Almond Picker

Excerpt fromThe Almond Pickerby Simonetta Agnello Hornby. Copyright 2002 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore Milano. To be published in March, 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. 1. Dr. Mendicograve; attends a dying patient Dr. Mendicograve; suddenly felt exhausted, his legs stiff and his arms tingling. He had been in the same position for over an hour, Mennulara's hands clasped between his, ceaselessly caressing her fingers with a delicate circular movement. He lifted his right hand, leaving his left--in which the deceased's hands lay, still warm--palm up on the sheet. It was a solemn moment, which he knew well and which always moved him: the final task of a doctor defeated by death. Delicately, he closed her eyes. Then he arranged her hands, interlacing her fingers, laid them carefully on her breast, smoothed out the sheet, and drew it up to cover her shoulders before, finally getting up to inform the Alfallipe family that Mennulara was dead. He stayed with them for as long as was necessary, gave Gianni Alfallipe the envelope containing the dead woman's last wishes, and hurried down the stairs of the small apartment block, coming across women neighbours on their way up to offer condolences. He had felt stifled in that flat; as soon as he went out the front door he walked off with small, slow steps, filling his lungs with the still-fresh morning air. The street was only a few dozen yards long but seemed longer because it was narrow and full of corners formed by the two- and three-storey buildings that over the centuries had proliferated at random, piling up one on top of the other and engulfing the earlier houses until they merged into what were two almost contiguous uneven walls, pierced only by two arches, like a tunnel, through which passed one of the many meandering flights of steps that formed the street network of Roccacolomba, a typical inland town clinging to the side of a mountain. All at once Dr. Mendicograve;ch remembered that he had not wound a rosary around the dead woman's fingers, as was the custom. In his mind's eye he revisited Mennulara's bedroom trying to work out how this oversight had occurred. It was an austere little room with only the basic necessities: a bed, a chair, a wardrobe, a lamp and a radio on the bedside table, and a narrow table that served as a writing desk, on which sat a metal tray holding pens, pencils, and a large eraser, arranged in perfect order. On the shelf were two photographs of her nephews and a rather faded shot of her parents, some notepads, and few books. The walls were bare, apart from a reproduction of Ferretti'sMadonna and Childabove the bed. Missing in the room were the feminine touches and the religious ingredients: the hodgepodge of holy images, statuettes of the Virgin and the local saints, and those bottles full of holy water brought home from far places that pile up on women's bedside tables; there wasn't even a rosary. Despite this, Mennulara's bedroom had given him the feeling of being permeated with a deep, almost monastic piety. The strip of sky carved out by the irregular pointed roofs was dazzlingly bright, with only a hint of blue. The doctor stopped, took a deep breath, and looked up, staring intensely at the sky. "Who knows where her soul has flown? May God give her peace," he said softly before setting off again to take the steps that went down towards his house. The convent bell struck eleven. Dr. Mendicograve; thought he would have enough time before lunch to make the necessary telephone calls, have a coffee, and take a stroll: he needed to be on his own, to think. "Not even an old doctor like me gets used to death," he murmured to himself as he rang the doorbell of his home. After seeing Dr. Mendicograve; to the door, Gianni went back into the living room. His sisters and mother were waiting for him in silence. Santa, the maid, diHornby, Simonetta Agnello is the author of 'Almond Picker', published 0000 under ISBN 9780374182342 and ISBN 0374182345.