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

a set of protruding teeth. Aunt Porredda was cooking, and scolding the maid for this annoying habit of hers. Only fancy! Here was the mistress doing the cooking, while the servant sat by the stove and⁠—laughed! What kind of way to do was that? And, moreover, the good woman could never have one single moment’s peace, and she the mother of a famous lawyer!

Giovanna seated herself at some little distance from the stove, stooping over with her hands still buried in the pockets of her skirt.

“Just look!” exclaimed Aunt Bachissia in a tone of envy. “This kitchen might be a parlour! You must do your kitchen up like this, Giovanna.”

“Yes,” said the young woman absentmindedly.

“Yes? Well, upon my soul, I should say so! Godmother Malthina is close, but you have got to make her understand that money is meant to spend. A kitchen like this⁠—why, it is heaven⁠—upon my soul! This is living.”

“What do you always say ‘upon my soul’ for?” asked the giggling servant-maid.

“If she doesn’t choose to spend her money, how am I to make her?” said Giovanna with a sigh.

The servant was still laughing, but Aunt Porredda, who wanted to keep out of her guests’ conversation, turned on her, and sharply ordered her to grate some cheese for the macaroni. The girl obeyed.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Aunt Bachissia as Giovanna sighed again.

“She remembers!” said Aunt Porredda to herself. “After all, she is a Christian, not an animal, and she can’t help herself!”

But Giovanna spoke up crossly:

“Well, it’s just this; they’ve cheated us. That is not good linen, and the ribbon is spotted. Oh! it is too much.”

“Upon my soul!” said the maid, mimicking Aunt Bachissia’s voice and accent, and grating away vigorously on the cheese.

Aunt Porredda thereupon let out upon her all the vials of wrath she would fain have emptied upon her guests, calling her by all the names which, in her secret heart, she was applying to Giovanna⁠—“shameless,” “vile,” “ungrateful,” “despicable,” and so on, and threatening to strike her over the head with the ladle. In her terror, the girl grated the skin off one finger, and she was in the act of displaying it with the blood streaming down when the lawyer-son limped briskly into the room. He was enveloped in a long, black overcoat, so full that it looked like a cloak with sleeves. His smooth, fresh-coloured little face beamed with the self-satisfied expression of a nursing child. Asking immediately what there was to eat, he dropped into a seat beside Aunt Bachissia, and sat there chatting until supper was ready. After him the little Minnia came running in, rosy, breathless, and dishevelled, and threw herself down by the servant-maid. The boy had died three years earlier. The little girl’s dress, of black and red flannel, was pretty enough, but her shoes were torn and her hands dirty. She had spent the entire day tearing around in a neighbouring truck-garden, and began to pour out confidences to the servant in an eager undertone.

“Upon my soul!” repeated the servant, in the same tone as before.

Next Uncle Efes Maria’s big face, with its thick, wide-open lips, appeared in the door, wanting to know why they could not have supper right away.

The dining-room was now furnished with two tall, shining cupboards of varnished wood, and the whole apartment had quite an air of elegance⁠—strips of carpet on the stone floor, a stove, and so on. Poor Aunt Porredda, with her big feet and hobnailed shoes, never felt really at home there; while Uncle Efes Maria had not yet cured himself of the habit of staring proudly around him. Grazia, tall and elegant, always withdrew into herself when her relations came into this room, where she passed most of her time eagerly devouring the Unique Mode, the Petite Parisienne, and the fashion articles of a family journal⁠—sufficiently immoral in its tone, since it fomented such unhealthy dreams in her foolish head. Ah, those low-cut gowns, covered with embroidery; those scarfs worked in gold; those bodices with their great wings of silver lace, the rainbow hues, the spangles glittering like frost! Ah, those hats covered with artificial fruits, and the long flower boas, and petticoats trimmed with lace at thirty lire a yard, and the painted gloves, and fans made of human skin! How beautiful it all was⁠—horribly, terrifyingly beautiful! Merely to read about these things gave her a sort of spasm, they were so beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful. And afterwards, how ugly and common and flat everything seemed⁠—the simple old grandmother, with her fat, wrinkled face; and the dull grandfather, gazing about him with such ignorant satisfaction and pride! It was all simply stultifying.

Just as on that other, faraway evening, Aunt Porredda came in, bearing triumphantly the steaming dish of macaroni, and all the members of the party seated themselves around the table. Aunt Bachissia, finding herself in the shadow, so to speak, of Grazia’s wings, forthwith broke anew into loud exclamations of wonder and admiration, this time apropos of those glorious objects:

“No, we have never seen anything like that in our neighbourhood, but then, we have no ladies there. Here they all look like angels, the ladies.”

“Or bats,” said Uncle Efes Maria. “Eh, it’s the fashion, my dears. Why, I remember when I was a child the ladies were all big and round; they looked like cupolas. There hardly were any ladies in those days⁠—the Superintendent’s wife, the family⁠—”

“And then that thing behind,” interrupted Aunt Porredda. “Oh! I remember that, it looked like a saddle. Well, if you’ll believe me, upon my word and honour, I remember one time someone sat down on one of them.”

“The last time we were here,” said Aunt Bachissia, “those wings were little things; now they are growing, growing.”

Grazia sat eating her supper as though she did not hear a word of what the others were saying. The “Doctor” eat his too⁠—like a gristmill⁠—staring at his niece all the while with the look