The Old Drift Read online

  Her mother’s arrival each night was a terrible deflation. Adriana would stomp in complaining about her job. She had become obsessed with the Signora’s bird: a luxury too far! An animal that ate human food! And gave nothing back but noise and shit! Sibilla said nothing. She just nodded and served the meal she had cooked for them and washed their bowls. But her silence gentled as the evening went on. It was almost companionable when they went to bed. By that point in the night, Adriana’s empty chatter had come to seem soothing, a kind of company, like sitting by a babbling brook. It was a version of family better than most.

  * * *

  Longing for a better coat, Federico doggedly tracked the trail of hair through the snow, from tree to sapling to fence post to rock. Between these poles, the braided line hung suspended, fallen snow clinging to it in little triangles like the banners of a medieval battle – all white, all surrender. Sometimes he would lose the thread under a snowdrift. Then he would find it again and chuckle. He was so charmed by the trick of it – though in truth he was half-charmed by his own charm. He had always loved a quest, the sparkle it sprinkles on a mystery.

  Federico had lost his faith in the church as an adolescent, the moment that he had compared what he knew of sex with what he had been told about God. A little while later, he lost his faith in war. When he was a boy, war had seemed like the only way out of a standstill life in the landed gentry. As the youngest son of a titleless nobile, he was too rich to work, too poor to play. The military seemed ideal: a balance of work and play. But with a myth for an older brother – the Colonel always away in Abyssinia or Libya – Federico had developed a rather abstract image of war: an exalted space of pure momentum; a blur of racing legs and spinning wheels; fire and smoke curling across a map.

  Then, on 10 October 1944, nearly eight years after Mussolini joined the Axis, 2,000 members of the Allied resistance came down from the hills of Piedmont. They swept through Alba, retaking the puppet government of Salo and establishing a Partisan Republic. The bells of the town’s nine churches quarrelled clamorously. The townspeople stood in the streets, applauding with fervour or fear. The Partisans marched through in their motley outfits, gathering whores and cars and petrol, knocking on the doors of registered army officers and emerging with guns and gear – Federico recognised the insignia of black and yellow frogs from his brother’s old uniform. Drunk on courage, he signed up as a badogliani the next day. He was only sixteen years old but because of his education, he was promptly promoted to the rank of sergeant.

  It turned out that, in practice, being a soldier resisting the Nazis meant late-night foot patrols, dull days of shooting practice, and a great deal of waste: good soil ploughed up by bullets from the machine guns, casings strewn everywhere like the husks of seeds. Farms and houses were taken over by lazy, uncouth men, the buildings reverting to wood and stone, the men to animals. There were shallow graves everywhere – any step you took was as liable to land on a corpse’s hand as in a pile of shit. Worst of all was the stink of futility. After just twenty-three days of occupation, the Fascists took the city back from the Partisans and held it until the Armistice the following year.

  Federico felt distraught, listless. He had not served, he had only waited. There was nothing to do once the war was over but commiserate with his older brother, who had been injured in brave but minor fashion in the second Abyssinian campaign. Upon his return to Alba, Colonel Corsale had dabbled at farming and local politics, but it suited him better to spend his days limping through the forest shooting for sport and his nights telling old war stories at Signora Lina’s parties. When Federico pitched up at Villa Serra after the Armistice was announced on the radio, his brother opened the door in full regalia and gave him a slow salute.

  ‘Welcome to Limbo!’ the Colonel cried, clapping Federico on the back. ‘It’s even worse than Inferno.’

  The parties at Villa Serra were indeed depressing. In a rage of boredom, Federico often found himself prodding his brother to argue with him. Federico wanted to talk about the war, the ideals it had gestated, the deformed monsters it had birthed – like the colonies, which were now roiling with revolution, intent on independence. But the Colonel just laughed at these philosophical questions. He had long ago decided that the world was only tolerable if you could find the humour in it. Federico glared at him bitterly. How could you laugh when glory had proven a mutter? When democracy was stillborn?

  The broken promises of the church, the Partisans, the war: Federico had become a man always sighing in the ruins. Though it be a melancholy song, a sigh is a song all the same. It was not that he had lost his faith entirely but rather that he had been blessed with a dolorous faith – a faith premised on loss, and thus endlessly renewable. When he had first seen the hairy girl spin in the Signora’s salon, he had felt his ribs stretch near to splintering. The Colonel had muttered something crude in his ear of course, but Federico had just waved him off and watched.

  The girl’s tresses dove and fluttered as they whipped around her, her pale form gleaming under the smog of hair. And when she stopped and her hair kept going, when it bound her so tight that it smothered her, when his brother cut her loose and raised her like Lazarus from his bindings, and when he himself wiped the blood from her back – then Federico Corsale knew faith again. It flooded him now, as he reached the top of a hill, and saw a thread of her hair vanish under the door of an old hunting cabin.

  * * *

  Sibilla was sitting on the floor, her eyes closed, listening for the sound of her inner spin, its whir like the throaty coo of a dove. A knock on the door lifted her to her feet before her eyes were even open. She raced to it and shouted instructions and waited while he found the key in the tomato garden and unlocked the door. They stood facing each other across the threshold. She was grinning at him, choked with joy. The Sergeant, measled with snowflakes, shivered happily at the sight of her, or maybe at his own sense of triumph. ‘I found you!’ he kept saying as she led him inside and sat him on a chair by the hearth and fixed him a cup of chicory coffee.

  He sipped and talked and talked and sipped, giving her a detailed account of his discovery of her absence, and the trail of hair, and his journey through the snow. His mouth was like an automa. She sat on the floor and watched it open and close for some time. Then, to their mutual surprise, she interrupted. She told him her version of things, about how at first, locked in that dark, smelly larder, she had plucked out her hair, one strand at a time. How she had found an old knife under a sack of polenta and sawed wretched swathes of hair off herself, her skin flaming red then cooling white. She’d had to twist her arm over her shoulder to sever the hairs from her back. But she had made sure to pull out enough to braid into a firm thread. She had spooled it into a ball and trailed it from her pocket as her mother dragged her back to this cabin where, if he hadn’t come, she would have been trapped forever…

  The Sergeant’s mouth was open, his eyes wide. Sibilla was breathing so heavily that her hair pulsed with it. The fire smacked its lips. The Sergeant smiled.

  ‘Certo,’ he said. On the journey here, he lied, he had wondered how she had managed to make such a long thread for him to follow. But he had decided that she must have used the cut hair from the garden – the hair in the ground, remember? Sibilla did remember, and she said so, and smiled at him, relieved that he remembered too. She wasn’t a fool after all.

  ‘And how is Villa Serra?’ she asked shyly.

  ‘Oh. Well. There is a terrible bird that my brother gave to Lina. It talks and you—’

  ‘It talks?’

  ‘It says what you teach it,’ he laughed. ‘Lina, of course, has neglected its training…’

  He removed his jacket as the fire warmed his bones, freeing his arms to gesticulate as he told her all about the social intricacies of the salon at Villa Serra. She slumped and examined her hands.

  ‘…going on and on about the damned babies in—’

 
; ‘Babies?’ She looked up.

  ‘My brother, the Colonel, was boasting,’ he scoffed. ‘That in Africa they would string up babies over a long fire.’

  ‘Dio, that’s terrible,’ said Sibilla, her eyes alight with revulsion.

  Federico nodded seriously. ‘And they would sit there and just watch them burn.’

  ‘I cannot believe Italians would do such a thing,’ she said.

  ‘No, no!’ Federico clucked. ‘The natives!’ His disgust soon found a new object. ‘Even after we brought them our “God” and our “civilised ways”. It is an abomination what we did to the ascari, to make them fight their own brothers…’

  ‘Ascari?’

  ‘Black soldiers,’ he murmured. ‘War is a nightmare, Sibilla,’ he said, gazing solemnly out of the window. ‘It is a sickness, no matter the colour of the hand that grips the weapon.’

  ‘What kind of weapon?’

  ‘Guns, sicuro.’ He frowned. ‘In Africa they use assegai.’ He glanced at her. ‘I’ve heard.’

  Her eyes glowed behind her hair like eggs in a nest. ‘What is an assegai?’

  Thus began a coincidence of four lips. In the beginning, those lips opened and shut across the room as Federico and Sibilla chatted. As the weeks passed and Federico continued to visit, they moved closer together until one day, those lips were opening and closing up against each other, silently, urgently. They mouthed blindly, spoke in tongues, each scandalised by the other’s willingness to go further. Her hair writhed and knotted, tangled between them. Once, she tugged away from him and whispered: ‘Does it repulse you?’

  Federico’s lips were still mouthing the air. He closed them and opened his eyes. ‘What?

  ‘My hair. Does it—’

  Federico pulled her to him and kissed the top of her head. She nestled into his shoulder and her hair seemed to soften, as well.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about the plan.’

  ‘What plan?’ Federico murmured into her skull, his voice humming through the bone.

  ‘To leave this place.’

  * * *

  One night a few months later, Sibilla woke to the sound of the key scraping the lock. It was still dark but on the verge of dawn, that briefest spell when even the insects are asleep. The cabin door opened and Sibilla heard her mother curse as she tripped over the doorsill. Sibilla turned onto her other side. Then she heard more sounds: a snort, feet stumbling, whispers, a glugging bottle, the hollow whistle of lips across its mouth. It sounded like two people, laughing at each other, hushing each other, laughing at the hushing and hushing the laughter and so on. A stupid game: the cabin was too small for secrets. Sibilla sat up.

  ‘I can hear you,’ she said.

  Her mother squealed. The man buried his guffaw in something soft, skin or cloth.

  ‘Come!’ he finally wheezed. ‘Ragnatela! Join us. Let me take a look at you!’

  Sibilla reluctantly slid off the bed, wrapping a sheet around herself, and lit a lamp. Their figures flickered to life. The Colonel was sitting on the chair. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing his thick neck laced with greying curls. His eyes shifted back and forth between Sibilla and her mother, who was sitting on his knees. Adriana wore an unfamiliar dress that was either a stained white or a faded brown, and the bluegreen glass necklace Signora Lina had given her. Her hair was down and resembled an old mop. Sibilla realised she hadn’t seen them together since that morning a decade ago when she first went to the Signora’s. Neither had changed much – her mother a little thinner, the Colonel a little thicker – but things between them had clearly changed profoundly. Sibilla thought of Nonna Giovanna’s fables. The Colonel was the puppet Gianduja, Adriana the Giacometta on his knee.

  ‘Bring us water!’ Adriana demanded from her throne.

  Sibilla’s hair bristled, but she complied. She walked over to the jug and poured water into two tin tumblers and handed them over, then sat back on her bed. Adriana kept licking her lips after every sip, an oddly sensual gesture though she was probably just trying not to make a mess.

  ‘We have not seen you in our grand salon for quite some time, ragnatela,’ the Colonel said. ‘Let me take a look at you. I will miss you when I’m gone.’

  Sibilla’s eyes darted towards him. Gone where?

  ‘Why don’t you show us a trick?’ Adriana slurred knowingly. ‘Why don’t you spin for us?’

  ‘Yes, that would be jolly, wouldn’t it?’ the Colonel said, his eyes glinting in the lamplight.

  Adriana laughed with relish, tipping her head back. Sibilla had never seen her mother’s neck curve like that, a sapling bent by the wind, her bead necklace glittering like dew.

  ‘Dance for us, ragnatela!’ The Colonel began a stentorian clap, stomping his foot in time. Adriana giggled awkwardly, struggling to stay upright on his bouncing knee. When she managed to adjust her balance, she added the thin slap of her palms to the percussion.

  Sibilla stared at their bared teeth and expectant eyes as their advance applause began to speed up. It was set to trigger the whorl in her. She despaired. Would she always spin like this for others, like a record, their needling gaze slipping into her grooves? Sibilla turned from the riot in their eyes and walked out of the cabin, closing the door behind her.

  She sat in the cool grass under the trees behind the cabin, her arms around her knees. Had Federico – his unhurried, unworried courtship – given her the will to leave? No. He had a thirst for her too, the same kind she had seen in their eyes, and that she could hear her mother and the Colonel slaking together now inside the cabin. By the time their last cries clashed with the first birdsong, dawn had uncorked the sky and spilled white gold over the valley.

  When the Colonel came out and limped off down the hill, Sibilla went back inside. Her mother glowered at her from her tousled bed.

  ‘Just one night. After all this time.’ Adriana sat up and pulled a slip over her head. ‘A little pleasure…’ She turned to look out of the window. Her cheek was creased with lines, though from the years or the sheets, Sibilla couldn’t say.

  * * *

  Spring came. It darkened Federico’s skin and brightened his hair. It blanketed the valley with luminous green leaves and white blossoms. Sibilla vibrated with restlessness.

  ‘Take me somewhere,’ she begged.

  Federico demurred. ‘You are the only journey I wish to take, my Giacometta.’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’ She gave him a sharp look. ‘Fine. Let me take you somewhere then.’

  Despite the heat, Sibilla put on her mother’s old satin-lined coat. She took Federico’s hand and led him on the route she had taken as a child. Here were the peppery trees! Here was the root she had tripped over! Here was the Lanaro river!

  ‘This isn’t the Lanaro,’ Federico laughed. ‘It’s just a creek.’

  She shrugged. It was still hers – but what a difference the weather made! This wasn’t a brown river under a stormy sky. Sunrays dove into the water and pulled twisted ropes of light out over the stones. The green trees overhead hushed fondly. Federico complained about the bites but even the mosche looked lovely in their glinting throngs. Sibilla tossed the coat aside and stepped barefoot into the water. Her hairs puckered its surface, drifted drowsily. Federico took off his boots to join her. They smiled at their underwater feet. Then he leapt onto the bank.

  ‘Che cos’è?!’ Sibilla asked. ‘A snake?’

  A school of fishes. She could feel them biting her ankles too now. Federico was already putting his boots back on, grumbling about the dangers of barefootedness. She looked down at the translucent creatures swarming her feet, darting in and out of the tangles of her hair. Were they hungry? No. Biting is just an expression of curiosity for those without hands. But she had the feeling that, left to their own devices, they might nibble her to the bone.

  Sibilla shuddered off her footmaidens
and stepped out of the creek. She spread the coat out and sat, waiting for Federico to stop talking. Finally, he looked at her. She looked at him. Her hair trembled.

  As is usual for the first time between a man and a woman, the woman was dissatisfied, the man satisfied too soon. Federico rolled onto his back. Sibilla’s hand was still on his wrist and his pulse ticked faintly, erratically, like cooling metal. They lay there for a while on her mother’s coat, in the seep of his semen and the creep of the gloaming, looking up at the trees above nuzzling their leafy heads.

  ‘Try again?’ she whispered, and he did.

  1956

  Ding dong, said the bird.

  The brothers Corsale were in the Signora’s salon. The other guests had not yet arrived. The Colonel was sitting in his velvet chair, poking into the grey parrot’s cage as it hopped about, squawking its echoes. Lina stood by the fire, pouring drinks into tumblers on the mantel. Federico was pacing furiously, his ponytail swinging like a whip as he speechified.

  ‘The Italians forced the Africans to fight one another. And for what? For ideals utterly beyond their comprehension. The native has no notion of empire or democracy or the future.’

  ‘No sense of time at all,’ the Colonel muttered. ‘Kaffirs are always bloody late.’

  Bloody, bloody! said the bird.

  ‘You’ve missed the point!’ Federico exclaimed. ‘Abyssinia was meant to be our greatest achievement. To take Fort Ual-Ual was one thing. But when we used the ascari for the invasion, we lost our souls, our dignity. We set them on each other like…like cannibals.’