In Calabria Read online

  He was about to hang up the phone when she asked shakily, “And if she chooses to be seen? What then?”

  “It has happened before. How else would we know there are such things, if no one ever saw them? Go to bed.”

  He wrote part of a poem that night: not about La Signora and her child, but about Giovanna’s grief at the thought of her uncontrollable joy having betrayed the unicorn’s presence. It was a new sort of poem for him, and slow in coming, and he dozed off at his kitchen table, waking only at the sound of the blue mail van chugging up the road. As he had ordered Giovanna to do, he splashed water on his face, ran a hand over his sleep-bristled hair, and went outside to meet Romano.

  The sun was just up, glittering off the leaves of the beech tree a little way from the house, where the unicorn was standing, letting her child nurse. The black colt looked up when the van heaved itself around the last bend, but his mother paid no heed, even when Romano jumped down from the cab, and immediately had to scramble back up, having forgotten to set the handbrake. He did not take so much as a step toward the unicorn, nor toward Bianchi, but stood rigid, gaping, until, for all his own anxiety, it was impossible for Bianchi not to be amused. He said, “Well, I do not think I looked quite that stupid when I first saw her—but maybe I did. It is hard to know, of course.”

  Romano’s eyes were almost as wild as those of a strange colt struggling through a storm to be born. He whispered, “Giovanna . . . don’t be angry at her—she tried to stop me. But I had to see . . .”

  “Well,” Bianchi said. “Now you have seen. Close your mouth.”

  La Signora raised her head, looking directly at Romano. The dawn light turned the dark-gold horn to a fiery flower, and Romano backed a little toward the van. He said, “I’ll bet she could be over here in half a second.”

  Bianchi nodded. Romano said with some earnestness, “Tell her I do not want to hurt her, or the little one. Tell her I just wanted to look.”

  “She knows that. Otherwise she would be somewhere else in half a second. I am afraid for her, not for you.”

  Romano looked puzzled for a moment; then his eyes widened, and he touched his fingers, first to his lips and then to his heart. “Never! What do you think I am? I would never tell anyone!” Bianchi looked at him. “I would not! I swear on my parents’ graves! Giovanna will swear, too.”

  “Giovanna has already told,” Bianchi said. “No, she did not mean to, and it was only you she told. And you will not mean to tell, either, but it will happen.” He waved Romano’s protests to silence. “No, it will. And there will be nothing you or your sister or I can do about it. The only real question is what she will decide to do, when the reporters’ big vans are up here day and night, and the helicopters are hovering overhead like avvoltoi neri, black vultures. There will be police, too, and government people, maybe Americans wanting to make movies about her.” He chuckled slowly and dryly. “Paparazzi chasing a unicorn all around my farm. If she allows it. Chi lo sa?”

  La Signora, who had bent to her nursling, raised her head again, looking now toward Bianchi. Did she hear my promise to keep her and her son safe? What can that possibly mean to her, who is about to be hunted more mercilessly by cameras than she can ever have been by mounted knights? Can even she know what is coming for her? I wish I believed in God right now, so I could ask him to have mercy on her.

  Romano left after a while, swearing over and over that he would never mention the unicorn’s existence: not to his friends, no matter how drunk he might get, nor to Tessa Moro, his fiancée, no matter how much he wanted to share his wonder with her. “And, please, you must forgive Giovanna. She will never stop crying until you do, and it is giving me a headache. And breaking my heart.”

  “I was never angry at her. Tell her to come back. The little one is already trying to run.”

  But he was angry—angry and frightened by the realization of his own helplessness in the face of the twenty-first century that would inevitably be invading the life he had built for himself—no, the life that I have settled for—here with the trees and the animals and the earth, all granting him enough to get by on, all supporting the profitless poems that made him happy to think about, even as the farm people still called “the Greek’s place” crumbled silently away through his own old disinterest.

  His little television set received a couple of the stronger RAI channels, and Romano sometimes brought him day-old copies of La Stampa or the Corriere della Sera. He knew, as coldly as he knew that Giorgio Malatesta would be selling off-brand Albanian transmissions to the day he died, that when the news that he had two unicorns living on his farm got out—and it would, no matter what Romano swore, because such news wants to get out, will get out, just as La Signora’s black colt had willed so indomitably to be born—then the world he knew would end, and end for good. Whatever happened from now on, there would be no going back to his dear now.

  All of which would be tolerable—he would make it tolerable—if only he could keep his word to a unicorn.

  Giovanna did come back, not on that day, but on the next, her usual Friday. She hesitated before she stepped down from the cab, and the hesitation was in her eyes as well as her body. It moved Bianchi in a way that was still surprising and distantly alarming to him, even as he was walking to her and putting his arms clumsily around her.

  She rested her head against his head—they were very nearly of a height—and she did cry then, but only a little, and without a sound. They stood so for some time.

  “Troppo vecchio,” Bianchi said presently. “I am far too old for you.” Giovanna nodded against him. “And I was living alone before you were born, and I do not really like very many people.” He stroked her hair. “I like you.”

  “I like you, too,” Giovanna whispered. “I am so sorry—”

  Bianchi put a finger across her lips without answering, and they went on watching the unicorns. Giovanna said, “I think his horn is a little bigger, don’t you?”

  “They need to be ready,” Bianchi said.

  He had already seen the larger footprints before she pointed them out to him. “No, the cows never come this close to the house—they are all afraid of the goat, which makes him very vain. And the tracks are not his, either, nor hers.” His eyebrows and shoulders mimicked the quirk of his mouth as he smiled at her. “You are the one who kept asking about the father, non e vero?”

  Romano swore that he had never said anything to anyone, and Bianchi rather believed him. He thought himself that it had probably started with the Reggio traffic helicopter, which usually passed high over his farm at around three o’clock every afternoon. In any case, whatever the cause, the first result was a visit from a battered yellow two-door Fiat, whose transmission sounded no better than the Studebaker’s. The Fiat contained two raincoated reporters, not from Reggio, as Bianchi would have expected, but from Siderno Marina, farther up the coast. They were coy about stating their mission, asking diffidently about rumors, local folktales, sightings—even mentioning mermaids reported playing in the Strait of Messina, and la leggenda Americana Bigfoot—and Bianchi found it easy to play the slack-jawed peasant, since they expected one. They went away without bothering to stroll around the farm, or even to check the earth under their feet for the prints of delicate cloven hooves. Well, if they’re all to be as blind-stupid as that pair . . . But he was a Calabrese, and knew better than to expect such fortune.

  That night, he did something that he never told Giovanna about. When he judged it late enough that the village streets would be comparatively empty, he started the Studebaker—not the easiest chore on his farm—and drove slowly down into town, coaxing and cursing the truck in a soft undertone all the way. He left it on a dark back street and walked on to the one-room cottage, little bigger than a chicken coop, that served as the reception area, workplace, and residence of Madame Leonora Venucci.

  The door opened before he reached it. This did not particularly startle Bianchi; it was known in the village that Madame Leonora (as s
he preferred to be addressed, in the French style) possessed a familiar spirit who always informed her when clients—or children bent on mischief—were approaching her dark doorstep. Bianchi himself most often believed that the old woman merely had extremely acute hearing, as well as a number of loose paving stones in the pathway to her house. This generally informed his attitude toward la strega: he held no special belief in her powers, but there had been moments over the years when he wondered . . . and anyway, what could it hurt? Now he said simply, “Good evening, Madame.”

  “I knew you would come to me tonight,” the tiny old woman wheezed. “I knew when you made up your mind to come.”

  Despite the lateness of the hour, Madame Leonora was still in her working clothes, which consisted of a green turban, a once-purple robe long washed to a pallid violet, more or less matching opera gloves, and brown house slippers the size of small dogs. No one could remember her ever wearing anything else—except, when she deemed her visitor important enough to warrant it, a floor-length midnight-blue fur cloak with a high flaringcollar, and a certain vaguely disconcerting smell. Bianchi knew it only by reputation.

  “I knew you would come,” the old woman said again. “Madame Leonora always knows.” Bianchi grunted in response, looked quickly around, and followed her into the house.

  To do Madame Leonora justice, the single room, lighted by a single tottery lamp, was remarkably neat and well-kept. The spangled cloth on the small round table was frowsy with age, but quite clean, and there was no evidence either of a crystal ball, a wand, a yellowing skull, or even a deck of tarot cards. To left and right tall wardrobes guarded their secrets; under one of the pair of high-backed chairs, a one-eyed cat, properly black, hissed sullenly at Bianchi. The several vases on the deep window ledge were elegant enough to belong in a very different house, but the flowers they contained badly needed to be replaced. Books with crumbling leather bindings were ranged on a shelf beside the little wood stove, and—surprisingly—a framed portrait of the Virgin held the place of honor in a niche directly above the door. There was a fire in the stove, and the house was warm.

  “Sit,” said Madame Leonora, and Bianchi took his cap off and sat. The old woman took the chair across the table from him and glared at him out of small currant-colored eyes. “Well, you certainly took your time about it,” she grumbled presently. “You have taken so long that I am doubtful whether I can help you at all. But then you were always a stubborn mocker, always, since you were a small boy.”

  “You never knew me when I was small,” Bianchi reminded her. “You came here from Lucca when I was practically grown.”

  Taken aback, Madame Leonora frowned under brows so pale, and so fiercely plucked, as to be almost invisible. “Ay, that was the other boy,” she muttered to herself, slapping her cheek lightly. “Well, you will grow old too, Bianchi. Now, about the Muscari girl—”

  “I am not here because of her,” Bianchi interrupted, raising his voice more than he had meant to. He was only mildly startled that la strega was aware of his relationship with Giovanna: having lived most of his life in or near small southern villages, he would have been far more surprised if she had not. It was Madame Leonora’s business, and that of every such rural practitioner, to know very nearly as much about her neighbors as she pretended to know. Even so, Giovanna’s name, in the fortune-teller’s harsh rasp, made him flush sharply, and angered him. He said, “Nothing to do with her. Nothing.”

  “Of course not,” the old woman agreed quickly. “Madame Leonora always knows. You are concerned about that shortness of breath you have been experiencing late at night—” Bianchi looked back at her without responding. Why on earth did I ever imagine a silly, half-mad old fraud could help me? Madame Leonora corrected herself again. “No, permesso, I again confuse you with someone else, scusami. This is a matter of animals, not so?”

  Bianchi waited, annoyed to realize that he was holding his breath. “I mean, the strange plague of udder abscesses spreading among your sows. Madame Leonora long ago created her own special remedy for this tragic ailment.” Bianchi chuckled dryly, and the witch bridled. “Ah, you laugh? Shall I tell you what became of the last lout of a pig farmer foolish enough to laugh at Madame Leonora Venucci?” She appeared to consider relating the cautionary tale, then rejected the notion. “No, I was too cruel on that occasion, and I still rather regret it. I should never have cursed all his pigs—just the sows. But I was younger then.”

  “I have six weanling pigs,” Bianchi replied. “And one sow.”

  “Did I say pigs?” Madame Leonora blinked, inserting a finger under the turban to scratch her head. “Ay, this thing of age—I cannot even talk properly anymore. Of course I was speaking of your cows, the poor things. If you had delayed any further in coming to me . . .”

  Bianchi stood up while she was saying, “Your cabbages are suffering from the Tunisian Black Pestilence—this is why they are coming up so pale and scanty. And somebody has also put a curse on your onions . . .”

  “Buona notte, Madame Leonora,” Bianchi said. He put his cap back on and went to the door, hunching his shoulders slightly against the fusillade of good, round, filthy Calabrese curses that were bound to pursue him. But she said nothing further until he was standing once again on her doorstep, shaking his head in continuing anger at himself, still smelling the curious, almost-familiar herbs that smoldered in her fireplace. I hope the transmission will not fall out until I am home. It will be uphill.

  Behind him, the wheezing voice, no more than a crackle, a rustle. “Bianchi.” He did not answer. “Bianchi. Your wife did not leave you because the baby died.” There was a silence for a little, which was good, because Bianchi could not have comprehended language in that moment. Then: “She left because you did.”

  The light in the single room went out. Madame Leonora’s work was done for the day.

  The Studebaker stalled three times on the crawl home.

  The next film crew—three this time—was indeed from Reggio Calabria, and they came in a better car, with a television camera. These were brisk as police, though plainly slightly embarrassed to be asking questions about unicorns being reported on his property. And they not only noticed the betraying hoofprints, but filmed them; and at least one was country enough not to be fobbed off with talk of cows and calves. In neither instance were La Signora and her little son anywhere to be seen, but Bianchi had no faith that this would remain the case. It was a small farm, after all, and they shone so.

  As well as he imagined himself decently prepared for all the vans and RVs and video trucks that came scrambling up the road, there was no way Bianchi could have conceived of what it would mean to have the twenty-first century crash into his near-nineteenth-century life like a runaway truck. He was endlessly interviewed blinking into more television lenses than he could keep track of, growling at each blonde young lady or trim young man holding a microphone that he had no idea how the porca miseria story ever got started. Unicorns were just as mythical as mermaids, even children knew that today, and these porca miseria motorcycles and cameras were frightening his animals and keeping him from running his farm, and he had no more than that to say. That was all any of them got out of him, and sooner or later they would all turn their machines off, turn their vans around, and go away, blaming one another for the waste of time.

  He had rather hoped—foolishly, as it quickly turned out—that the comparative remoteness of his farm, combined with boredom and frustration at their unwelcoming reception, might provide something of a bulwark against the cars and the cameras. But the news helicopters were another matter. Bianchi had expected them, as he had warned Romano to expect them, as he expected the Reggio weather helicopter every day, and now and then a police spotter, flying low in search of a terrorist or a lost child. Now, however, there were few days when he did not waken to the sound of engines outside his door, or fall asleep with bright lights still stabbing into his window. Even so, he clung doggedly to his belief in the innate impatience of ev
eryone who was not a farmer. “I tell them nothing,” he said to Giovanna on the phone, “and there is nothing for them to see or to show, so what can they do? It will all pass. In time they will get tired. People get tired of everything.”

  “I hope so,” Giovanna said doubtfully; but Romano, delivering the mail, said, “Not of unicorns. They are the ultimate tourist attraction. I was wrong about the skiers and the beach people.”

  “It will all pass,” Bianchi repeated. His eyes were dark and distant, and the lines down his cheeks were more pronounced than Romano had ever seen them. He mentioned this to his sister.

  But the rumors seemed to spread upward in one grand synchronized flurry, like a flock of birds all taking flight in a single rush, wheeling as one in the same direction, crying the same cry. Within two weeks, the helicopters crowding each other in the sky now bore the emblems of radio and television stations he had never heard of—a good half of them, and more every day, from other countries, and even other continents. He was interviewed in languages he did not know, translated to the world by people who did not speak Calabrese—and, in some cases, barely spoke Italian.

  Nor did these helicopters fly off to their nests with the coming of evening: on the contrary, many of them hovered all night, sweeping the entire countryside with powerful searchlights that crisscrossed each other like whiplashes, invariably waking him and setting Garibaldi barking and cowering under the house. Then Bianchi would pull the bedclothes over his head, and do his best to drown out the engine racket with his own cursing.