When I see her, she’s so beautiful I want to weep.
Who told you? demands Federico.
Told me what? I’m saying she’s beautiful.
Then don’t talk about weeping.
What’s the matter with you, Federico?
Begin the eels, woman.
When the fire’s hot enough I’ll begin, not before.
A klaxon sounds, the van arrives and Roberto shouts from the driving seat to Federico standing in front of the house: Where’s the kitchen, Count?
In the next field. Come and have some coffee first.
The van has woken up the other women: Leila, Marella and Zdena. Federico was the only man to sleep in the small house that night. He slept on the sofa. How the others managed he doesn’t know. He only knows that his sister insisted upon giving Ninon her letto matrimoniale. Tonight the fiancée must be alone, she said.
When the sun is high enough above the horizon to light the grass on top of the dyke, but before there are any shadows in the village square, the other market friends of Gino will arrive in their vans: Luca, the pastry cook; Ercole, the jeweller who also sells spices; Renzo, the cheese merchant with his nana; Gisella who trades in all the silks of Asia; and Scoto who sells only watermelons and listens to them as if they were oracles. Streetsellers, whether we sell tamata or melons, scarves or meat, have certain things in common. We all know how to get attention, how to joke, how to get up early and how to set ourselves up anywhere where there’s a chance of a stream of people. When we get tired, we long for silence; yet silence we fear, as actors fear empty theatres. With my white stick I wander among Gino’s friends and feel at home.
They have parked the vans in a circle on a patch of land which makes me think of the basement where Zdena went to buy her birdsong instruments in Bratislava. This one is an open-air basement and the ceiling is the sky, but it’s lower than the sea and lower than the village square where the church and the war memorial stand. In the middle of the circle Roberto, the butcher, has begun cooking the lamb. The carcass is turning on a spit over a massive brasier of wood embers. From time to time he bastes the meat, with a spoon the size of a hat, from a bucket of marinade he has prepared. Federico occasionally works a pair of bellows. A ring of men in immaculate white shirts watch and commentate. The roasting meat smells like every feast day since feasts began. The women chatting in the vans are putting the final touches to their hats and make-up. In the house Leila has been working on the bride’s dress for two hours.
The marriage service in the church of Gorino will take place at 11:30 a.m.
Afterwards a hundred people, wedding guests and villagers, will be waiting in the square. Opposite the church porch is a massive plane tree. Around it have been arranged tables with dozens of sparkling glasses and, along one edge, dark green bottles of vino spumante. Federico is systematically turning the glasses the right way up. Certain men are born hosts and they find it difficult to be either guests or spectators. Such men often lead rather solitary lives — gangsters, deep-sea fishermen, cattle dealers. Federico is a solitary. He only put on his splendid pinstripe suit when he saw the curato go into the church and the organ started playing. Now that the ceremony is over, he pours sparkling wine into the glasses, for he knows he can do it better than either of the waiters. They spill too much.
Kids from the school have come to watch. They have never seen so many strangers in the village, not even when a stray coach arrives in the summer and the tourists get out to look at the lighthouse. Today there are women in hats like actresses wear on television. Today there are men with roses in their buttonholes. And there is jewellery everywhere.
What are they waiting for?
Nothing special.
Did you see the banquet? I went down to the tables behind the house. There’s everything you can imagine — melons and prosciutto and asparagus—
Gelati?
The sheep is cooking.
It’s a lamb.
What are they waiting for?
It’s just beginning, this is what weddings are like.
How do you know?
My sister got married. It goes on all night, all night.
One of the boys will make a fucky-fuckie sign with his fingers. The boy whose sister got married shoves his open hand up against the other one’s nose.
Friends of Ninon and Gino are standing by the church porch and their fists are full of rice to throw over the newlyweds as soon as they appear. The rice probably comes from Vercelli, the town from which Jean Ferrero’s parents emigrated in the 1930s.
Jean, standing behind Zdena, surveys the crowd like a delegate at a political meeting; throughout his whole adult life he has only worn a shirt and tie when attending Congresses. The word Comrades is on the tip of his tongue. Impulsively he puts his large hand on Zdena’s shoulder. She touches it immediately with her fingers which ache.
Suddenly the bride and bridegroom are there. A rain of rice. A woman claps, carried away by memories. The curato beams.
The air plucking at Ninon’s veil, her white flaring skirt with its quivering lace hems, her loose billowing sleeves buttoned tight around her wrists, the glistening silver shoes on which she walks so delicately as they come forward into the square, that she seems to be half tottering and half gliding, and the manner in which Gino places his feet, as if any one of his steps might have to suddenly anchor them both — all this suggests the force of a mysteriously gentle yet irresistible gale. Have you noticed it blowing at other weddings? At this one the expression of the couple’s eyes has been swept by the gale too.
Zdena and Jean gaze at their daughter and their son-in-law and at this moment their own faces are as astounded as children’s.
They’re married, a man shouts, Long Live the Bride!
A picture please, says the official photographer from Ferrara, a picture, please, with the bride holding her bouquet.
Fetch the bouquet! She left it in the church.
It’s blown away, whispers a little girl, not knowing why she says this.
Gino takes Ninon’s hand, moves closer, and standing side by side, her shoulder pressing against him, the two of them wait for the gale to pass.
Give him a kiss, calls out Ercole the spice man, come on, give him a kiss.
Ssshhh! They’ve a lifetime for that. Let them be. Tranquillo.
She’s so lovely, declares Mimi, the wife of Luca the pastry cook, so lovely she should have ten children! She counts the babies on her ten plump fingers.
Nobody has ten children these days, Mimi.
The young know things our parents didn’t.
It must have taken hours and hours to do her hair in all those little plaits.
What are they called?
People call them dreadlocks. But they’re wrong. Never seen so many.
The waiters are handing out glasses of sparkling wine.
Marella catches Ninon’s eye and sends her a kiss with her hand. In her own eyes there are tears.
After the last photo, Ninon pulls at her husband’s arm. The gale has abated. Her husband leans his head towards her and she says into his ear: So we’re running together, Hare, are we? I have to do everything today … everything, you understand.
He will show her the lucioperca lying on the silver platter, varnished with aspic, shining as if moonlit, every scale silver or gold, bejewelled with almonds, coriander leaves and ruby-red pimentos, and he will turn the platter so Ninon can see the lucioperca standing on her tail, waiting like a dancer in a long clinging dress for the music to begin. And at this moment Ninon will take hold of Gino’s finger, and with the finger she will slowly trace down her own body the lateral line he taught her. When she releases his finger, she will tap with the toe of her shoe on the grass under the apple trees and she will order him: Look at me, husband, I’m your wife now. And then she will laugh. A laugh which comes from another time and from a language that has been lost.