Part 22

On the things exhausted by the heat hovered the limpid and sweet hour that was about to gather in its crystalline sphere the impalpable ashes of the consumed day.

The field was laid out in a parallelogram, on a tableland girt with gigantic olive-trees, through the branches of which were glimpses of the blue band of the Adriatic, mysterious as the velum perceived in the temple behind the silver palms. The high haystacks were erected at intervals in the form of cones, massive, and opulent with the richness heaped up by the arms of men, celebrated by the songs of women. When the toil was ended, the band of haymakers made a circle around its chief in the centre of the field. They were robust, sunburnt men, dressed in linen. On their arms, on their legs, on their bare feet, they had deformities which the long and slow endurance of manual labor imprints on limbs that toil. In the fist of each man shone a scythe, curved and thin as the moon in its first quarter. From time to time, with a simple gesture of their disengaged hand, they wiped the sweat from their brows, and with it sprinkled the ground where the straw was shining under the oblique rays of the setting sun.

In his turn, the chief made the same gesture; then, raising his hand as if to bless, he cried, in his sonorous voice, rich in rhythm and assonance:

"Let's leave the field, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!"

In chorus, the men of the scythe replied, with a great cry:

"Amen!"

And the chief went on:

"Blessed be our master, and blessed be our mistress!"

The men replied:

"Amen!"

And the chief, in a voice that gradually gathered strength and fire:

"Blessed be he who brought us good food to eat."

"Amen!"

"Blessed be he who says: 'Don't put water in the wine of the haymaker!'"

"Amen!"

"Blessed be the employer who says to his lady: 'Give without measuring, and put sapor in the wine of the haymaker!'"

"Amen!"

The benedictions extended from one to another: to him who had killed the sheep, to him who had washed the herbs and vegetables, to him who had polished the copper saucepan, to him who had seasoned the meats with spices. And the chief, in the fire of enthusiasm, in the sudden transport of a sort of poetic fury, expressed himself, all at once, in couplets. The band replied to him by immense clamors that reverberated through all the creeks, while on the iron of the scythes the flashes of the twilight, and the sheaves arranged on the top of the stacks, had the appearance of flames.

"Blessed be the woman who sings beautiful songs while bringing pitchers of old wine!"

"Amen!"

There was a thunderclap of joy. Then all were silent, and watched approach the chorus of the women, bearers of the last gifts of the mown field.

The women, in double file, were singing, carrying in their arms the large painted jars. And the uninitiated spectator, seeing them advance between the olive-trees, as through a colonnade, against the maritime background, might imagine he saw one of those votive images that develop harmoniously in bas-relief on the friezes of the temples or around the sarcophagi.

As he went back to the house this image of beauty accompanied him along the road, while he slowly wended his way amid the illusions of the evening, in which were still floating the waves of the choruses. At a bend in the road, he stopped to listen to a melodious voice that was approaching and that he seemed to recognize. As soon as he recognized it he started joyfully: it was the voice of Favetta, the young singer with the falconlike eyes, with the vibrating voice that always awoke in him the memory of that delicious May morning, resplendent on the labyrinth of the blossoming furze, on the solitude of the garden of gold in which, to his surprise, he thought he had discovered the secret of joy.

Without suspecting the presence of the stranger, hidden by a hedge, Favetta advanced, leading a cow by the tether. And she sang, her head high, her mouth open towards the sky, the full light on her face; and from her throat the song gushed forth, fluid, limpid, crystal as a stream. Behind her the fine, snowy beast ambled gently, and at each step its fetlock undulated, and its massive udder, swollen with milk by the pasture, dangled between its legs.

When she perceived the stranger, the singer stopped singing, and seemed about to halt; but he went to meet her with a joyous air, as if he had met a friend of the happy days.

"Where are you going, Favetta?" he cried.

Hearing herself addressed by her name, she blushed and smiled with embarrassment. "I'm taking the cow to the shed," she replied.

As she had suddenly slowed down her step, the snout of the beast grazed her hips, and her bold bust stood out between the large horns as in the crescent of a lyre.

"You're always singing," said George, admiring her in this attitude.

"Ah! signor," she said with a smile, "if we couldn't sing, what could we do?"

"Do you remember that morning when you plucked the furze flowers?"

"The first flowers for your lady?"

"Yes; do you remember?"

"I remember."

"Sing again for me the song you sang that day!"

"I can't sing it alone."

"Well, sing another."

"Like that, all at once, in your presence? I'm ashamed. I'll sing on the road. Addio, signor."

"Addio, Favetta."

And she resumed her way along the path, dragging the peaceable beast after her. When she had gone a little way, she struck up the song with all the strength of her voice that invaded the surrounding luminous country.

The sun had just set, and an extraordinarily vivid light was shed over the coasts and over the sea; an immense wave of impalpable gold mounted from the occidental sky to the zenith and redescended to the opposite side, the glassy transparency of which it penetrated with infinite slowness. Gradually the Adriatic became more clear and more gentle, approaching the green hue of the first leaves of the new shoots of willows. Alone, the red sails, as superb as if they were of purple, broke the diffused light.

"It's a holiday," thought George, dazzled by the splendid sunset, feeling palpitate around him the joy of life. Where does the human creature breathe for whom the whole day, from dawn to twilight, should not be a Holiday consecrated by some new conquest?

On the hill, the songs in honor of the nativity of the bread continued and alternated. The long feminine files appeared on the slopes and disappeared. Here and there, in the still air, columns of smoke rose slowly from invisible fires. The spectacle grew solemn and seemed to sink back into the mystery of the primitive centuries, in the holiness of a celebration of rural Dionysiacs.

*CHAPTER IV.*

Since the tragic night on which Candia, lowering her voice, had spoken of the witchcraft that hung over the men of the Trabocco, that great, whitish framework, stretched along on the rocks, had more than once attracted the strangers' attention and excited their curiosity. In the crescent of the little musical bay, that bristling and treacherous form, continually lying in ambush, seemed to deny the benignity of the solitude. At the burning and motionless noon-times, at the misty twilights, it often took on formidable aspects. At times, when all was still, one could hear the grinding of the capstan and the creaking of the timber. During the moonless nights, the red light of the torches was seen reflected by the water.

On an afternoon of oppressive idleness, George proposed to Hippolyte:

"Shall we go and visit the Trabocco?"

She answered:

"We'll go, if you like. But how can I cross the bridge? I have already tried it once."

"I will lead you by the hand."

"The plank is too narrow."

"We'll try."

They went there. They descended by the path. At the turn they found a sort of stairway hewn in the granite, hardly practicable, and the irregular steps of which stretched out as far as the reefs, at the end of the shaky bridge.

"You see! How can I manage?" said Hippolyte regretfully. "Even looking at it makes my head swim."

The first portion of the bridge was composed of a single plank, very narrow, upheld by stanchions fixed on the rock; the other part, broader, was formed of transverse thin deal boards, of an almost silvery whiteness, worm-eaten, brittle, badly joined, so thin that they seemed likely to break under the slightest pressure of the foot.

"Don't you want to try it?" asked George, with an inner sense of strange relief on finding that Hippolyte would never succeed in accomplishing the perilous passage. "Look; someone is coming to lend us a hand."

A half-naked child ran toward them from the platform, agile as a cat, brown as a rich golden bronze. Beneath his unfaltering foot the deal boards creaked, the rafters bent. Arrived at the end of the bridge, near the strangers, he encouraged them by energetic gestures to confide in him, looking up at them with his piercing eyes like the bird at its prey.

"Don't you want to try?" repeated George, smiling.

Irresolute, she advanced one foot on the shaking plank, looked at the rocks and water, then drew back, incapable of conquering her agitation.

"I fear vertigo," she said. "I am sure I should fall."

She added, with manifest regret:

"Go, go alone. You're not afraid?"

"No. But what will you do?"

"I will sit down in the shade and wait for you."

She added again, with hesitation, as if to try and retain him:

"But why do you go there?"

"I'm going. I'm curious to see."

She seemed sorry not to be able to follow him, vexed at letting him go to a place which she could not reach herself; and what seemed to chagrin and vex her was, not only having to renounce a curiosity and pleasure, but also some other cause, not distinct. What made her suffer, also, was the temporary obstacle that was about to be interposed between her lover and herself, that obstacle over which she was powerless to climb.

So essential had become the necessity of holding her lover always attached to her by a sensible bond, to be with him in uninterrupted contact, to dominate him, to possess him!

She said, a scarcely perceptible note of anger in her voice:

"Go, go along."

George became cognizant of a sentiment in himself that contrasted with the instinctive sentiment of Hippolyte; it was a sort of relief to establish beyond doubt that there was a place where Hippolyte could not follow him, a refuge completely inaccessible to the Enemy, a retreat defended by the rocks and by the sea where he could at last find a few hours of real repose. And these two impressions of their souls, although indistinct and even somewhat puerile, but certainly opposed, demonstrated the actual position of the lovers toward one another: the one, a conscious victim destined to perish; the other, an unconscious and caressing executioner.

"I'll go," said George, with a shade of provocation in his voice and attitude. "Good-by."

Although he did not feel sure of himself, he refused the child's assistance, and was very careful to take bold and sure steps, not to hesitate, not to vacillate on the shaking plank. As soon as he had put foot on the wider part, he hastened his steps, still preoccupied by Hippolyte's look, instinctively giving to his efforts the heat of a hostile reaction. When he trod the planks of the platform, he felt the illusory sensation of finding himself on the bridge of a ship. In one second, the freshness of the short, splashing sea that broke on the rocks revived in his memory certain fragments of the life that he had lived on the Don Juan; and he felt through all his being a sudden thrill at the chimerical idea of raising the anchor.

Immediately after, his gaze was attracted to the surrounding objects, the slightest details of which he remarked with his usual lucidity.

Turchino had saluted him abruptly, with a gesture that neither word nor smile softened, as if no event whatever, however unusual and extraordinary it might be, would have the power to interrupt even for a second the terrible preoccupation that appeared on his terrene face, almost chinless, scarcely larger than a fist, with a long, prominent nose, pointed like the snout of a pike, between two small, glittering eyes.

The same preoccupation was legible in the faces of his two sons, who also saluted in silence, and resumed their work without laying aside their immutable sadness. They were boys of over twenty, fleshless, sunburnt, agitated by a continual muscular restlessness, like demoniacs. All their movements had an air of convulsive contraction, of starts; and beneath the skin of their chinless faces the muscles could be seen, at moments, trembling.

"Is the fishing good?" asked George, pointing to the large, immerged net, whose corners could be seen at the surface of the water.

"Nothing to-day, signor," murmured Turchino, in a tone of suppressed anger.

After a pause, he added:

"Who knows? Perhaps you've brought us good luck."

"Draw up the net. Let's see."

His sons began to manoeuvre the capstan.

Through the interstices of the planks could be seen the reflecting and foaming waves. In a corner of the platform stood a low cabin with a straw roof, the summit of which had a layer of red tiles, and decorated with a piece of sculptured oak in the form of a bull's head with two large, connecting horns--a charm against witchcraft. Other amulets were suspended from the roof, mingled with wooden disks, on which were glued with pitch pieces of mirror, round as eyes; and a bunch of four-pronged rusty forks lay before the low door. To right and left, two large vertical masts were erected, fixed on the rock, fastened at their bases by stakes of all dimensions, that intercrossed and mingled, riveted to one another by enormous nails, bound by iron wire and cordage, strengthened in a thousand ways against the rage of the sea. Two other horizontal masts crossed the first two and stretched out like bowsprits beyond the rocks, over the deep water teeming with fish. At the forked extremities of the four masts hung pulleys provided with cords corresponding to the corners of the square net. Other cords passed through other pulleys, at the end of smaller spars; as far a the most distant rocks, the stakes driven in sustained the re-enforced cables; innumerable planks, nailed on the beams, strengthened the weakest points. The long and obstinate struggle against the fury and treacherousness of the waves was as if written on this enormous carcass by means of these knots, these nails, this machinery. The machine seemed to have a life of its own, to have the air and figure of an animated body. The wood, exposed for years to sun, rain, and tempest, showed all its fibres, exhibited all its rugosities and knottiness, revealed every part of its resistant structure, was denuded, was consumed, was white like a tibia, or shining like silver, or grayish like silex, acquired a special character and significance, an imprint just as distinct as that of a person on whom old age and suffering have achieved their cruel work.

The capstan creaked as it turned by the impulsion of the four bars, and the whole machine trembled and creaked under the effort, while the vast net gradually emerged with golden reflections from the green depth.

"Nothing!" grumbled the father, on seeing the empty bottom of the net rise to the surface of the water.

The sons released the bars together, and with still louder creakings the capstan began to turn, beating the air with its four brutish arms, that could have cut a man in twain. The net replunged into the water. All were silent. In the silence was heard only the breaking of the sea against the rocks.

The weight of witchcraft crushed these miserable lives. George had lost all curiosity to question them, to discover, to know; but he felt that this taciturn and tragic company would soon possess for him the attraction of dolorous affinity. Was he not, too, the victim of a malefice? And he looked instinctively toward the beach, where appeared the figure of the woman outlined against a rock.

*CHAPTER V.*

He returned to the Trabocco almost every day, at different hours. It became the favorite place for his dreams and his meditations. The fishermen had become accustomed to his visits; they received him respectfully, prepared in the shade of the hut a couch for him, made from an old sail smelling of tar. On his part, he was not illiberal toward them.

In listening to the murmur of the waters, in watching the top of the mast, immovable in the azure, he evoked his nautical recollections, relived his wandering life of long-distant summers, that life of limitless liberty that to-day seemed to him singularly beautiful and almost chimerical. He recalled his last voyage on the Adriatic, several months after the Epiphany of Love, during a period of sorrows and poetic enthusiasms, under the influence of Percy Shelley, of that divine Ariel whom the sea had transfigured "into something rich and strange." And he recalled the debarkation at Rimini, the entry into Malamocco, the anchorage before the Schiavoni quays, all gilded by the September sun. Where, now, was his old travelling companion, Adolpho Astorgi? Where was the _Don Juan_? The preceding week he had received news of it from Chios, in a letter that seemed still impregnated with the odor of mastic, and which announced the coming shipment of a quantity of Oriental confections.

Adolpho Astorgi was truly a fraternal spirit, the only one with whom he had been able to live a little time in complete communion, without feeling the embarrassment, uneasiness, and repugnance that prolonged familiarity with his other friends almost always caused him. How unfortunate he should be so far away now! And at times he represented him to himself as an unexpected deliverer who would appear with his vessel in the waters of San Vito to propose escape to him.

In his incurable weakness, in this total abolition of active will, he lingered at times in dreams of this kind; he implored the arrival of a strong and imperious man who would roughly rouse him, and who, breaking his chains, with an abrupt and definite blow, forever, would enliven him, carry him off, confine him in some lost region, where he would be unknown to everybody, where he would know no one, and where he could either begin life over again or die a less hopeless death.

Die he must. He knew to what he was condemned, knew it to be irrevocable; and he was convinced that the final act would be accomplished during the week preceding the _fifth anniversary_, between the last days of July and the first days of August. Since the temptation that, in the horror of the torrid noon, before the bright rails, had traversed his soul like a flash, it even seemed to him that the means were already found. He had listened intently, ceaselessly, to the rumbling of the train, and he felt a strange unrest when the time of its passage approached. As one of the runnels crossed the point of the Trabocco, he could, from his pallet, hear the dull noise that made the entire eminence tremble; and at times, when he was distracted by other thoughts, he experienced a start of fear, as if he had suddenly heard the rumbling of his destiny.

Was it not the same thought that reigned in him and in these taciturn men? Did not both they and he feel a similar chill in their hearts, even in the most burning heat of the dog-days? It was perhaps this affinity that made him love this place and this company. On the musical waters, he let himself be lulled in the arms of the phantom created by himself, while the will to live grew gradually less, as the heat abandons a corpse.

The great calms of July had come. The sea extended before the view all white, milky, greenish here and there in the vicinity of the shore. A mist, slightly tinted with violet, paled the distant coasts: Cape Moro, the Nicchiola, Cape Ortona, the Vasto Point. The scarcely perceptible undulations of the smooth sea produced between the rocks a deep-toned harmony, measured by equal pauses. Holding himself at the extremity of one of the long, horizontal masts, the child acted as a lookout; with watchful eye he scrutinized beneath him the mirror of the wave, and, from time to time, to entice the frightened fish into entering the net, he threw a stone, the light splash of which increased the surrounding melancholy.

At times, the visitor dozed beneath the caress of the slow rhythms. These brief slumbers were the only compensation for his sleepless nights. And he had the habit of pretending this need of repose, so that Hippolyte might permit him to rest on the Trabocco as long as he pleased. George assured her that he could not sleep elsewhere than on those planks, amid the exhalations of the rocks, amid the music of the sea.

To this music he lent an ear more and more attentive and subtle. From now on he knew all its mysteries, understood all its significations. The feeble splash of the surf, like the lingual sound of a flock quenching its thirst; the great, sudden roar of a giant wave, which, arriving from the offing, meets and breaks the wave refracted from the shore; the most humble note, the most superb note, and the innumerable intermediate scales, and the diverse measures of the intervals, and the most simple chords, and the most complex chords, and all the powers of this profound marine orchestra in the sonorous gulf--he knew all, he understood all.

Mysterious, the twilight symphony developed and swelled, very slowly, very slowly, beneath a sky of chaste violets, and between the ethereal clusters of which shone the first timid glances of the constellations still covered by a veil. Here and there, errant breezes raised and pushed the billows, rare at first, then more frequent, then weaker; they raised and pushed the waves whose delicate crests blossomed, stole a glint from the twilight, foamed a moment, and fell back languidly. Now like the dull sound of cymbals, now like the sound of silver disks clashed against one another, such was the sound produced in the silence by those falling and expiring waves. New billows arose, engendered by a stronger gust, curved limpidly, bore in their curvature the grace of the closing day, broke with a sort of indolence, like restless white rose-trees shedding their eaves, and leaving durable foam, like petals, on the mirror that stretched out where they disappeared forever. Still others arose, increased in velocity and strength, approached the shore, reached it with a triumphant roar followed by a diffused murmur similar to the rustling of dry leaves. And, while this illusionary rustling of the unreal forest lasted, other waves, over there, over there, on the crescent of the gulf, unfurled at constantly diminishing distances, to be followed by the same murmur, so that the sonorous zone seemed to extend to the infinite by the perpetual vibrations of a myriad of dry leaves.

The water rushed on the unshakable rocks with the impetuous warmth of love or anger; it dashed over them roaring, washed over them foaming, invaded with its liquidity the most secret crevices. It seemed that an ultra-sovereign natural soul was filling with its frantic perturbation an instrument as vast and multiple as an organ, guilty of every discordance, touching all the notes of joy and pain.