After the Divorce, Grazia Deledda [the giving tree read aloud .txt] 📗

Their accuracy was amazing; they never made a mistake of so much as a single day. Some even carried their calculations so far as to count the hours. Costantino thought it all very foolish; one might die in the meantime, or regain his liberty! It was all in the hands of God. Yet, all the same, he too counted on being freed before the appointed hour; only in his case the appointed hour was so desperately, so hopelessly far away!

This realisation was heavy upon him on that morning when he awoke and fingered the warm paper of Giovanna’s last letter.

Getting up, he sighed heavily, and began to dress himself. The man on his right stopped snoring, opened one sleepy eye, regarded Costantino dully, then closed it again. “Feeling badly?” he asked, as Costantino sighed again. “Oh, yes! Your child is ill. Why don’t you tell the Director?”

“Why should I tell the Director? He would clap me into a cell for receiving the letter, and that would be the whole of it.”

“Except pane e pollastra,”6 said an ironical voice.

There was a general laugh, and Costantino, realising bitterly the utter indifference of all those men among whom he was destined to pass his days, felt as though he were wandering alone in a burning desert, gasping for air and water.

He went to his work longing impatiently for the exercise hour, when he would be able to talk over his troubles with the King of Spades. The great, fat, yellow man whom he despised so in his heart, was, nevertheless, indispensable to him; his sole comfort, in fact. He alone in that place understood him, was sorry for him, and listened to him. He was paid for it all, to be sure, but what did that signify? He was necessary in the same way to a great many of the convicts, but to none, probably, as much as to Costantino, who already, with a somewhat selfish regret, was dreading the time when, his term expired, the King of Spades would finally depart.

On this particular day a new inmate made his appearance in the workroom. He was a Northerner; long and sinuous, with a grey, wrinkled face, and small, pale eyes. It was not easy to tell his age, but the men laughed when he announced himself as twenty-two. He began at once to complain of the heat and of the sickening smell of fish that filled the room. Ah, he was no cobbler; no, indeed! He was the only son of a wealthy wholesale shoe-dealer⁠—a gentleman, in fact. And thereupon he recounted his unfortunate history. He had, it appeared, been so unlucky as to kill a rival in love; there had been provocation and he had ripped him open in the back⁠—simply that! The woman who was the real cause of the crime had consumption, and now she was dying from grief⁠—dying, simply that! Moreover, there was a child in the question, a son of the prisoner’s by the sick woman. If she died, the boy would be left orphaned and abandoned. Costantino trembled at this; not, indeed, that the man’s story affected him particularly, but because the picture of the woman and the child reminded him of Giovanna and the sick Malthineddu.

The newcomer, who was cutting a pair of soles with considerable skill, now became silent, and bent over, intent upon his work, his under-lip trembling like that of a child about to cry. Costantino, watching him, reflected that though he knew that this man must be suffering intensely he felt as indifferent as did any of the others: he too, then, had lost the power of sympathising with the sorrows of others! The thought filled him with dismay and made him more insanely anxious to get out than ever.

That day, as soon as he saw the King of Spades, he drew him over to a corner where the sun-baked wall cast a little spot of shade; but when he had got him there he could not bring himself to begin on his own troubles. Instead he repeated the story told by the new arrival. The other shrugged his shoulders and spat against the wall.

“If he wants to, even he can write,” he said. “But I should advise prudence, someone is nosing about.”

“How are we ever going to manage after you have gone?” said Costantino thoughtfully.

“You would like to keep me here forever, you rascal?” demanded the other in a rallying tone.

“Heaven forbid! No, indeed; I only wish you might get out tomorrow!”

The King of Spades sighed. His enemies, he declared, were forever devising new and diabolical schemes for keeping him out of the way; he had abandoned all hope now of a pardon. In any case, however, his term would expire before long; then he would go at once to the King, and lay a plain statement of the facts before him. The King would order an instant reversal of the verdict, and he himself, his innocence finally established, would be restored to his post. Who could tell, there might even be another medal conferred, to keep the rest company! But his first care would be to obtain pardons for all his friends, especially for Costantino. “That would be a noble work,” he observed, self-approvingly. Indeed, by virtue of making such assurances frequently, he had come actually to believe in them himself.

“Tomorrow? Yes, indeed; a pardon might very possibly come tomorrow, and a good thing that would be for everyone.”

“Good, or bad,” said Costantino despondently.

“After all,” continued the other, “when I am gone it may be that you will no longer have any use for my services.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth he regretted having spoken, but seeing that Costantino merely shook his head, evidently supposing that he alluded to a possible pardon, he regarded him compassionately.

“Are you really and truly innocent?” he asked. “By this time I should think you would be willing to talk to me quite openly. Do you remember