The Shoemaker's Wife

Chapter 2

A RED BOOK

Un Libro Rosso

Halfway down the mountain, in the early afternoon, Marco stopped to rest Cipi on the outskirts of Clusone. He helped Caterina down from the cart. She thanked him—the first time she had spoken directly to him since the trip began that morning.

Marco opened a tin and offered her a fresh, crusty roll, thin slivers of salami, and a bottle of sweet soda. Caterina took a handkerchief tucked inside her sleeve and placed the bread and salami on it while Marco opened the bottle of soda. She took a small bite of the biscuit and chewed slowly.

Marco had been a coachman since he was a boy. His father had taught him how to take care of horses, shoe and feed them, build and maintain equipment, and serve customers, and he still followed his father’s advice: The coachman must know his place and speak only when spoken to. Half the negotiated fare is collected at the beginning of the trip, the balance at the end. A coachman should engage a strong horse and provide a clean carriage with the feed stored out of sight. There should be several rest points on a long journey, announced to the customer beforehand. Food and drink should be provided, as well as pipe tobacco, snuff, cigarettes, and matches. The coachman should be familiar with the route, and know the location of way stations in case of illness or accident. Once the destination is reached, the coachman is responsible for the secure delivery of the customer’s belongings.

This particular afternoon, Marco forgot the rule about conversing with passengers. He was thinking of his children, and knowing that Signora Lazzari was also a mother, he sensed that she might be simpatico. The little boy she’d left behind tore at Marco’s heart. Caterina was stoic until the carriage reached the cleft of the pass. It was only then that she wept.

“I told my daughter that it wouldn’t snow beyond Valle di Scalve.” Marco looked out over the expanse of the valley, frozen over in white ice, the hills curved like sculpted marble. The road ahead seemed clear; the only danger Marco foresaw was the occasional patch of black ice.

“You were right.” Caterina took the biscuit and broke it in half, giving the other half to Marco.

“Thank you,” he said.

She took a bite.

“Do you have a daughter?” Marco asked.

“No. Two boys. You saw Ciro, and there’s Eduardo. He’s a year older.”

“Was he at the convent too?”

She nodded that he was. Marco looked at Caterina, roughly his own age, and decided that she was taking the years better than he. The early mornings tending the animals, the long days working in the iron ore mine for little return, and the constant anxiety about how to provide for his family had made Marco feel and look older than his age. There had been a time when a beautiful woman like Caterina could turn his head. In the right circumstances, she still could.

“I always wanted a daughter,” she admitted.

“My eldest is a good girl. She helps her mother and me, and she doesn’t complain. Enza is ten years old, and already so wise. I have two sons and three more girls.”

“You must have a farm.”

“No, no, just the cart and the horse.”

Caterina couldn’t imagine why Marco would have six children unless he needed to put them to work on a farm. A couple of strong boys was all he would need to keep a carting business with a livery stable going. “You must have a good wife.”

“A very good wife. And your husband?” Marco realized that he was asking very personal questions, inappropriate for a lady like Caterina. “I only ask because you left your boys at the convent,” he explained.

“I am a widow,” Caterina offered, but she did not elaborate.

Caterina’s station in life—once as the daughter of a prominent family, then as a young wife and mother, and now as a widow—required her to hold herself to standards of decorum. A lady didn’t confide in a coachman, even when she may very well have been even poorer than he.

“The sisters of San Nicola are very kind,” Marco said.

“Yes, they are.” Caterina was sure he was referring to the envelope that Sister Domenica had given to him, which paid for this trip. For Caterina, the nuns had been more than generous. They had taken the boys on short notice and made her arrangements as well.

“Your boys should do very well there.”

“I hope they will.”

“Many years ago, when I was a boy, the nuns of San Nicola gave me a remembrance card. I still carry it with me.” Marco reached into his pocket and handed her a small illustrated card trimmed in gold.

“A talisman.” Caterina’s father used to print cards like this one, depicting the Holy Family protected by angels. They were distributed on feast days or at funerals, often with the name of the dead embossed upon the back. Her eyes filled with tears at the memory of the boxes of them in her father’s print shop. “I understand why this gives you comfort. Are you a believer?”

“Yes, I am,” Marco said.

“Not me. Not anymore.” Caterina handed the card back to Marco. If only the image on the card were true. She had long given up on the angels and saints. Their power to soothe her had died with her husband. She climbed back up into the carriage without Marco’s help, suddenly impatient with the length of the journey. “How much longer is the trip?”

“We’ll be in Bergamo by nightfall.”

They continued down the Passo Presolana, over Pointe Nossa, through Colzate, past Vertova, for a final rest stop in Nembro, where Signora Lazzari changed out of her traveling clothes and into a proper dress before arriving in Bergamo. Marco surmised the appointment Signora was to keep must be important. She fixed her hair, her hat, and her gown, which once had been stylish but now was worn along the hem and cuffs. The coachman and his customer did not exchange another word.

Enza closed the wooden shutters on the window at the front of the house. As she threw the latch, cold wind whistled through the slats. With the hearth crackling behind her, stoked with wood and a few pieces of coal, and the laundry kettle about to boil, the kitchen was filled with a warm and welcome mist.

This was Enza’s favorite time of day, when night had fallen in Schilpario and the children were in bed. Baby Stella slept in a woven basket draped with a soft white blanket. Her face looked like a pink peach by the firelight.

Giacomina, Enza’s mother, a capable woman with a sweet face and soft hands, stirred a pot of milk on the fire. She wore her long brown hair with a center part and two braids, wrapped neatly in a bun at the base of her neck.

Giacomina stooped over the flame until the milk foamed and placed the pan on a stone trivet. She lifted two ceramic cups from the shelf, placing them on the table, dropped a pat of butter in each cup, and poured the milk on top. Reaching up to pull a small bottle of homemade brandy from the shelf, she put a teaspoon in her cup, a couple of drops in Enza’s. She stirred the mixture and ladled the foam left in the pan on top.

“This will warm you up.” Giacomina gave Enza her cup. They sat down at the end of their dining table, made from wide planks of alder, with matching benches on either side. How Enza wished she could buy her mother a dining room suite made from polished mahogany with fabric seats, and a new set of china to dress the table, just like Signora Arduini had at her house.

“Papa should be back by now.”

“You know the trip back up the mountain is always longer.” Mama sipped her milk. “I’ll wait up for him. You can go to bed.”

“I have wash to do.” Enza shrugged.

Giacomina smiled. The laundry could wait, but Enza wanted an excuse to be awake when her father returned. It was always the same. Enza couldn’t sleep until all the members of the family were safe inside, asleep in their beds.

“Mama, tell me a story.” Enza reached across the table and took Giacomina’s hand. She spun her mother’s gold wedding band around her finger, feeling the grooves of the tiny carved rosebuds etched into the gold. Enza believed it was the most beautiful piece of jewelry in the world.

“I’m tired, Enza.”

“Please. The story of your wedding day.”

Enza had heard the love story so many times that her own mother and father had become as magical to her as figures in her favorite book, drawn in exquisite detail and eternally young in the telling. Enza studied the photograph of her parents on their wedding day as if it were a map. In a sense it was, as they were creating a destination, a life together. The bride and groom sat stiffly in two chairs. Mama held a bouquet of mountain asters tightly as Papa rested his hand on her shoulder.

“Your papa came to see me one Sunday when I was sixteen and he was seventeen,” Giacomina began the familiar story. “He drove the governess cart—at that time, it belonged to his father. It was painted white in those days, and that morning, he had filled it with fresh flowers. There was barely room for your papa on the bench.

“Cipi, just three years old, had pink ribbons braided through his mane. Papa arrived at our house, threw off the reins, leaped off the bench, came into the house, and asked my papa if he could marry me. I was the last daughter in my family to marry. My papa had married off five daughters, and by the time it was my turn, he barely looked up from his pipe. He just said yes, and we went to the priest, that was that.”

“And Papa said—”

“Your father told me that he wanted seven sons and seven daughters.”

“And you said—”

“Seven children will be enough.”

“And now we have six.”

“God owes us one more,” Giacomina teased.

“I think we have enough children around here, Mama. We barely have enough food as it is, and I don’t see God showing up at the door with a sack of flour. “

Mama smiled. She had grown to appreciate Enza’s wry sense of humor. Her eldest daughter had a mature view of the world, and she was worried that Enza was overly concerned with adult problems.

Enza went to the fire to check the iron kettle suspended on the spit and filled with bubbling hot water, melted down from snow. A second pot, resting on the hearth, filled with clean hot water, was used to rinse the clothes. Enza lifted the pot off the fire and placed it on the floor. She picked up a wooden basket full of nightshirts and placed them into the kettle to soak, added lye, and stirred the laundry with a metal rod, careful not to splash the lye onto her skin. As she stirred, the nightshirts turned bright white.

Enza poured off the excess water into an empty pot and hauled it to the far end of the kitchen, where her father had made a chute in the floor, feeding into a pipe that released water down the mountainside. She wrung the nightshirts by hand and gave them to her mother, who hung them on a rope by the fire, mother and daughter making quick work of a big chore. The lye, sweetened with a few drops of lavender oil, filled the room with the fresh scent of summer.

Giacomina and Enza heard footsteps on the landing. They ran to the door, opening it wide. Marco was on the porch, brushing the snow off his boots.

“Papa! You made it!”

Marco came into the house and embraced Giacomina. “Signor Arduini came for the rent this morning,” she whispered.

“What did you tell him?” Papa lifted Enza off the ground and kissed her.

“I told him to wait and speak to my husband.”

“Did he smile?” Marco asked his wife.

“No.”

“Well, he just did. I stopped at his house and paid him the rent. On time, with thirty-five minutes to spare.”

Enza and Giacomina embraced Marco. “Did you girls think that I would let you down?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Enza said truthfully. “That’s a big mountain and there’s a lot of snow, and we have an old horse. And sometimes, even when you do a good job, passengers only pay the first half of the fare, and you get stuck for the rest.”

Marco laughed. “Not this time.” Papa placed two crisp lire and a small gold coin on the dining table. Enza touched each bill and spun the gold coin, thrilled at the treasure.

Giacomina lifted a warming pan from the hearth filled with her husband’s dinner. She served her husband a casserole of buttery polenta and sweet sausage, and poured him a glass of brandy.

“Where did you take the passenger, Papa?”

“To Domenico Picarazzi, the doctor.”

“I wonder why she needs a doctor.” Giacomina placed a heel of bread next to his plate. “Did she seem ill?”

“No.” Marco sipped his brandy. “But she’s suffering. I think she must have just become a widow. She had just placed her sons in the convent in Vilminore.”

“Poor things,” Giacomina said.

“Don’t think about taking them in, Mina.”

Enza noticed that her father used her mother’s nickname whenever he didn’t want to do something.

“Two boys. Around Enza’s age: ten and eleven.”

Giacomina’s heart broke at the thought of the lonely boys.

“Mama, we can’t take them,” Enza said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s two more children, and God only plans to send you one more.”

Marco laughed as Enza stacked the laundry pots and kettles next to the hearth. She kissed her mother and father goodnight and climbed the ladder up to the loft to sleep.

Enza tiptoed in the dark past the crib where Stella slept and over to her brothers and other sister, who slept on one large straw mattress, their bodies crisscrossed like a basket weave. She found her place on the far side of the bed and lay down to sleep. The sound of the gentle breathing of her brothers and sisters soothed her.

Enza prayed without making the sign of the cross, saying her rosary, or reciting the familiar litanies from vespers in Latin. Instead she called on the angels, thanking them for bringing her father home safely. She imagined her angels looked a lot like the gold-leafed putti holding sheaves of wheat over the tabernacle at the church of Barzesto, with faces that resembled that of her baby sister Stella.

Enza prayed to stay near her mother and father. She wanted to live with them always, and never marry or become a mother herself. She couldn’t imagine ever being that brave, courageous enough to stand away from all she knew to choose something different. She wanted to live in the same village she had been born in, just like her mother. She wanted to hold every baby on the day he was born and bury every old person on the day he died. She wanted to wake up every day to live and work in the shadows of il Pizzo Camino, Corno Stella, and Pizzo dei Tre Signorei, the holy trinity of mountain peaks that she had been in awe of her whole life.

Enza prayed that she could help her mother take care of the children, and maybe one more when God sent him. She hoped the new baby would be a boy, so Battista and Vittorio would feel less outnumbered. She prayed for patience, because babies are a lot of work.

Enza prayed for her father to make enough lire to buy the house, so they wouldn’t have to live in fear of the padrone any longer. When the first of the month arrived, so would Signor Arduini. Enza dreaded it, as there were times when Marco could not pay the rent. So Enza used to imagine her father’s empty pockets filled with gold coins. Her imagination helped her avoid despair; the things that frightened her could be willed away. Enza imagined a satisfactory outcome to every problem, and thus far, the world had obeyed her will. Her family was warm, safe, and fed tonight, the rent was paid, and there was money in the tin box that had been empty for too long.

Throughout the day, she pictured her father as he came up the mountain, imagining each curve of the road, the rest stops where Cipi ate oats and Papa enjoyed a smoke. She imagined each clop of the hooves that led her father safely back up the pass, one after the other, like the consistent ticking of a clock. In her mind’s eye, she willed Marco home to Schilpario, safely, surely, and without incident, and with the promised three lire in his pocket that would get his family through the long winter.

Enza knew how lucky she was, and how sad it was that everyone on the mountain did not share that luck. Her papa had done a good job, and he had been paid. For now, all was well. When she dreamed that night, she would imagine the young widow who suffered the loss of her husband and now her sons. Poverella, she thought.