June 23, 1967

The Eve of San Giovanni

     The ancient granary’s five brick arches loomed high over the weedy grasses and the wisteria vine that had twisted around the fruit laden jujube tree. A narrow roof briefly rose above the arches and peaked; then it descended on the other side of the peak where it rested on the back wall, a brick filigree of cross-shaped holes and cross-laid bricks that allowed air to swirl around the second floor. 
     Serafino Moratti’s great-great-grandfather Anchise had built this brick outbuilding on the strip of land Anchise had inherited from his grandfather Iacopo when Anchise was sixteen. Anchise had copied the arches down to the centimeter from the high arch he had seen inside the church at Porto Fuori; if that arch had stood for over 1500 years, he was certain five of them would hold up his granary at least half as long. The lattice pattern of crosses alternating brick and air, came from pavements he had seen in the church that had survived almost as long, and he figured they would function as easily vertically as they did horizontally. Anchise had constructed the granary behind his farmhouse so the Moratti family could store their hay and straw and hemp and let it sweeten in the fall and winter and spring air. Anchise’s son Oddone and grandson Radames were grateful he had built it; as they acquired more land, the building was large enough to hold the hay and straw and hemp they received from the sharecroppers on their old and new lots. The granary was still in perfect shape, and as timeless and as elegant as a byzantine altar railing of five arches silhouetted against a hanging of red and gold brocaded crosses.  The granary however, held grain no longer.

        This evening, the lovely rise of the five arches soared over Anchise’s great-great-grandson Serafino and his friend, sipping wine in the full light of Midsummer’s Eve. Serafino and Anchise differed considerably in their approach to this land and their crops. After sitting down and waiting for a lull in the conversation, Serafino launched into his explanation for the evening and their agrarian aperitif of sparkling wine in the granary he had abandoned twenty years ago when he inherited it. 
         “What do the priest-eating farmers in this forgotten village of Porto Fuori really want from their Church of San Giovanni after the priest has married them, baptized their children, and oiled and buried their loved ones? The glory of fireworks exploding over their shabby farmhouses and warm fields on the Eve of San Giovanni. That’s why Marinella and I invited you and Renata out to the country for a bucolic meal al fresco in this cold-water farm building I inherited,” Serafino explained to Giantito. 
         The two of them were drinking wine on the weedy brick floor under the colonnade of the granary behind the two-story farmhouse across the courtyard from them. Inside the farmhouse’s second floor, they could see their wives Renata and Marinella in white satin slips, flitting back and forth in the abandoned corner bedroom upstairs while there was still light enough to pluck their eyebrows. Seated at the ancient vanity with mirror and wash basin attached to its dusty marble top, they made up their faces, lacquered their hair, and slipped into perfectly ironed, silk Pucci blouses.

          Serafino continued: “The big event takes place just after nightfall. When we’ve finished dinner, we’ll grab a couple of blankets and bottles of sparkling wine and wander out into the middle of one of my fallow sugar beet fields and watch the explosions of colored light in the black sky over the grape vines and the pear trees.” 
          Serafino poured Giantito another glass of wine and finished: “The church of San Giovanni itself is hidden in the countryside and hardly worth visiting: the Germans flattened the town during the war. The first thing the sharecroppers did out here was take what was left of the town hall and rebuild the headquarters of the Communist Party. Then they salvaged the rubble from the Church of San Giovanni and reconstructed what they could literally piece together. Though the Germans destroyed the church building, the very ideal of the Church was destroyed by its fascist priest, the Great White Whale of a martyr Don Innocenzo, an unrepentant traitor and pitiless coward who could not even save his own hide. 
         “The Church of San Giovanni has herded the poorest parish in our agricultural province within its millennial walls for decades, if not centuries, but that “charity” has never affected the farmers’ memories. With Don Innocenzo out of the way, the parishioners started spending the church’s “candle” fund on the most spectacular fireworks they could buy in vindictive memoriam of Don Innocenzo’s glorious blaze of martyrdom: the Nazis bombed the church while he teaching catechism in it one fine spring evening. Originally the parishioners meant to use the fireworks to ward off his return as a ghost. The men usually touch their left testicles when the first firework goes off, and the women make the sign of horns downward into the ground, lest Don Innocenzo return to betray them again.

         “Thanks to these priest-eating farmers, we’ll see gigantic nocturnal blooms of cerise and periwinkle glittering and falling away into the cobalt horizon; they’re the main attraction after Marinella’s big, satisfying traditional meal of farfalle Romagnol style tonight. Let’s go ahead and light the barbecue here, if we’re going to grill this meat after we wash down her famed pasta."

          Giantito and his wife Renata had been leery of driving all the way out in the country to the tiny village of Porto Fuori this evening just to have dinner with Serafino and Marinella. When they saw the dilapidated old building, they realized they would just have to grin and bear it. Their daughter had been dating Serafino and Marinella’s son Albertino. Since Serafino and Marinella were as well-to-do and cultured as Giantito and Renata were, there were plenty of good reasons to gently encourage the liaison between their offspring, even though Giantito called Serafino’s son Albertino “a buttless wonder” when he and Renata were alone. Serafino’s dèlabrè farmhouse was however, on a sizable piece of land whose financial worth had jumped in the last five years. This property was worth seeing in person so Giantito could calculate how much a lack of gluteus maximus might be overlooked. 

          “So Serafino, why did you buy this rustic country home if you only use it for the occasional meal in the country?” asked Giantito as he balled up newspapers for the fire.

          “Oh, I didn’t buy it; it was handed down to me. My grandfather Radames inherited the farmhouse and land in the parish of San Giovanni from his grandfather, and it naturally came down to me when he passed; my family skips a generation on land – it avoids a lot of problems with siblings. This old ruin’s been in the family God knows how long, and I’m proud to say I’m the first member of my family not to even oversee the cultivation of the fields. I just like to have this old place in the country for summer evenings like tonight, where I can have a drink in this rough but elegantly vaulted granary, or entertain by the fire on a winter’s afternoon in the farmhouse where I don’t need to worry about getting grease or wine on the floor by the hearth. 
        “Each year since I inherited the property, I’ve rented the arable land out to a local farmer whose tiny orchards border my sugar beet field at the back. It’s so much easier than the sharecropping my grandfather used to have to contend with. So, the property actually brings in a little cash as well, not enough to really buy anything with for the moment, but it keeps the soil turned and fertile. It’s just a cheesy little luxury I like to treat myself to. If they put the highway through according to plan, the land will explode in value. That makes me wonder whether I should leave it to Albertino's unborn child or go ahead and sell it. The highway and eminent domain would be the perfect solution. If Albertino feels like a home between Ravenna and Rimini, well, this would be a choice spot with such easy highway access. If he can put up with the farmers.”

          “Farmers aren’t so bad, Serafino.”

          “Oh, I don’t think you know them very well. They’re a crusty lot, though I’ll say Saverio Casadei who rents out my land, punctually pays his rent once a year. That’s all I’m really interested in anyway: his money. Oh, here come the ladies. We gotta light this wood and get cooking!”

          Saverio Casadei never heard comments like these from his landlord Serafino, a conceited, well-off notary public in Cotignola, but Saverio knew he was beneath Serafino’s notice unless of course, Saverio had the rent check. Like almost all the parishioners of San Giovanni, Saverio was a congenital farmer; he had a wife and child and a ramshackle old farmhouse.
          The last time Saverio had seen the fireworks display that Serafino was illustrating to Giantito, was while Saverio had been courting his sweetheart, Vilma. After they married, Saverio never went back, not once, not even with his daughter. He used to accompany Vilma and his daughter into town and then go to the café, play a couple of hands of snipe, and pick them up afterwards. Even Vilma was not going to take their daughter Ornella to see the fireworks this year. Vilma had decided to stay at home now, since she did not think she needed to accompany their daughter; Ornella was big enough to take care of herself. 
          Nor was Saverio and Vilma’s daughter Ornella particularly enthused at the idea of going to see the fireworks. Ornella would much rather have stayed at home, read a little and gone to bed early. But, Ornella’s childhood friend Daria had spent the past few days scheming and goading Ornella into taking at least one night off this week from her work and studies, so Ornella and Vilma had a light dinner tagliatelle alla romagnola with noodles her mother had made with the eggs from their chickens and the green tomatoes, parsley and garlic  in the sauce from the garden. 

        Then Ornella walked the mile from her farmhouse to Daria’s home in the village of Porto Fuori. this bright summer evening. Ornella and Daria locked themselves in the bathroom while Daria finished applying her makeup and dressing. This was fun for Ornella; Daria knew Ornella backwards and forwards and Ornella knew Daria inside out.

          Daria was a pretty, healthy girl like Ornella and almost as smart. They both liked getting dressed up though their styles differed as considerably as water and wine. Daria had been waiting all week to wear a “miniskirt” she had bought at the market last Saturday; its scattering of bright orange and purple and pink circles came down to two inches above her knees! Ornella arrived wearing a perfectly ironed and starched white linen sleeveless shirt with Peter Pan collar, and a dark grey pencil skirt in summer wool.

          Daria adored flirting to find a boy that would suit her. She gave the impression of being demure but Ornella knew that Daria was far from ingenuous when it came to sex. “I’ve seen what the boar does to the sows in the pigsty and, and what happens in the farmyard between the pompous rooster and the silly hens. The sows and pullets just barely put up with the male ‘domination’.  I mean, when they do it, it looks violent, but it really is pretty quick and to the point. No courtship here, just a courtyard, doncha know Ornella?  I really don’t expect most boys to behave much differently; but I know there will be one boy, one day, who may not court me the way I‘d like but at the very least, he’ll give me a courtyard, if I choose him carefully. But he’s got to have a cute tush, I’ll tell you that!”

          Ornella laughed. “Oh Daria, you’ll never change. Nor will I. I have no intention whatsoever of marrying some local bumpkin; I’d rather drink bleach than flirt with a future farmer.”

          “Well, Ornella who do you think you’re going to fall in love with? Albertino?”

         “Now Daria, there’s nothing wrong with Albertino Moratti.”

          “There’s nothing right with him either. He’s got a hiney like a broken ironing board.”

          “Let’s not talk about Albertino since neither of us is interested in him. I’m not interested in a Romagnol man at all: the idea of leading a life like Mamma’s and Babbo’s just does not do it for me. Babbo got up at half past four this morning to get out into the fields before the heat set in, and Mamma got up at four to fix him breakfast. Once Babbo was out in the fields, Mamma went back to bed for an hour until the sun was high enough to illuminate the kitchen so she could save on electricity. When she got up the second time I was just finishing my coffee and getting ready to pedal out to work. There was Mamma with a never ending list of tasks before her: feed the chickens, prepare lunch, wash and iron, clean and shop, prepare dinner and finally crochet by herself at home alone tonight while Babbo biked into town to yammer with his friends and play cards and read the news at the Café Stakhanov.  No thank you!”

          “Well, at least your Pops still has a sturdy, tight tushie.”

          “Daria, you’re so gross! He’s my father!  Isn’t there anything else that you can talk about except the gluteus maximus?”

          Daria assumed her newly minted pose as Lady Bracknell. “Oh, my deah, I feahh I have offended Lady Bluestocking Lyceum with my vulguh tastes and looowly expressions! Wait till she starts frequenting the University of Bow-low-nyuh and discovers what the specialty is they-ah! She’ll need to practice to catch up I fee-ah, and there’ll be no cucumbers left for sandwiches when the vicah comes to tea!”

          They girls both snorted in laughter.  Daria dropped the Lady Bracknell impersonation and continued

         
          “Well Ornella, I’m going to set my sights on a Romagnol, all the same. We all can’t go to the University, and I’ll tell you I can't wait to finish my exams this year and get some sort of a job somewhere – even working in the fields.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you can just pick and choose among the boys: they are just about all empty-headed, garden-variety zucchini.”

“That’s why I want one with nice compact little butt. At least I‘ll have that to grab onto on at night. Boys! Boys’ brains are divided into three lobes: soccer, mopeds, and getting into as many girls’ knickers any way they can. I don’t know how our mothers ever kept the boys at bay; just think, pantyhose hadn’t even been invented back then. Those are the only subjects they ever talk about, and soccer and mopeds come first.”

Ornella nodded and looked at Daria from the corner of her eyes.

“I’ll put up with a lot of their foolishness and I’ll be kind, but I’m still smart enough not to let the boys know what I think of them. That’s easy enough, actually: they make no impression on me. I haven't got anything to say to them and I know that they would never listen to what I had to say anyway.”

“All right Lady Bluestocking. You want them to lend you their ears; I’ll settle for their cute rears. Here, let me do your eyebrows just a little darker to make your eyes pop out.”

          An hour later Daria and Ornella were sitting on a bench in town, looking at their friends and their friends’ brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, and occasional grandparent  all of whom they knew by sight and by name. The world of Porto Fuori was assembled before them. Most of the village had gathered in the churchyard in the lengthening twilight about an hour or so ago, and the adults were pointing to the stars as they came out one by one in the deepening azure of the sky. People were eating homemade ciambella and dunking it in osteria glasses of sweet Albana wine. Their children were screaming and yelling and running around. Don Ubaldo’s portable record player provided mazurkas and tangos and Viennese waltzes, and ten couples were whirling away in the dust, as serious as swans while they moved in perfect time to one another and to the music. But these were not the reasons everyone had come.

          In a half hour or so when darkness finally fell, there would be fireworks. Almost all the able-bodied adults in the village attended the firework show religiously each year despite the men’s exhaustion from the longest workday of the year. The farmer’s day began at sunup and ended at sundown, autumn, winter, fall and summer. The evenings didn’t come any later than this San Giovanni’s, and tomorrow morning would be the earliest for another year. Tonight however, was Porto Fuori’s big event of the year. Nothing else could even compare to it, and certainly not Christmas Mass. Most of the parishioners never bothered to attend Mass once the children were old enough to eat priests and strozzapreti without bibs.

          However, the fireworks were not for another twenty minutes and Ornella was starting to weary of the whole affair, exactly the same way her mother and her father had.

“These fireworks are just a waste of money, Daria,” Ornella remarked.

“But don’t you understand why the parishioners drop their money in the collection bag on Sundays? The townspeople want the fireworks, something for their children and their friends in neighboring villages, something that will show everyone that the church of San Giovanni can do something really big, something big enough for people to take notice of, even as far as Bassona out by the Adriatic. These fireworks are the most grandiose things our neighbors can aspire to, a show as big as the vast dome of the nighttime sky over the fields of plums, peaches, and alfalfa. The fireworks tonight won’t last long, we all know that, but nobody sets any store by this at all. Oh gosh Ornella, when you make tortellini, it takes an hour, you know they cook for ten minutes and they’re gone in five. Fireworks are just shorter lived. By the time we’ve all sat and craned our necks backwards for twenty minutes, we’ll be ready to pick up and go home and go to bed so the men can rise tomorrow morning at twenty past four.”

“What am I doing here, Daria?” Ornella responded.

“Aren’t you just sitting here to catch a boyfriend tonight, I mean really Ornella, in your heart of hearts? Don’t you want to fall in love?”

“Oh no, and I am bored to tears talking about boys. It ‘s the only thing we’ve talked about all night.”

Daria winced and wondered how much longer she and Ornella would remain friends. Daria pulled out her flirting wiles and polished them up. She straightened her back and her pointed brassiere suddenly aimed at the heavens.

“Well, Ornella, let’s finish up our ciambella,”  Daria whispered. “Then it’s  divide and conquer!”

“Divide and conquer what, Daria? I’ve seen how your boyfriends treated you: Ezio, Mirto even Marcello.  All Ezio ever did was tell you what to do and where to go and you had run all sorts of errands for him. All he ever did for you was let you smoke his cigarettes while he was playing snipe. In return for all of that stuff you had to do for boys, the next, one, what was his name, oh yes, Mirto would at least take you out twice a week, Thursday and Saturdays. And Ezio, Ezio was more interested in showing you off than he was interested in you as a person.”

“That’s not true, Ornella. Ezio was more interested in a hand job than anything else. Oh wise up Ornella! Deep down boys just want the simple certainty we’ll be there when they want us. Just like your father and mother and my father and mother. Men and boys don’t really cling to us girls and women, anyway, and smother us with their attention.”

“You’re right about that. They cling to other men and boys on Friday night. I sometimes wonder if there isn’t a little bit of faggotry in all that.”

Daria assumed her Lady Bracknell voice again and pretended she was holding a pair of lorgnettes.

“The Romagnol male is definitely  different, and fahhh clow-suh to the other Romagnol males around him than the females of the species in general. Their significant relationships comprise: the members of their soccer team, their neighbors, and their partners at card games. In sum, my deah: all men. The Romagnol male only speaks to these men and boys; he rarely speaks to women. Which is of course, to our great advantage and saves us from hearing a considerable amount of rubbish about goalies and gasoline.”

“This, my deah Ornella is precisely why I persuaded you to come out this evening. Friday is boys’ night out and we can just pick and choose from the complete selection of available swains at the fireworks display like so many delightful cucumber sandwiches arranged on a silver tray for tea with the vicah. So Lady Bluestocking. once again, the time has come to divide and conquer. The time has come to decide which derriere d’dor  is the most promising!”

Daria flipped her imaginary lorgnettes shut and then swished off in her miniskirt, leaving Ornella to herself. Ornella didn’t mind and she tracked Daria’s progress with the boys whose eyes she had caught, when she straightened up her back or knelt to pick up an imaginary coin.  When Daria opened her flirt valve, she never settled on just one boy; she needed at least three so she could play them off against one another. Daria was laughing and having a good time. Ornella wished she could say the same for herself.

Ornella’s good charcoal pencil skirt and simple white blouse were now starting to dampen with the dew rising from the grass where she sat in front of the church. The neighbor boy came up and sat beside her.

“Nice night, isn’t it?”

Ornella turned and looked at him. “Yes, it is. How’s your mother, Pierpaolo?”

“Oh, she’s fine. I was wondering Ornella …”

“Yes Pierpaolo, what?”

“They’re going to flunk me in science and put me back a whole year if I don’t pass my make-up exam next September.”

“Oh, they’ll pass you, don’t worry about that. All the F's turn into D’s as long as you show up for your make-up exam in the fall.”

“I know that, but I really don’t understand biology. I was wondering if you could tutor me.”

“In biology?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how I would pay you, but we could figure something out, don’t you think? How much would you want?”

Ornella was not tempted in the least to tutor Pierpaolo in biology, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“Oh, I’d say about 500 lire an hour.”

“Five hundred! Well, I should probably forget it.”

“Oh Pierpaolo, just open your books and read them. That’s the whole point of studying. Haven’t you done that?”

“No, I haven’t. I can’t read something that I can’t understand, can I? What’s the point?”

“Trying to understand it; that’s the point. I tell you what. Why don’t you come over tomorrow evening after supper? If you sit in the kitchen with your book open, and try to read it for an hour, while Mamma and I are putting apricots up, then I’ll help you with the things you don’t understand for free.”

“You want me to read for an hour?”

“If you can’t read for an hour, you certainly won’t want to study with me for an hour. Just think about it, huh? That’s how you start to learn something.”

“Holy Mother of God, Ornella! I don’t want to learn anything. I want to graduate from agrarian school. Is it really that hard for you to understand me?”

Ornella slipped Pierpaolo a gimlet glance: his scholastic ambition was a meaningless diploma. He meant exactly what he was saying: half his class probably had the same aspiration. The other half probably never learned anything at all and never thought about making more effort than acceptable for passing each subject. That was why students were separated after middle school: the very few best and brightest all ended up at the classical and scientific lyceums while the vast majority of studying adolescents went to accounting school, or electrical technical school or teacher’s school or art school or agronomy or any one of a number of so-called “vocational” schools. They memorized forty phrases in English and passed the English exam, parroted theories of perspective without any understanding of the mechanisms behind them much less the techniques to apply in drawing, and learned how to make a battery out of copper wire and leather and lemon juice to demonstrate how electricity worked. The students never learned what they had memorized because they only remembered the general notions and germane details long enough to pass their exams. This was actually no great loss since the students would never need the facts and theories they had studied at school, outside in the real world. The thing their schooling did most effectively was keep them off the streets and out of the job market until they turned 18, unless they decided they had had enough of school and would toil in the fields, or maybe try one of the new factory jobs in the suburbs. The only practical lessons students learned at high school were how to ingratiate themselves with authority figures and game the system: they finessed worming their way out of a demerit for arriving late and keeping their parents in the dark about what was going on. All these tools of deception would be invaluable when society attempted to manipulate them in their adult years, and they manipulated society, or thought they did.

Last week Ornella had entered the job market herself, working as a chambermaid at the Park Hotel at the seaside. She was squirreling away money so she could go to the university in the fall after passing her state boards for the scientific lyceum in town this summer. Even Ornella had to admit that nothing she had studied at school was of any use to her at her workplace. Not algebra, not the plays of Oscar Wilde, not the utterly evanescent disquisitions on the miracle of transubstantiation she had had to swallow in religion – the least useful subject of all and the only subject that every high school student at every kind of school had to take. The scholastic system turned Religion into the lowest common denominator of the population, since the Church could do it no longer.

Don Ubaldo turned all the lights off and the crowd fell silent. A sibilant whistle issued from behind the church, a slight movement could be perceived in the sky, and POW! A giant burst of pink lights lit up the sky in an enormous spider chrysanthemum. It was pretty, Ornella had to admit that.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Ornella?”

Pierpaolo was still sitting beside her, and she noticed that he had not only discreetly groped himself, but that he was slowly inching his whole body towards her in front of the steps to the church. Ornella turned her head with measured dramatic torpor and looked him straight in the eye: “Yes, it is. I had forgotten. And now I have to go home: tomorrow is changeover day at the hotel and all the rooms have to be scrubbed and changed. You have a nice evening!”

Pierpaolo grabbed Ornella‘s wrist. “Oh, come on, stay, Ornella. I’ll take you home on my Vespa.”

“That’s very kind, but I think I’ll walk. Good night, Pierpaolo.”

“Ornella,” Pierpaolo implored.

“Whining will get you nowhere. Begging won’t either. I’m too old for you, and you’re too young for me. Come on Pierpaolo, let me go.”

“I won’t until you give me a kiss.”

When Ornella heard this, she calmly counted to five, and then with lightning alacrity she twisted her wrist hard and fast upwards, as if she were breaking the neck of a chicken. Pierpaolo fell back onto the steps of the church.

“Pierpaolo, Don’t even think of starting that stuff with me. Good Heavens! I could be your sister and I just about am.”

Another firework went off and they both turned to look up at a parabola raining scarlet embers raining across the sky.

“Oh Ornella, We’re young! Don’t the magic of the evening do nothing for you?”

“Magic? Magic? This is hardly magic! This is a costly display of sparks and gunpowder and chemicals. As for being young, I’m not young enough to make the mistake of letting you paw me.”

Another firework appeared in the sky, twisting helixes of turquoise shot through with gold sparklers. It was stunning. Pierpaolo grabbed Ornella around the waist. She turned slowly towards him once again, looked deep into his dark brown eyes, and abruptly slapped him loud enough for the crowd to hear it. Everyone turned to look at them. Pierpaolo was furious and glared at her, but when he saw the whole parish staring at them, he lowered his hands and started clapping.

“Isn’t it gorgeous? Why ain’t nobody applauding?”

Another firework went off, a wide chartreuse and tangerine column soared to the sky and fluttered into lilac blooms at the top. Ornella turned, rose, said good-bye and walked off. She looked back after counting 100 paces to make sure that Pierpaolo was not following her. She did the same after another 100 paces, and then after another 100 paces. By the time she got to the turn at the main road, she was sure she was alone.

Ornella turned and then walked past apricot and apple orchards, and row after row of vines. She probably should have ridden her bicycle, but pedaling would have been uncomfortable in her tight skirt. There was no moon out, and no cars were passing along the road but Ornella knew the countryside like the back of her hand and had no trouble finding her way in the dark. She turned and squinted to see if a moped were coming up behind her, for she imagined that Pierpaolo might not give up so easily. She listened too, but the only thing she could hear were the distant explosions of the fireworks.

Pierpaolo! What had gotten into his pea-sized brain! Ornella and Pierpaolo used to play together when they were children, teasing the animals in the farmyard and hunting for snails after the summer rains. Pierpaolo was a brother to her and not a potential boyfriend; Ornella was less and less convinced she wanted a boyfriend, especially if the fundamental criteria boys used to pick girls, were proximity and necessity.

  

Ornella found the gate to her home open, closed it and then walked across the dirt courtyard to go into the house.

Her mother was seated at the enormous kitchen table covered in oilcloth, a glass of water with mint sitting on it before her. She had done some late gardening: Ornella noticed little faggots of herbs neatly tied with white string, lined up across the table. A single light bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling in the cavernous room and the radio was playing a musical variety show. Mina was singing of unrequited love and Ornella’s mother was calmly but quickly working with her crochet hooks out and her glasses on, deftly making one square after another of new antimacassars for the living room. 
The living room lay beyond the door to the front of the house; they rarely sat there except when company came for Easter and Christmas. Even Ornella didn’t care to do her homework in the living room, preferring the spread of the table in the “kitchen;” she could arrange her books and papers at one end while her mother gutted a chicken or rolled out pasta at the other end of the table. The table was so sturdy that the few vibrations that reached her, somehow relaxed her.

“So, how were the fireworks, Ornella?”

“Oh, I had to leave early. Pierpaolo was pestering me”

“I thought that‘d happen, sooner or later. He seems like a nice enough boy, but you know what happens if you let a boy have it.”

“The only thing I let him have was a slap on the face when he put his arm around my waist and tried to touch my bosoms.”

“I hope you landed him one loud ringing slap on the chops. That’s the only way for men to understand that you really meant your slap: a nice, big, noisy pop. It drives’em crazy and there’s only one thing they hate more. You didn’t have to do that, did you?”

“No, I didn’t have to knee him in the crotch: we were in the churchyard and the slap was so loud everyone turned and started staring. Pierpaolo was quick though, he started clapping so it sounded like he’d been applauding the fireworks instead of getting slugged upside the head.”

“That’s my girl. You didn’t see your father, did you?”

“No, I didn’t even walk past the café.”

“Good. We need to talk, Ornella. Your father don’t want you to go to University this fall.”

“What?” Ornella felt all the blood draining from cranium to shoulders and down towards her hands. “You mean …”

“Ornella, sit down, listen to me.”

“I’m working at that hotel all the way at the seaside and studying night and day, and putting my own money aside to pay for the University myself. What right has he got …

“Ornella, listen. I just said he don’t want you to go the University. I didn’t say he’s going to stop you.”

“But Mamma, you know …” Ornella’s voice started to rise. Her mother placed her crocheting on the oilcloth gently and then pounded her fist on the table so hard that the glasses, forks, and dishes all rattled. Even the heads of garlic and onions rolled around in their baskets.

“GODDAMMMIT! LISTEN!”

Ornella knew it was time to shut up.

“I’m listening.”

“Very well. Your father don’t think it’s a good idea for you to put all those useless ideas in your head when all he thinks you’re going to do is get married, squirt one baby out after another, and never use your learning. I never did figger out why Daria wanted to go to the Lyceum with you, ‘cause she sure ain’t lookin’ for nothin’ but a husband now. I’m not sayin’ that I agree with him, I’m not sayin’ he’s going to stop you from going to school. All I’m doin’ is tellin’ you what he‘s goin’ to say to you, so you got a answer ready. Have I made myself clear? I’m tryin’ to help you get ready to face him. So, first of all, it’s time the two of us talked about this seriously, since it looks to me like you’re serious about this. What do you want to study?”

“Philosophy.”

“Philosophy? That don’t sound very serious to me. What’re you going to do with a degree in philosophy?”

“Well, I could teach.”

“Don’t you know how much teachers make? Crumbs Ornella, crumbs. You’re going to spend all this money and sweat and years of your life in school so you can fail at educating half-washed insipid pumpkins like Pierpaolo down the road? Is that what you really want to do?”

“No, what I really want to do is see the world and meet educated people.”

“Now that’s the wrong thing to tell your father. You know that he only finished the eighth grade. As did I. The first thing he’ll say is that he ain‘t educated enough for you and then he’s going to haul off and smack you across the face and it wouldn’t be the first time. So you’d better come up with a better answer to what you want to do.”

“Oh Mamma, I want to leave Porto Fuori, I want to see the world, and I want to live among people who read and go to the theatre. I want more from a summer’s night than fireworks on damp grass. I want to go to concerts, hear lectures, walk under the porticoes of Bologna in the evening, and see the latest books in the shop windows. I want to hear people discuss politics, and not just grain subsidies and local land taxes. I want to be part of the big wide world.”

“That all sounds kind of fuzzy to me and I’m not sure the university’s the easiest way to get to that place you’re talking about. It sounds more like you need to meet a rich husband. That would be the surest way, but you ain’t got much chance of that, here in Porto Fuori unless you can stomach Serafino Moratti’s spavined son Albertino. To land him, you’d need the biggest butt on the plain of the whole Po river and be temporarily blinded. Or you could both lose your minds temporarily. Anyway, what’s so magical about this big wide world? What kind of miracle do you think is going to take place when you get your university learning?”

“Mamma, there are no miracles or magic, they don’t exist. Even you don’t really believe in them.” (Vilma cocked her eyebrows at this, although she never took her eyes off her clicking crochet hooks). “When I get my degree, I’ll be ready to take my place in the big wide world of ideas and action.”

“You’re not travelling any great distance on this train of thought, my little hen. Let’s change tracks. Have you thought about a different degree?”

“Like what?”

“How about medicine?”

Ornella paled once again. She excelled in science, but it held no glamour for her.

“No, I haven’t thought about medicine.”

“Well now, if you become a doctor …”

“Do you know how many women doctors there are?”

“Too few, that’s for sure. But they do exist. At any rate, if you studied medicine, you'd be guaranteed a good paying job, a job that would put you in the thick of all them “ideas” in the big wide world that you were yawping about. I believe your father just might cotton to the idea of a doctor daughter. The Lord help you if you tell him you’re going to study philosophy.”

Ornella looked at her mother who had never stopped crocheting after pounding her first on the table, her arms tucked in close to her chest as she carefully dosed the tension in the thread. Ornella could see her mother was trying to help her, and Ornella’s ideas were vague, even Ornella had to admit that herself. Ornella just wanted to live in town, to get away from the dirt courtyards and smell of manure fertilizing the fields, she wanted to be free of the community of Porto Fuori where half the people spoke only the Romagnol dialect out of choice: the very language of ignorance itself. The other half would never learn proper Italian. Ornella wanted at least a chance at a different life. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, she wasn’t afraid of difficulties; she wasn’t afraid of her father either.

She was afraid of not having a real chance. Ornella looked up at her mother, and realized that Vilma was the key to her future. Her mother had always been the key to Ornella’s future.

“I think I hear the generator on your father’s bicycle. You scoot off to bed now before he comes in. You’re in no condition for his questions to rain down on you, and he’s in no condition to listen to your hazy opinions and cloudy ideas. I’ll keep him from asking you anything until you’ve got a bright, sunny answer. Your father’s like a nail, Ornella; you have to hit it just right and hard the first time and then it goes right in where you want it. If you hit it wrong the first time it bends in the wrong direction and no matter how you hit it afterward, there is no way to drive it straight into the board. And you Ornella, don’t even got a hammer. So run off to bed. I’ll wake you up after he’s out in the fields tomorrow morning. You got a long day ahead of you to get to the seaside by eight on your bike.”

Ornella nodded and kissed her mother good night. As Ornella closed the door to her bedroom, she heard her father walking into the great room of the farmhouse. She was tempted to eavesdrop at the door, but tomorrow was going to  be a long day, so she undressed and laid her head on her pillow, the hempen pillowcase redolent of the lavender  her mother used to scent their linens, like all good Romagnol homemakers.

Saverio came in, took off his vest, and rubbed his left kidney. He sat down at the table and took off his hat.

“My back’s killing me!”

“That’s what you get for lying in the wet grass all evening and watching the fireworks.”

“You know me better than that. Why would I piss away my time with all that waste of money? And I certainly don’t need to even remember Don Innocenzo is gone. I’m reminded of that every day when I walk past the cemetery and see my uncle’s grave.  And my aunt’s. And poor Romolo Foschini’s. And all his brothers and sisters. No, I was at the café losing at cards, but losing a lot less than them fireworks costed. Ouch!”

“Here let me see that.”

Vilma pulled her husband’s blue checked shirt out of his trousers in the back and looked at the round swell of white flesh above his belt. There was a light bruise but when she touched it, Saverio did not jump. The pain had to be something twisted deep in the muscle near his spine.

“You’ll be all right. Drop your drawers and take your shirt off. Let me put some Saint John’s wort on it. It’s in bloom today and it’ll never work stronger.”

Vilma walked over past the stove, crouched down, and opened the bottom of a robin’s egg blue corner cupboard where she kept her medicines. There were aspirins, alcohol, bandages, mustard, and bottles of the dozen home remedies her grandmother had taught her to concoct. Tucked far away in the back was a bottle where the once yellow flowers of Saint John’s wort floated in oil behind the label marked “1966.” Vilma grunted as she reached back and pulled it out, along with a square from an old cashmere sweater her mother had stopped wearing when the holes became too large even for working in the fields. This would suit Saverio’s lower back; the bottle was half-empty, so she dumped about a tenth of what was left onto the cashmere square and gently massaged the lard around her husband’s left kidney.

“This should help.”

Saverio sat patiently through all of this before he started asking about Ornella.

“What are we going to do about Ornella?”

“Shhhh. Keep still and don’t get your drawers in a bunch while I’m rubbing this in. You’ll make your back worse. Don’t you worry none about Ornella.”

“Well, who’s going to pay for her university?”

“She’s been cleaning rooms the last three weeks at the Park Hotel and putting the money aside to pay for her tuition, and she plans to keep working until the season ends in September. She’s also been studying to pass her high school exams at the same time. And she ain’t complained once.”

“And who’s paying for her meals?”

“We are. But I’m the one who’s producing most of her food: eggs, vegetables, chickens, and rabbits. The only thing you actually pay for is flour and I’m the one who turns that into noodles and cappelletti: Ornella don’t even drink the wine you make, so you can hardly begrudge her that.”

“And what about her clothes?”

“Soap’s the cheapest thing there is to buy, and you ain’t never bothered with laundering nothing. Anyway, I make most of her clothing from hand-me- downs. I certainly don’t begrudge her that. So how much do you think she’s costing you?”

“We let her go to the scientific lyceum in town and we paid for all of that.”

“Most of that was paid for by the State. You cain't complain that our daughter wants to study and become a doctor, can you?”

Saverio groaned again. “A doctor? When did she tell you that?”

“Oh, she hasn’t told me that yet, but that’s what she’s going to study. Trust me. Do you know how much a doctor makes?”

“After eight years of school?”

“That’s how long it takes. It’s not a miracle, and it ain’t magic, it’s just a lot of hard work.”

“Staring at books?”

“Studying day and night like she done in high school. Ornella’s a smart girl, Saverio. And headstrong, just like you,” (“And just like you, Vilma!” Saverio thought). “She can do whatever she puts her mind to. And she will.”

Vilma held the green cashmere patch up against Saverio’s pallid backside with one hand, and unrolled an old linen bandage with her other and wrapped it around his sagging paunch twice. She pinned the bandage closed over his bellybutton and pulled his undershirt down tight and tucked it into the elastic of his underwear.  Saverio might have lost half the hair on his head, but he still had a nice round behind. Feeding him had something to do with it. Vilma gave his rump a gentle pat and a soft squeeze

“Now, this will calm that little lizard running around inside your back. But you need to keep it on all night – or what’s left of the night. Now, go on to bed. Four a.m. comes sooner than you think.

“But what about Ornella and the university?”

“Ain't we just decided that? She’ll study medicine, and become whatever kind of doctor she wants. She’ll pay for her tuition, transportation, and books. I’ll take care of most of her food and clothing: you’ll be in charge of making sure Ornella has a piece of bread and enough flour for a plate of pasta every day. A plate of pasta that I will be making myself, I might add, and you will get one just like it and you won’t get charged nothing. I don’t think that’s too much to give your only daughter. Especially since she’ll make more money than both us and our parents, all thrown in together.”

Saverio clucked his tongue. It was no use. Vilma decided everything about the house and money, and Saverio made all the decisions about the fields and the car and bicycles. He had to give in to her. He pulled his shirt back on and went to the bathroom to wash up before going to bed.

Vilma turned all her attention to finishing the square she was crocheting. It wouldn’t take more than ten minutes and then she could go to bed. Hopefully Saverio would be asleep by then and she could rest undisturbed until a quarter to four.

Vilma looked at the herbs she had gathered that evening just after the sun had gone down. She had promptly washed and air dried them, and bound them up in little  gauze bundles with white string, just as her grandmother had taught her. Her grandmother  had “learned” Vilma all the folkways Vilma could remember. “If it rains on the palms, it don’t rain on the eggs,” which meant it either rained on Palm Sunday or on Easter Sunday. “At Candlemas, winter is past.” That was only true if the sun didn’t shine that day. If it was overcast on the second of February, there were bound to be milder days through most of March. Grandmother Esaura had also taught Vilma how to make a bacon poultice, to cut her fingernails when the moon was waning so they would grow slower and stronger, and cut her hair when the moon was waxing so her hair would grow out thicker and quicker. 
Whenever perverse hail threatened to ruin a tender crop of ripe peaches or tomatoes bursting on the branches and vines in the heat of the summertime, Nonna Esaura used to light a candle on the floor in the corner of the room. “That’un don’t always work,” she said, “but it’ll take your mind off the crops and it’s just about the only thing you can do: hope for the best. Hope is half of healing; herbs and healthy food are the other half.”

Esaura knew how to use every herb in the field. First, she cooked with them: “That’s the best way for ‘em to work, ‘cause it keeps a well-full of troubles out of your path. It’s easier to stay out of a well than it is to climb out.” Esaura had taught Vilma how to use the herbs in oils and infusions and rubdowns and gargles. “A little Saint John’s wort in olive oil will soothe aches and soreness. It’ll even calm down children (but not grownups) if you make an infusion of it and make them drink it with a big dollop of honey.”

 The most important date for the vast majority of herbs was the longest day of summer: the Eve of San Giovanni. Nonna Esaura and Vilma used to go out just before twilight, just as Vilma had done this evening, and gather her herbs for the rest of the year. The Eve of San Giovanni had been different when Vilma was a little girl. The famers used to build bonfires in the fields to ward off bad luck and evil spirits. Esaura made Vilma walk through the fields and stay away from the roads. Witches lingered at crossroads, lying in wait to lead you down the wrong path. Like Philosophy! Hah!

 Just as darkness fell on their way to the fields, Esaura and Vilma collected Saint John’s wort with its yellow flowers. It always grew wild; they never could find the seeds or transplant it. The farmers considered the plant a weed, and tried to keep it outside their irrigation canals because it turned the crops bitter. The first herb Esaura gathered each year was St John’s wort since it would be weeded out of the fields and would be destroyed first. 
As they snipped off the stems with yellow flowers or pulled up the roots, Esaura advised Vilma about herbs. “Always plant your courtyard herbs at the ends of the lines of grapevines nearest the house. That way you know how strong the herbs are: as strong as the wine that comes from the grapes that year. You also know the herbs ain’t good no more when the wine turns to vinegar. Herbs don’t need no fuss or tending anyway: most animals avoid them. If you plant them in your vegetable garden, they just take up room where you could put in cardoons or lettuce. There are two exceptions: your rosemary bush and pot of basil; always plant them right outside the door closest to the kitchen. Rosemary and basil ensure a happy home: they bring remembrance and love. And they’re the herbs you need most often when you’re cooking.”

Whenever there was something Esaura needed to remember, she would break off a little sprig of rosemary and put it in her apron pocket. Half the times Esaura couldn’t remember exactly what it was she needed to do when her hand grazed the stiff leaves in her pocket. She would pull the rosemary out and ask Vilma if she knew what  the rosemary was for. Her forgotten task came to Esaura eventually as she went about her chores. Vilma had taken up the same habit. Now Ornella would ask Vilma what her mother needed to do when Ornella smelled aromatic rosemary wafting about her mother.

“Basil also keeps witches from the door, and wild spirits, especially the incubus that invades your bedroom, sits on your breastbone, and leaves you pregnant, whether or not you got a husband.” Vilma would be sure to put basil in Ornella’s salad tomorrow. Pierpaolo! Hah!  Philosophy! Hah!

All those beliefs had withered now. No one remembered why things were done a certain way. The bonfires in the fields drove away witches and malignant spirits; but they also eliminated scrub from the fields, and cost nothing. Now the bonfires had been transformed into spectacular, costly, and perfectly meaningless fireworks that lit up the midsummer night. As far as Vilma was concerned, the fireworks were nothing more than a flash in the big dipper. 
The fire itself had lost its significance: no one thought of the pervasiveness of evil any more, of taking the wrong path, of making a poultice when you could get a pill or a salve at the pharmacy. What was in them pills and poultices? The doctors didn’t explain it none to you, even if you asked; they just gave you a tablet or some sort of ointment and you had no idea what was in it. You never could find out what was in the preparations you bought, even if you asked the pharmacist. “Too difficult to explain,” was the best she ever got.

 Vilma knew the herbs were not the final cure, any more than her grandmother believed that lighting a candle in the corner of the room would send the summer hail away. Vilma used the herbs faithfully because intensely hoping and preparing the way for something to come down your path, usually helped it arrive. Tiny acts of tradition and superstition in the kitchen and the farm’s courtyard changed how you thought about things, and how you pursued them. A little mint in her water in the summertime always refreshed her more than just plain water did. Vilma kept sprigs of marjoram and desiccating pomegranates in Esaura’s old gray bowl from Faenza so there would always be money in the house. That one had not always worked perfectly, but it had kept wolves from the door. Ornella had been studying particularly hard in the last few weeks, so Vilma made batches of tortelli and cooked them up in the evening before her exams at the end of the school year. She seasoned them with butter and summer savory to help Ornella stay sharp on the job and over her books. Vilma rubbed Saverio’s chicken with thyme to give him strength when he seemed to be flagging. Finally, she would fry up leaves of sage as a side dish when a measure of wisdom was obviously lacking in her family. Saverio and Ornella always scarfed the crisp leaves down, and asked for more. That only proved that Vilma had been right. It always seemed easier to tease out a mature decision from both Saverio and Ornella after they had crunched up half a platter of fried sage leaves.

Vilma had finished her square and went over to the cabinet to put the Saint John’s wort away; she pulled out an opaque old Vov bottle and poured a wee drop of wormwood into a tiny little glass that she had inherited from her grandmother just for the wormwood. “It’s bitter, you can’t drink much, but just a drop is all you need to call the spirits to you.” On San Giovanni’s Eve, Vilma always called for her grandmother to come to Vilma in her sleep and tell her of the year to come: what to do, what not to do, and what to expect. Vilma also asked Nonna Esaura what the winning numbers in the lottery would be. 
Vilma wasn’t at all sure that it worked: she never did remember her dreams, and she had never won the lottery, but somehow Vilma made the right decisions about her life and her family and her household. Saverio only thought about the crops in the field right now and Ornella only thought about what she wanted to do after she graduated. Vilma was the only one in the family who got the big picture of the year that passed, the year they were in and the year that would come, and how the three of them had to be held together, the same way the white string gently bound the herbs lying before her on the kitchen table.

The cat was scratching at the door so Vilma stood up and let it in, stashed the white bundles in her pockets, bolted the door, turned off the light, and walked to her bedroom in the dark. She pulled the herbs from the pocket of her shift and slid them under her pillow to see what her premonitory dreams would be tonight. Vilma took off her shift and glided into bed beside Saverio, softly snoring.

She laid her head on her pillow and was just about to drop off when the bitter scent of rue stung her nostrils: it was the only herb her head had crushed as she settled down for a short summer’s sleep. The rue woke Vilma right up. The herbs were sending her a crystal clear message: a boy was going to be a problem for Ornella. It wasn’t difficult to imagine he would be Pierpaolo. Men seldom gave up after they tried to squeeze your boobs.

Forewarned is forearmed. Vilma would make sure Ornella drank tiny cups of rue tea for a week just before the Marchesa came for her monthly visit. Nothing was going to interrupt Ornella’s studies, Vilma would see to that. Vilma herself never got pregnant after her third, tragic stillbirth. Esaura, as old as she was, had come to get Vilma from the hospital, talked to the doctors, and got her granddaughter home and into bed, while Saverio was ploughing the sugar beet fields. Esaura gave her granddaughter a hot cup of rue, bitter it was, bitter though Esaura had sweetened it up with a teaspoon of honey. “You need to know what you’re drinking; remember its bitter taste.” Esaura then started Vilma on a regime of light rue tea daily; Esaura would drop by every day and made sure Vilma had a pale cup of warm rue infusion. Vilma did not much care for it and tried to refuse more than once, but Esaura was more than adamant. Vilma just resigned herself to drinking it once a day.

After a year passed and the miscarriage was in everyone’s past (except for Vilma’s) Vilma had finally confessed to Esaura about “problems” with Saverio because Vilma did not want another pregnancy. Then and only then did Esaura tell Vilma why Esaura had been making sure Vilma drank her rue tea daily. Vilma would never again need to worry about “consequences.”  Saverio never complained again.

Vilma looked at the ceiling and thought about the lives she had led, thinking that the herbs were as useless as a priest’s prayers, and every bit as useful. The rue might not actually have to do anything for Ornella, but at least it would remind Vilma to keep Ornella’s future pointed in the right direction. Just hoping (and praying) for the best was really not enough: you had to stay on course and be wary at the crossroads.

Vilma reached her hand under her pillow and bundled all the herbs into her grasp. They were all there; she had done everything she could for the day. Vilma thought about what she needed to do tomorrow; gather more rue and hang it from the rafters to dry, among other things. Finally she thought about the dark, warm present. Vilma would do what she needed to do now: sleep the sleep of the just and dream the dream of the life to come, of the life she wanted her family to lead.

The comforting smell of lavender reminded her of that.