Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [7]
The chiazza was Scilla’s heartbeat. It was on the third level in Scilla and overlooked the castle, the neighborhood of the Chianalea, and the beach. Its western end jutted out over the sea. Adjacent to the square were rows of pino marino trees and flowering bushes; in June the air was scented with honeysuckle. In good weather, which was nearly every day, people would gather there in the evenings, and on Sundays. Children were scooted away to play so that the adults could have a glass of wine and gossip. Giovanna and Nunzio had a spot under a bougainvillea bush where they could listen undetected while they shelled and sucked on pistachios.
They loved when the talk turned from the village to the news of the world. Town gossip was boring. Generally it was a topic the men all agreed upon, and it made for uneventful conversation. “The fish are running good,” and they would all nod and grumble in agreement, “Sì, the fish are running good.” But when the subject was the politics of Italy, that was an entirely different matter. Arguments and curses flew fast and furious, fists were raised in dramatic thrusts, and unlikely alliances were both made and broken.
When Giovanna and Nunzio heard that a northern newspaper had made its way into town, it didn’t matter how many chores they had, they would make sure they were under the bougainvillea bush with an extra stash of pistachios and a flask of wine. On these nights, Vittorio, one of the few contadini in the village who could read, would scrub his hands and muscular forearms with lemons to rid them of the fish smell and put on his best shirt. He would stride to the chiazza and sit in the prime spot that had been reserved for him. Within minutes, scores of men would gather around Vittorio with the women on the perimeter pretending to be absorbed in their sewing.
Vittorio would read aloud from what was usually a Roman newspaper, although sometimes a paper made it all the way from Milano. Their local newspaper was published in Reggio and written in their dialect, but it didn’t have the same incendiary content of the northern papers. The northern papers were written in Italian, which was only vaguely similar to the dialect spoken in Scilla. Also, the paper was invariably three months old, and along the way pages had been torn out to blow a nose or to wrap the day’s catch. So Vittorio would struggle to read what was left of the words that most closely resembled his own language.
“And then, the pig says”—Vittorio was prone to commentary—“our Italia must be protected by an Italian army. Our good men from l’alta Italia are serving, and so must the lazy dogs of the south whose families whine that they can’t leave their farms.”
“That stupid son of a whore!” Luigi DiFranco, a goat herder, shouted, jumping on his chair. It wobbled on the uneven cobblestones beneath. “If my son goes in their goddamn army, who will take care of the goats and make the cheese to pay their taxes!!??”
Every man shouted at once.
“Who will fix the nets?”
“Dogs! They are pigs! Sporcaccioni!”
“How come they tax my mule but not their rich friends’ cows? I’m not stupid!”
“Will their sons plow my land?”
The men were so loud that Vittorio’s brother lit a firecracker to stun them into silence.
Cesare, one of the oldest men in the village, was the first to speak. “Who is this Italia and why does she need an army? Is she a Roman queen?”
After a moment there was laughter, but Vittorio was getting impatient; he wanted to continue reading. “Cesare, do you know nothing? Italia is the country we live in. The north, the south, Sicilia, we are all this country of Italia.”
“Cesare’s right!” The firecracker had done little to change Luigi’s mood. “Who is this Italia? I’m Calabrese. I can’t afford to be an Italian. They taxed my goat, they taxed my mule, and now they want to take my son. Italian my ass!”
“It’s the