Read Ebook: Ashes (Cenere): A Sardinian Story by Deledda Grazia Wylde Katharine Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1664 lines and 78960 words, and 34 pages

But she rose, all tremulous.

"Perhaps we'll see each other to-morrow morning. I shall be picking my flowers before sunrise. I'll make you a charm against temptations."

But he was not thinking about temptations. He knelt, clasping Ol? in his arms, and began to cry.

"No, my flower, don't go! don't go! Stay a little longer, Ol?, my little lamb! You are my life. See, I kiss the ground where you put your feet. Stay a little, or, indeed, indeed, I shall die!"

He groaned and shook; and his voice moved Oh even to tears.

She stayed.

Not till autumn did Uncle Micheli perceive that his daughter had gone wrong. Then fierce anger overpowered this wearied and suffering man, who had known all the griefs of life except dishonour. That was unbearable. He took Ol? by the arm, and cast her out. She wept, but Uncle Micheli was implacable. He had warned her a thousand times. He had trusted her. Had her lover been a free man he might have forgiven. But this--No! this, he could never pardon.

For some days Ol? found shelter in the tumble-down house round which Anania had sown his corn. The little brothers brought her scraps of food, till Uncle Micheli found it out and beat them.

Now autumn was covering the heavens with great livid clouds; it rained ceaselessly; the thickets were blown by damp winds, or they glittered with cold hoar frost. Ol? made her way to Nuoro to ask help from her lover. Perhaps he had a presentiment of her coming, for outside the town he met her. He was kind, he comforted her, he wrapped her in his own jacket; he took her to Fonni, a mountain village above Mamojada.

"Don't be frightened," said the young man; "I have a relation at Fonni, and you'll be all right with her. Trust me, my little lamb! I will never desert you."

Anania had gone away. The widow, pale and thin, with the face of a spectre framed by a yellow handkerchief, sat spinning before a wretched fire of twigs. All round was misery, rags, dirt. Great cobwebs hung trembling from the smoke-blackened tiled roof. A few sticks of wooden furniture gave scanty comfort. The boy with the big ears never spoke or laughed. He was already dressed in the costume of the place with a sheepskin cap. His only amusement was roasting chestnuts in the hot ashes.

"Have patience, daughter; it's the way of the world!" said Aunt Grathia the widow, not raising her eyes from her distaff. "Oh! you'll see far worse things if you live. We are born to suffer. When I was a girl I also laughed; then I cried; now both laughing and crying are over."

Ol? felt her heart freeze. Oh, what griefs! what immense griefs!

Outside, night was falling. It was bitter cold. The wind roared in the chimney with the voice of a stormy sea. In the murky brightness of the fire, the widow went on with her spinning, her mind busy with memory. Ol? crouched on the ground, and she too remembered--the warm night of San Giovanni--the scent of the laurel--the light of the smiling stars. Little Zuanne's chestnuts burst among the ashes which strewed the hearth--the wind battered furiously at the door, like a monster scouring the night. After a long silence the widow again spoke.

"I also belong to a good family. This boy's father was called Zuanne. Sons, you know, should always have their father's name, so that they may grow up like them. Ah, yes! my husband was a very distinguished man. He was tall as a poplar tree. Look, there's his coat hanging against the wall."

"I shall never take it down," continued the widow, "not though I am dying of cold. My sons may wear it when they are as clever as their father."

"But what was their father?" asked Ol?.

"With whom?" asked Ol?, forgetting her own troubles. The child was listening too, his great ears pricked till he seemed a hare listening to the voice of a distant fox.

"A fine sort of ability!" said Ol?; "why don't they knock their heads against a wall if they've nothing to do?"

"You don't understand, my daughter," said the widow, proud and sad; "it's all a matter of Fate. If you like, I will tell you how my husband made himself a brigand." She said "made himself a brigand" with great dignity.

"Yes, tell me," answered Ol?, shuddering a little. The shadows had grown denser; the wind howled with a continuous thunder rumble; they seemed in a hurricane-pervaded forest. The words, the cadaverous face of the woman in that black surrounding, now and then momently illuminated by a flash of livid flame, excited Ol? to a childish voluptuousness of terror. She seemed involved in one of those fearful legends which Anania used to relate for her little brothers; and she herself, she with her infinite wretchedness, was a part of the hideous story.

The widow went on--

"Now we'll have supper!" said the widow, rousing herself. She got up, lighted a rude lamp of blackened iron, and prepared the meal; potatoes, always potatoes, for two days Ol? had eaten nothing but potatoes, and a couple of chestnuts.

"Anania is your relation?" asked the girl, after they had eaten for some time in silence.

"Yes, a distant relation of my husband's. He's from Argosolo, not Fonni. But," said the widow, shaking her head contemptuously, "Anania's not at all like the blessed one! My man would have hung himself from an oak tree sooner than do this vile action of Anania's, my poor sister!"

Ol? burst into tears. She retired to the chimney corner, and when little Zuanne seated himself near her, she drew his head to her knee, and held one of his little hard, dirty hands, thinking of her lost little brothers.

"They are like little naked birds," she cried, "left in the nest when their mother is shot and doesn't come back. Oh, who will feed them? The little one can't even undress himself!"

"Then he can sleep in his clothes," said the widow grimly; "what are you crying for, idiot? You should have thought of all that before; it's useless now. You must be patient. The Lord God doesn't forget even the birds in the nest."

"What a storm! What a storm!" lamented Ol?; then asked suddenly, "Do you believe in ghosts, Aunt Grathia?"

"I?" said the widow, putting out the lamp and resuming her spindle, "I believe neither in the dead nor in the living."

Zuanne lifted his head and said softly, "I'm here," then hid his face again in Ol?'s lap.

The widow continued her recital.

"After that I had a son. His name is Fidele, and he's eight years old and has gone to work at a sheepfold. Then I had this one. We are very poor now, sister. My husband wasn't dishonest, you know; he had lived on his own property, and that's why we had to sell everything except just this house."

"How did he die?" asked the girl, caressing the head of the apparently sleeping child.

"How did he die? Oh, on one of his expeditions. He never got into prison," said the widow, proudly, "though the police were after him like hunters after a boar. He was clever at hiding, and when the police were looking for him on the mountains, he would be spending the night here--yes, here, at this hearth where you are sitting now."

The child looked up, his two great ears suddenly on fire; then sank again on Ol?'s lap.

"Yes, I tell you, here. One day, two years ago, he learned that a patrol was searching the hills for him, and he sent to tell me, 'While they are busy at that I'm going to take part in a job; on the way back, I'll stop with you, little wife. Look out for me.' I looked out three nights, four. I span a whole hank of black wool."

"Where was he?"

Ol? watched her a long time. Suddenly her gaze was attracted to the frightened gaze of the little Zuanne, whose hands, hard and brown as the claws of a bird, were clenching themselves, and fingering the wall.

"What is it? What do you see?"

"Dead man!" lisped the child.

"What? A dead man?" said Ol? laughing.

But when she was in bed, alone in a grey, cold garret, round whose roof the wind screeched ever louder, searching and hammering the rafters, Ol? thought of the widow's story; of the mask who had said, 'Woman, wait no more'; of the long black cloak hanging on the wall; of the child who had seen the dead man. And she thought of the little naked birds in the deserted nest; of her poor little neglected brothers; of Anania's treasure; of midsummer night; and of her dead mother. She was afraid--she was sad, so sad that though she believed herself doomed to hell, she longed to die.

Ol?'s son was born at Fonni in the springtime. He was called Anania by the advice of his godmother, the bandit's widow. He passed his infancy at Fonni, and in his imagination never forgot that strange village perched on the mountain crest, like a slumbering vulture.

While the goats fed among the rocks, green with eglantine and aromatic herbs, the two children roamed about. They descended to the road and threw stones at the passers-by; they penetrated into potato plantations where strong wary women were at work; they sought wind-falls in the great damp shadows of the gigantic walnut trees. Zuanne was tall and lithe: Anania stronger and for his age bolder. They were both story-tellers of extraordinary ingenuity, and were excited by strange fancies. Zuanne was always talking of his father, boasting of him, resolving to follow his example, and to avenge his memory. Anania meant to be a soldier.

"I'll catch you," he said calmly, and Zuanne the brigand replied with alacrity, "I'll murder you."

They often played at banditti, armed with guns of cane. They had a suitable den, and Anania the soldier never succeeded in discovering the robber, though the latter cried Cuckoo from the thicket in which he crouched. A real cuckoo would answer from the distance, and often the children, forgetting their murderous intent, would go off in search of the melancholy bird--a search no more successful than the search for the robber. When they seemed quite close to the mysterious voice, it would sob further off, and still further. Then the little brothers in ill luck, buried in the grass, or outstretched on the mossy rock, would punish the cuckoo with questions. Zuanne being shy only said--

and the bird would call seven times when he ought to have answered ten. Nevertheless Anania ventured bolder demands.

"Cu--cu--cu--cu."

"Four years, you little devil! You're going to marry young!" sang out Zuanne.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet