Chiara dropped into a chair and put her hand on Magda’s arm.
Chiara had a sudden image of Magda, as a little girl in Germany, hiding in the corner so her parents wouldn’t beat her for coming second behind a Jewish girl.
Her vision was interrupted by Magda croaking, “It’s all my fault.”
At first Chiara thought Magda meant it was her fault for losing to a Jewish child, but then realized that image was her own construction. “What do you mean? What’s your fault?”
Magda shook her head and waved away Chiara’s question.
It hit Chiara like a clap of thunder. “The fire? The fire is your fault?”
Magda said nothing.
“Magda, that’s ridiculous.”
Chiara remembered that holding the sagra at the castle was Magda’s idea. That she had browbeat everyone into agreeing with her. “Listen, Magda, the inspector approved the site, nobody could have guessed—”
“I bribed the inspector.”
“Ah.”
Magda nodded slowly. “Everyone was right about me.”
“No, Magda! It was the inspector’s job to be forthright. He didn’t do his job. You just wanted the sagra to be a success.”
As Magda stared at her hands clutched on the table, Chiara realized why it was so important for Magda to prove herself valuable.
A tear slid down Magda’s cheek. “I ruined the sagra, and probably the castle. And all the homes. And the olive trees! And probably the whole town.” She finished lamely.
“Let’s not get carried away. It sounds like the fire is under control, and anyway, fires have hit the castle before, and it’s still standing. Likely all that got damaged was the wisteria and the arbor. It’s lucky that Santa Lucia is almost all built from stone.”
“What if someone got hurt?”
“No one got hurt. It’s okay, we saw everyone leaving, remember?”
Magda choked back a sob, and nodded obediently.
Chiara went on, “So what’s in the box?”
Magda blinked back her tears and tucked her hair behind her ears a few times before answering. “My box. It’s a box of reminders.”
“Reminders?”
“Yes. My parents’ things.”
“You kept all of this.”
“Yes.”
“May I?” Chiara asked, indicating the box.
Magda shrugged and pushed it to her. Chiara sifted through photographs of stoic Germans, commendations handwritten on thin vellum, a patch with a symbol that matched the amulet. Chiara held it up, questioningly.
“It’s a symbol, a sign among Nazi sympathizers of kindred spirits.”
“Magda. Why would you wear that?”
Magda shook her head and wailed. “I don’t know! I’m not a Nazi, I swear. What my parents did made me sick. I was an adult before I stopped having stomach aches, and even now it’s not quite proper.” Magda’s hand flitted to her stomach before she shook her head again. “I hated what they did, Chiara. I don’t know why I’d wear such a thing.”
But Chiara did, or at least she suspected.
“How old were you when you started wearing the amulet?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I was a child. The war was essentially over, but my parents’ hatred, oh that lasted until their death.”
“When did they die?”
“I don’t know that either. They escaped Germany when the search for Nazis was heating up. They left me with my aunt in the country. She told me when I was in high school that they had died in a car accident. I think that’s when I started wearing the amulet, actually.”
Chiara was silent.
Magda mused in wonder, “Maybe that car crash never happened.”
Chiara regarded her friend. “You let your parents define what you believe about yourself.”
Magda hung her head. “Yes.”
“How long are you going to let those people decide who you are?”
“I’m not. Not anymore. I want to get rid of this box. But, without this box, who am I?”
Chiara took Magda’s hand. “Well, let’s burn that damned box and find out.”
Shouts of alarm were replaced with yelps of celebration, the air ringing with relief as the last of the fire was extinguished.
One by one, the townspeople thanked the firefighters, who piled into their cartoonishly proportioned, but heroic, truck, and backed out of Santa Lucia. The villagers dropped their weaponry and flung themselves to the ground around the castle yard. In groups of two and three chatter began, as voices catalogued their burns, the clothes that would never be the same again, the damage to the castle’s groves, the impact on the coming year’s yield. As runners in a relay, they passed the baton of thanks to the Madonna that the fire hadn’t reached their trees.
The loss of the castle uliveto was heartbreaking, certainly, but don’t people feel their own losses most of all?
As the villagers began brushing themselves off to return home to a well-earned sleep, speculation began churning at the cause of the conflagration.
Giovanni mused, “Such bad luck. The wind must have blown embers up to the vines.”
On the far side of the castle yard, a voice answered. “Are you serious? The vines aren’t dry enough to catch that way. Someone must have set this fire.”
“What? That’s insane!”
“C’mon, don’t be stupid. Plenty of people could have done it.”
A chorus of “No way!” echoed as more people realized the conversation in play and the speculation spread. The voices meshed and jammed in the darkness.
The accuser sat up, moonlight illuminating the side of his face. It was Fabio, the tuba player who worked at the hardware store. “Look what happened in Spain just a few weeks ago. You know the African population around here has been rising. You know what they are capable of.”
“What? Impossible!” Giovanni retorted. “I know our immigrants. They come into the alimentari every day. They would never ever do this.”
“Then who?” insisted Fabio.
“What do you mean, who? We had a fire out here around dry wood. Whose crazy idea was that?”
A voice next to Fabio muttered loudly, “The German.”
Fabio snickered. “Ah, see. Maybe it was her. Maybe she started it. Mrs. Angry.”
Giuseppe growled from his position lying down beside Patrizia, “Magda?
