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

tarantula! I saw it as plain as I see you, but it was some distance off, on the wall. Ah, the devil take you, accursed creature! So I came right home. Do you know, I am afraid to die; I’ve been afraid for ever so long.”

“But we all have to die some time, whenever the hour comes,” said Isidoro seriously.

“Yes, that is true; we all have to some time,” agreed one of the men; “but that is poor consolation for Giacobbe Dejas.”

“My legs feel as though they had been broken,” he groaned. “And oh, my spine! it is just as though someone had struck it with an axe! I am going to die; I know I am going to die⁠—”

As they passed along, the people came out of their houses to watch them go by, but it was like a funeral procession; no one spoke, nor did anyone follow them. Giacobbe’s eyes grew dim, and presently he stumbled and clutched hold of Isidoro for support.

The women were moving along on a trot, like a herd of colts; their voices rose, fell, rose again, and seemed to die away into the chill night air, overpowered at last by the even, strident notes of the cithern, like the gasps of some wounded animal left to die alone in the forest.

At last they reached the little widow’s house. A fire was burning in the slate-stone fireplace in the centre of the kitchen, laid on a little heap of live coals which had just been taken out of the oven. This last, a huge, round affair having a hole in the top to allow the smoke to escape, occupied one corner, its square door being quite large enough to allow of the passage of a man’s body. Into its still hot interior Giacobbe accordingly now crept, the soles of his heavy shoes appearing in the opening, their worn nails shining in the firelight.

Placing themselves around the oven and the fireplace, the women continued their exorcism with renewed vigour, the red and purple lights from the fire falling upon their white blouses and yellow bodices. Aunt Anna-Rosa’s round, open mouth looked like a black hole in the middle of her pink, shining face. The blind man, conscious of the fire, felt his way towards it little by little, though without ceasing to play. Reaching the edge of the fireplace, he put one of his bare feet upon the hot stone. “Zs⁠—s⁠—” whispered Uncle Isidoro warningly. “Look out, boy, or you’ll have a surprise.”

The words were not out of his mouth when the youth gave a sudden bound backwards, shaking his burned foot in the air. For a moment he stopped playing, but the women never faltered. Standing there, erect and immovable around the huge oven, they might have been intoning a funeral dirge over some prehistoric sepulchre.

“He is coming out!” cried Aunt Anna-Rosa suddenly, and Giacobbe’s great feet could be seen issuing from the oven. At the same instant the house-door was thrown violently open, and the black-robed figure of Priest Elias appeared. On hearing what had occurred he had at once hastened to the house, hoping to arrive in time at least to prevent the ordeal of the oven. He was flushed and breathless, and his eyes flashed. On catching sight of him one of the women gave a scream and others stopped chanting, while the rest motioned to them to continue. Giacobbe, meanwhile, had got out of the oven.

“Be quiet!” commanded the priest, panting. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? No?”

They all became silent.

“Go,” he said, opening the door and holding it with one hand, while with the other he almost pushed the women out. When the last had gone he became aware for the first time of the presence of Isidoro, and his face fell. “You too?” he said reproachfully. “Extraordinary, most extraordinary! Don’t you see what you have done among you to that poor man?” Then changing his tone, “Quick,” he said, “go at once for the doctor as fast as you can. And as for you,” turning to Giacobbe, “get to bed at once.”

The sick man asked for nothing better; he was burning with fever, his head was shaking, and he could hardly see. Isidoro went off in search of the doctor, somewhat mortified and yet, in spite of his usually hard common sense, his intelligence, and his deeply religious nature, quite unable to see what harm there could be in trying to cure a tarantula sting with the rites, chants, and incantations employed by one’s forebears from the days when giants inhabited the Nuraghes.

The women had scattered into groups along the street and were discussing the occurrence, some of them a little ashamed, while others were inclined to blame the priest. One irrepressible young girl was beating her hands in time and singing the lament which should have been chanted in chorus around Giacobbe’s bed had not the priest’s arrival prevented:

“ ‘Oh, mother of the spider!
A stroke has fallen on me.’ ”

Some of the women would have stopped Isidoro, but he strode quickly on, buried in thought. At last they all dispersed, and the cold, still evening settled down on the little widow’s house, while overhead the stars looked like golden eyes veiled in tears.

XIV

The room where Giacobbe lay was extremely lofty, and so large that the oil light did not penetrate the corners. The furniture appeared to have been built expressly with a view to its ample proportions; a huge, red, wooden wardrobe which stood against the end wall, reaching clear to the ceiling. The bed, the lower part of which was draped with yellow curtains, was as high and massive as a mountain. Seen thus, in the dim, flickering light, with its black corners and great lofty white ceiling like a cloudy sky, the room had a mysterious, uncanny look. Little Aunt Anna-Rosa seemed almost in danger of losing her way as she moved about among the bulky furniture, and her shoulders hardly reached above