The Old Drift Read online

  * * *

  The truth was, Adriana had claimed the soap for herself before it even fell to the floor. It was impractical to use anything but tallow on Sibilla, and a waste to use it on a wrinkled old woman. Adriana kept it for herself, using it sparingly: birthdays, saints’ days, at the end of her menses. She would drag the metal tub behind the cabin and fill it with heated water. Then she would strip off her clothes and lower herself into the steaming bath and spin piles of ornate lace with the soap, making baroque circles over her body with her palms. Like a woman, she would think. Like a real woman.

  Over time, the soap dwindled and dulled and formed cracks like a desiccated fruit seed. It grew so thin that it slipped between her fingers into the water, where it would lose even more silky layers, a cycle of diminishment that filled her with anguish. To use it was to lose it. How strange, she thought now as she reached the short uphill path that led through the woods to the cabin. That soap had once seemed an extravagance – a thing that smelled like gianduja chocolate and felt like satin lining and gave you licence to touch your own skin and still feel clean. How had it become a need?

  * * *

  Long strands of hair streamed out from Sibilla’s body. She could see better like this and she noticed that the boys’ hair sat greasy on their heads. The trees in the distance were not stirring, either. So what was lifting her hairs up this way? She saw the boys wonder the same thing. They glanced at each other and slowly began to back away, their eyes widening as her hair rotated to the front of her body until it was pointing directly at them. They stepped backward faster and faster until one of them stumbled over a root and cried out. Then they all turned and ran.

  Sibilla’s hair was streaming before her as it had when she had first stepped outside that morning. But this time, rather than drag her forward, it swung back and roped her into the water behind her. The shock of cold squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she saw the metal grey sky through the water. It warped under the cascade of a wave, then a swathe of her hair soared across her vision, languid as melassa. Individual threads of hair came into view, bubbles stringing each strand like Mama’s glass bead necklace, each bubble bearing a miniature reflection of Sibilla’s face. The small Sibillas blinked in unison.

  Just then, the sole of her foot touched the riverbed and instinct sent all her concentration into her ankle. She bent her knee and propelled herself up, hair streaming down with the force of her skyward dive. Her head broke the surface and she gasped for air but her mouth was stoppered. She shook her head until there was enough of a crack between the thick falls of hair to breathe, then grabbed at a branch and pulled herself out of the water. She felt her hair tugging her back in so she began hauling it towards her, lock by lock, before it tried to swim off or drown her.

  When she had finally lugged it all out of the currents, she found herself kneeling on the shore of a tumbling river. This must be the Lanaro. Nonna had pointed out flashes of it from the cabin window. Sibilla parted her hair with shrinkled fingers to examine herself in its surface. The water was choppy but she didn’t notice the zigzag. She was mainly struck by how small she looked in her reflection. She didn’t feel that small from the inside.

  * * *

  When Adriana arrived home that day, she found her mother seated on a chair by the hearth and her daughter kneeling on the floor beside her. Giovanna was rocking and sobbing. Sibilla was silent, stroking her grandmother’s knee with a heavy-looking paw. And they were both surrounded by a muddy, gritty spill of hair, more hair, Adriana exclaimed, than she had ever seen, though in truth that was what she often said when she came home from a hard day at work.

  Sibilla told the story in bursts like gunfire: the door, the wind, the boys, the river. The rest of the evening was consumed with washing the girl’s hair – with fetching water from the well with a tin can that bled drops from a hole in a fixed beat that counted the seconds till dawn. Guiltily, Adriana used the rest of the fancy soap to wash it. Sibilla and Giovanna both tried to help but the young girl’s fingers were too involved and the old woman’s too shaky. Eventually, they both fell asleep.

  Adriana alone sat up late into the night with Sibilla’s hair across her lap, extricating pine needles and rocks and dead insects from it. By the time she was done, the hair was huge with handling, fluffy and grey as smoke. She felt an urge as strong as a contraction to reach inside and pull her daughter out. Instead, she watched through the window as the sun rose behind the mists of Alba. Then she woke Sibilla up, wrapped her in sackcloth, and took her to Villa Serra.

  1948

  The Signora’s green robe wafted gently over the threshold. She was calling over her shoulder down the corridor behind her. ‘I’ll be right back, Colonnello Corsale. I cannot imagine who is visiting so late. Or so early, rather,’ she chuckled. The Signora turned. ‘Oh, hello.’

  ‘Signora.’

  ‘But this is the front door—’ The Signora’s chin lifted. ‘And what have we here?’

  Sibilla looked up through her hair at the women exchanging words and gestures over her head. Mama had been forceful on their walk here, but now that they had arrived, she seemed fearful. She kept plucking at the sackcloth covering Sibilla. Impatient and hot, Sibilla tossed her head to unhood herself, and blew a puff of air to clear her vision. The Signora started. Her eyes went green and wide, then black and thin.

  ‘I see,’ she said curtly. ‘Come on then.’ She spun and walked back into the house.

  Adriana and Sibilla followed her down a corridor to a room the size of their entire home. This room was dimly lit – the curtains were drawn and only a few squat candles guttered in the corners – and it looked like a storm had passed through, knocking things over, scattering mess everywhere. Sibilla was ordered to sit on a velvet stool before a velvet chair, in which was seated the largest person she’d ever seen. He looked like a taller, thicker tree than the ones who had thrown stones at her, or as Mama was now calling them, i demoni. The big man listened, his black moustache teetering with curiosity. This was reassuring, as were the bright buttons on his jacket, and the way his fingers massaged the air when he spoke. For some reason, Sibilla desperately wanted to sit on his knee. As if sensing this, he turned to her.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said in a deep voice that made his moustache buzz, ‘whenever a draught blows through here, your hair is like the ribbons of a Chinese dancer.’

  ‘What is a Chinese?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah! What a question! You know,’ he remarked to the Signora, who was stretched out on a chaise longue. ‘It really is a question now, after the war.’

  The Signora murmured vaguely, then stood up and wandered off, stepping casually over the mess on the floor. Sibilla wanted to ask more about wars and ribbons and the Chinese but the man was too busy admiring the Signora from behind as she departed, and Mama was no longer Mama. She had become a blinky, twitchy thing, rising halfway from her seat when the Signora returned with a tray of drinks. The Signora handed Sibilla one filled with something clear and sweet and fizzy. It bit Sibilla’s tongue and stranded ticklish bubbles above her lips and her interest narrowed to figuring out how to drink it politely. By the time it was finished, her fate had been decided.

  Sibilla would live at Villa Serra with the Signora, for ‘safety’, and she would help her mother clean every day, for ‘personal development’. On his part, the Colonel would write to a doctor friend of his about her ‘condition’. Sibilla was about to ask about her nonna when the Colonel stretched his hand out to her. She extended her hairless palm to shake. But then his other hand rose and he reached them both towards her face. Sibilla glanced at her mother, who nodded gravely. Her fists at her sides, Sibilla tipped her face up to the Colonel. He put his palms to her cheeks and smoothed the hair back. She could see his eyes glinting from the caves under his bushy eyebrows, a mole winking from behind a fork of his moustache. He grunted and stretched her hair back harder, pulling it t
ight across her face. Sibilla winced and exhaled bravely.

  ‘Yes,’ the Colonel’s moustache buzzed. ‘Now I can see you.’

  ‘Enough,’ the Signora flustered between them. ‘It is time to show the girl her quarters.’

  These were in the kitchen larder, a tall, narrow room that smelled of wheat and coffee and vinegar. There was one window high up and a door with an outer lock. The Signora tossed a pillow on the floor, a square thing with a complicated pattern that the Colonel called ‘orientals’. This was to be Sibilla’s new bed. She tucked her hair under her bum and sat on it. Her mother knelt before her.

  ‘Sleep,’ she whispered to Sibilla.

  And she did. It was still morning but Sibilla was exhausted from yesterday’s adventure. She dreamt of the Colonel, his moustache and eyebrows growing thick and wide until they covered his face completely.

  * * *

  Sibilla never saw her nonna again. A month after Sibilla had moved to Villa Serra, Giovanna sat up with a bolt in the middle of the night, waking Adriana up with a strange jumble of words about prezzemolo. Years ago, during the last months of her pregnancy, Adriana had developed a craving for it, and Giovanna had started growing it in the tomato garden to save money, collecting leftover hair from the barbiere to fertilise the soil. Only now did Giovanna realise what she had done, she said. She had planted the hair in the ground along with the seeds. And as Adriana had devoured sprig after sprig to satisfy her craving, she must have swallowed the fur right along with the parsley.

  ‘I put the hair right in your belly!’ Giovanna cried. ‘Sibilla was bound to end up a tarantola!’

  Then she crossed herself, lay back down, and fell asleep. Assuming it was a spot of senility, Adriana said nothing of it the next morning. A few days later, while harvesting tomatoes in her garden, Giovanna sat down and died. Adriana buried her with the help of their neighbour, who thus atoned for the stones his sons had thrown at Sibilla. Adriana mourned her mother sporadically, in between all the tasks she had to tend to – for her own sake and for her daughter’s.

  At dawn, Adriana would arrive at Villa Serra, unlock the larder, and wake Sibilla. The girl would urinate in the outhouse and wash her face in the basin, then they would proceed together to the doors of the grand salon. Adriana would throw them wide and they would pause a moment, riveted. What devastating thing happened here every night? Adriana would sigh, Sibilla would blink, and they would begin. Sibilla’s hair was an asset for this line of work. She could dust without a duster, mop without a mop. She didn’t even need to wash the tool of her trade – at the end of the day, she cut off the dirty ends and tossed them in the garden behind the kitchen.

  For years, Sibilla worked at her mother’s side, fondling Villa Serra’s chipped and tattered insides with care. Later, when she thought back on her childhood, this is how she remembered her days. Her nights were a different story.

  Shortly after she arrived at Villa Serra, Sibilla woke to the sound of the larder door bursting open.

  ‘Come!’ the Signora exclaimed. ‘There is no more wine! We need entertainment!’

  ‘Where is – ow!’ Sibilla pried the Signora’s high heel off her hair and stood. ‘Where is Mama?’

  ‘Your mother?’ The Signora snorted. ‘She isn’t here. It isn’t morning. Well, it is. But it isn’t.’

  Sibilla stared at the Signora through her nest. The Signora stared back a moment. Then ‘Come!’ she said again and stalked out of the kitchen, her heels stuttering. Sibilla followed.

  As they approached the salon, a low roar rose, jazz frothing along its edge. When they reached the doors, the Signora opened them and, with a grandiose sidestep, disappeared into the party. Sibilla looked around. A short man was dancing with a tall woman, who seemed entranced by a candelabra. Behind them stood a group of women in all white with no mouths – oh, it was just their gloved hands covering their lips. A bald man was asleep on a divan, an empty glass perched on his chest in the centre of a red stain. His bare feet lay in the lap of a woman wearing a sky-blue gown. She was counting cards, copper ringlets trembling with the motion of her fingers. Was this what she and her mother spent their days washing away? This disaster in progress was far preferable to its aftermath. Everything in the salon was transformed by the glow of the chandelier, which was the most transformed of all, its dusty dewdrops alive with light.

  Sibilla drifted towards the centre of the room to look at it, her train of hair dragging behind her. She felt herself catching on gazes, as if sticky strings tied her to the eyes in the room – wherever she went, they went. For the first time in her life, her hair felt like insufficient cover. Finally, a familiar face! The Colonel. He sat in the velvet armchair and on its footstool sat a young man with a ponytail, gesturing so wildly that the Colonel, scowling with concentration, seemed a statue by contrast. The statue melted – he smiled and reached for her.

  ‘Ragnatela!’ His voice bristled her scalp as he pulled her close. ‘You have joined us at last,’ he grinned. ‘I’ve been scolding Lina for keeping you away.’

  He put his hands on her cheeks and stretched the hair tight, as he had when they first met. Sibilla’s relief at seeing him congealed in her stomach. Her hair seemed to stir under his palms, tingling with static, waves of which would sometimes attack her and leave her feeling like she had drunk too much espresso. He let go of her to introduce her to the young man with the codino.

  ‘This is my brother,’ said the Colonel.

  ‘Sergente Corsale.’ The young man bowed slightly.

  ‘Sergente?!’ The Colonel rolled his eyes. ‘Sergente of the Partisan Army of 1944 maybe! Or should I say the Partisan Army of the tenth of October to the second of November 1944…’

  As the Colonel continued to mock his brother’s military service, Sibilla swept the hair from her eyes and extended her hand. The young Sergeant ignored it with a frown and bowed again. She couldn’t tell if he was scared to touch her or expected her to curtsy instead. She let her hand and eyes drop. Colonel Corsale was expostulating about Abyssinia now, about il Africa orientale – nothing Sibilla had ever heard of – gesturing to her every once in a while as if to demonstrate something.

  An old woman approached, white powder coating her cheeks and chin in unseemly patches. Sibilla cocked her head to one side by way of a greeting. The old woman yelped in reply, then reached up and tugged at the grey bun on top of her own head, undoing it. The wispy hair wafted down. Sibilla was annoyed by the gesture – it was like crouching to see eye to eye with an animal. But the old woman’s eyes reminded her of her nonna, so she smiled. The old woman grinned back, her teeth stark as gravestones in the expanse of gum. Then she took Sibilla’s arm and began to dance.

  At first, Sibilla went along with the marionette movements of reluctance – jerk-sway, jerk-sway – waiting for an opportune moment to let go. But then someone else grabbed her other arm – it was the pretty card counter with the blue dress and the copper curls. The women danced, passing Sibilla between them. Her feet scraped, then tapped, then bounced against the floor, and soon enough she was bounding along, drawing near one dance partner, then the other, letting them spin her. The Colonel took notice and began to clap loudly to the beat from his seat. The Sergeant leaned against a wall, his wine glass pressed to his collarbone.

  Sibilla could see! Whenever she spun, her hair would whirl up and out from her body, dissipating into a mist of suspended strands. The music jiggled and jumped. Sibilla spun and spun. A vortex seemed to deepen and clarify in her belly, as if this were simply the natural acceleration of a spinning that had always been inside her. The party guests circled her, clapping in time. The ends of her hair thudded across corduroy, whispered across satin, pittered against badges. Splotches of faces bloomed towards her and wilted away. She caught a glimpse of Signora Lina’s scowling face and just then the spinning started to feel uncontrolled. Sibilla was no longer turning in place – she was orbiti
ng a lopsided loop in the centre of the room.

  But how to stop? Sibilla closed her eyes. Between spinning and stopping was a chasm. How to cross it? She heard dilating laughter and tumbling music. Only a plunge of nausea told her that she had finally stopped. As she swayed, something stirred over her – it was her hair wrapping around her – once, twice, encasing her completely. There was an airless pause, everyone caught in a gasp. Sibilla opened her eyes.

  Oh! How soft! A dark cocoon, dreamy and warm, the still-spinning room striated in a spiral of strips, the way Nonna used to peel an orange. Sibilla could see a grey moustache, a red dress, a green eye. Oh! How soft and beautiful! But now the cocoon was filling with heat, a vast vibration was swelling. The slivers of colour peeled away and a massing, swarming burst revealed all the capillaried flesh that hides behind the skin of the world. Sibilla fell into darkness.

  She woke up in someone’s arms. She blinked and the Colonel’s dark moustache came clear, then his eyes. Over his shoulder she saw his brother, the Sergeant with his codino striding back and forth like a caged beast. She felt the hot wetness on her back before she felt the sting of the cuts down her spine. Later she learned that the Colonel had pulled out his hunting knife and cut her out of her hair, his blade skimming her back and opening a dashed line of gashes.

  Now, he stood her upright on the shaggy rug of hairs that had fallen with his rescue. She looked down at the staticky pile, its uneven lengths reaching up her legs. Her back pulsed and trickled. The sliding violins started up again and Sibilla was picked up and carried across the room and laid on her side on a chaise. She felt wrung. I might fall asleep right here, she thought with a woozy giggle, and just as a cool damp cloth touched the top of her spine, she did.