But Anna was delighted to be in the water. The request was drowned by the sound of children shouting.
“Young lady,” repeated the woman, more loudly this time. “Adults aren’t allowed in the fountain. It’s for the children.” The other women nodded in agreement.
Anna turned around in surprise, still smiling. “Children or not,” she answered, “I must do something to cool down, if you don’t mind.” Her tone was pleasant, ceremonial almost, as though she hoped to amuse. Then she went toward the middle of the fountain, where the water was deeper.
Another woman, with a face like a weasel, waved her hands. “This fountain belongs to the children,” she shouted. “Do you hear? To the children.”
Others followed suit: “Get out! Out! It’s for the children!” Even the children themselves, who had taken no notice at first, looked up at this girl who had come to share the water with them; and they stopped playing, expectantly.
“Get out! Not allowed! Out!” By now Anna was almost under the jet of water, where the children were thickest. The water was up to her knees. She turned around again at the renewed shouting, but for some reason she was blind to the sudden transformation that had affected the faces of the surrounding women: damp with sweat, red and drawn with anger, with lines of hatred at the corners of their mouths. She didn’t see and she wasn’t afraid. “Oh, just a minute,” she replied, raising a hand in impatience and annoyance.
From the fountain’s edge Antonio, trying to avoid further trouble, spoke gently. “Anna, Anna, come back now. You’re cool enough.”
But Anna realized that Antonio was embarrassed by her and was, in a way, putting the women in the right. In reply she stamped in the water like a naughty child. “I’m coming, just a minute!” She didn’t want to give in to those old hags.
Splash. Something gray fell into the water, and a large patch of dirt appeared on Anna’s back; it ran down the blue flowered material. Who had done it? One of the women, tall, handsome and strongly built, had taken a fistful of mud from the bottom of the pool and had thrown it at Anna.
The crowd laughed and shouted. “Out! Out of the fountain. Out!” There were men’s voices now, as well. The crowd, which had been drowsy and uncaring at first, was now thoroughly roused. It contemplated with glee the prospect of humiliating this brazen girl whose face and accent proclaimed her foreign origin.
“Cowards!” shouted Anna, turning suddenly. She tried to wipe the mud off her back with a handkerchief. But the joke had succeeded. Another dollop hit her on the shoulder, a third on the neck of her dress. She had become a target.
“Out! Out!” they shouted in delight. A burst of laughter went through the crowd when a great fistful of mud hit Anna’s ear, and went over her face; her sunglasses fell off into the water. The girl tried to shield herself from the sudden rain of blows, panting and shouting incomprehensible phrases.
Here Antonio pushed himself forward to intervene. Unfortunately, as often happens in moments of great stress, he could produce only disjointed words: “Please, for goodness’ sake,” he began, “leave her alone! She hasn’t done you any harm. . . . Now, look . . . listen. . . . Surely you must . . . Anna, Anna, come away immediately!”
Antonio was a foreigner, the crowd all spoke dialect. His words sounded odd, almost ridiculous. Right beside him, someone began to laugh. “For goodness’ sake, eh? Surely you must?” he mimicked. He was a young man of about thirty, wearing a T-shirt and with the sly face of a born troublemaker.
Antonio’s lip trembled. “What do you mean?” he began. But at the same moment, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman raise her arm to throw more mud. He seized her wrist, stopping her; the dirt spattered from her fingers.
“Oh, so you go for women too, do you?” said the young man in the T-shirt. “I suppose you’re the boyfriend?” He brought his leering face close to Antonio’s. “Now, now,” he threatened, drawing a hand provokingly in front of the boy’s face. Antonio clenched a fist to push him back. But he struck out clumsily, grazing the man’s shoulder.
The young man didn’t give an inch. He smiled, apparently highly amused; then he began to mark time with his feet like a boxer, fists flailing. “Now take this!”
His left arm lengthened, slowly it seemed, with no particular force. But Antonio, for some reason, was unable to avoid it. It was apparently quite a mild blow, hitting him in the stomach. But as soon as he drew a breath he felt an atrocious pain spreading within him: a deep, dull, evil pain. He was unable to breathe.
“For goodness’ sake! For goodness’ sake!” cackled the young man, still mimicking. Then the other arm lengthened. The blow hardly seemed to touch him. Yet a second later Antonio was doubled up, groaning. A horrible wave of nausea rose from deep within him. He could see only a confusion of shadows. He backed toward the nearest tree, to lean against it.
When he recovered—it was only a matter of seconds—something new was happening at the fountain.
Anna was still in the middle. Spattered with mud, her face twisted into an expression of anguish, she was dividing her attention between shielding herself with her hands and trying to splash water at those who were aiming at her. But she moved with difficulty, as though suddenly overcome with exhaustion. She was standing among the children in the hopes that their mothers, not wanting to hit them, would spare her too. “Antonio, Antonio,” she called, “look what they’ve done to me! Just look at me!” She continued to shout the phrase mechanically, as though she could say nothing else.
“Out! Out! Get out! . . . Come away, Nini . . . come away all of you children!” shouted the women. The children began to move away, leaving Anna standing quite alone.
At this point,
