Page 98 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Grazie, Beatrice."
Outside the window, the whole house was awake. Lina's voice demanding a pin, a man's voice calling another man by name, footsteps on the marble of the floor below, the heavy smell of tuberose rising up the stairwell.
When I went down to the kitchen for water, I saw the soldiers at the service door.
Two of them. No suits today—black pants, black shirts, earpieces. Cazzo, I thought. Today too.
"Signora," the nearest one said, with a minimal nod of his head, "auguri."
"Grazie."
I went back upstairs.
Donna Beatrice was waiting in the room with the dress in her arms. The eleven kilos of ivory fabric, the old lace, Nonna Moretti's work. She helped me into it, settled it on my shoulders, and fastened the hooks down the back slowly, one by one.
"The nonna is waiting for you, signora."
"Now?"
"Yes. Alone in her room."
The nonna's room was my old room.
It was strange to walk in. The walls were the same, the tall window was the same, the painting of the Madonna and Child hung in the same place. But the nonna had changed the bed, hung heavy dark-green curtains, set a silver crucifix on top of the dresser, where I used to leave the dagger.
The dagger, today, I hadn't brought.
She was waiting in the green velvet armchair—the only one in the house. She'd had it brought from Capri along with her. Absolute black dress, white hair in a bun, a blood-red garnet brooch at her chest, and the cane resting against her knee.
"Vieni qui, signora. Sit down."
I sat in the other armchair. Donna Beatrice poured the coffee and left, closing the door behind her.
The nonna looked at me.
"Are you ready?"
"I am."
"No, you're beautiful. Ready is what you'll be in an hour."
"Nonna. You promised."
"I know what I promised." She took a sip of coffee. "I'll keep it. Sit up straight."
I did what she said.
"Your mother played Chopin for me in Capri for sixteen years," the nonna began, without preamble. "From 1995 to 2011. Every summer. She'd spend July and August with me on the Via Tragara, with Matteo, and then with you once you were born. Your father would show up on weekends; the other days were ours."
I felt a knot in my throat, but I said nothing.
"I didn't know."
"You were five when you went to the convent. You wouldn't remember."
"Sì."
"In 2010, signora, I asked your mother to leave your father." The nonna was in no hurry; each word fell to the floor like a stone. "I said to her: Lucia, that man will wear you to death before the cancer does. Leave him, come live in Capri with me, bring the children. She said no. Because of you. Because Salvatore had sworn to take you from her if she left."
