Free That Summer in Sicily by Marlena de Blasi Page A

I want to stay. “I usually sit with Cosimo at this time. To read, to talk.”
    From her high-backed white iron chair with the red velvet cushion, she tugs at the less regal one next to it, beckons me to sit. I do. An assent. Into a thin, tall glass she pours out a cloudy stream of almond milk from a small pitcher, adds water from another pitcher, unscrews what looks like a medicine bottle, and with a dropper, doses the whitish swirling mixture with a few drops of neroli. Essence of orange blossoms. She stirs the drink with a long silver spoon, stirs it ferociously, removes the spoon, and lays it, bowl down, upon the table. A high priestess in full ceremony, her movements seem liturgical. She places the glass in front of me.
    “The elixir of Sicily. Bitter. Sweet,” she tells me. Warns me.
    I run my finger along the rim of the glass. I smile at Tosca.
    “It’s like you, then. Also you are the elixir of Sicily. Bitter. Sweet.”
    She begins to laugh and, I think, to blush, though it may be only a lozenge of light flitting about the leaves that ruddies her skin.
    “I knew you were the right person. I mean, I’m glad you’re here. Glad you’ve landed here. Exactly here.”
    I sip the drink. I like it and sip it again, feel it caressing the knob in my chest. A tightness I hadn’t known was there until now; or is it the one to which I’d grown accustomed over these past few weeks? Longer than that. I turn to Tosca as though it’s she who has the answer, but she’s busy with her potion. Pouring, stirring into her own glass. She drinks nearly half the drink in one long pull. As though to leave, she rises then, walks a meter or two to where another table sits—a rusted metal one upon which pots of herbs are piled randomly—and plucks, from here and there about them, withered leaves, holding the brown, dry things in one hand, proceeding to purge the plants with the other.
    “It just never works,” she says, but whether to me or to herself I cannot say. “I mean, trying to domesticate wild herbs.”
    Surely she is talking about more than the parched marjoram. Walking back to the table where I still sit, she sinks into the faded red cushion of her chair as if into some wreckage, her own wreckage I think, and crushes the dead leaves in her hand, holding out the dust of them in her palm for me to sniff. I oblige, but sense nothing but her own perfume.
    Tosca begins.
    “I had two childhoods. The first was spent with my family. My mother, my father, and my sister. My sister, whom my mother called
la-piccola-Mafalda,
The Tiny Mafalda—as though it were a single word—from the moment she was born and whom I’ve been calling the same ever since. When my mother died, my sister and I looked after my father as well as we might have been expected to do at ages five and eight. My father was never much good at looking after anyone save his horses. Save himself. But I was good at it and The Tiny Mafalda was good at it and so, together, we were fine. Fine enough. In our village, eating at least once a day and sleeping less than six to a broken bed and with no one beating or raping you on a regular basis meant you were fine. It was only with the perspective of the next childhood that I began to understand how poor I’d been, how poor my family had been. Not with space or silver or brocade or feather beds did that perspective come. It came with food.
    “I’d never understood how hungry I’d always been until the time when I sat at the prince’s table and ate and ate until I was full. Oh, that didn’t happen on the first day and maybe not in the first week. But I’ll get to that.
    “I suppose it’s true that, on the day when the prince came to fetch me from my father’s house, I acted the nine-year-old savage. I know Cosimo told you that. I was using anger and orneriness to cover my fear. Fear of a new devil. My father was the known devil, but who was this smiling yellow-haired devil who spoke in such a soft voice? And then