Under the Shadow of Etna/The Bereaved
THE BEREAVED.
THE BEREAVED.
THE little girl appeared at the door, twisting the comer of her apron in her fingers, and said,—
"Here I am!"
Then, when no one paid any attention to her, she looked shyly first at one and then at another of the women who were kneading dough, and spoke again,—
"They told me,—'Go to comare Sidora.'"
"Come here, come here," cried comare Sidora, red as a tomato, as she stood in the back part of the bakeshop. "Wait a moment, and I'll make you a nice cake."
"It means they are bringing comare Nunzia the Viaticum; they've sent the little girl away," observed the woman from Lacodia.
One of the women engaged in kneading the dough, turned her head, with her hands still at work in the trough, her arms bare to the elbow. and asked the little girl,—
"How is your step-mother?"
The child, not knowing the woman, looked at her with frightened eyes, and hanging her head, and nervously working at the ends of her apron, said, in a low voice, between her set teeth,—
"She's in bed."
"Don't you see 't is the Sacrament," replied la Licodiana, "Now the neighbors have begun to scream at the door."
"As soon as I finish kneading this dough," said comare Sidora, "I'll run over a moment to see if they have need of anything. Compare Meno loses his right hand when this second wife of his dies."
"Some men have no luck with their wives, just as some are unfortunate with their mules. No sooner do they get 'em than they lose 'em. There's comare Angela."
"Yesterday evening," observed la Licodiana, "I saw compare Meno at his door; he had come back from the vineyard before the Ave Marie, and was blowing his nose on his handkerchief."
"But," suggested the woman who was kneading the dough, "he is a master hand at killing off his wives. In less than three years already two of curátolo[1] Nino's daughters have been eaten up, one after the other! Wait a little and you'll see the third go the same way, and all curátolo Nino's things wasted."
"Is this little girl comare Nunzia's daughter, or his first wife's?"
"She's his first wife's daughter. But this one has been just as kind to her as though she had been her own mamma, because the little orphan was her niece, you know."
The child, hearing them speaking of herself, began to weep silently in a corner, thus relieving her bursting heart, which she had till then kept under control, by playing with her apron.
"Come here, come here," pursued comare Sidora, "The nice cake's all ready. There, there! Don't cry; for your mamma's in Paradise."
The little girl then dried her eyes with her doubled fists, because she saw that comare Sidora was preparing to open the oven.
"Poor comare Nunzia!" said a neighbor, appearing at the door. "The gravediggers are on their way. They just passed by here."
"Heaven protect me! as I am under Mary's grace!"[2] exclaimed the women, crossing themselves.
Comare Sidora took the cake out of the oven, brushed off the ashes, and handed it, smoking hot, to the little girl, who took it in her apron and walked away slowly, slowly, blowing on it as she went.
"Where are you going?" cried comare Sidora. "Stay here! There's a black-faced ba-bau at your house who carries folks off."
The little orphan listened gravely, with wide-opened eyes. Then she replied in the same obstinate drawl,—
"I am going to carry it to my mamma."
"Your mamma is dead; stay here," said one of the neighbors. "Eat your cake."
Then the little girl squatted down on the door-step, the image of sadness, holding her cake in her hand without offering to eat it.
Then suddenly seeing "il babbo" coming, she jumped up joyously and ran to meet him.
Compare Meno entered without saying a word, and sat down in a corner, with his hands dangling between his knees, with a long face, and his lips as white as paper; for since the day before, he had not put a morsel of food into his mouth because of his grief. He looked at the women as if to say,—
"Poveretto me!"
Seeing the black handkerchief around his neck, the women, with their hands still pasted with dough, made a circle round him and condoled with him in chorus.
"Don't speak of it to me, comare Sidora," he exclaimed, shaking his head, and heaving up his great shoulders. "This is a thorn that will never be pulled out of my heart. That woman was a real saint! I did not deserve her, saving your presence. Only day before yesterday, when she was so sick, she got up to tend to the weaning colt, and she would not let me call in the doctor, or buy any medicine, either—so as to not waste any money. I sha'n't find another wife like her. No I sha'n't, I tell you. Let me weep—I've good reason to."
And he began to shake his head and to heave his shoulders as if his misfortune were a burden not to be borne.
"As to getting another wife," said la Licodiana, to encourage him, "all you've got to do is to look for one."
"No! no!" asseverated compare Meno, with his head hung low, like a mule's. "Such another wife is not to be had. This time I shall remain a widower. I tell you I shall."
Comare Sidora interrupted him,—
"Don't say foolish things like that. You must get another wife, if only for the sake of this little orphan girl; for otherwise, who will look out for her when you are out working? You wouldn't let her run in the streets, would you?"
"Then find me another wife like my last one! She would not wash herself, for fear of soiling the water; and at home, she served me better than a farm-hand—affectionate and faithful. Why, she would not take even a handful of beans from the rack, or ever open her mouth to ask for anything. And beside, a fine dowry—things as good as gold. And I've got to give it all back because she had no children. At least, so the sacristan says, when he came with the Holy Water. And how kind she was to the little girl who reminded her of her poor sister. Any other woman, except an aunt, would have cast an evil eye on her, the poor little orphan!
"If you asked curátolo Nino for his third daughter, it would make things all right, both for the orphan and for the dowry," suggested la Licodiana.
"That's what I say. But don't speak of it to me, for now my mouth is bitter as gall."
"I wouldn't talk about it now," said comare Sidora. "Eat a bit of something, compare Meno. You are all tired out."
"No! no!" returned compare Meno several times. "Don't speak to me of eating, for I have a lump in my throat."
Comare Sidora placed before him on a stool fresh bread with ripe olives, a piece of sheep's-head cheese, and a jug of wine. And the poor clumsy fellow set to work nibbling at it, all the time grumbling, with a long face.
"Such bread as she made," he observed with a quaver in his voice, "no one else could ever make. Just as if it were made of real meal. And with a handful of wild fennel, she would make a soup to lick your fingers over! Now I shall have to buy bread at the shop of that thief, mastro Puddo; and as for hot soup, I sha'n't have any more, when I come home wet as a fresh-hatched chicken. And I shall have to go to bed with a cold stomach. Only the other night, while I was watching with her, after I had been digging and grubbing all day on the hill, and caught myself snoring as I sat next the bed, so tired I was, the poor soul said to me: 'Go and get a mouthful of something to eat. I left the soup to keep hot on the hearth.' And she was always thinking about my comfort, and about the house, and whatever was to be done, and this thing and that thing; and she could not come to an end of speaking or of giving her last directions, like one who is going off on a long journey, and I heard her constantly muttering between waking and sleeping. And how contentedly she went off to the other world! With the crucifix on her breast, and her hands folded over it. She has no need of Masses and rosaries, saint that she was. Money spent on the priest would be money thrown away."
"World of tribulation!" exclaimed a neighbor. "Comare Angela's ass is like to die of the colic."
"But my misfortunes are heavier," ended compare Meno, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "No, don't make me eat any more, for the mouthfuls fall like lumps of lead into my stomach. You eat something, you poor innocent, for you don't understand what you've lost. Now you have no one any longer to wash you and brush your hair. Now you haven't a mamma any more to shelter you under her wings like a setting hen, and you are ruined, as I am. I found her for you, but a second stepmother like her you won't get, my daughter!"
The child with bursting heart put up her lip again, and stuck her fists into her eyes. "No, you can't possibly get along alone," interposed comare Sidora. "You must find another wife for the sake of this poor little motherless girl, left in the midst of the street."
"And how shall I get along? And my colt? And my house? And who'll look after the hens? Let me weep, comare Sidora! It would have been better if I had died instead of that good soul."
"Hush, hush! you don't know what you are saying, and you don't know what a house without its head is!"
"That is true," assented compare Meno, comforted.
"Just take example from poor comare Angela! First, her husband died; then her grown-up son, and now her ass is also dying."
"The ass ought to be bled in the belly, if it has the colic," said compare Meno.
"Come, you know all about such things," suggested the neighbor. "Do a work of charity for the sake of your wife's soul."
Compare Meno got up to go to comare Angela's, and the little orphan ran behind him like a chicken, now that she had no one else in the world. Comare Sidora, good housewife that she was, called him back.
"And the house? How have you left it, now that there is no one there to look after it?"
"I locked the door, and besides cousin Alfia lives opposite, and will keep an eye on it."
Neighbor Angela's ass lay stretched out in the midst of the yard, with his muzzle cold and his ears hanging, every now and then kicking his four legs into the air whenever the colic made him draw in his sides like a pair of bellows. The widow crouching in front of him on the rocks, with her hands clenching her gray hair, and her eyes dry and despairing, was watching him, pale as a corpse.
Compare Meno manœuvred round the animal, touching his ears, locking into his lifeless eyes, and when he saw that the blood was still oozing from the punctured vein under the belly, drop by drop, and coagulating in a black mass on his hairy skin, he remarked:
"So you've had him bled, have you?"
The widow fixed her dark eyes on his face without speaking, and nodded her eyes:
«Then there's nothing more to do," said compare Meno, and he continued to stare at the ass, which stretched itself out on the stones, stiffly, with its hair all rumpled, like a dead cat.
"It is God's will, sister!" said he to comfort her. "We are ruined, both of us!"
He had gone round by the widow's side and squatted down on the stones, with his little daughter between his knees, and both of them continued to gaze at the poor beast, which from time to time threshed the air with its legs as if it were in the agonies of death.
Comare Sidora, when she had got the bread safely out of the oven, also came into the yard with the cousin Alfia, who had put on her new gown and wore her silk handkerchief on her head, all ready for a bit of gossip, and comare Sidora said to compare Meno, drawing him aside,—
"Curátolo Nino won't give you his third daughter, for at your house the women die off like flies, and he loses the dowry. And then la Santa is too young, and there's the risk that she'd fill your house with children."
"If only one could be sure of boys! But there's always the danger of girls coming. Oh, I am so unfortunate!"
"Well, there's the cousin Alfia. She is no longer young, and she has property,—the house and a bit of vineyard."
Compare Meno fixed his eyes on the cousin Alfia, who with her arms a-kimbo was pretending to look at the ass, and then he said, "That's so! One might think of that. But I am so very unlucky!"
Comare Sidora interrupted him,—
"Think of those who are more unlucky than you are!"
"No one is, I tell you. I shall never find another wife like her, I shall never be able to forget her, even if I married ten times. And this poor little orphan will never forgot her, either."
"Calm yourself! You'll forget her fast enough. And the little girl will forget her, too. Didn't she forget her own mother? But just look at poor neighbor Angela, whose ass is dying, and she hasn't got anything else. She'll never be able to forget it."
Comare Alfia saw that it was a favorable moment for her to approach, and drawing a long face, she began to eulogize the dead woman. She had with her own hands helped to lay her out on the bier, and had put over her face a fine linen handkerchief, of which she had a goodly store, as may be imagined.
Then compare Meno, with his heart melting within him, turned to his neighbor Angela, who was sitting motionless, as if she had been turned to stone.
"I suppose you'll have the ass skinned won't you? At least get some money for his pelt."