Assunta was not used to so many people sleeping in the same place. The bed had the dank, clotted smell of many years’ worth of unlaundered sleep. Assunta had found a flea on her leg while theywere eating dinner and now couldn’t escape the thought that the dirty bed was crawling with vermin. But she had no choice but to lie there and offer up her body to them until it was light enough to take her daughter home.
In the murky twilight that comes an hour before dawn, Assunta heard the infant Angela start to fuss. There was maternal murmuring from the far side of the bed, and then fabric sliding against skin as her mother sat up to soothe her. Assunta heard the familiar wet sounds of a baby suckling, barely audible over the steady, damp snoring of Mariastella the elder, who Assunta was certain was not awake. The baby Angela wasn’t thirteen-year-old Mariangela’s sister; she was her daughter.
THE NEXT MORNING,Antonio and Assunta set off for Ievoli as soon as it was light enough to see the road. Assunta was desperate to be home. She wanted to strip off all their clothes and check the baby for lice and fleas.
As they followed the donkey path through the gully between the villages, Assunta got up the courage to say to Antonio, “I didn’t know your mother died when you were little.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Antonio turned away from her, glaring into the olive valley. “My mother didn’t die. My mother cooked you dinner last night.”
Stella was heavy in Assunta’s arms, dozing on her chest as they walked. She, like Assunta, must not have gotten any sleep in the stinky crowded bed. Assunta shifted her daughter’s weight and tried again. “But yesterday Mariangela told me that... that the, the new baby is named after her dead mother.”
Assunta waited nervously until finally her husband said, “Mariangela had a different mother than I did, but my mother is the one you know.”
That made even less sense. Unless—had Antonio’s father had a mistress? Was Mariangela a bastard? But Antonio was not going tosay anything else on the topic. “Here, give me the baby, we’ll get home faster.” He took Stella in his arms and picked up the pace so that Assunta had to trot to keep up.
ASSUNTA TOOK OFFSTELLA’Scontaminated dress and put the little girl straight to bed when they got home. She would have liked to lie down herself, but Antonio had gone out to replenish their firewood and he would want a hot lunch when he came home.
Her day was haunted by the revelation of the night before—her unmarried adolescent sister-in-law suckling an unexplained infant. The ungodliness was shocking—Mariangela, who had been such a sweet little flower girl only five years earlier, had let some man do the job to her. Assunta was frightened by the very notion of sex before marriage, a mortal sin, a soul-killing betrayal of a girl’s grace before God—she was frightened even though she could never commit the sin herself. And a girl of Mariangela’s age, too? Assunta had been almost fifteen when she’d married; she couldn’t imagine enduring that milestone any younger. At twelve she had been a child, without even her monthly bleeding. How had little Mariangela gone so far astray?
Assunta was sick to her stomach by what she now knew, and didn’t know, about her husband’s family, wary of their morals and their seedy habits. She kept herself moving, shedding her Tracci dress and putting on the nicer dress she usually saved for mass. Leaving the baby sleeping, she hiked up to the cistern at the top of via Fontana, where she scrubbed all their dirty clothes on the rocky bottom of the laundry trough. The cold mountain water numbed her fingers. She didn’t have any soap this year, because there hadn’t been spare olive oil to make any. But now that Antonio was home things would be better. To shatter her own black thoughts, she said out loud several times, “The war is over. It’s a new life. The worst is behind us.”
When Assunta got home, Stella was still sleeping, poor thing. Assunta hung the laundry on the line that stretched over the widow Marianina’s chickens. She went back up to the fountain to fill her cooking potwith water, then stoked the fire. She peeled a handful of roasted chestnuts and dropped them in the water, added chopped potatoes, dried pear, and a sprinkle of salt. She filled a bowl with persimmons from the tree in the yard—the fruits were just in season—then sat at her table, feeling anxious. Antonio would come home for lunch and they would learn how to live a life together. They had done it before, albeit not for long. She felt like she was getting used to a completely new husband, as if there were no history or existing affection between them.
She thought about this as the church bells of Santa Maria Addolorata sounded the quarter hours. It was not only Antonio, she decided. She was a different person than when he had left. She was a mother now, and understood the thing that mothers understand, that nothing in the world is more important than the tiny breaths of your child—not obeying your husband, not romance or desire or even one’s own physical self. To be a good Christian wife she would have to remind herself to prioritize the needs of her husband the way she had done naturally before, when there had been nothing more important than he was.
When the church bells sounded one o’clock, Assunta checked on Stella. Should she wake the little girl up to eat lunch? Assunta felt her daughter’s forehead, which might have been a little bit warm. She thought of the heavy air of the poorly lit hut in Tracci and her anxiety increased. She decided to let Stella sleep.
Antonio came home with more wood than Assunta would have guessed one man could carry. He stacked it in the yard, then sat and ate the food Assunta presented to him. He didn’t compliment her cooking, but he didn’t complain, either. Then he went out again—perhaps to catch up with the men at the bar.
Assunta cleaned up her kitchen and tried to wake her daughter. “Aren’t you hungry, little star?” Stella finally opened her eyes, looking as disoriented as any unhappily wakened baby. “Let’s have some soup,” Assunta said. She collected Stella in her arms with a blanket wrapped around her naked torso—thebambina’s linen dress was still drying outside—and brought her to the table. Stella fussed and onlytook a few mouthfuls of potato. Assunta helped her daughter use the chamber pot, although there wasn’t much, and then put Stella back in bed, wondering if she felt warmer than she had before.
It looked like rain, so Assunta pulled the laundry in to finish drying by the fire. Her anxiety had taken over her mind now, so she worked her way through the rosary, chanting as slowly as she could make herself, concentrating on the Virgin and her grace. She was about two-thirds of the way through when her sister, Rosina, came over, and they finished the recitation together.
Ros felt the baby’s head. “I don’t think she’s well, Assunta.” She performed acruceunder her breath and took some of the mint from the bundle on her neck to crush against Stella’s forehead to drive away the Evil Eye.
“What should I do?”
Ros studied the baby. “Babies have fevers all the time, poor things, you know that. It might just go away. Get her to drink somegagumil’and wait two hours. If she gets warmer, though, you will want to get the doctor.”
Assunta was unsure. “If I have to go to Feroleto, maybe it would be better to go now.” There were two more hours of daylight; Assunta could take Stella to Feroleto, where the closest doctor was, before dark, although being outdoors in the wet December air might be the worst thing for her. Assunta could go to Feroleto alone and fetch the doctor to come back to Ievoli, but she couldn’t even imagine how much a house call would cost. She didn’t have any money; she would need Antonio to come home so she could ask him for some to make that plan work.
“Listen, Assù. You try the first thing first, and then if you still need to go to Feroleto, you go.” Diminutive Ros reached up to put her child-size hand on her younger sister’s shoulder, and Assunta could feel her calming warm palm through the fabric of her dress. “Don’t worry about things ahead of time or you’ll make bad decisions. If you need to go, you’ll know. And then you go.”
Rosina went back to collect her herbs and returned with Mariain tow. They brewed a tincture of chamomile, dried lemon peel, and anise to dispel whatever badness might have collected in little Stella’s blood. Stella sat up with her grandmother and aunt for a while, docilely sipping and smiling at them as they sang some of her favorite songs, holding her little hands and pinching her feet. But Stella looked listless, her eyes sunken and sad, so Assunta clothed her in her now-dry dress and put her back in bed. Maria and Ros sat with Assunta, crocheting and listening to the rain, until Antonio came home, when they filed out.
For dinner Assunta served the leftoverminestra, which she had expanded with some carrots and an onion. They ate in silence, Assunta tortured by her nerves. Antonio gave off the sour smell that came from hours of drinking, which under normal circumstances would have made Assunta unhappy. Tonight she was too anxious about her daughter to worry about her husband.
After she’d cleaned the plates up, Assunta checked again on Stella, whose forehead was shockingly hot to the touch. The change was so drastic that Assunta gasped out loud. “Antonio,” she said when she found her voice. “We need to go to Feroleto. We need to get the doctor for Stella.”
Antonio came over to the bed and tested Stella’s temperature with his rough hand. Assunta swallowed at seeing his big, indelicate fingers on her daughter, but Stella didn’t stir.
“It’s just a fever,” Antonio said. “It will pass. If she’s not better tomorrow I will go to Feroleto to get the doctor after mass.”
Assunta remembered what Ros had said to her—that if she needed to go, she would know. She knew—she knew. She needed to go to Feroleto. She said so.
“That’s ridiculous,” Antonio said. “Listen to the rain. Do you know what time it is? It’s not safe to go out this late at night.”
“Antonio, please.” Assunta was sobbing. She realized her husband would not respect her for crying, but she couldn’t stop herself. “She needs the doctor. I will go, I’m not afraid.”
