Читать книгу After the Divorce - Grazia Deledda - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Meanwhile, the Eras pursued their journey under the burning July sun. The road at first led downwards to the bottom of the valley; then crossed it and ascended the violet-coloured mountains that, shutting in the horizon beyond, lost themselves in the haze that rose from the heated earth. It was a melancholy progress. The two women rode one horse, a dejected-looking beast, tractable and mild. Their travelling companions had gradually drifted away; some riding on ahead; others falling behind, but all alike were silent and depressed, overpowered by the suffocating heat, the stillness, and the sad outcome of their journey. They felt Costantino's misfortune almost as keenly as the women themselves, and out of respect for Giovanna's dumb agony, either remained silent, or, if they spoke, did so in undertones that awoke no echoes, and failed even to break the intense silence.

Thus they travelled on, and on; descending steadily towards the bed of a torrent, whose course ran through the bottom of the valley. The path, though not very steep, was rugged and at times difficult to follow as it wound its way between rocks, stretches of barren, dusty ground, and yellow stubble. At long intervals a scraggy tree would raise its solitary head; lifeless, immovable in the breathless atmosphere, like some lonely hermit of the wilderness; its shadow falling athwart the sun-baked earth, like that of a little wandering cloud, lost and frightened in the great expanse of light its presence alone seems to mar. Occasionally the shrill note of a wild bird would issue from one of these oases of shade, only to die away instantly, choked and overpowered by the weight of the all-embracing silence. Big purple thistles, pink-belled convolvuluses, and lilac mallows, rearing themselves here and there in defiance of the sun, seemed only to enhance the general air of desolation; while below and above stretched endless lines of ancient grey stone-walls, covered with dry yellow moss. Fields of uncut grain, with spears like yellow pine-cones, closed in the distance.

On, and on, they went. Giovanna's head was burning beneath her woollen kerchief upon which the sun's rays beat mercilessly; and big tears coursed silently down her cheeks. She tried to hide them from her mother, who was riding on the saddle, while she was seated on the crupper, but Aunt Bachissia heard, Aunt Bachissia saw, even out of the back of her head; and presently she could contain herself no longer.

"Look here, my soul," said she suddenly, as they traversed the bottom of the valley, between great thickets of flowering oleanders; "will you have the goodness to stop? What are you crying for, anyhow? Haven't you known it for months and months?"

Instead of stopping, however, Giovanna only burst forth into loud sobs. Aunt Bachissia glanced around; the others had all gone on ahead, and they were quite alone.

"Haven't you known all along how it would be?" she repeated, in low, even tones that seemed to Giovanna to come from an immeasurable distance and, sweeping by them, to be swallowed up in the surrounding void. "Are you such a fool, my soul, as not to have known it from the first? Did he or did he not kill that infamous Vulture? If he killed him——"

"But he never said he had done it!" interrupted Giovanna.

"Well! that was all that was needed, for him to be crazy enough to say so. My soul! just think for a moment, nothing more was wanting! For my own part, I always expected that some time or other he would crush that Vulture as one crushes a wasp that has stung him. You say Costantino is a good Christian! My soul! one would have thought that by this time you would begin to have some idea of what it means to hate! Would you, yes or no, if you had the chance, murder those men back there who condemned him? Very well, then. He murdered the Vulture, and to a certain extent I sympathise with him, because I know the human heart. But I have not forgiven him, and I never will forgive him, for taking the risks he did. No, that I will not, not for the love of God! He had a wife and a child, and if he were going to do it he should have gone about it more carefully. And now, that's enough of it. Let the whole matter drop. You are still young, Giovanna; you must think of him as of one who is dead."

"But he is not dead!" wailed Giovanna desperately.

"Very well, then," said Aunt Bachissia angrily. "Go and hang yourself. There, do you see that tree over yonder? Well, go and hang yourself from it; but don't torment me any more. You have always been a torment. If you had married Brontu Dejas everything would have been right; but no, you must have that beggar; very well, the best thing for you to do now is to hang yourself!"

Giovanna made no reply. In the bottom of her heart she too believed Costantino to be guilty, but she had long ceased to care. In her present misery all she took note of was the central fact of his condemnation, and she could not understand why ordinary mortals should have the power so to dispose of a fellow-creature. Ah, how she hated that mysterious, invincible power! She felt towards it as she did towards those horrible spirits, unseen, but felt, which fly abroad on stormy nights!

On, and on, they went. Now they had crossed the valley and were slowly ascending the mountain on its further side. The sun began to sink towards the west, the horizon to open; the sky grew soft, and the landscape lost its look of utter desolation. The shadows of the mountain-peaks stretched down now, clear into the dim depths of the valley, where a few late dog roses still bloomed; a little breeze sprang up and filled the air with the odour of wild growing things.

Insensibly every one's spirits revived under the influence of this unlooked-for shade and coolness. One of their companions, joining the two women, began to recount an adventure a friend of his had had close to that very spot; at one point the story became so entertaining that even Giovanna smiled faintly.

On, and on. Now the sun was setting, and from the height they had attained they could make out the sea, a bluish circle, bounded by the horizon. Finally, beyond a thick-growing mass of trees and bushes so sturdy as to withstand alike the wild winter blasts and the scorching heats of summer, lying in the midst of the melancholy uplands like an island in a sea of light and solitude, they descried their own village, the eyrie of a strong, handsome, and primitive people; shepherds for the most part, or peasants occupied in raising grain and honey.

Green, rocky pastures, gay in the springtime with daffodils, and fragrant with mint and thyme, and fields of grain, hemmed in the little group of slate-stone cottages that gleamed in the sun like burnished silver. Here and there a good-sized tree cast its shadow athwart this quail's nest, hidden away, as it were, amid the billows of ripening grain. Lines of green tamarisks, and a wilderness of thyme and arbute, lay beyond. Further still were the limitless stretches of the uplands, and above all spread a sky of indescribable softness and beauty. On the right, against this sky, the lonely mountain-peaks reared themselves like a company of sphinxes, blue in the morning, lilac at noonday, and purple or bronze-coloured at evening; their rugged sides covered with forests, the home of eagles and vultures.

It was nearly dark when the Eras at last reached the village. Mount Bellu, the colossus of that company of sphinxes, had enveloped itself in a cloak of purple mist, and stood out against the pale, grey sky. The street was already silent and deserted, and the clatter of the horse's hoofs on the rough stone paving resounded like the blows of a hammer. One after another their companions turned off, so that when they reached their own home, the two women were quite alone.

The Era cottage stood on a little flat clearing, above the level of the street. Higher up on the hillside, overlooking it, was another house, a white one. A large almond-tree, growing beside a piece of crumbling wall that extended from one corner of the cottage, overhung the street, which, beyond this point, merged into the open country.

Scattered about on the level stretch of ground between the two houses—the grey cottage of the Eras and the white dwelling of the Dejases—beneath the shadow of the almond-tree, lay a quantity of great boulders, convenient and comfortable resting-places; hence the spot had come to be used by the villagers as a sort of common or place of public resort. Hardly had the horse stopped before the cottage, when Giovanna slid down and, with lagging steps and hanging head, advanced towards a woman—a relative left in charge during their absence—who came forward to meet them with the baby in her arms. Taking the child from her, Giovanna clasped it closely to her breast, and began to weep, burying her head on the chubby little shoulder. Her tears were now flowing quietly enough, a feeling of numbness and of utter despair crept over her, and the unhappiness of the preceding months seemed as nothing in comparison with the misery and desolation of the present moment. The baby, hardly yet five months old, had clear, violet eyes, and little, unformed features set in a stiff, red cap with fringe hanging down over the forehead. He recognised his mother, and began pulling with all his strength on the end of her kerchief, kicking both little feet, and crying: "Ah—ah—aah——"

"Malthinu, my little Malthineddu, my sole comfort in all the earth; your daddy is dead," sobbed Giovanna.

The woman, understanding that Costantino had been found guilty, began to cry as well. Suddenly Aunt Bachissia descended swiftly upon them. Pushing Giovanna into the cottage, she asked the woman to help her unload the horse.

"Are you stark mad, both of you?" she demanded in a low voice. "What need is there to carry on like that, right out here in sight of the white house? I can see the beak of that old Godmother Malthina now. Ah! she will be delighted when she hears of our bad luck."

"No," said the woman, "she has come several times to ask for news of Costantino, and she always seemed to feel very sorry. She told me she had dreamed that he was condemned to penal servitude."

"Oh, yes! that is the kind of sorrow that an ill-tempered cur feels! I know her! She's a venomous snake, and she can't forgive us. After all," she added a few minutes later, walking towards the cottage with the wallet on her back, "she's right; we can't forgive ourselves."

Aunt Martina Dejas was the owner of the white house on the hill, and the mother of that Brontu Dejas whom Giovanna had refused to marry. She was very well off, but a miser, and Aunt Bachissia was quite mistaken in supposing that she hated them. As a fact, the refusal had affected her very little, either one way or the other.

"See here," said Aunt Bachissia, when they had finished unloading the horse. "Will you do me one favour more, Maria Chicca? Will you take back the horse and tell her that Costantino is to get twenty-seven years in prison? Then watch her face."

The woman took hold of the bridle, the animal having been hired from the Dejases, and led it towards the white house.

This house, formerly the property of a merchant who had failed, had been bought at public sale a few years before. It was large and commodious, with a portico in front that gave it an almost seignorial air, but which was used as a promenade by Aunt Martina's chickens and pigs. It was an inappropriate dwelling for rough shepherds like the Dejases, as was shown by its rude furnishings, composed mainly of high clumsy wooden bedsteads, roughly fashioned chests, and heavy chairs and stools. Aunt Martina was seated on the portico, spinning—she could spin even in the dark—when Maria Chicca approached, leading the horse. The house was entirely unlighted, Brontu and the men being off at the sheepfolds, while Aunt Martina never kept a servant. She had other sons and daughters, all married, with whom she lived in a constant state of warfare on account of her miserly habits. Whenever there was any especial stress of work, she got in some of the neighbours to help. Often Giovanna and her mother were hired in this way, being paid in stale or injured farm produce. The Eras, however, were too poor to refuse anything they could get.

"Well, what was the result?" asked the old woman, laying the spindle and a little ball of flax on the bench beside her. She had a thin, nasal voice; round, light eyes, placed close together; a delicate, aquiline nose, and lips that were still full and red. "You are crying, Maria Chicca. I saw those two poor women arrive, but I was afraid to go and ask, because I dreamed last night that he had been sentenced to penal servitude."

"Ah, no! they have given him twenty-seven years' imprisonment."

Aunt Martina appeared to be disappointed; not, indeed, that she bore Costantino any ill-will, but because she had a firm belief in the infallibility of her dreams.

She took the horse by the bridle, saying:

"I will go to the Eras' this evening, if I possibly can, but I'm not sure. There's a man coming, he who worked for Basile Ledda; he is going to hire out to us. He was one of the witnesses; but I believe he's back, isn't he?"

"Yes, I think he is," said the other. And, returning to the cottage, she began at once to relate how Aunt Martina felt very sorry; and how she had dreamed that Costantino had got penal servitude; and that Giacobbe Dejas—he was a poor relation of the other Dejases—was going to work for them. Giovanna, who was nursing the child, and gazing down at it sorrowfully, did not so much as raise her eyes. Aunt Bachissia, on the contrary, asked innumerable questions: Had she found the old Dejas alone? Was she spinning—spinning there in the dark?—etc., etc.

"Listen," she said to Giovanna. "She may be here this evening."

Giovanna neither moved nor looked up.

"My soul! do you hear me?" cried the mother angrily. "She may come down this evening."

"Who?" asked Giovanna, in the tone of a person just awake.

"Malthina Dejas!"

"Well, let her go to the devil!"

"Who is to go to the devil?" asked a sonorous voice from the doorway. It was Isidoro Pane, an old leech-fisher related to the Eras. He had come on a visit of condolence. Tall, with blue eyes and a yellow beard, a bone rosary about his waist, and clasping a long staff with a bundle fastened to the top, Uncle Isidoro looked like a pilgrim. He was the poorest and the gentlest and the most peaceable inhabitant of Orlei. When he wanted to swear, all he said was: "May you become a leech-fisher!" He and Costantino were great friends. Often and often had the two sung the holy lauds in church together, and the Eras had named him as a witness for the defence, because no one could testify better than he to the blameless character of the accused man. His name had, however, been rejected. What, indeed, would the testimony of a poor leech-fisher amount to when confronted with the majesty of the law!

The moment she saw him, Giovanna gave way and began to sob.

"The will of God be done!" said Isidoro, leaning his staff against the wall. "Be patient, Giovanna Era, you must not lose your trust in God."

"You know?" asked Giovanna.