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4 Responses to “ The Weekly LitWit Challenge 9.0: A week in the life of someone else is Not Extended. ”

1. # 1 Michael Says:
   June 15th, 2012 at 19:49

   August 21-27, 1946

   Wednesday, 21 August 1946

   My father’s country is old and unchanged. Olive and almond trees are tended in its ancient groves as they’ve always been. Low wooden houses line the small villages of cobbled streets. Roads pounded out of the dust by peasant footsteps and mule carts link the villages through the hills of Corleone.

   I have now been in Sicily for more than seven months. It’s very strange that it’s been in these long walks, in exile so far away from him, that I’ve come to understand my father.

   It’s a beautiful country. Ringed about by the Mediterranean sea, blessed with bountiful harvests, everlasting green hills, a warm wind and sun.

   Here, my father became a man at twelve years old when his own father and older brother were both killed. Here, in this poor land where roads crisscross like dusty veins, where vendettas pulse and swell and are passed on from father to son. A tragic country where hearty shepherds sling luparas on their shoulder as much to use for shooting strangers as to guard their sheep.

   Calo and Fabrizzio have gotten used to my moods and knew not to talk too much on today’s march. At least old Calo did, because Fabrizzio started chattering about the States again when a battered old Allied jeep, fellow veteran, passed us on the road.

   I barely paid attention to my shepherd bodyguards anyway. I just kept on walking because I don’t have much else to do with my days. The alternative is to brood. Not about Solozzo and McCluskey because they deserved everything they got, but to feel guilty about leaving Kay.

   Today was a good walk. I ranged a good distance and went back to the villa exhausted. I’ll barely need the bedside wine to help me sleep tonight. I think I’ll walk to Mazara tomorrow. The town’s a full day’s march away. I’ll end it at the coast and take the bus back here come sunset.

   Thursday, 22 August 1946

   I never made it to the coast.

   I’d gone about fifteen miles by midday and rested under an orange grove for lunch and wine with Calo and Fabrizzio. Fabrizzio had begun to entertain us by unbuttoning his shirt and making the doomed lovers on his vulgar tattoo wiggle when we were interrupted.

   A peasant girl ran into the grove, chased by her playmates, and then there was no one else in all the world. She was young, but already a woman in this country and she was beautiful. Ovals, all ovals from her long lashed eyes to her cheeks and unto the arc of her brow. Her lips were delicate bows and so was her figure beneath her clinging dress. Her skin was luscious brown from being licked by the sun. She startled like a deer when she saw us. Her deep, violet eyes went wide and her mouth became another oval as she spun and ran away.

   I felt a roaring in my head as the blood rushed to my ears. I could hear nothing else until it subsided, then I heard Fabrizzio and Calo laughing. They yammered that I’d gotten hit by the thunderbolt. Hot, I asked them what they were talking about.

   Calo told me to be easy, that when a man was hit by the thunderbolt he couldn’t hide it, that some men prayed for the thunderbolt. He told me I was a lucky fellow.

   I said nothing to this, but the blood in me continued to howl and in my pounding chest I knew, then, that I had to have this woman as mine entirely and that she would haunt and taunt me until I did.

   I went on to the small village down the road. I stopped at the open café by the square and had my men ask about the girl. I listened as they talked to the well-fed owner, a man named Vitelli. He sounded sympathetic at first, but then he became closemouthed after my men described her. The man turned curt and left us alone in a huff. It turned out that she was his daughter.

   I had my men bring Vitelli back out so I could talk to him. My Sicilian’s very good now, but because I wanted to be sure that Vitelli understood, I told Fabrizzio to translate what I said. I told Vitelli who I was and why I’d come to Sicily. I told him that some people would pay a lot of money to know what I’d just told him. I told him that if he did that his daughter would lose a father instead of gaining a husband.

   Vitelli had been belligerent when he’d come out, but he calmed down after I spoke reasonably. As directly as he dared, he asked if I was Mafia. I met his eyes as he sized me up and I told him that I was a stranger in this place, but that he could ask around about me. Signor Vitelli invited me to come back on Sunday afternoon.

   Fabrizzio is too much of a gossip for me to have expected him to keep quiet. So tonight, over dinner, Don Tommasino and Dr. Taza asked about my thunderbolt. Don Tommasino tried to object to my having brought in marriage, but I politely told him that if I refused my own father’s counsel in these things then I could not submit to his. Don Tommasino subsided against this. In my turn, I decided not to protest when he insisted that my two shepherd guards would still have to accompany me when I go to the Vitelli house on Sunday.

   Friday, 23 August 1946

   I took the bus to Palermo to buy gifts. I won’t go to her or her parents empty-handed. Calo and Fabrizzio went with me because Don Tommasino wouldn’t hear of my going to Palermo unescorted. But I had them wait outside whenever I found a shop with what I might need even though this time they didn’t each have a shotgun hanging from a shoulder.

   I took my time in choosing gifts. Palermo isn’t New York, even if repurposed American jeeps left over from the war seem to be every other car there, but I knew I’d find the right ones if I kept looking.

   Finding the one for her was the hardest of all. I entered and pulled out of one store after another with mounting excitement and frustration. I was fully agitated when finally I came on it in a cozy place in the old converso quarter.

   I couldn’t believe how giddy I felt when I finally left Palermo with the carefully wrapped package held in my hands. All the way to Palermo and back, I kept seeing her face and the shape of her moving in front of me. I’m still giddy and excited. It’s going to take more than one bottle of wine to let me sleep tonight.

   Saturday, 24 August 1946

   I stayed in the villa for most of today. So did Don Tommasino. This morning, I watched when the priest came to him to solicit alms for today’s feast of flayed Saint Bartholomew. This afternoon, I went out to the plaza and watched the priest leading the procession of the faithful, fleecing shepherds this time after having earlier fleeced the wolf.

   All of that was just a distraction to occupy myself while I wait for tomorrow.

   Apollonia. That’s her name. I can’t see her soon enough. I’ve never even heard her voice, but she’s completely unmanned me. Sleep’s become in fits and starts just from having seen her once. I was right that not even the wine at night has been any help.

   Sunday, 25 August 1946

   I drove the Alfa Romeo to the Vitellis’ café. The last peals of the Pentecost bells were still ringing when I arrived where Signor Vitelli waited for me in front of his closed shop. I told Calo and Fabrizzio to stay when Vitelli invited me to walk up with him to his house on the hill.

   His two sons and his wife were waiting. I greeted them before their glass-covered Madonna with its candles pulsing at her bare feet. After the proper courtesies, I gave Vitelli and his wife their gifts, a gold cigar-cutter for him and a roll of Palermo cloth for her.

   Then I turned to Apollonia who’d come to the doorway. I’d felt her, smelled her, caught her warm, heavy scent before I even saw her, and when I did she was beautiful. I took a long, deep draught of the sight of her. I wanted her right there.

   Carefully, I placed the gold-wrapped gift I’d found in Palermo onto her hands. Apollonia was too demure to open it herself and her mother did it for her. Her mother unwrapped the paper and unclasped the jewelry box inside.

   Everyone was very quiet when Signora Vitelli held up the swollen gold necklace. I looked straight at Apollonia. She looked at me through her long, black lashes and said, “Grazie”.

   I was undone. I felt her voice as a warm peal shaking through my body. I could barely stay still to look at her after that. Apollonia. She closed her eyes shyly, but her beauty burned through her dark, Sunday dress in the afternoon light. Apollonia flushed with the blood rushing to her face and she looked young and sensual and the craving inside me swelled into desperate turgor.

   I could only endure stolen glances of her after that. I kept up speaking to her father and mother, but when I looked at her I throbbed, dazed, in time to the blood beating under her sun-dark skin.

   Then it was time to go. Bells knelled through my skull when I her warm hand to say goodbye. I was barely lucid enough to nod while Signor Vitelli walked down to the car with me and asked me to come to dinner on Sunday next.

   Monday, 26 August 1946

   I didn’t wait. Today I drove to Vitelli’s without my shepherds. Signor Vitelli came out when he saw me and we talked for a little while. After a decorous enough interval, Vitelli called on his wife and Apollonia to come down the hill.

   I spoke to Apollonia in my now barely accented Sicilian. She answered and I soaked myself in the heady velvet of her voice. The warmth from being in proximity to her stayed with me all the way back to the villa.

   Tuesday, 27 August 1946

   I came to Apollonia again. As she walked down to the café, I saw that this time she wore the necklace. I smiled at her for this and she smiled back.

   We spoke more. I said to her the Sicilian endearments I had sometimes heard my father say to my mother. Apollonia’s face shined and the café rang with her delighted laughter. I bathed in all of it.

   I walked her up when it was time to say our goodbyes again. Signora Vitelli walked a little behind us.

   Apollonia stumbled a little on the way up the hill. Her slight, soft body leaned and rested on my arm for one brief instant. It was the thunderbolt for true. Fast, hot, and then withdrawn, the touch rolled and echoed through me all the way to her house and for long after she closed the door.

   I will marry her.

2. # 2 Rhick Says:
   June 16th, 2012 at 11:45

   What? Only one person joined? I should have entered. :( I wanted to do a piece about Alice, and her actions while she was awake, that may have been the building blocks for her wonderland. But I never got around to writing it. Alas, i shall wait for the next Lit Wit challenge.

3. # 3 Michael Says:
   June 18th, 2012 at 15:13

   Really? But I must confess that I worked around my office hours, family commitments, teaching load, and was late in coming to pick up my love on Friday all to make the deadline.

   I write this because I must respectfully manifest that it truly was a contest. That others didn’t make the finish line because they only thought about joining the race ought not invalidate my effort.

   It’s certainly your contest and your rules to make, and I know that my own submission won’t be winning a Nobel for its prose, but I submitted when and what I did precisely in careful consideration of those rules.

4. # 4 Reina Says:
   August 1st, 2012 at 16:44

   Too bad, as an avid reader, I’m sorry to hear this. I hope you revive the contests. I’m writing because I have a suggestion for one, inspired by this one-paragraph story by an Indian writer using many English phrases common only in India. I’d love to read what you can come
   up with for Filipino English, and I think it’s also a good idea for a fun contest!
   Here’s the link to the post: http://j.mp/LT1t6j

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