Then the scene changes. Now it is the portico of the rich Dejas’s house; everyone is busy with the spun wool, dividing it into long skeins preparatory to weaving it. Giovanna comes and goes, carrying huge bunches in her hands. Brontu is there too, seated on the threshold of the kitchen door, with his legs well apart, and between them, laughing and unsteady, stands the little Malthineddu. Ah, intolerable thought! Presently, however, remembering that Brontu is never at home except on holidays, he is somewhat comforted, and then he falls asleep, his heart steeped in a mingled sensation of joy and pain.
VII
Summer had come again.
“How quickly the time passes,” said Aunt Martina, as she sat spinning on the portico. “It seems only yesterday, Giacobbe, that you took service with us, and yet, here you are back again to renew the contract! Ah, the time does indeed pass quickly for us poor employers! You have saved thirty silver scudi at the very least, and have begun to build a house of your own, but what have we to show for it?”
“That’s all very well, but how about the sweat of my brow, little spring bird? The sweat of my brow, doesn’t that count for anything?” replied the herdsman, who was busily greasing a leather cord with tallow.
“But there’s your keep,” rejoined the old woman. “Ah, you have forgotten to allow for that!”
May the crows pick your bones! thought Giacobbe, who would have liked to say it aloud, but was afraid to. He thoroughly detested both his employers, the miserly old woman and the weak, hot-headed son, who tormented him continually with his project of marrying Giovanna if she would get a divorce. It was important, though, for him to renew the contract, so he held his tongue. He greased the thong thoroughly, rolled it up, and took it into the house; then he asked permission to go off to attend to a piece of business of his own, and having received a grudging assent, departed.
Walking in the direction of the Era cottage, the herdsman presently descried little Malthineddu bestriding, with very unsteady seat, a spirited stick horse, the sun gilding his dirty little white frock, his stout legs and bare arms.
Stooping down with outstretched arms, Giacobbe barred the way. “Where are we off to?” he asked caressingly. “There’s the sun, don’t you see it? Ahi! ahi! Maria Pettina5 will come with her fire-comb and snatch you up, and carry you off to the hobgoblins! Run back quickly to the house.”
“No-o-o, no-o-o-o,” shouted the child, jumping up and down on his steed.
“Well, then,” said Giacobbe, lowering his voice and closing one eye as he pointed to the white house, “Aunt Martina is up there, and to save bread she eats little children; don’t you see her?”
The boy seemed to be impressed, and allowed himself to be led back to the cottage, still insisting, however, upon riding his stick.
Giovanna was sewing at the door, as round and fresh and rosy as though no misfortune had ever befallen her. Above her pretty face the mass of wavy hair lay in thick, glossy coils. Seeing Giacobbe approach with the child, she raised her head and smiled. “Here he is,” said the herdsman. “I am bringing him safely back to you; but I found him playing in the sun, and travelling straight towards Aunt Martina, who eats children so as to save bread.”
“Oh, go away!” said Giovanna. “You ought not to tell children such things!”
“I tell them to grown people as well, for Aunt Martina eats them too. Look out, Giovanna Era, the first thing you know she will eat you, and all the more because you are like a ripe quince—no, not that either, quinces are yellow, aren’t they? You are more like a—a—”
“An Indian fig!” she suggested, laughing.
“And how is Aunt Bachissia? Is it long since you heard from Costantino?”
At this Giovanna became suddenly grave, replying with an air of mystery that they had had news of the prisoner only a short time before.
“Ah!” said the man, without pressing the matter further. “Can you tell me if Isidoro Pane is anywhere about? I want to see him.”
“Yes,” she replied sadly, taking up her work again. “He is at home.”
Giacobbe said goodbye, and walked thoughtfully away in the direction of Isidoro’s house—if house it could be called—which stood at the other end of the village.
The fisherman, in justice to whom it should be said that he fished for trout and eels as well as leeches whenever he had the opportunity, was seated in the shadow of his hut, mending a net. This hut, which stood in the fields, a little apart from the rest of the village, was a prehistoric structure composed of rough pieces of slate dating possibly from the time when men, not yet having mastered the art of cutting stones for themselves, used such pieces as had already been detached by nature. It was roofed over with sticks and bits of tile, above which flourished a vigorous growth of vegetation.
The sun was sinking after a day of intense heat. Not a leaf stirred in the row of dusty trees along the scorched, deserted village street. Far off, the yellow uplands, furrowed by long, slanting shadows, were immersed in floods of crimson light; and beyond them rose the rugged line of purplish mountains—a row of huge red sphinxes covered with a veil of violet gauze. The all-pervading stillness was pierced by the distant note of a blackbird. Wild figs with coarse, dark foliage, and a hedge of wild robinia, among whose branches hairy nettles and the whitish-leaved henbane had wound and interlaced themselves, surrounded the hut; and from the doorway could be seen a wide expanse of country, lonely and vapourous as the sea. The atmosphere was filled with the acrid odour of stubble and dried asphodel, and the
