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

“Well, you didn’t know me, after all,” said Costantino, unstrapping his wallet. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

Even his voice and accent were strange; and now, after his first sensations, first of chill and then of pity, Isidoro felt a sort of diffidence. “What are you dressed that way for?” he asked. “If you had let me know I would have brought you your clothes to Nuoro, and a horse too. Did you come all the way on foot?”

“No; San Francisco lent me a horse. What are you about, Uncle Isidoro? I don’t want any coffee. Have you got any brandy?”

The fisherman, who had begun to uncover the fire, got up from his knees, embarrassed and mortified at having nothing better to offer his guest than a little coffee.

“I didn’t know,” he stammered, spreading out his hands, “but just wait a moment, I’ll go right off⁠—you see I expected you, and I didn’t expect you⁠—” And he started for the door.

“Stop; where are you going?” cried the other, seizing hold of him. “I don’t want anything at all. I only said it for a joke. Sit down here.”

Isidoro seated himself, and began to look furtively at Costantino; little by little he grew more at ease with him, and presently passing his hand over his trousers he asked if he intended to go on dressing that way. In the early morning light streaming through the open door, Costantino’s face looked worn and grey.

“Yes,” he said, with another of those disagreeable laughs, “I am going on dressing this way. I am going away soon.”

“Going away soon! Where to?”

“Oh! I have met so many people,” began Costantino, in the tone of one reciting a lesson. “And I have friends who will help me. What is there for me to do here, anyhow?”

“Why, shoemaking! Didn’t you write to me that that was what you wanted to do?”

“I know a marshal named Burrai,” continued Costantino, who always thought of the King of Spades as still holding office. “He lives in Rome now, and he’s written me a letter; he’s going to get me a position in the King’s household to be shoemaker.”

Isidoro looked at him pitifully. “Ah, the poor fellow, he was altogether different. What made him talk like that, and tell all those foolish little things when there were such heartrending topics to discuss.” Thus Uncle Isidoro to his own heart.

Pretty soon, however, he began to suspect that Costantino was putting all this on, and that his apparent indifference was assumed. But why? If he could not be open and natural with him, with whom could he be? “Come,” said he, “let us talk of other things now; we can discuss all that later. Really, though, won’t you have a little coffee? It would do you good.”

“What do you want to talk about?” asked Costantino drearily. “I knew you would think it strange that I don’t cry, but I’ve cried until I haven’t the wish to any more. And I am going away; one can’t stay in this place after having crossed the sea⁠—who is that going by?” he asked suddenly, as the sound of footsteps was heard outside. “I don’t want any one to see me,” and he jumped up and shut the door.

When he turned, his whole expression had changed and his features were working.

“I walked by there,” he said, his voice sinking lower and lower, “on my way here. I didn’t want to, but somehow I found myself there before I knew it. How can I⁠—how can I stay here? Tell me⁠—you⁠—”

He clasped both hands to his forehead and shook his head violently; then, throwing himself at full length on the ground, he writhed and twisted in an agony of sobs, his whole body shaking with the vehemence of his grief. He was like a young bull caught and held fast in the leash, and made to submit to the red-hot iron.

The old fisherman turned deathly white, but made no attempt whatever to calm him. At last, at last, he recognised his friend.

No sooner had news of Costantino’s return got abroad than visitors began to stream to Isidoro’s hut. Throughout the entire day there was an incessant coming and going of friends and relatives, and even of persons who had never in their lives so much as interchanged a word with the late prisoner, but who now hastened with open arms to invite him to make his home with them. The women wept over him, called him “my son,” and gazed at him compassionately; one neighbour sent him a present of bread and sausages. All these kindly demonstrations seemed, however, only to annoy their object.

“Why on earth should they be sorry for me?” he said to Isidoro. “For Heaven’s sake, send them about their business, and let’s get away into the country.”

“Yes, yes, we will go, all in good time, child of the Lord, only have a little patience,” said the other, bending over the fireplace, where he was cooking the sausage. “How naughty you are, I declare!”

Since witnessing that paroxysm of grief in the morning, Uncle Isidoro had felt much more at ease with his guest, and even took little liberties with him, scolding him as though he had been a child. During the short intervals when they found themselves alone, he told him the facts. Costantino listened eagerly, and was annoyed when the arrival of fresh visitors interrupted the narrative. Among these visitors came the syndic, he who was a herdsman, and looked like Napoleon I. His call was especially trying.

“We will give you sheep and cows,” he began, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “Yes, every herdsman will give you a pecus,13 and if there is anything you need, just say so; are we not all brothers and sisters in this world, and especially in a small community like this?”

Costantino, thinking of the treatment he had received at the hands of his “brothers