The House of Scorta Read Free Page A

Filomena might have had if she’d been allowed to age. Immacolata never married. She felt as if life had lost interest in her and she would never experience anything more thrilling than the changing of the seasons. In her years of boredom, she often thought back on the man who had courted her sister when she herself was still a child, and it was always with a kind of quiver of pleasure. He was terrifying. His roguish smile haunted her. The memory of him made her drunk with excitement.
    Fifteen years later, when she opened the door and saw that man standing before her, asking for nothing, everything seemed clear. She had no choice but to submit to the blind force of destiny. The scoundrel was right in front of her, within her reach. Later, in the bedroom, when, at the sight of her nude body, he whispered her sister’s name, she paled. She suddenly understood that he thought she was Filomena. She hesitated a moment. Should she resist him? Point out his mistake? She hadn’t the slightest desire to do so. There he stood before her. If taking her for her sister would bring him greater pleasure, she would grant him this luxury. There was no lie in it. She gave in to everything he wanted, without complication. Simply to be, for once in her life, a man’s woman.
    Don Giorgio had begun to administer last rites to the dying man. But Luciano could no longer hear him. He was doubled up with rage.
    “I am Luciano Mascalzone and I am dying in ridicule. My whole life for this bad joke. But it doesn’t matter. Filomena or Immacolata, it makes no difference. I am satisfied. Can anyone understand that? Fifteen years I thought of that woman. Fifteen years I dreamed of her embrace and the comfort it would bring me. The minute I got out, I did what I had to do. I went to that house and made love to the woman I found there. Fifteen years, thinking only of that. Fate decided to play a trick on me, but who can fight that? It’s not in my power to reverse the course of rivers or put out the stars in the sky. I am only a man. I did all a man can do. I went all the way there, knocked on that door, and made love to the woman who opened it… I am only a man. If fate wants to make a fool of me, I can do nothing about it… I am Luciano Mascalzone and I’m sinking into death, far from the noisy world sniggering over my body…”
    He died before the village priest had finished praying. He would have laughed if he had known, before dying, what would come of this day.
    Immacolata Biscotti became pregnant. The poor woman would give birth to a son. Thus the Mascalzone line was born. From a blunder. A misunderstanding. From a scoundrel of a father, murdered two hours after the embrace, and an old maid who gave herself to a man for the first time. A family was born. From a man who’d made a mistake and a woman who’d played along with the lie because her knees were clattering with desire.
    A family was born of this day of burning sunlight, because destiny felt like toying with people the way cats, using the tips of their paws, sometimes do with injured birds.

 
     
    T he wind is blowing. It flattens the dry grass and makes the rocks whistle. It’s a hot wind carrying the sounds of the village and the smells of the sea. I am an old woman. My body creaks like the windblown trees. I am burdened by fatigue and the wind is blowing. Let me lean on you to keep from tottering. Kindly give me your arm. You are a man in your prime. I feel it in your body’s calm strength. Clinging to you, I won’t give in to exhaustion. The wind whistles in our ears and carries away some of my words. You can hardly hear what I’m saying. Don’t let it bother you. I prefer it this way. Let the wind bear away a little of what I’m saying. It’s easier for me. I’m not used to speaking. I am a Scorta. My brothers and I were the children of the Mute, and the whole town of Montepuccio used to call us “the silent ones.”
    You are surprised to hear me speak. It’s the