Bloodlines

by Marcello Fois, Silvester Mazzarella

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

When Giuseppe Mundula first sees Michele Angelo Chironi across the corridor of a Sardinian orphanage, the reserved blacksmith realises he has found the son and heir he never knew he needed. And when, a few years later, Michele himself looks down from a church rooftop and sees the beautiful Mercede, the quiet orphan realises he has found the woman he will marry. So begins Marcello Fois' magisterial domestic epic of the lives and loves of the Chironi family, as they struggle through war and fascism. Deftly endowing familial horrors with mythical resonance, Fois creates a Dantesque triptych that inscribes the history of twentieth-century Sardinia onto a single misbegotten household.

Release date: June 30, 2014

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 274

Sample

Luigi Ippolito is lying on his carefully made bed. He is in formal dress, the buttons on his soutane shining, his shoes like polished mirrors. As he always has, and always will, he refers to himself by surname first: “Chironi Luigi Ippolito” and, without moving, he stands up to look back at himself, perfectly serene, dead, so ready he could weep. There, on the bed, lies the One, tidy and precise, while the Other stares at him, anxious and turned to stone, yet at the same time turbulent, as straight and blunt as an insult hurled in your face, standing between the bed and the window. Because the immovability of the One is like a shadow and the immovability of the Other is control. At a glance, one would say Luigi Ippolito and Luigi Ippolito are identical in every respect, except that the first, the one lying on the bed, has the imperturbable appearance of a body peaceful in death while the second, standing and observing himself, has the frowning rigidity of someone who is unsure of himself. So that while the first is immersed in the indescribable peace of total surrender, the second is struggling against an overwhelming sense of feebleness. This is why, at a certain point, to end this stagnation, Luigi Ippolito almost holds his breath, like a loving but anxious father who needs reassurance that his newborn child is still breathing. But it is not out of love that Luigi Ippolito is bending over Luigi Ippolito, oh no: the Other is bending over the One in order to read his life. And to insult him too, because this is no moment for dying, still less for playing at death; nor is it a time for surrender.

The One listens without moving, stubborn in his farce of playing dead. He does not move even though he would like to pull himself together.

Giving in to his own obvious obstinacy, the Other sits down on the edge of the rush-seat chair by the bedside table like a young widow who has not yet understood the disgrace she has suffered. He continues to watch the One, who is barely breathing. What can it be like to explore that land of silence? he asks himself. What is that accursed journey like?

Then the light seems to leave the room suddenly, so that the thick eyebrows shading the closed eyelids of the One add force to his pallor. In response, the Other lowers his voice and the intensity of his thoughts to declare himself disposed to playing the mourning game. Can he remember the solitude of exhausted fields during the sweltering heat of the summer? Can he remember the long wait in front of the snare? And life bursting from his lungs after a race? Can he remember? Those battles among the olive trees, the tremendous chirping of the cicadas, the treacherous whistling of the north-west wind. Do you remember? I wanted to live in the void, in the light of a constant present. I was obstinate. But you wanted to be silhouetted against the light. You wanted shadows. I wanted space, remember? Do you remember? It was all a constant repeating. Do you remember? And books in baskets like bread, because there was a body within that had to be fed and the urgency of being prepared for the daily march of time. And the rough surface of our shared life, like a crude rustic table on which the incantations of the past could find order. Luigi Ippolito Chironi, descended from people originally called De Quiròn, then Kirone, who, before their captivity in the Barbagia region, had bred horses that bore the holy backsides of two popes and the very secular backside of a viceroy … Do you remember? The marbles, the narrow-necked bottle, the old magazine. Oh … Our whole life balancing in the predestined chaos of memory. Like the secret order of a tidy plan. Do you remember? Do you remember the transparent hope of the glass windows?

But the One doesn’t respond to these questions; he knows what it means to be self-confident and abruptly believe himself to be both the One and the Other at the same time. Silence. This is the point they always return to.

By now the light in the little room has faded to that of a mortuary chapel since a black stain has crossed the sun’s face. The One and the Other exchange glances. The One, lying down, seems far away, but is watching the Other through half-closed eyelids. The Other, his brow furrowed, responds to this absent stare with a persistent expression of expectation. As it has always been, and always will be.

Then comes silence, set against the constant roar of reasoning. Now there seems to be nothing; nothing to think, nothing left to remember. It has all been a dream, yet no. They are exactly back at the point where being able to change anything has become impossible.

The writing-desk stands by itself in the shadowed corner of the room. Fate has allowed him pen and paper. Outside, the sky is the colour of milk. Luigi Ippolito watches himself with a mixture of understanding and pain. His body is drifting, softer than he remembered it, more pliable than ever before, yielding to the current.

But how can this story of silences be told? You know it, everyone knows it: stories only ever get told because they have happened somewhere. It is enough to hit the right tone, to give voice to the internal warmth of the dough waiting to rise, serene on the surface but turbulent inside. It is enough to be able to tell the chaff from the grain, almost thinking without thought. Because conscious thinking reveals its mechanisms and introduces terror into the story. So, as I was about to say, the stubborn brightness of a sheet of white paper leaps from the shadows enveloping the desk. Which is perhaps an invitation …

Scire se nesciunt





First the ancestors: Michele Angelo Chironi and Mercede Lai. Before them nothing at all. And it must be said that if this blacksmith and this woman had never met in church, it is probable, in fact certain, that the family would have vanished into the anonymity that shrouds the stories of this land before anyone has had a chance to tell them.

This is how it happened, she is saying a novena prayer to the Madonna delle Grazie, and three metres above her, he is adjusting the metal hook from which the large incense burner hangs. She is sixteen, he is nineteen. He is not even a blacksmith yet, merely a blacksmith’s apprentice, but she is already cast in iron, chiselled and magnificent, her face perfect. For him, high above her, it is like looking down into distant depths while she, looking up, feels vertigo. Just that. The air seems rarefied like when a runner pauses for breath.

Michele Angelo is solid and stout, plump as a well-fed animal. His clothes are basically light brown but, seen against the light, his substance almost blond, like the living expression of something as transient as fruit growing from honeyed seed, in sharp contrast to the crow-like blackness that surrounds him. Local girl Mercede’s hair seems shining blue, bright as an enamel brushstroke. In fact, it is really jet black, full of presence and depth, but the light on her dazzlingly white parting makes her hair look blue.

And so it is that their moment of unconscious awareness scarcely lasts a second.

Days and months pass. The nine days of the novena are over, the feast day that follows is over too, and so is the winter.

In April, Mercede, together with other local girls, goes to collect alms for the festival of San Francesco di Lula. The third house they come to is the home of Giuseppe Mundula, master blacksmith, the place where Michele Angelo lives. And she, who has always before been too timid to knock on anyone’s door, knocks on this one; and he, who ought not even to be at home, comes to open it himself. These meetings may seem destined by Fate though Fate is far too solemn a word. Mercede and Michele Angelo are fully aware that they are exactly where they had always determined to be, driven by the wordless force of desire.

Even so, now face to face, they avoid each other’s eyes. But she sees clearly that he is robust and not too slim. She is still growing and could end up becoming the taller of the two. But what does that matter? Mercede likes the amber glow that surrounds him, and invests it with a practical genetic quality: it is the seed from which her children will grow. Michele Angelo likes the way she breathes with lips slightly parted. Then there are her eyes, and everything else he would be thinking about if not distracted by the conviction that this is the woman of his life.

Something in the house has made him late for work this morning; and something has made her push in front of the three other girls to be the one to knock on the door. From the other side of the closed door he hears the knocking, thinks it familiar and, against all probability, hurries past the blacksmith to open it.

But, of course, Destiny plays no part in this simultaneity; it is simply a matter of stubbornness. Love lasts one single perfect moment; the rest is merely reminiscence of what has already happened, but that single moment can be enough to make sense of more than one life. And that’s how it was: he handed over a fitting offering for the saint, almost equivalent to a whole day’s work, and she held out her palm for it in such a way that he would lightly touch her hand. A gesture she would never be ashamed of even though, when she thought about it, it seemed more lustful than if she had offered him her virginity. Because her gesture contained an invitation, and an invitation is much worse than the simple if stupefying physiology of desire. There was nothing surprising in what she had done, only a deliberate conscious intention to make it possible for that man to touch her.

Michele Angelo kept his hand in place for a moment, just long enough to experience the softness of her skin and, perhaps, to be ashamed of the roughness of his own; but then a blacksmith, even if only an apprentice, can never, ever have soft hands.

The difference between them is already clear: Mercede knows everything and Michele Angelo knows nothing.

On their wedding night Michele Angelo is so hesitant and uncertain that Mercede, as always one to take the initiative regardless of the consequences, grabs his hand and places it on her breast. The act of a brazen woman perhaps, but apparently needed because he seems unable to bring himself to touch her, as if there were a cushion of air between her flesh and his hands. Mercede would like to feel herself drenched with explicit desire, because she has always wanted this, while Michele Angelo seems able to do nothing but hover tentatively over her, as over a loaf hot from the oven, brushing it with his fingertips before pulling back. So she looks straight into his eyes, which in the flickering candlelight seem flashing with honey, and presses his hand on her breast. Finally Michele Angelo, from that unplanned contact with soft breast and erect nipple, starts breathing heavily through his nose … When he tries to close his eyes, she stops him by pressing his hand to herself ever more firmly, leading it in a circling motion. When she senses that he has finally understood she releases her grip and lets him continue on his own.

The house where the young couple live is small, but it is their own.

There are no lights from human activity outside, so they can gaze into the perfect darkness filled by infinite clusters of stars.

A simple, basic home. A floor added above the forge.

By day, ox-drawn carts go by on the cobbles, then horses, sheep and shepherds. The curate and the doctor pass too. And soldiers: the grey uniforms of the royal army and the blue of the carabinieri. Fugitives and their pursuers also, magistrates and informers. Over that strip of land passes a history in miniature that is the fruit, almost the consequence, of some much greater history. All there is to eat in this tiny slice of the world are the crumbs from the banquet, but if you study those crumbs attentively and taste them carefully, they can teach you many things.

Despite the dark, the walls of the little room above the black-smith’s forge are phosphorescent with quicklime.

They are aware of something beyond the window, Michele Angelo and Mercede, something far beyond the languorous fever consuming them; passing vehicles telling what might be very small or very great stories. And though they are not consciously aware of it, they imagine that conversely, from the lane, the forge of life can be detected in feverish activity. For this reason, as a precaution that is perhaps pointless, perhaps not, Michele Angelo buries his face in the pillow to muffle a deep climactic groan. Without looking at Mercede, he responds to her approval, feeling her opening up to him almost like a mother.

Thinking over it many years later, Mercede says the greatest surprise was to find the attributes of a mature man in her child husband. The light curly hair covering his shoulders and chest made his skin seem even whiter. Then his beard, which from the distance of a mere kiss, could be observed and even felt growing. She is not embarrassed to say he was a good husband, caring and never vulgar. And that he loved her caresses and her breasts most of all.

With miraculous, mathematical, precision Mercede fell pregnant that very night.

But the secret of this perfect conception was their unquestioning acceptance of themselves. Time revealed defects: Michele Angelo was taciturn and touchy and Mercede was bossy and paid too much attention to what other people thought.

Nine months later, again like the precise proof of a mathematical theorem, twin boys were born, Pietro and Paolo. Over the course of the next ten years came Giovanni Maria who was stillborn; Franceschina, also stillborn; Gavino, who left for Australia; Luigi Ippolito, who died in the war; and Marianna …



Their love has travelled a long way. They have moved like two pilgrims heading for a distant sanctuary, expecting at every step to see at least the top of the bell tower, but they never see anything. So they have to love each other, again and again, in spite of everything: the dust clogging their hair, the temptation to accept a lift from a cart, or simply, drenched with rain, to abandon themselves to despair, plodding along with uncertain steps in muddy shoes, or with palates parched by scorching heat, or fingers blue with cold, and their eyes fixed on a goal that always, always, turned out to be no more than a starting point.

They have walked straight on, never turning to look back, moving as anonymously as it is possible to imagine. The edge of the road which, from high up on a gig, looks comfortable, but at ground level, trudging on shifting gravel, seems terrible and endless. Occasionally, they meet another person but never, never, anyone they recognise, because they are on their own, two and yet one, seeing nothing and knowing nothing. All they have is their love: obstinate, unyielding, banal and blind.

In just a few years Michele Angelo has extended the workshop, building a new forge behind the old one. The work has involved sacrificing part of the courtyard, but it is good to have more room now the twins are growing and the family is expanding as though spring is a season that will never end. And business has prospered because Michele Angelo has become known as the best blacksmith in the village, which has now almost grown into a town.

Because of the destiny allotted to it by the register office, if we can believe in such a thing as Destiny, the district could now be described as a modest built-up area, as if passing through a sort of restless adolescence, as yet neither fish nor fowl. But it does have the presumptuous expectation of certain suburbs that they will soon become one or the other, or both. Seen from the direction of Ugolio, Nuoro is now like the vanguard of a bare border post, with its landmark cathedral making it look like a village in the Andes. An immense circular prison set down like a bass drum on a grassy plain. To tell the truth, Nuoro now combines two different worlds: in the hills, San Pietro and the shepherds, and in the valley Séuna and the farmers. It is from this clear duality that the life of the place depends. And it is a life Michele Angelo encounters just as the hormone of modernity begins to bubble away in the village’s infantile and archaic organism, percolating city ideas (or at least those of a small town), creating via Majore, an extremely modern middle-class street, at the exact meeting point of two ancient souls. Turning two-faced Janus into three-headed Cerberus. This central position explains and synthesises everything: the feeling of caste, the gaze directed overseas, towards History. And it describes the ubiquitous persistence of certain ideas: everybody is convinced they have seen something others have not seen, and they delude themselves that they have thought things that others have not thought, but this is just because someone has taken the trouble to tell an ordinary story in an extraordinary way.

So the connecting road, via Majore, has been created to display – in accordance with a theory of what a town should have – a smart hostelry, a pharmacy and even a rustic town hall complete with market and a weighing-machine for livestock. In addition, of course, to small permanent businesses, mostly run by outsiders, and this among people only recently civilised to the point of being able to read and write and who only recently have given up on bartering. So here is this connecting road, a foreign link between two native realities, a stretch of common land running beside a sort of mossy, rocky riverbed surrounded by trees that the people of Nuoro have named the Giardinetti. But to Michele Angelo this street is above all a building project of small plaster-fronted villas … fitted with balconies.

However, in this farce of chained creatures, Michele Angelo is the exception that proves the rule … Not much is known about him, except that he must have been the product of a union consummated behind the scenes: his father could have been a charcoal-burner from the mainland; and his mother a local nobody, perhaps a servant girl. What is certain is that she did not know she was pregnant until she was actually giving birth, whereas the man never knew he had become a father at all. And it is also a fact that in that corner of the world forsaken by every sort of god, women gave birth to underweight ugly hairy things, while what this mother produced was like something from a gold and white bundle, as beautiful as baby Jesus in the manger. But, clearly, it was the fruit of a seed ill-suited to such a uterus, so that when they pulled him out she was already dead. Hence the name they gave the child, Michael: the angel with the sword … The Sisters of Charity at the orphanage liked the idea that the fruit of sin had itself avenged the sin from which it had sprung.

Mercede’s case was different. Her father had wanted that name for her even though he knew he would never see her grow up. The girl was the subject of a dispute over a violated marriage contract. It is possible the facts are otherwise, but the popular rumour was that Mercede’s parents were the nobleman Severino Cumpostu and the priest’s housekeeper at San Carlo, Ignazia Marras. Known parents, whatever the case. But – and there was a “but” – Severino Cumpostu had contracted to marry a woman of the Serusi di Gavoi family, so that all trace was lost of the housekeeper and her child, until the girl appeared in church sixteen years later at the very moment when Michele Angelo was adjusting the large incense burner.

The Chironi family was the fruit of outcasts, of two negatives combining to make a positive, in itself enough to condemn their union as a rash one. When Michele Angelo and Mercede looked at each other for the first time, he saw her raising her head as if to adore a winged statue – in fact the blond youth was leaning away from the ladder towards the pivot from which the incense burner was hanging and looked as if he was flying. And he, looking down on the girl from above, seemed to see a ruby in its . . .