When Hermione got out of the boat in the little harbor of the village on the mainland Gaspare said again:
“I could easily row you to Mergellina, Signore. I am not a bit tired.”
She looked at him as he stood with his hand on the prow of the boat. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, showing his strong arms. There was something brave, something “safe”—so she called it to herself—in his whole appearance which had always appealed to her nature. How she longed at that moment to be quite at ease with him! Why would he not trust her completely? Perhaps in her glance just then she showed her thought, her desire. Gaspare’s eyes fell before her.
“I think I’ll take the tram,” she said, “unless—”
She was still looking at him, longing for him to speak. But he said nothing. At that moment a fisherman ran down the steps from the village, and came over the sand to greet them.
“Good-bye, Gaspare,” she said. “Don’t wait, of course. Giovanni can row me back.”
The fisherman smiled, but Gaspare said:
“I can come for you, Signora. You will not be very long, will you? You will be back for colazione?”
“Oh yes, I suppose so.”
“I will come for you, Signora.”
Again she looked at him, and felt his deep loyalty to her, his strong and almost doglike affection. And, feeling them, she was seized once more by fear. The thing Gaspare hid from her must be something terrible.
“Thank you, Gaspare.”
“A rivederci, Signora.”
Was there not a sound of pleading in his voice, a longing to retain her? She would not heed it. But she gave him a very gentle look as she turned to walk up the hill.
At the top, by the Trattoria del Giardinetto, she had to wait for several minutes before the tram came. She remembered her solitary dinner there on the evening when she had gone to the Scoglio di Frisio to look at the visitor’s book. She had felt lonely then in the soft light of the fading day. She felt far more lonely now in the brilliant sunshine of morning. And for an instant she saw herself travelling steadily along a straight road, from which she could not diverge. She passed milestone after milestone. And now, not far off, she saw in the distance a great darkness in which the road ended. And the darkness was the ultimate loneliness which can encompass on earth the human spirit.
The tram-bell sounded. She lifted her head mechanically. A moment later she was rushing down towards Naples. Before the tram reached the harbor of Mergellina, on the hill opposite the Donn’ Anna, Hermione got out. Something in her desired delay; there was plenty of time. She would walk a little way among the lively people who were streaming to the Stabilimenti to have their morning dip.
In the tram she had scarcely thought at all. She had given herself to the air, to speed, to vision. Now, at once, with physical action came an anxiety, a restlessness, that seemed to her very physical too. Her body felt ill, she thought; though she knew there was nothing the matter with her. All through her life her health had been robust. Never yet had she completely “broken down.” She told herself that her body was perfectly well.
But she was afraid. That was the truth. And to feel fear was specially hateful to her, because she abhorred cowardice, and was inclined to despise all timidity as springing from weakness of character.
She dreaded reaching Mergellina. She dreaded seeing this woman, Ruffo’s mother. And Ruffo? Did she dread seeing him?
She fought against her fear. Whatever might befall her she would remain herself, essentially separate from all other beings and from events, secure of the tremendous solitude that is the property of every human being on earth.
“Pain, misery, horror, come from within, not from without.” She said that to herself steadily. “I am free so long as I choose, so long as I have the courage to choose, to be free.”
And saying that, and never once allowing her mind to state frankly any fear, she came down to the harbor of Mergellina.
The harbor and its environs looked immensely gay in the brilliant sunshine. Life was at play here, even at its busiest. The very workers sang as if their work were play. Boats went in and out on the water. Children paddled in the shallow sea, pushing hand-nets along the sand. From the rocks boys were bathing. Their shouts travelled to the road where the fishermen were talking with intensity, as they leaned against the wall hot with the splendid sun.
Hermione looked for Ruffo’s face among all these sun-browned faces, for his bright eyes among all the sparkling eyes of these children of the sea.
But she could not see him. She walked along the wall slowly.
“Ruffo—Ruffo—Ruffo!”
She was summoning him with her mind.
Perhaps he was among those bathing boys. She looked across the harbor to the rocks, and saw the brown body of one shoot through the shining air and disappear with a splash into the sea.
Perhaps that boy was he—how far away from her loneliness, her sadness, and her dread!
She began to despair of finding him.
“Barca! Barca!”
She had reached the steps now near the Savoy Hotel. A happy-looking boatman, with hazel eyes and a sensitive mouth, hailed her from the water. It was Fabiano Lari, to whom Artois had once spoken, waiting for custom in his boat theStella del Mare.
Hermione was attracted to the man, as Artois had been, and she resolved to find out from him, if possible, where Ruffo’s mother lived. She went down the steps. The man immediately brought his boat right in.
“No,” she said, “I don’t want the boat.”
Fabiano looked a little disappointed.
“I am looking for some one who lives here, a Sicilian boy called Ruffo.”
“Ruffo Scarla, Signora? The Sicilian?”
“That must be he. Do you know him?”
“Si, Signora, I know Ruffo very well. He was here this morning. But I don’t know where he is now.” He looked round. “He may have gone home, Signora.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Si, Signora. It is near where I live. It’s near the Grotto.”
“Could you possibly leave your boat and take me there?”
“Si, Signora! A moment, Signora.”
Quickly he signed to a boy who was standing close by watching them. The boy ran down to the boat. Fabiano spoke to him in dialect. He got into the boat, while Fabiano jumped ashore.
“Signora, I am ready. We go this way.”
They walked along together.
Fabiano was as frank and simple as a child, and began at once to talk. Hermione was glad of that, still more glad that he talked of himself, his family, the life and affairs of a boatman. She listened sympathetically, occasionally putting in a word, till suddenly Fabiano said:
“Antonio Bernari will be out to-day. I suppose you know that, Signora?”
“Antonio Bernari! Who is he? I never heard of him.”
Fabiano looked surprised.
“But he is Ruffo’s Patrigno. He is the husband of Maddalena.”
Hermione stood still on the pavement. She did not know why for a moment. Her mind seemed to need a motionless body in which to work. It was surely groping after something, eagerly, feverishly, yet blindly.
Fabiano paused beside her.
“Signora,” he said, staring at her in surprise, “are you tired? Are you not well?”
“I’m quite well. But wait a minute. Yes, I do want to rest for a minute.”
She dared not move lest she should interfere with that mental search. Fabiano’s words had sent her mind sharply to Sicily.
Maddalena!
She was sure she had known, or heard of, some girl in Sicily called Maddalena, some girl or some woman. She thought of the servants in the Casa del Prete, Lucrezia. Had she any sister, any relation called Maddalena? Or had Gaspare—?
Suddenly Hermione seemed to be on the little terrace above the ravine with Maurice and Artois. She seemed to feel the heat of noon in summer. Gaspare was there, too. She saw his sullen face. She saw him looking ugly. She heard him say:
“Salvatore and Maddalena, Signora.”
Why had he said that? In answer to what question?
And then, in a flash, she remembered everything. It was she who had spoken first. She had asked him who lived in the House of the Sirens.
“Salvatore and Maddalena.”
And afterwards—Maurice had said something. Her mind went in search, seized its prey.
“They’re quite friends of ours. We saw them at the fair only yesterday.”
Maurice had said that. She could hear his voice saying it.
“I’m rested now.”
She was speaking to Fabiano. They were walking on again among the chattering people. They had come to the wooden station where the tram-lines converge.
“Is it this way?”
“Si, Signora, quite near the Grotto. Take care, Signora.”
“It’s all right. Thank you.”
They had crossed now and were walking up the street that leads directly to the tunnel, whose mouth confronted them in the distance. Hermione felt as if they were going to enter it, were going to walk down it to the great darkness which seemed to wait for her, to beckon her. But presently Fabiano turned to the right, and they came into a street leading up the hill, and stopped almost immediately before a tall house.
“Antonio and Maddalena live here, Signora.”
“And Ruffo,” she said, as if correcting him.
“Ruffo! Si, Signora, of course.”
Hermione looked at the house. It was evidently let out in rooms to people who were comparatively poor; not very poor, not in any destitution, but who made a modest livelihood, and could pay their fourteen or fifteen lire a month for lodging. She divined by its aspect that every room was occupied. For the building teemed with life, and echoed with the sound of calling, or screaming, voices. The inhabitants were surely all of them in a flurry of furious activity. Children were playing before and upon the door-step, which was flanked by an open shop, whose interior revealed with a blatant sincerity a rummage of mysterious edibles—fruit, vegetables, strings of strange objects that looked poisonous, fungi, and other delights. Above, from several windows, women leaned out, talking violently to one another. Two were holding babies, who testified their new-born sense of life by screaming shrilly. Across other window-spaces heads passed to and fro, denoting the continuous movement of those within. People in the street called to people in the house, and the latter shouted in answer, with that absolute lack of self-consciousness and disregard of the opinions of others which is the hall-mark of the true Neapolitan. From the corner came the rumble and the bell notes of the trams going to and coming from the tunnel that leads to Fuorigrotta. And from every direction rose the vehement street calls of ambulant venders of the necessaries of Neapolitan life.
“Ruffo lives here!” said Hermione.
She could hardly believe it. So unsuitable seemed such a dwelling to that bright-eyed child of the sea, whom she had always seen surrounded by the wide airs and the waters.
“Si, Signora. They are on the third floor. Shall I take you up?”
Hermione hesitated. Should she go up alone?
“Please show me the way,” she said, deciding.
Fabiano preceded her up a dirty stone staircase, dark and full of noises, till they came to the third floor.
“It is here, Signora!”
He knocked loudly on a door. It was opened very quickly, as if by some one who was on the watch, expectant of an arrival.
“Chi e?” cried a female voice.
And, almost simultaneously, a woman appeared with eyes that stared in inquiry.
By these eyes, their shape, and the long, level brows above them, Hermione knew that this woman must be Ruffo’s mother.
“Good-morning, Donna Maddalena,” said Fabiano, heartily.
“Good-morning,” said the woman, directing her eyes with a strange and pertinacious scrutiny to Hermione, who stood behind him. “I thought perhaps it was—”
She stopped. Behind, in the doorway, appeared the head of a young woman, covered with blue-black hair, then the questioning face of an old woman with a skin like yellow parchment.
“Don Antonio?”
She nodded, keeping her long, Arab eyes on Hermione.
“No. Are you expecting him so early?”
“He may come at any time. Chi lo sa?”
She shrugged her broad, graceless shoulders.
“It isn’t he! It isn’t Antonio!” bleated a pale and disappointed voice, with a peculiarly irritating timbre.
It was the voice of the old woman, who now darted over Maddalena Bernari’s shoulder a hostile glance at Hermione.
“Madonna Santissima!” baaed the woman with the blue-black hair. “Perhaps he will not be let out to-day!”
The old woman began to cry feebly, yet angrily.
“Courage, Madre Teresa!” said Fabiano. “Antonio will be here to-day for a certainty. Every one knows it. His friends”—he raised a big brown hand significantly—“his friends have managed well for him.”
“Si! si! It is true!” said the black-haired woman, nodding her large head, and gesticulating towards Madre Teresa. “He will be here to-day. Antonio will be here.”
They all stared at Hermione, suddenly forgetting their personal and private affairs.
“Donna Maddalena,” said Fabiano, “here is a signora who knows Ruffo. I met her at the Mergellina, and she asked me to show her the way here.”
“Ruffo is out,” said Maddalena, always keeping her eyes on Hermione.
“May I come in and speak to you?” asked Hermione.
Maddalena looked doubtful, yet curious.
“My son is in the sea, Signora. He is bathing at the Marina.”
Hermione thought of the brown body she had seen falling through the shining air, of the gay splash as it entered the water.
“I know your son so well that I should like to know his mother,” she said.
Fabiano by this time had moved aside, and the two women were confronting each other in the doorway. Behind Maddalena the two other women stared and listened with all their might, giving their whole attention to this unexpected scene.
“Are you the Signora of the island?” asked Maddalena.
“Yes, I am.”
“Let the Signora in, Donna Maddalena,” said Fabiano. “She is tired and wants to rest.”
Without saying anything Maddalena moved her broad body from the doorway, leaving enough space for Hermione to enter.
“Thank you,” said Hermione to Fabiano, giving him a couple of lire.
“Grazie, Signora. I will wait down-stairs to take you back.”
He went off before she had time to tell him that was not necessary.
Hermione walked into Ruffo’s home.
There were two rooms, one opening into the other. The latter was a kitchen, the former the sleeping-room. Hermione looked quietly round it, and her eyes fell at once upon a large green parrot, which was sitting at the end of the board on which, supported by trestles of iron, the huge bed of Maddalena and her husband was laid. At present this bed was rolled up, and in consequence towered to a considerable height. The parrot looked at Hermione coldly, with round, observant eyes whose pupils kept contracting and expanding with a monotonous regularity. She felt as if it had a soul that was frigidly ironic. Its pertinacious glance chilled and repelled her, and she fancied it was reflected in the faces of the women round her.
“Can I speak to you alone for a few minutes?” she asked Maddalena.
Maddalena turned to the two women and spoke to them loudly in dialect. They replied. The old woman spoke at great length. She seemed always angry and always upon the verge of tears. Over her shoulders she wore a black shawl, and as she talked she kept fidgeting with it, pulling it first to one side, then to the other, or dragging at it with her thin and crooked yellow fingers. The parrot watched her steadily. Her hideous voice played upon Hermione’s nerves till they felt raw. At length, looking back, as she walked, with bloodshot eyes, she went into the kitchen, followed by the young woman. They began talking together in sibilant whispers, like people conspiring.
After a moment of apparent hesitation Maddalena gave her visitor a chair.
“Thank you,” Hermione said, taking it.
She looked round the room again. It was clean and well kept, but humbly furnished. Ruffo’s bed was rolled up in a corner. On the walls were some shields of postcards and photographs, such as the poor Italians love, deftly enough arranged and fastened together by some mysterious not apparent means. Many of the postcards were American. Near two small flags, American and Italian, fastened crosswise above the head of the big bed, was a portrait of Maria Addolorata, under which burned a tiny light. A palm, blessed, and fashioned like a dagger with a cross for the hilt, was nailed above it, with a coral charm to protect the household against the evil eye. And a little to the right of it was a small object which Hermione saw and wondered at without understanding why it should be there, or what was its use—aFattura della morte(death-charm), in the form of a green lemon pierced with many nails. This hung by a bit of string to a nail projecting from the wall.
From the death-charm Hermione turned her eyes to Maddalena.
She saw a woman who was surely not very much younger than herself, with a broad and spreading figure, wide hips, plump though small-boned arms, heavy shoulders. The face—that, perhaps—yes, that, certainly—must have been once pretty. Very pretty? Hermione looked searchingly at it until she saw Maddalena’s eyes drop before hers suddenly, as if embarrassed. She must say something. But now that she was here she felt a difficulty in opening a conversation, an intense reluctance to speak to this woman into whose house she had almost forced her way. With the son she was strangely intimate. From the mother she felt separated by a gulf.
And that fear of hers?
She looked again round the room. Had that fear increased or diminished? Her eyes fell on Maria Addolorata, then on theFattura della morte. She did not know why, but she was moved to speak about it.
“You have nice rooms here,” she said.
“Si, Signora.”
Maddalena had rather a harsh voice. She spoke politely, but inexpressively.
“What a curious thing that is on the wall!”
“Signora?”
“It’s a lemon, isn’t it? With nails stuck through it?”
Maddalena’s broad face grew a dusky red.
“That is nothing, Signora!” she said, hastily.
She looked greatly disturbed, suddenly went over to the bed, unhooked the string from the nail, and put the death-charm into her pocket. As she came back she looked at Hermione with defiance in her eyes.
The gulf between them had widened.
From the kitchen came the persistent sound of whispering voices. The green parrot turned sideways on the board beyond the pile of rolled-up mattresses, and looked, with one round eye, steadfastly at Hermione.
An almost intolerable sensation of desertion swept over her. She felt as if every one hated her.
“Would you mind shutting that door?” she said to Maddalena, pointing towards the kitchen.
The sound of whispers ceased. The women within were listening.
“Signora, we always keep it open.”
“But I have something to say to you that I wish to say in private.”
“Si!”
The exclamation was suspicious. The voice sounded harsher than before. In the kitchen the silence seemed to increase, to thrill with anxious curiosity.
“Please shut that door.”
It was like an order. Maddalena obeyed it, despite a cataract of words from the old woman that voiced indignant protest.
“And do sit down, won’t you? I don’t like to sit while you are standing.”
“Signora, I—”
“Please do sit down.”
Hermione’s voice began to show her acute nervous agitation. Maddalena stared, then took another chair from its place against the wall, and sat down at some distance from Hermione. She folded her plump hands in her lap. Seated, she looked bigger, more graceless, than before. But Hermione saw that she was not really middle-aged. Hard life and trouble doubtless had combined to destroy her youth and beauty early, to coarsen the outlines, to plant the many wrinkles that spread from the corners of her eyes and lips to her temples and her heavy, dusky cheeks. She was now a typical woman of the people. Hermione tried to see her as a girl, long ago—years and years ago.
“I know your son Ruffo very well,” she said.
Maddalena’s face softened.
“Si, Signora. He has told me of you.”
Suddenly she seemed to recollect something.
“I have never—Signora, thank you for the money,” she said.
The harshness was withdrawn from her voice as she spoke now, and in her abrupt gentleness she looked much younger than before. Hermione divined in that moment her vanished beauty. It seemed suddenly to be unveiled by her tenderness.
“I heard you were in trouble.”
“Si, Signora—great trouble.”
Her eyes filled with tears and her mouth worked. As if moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she thrust one hand into her dress, drew out the death-charm, and contemplated it, at the same time muttering some words that Hermione did not understand. Her face became full of hatred. Holding up the charm, and lifting her head, she exclaimed:
“Those who bring trouble shall have trouble!”
While she spoke she looked straight before her, and her voice became harsh again, seemed to proclaim to the world unalterable destiny.
“Yes,” said Hermione, in a low voice.
Maddalena hid the death-charm once more with a movement that was surreptitious.
“Yes,” Hermione said again, gazing into Maddalena’s still beautiful eyes. “And you have trouble!”
Maddalena looked afraid, like an ignorant person whose tragic superstition is proved true by an assailing fact.
“Signora!”
“You have trouble in your house. Have you ever brought trouble to any one? Have you?”
Maddalena stared at her with dilated eyes, but made no answer.
“Tell me something.” Hermione leaned forward. “You know my servant, Gaspare?”
Maddalena was silent.
“You know Gaspare. Did you know him in Sicily?”
“Sicily?” Her face and her voice had become stupid. “Sicily?” she repeated.
The parrot shifted on the board, lifted its left claw, and craned its head forward in the direction of the two women. The tram-bell sounded its reiterated appeal.
“Yes, in Sicily. You are a Sicilian?”
“Who says so?”
“Your son is a Sicilian. At the port they call him ‘Il Siciliano.’”
“Do they?”
Her intellect seemed to be collapsing. She looked almost bovine.
Hermione’s excitement began to be complicated by a feeling of hot anger.
“But don’t you know it? You must know it!”
The parrot shuffled slowly along the board, coming nearer to them, and bowing its head obsequiously. Hermione could not help watching its movements with a strained attention. Its presence distracted her. She had a longing to take it up and wring its neck. Yet she loved birds.
“You must know it!” she repeated, no longer looking at Maddalena.
“Si!”
All ignorance and all stupidity were surely enshrined in that word thus said.
“Where did you know Gaspare?”
“Who says I know Gaspare?”
The way in which she pronounced his name revealed to Hermione a former intimacy between them.
“Ruffo says so.”
The parrot was quite at the edge of the board now, listening apparently with cold intensity to every word that was being said. And Hermione felt that behind the kitchen door the two women were straining their ears to catch the conversation. Was the whole world listening? Was the whole world coldly, cruelly intent upon her painful effort to come out of darkness into—perhaps a greater darkness?
“Ruffo says so. Ruffo told me so.”
“Boys say anything.”
“Do you mean it is not true?”
Maddalena’s face was now almost devoid of expression. She had set her knees wide apart and planted her hands on them.
“Do you mean that?” repeated Hermione.
“Boys—”
“I know it is true. You knew Gaspare in Sicily. You come from Marechiaro.”
At the mention of the last word light broke into Maddalena’s face.
“You are from Marechiaro. Have you ever seen me before? Do you remember me?”
Maddalena shook her head.
“And I—I don’t remember you. But you are from Marechiaro. You must be.”
Maddalena shook her head again.
“You are not?”
Hermione looked into the long Arab eyes, searching for a lie. She met a gaze that was steady but dull, almost like that of a sulky child, and for a moment she felt as if this woman was only a great child, heavy, ignorant, but solemnly determined, a child that had learned its lesson and was bent on repeating it word for word.
“Did Gaspare come here early this morning to see you?” she asked, with sudden vehemence.
Maddalena was obviously startled. Her face flushed.
“Why should he come?” she said, almost angrily.
“That is what I want you to tell me.”
Maddalena was silent. She shifted uneasily in her chair, which creaked under her weight, and twisted her full lips sideways. Her whole body looked half-sleepily apprehensive. The parrot watched her with supreme attention. Suddenly Hermione felt that she could no longer bear this struggle, that she could no longer continue in darkness, that she must have full light. The contemplation of this stolid ignorance—that yet knew how much?—confronting her like a featureless wall almost maddened her.
“Who are you?” she said. “What have you had to do with my lie?”
Maddalena looked at her and looked away, bending her head sideways till her plump neck was like a thing deformed.
“What have you had to do with my life? What have you to do with it now? I want to know!” She stood up. “I must know. You must tell me! Do you hear?” She bent down. She was standing almost over Maddalena. “You must tell me!”
There was again a silence through which presently the tram-bell sounded. Maddalena’s face had become heavily expressionless, almost like a face of stone. And Hermione, looking down at this face, felt a moment of impotent despair that was succeeded by a fierce, energetic impulse.
“Then,” she said—“then—I’ll tell you!”
Maddalena looked up.
“Yes, I’ll tell you.”
Hermione paused. She had begun to tremble. She put one hand down to the back of the chair, grasping it tightly as if to steady herself.
“I’ll tell you.”
What? What was she going to tell?
That first evening in Sicily—just before they went in to bed—Maurice had looked down over the terrace wall to the sea. He had seen a light—far down by the sea.
It was the light in the House of the Sirens.
“You once lived in Sicily. You once lived in the Casa delle Sirene, beyond the old wall, beyond the inlet. You were there when we were in Sicily, when Gaspare was with us as our servant.”
Maddalena’s lips parted. Her mouth began to gape. It was obvious that she was afraid.
“You—you knew Gaspare. You knew—you knew my husband, the Signore of the Casa del Prete on Monte Amato. You knew him. Do you remember?”
Maddalena only stared up at her with a sort of heavy apprehension, sitting widely in her chair, with her feet apart and her hands always resting on her knees.
“It was in the summer-time—” She was again in Sicily. She was tracing out a story. It was almost as if she saw words and read them from a book. “There were no forestieri in Sicily. They had all gone. Only we were there—” An expression so faint that it was like a fleeting shadow passed over Maddalena’s face, the fleeting shadow of something that denied. “Ah, yes! Till I went away, you mean! I went to Africa. Did you know it then? But before I went—before—” She was thinking, she was burrowing deep down into the past, stirring the heap of memories that lay like drifted leaves. “They used to go—at least they went once—down to the sea. One night they went to the fishing. And they slept out all night. They slept in the caves. Ah, you know that? You remember that night!”
The trembling that shook her body was reflected in her voice, which became tremulous. She heard the tram-bell ringing. She saw the green parrot listening on its board. And yet she was in Sicily, and saw the line of the coast between Messina and Cattaro, the Isle of the Sirens, the lakelike sea of the inlet between it and the shore.
“I see that you remember it. You saw them there. They—they didn’t tell me!”
As she said the last words she felt that she was entering the great darkness. Maurice and Gaspare—she had trusted them with all her nature. And they—had they failed her? Was that possible?
“They didn’t tell me,” she repeated, piteously, speaking now only for herself and to her own soul. “They didn’t tell me!”
Maddalena shook her head like one in sympathy or agreement. But Hermione did not see the movement. She no longer saw Maddalena. She saw only herself, and those two, whom she had trusted so completely, and—who had not told her.
What had they not told her?
And then she was in Africa, beside the bed of Artois, ministering to him in the torrid heat, driving away the flies from his white face.
What had been done in the Garden of Paradise while she had been in exile?
She turned suddenly sick. Her body felt ashamed, defiled. A shutter seemed to be sharply drawn across her eyes, blotting out life. Her head was full of sealike noises.
Presently, from among these noises, one detached itself, pushed itself, as it were, forward to attract forcibly her attention—the sound of a boy’s voice.
“Signora! Signora!”
“Signora!”
A hand touched her, gripped her.
“Signora!”
The shutter was sharply drawn back from her eyes, and she saw Ruffo. He stood before her, gazing at her. His hair, wet from the sea, was plastered down upon his brown forehead—ashishair had been when, in the night, they drew him from the sea.
She saw Ruffo in that moment as if for the first time.
And she knew. Ruffo had told her.
Hermione was outside in the street, hearing the cries of ambulant sellers, the calls of women and children, the tinkling bells and the rumble of the trams, and the voice of Fabiano Lari speaking—was it to her?
“Signora, did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“He is glad to be out of prison. He is gay, but he looks wicked.”
She did not understand what he meant. She walked on and came into the road that leads to the tunnel. She turned mechanically towards the tunnel, drawn by the darkness.
“But, Signora, this is not the way! This is the way to Fuorigrotta!”
“Oh!”
She went towards the sea. She was thinking of the green parrot expanding and contracting the pupils of its round, ironic eyes.
“Was Maddalena pleased to see him? Was Donna Teresa pleased?”
Hermione stood still.
“What are you talking about?”
“Signora! About Antonio Bernari, who has just come home from prison! Didn’t you see him? But you were there—in the house!”
“Oh—yes, I saw him. A rivederci!”
“Ma—”
“A rivederci!”
She felt in her purse, found a coin, and gave it to him. Then she walked on. She did not see him any more. She did not know what became of him.
Of course she had seen the return of Antonio Bernari. She remembered now. As Ruffo stood before her with the wet hair on his forehead there had come a shrill cry from the old woman in the kitchen: a cry that was hideous and yet almost beautiful, so full it was of joy. Then from the kitchen the two women had rushed in, gesticulating, ejaculating, their faces convulsed with excitement. They had seized Maddalena, Ruffo. One of them—the old woman, she thought—had even clutched at Hermione’s arm. The room had been full of cries.
“Ecco! Antonio!”
“Antonio is coming!”
“I have seen Antonio!”
“He is pale! He is white like death!”
“Mamma mia! But he is thin!”
“Ecco! Ecco! He comes! Here he is! Here is Antonio!”
And then the door had been opened, and on the sill a big, broad-shouldered man had appeared, followed by several other evil-looking though smiling men. And all the women had hurried to them. There had been shrill cries, a babel of voices, a noise of kisses.
And Ruffo! Where had he been? What had he done?
Hermione only knew that she had head a rough voice saying:
“Sangue del Diavolo! Let me alone! Give me a glass of wine! Basta! Basta!”
And then she went out in the street, thinking of the green parrot and hearing the cries of the sellers, the tram-bells, and Fabiano’s questioning voice.
Now she continued her walk towards the harbor of Mergellina alone. The thought of the green parrot obsessed her mind.
She saw it before her on its board, with the rolled-up bed towering behind it. Now it was motionless—only the pupils of its eyes moved. Now it lifted its claw, bowed its head, shuffled along the board to hear their conversation better.
She saw it with extreme distinctness, and now she also saw on the wall of the room near it the “Fattura della Morte”—the green lemon with the nails stuck through it, like nails driven into a cross.
Vaguely the word “crucifixion” went through her mind. Many people, many women, had surely been crucified since the greatest tragedy the world had ever known. What had they felt, they who were only human, they who could not see the face of the Father, who could—some of them, perhaps—only hope that there was a Father? What had they felt? Perhaps scarcely anything. Perhaps merely a sensation of numbness, as if their whole bodies, and their minds, too, were under the influence of a great injection of cocaine. Her thoughts again returned to the parrot. She wondered where it had been bought, whether it had come with Antonio from America.
Presently she reached the tramway station and stood still. She had to go back to the “Trattoria del Giardinetto.” She must take the tram here, one of those on which was written in big letters, “Capo di Posilipo.” No, not that! That did not go far enough. The other one—what was written upon it? Something—“Sette Settembre.” She looked for the words “Sette Settembre.”
Tram after tram came up, paused, passed on. But she did not see those words on any of them. She began to think of the sea, of the brown body of the bathing boy which she had seen shoot through the air and disappear into the shining water before she had gone to that house where the green parrot was. She would go down to the sea, to the harbor.
She threaded her way across the broad space, going in and out among the trams and the waiting people. Then she went down a road not far from the Grand Hotel and came to the Marina.
There were boys bathing still from the breakwater of the rocks. And still they were shouting. She stood by the wall and watched them, resting her hands on the stone.
How hot the stone was! Gaspare had been right. It was going to be a glorious day, one of the tremendous days of summer.
The nails driven through the green lemon like nails driven through a cross—Peppina—the cross cut on Peppina’s cheek.
That broad-shouldered man who had come in at the door had cut that cross on Peppina’s cheek.
Was it true that Peppina had the evil eye? Had it been a fatal day for the Casa del Mare when she had been allowed to cross its threshold? Vere had said something—what was it?—about Peppina and her cross. Oh yes! That Peppina’s cross seemed like a sign, a warning come into the house on the island, that it seemed to say, “There is a cross to be borne by some one here, by one of us!”
And the fishermen’s sign of the cross under the light of San Francesco?
Surely there had been many warnings in her life. They had been given to her, but she had not heeded them.
She saw a brown body shoot through the air from the rocks and disappear into the shining sea. Was it Ruffo? With an effort she remembered that she had left Ruffo in the tall house, in the room where the green parrot was.
She walked on slowly till she came to the place where Artois had seen Ruffo with his mother. A number of tables were set out, but there were few people sitting at them. She felt tired. She crossed the road, went to a table, and sat down. A waiter came up and asked her what she would have.
“Acqua fresca,” she said.
He looked surprised.
“Oh—then wine, vermouth—anything!”
He looked more surprised.
“Will you have vermouth, Signora?”
“Yes, yes—vermouth.”
He brought her vermouth and iced water. She mixed them together and drank. But she was not conscious of tasting anything. For a considerable time she sat there. People passed her. The trams rushed by. On several of them were printed the words she had looked for in vain at the station. But she did not notice them.
During this time she did not feel unhappy. Seldom had she felt calmer, more at rest, more able to be still. She had no desire to do anything. It seemed to her that she would be quite satisfied to sit where she was in the sun forever.
While she sat there she was always thinking, but vaguely, slowly, lethargically. And her thoughts reiterated themselves, were like recurring fragments of dreams, and were curiously linked together. The green parrot she always connected with the death-charm, because the latter had once been green. Whenever the one presented itself to her mind it was immediately followed by the other. The shawl at which the old woman’s yellow fingers had perpetually pulled led her mind to the thought of the tunnel, because she imagined that the latter must eventually end in blackness, and the shawl was black. She knew, of course, really that the tunnel was lit from end to end by electricity. But her mind arbitrarily put aside this knowledge. It did not belong to her strange mood, the mood of one drawing near to the verge either of some abominable collapse or of some terrible activity. Occasionally, she thought of Ruffo; but always as one of the brown boys bathing from the rocks beyond the harbor, shouting, laughing, triumphant in his glorious youth. And when the link was, as it were, just beginning to form itself from the thought-shape of youth to another thought-shape, her mind stopped short in that progress, recoiled, like a creature recoiling from a precipice it has not seen but has divined in the dark. She sipped the vermouth and the iced water, and stared at the drops chasing each other down the clouded glass. And for a time she was not conscious where she was, and heard none of the noises round about her.
It was the song of Mergellina, sung at some distance off in dialect, by a tenor voice to the accompaniment of a piano-organ. Hermione ceased from gazing at the drops on the glass, looked up, listened.
The song came nearer. The tenor voice was hard, strident, sang lustily but inexpressively in the glaring sunshine. And the dialect made the song seem different, almost new. Its charm seemed to have evaporated. Yet she remembered vaguely that it had charmed her. She sought for the charm, striving feebly to recapture it.
The piano-organ hurt her, the hard voice hurt her. It sounded cruel and greedy. But the song—once it had appealed to her. Once she had leaned down to hear it, she had leaned down over the misty sea, her soul had followed it out over the sea.