The Rosselli Cantata THE ROSSELLI CANATATA by A. S. Maulucci Prologue A BLACKBIRD CALLED out in the dark, green forest. Matthew Rosselli stood listening, alone, attending. That cawing sound stirred his blood with passion for his homeland, for these New England woods and fields, for the oak, maple, and pine trees whose branches stretched out so majestically, so cathedral-still overhead, for this rushing brook he was about to cross over. There it was again, that lonely call, awakening something in his soul. Unlike most people, he loved its strange monotone, so much a part of this familiar forest, which he also loved. On this fine September morning in 1962, Matthew Rosselli was dressed in his best clothes. He had been wearing them since early morning. He had on a black suit and black Oxford shoes, made especially for him by his grandfather, Salvatore Rosselli, once a master shoemaker. His hair was the same raven color as the bird that burst into flight from the treetops above his head. Matthew�s long legs stiffened, his trim body becoming as taut as a harp string as he stood for another moment, listening with animal intensity. Then he moved on, over stones and across the stream. In four more years, Matthew would leave this sheltered life in Connecticut. He would enter Columbia University as a freshman. The year would be 1966, and, unsure exactly why he was going to college, he would be willing to give it a try since it would be better than being drafted into the Vietnam War. Maggie Bishop, his high school girlfriend, would be going into her second year at NYU. She�d be a bit condescending towards him after moving to New York, and he would desperately want her to think of him as a man. Matthew walked up a hill and came out of the woods into an open field. Milkweed and cattails pointed up at the soaring blue sky that was pale at the horizon with a hint of autumn. As Matthew looked across the fields into the hills in the distance, he imagined how it must have been on this vast North American continent when the first European settlers arrived full of wonder and greed for the New World. Although he was sorry for the native people, the Indians, he had as a boy felt only great admiration for the pioneers, the men and women who had endured hardship and deprivation three centuries before his grandfather had arrived from Italy. America owed its existence to those pioneers and their corn. It had been a hard, cruel and glorious battle, Matthew believed, from the first rows of cornstalks to the proud skyline of New York City. That skyline was the first sight to greet his grandfather when he stepped off the boat from Naples in 1925. Yes, and Matthew also tried to imagine that day. By then, most of the cornstalks had been pushed back to Iowa. On the island of Manhattan, the building rose up tall and strong, Salvatore Rosselli�s counterpart in steel and concrete. They were a visual promise of the fulfillment of the dreams he must have nurtured on the long journey across the Atlantic to Ellis Island. Most certainly he had never seen such tall buildings, nor, even if he�d been able to see all the way to Iowa had he ever seen cornstalks growing so high. He must have been a simple man then who had not seen much of the world. He had come from a small village near Bari, had raised sheep until the day he moved to Naples and took up shoemaking, and this humble yet honorable old-world trade belied the ambition that world transform him from tradesman to tycoon. While Salvatore Rosselli was still a young man, the famous Rosselli shoes graced the feet of presidents Roosevelt and Truman, as well as many other prominent Americans. Yes, Salvatore Rosselli, my grandfather, thought Matthew, had arrived in time to shod the feet of prosperous men and women, and then, during the Depression, Rosselli Shoes survived by keeping its standards high. By working hard he had become rich, but all of his money could not prevent death from drawing near, and he had died three days ago in bed at home, his wife Renata by his side. His once-robust body was much emaciated by cancer, and his immense fortune depleted by eccentric medical treatments and the extravagant whims of a dying man used to getting his way. Now he is dead, and better off, thought Matthew, for at least his many years of suffering are over. Matthew walked, thinking these proud and gloomy thoughts, until he stood beneath his grandfather�s favorite oak tree. Salvatore had once told him that he had come all the way to America just to find this tree. �This is where I can come when I need to talk with you,� Matthew said aloud, peering up into the thick branches whose leaves were edged with red and gold. Then, stretching his arms as far as they would go around the huge girth, he pressed his body against the trunk. �So here under your tree I make my vow.� He paused, swallowing. �I solemnly swear, Nonno, to live my life by the lessons you taught me, to love my family, work hard, and always keep my promises. I swear I�ll become the kind of man you�d be proud of. I won�t disappoint you!� When Matthew emerged from the woods a short time later, he entered the withered gardens behind the house and glanced at the marble statues imported from Florence by his grandfather as if expecting a nod of approval from them for having made his vow. Here it was that Matthew had walked hand in hand with his grandfather on a Sunday afternoon while the rest of the family conversed around the dining room table or in the comfortable sitting room of the large colonial-style brick house. As he approached the terrace, tears sprang from his eyes, and he spun around, walking faster, then running, trying to escape the memory of his grandfather�s gentle touch on his head, the touch of hands that could work leather into submission until it was as soft as a woman�s skin, hands that could build things out of any material and grow delicious vegetables and roses that were morebeautiful than any flowers he had ever seen. Matthew ran faster, trying to get away from his grandfather�s laughter, the sparkle in his eyes when he was happy, his broad smile of enjoyment and approval. He ran from the memory of his strong arms, the elegant turn of his handsome head, the resonance of his deep voice. He ran too from the sight of his blighted body and the bitter look of pain and fear in his eyes as he sat, enfeebled, at the head of the long dining room table for what was to be his last birthday party. Matthew ran until he stumbled and fell, gasping for air. Cars filled the parking lot with hot metal and baking leather. No less than seven black limousines were lined up in front of the facade of Saint Joseph�s Cathedral, the biggest Roman Catholic church in Hartford, Connecticut. The fact that he was the last person to make his entrance into the cathedral for his grandfather�s funeral was of no consequence to Matthew. He had, in fact, been among the first to arrive, but he had struggled with a strong desire to leave, just jump on a bus and go somewhere else, as he walked up and down Asylum Avenue in front of the Aetna Insurance Company Head Office across the street. There was no one else in front of the church now except the chauffeurs, who were leaning irreverently against the limos, smoking and talking loudly about a race horse. Matthew�s sudden appearance startled them into silence, but they made no effort to stand up any straighter as he passed them and climbed the steps of the church. The funeral had already commenced. This final farewell was intended for the large Rosselli family and their close relatives only. Dressed in their black finery, they filled almost half of the pews. Matthew would have recognized most of them had he looked to either side as he walked steadily down the aisle, but his gaze was fixed on the open coffin in front of the altar. Eyes that glanced at him were glazed over with the sorrow of an inward journey. Matthew could feel the oppressiveness of their sense of defeat and resignation, but running through his mind were the lines from one of his favorite poems: �Do not go gentle into that good night . . . Rage, rage against the dying of the light.� This is no way to honor him, with your drooping spirits, Matthew wanted to shout; he lives in all of us, and we owe it to him to hold our heads up with pride, courage, dignity, and hope. Pray that God grants him peace but remember he�ll be looking down to see what we�re doing here on earth. He caught sight of his mother among the mourners in the third row on the right. She was kneeling and her head was bowed in prayer. His father kneeled next to her, his head also bowed and his shoulders slumped over. Farthest inside the pew sat his two sisters, only a year apart in age, their radiant girlish beauty a stark contrast to their clothes and everyone around them. An empty space beside his mother was reserved for him. Matthew genuflected and sat down. The moment of panic, when he fought the impulse to scream in anger, had passed. His mother�s look told him he had forgotten something. He got up and went dutifully to the open casket, knelt down on the top step of the altar, and recited a prayer. When he was done he could not force himself to kiss the powdered crown of the old beloved�s head. Look at him . . . No, I can�t . . . doesn�t look real, not the way he looked in life, don�t want to remember him this way . . . No one will notice if I don�t, so what if they do . . .His grandmother Renata Rosselli�s words echoed in his mind: �Like the body of a plucked bird� was the way she described him. It was true. He stood up, went down the few steps, and returned to his place in the pew beside his mother. The mass was beginning, and his mother gripped his hand tightly. His sister�s faces shone with tragic bewilderment. His father was full of solemn dignity but shed no tears and did not look over at him. The brethren of the Rosselli tribe sat in communal silence before the remains of their patriarch. Matthew noted that his grandfather�s ornate oak coffin (it should have been hewn from his tree, he thought) gleamed as richly as the robes of the priest, who had appeared on the altar, and the gold of the tabernacle itself. At that moment, he felt an intense spirituality that he would not experience again for many years. Nature herself seemed to conspire to make this religious ritual more sacred somehow. The late September sun, pouring through the stained-glass windows, emblazoned the figures of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph which stood above the scriptures, and fell in a many-colored pattern over the somber congregation. A shaft of light penetrated the sanctuary, struck a brass fitting on the coffin, and flared up like the fire of the Holy Ghost. The intonations of the priest in Latin began the mass, and before long Matthew was dreaming. The interior of the sleek limousine smelled of death and tears. Matthew was in the second car sitting between his grandmother and an uncle he barely knew. He wasn�t sure where his parents and sisters had ended up. It�s all wrong, Matthew was averring to himself, it�s unnatural and obscene to treat him this way. He felt another urge to shout but suppressed it. Is this the best we can do to honor a man who lived by his principles, a man who left everything he loved in Italy in order to seek in the new world the justice he wanted more than anything? He was a man of passionate convictions when it came to morality, integrity, and what he called strength of character. How many of you knew him for what he really was? Did you spend much time with him? Did you get to know him truly, the way I did, loving him for his goodness and kindness, or were you more interested in what he could give you? Are the flowing tears of my family the tears of love or of guilt, remorse, and fear? No, I am not being fair, thought Matthew; I have no right to judge this family of mine. Rather, I should pity them for they were not all privileged to know him as intimately as I did, nor do they have any idea that he died in the happiness of a life fulfilled. The funeral cortege turned off the highway onto a secondary road. It went through a tunnel of thickly leafed branches of elms, oaks, beeches and maples, then came out on an open road. They were in the midst of farmland northeast of Hartford. Strange place for a cemetery, thought Matthew, and when Saint Benedict�s came into view it looked to him like a frozen sea of the dead, the tombstones like the sails of the ships of the dead, eternally becalmed. Death seemed like the eternal doldrums. As the cortege passed through the entrance, Matthew read the inscription carved into the granite arch over the gates: THE DEAD SHALL BE RAISED. Inside the cemetery grounds, they slowed to a crawl along the tranquil grounds, the tires crunching pine cones and the light carpeting of early autumn leaves. With exaggerated ceremony, the hearse led the way until the entire processional had filed in and come to a halt. It was Renata Rosselli�s wish that Matthew Rosselli, her first grandson, be a pall bearer for Salvatore Rosselli�s coffin. Matthew accepted the honor with a sense of pride in his heritage as the grandson of a poor immigrant who had made it in America. Matthew stepped with relief from the enclosed limo into the crisp air. A slight puff of wind brought the fragrance of freshly dug earth to his nostrils, which open greedily. Looking in the direction of the breeze, he saw a canopy flapping over an open grave. How odd, he thought, that the open grave had to be covered. Was the sun a violation of death? Couldn�t we endure a few moments of discomfort in order to bury him in the glory of the sunshine, especially for someone who taught us how to die with dignity and grace? Matthew took his place beside an uncle, making three on a side, as the casket was withdrawn from the hearse. The brass rail was cold against the palm of his hand. With all the sensitive nerve endings in my hand, he wondered, surely I could feel the beating of his heart if it were still alive but of course it�s not . . . His spirit is all around us, though; I can sense it . . . he hasn�t left us yet . . . When the coffin was in place, Matthew stood back at the head of the grave and remained standing until a prayer had been murmured by all. Directly across from him, at the foot of the grave, his grandmother sat upon a folding chair in regal dignity, her patrician face veiled in black. Beside her sat Salvatore�s mother, Matthew�s great-grandmother, a woman who refused to learn English because it was vulgar to her ears, white-haired, bright-eyed, and looking in her seventies like the survivor of another era. Between these two poles, himself and his grandmother, as Matthew saw it, was amassed the hundred-fold tribe of Salvatore Rosselli. When the sanctifying words had been orated and the holy water generously sprinkled by the priest, the casket was lowered down without benefit of a eulogy. As the coffin was disappearing from view, Renata Rosselli shattered the silence with a cry of misery and desperation: �O Salvatore!� In an instant, everyone around the grave seemed frozen in a tableau. The only sound that answered her was the cry of a blackbird as it burst into flight from a nearby tree and flew away over the fields through the sunshine. The shrill creaking of the lowering mechanism continued until the load hit bottom, sunk into the frozen sea of the dead. ������Ten years later, at the age of twenty-four, Matthew Rosselli wrote a story about his grandfather�s life, had it privately printed, and circulated it among our family members. He called it a family cantata. From what we understand, most of the events are based on what he learned from his grandmother, Renata Rosselli, and may have actually happened. Matthew has always insisted that the part about the deaf-mutes is true, but he�s not sure about the rest; he thinks Renata Rosselli may have changed a few things for her own reasons or may have embroidered the narrative somewhat by adding details of her own -- after all, she was an artist. Mostly, it�s a work of the imagination, Matthew told me, an attempt to understand the man who was his grandfather. During those ten years, while Matthew went to Columbia and began his career as a journalist, he was disturbed by a strange occurrence he had witnessed about three days before Salvatore�s death, an encounter that made Matthew realize there was some sort of mystery surrounding his grandfather�s life, and he decided he would find out what it was. He was always very determined when it came to finding things out. Since Matthew and his grandmother were close, this proved to be fairly easy; it was natural for her to open up to him, and she told him more than she had ever revealed to anyone else.
Copyright © 2001 Anthony S Maulucci |