Memory of the Abyss

by Marcello Fois, Patrick Creagh, Patrick Creagh

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; World War I

Synopsis

When Samuele Stocchino is two years old the village sage can already see a heart shaped like a wolf's head beating in his breast: the heart of a murderer. As a colonial soldier in Northern Africa, recruited from one subject land to subdue another, the sixteen-year-old Stocchino learns to kill before he has learned to love, and it is a skill he hones to perfection on the pitiless battlefields of the Corso Front in the Great War. Returning to Sardinia a hero to a pauper's welcome, he finds his family swindled and his sweetheart stolen away by the richest clan in the region, and from one first crime of passion a bitter feud is born. Stocchino terrorizes his wealthy neighbours and anyone who dares to till their land until, with Italy now firmly under Mussolini's boot, his elimination becomes Il Duce's priority. As he continues to elude capture, the seeds of myth are sown and the legend of Samuele Stocchino is forged. Shrouded by mystery and portent, Memory of the Abyss is a stirring fusion of myth, history and fiction, a daring re-imagining of the true story of a notorious Sardinian bandit and a deft excavation of the island's cultural roots by one of Italy's most gifted and celebrated writers.

Release date: April 26, 2012

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 186

Sample

In which it is related that a pair of boots can change the destiny of a man, and that forewarnings often have an explanation, but are no less important for all that. And where we tell of Samuele’s first separation and of lambs falling from the skies

But years, many years before that night, there had been other nights in Ogliastra. And other moons too. To tell of them all would take many lifetimes. So we must concentrate on the one on which, at the age of seven, I was walking along a road with my father. He had been drinking and staggered a little, and laughed at himself for his unsteady gait.

It was a Sunday, Saint Sebastian’s Day.

We had been to a christening: the seventh son of Redento Marras, and between this Redento and my father there was holy oil, because the blacksmith of Elìni was godfather to my elder brother Gonario. And I was wearing my brother’s boots.

It happened like this. My father, Felice Stocchino, and my mother, Antioca Leporeddu, had talked and talked about their duty to be present at that christening, because Elìni was not just round the corner from our house, it was a good four hours on foot, and so on and so forth. And as if the matter of the distance was not enough, there was the fact that they had nothing to give the newborn babe to bring him luck on this earth. And to bring luck on this earth you cannot turn up empty-handed before one who has only just opened his eyes to the world. No, no, not even the poorest shepherds arrived empty-handed at the manger where Christ and the Madonna were.

In any case, my mother said there was no way out of it: a duty is a duty, the holy oil is too strong a bond. Not to attend the baptism of the seventh son of a god-relation is simply out of the question. It would be turning the world topsy-turvy. My father nodded, he did not deny it, but when you haven’t got the needful you haven’t got it and that is that. And even if they did have something to bring the infant, what about my brother Gonario, Redento’s godson, who had grown out of his boots because his feet had got bigger by the day?

“Very well,” says my father, “I have to take Gonario with me, but can I take him barefoot?” My mother and father exchanged a look.

“Take Samuele,” says my mother, “because whether it’s Gonario or Samuele it’s all the same to Redento, who hasn’t seen Gonario since the font … Those boots fit Samuele, so take Samuele with you.”

Days such as that on which my parents agreed that I should go with my father to the baptism of Redento Marras’ son are branded with the mark of destiny. One always thinks they are days like any others. But that is wrong, because things happen, and sometimes one sees things that ought not to happen or one ought not to see. So one tells oneself there’s nothing strange about it, that everything is as usual, but that is not the case. For example, that very day, while my father and mother were trying to sort out the problem of the baptism, what should fall into the yard in front of my house but a lamb?

Just like that, out of the blue. As if a cloud had become so heavy that it crashed to earth and turned to pulp. We children were playing when we heard a great thump right behind us and Tzia Mena shrieking. Then other people came running and they all gathered round to see the animal that had smashed to the ground.

Tzia Mena told the whole story. She was sweeping the yard, she stopped for a breather because her health is not what it was, then she heard a whistling sound, distant at first but then nearer and nearer … She looked up and saw that out of the skies, and she swears it by her children and grandchildren Amen!, that out of the skies a lamb was falling. It is as certain as certain that lambs don’t fly, but it is equally certain that the creature splatted there on the ground had fallen from on high. “What do you mean, ‘from on high’?” they began to ask. But Tzia Mena stuck to her guns: “Out of the sky, I tell you! From up there, from up above …”

It has to be said, though, that that woman was not a very reliable person … but let that go. However, they came to us children, me and Luigi Crisponi and Giuseppe Murru, and asked us what we had seen. Well, we had seen nothing, but heard something, that we had: a rushing of air and then a truly terrible sound, a dull thud, like a boulder falling in the distance or a sack of potatoes dumped heavily on the ground. Like when you slip and land up on your bum and before it starts to hurt you hear the sound of the bump. Yes, that’s it: maybe that sound might best match the impossible idea of a land animal falling out of the sky. After all, the church was full of saints and lambs standing on clouds, and perhaps this particular animal had put a foot wrong. We all know, don’t we, that although the clouds look solid they are tricking us. You have to watch your footing even in heaven, hanging there above the heads of us mortals. And we can add that at the Apocalypse, so they tell us, a whole lot of toads are waiting to fall from the skies onto the heads of sinners. So perhaps they were having a trial run …

The hubbub was at its height when Totore Cambosu arrived. But he, a hunter who knows the secrets of nature, told everyone to calm down.

“This has nothing to do with saints or clouds, and not even with trial runs for the Day of Judgement. It’s to do with birds of prey.” When Totore spoke, dead silence fell. He bent down to examine the animal. “Hmm,” he said, pointing at the lamb’s white back on which some red scratches could be seen. “He grabbed it here and then he must have lost hold of it.”

We all looked agog at Totore Cambuso. He is one of those who can bewitch you with the tales he tells.

The answer was simple enough. A golden eagle had picked a lamb out of the flock and carried it on high. The little creature had begun to struggle, its heart beating against its ribs and was so terror-stricken it could scarcely breathe. What’s more, the air at that height is rarefied. All the same, from up in the sky the lamb could see huge things becoming tiny: the flustered shepherd rounding up the other lambs and shaking his stick in the air; the ram who, conc’a susu, was sniffing at the mistral; the maddened dog barking and leaping in an attempt to fly. Finally he saw his mother grazing away in the middle of the flock without a worry in her head, because since the world began it is always the meek who suffer. So if only for a moment the lamb knew what it was to fly, but then it realised that you need wings to be an eagle. So he tried to fly … Then it must have been that the eagle was young and had eyes too big for his stomach. So maybe he had not even realised that the lamb he had picked out was heavier than he had thought, all the more so because the creature in his talons was wriggling and wasn’t helping at all, and so sensing that he would not manage to carry his prey all the way to the crest of the hill, he simply let go …

And the rest we know.

*

Then, amid all the confusion, along came Missenta Crisponi, afraid that her Luigi might have been up to something, and they told her about the lamb, so she turned to look at her son and went as white as a sheet, because we hadn’t noticed but Luigi had a spot of the lamb’s blood right in the middle of his forehead. So Missenda grabbed him, spat on a corner of her apron, rubbed vigorously with the damp material and wiped off the stain. Tzia Mena and the other women crossed themselves: Sant’Antoni meu … What on earth would happen next?

And how long was it, two days later? What should happen to Luigi Crisponi? He was a particular friend of mine, but his father died. He had seen very little of his father, perhaps only twice in seven years, maybe three times, who knows …? But the fact of the matter is that when he was told his father was dead he could not even remember what he looked like. Yes, of course, Bartolomeo Crisponi was a tall man, but apart from that? Apart from that nothing, and when they asked him what his father was like he said he was tall and worked in a mine, and that was all. All the same Luigi felt it at once, for the odd thing is that even without a face to remember the grief is the same. Once Serafino Musu said to him that if he had nine brothers and sisters his father must have come home a few times, but Luigi gave him a perplexed look and I made a sign to Serafino to tell him to keep his mouth shut. This Serafino is older than us and knows a thing or two. So we decided not to go on about it, but Luigi insisted.

“You have all these brothers and sisters, so where do you think your mother found them?”

Luigi Cresponi looked this way and that, then clapped a hand over his mouth and opened his eyes wide.

Meanwhile, at Shaft Nine at Montevecchio they were bringing up the body of his father, four days dead. And that dead man’s eyes were wide open too. As old people always say, when you die in the dark you look for the light. Destiny buried Luigi Crisponi’s father before he died. Therefore, perhaps to keep at bay that terrible darkness and maybe also to alleviate the taste of caved-in earth that filled his mouth, he had opened his eyes wider than you can imagine, almost as if to pierce the close-woven fabric of the dark.

Brought home in a makeshift wooden coffin, the beanpole that had been Bartolomeo Crisponi arrived one January morning. The coffin was nailed up. But Missenta refused to sit there staring at a nailed-up coffin and asked them to open it, as she wanted to see her husband one last time. And the others were telling her to let it go, it was better to remember the living. Missenta nodded, but thought otherwise. She knew what she wanted and it was her business …

So they took off the coffin lid to show the dead man to his wife Missenta. Now that the blood had left him Bartolomeo’s complexion was moon-like, almost shiny, as it had been when he was a boy: the smooth skin of a young girl.

Bartolomeo looked as if wearied by death, his eyes forced shut by the doctor at the mine, but still handsome. He was not even swollen. To all appearances he didn’t even look dead. Austere, gaunt and massive, like a phosphorescent beech-tree trunk, like a discarded plaster cast. He could have been made of a material inert and organic at the same time, a huge pale larva, shining with its own light, wrapped in a dirty sheet.

Missenta looked fixedly at her husband, then at her neighbours, seeking their approval. As if to say: You understand, don’t you, but in the state he is, his fingernails encrusted with earth, his face with the coal dust barely wiped off it, we can’t bury this man. So the women laid him out on the kitchen table and undressed him.

Bartolomeo, naked as the first of men, was ready to receive loving care. And the length of him! His legs stuck out over the edge of the table from the calf down. His feet were knobbly. Luigi Crisponi’s mother wanted no-one else in the kitchen. She wanted to be with her dead husband’s body. So the neighbours took the children home with them and fed them on bread and cheese and milk.

Once alone, Missenta began to examine that body which, though hers, had never really been hers. She did not think they had ever been more profoundly intimate, she and her husband, than at that moment, even though they had brought nine children into the world. She began to wash him with a lukewarm cloth. She was nervous but determined, lingering over details: the black nails, the coal dust in the wrinkles of his forehead.

When she had finished, she sat exhausted with her hands on her knees.

That inert, washed body all of a sudden gave her the measure of her sorrow. Which was terrible. And sharp. But it was also a profound and honest sorrow. Almost calm … As before an attack of vertigo. That instant of absolute stability, rather than peace, which comes before you fall. This was how she, Missenta Corrias, now the widow Crisponi, saw that sorrow of hers: as seriously as a sulky child.

Then she stood up. And as she did so a thought came into her head. Missenta bent towards her husband’s mouth, to kiss it. Her lips brushed his, ice-cold but soft. Still with tiny traces of soil at the corners. Bartolomeo let her, and seemed languid and relaxed, seemed for once almost to like his wife’s advances.

It was easy to kiss him: between the thought and the deed there came the perfect moment.

Then it happened.

Bartolomeo’s eyelids suddenly shot open. His eyeballs were lifeless, his look was not a look, as if he were staring at some place unknown.

Missenta wanted to shriek, but what happened was worse. She felt dizzy, she was losing consciousness, she realised she was going to fall and fall she did. And in falling she grabbed hold of her husband’s body and pulled it down on top of her.

Infernal racket! What horror can this be? Per Deus e pe’ santos, what is happening? Someone knocked on the kitchen door: “Missé… open up for the love of God … Missé, what has happened?” But the woman was turned to stone, it was not even terror but something deeper, like a sense of eternal perdition. As when we slip and fall, in fact, and are not aware of falling but almost voluntarily let ourselves go just so as not to put it all down to chance. The naked body of her man covered her now with a shamelessness he had never had in life. Knocking and more knocking, but Missenta’s thoughts were already drifting elsewhere … Try telling her now that Bartolomeo is dead. She’ll never believe you, never, never, never …

The perfect moment. And the dizziness. Missenta’s particular dizziness had endless explanations but only three names: dizziness, in fact, at the one instant when Missenta herself was able to think about it and thus give it a name; then, apoplectic fit, as Dr Milone said when he had inspected the body; while everyone else called it heartbreak.

In a word, when they broke down the kitchen door the only thing to be done was to order another coffin. Of the cheap kind.

Then it happened that one morning a bailiff turned up at the Crisponi place to tell them they had to get out of the house, that it did not belong to them, even if no-one knew to whom it did in fact belong.

That very night Luigi Crisponi had a dream.

He dreamed that he heard a terrible noise, really and truly an excruciating uproar, so he put his hands over his ears but, instead of stopping, the noise grew louder and louder. Then, in his dream, he was his father swallowed up by the earth. He was his father trying to cry out, but could only stare wide-eyed into the dark. You see, it was like what happens in visions, that someone honestly believes in what he dreams as if it were true. And in the power of that dream Luigi truly believed that he could not breathe and that there was no way at all to cleave that darkness. He believed that his father, to make up for all the gifts that he had never given him, had come to him in a vision to tell him of the thunderous horror of the long death he had died. It seemed to Luigi that he could see himself in the whites of his father’s staring eyes that were the only source of light in that dense gloom. And it also seemed to him that that dream, persisting in him as both reality and its opposite, was a kind of trust which his dying father, his eyes staring, his mouth full of earth, grimed with coal dust, was bequeathing to him. Even if he, Luigi, could not say exactly what that bequest was.

Then it happened that no sooner did he awake than he stopped asking himself questions. He realised it was absolutely useless to lay claim to anything. He understood that his father’s legacy was to be docile in the face of adversity … And he realised his mother had died for having put up a fight, for not having given way. She had died because she thought she could prevail over the destined course of her pointless existence.

Luigi thought, though not at once, indeed many years were to pass before he thought that a meaningful existence is purchased at the price of thousands of meaningless ones. His father had whispered this to him with the whites of his eyes, looking at him from the depths, from the foul bowels of mother earth.

And then, of course, troubles don’t come singly … For not so much as a week had passed before they told Luigi that they were taking him to the or. . .