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

the noontide heat and stillness, and the sound was like metal striking against stone, as though far off, in the rocky heart of those huge sphinxes, a drowsy giant were wielding his pick. “Why don’t you want to marry my sister?” said Giacobbe again. “This house will belong to her, and this will be her bedroom; here at this very window you could smoke your pipe⁠—”

“I never smoke; do let me be,” said the fisherman impatiently. The other’s talk began to annoy him.

“I’m not joking, you old lizard,” retorted Giacobbe. “Only you are such a dull beggar that you can’t even tell that I’m not.”

“Listen,” said Isidoro. “You have given me my dinner today, and so you think you have a right to make game of me. Now, I tell you this, if you want me to be grateful for it, you had better leave me alone.”

Giacobbe stared at him for a moment; then he burst into a loud laugh.

“Come on,” he cried; “let’s have something to drink.”

They went out, and Giacobbe led the way to the tavern, but the other refused to enter, saying that it was time for him to be getting back to the church.

In the tavern Giacobbe found Brontu and a number of others playing morra, their arms flung out in tense attitudes, and all shouting the numbers at the tops of their lungs.

Before five o’clock, the hour set for the procession, they were all quite tipsy, Giacobbe more so than anyone: notwithstanding which fact he insisted upon grasping his master by the arm, being firmly under the impression that without his aid, the other would not be able to walk. He then invited the whole company to adjourn to his “palace” to view the procession. A little later, accordingly, the big, empty rooms echoed to the sound of hoarse voices, bursts of aimless laughter, and uncertain footsteps. The windows were all thrown wide open, and quickly filled with wild, bearded faces.

Giacobbe and Brontu were standing at the same window where the old fisherman had been shortly before. By this time the sun had left it, but the sill was still warm, while below them and beyond, the village, and the plain, and the mountains were striped with long bars of ever lengthening shadows.

“Cu, cu!” shouted Brontu, staring out with round eyes. This was so intensely humourous that the others all began imitating him, each one making as much noise as possible. The house resounded with the uproar; a crowd gathered in the street below, and presently the drunkards within and those without began to exchange abusive epithets, followed by spitting and stone-throwing.

On a sudden, however, complete silence fell; a sound of low, mournful chanting was heard approaching, and immediately after a double line of white, phantom-like figures appeared at the end of the street, preceded by a silver cross held aloft against the blue background of the sky. The men in the street fell back against the walls, the heads at the windows were lowered, and every one uncovered.

One of the white-robed brotherhood, boys for the most part who, when the ceremonies were over, would receive three soldi each and a slice of watermelon, knocked at the door of the new house as he passed, and the others followed his example.

“Curse you!” yelled Giacobbe furiously, leaning far out of the window. “Boors! walking in the procession, are you?” and he was about to spit on them, but Brontu prevented him, telling him it would not do.

Now came the green brocade standard, with its hundred variegated ribbons and gilded staff; and next the Madonna of the Assumption, extended with closed eyes on her portable couch, covered with necklaces and rings that looked like relics of the bronze age, and watched over by the four green cherubs.

On each of the four sides, walking beside the bearers, was a man wearing a white tunic and carrying in his arms a child dressed as an angel. They were charming little creatures, two blond and two brunette, and they chattered gaily with one another, shouting to make themselves heard. One of them, tickled under the knee by the man who carried him, squirmed and wriggled, one wing hanging limply down.

The sight of these children touched some finer emotion in Brontu, Giacobbe, and the others, and bending their knees, they crossed themselves devoutly. The children, for their part, gazed up at the windows, and one of them, recognising an uncle in the group, flung a red confetto at him, which, missing fire, fell back into the road.

Priest Elias and the little stranger from Nuoro came next, wearing brocade and lace robes, pale and handsome in their bravery. They walked with clasped hands and rapt faces, chanting in Latin.

“The devil!” exclaimed Giacobbe suddenly. “If there isn’t that dirty old Isidoro Pane! You’d suppose he was running the whole procession; I’m going to spit on him.”

“No, you’re not,” commanded Brontu.

Giacobbe coughed to attract the fisherman’s attention, but the other did not so much as raise his eyes, continuing to intone the prayers to which the people responded as with a single voice.

The surging, vari-coloured crowd had flowed together behind the procession, and above the sea of heads could still be seen the swaying silver cross. The men had all uncovered⁠—bald heads, shining with perspiration, mops of thick black hair, rough, curly pates⁠—and then the gay head-kerchiefs of the women, some with black grounds and yellow squares, others striped with red, or covered with green spots⁠—all surmounting flushed faces, flashing eyes, white bodices crossed on the breast, red, gesticulating hands. Gradually the crowd thinned; an old cripple came limping along, then a woman with two children hanging to her skirts, then three old women⁠—a child with a yellow flower in its mouth⁠—the street grew empty and silent; the noise, and movement, and colour receding in waves, and growing ever fainter as the low, melancholy cadence of the chanted invocations died away in the distance.

As the last