Buon Vento
The man appears, addresses me in English, then disappears behind me into the crowds of Bowrington Road. I internalise his phrasing before committing it to memory.
I’ve seen him before, I realise. At a Marks and Spencer in Taikoo Shing. Then, too, he asked me a question, but was interrupted by the cashier before leaving the store abruptly. I think he remembers me, as I’ve remembered him. His haiku-like question is a signal; it affirms our history.
His words linger like an incantation as I cross beneath the Canal Road Flyover. Crowds pass rows of villain-hitting aunties crouched on low plastic stools, beating paper effigies with their slippers. Their noise slices through the pneumatic sighs of the buses pulling in beside them.
The matrilineal side of my family hails from a city in Campania called Benevento, which translates as ‘fair wind’. It’s apt, as the family name, ‘Polvere’, translates as ‘dust’; a people of dust from a town of fair wind. Benevento is a city steeped in witchcraft. Lombards once performed their pagan rites around a sacred tree, only for a bishop to cut it down and build a church in its place. But old words outlived the tree. An incantation survives from the early Renaissance period: Unguento, unguento, mandame a la noce de Benivento, supra aqua et supra ad vento. Residents would speak of the janare—the local witches—with caution. To mention one by name required a counter-spell: oggi è sabato. Today is Saturday.
Above me, incense smoke lifts from the aunties’ offerings and thins into the evening air.
Originally published in Even Now.
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