In Calabria

  Praise for In Calabria

  “A novella about love in a world of hardship, loss, magic, and recovery. Beagle’s unicorns have never been more bewitching, impossible, and genuine. I cherished every page.”

  —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and After Alice

  “Peter S. Beagle is a master of the magical, but also of the little details of day to day existence that root his characters in the soil, sweat and everyday breezes of their worlds, and make the magical all the more magical when it touches them. It’s deep and powerful magic that stirs things to life in the gentle fable of In Calabria, but what it stirs— greed, peril, beauty, grief, love, publicity, sorrow, poetry and more—are very much matters of the human heart. Beagle once again explores the magic within us and the magic around us, and does it in unmatched style.”

  —Kurt Busiek, author of Astro City and The Avengers

  “Acclaimed fantasist Beagle (Summerlong) sets this charming, lyrical tale of unicorns and love on a poor little hillside farm in the toe of boot-shaped Italy, where 47-year-old Claudio Bianchi scratches out a meager existence for himself, old dog Garibaldi, goat Cherubino, three cows, a pig, and three cats. Claudio writes poetry, too, and one day a golden-white unicorn appears to him as a gentle reminder of the freedom animals and humans have lost. The unicorn becomes the one miracle of Claudio’s life—and the ultimate tourist attraction. He protects her as best he can from hordes of reporters, television crews and helicopters, animal rights activists, yearning yokels, and even the Calabrian ’Ndràngheta mob. After Claudio helps the unicorn deliver her colt, his heart, frozen by an earlier tragedy, warms to Giovanna, the intrepid 20-ish sister of the postman. Neatly playing the strictures of Claudio’s simple rural life against the shimmering wildness of the unicorn, Beagle’s kindly fable shows how a man who seems to have nothing can really have everything—with just a touch of magic.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “In Calabria is smart, heart-touching, specific and metaphoric; at the same time, lyrical, stunning. And any one who writes or wants to write, or loves to read, should read it.”

  —Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic

  “Peter Beagle weaves his trademark magic deep in the Italian countryside, using threads of the everyday and the fantastical: poetry and pigs, Mafia bosses and terrible beauty, love and rage, the sacred born of the profane. In Calabria holds the power to transform, like the touch of the unicorn at its heart.”

  —Laurie R. King, author of the Mary Russell series (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice)

  “What a wondrous gift it is to have a new unicorn story from Peter S. Beagle! In Calabria is both elegant and earthy, with a slow build of wonder, and then tension, and then growing dread that propels the reader inexorably toward the miraculous conclusion. Once again Peter Beagle demonstrates why he is one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time!”

  —Bruce Coville, author of The Unicorn Chronicles

  “For me, Peter S. Beagle is one of the essential voices in American literature, so essential that I approach each new book he writes not only with excitement but also with trepidation. Can he possibly do it again? Today I read In Calabria from cover to cover. He does it again.”

  —Kevin Brockmeier, bestselling author of The Brief History of the Dead

  “In Calabria is a gorgeous story shaped with elegant prose and stunning imagery. . . . It is a unicorn story. It is a coming of age story. It is a story of forgiveness and a story of love. In Calabria will speak to each and every reader that ventures through its pages.”

  —So Many Books, So Little Time

  Praise for Peter S. Beagle

  “One of my favorite writers.”

  —Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time

  “Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts’ reasons that reason does not know.”

  —Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness

  “The only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien.”

  —Booklist

  “Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers’ hearts.”

  —Tad Williams, author of Tailchaser’s Song

  “[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet.”

  —Saturday Review

  “Not only one of our greatest fantasists, but one of our greatest writers, a magic realist worthy of consideration with such writers as Márquez, Allende, and even Borges.”

  —The American Culture

  “Before all the endless series and shared-world novels, Beagle was there to show us the amazing possibilities waiting in the worlds of fantasy, and he is still one of the masters by which the rest of the field is measured.”

  —Lisa Goldstein, author of The Red Magician

  “Peter S. Beagle would be one of the century’s great writers in any arena he chose.”

  —Edward Bryant, author of Cinnabar

  Praise for Summerlong

  “Beagle’s novel Summerlong is a lovely, tantalizing read that moves through a finely detailed, familiar world into a tale as old and as urgent as language.”

  —Patricia A. McKillip, author of The Riddle- Master of Hed and Dreams of Distant Shores

  “Summerlong is beautiful in its love for our messy complexity; for the first step into cold water, for the death that lets us grow again, and the ways we learn to love each other—and ourselves—wiser and better.”

  —Leah Bobet, author of An Inheritance of Ashes

  “Best-selling fantasy-author Beagle crafts a tantalizing picture of an atypical Pacific Northwestern couple whose lives are interrupted by myth and mystery.”

  —Booklist

  “In his first new novel in more than a decade, Beagle creates an intimate drama . . . a beautifully detailed fantasy.”

  —Kirkus

  Praise for The Last Unicorn

  “The Last Unicorn is the best book I have ever read. You need to read it. If you’ve already read it, you need to read it again.”

  —Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear

  “Almost as if it were the last fairy tale, come out of lonely hiding in the forests of childhood, The Last Unicorn is as full of enchantment as any of the favorite tales readers may choose to recall.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “The Last Unicorn is one of the true classics of fantasy, ranking with Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Beagle writes a shimmering prose-poetry, the voice of fairy tales and childhood.”

  —Amazon.com

  Also by Peter S. Beagle

  Fiction

  A Fine & Private Place (1960)

  The Last Unicorn (1968)

  Lila the Werewolf (1969)

  The Folk of the Air (1986)

  The Innkeeper’s Song (1993)

  The Unicorn Sonata (1996)

  Tamsin (1999)

  A Dance for Emilia (2000)

  The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version (2007)

  Strange Roads (with Lisa Snellings Clark, 2008)

  Return (2010)

  Summerlong (2016)

  Short story collections

  Giant Bones (1997)

  The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances (1997)

  The Line Between (2006)

  Your Friendly Neighborhood Magician: Songs and Early Poems (2006)

  We Never Talk About My Brother (2009)

  Mirro
r Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle (2010)

  Sleight of Hand (2011)

  Nonfiction

  I See By My Outfit: Cross-Country by Scooter, an Adventure (1965)

  The California Feeling (with Michael Bry, 1969)

  The Lady and Her Tiger (with Pat Derby, 1976)

  The Garden of Earthly Delights (1982)

  In the Presence of Elephants (1995)

  As editor

  Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn

  (with Janet Berliner, 1995)

  The Secret History of Fantasy (2010)

  The Urban Fantasy Anthology (with Joe R. Lansdale, 2011)

  In Calabria

  PETER S. BEAGLE

  In Calabria

  Copyright © 2017 by Peter S. Beagle

  This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.

  Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story

  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  415.285.5615

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  tachyon@tachyonpublications.com

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Rachel Fagundes

  ISBN 13: 978-1-61696-248-7;

  ePub: 978-1-61696-249-4;

  Mobi: 978-1-61696-250-0;

  PDF: 978-1-61696-251-7

  First Edition: 2017

  Book printed in the United States by Maple Press

  For Ayesha L. Collins,

  brave and beautiful,

  always,

  even when weary and sad

  he whole trouble with your farm,” Romano Muscari said, “is that it is too far uphill for the American suntanners, and too low for the German skiers. Location is everything.”

  “The trouble with my farm,” Claudio Bianchi growled through his heavy, still-black mustache, “is that, no matter where it is located, the postino somehow manages to find his way out here twice a week. Rain or shine. Mail or no mail.”

  Romano grinned. “Three times a week, starting next month. New government.” He was barely more than half Bianchi’s age, but a friend of long enough standing to take no offense at anything the Calabrese said to him. Romano himself had been born in the Abruzzi, and in a bad mood Bianchi would inform him that his name suited him to perfection, since he spoke like a Roman. It was not meant as a compliment. Now he leaned on the little blue van that served him as a mail truck and continued, “No, I am serious. Whichever way you look—down toward Scilla, Tropea, up to Monte Sant’Elia, you are simply in the wrong place to attract the tourists. I grieve to mention this, but it is unlikely that you will ever be able to convert this farm into a celebrated tourist attraction. No bikinis, no ski lifts and charming snow outfits. A great pity.”

  “A blessing. What do I need with tourists, when I have you to harass me with useless advertisements, and Domenico down in the villaggio to sell me elderly chickens, and that thief Falcone to cheat me on the price of my produce, when I could get twice as much in Reggio—”

  “If that truck of yours could get even halfway to Reggio—”

  “It is a fine truck—Studebaker, American-made, a classic. All it needs is to have the transmission repaired, which I will not have Giorgio Malatesta do, because he uses cheap parts from Albania. Meanwhile, I endure what I must. Whom I must.” He squinted dourly at the young postman. “Do you not have somewhere else to be? Truly? On a fine day like today?”

  “Well . . .” Romano stretched out the word thoughtfully. “I did tell Giovanna that I would give her a driving lesson. She is learning my route, you know, in case of emergencies. Such as me actually needing to sleep.”

  “Your sister? Your sister is not yet old enough to drive a motorcycle!”

  Romano shook his head slowly and sorrowfully. “The saddest thing in this world is to watch the decline of a once-great mind. You can no longer even remember that Giovanna will be twenty-three years old next month.” He rolled his eyes, regarding the sky accusingly. “She cannot live with me forever. People will talk. Once she graduates, she will most likely move in with her friend Silvana, until she can find work and a place of her own. Just as you will undoubtedly need a quiet room where you can sit untroubled all day and write your poetry. Food and calming medications will be brought to you periodically.” He caressed the graying muzzle of Garibaldi, Bianchi’s theoretical watchdog, and glanced warily sideways at the short, barrel-chested farmer. “Have you written any nice poems lately, by the way?”

  “I do not write poetry. As you know. I sometimes—sometimes—read poetry to my cows, because they seem to like it. But it is not my poetry, never my poetry. I read them Leopardi, Pavese, Pozzi, Montale—poets of some size, some humanity, poets perhaps to make my cows understand what a thing it is to be a man or a woman.” He cleared his throat and spat neatly into a tuft of weeds, startling Sophia, the stub-tailed three-legged cat, who was stalking a sparrow. “Now even if I did write poetry, I would never dream of reciting it to the cows. They have been raised to have taste. I would be shamed.”

  “Admirable modesty. Truly admirable.” Romano clucked his tongue approvingly. “Well, I must tear myself away from this peaceable kingdom, or my flyers will not go through, and poor Giovanna will wait in vain for her lesson.” He patted the blue van’s left front fender, as he always did on getting into it; when Claudio mocked him as a superstitious peasant, Romano would reply serenely that the routine was merely to reassure himself that the fender remained attached. Starting the engine, he leaned out and spoke over its raspy hiccup. “One day you will see that girl driving this machine up the hill to your door, just as I do. She is a very quick learner.”

  Bianchi snorted like a shotgun. “She is too young. She will always be too young. You are too young.” He stepped back, raising a hand in a gesture that might conceivably have meant farewell, but could just as easily have been directed at an annoying gnat.

  Romano and his sister had barely started school when Bianchi inherited the rambling farm west of Siderno, north of Reggio, from a second cousin on his grandfather’s side whom he could never remember meeting. The Bianchis of southern Calabria as a group generally disliked one another, but they disliked outsiders even more, and there was no question of selling off the farm as long as there was some splinter of the family tree to take it over. It was still referred to locally as “the Greek’s place,” because a Bovesian relative of some generations back had supposedly spoken a dialect that contained some words and phrases of the ancient Griko tongue. Claudio Bianchi had his doubts, as he did about most things.

  He was forty-seven years old: short, barrel-chested, and broad-shouldered, like most of his family, like most of the men he had known all his life. His black hair was increasingly patched with gray, but remained as thick as ever, and his skin was the color of the earth he worked every day in the sun of the mezzogiorno. The lines around his eyes were as harsh as the land, far more likely to have been inscribed by weariness, anger, and bone-born skepticism than by laughter; but the large eyes themselves were deep brown, and their wary warmth should have had no place in the heavy-boned face of a Calabrese farmer possessed of no illusion that God and his angels ever came this far south. Bianchi had been embarrassed by his eyes on a few odd occasions.

  The afternoon was sunny but chill, unusual for the region, even in November. Bianchi had noticed animals he saw every day, from his three cats and the old goat Cherubino to the neighboring weasels and foxes to rabbits and caterpillars, growing heavier coats than normal; he had had to start heating his cow barn at night, a month or more early, and begin swaddling his outdoor faucets and hoses—even the Studebaker’s engine block—against the cold. He growled often to Romano, or Domenico, or to Michaelis the village innkeeper—wh
o really was Greek—that one might as well be living in England or Denmark. Or in Pedraces Bolzano, if it came to that. Bianchi tended to disapprove of all of Italy north of Milano.

  In fact, however, he rather enjoyed this odd cold snap, or climate change, or whatever it was. It did no harm to his cabbages, kale, onions, scallions, eggplants, and potatoes, long since harvested and sold to that thief Falcone, nor—as long as the rain was not excessive—to the dwindling hillside vineyard that he kept up out of pure stubbornness when he had let so much else crumble and blow away, and it was a positive benefit to his dormant apple trees, ensuring crisp tartness come spring. If Gianetta, Martina, and Lucia, his three cows, had not been put to stud in more than a year—and could die as virginal as Giovanna Muscari, as long as that shameless pirate Cianelli kept demanding such outlandish fees for the use of his reportedly Friesian bull—still their milk kept coming, and kept the cats and the cheesemaking Rosmini brothers happy. If the old house was little more than kitchen, bedroom, bath, a bit of a parlor, and an attic long since closed off and still, nevertheless it held the heat from his oven and his fireplace better than a larger one would have done; if the nights were dark and silent, the better for thinking and smoking his pipe in peace. And for writing poetry.

  For Romano was quite right about that. Claudio Bianchi did write poetry, at highly irregular intervals during his solitary daily life as a farmer in the toe of the Italian boot. Few of his acquaintances—Romano again excepted—knew that he had finished high school before going to work; or that, despite both of these circumstances, he had never lost his childhood love of reading poems, and in time trying to imitate them. He had no vanity about this, no fantasies of literary celebrity: he simply took pleasure in putting words in order, exactly as he laid out seedlings in the spring, and tasting them afterward, as he tasted fresh new scallions or ripe tomatoes, or smelled mint or garlic on his hands. He never thought of his poems as being about anything: they came when they came, sometimes resembling what he saw and touched and thought all day—sometimes, to his surprise, becoming visions of what his father’s days and nights might have been like, or Romano’s, or even those of Cianelli’s aging bull. He would say a coming poem over to himself while he was repairing the Studebaker or his tractor, repainting the barn, or adding red peppers to his dinner of sautéed melanzane eggplant. They came when they came, and when they were finished, he knew. Nothing else—as he often thought—was ever truly completed; there was always something else to be added, repaired, or corrected to make it right. But when a poem was done, it was done. There was satisfaction in this.