Climbing On Mirrors

Chapter 8: Chrysanthemums

Rimini 1846:

My Nonnetto had become accustomed to the music of his daughter’s queries and many wonderings while he tended the vines. It had only been a short time ago that they had tumbled upon his ears with the furious tumult of a Summer’s rain. Now, she and her many wonderings had fallen silent. It was this silence that savaged him.

The shade of the vines, tangled one upon the other overhead, had once been a refuge for the girl. She had sat beneath them, scatterings of sunlight teasing her cheeks, safe in their leafy embrace. Since the night she had roused the noblidonna’s ire it seemed that she cared for nothing beyond the borders of the odd domain she had created in her own head. He’d noticed the change in her that very evening.

At times he had felt sorry for her, his poor Armonia. He was tormented by the fact that her only playmate should be this withered old man she called father. He’d hoped in time that perhaps the other children of the vineto might accept her, or at the very least feign civility. Now his daughter had forsaken all but some character she had concocted by the name of Scarafaggio. Nonetto had no love for him. It seemed that Scarafaggio had succeeded in culling out the girl’s most mischievous tendencies and delighted in constantly courting trouble.

“The Noblidonna said she caught you eating grapes again today!” He’d say to the girl in as stern a voice as he could manage, for in truth he was almost incapable of scorn. “What do you think would become of the fields if we all just ate as many grapes as we pleased?”

“It was only a few.” She giggled. Then, tossing her mane of black curls back defiantly, she looked the old man right in the eye and demanded. “Why shouldn't I?”

“You’ll make her angry again.” He offered a warning that sounded more like pleading to her ears.

“No matter how good I am she hates me!” The child hissed back, her eyes narrowed. “Why should it matter what I do?”

“Did Scarfaggio put that idea in your head?” Nonetto asked through clenched teeth.

She only ever laughed in reply.

The truth was that my mother had found a friend, just as Nonetto had wished she might. Her friend however came from a world far beyond the vineto, and far beyond the laws imposed by man. Far from having been birthed in her own caprice, Scarafaggio, though boorish and ill mannered, was very much real.

He had taken to spending the bulk of his time with this girl, who he had renamed Guendalina the eve she had christened him Scarafaggio. He told himself he merely tolerated her unyielding questions, and odd compulsions. One of which was her propensity for twining his pale, snowy hair into a plait.

“The maids showed me how.” She’d once told him. “But my hairs too tangled and ratty to do it with.”

He could be expected to sigh and groan as she wound flowers into the long pigtail. Though they’d snatched them together from windowsills and flowerbeds, he always maintained an attitude of offense towards their eventual placement. He was loath to admit that he actually enjoyed the attention. The Fatine, bound together as one mind, seldom doted upon one or another of the tribù.

“So you have all the same memories as your brothers and sisters?” She’d asked him once.

“Yes! Of course” He said, playing at annoyance and falling into laughter. He enjoyed being such a novelty to her.

“Then you’re born knowing everything already?” She marveled.

“Not everything, but the knowledge is there. Some things you don’t really understand until you’re shown how to…well how to…” He struggled to explain the concept to her. Every memory she had was uniquely her own, won from a life that scene by scene had unfolded around her. In a way he envied that freedom, though he couldn't imagine enduring the tedium of it himself.