Page 2 of The Girl from Sicily

2

LUCIA, JUNE 1943

Lucia gazed up at the falcon circling over Villaurora. If only she could be free like that bird. Free to live her life. Free to soar. Instead, she was sitting on a chair on the step outside the family’s one-storey house in the steep, narrow street, surrounded by flies in the hot June sunshine.

She wiped her brow. For the past eight years, since she’d travelled from Brooklyn, she’d been taking part in the annual pressing of the pumadori . Yesterday, the tomatoes had been cleaned, washed and left to dry overnight. This morning, she and her younger sister, Annita, had laid the pumadori out on bamboo frames in the sun before they’d added sea salt. Now she, Ma and Annita were working the extract with their hands prior to it being bottled. Hot, sticky work. Women’s work.

‘Face around, Lucia,’ her mother admonished. ‘Remember where you are.’

‘Yes, Ma,’ Lucia groaned.

How could she ever forget? As an unwed girl, she was required to turn her back to the street. Only after dusk could she turn her profile to passers-by so that strolling young men might assess her desirability. The marshal of the local carabinieri, Giulianu Cardona, often looked at her like that, and even more blatantly during Sunday mass.

Lucia huffed to herself. She didn’t want to attract the attention of a prospective husband. As soon as the war ended, she wanted to return to America, the country of her birth.

How she wished her father, Leonardo, an immigrant who’d worked as a garbage collector, hadn’t needed to bring the family back to Sicily so he could look after his elderly widowed father. He’d been the only son and his married sisters had insisted the responsibility lay with him. Nannu passed away three years ago, but by then Mussolini had sided with Hitler against France and Britain. A year later, after Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. It became impossible for civilians like Lucia and her family to travel across the Atlantic and, in addition, Ma and Pa would have been considered ‘enemy aliens’ and might even have been interned.

Ma nudged Lucia, breaking into her thoughts.

‘You and Annita help me take the tomato paste indoors,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll get on with finishing up making the supper.’

After washing her hands, Lucia went outside again. The church bells were ringing the Angelus, which meant that Pa and her twin brother, Dinu, would be home soon from working the small patch of land Pa had inherited from his father.

The smallholding, known as a campagna , cultivated most of the fruit and vegetables they needed, with some extra produce to sell for the cash to buy wheat. The only meat they ate was rabbit, and Lucia’s stomach rumbled as the aroma of a delicious stew came through the open door. She smiled to herself, remembering how she and Dinu had gone out hunting late yesterday afternoon.

It was something they would often do. She dressed in his clothes – he was quite short and she was almost as tall as him – and she would tuck her mane of dark brown hair into a cap. It made her existence more bearable.

They’d hiked up to the corridor of jagged peaks forming a rocky ridge behind the village. Clusters of small, pale grey snails had fallen from the sisal plants with a faint dry rattle as their feet brushed past them. Long black snakes slithered among the stones, and there were insects everywhere – big, bright butterflies and dragonflies and hornets, legions of twittering grasshoppers, and great armies of ants.

Lucia had known, from experience, that the rabbits would be feeding on clover at the foot of the crags. Hearing her and her brother approach, the animals hid as usual. But she and Dinu raced, zigzagging towards them, shooting and flushing them out of hiding. They’d learnt to be quick on the trigger and it hadn’t taken long to bag a couple for the cooking pot.

Dinu had hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.

‘You did well, soru .’ Sister. ‘You’re becoming an even better shot than me.’

She’d put him in his place, slapping him playfully on the arm.

‘I’ve always been a better shot than you, frati .’ Brother.

Lucia loved her brother Dinu to the depths of her soul, but she also worried about him. He was intelligent yet ambitious, resilient yet hot-headed, and there was a dark side to him that could lead him into terrible trouble one day.

She could hear her twin’s voice before she risked turning her head to see him leading their mule down the street towards her. There was another man, a rucksack slung over his shoulder, walking between him and Pa.

As they drew nearer, she realised that the man, dressed in the usual peasant clothes – baggy trousers and an open-necked shirt – appeared familiar. Thick, dark brown hair, cut short at the back and sides. Chocolate-brown eyes. A chiselled chin. But it was his confident, white-toothed smile that made her gasp with surprise.

It was Gero Bonanno from the Bronx, the eldest son of fellow emigrants from Villaurora. He’d become as handsome as a Greek Apollo, and he’d grown taller and broader than most Sicilians. What the hell was he doing walking down the street with her father and brother? As far as she knew, his family was still in New York.

She crossed her arms. She’d got to know Gero, a little, on outings with the Bonannos to Coney Island. He was a couple of years older than her and Dinu, and she’d always thought him arrogant despite having a little girl’s crush on him.

‘Look who we found asleep beneath the bridge over the dry riverbed,’ Pa said as if it was an everyday occurrence. ‘Let’s get him indoors.’

They trooped through the front door, and Lucia felt a quiver of shame. Their only room served as a stable on one side. On the other side, a rectangular wooden table and eight chairs stood on the earth floor. Acrid smoke, from the straw fire under the cooking pot, billowed towards them. Lined up along the wall were the quartare , terracotta jugs used for keeping fresh water. There were also the family’s bunk beds. They all lived together in this miserable hovel. It was like something out of the Dark Ages.

Lucia and Dinu’s younger sister, Annita, shyly held back.

‘ Bedda Matri! ’ Ma exclaimed, stepping forward. ‘I can’t believe my eyes.’

‘ Bona sira .’ Gero from the Bronx wished her a good evening.

‘What are you doing in Villaurora and how did you get here?’ Ma asked bluntly. She was never one for measuring her words.

‘I was flown over from our base in Africa and parachuted down in the valley below Villaurora late last night. Walked up here and then fell asleep while I waited for nightfall.’

‘You’re with the US army, I presume?’ Pa said, pouring water from a jug into the basin and scrubbing at his hands. ‘Are the americani on their way?’

‘I can’t say.’ Gero put a finger to his lips, then accepted a glass of rough red wine from Dinu. ‘It was lucky I met you, though. Dad said you’d come back to Villaurora. I’m here with a message for don Nofriu Vaccaru. They chose me to deliver it because my father is a paisano .’ A compatriot.

Lucia had seen don Nofriu around the village, wearing his trademark short-sleeved shirt, a cigar in his mouth and a cap pulled down almost to his tortoiseshell spectacles. He was Villaurora’s godfather, a so-called man of honour. Not someone to be crossed, for sure.

What on earth could the American army want with him?

‘Come, Lucia, give me and Annita a hand serving dinner.’ Ma grabbed Lucia’s arm. ‘It’s a good thing you and Dinu bagged those rabbits yesterday.’

Lucia caught Gero looking at her curiously.

She turned away and went to help her mother and sister.

Gero was just as arrogant as he’d always been, bragging about his mission. She hoped that, once he’d delivered his message, he’d get the hell out of Villaurora. It would be better for the family if they didn’t draw don Nofriu’s attention.

* * *

‘That was the best rabbit stew I’ve ever eaten,’ Gero said to Ma later, after accepting a second helping.

Thankfully, there’d been more than enough to go around. They didn’t have a refrigerator – none of their neighbours had one – so it made sense for them to finish off what was in the pot.

While eating, the conversation had focused on how well Gero’s father was doing. Lucia remembered hearing that Alfonso Bonanno had travelled to the USA with his pregnant wife, Filomena, about twenty years ago when Mussolini had become prime minister. Gero had been born soon after they’d arrived in New York. They’d had four more children – all of them girls. Gero informed Lucia and her family that his dad had started a film distribution company, importing and leasing Italian films to US theatres.

He’s bragging again , Lucia thought.

She whispered to Annita that they needed to help Ma with the dishes, so they cleared the table and went to the kitchen area.

‘Gero can stay here tonight as it’s too late for him to visit don Nofriu,’ Ma said, passing Lucia a plate.

‘But where will he sleep?’

‘There’s a spare mattress. He can have that.’

Feeling that quiver of shame again, Lucia told herself that it was Gero who was imposing on them, that he should take them as they were. It wasn’t their fault that they’d become so poor. It was merely because of circumstances. By the time she rose in the morning, hopefully Gero would be gone.