Pescara Tales Read online

  A procession had formed inside the church and lengthened out into the square. In front of the altar, where Saint Pantaleone had fallen, eight chosen men awaited the moment when they would lift the statue of Saint Gonselvo, and the name of those were: Giovanni Curo, l’Ummalido, Mattalà, Vincenzio Guanno, Rocco di Céuzo, Benedetto Galante, Biagio di Clisci and Giovanni Senzapaura. They stood in silence and a little self-consciously, understanding well the dignity of their office. Their strength was evident; they had the ardent eyes of fanatics; all had, like their women, a ring of gold at each ear-lobe. From time to time they felt their biceps and wrists, as if to test again the capability of their arms, or they cast quick smiles towards the others in the group.

  The statue of the Patron was huge, the body of dark bronze and hollow, but the head and hands were of silver and very heavy.

  Mattalà spoke:

  ‘Let us go, lads!’

  All around them, people milled to see better. The high windows hummed with every gust of wind; the nave smoked with benzoin and sandalwood; sounds of musical instruments drifted in and out of the building. The eight men at the centre of all that agitation extended their arms. They were gripped by religious fever, or a certain kind of religious fever; in any case they were ready.

  Mattalà counted:

  ‘A-one... a-two... a-three!...’

  They tensed together to make a mighty heave that would have lifted the statue from the altar; but at that moment the weight defeated them; the statue tilted to the left. The movement was unexpected and the men’s hands were unprepared. Their backs curved in an attempt to resist the sway; Biagio di Clisci and Giovanni Curo, the least able of the team, let go their hold; the statue tilted violently to one side; l’Ummalido gave a cry and the others around shouted:

  ‘Care, now! Take care!’ as they saw disaster overtaking their Patron. The clamour outside in the square drowned their voices.

  L’Ummalido had fallen to his knees, and his right hand was under the bronze. Thus kneeling, he kept his eyes fixed on the trapped hand, wide-open eyes full of terror and pain; his distorted mouth, which may have cried out too among those shouts, uttered nothing now. Some drops of blood trickled down the altar front.

  His companions made a second effort to lift the great weight, now become a more difficult operation; L’Ummalido twisted his mouth spasmodically; women around the group shuddered.

  The statue was finally raised and l’Ummalido extracted his hand, crushed, bloody and formless.

  ‘Go home, quick! Go home!’ the people around him cried, urging him towards the door of the church.

  One woman untied her apron and offered it as a bandage for his arm, but l’Ummalido refused it. He said nothing and stood looking back at the group of men who were now gesticulating and arguing around the statue.

  ‘It’d be my turn!’

  ‘No, ‘tis mine!’

  ‘No, mine!’

  Cicco Ponno, Mattia Scafarola, and Tommaso di Clisci contended for the eighth place, vacated by l’Ummalido.

  He approached the disputants, keeping his broken hand against his side and opening a passage with the other. He spoke quietly:

  ‘This place be mine.’

  And he lowered his left shoulder under the Patron, stifling the pain with gritted teeth and by ferocious willpower.

  Mattalà spoke to him:

  ‘Man, what be you in mind to do there?’

  And he replied:

  ‘What Sante Gunzelve wants.’

  And together with the others he began walking, supporting his side of the statue.

  People, stupefied, watched him going. From time to time someone catching sight of the bloody and darkening member asked him as he passed:

  ‘L’Ummá, man, what ye got there?’

  But he did not reply; he went on gravely, measuring his pace by the rhythm of the music, passing beneath the vast bedcovers that beat in the wind, through the increasing crowd, his thinking becoming a little unclear now.

  At a corner of a street he suddenly fell. The Saint stopped and swayed for an instant, there was a momentary disorder, then the statue resumed its floating passage: Mattia Scafarola had immediately filled the vacated space. Two of l’Ummalido’s relatives gathered up the senseless man and carried him to a nearby house.

  Anna di Céuzo, an old woman who was an expert in treating wounds, looked over the misshapen and bleeding member and shook her head, muttering:

  ‘What can a body do there.’

  It was beyond her art.

  L’Ummalido had regained consciousness and he said nothing, just sat and contemplated his injury calmly. The hand hung loose with the bones crushed, inevitably a lost thing.

  Two or three old peasants came to look at it, and each with a gesture and one word expressed the same thought.

  L’Ummalido asked:

  ‘Who carries the Sante?’

  They told him:

  ‘Mattia Scafarola.’

  He asked again:

  ‘What happens now there?’

  They replied:

  ‘Vespers and music.

  The peasants said good-bye. They were going to vespers. A great pealing of bells came from Mascalico’s mother-church.

  One of the relatives brought in a pail of cool water and put it beside the wounded man, saying:

  ‘Dip the hand in there sometimes. We go to vespers.’

  L’Ummalido was left alone. The pealing increased, changing its metre. The day’s light began to wane. The branches of an olive tree blustered by the wind tapped against a low window beside his chair.

  Sitting, he began to bathe his hand, a little at a time; as the blood and dry clots dissolved, the damage became more apparent.

  L’Ummalido thought:

  ‘No good, ‘tis done for. Sante Gunzelve, I offer it to thee.’

  He took up a knife and went out. The streets were deserted: all had gone to worship in the church. Above the houses the violet-coloured clouds of a September dusk fled across the sky like herds of wild cattle.

  Inside the church the densely-packed multitude sang in measured intervals to the sound of instruments, harmonising almost as well as a directed choir. A palpable warmth emanated from the human bodies and the lighted tapers. The silver head of Saint Gonselvo shone above the assembly like a lighthouse.

  L’Ummalido came in. The singing stopped and all watched him silently as he walked up to the altar.

  He said in a clear voice, while holding the knife in his left hand:

  ‘Sante Gunzelve, I offer it to thee.’

  And under the eyes of the stone-still population he began with care to cut around his right wrist. Bathed by a flow of blood, the mangled hand separated by stages, hung for a moment by its last filaments, and fell into the copper basin at the feet of the Patron where the coin donations were made.

  L’Ummalido then raised his bloody right stump and repeated in a clear voice:

  ‘Sante Gunzelve, I offer it to thee.’

  THE FUNERAL VIGIL

  The body of Mayor Biagio Mila, fully dressed and its face covered by a cloth dampened with water and vinegar, lay on a bed almost in the middle of the room, a burning taper at each of the four bedposts. Those keeping vigil on either side of the bed were his widow and his brother.

  Rosa Mila might have been about twenty-five. She was a woman in full flower, with a clear complexion, a somewhat low forehead, eyebrows that traced long curves, and grey large eyes whose irises were as variegated as agates. Being blessed with an abundance of hair, there were almost always rebellious tresses falling over the nape of her neck, her temples and eyes. Her whole person shone with clean, lucent health, and her fresh skin gave forth an odour that called to mind some rare and exquisite fruit.

  Emidio Mila, a priest not long taken into Holy Orders, was probably about the same age. He was lean and had the bronze colour of those who live in the open countryside under a full sun. A soft reddish down covered his cheeks, his strong white teeth gave to his smile a vir
ile appeal, and his pale-amber eyes in certain conditions glinted like new gold zecchins.

  Both were silent: one passing through her fingers the beads of a rosary, the other watching that passage. Confronting the mystery of death, they both, in the way of our country-folk, were indifferent to it.

  Emidio gave a long sigh and said:

  ‘It’s hot tonight.’

  Rosa assented by a lift of her eyes.

  In the low-ceilinged room the light wavered according to the movement of the candle flames; shadows gathered now in a corner, now on a wall, changing their form and depth. The windows had been opened but the shutters remained closed. From time to time the white muslin curtains stirred and seemed to inhale breaths. On the white bed the body of Biagio lay in the semblance of one asleep.

  The words of Emidio sank into the room’s silence. The woman bent her head and returned to slowly telling her rosary. A lustre of perspiration had appeared on her forehead and her breathing was somewhat weary.

  Emidio asked, after a while:

  ‘At what time will they come for him tomorrow?’

  She replied nonchalantly:

  ‘At ten, with the Congregation of the Sacrament.’

  With that, they fell silent again. A persistent croaking of frogs came from the fields and at intervals the odour of grass. In that perfect serenity Rosa became suddenly aware of a kind of hoarse gurgling emitted by the cadaver, and she stood up with horror from her chair to move away.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Rosa, it’s just the gasses,’ her brother-in-law told her, stretching his hand out to her in a gesture of reassurance.

  She took his hand instinctively and kept hold of it, still standing. Her ears were now attuned to understand the sound, but she looked away. The gurgling continued inside the trunk of the dead man and appeared to be rising from there to his mouth.

  ‘It’s nothing, Rosa, calm yourself,’ her brother-in-law said again, nodding towards a flower-patterned cushion covering a trousseau-chest by a wall, indicating that she should sit there.

  She sat down on it, still holding his hand, unsettled, and he took a place beside her. The chest was not large and their elbows touched.

  Silence returned. The singing of peasants threshing grain came into the room from a distance.

  ‘They’re threshing at night, by moonlight,’ the woman said, to dismiss her fear and tiredness.

  Emidio made no comment. She retracted her hand because that contact had begun to awaken in her a vague restlessness.

  They were both now held by the same thought, something that had suddenly come to their minds, the same memory, a memory of pastoral ardour at the time of their first youth.

  They were neighbours then in a community called Caldore on a sunny hill where two roads crossed. At the boundary of a wheat field rose a high wall made of stones mortared with clay, and within the southern side of the wall, on land owned by Rosa’s parents, there where the sun’s warmth lingered and was most dulcet, a family of fruit trees prospered and multiplied. In spring the trees blossomed in joyous communion, and their silvery or rosy or violet crowns curved like cupolas set against the sky, overlying the wall, swaying wing-like as if to lift themselves at any moment into the air, contributing their rustle to the sleepy, genial murmur of bees.

  Rosa at that time often sang on the side of the wall where the trees were, and her limpid, fresh voice flowed upwards like a fountain beneath and through those crowning flowers. During one long season of convalescence Emidio had listened to that singing, seated on the other side. He was weak and starved, and to escape the strict diet that had been imposed on him he used to come furtively down from his house, hiding in his clothing a great lump of bread, and following the wall would walk beside the last furrow of grain until he reached the place of bliss.

  There he would sit with his shoulders against the sun-warmed stones and begin to eat, biting into the bread and plucking ears of wheat whose every grain held in it a tiny drop of milky juice and the fresh savour of milled flour. The pleasures of taste and those of hearing became confounded in the convalescing boy almost into one single, infinitely delightful voluptuous sensation; so that in that time of inactivity, in that heat, among those odours which gave to the air almost the cordial savour of wine, the feminine voice too, like some material nutriment melting into his veins, became for him a staple of nourishment by which his strength renewed. Rosa’s songs were therefore a cause of his healing, and when that was completed her voice ever afterwards held for him, its beneficiary, a certain sensual virtue.

  Subsequently, as the two families grew intimate, there bred in Emidio one of those taciturn, timid and solitary loves which devour adolescent life. In September, before Emidio was to depart for the seminary, the two families went one afternoon to picnic in the woods along the river. The day was mild, and the three carts drawn by oxen advanced past thickets of cane in flower.

  The picnic in the woods was conducted on a natural lawn in a circular glade surrounded by giant poplars, the grass beneath them short and full of a kind of little violet flowers that exhaled a subtle perfume. In the depths within this secluded sanctuary the sun descending through the leafy canopy formed on the ground large zones of light, and the river below, where aquatic plants slept unmoving in transparent water, was as still as a lake.

  After the meal, some went strolling up or down the river bank, others lay stretched out on their backs in the glade. Rosa and Emidio were left alone, and arm in arm they took a path that was discernible through undergrowth not far away. She walked leaning against him and laughing, tore leaves from shoots in passing, nibbled the bitter stems, tilted her head back to follow the flight of jays; and during one such motion her turtle-shell comb slipped from her hair, which instantly fell spreading over her shoulders in all its stupendous richness.

  Emidio bent at the same time as she to retrieve the comb, and as they both straightened, their heads met lightly. Rosa, holding her forehead in both hands, exclaimed through her laughter:

  ‘Ow! Ouch!’

  The young man stood looking at her, feeling a quiver run through the full length of his body, aware that he had gone pale and fearing what that might reveal. With her fingernails she prised away a long spiral of ivy from the trunk of a tree and with a rapid twist wound it around the rebellious tresses, affixing the comb again above the nape of her neck. The green leaves, loosely bound and some of them tinged with red, emerged freely from the coil in certain places, and she asked:

  ‘Do you like me like this?’

  But Emidio stayed silent; he could not think of anything to say.

  ‘Ah, it doesn’t suit me, then. Or maybe you’ve gone dumb?’

  He wanted to fall on his knees, and while Rosa laughed with disappointment he almost felt an urge to weep rising to his eyes from the anguish of not finding a word to say.

  They continued to walk. At a certain point a fallen young poplar lay across their passage. Emidio lifted the trunk with both his hands, and Rosa slipped through under the verdant branches, the leaves for a moment encircling her head like a wreath.

  Further, they came across a well with two rectangular troughs of stone, one on each side of it. The trees were dense here and formed around and over the well a cloister of greenery. Here all was in profound shade, an almost humid darkness; the leafy ceiling was perfectly reflected in the water that reached halfway up the brick parapet of the well. Embracing all this with her arms, Rose exclaimed:

  ‘How lovely!’

  She cupped her hand and with a graceful gesture collected some water and drank. A few drops passed between her fingers and beaded her dress; then, satisfied, she gathered more water in her two hands held together and offered it to her companion, tempting him.

  ‘Come, drink!’

  ‘I’m not thirsty,’ Emidio mumbled, completely confused.

  She flung the water in his face and thrust her lower lip out in a grimace almost of contempt; then she lay down in one of the dry troughs as in a cradle, her feet
poking over the end, twitching them impatiently. A moment later she was on her feet again and looking at Emidio with a singular intensity; then she said:

  ‘Well?... Let’s go back.’

  They recommenced walking, returning in silence to the place of the picnic. Blackbirds whistled above their heads, sunlight lay in horizontal sheaves across their way, and the perfume of the woodland had grown more intense around them.

  Some days afterwards Emidio departed.

  Some months afterwards Emidio’s brother would take Rosa for his wife.

  In the first years at the seminary the novice thought often about his new sister-in-law. In class, while the priests expounded the Epitome historiæ sacræ, he fantasised about her. In the study hall, while his neighbours unseen behind their opened lecterns gave themselves up to obscene practises, he had hid his face in his hands and succumbed to impure imaginings. In chapel while the litanies of the Virgin were being enumerated, at the point of the invocation to the Rosa mystica his thoughts departed far from there.

  And having lost all naiveté after associating with fellow seminarians, that episode in the woods appeared to him in a new and corrupt light, and the suspicion that he had not understood the situation, had not known how to pluck the offered fruit, tormented him strangely. So, had it been like that? Could Rosa have once loved him? And had he therefore passed by a wondrous joy obliviously?

  And those thoughts each day became more acute, more insistent, more pursuing, more anguished; and every day he ruminated on them with a greater intensity of suffering, until in the long monotony of his seminary existence they had grown to be a species of incurable illness, and, confronted by the irremediability of things, he was overtaken by an immense dismay, an endless melancholy.