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

“Well, why don’t you go on?” cried Paolo. “You are to be married by civil ceremony because the priests won’t give you any other! They don’t understand, and they never will understand; just as you will never understand, Mamma Porredda. What is marriage, after all? It is a contract made between men, and binding only in the sight of men. The religious ceremony really means nothing at all⁠—”

“It is a sacrament!” cried Aunt Porredda, beside herself.

“Means nothing at all,” continued Paolo. “Just as some day the civil ceremony will mean nothing at all. Men and women should be at liberty to enter spontaneously into unions with one another and to dissolve them when they cease to be in harmony. The man⁠—”

“Ah, you are no better than a beast!” exclaimed Aunt Porredda, though it was, in fact, not the first time that she had heard her son express these views. “It is the end of the world. God has grown weary; and who can wonder? He is punishing us; this is the deluge. I have heard that there have been terrible earthquakes already!”

“There have always been earthquakes,” observed Uncle Efes Maria, who did not know whether to side with his wife or his son. Probably, in the bottom of his heart his sympathies were with the former, but he did not want to say so openly for fear of being looked down upon by the gifted Paolo.

The latter made no reply. Already he regretted having said so much, being too truly attached to his mother to wish to give her needless pain. Giovanna now took her hands from her face, and spoke in a tone of gentle humility:

“Listen,” said she. “When I was married before⁠—to that unfortunate⁠—I had only the civil ceremony, and if he had not been arrested, who knows when we ever would have had the religious marriage! And yet, were we not just as much man and wife? No one ever said a word, and God, who knows all, was not offended⁠—”

“But he punished you,” said Aunt Porredda quickly.

“That remains to be seen!” shouted Aunt Bachissia, whose bile was beginning to rise. “Was the punishment for that, or for Basile Ledda’s murder?”

“If it had been for the murder, only Costantino would have been punished.”

“Well,” said the old witch, her green eyes glittering with triumph, “is not that just what I am saying? My Giovanna here is not to be punished any longer for his fault, since God has given her the opportunity to marry a young man who is fond of her, and who will make her forget all her sufferings!”

“And who is also rich,” remarked Uncle Efes Maria, and no one could tell whether he spoke ingenuously or no.

Giovanna, who had quite lost the thread of her discourse, was, nevertheless, determined to continue her role of patient martyr. “Ah, my dear Aunt Porredda,” said she, “you don’t know all, but God, who alone can see into our hearts, he will forgive me even if I live in mortal sin, because he will know that the fault is not with me. I would gladly have the religious ceremony, but it cannot be.”

“Yes, because you are married already to some one else, you child of the devil!”

“But that other one is as good as dead! Just tell me now, can he help me to earn a living? And if the lawyers, who are educated and learned, and who know what life really is, can dissolve civil marriages, why can’t the priests dissolve religious ones? Perhaps they don’t understand about it. There is that priest whom we have⁠—Elias Portolu⁠—the one who is so good, you know him? he talks like a saint, and never gets angry with anyone. Well, even he can’t say anything but ‘No, no, no; marriage can only be dissolved by death⁠—and go and be blessed, if you don’t know what is right!’ Does a body have to live? Yes, or no? And when you can’t live, when you are as poor as Job, and can’t get work, and have nothing, nothing, nothing! And just tell me, you, Aunt Porredda, suppose I had been some other woman, and suppose there had been no divorce, what would have happened? Why, mortal sin, that is what would have happened, mortal sin!”

“And in your old age⁠—want,” said Aunt Bachissia.

The servant brought in the fruit: bunches of black, shining, dried grapes, and wrinkled pears, as yellow as autumn leaves.

The old hostess handed the dish to her old guest, with an indescribable look of compassion. Her anger, and disdain, and indignation had suddenly melted away as she realised the sordid natures of the mother and daughter. “Good San Francisco, forgive them,” she prayed inwardly. “Because they are so ignorant, and blind, and hard!” Then she said mildly: “You and I, Bachissia Era, are old women, and you, Giovanna, will be old some day. Now tell me one thing: what is it that comes after old age?”

“Why, death.”

“Death; yes, death comes after. And after death what is there?”

“Eternity?” said Paolo, laughing softly to himself as he devoured his grapes like a greedy child, holding the bunch close to his mouth, and detaching the seeds with his sharp little teeth.

“Eternity, precisely; eternity comes after⁠—where are you going, Minnia? Stay where you are.” But the child, tired of the conversation, slipped out of the room. “What do you say, Giovanna Era, does eternity follow? yes, or no? Bachissia Era⁠—yes, or no?”

“Yes,” said the guests.

“Yes? and yet you never think of it?”

“Oh! what is the use of thinking of it?” said Paolo, getting up, and wiping his mouth with his napkin; he felt that it was high time for him to be off; he had already wasted too much time on these women, who, after all, were interesting solely from the fact that they had not yet paid him. “There are some people waiting to see me at the office⁠—several people, in fact,” he said. “I will see you again; you are