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Random documents with unrelated
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animated, abandoned herself to her imagination; with discreet
reserve she spoke of princely “amours,” of royal favours, of romantic
adventures; she thus evoked all of those confused recollections of
novels read at other times, and trusted liberally to the credulity of
her listeners. Don Giovanni at these times turned his eyes upon her
full of inquietude, almost bewildered; moreover experiencing a
singular irritation that had an indistinct resemblance to jealousy.
Violetta at length ended with a stupid smile and the conversation
languished anew.
Then Violetta went to the piano and sang. All listened with profound
attention; at the end they applauded. Then Don Brattella arose with
the flute. An immeasurable melancholy took hold of his listeners at
that sound, a kind of swooning of body and soul. They rested with
heads lowered almost to their breasts in attitudes of sufferance. At
last all left, one after the other. As they took the hand of Violetta a
slight scent from the strong perfume of musk remained on their
fingers, and this excited them further. Then, once more in the street,
they reunited in groups, holding loose discourse. They grew
inflamed, lowered their voices and were silent if anyone drew near.
Softly they withdrew from beneath the Brina palace to another part
of the square. There they set themselves to watching Violetta’s
windows, still illuminated. Across the panes passed indistinct
shadows; at a certain time the light disappeared, traversed two or
three rooms and stopped in the last window. Shortly, a figure leaned
out to close the shutters. Those spying thought they recognised in it
the figure of Don Giovanni. They still continued to discuss beneath
the stars and from time to time laughed, while giving one another
little nudges, and gesticulating. Don Antonio Brattella, perhaps from
the reflection of the city-lamps, seemed a greenish colour. The
parasites, little by little in their discourse spit out a certain animosity
toward the opera-singer, who was plucking so gracefully their lord of
good times. They feared lest those generous feasts might be in peril;
already Don Giovanni was more sparing of his invitations.
“It will be necessary to open the eyes of the poor fellow. An
adventuress! Bah! She is capable of making him marry her. Why not?
And then what a scandal!”
Don Pompeo Nervi, shaking his large calf’s head, assented:
“You are right! You are right! We must bethink ourselves.”
Don Nereo Pica, “The Cat,” proposed a way, conjured up schemes;
this pious man, accustomed to the secret and laborious skirmishes of
the sacristy was crafty in the sowing of discord.
Thus these complainers treated together and their fat speeches only
returned again into their bitter mouths. As it was spring the foliage
of the public gardens smelt and trembled before them with white
blossoms and through the neighbouring paths they saw, about to
disappear, the figures of loosely-dressed prostitutes.

When, therefore, Don Giovanni Ussorio, after having heard from

Rosa Catana of the departure of Violetta Kutufa, re-entered his
widower’s house and heard his parrot humming the air of the
butterfly and the bee, he was seized by a new and more profound
discouragement.
In the entrance a girdle of sunlight penetrated boldly and through
the iron grating one saw the tranquil garden full of heliotropes. His
servant slept upon a bench with a straw hat pulled down over his
face.
Don Giovanni did not wake the servant. He mounted the stairs with
difficulty, his eyes fixed upon the steps, pausing every now and then
to mutter: “Oh, what a thing to happen! Oh, oh, what luck!”
Having reached his room he threw himself upon the bed and with
his mouth against the pillows, began again to weep. Later he arose;
the silence was deep and the trees of the garden as tall as the
window waved slightly in the stillness. There was nothing of the
unusual in the things about him; he almost wondered at this.
He fell to thinking and remained a long time calling to mind the
positions, the gestures, the words, the slightest motions of the
deserter. He saw her form as clearly as if she were present. At every
recollection his grief increased until at length a kind of dulness
benumbed his mind. He remained sitting on the bed, almost
motionless, his eyes red, his forehead blackened from the colouring
matter of his hair mixed with perspiration, his face furrowed with
wrinkles that had suddenly become more evident; he had aged ten
years in an hour, a change both amusing and pathetic.
Don Grisostomo Troilo, who had heard the news, arrived. He was a
man of advanced age, of short stature and with a round, swollen
face from which spread out sharp, thin whiskers, well waxed and
resembling the two wings of a bird. He said:
“Now, Giovà, what is the matter?”
Don Giovanni did not answer, but shook his shoulders as if to repel
all sympathy. Don Grisostomo then began to reprove him
benevolently, never speaking of Violetta Kutufa.
In came Don Cirillo d’Amelio with Don Nereo Pica. Both, on entering,
showed almost an air of triumph.
“Now you have seen for yourself, Don Giovà! We told you so! We
told you so!” they cried. Both had nasal voices and a cadence
acquired from the habit of singing with the organ, because they
belonged to the choir of the Holy Sacrament. They began to attack
the character of Violetta without mercy. She did this and that and
the other thing, they said.
Don Giovanni, outraged, made from time to time a motion as if he
would not hear such slanders, but the two continued. Now, also,
Don Pasquale Virgilio arrived, with Don Pompeo Nervi, Don Federico
Sicoli, Don Tito de Sieri; almost all of the parasites came in a group.
Supporting one another they became ferocious. Did he not know
that Violetta Kutufa had abandoned herself to Tom, Dick and
Harry...? Indeed she had! Indeed! They laid bare the exact
particulars, the exact places.
Now Don Giovanni heard with eyes afire, greedy to know, invaded
by a terrible curiosity. These revelations instead of disgusting him,
fed his desire. Violetta seemed to him more enticing, even more
beautiful; and he felt himself inwardly bitten by a raging jealousy
that blended with his grief. Presently the woman appeared in his
mind’s eye associated with a certain soft relaxation. That picture
made him giddy.
“Oh Dio! Oh Dio! Oh! Oh!” He commenced to weep again. Those
present looked at one another and restrained their laughter. In truth
the grief of that man; fleshy, bald, deformed, expressed itself so
ridiculously that it seemed unreal.
“Go away now!” Don Giovanni blubbered through his tears.
Don Grisostomo Troilo set the example; the others followed him and
chattered as they passed down the stairs.
Toward evening the prostrated man revived little by little. A woman’s
voice called at his door: “May I come in, Don Giovanni?”
He recognised Rosa Catana’s voice and experienced suddenly an
instinctive joy. He ran to let her in. Rosa Catana appeared in the
dusk of the room.
“Come in! Come in!” he cried. He made her sit down beside him, had
her talk to him, asked her a thousand questions. He seemed to
suffer less on hearing that familiar voice in which, under the spell of
an illusion, he found some quality of Violetta’s voice. He took her
hands and cried:
“You helped her to dress! Did you not?”
He caressed those rugged hands, closing his eyes and wandering
slightly in his mind on the subject of those abundant, unbound locks
that so many times he had touched with his hands. Rosa at first did
not understand. She believed this to be some sudden passion of Don
Giovanni, and withdrew her hands gently, while she spoke in an
ambiguous way and laughed. But Don Giovanni murmured:
“No, no!... Stay! You combed her, did you not? You bathed her, did
you not?”
He fell to kissing Rosa’s hands, those hands that had combed,
bathed and clothed Violetta. He stammered, while kissing them,
composed verses so strange that Rosa could scarcely refrain from
laughter. But at last she understood and with feminine perception
forced herself to remain serious, while she summed up the
advantages that might ensue from this foolish comedy. She grew
docile, let him caress her, let him call her Violetta, made use of all
that experience acquired from peeping through key-holes many
times at her mistress’s door; she even sought to make her voice
more sweet.
In the room one could scarcely see them. Through the open
windows a red reflection entered and the trees in the garden, almost
black, twisted and turned in the wind. From the sloughs around the
arsenal came the hoarse croak of the frogs. The noises of the city
street were indistinct.
Don Giovanni drew the woman to his knees, and, completely
confused as if he had swallowed some very’ strong liquor, murmured
a thousand childish nothings and babbled on without end, drawing
her face close to his.
“Ah, darling little Violetta!” he whispered. “Sweetheart! Don’t go
away, dear...! If you go away your Nini will die, Poor Nini...! Ban-
ban-ban-bannn!”
Thus he continued stupidly, as he had done before with the opera-
singer. Rosa Catana patiently offered him slight caresses, as if he
were a very sick, perverted child; she took his head and pressed it
against her shoulder, kissed his swollen, weeping eyes, stroked his
bald crown, rearranged his oiled locks.

VI
Thus, Rosa Catana, little by little, earned her inheritance from Don
Giovanni Ussorio, who, in the March of 1871, died of paralysis.
 III
THE RETURN OF TURLENDANA

The group was walking along the seashore. Down the hills and over
the country Spring was coming again. The humble strip of land
bordering the sea was already green; the various fields were quite
distinctly marked by the springing vegetation, and every mound was
crowned with budding trees. The north wind shook these trees, and
its breath caused many flowers to fall. At a short distance the
heights seemed to be covered with a colour between pink and violet;
for an instant the view seemed to tremble and grow pale like a ripple
veiling the clear surface of a pool, or like a faded painting.
The sea stretched out its broad expanse serenely along the coast,
bathed by the moonlight, and toward the north taking on the hue of
a turquois of Persia, broken here and there by the darker tint of the
currents winding over its surface.
Turlendana, who had lost the recollection of these places through a
long absence, and who in his long peregrinations had forgotten the
sentiments of his native land, was striding along with the tired,
regular step of haste, looking neither backward nor around him.
When the camel would stop at a tuft of wild grass, Turlendana would
utter a brief, hoarse cry of incitement. The huge reddish quadruped
would slowly raise his head, chewing the morsel heavily between his
jaws.
“Hu, Barbara!”
The she-ass, the little snowy white Susanna, protesting against the
tormenting of the monkey, from time to time would bray lamentingly,
asking to be freed of her rider.
But the restless Zavali gave her no peace; as though in a frenzy, with
quick, short gestures of wrath, she would run over the back of the
beast, jump playfully on her head, get hold of her large ears; then
would lift her tail and shake the hairs, hold it up and look through
the hairs, scratch poor Susanna viciously with her nails, then lift her
hands to her mouth and move her jaws as though chewing,
grimacing frightfully as she did so. Then suddenly, she would jump
back to her seat, holding in her hands her foot, twisted like the root
of a bush, and sit with her orange coloured eyes, filled with wonder
and stupor, fixed on the sea, while wrinkles would appear on her
head, and her thin pinkish ears would tremble nervously. Without
warning she would make a malicious gesture, and recommence her
play.
“Hu, Barbara!”
The camel heard and started to walk again.
When the group reached the willow tree woods, at the mouth of the
River Pescara, figures could be seen upon its right bank, above the
masts of the ships anchored in the docks of Bandiera. Turlendana
stopped to get a drink of water from the river.
The river of his native place carried to him the peaceful air of the
sea. Its banks, covered with fluvial plains, lay stretched out as
though resting from their recent work of fecundity. The silence was
profound. The cobwebs shone tranquilly in the sun like mirrors
framed by the crystal of the sea. The seaweed bent in the wind,
showing its green or white sides.
“Pescara!” said Turlendana, with an accent of curiosity and
recognition, stopping still to look at the view.
Then, going down to the shore where the gravel was clean, he
kneeled down to drink, carrying the water to his mouth in his curled
up palm. The camel, bending his long neck, drank with slow, regular
draughts. The she-ass, too, drank from the stream, while the
monkey, imitating the man, made a cup of her hands, which were
violet coloured like unripe India figs.
“Hu, Barbara!” The camel heard and ceased to drink. The water
dripped unheeded from his mouth onto his chest; his white gums
and yellowish teeth showed between his open lips.
Through the path marked across the wood by the people of the sea,
the little group proceeded on its way. The sun was setting when they
reached the Arsenale of Rampigna. Turlendana asked of a sailor who
was walking beside the brick parapet:
“Is that Pescara?”
The sailor, astonished at the sight of the strange beasts, answered
Turlendana’s question:
“It is that,” and left his work to follow the stranger.
The sailor was soon joined by others. Soon a crowd of curious
people had gathered and were following Turlendana, who went
calmly on his way, unmindful of the comments of the people. When
they reached the boat-bridge, the camel refused to pass over.
“Hu, Barbara! Hu, hu!” Turlendana cried impatiently, urging him on,
and shaking the rope of the halter by which he led the animal. But
Barbara obstinately lay down upon the ground, and stretched his
head out in the dust very comfortable, showing no intention of
moving.
The people jesting gathered about, having overcome their first
amazement, and cried in a chorus:
“Barbara! Barbara!”
As they were somewhat familiar with monkeys, having seen some
which the sailors had brought home, together with parrots, from
their long cruises, they were teasing Zavali in a thousand different
ways, handing her large greenish almonds, which the monkey would
open, gluttonously devouring the sweet fresh meat.
After much urging and persistent shouting, Turlendana succeeded in
conquering the stubbornness of the camel, and that enormous
architecture of bones and skin rose staggering to his feet in the
midst of the instigating crowd.
From all directions soldiers and sailors flocked over the boat bridge
to witness the spectacle. Far behind the mountain of Gran Sasso the
setting sun irradiated the spring sky with a vivid rosy light, and from
the damp earth, the water of the river, the seas, and the ponds, the
moisture had arisen. A rosy glow tinted the houses, the sails, the
masts, the plants, and the whole landscape, and the figures of the
people, acquiring a sort of transparency, grew obscure, the lines of
their contour wavering in the fading light.
Under the weight of the caravan the bridge creaked on its tar-
smeared boats like a very large floating lighter. Turlendana, halting
in the middle of the bridge, brought the camel also to a stop;
stretching high above the heads of the crowd, it stood breathing
against the wind, slowly moving its head like a fictitious serpent
covered with hair.
The name of the beast had spread among the curious people, and
all of them, from an innate love of sensation, and filled with the
exuberance of spirits inspired by the sweetness of the sunset and
the season of the year, cried out gleefully:
“Barbara! Barbara!” At the sound of this applauding cry and the well-
meant clamour of the crowd, Turlendana, who was leaning against
the chest of his camel, felt a kindly emotion of satisfaction spring up
in his heart.
The she-ass suddenly began to bray with such high and discordant
variety of notes, and with such sighing passion that a spontaneous
burst of merriment ran through the crowd.
The fresh, happy laughter spread from one end of the bridge to the
other like the roar of water falling over the stones of a cataract.
Then Turlendana, unknown to any of the crowd, began to make his
way through the throng. When he was outside the gates of the city,
where the women carrying reed baskets were selling fresh fish,
Binchi-Banche, a little man with a yellow face, drawn up like a
juiceless lemon, pushed to the front, and as was his custom with all
strangers who happened to come to the place, offered his services in
finding a lodging.
Pointing to Barbara, he asked first:
“Is he ferocious?”
Turlendana, smiling, answered, “No.”
“Well,” Binchi-Banche went on, reassured, “there is the house of
Rosa Schiavona.” Both turned towards the Pescaria, and then
towards Sant’ Agostino, followed by the crowd. From windows and
balconies women and children leaned over, gazing in astonishment
at the passing camel, admiring the grace of the white ass, and
laughing at the comic performances of Zavali.
At one place, Barbara, seeing a bit of green hanging from a low
loggia, stretched out his neck and, grasping it with his lips, tore it
down. A cry of terror broke forth from the women who were leaning
over the loggia, and the cry spread to other loggias. The people
from the river laughed loudly, crying out, as though it were the
carnival season and they were behind masks:
“Hurrah! Hurrah!”
They were intoxicated by the novelty of the spectacle, and by the
invigourating spring air. In front of the house of Rosa Schiavona, in
the neighbourhood of Portasale, Binchi-Banche made a sign to stop.
“This is the place,” he said.
It was a very humble one-story house with one row of windows, and
the lower walls were covered with inscriptions and ugly figures. A
row of bats pinned on the arch formed an ornament, and a lantern
covered with reddish paper hung under the window.
This place was the abode of a sort of adventurous, roving people.
They slept mixed together, the big and corpulent truckman, Letto
Manoppello, the gipsies of Sulmona, horse-traders, boiler-menders,
turners of Bucchianico, women of the city of Sant’ Angelo, women of
wicked lives, the bag-pipers of Atina, mountaineers, bear-tamers,
charlatans, pretended mendicants, thieves, and fortune-tellers.
Binchi-Banche acted as a go-between for all that rabble, and was a
great protégé of the house of Rosa Schiavona.
When the latter heard the noise of the newcomers, she came out
upon the threshold. She looked like a being generated by a dwarf
and a sow. Very diffidently she put the question:
“What is the matter?”
“There is a fellow here who wants lodging for his beasts, Donna
Rosa.”
“How many beasts?”
“Three, as you see, Donna Rosa—a monkey, an ass, and a camel.”
The crowd was paying no attention to the dialogue. Some of them
were exciting Zavali, others were feeling of Barbara’s legs,
commenting on the callous spots on his knees and chest. Two
guards of the salt store-houses, who had travelled to the sea-ports
of Asia Minor, were telling in a loud voice of the wonderful properties
of the camel, talking confusedly of having seen some of them
dancing, while carrying upon their necks a lot of half-naked
musicians and women of the Orient. The listeners, greedy to hear
these marvellous tales, cried:
“Tell us some more! Tell us some more!” They stood around the
story-tellers in attentive silence, listening with dilated eyes.
Then one of the guards, an old man whose eyelids were drawn up
by the wind of the sea, began to tell of the Asiatic countries, and as
he went on, his imagination became excited by the stories which he
told, and his tales grew more wonderful.
A sort of mysterious softness seemed to penetrate the sunset. In the
minds of the listeners, the lands which were described to them rose
vividly before their imaginations in all their strange splendour. Across
the arch of the Porta, which was already in shadow, could be seen
boats loaded with salt rocking upon the river, the salt seeming to
absorb all the light of the evening, giving the boats the appearance
of palaces of precious crystals. Through the greenish tinted heavens
rose the crescent of the moon.
“Tell us some more! Tell us some more!” the younger of those
assembled were crying.
In the meanwhile Turlendana had put his beasts under cover and
supplied them with food. This being done, he had again set forth
with Binchi-Banche, while the people remained gathered about the
door of the barn where the head of the camel appeared and
disappeared behind the rock gratings.
On the way Turlendana asked:
“Are there any drinking places here?”
Binchi-Banche answered promptly:
“Yes, sir, there are.” Then, lifting his big black hands he counted off
on his fingers:
“The Inn of Speranza, the Inn of Buono, the Inn of Assau, the Inn of
Zarricante, the Inn of the Blind Woman of Turlendana....”
“Ah!” exclaimed the other calmly.
Binchi-Banche raised his big, sharp, greenish eyes.
“You have been here before, sir?”
Then, with the native loquacity of the Pescarese he went on without
waiting for an answer:
“The Inn of the Blind Woman is large, and they sell there the best
wine. The so-called Blind Woman is a woman who has had four
husbands....”
He stopped to laugh, his yellowish face wrinkling into little folds as
he did so.
“The first husband was Turlendana, a sailor on board the ships of
the King of Naples, sailing from India to France, to Spain, and even
as far as America. He was lost at sea, no one knows where, for the
ship disappeared and nothing has ever been heard from it since.
That was about thirty years ago. Turlendana had the strength of
Samson; he could pull up an anchor with one finger ... poor fellow!
He who goes to sea is apt to have such an end.”
Turlendana was listening quietly.
“The second husband, whom she married after five years of
widowhood, was from Ortona, a son of Ferrante, a damned soul,
who was in conspiracy with smugglers in Napoleon’s time, during the
war with England. They smuggled goods from Francavilla up to Silvi
and Montesilvano—sugar and coffee from the English boats. In the
neighbourhood of Silvi was a tower called ‘The Tower of Saracini,’
from which the signals were given. As the patrol passed, ‘Plon, plon,
plon, plon!’ came out from behind the trees....” Binchi-Banche’s face
lighted up at the recollection of those times, and he quite lost
himself in the pleasure of describing minutely all those clandestine
operations, his expressive gestures and exclamations adding interest
to the tale.
His small body would draw up and stretch out to its full height as he
proceeded.
“At last the son of Ferrante was, while walking along the coast one
night, shot in the back by a soldier of Murat, and killed.
“The third husband was Titino Passacantando, who died in his bed of
a pernicious disease.
“The fourth still lives, and is called Verdura, a good fellow who does
not adulterate the wine of the inn. Now, you will have a chance to
try some.”
When they reached the much praised inn, they separated.
“Good night, sir!”
“Good night!”
Turlendana entered unconcernedly, unmindful of the curious
attention of the drinkers sitting beside the long tables. Having asked
for something to eat, he was conducted to an upper room where the
tables were set ready for supper.
None of the regular boarders of the place were yet in the room.
Turlendana sat down and began to eat, taking great mouthfuls
without pausing, his head bent over his plate, like a famished
person. He was almost wholly bald, a deep red scar furrowed his
face from forehead to cheek, his thick greyish beard extended to his
protruding cheek bones, his skin, dark, dried, rough, worn by water
and sun and wrinkled by pain, seemed not to preserve any human
semblance, his eyes stared into the distance as if petrified by
impassivity.
Verdura, inquisitive, sat opposite him, staring at the stranger. He was
somewhat flushed, his face was of a reddish colour veined with
vermilion like the gall of oxen. At last he cried:
“Where do you come from?”
Turlendana, without raising his head, replied simply:
“I come from far away.”
“And where do you go?” pursued Verdura.
“I remain here.”
Verdura, amazed, was silent.
Turlendana continued to lift the fishes from his plate, one after
another, taking off their heads and tails, and devouring them,
chewing them up, bones and all. After every two or three fishes he
drank a draught of wine.
“Do you know anybody here?” Verdura asked with eager curiosity.
“Perhaps,” replied the other laconically.
Baffled by the brevity of his interlocutor, the wine man grew silent
again. Above the uproar of the drinkers below, Turlendana’s slow
and laboured mastication could be heard. Presently Verdura again
Ventured to open his mouth.
“In what countries is the camel found? Are those two humps
natural? Can such a great, strong beast ever be tamed?”
Turlendana allowed him to go on without replying.
“Your name, Mister?”
The man to whom this question was put raised his head from his
plate, and answered simply, as before:
“I am called Turlendana.”
“What?”
“Turlendana.”
“Ah!”
The amazement of the inn keeper was unbounded. A sort of a vague
terror shook his innermost soul.
“What? Turlendana of this place?”
“Of this place.”
Verdura’s big azure eyes dilated as he stared at the man.
“Then you are not dead?”
“No, I am not dead.”
“Then you are the husband of Rosalba Catena?”
“I am the husband of Rosalba Catena.”
“And now,” exclaimed Verdura, with a gesture of perplexity, “we are
two husbands!”
“We are two!”
They remained silent for an instant. Turlendana was chewing the last
bit of bread tranquilly, and through the quiet room you could hear
his teeth crunching on it. Either from a natural benignant simplicity
or from a glorious fatuity, Verdura was struck only by the singularity
of the case. A sudden impulse of merriment overtook him, bubbling
out spontaneously:
“Let us go to Rosalba! Let us go! Let us go!”
Taking the newcomer by the arm, he conducted him through the
group of drinkers, waving his arms, and crying out:
“Here is Turlendana, Turlendana the sailor! The husband of my wife!
Turlendana, who is not dead! Here is Turlendana! Here is
Turlendana!”
 IV
TURLENDANA DRUNK

The last glass had been drunk, and two o’clock in the morning was
about to strike from the tower clock of the City Hall.
Said Biagio Quaglia, his voice thick with wine, as the strokes
sounded through the silence of the night filled with clear moonlight:
“Well! Isn’t it about time for us to go?”
Ciavola, stretched half under the bench, moved his long runner’s
legs from time to time, mumbling about clandestine hunts-in the
forbidden grounds of the Marquis of Pescara, as the taste of wild
hare came up in his throat, and the wind brought to his nostrils the
resinous odour of the pines of the sea grove.
Said Biagio Quaglia, giving the blond hunter a kick, and making a
motion to rise:
“Let us go.”
Ciavola with an effort rose, swaying uncertainly, thin and slender like
a hunting hound.
“Let us go, as they are pursuing us,” he answered, raising his hand
high in a motion of assent, thinking perhaps of the passage of birds
through the air.
Turlendana also moved, and seeing behind him the wine woman,
Zarricante, with her flushed raw cheeks and her protruding chest, he
tried to embrace her. But Zarricante fled from his embrace, hurling at
him words of abuse.
On the doorsill, Turlendana asked his friends for their company and
support through a part of the road. But Biagio Quaglia and Ciavola,
who were indeed a fine pair, turned their backs on him jestingly, and
went away in the luminous moonlight.
Then Turlendana stopped to look at the moon, which was round and
red as the face of a friar. Everything around was silent and the rows
of houses reflected the white light of the moon. A cat was mewing
this May night upon a door step. The man, in his intoxicated state,
feeling a peculiarly tender inclination, put out his hand slowly and
uncertainly to caress the animal, but the beast, being somewhat
wild, took a jump and disappeared.
Seeing a stray dog approaching, he attempted to pour out upon it
the wealth of his loving impulses; the dog, however, paid no
attention to his calls, and disappeared around the corner of a cross
street, gnawing a bone. The noise of his teeth could be heard plainly
through the silence of the night.
Soon after, the door of the inn was closed and Turlendana was left-
standing alone under the full moon, obscured by the shadows of
rolling clouds. His attention was struck by the rapid moving of all
surrounding objects. Everything fled away from him. What had he
done that they should fly away?
With unsteady steps, he moved towards the river. The thought of
that universal flight as he moved along, occupied profoundly his
brain, changed as it was by the fumes of the wine. He met two other
street dogs, and as an experiment, approached them, but they too
slunk away with their tails between their legs, keeping close to the
wall and when they had gone some little distance, they began to
bark. Suddenly, from every direction, from Bagno da Sant’ Agostino,
from Arsenale, from Pescheria, from all the lurid and obscure places
around, the roving dogs ran up, as though in answer to a trumpet
call to battle and the aggressive chorus of the famishing tribe
ascended to the moon.
Turlendana was stupefied, while a sort of vague uneasiness awoke in
his soul and he went on his way a little more quickly, stumbling over
the rough places in the ground. When he reached the corner of the
coopers, where the large barrels of Zazetta were piled in whitish
heaps like monuments, he heard the heavy, regular breathing of a
beast. As the impression of the hostility of all beasts had taken a
hold on him, with the obstinacy of a drunken man, he moved in the
direction of the sound, that he might make another experiment.
Within a low barn the three old horses of Michelangelo were
breathing with difficulty above their manger. They were decrepit
beasts who had worn out their lives dragging through the road of
Chieti, twice every day, a huge stage-coach filled with merchants
and merchandise. Under their brown hair, worn off in places by the
rubbing of the harness, their ribs protruded like so many dried
shingles through a ruined roof. Their front legs were so bent that
their knees were scarcely perceptible, their backs were ragged like
the teeth of a saw, and their skinny necks, upon which scarcely a
vestige of mane was left, drooped towards the ground.
A wooden railing inside barred the door.
Turlendana began encouragingly:
“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!”
The horses did not move, but breathed together in a human way.
The outlines of their bodies appeared dim and confused through the
bluish shadow within the barn, and the exhalations of their breath
blent with that of the manure.
“Ush, ush, ush!” pursued Turlendana in a lamenting tone, as when
he used to urge Barbara to drink. Again the horses did not stir, and
again:
“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!” One of the horses turned and placed
his big deformed head upon the railing, looking with eyes which
seemed in the moonlight as though filled with troubled water. The
lower skin of the jaw hung flaccid, disclosing the gums. At every
breath the nostrils palpitated, emitting moist breath, the nostrils
closing at times, and opening again to give forth a little cloud of air
bubbles like yeast in a state of fermentation.
At the sight of that senile head, the drunken man came to his
senses. Why had he filled himself with wine, he, usually so sober?
For a moment, in the midst of his forgetful drowsiness, the shape of
his dying camel reappeared before his eyes, lying on the ground
with his long inert neck stretched out on the straw, his whole body
shaken from time to time by coughing, while with every moan the
bloated stomach produced a sound such as issues from a barrel half
filled with water.
A wave of pity and compassion swept over the man, as before him
rose this vision of the agony of the camel, shaken by strange, hoarse
sobs which brought forth a moan from the enormous dying carcass,
the painful movements of the neck, rising for an instant to fall back
again heavily upon the straw with a deep, indistinct sound, the legs
moving as if trying to run, the tense tremor of the ears, and the
fixity of the eyeballs, from which the sight seemed to have departed
before the rest of the faculties. All this suffering came back clearly to
his memory, vivid in its almost human misery.
He leaned against the railing and opened his mouth mechanically to
again speak to Michelangelo’s horse:
“Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!” Then Michelangelo, who from his
bed had heard the disturbance, jumped to the window above and
began to swear violently at the troublesome disturber of his night’s
rest.
“You damned rascal! Go and drown yourself in the Pescara River! Go
away from here. Go, or I will get a gun! You rascal, to come and
wake up sleeping people! You drunkard, go on; go away!”
Turlendana, staggering, started again towards the river. When at the
cross-roads by the fruit market, he saw a group of dogs in a loving
assembly. As the man approached, the group of canines dispersed,
running towards Bagno. From the alley of Gesidio came out another
horde of dogs, who set off in the direction of Bastioni.
All of the country of Pescara, bathed in the sweet light of the full
moon of the springtime, was the scene of the fights of amorous
canines. The mastiff of Madrigale, chained to watch over a
slaughtered ox, occasionally made his deep voice heard, and was
answered by a chorus of other voices. Occasionally a solitary dog
would pass on the run to the scene of a fight. From within the
houses, the howls of the imprisoned dogs could be heard.
Now a still stranger trouble took hold upon the brain of the drunken
man. In front of him, behind him, around him, the imaginary flight
of things began to take place again more rapidly than before. He
moved forward, and everything moved away from him, the clouds,
the trees, the stones, the river banks, the poles of the boats, the
very houses,—all retreated at his approach. This evident repulsion
and universal reprobation filled him with terror. He halted. His spirit
grew depressed. Through his disordered brain a sudden thought ran.
“The fox!” Even that fox of a Ciavola did not wish to remain with him
longer! His terror increased. His limbs trembled violently. However,
impelled by this thought, he descended among the tender willow
trees and the high grass of the shore.
The bright moon scattered over all things a snowy serenity. The
trees bent peacefully over the bank, as though contemplating the
running water. Almost it seemed as though a soft, melancholy breath
emanated from the somnolence of the river beneath the moon. The
croaking of frogs sounded clearly. Turlendana crouched among the
plants, almost hidden. His hands trembled on his knees. Suddenly he
felt something alive and moving under him; a frog! He uttered a cry.
He rose and began to run, staggering, amongst the willow trees
impeding his way. In his uneasiness of spirit, he felt terrified as
though by some supernatural occurrence.
Stumbling over a rough place in the ground, he fell on his stomach,
his face pressed into the grass. He got up with much difficulty, and
stood looking around him at the trees. The silvery silhouette of the
poplars rose motionless through the silent air, making their tops
seem unusually tall. The shores of the river would vanish endlessly,
as if they were something unreal, like shadows of things seen in
dreams. Upon the right side, the rocks shone resplendently, like
crystals of salt, shadowed at times by the moving clouds passing
softly overhead like azure veils. Further on the wood broke the
horizon line. The scent of the wood and the soft breath of the sea
were blended.
“Oh, Turlendana! Ooooh!” a clear voice cried out.
Turlendana turned in amazement.
“Oh, Turlendana, Turlendanaaaaa!”
It was Binchi-Banche, who came up, accompanied by a customs
officer, through the path used by the sailors through the willow-tree
thicket.
“Where are you going at this time of night? To weep over your
camel?” asked Binchi-Banche as he approached.
Turlendana did not answer at once. He was grasping his trousers
with one hand; his knees were bent forward and his face wore a
strange expression of stupidity, while he stammered so pitifully that
Binchi-Banche and the customs officer broke out into boisterous
laughter.
“Go on! Go on!” exclaimed the wrinkled little man, grasping the
drunken man by the shoulders and pushing him towards the
seashore. Turlendana moved forward. Binchi-Banche and the
customs officer followed him at a little distance, laughing and
speaking in low voices.
He reached the place where the verdure terminated and the sand
began. The grumbling of the sea at the mouth of the Pescara could
be heard. On a level stretch of sand, stretched out between the
dunes, Turlendana ran against the corpse of Barbara, which had not
yet been buried. The large body was skinned and bleeding, the
plump parts of the back, which were uncovered, appeared of a
yellowish colour; upon his legs the skin was still hanging with all the
hair; there were two enormous callous spots; within his mouth his
angular teeth were visible, curving over the upper jaw and the white
tongue; for some unknown reason the under lip was cut, while the
neck resembled the body of a serpent.
At the appearance of this ghastly sight, Turlendana burst into tears,
shaking his head, and moaning in a strange unhuman way:
“Oho! Oho! Oho!”
In the act of lying down upon the camel, he fell. He attempted to
rise, but the stupor caused by the wine overcame him, and he lost
consciousness.
Seeing Turlendana fall, Binchi-Banche and the customs officer came
over to him. Taking him, one by the head and the other by the feet,
they lifted him up and laid him full length upon the body of Barbara,
in the position of a loving embrace. Laughing at their deed, they
departed.
And thus Turlendana lay upon the camel until the sun rose.
 V
THE GOLD PIECES

Passacantando entered, rattling the hanging glass doors violently,

roughly shook the rain-drops from his shoulders, took his pipe from
his mouth, and with disdainful unconcern looked around the room.
In the tavern the smoke of the tobacco was like a bluish cloud,
through which one could discern the faces of those who were
drinking: women of bad repute; Pachio, the invalided soldier, whose
right eye, affected with some repulsive disease, was covered by a
greasy greenish band; Binchi-Banche, the domestic of the customs
officers, a small, sturdy man with a surly, yellow-hued face like a
lemon without juice, with a bent back and his thin legs thrust into
boots which reached to his knees; Magnasangue, the go-between of
the soldiers, the friend of comedians, of jugglers, of mountebanks,
of fortune-tellers, of tamers of bears,—of all that ravenous and
rapacious rabble which passes through the towns to snatch from the
idle and curious people a few pennies.
Then, too, there were the belles of the Fiorentino Hall, three or four
women faded from dissipation, their cheeks painted brick colour,
their eyes voluptuous, their mouths flaccid and almost bluish in
colour like over-ripe figs.
Passacantando crossed the room, and seated himself between the
women Pica and Peppuccia on a bench against the wall, which was
covered with indecent figures and writing. He was a slender young
fellow, rather effeminate, with a very pale face from which protruded
a nose thick, rapacious, bent greatly to one side; his ears sprang
from his head like two inflated paper bags, one larger than the
other; his curved, protruding lips were very red, and always had a
small ball of whitish saliva at the corners. Over his carefully combed
hair he wore a soft cap, flattened through long use. A tuft of his hair,
turned up like a hook, curled down over his forehead to the roots of
his nose, while another curled over his temple. A certain
licentiousness was expressed in every gesture, every move, and in
the tones of his voice and his glances.
“Ohe,” he cried, “Woman Africana, a goblet of wine!” beating the
table with his clay pipe, which broke from the force of the blow.
The woman Africana, the mistress of the inn, left the bar and came
forward towards the table, waddling because of her extreme
corpulence, and placed in front of Passacantando a glass filled to the
brim with wine. She looked at him as she did so with eyes full of
loving entreaty.
Passacantando suddenly flung his arm around the neck of
Peppuccia, forced her to drink from the goblet, and then thrust his
lips against hers. Peppuccia laughed, disentangling herself from the
arms of Passacantando, her laughter causing the unswallowed wine
to spurt from her mouth into his face.
The woman Africana grew livid. She withdrew behind the bar, where
the sharp words of Peppuccia and Pica reached her ears. The glass
door opened, and Fiorentino appeared on the threshold, all bundled
up in a cloak, like the villain of a cheap novel.
“Well, girls,” he cried out in a hoarse voice, “it is time for you to go.”
Peppuccia, Pica, and the others rose from their seats beside the men
and followed their master.
It was raining hard, and the Square of Bagno was transformed into a
muddy lake. Pachio, Magnasangue, and the others left one after
another until only Binche-Banche, stretched under the table in the
stupor of intoxication, remained. The smoke in the room gradually
grew less, while a half-plucked dove pecked from the floor the
scattered crumbs.
As Passacantando was about to rise, Africana moved slowly towards
him, her unshapely figure undulating as she walked, her full-moon
face wrinkled into a grotesque and affectionate grimace. Upon her
face were several moles with small bunches of hair growing out from
them, a thick shadow covered her upper lip and her cheeks. Her
short, coarse, and curling hair formed a sort of helmet on her head;
her thick eyebrows met at the top of her flat nose, so that she
looked like a creature affected with dropsy and elephantiasis.
When she reached Passacantando, she grasped his hands in order to
detain him.
“Oh, Giuva! What do you want? What have I done to you?”
“You? Nothing.”
“Why then do you cause me such suffering and torment?”
“I? I am surprised!... Good night! I have no time to lose just now,”
and with a brutal gesture, he started to go. But Africana threw
herself upon him, pressing his arms, and putting her face against
his, leaning upon him with her full weight, with a passion so
uncontrolled and terrible that Passacantando was frightened.
“What do you want? What do you want? Tell me! What do you want?
Why do I do this? I hold you! Stay here! Stay with me! Don’t make
me die of longing; don’t drive me mad! What for? Come,—take
everything you find ...”
She drew him towards the bar, opened the drawer, and with one
gesture offered him everything it contained. In the greasy till were
scattered some copper coins, and a few shining silver ones, the
whole amounting to perhaps five lire.
Passacantando, without saying a word, picked up the coins and
began to count them slowly upon the bar, his mouth showing an
expression of disgust. Africana looked at the coins and then at the
face of the man, breathing hard, like a tired beast. One heard the
tinkling of the coins as they fell upon the bar, the rough snoring of
Binchi-Banche, the soft pattering of the dove in the midst of the
continuous sound of the rain and the river down below the Bagno
and through the Bandiera.
“Those are not enough,” Passacantando said at last. “I must have
more than those; bring out some more, or I will go.”
He had crushed his cap down over his head, and from beneath his
forehead with its curling tuft of hair, his whitish eyes, greedy and
impudent, looked at Africana attentively, fascinating her.
“I have no more; you have seen all there is. Take all that you find ...”
stammered Africana in a caressing and supplicating voice, her
double chin quivering and her lips trembling, while the tears poured
from her piggish eyes.
“Well,” said Passacantando softly, bending over her, “well, do you
think I don’t know that your husband has some gold pieces?”
“Oh, Giovanni! ... how can I get them?”
“Go and take them, at once. I will wait for you here. Your husband is
asleep, now is the time. Go, or you’ll not see me any more, in the
name of Saint Antony!”
“Oh, Giovanni!... I am afraid!”
“What? Fear or no fear, I am going; let us go.”
Africana trembled; she pointed to Binchi-Banche still stretched under
the table in a heavy sleep.
“Close the door first,” she said submissively.
Passacantando roused Binchi-Banche with a kick, and dragged him,
howling and shaking with terror, out into the mud and slush. He
came back and closed the door. The red lantern that hung on one of
the shutters threw a rosy light into the tavern, leaving the heavy
arches in deep shadow, and giving the stairway in the angle a
mysterious look.
“Come! Let us go!” said Passacantando again to the still trembling
Africana.
They slowly ascended the dark stairway in the corner of the room,
the woman going first, the man following close behind. At the top of
the stairway they emerged into a low room, planked with beams. In
a small niche in the wall was a blue Majolica Madonna, in front of
which burned, for a vow, a light in a glass filled with water and oil.
The other walls were covered with a number of torn paper pictures,
of as many colours as leprosy. A distressing odour filled the room.
The two thieves advanced cautiously towards the marital bed, upon
which lay the old man, buried in slumber, breathing with a sort of
hoarse hiss through his toothless gums and his dilated nose, damp
from the use of tobacco, his head turned upon one cheek, resting on
a striped cotton pillow. Above his open mouth, which looked like a
cut made in a rotten pumpkin, rose his stiff moustache; one of his
eyes, half opened, resembled the turned over ear of a dog, filled
with hair, covered with blisters; the veins stood out boldly upon his
bare emaciated arm which lay outside the coverlet; his crooked
fingers, habitually grasping, clutched the counterpane.
Now, this old fellow had for a long time possessed two twenty-franc
pieces, which had been left him by some miserly relative; these he
guarded jealously, keeping them in the tobacco in his horn snuff-
box, as some people do musk incense. There lay the shining pieces
of gold, and the old man would take them out, look at them fondly,
feel of them lovingly between his fingers, as the passion of avarice
and the lust of possession grew within him.
Africana approached slowly, with bated breath, while Passacantando,
with commanding gestures, urged her to the theft. There was a
noise below; both stopped. The half-plucked dove, limping, fluttered
to its nest in an old slipper at the foot of the bed, but in settling
itself, it made some noise. The man, with a quick, brutal motion,
snatched up the bird and choked it in his fist.
“Is it there?” he asked of Africana.
“Yes, it is there, under the pillow,” she answered, sliding her hand
carefully under the pillow as she spoke. The old man moved in his
sleep, sighing involuntarily, while between his eyelids appeared a
little rim of the whites of his eyes. Then he fell back in the heavy
stupor of senile drowsiness.
Africana, in this crisis, suddenly became audacious, pushed her hand
quickly forward, grasped the tobacco box and rushed towards the
stairs, descending with Passacantando just behind her.
“Lord! Lord! See what I have done for you!” she exclaimed, throwing
herself upon him. With shaking hands, they started together to open
the snuff-box and look among the tobacco for the gold pieces. The
pungent odour of the tobacco arose to their nostrils, and both, as
they felt the desire to sneeze, were seized with a strong impulse to
laugh. In endeavouring to repress their sneezes, they staggered
against one another, pushing and wavering. But suddenly an
indistinct growling was heard, then hoarse shouts broke forth from
the room above, and the old man appeared at the top of the stairs.
His face was livid in the red light of the lantern, his form thin and
emaciated, his legs bare, his shirt in rags. He looked down at the
thieving couple, and, waving his arms like a damned soul, cried:
“The gold pieces! The gold pieces! The gold pieces!”
 VI
SORCERY

When seven consecutive sneezes of Mastro Peppe De Sieri, called La

Brevetta, resounded loudly in the square of the City Hall, all the
inhabitants of Pescara would seat themselves around their tables
and begin their meal. Soon after the bell would strike twelve, and
simultaneously, the people would become very hilarious.
For many years La Brevetta had given this joyful signal to the people
daily, and the fame of his marvellous sneezing spread through all the
country around, and also through the adjoining countries. His
memory still lives in the minds of the people, for he originated a
proverb which will endure for many years to come.

Mastro Peppe La Brevetta was a plebeian, somewhat corpulent,

thick-set, and clumsy; his face shining with a prosperous stupidity,
his eyes reminded one of the eyes of a sucking calf, while his hands
and feet were of extraordinary dimensions. His nose was long and
fleshy, his jaw-bones very strong and mobile, and when undergoing
a fit of sneezing, he looked like one of those sea-lions whose fat
bodies, as sailors relate, tremble all over like a jelly-pudding.
Like the sea-lions, too, he was possessed of a slow and lazy motion,
their ridiculously awkward attitudes, and their exceeding fondness
for sleep. He could not pass from the shade to the sun, nor from the
sun to the shade without an irrepressible impulse of air rushing
through his mouth and nostrils. The noise produced, especially in
quiet spots, could be heard at a great distance, and as it occurred at
regular intervals, it came to be a sort of time-piece for the citizens of
the town.
In his youth Mastro Peppe had kept a macaroni shop, and among
the strings of dough, the monotonous noise of the mills and wheels,
in the mildness of the flour-dusty air, he had grown to a placid
stupidity. Having reached maturity, he had married a certain Donna
Pelagia of the Commune of Castelli, and abandoning his early trade,
he had since that time dealt in terra cotta and Majolica ware,—
vases, plates, pitchers, and all the poor earthenware which the
craftsmen of Castelli manufactured for adorning the tables of the
land of Abruzzi. Among the simplicity and religiousness of those
shapes, unchanged for centuries, he lived in a very simple way,
sneezing all the time, and as his wife was a miserly creature, little by
little her avaricious spirit had communicated itself to him, until he
had grown into her penurious and miserly ways.
Now Mastro Peppe was the owner of a piece of land and a small
farm house, situated upon the right bank of the river, just at the spot
where the current of the river, turning, forms a sort of greenish
amphitheatre. The soil being well irrigated, produced very
abundantly, not only grapes and cereals, but especially large
quantities of vegetables. The harvests increased, and each year
Mastro Peppe’s pig grew fat, feasting under an oak tree which
dropped its wealth of acorns for his delectation. Each year, in the
month of January, La Brevetta, with his wife, would go over to his
farm, and invoke the favour of San Antonio to assist in the killing
and salting of the pig.
One year it happened that his wife was somewhat ill, and La
Brevetta went alone to the slaughtering of the beast. The pig was
placed upon a large board and held there by three sturdy farm-
hands, while his throat was cut with a sharp knife. The grunting and
squealing of the hog resounded through the solitude, usually broken
only by the murmuring of the stream, then suddenly the sounds
grew less, and were lost in the gurgling of warm vermilion blood
which was disgorged from the gaping wound, and while the body
was giving its last convulsive jerks, the new sun was absorbing from
the river the moisture in the form of a silvery mist. With a sort of
joyous ferocity La Brevetta watched Lepruccio burn with a hot iron
the deep eyes of the pig, and rejoiced to hear the boards creak
under the weight of the animal, thinking of the plentiful supply of
lard and the prospective hams.
The murdered beast was lifted up and suspended from a hook,
shaped like a rustic pitchfork, and left there, hanging head
downward. Burning bundles of reeds were used by the farm-hands
to singe off the bristles, and the flames rose almost invisible in the
greater light of the sun. At length, La Brevetta began to scrape with
a shining blade the blackened surface of the animal’s body, while
one of the assistants poured boiling water over it. Gradually the skin
became clean, and showed rosy-tinted as it hung steaming in the
sun. Lepruccio, whose face was the wrinkled and unctuous face of
an old man, and in whose ears hung rings, stood biting his lips
during the performance, working his body up and down, and
bending upon his knees. The work being completed, Mastro Peppe
ordered the farm-hands to put the pig under cover. Never in his life
had he seen so large a bulk of flesh from one pig, and he regretted
that his wife was not there to rejoice with him because of it.
Since it was late in the afternoon, Matteo Puriello and Biagio
Quaglia, two friends, were returning from the home of Don
Bergamino Camplone, a priest who had gone into business.
These two cronies were living a gay life, given to dissipation, fond of
any kind of fun, very free in giving advice, and as they had heard of
the killing of the pig, and of the absence of Pelagia, hoping to meet
with some pleasing adventure, they came over to tantalise La
Brevetta. Matteo Puriello, commonly called Ciavola, was a man of
about forty, a poacher, tall and slender, with blond hair and a yellow
tinted skin, with a stiff and bristling moustache. His head was like
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