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

top of one another⁠—like a great crowd of people dispersing after a reunion. The light was sea-green; the air was fresh and reviving, filled with the odour of damp earth and of dried grass that has had a thorough soaking, and with the sound of shrill, foolish crowings of roosters mistaking this pale, clear twilight for the dawn. Then⁠—silence. Aunt Martina’s black figure, eternally spinning on the portico, made a dark splotch against the green sky. Giovanna was lighting the fire, bending over the hearth, when a long, tremulous neigh broke on her ears; the tremor in the sound seemed to communicate itself to her, and she straightened herself up, trembling as well, and looked out. Brontu was arriving, and she was frightened⁠—what about⁠—? About everything and nothing at all.

A tiny gleam flashed out from Aunt Bachissia’s cottage; by its light the old woman was endeavouring, with the aid of a rough broom, to sweep out the water that had poured over her threshold. The sky, beyond the yellow fields, looked like a stretch of still, green water; and in the foreground the almond-tree, glossy and dripping, dominated everything around it. Beneath the almond-tree, in the last gleam of daylight, Brontu appeared on horse-back; horse and rider alike black and steaming, and lagging along as though sodden and weighted by the deluge that had poured over them.

The two women came running out to meet him, uttering many expressions of horror, possibly a trifle exaggerated in tone, but he paid no attention to them.

“The devil! the devil! the devil!” he muttered, drawing his feet heavily out of the stirrups, and lifting first one and then the other. “Go to the devil who sent you!⁠—My shoes are waterlogged! Why don’t you get to work?” he added crossly, marching off to the kitchen.

The two women began at once to unload the horse, and when Giovanna followed him a little later, he at once demanded something to drink, “to dry him.” “Change your clothes,” she told him.

But no, he did not want to change his clothes; he only wanted something to drink⁠—“to dry him”⁠—he repeated, and grew angry when Giovanna would not get it for him. He ended, however, by doing precisely as she said⁠—changed his clothes, took nothing to drink, and, while waiting for supper, sat carefully rubbing his wet hair on a towel, and combing it out.

“What a deluge! what a deluge!” he said. “A regular sea pouring straight out of heaven. Ah, I got my crust well softened this time!” He gave a little laugh. “How are you, Giovanna? All right, eh? Giacobbe Dejas sent all kinds of messages. You act like smoke in his eyes.”

“You ought to stop his tongue,” said Aunt Martina. “He’s only a dirty serving-man; if you didn’t let him take such liberties he would respect you more.”

“I stopped more than his tongue; he wanted me to let him come in tonight. ‘No,’ I said; ‘you’ll stay where you are, and split.’ He’s coming in tomorrow, though.”

“Tomorrow? and why tomorrow? Ah, my son, you let yourself be robbed quite openly; you don’t amount to anything!”

“Well, after all, tomorrow is the Assumption,” said he, raising his voice, and putting the finishing touches to his hairdressing. “And Giacobbe is a relation, so let it rest. There, Giovanna, see how handsome I am!” He smiled at her, showing his splendid teeth.

He did, in truth, look so handsome, and clean, and radiant, with his shining locks and fresh colour, that Giovanna felt a momentary softening. Presently he began to hum a foolish little song that children sing when it rains:

“ ‘Rain! rain! rain
Ripe grapes, and figs⁠—’ ”

And so, they all sat down to the evening meal in high good humour and contentment. Aunt Martina, excusing herself on the plea of having no appetite, ate nothing but bread, onions, and cheese; articles of diet, however, of which she happened to be particularly fond⁠—but this in no wise interfered with the general harmony of the supper. After they had finished Brontu asked Giovanna to go out with him for a little walk; just to ramble about with no particular object, among the paths and deserted lanes of the village.

The sky had completely cleared, a few flickering stars glimmered faintly from out its pellucid depths; and the air was full of the odour of dead grass and wet stones. Quantities of sand and mud had been washed over the paths, but Giovanna wore her skirts very short, and such heavily nailed shoes that they struck against the stones with a sound like metal. Brontu took hold of her arm and began to invent wonderful pieces of news, as his custom was when he wanted to interest her.

“Zanchine,” said he, naming one of the men, “has found something. What do you suppose it is? A baby.”

“When?”

“Why, today, I think. Zanchine was digging up a lentisk when he heard a ‘wow, wow’; he looked, and there was a baby, only a few days old. Well, that wasn’t so wonderful; but now comes the queer part. A little cloud suddenly came flying through the air, and swooped down on Zanchine and seized the baby. It was an eagle who had evidently stolen the baby somewhere and hidden it among the bushes, and when he saw Zanchine looking at it, he shot down and⁠—”

“Get out!” said Giovanna. “I don’t believe a single word you say.”

“Make me rich, if it’s not true.”

“Get out, get out!” said Giovanna again impatiently, and Brontu, seeing that instead of being amused, she was out of humour, asked her if she had had a bad dream. She remembered the one she had told her mother of, and made no reply.

In this way they came to the other side of the village; that is, to the part where Isidoro Pane lived. A spectacle of indescribable loveliness lay spread before them. The moon, like a great golden face, gazed down from the silver-blue west; and the black earth, the wet trees, the slate-stone houses, the clumps of