“He starved, he was homeless and cold and forsaken!” she cried out, wringing her hands.
Then Maddalena wept for her unborn children and for the father of her unborn children, himself so much her child. The merciful tears streamed down her cheeks unheeded, while the sharp plough of sorrow furrowed her soul; and her tears fell one by one into those furrows, nourishing the sacred seed of the spirit, the seed of faith in the mercy of God, that must come to fruition through tears.
Rosa touched Mario quietly on the shoulder, and together they left the stable. Then Nerone got awkwardly up from his knees, and he too left the stable, trying to walk softly, trying not to tap with his old wooden leg that made such a noise on the stones. But Teresa Boselli still lingered by the coffin, for she could not take her eyes from her grandson.
“So much food in the world,” she kept repeating, “and they think that he died of starvation!”
When old Teresa had at last looked her fill, she walked away firmly with her back very upright; she scarcely appeared to require that stick, so strong, it seemed, were her knees.
Outside in the street she said to a passer: “Where is our Catholic Church?”
“The Roman Catholic church is down there on the right-hand side,” she was told.
Teresa went into the quiet, empty church—she had not entered a church until now for thirty-four angry years. Right up to the statue of the Virgin walked Teresa—the statue that stood at the foot of the altar—and the Virgin’s halo was set with seven stars, perhaps for her seven sorrows.
“So,” said Teresa, confronting the Madonna, “so this is what you have done! I gave you Gian-Luca, the little Gian-Luca—all helpless and cold and motherless he was—and I said to you: ‘Take him, I give him to you, you can have him body and soul!’ And you took him, and you broke him, and you starved him to death out there in the cold, English forest—and he was the child of my only child, of Olga whom you left to die in shame. And he was a fine and a lovely man, as lovely as the morning with his strange, light eyes, and you left him at a time when his heart was broken because of this intolerable world! Oh, I know very well why you did these things, you did them to break Teresa Boselli. ‘She will not serve me any more,’ you said; ‘very well, I will show her that it pays best to serve me; I will take all things from her and leave her alone, now that she must suffer old age.’ But she will not serve you; she has come here to tell you yet again that she will not serve you! He was lovely as the morning, the little Gian-Luca—”
She stopped abruptly, staring up at the Madonna, who looked down with a deprecating smile—she could not help that deprecating smile, it was molded into the plaster.
“Answer me!” commanded Teresa sternly. “What have you done with Gian-Luca?”
But the Virgin was silent, and her lips were composed and gentle, like the lips of the body in the stable; for not in poor, faltering human speech could the Mother of God reply to Teresa.
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Adam’s Breed
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