Caterina, still a young girl, had no idea what fate had in store for her. Not only illness, but also a full life, a family, two children who would later represent her entire universe. That night she dreamed of a beautiful young woman with a white blindfold over her eyes. The woman in the dream approached her and whispered in her ear. Caterina recounted that in the dream she hadn't quite understood the words, but she had felt a slight shiver run along the side of her neck behind her ear. She then insisted on asking the blindfolded lady about her fate, and the goddess, this time with a menacing and annoyed air, replied loudly: "It is you who do not want to see." Caterina continued, saying: "Is it me who doesn't want to see? But the blindfolded one is you!" She woke up shaken by her dream and still feeling the shiver behind her ear. Belinda had never tried to seek her fate in dreams, nor had Caterina, not for lack of courage, perhaps more out of a form of respect: better not to insist and disturb unknown forces.
Elia listened to her patiently and slightly resigned; it certainly wasn't the first time he had heard those stories that had been repeated for years. Furthermore, he knew his wife well and her enthusiasm for new things, but he never let himself be swayed or surprised by all the stories Belinda told him. Perhaps it was a cultural background: his land was rich in superstitions and magical tales, and so they were not a source of astonishment for him. With serene resignation and a bit of indifference, he replied with his usual ironic tone: "Va bè, ora che diventi maggica, vidi si putemu fari una magia pi soddi." (Well, now that you become magical, let's see if we can do some magic for money.)
Belinda always took the events of her life a little too seriously; luckily, Elia was there to lighten the mood. But in that specific case, Belinda was offended: "There you go, always the same! There's no point in telling you things if you're always going to act like an idiot."
Elia then tried to appease Belinda, because her temper was fiery and also irascible. He defined her in many ways, one being: "Filu accennu" (Tinderstick) which ignites quickly, a fitting example also because she had a mountain of red hair.
Elia took Belinda's hands and kissed them, saying: "My love, I love you, don't take it personally if I joke. I'm tired, you know even my mom is menza mavara." (In Sicily, mavare women are crones or witches, a term that, however, is not used disparagingly. In ancient times they were seen as healing women, with many virtues, able to cure with herbs, assist in childbirth, and remove or cast the evil eye as needed.)
Elia's mother, Anna, was also a peculiar woman, with an immoderate passion for art in more than one form. She dabbled in painting and poetry, very good at removing the evil eye or mavaria. Anna is eighty years old, lives alone in a large house with an orange cat given to her by Belinda. She was convinced that the spirit of her deceased husband lived in the cat named Tango and occasionally joked about it, calling him "Curnutu" (Cuckold). She rarely goes out, also due to her continuous back pain and various ailments due to age, but when she returns home Tango meows loudly with a tone of reproach and then caresses her face with a soft, furry paw, never using his claws. She spends her days between brushes and colors, endowed with an inexhaustible artistic vein. Art for her is like an outlet, a cure. When she doesn't paint, she dedicates herself to poetry: endless pages flow like a swollen river from the sheets. She too, like Belinda's grandmother, every Christmas Eve precanta l'occhiu (recites prayers against the evil eye).
Belinda wants to learn from her mother-in-law, the only living witness of the family who can instruct her. The prayers are long, articulate, and in dialect. She will have to write them down and then memorize them. Guard them in great secrecy, so secret that not even I, the writer, am allowed to know what they say.
Belinda knows well that while Sicily is a land rich in traditions and popular folklore, it is also a harsh and retrograde land, not very open to New Age religion or, more generally, to other religions that do not include Christianity and the Catholic religion. She knows very well that troubles have just begun for her, and she can only save herself from such troubles if she remains anonymous and secretive. "Parla poco e ascolta molto" (Speak little and listen much) is one of the witches' favorite mottos.
Discussions between Belinda and Elia always end this way, with an "I love you," a laugh, and a "Futtitinni" (Don't give a damn). But in Belinda's head, that phrase thrown by Elia echoes: would doing magic for money be so wrong?
She will think about money later, which in the end has never been important, only useful for some practical aspects of life. Now it was time to put Azzurra to bed, her beautiful blonde little girl who doesn't resemble her, but perhaps when she grows up, she will resemble her paternal grandmother and her great-grandmother. It is the hour of night and rest, the hour when prophetic dreams manifest, take shape, elements manifest.
Belinda writes some rhymes on a sheet before falling asleep. She dreams of her grandmother Linda: they walk together along a wooden bridge on an August afternoon, in the middle of a field of gold-yellow wheat. They don't speak, they simply accompany each other. In the distance, between the mist and the sun, through the wet haze, they approach a bull that blocks their path. The bull is accompanied by Belinda's grandfather, who won't let her pass and says: "You stop here, you cannot go on."
Belinda wants to continue and asks for an explanation. Her grandfather replies that since she is not dressed in red, the bull won't let her pass. Belinda in the dream turns to her grandmother and notices that she is wearing a fiery red tunic; then she looks at herself and indeed her tunic is white. She observes her grandfather and asks him with a certain arrogance: "But Grandpa, you are not dressed in red, your tunic is black!" Her grandfather replies impatiently: "Of course I am not dressed in red, I am the master of the bull and I tell you to stop, you cannot go further!"
So, in a warm embrace that smells of home, she greets her grandmother and turns back. "Just another dream, just another," she wakes up with these words between her teeth.
Belinda's grandfather, Giovanni, had been a powerful man, not much loved by his family, or rather, little loved by Belinda and her mother, and for good reason. If Belinda could summarize the evil of her family, that dark evil that infests like a weed, she would call it by his name. Grandfather Giovanni had been a severe patriarch with his children and grandchildren; many times as a child Belinda had witnessed scenes of fights and arguments, bottles flying from the table, and family tragedies. His favorite words were: "Quannu moru io, fanculu a cu resta" (When I die, screw everyone else).
He had lived a long and healthy life until the age of ninety-three. He was very attached to money and was very happy to hurt his children with malice conceived at night only to unleash it during the day. Once he bought Mussolini's book for a lot of money, five hundred euros, to venerate a dictator. He had stripped his wife Belinda of all her possessions—houses, lands, buildings—with a notarized act that he had tricked her into signing, without anyone's knowledge. When he had obtained the loot, he had told her: "E ora non hai chiu nenti, sunnu tutti cosi mei, ti spugghiai di tutti cosi!" (And now you have nothing left, it's all mine, I've stripped you of everything!). In Sicily, especially in those times, women were considered very little, and grandmother Belinda, like many of her peers, seemed resigned to that state of affairs. Belinda remembers her grandmother's tears when it was too late; she had been defrauded by her husband. She remembers the wars that broke out immediately afterward, even among the children.
Giovanni was a man who loved power and was naturally inclined to violence. Belinda remembers that her mother Caterina never left her alone at her grandparents' house and that she was often checked on by her mother who told her: "Never be alone with Grandpa; if something happens, you run to another room." Belinda had always feared her grandfather, because that's what her mother and aunt, Caterina's younger sister, had instilled in her.
Only years later, when Belinda was old enough to understand, Aunt Francesca confessed to her that her grandfather, her father, had raped her when she was just six years old. One of the saddest and heaviest pages, a burden, a dark stain on Belinda's lineage, would be indelibly etched. Aunt Francesca was Caterina's best friend, a younger sister to protect even when grown up. Aunt Francesca was also Belinda's godmother, a woman Belinda loved very much, almost as if she had been her second mother—a mother she lost just as she lost Caterina.
Thus, Grandfather Giovanni transforms in Belinda's eyes, who discovers the truth only during adolescence, from a severe patriarch to a frightening monster.