After the Divorce

And they shall scourge him, and put him to death; …
And they understood none of these things: …

St. Luke 18:33, 34

Part I

I

Nineteen Hundred and Seven. In the “strangers’ room” of the Porru house a woman sat crying. Crouched on the floor near the bed, her knees drawn up, her arms resting on her knees, and her forehead on her arms, she wept and sobbed continuously, shaking her head from time to time as though to indicate that there was no more hope, absolutely none at all; while her plump shoulders and straight young back rose and fell in the tightly fitting yellow bodice, like a wave of the sea.

The room was nearly in darkness; there were no windows, but through the open door which gave upon a bricked gallery, a stretch of dull grey sky could be seen, growing momentarily darker; and far, far away, against this dusky background, gleamed the yellow ray of a little, solitary star. From the courtyard below came the shrill chirping of a cricket, and the occasional stamp of horses’ hoofs on the stone pavement.

A short, heavy woman, clad in the Nuorese dress, with a large, fat, old-woman face, appeared in the doorway; she carried a four-branched iron candlestick, in one socket of which burned a wick soaked in oil.

“Giovanna Era,” said she in a gruff voice, “what are you about all in the dark? Are you there? What are you doing? I believe you are crying! You must be crazy! Upon my word, that’s just what you are—crazy!”

The young woman began to sob convulsively.

“Oh, oh, oh!” said the other, drawing near, and in the tone of one who is deeply shocked and amazed. “I said you were crying. What are you crying for? There’s your mother waiting for you downstairs, and you up here, crying like a crazy creature!”

The young woman wept more violently than ever, whereupon the other hung the candlestick on a large nail, gazed vaguely about her, and then began hovering over her disconsolate guest, searching for words wherewith to comfort her; she could only repeat, however: “But, Giovanna, you are crazy, just crazy!”

The “strangers’ room”—the name given to that apartment which every Nuorese family, according to immemorial custom, reserves for the use of friends from the country—was large, white, and bare; it had a great wooden bedstead, a table covered with a cotton cloth and adorned with little glass cups and saucers, and a quantity of small pictures hung close to the unpainted wooden ceiling. Bunches of dried grapes and yellow pears hung from the rafters, filling the room with a faint fragrance; and sacks of wool stood about on the floor.

The stout woman, who was the mistress of the house, laid hold of one of these sacks, dragged it to another part of the room, and then back again to where she had found it.

“Now then,” said she, panting from her exertion, “do stop. What good does it do? And why should you give up, anyhow? What the devil, my dearie! Suppose the public prosecutor has asked for the galleys, that doesn’t mean that the jury are all mad dogs like himself!”

But the other only kept on crying and shaking her head, moaning: “No, no, no!” between her sobs.

“Yes, yes, I tell you,” urged the woman. “Get up now, and come to your mother,” and, taking hold of her, she forced back her head.

The action revealed a charming countenance; rosy, framed in a thick mass of tumbled black hair; the big dark eyes swollen and glistening with tears, and surmounted by heavy black eyebrows that met in the middle.

“No, no,” wailed Giovanna, shaking herself free. “Let me cry over my fate, Aunt Porredda.”1

“Fate or no fate, you just get up!”

“No, I won’t get up! I won’t get up! They’ll sentence him to thirty years at the very least! Do you hear me? Thirty years! That’s what they’ll give him!”

“That remains to be seen. And after all, what is thirty years? Why, you carry on like a wildcat!”

The other gave a shrill cry, and tore her hair in an access of wild despair.

“Thirty years! What is thirty years!” she shrieked. “A man’s whole lifetime, Aunt Porredda! You don’t know what you are talking about, Aunt Porredda! Go away, go away and leave me alone! for the love of Christ, oh, leave me to myself!”

“I’m not going away,” said Aunt Porredda. “The idea! In my own house! Get up, you child of the devil! Stop this before you make yourself ill. Tomorrow will be time enough to pull your hair out by the roots; your husband isn’t in the galleys yet!”

Giovanna dropped her head, and began to cry again in a subdued, hopeless way, heartbreaking to listen to. “Costantino, Costantino,” she moaned in the tone of one bewailing the dead, “I shall never see you again, never again! Those mad dogs have seized you and bound you fast, and they will never let you go; and our house will be empty, and the bed cold, and the family scattered. Oh, my beloved! my lamb! you are dead for this world. May those who have done it die the same death!”

Aunt Porredda, distracted by Giovanna’s grief, and unable to think of anything more to say, went out on the gallery, and began calling: “Bachissia Era! come up here; your daughter is losing her mind!”

A step was heard on the outer stair. Aunt Porredda turned back into the room, and behind her appeared a tall, tragic-looking figure all in black. The gaunt, yellow face, shaped like that of some bird of prey, was framed in the folds of a black handkerchief; two brilliant green spots indicated the eyes, deep set, overhung by fierce, heavy brows, and surrounded by livid circles. Her mere presence seemed to exercise a subduing effect upon the daughter.

“Get up!” she said in a harsh voice.

Giovanna arose. She was tall and lithe, though cast in a heavy mould and having enormous hips. Beneath the short, circular petticoat, adorned below the waist with a band of purple, and with a broad, green hem, appeared two little feet shod in elastic gaiters, and the suggestion of a pair of shapely legs.

“What are you worrying these good people for?” demanded the mother. “Have done now; come down to supper, and don’t frighten the children, or throw a wet blanket over the happiness of these good people.”

The “happiness of these good people” was in allusion to the arrival of the son of the house, a law student, home for the holidays.

Giovanna, recognising that her mother meant to be obeyed, quieted down without more ado. Pulling the woollen kerchief from her head, and thereby disclosing a cap of antique brocade, from whence escaped waves of coal-black hair, she turned towards a basin of water standing on a chair, and began to bathe her face.

The two women looked at one another, and Aunt Porredda, taking her lips between her right thumb and forefinger in sign of silence, noiselessly left the room.

The other, accepting this hint, said nothing more, and when Giovanna had finished bathing, and had set her hair in order, silently led the way down the outer stair.

Night had fallen; warm, still, profound. The solitary yellow star had been followed by a multitude of glittering asterisks, and the Milky Way lay like a scarf of gauze embroidered with silver spangles. The air was heavy with the penetrating odour of new-mown hay.