Pescara Tales Read online

  ‘Te rogamus, audi nos!’

  But when the arm re-entered the cathedral and the great bells stopped ringing, in that moment of silence a jingling of harness was heard on the road beside the river, and there was an immediate turn and movement by the concourse towards that sound, and many voices shouted:

  ‘Ha! Pallura with the candles! Pallura comes! Here is Pallura!’

  The cart approached, crunching gravel under its wheels at a pace set by its heavy mare, on her grey rump a harness decoration in the shape of a cornucopia made of brass, shining like a vivid new moon. As a wave of citizens, led by Giacobbe, flowed towards the cart, the patient beast halted, blowing powerfully through its nostrils, and Giacobbe, the first to reach the cart, saw stretched out on its bottom a body daubed with bloodstains. Turning to the crowd, flouorishing his arms, he bellowed:

  ‘He is dead! He is dead!’

  III.

  The dreadful news spread in a moment. People pressed up to the cart, craning their necks to see what they could, smitten by this new event and invaded by that natural, that ferocious curiosity which men have in the presence of blood. They had stopped thinking of the menace above them.

  ‘But no, is he really dead? How did it happen?’

  Pallura lay on his back on the boards of the cart, a great wound in the middle of his forehead, one ear lacerated, rents visible along his arms and his sides and one thigh. A tepid stream from the hollows of his eyes had at some point dripped down to his chin and neck and spotted his shirt, had formed dark, shining clots on his chest, on his leather belt and his breeches. Giacobbe had turned again and was bent over the body, the others around waited. A light from above like a glimmer of dawn palely illuminated their perplexed faces; and in that moment of quiet the song of frogs lifted from the river, and bats passed and repassed just over the heads of the hushed populace.

  Suddenly, Giacobbe straightened from the cart, one cheek smeared with blood, and he announced:

  ‘He is breathing! He is not dead!’

  A murmur of voices rose around him, and those of the crowd who were closest to the cart stretched over its sides to look, while the restlessness of people at the distant edges began to break out into an insistent clamour. Two women brought over a carafe of water, another some torn strips of linen, a young man offered a gourd of wine. The wounded man’s face was washed, the flow of blood from his forehead was staunched and his head raised. While all that was being done, the babble of voices increased, loudly demanding the cause of what had happened. The hundred pounds of wax was missing, only a few fragments of candles remained trapped in gaps between the bottom boards of the cart.

  Conjectures, accusations uttered from an excited stir grew more and more heated, indignant and bellicose; and as there burned an ancient hereditary hatred against the town of Mascalico across the river, Giacobbe asked in a curt and venomous tone:

  ‘That wax would not have gone over to serve their San Gonselvo now, would it?’

  And that spark lit a fire. The spirit of an invincible parochialism awoke instantly in that population brutalized by generations of blind and fierce adherence to the cult of their own graven image. The words of the zealot were propagated from mouth to mouth, and under that tragic red twilight the multitude in tumult had in an instant acquired the look of a vast tribe of mutinous negroes.

  The name of the enemy’s idol burst forth from every throat like a war cry. The more ardent flung imprecations at that side of the river, waving arms and clenching fists. Then, all those faces afire with choler and with the sky’s red light, faces which seemed enlarged in that glow and become more determined, whose round gold earrings and frontal-spilling manes of hair had strangely changed to features of barbarity, those faces turned back with softness and pity towards the recumbent man. The solicitous charity of women anxious to reanimate the wretch in pain now encircled the cart, loving hands changed the linen strips around his wounds, sprinkled water over his face, accosted the gourd of wine to his lips, made a pillow to put beneath his head.

  ‘Pallura, poor Pallura, can you hear us?’

  He remained reclining with his eyes closed, his mouth slightly open, a boy’s russet down on his cheeks and chin, the gentle beauty of youth still patent in his strained features convulsed by pain. Under the binding around his forehead a thread of blood escaped down one temple, at the corners of his mouth small bubbles floated on rosy foam, and from his throat came a kind of hoarse, interrupted whistling. The attention, the questions, the fevered looks increased around him. From time to time the mare shook her head and neighed in the direction of her stall somewhere among the houses. An anxiety like that felt at the approach of an immense tempest weighed over the town.

  Shrill female cries were heard from the direction of the square: they were those of the mother, sounding louder for the sudden cessation of all other voices, and a huge woman, half-suffocated by layers of fat, panted through the crowd, thrust wailing towards the cart. Unable to lift all her mass into it, she bent over it and collapsed upon her son’s feet with words of love uttered through sobs, in such a lacerated and broken voice and an expression of suffering so horribly bestial as to cause a shudder to course over those standing near, and they turned their eyes away.

  ‘Zaccheo! Zaccheo! My heart, my happiness!’ the widow was crying repeatedly, kissing the feet of the wounded man, pulling at them in an attempt to slide him across to her.

  He stirred, a spasm twisted his mouth, and he opened his eyes to the sky; but it was obvious that he could not see, because a sort of humid film covered the pupils. A flow of tears began coursing down his cheeks and neck; his mouth remained distorted; by a faint wheeze coming from his throat could be detected a vain attempt to speak. The crowd around pressed him with questions and demands:

  ‘Speak, Pallura! Who did this to you? Who did it? Say something! Speak!’

  And behind that clamour there was rage, there were intensifying centres of fury, a wordless tumult for vengeance was awakening, and an ancient hate boiled again in the breast of everyone there.

  ‘Tell us! Who did it to you! Speak to us, speak!’

  The dying man opened his eyes once more and his expression lightened, his spirits for a moment were perhaps revived by the living and warm contact of the arms that upheld him. From his lips through the froth that flowed increasingly copiously and bloody he uttered a vague babble, not a word of which was understandable. The breathing of the multitude became audible in the silence, like expectant panting, all eyes burning with the same flame in their depths, attendant now on one forced word:

  ‘Ma… Ma… Ma… scalico…’

  ‘Mascalico! Mascalico!’ shouted Giacobbe, who had been inclined with one ear towards the dying mouth to catch those weakly uttered syllables. An explosion of noise responded to the shout, at first a confused swirling like waves in a tempest, then at the sound of some dominating voice giving the call to arms the infuriated multitude disbanded in all directions. One thought stirred those men, one thought that appeared to have flashed into all their minds at the same moment: to obtain some weapon with which to strike. Beneath the surly crepuscular light, in the midst of the electric odour emanating from an anxious countryside, a bloodthirsty fatalism settled on all.

  IV.

  And the mass, armed with scythes, with pruning knives, with axes, with hoes, with muskets, gathered again in the square in front of the church, the frenzied idolaters all roaring together:

  ‘San Pantaleone!’

  Don Consolo, stunned by the din, had taken refuge in the deepest extremity of his church, inside a stall behind the altar. A squad of fanatics headed by Giacobbe entered the main chapel, forced open the bronze entry and penetrated into the subterranean crypt where the bust of the Saint was kept. Three lamps fuelled by olive oil cast a gentle light through the humid air of the sacrarium; behind a sheet of Bohemian glass the Christian idol glittered, its white head haloed by a large disc of solar splendour. The walls of the sacrarium were invisible under the r
ichness of the bequests that hung on them.

  When the idol, carried out on the shoulders of four stalwarts, appeared between the pilasters of the vestibule, where it received from the sky above the first auroral gleams, a passionate long gasp burst from the waiting people, the air as if leavened by some joyous breeze seemed to quiver over their faces; and soon a column formed and began to move, the vast head of the Saint swaying above it and gazing ahead through its vacant eye orbits.

  From time to time the tracks of lively meteorites streaked through the heavens; sheafs of thin clouds detaching from the edges of that even and dismal glare floated by, dissolving slowly. Beneath, the town of Radusa appeared in that light like a heap of grey cinders sheltering embers; in the arc of its hinterland indistinct points of light that were farmsteads glimmered and vanished. A great canticle of frogs filled the resonant solitude.

  On the river road Pallura’s cart was an obstacle to progress; it was empty now but still bore residues of blood in many places. After a moment of silence, execrations fired with ire and impatience burst out in various parts of the assembly. Giacobbe shouted:

  ‘Put the Saint in it!’

  The bust was lowered on the bottom boards and the cart manoeuvred by hand to the ford: the battle procession was crossing Radusa’s territorial boundary. Along the column some carried metal lamps, and at those points the invaded water broke up in luminous sprays; ahead, a sequence of red lights flickered in passing through copses of poplars on the road leading to the old square watchtowers. Mascalico was visible on a small height, dreaming among olive growths. Dogs barked from various directions, replying to each other with furious persistence. Soon after the column had passed the ford, it abandoned the public road to make a more rapid advance by taking a direct route across fields. The silver bust was borne again on shoulders, and it dominated the line of heads visible above tall grain, fragrant and bestarred with animated fireflies.

  Suddenly, a shepherd or farm hand who had been lying in a nest of straw, possibly a guard on the grain, woke from his doze and was instantly thrown into mad terror at the sight of such a throng of armed intruders, and he took to his heels up the slope, howling for help at the top of his voice, his yells re-echoing in the olive groves.

  Then was it the Radusans put on speed: through stands of trees and through dry reeds the silver Saint jolted and danced, rang with a deep hum or a metallic ‘ting’ according as he met a branch or twig, was instantly bathed with vivid lamplight brought quickly with concern to bear on him when some large sideways tilt threatened he might be let fall. The dim mass of Mascalico now lifted up ahead. With a series of consecutive flashes ten, twelve, twenty musket-shots hailed into the houses. There were noises of things breaking, then shouts, then came the sound of a great, clamorous stir: doors opened, other doors were slammed shut, glass fell in fragments, pots of basil were overturned and broke on pavements. A pall of white gun-smoke rose placidly in the air behind the advancing attackers, lifted towards the night’s celestial incandescence, while blinded by bellicose fury, each man of Radusa roared:

  ‘Kill them! Kill them!’

  A platoon of idolaters kept close about Saint Pantaleone, and from among its brandished scythes and pruning-hooks atrocious vituperations erupted against Saint Gonsalvo:

  ‘Thief! Bandit! Thou good-for-nothing! The candles! The candles!’

  Other groups were taking the assault to the doors of houses, hacking at them with hatchets, and as the unhinged and splintered doors crashed down, the Pantaleonites leapt into the interiors, bellowing for blood. Half-naked women sought refuge in corners, pleading for mercy, grappled with weapons at the cost of gashed fingers, rolled and lay extended on floors, their turnip-fed limp flesh entangled with heaped sheets and blankets.

  Giacobbe, tall, scrawny, flushed, a bundle of arid bones rendered formidable by passion, the condottiere of the massacre, stopped here and there to make with a hay-sickle some large imperial gesture over his countrymen’s heads. He led in the van, fearless, hatless, ferocious in the name of Saint Pantaleone, and more than thirty men followed him. And all of them had fallen subject to the same confused and dull sensation of dream-walking through a conflagration, over oscillating ground, beneath a burning vault teetering on the point of crashing down upon all heads.

  But now from every side defenders were at last appearing, the males of Mascalico: strong and swarthy as mulattos, homicidal, attacking with long-bladed folding knives aimed at the belly and throat, accompanying the thrusts with guttural cries. The fray drew step by step towards their church; the roofs of two or three houses were already in flames; a horde of blank-eyed women and children, overcome by panic, fled precipitately through the olive trees. Then the counterattack of their men, no longer impeded by tears and clinging hands, grew yet more ferocious. Under the rust-coloured sky the ground was being covered with corpses. Shrieked maledictions passed through the teeth of the wounded, to be cut off by death; and unceasing through the clamour the cry of the Radusans persisted:

  ‘The candles! The candles!’

  But the door of the church remained shut, a door enormous, all in oak and starred with the heads of nails, the Mascalicoites defending it against the weight of charges and the blows of axes. The silver Saint, impassive and white, swayed above the thickest of the fray, sustained by the herculean shoulders of the four, whose bodies bled from head to foot and yet retained their burden upright. The supreme vow of the invaders was to put their idol on the altar of the enemy.

  And now while the Mascalicoites fought like lions and performed prodigies on the stone steps, all at once Giacobbe disappeared around their church to search where on its undefended sides might be a passage to the sacristy; and in fact on seeing a narrow ventilation-opening not high above the ground he clambered up and into it, was trapped for a few moments at the hips, then after some contortions passed his lengthy body through. A genial odour of spent incense hung in the nocturnal coolness of the house of God. Groping in the dark, guided by the noise of combat, he proceeded to the door, catching against pews, grazing his face and hands. At the door, the furious work of the Radusan axes was already overcoming the resistance of the oak-wood. He began forcing the locks with an iron bar, panting, choked by a violent tremor of pain that diminished his strength, his vision crossed by will-o’-the-wisp flashes, his wounds aching and sending warm waves over his skin.

  San Pantaleone! San Pantaleone! came hoarsely to him the voices of his comrades outside; feeling the door slowly giving, they were redoubling their drumming and hacking. Through the wood of the door came the sound of thrashing bodies falling heavily together, the truncated thud of a knife nailing someone out there through the kidneys; and it seemed to Giacobbe that all the nave was throbbing with the beat of his own savage heart.

  V.

  With a final effort the door crashed open. Uttering an immense roar of victory and passing over the bodies of the killed, the Radusans poured into the church, carrying on their tide the silver Saint towards the altar. And in an instant, lively waves of reflected flashes invaded the gloom of the nave, made glint overhead the gold of the candelabras, the copper of the organ pipes. And in that tawny brightness, to which the nearest burning houses surely added something, the forces joined again in hand-to-hand battle. Entangled bodies rolled on the pavement flagstones, turned or rocked together as though one body, according to the sways of rage, embraced beneath pews or on the steps of chapels or at the corners of confessionals. In the vast, all-gathering concavity of God’s house the sickening sound of steel penetrating flesh and slewing over bone, the distinctive cut-off moan of a man struck in a vital part, the crunch of a cranial cage shattered by a blow, the whine of one who does not want to die, the atrocious laughter of someone else who has just killed, all echoed distinctly. And the mild faint odour of old incense drifted over the conflict.

  The idol of silver had not yet attained the glory of the altar, a hostile circle impeded its access. Giacobbe fought on with his sickle, wounded in many
parts, not ceding by a step the space he had conquered. Only one pair of bearers remained now to uphold the Saint. The enormous white head swayed drunkenly, dipped and bobbed on that swirl of maddened blood. The Mascalicoites raged.

  Then Saint Pantaleone crashed upon the pavement, and Giacobbe felt the pain of that jangling plunge penetrate his heart deeper than the point of a dagger might have done. As the flushed reaper darted forward to raise the Saint, a great devil of a man laid him low on his back with a pruning hook. Twice he attempted to rise, and each time a blow felled him again. Blood flooded all his face, his breast and hands; the barred bone showed white in the depths of wounds that opened on his shoulders and arms. Yet, obstinately, he tried to launch himself forward again; until three, four, five villeins together, maddened by his ferocious hold on life, directed their weapons at his belly. The innards disgorged. The old fanatic fell supine, the nape of his neck striking the silver bust; then a sudden contraction sent him face-down, a cheek resting on the metal, arms outstretched and legs curled up. And it was thus that Saint Pantaleone was lost.

  THE HERO

  The great standards of Saint Gonselvo had come out on the square and swayed ponderously, held high in the air. They were maintained there and brandished by rock-fisted men of herculean stature, red-faced and swollen-necked from their labours in the intricate banner-play that attended such processions.

  After their victory over the Radusans the people of Mascalico were celebrating the feast of September with a novel magnificence. An extraordinary religious ardour gripped their souls. The whole town and surrounding countryside had devoted the richness of the recent grain harvest to the glory of the Patron. All along the streets, from window to window the women had hung out the nuptial bedding, the men garlanded doors with fresh verdure and attached nosegays over thresholds, so that at every gust of wind there was a universal wave of movement to dazzle and intoxicate the passing crowd.