He hesitated a moment, and stopped, with his left arm raised in an uncompleted gesture. In that brief silence, from a distance that was difficult to assess, came the noise of an explosion which stunned the entire assembly.
“Dear God,” groaned Mariú Gabrielli, throwing herself on her knees. “My children!”
“They’ve begun!” shouted another woman hysterically.
“Be quiet, calm yourselves, nothing has happened! Don’t act like serving maids!” interposed Liselore Bini.
Then Maestro Cottes came forward. Distraught, with his coat thrown over his shoulders, and his hands grasping the lapels of his tailcoat, he stared fixedly at the barrister Cosenz, and solemnly announced, “I’m off.”
“Off where?” said several voices together, full of vague hopes.
“I’m going home. Where else should I be going? I can’t endure it any longer.” And he moved toward the exit. But he was swaying, as though he were quite drunk.
“Now? But no, wait, wait! It’ll be morning soon!” they shouted at his back. It was useless. Two of them showed him downstairs with candles, where a drowsy porter opened the door to him unprotestingly. “Phone,” was the last piece of advice. Cottes began walking, and did not answer.
Upstairs, they rushed to the windows, looking out from the slats in the shutters. What was going to happen? They saw the old man cross the tram tracks; with clumsy steps, almost stumbling, he aimed at the piazza’s central flower bed. He passed the first row of stationary cars and continued into the clear space beyond. All of a sudden he fell heavily forward, as if he had been given a push. But there was not another living soul to be seen in the piazza. There was an audible thud. He stayed stretched out on the asphalt with his arms splayed, and his face down. At a distance he seemed like a huge squashed beetle.
The onlookers caught their breath. They were speechless and rigid with horror. Then a horrible female scream broke the silence: “They’ve murdered him!”
Not a movement in the piazza. Nobody came out of the stationary car to help the old man. The place seemed dead, weighed down by an immense incubus.
“They fired at him. I heard the shot,” somebody said.
“What nonsense, it was the noise of his fall.”
“I swear I heard a shot. An automatic pistol, I know them.”
Nobody contradicted him. They stayed as they were, some smoking from desperation, some forlornly on the floor, others riveted to the shutters, on the lookout. They felt destiny coming toward them in a concentric fashion, from the gates of the city.
Till at last a faint gleam of gray light fell on the sleeping buildings. A solitary cyclist went creaking by. There was a noise of distant trams. Then a little bent man came into the piazza, pushing a small cart. Very calmly, starting from the entrance to Via Marino, he began to sweep. Wonderful! A few strokes of the broom sufficed. Sweeping away the dirt and the wastepaper, he swept fear away too. Later came another cyclist, a workman on foot and a van. Little by little, Milan was waking up.
Nothing had happened. Roused by the street sweeper, Maestro Cottes breathlessly got himself onto his feet. He looked around in amazement, picked his coat up off the ground and tottered hastily in the direction of his house.
As dawn filtered through the shutters, an old flower woman noiselessly entered the foyer. An apparition! She seemed decked out for a first performance, for night had passed over her without touching her: she had a long black tulle dress draped to the ground, a black veil, black shadows around her eyes and a basket full of flowers. She passed through the midst of the liverish-looking assembly, and with a melancholy smile offered Liselore Bini a perfect gardenia.
Humility
A MONK NAMED CELESTINO BECAME A HERMIT AND went to live in the heart of the city where the human heart is loneliest and temptation strongest. For as powerful as is the impact of the eastern deserts with their stones, sand and sun, where even the most unimaginative man realizes his insignificance when face-to-face with creation and the abyss of eternity, even more powerful is the desert of the city with its crowds, vehicles, asphalt, electric light and clocks which all strike in the selfsame instant the selfsame condemnation.
Well, in the most desolate part of this arid land lived Father Celestino, spending most of his time in ecstatic adoration of the eternal, but as soon as it became known how enlightened he was, there came to him even from the most distant countries a confused throng of people to seek advice and make their confessions. At the back of a metal workshop he had found, goodness knows how, the remains of an antique truck whose cramped driving cab, minus, alas, plate glass, served as a confessional.
One evening when it was already dark, after he had spent long hours hearing numerous lists of sins, more or less genuine, Father Celestino was about to climb down from his perch when from the shadows a small figure approached in penitential attitude.
Only when the stranger was kneeling on the footboard did the hermit notice that he was a priest.
“What can I do for you, my little priest?” asked the hermit with gentle patience.
“I have come to confess,” replied the man, and without delay began to recite his sins.
Now, Celestino was accustomed to suffer the confidences of people, especially women, who came to confess in a kind of mania, boring him with detailed accounts of the most innocent actions. But never before had he come across
