The Dragonflies
Translated from Italian by Laura Valeri
They were four in the family.
Four siblings, spinsters and bachelors between 50 and 60 years of age. Two sisters and two brothers.
Their house was wedged in an alley slightly wider than the others, thus entitled to boast the name “Corso d’Italia.”
On the other side of the street, paved in beautiful grey stone, Palace Della Gatta flaunted its royal coats of arms on its front gate.
The Della Gatta family, owners of the imposing mansion since time immemorial, gave the country lawyers and magistrates, and back in the age of the Bourbons, even an admiral. For that reason, a magnificent brigantine with masts unfurled appeared above the coat of arms — a female cat rampant against a starry backdrop, flanked by the pilasters and curly friezes that adorned the baroque portal.
But the palace obstructed the sea view, and this was cause for resentment for the four siblings.
A few years earlier, they had tried to raise the house one level, just enough to see the coastline from the windows, trusting in their older brother’s connections, who was a lance corporal in the Carabinieri force, to obtain — or, if necessary, to circumvent — the required building permits. But the meanness and envy of their neighbors quickly leveled down the walls that had already begun to rise.
The four siblings had no doubt that behind it all was the hand of the last descendant of the Della Gatta, who furthermore lived in the north and spent only summers in town. In any case, how were they to prove what they knew to be the incontrovertible truth? Donna Eleonora always wore a great smile on her face when she met them. She stretched her lips and offered a big greeting with a voice both husky and strident, for certain, a sign of her duplicitous nature. Predators and despots her ancestors, predator and despot herself.
Permits to turn her palace inside out like a sock had not been denied to her, the siblings bitterly pondered.
From then on, their rapport with the noblewoman had turned cold and formal. Only good day and good evening.
Neither Santo, nor Gabriele, nor Giovanella, nor Isabella had ever been married, nor for that matter engaged. At least not officially, which is the only type of engagement that counts.
Everyone knows, people with assets whose home and bank account are built on a bit of inheritance and a lot of hard work need to find a reputable party. But did they ever find one worthy of their level?
They certainly had not resigned themselves to being single, God forbid. But they could not deny that with each passing season, their opportunities grew ever more meager.
They resembled each other a lot. Not very tall, with soft, even childlike features, few wrinkles, and hair mostly dark — except for Salvo, who had a hint of red for his habit of touching up the silver strands — the siblings were especially similar in their considerable roundness. But to different degrees.
Santo was the slimmest. He stalked the 100 kilos mark like a bullfighter circling his bull, while Gabriele had firmly embraced that weight like a friend, having been intimate with it for a long time.
The two brothers were always shiny and pomaded. White shirts freshly laundered and dark pressed pants with a straight crease.
Isabella outweighed Gabriele by a noticeable measure, while Giovanella was practically almost inert, burdened to suffer a mastodontic body. The two sisters dressed in ample robes, and fabric slippers kept their aching feet from spilling over, but they took care to coif and perfume themselves elaborately, all the same.
People can be cruel, especially with those who are by nature quiet, so they had baptized the four siblings the Dragonflies.
The name stuck to them, and that’s how everyone knew them. Still, the Dragonflies were sensible and mild, all four of them extraordinarily romantic. Perhaps they were a little unrealistic, true, but that is exactly why none of them had ever lost hope of one day finding that soulmate they’d always dreamt of.
Did anyone ever have cause to whisper about the two ladies? Even if the usual forked tongues would feel the need to add on the sly: “Of course not! Who would want them?”
But winters can last so long, when the sea is rough and the fishing trawlers have to sit quietly in port, huddled close together to overcome their longing for the open sea. The sky is livid, and the wind blows from the north; a tramontana wind that makes people wish for those scorching days in the long summers when the heat melts the brain and drowns every thought in rivulets of sweat. When it’s cold, however, the brain works in full rhythm, and produces filigrees of words and thoughts, all lined up straight like soldiers ready for battle. Then, the bassi 1, nowadays luxuriously decorated with money from summer tourism, turn into dens for gossip and chatter woven endlessly on the weft of boredom and on the warp of secret envy and ancient resentments.
Years and months passed, but the Dragonflies had not given up dreaming of romantic weddings.
The souvenir shop that Gabriele owned, with its elegant stone arch in the front, was located right in the center of town, and at the end of the alley one could glimpse the coastline. He sold fossils that he collected in the countryside and vignettes of the marina and of quaint street corners that he painted himself.
Gabriele had inherited his talent from his father and grandfather, both artisans. He was the one in charge of organizing the great procession of St. Michael the Archangel and to choreograph the designs in every detail, like his father and his grandfather before him.
For this feast both archaic and pagan, the heavy statue of the Archangel of Justice, with its shiny sword brandished against an evil demon with burning eyes popping out from its skull, would be carried over the shoulder uphill, from the small oratory dedicated to the archangel up the sea cliff to the cathedral — through chants, and penitents who beat their chests, and girls dressed in white wearing garlands on their heads.
In the evening, on the beach, there are fireworks and the water glows in a game of sparks that illuminates both sky and sea as in a two-way mirror.
Giovannella was particularly sensitive to that feast and she wanted nothing to do with it. It is said that when she was a young girl, a suitor — some say the only one she ever had in her life — had declared himself to her right on the evening of the Patron Saint, during the fireworks. To her, it had seemed that those fountains of colored light that boomed throughout the universe were only a pale reflection of the happiness exploding inside her. So handsome was that boy with green eyes and dark straight hair. So deep was the green of his eyes that it pierced her and seemed as dark as his hair.
Then he left for the front and never came back.
From then on, Giovannella didn’t want to hear any more about Saint Michael the Archangel, or about fireworks, or solemn masses, and for years she didn’t even look out from the window at the procession when it passed.
One day, a letter from Milan arrived at the Dragonflies’ residence. It was addressed to Santo.
Santo had lived in Milan for five years, and, though nobody knew this except Gabriele, he’d had a relationship with a woman from the north, a beautiful big girl, fair and blond, God bless her. But nothing came out of it because she was a servant, even if in the home of people who were well-off, but still....
Santo wanted to get settled, this is true, and he liked the girl, had no objections to her but one: he could not marry a girl who worked as a domestic, even if she was a proper girl for sure. So, when the term of the employment that had brought him to that metropolis came to an end, he went home and didn’t bring her with him.
The letter was from a young man who claimed to be his son, born without his knowing from a relationship now almost forgotten.
The mother, on her deathbed, did not have the heart to take that secret to the grave, and now the boy wanted to get to know the father he hadn’t known he had.
In the house on Corso d’Italia there brewed a storm the like of which had never been seen at sea. Not only because the sisters, due to these circumstances, were only just discovering this concealed side of their beloved brother, but also because in the flux of days that were always the same, in a time when nothing ever happened, such news had caused a wave that might have drowned them all.
They had always hoped for something big to come and give meaning to their days. Therefore, they made mountains out of every molehill, anything to pass the time. Especially for the two sisters, who were homebound.
In truth, no real desire for change ever dwelled within those walls, angular walls of an impenetrable building. The siblings had become one, even physically, against a world they sensed was hostile. They were still children, even if they had outgrown childhood in the flesh.
But a son is a son. At his age, that he was illegitimate had little importance, and he might be a handsome young man, tall and strong, who could inherit their property and give them all grandchildren.
What a handsome young man he must be, Santo thought, big and fair, because boys take up from their mothers. It would be a pleasure to show him around and to show off to everyone the man he had been able to create.
Yes, because people had even stooped so low as to malign the virility of his loins — the envy unleashed at those who are blessed in life can reach such extremes! This would have shoved the evil whispers back into the mouths of those who vomited them out. Malicious people, worse than the Scazzamauriello! 2
The boy’s name was Michele, he’d said when he wrote, because the mother remembered the stories that Santo told her to placate her, regaling her with anecdotes about the town, describing in minute detail every person and every tradition. So much so that the blond from the north felt as though she knew the town. She’d hoped that one day she would arrive with a ring on her finger and be welcomed as the lady of a house that would finally be hers.
When Santo had left her, unknowingly abandoning her with a child in the womb, he’d told her as an excuse that he had a fiancé back home and that he could not call off the wedding.
She’d wept, she’d cried out, that big girl — softly, softly because she was from the north — but even brokenhearted for that milky flesh that tasted like bread and smelled like Marseillan soap, like laundry drying in the sun, Santo still could not bring himself to marry a servant. In the end, that’s what she was, even if they called her a domestic.
And it happened that the big girl had kept silent about that son without a father because she was a proud woman. But one day, she would right that wrong.
Now, the boy needed an answer. Details had to be properly arranged for that son who came from nowhere. Train schedules. Phone numbers. An appointment at the train station with that brand-new father and uncle. When all the arrangements had been made, all the smallest details worked out, the anticipated day arrived.
That night, was anyone able to sleep? Isabella went down to the kitchen at four in the morning and helped Giovanella settle in the big chair where she usually sat so they could start on the pasta and eggplant casserole, wild hyacinth bulbs boiled and garnished, a roast with sausage and dill stuffing, pizza with toppings, and sweet almond cakes.
It was necessary for Michele — blessed boy — to immediately know the tastes and scents of his new land, for surely the food he was used to in his part of the country must have tasted insipid, and inside that northern man’s body, he would have to rediscover his true southern soul.
At the appointed hour, the two brothers were there, waiting for that train, trembling and perspiring the acidic sweat of anxiousness.
The train screeched to a halt into that small station amidst agave cactuses and perfumed privets.
But Michele wasn’t there.
They looked, waited, hoped that he’d step down until the very last minute. Maybe he’d fallen asleep due to the long journey and the heat. They were getting ready to locate the station master to ask him to warn the train conductor.
But Michele wasn’t there.
The only people to deboard had been two women and a squat and thickset youth drenched in sweat, with olive skin tone and dark, dark hair. He was glancing around, looking lost, then he fixed them with a hesitant look.
The train departed with a whistle and only the three of them stood on that small platform.
The youth then approached Santo and Gabriele and with a feeble voice, a bit husky, he said in a dislikable foreign accent: “I’m Michele. You are...?”
Michele? That was Michele? That sweaty, swarthy lump of flesh was all that his loins had been able to germinate in that pale, rosy body?
How could this be... shouldn’t he have been blond, tall, robust like his mother and father both, fitting the fantasy he had already described to everyone?
This was his son?
Santo only had enough breath to whisper disconnected phrases, the only distinguishable ones being “impossible,” “misunderstanding,” “mistaken identity.”
The boy looked at them stupefied, overcome with fatigue, and especially disoriented. He tried to explain who he was, to describe his mother, showing a faded photo of her with Santo.
But Santo was thinking of the stories he’d already spread, of how he’d described the boy, and no way could he walk around town with this one by his side. Besides, he didn’t even look like him. Maybe in the bulk, and in the thick hair. Moreover... who knew if it really was his son. How could he be sure?
He generously set him up lodging at his expense at a hostel not too far from the station and immediately bought him a return ticket for that same night. After all, that poor boy had no blame in this.
To the town, already brewing with curiosity and expectation, he said that he’d been duped, that he’d looked into the matter and that in the end, a man can never trust a woman, especially one from the north. Not even on her deathbed. He then covered with a tarp that vision of a future that had once opened before him.
Peace returned to the household.
The two ladies were known to all the household-goods salesmen of the region.
They would buy the most richly embroidered sheets, towels made of the finest and softest terry cloth, tablecloths in Flanders linen with hand stitched scallop edges. They also bought cooking sets, fine porcelains, and crystal glasses.
What they might do with all those fine things was the joke and the dream of every salesman.
They were putting together a dowry.
Those two seasoned crazies were hoarding cases full of dowry. Because, it’s well known, one can never have enough whites.
When sales lagged, a visit to the two ladies never failed to bring in a little profit. Quality has a price, and if things are to last, they have to be the finest.
Every now and again, Don Ciriaco, the parson at the Madonna della Neve, would pay them a visit — with great fanfare for the Easter benediction.
Isabella would greet him at the door, all kindness and reverence, and she would escort him immediately to Giovannella, who, sunk in her chair in the drawing room, would be cooling herself with a fan.
Don Ciriaco would not skirt his house-call duties as the local parson, and not just for the cares he took to alleviate the burdens of the suffering.
He looked forward to those famous almond cakes and local savories he’d be served. Every visit, he felt as though he’d fallen into a scene from a different time period.
The large drawing room was crammed with fine furniture from the nineteenth century in walnut, cherrywood, and rosewood. There was a seven-drawer dresser in particular that Don Ciriaco liked more than anything else. It was fine cabinetry work done by the grandfather of the Dragonflies, with precious wood inlays like those of an altarpiece.
Tasseled curtains in layers of velvet and lace darkened the windows.
Curio cabinets brimmed with biscuit statuettes, Limoges china cups, glass sculptures and crystals.
On the basalt-stone mantelpiece imported from Sicily there triumphed a large pair of pink opal glass oil lamps painted with landscapes and peasant life.
The walls were decorated with delicate stucco friezes and frescoes of putti and little clouds that bled over the crown molding and stretched up to the ceiling.
“How is miss Giovannella? Is the leg better?”
“Well, what do you expect, Don Ciriaco... I’m of a certain age, and of a certain weight, too. But I trust in the Lord, and if He could find me a good companion for my old age...”
“What are you saying, miss. Your age doesn’t show. You don’t have a single wrinkle. Your skin is taut like a little girl’s. The weight... well, yes. There is that, but with dieting and a little care,” said Don Ciriaco, hugging with his gaze the tray on the table that was brimming with savories, and the surrounding small platters of almond cakes dotted with hard sugar swirls and candy.
Giovannella held in her big fingers a sumptuous black silk shawl, which she was embroidering with flowering shoots and exotic birds with rainbow feathers.
That silken painting caught Don Ciriaco’s eye.
“Wait, wait, Don Ciriaco,” said Isabella, leaving the room.
She came back a little while later with a suitcase that she placed on a table and out of it came eight or nine shawls, in lace, in silk, in wool hand-knit with crystal applications and multi-colored embroideries shining like enamel that surpassed even the ones made by the nuns.
With every “oh,” and “ah” of admiration, Don Ciriaco stuffed his mouth with another delicacy.
What an irony, thought he, that all these marvels came out of this poor woman, paralyzed by her enormous body. Imagine how much beauty she had inside.
“Come, come, Don Ciriaco. Come and bless the house!” Isabella tugged him gently by the cassock. “Afterwards, I will wrap up the leftovers for the poor,” she added, noticing the parson’s affliction for having to distance himself from the objects of his desire.
Don Ciriaco, thus reassured, followed her from room to room, up hallways and stairs. Finally, Isabella brought him to her own bedroom to bless last. An enormous matrimonial bed dominated the room, just like the ones in her siblings’ rooms, and it was covered in a silk bedspread of a slightly faded pink embroidered with love knots and swallows. The same motif was picked up in the decorative engraving on the headboard, lacquered in pink and old gold, and on the abat jour and ceiling, frescoed to resemble the sky at dawn, with rosy putti flying about over ribbons and love knots.
“You see, Don Ciriaco? When I find my spouse, I already have my room set up. And if you bless it, maybe I’ll find him sooner,” Isabella said, like every year. “Eh, Don Ciriaco,” she added as an afterthought, “mother always said that it would be difficult for us girls because we are too honest. Do you know what she always said? She said, ‘A compliment, a rebuff, a passionate kiss... Pretend he’s a great man, and you’ll find marriage bliss.’”
A few years earlier, in the attic of an enormous aristocratic villa in Palermo, several huge dowry chests had been discovered, with the initials L. D. C. engraved in intertwined bronze letters. L. D. C. had lived during the times of the Unification. The chests were still intact and sealed, and Don Ciriaco had watched their opening live on television as the documentary was filming the event. Exactly as it might have happened had they revealed access to some recently discovered Etruscan tomb.
Out of those chests came dozens of embroidered chemises, bodices and drawers, blouses encrusted with whitework, cross-stitched sea silk handkerchiefs, nightgowns of fine muslin with Brussels bobbin lace, and lace trim from Burano and Bruges, sheets of the finest linen frothy with needlepoint and tatting, and tablecloths with Sicilian drawn thread embroidery in sets for twenty-four and thirty-six, and more and more hosiery, silk stockings and fine cotton tights, bustiers, undergarments... a sea of white frost that no one had ever sailed.
L.D.C. had died a maiden, even if rich and noble, and her stupefying dowry remained intact. Like her maidenhood. Now, those cameras had violated her ancient virginity with unparalleled cruelty. Without respect or shame.
Would that also be the fate of Isabella and Giovannella? Don Ciriaco wondered. What would happen to their abundant dowry, the fruit of their quiet folly?
Don Ciriaco turned sad. He blessed her alcove, chaste as it had been, was, and ever would be, saecula saeculorum, and went back to the salon.
He gave a blessing and said goodbye. He wistfully took underarm the large package of savories and almond cakes that they offered.
Those women’s folly moved him, and it hurt.
“You see,” he told the altar boy who accompanied him on his rounds, “women are strange. Even the ones who don’t look much like women anymore. They are women at heart, all the same. I suspect that there is a Giovanella and an Isabella inside every woman, even in the troublemakers who say they are feminists. In the end, they all want to get married. They may be feminists, but they are women at heart, even if many don’t want to see that inside themselves.”
“Yes, Don Ciriaco,” the altar boy said, who also carried underarm his own package, of a size proportionate to his place in the pecking order, but he understood nothing at all of the lecture. “Women, yes, but also insane.” But how, he thought, does Don Ciriaco know all this about women? He resolved that there was nothing like the confessional to teach a man about human nature.
When she passed away, Giovanella was denied even the dignity that comes with death.
Her body, enormous, grown larger while her limbs lay inert, in spite of the constant dance of her heart, would not pass through any door or window. So, the window frame of her bedroom, with its painted putti and dawning skies, was made larger to the tune of pick-axe blows, so they could then lower her to Corso d’Italia with all due precautions.
Pressed tight she barely fit in a double coffin. In death she would lie in a coffin for two, like the double bed she’d always slept in.
For her marriage with death, they dressed her in a white bridal gown, appropriately let out, embroidered with a drawn-thread work pattern that she’d laced and stitched with her own prodigious hands. Finally, she would be leaving home.
The coffin, hanging by a winch, was lowered from up high, and a small crowd had gathered to watch the squeaky swaying of that horizontal monument.
The funeral cortege preceded by a day the procession for the Archangel Michael, Patron Saint.
At least, thought Don Ciriaco after the service, aware of her aversion, she was spared the last melancholy reminder of that declaration of love from so long ago.
He dried up a tear and headed to the catered post-funeral reception.
The following night, during the pyrotechnic show on the beach, while fireworks popped in the sky, lights reflecting in the warm and deep southern sea, many swore that through the fountains, the sparkles, the galaxies and constellations of colored flashes, they saw an immense sphere bubbling with brilliant snow-white lacework, floating lightly, slipping away towards the deep blue of space, bouncing from one light display to another like a soft, enormous cloud.
1 Bassi is a term specific to southern Italy and refers to the ground-level dwellings that once belonged to the poor. They were deemed unsanitary because they have no windows and the front door opens to the street, making them especially susceptible to disease and plagues. However, they have now become popular and typify southern Italian architectural character.
2 Scazzamuriello is a red-hooded trickster sprite of the Apulia region folklore, said to get into people’s homes through the keyhole and sit on people’s chest when they sleep.
FRANCESCA DIANO is an author who Lives in Padua, Italy, and is the author of Fiabe ’amor crudele, La Strega Bianca, and Bestiario.