I
The new morning’s bright sun washed over the yard, and a faint breeze wafted from the west, carrying a hint of sea even so far from the Sicilian coast. The leaves of olive trees rustled in their grove, and the cattle lowed as Paolo and his dog led them out onto the hillside.
Caterina loved this early morning hour in summer, when the sun was fresh and the problems of the day before had faded with the night’s rest. It was in this moment, and only this one, she could feel that life still held hope. The beauty of the world washed over her in this one moment, fresh and new and bright.
Such great beauty, so easily sullied by people’s daily cruelties and pettiness. And yet each day started in this fresh new way.
Gatto Giallo, the huge, ugly tom cat who lorded over the villa and his little realm of barn cats, perched on a fence post, licking a paw to wipe his whiskers. Every now and then, he lifted his pale, scarred face and blinked at the sun.
Caterina smiled as she watched him enjoy the warming morning. He was a sweet boy, unless you were a mouse. Or another tom with ideas about taking over the villa.
She stood in the chickenyard, her apron full, and scattered grains for the flock at her feet. They clucked and chattered happily, scratching in the yellow dust. Occasionally, two or three hens would bicker with each other, and she went to shoo them apart.
“Come, little ladies. Let’s all get along. The world is too unkind to fight with family.”
“Caterina! I need the eggs!” her mother called from the kitchen window.
“I’m almost finished, Mamma!” She scooped bigger handfuls and tossed the grain in the yard, careful to strew it about so the hens didn’t cluster too closely and fight over a single kernel of dried corn when there were so many to be had.
She dropped her empty apron and brushed the seed dust away, then swiped her hands together before she headed to the coop to gather the day’s eggs. Caterina and her mother cooked for all who worked here at the Villa Cuccia, and for the Cuccia family as well, and they never had eggs left over from one day to the next. Indeed, sometimes, Caterina had to go looking to borrow more from nearby kitchens, or even into the village to buy some.
This morning, she collected almost two dozen eggs and carried the basket back into the kitchen with both hands.
Her mother took the basket from her at once and went to the pump at the sink to wash them. “Wash up and prepare the flours, little treasure. Don Cuccia has guests this evening, remember.”
Enrico Cuccia was the most powerful, and most dangerous, man in their little village and for some distance beyond it. He officially owned this vast estate, with its many hectares of olive groves and cattle pastures, but in truth he owned their whole village and everyone in it. Some were more ‘owned’ than others, but no one was truly free of Don Cuccia’s influence, or his will.
Caterina’s family was one of those more owned than others, but they had secret, terrifying plans to change those circumstances. Her father was already free. They’d bought his freedom at the cost of Caterina’s, and her brother’s, and her mother’s, but it was a choice they’d made willingly, to save his life, and in the hopes that they all might follow him soon to the golden streets of America.
Five years had passed since her father had left them, and they’d had word from him only once. They didn’t know if his letters simply couldn’t get through, or if he’d stopped trying, or if harm had befallen him. But their plans continued, in secret and in risk. Someday, they would leave this place for a better one.
Caterina washed her hands. She saw the big pot on the massive iron cookstove and checked the corn porridge, stirring it with a thick wooden spoon. The Cuccia family was at their breakfast now, an elaborate meal with many dishes to choose from. The porridge would sit on the stove for an hour or more; it was for the workers, who would come in when they could and ladle out a wooden bowlful for themselves.
Seeing that the porridge was thickening, she added some fresh milk and stirred until it had new life.
“The flours, Caterina. We need to start the breads.”
“Yes, Mamma.” She went to the wooden cook table and began to sort and measure out the flours for the breads they’d bake today. They milled the grains once a week, on Saturdays, so today she was able to measure from their bins.
“He’s coming!” Isabella, who served the family meals and helped with the cleaning of the villa, bustled into the kitchen with a tray laden with dirtied breakfast dishes. She spoke under her breath but with an edge of anxiety. “He’s coming!”
Caterina and her mother stood straight and smoothed their aprons and skirts as Don Cuccia came into the kitchen.
He was not an ugly man, nor fat, nor bald, nor short. In fact, he was fine enough looking. At casual glance, a stranger might deem him unremarkably attractive. He was old enough to be entirely grey, head and beard alike, and his face showed the wrinkles of a life lived in the Sicilian sun, but nothing in his looks showed darkness or cruelty. When he smiled, as he did now, one might even think him capable of kindness.
And he was. But that kindness was reserved for his family and friends. When he was kind to those he considered beneath him, it always came with a bitter cost.
“The breakfast was excellent this morning, Maddalena,” he said to Caterina’s mother.
“Thank you, my don. I’m happy it satisfied you.”
“It did. Very good.”
It was not his custom to praise his servants. The atmosphere in the kitchen was thick and tense, with Caterina, her mother, and Isabella standing perfectly still, waiting to know what the don really intended by coming into the kitchen. Normally, it was his wife who gave the food orders.
There was a wooden bowl of apples, yellow with a blush of pink, on the worktable, near Caterina’s elbow. They were intended for that evening’s dessert. The don leaned close beside her and plucked one from the bowl, then turned and rested with studied nonchalance on the edge of the table. He slipped a pocketknife from his trousers and popped it open. As he sliced pieces from the apple and ate each one off the knife, he said, “I’ve had word in the morning post—we’ll have three more for dinner this evening.”
“Very good, my don,” Caterina’s mother said, her head bowed.
“Berto is coming home. His travels are over, and he’ll be home this afternoon.” He turned to Caterina, with the smile that could be mistaken for kind. “What do you think of that, Caterina?”
Berto was Don Cuccia’s fifth child and only son. He had been raised like a prince, free to chase his whims, until he was past twenty, and then sent out to learn the world before he took his seat at his father’s side.
When she was younger, before she’d known better, while she’d still had her father here and didn’t understand the way things worked in this world, she, like most of the girls in their village, had thought Roberto Cuccia a dashing figure—handsome and mysterious, free with his wealth and with his smiles. He’d been like an idol, something to be worshipped.
Since those young days, she’d learned there was nothing worthy of worship in the Cuccia family, though they all themselves believed otherwise.
When Berto was last home, for the long December holiday, he’d paid Caterina a great deal of attention, despite her best efforts to avoid him once she’d realized that she’d gained his notice. On the eve of the new year, he’d forced her into a corner and kissed her. He might have done more, his hands had grasped for more, but she’d been saved by a group of drunken revelers coming upon the shadows he’d shoved her into, and she’d managed to slip away and stay scarce until he left the villa again.