The Good Left Undone
Adriana Trigiani
For Lucia
PART ONE
LET WHOEVER LONGS TO ATTAIN ETERNAL LIFE IN HEAVEN HEED THESE WARNINGS:
When considering the past, contemplate these things:
The evil done
The good left undone
The time wasted
PROLOGUE
Karur, India
LONG, LONG AGO
The mountain was a tabernacle with one door. Behind that door, beneath cool black caverns chiseled deep into the earth, lay the richest veins of corundum, pyrite, and rubies in all of southern Asia.
Outside the mouth of the mine, the sun blistered the red ground stamped with footprints of all sizes. The scents of cloves and clay hung in a haze so thick, it was impossible to see the road. Gem traders were gathering nearby in the village of Karur to await the haul when they turned toward the mountain. They heard the braying of the elephant, a mournful sound filled with longing, like the low throttle of a trumpet in the dark. When the beast’s massive head appeared in the entrance of the mine, her wailing grew louder and echoed through the hills.
The elephant’s eyes were clouded with a white film from the cataracts of old age. Burgundy streaks of dried blood where she had been beaten with chains marked her ample coat. Her front and back legs were harnessed with thick hemp ropes secured with iron clamps that dug into her soft gray skin. She pulled a massive flatbed piled high with rock, speckled with raw rubies.
The mahout was slight of build, his skin the color of cinnamon. He draped himself over the elephant’s back as the iron bit attached to the lead chains swelled in the animal’s mouth. The elephant shook her head to loosen the bit. Her master tightened his grip.
The elephant stopped. She was neither inside the mine nor outside of it.
“Jao!” the mahout shouted as the prop timbers across the entrance entrapped him. The elephant ignored his command. The mahout whipped her with the slack of the chain as he lay on top of her. “Jao!”
The animal stood firm.
For the first time in her long life, the elephant did not obey the mahout’s command. She did not buckle under the lash of the chain; instead, she lifted her head and raised her trunk to find the way forward.
The elephant remembered the field of sweetgrass on the banks of the Amaravati River. The memory of it gave the beast the strength to pull the flatbed out of the mine and into the light.
CHAPTER 1
Viareggio, Italy
NOW
Matelda Roffo closed her eyes and tried to remember what happened next. Something happened to the mahout, that much she knew. Sadly, the details of the bedtime story her grandfather had told her had slipped away with the rest of the nonessential information her mind could no longer retain. Old age was a box of surprises and not the good kind. Why hadn’t she written down the story of the elephant? She’d meant to, so many times, but never got around to it. Why was she such a procrastinator? Who would know the ending? Nino! She would call her brother in America! But his mind was shot too. Who would tell the story of the elephant when she was gone? A family was only as strong as their stories.
Matelda’s grandfather Pietro Cabrelli, Toscano by birth, had been a gem cutter and a goldsmith. He created chalices, patens, and pyxes for the Vatican using the most precious jewels and metals on earth, but he did not own them. Cabrelli worked on commission set by the buyer. His wife, Netta, was not impressed. “You might as well sweep the streets of Roma because you’d be paid the same for your trouble.”
Every day after school, Matelda had joined her grandfather in the workroom of his shop. She sat in the windowsill with her feet resting on the radiator, quietly observing him. Cabrelli worked over an open blue flame, brazing the gold into shapes when he wasn’t measuring, cutting, or polishing the stones to be inlaid into their settings. He wore a leather work apron, a magnifying glass around his neck, a pencil tucked behind his ear, and he carried a chisel in his back pocket. The first music Matelda heard was the hum of the bruting wheel, a high-pitched sound similar to a detaché on the violin. Cabrelli would hold a shard of stone no bigger than her fingernail against the coarse surface to polish it. To pass the time, Cabrelli taught his granddaughter to study gems through the loupe. Matelda was delighted every time the light in the facets created a kaleidoscope that played through the colors of the stone. Matelda had fun in the shop, but she also had responsibilities. It was her job to open the windows when Cabrelli soldered the metals, and to close them when he was done.
There was a map of the world on the wall of the workroom where Cabrelli had circled the most productive ruby mines. He showed her places in South America, China, and Africa, but his finger would eventually trace back to India, where he had drawn the most circles. Cabrelli worked with rubies because the Holy Roman Church favored red. He was certain his creations were sparked by the divine. To encrust jewels on a monstrance that held the Blessed Sacrament was to imbue it with the properties of faith and time.
Matelda squeezed her eyes shut and leaned forward as she gripped the church pew, inhaling the scents of beeswax and frankincense, which seemed to jolt her sense memory. Instead of praying in the silence between the distribution of Holy Communion and the final blessing, she scrolled through the hard drive of her brain back to the days when her parents, grandparents, and baby brother lived in the same house and walked together every Sunday to this church.