Part 12
In the summer of 1835 Luca set sail for a Grecian port upon the skiff “Trinita” belonging to Don Giovanni Camaccione. Moreover, as he held a secret thought in his mind, before leaving, he sold his furniture and asked some relatives to keep Anna in their house until he should return. Some time after that the skiff returned loaded with dried figs and eggs from Corinth, after having touched at the coast of Roto. Luca was not among the crew, and it became known later that he had remained in the “country of the oranges” with a lady-love.
Anna remembered their former stuttering hostess. A deep sadness settled down upon her life at this recollection. The house of her relatives was on the eastern road, in the vicinity of Molo. The sailors came there to drink wine in a low room, where almost all day their songs resounded amid the smoke of their pipes. Anna passed in and out among the drinkers, carrying full pitchers, and her first instinct of modesty awoke from that continuous contact, that continuous association with bestial men. Every moment she had to endure their impudent jokes, cruel laughter and suggestive gestures, the wickedness of men worn out by the fatigues of a sailor’s life. She dared not complain, because she ate her bread in the house of another. But that continuous ordeal weakened her and a serious mental derangement arose little by little from her weakened condition.
Naturally affectionate, she had a great love for animals. An aged ass was housed under a shed of straw and clay behind the house. The gentle beast daily bore burdens of wine from Saint Apollinare to the tavern; and for all that his teeth had commenced to grow yellow, and his hoofs to decay, for all that his skin was already parched and had scarcely a hair upon it, still, at the sight of a flowering thistle he put up his ears and began to bray vivaciously in his former youthful way.
Anna filled his manger with fodder and his trough with water. When the heat was severe, she came to rest in the shadow of the shed. The ass ground up wisps of straw laboriously between his jaws and she with a leafy branch performed a work of kindness by keeping his back free from the molestation of insects. From time to time the ass turned its long-eared head with a curling of the flaccid lips which revealed the gums as if performing a reddish animal smile of gratitude, and with an oblique movement of his eye in its orbit showed the yellowish ball veined with purple like a gall bladder. The insects circled with a continuous buzzing around the dung-heap; neither from earth nor sea came a sound, and an infinite sense of peace filled the soul of the woman.
In April of 1842 Pantaleo, the man who guided the beast of burden on his daily journeys, died from a knife-wound. From that time on the duty fell to Anna. Either she left at dawn and returned by noon, or she left at noon and returned by night. The road wound over a sunny hill planted with olives, descended through a moist country used for pasture, and on rising again through vineyards, arrived at the factories of Saint Apollinare. The ass walked wearily in front with lowered ears, a green fringe all worn and discoloured beat against his ribs and haunches and in the pack-saddle glittered several fragments of brass plate.
When the animal stopped to regain his breath, Anna gave him a little caressing blow on the neck and urged him with her voice, because she had pity for his infirmities. Every so often she tore from the hedges a handful of leaves and offered them to him for refreshment; she was moved on feeling in her palm the soft movement of his lips as they nibbled her offering. The hedges were in bloom and the blossoms of the white thorn had a flavour of bitter almonds.
On the confines of the olive grove was a large cistern, and near this cistern a long, stone canal where the animals came to drink. Every day Anna paused at this spot and here she and the ass quenched their thirst before continuing the journey. Once she encountered the keeper of a herd of cattle, who was a native of Tollo and whose expression was a little cross and who had a hare-lip. The man returned her greeting and they began to converse on the pasturage and the water, then on sanctuaries and miracles. Anna listened graciously and with frequent smiles. She was lean and pale with very clear eyes and uncommonly large mouth, and her auburn hair was smoothed back without a part. On her neck one saw the red scars of her burns and her veins stood out and palpitated incessantly.
From that time on their conversations were repeated at intervals. Through the grass the cattle dispersed, either lying down and pondering or standing and eating. Their peaceful moving forms added to the tranquillity of the pastoral solitude. Anna, seated on the edge of the cistern, talked simply and the man with his split lip seemed overcome with love. One day with a sudden, spontaneous blossoming of her memory, she told of her sailing to the mountain of Roto; and, since the remoteness of the time had blurred her memory, she told marvellous things with a strong appearance of truth. The man, astonished, listened without winking an eye. When Anna stopped speaking, to both the surrounding silence and solitude seemed deeper and both remained in thought. Then the cattle, driven by habit, came to the trough and between their legs dangled the bags of milk supplied anew from the pasture. As they thrust their noses into the stream, the water diminished with their slow, regular gulps.
IV
During the last days of June the ass fell sick. It took neither food nor drink for almost a week. The daily journeys were interrupted. One morning Anna, descending to the shed, found the beast all cramped upon the straw in a pitiable condition. A kind of hoarse, tenacious cough shook from time to time his huge frame thinly covered with skin, while above the eyes two deep cavities had formed like two hollow orbits, and the eyes themselves resembled two great bladders filled with whey. When the ass heard Anna’s voice he tried to get up; his body reeled upon his legs, his neck sank beneath the sharp shoulder-blades, and his ears dangled, with involuntary and ungainly motions, like those of a big toy broken at the hinges. A mucous liquid dropped from his nose, sometimes flowing in little sluggish rivulets down to his knees. The raw spots in the skin turned the colour of azure, and the sores here and there bled.
Anna, at this sight, was inwardly torn by a pitying anguish; and, since by nature and by habit she never experienced any physical repugnance on coming in contact with things commonly regarded as repellant, she drew near to touch the animal. With one hand she held up his lower jaw and with the other a shoulder and thus sought to help him walk, hoping that exercise might do him good. At first the animal hesitated, shaken by new outbreaks of coughing, but at length he began to walk down the gentle incline that led to the shore. The water before them shone white in the birth of the morning and the _Calafatti_ near La Penna were smearing a keel with pitch. As Anna sustained her burden with her hands, and held the halter rope, the ass through a misstep of a hind leg fell suddenly. The great structure of bones gave a rattle within as if ruptured, the skin over the stomach and flanks resounded dully and palpitated. The legs made a motion as if to run, while blood issued from the gums and spread among the teeth.
The woman began to call and run toward the house. But the _Calafatti_, having arrived, laughed and joked at the reclining ass. One of them struck the dying beast in the stomach with his foot. Another grabbed his ears and raised his head, which sank heavily again to earth. The eyes at length closed, a chill ran over the white skin of the stomach, parting the tufts of hair as a wind would do, while one of his hind legs beat two or three times in the air. Then all was still, except that in the shoulder, where there was an ulcer, a slight quivering took place, like that caused by some insect a moment before in the living flesh. When Anna returned to the spot she found the _Calafatti_ dragging the carcass by the tail, and singing a Requiem with imitation brays.
Thus Anna was left alone. Still for a long time she lived on in the house of her relatives and gradually faded, while she fulfilled her humble duties and endured with much Christian patience her vexations. In 1845 her epilepsy returned to her with violence, but disappeared again after some months. Her religious faith became at the same time more deep and living. She went up to the church every morning and every evening, and knelt habitually in an obscure corner protected by a great pillar of marble where was pictured in rough bas-relief the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. Did she not at first choose that corner because she was attracted by the gentle ass bearing the child Jesus and His mother from the land of idolatry? A great peace as of love descended upon her soul when she bent her knees in the shadow, and prayers rose unpolluted from her breast as from a natural spring, because she prayed only through a blind passion to adore, and not through any hope to obtain the grace of happiness in her own life. She prayed with her head lowered on a chair, and as Christians, in coming and going, touched the holy water with their fingers and crossed themselves, she from time to time shivered on feeling on her hair some welcome drops of the holy water.
V
When in the year 1851 Anna came for the first time to the country of Pescara, the feast of Rosario was approaching, which is celebrated on the first Sunday of October.
The woman came from Ortona on foot, for the purpose of fulfilling a vow; and bearing with her, hidden in a handkerchief of silk, a little heart of silver, she walked religiously along the seacoast; since at that time the province road was not yet constructed, and a wood of pines almost covered the virgin soil. The day was calm, save that the waves of the sea were ever increasing and at the farthest point of the horizon the clouds continued to rise in the shape of large funnels. Anna walked on entirely absorbed in holy thoughts. Towards evening, as she was approaching Salini, suddenly the rain began to fall, at first gently, but later in a great downpour; so much so that, not finding any shelter, she was wet through and through. Further on, the gorge of the Alento was flooded, and she had to remove her shoes and ford the river. In the vicinity of Vallelonga the rain ceased, and the forest of pines serenely revived gave forth an odour almost of incense. Anna, rendering thanks in her soul to her Lord, followed the shore path with steps more rapid, since she felt the unwholesome dampness penetrate her bones, and her teeth began to chatter from a chill.
At Pescara she was suddenly stricken with a swamp-fever, and cared for through pity in the house of Donna Cristina Basile. From her bed on hearing the sacred chants, and seeing the tops of the standards wave to the height of her window, she set herself to praying and invoking her recovery. When the Virgin passed she could see only the jewelled crown, and she endeavoured to kneel upon the pillows in order to worship.
After three weeks she recovered and Donna Cristina having asked her to remain, she stayed on in the capacity of a servant. She had a little room looking out upon a court. The walls were whitened with plaster, an old screen covered with curious figures blocked a corner, and among the beams of the roof many spiders stretched in peace their intricate webs. Under the window projected a short roof, and further down opened the court full of tame birds. On the roof grew from a pile of earth enclosed with five tiles a tobacco plant. The sun lingered there from early in the morning until the evening. Every summer the plant bloomed. Anna, in this new life, in this new house, little by little felt herself revive and her natural inclination for order reasserted itself.
She attended tranquilly and without speaking to all her duties. Meanwhile her belief in things supernatural increased. Two or three legends had in the distant past established themselves with regard to certain spots in the Basile house, and from generation to generation they had been handed down. In the yellow room on the second floor (now unoccupied) lived the soul of Donna Isabella. In a dark room with a winding staircase descending to a door that had not been opened for a long time, lived the soul of Don Samuele. Those two names exercised a singular power over the present occupants, and diffused through the entire ancient building a kind of conventional solemnity. Further, as the inside court was surrounded by many roofs, the cats on the loggia gathered in counsel and mewed with a mysterious sweetness, while begging Anna for bits from her meals.
In March of the year 1853 the husband of Donna Cristina after many weeks of convulsions died of a urinary disease. He was a God fearing man, domestic and charitable, at the head of a congregation of landowners, read theological works, and knew how to play on the piano several simple airs of the ancient Neapolitan masters. When the viaticum arrived, magnificent with its quantity of servers and richness of equipage, Anna knelt on the doorsill and prayed in a loud voice. The room filled with the vapour of incense, in the midst of which glittered the _cyborium_ and the censers flickering like burning lamps. One heard weeping, and then arose the voices of the priests recommending the soul to the Most High. Anna, carried away by the solemnity of that sacrament, lost all horror of death, and from that time on the death of a Christian seemed to her a journey sweet and joyful.
Donna Cristina kept the windows of her house closed for an entire month. She mourned for her husband at the hours of dinner and supper, gave in his name alms to beggars; and many times a day, with the tail of a fox swished the dust from his piano, as if from a relic, while emitting sighs. She was a woman of forty years, tending toward fleshiness, although still youthful in her form which sterility had preserved. And since she inherited from the deceased a considerable sum, the five oldest bachelors of the country began to lay ambushes for her and to allure her with flattering wiles to new nuptials. The competitors were: Don Ignazio Cespa, an effeminate person, of ambiguous sex, with the face of an old gossip marked from the small-pox, and a head of hair filled with cosmetics, with fingers heavy from rings and ears pierced with two minute circles of gold; Don Paolo Nervegna, doctor of law, a man talkative and keen, who had his lips always curled as if he were chewing on some bitter herb, and a kind of red, unconcealable wart on his forehead; Don Fileno d’Amelio, a new leader of the congregation, slightly bald, with a forehead sloping backward, and deep-set lamb-like eyes; Don Pompeo Pepe, a jocular man and a lover of wine, women and leisure, luxuriantly corpulent, especially in his face and sonorous in laughter and speech; Don Fiore Ussorio, a man of pugnacious disposition, a great reader of political works, and a triumphant quoter of historical examples in every dispute, pallid with an unearthly pallor, with a thin circle of beard around his cheeks and a mouth peculiarly leaning toward an oblique line. To these were added, as a help to Donna Cristina’s power of resistance, the Abbot Egidio Cennamele who, wishing to draw the heritage to the benefit of the church, with well covered cleverness antagonised the wooers by means of flattery. This great contest, which some day should be narrated in more detail, lasted a long time and held great variety of incident.
The principal theatre of the first act was the dining-room—a rectangular room where on the French paper of the walls were graphically represented the facts of Ulysses’ sail to the island of Calypso. Almost every evening the combatants assembled around the besieged’s window and played the game of _briscola_ and of love alternately.
VI
Anna was a constant witness. She introduced the visitors, spread the cloth upon the table, and, in the midst of the siege, brought in glasses full of a greenish cordial mixed by the nuns with special drugs. Once at the top of the stairs she heard Don Fiore Ussorio, in the heat of a dispute, insult the Abbot Cennamele who spoke submissively; and since this irreverence seemed monstrous to her, from that time on she judged Don Fiore to be a diabolical man and at his appearance rapidly made the sign of the cross and murmured a Pater.
One day in the spring of 1856 while on the bank of the Pescara, she saw a fleet of boats pass the mouth of the river and sail slowly up the current of the stream. The sun was serene, the two shores were mirrored in the depths facing one another, some green branches and several baskets of reeds floated in the midst of the current toward the sea like placid symbols, and the barks, with the mitre of Saint Thomas painted for an ensign in a corner of their sails, proceeded thus on the beautiful river sanctified by the legend of Saint Cetteo Liberatore. Recollections of her birthplace awoke in the soul of the woman with a sudden start, at that sight; and on thinking of her father, she was overcome with a deep tenderness.
The barks were Ortonesian skiffs and came from the promontory of Roto with a cargo of lemons. Anna, when the anchors were cast, approached the sailors and gazed at them in silence with a curiosity yearning and fearful. One of them, struck by her expression, recognised her and questioned her familiarly: “Whom was she seeking? What did she want?” Then Anna drew the man aside and asked him if by chance he had seen in the “country of the oranges” Luca Minella, her father. “He had not seen him? He no longer lived with that woman?” The man answered that Luca had been dead for some time. “He was old, and could not live very long?” Then Anna restrained her tears and wished to know many things. “Luca had married that woman and they had had two children. The elder of the two sailed upon a skiff and came sometimes to Pescara for trade.” Anna started.
A perplexing confusion, a kind of troubled dismay seized her mind. She could not regain her equilibrium in the face of these complicated facts. She had two brothers then? She must love them? She must endeavour to see them? Now what ought she to do? Thus, wavering, she returned home. Afterwards, for many evenings, when the barks entered the river, she descended the long dock to watch the sailors. One skiff brought from Dalmatia a load of asses and ponies. The beasts on reaching land stamped and the air rang with their brays and neighs. Anna, in passing, stroked the large heads of the asses.
VII
At about that time she received as a gift from a squire a turtle. This new pet, heavy and taciturn, was her delight and care in her leisure hours. It walked from one end of the room to the other, lifting with difficulty from the ground the great weight of its body. It had claws, like olive-coloured stumps, and was young; the sections of its dorsal shield, spotted yellow and black, glittered often in the sunlight with a shade of amber. The head covered with scales, tapering to the nose and yellowish, projected and nodded with timorous benignity, and it seemed sometimes like the head of an old worn-out serpent that had issued from the husk of its own skin. Anna was much delighted with the traits of the animal; its silence, its frugality, its modesty, its love of home. She fed it with leaves, roots and worms, while watching ecstatically the movement of its little horned and ragged jaws. She experienced almost a feeling of maternity as she gently called the animal and chose for it the tenderest and sweetest herbs. Then the turtle became the presager of an idyl. The squire, on coming many times a day to the house, lingered on the loggia to chat with Anna. Since he was a man of humble spirit, devout, prudent, and just, he enjoyed seeing the reflections of his pious virtues in the soul of the woman. Hence, from habit there arose between the two, little by little, a friendly familiarity. Anna already had several white hairs on her temples, and a placid sincerity suffused her face. Zacchiele exceeded her in age by several years; he had a large head with bulging forehead and two gentle, round, rabbit-like eyes. During their soliloquies they sat for the most part on the loggia. Above them, between the roofs, the sky seemed a transparent cupola, while at intervals the pet doves in their soarings traversed this patch of the heavens. Their conversations turned upon the harvests, the fruitfulness of the earth and simple rules for cultivation, and they were both full of experience and self-denial. Since Zacchiele loved at times, because of a natural diffident vanity, to make show of his knowledge before the ignorant and credulous woman, she conceived for him an unlimited esteem and admiration. She learned from him that the earth was divided into five races of men: the white, the yellow, the red, the black, and the brown. She learned that in form the earth was round, that Romulus and Remus were nourished by a wolf, and that in autumn the swallows flew over the sea to Egypt where the Pharaohs reigned in ancient times. But did not men all have one colour, in the image and semblance of God? How could we walk upon a ball? Who were the Pharaohs? She did not succeed in understanding and thus remained completely confused. However, after that she regarded the swallows with reverence and judged them to be birds gifted with human foresight.
One day Zacchiele showed her a copy of the Old Testament, illustrated with drawings. Anna examined it slowly, listening to his explanations. She saw Adam and Eve among the hares and fawns, Noah half nude kneeling before an altar, the three angels of Abraham, Moses rescued from the water; she saw with joy finally a Pharaoh, in the presence of the rod of Moses, changed into a serpent; the queen of Sheba, the feast of the Tabernacle, and the martyrdom of the Maccabees. The affair of Balaam’s ass filled her with wonder and tenderness. The story of the cup of Joseph in the sack of Benjamin caused her to burst into tears. Now she imagined the Israelites walking through a desert all covered with scales, under a dew that was called manna and which was white like snow and sweeter than bread. After the Sacred History, seized with a strange ambition, Zacchiele began to read to her of the enterprises of the kings of France with the Emperor Constantine up to the time of Orlando, Count of Anglante. A great tumult then upset the woman’s mind, the battles of the Philistines and Syrians she confused with the battles of the Saracens, Holofernes with Rizieri, King Saul with King Mambrino, Eleazar with Balante, Naomi with Galeana.
Worn out she no longer followed the thread of the narrative, but shivered only at intervals when she heard fall from the lips of Zacchiele the sound of some beloved name. And she had a strong liking for Dusolina and the Duke of Bovetto, who seized all of England while becoming enamoured of the daughter of the Frisian King.
The first day of September came. In the air, tempered with recent rain, was a placid autumnal clarity. Anna’s room became the spot for their readings. One day Zacchiele, seated, read “how Galeana, daughter of the King Galafro, became enamoured of Mainetto and wished to make him a garland of green.”
Anna, because the fable seemed simple and rustic, and because the voice of the reader seemed to sweeten with new inflections, listened with evident eagerness. The turtle gently dragged itself over several leaves of lettuce, the sun illumined a great spider’s web upon the window, and one saw the last red flowers of the tobacco plant through the subtle threads of gold.