by Sandra Sabatini
EXCERPT
AFTER THE LONG WORKDAY, the boys prowled down to the bottom of the gorge and sat, throwing rocks at the birds that perched on high ground in the middle of the river. Dante said, “I have to tell you something. I am telling you so that you can be ready, but if you spill the beans to anyone, I’m sorry, we’ve known each other all our lives, and your parents will grieve and hate me and perhaps hunt me down, but if you tell anyone, I will kill you.”
Sabino smiled.
“I am leaving this town. I am packing my rucksack, I am taking what money I can find, and I am leaving home for good. The boss may fire you, so you have to be ready for that. My advice is that you line up another job right away.”
Sabino nodded. “When will you leave?”
“As soon as I can. I cannot stand too much more of this. My mother wants me to be a baby forever. She would like to push the pasta right into my mouth and then wipe it for me. My father orders me around, tells me I eat too much of his food, break too many of his shabby tools, drink too much of his water, sleep too much in his house. As if everything were his. All that his eye falls on. I cannot stand too much more.”
Sabino again nodded. These were assertions that he had heard before.
“I will come with you.”
“Ai, basta, Sabin. You cannot come with me. You would not survive on your own, and besides, your family needs you.”
Sabino looked at Dante, thin and pale, and thought he knew which of them would survive best on his own.
“I will come with you. Vengo con te.”
Dante did not want company. In the vision he had of a courageous and pioneering journey to a future, he saw himself alone and heading to all the possibilities of the north. To industry, wealth, appointments. To all the rest of Europe waiting, and just for him. Not for him and his block of a friend.
However, Sabino had decided.
“I will come with you.”
Dante gave up. He would just keep quiet. He would leave on his own and that was that. Sabino did not seem able to grasp the consequences of such a momentous decision, the thought that must be put into it, the dark nights of the soul searching for its destiny. A fellow could not pack up and leave the dear familiar on a whim. His family, the father as soft as the son, the mother so gentle, three sisters, all depending on their quiet brother. Dante would not allow him to make such a foolish mistake.
When his father brought him back to Spoleto, weak and skeletal thin, Sabino was the first one at his door. His eyes downcast and smiling as always, dark lashes over blue eyes. Sabino sat in the chair brought into Dante’s room for visiting and hung his head. Dante knew he was a terrible sight. In the lines of his friend’s posture, shoulders sloped, hands curled one into the other and perfectly still as though there was no fight, no possibility of throttling any sort of sense into someone as stupid as Dante.
Sabino said, “ciao,” and “come va?” as though Dante might have just paused, suddenly supine, in the middle of a commonplace day. Sabino came day after day to sit in the chair in the corner. He placed packages of cookies and cakes that his mother sent for Dante. He brought crossword puzzles at first. As Dante got stronger, he brought checkers and chess. They moved to the back garden and Sabino brought rocks to throw at the cans set up on the ancient wall. The recovery was slow and steady. The passage from broth to eggs to meat took several months and there was not one day that passed without the stolid presence of Sabino, for whom even Dante’s father developed a grudging attachment. He showed the boy his wine press and his personal photograph of the Duce.
“That Sabino,” he said from his post at the threshold of Dante’s door, “he’s not as stupid as he looks.”
High praise.
When the military school opened in Spoleto, Dante saw his chance to get out from under his father. He would do officer training. He would get out of this town, finally, out of the country, even, and not come back. Not until he could wave a fist of lire under his father’s nose and buy a golden bracelet for his mother, one without charms or medallions. No Holy Mother, no Saint dangling from it. Something that would distract her when she rolled dough, that would get in her way. Something utterly without use. He would adjudicate his own behaviour. He would read and speak and people would listen. He was eighteen and these were the things he could predict.