the mail. He is considered by everyone very well traveled. He says the American often receives packages and letters from America or other places. In fact, the mail this American man, William Wiley, receives is probably about half the mail the mailman delivers from the small bag attached to the front of his bicycle.
One of the strange things about this family is they do not make wine from their grapes. They pick the grapes at the proper time, when they are filled with juices, then eat some of them, as does everyone in the village. The rest of the grapes they crush in a large wine press, as everyone knows it must be done, but then they bottle the juice and keep it tightly closed so it can never turn into the lovely light wine for which this part of Italy is famous.
They drink this juice of the grape just that way, raw. It is another thing the people in the village can never understand. But then, they say, what else can one expect from foreigners, especially when one of them is most likely a witch, or worse.
Long ago, the cardinal in Perugia sent a priest to vist the Americans. This was just after they had arrived.
This priest was thirty-five at that time, and it is said he had studied in Rome. He did not think the mother and wife, whose name is Caroline, was ugly at all. He found her quite attractive in a foreign kind of way.
He made this first visit over forty years ago. They invited him to drink with them, and it was true: it wasn’t wine, it was grape juice. He told the villagers he was surprised to find how delicious it tasted, but no one in the village would believe him, even though he was a priest.
This priest discovered the Americans were not Catholic, had no religion, did not go to any church, did not intend to send their children to church or to instruct them in religion. In fact, he suspected they weren’t even Christians, but he didn’t tell anybody in the village this.
Finally, he talked to the family about why he’d come to visit them, how the villagers found them peculiar and thought the wife might be a witch. At this, the two strangers looked at each other and smiled. They’d just had a child born to them, a baby girl; the mother brought her out for the priest to see. He asked if perhaps he might baptize the child. It would help the villagers accept the Americans if he could tell them the baby was baptized. William and Caroline had no objection, and so the priest performed the ceremony. They named the little girl Kathleen.
With that, he left. There was no other discussion.
In the course of years passing by, he came once a year, until, years later, he became a monsignor and was assigned to another church in another part of Italy. During all that time, the American couple allowed him to bless the house and baptize their other children when they were born. This seemed to satisfy most people in the village, although many still maintained the woman was a witch.
The thing that especially bothered everyone, particularly the women in the village, was that as the years passed by, the wife, Caroline, scarcely seemed to age. She became only more mature, more beautiful. At the time when our story starts, after more than forty years, she still looked younger than most forty-year-old women in the village. It wasn’t natural.
Over the years, she continued with her long nocturnal walks, through the dusty fields, up into the forests, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty kilometers in different directions. When she did appear in the daytime, or when children came near her house, she was always kind, and the village children grew to love her. This, perhaps even more than the priest’s acceptance, somewhat commended her to the villagers. In Italy, anyone who loves children and whom children love in turn cannot be thought of as really bad and probably couldn’t be a witch.
So, now it is time for our tale. It will be told mostly by the man in the family, the American named William Wiley. It is a strange, somewhat frightening history, and I must admit I cannot actually remember now how I came to know it. Sometimes it all seems like a weird dream. At the same time, I believe it as strongly as I believe anything in this life.
At the time of our story, the three older children have left and only the young boy remains. The father, William, now has almost pure white hair and is over sixty years old. Caroline continues to look young, not girlish, but like a real woman, a strong woman of great natural beauty. The little boy is dark, thin and tall. All the children, like their mother, seem to mature slowly, seem very young for their years.
Inside the house, on the first floor, is one large room, the room into which one enters. On one side, to the right, is a huge bed, a bed as large as three double beds; it takes up the entire width of the room. In the center of the room is a large round wooden table. It is massively thick and ample enough to seat six people comfortably.
On the other side of the room is a kitchen with a closet for dishes and food. The kitchen has a copper sink, a drainboard in wood, and a large worktable. On the rear wall of the room is a fireplace. On either side are closets for clothing, huge, hand-carved wooden chests reaching to the ceiling. Also on that back wall is a staircase, almost like a ship’s ladder. It leads to the upstairs.
If we go up those stairs, we find two rooms. One is a schoolroom, with chalkboards on the walls, a wide desk and four smaller ones. In that room, the walls, where there are not chalkboards, are lined by bookshelves filled with books. It’s a miniature schoolroom.
The other room is the workroom of the father, William. There is a desk with a typewriter. This desk is large and has many drawers. It also has a section with a slanted top for drawing. There is a light over the typewriter and another over the drawing board. On the board is a half-finished drawing, but we cannot quite see it.
We now go downstairs again. The mother, Caroline, is in the kitchen preparing breakfast. The father, William, and the son, Billy, are still in bed. The little boy is stretched out on his father’s chest.
Let us now begin our story. I only hope I can tell this properly. Oddly enough, being a professional writer of novels can sometimes make it difficult to tell about true things so they’ll be believed. People don’t expect truth in novels. Once, in a book called A Midnight Clear, I wrote about a nineteen-year-old boy who said, ‘I have a penchant for telling true stories no one can believe.’
I feel that way myself, now.
2
Denial
‘Aw, come on, Daddy, that’s not the way it ends. You can’t end the story that way.’
‘What do you mean, Billy? Of course that’s the way it ends. That’s the end of the story.’
‘Please, Dad, make up another ending. Make up an interesting ending with more things happening, exciting things.’
Billy has his head on my chest now. With one ear he can listen to the hollow sound of my voice inside me, and with the other ear hear the sounds coming out of my mouth. All our children figured this out at one time or another, or maybe it was only one and they shared. But, in the past, when for a while there were four of them scattered on top and around me, there was hardly room on my chest for all the heads. I’m missing those wonderful mornings, those full days. I dread when Billy will grow up and leave us.
Kathy, our oldest, once told me how hearing a story that way, with her ear on my chest, made it seem to come from inside herself. Matthew, our first boy, always said he liked to watch my eyes and mouth when I told a story, but that it was even better hearing it with his ear against me. Once in a while, in an exciting part, he’d lift his head and look into my eyes. He’d have such a wonderful glow of excitement and interest in his beautiful yellow-brown
