Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - Angela’s Youth

It was indeed a long path that took Angela to the point where she could kill her husband.

Armando and Maria Liguria were Angela’s parents and both were born in Girotondo, one of the magical hill top towns of Southern Tuscany. Both were born of peasant farmers and both had done well at school. This was more thanks to diligence than any great intelligence. Their parents were old fashioned and catholic and so were they.

Armando and Maria married young. Everyone did in those days, particularly in rural Tuscany. They tried for many years to have a child but never managed it. Armando reached the point where he could no longer take the gossip, so he persuaded Maria that they should give up. They were the talk of the town and that would do his ambitions to become bank manager no good.

Maria persuaded him that they should try once more, with the potions that her mother and the local doctor had concocted. Armando was such a prude. He hated the ritual. Strange soups, with oysters, pigs trotters and God knows what else. And her mother was always there with the Doctor as they ate their latest attempts. Armando would sit in his perfect black suit and waist coat wincing in agony as they conducted this bizarre ritual.

Then he and Maria disappeared upstairs while the mother in law cleared up. Their bedroom was scented with incense and lit only by candles. It was a miracle that the priest wasn’t present. But Maria knew how to soothe her husband and make him forget his prudishness.

And that was how Angela was conceived. She was a ’sixties baby, but in Girotondo, you would never have known it. Angela was beautiful to everyone the moment she was born. She had a strong crop of dark brown hair and huge brown eyes. They looked like the most perfect chocolate buttons surrounded by olive shaped eyelids. All of her limbs and her looks were stunning.

Angela was a difficult child. Her parents would always complain that she was way too sensitive and later that she was too spoilt. Her teachers that she was too easily distracted. For Angela was an artist at heart, even through she didn’t know it at the time. And she adored Girotondo. She would sit for hours on one of the many wooden benches that surrounded the town walls and stare off into the distance, to Monte Amiato. She always imagined that Monte Amiato was her Mount Everest or her Mount Kilimanjaro. Indeed, the plains of yellow crops or brown winter vines and old olive groves that led up to the wonderful old Monte could have transported many a mind to Africa, particularly that of a young girl with a fervent imagination.

The town she found less interesting, except for Piazza Rimazza, which hosted a weekly market with goods from all over the world. Well, actually from all over Italy, but to Angela they came form all over, wherever her history books were taking her at that particular point in time. So, the olives came from the hillsides of Andalusia, the spices from Zanzibar and the gems from the Far East. Angela would lose herself in the secrets of this market and the history of Piazza Rimazza.

The Piazza was a perfect square with twenty odd houses. Five on each side. They were all made of old, weathered stone and worn terracotta tiles. The grandest house belonged to the Grimaldi’s, but was always empty. It stood there noble and silent, bearing the Grimaldi crest proudly on its chest.

But perhaps Angela’s greatest love was wandering secretly through the Grimaldi family estate. The old Palazzo sat on another hilltop, right next to that housing Girotondo. Both hills sat side by side like two proud Neapolitan Mastiffs looking out at Monte Amiato. Palazzo Grimaldi was hundreds of years old. It sat like a fairy tale castle perched on it’s hilltop. A dirt road wound up the hill to the huge gates and twelve foot high stone walls that protected the place and its antiquated family. Down the hill cascaded some of Tuscany’s finest olive trees. The hill was surrounded from the bottom by vast woods on one side and the famous Grimaldi vineyards on the other.

In the mornings Angela would sit on top of the walls surrounding Girotondo and watch the mist encircle the Grimaldi’s vines and woods like a mystical serpent that would later on be magically vaporized by the midday sun. After school, before returning home, Angela would wander the Grimaldi estate like Sleeping Beauty. She knew that if she was caught she would get away with it, for her parents were so in awe of the Grimaldi family. Her father would have done anything for them. Indeed his bank did. And now that Armando Liguria was the bank manager, the bank probably did too much for them.

It was on one of these afternoon jaunts that Angela realized just how much she adored this estate. It was late September and she was barely twelve. It was a hot afternoon and she was hiding up an olive tree watching the grape crushing ceremony. You could see the heat. The haze made everything misty and translucent. But she could easily make out the women dancing and stamping in the huge wooden containers. Their skirts were lifted high as they crushed the juicy red fruit between feet, toes and sometimes even knees. It looked like they were bleeding as the red juice splashed across their limbs. But the women seemed to be having so much fun. The same women that worked the fields with only a smirk and a frown now became angels of delight for this one afternoon of the year. The men stood around talking and laughing and drinking wine.

Angela soaked in the occasion and as though tipsy herself she slid down the tree, shaking some diseased olives from their stems, before settling on the ground next to them. She rolled down the grass that surrounded the trees and lay on her back imagining herself as the young princess wandering her estate, her grounds, her people. She was in such a trance that she could never have seen him coming. But he saw her.

Conte Grimaldi was now in his late sixties. He was an old chiseled man. Crooked with age and deaf in his right ear from a lifetime of boar and pheasant shooting. He was a widower and a son of a bitch. His temper was famous, as were the stories of him with the young women that worked in the fields. He was feeling a little drunk after the wine crushing and so decided to take a stroll. It was not long before he spotted Angela. She looked older than the last time he spotted her wandering through their olive groves. She had become a woman. Her short summer skirt revealed a tanned, long legged beauty of a woman. Her socks had fallen to her ankles. As she lay on her back, he could see her brown hair lying across her baby breasts, covered only by a light cotton shirt.

Angela suddenly knew she was no longer alone. As she opened her eyes from her dreaming, she saw the old Conte standing over her. He was staring at her in such a strange way. Like a rancid dog sniffing at a bitch on heat. She was instantly terrified. She froze. He smiled at her. Then he knelt down next to her. He extended his arm toward her leg.

“Oh, Dio, you have scratched your leg,” was his excuse.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing.” Angela pleaded.

But she did not dare pull her leg away. After all, this was Conte Grimaldi, the most important man in Girotondo, and maybe even one of the most important men in all of Tuscany. Her father was always telling her and her mother how important he was and how thankful they and all of Girotondo should be for his patronage.

Was this patronage? Angela asked herself as he stroked her knee. She managed a smile, a terrified smile. Then he moved his hand up her thigh. He did not stop until his hand was between her legs. He pulled her pants to one side with strong, spidery fingers. Angela froze. What was she to do? Then she felt his fingers inside her, like two old twigs. She snapped. She froze. She had not been prepared for this. She had only ever been trained to be subservient, a woman in a man’s world. A Liguria in a Grimaldi universe. She felt sick. Her stomach took all her fear. She could hardly breathe. Then, she closed her eyes and resigned herself.

“Conte, Conte, are you there?” The voice called out in the distance.

“Christo!”

The Conte scrambled to his knees. Like a man caught sinning, he moved quickly and desperately. His expression was one of fear mingled with exasperation at being so rudely interrupted. He panted and sweated to his feet.

“Never mention this to anyone. And now get off my land and quickly.” He ordered Angela.

She pulled up her panties, buttoned her shirt and ran. She ran like she had never run before. She didn’t stop running until she reached her house. Her eyes were streaming so badly that she hardly saw her father as she careered into him, straight into his arms. She shuddered in his embrace. Finally she told him everything. When she had finished his face had changed. It frightened her. It made her feel like she was guilty of some terrible sin. She felt dirty.

“You despicable girl. How dare you tell me such lies. You dirty, filthy child. You make me sick. How dare you tell such stories of the Conte Grimaldi. It is his patronage that keeps us all safe, that keeps us all alive. You make me sick. Go to your room. I do not want to see your face. Go, now!” Was all Angela could hear as she scampered to her room.

copyright ©Philip L Letts 2007