A Winter's Night Read Free Page B

town, there was a story to be told for every event, and this one was no exception.
    Don Massimino had been a poor man his whole life and even in the parish, where he could have enjoyed the generous revenues coming in from its five prebendal properties, he never used a whit more than what he needed, dividing the rest between the diocese and the poor. He’d asked to be buried in a simple shroud, without a coffin, because that amount of money could be used to buy enough wheat to feed a family for a whole week. But the devil, who he had defeated so many times in his life, made sure to give him payback in his final place of rest. Nettles and weeds grew on his grave and a big snake black as ink had burrowed in to stay, so that no one dared to get close enough to clean it up a bit or lay down a bunch of meadow flowers.
    Until one day, when a white and black magpie hid an acorn that soon took root. An oak tree grew quickly and spread a dome of green leaves over the grave. The weeds and nettles died, and emerald green grass as fine as cat’s fur grew in their place. A hawk nabbed the snake as it left its den and devoured it. And every springtime since then, the humble grave of Don Massimino was covered with daisies.
    The people took heart at stories like this one and many others, invented to lead them to believe that there was someone who was thinking of them in their moments of pain, hunger and despair. The poorest families faced the winter as a scourge sent by God, living in hovels where their piss froze in the urinals at night and all the rosaries the women said did not suffice to protect them from malnutrition and disease. Babies were born small and didn’t thrive, as their mothers had no milk. Thin, almost transparent, they struggled on until a fever took them away. The women had no tears left. They would open a window so that the little one’s soul could fly up to the sky, and whisper: “Saints in heaven!”
    At least the child had stopped suffering, whereas they had not. There would be another pregnancy and more trouble and tribulation and more children who cried with hunger until they lost their voices, because men would never give
that
thing up, and it didn’t count to close your eyes and say the rosary to stop from getting pregnant. There was never an easy day in the homes of the day laborers, who went into debt in the wintertime for as long as the shops would give them credit, hoping to pay it off in the springtime, when they could earn a day’s pay.
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    The Brunis had lived in the same house and worked the same land for one hundred years, or maybe even more: no one had ever kept records, after all, and no one remembered where the family came from. They had no money but they had never gone hungry: they could always count on enough milk, cheese, eggs, bread, prosciutto and
salame
, because the landowner lived in Bologna, the steward showed up once in a blue moon and the Brunis took what they needed to stay strong.
    As times got worse, however, the owner had become more demanding. Just a year before, when old Callisto went into town with the horse and cart to settle the accounts, he had to hear that he’d have to be content with half the wheat and half the corn and from the way things were going, the same could be expected for the year just begun as well. That’s why he kept putting off the day when he’d have to go to the city. Clerice asked again and again: “Callisto, when are you going to settle up with the landlord?”
    He would answer: “One of these days, Clerice, one of these days.”
    But they’d nearly run out of white flour and yellow flour and so the time had come for the head of the family to hitch up the horse, to put on his brown velvet suit and white hemp shirt and to pay a visit to notary Barzini. Clerice waved goodbye from the side of the road with a white handkerchief as if he were leaving for the war.
    He returned at dusk in a black mood. He