Pescara Tales Read online

  Orsola lay stretched full length in the same bed beside Camilla, motionless and her eyes wide open; a great sleepless weariness had invested her limbs and an unyielding anguished vigilance martyred her miserable soul. She listened to the stillness; she investigated herself with an anxious curiosity as if to determine what change might have taken place in her being.

  Then Camilla in her sleep began murmuring confused words, incomprehensible fragments of words, barely moving her lips, issuing long sighs. Her face, fleshless, wrinkled, her head rigidly sculpted by penitence and fasting, yellowed by the light of the lamp and resting on the white of her pillow, looked like a badly-gilded image of some saint environed by a halo. Small dark-violet shadows indicated the cavities of her nostrils, the recesses in her tense and stringy neck, the cheek’s indents, the hollows of the eyes, out of which the curve of two globes covered with the soft skin of their lids emerged conspicuously. She evoked the corpse of a martyr upon which the Holy Ghost was at that moment descending.

  Although this was not the first time Orsola had heard her sister’s nocturnal soliloquies, she now listened attentively, an icy chillness tingling her scalp. Sudden terror assailed and enclosed her, and with an unthinking motion she jerked away; then, seeking to distance herself further from that body, she slid to her edge of the bed. She remained there immobile, waiting in suspension during each interval of silence, her eyes fixed on the sleeper’s mouth, feeling a speechless whisper forming in her own breast whenever those lips moved to shape new words. She could not understand, but something distantly profound and solemn was in that broken murmur, a supernatural enigma was burgeoning from that inert and oblivious body, speaking without hearing its own voice. A sepulchral breath passed through the room; to the disturbed imagination of the sleepless woman the oscillating shadows above took on the frightful and menacing forms of spectres, the air seemed to be scored by unknown noises. Wherever her hallucinated gaze turned for refuge, those perceptions transformed themselves, became animated and confrontational. Then the notion of punishment and eternal damnation swelled again in her conscience and began to harry her. She abased herself beneath the incubus of her sin, making a cross with her hands over her breast to defend herself from the menacing demons, attempted to pray with a tongue impeded by panic, clinging with a supreme effort to the anchor of repentance, the promise in that of her ultimate salvation. She felt herself lost, begged the divine and betrayed Spouse for forgiveness from the depths of her heart, begged Jesus, good and great-hearted, begged him who absolves all sins.

  Camilla’s voice rose in enraptured sighs, descended to a tremulous sonority, was extinguished, and she returned to slow and equal breathing as the fervour of the mystic dream abated. The shadows continued to sway. There was no descent yet of the crucified One from the wall, to gather up in his compassionate arms the lamb returning to the fold.

  XVII.

  ‘The Lord has told us through the mouth of the prophet Joel, son of Pethuel: “And it shall come to pass afterwards, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.” That Spirit of which the apostles had the first signs and blessings was for them and for us a Spirit of truth, a Spirit of sanctity, and a Spirit of might… O divine love, O sacred bond that unites the Father and the Son, omnipotent Spirit, faithful consoler of the afflicted, enter into the profoundest depths of our hearts and fill them with refulgent light…’

  Thus did Don Gennaro Tierno preach at Pentecost, standing beside the great altar and facing the listening people. Above him, the third person of the Holy Trinity, in the form of a dove surrounded by a nimbus of candle flames, opened the radiant arc of its golden wings; below, the lights of other tapers scattered red glimmers like the reflections of a distant great conflagration. The enormous stone pilasters, covered in barbarous Christian sculptures and supporting the two naves, marched heavily towards the altar; on the side walls twinkled sequences of mosaics: some head of an apostle here, there the rigid arm of a female saint, further away the wing of an angel yet managed to emerge from the smoke-stains and encrustations laid over them by the sacramental business of centuries. Between the mosaics hung little ex-voto boats dedicated by mariners delivered from shipwreck. And among the rude stonework and obscure decorations a group of slender spiral columns of rosy marble supported on acanthus-leaved capitals the marble pulpit, its sides animated by reliefs.

  ‘Send the celestial rays of your love into the sanctuary of our souls, so that, entering, it should ignite consuming fires to purify us of our weaknesses, our negligence, our indolence!’ the priest went on, rising to the summit of his eloquence and vocal power.

  Orsola, sitting near, listened with total attentiveness. She had taken refuge in the house of the Lord, had returned to the bridal antechamber; she wanted to be purified by him and be received by him once more in the tenderness of his universal embrace. Her own radiant impulse of faith dazzled her, made her almost forget any previous failings. It seemed to her that by it those stains would presently be annulled from her soul, and from her body would fall the dross of worldly impurity. Never before had she approached God’s altar with a tremor of hope rising from such depths; never had she listened to the word of God while gripped by such lofty exaltation.

  From the moment the horror of damnation had risen in her awareness, she had hunched herself into an intensely concentrated introspection, scrutinising herself, her acts, her thoughts, her least impulse, in a dreaded concern that this vehemence of repentance should not disperse, in her anxiety to maintain alive this bud of faith which had suddenly regenerated. It was an ascent towards Jesus by a corresponding repudiation of earthly ties. In that exalted spirit, she flung herself into the reading of sacred texts, in a contemplation of images and mysteries, resisted the soft vileness and vices of the flesh, the fervours of the day and the snares of the night, the perfumes brought to her on the wind; she stifled the quickened breath animated by impure memories, the voices that seemed to solicit at her ear and to whisper new secret desires.

  After that week of solitary passion, she was now setting down the sacrifice at the foot of the altar, was being anointed by the balsam of God’s word, her eyes fixed on the radiant dove above her and feeling herself by stages sinking into a sea of mystic rapture.

  ‘Come, then, come, sweet consoler of desolate hearts, refuge in dangers, protector in misfortune. O come, who purifies souls from all stain and heals all wounds. Come, strength of the weak, support of the stumbling. Come, star of navigators, hope of the poor, balm of the dying…’ pursued Don Gennaro Tierno relentlessly, high in his silver chasuble, red of face, his eyes bulging, gesturing upward as if intent on touching the heavens.

  Inside the church a sombre sultriness had grown dense over the worshippers; the naves seemed to weigh down with crushing weight upon their pilasters. From a stained glass window impacted by the sun the head of Saint Luke the Evangelist radiated an exploding halo, while his extensive mantle suffused in the air around it a penumbra of crepuscular green. The paleo-Christian marble ambo emerged miraculously like some mystic flower from the vaporous candlelight.

  ‘Come, O Spirit, and coming be merciful unto us!’

  Orsola kept her eyes elevated; borne on the wave of those invocations she felt herself rising towards the nimbus, being pierced by the ineffable bliss that draws the soul to the sweet essence of spirituality. For an instant one of the lights about the golden Dove seemed to beam more intensely, and her heart leapt with joy in her breast, like Saint John in the womb of Elizabeth at the visit of the Virgin Mary.

  ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

  The priest all in silver turned towards the ciborium, murmuring the Credo to himself; at his sides two censer-bearers in white began swinging their smoking and odorous censers. A cloud of incense surrounded the violated virgin kneeling nearby. And at that moment an invincible wave of nausea, surging from its source in her womb and rising
to her throat, made her mouth warp in a gruesome line.

  XVIII.

  Was there no escape? For days she wavered in uncertainty, awaiting the final evidence. Dizziness overcame her in the morning when she got up, the moment she put her feet to the ground; a vague fatigue disabled her in the evening, a haziness in which thought, will, memories all blurred into the same state of indistinct drowsiness, the swaying somnolence of the first morning hours lulling her again. She did things from habit, with the movements of a sleepwalker, tiredly. At school, if a breeze brought the odour of warm bread from the bakery below, she felt like dying, felt all her insides mount suddenly to her mouth and a scouring taste of lye to spread over her tongue. One day, while some child was sucking on a cherry, a violent desire for that fruit contorted her on her chair, made her go pale and perspire. Then, after a meal, her mouth bitter with nausea, she stretched herself out on the bed where she was invaded by torpor. The heat bore down on her, flies buzzed, the calls of some spectacles-seller passing beneath the window was painfully raucous in the silence.

  Mistrustful, she no longer went to church; the smell of incense now repelled her.

  She had no further thought for Marcello; she did not see him, had hardly more than a nebulous memory of him, like that of some dream in the past. Her anxiety filled her mind completely.

  Lindoro came up with water as before. He appeared, flushed and oozing sweat, sending side-glances at the victim as he put down the pails. Orsola would withdraw to another room or would bend over her work, gritting her teeth with repressed rage. Lindoro would leave like a whipped dog. But the thought that he had possessed that woman gave him no peace; he would have liked now to drag her away with him, keep her, be her owner as of goods that might be used and sold. Sensual hunger and avidity for gain mingled inside him.

  One evening, he waited till Camilla had gone out through the street door, then he went rapidly up the stairs to surprise Orsola, to find her alone. When he knocked on the door Orsola recognised who it was and instantly fell into uncontrolled disarray.

  ‘What do you want from me, what do you want?’ she hissed, without opening.

  ‘Listen to me a moment, listen! Don’t be frightened, I won’t hurt you…’

  ‘Go away! Mongrel! You horror! Murderer!…’ the woman cut across his words with a passionate scream of abuse, releasing all constraint on the hate she had accumulated for him. ‘Go away, go!…’

  And, drained, she retreated into her room, threw herself on the bed, on the pillows, to bite them between spasms of sobbing.

  XIX.

  There was no escape. The daughter of Maria Camastra had drunk vitriol and had died that way, with a three-months babe in her womb. The daughter of Clemenza Iorio had thrown herself from a bridge and had died so, in the mud of the Pescarina. It was necessary to die, evidently.

  When that thought flashed through Orsola’s mind, it was afternoon. All the bells were gloriously tolling the vigil of Corpus Domini, the celebration of the Eucharist sixty days after Easter. Tribes of swallows were circling in great excitement over the Brina mansion, assembling in parliaments atop the Arch. A red cloud hovered over the roofs of houses, similar perhaps to the one from which burning pitch had once poured down on the impieties of Sodom.

  At the dawning of her conclusion Orsola grew bewildered, then frightened. Then, as the sentiment of shame committed her further to take that necessary step, deep inside her a mute rebellion of her life-force began to well up in resistance, her spirits to seethe. She felt in an instant all the colour and heat of her blood spreading over her forehead and her cheeks. Yet she rose abruptly from her chair, twisting her arms painfully in an agitation of self-combat, and with a spur of nervous energy left the room, went into the kitchen, located a glass on a bench and the sulphur-matches that were tied together in a little sheaf. The strong smell of coal in the room made her stomach churn, vertigo attacked her. She found everything needed, dipped the matches in the water and left them in it to dissolve. She returned into her bedroom and hid the lethal glass in a corner.

  ‘My God, my God!’

  She was frightened to find herself alone like that, in the presence of the thing she had resolved to do. The memory of Cristina Iorio’s corpse glimpsed that day they were bringing her in a wheelbarrow to her mother’s house returned to her: the body swollen like a full wineskin, mire in her hair, in her eye-cavities, in her mouth, between her gone-violet toes…

  ‘My God, my God, to die!…’

  And she started, trembling as if a cold, rigid hand had touched her head; a shiver passed through all her limbs and went on for a moment longer in the region of her scalp, where it felt like a blade detaching the skin.

  ‘No, no, no!’ she said in a strangely altered voice, as if she wanted to drive away from her a contact with something horrible. And she went to the window and put her head out, looking for some haven.

  She remained there transfixed, gazing up with amazement at that vision of biblical fire and the darting confusion of airborne black birds. When she partly turned away she glimpsed a strange shimmering in the room: small flashes from the gold half-moons on the robe of the Madonna of Loreto, and other flashes from the hanging medallions. Once again she felt terror; she pressed herself against the window-sill, leant out further, and she remained like that without the courage to move. Then during that interval of immobility her nightly return of faintness began to invade her, and she pressed the palms of her hands to her head, closed her eyes.

  ‘Ah!’

  Unexpectedly, a way out opened to her, a glimmer of hope. Yes, yes, she now remembered! Spacone the magician, that old gaffer with the long beard, the one who performed miracles and had a medicine for every ill… He had come at times to town, mounted with legs spread wide on a diminutive white mule, with gold triangles hanging from his ear lobes and a line of silver buttons round as soup spoons down his front. Many women came out of their doors to call to him, to declare their gratitude. He had cured all kinds of ailments with certain herbs and certain waters and certain signs with his thumb and with magic words. He must have the cure for this thing… yes, yes, he must!

  And Orsola grew alive again in a dawning of hope, while yet her languor spread and spread. Before her, things diminished in the darkness; the vermillion day penetrated by the ashes of encroaching night abated through a slow discolouration without contrasts. A swallow passed bat-like by her head, almost grazing her. Then a sudden breath of summer wafted in her face, animated every vein in her body again, made her quaver to her deepest roots.

  Without any thought or intention, she put her hands on her abdomen and kept them there for a moment. Maternity’s indefinite sentiment was traversing her being. And deep inside her, mysteriously, the memory of her past convalescence returned. Ah, it was in March… a great laughing whiteness… And those little spies of soft down had rained over her…

  XX.

  And so it was that next morning she left the house furtively to walk alone out of the town-limits on the new road to Chieti.

  Spacone lived near San Rocco, carrying out his miracles and framing his oracular responses beneath the majesty of a Druidic oak. The peasantry for twenty miles around resorted to him as to one of God’s apostles. During times of regional cattle epidemics, herds of oxen and horses encircled the oak, waiting to receive the talisman that would preserve them from contagion, their equine and bovine hooves leaving imprints like an enchanted circle on the simple grasses of the land.

  When Orsola set out, the Pescara countryside was enjoying a great sporting of shadows and lights. Nomadic clouds migrating from the sea to the highlands passed across those Arabic skies of June like provisioning caravans with goodly bounties of water. At intervals, large areas of the land sank into darkness, others emerged like vast, bright illustrations, and as the shadows were blue and mobile, so did the countryside seem like a drifting, profuse archipelago of groves and fields of grain. The songs of birds celebrated the ripeness of the seed-heavy forage crops.
/>   At the first view of this spectacle, Orsola felt an unfamiliar relief: the freedom of the open country, the happy light on the foliage, the bracing smells in the air that at sudden moments surrounded her person quickened her blood, and she rejoiced and felt braver at the unfolding of a new horizon of hope. She felt disburdened of her anxieties, alive to only two sentiments: hope of physical salvation, and at that moment a concern with attaining her goal, where at that terminus she saw rising in her imagination the old benefactor, augmented and illuminated by a mystic light. By a native superstitious imagination, she was transforming that figure, expanding it hugely and clothing it in gentle Christian attributes, encircling it with a halo. Then all that was said among the common people about Spacone returned to her memory confusedly to scatter sprays of dazzling light on his countenance. She remembered hearing, during one of those distant days when she had been sick, some words uttered with reverent awe by Rosa Catena about ‘the Ancient One’ and citing miracles. A blind man of Torre de’ Passeri had gone to San Rocco and returned after three days with his eyes healed and a cabalistic symbol in blue on his forehead; a woman from Spoltore invaded by malign spirits had come back mild as a lamb after having taken two sips of some water kept in a small dry pumpkin.

  Thus from a throng of many disconnected elements Orsola as she walked along the road gradually assembled in her mind a kind of legend; and just as man can do nothing without the assistance of God, she was increasingly persuaded that ‘the Ancient One’ must be a messenger from heaven, a redeemer of souls from their earthly dependence, a dispenser of grace to the fallen. Had not that ultimate hope descended suddenly through the sinner’s window almost as a divine ray among incandescent signals in the heavens? And during Pentecost, had not the Dove sent solace down to her raised eyes while she was praying, directed on her a beam of caring reassurance?