The Walnut Tree
A world by Ari Weaver
The Walnut Tree
Your grandmother Assunta just died in Benevento, a small city inland from Naples where everyone knows the janare, the local witches, meet under a walnut tree by the river on Saturday nights. Everyone also knows the Ricciardi sisters who run the pharmacy are janare. Now the sisters want you in Assunta's place under the tree, and a carabiniere from the north wants to know where they were the night a married horse vet drowned below the old bridge.
Playing as Traveler·
Don Michele stops halfway through the Mass for your grandmother to blow his nose into a big checked handkerchief, and nobody in San Gennarello minds. The church is full, which in the Triggio means about sixty people, most of them related to you. The coffin is plain walnut under white chrysanthemums. Your cousin Totò, in the front pew, checks his phone twice.
At the back, by the holy water, stand three women in black who don't come up for communion. Concetta Ricciardi from the pharmacy is small and grey and doesn't move at all. Her sister Filomena cries into a tissue beside her. The youngest sister, Rosaria, wears sunglasses indoors, and the old women in the side pews keep turning round to look at her. When the bearers lift the coffin, Filomena drops a pinch of something from her fist into the font. Don Michele sees it and says nothing.
Outside on the steps, in a cold wind coming up from the river, people kiss you on both cheeks. Totò takes your elbow. “Listen, cousin, the man who wants the house is here, Carmine, the big one by the car. Just say hello, trust me.” Before you can, Concetta is in front of you, pulling off one glove.
“I'm sorry about your grandmother. She was eighty-eight, by the way, not eighty-seven, whatever the paper says.” She looks past you at Carmine Avellino and back. “Come to the pharmacy tomorrow at one, when we close for lunch. Come on your own. Can you do that?”
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