The Shoemaker's Wife (11 page)

Ciro entered the church, removing his cap. The vestibule was full, ten people deep. Ciro worked his way through the crowd to the back of the church. Every pew was filled. Rows of mourners stood in the aisles. The alcoves overflowed with people, and the stairs up to the choir loft were full. Ciro soon realized that the entire population of the village was standing in the church. Ciro had been hired to bury someone very important, a padrone, a
sindaco
, or perhaps a bishop.

Ciro was tall enough to see over the heads of the mourners. He looked down the long center aisle to the foot of the altar, where a small open casket rested. To his horror, Ciro realized that he had come to bury not an old man, but a child. Kneeling before the casket was the family, a mother and father and their children. They were dressed in clean, neatly pressed work clothes, but in no way would their humble appearance justify this elaborate funeral or the standing-room-only attendance. Ciro was surprised to see such a poor family, one of his own station, so exalted in church.

Giacomina knelt before the casket, placing her hands upon it as if to comfort a sleeping child in a cradle. Giacomina had never had the seventh baby she had promised her husband. How strange that she was thinking about the baby that had never been born as her own lay in her casket. The scent and sounds of a new baby in the house always sweetened the surroundings. The older children had their enchantments, and it was a pleasure to tend to them, but a baby brings a focus to the home. A new baby binds a family together anew.

Giacomina had believed that the absence of a seventh baby shielded the other six from harm. She had made a deal with God Almighty. In exchange for that seventh joy she had prayed for but not received, He would hold the six she had close and safe. But God had broken His promise. As she took in the faces of her children, she realized that she could not comfort them. Their loss was as catastrophic as her own.

Enza gripped her mother’s hand tightly as she knelt before the casket, taking in for the last time Stella’s sweet face and unruly curls. How many times Enza had stood at the foot of the crib when Stella was a baby, peering up at her as she slept! She did not look that different to Enza now.

Enza would hold the image of her baby sister in her heart like the curl of Stella’s hair that she had clipped and placed in a locket before the priest allowed the mourners into the church. Enza began to list all the things Stella had accomplished during her short life. Stella was learning to read. She knew the alphabet. She could recite her prayers, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Our Father. She knew the song “Ninna Nanna” and could dance the bergamasca. She was learning about nature; she could identify the poisonous red berries of the sagrada plant as well as the edible plumberries that grew wild on the cliffs. She knew the difference between alpine deer and wild elk from drawings in Papa’s book.

Stella knew about heaven, but it had been presented like a land of make-believe, a castle in the clouds where angels lived. Enza wondered if Stella understood what was happening as she lay dying. It was too cruel to imagine Stella’s last thoughts.

Life, Enza decided, is not about what you get, but what is taken from you. It’s in the things we lose that we discover what we most treasure. Enza’s most profound wish was that she might have kept Stella safe, that she had not failed her baby sister, that they would not have to face the years ahead without her.

Enza vowed never to forget Stella, not for a day.

The priest struck a long match and ignited the incense in the gold urn until streams of gray smoke curled from the open squares of the brass cup. He gently lowered the cap and lifted the urn on its rope chain, swinging it gently as he walked around the casket, anointing it, until puffs of smoke obscured the tiny casket, which now resembled a small golden ship sailing through clouds. The family encircled the casket as they had Stella’s bed.

The priest looked all around the church, unable to figure out a way to move the vast crowd through the cathedral so each mourner might pass the casket and pay their final respects. Ciro quickly grasped the problem. He nudged two young men and motioned for them to join him.

Ciro walked up the aisle with the boys, and, slipping behind the altar to the far side of the church, he motioned for the two young men to do the same on the other side of the church. They unbolted the side doors, top and bottom, letting in the fresh mountain air and beams of sunlight that immediately dispelled the gloom. The mourners formed a line and began to process past the casket and out from either side. The priest nodded his approval to Ciro.

Ciro observed the eldest daughter rise from her kneeling position to stand behind her grieving mother, placing her hands on her shoulders to comfort her. He looked away; to see such deep connection between mother and child awoke a particular grief of his own. He slipped out the side door through the crowd. Once outdoors, he took in the cool, fresh air. He figured it would take most of the afternoon to move the mourners through the cemetery after the final benediction. It would be hours before he could begin to dig the grave, and nightfall before he would return to Vilminore.

Hearing a dog whimper, Ciro looked up and saw his stray running around the side of the church toward him. He leaned down, and the dog nuzzled his hand.

“Hey, Spruzzo,” he whispered, happy for the company.

Ciro reached back into his knapsack and broke off a bit of salami for the dog as the mourners filed out of the church and into the streets of Schilpario in waves of black and gray, like low storm clouds off the cliffs.

A group of children left the church together. Ciro immediately recognized them as orphans. They were led by a nun whose hands were folded into her billowing black sleeves, her head bowed as she went. The sight of the children, moving quickly as if to ward off attention as they followed the nun, tore at his heart. He missed his own mother. Ciro had learned that the pain of her abandonment was only lying dormant; suddenly, when he was most unaware, the sight of a child around the age he was when Caterina left him at the convent would open the old wound again, piercing his fragile soul.

Ciro imagined his mother in a gold carriage, led by a team of black horses, stopping in front of the convent on a winter morning. Caterina would be wearing her best coat, of the deepest midnight blue velvet. She would reach down and extend her hands to her sons, beckoning them to join her. In this dream, Ciro and Eduardo were young boys again. This time, she wouldn’t leave them behind; instead, she would scoop them up and place them on the seat of the carriage. The driver would turn to them: their father, Carlo, smiling with the contentment of a happy man with a clear conscience, who needs nothing in this world but a woman who loves him and the family they have made together.

Chapter 6

A BLUE ANGEL
Un Angelo Azzurro

A
silver mist settled over the cemetery of Sant’Antonio da Padova as the sun sank behind the mountain. The wrought-iron gates of the cemetery were propped open, revealing a flat field cluttered with headstones and surrounded along the periphery by a series of crypts.

Prominent families had built ornate marble and granite mausoleums that featured outdoor altars, open porticoes, and hand-painted frescoes. There were also simple, spare structures in the Roman style, with columns offsetting crypts inlaid with gold lettering.

Ciro knew that grave-digging in Schilpario would be difficult. Barite and iron mines lay beneath the village, which meant that the ground was loaded with shale. Even as his shovel struck rock again and again, he persisted, excavating white limestone hunks that looked like oversize pearls and stacked them by the grave.

Stella’s casket rested nearby on the marble floor of a mausoleum entrance. It was covered in a blessed cloth, ready to be placed in the grave when Ciro’s work was done.

Spruzzo sat on the edge of the open grave and watched his new master make steady progress, the mound of dirt next to the headstone growing higher and higher. Earlier, after final rites were performed at the graveside, the casket had been lowered into the shallow grave and covered with greenery. As soon as the last mourners left, Ciro removed the spray, lifted the casket out of the grave, and commenced digging seven feet into the earth. After two hours of digging, the shale gave way to dry earth, and Ciro dug the last two feet into the pit in no time at all.

Ciro climbed out of the grave to retrieve the casket.

Years ago, the Ravanelli family had purchased a small plot and marked it with a delicate sculpted angel of blue marble. Ciro preferred the Ravanellis’ plot, elegant in its simplicity, to the fancy mausoleums.

Ciro lifted the small casket and set it down beside the pit. He placed it gently on the ground and jumped into the grave.

“Here. Let me help,” a girl said.

Ciro peeked up from the ragged hem of the grave to see the eldest Ravanelli daughter standing over him. In this light, she seemed ethereal, like an angel herself. Her long black hair was loose, and her eyes pierced through the mist, black as jet beads. She wore a starched white apron over her paisley dress. Wiping her tears away with her handkerchief, she stuffed it into her sleeve before kneeling.

Ciro could see that the girl needed to help, that the finality of burying the casket would give her some peace. “Okay,” he said. “You lift one end, and I’ll take the other.”

Carefully, they lifted Stella’s casket together. Ciro placed it gently in the grave and positioned it in the earth firmly before climbing out. Enza knelt on the ground and bowed her head. Ciro waited for her to finish her prayer.

“You might want to go now,” Ciro said softly.

“I want to be here.”

Ciro looked around. “But I have to cover the casket now,” he said gently, as he leaned against the shovel.

“I know.”

“Are you sure?”

Enza nodded that she was sure. “I don’t want to leave my sister.”

Spruzzo whined. Enza extended her hand, and the dog trotted over to her.

“There’s some food in my knapsack,” Ciro told her.

Enza opened the burlap sack and found the end of the sausage Sister Teresa had packed for him.

“If you’re hungry, help yourself,” he offered.

“
Grazie
.” She smiled at him.

Enza’s smile filled Ciro with a feeling of warmth as he stood next to the mound of cold earth. He smiled back at her.

Enza fed Spruzzo bits of sausage as Ciro shoveled. He layered the ground evenly, until the surface on top was smooth and level with the other graves. When he was done, Enza helped him move the limestone rocks off to the side.

When they were done, Enza replaced the spray over the fresh grave until barely any earth showed through the quilt of green juniper and pine that the ladies of the church had gathered. Enza lifted long, fresh green branches of myrtle from a stack she had gathered that morning and made an edge around the grave, framing the grave in deepest green. She stood back; it looked lovely, she thought.

Ciro gathered the shovel and pick as Enza folded the holy cloth carefully.

“I have to return that to the priest,” Ciro said.

“I know.” Enza tucked it under her arm. “They use it at every funeral.”

“Do you press the linens?” Ciro asked.

“Sometimes. The ladies of the village alternate between the linens and tending to meals for the priest.”

“No nuns in Schilpario?”

“Just the one who runs the orphanage. And she’s too busy to do extra chores.”

Enza led Ciro out of the cemetery. Spruzzo followed behind, wagging his tail as he went.

“I can take it from here,” Ciro said to her. “Unless . . . you want to show me the way.” He smiled to invite her along.

“The rectory is behind the church,” Enza said. “Like it is in every village in every province in Italy.”

“You don’t have to tell me about churches.”

“Are you studying to be a priest?” Enza assumed he might be because he wore the clothes of the poor, and many entered the religious life because it was a good alternative to a life in the mines, or other hard-labor jobs on the mountain like stonecutting.

“Do I look like a priest?” Ciro asked her.

“I don’t know. Priests look like everyone else.”

“Well, let’s just say I will never be a priest.”

“So you’re a grave digger?”

“This is my first, and hopefully my last, time.” He realized how that sounded, so he said, “I’m sorry.”

“I understand. It’s not a pleasant job.” Enza smiled. “I’m Enza.”

“I’m Ciro.”

“Where are you from?”

“Vilminore.”

“We go there during the feast. Do you live in the village or on a farm?”

“I live in the convent.” It surprised him that he so readily admitted where he lived. Usually, when talking to girls, he was reluctant to tell them about San Nicola and how he had grown up.

“Are you an orphan?” Enza asked.

“My mother left us there.”

“Us? You have brothers and sisters?”

“One brother, Eduardo,” he said. “Not like you. What’s that like, to be from a big family?” he asked.

“Noisy.” She smiled.

“Like the convent.”

“I thought the nuns were quiet.”

“Me too. Until I lived with them.”

“So none of the piety rubbed off on you?”

“Not much.” Ciro smiled. “But that’s not their fault. It’s just that I don’t think prayers are answered very often, if at all.”

“But that’s why you need faith.”

“The nuns keep telling me I need it, but where am I supposed to find it?”

“In your heart, I guess.”

“There are other things in my heart.”

“Like what?” Enza asked.

“Maybe you’ll find out someday,” Ciro said shyly. Enza picked up a stick and tossed it up the road, and Spruzzo ran to fetch it.

They walked up the road and into town. Enza noticed that their strides were similar as they walked together. She didn’t find herself skipping to keep up with him, even though he was bigger and taller than she.