The Devil Below Us: Chapter Three

His Sacred Heart | (Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid — Joshua 1:9)

Chapt 2 | Contents | Chapt 4

new home was like a new friend. It took time to settle in and get to know one another.

He had found this little ground floor flat by a chance of fate; the executor of his Mama's will had come across this property for half its market value when he had expressed his desire to leave his village, and Dante took it as a sign. It was so different from his home in Sicily. The street was so different. But he hoped to become friends with these differences. It was an opportunity to let something new into his life.

Dante looked around at the bare walls of his new kitchen. His Mama would tell him that a home's heart was the kitchen. It was the warm heartbeat of the hearth. He remembered watching her as a child, as she cooked the day's meal. The memories played back to him on a music sheet of senses; the sounds, smell, and her singing all merged now in a melody impervious to time. He could hear her voice in his mind.

"Do you know what a kitchen is, my son?"

"It's my favourite place in the whole world, Mama," It was true. There was no where else he would rather be than watch his mother cook and sing her favourite arias.

"The way you eat, my son, this does not surprise me. But the kitchen, my darling, is not simply a place where we cook, or gather with close friends to share our problems and joys. It is the heart of a home."

That did not sound right to him. "No, Mama, you are the heart of our home."

"Oh, really? And Papa?"

"Papa is our strength." He raised an arm to try and tense a bicep. "He is our muscle!"

She laughed and ruffled his hair. "You are the heart and strength of our family, my little Dante. And I am glad to hear we are yours. But a family's heart is here. A cold kitchen means a cold heart. Never forget this. We Sicilians cannot live in a home with no heart."

Dante looked around his new kitchen, and wondered how he could make its heart beat, to bring his new friend to life. He would eat in it, that was for sure. He had a passion for good food, and a healthy Sicilian appetite, although you couldn't tell by looking at his slender frame. But he would cook in it, too. He enjoyed all the sensations of the culinary arts. The way the scents and textures would unify to bring together the gifts of God and Nature in a meal that gave sustenance to your loved ones was, to him, a miraculous thing. To share food prepared by your own hands was to share your love of God. It was Christian charity, as he had been raised to believe, at its most basic and fundamental.

"Now, my kitchen, how do I make you breathe, so I can start to create my own miracles with you?"

Dante had said this out loud to himself. It was a habit he formed as a child. When he realised at a young age that people didn't appreciate hearing what was true and straight from his heart, he stopped speaking to them. It meant he was on his own for most of the time, so he would speak to himself constantly. It gave people the impression he was strange, but he didn't care. He preferred it. It was easier to be thought weird than to have to force himself to tell people what they wanted to hear, when it wasn't what was in his heart to say, or to deal with their awkwardness his direct honesty made them feel.

He couldn't lie. He didn't know why. There was a line in him God had drawn at his birth; it was one he couldn't cross. He didn't like lying about who he was, or lying to get away with things. Why do something, if you would have to hide it with lies afterwards? It made no sense to him. How could a person get away from the truth? Could a person get away from themselves? It was like trying to hide from God. He knew what he was, and what was in his heart. Why should it bother anyone else, if those who had nurtured and raised him, had accepted his differences?

ut bother them it did. Dante knew his particular ways caught the attention of others, especially the villagers in his own village. He loved his people and his neighbours, but he felt no love for their dishonesty. A man had to be a certain way, or at least be seen to be a certain way. Why could a man not just be who he was?

"Another fight, my son?" His Papa had looked at his bloodied nose and swollen eye with a critical glance, but his voice was gentle. "How many this time?"

His gaze dropped to the floor. "It does not matter, Papa. It only matters that I have shamed you."

His Papa knelt down beside him, to take a closer look at his injuries. "Now, why do you think you have shamed me?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I am not like the other boys in the village. They tell me I shame you, so I fight."

"And do you run away? Do you let them beat you?"

"Of course not, Papa. I am your son. You are the man that no other man in the village can beat in a fight. They knock me down, and I think of you and Mama, and I get up every time. They may beat my body, but I will not let them beat my soul."

His Papa stood up, smiling. "Then you have not shamed me, my son. You have made me proud."

"But I do not feel proud." The fight in the village square had not tempered his Sicilan rage. He had felt no pain as he fought them, the righteous injustice he felt was like an armour. He was still angry, however.

"Why do people behave like this, Papa? I know some of the boys like me, but they pretend to hate me. They are the ones that try to beat me the hardest. They are the ones I fight back the most. You know old Salvatore's son, Lorenzo? He is the worst."

His Papa sighed. "My son, it is because your courage shines a light on their cowardice. They are afraid. You are not. And people will always try to destroy the thing they fear. It is the way of the world. Besides, Lorenzo is not such a bad boy. You will find out in time."

"But-"

"Enough now, go in and let your Mama clean you up."

Dante had not really understood what his father had told him that day. It was only as he grew older that he understood the wisdom in his Papa's words.

n his late teens, the ways of the menfolk in his village meant that married men, old and young, would come to him of a night in secret, looking to tempt or force some sort of physical intimacy, and he would refuse. He knew what it meant to dent a Sicilian's man pride. It would mean facing their fists and their scorn when their paths next crossed in the village square, but to give them what they wanted would have meant crossing a line he couldn't cross. It no longer angered him, however, even when they acted as though they were the injured party.

Then Lorenzo came to call at his home one night. When he opened the front door, he couldn't hide his surprise. But then, Dante could never hide anything.

"If you've come to fight, you're wasting your time."

"I haven't come to fight," Lorenzo said quietly.

"What have you come for then?"

Lorenzo lit the cigarette drooping sullenly out of the corner of his mouth. His face, bathed in light for a brief second from the lighter's flame, looked haggard. The crucifix that hung around his neck, glowed. "I've come to talk."

"If you've come for the type of talk that all the others knock at my door for at this time of night, then I'm in no mood for conversation. Good night."

Dante was about to shut the door, but Lorenzo put out a hand to stop him. "Will you take a walk with me? Just to talk? Please?"

Something in the way Lorenzo spoke, made him suddenly feel that all his refusals had been because he was waiting for the right person that could make him cross that line. But it couldn't be Lorenzo.

Despite his misgivings, they walked and they talked. Lorenzo would come every night after that, just to talk. Of their village, of their families, of the future. Often Lorenzo would stop mid-sentence and point out a star in the velvet fabric of the sky, that closely mirrored his own eyes, and tell Dante its name, and its distance from them.

On one such occasion, he told Dante quietly, "I love you."

For the first time in his life, Dante realised he was too afraid to say what was in his heart to say. So, he said nothing. He didn't speak again for the entire walk, not even to say good night when Lorenzo walked him back to his front door.

He thought he wouldn't see Lorenzo again, and it bothered Dante more than he wanted to admit. The visits had meant that the other men in the village had stopped their calls, and Dante had been glad. But it was more than that; he was ashamed that he hadn't the courage to tell Lorenzo that he loved him, too.

When Lorenzo came again the next night, Dante didn't wait for the usual welcome that opened their nightly walks. "I love you, too," he blurted out.

Lorenzo smiled, and lit a cigarette. Under the stars they did more than just walk and talk that night. Afterwards, Lorenzo took the crucifix from his neck, and put it around Dante's own.

"To remember me by," he said.

"You think I have such a bad memory that I will forget you by tomorrow evening?"

"I leave for Rome tomorrow."

"Why?" Dante stood up, forgetting he was naked. His anger had returned. Lorenzo looked up at him, stretched out a hand to his, but Dante slapped it away.

"You know, why. Come with me. We can go together."

Dante felt betrayed. He had crossed the line for someone who was not worthy. "And what? Do in Rome what we cannot do here? Why is it wrong for two people to fall in love here, but not in Rome?"

Lorenzo lit a cigarette. "We cannot change the world, Dante. We can only live in it."

"I do not want to change the world. I only want to live in it as the man I am."

"Then come with me. If you love me."

"I cannot love a coward, Lorenzo." Dante picked up his clothes, and turned his back to him. "If you are brave, you will stay and I will see you tomorrow. If not, then do not ever come back."

Dante waited all the next night, but Lorenzo did not come. He had left for Rome. Dante knew it was for the best, but he kept Lorenzo's crucifix around his neck, and walked through the village square the next day, his head held higher.

It was only after he fell in love with Lorenzo, that Dante really came to understand the wisdom in his Papa's words.

They are afraid. You are not.

There was a price to pay for his courage, as there always is when bravery shines a light on the cowardice of others. It is the way of the world. In his world, this meant that the people in the village, even his parents' closest friends, gradually, one by one, stopped coming to their home for dinner. No one said anything in the open, they just made polite excuses. But when their friends stopped coming round to dine, it meant something more than just an empty dining table.

ining with friends was more than a social activity, in his homeland it was a necessity. And the people you shared your food with, was an important rite of dining. In the old traditions of his country, Sicilians never sat down to eat with someone who might become an enemy; in their long past, it was believed you couldn't kill someone you had broken bread with, or to share a meal with someone you once had a personal enmity towards, meant that they had become a friend.

When their neighbours began to shun his parents' home for this Sicilian sacrement, because their son had refused to hide who he was, his anger returned stronger than ever. His parents had pretended they didn't care, but he knew they did; he knew it in his heart, and it bothered him, more than Lorenzo's desertion had.

He shed the tears he hadn't cried for Lorenzo.

"What is it my son? You are not a man to cry."

"I'm not crying, Mama." He turned his face away. He had thought himself alone in the kitchen.

"My beautiful son, who never lies, lies to me now? Tell me what is in your heart?"

So, Dante told her. He told her of his sadness to see his parents shunned because of him. For the first time, it made him wish he wasn't different. If he could change those lines drawn in him by an unseen hand, for the sake of his parents, he would have done it. He was angry at himself, that he could not change, not even for the only two people he loved most in the world.

"And this is what upsets you?

"Doesn't it upset you, Mama?"

"I would be lying if I said no, but, you know, your Nona, may she rest in peace, would tell me that if you sat down to eat with someone who is poison, or spoke poison, then the food you eat with them will turn to poison inside you. So, I should thank you. We know the people now not to invite into our home. But my darling, this village is our home. We Rossis do not run away, but we must learn to live in peace here, and in time, our old friends will learn to live in peace again with us."

He heeded his Mama's advice, and found ways in which to control the anger he felt. Instead of fighting with the villagers, he shunned them in public as they had shunned his parents in private. It was the biggest fuck you to a Sicilian when you ignored his greeting. He knew it would anger his neighbours, but it was one their own, Lorenzo who had taught him that keeping people at a distance was safer. It was safer then getting attatched to them. They couldn't hurt you then. Or find yourself falling in love with a coward.

He wouldn't hide away; he wouldn't run away. He would shine his light in defiance of all of them. He sang, he danced, he did those things that brought him joy. He knew it bothered people, but his ways always bothered people.

But he didn't want to change the world. He just wanted to live in it as the person he was. He touched the crucifix he still wore around his neck after that night under the stars.

They are afraid. You are not. But was he really? He had left his village, just as Lorenzo had. He had taken the first opportunity that presented itself to him, to sell up and move to England. Was it a sign of weakness to have left? Had the heartache of his Mama's loss really been too much for him to bear? His heart was silent to these questions.

Suddenly, his nervousness crept upon him to overshadow his thoughts. He felt his heart go cold, but it had served to transport him out from the past. That chapter of his life was over, but not to be forgotten. So, it was only right that his new kitchen should reflect his Mama, now. He began to unpack some of her possessions he couldn't bring himself to sell, a few wall ornaments, her treasured religious icons, to hang on the walls.

As he rummaged through his Sicilian wicker box, he came across two items to make him pause. "Now, what have I found here? Come out my darlings."

With an exclamation of joy, he dug out two of his Mama's favourite head planters, hand-painted pots in the shape of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary. He would sow seeds in them, he decided, the ones he had brought from his Papa's small garden back home. He placed them by the kitchen window. They were empty of life for now, but he would fill them with life. And as he watched his Papa's tomatoes and peppers grow, he hoped new life would grow in his heart, too.

He put on his opera music as he worked, and began to sing along to the aria, the sound of his voice filling the air. Slowly, the joy in his heart returned; his nervousness dimmed.

The kitchen is the heart of a home. That was what his Mama had taught him. Well, he would make its heart beat, to bring his new friend to life, to start his new life.

                  n operatic voice came through the floor into Derek's kitchen.

                           "Who is that?" His mother asked, sipping her tea.

                            "My new neighbour. He just moved in last week," he replied. An intense hatred for his neighbour had begun the first time Dante's music had floated up from below. But you wouldn't know it to look at him. His voice was as impassive as his face. It gave nothing away.

"His voice sounds lovely. Have you met him, yet?"

"Yes. His name is Dante."

"How wonderful! An Italian. May be you two could be friends? You could do with a friend."

The ice within Derek almost cracked to reveal what lay beneath his stoic exterior. Almost, but not quite. "I like him. He is nice," was all he said.

His mother's feet began to fidget under the kitchen table when she heard her son say that. It reminded her of Pixie. The skin prickled on the back of her neck. "Well, maybe he won't be here too long. Best to leave him alone." As Dante's voice rose higher in decibels and passion, she added, "His voice isn't that good really."

Derek turned away in silence to place his own cup and saucer into the kitchen sink.

Derek's mum knew something was wrong, but said nothing.

Published 22 April, 2026

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