Part 8

An animated oscillation of reflections suddenly illuminated the obscurity of the nave and made the gold of the candelabra glitter. And in that glaring splendour, which now and again was intensified by the burning of the adjacent houses, a second struggle took place. The entangled bodies rolled upon the bricks, remained in a death grip, balanced together here and there in their wrathful struggles, howled and rolled beneath the benches, upon the steps of the chapels and against the corners of the confessionals. In the symmetrical concave of this house of God arose that icy sound of the steel that penetrates the flesh or that grinds through the bones, that single broken groan of a man wounded in a vital part, that rattle that the framework of the skull gives forth when crushed with a blow, that roar of him who dreads to die, that atrocious hilarity of him who has reached the point of exulting in killing, all of these sounds echoed through this house of God. And the calm odour of incense arose above the conflict.

The silver idol had not yet reached the glory of the altar, because the hostile forces, encircling the altar, had prevented it. Giacobbe, wounded in many places, struck with his scythe, never yielding a palm’s breadth of the steps which he had been the first to conquer. There remained but two to support the Saint. The enormous white head rolled as if drunk over the wrathful pool of blood. The Mascalicesi raged.

Then Saint Pantaleone fell to the pavement, giving a sharp rattle that stabbed the heart of Giacobbe deeper than any sword could have done. As the ruddy mower darted over to lift it, a huge demon of a man with a blow from a sickle stretched the enemy on his spine.

Twice he arose, and two other blows hurled him down again. The blood inundated his entire face, breast and hands, while on his shoulders and arms the bones, laid bare by deep wounds, shone out, but still he persisted in recovering. Maddened by his fierce tenacity of life, three, four, five ploughmen together struck him furiously in the stomach, thus disgorging his entrails. The fanatic fell backwards, struck his neck on the bust of the silver Saint, turned suddenly upon his stomach with his face pressed against the metal and with his arms extended before him and his legs contracted under him.

Thus was Saint Pantaleone lost.

VIII

_MUNGIA_

Through all the country of Pescara, San Silvestro, Fontanella, San Rocco, even as far as Spoltore, and through all the farms of Vallelonga beyond Allento and particularly in the little boroughs where sailors meet near the mouth of the river,—through all this country, where the houses are built of clay and of reeds, and the fire material is supplied by drift wood from the sea, for many years a Catholic rhapsodist with a barbarian and piratical name, who is as blind as the ancient Homer, has been famous.

Mungia begins his peregrinations at the beginning of spring, and ends them with the first frosts of October. He goes about the country, conducted by a woman and a child. Into the peaceful gardens and the serenity of the fields he brings his lamenting religious songs, antiphonies, preludes and responses of the offices of the dead. His figure is so familiar to all, that even the dogs in the backyards do not bark at his approach. He announces his advent with a trill from his clarionet, and at the well-known signal, the old wives come out upon the thresholds to welcome him, place his chair under the shade of a tree in the yard, and make inquiries as to his health. All the peasants come from their work, and form a subdued and awed circle about him, while with their hard hands they wipe the perspiration of toil from their foreheads, and, still holding their implements, assume a reverent attitude. Their bare arms and legs are knotted and misshapen from the severe toil of the fields; their twisted bodies have taken on the hue of the earth—working in the soil from the dawn of day, they seem to have something in common with the trees and the roots.

A sort of religious solemnity is thrown over everything by this blind man. It is not the sun, it is not the fulness of the earth, not the joy of spring vegetation, not the sounds of the distant choruses that gives to all the feeling of admiration, of devotion, and more than all, the sadness of religion. One of the old women gives the name of a departed relative to whom she wishes to offer songs and oblations. Mungia uncovers his head.

His wide shining cranium appears encircled with white hair; his whole face, which in its quiet calm has the appearance of a mask, wrinkles up when he takes the clarionet in his mouth. Upon his temples, under his eyes, beside his ears, around his nostrils and at the corners of his mouth, a thousand lines become visible, some delicate, some deep, changing with the rhythm of the music by which he is inspired. His nerves are at a tension, and over his jaw bones the purple veins show, like those of the turning vine-leaves in the autumn, the lower eyelid is turned outward, showing a reddish line, over his whole face the tough skin is tightly drawn, giving the appearance of a wonderful carving in relief; the light plays over the face with its short, stiff, and badly shaved beard, and over the neck, with its deep hollows, between the long still cords which stand out prominently, flashing like dew upon a warty and mouldy pumpkin; and, as he plays, a thousand vibrating minor notes float out upon the air, and the humble head takes on an appearance of mystery. His fingers press the unsteady keys of the box-wood clarionet, and the notes pour out. The instrument itself seems almost human, and to breathe with life, as inanimate objects which have been long and intimately associated with men often do; the wood has an unctuous glare; the holes, which in the winter months become the nests of little spiders, are still filled with cobwebs and dust; the keys are stained with verdigris; in places beeswax has been employed to cover up breaks; the joints are held together with paper and thread, while about the edge one can still see the ornaments of its youth. The blind man’s voice rises weak and uncertain, his fingers move mechanically, searching for the notes of a prelude, or an interlude of days long passed.

His long, deformed hands, with knots upon the phalanges of the first three fingers, and with the nails of his thumbs depressed and white in colour, resemble somewhat the hands of a decrepit monkey; the backs are of the unhealthy colour of decayed fruit, a mixture of pink, yellow and blue shades; the palms show a net-work of lines and furrows, and between the fingers the skin is blistered.

When he has finished the prelude, Mungia begins to sing, “_Libera Me Domine_,” and “_Ne Recorderis_,” slowly, and upon a modulation of five notes. The Latin words of the song are interspersed with his native idioms, and now and then, to fill out the metrical rhythm, he inserts an adverb ending in _ente_, which he follows with heavy rhymes; he raises his voice in these parts, then lowers it in the less fatiguing lines. The name of Jesus runs often through the rhapsody; not without a certain dramatic movement. The passion of Jesus is narrated in verses of five lines.

The peasants listen with an air of devotion, watching the blind man’s mouth as he sings. In the season, the chorus of the vintagers comes from the fields, vieing with the notes of the pious songs; Mungia, whose hearing is weak, sings on of the mysteries of death; his lips adhere to his toothless gums, and the saliva runs down and drips from his chin; placing the clarionet again to his lips, he begins the intermezzo, then takes up the rhymes again, and so continues to the end. His recompense is a small measure of corn and a bottle of wine or a bunch of onions, and sometimes a hen.

He rises from his chair, a tall, emaciated figure, with bent back and knees turning a little backward. He wears upon his head a large green cap, and no matter what the season, he is wrapped in a peasant cloak falling from his throat below his knees and fastened with two brass buckles. He moves with difficulty, at times stopping to cough.

When October comes, and the vineyards have been vintaged and the yards are filled with mud and gravel, he withdraws into a garret, which he shares with a tailor who has a paralytic wife, and a street pauper with nine children who are variously afflicted with scrofula and the rickets. On pleasant days he is taken to the arch of Portanova, and sits upon a rock in the sun, while he softly sings the “_De Profundis_” to keep his throat in condition. On these occasions, mendicants of all sorts gather around him, men with dislocated limbs, hunchbacks, cripples, paralytics, lepers, women covered with wounds and scabs, toothless women, and those without eyebrows and without hair; children, green as locusts, emaciated, with sharp, savage eyes, like birds of prey; taciturn, with mouths already withered; children who bear in their blood diseases inherited from the monster Poverty; all of that miserable, degenerate rabble, the remnants of a decrepit race. These ragged children of God come to gather about the singer, and speak to him as one of themselves.

Then Mungia graciously begins to sing to the waiting crowd. Chiachiu, a native of Silvi, approaches, dragging himself with great difficulty, helping himself with the palms of his hands, on which he wears a covering of leather; when he reaches the group about Mungia, he stops, holding in his hands his right foot, which is twisted and contorted like a root. Strigia, an uncertain, repugnant figure, a senile hermaphrodite with bright red carbuncles covering neck and grey locks on the temples, of which the creature seems to be proud, the top and back of the head covered with wool like a vulture, next approaches. Then come the Mammalucchi, three idiot brothers, who seem to have been brought forth from the union of man and goat, so manifest in their faces are the ovine features. The oldest of the three has some soft, degenerated bulbs protruding from the orbs of his eyes, of a bluish colour, much like oval bags of pulp about to rot. The peculiar affliction of the youngest is in his ear, the lobe of which is abnormally inflated, and of the violet hue of a fig. The three come together, with bags of strings upon their backs.

The Ossei comes also, a lean, serpent-like man with an olive-coloured face, a flat nose with a singular aspect of malice and deceit, which betrays his gipsy origin, and eyelids which turn up like those of a pilot who sails over stormy seas. Following him is Catalana di Gissi, a woman of uncertain age, her skin covered with long reddish blisters, and on her forehead spots looking like copper coins, hipless, like a bitch after confinement: she is called the Venus of the Mendicants,—the fountain of Love at which all the thirsty ones are quenched.

Then comes Jacobbe of Campli, an old man with greenish-coloured hair like some of the mechanics’ work in brass; then industrious Gargala in a vehicle built of the remains of broken boats, still smeared with tar; then Constantino di Corropoli, the cynic, whose lower lip has a growth which gives him the appearance of holding a piece of raw meat between his teeth. And still they come, inhabitants of the woods who have moved along the course of the river from the hills to the sea; all gather around the rhapsodist in the sun.

Mungia then sings with studied gestures and strange postures. His soul is filled with exaltation, an aureole of glory surrounds him, for now he gives himself freely to his Muse, unrestrained in his singing. He scarcely hears the clamour of applause which arises from the swarming mendicants as he closes.

At the end of the song, as the warm sun has left the spot where the group is assembled and is climbing the Corinthian columns of the arch of the Capitol, the mendicants bid the blind man farewell and disperse through the neighbouring lands. Usually Chiachiu di Silvi, holding his deformed foot, and the dwarfed brothers remain after the others have gone, asking alms of passers-by, while Mungia sits silent, thinking, perhaps, of the triumphs of his youth when Lucicoppelle, Golpo di Casoli, and Quattorece were alive.

Oh, the glorious band of Mungia! The small orchestra had won through all the lower valley of Pescara a lofty fame. Golpo di Casoli played the viola. He was a greyish little man, like the lizards on the rocks, with the skin of his face and neck wrinkled and membranous like that of a turtle boiled in water. He wore a sort of Phrygian cap which covered his ears on the sides. He played on his viola with quick gestures, pressing the instrument with his sharp chin and with his contracted fingers hammering the keys in an ostentatious effort, as do the monkeys of wandering mountebanks.

After him came Quattorece with his bass viol slung over his stomach by a strap of ass-leather; he was as tall and thin as a wax candle, and throughout his person was a predominance of orange tints; he looked like one of those monochromatic painted figures in stiff attitudes which ornament some of the poetry of Castelli; his eyes shone with the yellow transparency of a shepherd dog’s, the cartilage of his great ears opened like those of a bat against which an orange light is thrown, his clothes were of some tobacco-coloured cloth, such as hunters usually wear; while his old viol, ornamented with feathers, with silver adornments, bows, images, and medals, looked like some barbarian instrument from which one might expect strange sounds to issue. But Lucicoppelle, holding across his chest his rough, two-stringed guitar, well tuned in diapason, came in last, with the bold, dancing step of a rustic Figaro. He was the joyful spirit of the orchestra, the greenest one in age and strength, the liveliest and the brightest. A heavy tuft of crisp hair fell over his forehead under a scarlet cap, and in his ears shone womanlike, two silver clasps. He loved wine as a musical toast. To serenades in honour of beauty, to open-air dances, to gorgeous, boisterous feasts, to weddings, to christenings, to votive feasts and funeral rites, the band of Mungia would hasten, expected and acclaimed. The nuptial procession would move through the streets strewn with bulrush blossoms and sweet-scented herbs, greeted with joyful shouts and salutes. Five mules, decorated with wreaths, carried the wedding presents. In a cart drawn by two oxen whose harness was wound with ribbons, and whose backs were covered with draperies, were seated the bridal couple; from the cart dangled boilers, earthen vessels, and copper pots, which shook and rattled with the jolting of the vehicle; chairs, tables, sofas, all sorts of antique shapes of household furniture oscillated, creaking, about them; damask skirts, richly figured with flowers, embroidered waist-coats, silken aprons, and all sorts of articles of women’s apparel shone in the sun in bright array, while a distaff, the symbol of domestic virtue, piled on top with the linen, was outlined against the blue sky like a golden staff.

The women relatives, carrying upon their heads baskets of grain, upon the top of which was a loaf, and upon the loaf a flower, came next in hierarchical order, singing as they walked. This train of simple, graceful figures reminded one of the canephoræ in the Greek bas-reliefs. Reaching the house, the women took the baskets from their heads, and threw a handful of wheat at the bride, pronouncing a ritual augury, invoking fecundity and abundance. The mother, also, observed the ceremony of throwing grain, weeping copiously as with a brush she touched her daughter on the chest, shoulders and forehead, and speaking doleful words of love as she did so.

Then in the courtyard, under a roof of branches, the feast began. Mungia, who had not yet lost his eyesight nor felt the burden of years upon him, erect in all the magnificence of a green coat, perspiring and beaming, blew with all the power of his lungs upon his clarionet, beating time with his foot. Golpo di Casoli struck his violin energetically, Quattorece exerted himself in a wild endeavour to keep up with the crescendo of the Moorish dance, while Lucicoppelle, standing straight with his head up, holding aloft in his left hand the key of his guitar, and with the right pricking on two strings the metric chords, looked down at the women, laughing gaily among the flowers.

Then the “Master of Ceremonies” brought in the viands on large painted plates and the cloud of vapour rising from the hot dishes faded away among the foliage of the trees. The amphoras of wine, with their well-worn handles, were passed around from one to another, the men stretched their arms out across the table between the loaves of bread, scattered with anise seeds, and the cheese cakes, round as full moons, and helped themselves to olives, oranges and almonds. The smell of spice mingled with the fresh, vaporous odour of the vegetables; sometimes the guests offered the bride goblets of wine in which were small pieces of jewelry, or necklaces of great grape stones like a string of golden fruit. After a while the exhilarating effects of the liquor began to be felt, and the crowd grew hilarious with Bacchic joy and then Mungia, advancing with uncovered head and holding in his hands a glass filled to the rim, would sing the beautiful deistic ritual which to feasters throughout the land of Abruzzi gave a disposition for friendly toasts:

“To the health of all these friends of mine, united, I drink this wine so pure and fine.”

IX

_THE DOWNFALL OF CANDIA_

I

Three days after the customary Easter banquet, which in the house Lamonica was always sumptuous and crowded with feasters by virtue of its traditions, Donna Cristina Lamonica counted her table linen and silver while she placed each article systematically in chest and safe, ready for future similar occasions.

With her, as usual, at this task and aiding, were the maid Maria Bisaccia and the laundress Candida Marcanda, popularly known as “Candia.” The large baskets heaped with fine linen rested in a row on the pavement. The vases of silver and the other table ornaments sparkled upon a tray; they were solidly fashioned, if somewhat rudely, by rustic silversmiths, in shape almost liturgical, as are all of the vases that the rich provincial families hand down from generation to generation. The fresh fragrance of bleached linen permeated the room.

Candia took from the baskets the doilies, the table cloths and the napkins, had the “signora” examine the linen intact, and handed one piece after another to Maria, who filled up the drawers while the “signora” scattered through the spaces an aroma, and took notes in a book. Candia was a tall woman, large-boned, parched, fifty years of age; her back was slightly curved from bending over in that position habitual to her profession; she had very long arms and the head of a bird of prey resting upon the neck of a tortoise. Maria Bisaccia was an Ortonesian, a little fleshy, of milk-white complexion, also possessing very clear eyes; she had a soft manner of speaking and made slow, delicate gestures like one who was accustomed habitually to exercise her hands amongst sweet pastry, syrups, preserves and confectionery. Donna Cristina, also a native of Ortona, educated in a Benedictine monastery, was small of stature, dressed somewhat carelessly, with hair of a reddish tendency, a face scattered with freckles, a nose long and thick, bad teeth, and most beautiful and chaste eyes which resembled those of a priest disguised as a woman.

The three women attended to the work with much assiduity, spending thus a large part of the afternoon.

At length, just as Candia went out with the empty baskets, Donna Cristina counted the pieces of silver and found that a spoon was missing.

“Maria! Maria!” she cried, suddenly panic-stricken. “One spoon is lacking.... Count them! Quick!”

“But how? It cannot be, Signora,” Maria answered. “Allow me a glance at them.” She began to re-sort the pieces, calling their numbers aloud. Donna Cristina looked on and shook her head. The silver clinked musically.

“An actual fact!” Maria exclaimed at last with a motion of despair. “And now what are we to do?”

She was quite above suspicion. She had given proof of fidelity and honesty for fifteen years in that family. She had come from Ortona with Donna Cristina at the time of her marriage, almost constituting a part of the marriage portion, and had always exercised a certain authority in the household under the protection of the “signora.” She was full of religious superstition, devoted to her especial saint and her especial church, and finally, she was very astute. With the “signora” she had united in a kind of hostile alliance to everything pertaining to Pescara, and especially to the popular saint of these Pescaresian people. On every occasion she quoted the country of her birth, its beauties and riches, the splendours of its basilica, the treasures of San Tomaso, the magnificence of its ecclesiastical ceremonies in contrast to the meagreness of San Cetteo, which possessed but a solitary, small, holy arm of silver.

At length Donna Cristina said, “Look carefully everywhere.”

Maria left the room to begin a search. She penetrated all the angles of the kitchen and loggia, but in vain, and returned at last with empty hands.

“There is no such thing about! Neither here nor there!” she cried. Then the two set themselves to thinking, to heaping up conjectures, to searching their memories.

They went out on the loggia that bordered the court, on the loggia belonging to the laundry, in order to make a final examination. As their speech grew louder, the occupants of the neighbouring houses appeared at their windows.

“What has befallen you? Donna Cristina, tell us! Tell us!” they cried. Donna Cristina and Maria recounted their story with many words and gestures.

“Jesu! Jesu! then there must be thieves among us!” In less than no time the rumour of this theft spread throughout the vicinity, in fact through all of Pescara. Men and women fell to arguing, to surmising, whom the thief might be. The story on reaching the most remote house of Sant’ Agostina, was huge in proportions; it no longer told of a single spoon, but of all the silver of the Lamonica house.

Now, as the weather was beautiful and the roses in the loggia had commenced to bloom, and two canaries were singing in their cages, the neighbours detained one another at the windows for the sheer pleasure of chattering about the season with its soothing warmth. The heads of the women appeared amongst the vases of basil, and the hubbub they made seemed especially to please the cats in the caves above.

Donna Cristina clasped her hands and cried, “Who could it have been?”

Donna Isabella Sertale, nicknamed “The Cat,” who had the stealthy, furtive movements of a beast of prey, called in a twanging voice, “Who has been with you this long time, Donna Cristina? It seems to me that I have seen Candia come and go.”

“A-a-a-h!” exclaimed Donna Felicetta Margasanta, called “The Magpipe,” because of her everlasting garrulity.

“Ah!” the other neighbours repeated in turn.

“And you had not thought of her?”

“And did you not observe her?”

“And don’t you know of what metal Candia is made?”

“We would do well to tell you of her!”

“That we would!”

“We would do well to tell you!”

“She washes the clothes in goodly fashion, there is none to dispute that. She is the best laundress that dwells in Pescara, one cannot help saying that. But she holds a defect in her five fingers. Did you not know that, now?”

“Once two of my doilies disappeared.”

“And I missed a tablecloth.”

“And I a shift shirt.”

“And I three pairs of stockings.”

“And I two pillow-cases.”

“And I a new skirt.”

“And I failed to recover an article.”

“I have lost——”

“And I, too.”