“Here! here!” shouted Brontu, turning around, and gesticulating with both arms. “Come back! come back, I tell you! ’Sidore Pane, che ti morsichi il cane!’ ”4 he laughed, delighted with his rhyme. But Isidoro did not stop.
“Do you hear me?” yelled the tipsy Brontu, stammering somewhat. “I tell you to come here! Ah! you won’t do it, you little toad? I tell—you—”
But Isidoro silently pursued his way.
“Don’t talk to him like that; what sort of way is this to carry on?” remonstrated Giacobbe. Brontu thereupon adopted a new method.
“Little flower, come here, come here! Come listen to what I have to say. You may tell her—that friend of yours—well, yes, Giovanna, that is who I mean. You may tell her that if she gets a divorce I’ll marry her!”
This had the desired effect. The old man stopped short, and turning around, called in a distinct voice:
“Giacobbe Dejas!”
“What is it, my dear?” answered the herdsman mockingly.
“Make—him—keep—quiet!” returned Isidoro in the tone of a person who means to be obeyed.
For some unexplained reason, Giacobbe felt a sudden sense of chill as he heard the tone and those four emphatic words. Taking his new master by the arm he drew him quickly away, murmuring:
“You are a dunce! You behave as though you had no sense at all! What a way to talk!”
“Didn’t you tell me to yourself?”
“I? You are dreaming! Am I crazy?”
They continued on their way, staggering along together, arm in arm. On the portico they found Aunt Martina, still spinning. She saw at once that her son was tipsy, but said nothing, knowing by experience that to irritate him when he was in that condition was only to arouse him to a state of fury. When he asked for wine, though, she said there was none.
“Ah! there is none? No wine in the Dejas’ house! The richest people in the neighbourhood! What a miserly mother you are.” Then he began to bluster: “I’m not going to make a scandal, but I can tell you I am going to marry Giovanna Era!”
“Yes, yes, you are going to marry her,” said Aunt Martina to quiet him. “But in the meantime, go to bed, and don’t make such a noise; if she hears you, she won’t have you.”
He quieted down, but made Giacobbe unroll a couple of rush mats and spread them on the floor; then, throwing himself down, nothing would do but the herdsman must lie down as well, and sleep beside him; and rather than have any trouble, Aunt Martina was obliged to agree.
Thus it fell out that instead of beginning his term of service on the Monday, Giacobbe entered his new place on Saturday evening.
V
Sunday morning, a fortnight later, found all the personages of our story assembled at Mass, with Priest Elias officiating. The country people said that when he celebrated he seemed to have wings.
Giovanna alone was absent; and this for two reasons. First, her late misfortune required the observance of a sort of mourning; she was expected not to show herself outside the house except when her work made it necessary. Apart from this, however, she had fallen into a state of lethargy, and appeared to be quite unable to move about, to go anywhere, to work, or even to pray. She had, indeed, never been much of a Christian at any time, though before the trial she had made a vow to walk barefoot to a certain church in the mountains, and, if Costantino were acquitted, to drag herself on her hands and knees from the point where the church first came into view to its doors; that is, a distance of about two kilometres.
Now, she had ceased praying, or talking, or eating, and even seemed to have lost all interest in her child. Aunt Bachissia had to feed him with bread crumbled up in milk in order to keep the poor little fellow alive. Some of the neighbours said that Giovanna was losing her mind; and indeed it did look so. She would remain for hours at a time in a sort of stupor, crouched in a corner with her glassy eyes fixed on vacancy, and when she aroused it was only to fly into violent paroxysms, tearing her hair, and crying out wildly.
After the final interview with Costantino, when she had had the child with her, she could think of nothing else, and described the scene in the prison over and over again, with the monotonous insistence of a monomaniac:
“He was there, and he was laughing. He was livid, and yet he laughed, standing there behind the bars. Malthineddu seized hold of the bars, and he touched his little hands and then he laughed! My heart! my heart! don’t laugh like that; it hurts me, because I know that that is how dead people laugh! And the guards, standing there like harpies! At first they were good to us, those guards who watch over human flesh; but afterwards, when Costantino had been condemned, they were cruel, as cruel as dogs! Malthinu was frightened when he saw them, and cried; and his father laughed! Do you understand? The baby, the little, innocent thing, cried; he understood that his father had been condemned, and he cried! Oh, my heart! my heart!”
Then Aunt Bachissia, beside herself with impatience, and unable to hold in any longer, would exclaim:
“Honestly, Giovanna, anyone would take you to be two years old! That child there has more sense than you. Simpleton!” And sometimes she would threaten to beat her; but prayers, sympathy, and threats were equally unavailing.
Meanwhile, word came from Nuoro that, while waiting to hear from the appeal, Costantino had been removed to the jurisdiction of Cagliari. Then came a short, sad, little letter from the prisoner himself. The journey had gone well, but there, at Cagliari, the heat was suffocating, and certain red insects, and others of different colours, tormented him night and day. He sent a kiss to the child, and
