and eyes drop. Colonel Corsale was expostulating about Abyssinia now, about il Africa orientale – nothing Sibilla had ever heard of – gesturing to her every once in a while as if to demonstrate something.
An old woman approached, white powder coating her cheeks and chin in unseemly patches. Sibilla cocked her head to one side by way of a greeting. The old woman yelped in reply, then reached up and tugged at the grey bun on top of her own head, undoing it. The wispy hair wafted down. Sibilla was annoyed by the gesture – it was like crouching to see eye to eye with an animal. But the old woman’s eyes reminded her of her nonna, so she smiled. The old woman grinned back, her teeth stark as gravestones in the expanse of gum. Then she took Sibilla’s arm and began to dance.
At first, Sibilla went along with the marionette movements of reluctance – jerk-sway, jerk-sway – waiting for an opportune moment to let go. But then someone else grabbed her other arm – it was the pretty card counter with the blue dress and the copper curls. The women danced, passing Sibilla between them. Her feet scraped, then tapped, then bounced against the floor, and soon enough she was bounding along, drawing near one dance partner, then the other, letting them spin her. The Colonel took notice and began to clap loudly to the beat from his seat. The Sergeant leaned against a wall, his wine glass pressed to his collarbone.
Sibilla could see! Whenever she spun, her hair would whirl up and out from her body, dissipating into a mist of suspended strands. The music jiggled and jumped. Sibilla spun and spun. A vortex seemed to deepen and clarify in her belly, as if this were simply the natural acceleration of a spinning that had always been inside her. The party guests circled her, clapping in time. The ends of her hair thudded across corduroy, whispered across satin, pittered against badges. Splotches of faces bloomed towards her and wilted away. She caught a glimpse of Signora Lina’s scowling face and just then the spinning started to feel uncontrolled. Sibilla was no longer turning in place – she was orbiting a lopsided loop in the centre of the room.
But how to stop? Sibilla closed her eyes. Between spinning and stopping was a chasm. How to cross it? She heard dilating laughter and tumbling music. Only a plunge of nausea told her that she had finally stopped. As she swayed, something stirred over her – it was her hair wrapping around her – once, twice, encasing her completely. There was an airless pause, everyone caught in a gasp. Sibilla opened her eyes.
Oh! How soft! A dark cocoon, dreamy and warm, the still-spinning room striated in a spiral of strips, the way Nonna used to peel an orange. Sibilla could see a grey moustache, a red dress, a green eye. Oh! How soft and beautiful! But now the cocoon was filling with heat, a vast vibration was swelling. The slivers of colour peeled away and a massing, swarming burst revealed all the capillaried flesh that hides behind the skin of the world. Sibilla fell into darkness.
She woke up in someone’s arms. She blinked and the Colonel’s dark moustache came clear, then his eyes. Over his shoulder she saw his brother, the Sergeant with his codino striding back and forth like a caged beast. She felt the hot wetness on her back before she felt the sting of the cuts down her spine. Later she learned that the Colonel had pulled out his hunting knife and cut her out of her hair, his blade skimming her back and opening a dashed line of gashes.
Now, he stood her upright on the shaggy rug of hairs that had fallen with his rescue. She looked down at the staticky pile, its uneven lengths reaching up her legs. Her back pulsed and trickled. The sliding violins started up again and Sibilla was picked up and carried across the room and laid on her side on a chaise. She felt wrung. I might fall asleep right here, she thought with a woozy giggle, and just as a cool damp cloth touched the top of her spine, she did.
The next day was a misery. Sibilla had to clean Villa Serra beside her mother as if nothing had changed. She wore a shift to conceal the marks on her back from the Colonel’s knife, but she could not hide