AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes. Very true. Do you miss your husband?”
“Of course.”
“You can speak freely with me.”
I felt that this was true even though it also felt dangerous. I sat with it for a moment and pretended to fix my hair with a piece of twine I kept wrapped around my wrist. The truth was I did not know my husband well enough to miss him. I considered what to say for a moment longer. “Life is easier with him gone. When he returns it is another person to take care of. And he is a stranger in our home, a stranger to our ways and our routines. My children do not know how to behave around him. They want to love him like a father, but they tiptoe around him and often make themselves scarce. They are scared to disappoint him, I think.”
“But are you lonely when he is gone?”
“I have three boys and Cettina and the women of the town.”
“And the old woman beyond the town.”
“Rosalia.” I said her name. “She has taught me everything I know about caring for people.”
“I feel badly for her. We would never force a man to live out of the village for not having a wife and a family and it is wrong that the town did not welcome her back when she returned from Palermo, that she was asked to live beyond the edge of the village like a leper.”
“Do you remember that time?”
“No. It was before both of us were born, I think. But I heard that it was the priest who demanded her exile to the top of the mountain.”
“I do not know if she minds,” I tried to explain. “She likes her quiet life. I don’t know how well she would do in the center of town with all the people.”
“Maybe so. But she still deserves more of our respect.”
“You are not wrong. She deserves everyone’s respect.”
When we got close to the marina, I pulled a swath of linen out of my bag and tied it around the lower half of my face like a mask and then handed a second one to Marco.
“Rosalia explained to me that this will help us from getting sick when dealing with those who are ill. We also must make sure to wash our hands and not spend too much time indoors with them.”
We left the car on the side of the road and walked in easy silence down to the filthy dwellings close to the docks. Vendors sat on the side of the road selling half-rotted watermelons and brightly colored scarves covered in dust. We had to step over a man, a sailor from the looks of his uniform, who was passed out on the side of the road, likely overcome by drink the night before. I heard the cries of the sick children before I saw them and felt each moan deep within myself. Since having my own child, I could not help but be pierced by the cries of another.
The ill ones were collected in one room on the second floor of a wooden building that looked as though it were about to collapse into the sea. We were greeted by a young woman, younger than me, who introduced herself as Lucia. Her skin was very pale, and she was painfully thin. Her cheekbones protruded out from her face like arrowheads and her hair was matted and unwashed. Three other women rushed about the room, applying cold compresses to the skin of a dozen little ones from ages one to ten. They were all deeply uncomfortable. Bursts of red pustules appeared on some of the children’s faces. On others, the rash was confined to the body but their faces were red from screaming and streaked with dirt and tears. Some had itched the red spots open, causing bleeding, scabbing, and the oozing of a yellow pus. I asked one of the women if I could get closer to a small boy of two or three who howled with pain and itch. The rashes looked familiar even from a distance. I thought I had seen something similar in one of Rosalia’s books, but never in person.
Marco hesitated in the doorway. I held up my hand to let him know he should stay where he was. As I got closer, I saw tiny trails, thin red lines, between the bumps on the children’s skin, tracks that told me what I needed to know.
I questioned Lucia. “All of these children had fathers who were recently out at sea?”
She nodded, her enormous brown eyes filled with pain. “Our husbands came back on a ship from Tunis two weeks ago.”
“And do they have this rash? Your husbands?”
Lucia nodded.
“Did they bring anything into the home with them? Blankets, rugs, pillows.” The first two women nodded.
“I do not think it is an illness,” I explained to them. “It is a bug, an infestation and not an infection. A tiny bug that burrows beneath the skin like a weasel burrows into the dirt. It can travel through human skin or in fabrics. We will need to bathe these children in an antiseptic and burn their clothes and sheets.” I turned to Marco. “Can you get me mercury from the farmacia? As much as they have? This will spread to the whole family and to other children if it is not contained.”
He nodded, pleased to be given a task. I had learned this about men. As headstrong as they could be, they also liked to be told what to do as long as it didn’t question their own intelligence. Men needed to feel useful in a situation they could not control.
“Your children will be fine,” I assured the women as I went about boiling as much water as possible while they stripped their little ones naked and tossed the infested clothes onto the flames in the hearth. I instructed them to burn their own clothes as a precaution and any other cloth in the room. They observed me with suspicion, as though I had asked them to toss their children into the fire. Clothes and sheets were not inexpensive, and these women were poor. “I will ask my friend, the man I came with, to find you new linens. He is the mayor of a town up the mountain. He can talk to the officials here and get you help.” I did not know if this was true, but I promised it anyway. “Your husbands, where are they?”
“Gone again,” they all murmured. God help whoever was on the ships those men went back to. I went downstairs to meet Marco and fetch the items he returned with, sparing the women his presence in their nakedness. I asked if he could search out clothes and sheets. “Maybe the sisters at the monastery could help.”
“I will go right away,” he said, and promised to return in a few hours.
I was in constant motion for those hours, getting everyone comfortable, soothing the wounds, binding their bodies with gauze. Once no one needed me, I took my leave of the women and children and walked out toward the sea, careful to wash my hands and dip my own smock in the hot water before I left. The fabric was damp when I put it back on, but the moisture felt good after working in the fiery room choked with smoke.
