The shopkeeper’s angry expression disappeared and was replaced with a timid smile.
“Señor Martín? I didn’t recognize you … How is my child?”
“Your child is safe and sound in my house, snoring like a mastiff but with her honor and virtue intact.”
The shopkeeper crossed himself twice, much relieved.
“God bless you.”
“Thank you very much, but in the meantime I’m going to ask you to come collect her today without fail. Otherwise I’ll smash your face in, shotgun or no shotgun.”
“Shotgun?” the shopkeeper mumbled in confusion.
His wife, a small, nervous-looking woman, was spying on us from behind a curtain that concealed the back room. Something told me there would be no shots fired here. Don Odón huffed and puffed and looked as if he was on the point of collapse.
“Nothing would please me more, Señor Martín. But the girl doesn’t want to be here,” he countered, devastated.
When I realized the shopkeeper was not the rogue Isabella had painted him as, I was sorry for the way I’d spoken.
“You haven’t thrown her out of your house?”
Don Odón opened his eyes wide and looked hurt. His wife stepped forward and took her husband’s hand.
“We quarreled,” he said. “Things were said that shouldn’t have been said, on both sides. But that girl has such a temper, you wouldn’t believe it … She threatened to leave us and said she’d never come back. Her saintly mother nearly passed away from the palpitations. I shouted at her and said I’d stick her in a convent.”
“An infallible argument when reasoning with a seventeen-year-old girl,” I pointed out.
“It was the first thing that came to mind,” the shopkeeper said. “As if I would put her in a convent!”
“From what I’ve seen, you’d need the help of a whole regiment of infantry.”
“I don’t know what that girl has told you, Señor Martín, but you mustn’t believe her. We might not be very refined, but we’re not monsters either. I don’t know how to deal with her anymore. I’m not the type of man who would pull out a belt and give her forty lashes. And my missus here doesn’t dare even shout at the cat. I don’t know where the girl gets it from. I think it’s all that reading. Mind you, the nuns warned us. And my father, God rest his soul, used to say it too: the day women are allowed to learn to read and write the world will become ungovernable.”
“A deep thinker, your father, but that doesn’t solve your problem or mine.”
“What can we do? Isabella doesn’t want to be with us, Señor Martín. She says we’re dim and we don’t understand her. She says we want to bury her in this shop. There’s nothing I’d like more than to understand her. I’ve worked in this shop since I was seven years old, from dawn to dusk, and the only thing I understand is that the world is a nasty place with no consideration for a young girl who has her head in the clouds,” the shopkeeper explained, leaning on a barrel. “My greatest fear is that if I force her to return she might really run away and fall into the hands of any old … I don’t even want to think about it.”
“It’s true,” his wife said, with a slight Italian accent. “Believe me, the girl has broken our hearts, but this is not the first time she’s gone away. She’s turned out just like my mother, who had a Neapolitan temperament—”
“Oh, la mamma,” said Don Odón, shuddering even at the memory of his mother-in-law.
“When she told us she was going to stay at your house for a few days while she helped you with your work, well, we felt reassured,” Isabella’s mother went on, “because we know you’re a good person and basically the girl is nearby, only two streets away. We’re sure you’ll be able to convince her to return.”
I wondered what Isabella had told them about me to persuade them that yours truly could walk on water.
“Only last night, just round the corner from here, two laborers on their way home were given a terrible beating. Imagine! It seems they were battered with an iron pole, smashed to bits like dogs. One of them might not survive, and it looks like the other one will be crippled for life,” said the mother. “What sort of world are we living in?”
Don Odón gave me a worried look.
“If I go and fetch her, she’ll leave again. And this time I don’t know whether she’ll end up with someone like you. It’s not right for a young girl to live in a bachelor’s house, but at least you’re honest and will know how to take care of her.”
The shopkeeper seemed about to cry. I would have preferred if he’d rushed off to fetch the gun. There was still the chance that some Neapolitan cousin might turn up, armed with a blunderbuss, to save the girl’s honor. Porca miseria.
“Do I have your word that you’ll look after her for me until she comes to her senses?”
I grunted. “You have my word.”
I returned home laden with superb delicacies that Don Odón and his wife insisted on foisting on me. I promised them I’d take care of Isabella for a few days, until she agreed to reason things out and understood that her place was with her family. The shopkeepers wanted to pay me for her keep, but I refused. My plan was that before the week was up Isabella would be back sleeping in her own home, even if I had to keep up the pretense that she was my assistant. Taller towers had toppled.