Free Sweet Life by Linda Biasotto Page A

finds something about Paola amusing. If she knew the extent of Paola’s troubles, she’d quit smirking, that old woman with nothing to lose. No hotel in Pordenone in need of modernizing, no dwindling bank accounts, no romantic assignations to juggle. And no complaints about her brother. Ah no, Maria’s brother is a paragon. Well, what Paola could tell about Enzo would give Maria a stroke.
    One lesson Paola learned early is that every man has a use, but of what use has her brother been? Such an idiocy for him to join the Fascist Party during the war and go against their papà ’s wishes. After the war, Carlo returned from Libya with scrambled brains. His shouts would rouse the household at night, and there were many times he threatened the servants with imprisonment. Once he walked to a neighbour’s, calmly stalked their chickens and shot every one.
    Their papà turned out the tenants who lived in the farmhouse in Manna and gave the farm to Carlo. Along with raising a cow and poultry, he farms acres of wheat and corn scattered in the district outside town. Most Saturday afternoons, he calls Paola from the Silver Bar and demands more money. The ingrate. The only reason she mails him anything is to fulfill her promise to their late mamma to look out for him. The promise she has not fulfilled is in providing an heir for the Catelli estate, and if she continues to remain unmarried, the estate will go to male cousins.
    If her fiancée had survived the war, Paola would have been married at twenty. After him there were more men than her parents realized, but few could match their requirements for a son-in-law. And her own criteria? She gazes at her wide bed with its gold and pink canopy.
    When she marries, she will be forced to give up some independence. But it will be worth it to take a well-established name, one that will set her back on the higher social footing lost to her once Carlo’s eccentricity became well known. Unfortunately, there are those who believe that insanity is inherited.
    Nothing is wrong with Paola’s brains, thank the Holy Mother. And may the Holy Mother bless the friend who arranged for Paola to meet Alberto Barbaro, a handsome man, rich and ensconced in the best society. And best of all, due to his late wife’s barrenness, childless. Although he has asked questions about Carlo and the worth of the Catelli estate, she’s been able to put Alberto off. But he won’t propose until he visits her home and sees all for himself.
    There is an answer to everything. She hasn’t seen Carlo for three years and it’s time to pay him a visit, judge his state of mind. She can’t let Alberto slip through her fingers.
    Coffee finished, she gets into bed and nestles between the silk sheets. But a Catelli in an asylum? Never.

    ~
    The twelfth ring dies. On Via Mioni, a massive figure dressed in black and wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulls open one side of a double gate. When the gate is open, the man climbs onto a wagon and flips the reins. “Hey-ho, Nero!” The mule’s black ears twitch, then the mule lunges against the harness, jerks the wagon into the street. Once through, the man pulls at the reins, leaps down and relocks the gate with a key he fastens to his belt.
    “Hey-ho, Nero!” ricochets from the stone houses and their shuttered windows.
    The mule plods along Manna’s crooked streets, passes in and out of the wan lamplight where bats dive and climb. The wagon’s wheels scrape continuously, the noise waking children, who pull the covers over their heads. Older boys, excited in their fear, crack open shutters. Where is he headed, this night marauder? What does he load inside his wagon, which he covers with a tarp before returning home near daybreak, wakening his neighbours as he unloads? No one will berate him. Instead, they’ll complain to each other and to the mayor.
    Crazy Catelli knows about the fears, the children’s nightmares, the complaints. When others cave in to his demands, when men sight