The Stone Boudoir by Theresa Maggio

Author:Theresa Maggio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2011-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

Martina was one of the poorest people I had met in Sicily, a soft-spoken woman in her early thirties, the mother of a teenage girl. Her husband, Carlo, was out of work. They lived at the bottom of anyone’s hierarchy in subsidized housing in Locati, a village of red-orange tile rooftops nestled in a soft green valley rimmed by limestone cliffs and mountaintops. Their daughter slept on a cot in her parents’ bedroom, the only bedroom in the house. Their bathroom had a sink and toilet but no shower or tub. They kept a Coke bottle filled with spring water in the refrigerator. Carlo climbed a mountain to reach the spring.

Wild things were free and Martina knew all the wild things that could serve: sulla, the peppery clover you could pick by the side of the road (peel the skin and eat the pith); pine nuts for making pesto; the succulent plant whose dried stalks can be fashioned into lightweight stools; the snails that can be eaten; the broken agave leaf, which oozes a liquid Martina’s mother once used as laundry detergent when she used to wash clothes at the stream.

One morning Martina and Carlo invited me to spend the afternoon with them on a trip to Alimena, the next town over, where Carlo was born. I met them at their home—three rooms on two floors in an ancient apartment building on a hill in the heart of Locati. Carlo was mild-mannered and gaunt, with straight jet-black hair and high cheekbones. We climbed into his faded gray Fiat, all scratched and dented, and drove twenty minutes in intermittent downpours. The gray outskirts of Alimena were classic bleak, like a New Jersey wasteland, and gave me the same sinking feeling. Yet a sign welcomed us in English, German, and French.

“Are there tourists?” I asked, incredulous, from the backseat.

“In summer, yes. The children of emigrants,” Carlo said. The old people who had remained welcomed their grandchildren back from Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain, and Australia, where there were jobs. “Those born abroad don’t speak Italian anymore,” he said. “Once they were all farmers. Do you know how many mules there were here once? The streets were full of shit.”

Carlo drove us to the Church of Sant’Alfonso, high on a hill. The church was falling apart. He tried the door but it was locked. The town’s patron saint was inside. “Alfonso,” Carlo said. “We used to take him out during droughts.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then it rained.”

It was getting late. Martina had to prepare dinner and tend to the house. On the way back to Locati, the carabinieri stopped us. A cop in a Nazi-like uniform, with expensive sunglasses, glossy knee-high black boots, and a brimmed hat heavy with gilded vegetation came up to Carlo’s window.

“Documenti.” He opened his hand. Carlo gave him his identification card, license, registration, and proof of insurance. The cop took Carlo to his patrol car parked in the intersection while Martina and I waited for fifteen minutes. Nothing happened.

“Why did they stop us?”

“Maybe they are looking for someone,” Martina said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.