Chapter 6: The Sunday Table

On Sunday the Orsinis sat down to table, and I learned what a Santoni wife was for.

There were twelve of us at the long board in the front room.

The shutters stood open, and the winter sun lay on the cloth.

Marie-Ange served at the foot, and the old men took the places down both sides.

Antone sat at the head in his father's chair, and he had put me on his right.

Nobody had ever told me where the dead man's wife would have sat, so I sat where I was put.

The old cousin from the wedding cut the bread and said grace in Corsican.

Then Marie-Ange brought a small framed photograph from the sideboard and set it on the cloth in front of me.

A young man looked up out of it, laughing, with Antone's jaw and a sunburned nose.

He was in a fisherman's smock on a boat deck.

"Mattei," the old cousin said.

He said the name flatly, to see if anyone at the table would stop him.

Antone did not move.

I remembered rule three, and I understood it was a rule for the house and not for this table.

"It is the custom," the old cousin said. "A wife of this house swears to the dead on the first Sunday."

"Swears what?" I said.

"That no Santoni will ever speak of the night."

The table went quiet.

I looked at the photograph.

It was a good face, open, easy, a boy who had not known what was coming.

"I'll swear to him," I said.

I laid my hand on the cloth beside the frame.

"I swear I am sorry he is dead. I swear I'm sorry for every one of you who loved him."

"And the rest," the old cousin said.

"I can't swear my father killed him. Nobody has ever told me he did. I only know the tribunal said so."

A fork rang on a plate.

"Vannina," Antone said, very low.

"I'll keep quiet about it if you like," I said. "I haven't got anything to say."

I looked at the old cousin.

"But I won't put my hand on his face and say a thing I don't know."

For a long moment nobody spoke.

Then Antone put his napkin on the table.

"My wife has sworn what she can," he said. "That is enough."

It was the first time he had called me that in front of the family without a sneer.

The old men looked at each other, and one of them grunted.

Marie-Ange picked up the photograph and took it away.

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