The Shoemaker's Wife(151)

“No, Sister.” Ciro smiled weakly. “I’m not a good Catholic.”

“Well, Ciro, you’re a good man, and that’s more important.”

“Don’t let the priest hear you.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry. We have Father D’Alessandro from Calabria. He is nearly deaf.”

“What happened to Don Gregorio?”

“He went to Sicily.”

“Not Elba? He wasn’t banished like Napoleon?”

“He’s a secretary to the provost of the regional bishops.”

“His cunning got him far.”

“I think so.” Sister poured herself a cup of water. “Do you want to know what happened to Concetta Martocci?”

Ciro smiled. “Is it a happy story?”

“She married Antonio Baratta, who is now a doctor. They live in Bergamo and have four sons together.”

Ciro looked off and thought about how life had changed for him and those he knew. Even Concetta Martocci had found a way to redeem the worst thing that had happened to her. This made Ciro smile.

“Concetta Martocci still makes you smile.” Sister laughed.

“Not so much, Sister. There are other things. I am anxious to see my brother. My heart fills at the thought of seeing my mother. I want to visit my wife’s family. I promised Enza I would go up the pass to Schilpario. Has much changed on the mountain?”

“Not much. Come with me,” Sister said. “I want to prove to you how well I keep a promise.”

Ciro followed Sister Teresa behind the kitchen to the convent cemetery. She stopped at a small headstone near the end of the gate.

“Poor Spruzzo,” Ciro said. “He wandered these trails like an orphan, until he found an orphan.”

“No, not poor Spruzzo. He had a happy life. He ate better than the priest. I gave him the best cuts of meat.”

“Saint Francis would approve.” Ciro smiled.

The convent had finally been given the old carriage when the priest graduated to having a motorcar. The current horse, Rollatini, was donated by a local farmer. Ciro hitched the horse and thought of his wife, who would do a better job with the harness, hitch, and reins than he could ever do.

He climbed up into the seat and took the Passo up the mountain to Schilpario. He remembered the first time he’d kissed his wife, when she was just a girl and he a boy. He took in every daisy, cliff, and stream, as though they were precious gems in a velvet case that only he could open. How he wished Enza could be on the mountain with him!

It was a relief to be in a horse-drawn cart after days on the open sea, and after the long train ride north from Naples. A cart and horse had a certain rhythm, and there was something soothing about the company of a horse. Ciro felt less alone.

Enza had told Ciro where the new house had been built, and to look for the color yellow.

As he made his way along the main street past the spot where he’d first kissed Enza, a flood of memories washed over him. He remembered Via Scalina as he passed it, and the stable where Enza had hitched the horse to take him home the night he buried Stella. The wooden window shutters on the stable were closed.

Ciro proceeded up the road slowly, as the hill grew increasingly steep. He spotted the yellow house on Via Mai, standing out against the mountain like a leather-bound book. A feeling of complete recognition pealed through his body; the house before him was the same house he had seen in his mind’s eye as a boy, and had hoped to build for the woman of his dreams. How ironic, now, that the house Enza had worked to build for her family was the very one that had occupied the deepest wells of his imagination as a boy! It was almost detail for detail the house of his dreams. He couldn’t wait to tell Enza how magnificent the Ravanelli homestead she had helped build was in completion.

Ciro guided the horse to the side of the house. The barren garden, surrounded by fieldstones, looked like an abandoned campfire when the wood had burned to ash. Ciro followed the stone path up to the front door. Before he could knock, the door swung open, and Enza’s family moved toward him to greet him.

Enza’s mother Giacomina, nearing sixty, was plump, her gray hair worn in a long braid. Ciro could see Enza’s fine bone structure in her mother’s face, and certain of her mannerisms were instantly familiar. Giacomina embraced her son-in-law. “Ciro, welcome home.”

“This kiss is from Enza. She is well. She is in New York, helping Laura Heery with her new baby.”

Marco stood up in his chair. He was now more robust than Ciro remembered; returning to the mountain had been a tonic for him. Ciro embraced him, too. “Enza sends her love to you too, Papa.”

As Giacomina introduced each of her children, Ciro took careful note of any news that he could share with Enza. The boys, now men, were running a carriage service, now with a motorcar, and business was booming.

Eliana was close to thirty-five, expecting her fourth baby. Her straight brown hair was worn loose down her back, and she wore a work smock, skirt, and brown boots. She introduced her sons—Marco, eleven years old, Pietro, nine, and Sandro, five. Her husband, she explained, worked in Bergamo at the water plant, and was sorry he could not be there.

Vittorio was married to a local girl, Arabella Arduini, cousin to the town padrone.

Alma was twenty-six, and hoped to go to university. She wanted to become a painter, as she had a talent for fine art; she had painted a gorgeous fresco of sunflowers on the garden wall. She took Ciro’s hands into hers. “Please tell my sister that I thank her for everything she did for us. Because of her, I can go to university.”