[13]Thesestornellicalledmutosare improvised by the women of the Nuoro district. The subject of the first three lines is always independent of the subject of the second three, the two verses being connected only by the rhyme.
[13]Thesestornellicalledmutosare improvised by the women of the Nuoro district. The subject of the first three lines is always independent of the subject of the second three, the two verses being connected only by the rhyme.
"'Twas now the hour that turneth backdesireTo those who sail the sea; and melts theheart,"—
"'Twas now the hour that turneth backdesireTo those who sail the sea; and melts theheart,"—
"'Twas now the hour that turneth backdesireTo those who sail the sea; and melts theheart,"—
of those about to visit unknown shores. Among these was Anania. The train had carried him to the coast. It was evening, a clear, still autumn evening heavy with melancholy. The dented mountains of Gallura were faintly visible in the violet distance. The air was scented with heather blossom. A far off village with greycampanileagainst the violet sky came into sight. Anania looked at the strange outline of the mountains, at the quiet sky, at the cistus bushes among the rocks, and nothing kept back his tears but the fear of ridicule from his fellow-travellers: a priest, and a student from lowland Campidano who had once been his school-fellow.
At last he was a man! True he had thought himself a man ever since he was fifteen, but then he had thought himself a young man, now he was an "old young man." Youth, however, and health shone in his eyes. He was tall and slim with a seductive little gold-tipped chestnut moustache. Now stars came out above the Gallura range, here and there fires shone red among the dark tufts of heath. Good-bye, then, native land, sad island, aged Mother, loved but not loved enough. A powerful voice from beyond the sea draws your best sons from your warm lap, even as the wind calls the young eagles, inviting them to leave their nest among the lonely crags. The student looked at the horizon and his eyes darkened with the sky. For how many, many years had he not heard the voice which was calling him away!
He remembered the adventure with Bustianeddu, the childish project of flight; then the ceaseless dreams, the inextinguishable desire for a journey towards the lands beyond the sea. Yet now that he was leaving the island he felt sad, half repenting that he had not gone on with his studies at Cagliari. He had been so happy there! Last May, Margherita had come for the fantastic splendours of the Feast of St Efès. He had spent never-to-be-forgotten hours with her among merry companies of fellow citizens. Margherita was charming, very tall and well-formed. Her beautiful hair, her dark blue eyes shadowed by long black lashes, attracted the attention of passers-by who turned their heads to look at her. Anania, slighter and shorter than she, walked by her side trembling with jealousy and joy. It seemed impossible that this beautiful creature, so regal, so reserved, in whose disdainful eyes shone the pride of an imperial race, should abase herself to love, even to look at him. Margherita talked little. She was no flirt, and unlike the generality of women did not change look or voice when a man admired or addressed her. Was this superiority, simplicity, or contempt?
"Am I enough for her?" the lover asked himself. "Yes, surely, for she feels that no other love can equal mine."
He really did love her very deeply. He had eyes for no one else. He never looked at a woman except to compare her with Margherita and find her inferior. The more he became a man, the more she a woman, the more their love took flame. Anania had days of delirium in which he thought of the long years that must elapse ere he could have her, and felt the waiting an impossibility, felt he must die consumed by desire. But on the whole he loved her calmly, with patience, with constancy, and purity.
During the last vacation they had often been alone together in Margherita's courtyard, under the chaste eyes of the stars, the impassive face of the moon. Their meetings were facilitated by the servant who was also the medium of their correspondence. For the most part they were silent, Margherita trembling lightly, pensive, and vigilant. Anania panted, smiled, and sighed, oblivious of time and space, of all the things and affairs of men.
"You are so cold!" he would say. "Why don't you speak the same words that you write?"
"I'm afraid."
"Of what? If your father surprises us, I will kneel to him and say, 'No, we are doing no harm. We are united for eternity.' Don't be afraid, my dearest! I will be worthy of you. I have a future before me. I intend to besomebody."
She made no answer. She did not say that if Signor Carboni were to find out, the future might be shattered. But she continued vigilant.
At bottom her coldness was not displeasing to Anania, and only augmented his ardour. Often seeing her so beautiful and so frozen, her eyes shining in the moonlight like the pearl eyes of an idol, he dared not kiss her. He gazed at her in silence, and his breast heaved with felicity or with anguish he knew not which. Once he said—
"Margherita, I feel like a beggar on the threshold of a wondrous palace given him by a fairy into which he dares not enter."
"God be praised, the sea is calm," said the priest, Anania's fellow-traveller. The young man started from his memories and looked at the gold-green sea, which in the dusk suggested a moonlit plain, at the ruins of a little church, at a path through the thickets, lost on the extreme verge of the shore, as if traced by a dreamer who had hoped to carry it on across the velvet ripples of the sea. He thought of Chateaubriand's Renato, and fancied he saw that melancholy figure on a rock which overhung the waves.
"No, it's not Renato. Perhaps its Eudorus, who on the sea rocks of wild Gallia dreamed of the flowers in his distant Hellas. No, it is not Eudorus; it's just a poet thinking—"
"'This granite rock supreme above the seaWhat does it here?'"
"'This granite rock supreme above the seaWhat does it here?'"
But the rock and the church and the path and the silhouette of the uncertain personage have all disappeared. Strange questions are still, however, troublesome in Anania's mind, falling without answer like stones thrown into the sea.
Why should he not stop on this wild, gently melancholy coast? Why should not the half seen figure on the rocks be his own? Why not build a house on the ruins of that church? Why waste himself in this stupid sentimentality? Why was he going to Rome? why studying Law? Who was he? What was life? Nostalgia? Love? What was Margherita doing? Why did he love her? Why was his father a mere servant? Why had his father told him to visit, the moment he got to Rome, those places where gold coins were kept which had been found among the ruins? Was his father a criminal or only a monomaniac? Had he inherited monomania from his father? Monomania in a different form? Was it monomania, a mental disease, this continual thinking of his mother, of that woman? And was she really in Rome, and would he find her?
"'Anninia,'"[14]said the drawling tones of the mocking student from Campidano, using the nickname which Anania's companions had fastened on him, "are you asleep? Wake up! Life's just this, a circular ticket giving the right to stop longer or shorter time at definite places. At least give thanks that sea-sickness won't interrupt your love dreams."
The priest, who was young and narrow-minded, also had his gibe. "Don't be so gloomy, man. 'There's trout even in hell.' We are leaving our beloved fatherland, but at least we shan't be sea-sick!"
The sea was certainly smooth, and the passage began under the best auspices. The moon was near setting and threw strange gleams on the rock of Capo Figari, which suggested a cyclopean sentinel guarding the melancholy sleep of the abandoned isle. Good-bye! good-bye! island of exile and of dream!
Anania remained motionless leaning on the rail of the deck till the last vision of Capo Figari had disappeared and the little scattered islets which rose blue from the waves like petrified clouds, were absorbed into the vaporous distance. Then he sat on a little bench, and scornfully rubbed tears from his eyes. Battista Daga, his companion, who was always sea-sick no matter what the condition of the sea, soon retired. Anania remained alone on the deck, numbed by the damp breeze, and saw the moon, red like molten iron, sink into a turbid and sanguinous distance. At last he too turned in, but was long ere he slept. He felt as if his body were incessantly growing longer and shorter. An interminable line of carts seemed crossing over his torpid person. The most unpleasant recollections of his life came into his head. The clashing of the waves cut by the keel seemed the wind in the widow's cottage at Fonni. Oh what a vain, useless, odious thing was life! What was the good of living at all? However at last sleep vanquished his sufferings.
In the morning he felt another person, agile, strong, happy! He had closed his eyes on a gloomy grief-stricken land, on livid waves and a bloody moon. He awakened in a sea of gold, in a land of light. He was close to Rome.
Rome! His heart beat with joy. Rome! Rome! Eternal country, mother and lover, siren and friend, healer of all sorrows, river of oblivion, fountain of promise, abyss of every ill, source of every good!
Anania felt ready for the conquest of the world. Civita Vecchia was black and damp under the morning sky, but it seemed picturesque and beautiful to him.
Daga, who had been on the continent for a year, smiled at his companion's enthusiasm.
The noisy arrival of the express train gave the Sardinian youth an electric shock, a sense of terror, the first giddy impression of a civilization, violent, even destructive. The red-eyed monster would ravish him away as the wind ravishes the leaves. He would be pitched into a cauldron of new life, boiling over with terrible joys and griefs. Ah! that would be life in reality! dreamed of but never known I civilization! the human ebb and flow! the omnipotent palpitation of the great collective heart! Then he looked out of the train and watched the long melancholy lines of the Campagna Romana, warm green under the autumnal sun, reminding him of the tablelands of his home; but the new life upon which he was entering usurped all his thoughts obliterating the landscape, putting memory to flight. Everything, the walls, the trees, the bushes, the air itself, seemed in motion flying madly by, as if terrified, as if pursued by some unseen monster. Only the express train, itself a monster but beneficent, protecting, the immense warrior of civilization, advanced violently towards the persecutor dragon to fall upon and destroy it.
In Rome, the two students lived on the third floor of a huge house in Piazza della Consolazione, kept by a widow with two pretty daughters—telegraphists at a newspaper office. The companionship of Daga, a chameleon-like personage, sometimes merry, sometimes hypochondriacal, often choleric, often apathetic, always egotistical and sarcastic, was a great solace to Anania during the first days of his residence in the capital. The pair slept in one room, divided by a screen made out of a yellow rug. The room was vast but dark, with one little window looking out on the internal court. Anania's first glance from this window filled him with dismay. From the lurid depths of the court rose high walls of dirty yellow, pierced with irregular windows from which exhaled kitchen odours of grease and onions. Iron rods ran along the walls and across the court; from them depended miserable garments of doubtful cleanliness, one of these rods passed just under the student's window, long strands of twisted pack-thread floating from it. Anania stood looking gloomily at the faded walls, but Battista Daga shook the rod and laughed.
"Look!" he said, "the rings on this rod and the skeins of thread dance as if they were alive. It's amusing!"
Anania looked, and saw the resemblance to marionettes.
Battista went on. "That's life! an iron rod spanning a dirty court and men who dance suspended over an abyss."
"Don't destroy my illusions," said Anania, "I'm dull enough without your philosophy. Let's go out. I'm smothering." They went out and walked till they were tired, bewildered by the noise of carriages and trams, by the splendour of the lamps, by the violent rush and raucous cries of the motors, above all by the surging of the crowd.
Anania felt depressed, alone in a desert, alone on a stormy sea. Had he fallen or cried out none would have heard or seen him; the crowd would have stepped on his prostrate form without looking at it. He remembered Cagliari with yearning nostalgia. Oh enchanted balcony, picture of the sea, sweet eye of the Evening Star! Here no stars were to be seen, no horizon; only a repellent conglomeration of stones and among them a swarm of men, who to the young barbarian seemed of a race inferior to his own.
For the first days Rome, seen through bewildered eyes under the influence of fatigue and of the dark habitation in Piazza della Consolazione, caused him almost feverish sadness. In the older part of the town, in the narrow streets, the stuffy shops, the wretched dwellings whose doors seemed mouths of caverns, Anania thought of the poorest Sardinian village which was dowered at least with light and air. In the modern streets everything seemed too big, the houses were like mountains, the piazzas the size oftancas. Was this the intoxicating Rome, great but never oppressive, which he had imagined at Civita Vecchia?
He began to attend the University lectures, studying Civil and Penal Law under Ferri. Here again his ideas were upset. The students were entirely noisy; laughing at and mocking everybody and everything. In Hall IV., while they were waiting for Ferri, the row and the joking passed all limits of decorum. One student would leap upon the chair and deliver a parody of the expected lecture. His fellows shouted, hissed, applauded, cried, "Viva il Papa!" "Viva St Alphonso di Liguri!" "Viva Pio Nono!" Sometimes the student in the chair, with red, set face, would mimic the mewing of cats, the crowing of cocks. Then the roaring and the hissing redoubled. Paper balls were thrown and lighted matches; the student persisted till the arrival of the professor, who was received with thunders of applause.
Later Anania took part in this noise and tumult, but at first the absurdity, the scepticism, the vanity and egotism of his companions shocked him. He felt more than ever alone, unlike the rest, and he repented that he had come to Rome. But one evening he and Daga were crossing Via Nazionale at the fall of evening. The pavements were deserted, the radiance of the electric lamps was lost in the azure dusk. The windows of the banks were brightly illuminated.
"Look!" said Daga.
"It seems as if all the gold in the Bank was shining at the windows!" cried Anania.
"Bravo!" said the other, "you're getting quite brilliant in my society!"
Presently they stopped again. On the left, in the indescribable depth of Via Quattro Fontane, the sky burned with violet clearness; on the right the full moon was rising from the black outline of Santa Maria Maggiore which was silhouetted against a silver background.
"Let's go to the Coliseum!" said Anania.
They went, and spent a long time wandering round the divine mystery of the spot, looking at the moon through every arch. Then they sat on a shining column, and Daga said—
"I feel as if I were in the moon. Don't you think that in the moon one would feel just as one feels here in this great dead world?"
"Yes," said Anania, answering his own inward question, "thisis Rome!"
[14]Huah-a-bye baby.
[14]Huah-a-bye baby.
It was raining. An ashy shadow burdened the room, of which Daga had given his companion the brighter part, because he liked sleeping till ten o'clock and was intolerant of the faintest light. Stretched on his bed Anania looked at the yellow screen, while he fancied a marble bas-relief yellowed by damp, and was conscious of discouragement, almost physical in its nature.
Daga also sighed from his bed behind the screen.
"What's the matter withhim?" thought Anania irritated, "isn't he quite happy, rich, talented, esteemed?" He began to make comparisons.
"He isn't in love, the fool! he has parents who worship him; he's independent—while I? Well then, what about me? Am I not happy? Aren't my blue devils called up by rain clouds, by nebulous monsters? I declare I'm mad! I love and am loved. I have before me a future of love and peace. I'm ambitious, perhaps I have only to open my arms to embrace the world. Margherita is beautiful. She is rich. She loves me and is waiting for me. What is it that I want? Why this stupid sadness?"
Even his nostalgia was cured. Rome had by this time revealed herself before his eyes like some marvellous panorama emerging from the morning mists. She was now so delightful to him that one morning, looking down from the terrace of the Villa Medici on the refulgent picture drawn in the green hollow of the Campagna like a mother-o'-pearl city carved in a shell of emerald, and looking away to the lonely horizon which reminded him of the solitudes of Sardinia, he asked himself whether his new love for the Eternal City was not greater than the old love for his home.
In his life of study he had felt the spirit of Rome, severe and gentle, blowing on his own little spirit. He was assiduous at his lectures, he frequented libraries, galleries, museums. Certain pictures had struck him—he felt as if he had already seen them. Where? when? By degrees he recognized that the feeling came from the resemblance between the figures in the picture to the people of his home. That Madonna of Correggio's has the dark face of Bustianeddu's mother; that old man of Spagnoletto's is the Bishop of Nuoro; and the sarcastic physiognomy of Uncle Pera, the gardener, lives in the copy of a picture by an unknown Tuscan of which the original is at Venice.
Daily in the streets, the churches, the shops, Anania found objects of Art and of Beauty which filled him with enthusiasm. Ah! how beautiful was Rome! How he loved her! And yet—a shadow brooded upon all the love, all the enthusiasm, a cloud hung over all things.
Last night about eleven, before the rain had begun, the two students were walking in Via Nazionale, at this hour almost empty, with broad shadows between the electric lamps. They were talking in the Sardinian dialect, and presently one of those nocturnal butterflies who flit over the pavements, accosted them in the same speech:—
"Bonas tardas pizzocheddos."
She was tall, dark, with large, hollow eyes. The electric light gave a cadaverous pallor to her small face emerging from the fur collar of a light jacket. As when Marta Rosa had stopped him at Cagliari, Anania shuddered. He dragged Daga away who had answered the woman roughly. It was not the first time Anania had encountered such wandering phantasm in the lonely streets, and always he had felt a chill at his heart.
Was itshe? Could it beshe? But this time—oh this time—the woman had spoken in Sardinian. She was a Sardinian. It might beshe!
Stretched on his bed after long hours of melancholy oppression Anania thought—
"I can't go on living like this. I mustknow. Oh to hear that she were dead! dead! But I will seek her. Did I not come to Rome for this? To-morrow—to-morrow! From the very day I arrived I have said that I And to-morrow comes and I do nothing. But what can I do? Where must I go? And supposing I do find her?"
Ah! that was his dread. He must not even think of what might happen when he had found her! Then he thought:
"Would it be a good plan to confide in Battista? Suppose I tell him I'm going out now to the Questura[15]to get information; what will he advise? I must confide in some one. I want counsel—help. I can endure this sad secret no longer. So many, many years I have borne its weight. I want to get free, to throw it off as one throws off an oppressive burden. I want to get free, to breathe. I must dislodge this gnawing worm. I shall be told I'm a fool. I shall be convinced. Well, so much the better if I am convinced. I shall be told to let it alone. What a horrible day this is! I feel as if I was in one of Dostoyevsky's novels, seeing a procession of grey and famished folk passing across the end of the room. The sky is lowering. Am I going asleep? I must get up and go about this business at once. Battista Daga!" he cried, rising on his elbow, "aren't you going out?"
"No," roared the other.
"Will you lend me your umbrella?"
He hoped Battista would ask where he was going, but all his friend said was—
"Couldn't you do me the favour of buying an umbrella?"
Anania sat up on his bed, put his lips to the screen, and said slowly—
"I've got to go to the Questura."
Again he hoped a fraternal voice would ask his reason. His heart beat considering how he should explain.
But Daga only asked from behind the screen, "Are you going to get the rain taken up?"
Anania laughed, and his secret fell back on his heart like lead. Not a screen, but an immense and impenetrable wall divided him from his fellows. He must neither ask nor expect help from any one. He must be sufficient to himself.
He got up, dressed, sought in his desk for the certificate of his birth. Then he opened the door.
"Take the umbrella, of course," yawned Battista; "but why are you going?"
Anania did not reply. He went out.
It rained without intermission, furiously. Descending the dark stair he listened to the echoing clatter of the rain on the glass roof. It seemed the roar of a cascade which in a moment must smash the glass and inundate the staircase, already overflowed by the noise of the imminent catastrophe. He went out and wandered through the rain-washed streets. He passed through a deserted alley, under a black and mysterious arch; looked gloomily at the damp chiaroscuro of certain interiors, of certain small shops in which pale figures of women, of poor men, of dirty children, moved to and fro; caves where charcoal sellers assumed diabolical aspect, where vegetables and fruits in baskets grew putrid in the muddy darkness, where blacksmiths, and cobblers and washerwomen consumed themselves in the forced labour of an imaginary penitentiary, more sad than the real prison because more hopeless and lasting.
Anania thought of the savage surroundings of the widow at Fonni, of the mill, the encompassing poverty, the miserable figures in the poor homes of Nuoro. He seemed condemned always to be in sad places, among the grief-stricken and the poor.
After long and useless wandering, he came in and sat down to write a letter to Margherita.
"I am mortally sad," he wrote. "On my soul lies a great and bruising weight. For many years I have wished to tell you what I am writing now. I don't know how you will receive it. But whatever you may think. Margherita, never forget that I am impelled by inexorable fate, by a duty which is more bitter to me than a crime. Perhaps—but I will not influence you in any way; only remember that on your decision depends my life or my death. By death I mean moral death; the death which does not kill the body but condemns the whole man to a slow agony. First, let me explain. But oh! I can't, I can't! You will repel me! Yet my sorrow is so lacerating that I feel the need of flinging myself before you, of exposing my anguish——"
Having written thus far he stopped and read the letter over. He could not write another word. Who was Margherita? Who was he? Who wasthat woman? What was life? Here were all the stupid questions beginning over again. A long time he looked at the window panes, at the iron rod and the rings and the threads, dropping water, chafed by the wind, against a murky and faded background. He even thought of killing himself.
Presently he tore the letter, first in long strips then into little squares which he arranged in a pattern. Then again he looked at the window panes, and the rods, and the rings and the threads which seemed like soaking marionettes.
Towards evening the rain ceased and the two students went out together. The sky had cleared, the city noises reanimated the soft air; a rainbow made a marvellous frame for the picture of the Forum Romanum.
Daga was in a mood of thoughtless merriment. Anania walked automatically, noticing nothing, his hands in his pockets, his hat on his eyes, his lips shut. As usual they went down Via Nazionale. Daga stopped before Garroni's to look at the papers, while Anania walked on absently, advancing towards a line of chattering young priests habited in red. The reflection of their scarlet cassocks made a sanguinous reflection on the wet pavement, and all the footpath seemed on fire. They were foreigners, merry, thoughtless boys, frisking like flames and filling the streets with their laughter. Thus they would pass through life, thoughtless and unconscious, no passion involving them in shadows, no flame shining on their path but that of their long scarlet cassocks. Anania felt envious and said to Daga, who rejoined him—
"When I was a child I knew the son of a famous brigand. The boy was on fire with wild little passions, and meant to avenge his father. Now he has become a monk. What do you make of that?"
"He's a fool, that's all."
"That won't do," said Anania eagerly, "we explain too many psychological mysteries by that word fool!"
"Well, anyhow he's a monomaniac. Folly itself is a complicated psychological mystery, a tree of which monomania is the stoutest branch."
"Well, he had the monomania of brigandage, an hereditary monomania. He is a primitive sort of person, and by becoming a monk he tried to free himself from his monomania. He went from bad to worse. He'll end by going mad. A normal intelligent man, if he has the ill luck to become the victim of a fixed idea, throws it off by giving way to it. Take love, for instance. That's a fixed idea, if you like! a continual itch to be near some particular person—alone with her. There's no remedy for that state of obsession but to get near—the fixed idea! Wait a moment, I see something I want" (he stopped before a shop window)—"a crocodile card-case."
"Perhaps you are right."
"Of course I am. I know it's crocodile."
"I mean about the fixed idea——"
"Just think! that card-case was once living in the Nile."
"What an idiot you are! where's the Police Office?" asked Anania, turning on his heel.
"How do I know? I've never been taken up."
"Seriously, where is it?"
"Do you think you're at Nuoro? There are dozens of offices. I've noticed one at San Martino dei Monti."
"Will you come with me?" said Anania, turning up Via Depretis. He had grown pale; his hands trembled in his pockets.
"What are you going to do at the Questura? What's the matter with you? Have you committed a crime?"
"I want to get someone's address. Come on."
He hurried. His friend followed, curious and a little disturbed. "Who is the person? Who wants the address? Someone at Nuoro? Is it a mystery? Speak, you wretch!"
Anania strode on and made no answer.
"Well," said Daga as they arrived at S. Martino, "I'm not your pet dog. If you won't open your mouth, I'll leave you here."
"I'll tell you afterwards. Wait for me."
Daga waited. A quarter of an hour passed. The young man forgot his comrade's mysterious business in enjoyment of the grand scene spread out before him. The rosy haze of incipient twilight filled the air. The lamps were like pearls in the streets of the immense fan, stretching out from the Piazza dell' Esquilino. Foot-passengers and carriages passed as on a huge stage before a limitless background.
"They're all marionettes moved by an invisible thread," thought the student. "There they go passing, hurrying, disappearing. Each one thinks himself great, the pivot of the world, with an universe existing for him alone. While in reality they are all very small. I wonder how many of them have committed crimes? That swell there with the silk hat? Perhaps he has poisoned someone. They all have cares. No, not all. It's a lie to say humanity suffers. The chief part of humanity neither suffers nor enjoys. All those people going to the Pincio for instance! What can those people either enjoy or suffer? Is that Anania Atonzu coming back? Yes, here he is. He also is a marionette. He looks like Punch when he says 'the die is cast!'"
In his olympian superiority of the moment, Daga smiled more mockingly than ever.
"Well is the die cast?!" he asked tragically.
"Yes," replied Anania, leaning against the wall. For some minutes he also gazed at the Piazza where lamps were beginning to replace the luminous twilight. In the depths of the central street which seemed a road cut through a forest, Monte Mario could be seen, a distant wall against a background of reddened silver. Anania, he knew not why, suddenly remembered that evening when he—a child, had climbed the Gennargentu and seen a fearful heaven—all red, in which hovered the ghosts of dead robbers.
And now too, he felt a mystery hovering round him; and the vision of the city inspired him with fear: the vision of that forest of stone traversed by shining streets, like rivers of which the waves were the heart beats of suffering men.
[15]Police detective inquiry office.
[15]Police detective inquiry office.
Yes, as Battista had said, and in the words of the ancient Roman, the die was cast. The police office at Anania's instance undertook the search for Rosalia Derios. Before the end of March her son was informed that a woman answering the description lived at such a number of Via del Seminario, on the top floor, and made her living by letting rooms. This person was called, or had assumed the name of Maria Obinu and said she was a native of Nuoro. She had been fourteen years in Rome and at first had lived—well, a little irregularly. But for some years she had been quite respectable—at least in appearance; and let furnished rooms with or without board.
Anania took the information coolly. The description agreed. He did not precisely remember his mother's face, but knew she was tall with black hair and light eyes. He was sure that at Nuoro there was no family named Obinu, and that no one had a female relative living in Rome and letting rooms. This Obinu Was giving a false name, None the less, he felt instinctively that the woman was not, could not be his mother. This gave him a sense of relief. He had done his duty. Maria Obinu was not Rosalia Derios, Rosalia Derios could not be in Rome if the omniscientQuesturafailed to find her. He was not obliged to make further search. After days and months of oppression and suspense he at last breathed freely.
The spring had penetrated even into the dreary court of the house in Piazza della Consolazione, to that great yellow well, which exhaled the odours of victuals, and was noisy with the voices of servant maids and the piping of imprisoned canaries. The air was warm and sweet with the fragrance of violet and lilac; over the azure sky passed roseate clouds.
Standing at the window, Anania was again conscious of nostalgia. The scent of violets, the pink clouds, the warm spring breeze reminded him of his home, of the vast horizons, the clouds he had watched from the window of his little bedroom, sinking behind the holm-oaks of Orthobene. Then he remembered the pines of Monte Urpino, the silence of the hills clothed with blue iris and asphodel, the mystery of the paths, the pure eyes of the stars. And against the cerulean background of these nostalgic memories, the delightful figure of Margherita rose supreme, her little feet on the grass of the fresh landscape, her brown hair gold-tipped in the brilliance of the sunshine.
It was these recollections which touched him in the Roman spring; otherwise it seemed artificial, the sunsets too highly coloured, the abundance of flowers and perfumes exaggerated. Piazza di Spagna decked with roses like an altar, the Pincio with its flowering trees, the streets in which flower girls offered baskets of ranunculus and violets to the passers-by—all this ostentation, all this merchandise of spring, gave the Sardinian an idea of a vulgar holiday, which would end in weariness and disgust.
Beyond the horizon, Spring was a maiden wild and pure; she wandered among thetancascovered now with waving grass, she twittered with the water birds on the banks of lonely streams, she was merry with the lambs, with the leverets leaping among the cyclamen, or beneath the immense oaks sacred to the ancient shepherds of the Barbagia; she slept in the shadows of the moss-grown rocks, during the voluptuous noons, while round her bed of periwinkle and fern, golden insects buzzed their love stories, and bees sucked the dog roses extracting their bitter honey, sweet and bitter like the Sardinian soul. Anania lived and loved in that distant spring land. He sat at the window studying his books and watching the blue sky and the rosy clouds. He fancied himself an enamoured prisoner. A pleasant somnolence stole his strength, his will, his power of definite thought. Ideas came and went in his mind—like the people in the street. He made no effort to detain them, they passed languidly, leaving furrows of sadness in their wake.
More than ever he loved solitude. His companion irked him. They were no longer entirely good friends.
Daga tyrannised over the younger lad, he borrowed money (which he never repaid) he laughed at him and talked displeasingly.
"We view life under different aspects," said Daga, "or, rather, I see it and you don't. I am short-sighted, but I have strong eyeglasses. People and things seen through them are small but very dear. You are short-sighted too, but you haven't even a pair of spectacles."
Sometimes Anania did indeed believe he had a veil before his eyes. His blood ran with diffidence and apprehension. Even his love for Margherita was mixed with anxiety; and this nostalgia, this love of solitude, this sleepiness of spring, this indifference to life—to that imperious life which had ever eluded him—all this was just diffidence, grief, and apprehension; and indeed he knew it.
One day at the end of May, Anania surprised his companion kissing the elder daughter of the landlady.
"You are a brute!" he exclaimed, "haven't you been making love to the other one?"
They quickly got to high words.
"Why, you fool, it's the girls who come and throw themselves into my arms. Am I to push them away? If the world walks sideways, let us find our advantage in it. It's the women nowadays who corrupt the men, and I should be stupider even than you if I didn't accept their offers, up to a certain point!"
"That's very fine," returned Anania, "but why do these adventures happen only to certain people? What about me, for instance?"
"What happens to men doesn't happen to asses. The proverbial Sardinian donkey,sardu molente, is eternally blindfolded. His business is just to turn the wheel, and if the world were to collapse he'd never find it out. The mill is his fixed idea. Suppose some day a wretched historian wanted to write the donkey's life? he would find it vain to describe how his hero ate and slept, what he studied, whether he was intended for a doctor or a lawyer, whether he lived on land or sea or in the clouds. Such things didn't enter into the life of that excellent beast as they enter into the life of all other creatures."
"Anyhow he could say his donkey wasn't immoral."
"I might ask you, what is morality? but you wouldn't be able to answer. I will inform you that morality, or whatever you like to call it, is the result of circumstances. A donkey is highly moral so long as he has no opportunity to be anything else. The young ladies of this house know you are engaged. I am not, so they unlade their sweet electric discharges on me."
"Engaged? I? Who says so?"
"And to a daisy—a pearl cast this time before an ass.
"I forbid you to utter that name! I forbid you! Do you hear?"
"Don't threaten my eyes with that finger! I snap my fingers at you and at all the engaged chaps in the world."
Furiously Anania fell to packing his papers and books.
"I'm going at once!" he said, "at once. It seems there are prying people here, as well as persons in search of amusement. I leave you to your amusement. I am going away."
"Good-bye, then," said Battista, throwing himself on his bed, "but please remember that if I hadn't taken care of you at first, you'd have been squashed by the trams. You thought they were alive, didn't you?"
"And you, remember——" began Anania, stung by his companion's ridicule. But he checked himself and grew red.
"Oh, I remember perfectly. I owe you twenty-sevenlire. Don't be afraid for your twenty-sevenlire. My father, you recollect, has seventancasin a row."
"With a river in the middle!" cried Anania, banging his books on the table. "I defy you and your father and yourtancas! I snap my fingers at you."
Thus they separated, the two little supermen who in the Coliseum had thought themselves as high as the moon. Anania flung out of the dingy room with the intention of never setting foot in it again.
Once in the street, his heart still swelling with indignation, he went automatically towards the Corso, and almost without noticing it, found himself in Via del Seminario. It was burning noon, parched by a hot east wind. The awning of the shops flapped spitefully against the passers-by. The smell of the pavement was blended with perfume of flowers but also with odours of paint, of drugs, of provisions. Anania's nerves were on edge. He encountered a flock of young priests with floating black cassocks and compared them to crows. He remembered a long ago quarrel with Bustianeddu, and hated Battista Daga who represented the race of vain-glorious and cynical Sardinians. In this mood he rang at the door of Maria Obinu.
A tall, pale woman, shabbily dressed in black, came to open. Anania felt sudden dismay. Her greenish eyes seemed familiar.
"Signora Obinu?" he asked.
"Yes, that is my name," answered the woman, her tones somewhat coarse.
"No," thought the youth, "it's not her voice."
He went in. Signora Obinu took him across a dark vestibule, then into a small parlour, grey, dreary, badly lighted. His attention was caught by a variety of Sardinian objects, specially the head of a deer and a wild sheepskin nailed to the wall. He thought of his birthplace and felt his doubts reborn.
"I want a room. I'm a student, a Sardinian," he said looking at the woman from head to foot.
She was about thirty-seven, pallid and thin; her nose sharp, almost transparent. Her thick black hair, still dressed in Sardinian fashion, that is in narrow plaits coiled on the nape of the neck, made her seem almost pretty.
"A Sardinian? That's nice!" she answered frankly and with a pleasant smile. "I have no room just now, but if you can wait a fortnight there's an English lady going away."
He asked to look at the room. It was in a state of indescribable confusion. The bed was pulled out from the wall, and stood between piles of antique books and other curiosities. There was a folding india-rubber basin which the "Miss" used as a bath, and in it a fragrant branch of cassia. On the window-sill a book lay open. It was poetry, Giovanni Cena'sMadre(mother) and Anania was struck by seeing it. He decided to take the room.
In the vestibule there was a large ottoman. He said: "Can't I sleep here till the lady leaves? I want to get out of the place I'm in at once. I go to bed late and I get up early——"
"But this ante-room is a passage," said the woman.
"I know. But I don't mind if you don't," urged Anania.
"'Miss' goes to bed early, but the other two, her father and Signor Ciri never come in till late."
"I really don't mind for a few nights."
They returned to the parlour and Anania stood looking at the stuffed head of the deer.
"Suppose it isshe?" he was thinking. His coolness surprised him. He could have borne it even if at that very moment the woman had revealed herself. At bottom, however, he was deeply moved. He continued his investigations.
"This is Sardinian," he said touching the yellowing sheepskin, "why don't you use it as a rug?"
"It's a relic of my father. He was a hunter," said the woman still smiling kindly.
"She's lying," thought Anania. Then he looked attentively at the deer's head and asked, "Are you a native of Nuoro?"
"Yes, but I was born there by accident. My parents were just passing through."
"I was born accidentally at Fonni," he said with careless voice, fingering the horns of the stag; "yes, at Fonni. My name is Anania Atonzu Derios."
Having said the name, he turned and faced the woman. She did not move an eyelash.
"No, it's notshe," he thought, and felt relieved. She was not his mother.
But that evening when he had brought his portmanteau and books to his new domicile, Maria said to him:
"I'll give you my own room for the fortnight."
In vain he protested. His things were all carried into her little chamber and Anania took possession. He felt shy, intruding thus into the long narrow room which seemed like a nun's cell. The little white bed smelt of lavender and reminded him of the simple pallet beds of the patriarchal Sardinian homes. Again, Sardinian fashion, Maria Obinu had decorated the grey walls with a row of little pictures, with sacred images, three wax candles, and three crucifixes, a branch of olive, and an immense crown made of sugar. At the head of the bed hung two bunches of medals which had been blessed by the Pope. In one corner a lamp burned before a representation of blue-pencil souls in Purgatory praying before three red-pencil ensanguined flames. What a difference between the Englishwoman's room and that of Maria Obinu! They were divided by at least five centuries.
Anania was again in doubt. Why did she give him her room? Ah! she was too anxious—too affectionate! He was unpacking when she knocked and asked, without entering, whether he wished the lamp extinguished before the Holy Souls.
"No!" he shouted, "but please come in. I have something to show you."
In his hand was a quaint little object, a small case of greasy material hung on a thin chain blackened by time. He put the amulet round his neck and said:
"I am pious myself. This is the Ricetta of San Giovanni, which wards off temptation."
The woman looked. Her smile faded and Anania's heart beat. "You don't believe in it?" she said severely; "well, whether you believe or not, don't jest at it. It's holy."
Stretched on the lavender-scented bed, Anania pondered. If this Maria Obinu were Olì? If it wereShe? So near and yet so far! What mysterious thread had led him to her, to the very pillow where she must have wept for her deserted child? How strange is life!—a thread upon which men dance like rags moved by the wind; was it really she? Then he had arrived at his goal insensibly, almost unintentionally, by force of his subconscious will which had given him suggestion. Suggestion of what? But surely this was folly! Childishness! It couldn't be she! But if it were? Did she already know she was with her son while he was racked by doubt? Then why didn't she reveal herself? What was she afraid of? Had she recognised the amulet.
No, it could not be she. A mother must betray herself; could not help crying out on meeting her child. The idea was absurd. No, it was not absurd. A woman can control herself under the most violent emotions. Olì would be afraid—after deserting her son—throwing him away. Well, so much the more she ought to betray herself. A mother is always a mother—not a mere woman. And how could Olì, a wild creature, a child of nature, have so assimilated the hypocrisy of cities, as to be able to feign like an actress? Impossible! Maria Obinu was Maria Obinu, a nice kind woman, mild and unconscious, who had reformed by luck rather than by strength of character, who eked out her penitence—perhaps scarcely felt—by the ostentation of very questionable religious sentiment. It could not beShe.
"I'll press for information. She must tell me her history," he thought. "However I'm satisfied it's not she. I tell you it's not she! you imbecile, you idiot, you fool!"
Then he remembered his first night at Nuoro and the secret kiss his father had pressed upon his forehead. He half expected that now his door would open and a furtive shadow would come in the trembling light of the little lamp and imitate that shamefaced kiss.
"If it happens, what shall I do?" he asked himself, anxiously. "I'll pretend I'm asleep. But, good Lord! what a fool I am!"
The noises in the street and in the neighbouring Piazza of the Pantheon grew fainter and fewer, as if themselves weary and retiring to a place of repose. The belated lodgers came in. Then all was silence in the house, in the street, in the city. But Anania still kept vigil. Perhaps the lamp——
"I'll put it out," he thought and got up. A noise! a rustle! Was the door opening? Oh God! He sprang back into bed, shut his eyes, waited. His heart and his throat pulsed feverishly. The door remained shut. He calmed himself and laughed. But the lamp was left still alight.
Rome,June1st.
"My Margherita, this moment your letter has arrived and I reply at once. At least twenty times in the last few days I have taken my pen to write to you but have not managed it. I have a great deal to tell you. First, I have moved. I fell out with Battista Daga because I caught him kissing the elder of the landlady's girls while he still makes love to the younger one. That made me sick. Besides the place was too far from the University. Now that the heat has begun the long journey to and fro is a bore. As to Daga we made it up next day. I met him close to my new rooms and he said he was coming to look me up, though first he had said he wouldn't. I'm very comfortable here. The new landlady is a Sardinian. She says she was born at Nuoro. She's nice and kind and very pious—quite maternal in her care of me. She has given me her own room, until the departure of a very beautiful English lady whom I'm to replace. This 'Miss' is extraordinarily likeyou. Don't be jealous though. First, because I'm violently in love with a young lady at Nuoro; secondly because 'Miss' is going away in a few days; thirdly she's as mad as a March hare; fourth she's betrothed; fifthly I'm under the care of all the saints in heaven who are hung round the walls of my room, not to mention the blessed souls in Purgatory. They are illuminated day and night by a taper, which I know not why, seems to me itself a soul at expiation (now I'm writing what you call nonsense).
"Well, I must tell you that at my new landlady's, there are two or three more foreigners, a clerk at the War Office, a Piedmontese tailor, very fashionable and refined, and a French bagman who can fire off eighty lies in eight minutes. He reminds me of your suitor, the most worshipful Signor Franziscu Carchide of Nuoro. Yesterday, for instance, while 'Miss' and the tailor were arguing about the Boer war, Monsieur Pilbert told me, half in French half in Latin, that by force of suggestion he had made the hair come out on his baby's head and in a single hour it grew an inch, then stopped growing and at last set itselfSe développer naturellement. Signora Obinu—that's the landlady—has a queer little old Sardinian cook, who has been thirty years in Rome and still can't speak Italian. Poor old Aunt Varvara! She was almost ravished from Sardinia, carried off by a violentpadrone, a captain of Dragons (so she calls him) who terrified her. She's black and tiny, like ajana[16]keeps her native costume jealously locked up, and wears a ridiculous gown bought in the Campo dei Fiori, and a bonnet which might have belonged to the Empress Josephine. I often visit Aunt Varvara in her dark and torrid kitchen. We talk in dialect; she weeps, and asks after all the people she knew in the island. She thinks of returning to Sardinia, though she's horribly afraid of the sea and believes the storm in which she crossed to the continent is still going on. She knows nothing of the place she's living in. Rome, for her, is just a place where everything's dear, and a field of danger in which at any moment she may be assaulted by a passing vehicle. She says the trams seem to her like awful stags (she has never seen a stag) and that she can't go to mass at the Pantheon because that church with the round hole on top, like a Sardinian oven, makes her laugh. She wants to know whether in Sardinia we still bake at home. I said yes, and she began to cry, thinking of the jokes and games in the days when she baked bread in her father's oven. Then she asked if there are still shepherds, and if they still sit on the ground under the trees. How she sighed thinking of a certain Easter banquet forty years ago at Goceano! Aunt Varvara can't bear the Englishwoman, and she in her turn regards the old thing as a savage. Sometimes while she does her cooking she sings songs in the Logudorese dialect. Also this dirge which I have heard at Nuoro:
"Then in the evening mistress and maid repeat the Rosary in dialect; and it amuses me to join in from my room, because it makes Aunt Varvara furious. She breaks off her prayers to swear at me.
"'Su diaulu chi ti ha fattu' ('Go to the devil who made you!')" she shouts, and the padrona says, changing her voice:
"'Aunt Varvara have you gone clean out of your mind?'
"Enough of this, Margherita, my own, my sweet lovely Margherita! Let's turn to something else. It's very hot now-a-days, but generally grows fresh in the evening. I work hard all day—seriously; because it's not only my duty but my pleasure. I go oftener than anybody to the University and to the Libraries. For this reason I'm the darling of the Professors. In the evening I walk along the banks of the Tiber and spend hours watching the running water. I ask myself silly questions such as 'Whatiswater?' It's not true that the Tiber is clear coloured. Sometimes it's yellow and muddy, oftener it's green, sometimes blue, sometimes livid. I have seen it quite milky and reflecting the lamps, the bridges, the moon, like polished marble. I compare the perennial flowing of the water to my love for you,—thus constant, silent, inexhaustible. Why, oh why, are you not here with me, my Margherita? The mere thought of you makes everything more beautiful, gives everything deeper meaning. What would not the world be if I could see it reflected in your adored eyes! When, when will the tormenting and delicious dream of our souls be made real? I don't know how I manage to live thus divided from you, but I turn with joy to the thought that in two months we shall again be together. O my Margherita, my pearl of pearls, I cannot express even to you what I feel. No human speech could express it. It's a continual fire which devours me, an unspeakable thirst which only one fountain can slake. You are that fountain; you are the garden whose flowers shall refresh my soul.
"Margherita, I am alone in the world, for you are all the world to me. When I lose myself in the crowd, in the sea of unknown persons, it is enough for me to think of you, and my heart swells with love to them all, for your sweet sake. When your letters come, I am so happy I feel quite giddy. I seem to have attained the summit of some great mountain—if I stretch out my hand I shall touch the stars. It is too much! I dread falling—falling into an abyss, being reduced to ashes by contact with the stars. What would become of me, if, Margherita, if I should lose you? I laugh when you tell me you are jealous of the beautiful and cultured women whom I must be meeting here in Rome. No woman could be to me what you are. You are my life, you are my past, my home, my race, my dream. You are the mysterious wine which fills for me the empty cup we call Life. Yes, I like to fancy life a cup which we continually lift to our lips. For many this cup is never filled, and they try painfully to suck what is not there, and die slowly for lack of nourishment. But for others, and I belong to the happy number, the cup contains divine ambrosia. . . .
"I have interrupted this letter, because Battista came to see me. He seems getting into trouble with the two girls and wants to follow me here. We shall see. I will speak to my landlady about it. I don't bear malice, because as friend Pilbert assures me, hard words are things with no real existence.
"I return to my letter, quite upset by a confidence made to me a few minutes ago by Aunt Varvara. She tells me she knows Daga, having seen him here with thepadronaseveral times. I don't like it, for you must know Signora Obinu has not always borne the best of characters. I looked questioningly at Aunt Varvara but she shut up her lips and shook her head mysteriously. I promised next vacation to visit her old home and learn its history for her during the last thirty years. This pleased her so much that she let me catechize her a bit. I got out of her that Signora Obinu left children in Sardinia, one of whom has been adopted by a rich Signore of Campidano. Aunt Varvara thinks Battista Daga may be Maria Obinu's son."
Anania stopped writing, and read and reread the last few lines. A little black ant ran over the page and he looked at it with eyes full of thought. Whatwasthis little being called an ant? Why did it live? Ought he to crush it with his finger or not to crush it? Was there such a thing as Free-Will?
At this time, though he was attending Ferri's lectures, Anania still believed in free-will. He sometimes committed small crimes just to prove to himself that he had willed to commit them. This time, however, he let the ant alone. It vanished under a book ignorant of the danger it had escaped. As often before, he tore up part of his letter. Then he leaned his forehead on his hands and reread the remainder, a wave of bitterness overflowing his heart.
"Yes," he thought, "I am too near the stars; I don't see the abyss into which I must ineluctably fall. Why do I continue to deceive myself? It's my mother she may be, and Battista Daga visits her because she is still—But why has he never spoken of her? After all, why should he speak? He has not confided his adventures to me. He comes here—because—Oh God! Oh God! I am the son of Maria Obinu! She knows my whole life. She told the oldjanain her own way that I have been adopted by a rich Signore. Has she left other children in Sardinia? No, that part must be a lie—she went away at once after deserting me. She said that as a blind. Oh God!"
Presently he sprang to his feet.
"I must find out," he thought, "I must know. Why this burning lamp, these pictures, these prayers,—if it's not for that reason. But I will unmask you, lost soul! I will kill you, chase you away, because you are my curse! because you will be the curse of that pure noble creature. Oh my poor, poor Margherita!"
He struck his fist violently on the letter, while his eyes flamed with hatred. Then again he sank on his chair, and dropped his head on the table. He wished he could burst his head, think no more! forget! annihilate himself!
He felt vile, black and viscid as a lump of mud. He felt himself flesh of the solid flesh of his mother, himself a sinner, miserable, abject. Tumultuous recollections passed through his mind. He remembered the generous ideas so often caressed, the dream of finding and rescuing her, the infinite pity for her ignorance and irresponsibility; the pride with which he had regarded his own compassion—the thirst for sacrifice. It had all been self-deception. A vague hint given by a childish old woman had sufficed to turn his soul to mud, to rack it with storm, to impel it towards crime. "I will kill her." Yes, those words were already a crime.
He thought of the peace he had enjoyed since he had been in this house, and raised his head struck by a new idea. During the week passed in this convent cell of Maria's, he had at the bottom of his heart accepted the idea that she was his mother, and the recognition of her redemption, of her honest and hard working life had made him happy. He had welcomed the thought of their relationship. His horizon had cleared. He was freed from a weight which had crushed and nailed him to the earth, and was now ready to fly to the stars. And since she, either for fear, or for self castigation, or for love of independence, refused to acknowledge him, then he was glad to renounce her—now her future was assured, her life purified. He could do her no good. He might harm her by intrusion. Hismissioncould not be accomplished; he was spared the solution of the cruel problem. He might now—after his long suffering—prosecute his life, tranquilly, happily. He had fulfilled his duty by the mere desire to fulfil it. And this ideal duty which had cost him so much had seemed to him so heroic as to fill his soul with pride. The stars were near.
But now the abyss had reopened. All within and without his soul was a lie; all delusion, all dream—even the stars.
But perhaps the thing he was thinking now was the delusion? If he were deceiving himself. If Maria were notshe? He went back on his old thoughts. "Whether she is Maria or not, whether she is near or far, she exists and she calls me. I must return on my steps, begin again, find her dead or alive. Oh, if she were but dead!"
However, he waited for his landlady's return and to calm himself somewhat tried to analyse this passion which goaded him. But for that matter he knew well enough that the greater part of his trouble arose not from passion but from the fact that his Ego was made up of two cruelly contrasted personalities. One was the fantastic child, violent, melancholy, with sick blood in his veins, the child who had come down from his native mountains dreaming of an unreal world; who in his father's house had meditated flight without ever attempting it, who at Cagliari had wept wildly imagining that Marta Rosa could be his mother. The other was a being, normal and intelligent, who had grown alongside the morbid child, who saw clearly the unreality of the phantoms and nebulous monsters which were his torment, yet who had never succeeded in liberating him from the obsession. Continual conflict, cruel contradiction, agitated by day and by night these two personalities; but the fantastic and illogical child, victim and tyrant alike, always came off the victor. Often he had asked himself whether he would have suffered so acutely had he not been in love with Margherita; always he answered himself "yes."
Signora Obinu came home in the evening.
"I should like to speak to you," said her young lodger, opening the door. "Please come here a moment."
"What is it?" she asked, entering.
She was dressed in black, with an old hat of faded violet velvet. She had run up the stair and was panting, her face unusually red, her forehead hot and shining.
"What's the matter?" asked Anania, roughly.
"The matter with me? nothing," she answered, surprised; then resumed her usual pleasant smile. "Why are you sitting in the dark? Well, what have you to say to me?"
"I'll wait till you've taken off your hat."
She seemed struck by his voice and his frown, the more so that in the morning he had complained of not feeling well.
"How hot it is! Suffocating!" she said, "are you perhaps feeling it? Tell me what you want."
"First take off your hat," repeated Anania.
"Why?"
Anania was striking a match against the wall. He was thinking. "Better catch her suddenly before she speaks to that old monkey Aunt Varvara."
"What's become of the candle? Well, look here, a friend of mine came here—ahsu diaulu t'a fattu, the devil made you, candle, that you won't light! What a beast of a candle!"
He raised his head and looked sharply at the woman who was quietly watching his efforts with the candle. "Battista Daga, another student, has been here. He wants a room. Can you give him one?"
"We'll see," she said calmly, "when does he want it?" Anania began to feel irritated.
"You know him, I think?"
"I? No."
"Aunt Varvara told me she had seen him here several times."
Maria Obinu raised her eyebrows. She seemed trying to remember. Suddenly her face and her eyes burned.
"Look here," she said proudly, "if you mean that pale young man, with the crooked nose, and the look of mortal sin—tell him that in my house there is no place for him!"
"Why not? Please tell me. I assure you I know nothing against him. We slept for six months in the same room,—Daga and I. But I really don't know much about him—what he's up to. Tell me."
Anania had sat down by the table, inadvertently pushing the candle against the wall.
"I have nothing to tell you," answered the woman. "I'm not bound to give account to anyone. Let me alone. I live by my work and ask nothing from anyone. I'm better than the ladies to whom you gentlemen lift your hats! Ah!" she went on sighing heavily, "life is long! Days of trial will come to you young lads too! You will get to know the world, will find the hedge thick with serpents. They rise on every side of the path of life. You also will come upon the stone which will make you trip. And many, Signor Anania, many will never get up again. They will strike their heads against that stone and die of the blow. Perhaps those are the best off. Ah! but the Lord is merciful! The Lord is merciful!"
She put her hand on her heart and again sighed heavily.
"She's acting," thought Anania.
"Bostè est sapia che ì s'abba"[17]he said ironically, "upon my word, I don't understand your sermon. What has it to do with Battista Daga? Tell me. Signora Maria."
"Move that candle! It's setting fire to the calendar! What are you thinking of!" cried the landlady, jumping up, "are you trying to ruin me?"
Anania moved the candle and clapped a dictionary on the burning almanac.
"What a silly boy! Doesn't he deserve a box on the ear?" said Maria, recovering herself and pulling the tuft of hair which fell on his forehead.
"Don't! don't!" cried Anania, shaking his head from her touch. A sudden recollection had shot through him. Yes—in a far distant place, in a long distant time, in a black kitchen guarded by the long funereal cloak of a bandit—Olì, exasperated by poverty and grief, used sometimes to pull the wild locks of a naughty little boy.
Anania was moved by the recollection. He seized Signora Obinu's hand and held it tight. Was it the same hand which had struck the child, the hand which had led him to the olive-mill.
"A silly boy!" repeated Maria, "if I hadn't been there, there'd have been a fine conflagration. Well, may I go away now?"
He raised his head and said:
"I feel as if I had seen your hand before now. Some other time this hand has pulled my hair, has boxed my ears, has caressed me——"
"Are you going crazy, Signor Anania?" she said, snatching her hand away.
"Signora Maria, do you believe in spirits? No? Yet they exist. I believe in them. Last night a friendly spirit came and told me many things, among them, that you are my mother."
Maria laughed, somewhat forcedly, as if wishing to hide something. The young man saw he had chosen a very childish method of approaching her. Yet if she was really his mother she could not fail to be upset, finding he had guessed it. However she laughed, perhaps trying to carry off some terror of informing spirits.
"You really are crazy. I only wish I were your mother!" she said.
The voice of Aunt Varvara was heard calling her mistress.
"I can't waste any more time," said Signora Maria, turning to go away.
"What shall I say to Daga?" said Anania, brushing his hair.
"Say that if he comes here, I shall throw him downstairs. Do you see?"
"No, I don't see. Signora Maria! wait! Explain to me, do! Don't go away! What does it all mean?"
But she vanished into the darkness of the ante-room, making no reply.
"Of course I do see," thought Anania shutting the door. "Well, is it any business of mine what Daga is? and what she is? Hasn't everyone their faults?"