Адриана Трижиани – The Shoemaker's Wife / Жена башмачника. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 6)
Enza closed the wooden shutters on the window at the front of the house. As she threw the latch, cold wind whistled through the slats. With the hearth crackling behind her, stoked with wood and a few pieces of coal, and the laundry kettle about to boil, the kitchen was filled with a warm and welcome mist.
This was Enza’s favorite time of day, when night had fallen in Schilpario and the children were in bed. Baby Stella slept in a woven basket draped with a soft white blanket. Her face looked like a pink peach by the firelight.
Giacomina, Enza’s mother, a capable woman with a sweet face and soft hands, stirred a pot of milk on the fire. She wore her long brown hair with a center part and two braids, wrapped neatly in a bun at the base of her neck.
Giacomina stooped over the flame until the milk foamed and placed the pan on a stone trivet. She lifted two ceramic cups from the shelf, placing them on the table, dropped a pat of butter in each cup, and poured the milk on top. Reaching up to pull a small bottle of homemade brandy from the shelf, she put a teaspoon in her cup, a couple of drops in Enza’s. She stirred the mixture and ladled the foam left in the pan on top.
«This will warm you up.» Giacomina gave Enza her cup. They sat down at the end of their dining table, made from wide planks of alder, with matching benches on either side. How Enza wished she could buy her mother a dining room suite[47] made from polished mahogany with fabric seats, and a new set of china[48] to dress the table, just like Signora Arduini had at her house.
«Papa should be back by now.»
«You know the trip back up the mountain is always longer.» Mama sipped her milk. «I’ll wait up for him. You can go to bed.»
«I have wash to do.» Enza shrugged.
Giacomina smiled. The laundry could wait, but Enza wanted an excuse to be awake when her father returned. It was always the same. Enza couldn’t sleep until all the members of the family were safe inside, asleep in their beds.
«Mama, tell me a story.» Enza reached across the table and took Giacomina’s hand. She spun her mother’s gold wedding band[49] around her finger, feeling the grooves of the tiny carved rosebuds etched into the gold. Enza believed it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry in the world.
«I’m tired, Enza.»
«Please. The story of your wedding day.»
Enza had heard the love story so many times that her own mother and father had become as magical to her as figures in her favorite book, drawn in exquisite detail and eternally young in the telling. Enza studied the photograph of her parents on their wedding day as if it were a map. In a sense it was, as they were creating a destination, a life together. The bride and groom sat stiffly in two chairs. Mama held a bouquet of mountain asters[50] tightly as Papa rested his hand on her shoulder.
«Your papa came to see me one Sunday when Iwas sixteen and he was seventeen,» Giacomina began the familiar story. «He drove the governess cart – at that time, it belonged to his father. It was painted white in those days, and that morning, he had filled it with fresh flowers. There was barely room for your papa on the bench.»
«Cipi, just three years old, had pink ribbons braided through his mane. Papa arrived at our house, threw off the reins, leaped off the bench, came into the house, and asked my papa if he could marry me. I was the last daughter in my family to marry. My papa had married off five daughters, and by the time it was my turn, he barely looked up from his pipe[51]. He just said yes, and we went to the priest, that was that.»
«And Papa said —»
«Your father told me that he wanted seven sons and seven daughters.»
«And you said—»
«Seven children will be enough.»
«And now we have six.»
«God owes us one more,» Giacomina teased.
«I think we have enough children around here, Mama. We barely have enough food as it is, and I don’t see God showing up at the door with a sack of flour.»
Mama smiled. She had grown to appreciate Enza’s wry sense of humor. Her eldest daughter had a mature view of the world, and she was worried that Enza was overly concerned with adult problems.
Enza went to the fire to check the iron kettle suspended on the spit and filled with bubbling hot water, melted down from snow. A second pot, resting on the hearth, filled with clean hot water, was used to rinse the clothes. Enza lifted the pot off the fire and placed it on the floor. She picked up a wooden basket full of nightshirts and placed them into the kettle to soak, added lye, and stirred the laundry with a metal rod, careful not to splash the lye onto her skin. As she stirred, the nightshirts turned bright white.
Enza poured off the excess water into an empty pot and hauled it to the far end of the kitchen, where her father had made a chute in the floor, feeding into a pipe that released water down the mountainside. She wrung the nightshirts by hand and gave them to her mother, who hung them on a rope by the fire, mother and daughter making quick work of a big chore. The lye, sweetened with a few drops of lavender oil, filled the room with the fresh scent of summer.
Giacomina and Enza heard footsteps on the landing. They ran to the door, opening it wide. Marco was on the porch, brushing the snow off his boots.
«Papa! You made it!»
Marco came into the house and embraced Giacomina. «Signor Arduini came for the rent this morning,» she whispered.
«What did you tell him?» Papa lifted Enza off the ground and kissed her.
«I told him to wait and speak to my husband.»
«Did he smile?» Marco asked his wife.
«No.»
«Well, he just did. I stopped at his house and paid him the rent. On time, with thirty-five minutes to spare.»
Enza and Giacomina embraced Marco. «Did you girls think that I would let you down?»
«I wasn’t sure,» Enza said truthfully. «That’s a big mountain and there’s a lot of snow, and we have an old horse. And sometimes, even when you do a good job, passengers only pay the first half of the fare, and you get stuck for the rest.»
Marco laughed. «Not this time.» Papa placed two crisp lire and a small gold coin on the dining table. Enza touched each bill and spun the gold coin, thrilled at the treasure.
Giacomina lifted a warming pan from the hearth filled with her husband’s dinner. She served her husband a casserole[52] of buttery polenta[53] and sweet sausage, and poured him a glass of brandy.
«Where did you take the passenger, Papa?»
«To Domenico Picarazzi, the doctor.»
«I wonder why she needs a doctor.» Giacomina placed a heel of bread next to his plate. «Did she seem ill?»
«No.» Marco sipped his brandy. «But she’s suffering. I think she must have just become a widow. She had just placed her sons in the convent in Vilminore.»
«Poor things,» Giacomina said.
«Don’t think about taking them in, Mina.»
Enza noticed that her father used her mother’s nickname whenever he didn’t want to do something.
«Two boys. Around Enza’s age: ten and eleven.»
Giacomina’s heart broke at the thought of the lonely boys.
«Mama, we can’t take them,» Enza said.
«Why not?»
«Because it’s two more children, and God only plans to send you one more.»
Marco laughed as Enza stacked the laundry pots and kettles next to the hearth. She kissed her mother and father goodnight and climbed the ladder up to the loft to sleep.
Enza tiptoed in the dark past the crib where Stella slept and over to her brothers and other sister, who slept on one large straw mattress, their bodies crisscrossed like a basket weave. She found her place on the far side of the bed and lay down to sleep. The sound of the gentle breathing of her brothers and sisters soothed her.
Enza prayed without making the sign of the cross, saying her rosary, or reciting the familiar litanies from vespers in Latin. Instead she called on the angels, thanking them for bringing her father home safely. She imagined her angels looked a lot like the gold-leafed putti[54] holding sheaves of wheat over the tabernacle[55] at the church of Barzesto, with faces that resembled that of her baby sister Stella.
Enza prayed to stay near her mother and father. She wanted to live with them always, and never marry or become a mother herself. She couldn’t imagine ever being that brave, courageous enough to stand away from all she knew to choose something different. She wanted to live in the same village she had been born in, just like her mother. She wanted to hold every baby on the day he was born and bury every old person on the day he died. She wanted to wake up every day to live and work in the shadows of Pizzo Camino, Corno Stella, and Pizzo dei Tre Signorei[56], the holy trinity of mountain peaks that she had been in awe of her whole life.
Enza prayed that she could help her mother take care of the children, and maybe one more when God sent him. She hoped the new baby would be a boy, so Battista and Vittorio would feel less outnumbered. She prayed for patience, because babies are a lot of work.
Enza prayed for her father to make enough lire to buy the house, so they wouldn’t have to live in fear of the padrone any longer. When the first of the month arrived, so would Signor Arduini. Enza dreaded it, as there were times when Marco could not pay the rent. So Enza used to imagine her father’s empty pockets filled with gold coins. Her imagination helped her avoid despair; the things that frightened her could be willed away[57]. Enza imagined a satisfactory outcome to every problem, and thus far, the world had obeyed her will. Her family was warm, safe, and fed tonight, the rent was paid, and there was money in the tin box that had been empty for too long.