“Black Shawl” (“Scialle nero”)

Translated by Sarah Barrett

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Black Shawl” (“Scialle nero”), tr. Sarah Barrett. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

“Black Shawl” was first published not in a literary journal but rather in one of Pirandello’s own short story collections, the volume White and Black (Bianche e nere; Turin: Steglio) in 1904. However, as evidenced in Pirandello’s correspondence with Adolfo Orvieto, the editor of the magazine Il Marzocco, he had attempted in 1903 to have it published serially in two numbers there. The length of this quite long short story seems to have meant it was destined for Pirandello’s collections, instead. After the 1904 publication, the story became the opening piece of Pirandello’s first Collection in the Stories for a Year, also titled Black Shawl (Florence: Bemporad, 1922) – a Collection which drew no less than seven of its stories from the volume White and Black.

This story, written in a descriptive language that pays equal attention to details of scenery and the dynamics of the different characters interacting, focuses on the life of rural folk and the conflicts created by the intermixing of social classes in their countryside milieu. In this way, it resonates with the school of Sicilian verismo, naturalism, that was so impactful on Pirandello as a young writer. Like the realist authors in Italy and in Europe at the time, Pirandello describes social ills with a somewhat humorous and compassionate eye, paying special attention not only to how the social and legal rules create inequalities and unhappiness but also, especially, how women suffer as the most extreme victims of these systems. Likewise, his examination of psychology suggests a careful attention to the volatility of the human mind and of human desire. The story thus touches on themes of gender, (sexual) violence, and isolation with a realistic eye, examining and critiquing the social mores of small-town life and how they constrain the possibilities for human existence. At the same time, the recurrent theme of nature and the healing properties of sense immersion in the beauties of the natural landscape speaks to a typical Pirandellian contrast of social limitations against natural beauty as a form of escape. And in a similarly Pirandellian vein, the story likewise moves toward the depiction of various forms of social, psychological, and ultimately existential isolation or alienation – a distancing from one’s self, one’s life, or one’s world that is both typical as a focus of modernist work and also a recurrent concern across Pirandello’s corpus. The ironic, dark ending of the story thus emphasizes not only the harsh realities of rural life, of social mores and structures, of gender roles and limitations, and of the rebellious desire and violence of human life, but also the ways in which we respond – fleeing into nature, music, art, or simply a self-distanced withdrawal that might ultimately make us question the possibility of meaning in a life of suffering.

The Editors

“Wait here,” Bandi told D’Andrea. “I will go and find her. If she persists in this obstinacy, you should break in.”

The two men, both short-sighted, stood talking face to face, very close. They looked like brothers, each tall, thin, holding himself stiffly upright with that painful rigidity which marks a punctilious, meticulous person. Indeed, when they were standing together and talking, it was rare that one of them did not adjust the other’s spectacles on his nose, or the knot of the other’s cravat. Or, finding nothing to adjust, one of them would touch the buttons on the other’s jacket. In point of fact, they rarely conversed. And the characteristic melancholy of their nature showed itself clearly in the bleak expressions on their faces.

They had grown up together and had supported each other in their studies until they reached university, where one had taken a degree in law, the other in medicine. Now separated by their professional working days, each evening they would still take a walk together along the wide road that lay at the edge of the town.

They knew each other so intimately that it took only a slight gesture, a glance, a word for one of them to be immediately aware of what the other was thinking. Thus their walk began each evening with a brief exchange of words, and thereafter continued in silence, as if one had given the other something to think about. Like weary horses, they trudged with heads bowed, each with his hands clasped behind his back. It did not occur to either of them to turn his head towards the barrier which ran beside the road and be rewarded by a view of the open countryside which lay beyond, marked by hills, valleys, and plains. In the distance lay the sea, set aflame by the last rays of the sun––it hardly seemed possible that they could walk past this beautiful scene without turning to look at it.

A few days earlier, Bandi had said to D’Andrea:

“Eleonora is unwell.”

D’Andrea looked into his friend’s eyes and knew that whatever ailed his sister was not serious. “Do you want me to visit her?”

“She says no.”

As they walked, each frowned in thought, almost resentful of the woman who had been a mother to them and to whom they owed everything.

As a boy, D’Andrea had lost both his parents, and had been taken into the household of an uncle, who had been quite unable to provide the means for the boy to make his way in the world. Eleonora Bandi, herself left an orphan at eighteen together with a much younger brother, at first did her best, by means of small and careful economies, to make the most of the scarce funds left by her parents. Then, by giving piano and singing lessons, she managed to provide for her brother, as well as his inseparable friend, to maintain their studies.

“Never mind,” she would laugh to the two young men, “I made up for it by padding my bones with all the meat that’s missing from yours.”

Indeed, she was a big woman of almost boundless proportions; but the lineaments of her face were charming, and she had the air of one of the marble angels in churches, their garments appearing to float around them. And the look in her beautiful eyes, almost veiled by long lashes, and the harmonious sound of her voice, seemed also to make a painful effort to reduce the first impressions produced by her tall, heavy body—of which her sad smile betrayed her awareness.[1]

She played the piano and she sang, perhaps not always perfectly but with warmth and passion. Had she not been born and grown up surrounded by the prejudices of a small town, and had she not had the burden of raising her brother, she might perhaps have risked a life on the stage. At one time that had been her dream––but it was to be no more than a dream. She was now about forty years old. However, the respect widely accorded in the town to her artistic gifts compensated her somewhat for the lost dream; and the satisfaction of having instead turned another dream—to remove the barriers facing the two poor orphans—into reality compensated for her prolonged self-sacrifice.

In the drawing room, Dr. D’Andrea waited a while for his friend to return and summon him. This room, full of light despite the low roof, its furniture worn and outdated, seemed to breathe the air of other times, and to soothe itself, in the stillness reflected by two big facing mirrors, with its faded antiquity. Ancient family portraits which hung on the walls were the only true inhabitants of that space. The people depicted in those portraits seemed to look askance at the only modern item in the room, Eleonora’s baby grand piano.

Eventually growing impatient with the long wait, the doctor stood up and walked over to the doorway; bending his head to listen, he heard weeping in the room on the other side of the closed door. Then he stepped forward and knocked on that door.

“Come in,” said Bandi, opening the door. “I don’t understand why she is being so stubborn.”

“Because there’s nothing wrong with me,” Eleonora cried out tearfully.

She was sitting in a large, comfortable leather armchair, dressed as always in black, vast and pale. But her face was still that of an overgrown little girl,[2] now more than ever appearing strange, and perhaps more ambiguous than strange, on account of a certain hardening of her gaze, almost a fixation, but one which she struggled to hide.

“There is nothing wrong with me, I promise you,” she repeated, more calmly. “For pity’s sake, leave me in peace; do not worry yourselves on my account.”

“Very well!” her brother concluded, harsh and stubborn. “Anyway, here is Carlo. He will say what is wrong with you.” And he left the room, furiously slamming the door behind him.

Eleonora covered her face with her hands and burst into violent sobs. D’Andrea stood and looked at her for a little while, feeling a mixture of irritation and embarrassment; then he asked:

“What is it? What ails you? Can you not tell even me?”

And, as Eleonora continued to sob, he drew nearer, and tried, with chilly delicacy, to move one of her hands from her face.

“Calm yourself, please; tell me what it is; it is I who am standing here.”

Eleonora shook her head. Then, suddenly, she seized his hand in both of hers, her face contracted as if in spasm, and she groaned:

“Carlo! Carlo!”

D’Andrea leaned over her, somewhat awkward despite his rigid self-control:

“Tell me…”

At that, she leaned her cheek against his hand and begged desperately, her voice low:

“Help me—help me die, Carlo; help me, for pity’s sake! I can’t find a way to do it; my courage fails me.”

“Die?” asked the young man, smiling. “What are you saying? Why?”

“Yes, I want to die!” she repeated, her voice suffocated by sobs. “Teach me how. You are a doctor. Deliver me from this agony, for pity’s sake. I must die. There is no other cure. Only death.”

He stared at her in astonishment. She in turn raised her eyes to look at him, but immediately closed them again, her face once more clenched in an effort to control a piercing disgust which seemed suddenly to afflict her.

“Yes, yes,” she said, resolutely. “Carlo, I am lost! Lost!”

Instinctively D’Andrea withdrew the hand which she still held between her own.

“What! What are you saying?” he stammered.

Without looking at him, she placed a finger on her lips, then indicated the door.

“If he knew! Tell him nothing, I beg you! First, let me die; give me—give me something: I’ll take it like a medicine––I believe it will be a medicine that you give me––as long as it takes immediate effect! Ah, I have no courage, no courage! For two months, you see, I’ve struggled in agony, unable to find the strength or the way to make an end of it. What help can you give me, Carlo?”

“What help?” repeated Carlo, still lost in astonishment.

Eleonora once more reached out to take his arm; looking into his eyes, she added:

“If you can’t help me die, could you not… in some other way… save me?”

At this, D’Andrea drew himself up even more rigidly, drawing his eyebrows together severely.

“I beg of you, Carlo!” she insisted. “Not for me, not for me, but so that Giorgio may not know. If you believe that I have done anything for the two of you, for you yourself, help me now, save me! Must I end my life in this way, having done so much, suffered so much? In this way, in this shame, at my age? Ah, what misery! What horror!”

“But Eleonora, what are you saying? You? How did it happen? Who was it?” asked D’Andrea, unable to respond to her terrible distress except with dumbfounded curiosity.

Eleonora pointed once more to the door, and covered her face with her hands.

“Don’t make me think about it! I cannot think about it! Can you not spare Giorgio this shame?”

“How?” demanded D’Andrea. “That would be a crime, can’t you see? A double crime. But… tell me: could another remedy not be found?”

“No!” she replied, sharply, her expression darkening. “Enough. I understand. Leave me! I can bear it no longer…” She let her head fall against the back of the chair, and her body went limp with exhaustion.

Carlo D’Andrea waited a moment, his eyes blank behind the thick lenses which corrected his short sight. He could find no words, for he could not yet believe this revelation, nor imagine how this woman, hitherto an example––a mirror––of virtue and self-denial, could have fallen into this sin. Was it possible? Eleonora Bandi? In her youth, out of love for her brother, she had refused so many proposals, each one more advantageous than the last! And now that the sun had set on her youth, how had she…? Ah, but perhaps that was the very reason…

He looked at her, and the suspicion of this thin man, faced with this overwhelmingly large body, suddenly took on a horribly indecent, obscene aspect.

“Go then,” said Eleonora suddenly, irritated, for although she was not looking at him, in that silence she felt the horror of his unvoiced suspicion lie heavy upon her. “Go, go and tell Giorgio, so that he can do with me what he will, immediately. Go!”

D’Andrea left the room, moving almost automatically. She lifted her head a little to watch him leave, and then, as soon as the door closed behind him, she fell back into her former posture.

II

After two months of horrendous anguish, this avowal of her condition was an unexpected relief to her. Now that she no longer had the strength to struggle against, to resist this torment, she would surrender to her fate, whatever that might be. It seemed to her that the greater part was done.

Would her brother enter the room shortly and kill her? Well, so much the better! She no longer had the right to expect any consideration or pity. She had done more than her duty towards him and his equally ungrateful friend, but in an instant she had lost the rewards of all her benevolence.

She squeezed her eyes shut, once more overtaken by bitterness.

In the secrecy of her own conscience, however, she felt miserably responsible for her fault. She who had for so long had the strength to resist her youthful impulses, who had always cultivated in herself pure and noble sentiments, who had considered her own sacrifice as a duty––she herself, in a moment, had been lost![3] Oh misery, what misery!

The only explanation she felt able to put forward in her defense––what value would that have when she faced her brother? Could she say to him, “But Giorgio, perhaps the reason I have fallen is connected with you”? And yet this was indeed perhaps the truth.

She had been a mother to her brother, was that not true? But, as a reward for all her loving care, freely given, as a reward for sacrificing her own life, she had not been given so much as the pleasure of noticing a smile of happiness, however faint, on the lips of her brother and his friend. It seemed that their souls were poisoned by silence and boredom, weighed down by a foolish narrowness. Immediately after obtaining their degrees, they had plunged into their work like two oxen, with such furious determination that in a short time each had become self-sufficient. Now, their haste to free themselves of indebtedness in some way, as if they did not wish to be reminded of it, was a dagger to her heart. Almost at a stroke—just like that—she had found herself without purpose to her life. What remained for her to do, now that the two young men no longer had need of her? And she had irrevocably lost her own youth.

Not even the first fruits of his professional work had been enough to bring the smile back to her brother’s face. Did he still recognize the weight of the sacrifice she had made for him? Did he perhaps feel shackled by this sacrifice for the rest of his life, and thus condemned to sacrifice his own youth and the freedom of his own feelings for his sister’s sake? She had longed to open her heart to him:

“Do not worry about me, Giorgio! All I want is to see you light-hearted, happy… do you understand?”

But he had immediately interrupted her:

“Hold your tongue! What are you saying? I know my duty. Now it is my turn.”

“But what do you mean?” she wanted to cry out to him––she who had unhesitatingly sacrificed herself, with a smile and a light heart.

She recognized his flinty obstinacy, and had said no more. But she no longer felt able to bear this suffocating sadness.

Each day he earned more; he surrounded her with the comforts of life; he had wanted her to give up teaching. In this enforced leisure, which humiliated her, she had had a fateful thought that at first had almost made her laugh:

“What if I found a husband?”

She was already thirty-nine, however, and then there was her body… for goodness’ sake, she would have to make herself a husband out of her own spare flesh. But this would be the only way of liberating herself and her brother from that oppressive debt of gratitude.

Almost unconsciously, she had begun to take care of herself, acquiring a certain air of marriageability which she had never adopted before.

Those two or three men who had asked her hand in marriage now had wives and children. Before, she had never worried about this; now, from a new perspective, she experienced vexation; she felt envious of all her friends who had managed to secure their status.

She alone was left by herself…

Perhaps there was still time: who knows? Did she really have to cloister herself when her life had always been active? To live in this emptiness? Must she extinguish the flame which marked her passionate spirit? In these shadows?

She was enveloped by profound regret, sharpened sometimes by a certain restlessness, which affected her natural grace, the sound of her voice, her laughter. She became sharp, almost aggressive in conversation. She herself became aware of the change in her character; at certain moments she almost felt hatred of herself, repulsion towards her strong body; she was disgusted by the hitherto unsuspected desires which arose suddenly in that body, profoundly troubling her.

Her brother, meanwhile, had used his savings to buy a small farm, and had paid for a pleasant little villa to be built there.

At his urging, Eleonora had spent a month in the country; then, reflecting that her brother had perhaps acquired this farm in order to free himself of her from time to time, had considered retiring there permanently. In this way, she would leave him completely free: she would no longer tire him with her presence, with the sight of her, and even she herself, little by little, would rid herself of the strange idea that she would find a husband, at her age.

The early days went well, and she had believed it would be easy for her to continue like this.

She had already acquired the habit of rising every day at dawn and taking a long walk across the fields. Every now and then she came to a halt, enchanted. Sometimes she listened in the absolute stillness of the fields, where a nearby blade of grass shivered in the cool air; sometimes she heard cocks crow to each other from neighboring farmyards; sometimes she admired the green swathes of moss on a boulder, or the velvety lichen growing on the fallen trunk of an olive tree.

Oh, there, so close to the earth, she could almost make herself a new soul, another way of thinking and feeling; she would become like the good wife of a farmer, who was happy to be his companion and for him to teach her many apparently simple things about life and reveal their deep and unsuspected meaning.[4]

The sharecropper, however, was insufferable.[5] This man boasted of his wide experience––for he had travelled all over the globe, he had been in America, eight years in “Benossarie,”[6] and he did not want his only son, Gerlando, to be a wretched clod-turning peasant. For thirteen years, therefore, he had paid for Gerlando’s schooling; he wanted to give him “a bit of letters,” he said, to speed his way to South America––in that great land he would without a doubt make his fortune.

Gerlando was nineteen years old, and in thirteen years of school he had only just scraped into the third technical grade. He was a big, rough lad. His father’s fixation had for him proved a real martyrdom. During lessons with the other boys, he had unintentionally picked up certain “city boy” ways of talking, which only made him seem more awkward.

Each morning, he used water to tame his bushy hair, so that he could part it; but as soon as it dried, his thick hair stood out in every direction, as though erupting out of his scalp. His eyebrows seemed to sprout from his low forehead, and side-whiskers and a beard were already beginning to sprout from his cheeks and his chin, like tiny sparse bushes. Poor Gerlando! He was a pitiful sight, so big, so solid, so hairy, with a book lying in front of him. Some mornings his father must have sweated enough to make his shirt wet, as he struggled to shake his son awake from his delicious slumbers, like a well-fed pig, and send him, still dazed and stumbling, his eyes vacant, to the neighboring city––to his martyrdom.

After the signorina had arrived at the cottage,[7] Gerlando had conveyed to her his mother’s plea that Eleonora should persuade the father to stop tormenting his son with this endless, endless school. He could stand it no longer!

And Eleonora had indeed tried to intercede; but the farmer––“Ah, no no no!”––although expressing the very greatest respect for the signorina, requested her not to get mixed up in the situation. And then she, partly from kindness, partly from amusement, partly to give herself something to do, set herself to helping this poor young man, as far as she could.

Every afternoon, she bade him come to her cottage with his schoolbooks and writing pads. He complied with reluctance and shame, for he could see that the lady was amused by his slow stupidity; but what could he do? It was his father’s wish. He had no problem recognizing what a dunderhead he was as far as studying was concerned; but when it came to planting a tree, dealing with an ox, well, by Jove… and Gerlando showed off his muscled arms, shooting her the odd tender glance and showing his strong white teeth in a smile.

Unexpectedly, one day she had cut short those lessons; she did not want to see him anymore; she had arranged for a pianoforte to be brought from the city, and for a few days she had shut herself in the little villa, feverishly playing, singing, and reading. One evening, she noticed that the big lad, suddenly deprived of her help, of her company, and of the games which she sometimes played, had taken up a position where he could hear her singing and playing. Yielding to a mischievous instinct to surprise him, she suddenly stopped playing the piano and hurried down the steps leading up to the villa.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m listening…”

“Do you like it?”

“Very much, Signora— I feel like I’m in paradise.”

At this declaration, she burst out laughing; but suddenly Gerlando, as if he had been slapped in the fact by this laughter, leapt upon her, there, behind the villa, in the thick darkness, beyond the reach of the light coming from the balcony.

That was how it happened.

Overpowered, she had not known how to push him away; she felt helpless––she no longer knew why––beneath this brutal assault, and abandoned herself, giving in without wishing it.

The day afterwards, she returned to the city.

And now––why had Giorgio not come to shame her? Perhaps D’Andrea had not yet told him anything; perhaps he was thinking of ways to rescue her. But how?

She hid her face in her hands, as if she could not bear to look into the abyss which opened before her. But the abyss was within her, and there was nothing to save her. Only death. How? When?

Suddenly the door opened, and Giorgio appeared on the threshold, his expression quite unguarded, pale as death, his hair wild and his eyes still red from weeping. D’Andrea seized him by the arm.

“I only want to know one thing,” hissed Giorgio through clenched teeth, his words almost indistinguishable. “I want to know who it was.”

Eleonora, her head bowed and her eyes closed, slowly shook her head and began once more to sob.

“You will tell me,” shouted Bandi, moving towards her, held back by his friend. “And whoever it is, you will marry him!”

“Oh no, no, Giorgio,” she moaned, bowing her head still more and twisting her hands in her lap. “No! It’s not possible! Not possible!”

“Is he married?” he demanded, coming closer to her, his fists clenched, a frightening figure.

“No,” she told him hastily. “But it’s not possible, believe me!”

“Who is he?” Bandi repeated, trembling with fury, grasping her. “Who is he? Give me his name, now!”

Feeling all the force of her brother’s fury, Eleonora straightened her shoulders, managed to lift her head, and beneath Giorgio’s ferocious gaze, she moaned:

“I cannot tell you.”

“You will tell me, or I will kill you!” roared Bandi, raising his fist above her head.

But D’Andrea put himself between them, pushed his friend away, and told him severely:

“You, go! She will tell me. Go, go…”

And he thrust Bandi out of the room.

III

Her brother was unwavering.

In the few days that were needed for the marriage to be announced, he threw himself into the scandal. To ward off the mockery which he anticipated from all who knew him, he chose to savagely broadcast his shame, with language of horrible crudeness. He seemed to have gone mad; everyone felt pity for him.

His task, however, was to induce the farmer to agree to the marriage of his son.

Despite his vaunted wide experience of life, the old man at first behaved as though he had fallen from a cloud: he absolutely could not believe what had happened. Then he said:

“Be in no doubt, sir, that I myself will trample him beneath my feet––I’ll tell you how––as if I were treading on an egg. Or maybe––yes, this is what we’ll do. I’ll hand him over to you, bound hand and foot, and you, my dear sir, can do what you want with him. I’ll make the whip myself, and I’ll keep the sinews soft and pliable for three days, so that they will be more effective.”

When, however, he realized that his landlord had no such intentions, but wanted something else––matrimony––he was once again dumbfounded.

“What? What are you saying, your excellence? A grand lady of her breeding with the son of a wretched peasant?”

He proffered a stern refusal.

“You will forgive me. But the lady possessed judgement and maturity; she knew good from evil; she should never have done what she did with my son. Must I make myself plain? She would drag him into her villa every day. You, sir, will understand, I’m sure. A mere lad. . . At his age, he doesn’t think, he doesn’t care. . . And now I may lose my son, and only the good Lord knows what that will cost me. With respect, sir, the lady could be his mother. . .”

Bandi had to promise to give the farm as a dowry, and a daily allowance to his sister.

Thus the marriage was agreed upon; and when it took place, it was a great event for the citizens of those parts.

It seemed that everyone took great and malicious pleasure in publicly mocking the admiration and respect which had for so many years been accorded to this lady. Between the admiration and respect of which she was judged to be no longer worthy and the delight they took in attending her shameful wedding, it seemed that there was no room for a little sympathy.

The sympathy was all for her brother¬¬––who, it was understood, did not intend to take part in the ceremony. Nor could D’Andrea find it in himself to attend, making the excuse that on that sad day his duty lay in comforting his poor friend Giorgio.

An elderly doctor from the city, who had previously attended Eleonora’s parents (and from whom D’Andrea, freshly graduated, with all the obfuscation and sophistication of the latest treatments, had taken away much of his clientele), offered himself as a witness, and brought with him another elderly man, his friend, as the second witness.

Eleonora rode with them, in a closed carriage, to the town hall, and thence to a little out-of-the-way church, for the religious ceremony.

In a second carriage rode the bridegroom, Gerlando, sullen and scowling, with his parents.

The latter, arrayed in their Sunday best, bore themselves proudly and gravely––for after all, their son was marrying a real lady, the sister of a lawyer, who brought with her the dowry of a farm with a beautiful villa, and money as well. Gerlando, to render himself worthy of his status, would continue his studies. The father would continue to run the farm, being an expert. The bride was a little elderly? All the better! The heir would soon arrive. The laws of nature suggested that she would die before her husband, and Gerlando would then become free and wealthy.

The same thoughts were being entertained by the groom’s witnesses, two peasant friends of his father, who sat in a third carriage along with two elderly maternal uncles. Innumerable other relations and friends of the bridegroom waited at the villa, dressed up for the celebration, the men in deep blue cloth, the women with new capes and garishly patterned scarves. For the groom’s father, with his grand ideas, had ordered a first-rate spread.

At the town hall, Eleonora, on the threshold of the civic hall, was assailed by a storm of tears. The groom, who was standing in a small group with his relations, at their urging made to hurry to her side; but the elderly doctor advised him not to make his presence felt, to stay away for the time being.

Eleonora, not properly recovered from this emotional crisis, went into the hall. At her side she saw the young man, made even more disheveled and awkward by his shame; she felt a surge of rebellion; on the point of crying out “No! No!”, she stared at him as if urging him to cry out in the same way. But within a few moments they both said “I do,” as if submitting to an ineluctable fate. Having hurried through the second ceremony in the lonely church, the melancholy procession set off for the villa. Eleonora did not want to separate from her two old friends; but she had no choice but to step into the carriage with her husband and her parents-in-law.

During the journey, not a word was spoken in the carriage.

The farmer and his wife appeared astonished. From time to time they raised their eyes to look briefly at their daughter-in-law; then, after exchanging glances with each other, they once more lowered their eyes. The bridegroom stared out of the window, frowning, his attitude tense.

On their arrival at the villa, they were welcomed with a burst of firecrackers, accompanied by festive cheers and clapping. But the bride’s expression and behavior chilled the gaiety of the guests, although she tried to smile back at these good-hearted folk, who meant to celebrate her marriage after their own fashion, as is the way with wedding ceremonies.

It was not long before she asked permission to withdraw from the celebrations. But when she entered the room in which she had slept during her sojourn on the farm, and found it decked out as a marriage bed, she stopped short on the threshold: “In that bed? With him? No! Never! Never!” Seized with sorrow, she escaped to another room and, locking herself in, collapsed onto a chair, pressing both hands against her face.

She could hear, outside the room, the voices and laughter of the guests as they toasted Gerlando for the good social standing of his family and the fine quality of their estate. Gerlando stood on the balcony, looking out, only occasionally shrugging his heavy shoulders in response.

For he was indeed ashamed––ashamed to have married in this way, to this lady: that was the truth of it! And it was all the fault of his father, who, through his ridiculous obsession with education, had treated him as a stupid, awkward boy in front of the signorina on her arrival in the village, teaching her to make wounding jokes at his expense. And look what had come of it! His father thought only of the fine farmland. But how was he himself to live from now on, with this woman who made him feel so uneasy, and who certainly blamed him for the shame and dishonor which had befallen her? Why had he longed to lift his eyes to her face? Worse still, his father was determined that he should continue to attend school! He could imagine the derision his schoolmates would inflict on him. She was twenty years older than him, this wife, and she seemed like a mountain of a woman, she seemed...

While Gerlando tormented himself with such thoughts, his father and mother were putting the final touches on the feast. Finally, both he and she made a triumphant entry into the dining room, where the table had already been laid. The feast had been provided by a caterer who had come in from the city, and who had brought with him a chef and two waiters.

The farmer came to find Gerlando on the balcony:

“Go and tell your wife that the marriage feast is nearly ready.”

“I’m not going, you old goblin!” snarled Gerlando, stamping his foot. “You go.”

“Watch yourself, you great donkey!” shouted his father. “You’re the husband––go!”

“Such kind words… you goblin! I’m not going!” repeated Gerlando obstinately, and put out a hand to defend himself.

His father, enraged, seized him by the lapel of his jacket and gave him a slap.

“Ashamed, are you, you brute? You got yourself into this mess, and now you’re ashamed? Go! She is your wife!”

The guests hurried to make peace between them, and to persuade Gerlando to go.

“What harm can it do? Ask her to try a mouthful of food…”

“But I don’t even know what to call her!” shouted Gerlando in exasperation.

A few of the guests burst out laughing, a few more held back the infuriated farmer, who had rushed forward to slap the imbecile son who was spoiling the feast which had been prepared so carefully and at such cost.

Meanwhile, “Call her by the name she was baptized with,” said his mother, quietly and persuasively. “What is she called? Eleonora, isn’t it? Well then, you call her Eleonora. She’s your wife, isn’t she? Be sensible, my son, be sensible…” And talking in this way, she led him to the nuptial bedroom.

Gerlando went to knock on the door. His first knock was quiet. He waited. Silence. What was it that she has said? Should he really address her as tu, right from the start?[8] Ah, what a diabolical situation! And why did she not respond? Perhaps she had not heard. He knocked again. And again there was silence.

Then, awkwardly, he tried to call to her in a low voice, as his mother had suggested. But what came out of his mouth was “Eneolora,” so that, as if to obliterate it, he called loudly: “Eleonora!”

Finally he heard her voice from behind the door of another room:

“Who is it?”

He went to this door, his blood stirred up.

“It’s me…” he said, “Ger… Gerlando… It’s ready.”

“I can’t,” she replied. “Go ahead without me.” Gerlando went back into the reception room, relieved of a great weight of anxiety.

“She’s not coming. She says she’s not coming. She cannot come!”

“Well done, you donkey!” said his father, who used no other name for him. “Did you tell her that the food was served? Why didn’t you make her come?”

His wife joined the conversation, making her husband understand that it was perhaps better to leave the bride in peace for the day. The guests were in agreement.

“The emotion… the discomfort… you know!”

But the farmer, who wanted to show his daughter-in-law that, when the occasion called for it, he at least knew how to do his duty, remained sullen, and angrily ordered the meal to be served.

The appetite of the guests for the delicious dishes which were about to be brought to the table was tempered by consternation at all the luxurious tableware laid out on the new tablecloth. Each person had four glasses, of different shapes, as well as two sizes of fork, two sizes of knife, and even a pen nib wrapped in tissue paper.[9]

Seated well back from the table, they were also sweating beneath the heavy cloth of their best clothes, and saw each other’s tough, sunburnt faces strangely transformed by an unexpected cleanliness. They did not dare stretch out their big hands, deformed by rustic labor, to pick up those silver forks (the big one or the little one?) and those knives, conscious of being observed by the waiters, who moved round the table with the serving dishes and whose white fabric gloves made the guests feel painfully inferior.

Meanwhile the farmer, while he ate, looked at his son and shook his head, displaying an air of contemptuous pity:

“Look at him, just look at him!” he grumbled to himself. “What does he look like, sitting by himself at the head of the table? How can the bride respect a big ape like that? She’s right, she’s right to be ashamed of him. Ah, if only I were in his place!”

As the meal came to an end amid general ill humor, the guests, with one excuse or another, left. It was already almost evening.

“What now?” the father said to Gerlando, after the two waiters had finished clearing the table and everything in the villa was back to normal. “What are you going to do? You sort it out yourself!”

He told his wife to follow him back to the farmhouse, where they lived, not far from the villa.

Left alone, Gerlando, sweating, looked around him: he had no idea what to do.

In the silence he felt the presence of the woman who remained in her room with the door closed. Perhaps, now that she heard no more noise, she would come out of the room. What should he do, then?

Oh, how willingly he would have escaped to sleep in the farmhouse, near his mother—or even outside over there, under a tree!

What if she was waiting for him to call her? What if she had resigned herself to the punishment her brother had wanted to inflict on her, believed herself to be in her husband’s power, and was expecting him to… to invite her to…

He listened intently. But no––all was silent. Perhaps she had already gone to sleep. It was already dark. The moon shone its light through the balcony window, into the reception room.

Without switching on the light, Gerlando took a chair and went to sit on the balcony. From there he looked down and all around, at the open countryside sloping down towards the sea, there in the distance.

In the cloudless night sky, the major stars shone brilliantly; the moon threw a swathe of intense silver across the sea; vast fields full of stubble were filled with the shrilling of crickets, like an intense, continuous ringing of bells. Suddenly, a great horned owl close by gave a soft, melancholy hoot; in the distance another owl answered, like an echo, and the two birds continued for a little while to call in the clear night.[10]

With one arm resting on the railing of the balcony, in an instinctive effort to remove himself from the oppressive, restless uncertainty, he shut out the sound of these two birds answering each other in enchanted, moonlit silence; then, perceiving in the distance a section of the wall which ran round the farm, it occurred to him that now all that land was his––the olive trees, almond trees, carob trees, fig trees, mulberry trees were his; as was the vine.

His father had good reason to be happy, for from now onwards he would have to answer to no one.

All things considered, the idea of continuing his studies was not so strange. He would be better off there, in school, than here all day in the company of his wife. He would figure out how to counter the jibes of his companions who laughed behind his back. He was a signore now, and it didn’t matter to him if they chased him away from the school. In fact, he proposed now to commit himself to his studies, so that one day before too long he would figure among the “gentlemen” of the district; he would no longer feel inferior, and he would speak and act as they did, as equals. Four more years of school would be enough to allow him to graduate from the technology institute, and then become an agricultural surveyor or accountant. His brother-in-law, Mr. Lawyer, who seemed to have thrown his sister to the dogs, would have to doff his hat to him. Yes indeed. And then he would have the right to ask him, “What have you given me? This old woman? I have studied, I have a gentleman’s profession, and I could have aspired to marry a beautiful young woman, rich and of good family, like yours.”

With these thoughts he fell asleep, his head resting on his arm which lay on the balcony railing.

The two owls, one nearby, the other distant, continued their voluptuous lament. In the clear night, the moon seemed to cast a trembling veil on the earth, alive with the sound of crickets; from afar, like a faint sigh of reproof, came the deep rumbling surge of the sea.

Late that night Eleonora appeared like a shadow on the threshold of the balcony.

She did not expect to find the young man asleep there. The sight inspired a mixture of sorrow and fear. She stood there a moment, wondering whether she ought to wake him, tell him what she had decided, and take him in from there. But, as she was on the point of shaking him gently and calling his name, she felt her spirit fail, and withdrew quietly, like a shadow, to the room whence she had come.

IV

An agreement was easily reached. The next morning, Eleonora spoke in maternal fashion to Gerlando. She would leave him in control of everything, free to do whatever he pleased, as though there were no obligation between them. For her part, she asked only to be left alone, in that little room, along with the old female servant who had attended her birth.

Gerlando, as the night wore on, had come in from the balcony, now soaked with dew, and had gone to sleep on a divan in the reception room. Now, woken suddenly, he felt a strong urge to knuckle his eyes, his mouth gaping with the effort of drawing together his eyebrows; for he wanted, not so much to understand what was said to him, but to agree to it, all of it, by nodding his head. But his father and mother, when they heard about the agreement between Gerlando and Eleonora, were furious.

Gerlando tried in vain to make them understand that the agreement suited him, that in fact he was more than happy with it.

In order to pacify his father somewhat, he had to make a formal promise that at the beginning of October he would go back to school. But his mother also wanted a say in the matter: she insisted that he himself should choose the most beautiful room to sleep in, the most beautiful room to study in, the most beautiful room to eat in… all the most beautiful rooms!

“And listen to me: you take charge, using a stick if you have to! If you don’t, I myself will come to make sure that you are given the obedience and respect that are your right.” She finished by swearing that she would never again address a single word to that simpering woman, who so disrespected her son––such a handsome specimen, whom she was unworthy to even look at.

That very day, Gerlando set about his studies, resuming his interrupted preparation to retake his exams. In truth, it was already late; he had only twenty-four days ahead of him. But surely, if he put a little effort into it, perhaps he would finally succeed in passing this technical exam, over which he had been torturing himself for three years.

Shaking off the painful confusion of the first days, Eleonora, following the advice of the old servant woman, devoted herself to preparing the layette for the baby. She had not thought about this before, and regretted the fact.

Gesa, the old servant, helped and guided her in this work, for Eleonora was no expert; she gave her the measurements for the first delicate garments, the first little caps… Ah, fate had offered her this consolation, which she had hardly considered; she was going to have a little boy, or a little girl, to care for, to give herself to! But God in His grace should send her a boy child. She was already old, and would soon die; how could she leave to the father a little girl, to whom she would have transmitted her own thoughts and feelings? A boy child would suffer less from the hardships of existence to which malign fate would soon consign him.

Agonized by such thoughts, and tired from her work, to distract herself she took up one of the books which she had arranged to be sent from the city by her brother and began to read. Every so often, nodding in the direction of Gerlando, she asked the servant:

“What is he doing?”

Gesa shrugged her shoulders, pursed her lips, and replied:

“Uhm! He’s got his head on a book. Sleeping? Thinking? Who knows?”

Gerlando was indeed thinking: thinking that, adding it all up, his life was not a merry one.

It was like this: he had the farm, and it was as if he didn’t have it; he had a wife, but it was as if he didn’t have her; he was at war with his parents, and angry with himself because he could not manage to retain anything at all of what he studied—nothing, nothing, nothing.

Beset by this irritable idleness, however, he felt within himself a ferment of sharp longings––among them the longing for his wife, who had refused to give herself to him. It was true that the woman was no longer desirable. But… what kind of agreement was that? He was the husband, and he should be the one to make the decision, if one was to be made.

He rose and left the room, walking past the doorway to her room; but, glimpsing her, suddenly felt all plans of rebellion desert him. He exhaled sharply, and to avoid recognizing that in this moment he lacked the character required, he told himself that it wasn’t worth it.

On one of those days, he finally returned from the city, defeated, having once more failed the technical exams. Enough! That was enough, dammit! He wanted nothing more to do with studying. He took his books, his exercise books, his diagrams, his setsquares, his pencil box, his pencils, and took them outside, in front of the villa, to make a bonfire of them. His father ran to prevent him; but Gerlando, like an angry beast, rebelled:

“Leave me alone! I am the boss!”

His mother hurried to the scene, and so too did a few peasants who were working the fields. Amid the cries of the spectators, a whisp of smoke, first thin, then increasingly dense, was released from that mass of paper. A glow appeared, and then the flame burst out and rose into the air. Hearing the cries, Eleonora came out onto the balcony with the servant.

Gerlando, red in the face and puffed up like a turkey, shirtless and infuriated, threw onto the flames the final books that he held under his arm––the instruments of his long, futile torture.

Eleonora, with some difficulty, prevented herself from laughing at this spectacle, and hurriedly withdrew from the balcony. But her mother-in-law had noticed, and said to her son:

“She’s enjoying this, you know; it’s making her laugh.”

“I’ll give her something to cry about,” bellowed Gerlando threateningly, looking up towards the balcony.

Eleonora understood the threat and grew pale; she understood that all peace, albeit an exhausted and melancholy peace, was ended. Fate had granted her scant moments of respite. But what could this brute want from her? She was already exhausted; another blow, even a light one, would destroy her.

Moments later Gerlando appeared before her, out of breath, his face thunderous.

“Life changes right now!” he told her. “I’ve had enough. I’m going to be a peasant, like my father; and so you’ll stop being the lady round here. Get rid of all these frilly white clothes. Whoever is going to be born will be a peasant too, so he’ll not need all this fancy stuff. Get rid of the servant: you will prepare the food and look after the house, as my mother does. Understood?”

Eleonora rose, pale and trembling with disdain:

“Your mother is your mother,” she told him, looking proudly into his eyes. “I am myself, and I cannot become a peasant woman to match you, a peasant man.”

“You are my wife!” shouted Gerlando, rushing up to her and seizing her by an arm. “And you will do what I want; I’m in charge here, understand?”

Then he turned to the old servant woman and pointed to the door:

“Out! You will leave immediately! I want no servants in the house.”

“I shall go with you, Gesa!” screamed Eleonora, struggling to free herself from his arm which still imprisoned her.

But Gerlando did not let go, instead tightening his grip and forcing her to sit down.

“No! Here! You’ll stay here, tied to the place, with me! I’ve taken all those jokes because of you; now enough’s enough! Come out of your little hidey-hole. I don’t want to be all alone with my troubles anymore. Out! Come out!”

And he pushed her out of the room.

“And what troubles have you had up to now?” she asked him, tears in her eyes. “What have I demanded from you?”

“What have you demanded? Not to be bothered, to have no contact with me, almost as if I were… as if I didn’t deserve your consideration, you middle-aged cow! And you’ve had a servant give me my meals, when it was your duty to serve me, in all respects, as all woman should.”

“What would you have me do?” asked Eleonora, humiliated. “If you want, I’ll serve your meals with my own hands, from now on. Agreed?”

As she said this, she burst into sobs, and then, feeling her legs fail her, sank down. Gerlando, taken aback and confused, supported her with Gesa’s help, and both of them helped her gently to a chair.

Towards evening, she was suddenly seized with pain. Gerlando, apologetic and frightened, ran to call his mother; a young peasant was dispatched to the city to find a midwife; meanwhile the farmer, already seeing the farm in danger if his daughter-in-law lost the baby, attacked his son:

“You animal, you animal, what have you done? What if she dies on you? If you have no more children? You’re really up against it. What will you do? You’ve abandoned school, and you don’t even know how to hold a hoe. You’re ruined!”

“What does that matter?” shouted Gerlando. “She will have nothing either!” Suddenly his mother threw up her hands and cried:

“A doctor! A doctor is needed straightaway! I can see that she is very ill.”

“What is wrong with her?” asked Gerlando, appalled. But his father pushed him out of the room.

“Run! Run!”

As he ran, Gerlando, trembling with guilt, began to cry, forcing himself to keep on running. When he was half-way to his destination he met the midwife, who was travelling in a carriage driven by the farm lad.

“For God’s sake, hurry!” he shouted. “I’m going to fetch the doctor, she’s dying.”

He stumbled and collapsed; he got up, covered in dust, and started desperately running again, sucking the blood from the hand he had grazed when he fell. When he returned to the villa with the doctor, Eleonora was on the point of death from loss of blood.

“Murderer! Murderer!” shrieked Gesa, bending over her mistress. “It was him! He dared to lay his hands on her.”

But Eleonora shook her head. Her loss of blood was causing her little by little to lose her grip on life; her strength was gradually slipping away; she already felt cold. But she was not afraid of dying. Death was so gentle, such a great relief, after her agonizing suffering. Her face waxen, she stared at the ceiling, she waited for her eyes to close, gently and forever. Already she could no longer discern anything in the room. As if in a dream, she saw the elderly doctor who had been the witness at her wedding, and she smiled at him.

V

Gerlando never left her bedside, day or night, the whole time that Eleonora lay there between life and death.

When, finally, she could be helped from the bed to a chair, she seemed another woman; transparent from loss of blood. In front of her she saw Gerlando, who seemed himself to have recovered from a deathly illness, and his parents standing anxiously nearby. She stared at them with her beautiful black eyes, huge and suffering in her thin, pale face, and it seemed to her that from then on there no longer existed any relationship between them and her—as though she had just returned, a new and different person, from a faraway place, where every tie had been broken, not only with them but with the whole of her previous life.

She breathed in painful gasps; at the slightest sound her heart leapt in her chest and beat violently; fatigue lay heavy on her.

Then, with her head against the back of the armchair, her eyes closed, she felt regret that she had not died. What was there for her to do here? Why was she still condemned to see around her these faces, these objects from which she already felt so distant? Why did she once more have to come into contact with the oppressive, sickening sights of her previous life, a contact which sometimes seemed to become more sudden, as if someone were pushing her forward and forcing her to see and to feel the presence, the living, breathing reality of an odious life which no longer belonged to her?

She had the firm belief that she would never again rise from that chair, that very soon she would die of heart failure. But that did not happen; instead, after a few days, she was able to stand upright, and to take a few steps around the room. In time, she was able to go down the stairs and go out into the open air, supported by Gerlando and the servant. Eventually she acquired the habit of walking, at sunset, as far as the embankment which marked the boundary of the farm.

From there, a magnificent vista opened up: the coastal area which sloped from the upland plains down to the sea. In the early days of her recovery she went there often, usually accompanied by Gerlando and Gesa; then without Gerlando; and finally, on her own.

She would seat herself on a boulder, in the shade of a century-old olive tree. She looked at the distant river, its course curving sometimes in the shape of a crescent moon, sometimes in the shape of a breast, losing itself in the sea which moved according to the winds. She saw the sun, sometimes like a fiery disc slowly sinking to the west into the mist which covered the grey sea like a mold, and sometimes descending in splendor over the incandescent waves, amid a majestic display of clouds lit by its rays. In the damp twilight sky, she saw the light of Jove himself gush out calmly, reviving the faint, slender moon. Her eyes drank in the mournful beauty of the approaching evening; and she breathed in deeply, blissfully, feeling herself pervaded to the depths of her soul by clear air and tranquility, a comfort sent from on high.[11]

Meanwhile, in the farmhouse, the old farmer and his wife continued to speak against her, urging their son to look to his own interests.

“Why do you leave her alone?” his father kept asking him. “Can’t you see that, after her illness, she is grateful for the affection you’ve shown her? Don’t leave her side for an instant, seek to lodge yourself deeper in her heart. And… arrange it so that the servant no longer sleeps in the same room. Your wife is well now, and doesn’t need her.”

Gerlando, irritated, shrugged off these suggestions.

“Not even in my dreams! It won’t even have entered her head that I could… What are you thinking of? She treats me like a son… You should hear how she talks to me! She feels old already, she’s finished, done with this world. No more!”

“Old?” asked his mother. “Certainly she is no longer a child; but she is not old either; and you…”

“They will take away the farm from you!” his father pressed him. “I have already told you: you are ruined, you are facing a crisis. With no children, and your wife dead, the dowry returns to her family. And what a wonderful gain you will have made! You will have lost the benefit of all your schooling, with no compensation… Not even a fistful of flies! Think, think while you still have time. You have already lost so much… What can you hope for?”

“Patiently,” his mother began once more. “You must go to her with good intentions, and perhaps say: ‘Tell me, what have you given me? I have shown you respect, as you asked; but now, you must give a little thought to me. How will it be for me, if you leave me in this situation?’ When it comes down to it, God forbid that you should be at war with each other.”

“And then you can say—” his father renewed the attack: “‘Do you want to make your brother happy, the brother who has treated you in this way? To have him chase me away from here like a dog?’ This is God’s honest truth. You will be chased away like a beaten dog, and your mother and I, in our poverty-stricken old age, will be chased away with you.”

Gerlando did not reply. Hearing his mother’s advice he felt something like relief, but with a slight twitch of irritation; his father’s predictions caused anger to rise in him so that he became hot with rage. What could he do? He saw the difficulty of the task, but he also saw the compelling reasons for it. At all events, he would have to try.

Eleonora now sat at table with him. One evening, at supper, seeing him staring at the tablecloth, lost in thought, she asked him:

“You are not eating. Is something wrong?”

Even though he had over the last few days anticipated this question, prompted by his expression, he was not able to answer in the way he had planned; instead he made a vague gesture with his hand.

“What ails you?” Eleonora asked again.

“Nothing,” replied Gerlando, awkwardly. “As usual, my father…”

“Is he talking about school again?” she asked, smiling, encouraging him to speak.

“No, worse than that,” he said. “He makes me… he makes me see so many shadows, he attacks me with… with anxiety about my future, because he is old, he says, and I am the way I am, a jack of no trades. While you are here, all is well; but then… then, there will be nothing, he says…”

“Tell your father,” Eleonora responded gravely, her eyes half-closed as if she didn’t want to see how flushed he had become, “tell your father that he should not worry. I have made all necessary arrangements, and he should remain calm. In fact, since we are talking about this subject, listen: if I should grow ill again suddenly—I’m talking about life and death—go to the second drawer of the linen press in my bedroom, and you will find a yellow envelope containing a piece of paper addressed to you.”

“A piece of paper?” echoed Gerlando, unsure of what to say and confused by shame. Eleonora nodded her head, adding:

“You must not worry about it.”

The next morning, relieved and happy, Gerlando told his parents what Eleonora had said to him. But they—especially his father—refused to be reassured.

“A piece of paper? Trickery!”

What could this piece of paper say? A will, bequeathing the farm to Eleonora’s husband? And what if it was not drawn up properly, in the right form of words? It was easy to be suspicious, given that this was a document written by hand by an ordinary woman, without the assistance of a notary. And then, would they not have to deal with his brother-in-law, a lawyer and a trickster?

“Legal proceedings, my son? May God free and preserve you from such evil. Justice is not for the poor. And that man, through anger, is capable of making you see white as black, and black as white.”[12]

“What’s more, is this piece of paper really in the drawer of the linen press? Or has she just told you that so that you will leave her alone? Have you seen it? No. So? And even if she does let you see it, will you understand it? Will we understand it? With a child, now… I needn’t go on! Don’t let yourself be led by the nose; listen to us! Flesh and blood! Flesh and blood! What piece of paper?”

One day, then, Eleonora, while she sat beneath the olive tree on the ridge, suddenly saw Gerlando, who had approached her stealthily.

She was wrapped in an ample black shawl. She felt cold, although that February was so mild that it already appeared to be spring. The vast extent of coastal land which lay beneath the embankment was green with forage crops; in the distance the sea appeared motionless, and like the sky was a faded, delicate rose color; in the shade, the landscape seemed almost enameled.

In the silence, sated with looking at the wonderful harmonies of color, Eleonora had leant her head against the trunk of the olive tree. Beneath the black shawl drawn over her head could be seen only her face, even more pale by contrast.

“What are you doing?” Gerlando asked. “You remind me of the Grieving Madonna.”[13]

“I was looking…” she answered him with a sigh, half-closing her eyes. But he spoke again:

“If you knew how… how well it suits you, this black shawl…”

“Suits me?” said Eleonora, smiling sadly. “I feel cold!”

“No, I mean… that you look beautiful,” he explained, stammering, and sat down on the ground close to the rock.

Eleonora, her head resting against the trunk of the olive tree, closed her eyes once more and smiled to prevent herself from weeping, overcome with regret at the thought of her youth, wasted so pitifully. For, at eighteen, yes, she had indeed been beautiful.

Suddenly, while she sat there absorbed, she felt that she was being gently shaken. “Give me your hand,” he asked as he sat there, his eyes shining. She understood what he meant, but pretended that she did not.

“My hand? Why?” she asked him. “I cannot pull you to your feet: I no longer have the strength even for myself… It’s evening already, let us return.”

And she rose.

“I did not mean that you should pull me up,” explained Gerlando. “Let’s stay here, in the dark; it’s so beautiful here…”

As he spoke, with a swift movement he embraced her knees, smiling nervously, his lips dry.

“No!” she screamed. “Are you mad? Let go of me!”

To stop herself falling, she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him backwards. But her movement made the shawl float out; she bent over him as he rose to his knees, and the shawl fell round him and hid him.

“No—I want you! I want you!” he said then, as if intoxicated with the perfume of her body, wrapping one arm round her knees while with the other he sought her waist.

But Eleonora, with a supreme effort, succeeded in freeing herself; she ran to the edge of the embankment, turned, and cried out:

“I’ll throw myself off!”

She saw him loom violently over her; she leaned backwards and plunged down from the embankment.

He struggled to remain upright, horrified, howling, with his arms raised. Below, he heard the terrible thud of her fall. He looked over the embankment. A pile of black garments against the green of the field below. And the shawl, which had unfurled in the wind, came to rest softly, and lay spread out a little further away.

His hands clutching his head, he turned to look towards the farmhouse; but he suddenly glimpsed the pale face of the moon, which had just risen above the olive grove below. Terrified, he gazed up, as if the moon herself had become the witness to his crime, his accuser.