Under the Shadow of Etna Part 9

Turiddu, now that the cat was at home, no longer went out on the street by day, and he whiled away the tedium at the inn with his friends; and on Easter eve they had on the table a dish of sausages.

When _compare_ Alfio came in, Turiddu realized, merely by the way in which he fixed his eyes on him, that he had come to settle that affair, and he laid his fork on the plate.

"Have you any commands for me, _compare_ Alfio?" he asked.

"No favors to ask, _compare_ Turiddu; it's some time since I have seen you, and I wanted to speak concerning something you know about."

Turiddu at first had offered him a gla.s.s, but _compare_ Alfio refused it with a wave of his hand. Then Turiddu got up and said to him,--

"Here I am, _compare_ Alfio."

The carter threw his arms around his neck.

"If to-morrow morning you will come to the p.r.i.c.kly pears of la Canziria, we can talk that matter over, _compare_."

"Wait for me on the street at daybreak, and we will go together."

With these words they exchanged the kiss of defiance. Turiddu bit the carter's ear, and thus made the solemn oath not to fail him.

The friends had silently left the sausages, and accompanied Turiddu to his home. _Gna_ Nunzia, poor creature, waited for him till late every evening.

"Mamma," said Turiddu, "do you remember when I went as a soldier, that you thought I should never come back any more? Give me a good kiss as you did then, for to-morrow morning I am going far away."

Before daybreak he got his spring-knife, which he had hidden under the hay, when he had gone to serve his time in the army, and started for the p.r.i.c.kly-pear trees of la Canziria.

"Oh, Gesummaria! where are you going in such haste!" cried Lola in great apprehension, while her husband was getting ready to go out.

"I am not going far," replied _compare_ Alfio. "But it would be better for you if I never came back."

Lola in her nightdress was praying at the foot of the bed, and pressing to her lips the rosary which Fra Bernardino had brought to her from the Holy places, and reciting all the Ave Marias that she could say.

"_Compare_ Alfio," began Turiddu, after he had gone a little distance by the side of his companion, who walked in silence with his cap down over his eyes, "as G.o.d is true I know that I have done wrong, and I should let myself be killed. But before I came out, I saw my old mother, who got up to see me off, under the pretence of tending the hens. Her heart had a presentiment, and as the Lord is true, I will kill you like a dog, so that my poor old mother may not weep."

"All right," replied _compare_ Alfio, stripping off his waistcoat.

"Then we will both of us. .h.i.t hard."

Both of them were skilful fencers. Turiddu was first struck, and was quick enough to receive it in the arm. When he returned it, he returned it well, and wounded the other in the groin.

"Ah, _compare_ Turiddu! so you really intend to kill me, do you?"

"Yes, I gave you fair warning; since I saw my old mother in the hen-yard, it seems to me I have her all the time before my eyes."

"Keep them well open, those eyes of yours," cried _compare_ Alfio, "for I am going to give you back good measure."

As he stood on guard, all doubled up, so as to keep his left hand on his wound, which pained him, and almost trailing his elbow on the ground, he swiftly picked up a handful of dust, and flung it into his adversary's eyes.

"Ah!" screamed Turiddu, blinded, "I am dead."

He tried to save himself, by making desperate leaps backwards, but _compare_ Alfio overtook him with another thrust in the stomach, and a third in the throat.

"And that makes three! that is for the house which you have adorned for me! Now your mother will let the hens alone."

Turiddu staggered a short distance among the p.r.i.c.kly pears, and then fell like a stone. The blood foaming, gurgled in his throat, and he could not even cry, "_Ah! mamma mia!_"

LA LUPA.

She was tall and lean; but she had a firm, full bust, and yet she was no longer young; her complexion was brunette, but pallid as if she had always suffered from malaria, and this pallor set forth two big eyes and fresh rosy lips that seemed to eat you.

In the village she was called _la Lupa_--the She-Wolf--because she was never satisfied. Women made the sign of the cross when they saw her pa.s.s, always alone like a big ugly hound, with the vagabond and suspicious gait of a famished wolf; she would bewitch their sons and their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with her red lips and she made them fall in love with her merely by looking at them out of those big Satanic eyes of hers, even if they were before Santa Agrippina's altar.

Fortunately _la Lupa_ never came to church at Easter or at Christmas, nor to hear Ma.s.s or to make confession. _Padre_ Angiolino of Santa Maria di Gesu, a true servant of G.o.d, had lost his soul on her account.

Maricchia,--poor girl, pretty and clever she was,--secretly wept because she was _la Lupa's_ daughter, and no one had offered to marry her though she had nice clothes in her bureau, and her own little piece of land in the sun, like every other girl of the village.

One time _la Lupa_ fell in love with a handsome youth who had just served out his time in the army, and had come home and was helping to reap the notary's harvest with her; for surely it means to be in love when she felt the flesh burn under the fustian s.h.i.+ft, and on looking at him to experience the thirst that one has in hot June days down in the low-lands.

But he went on with his work, undisturbed, with his nose on his sheaves, and he said to her, "Oh, what's the matter, _gna_ Pina?"

In the immense fields where the only sound was the rustle of the gra.s.shoppers flying up, while the sun was pouring down his hottest beams perpendicularly, _la Lupa_ was heaping up sheaf on sheaf, and pile on pile, without ever showing any signs of fatigue, without one moment straightening herself up, without once touching her lips to the water jug, so as to stick close to Nanni's heels as he reaped and reaped; and now and again he would ask,--

"What do you want, _gna_ Pina?"

One evening she told him, it was while the men were sleeping in the thres.h.i.+ng-floor, weary of the long day's work and the dogs were howling through the vast black campagna,--

"I want you! you are as handsome as the sun and as sweet as honey; I want you!"

"But I want your daughter--I want the young calf," said Nanni, laughing at his own joke.

_La Lupa_ thrust her hands into the ma.s.ses of her hair, scratching her temples, without saying a word, and went off and was not seen again in the harvest field. But the following October she saw Nanni again at the time when they were pressing the oil, because he worked near her house, and the rattle of the press kept her awake all night.

"Take a bag of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me."

Nanni was shoveling the olives into the hopper and shouting "Ohi" to the mule to keep it going.

"Do you want my daughter Maricchia?" demanded _gna_ Pina.

"What dowry will you give with your daughter Maricchia?" replied Nanni.

"She has her father's things, and besides I will give her my house; it will be enough for me if you'll let me have a corner in the kitchen to spread out a mattress in."

"If that is so, we can talk about it at Christmas," said Nanni. Nanni was all grease and dirt from the olives put to fermenting, and Maricchia would not have him on any account; but her mother grabbed her by the hair as they stood in front of the hearth and hissed through her set teeth,--

"If you don't take him, I'll kill you."

_La Lupa_ looked ill, and the people remarked: "When the devil was old the devil a monk would be." She no longer went wandering about; she stood no more at her doorway looking out with those eyes as of one possessed.