmed her nerves and provided a solid base for everything. Money also helped Sabrina calm her nerves without resorting to drugs and the abasement of desperate addiction.

          Four teenage girls walked up to Loretta and told her they couldn’t find any more magenta sweaters in their size. Loretta tossed her cigarette to the ground, stamped it out with her boot, and turned inside the van. She pulled out five or six sweaters still wrapped in plastic.

          “Here, is this the colour you’re looking for?”

          “YES! Are they v-necks?” 

          “Oh yes. Now what sizes are you?”

           Loretta handed out the sweaters to the girls who tried them on right then and there, creating a bright spot of deep pink that passers-by stared at as they walked past. The girls were cooing and yelping. “How much are they?”

          “Well, I’ll tell you what. If you can give me exact change, I’ll sell the whole lot to you for eighty-thousand lire. That’s a 50 percent discount.”

          When Sabrina got home, Isabella was still sitting in front of the television, eating potato chips.

          “You’ll spoil your lunch!”

          “Oh, I’m not hungry anyway. You bought one of those magenta sweaters, didn’t you?”

          “Well, it’s not what I bought that’s so interesting. It’s who I met. Signora Mazzavillani!”

          Isabella turned a thousand shades of red as she looked deeper into her bag of potato chips. Sabrina strode over and yanked her daughter’s arm. Pale white potato chips fluttered all over the couch. Sabrina now grabbed Isabella by the chin.

          “Let’s have a look at your teeth. Well, I must say the dentist is doing a wonderful job. Why, you don’t have a single new filling.”

          Isabella pulled away and wrapped the white blanket on the couch around herself tightly. She started to pout and looked up at her mother from the tops of the orbits of her eyes.

          “I can go to any dentist I want!”

          “Oh, no you can’t. Who’s paying the bill?”

          “Papi will.”

          “And who signed your authorization to leave school? Did Papi sign that too, or did I? Do you have any idea how wrong it is to forge my name? Or what a fool I felt when Signora Mazzavillani told me? Do you know what sort of figure I cut?”

          At this, Isabella burst into tears, as she blubbered out: “I hate mathematics. I’m just no good at it. I get the shakes the night before I’m supposed to be interrogated and I feel, I feel . . .”

          “You feel like a lying little idiot who’s been found out, don’t you? Well, let’s see what we can do about this. We could start by grounding you for a week!”

          Now Isabella let loose every muscle in her body and her perfectly shaped little frame shook violently in spasms. It frightened Sabrina to see Isabella in such a state: her only daughter, reduced to a primeval hysteria and bestial twitch, and all due to the algebraic unknown. Isabella's performance was quite extraordinary. Indeed it was so exaggerated that Sabrina was moved to tears and wrapped Isabella in her arms while she sobbed louder and louder.

         “I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I’m not going back to school on Monday!”

          Sabrina winced and hugged her poor desperate daughter tighter.

          “Oh Isabella, chickadee, it’s not that bad. It’s …”

Isabella started screaming at the tops of her lungs as if she were possessed. “NO! ENOUGH! I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANY
MORE! HELP ME! I CAN’T FACE THEM ANY MORE! PLEASE! HELP ME!”

          This scared and unsettled Sabrina more; it was the sort of howl she used to hear coming from Renato when they put him in the pig’s pens in Rimini. She had also seen Isabella like this when she was four years old, having a temper tantrum over her stuffed Shetland pony but it was different now that she was an adolescent. This was distressing and serious and Sabrina needed to remove the cause of all this anguish to her poor daughter, which comprised of course, equations with two variables.

          “It’s all right chickadee. It’s all right. We’ll see what we can do. But you you’ve got to calm down. Calm down. Everything’s going to be all right.”

          Mother and daughter rocked in the feeble northern light of the living room while Sailor Moon careened around the television screen. Isabella was still bundled up in the white blanket, her head buried deep inside its dark.

          “And I hate Signora Mazzavillani ratting on me! The nasty bitch!”

          Sabrina repressed a complaisant smile, because Sabrina did not much care for Signora Mazzavillani’s intervention either. Sabrina thought that La Mazzavillani was more than a bitch, she was actually a cunt for treating Isabella in her backhanded manner, but of course Sabrina shouldn’t let her daughter say that her math teacher was a bitch. Not at her age.

          “Now now, Isabella. That’s no way to talk about your teachers. Calm down. Let’s see what we can do. I’ll talk to your father after lunch, and we’ll find a way for you to get through this. Perhaps some private lessons. . . “

           “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to go back to school!”

          “But chickadee, you only have one more year till you get your diploma. You know how important that is, don’t you?”

          “I don’t care! I don’t want to be under Signora Mazzavillani’s thumb! I hate her! I hate her! I hate her! I’m not going back to school. And nobody can make me! I hate her! I hate her! I HATE HER!”

          Isabella began to edge her way into another temper tantrum; she was pleasantly surprised that her first temper tantrum had been so quickly and so overwhelmingly effective. Sabrina simply couldn’t bear to see her daughter suffering; Isabella picked up on that immediately.

          “It’s alright, my little hen. We’ll figure something out. Perhaps you could go to work in the factory with Papi? He might be willing to take you on as a day worker. But you can’t just stay at home and do nothing. The time has come for you to take on some responsibility.”

          Isabella stuck out her lower lip so she wouldn’t let on that this was precisely what she wanted to do. She was much better at handling people and dealing with practical things than navigating scholastics and she knew it. At the factory she would be the boss’s daughter and no one would dare to cross her. She could do exactly as she pleased. But she mustn’t let her mother know that was precisely what she had been plotting now for the last two weeks.

          “In the factory! With the workers and their hairnets! I don’t think so. I could be, I could be, Papi’s personal assistant. His gopher. But how are we going to convince him? You know how important he thinks education is, since he never got any. It’s just impossible.” Isabella started to get teary eyed again.

          Sabrina looked at her daughter. She was just adorable, even when weepy. Claudio would not likely cotton to the idea at first, but Sabrina was starting to realize that when Isabella set her mind on something, there was no way around her. Every time Sabrina had abandoned her daughter to her own devices, it had always been a mistake. Isabella always managed to make everything worse when she didn’t get her way. It did not look like Isabella was going to budge about finishing her high school education. And really, how important was it? How much of a difference had it made in Sabrina’s life, after all?

          “Well, if you want to convince your father, you’d better not let him see you with that pouty face, your bottom lip sticking out, and those red eyes. He’ll be home in an hour so you’d better get yourself pulled together. And here’s something that will do the trick!”

          Sabrina pulled the magenta sweater out of the bag and Isabella clapped her hands and chortled with glee!

          “Oh Mama’, it’s just what I wanted! It’s just too wonderful. Oh thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you so much; you’re the best mother in the world.”

          Isabella threw her arms around her mother and hugged her like there was no tomorrow. There was nothing like hearing that your daughter loved you and Sabrina patted Isabella on the back and pushed her away gently.

          “Okay, so little Miss Prisspot, you had better go get freshened up while I fix lunch. Off you go!” and Sabrina gave Isabella a sweet smack on the butt and sent her towards her room. But just before Isabella closed the door, she turned to look at her mother and wailed again with joy at her new sweater as she clutched it to her chest. She would look like a warm tulip in the Springtime that you could dive right into.

          The blackbird on the roof outside huddled tightly into its ashen warmth over the chimney.

          What life is worth living if you aren’t comfortable in such polar cold? The world is an evil place, filled with dangers lurking to threaten your survival; as long as you have the warmth of a hearth, even one that you have done absolutely nothing to procure or fuel, there is no reason to ask for more. Except that same warm hearth for your offspring. Or maybe a magenta sweater.

Epiphany

January 6, 1969

          As the gelid morning light worked its way through the curtains, Balthazar could make out Baby Jesus against the gold speckled hay in his manger, his arms raised to the Angels and Heavens above. Mary in blue and Joseph in brown bent over him, while shepherds stood in clumps in the foreground. A distant window off in the village up above them displayed an amputated head while a woman standing in front of it nonchalantly fed her chickens. The thin light reached the banner of the angel perched on the top of the stable and “Gloria” gleamed faintly. Balthazar looked down at the casket of gold he was holding to take to the Christ Child and he heard someone shuffling in the next room.

          Melchior and Gaspar were behind him, followed by the camel and elephant and stallion; three pages wearing silk turbans held the reins to the animals. The nine components of their caravan had been camped out since last night on the coffee table, standing on various large modern art books scattered over its expansive, expensive crystal surface. Today the Three Magi would finally ascend to the Renaissance credenza and become part of the crèche’s final scene. Tomorrow, everyone – villagers, animals, Holy Family, angels, shepherds, and wise men would return to tissue paper and straw in crates. They would be carefully stored away in the darkness of the attic through the cold of winter and the stirring of insects in spring. The blistering summertime heat high in the roof of the house would bake everything as slowly and evenly as a good oven did, and then autumn would come with its cooling crackles. Finally, four Sundays before Christmas, all the players in the nativity circus would be taken down, removed from their boxes and ancient tissue paper and straw, and placed in the warmth of the heated Baldini home, to repeat their story of the Christ Child and the treks various to find him.

         The little village on the hill with its papier-mâché housewife and her chickens and bodiless head staring out of her home, had been placed along one wall in the living room in December with the stable and some straw. Her husband’s body had long gone missing, and each time the set of wood and terracotta figurines had been sold, the new owner purchasing the set, asked where the rest of his body was. The seller would always say: “Oh this. I don't know where the body is, but if you put his head on the window ledge of one of the houses, it looks like he’s just seen the star over Bethlehem; just point his eyes that way.” So each year, the proof of decapitation remained in the set and was usually wrapped up and tossed into the stable. So first the head came out of the stable. The beasts were put in the stable and the tiny village on the hill was arranged on and around the television set, to the right of the stable and slightly in the background.  In the second week of Advent, Mary and Joseph trotted across the room, he leading her and the donkey and they finally arrived at the stable on the third Sunday in advent. The shepherds were scattered on various end tables in the living room until Christmas Eve when the Angel appeared over the stable and beckoned them to come to the crèche where a host of Angels in billowing pastel starched linen gowns holding uplifted trumpets and swinging censors over the stable had been hung from the ceiling. On Christmas morning, Baby Jesus magically appeared in the manger. Then the shepherds came to the manger, bowing and scraping and offering him a little lamb.

          This year, the three wise men had seen none of this, for they had started their quest out in the grandeur of the foyer with its rich baroque tapestries, blasts of cold air, and smell of sables and fresh cologne as guests and family members entered and left the house. Through the month of December the Magi had been patiently moved, usually once a week but sometimes every day, and were transported closer and closer to the manger. On Christmas Day, they had been placed on the sideboard in the dining room and were inundated by the warming aromas of capon broth and nutmeg scented pasta served all day long on Christmas. On New Year’s Eve, they were placed on the monumental Lombard chest of drawers outside the entrance to the living room and on New Year’s Day, they had made it to the top of the tall 17^th century bookcase at the far end of this richly appointed salon. From this vantage point, Balthazar could see everything that took place in front of the Bethlehem stable sitting on the gorgeous Renaissance credenza standing beside the long modern travertine console hung on the wall next to the television set. Everyone was at the manger except for them.

          Balthazar knew this static choreography of the Christmas story was the family’s tradition and it had relatively little to do with religion. It was a game to keep the children amused; the servants and children talked about what had to be done with the fabulous nativity figures which their mother had bought at an antique shop in Cortina a few years ago. Balthazar overheard the conversations of everyone in the household, for the Magi followed the route where all the guests and family members and servants walked through the house every day. Balthazar knew he would make it to the manger this morning. He also knew that after the sun went down this evening and the family had finished a sumptuous supper of sturgeon and salmon with all their cousins, the maid would come in and gently wrap everyone up in tissue paper and straw and put them away for another year.

          Nilde entered the room and opened the heavy silk brocade curtains, one window after another, until the room was enveloped in the pasty grey light of Epiphany. The modern suede sofas seemed to be made of a soft beige fog and the stupendous millefleurs tapestries barely revealed their own figures of Flemish dancers and hunters in colours that had all but faded to a monochromatic sepia. The high 17^th century bookshelves were filled with rare editions of art books and etchings, codices and catalogues, and two lost Barbies concealed behind the great tomes. The Brunette Barbie behind the Kelmscott Chaucer had been placed there three years ago by Eugenio who had forgotten where he had hidden his sister’s doll. Instead, the Blonde Barbie was behind a stack of the last six months of Vogue magazines from Paris, London, New York and Italy. She would be found when the magazines were moved in March; the Brunette Barbie was destined to remain there until the family finally disintegrated and the house dismantled. No one ever looked at the engraved editions of La Fontaine or select letters from the presses of Manutius or Masson’s Trophées érotiques or even the carefully assembled first editions of D’Annunzio’s publications all bought for the Baldini family by a savvy antiquarian who assured them that investing at these rather high prices (and considerable commissions to him), would still double their return in the space of a few years. Nilde dusted all the books, four times a year.

          Balthazar had surmised that the Baldini family was far more than wealthy and Balthazar knew more than most people about riches. Balthazar also concluded that the only members of the Baldini family that had actually been born into riches were the pudgy little boy Eugenio and lithe, sylphlike sister Camilla. Their father Valter with his manly zygomatic scar, rough skin and shock of coal black hair had been born into nothing, like his wife Gilda. Her skin was tanned all year long from the light reflected off sea or snow and her frame was eternally draped in Fendi “F’s.” Gilda’s main talent was spending money and shopping. Valter’s talent instead, ran to making shrewd investments with such high yields that Gilda never once had to think about not buying something: a yacht, a basket of truffles, Christian Dior hose, a fazenda in Argentina, or even the gorgeous 18th century Neapolitan crèche set to which Balthazar belonged. Gilda never wasted anything, nothing was ever thrown out (it was given away or salvaged by the maids), but nothing really had any special value for her, unless it were something that she had not purchased yet.

          Eugenio and Camilla were quite another thing. At ten and seven years of age, they never thought about not having something because they always had everything they wanted. They were perfectly groomed and admirably behaved. Camilla would grow into great ethereal beauty, and after Eugenio grew out of his childhood chubbiness, he would marry extremely well, courtesy the great wealth that cushioned him. Money meant nothing to either of them, nothing at all. They never had been without it; they never would be without it. Asking them about money would be like asking any other human being how much importance they gave to cheese. It might go missing one day, and you really didn’t have to have it, but the thought of a world without cheese (though possible) was so preposterous that it did not even merit consideration.

          Balthazar heard the discreet clatter of the cook laying the breakfast dishes and silverware in the kitchen. He smelled the bergamot in the Earl Grey tea that Gilda had to have even before she came down for breakfast, the chocolaty nutella Eugenio was dosed for his bread (Eugenio had a hard time keeping weight off), the bitter thick black espresso that Valter drank all day long, and finally the fragrant vanilla in the ladyfingers that Camilla ate for breakfast every day. Then Balthazar smelled something else. What was it?

          Toasted barley. Egidio must be coming over this morning.

       Egidio was Gilda’s father, and the fount of all this wealth. Indeed, Egidio’s personal wealth exceeded the assets of all his offspring and employees put together. If Egidio had been one of the Kings, one of the Magi, he would have been Balthazar, the Wise Man who brought baby Jesus the gift of gold from his great mines of precious ore. Balthazar and Egidio both knew frankincense and myrrh were dissipating luxuries and certainly could not readily be traded for what they cost. Gold however, and real estate, were tangibles that never lost their value and Egidio knew that.

          Egidio had made his fortune after the Second World War, by supplying olive oil to the villages surrounding the tiny village of Glorie di Bagnacavallo. Egidio’s father had taught him how to make the baskets that held the demijohns of golden liquid. Egidio figured out how to pack the baskets on trucks, found trustworthy people to drive the trucks, and quickly grasped how important it was to give a discount when necessary. It was not long before he was snapping up property when he heard someone was in a hurry to sell. Egidio realized the crux of weaving a basket was the first spoke you placed in the base. As long as that central spoke of dried cane held the bottom of the basket, the cask would hold; as long as the cask held, the oil would make it to the truck, and as long the truck held the demijohns, the oil would make it to the customer; as long as the product made it to the customer, payment would be forthcoming. Commerce was nothing more than one step after another, each spoke of a basket that had to be tightly interwoven with perpendicular reeds until they formed an entire whole that permitted transportation and exchange.

          Egidio understood early on that he was the first vertical reed. When he met the man who would one day become his son-in-law, Egidio immediately realized that Valter would also become was the reed perpendicular to him.

          Egidio never applied the idea of credit, often to Valter’s chagrin. Egidio always paid on the nail, at the moment, and expected the same. He went to the Chicago Grain Market in the Savile Row tailored suits his wife ordered without consulting him and hung in his closet. When he found a likely customer, Egidio would shove his callused fist into his pink-silk-lined pocket, pull out a handful of wheat or barley or oats, and tell the person in front of him with his thick accent: “This is what I sell. I have fifteen silos of it outside Buenos Aires.”

          Egidio always sold it. He always got a good price. He did not always get the best price, but he never lost a lira. Egidio knew that the trick of doing business was not getting the best deal possible; it was always getting a good deal. If you did that, you could not fail. It was not greed that ruined people: it was ambition. Always trying to get the best deal was pretty stupid. It turned the people who had to attain their own personal, maximum advantage into mean, wheeler-dealers who cheated their employees and ruined their friends. These people thought that money made them great ladies and gentlemen, when all they were, were lice in stained, satin underwear.

          Better to know you are a farmer with a pocketful of oats than a niggard trying to pass yourself off as a gran signore.

          Egidio’s doctor had told him he could not drink coffee any more, so whenever he came to the Baldini household, Nilde in the kitchen would toast some of his barley, grind it into a powder and perk up un espresso pot of it for him. She served it put it in a sparkling white bowl just the way he liked it: with a dash of nutmeg and hot frothy white milk.

          “Here’s the Sgnor’s breakfast!”

          “Thank you, Nilde. Is anybody up yet?”

          “Who do you think might be up?”

          “Valter probably, and he’s most likely out hunting.”

          “Sgnor Egidio, you know your chickens. I suspect Sgnor Valter’ll be back about eight. What time is it now?”

          “Ten to eight.”

          “I should put his coffee on, too.”

           “Good, because I need him, Nilde. Let him know when he comes in. Now, where would an old hag like the Befana hang these stockings I brought, when she comes knocking on the door in her rags?”

          Egidio was toting a large farmer’s weathered kindling basket and pulled out two pairs of ladies’ pantyhose with carrots poking out of the runs in them. They were filled with real straw and real coal and real ashes and were comically preposterous. Nilde burst out laughing.

          “Where did you get those pantyhose?”

          “From my wife. She was going to throw them away and my grandchildren needed something where the Befana can leave them their ashes and coal in for Epiphany. What do you say we hang them from the fireplace in the living room?”

          “Well, I suppose that’ll be alright; the ashes would fall on the hearth and we aren’t expecting any guests this morning. But straw? Why did the Sgnor put straw in them? Weren’t the coal and ashes enough?”

          “What will my grandchildren feed their new ponies if I don’t give them some straw? Nutella and ladyfingers?”

          “Ponies! Oh, you’ll have a couple of happy little grandchildren this morning. Here, let’s go hang them up. I’ll give you a hand.”

          While Nilde and Egidio were in the living room hanging up the stockings, Valter stomped into the kitchen holding a couple of coots, swinging upside down from their dead legs. He saw the bowl of brownish milk, which must have toasted barley in it and that meant that his father-in-law was in the house. Had something happened on the Chicago grain market that Valter had not heard about? Valter walked over to the big freezer and slapped the birds down on top, took off his hat, and propped his rifle up against the doorjamb that led to his “dirt room.” Nilde had heard him enter and walked back into the kitchen.

          “Look at those tracks! You take your boots off right now! You’ve got mud all over the kitchen floor!”

          Valter looked down at his feet. “Yeah, but I also got two nice plump coots. Since the ladies of the house don’t eat game, and I know your husband Raoul likes it, if you’ll just stop pissing and moaning about the dirt, you can take these birds home. If you bring me back a breast to eat at the end of the week.”

          “Sgnor Valter, you’re incorrigible, but you’re a good hunter and Raoul and I do like nothing better than coots and polenta. But, you take off those boots, right now. I won’t have you tracking up the whole house.”

          While Valter sat and pulled off his muddy galoshes, Nilde went into the dirt room and came back with a pair of leather slippers.

          “And your socks. Take those nasty socks off, too.”

          Nilde bent down as Valter took his socks off, balled them up, and slipped his slippers on. She smiled up at him and said: “Black coffee?”

          “Nilde, you know the way to a man’s heart: give him exactly what he wants when he needs it.”

          “You’ll need it, too. Sgnor Egidio is in the living room hanging up the Befana’s stockings. He needs you.”

          “Must be money. Can’t be land. Can’t be disease. Well, we’ll see what the story is. Let me go see.”

          “Oh, no you don’t, you don’t go into the living room in your muddy hunting clothes. I’ll get your father-in-law for you. Turn the burner off if the coffee perks while I’m not here.”

Nilde brought Egidio back to the kitchen.

          “What is it, old man?”

          “Thieves, Valter.  Hired thieves. Thieves we hired and will not be long on our payroll after today. I need you to skip lunch today and sit with me during a stakeout I have devised.”

          “The Granarolo sorghum silo?”

          “Is it that obvious?”

           “Only if you’re paying attention. Who do you think it is?”

          “I’m not dumb enough to say that out loud to anyone, even you. But we’ll see who it is today; I know the groundskeeper is letting him (or them) in.”

          “Emanuele?”

          “Unfortunately, yes. It’s a real shame. His wife’s in the hospital with cancer.  This is going to cost Emanuele his job.”

          “How much has it cost us?”

          “Twenty-three million lire in lost grain.”

          “That’s enough money to go after.”

          “Goddamit, twenty-three lire is enough to go after, if it’s being stolen from you. I’ll come pick you up at a quarter past eleven. We’ll be using Raoul’s Fiat; I lent him my red Alfa. Now let me run out before the kids get up and figure out that I’m the Befana. See you at a quarter past eleven.”

Egidio walked out the door and Valter turned to drink his coffee.  The door to the dining room squeaked open and he heard the muffled sound of terrycloth slippered feet shuffling over the parquet. His children must be awake.

          Camilla lazily pushed her way through the door into the kitchen. Graceful and almost translucent, she was enchantingly lovely even at seven. Her long flaxen hair fell in disarray around her face, and she clutched her fuzzy white bathrobe around her shoulders.

          “Papi! Good morning! Did you get something in the marshes this morning?”

          “A couple of coots. Do you want Nilde to cook them up for you?”

          “You know I can’t abide animals with feathers on them. All I want now is a big cup of hot milk and some cookies.”

          Nilde placed a steaming bowl on the table in front of Camilla who gazed guilelessly into the steaming froth.

          “Well, my little white hen, have you checked to see if the Befana has come and brought you your Epiphany gift?”

          “Oh Papi, of course she has, But first I really do need to take some nourishment. Can’t we wait five minutes? We should give Eugenio a chance to come downstairs as well so we can open our presents together.”

          Valter stared at his daughter: she was so stunning, she almost gleamed. He wondered where she had gotten her looks. Valter was unusually swarthy, and there was nothing dark about Camilla. She looked as if she had been born in Sicily seven hundred years earlier, one of the famed diaphanous Normans, so creamy was her complexion and lustrous her blonde hair. Camilla’s skin was so soft it looked like you could eat it with a spoon and her almond-shaped dark green eyes made her perfectly formed white teeth sparkle even more. She would not have a hard time finding a husband one day.

          Valter knocked his coffee back and left the kitchen. He went upstairs to take a shower and found Gilda submerged in the rich ivory satin counterpane, her sleeping mask on, her red hair splayed all over the eight goose down pillows she insisted on keeping on their battlefield-sized bed. The bed was so large their sheets had to be specially made, and the mattress itself had been artfully crafted from two regular sized mattresses. It was like sleeping in a giant’s blazer pocket, there was so much silk and linen; Valter could stretch out like a swastika and still not even touch Gilda. He wondered again if Camilla had really been his child.

          “Valter?”

          “Yes, Gilda.”

          “Don’t wake me up!”

          With that, she turned over and plunged her body into the depths of the bedclothes.

Valter went into the bathroom and showered.  When he emerged, the maid had brought in a silver tray with Gilda’s tea on it, another cup of espresso for Valter, and a note from Egidio telling Gilda that he probably would not be at lunch, and neither would Valter. Gilda was fuming.

“My father! Can’t he ever stop working? I’ve hired a ballet dancer to dress up like an old country woman and come by as the Befana for the kids”

          “Well, you’ll need to do something about that. The Befana has already been by.”

           At this, they heard the shouts and screams of their children downstairs.

          “Oh my God! Valter! They’ve come to kidnap the children. Get your gun!”

Valter sat on the bed, gave Gilda her tea, took his coffee, and drank it at a draught.

          “Get up! Put on your bathrobe and come downstairs to see what the Befana has brought the kids.”

          When Valter and Gilda arrived in the living room, the children were dancing around the room, singing and shouting: “What can we call them?”

          “Call who?” asked Gilda.

          “Our new ponies! The Befana left us straw and the keys to the stable and that can only mean one thing!”

          “I’ll get that honey colored roan I wanted!”

          “And I’ll get the morello of my dreams. Oh Mami! Let’s go now.”

          “We’re not even going to talk about it. I’m still in my dressing gown and haven’t had breakfast.”

          “Oh Papi! Papi Papi Papi! Take us now!”

          Nilde was watching from the kitchen, and when she saw Valter and Gilda with Camilla and Eugenio, she stepped back and motioned to someone  behind her. A woman dressed in chiffon rags holding a tattered sack, hobbled through the kitchen door into the living room. It was the Befana, the old hag who brought good children gifts on Epiphany, just like the gifts the Magi had brought the baby Jesus on Epiphany. Balthazar had met the Befana centuries ago when Melchior, Gaspar, and he had stopped at her house on the road to Bethlehem, knocked on the door, and asked for directions. She had not had the time to speak to them, and slammed her door in their faces. Only five minutes later, she was filled with remorse. She wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and grabbed a basket of dried figs to the take to the manger, but she never found it or the three kings she had rebuffed. She had spent Januaries of the centuries ever since wandering in search of the Christ Child; all she ever found were miniature plaster babies lying on clean straw in someone’s living room. She ended up leaving her gifts for the good children of the homes she came across. That was her story.

          This chiffon draped Befana’s story was purely commercial with a whiff of self promotion; she was actually a dancer from the ballet school, a beguiling witch who comically hobbled en pointe about the room in her black silk stockings. The children laughed with glee and Valter looked at her legs. Gilda was pleased: she was unquestionably the chicest Befana that had ever crossed anyone’s threshold. As the Befana was about to speak, Gilda turned in a loud stage voice to the children and said: “Well aren’t you going to thank the Befana for the wonderful presents she left you this morning? It was awfully nice of her to come back and see how happy you would be with your new ponies.”

          Eugenio and Camilla clutched at the Befana’s tulle rags and kissed her artistically blackened hands. Valter left the room to get the keys to the car, and Gilda sent Befana into the kitchen for something to drink and more bergamot tea for herself.

          Balthazar, whom no one was looking at, twinkled. She was the best-looking Befana he had ever seen.

          No sooner had the Befana left the room than the children started dancing around Gilda again, imploring her to let them go to the stable. Valter came back and jiggled the car keys in his pocket. He looked at Gilda, who was perturbed but helpless in the face of her children’s’ enthusiasm. To contradict them now would mean an almost forgivable temper tantrum from both of them.

          “If your Mother says you can go to the stable ….”

          “Oh Mami Mami Mami Mami Mami Mami! Let Papi take us to the stable! Please!”

          Gilda turned to Valter. “Well, if you’ll be here for lunch …”

         “I can’t do that. But I’ll get the kids back by half past ten and you’ll have some peace and quiet in the meantime.”

         “Ohh all, right. Here,” Gilda said grabbing Balthazar around the waist. “But at least let me put this goddamn wise guy at the manger. And kids, you get the other two.”

          With their mother’s accession to their wishes, both Camilla and Eugenio calmed down and became as good as gold. Eugenio gingerly picked up Melchior while Camilla gracefully pulled Gaspar to her chest as they walked from the coffee table past the monumental travertine console. Valter took Balthazar from Gilda and placed him in the back; then Eugenio placed Melchior in front of him, and Camilla placed kneeling Gaspar so he hovered over the Baby Jesus.

          Gilda’s shallow pique was immediately placated by the sheer beauty of her family in this simple gesture: her rough and ready, muscular and almost Moorish husband; her childishly plump son with his braces glinting from his eternal grin and Camilla as poised as a virgin swan with perfect proportions, skin like peau soie, and deep emerald green eyes.

          “And if you’re going to get ponies, you might as well learn how to lead beasts to the manger,” she said pointing to the elephant, the camel and the Arabian stallion still standing on the coffee table with their leads. She bent over an enormous end table, slid the magazines off a capacious silver tray, and held it out so her family could transfer the darling pageboys in turbans and zouave pants, and the three luxuriously bedizened beasts of burden. As the girls and Valter loaded the retinue on the tray Gilda was holding, Valter leaned over and kissed Gilda in front of her ear, whispering: “Thank you!”

As soon as the animals and the kings’ attendants arrived at the manger, Balthazar saw the children bolt from the room to put on their riding clothes. Valter and Gilda went into the kitchen to thank the Befana, have a cup of coffee, and arrange a gala evening meal for their brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces with Nilde.

          Balthazar had been placed the farthest away from Baby Jesus. He knew the elephant had been placed behind him; they usually contrasted Balthazar’s black skin against the pearly grey of Melchior’s elephant with its golden-fringed howdah and pigeon’s blood ruby brocade parasol.  Balthazar looked at the Holy Family once again, and anguish struck him. Balthazar knew the story of the Holy Family and the stories of all families that came after them. He could see the pain and despair in the decades to come: for Mary and Joseph, Gilda and Valter, and Camilla, Eugenio and Jesus. All too often, the occasion of birth marked the high point in a family’s life. The Baldinis would never be this happy again. Joseph and Mary certainly wouldn’t. Valter would bag the leopard he wanted to hunt down in Africa, and Gilda would get the pelt made into a coverlet for her bed. Camilla and Eugenio would add even more ponies to the stable. In less than a decade though, their lives would all be shattered by the gruesome death of Egidio, and the scandalous “suicide” of Valter the decade following that. As a family, they would never to return to any moment as happy as this one with all four of them in the same room. Balthazar pretended to sleep and waited for the animals to speak:

The elephant began:

“A great square with a fountain at its centre,

 Will overflow with ...”

The camel continued:

          “.. the blood of the innocent

          Within the ...”

The stallion finished

            “..........     Year! 

            The evil is clear!

           

            Sated, fated, even hated

            The future cannot be overstated:

            Damned be the Sire

            Who doth to murder aspire!”

          Balthazar had been waiting to hear the evil omen for the year to come, a fresh omen that was revealed to him every year by his beasts of burden. The Square with the Fountain would be an enigma to discuss with Melchior and Gaspar, though as a Magus, Balthazar could easily interpret the reference to the “Sire” by himself. The three kings would not stop and visit Herod on their return.

* * * * * *

          Later that evening, the sturgeon and salmon were taken from the dining room table and the dishes were cleared and cleaned: the sumptuous meals of the Christmas season were now finished. Since tomorrow was the first day of school (and officially, work) after the Christmas holidays, Gilda and Valter and Camilla and Eugenio went to bed early. Nilde came into the living room with crates she had neatly stored in the mudroom and boxed up the crèche. Nilde would get Raoul to take the crates to the attic in the morning when he dropped her off for work.  

          As Nilde was wrapping up Balthazar, Balthazar’s gaze was fixed on Joseph who had fallen asleep. Poor Joseph: he was the least popular character in any crèche because he seemed to play only an auxiliary role. Balthazar knew far better than this. Joseph would be the first person to save his stepson. The Angel was still hanging from the peak of the stable; as Nilde gently wrapped Balthazar’s head in soft wrinkled pink tissue paper from the 1920’s, Balthazar heard the Angel tell Joseph in his sleep: “Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.”

          The Slaughter of the Innocents was about to begin.