The Maestrale Voice

I

I

On Garibaldi Avenue the dust was prominent. The royal administration was delaying funds for the paving of this village’s main road. And the mayor, the only person the citizens could express their anger with, was chided with threats and harsh words. The notary Cangemi, who despite his age had not abandoned his old Bourbonic official style, had even asked Maria Sofia for a recommendation. How was it possible that he was convinced that the revolutionary and creative ideas of the former Queen of Naples against the current sovereigns could have the strength to contribute to make the avenue decent, was the question people wondered, as well as the mayor, with anger.

At dusk, after a long day of work, Turi Musumeci, the miller of the village, walked down the avenue, but the dust did not give him any discomfort. As always, his mind was busy devising new ways to compete with the cylinder mill of the Prince of Granata, lord of the area, landowner and founder of the village.

“Mastro1 Turiddu,” called the nanny, looking out from the balcony of his building.

Turi Musumeci raised his eyes and his red beard, mingled with the color of his face that was flushed with fury.

“What do you want this time!” He yelled. And the anger was not in response to the hour on the clock, but to the harassment he suffered because she called him mastro. -Family members, employees and servants had to understand that I spent a huge sum to buy the barony of Mezzocannolo, a remote location in the countryside of Sicily above Granata! Turi thought angrily as he watched Donna2 Gaetanina’s disproportionate breasts and matron hips.

“Master, Baron... whatever your title is, your daughter-in-law is giving birth now,” the woman said, like she was reading his thoughts, and disappeared quickly into the house.

Turi Musumeci blanched. Suddenly, his face drained from too red and became too white. It was a male and that was a certainty. This other Turi would be a Baron and industrialist. He went back to Station Square, to the mill.

“Vincenzo, stop for the day and go home. Your wife is in delivery,” Turi screamed, still on the square in front of the factory.

The door of the storage building that held the outbound goods opened and a tall young man with light brown hair as beautiful as the sun came outside quickly.

“What did you say, Dad?” asked the young man.

“Look how fituso3 you are; you’re disgusting. Why did I let you study, so I could always see you covered in white flour?” thundered the Baron.

“Dad, you always say the same thing. You gave me the mill, and I have to know wheat and how to grind it the right way. On the contrary, I’m afraid that in the future I won’t have much opportunity to work on accounts behind a desk. There are no more mules to turn the millstones and with machines it’s quite different,” said Vincenzo Musumeci in one breath.

The words of the son shut him up. My son is a genius, Turi thought, admiring him. If only he appreciated the feud that I bought for him. But for him, the factory is everything and I hope it lasts. The prince is rich and his money can crush anyone. He tried, however, not to express himself aloud.

Turi Musumeci pointed his stick with the handle of pearl in the direction of the building and, adjusting the right lapel of his corduroy jacket with his left hand, turned back to the young man.

“Go home and let us hope that your son wants to be a great man in life. He’s about to be born. Your wife is in labor.”

“Oh, Dad. You’re wasting my time!” and Vincenzo Musumeci ran away like crazy.

Run, kept thinking Turi. This industry has been built for you too.

So, while deep in his thoughts, he crossed the door of the prosperous establishment of the Musumecis. He had built the mill from nothing, with one stone millstone and two mules. Many years had passed by, a whole lifetime. The adventures and the hardships in the beginning gave way to the success of the industry and the new respect of the inhabitants of the village, and especially the prince’s, who graciously authorized him to increase the production to eighty quintals per day of flour to make bread.

Beyond that amount, the prince did not allow him to produce: Granata was his reign. The repeated requests of Turi to the Chamber of Commerce, aimed to obtain a license for greater quantities, went unanswered for a decade.

Meanwhile, the prince’s operation continued to grow, selling two hundreds quintals of flour daily from the sea mill of his Granata House.

It was only from exasperation and not for the other benefits that Turi Musumeci bought Mezzocannolo and become a Baron. He hoped that the new rank would give more credit to the aspirations of the expansion of the industrial activity. Unfortunately, he had forgotten about another reality: the prince was also a senator of the Kingdom and nothing could get by without the political bureaucracy linked to the ownership of the land. Not much changed in Sicily; in fact the noble heirs of the Gattopardi’s were in decline and already saw the dissolution of their immense fortunes, but some of them enjoyed the power too much and refused to accept this. Next to them, in the twilight of that civilization, had come the hyenas. First, they would have served them and then they would have overtaken their position. Meanwhile, the only seat of the Parliament in Rome was occupied, for life, by the prince of Granata.

That b***h of politics is as valuable as a piece of land, reflected Turi, in silence, and even if I wasn’t too old to work on it, I couldn’t buy it anyways.

There was another miller in the village. It was the Chevalier Matthew Rao. The Chevalier was a good man. A bourgeois as the Musumeci family, but he didn’t compete with the prince. His small mill produced durum wheat flour, but only for the pasta factory he owned. And since Excellency cared more about bread than pasta, he let him live.

The Princes of Granata were the Lords of bread for centuries and the people knew it. When someone tried to enter the field of flours, they either failed and closed the factory, or devoted their production to pasta, as the nearby pasta makers of Termini Imerese.

Turi Musumeci, however, did not build a pasta factory, and his mill produced for the bakers: those few prepared to have the prince as an enemy and those that the great factory of Granata couldn't serve. Worried, Turi observed twenty workers at work. All family men, to which his son had added himself to proudly.

Vincenzo had learned as a child how to select the flours to be produced and could choose the best beans to ground up. He was a graduate in accounting and an accountant in the company; in a period when no one thought they could give an education to their children, this was priceless capital. Credit and finance would soon make companies a fortune.

From the balconies, the sun of May was entering. Inside the room of Corso Garibaldi, soberly furnished with solid pieces from the 1800’s, Ada Caronia, Vincenzo’s Musumeci wife, was laying on the bed, squeezing the rosary between her hands. She was in the grip of pain and the family nanny was worried. Labor was lasting far too long.

“Tana, I'm dying. Can't do it anymore!” Ada cried, with a hysterical voice.

“Mrs. Ada, breathe. Don't be afraid, everything is normal,” said Donna Gaetanina, while wiping the sweat from the face of the woman with a lace handkerchief.

The bedroom double doors opened and Vincenzo walked in. In his green eyes there was joy and excitement.

“How long?” he asked.

“A few moments. Maybe a couple of hours,” said the nanny. Then, she lowered the tone of voice. “The lady is worrying me. She is too nervous.”

“I’ll take care of her. Please prepare the necessities,” said Vincenzo.

Ada looked at her husband. He didn't seem as happy as when he entered the room. She sobbed. In two years of marriage, Vincenzo had intervened several times to reassure her. She was often a victim of non-existent fears and depressive crises of any kind.

“Ada,” said Vincenzo, taking her hand. “You have to be strong. Our son is coming.”

Ada Caronia felt like a little, lost girl and even younger than her age. One meter and fifty-five inches high, before pregnancy she weighed forty-five kg. On Sunday mornings, at the church, Vincenzo looked like her father. He had blue crystal eyes, but the fog that sometimes enveloped his mind made them often inexpressive.

Ada's lost gaze rested on the reassuring face of Vincenzo and for a moment she was able to find rest and refuge. Vincenzo was smiling at her sweetly.

“I will give you a nice son, Vincenzo and… you will not hate me if this is a baby girl, right?”

“Of course not, my love. Not at all.”

The smile, the typical shape of Vincenzo’s mouth, and his nose became large and full. The skin of his face and his lines, almost Nilotic, inherited by his mother, made him look like an Egyptian god in her eyes. She felt better and she began to prepare herself for the labor, feeling serene.

Then I'll see how to treat you, Vincenzo thought in silence.

The eyes of Ada now had the sparkle of the most precious stones.

Donna Gaetanina leaned in again and observed that the dilatation was good. Based on her experience, she determined that it was almost time and ordered the house cleaners to bring water, warm towels, and pillow cases. Then, she arranged the old chest on which Turi Musumeci was born next to the bed of the future Baroness.

Vincenzo left the room. In the living room, the whole family had already been waiting for a few hours.

From the window, Vincenzo looked down on the street and checked that Capizzi was at the carriage, ready to bring the news to the Baron. He smiled. He just couldn't imagine someone like Capizzi driving a car and his father had intended to make that step up. Turi Musumeci dreamed of buying a car, to make the prince die of envy.

The wait was feverish. Occasionally, Aunt Norina Reitano Musumeci, sister of the Baron and owner of part of the mill, peeked out from the bottom of the marble stairwell that connected the floors of the building.

“Vincenzo, Vincenzo, still nothing?”

“Auntie, can you hear crying?” Vincenzo answered every time with the same question, trying to be courteous. After half an hour of useless waiting, the aunt began again.

“It would be nice if you came down here to say something to your family. They are so impatient,” the aunt said, calling out to her nephew and teaching him the duties of hospitality that needed to be respected, even during circumstances when privacy was more appropriate.

They’re all anxious to know if the son of a crazy woman will be handicapped, or maybe a screamer, Vincenzo thought before answering.

“I am coming right away, so I can apologize for making them wait so long.”

Mario Fidone, the new doctor of Granata, arrived at the Musumeci house at 1 PM, as he had told the midwife who had preceded him he would. He was feeling hot and tired, but tried not to show it.

Vincenzo Musumeci, informed by a house cleaner, came to meet him.

“Dr. Fidone, I’ll lead the way,” he said.

The doctor stopped a moment and, without a smile, replied: "I know the way, accountant."

Vincenzo hesitated, but the doctor’s look discouraged him from asking the questions he had in mind. In the village, everybody feared Mario Fidone’s attitude; however, they all loved him.

“You can wait in the hallway, accountant,” said Fidone as he entered the room.

Vincenzo looked absently at the shelves, in Empire style, and sat on one of the two chairs placed on the either side of the cabinet. The poor chair creaked, maybe surprised to stay intact under the weight of ninety kilograms.

Another two hours passed.

Donna Gaetanina placed Ada on the Baronial chest. Then, aided by the midwife, poked the legs of the young lady inside the pillowcases and lifted them up to encourage childbirth.

“He is breeching,” said Fidone, tersely.

Gaetanina answered with a croak, a kind of pained moan like the yelp of a dog taken away from his master.

The baby was coming out with the lower part of the body first and could have stifled at birth. Internal lacerations due to that position were often the cause of severe bleeding in mothers, who died in a few hours.

Gaetanina looked at the doctor, pleading.

“My bag,” he said, quietly.

His shirt and forehead were drenched with sweat, but his disposition remained strong. A house cleaner handed him the suitcase and he took a pair of scissors out. He cut the sides to try and help. It was not enough. So, he went with his hands into the v****a and tried to realign the child. He succeeded and noted with satisfaction the retropulsion of the coccyx; the last part of Ada’s spine moved back naturally to make room. “Come on, Mrs. Push... good, one more time,” said Mario Fidone, as he pulled out a limb of the newborn.

Ada Caronia screamed in pain and lost consciousness, but the baby was born and it was a boy. Mario Fidone quickly cut the umbilical cord and tied the two ends with pharmaceutical eyelets. Then he held the little baby upside down, to help the baby breathe regularly. The strength of the tears that life imposed on the newborn moved him, as always.

“Hold him,” he said to the midwife. “I have to stitch.”

When he finished, he paused a moment to admire his work, pleased at the perfect job. Ada began to recover.

“Donna Tanina, let’s check that there is no bleeding. If everything is normal, I'll see you tomorrow for the dressing,” he said to the nurse. He washed his hands and up to the elbows and then grabbed his jacket that he had taken off when he had entered the room. He left, without leaving the package of required medicines and a kg of meat for the mother and child. After all, this was a rich house.

Turning up a giant cloud of yellow dust, a mixture of sand and flour, the carriage stopped in front of the mill.

“Capizzi, great cuckold, you’ll ruin the horse this way,” yelled Turi Musumeci, coming out of the factory.

“Baron, your grandchild has been born. It’s a boy.”

The Tuscan cigar butt, red with heat, fell down from the lips of Turi Musumeci. It hit his silk shirt at the bottom left, close to the hand-embroidered initials, and immediately made a gash.

Baron Mezzocannolo did not care; he possessed a vast collection of them, which was completely replaced every year.

“Take me home, Capizzi,” Turi said to the driver, and got into the box.

Capizzi turned the vehicle with extreme caution and from Station Square turned down Via dei Mulini.

“Capizzi, start trotting,” Turi Musumeci, impatient, tapped the platform of the buggy with his stick. “And if that’s too slow, you can take it to a gallop.”

The employee looked at his master, then grinned and snapped the reins. The horse of Turi Musumeci perked up and began to run through the streets of Granata. He stopped at the front door of the building, which the Baron crossed in a fury.