Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories (18 page)

Hands in his pockets, Nino was standing in a corner of the square with a faraway look in his eyes as they were selling his mule, all got up in ribbons and a new halter.

‘I don’t want your charity,’ he snarled.
‘I still have the use of my arms, thank God!
A fine saint, that San Pasquale of yours, eh?’

Turi turned his back on him and walked away so as to avoid a fight.
But the truth was that people’s nerves were on edge, now that San Pasquale had been carried in procession to all points of the compass to no effect.
The worst of it was that many of the San Rocco parishioners had been persuaded to join in the procession, beating their breasts like donkeys and wearing crowns of thorns on their heads, for the sake of the crops.
And now they were cursing away so violently that the bishop’s delegate had to make good his escape on foot and without a band, in the same way he had come.

To get his own back on the coachbuilder, the magistrate telegraphed to say the people were growing restless and that public order was under threat, with the result that one fine day news began to circulate that soldiers had arrived during the night, and if anyone wanted to see them, he only had to go to the stables.

Others, however, were saying they had come because of the cholera, and that down in the city people were dying like flies.

The chemist bolted the door of his shop, and the doctor was the first to make himself scarce, so as not to be set upon and bumped off.

‘It won’t come to anything,’ said the few people left in the village who hadn’t been able to escape to various parts of the countryside.
‘San Rocco will keep watch over the village, and if anyone shows his face in the streets after dark we’ll kill him.’

Even the people from the lower quarter were rushing barefoot into the church of San Rocco.
But before long men and women were going down with the cholera as thick and fast as raindrops before a thunderstorm, and people were saying that So-and-so was a greedy pig who had died on purpose to fill his belly with manna, and that So-and-so had returned from the country in the middle of the night.
In other words, the cholera had struck with a vengeance despite the vigil and the beard of San Rocco, and notwithstanding the fact that a pious old woman claimed he had come to her in a dream and told her in person, ‘Be not afraid of the cholera, I shall deal with it, for I am not like that good-for-nothing of a San Pasquale.’

Nino and Turi had seen nothing of one another since the affair of the mule, but as soon as Nino heard that brother and sister had both been taken ill, he rushed round to their house to find Saridda lying at the end of the room, her features dark and withered, alongside her brother, whose condition was less serious, but who was at his wits’ end to know what to do.

‘Ah!
Villain of a San Rocco!’ Nino sobbed.
‘I never expected this of you!
Saridda, don’t you recognize me?
It’s Nino, don’t you remember?’

Saridda looked at him through eyes so sunken in their sockets that you needed a lantern to find them, while Nino’s eyes were gushing like fountains.

‘Ah!
San Rocco!’ cried Nino.
‘You’ve played a worse trick on me than San Pasquale ever did!’

However, Saridda recovered, and as she stood in the doorway, pale as wax, with her scarf wrapped round her head, she said to him, ‘San Rocco has performed a miracle for my sake, and we must all go and light a candle to him on his feast day.’

Nino, proud as a peacock, nodded his head in agreement.
But then he too caught the disease, and lay at death’s door.
Saridda clawed at her cheeks, saying that she wanted to die with him, and that she would cut off her hair and lay it in his coffin, and no one would ever set eyes on her again for as long as she lived.

‘No!
No!’ Nino replied, his face all drawn and haggard.
‘Your hair will grow again, but I shall be the one who doesn’t set eyes on you again.’

‘A fine miracle San Rocco has performed on
you!’
Turi said, in an effort to cheer him up a little.

As they both convalesced, warming themselves in the sun with their backs to the wall and scowling at one another, they each kept hurling San Rocco and San Pasquale into the other’s face in turn.

When the cholera had run its course, Bruno the coachbuilder returned to the village, and as he was passing by he said, ‘We’ll have a big festival to thank San Pasquale for saving our lives.
There won’t be any more opposition from troublemakers, now that the magistrate has gone to glory and left the lawsuit in his will.’

‘You’re right,’ Nino jeered.
‘We can thank him for all the people who died!’

‘And do we have San Rocco to thank for keeping
you
alive?’

‘Do stop it,’ Saridda yelled at them, ‘or it’ll take the cholera to come back before we have any peace!’

When we say she fell, we mean that she had let fall on Polidori that first soft, languid, come-hither look that causes the serpent hidden at the foot of the tree of seduction to tremble at the knees.
Falls at breakneck speed are rare, and they sometimes frighten the serpent away.
Before descending from one branch to the next, Signora Rinaldi was careful to see where she should place her feet, and pulled a thousand pretty faces, pretending she really wanted to escape towards the top of the tree.
She had perched for about a month on the branch of epistolary contact, an unstable and hazardous branch that stirs in every little scented breeze.
They had begun with the excuse of borrowing or returning a book, requiring a piece of information, that sort of thing.
The fair lady would have liked to perch for quite a while on that branch, chirping prettily away as only women can, rocking to and fro between heaven and earth.
But once he had unburdened himself, Polidori quickly turned
monosyllabic, laconic and impatient, like a man driven to despair.
The poor dear had no option but to shut her eyes, raise her wings, and allow herself to glide a little lower.

‘I didn’t read your letter, and I don’t intend to!’ she told him when she met him at the last ball of the season, as they joined a line of other couples.
‘As you are not the gentleman I thought you were, leave me alone to remain as I want to be.’

Polidori gave her a very serious look, twitching his moustache, his head bowed.
The other dancers, having no reason to stand chattering in the doorway, pushed them in towards the ballroom.
The woman blushed, as though she had been surprised in a secret tête-à-tête with him.

Polidori – the serpent – took note of that fleeting change of colour.

‘You know I shall always obey you, whatever happens,’ he replied smoothly.

The diamond cross glittered on her bosom as it billowed in triumph.
All that evening, a horde of admirers in her wake, Signora Rinaldi danced like a madwoman, choosing a new partner each time she took to the floor.
Her eyes were aglow with joy, they sparkled like the gems that swarmed across her heaving bosom.
Then suddenly, finding herself face to face with her reflection in a large mirror, she turned very serious and refused to dance another step.
To everyone who asked, she replied that she was utterly exhausted, and she looked round instinctively for her husband.
There was no sign of the fellow!
In the ten minutes she lay sprawled on the sofa, unconcerned with crumpling her dress in so ungainly a fashion, strange visions passed before her eyes, mingling with the waltzing couples.
Polidori was not among the dancers, and was nowhere to be seen.
What sort of man was he?
She caught sight of him later at the end of a deserted room, face to face with a bald-headed man with obviously nothing to say, smiling as usual.
Even his smile was one of indifference.
On her word of honour, she would rather have surprised him in the company of the belle of the ball.
Polidori was not to know that.
He stood up, solicitous as ever, and offered her his arm.

At that very moment, who should turn up out of the blue but her husband, who had been looking all over for her.
She turned smartly
on her heels and, adjusting the neckline of her dress with a pretty little jerk of the shoulder, she said to Polidori, so softly that the rustling of the silk almost smothered the sound of her voice, ‘Very well, tomorrow at nine, in the Gardens.’

Polidori made a deep bow as, radiant and overjoyed, she passed by him on her husband’s arm.

When the carriage stopped at the gate, she was filled with alarm and drew back in her seat, as though her husband had suddenly appeared at the window.
She paused for a moment before stepping out, holding on to the handle of the carriage-door and musing, as in a dream, over how her husband seemed now to appear in a different light.
Then, stepping to the ground, she covered her face with her thickly embroidered dark black veil, through which her eyes began to glow with excitement as her features turned pale as death.
The carriage moved swiftly off, making no noise, being the sort of carriage that was discreet and well brought up.

The Gardens, too, seemed to have awoken earlier than usual, completely taken by surprise to be starting the day so early.
Men in shirt sleeves were busy washing down the Gardens, putting a comb through them, giving them their morning’s beauty treatment.
The few people she encountered gave one the impression they were there for the first time at that hour of day, and on doctor’s orders.
They attempted to penetrate the veil of the lady taking her morning stroll, and to identify the scent of the handkerchief concealed in the muff she held tightly to
her breast.
An old man, dragging himself slowly along in search of the early spring sun, stopped to gaze at her as she overtook him, leaned unsteadily on his stick, and sadly shook his head.

Signora Rinaldi paused at the edge of the lake, glancing cautiously this way and that to see whether anything or anyone was about.
As she stood there all alone, listening to the murmuring of the ripples on the surface of the water and the gentle rustling of the chestnut trees, she raised her veil a little, and from her glove she drew out a tiny note, smaller than a playing card.
For two or three minutes the rippling of the water and the rustling of the leaves continued of their own accord.
As the woman stood there, wholly absorbed in her dreams, a tear came into her eyes.

Suddenly, the sound of rapid footsteps caused her to lift her head, and the blood welled up in her cheeks, as though the ardent expression of the newcomer had grazed her face with a kiss.
Just as Polidori was about to raise his hand to his hat, she prevented the gesture with an imperceptible glance in his direction, then walked straight past without looking at him.

She walked with eyes cast downward, listening to the sand crunching beneath her pretty little boots, without looking ahead of her.
Every so often she covered her mouth with her handkerchief to breathe in deeply, as though her heart was greedily gulping down all the air around her.
Murmuring
sotto voce,
the peaceful flow of the stream escorted her softly along; the shade of the cedars and the silence of the deserted avenue stabbed her gently with a sweet sensation of desire.

When she stopped at the leopard’s cage, her heart came near to bursting and she trembled at the knees as Polidori, too, halted at her side, fixed his gaze on the proud beast with the stupefied expression of a peasant cast down on that spot by accident, and whispered, ‘Thank you!’

She offered no reply, blushed a deep crimson, and took a firm hold on the bars of the safety fence, against which she was resting her forehead.
As she did so, a pleasant sensation coursed along the skin of her gloveless hand.
Who would ever have imagined that such a delicious feeling could stem from so simple a greeting in so deserted a place!
A woman could lose her head completely over it!
She felt she was on fire
down to the back of her neck, which Polidori, standing behind her, could see turning red.
A tempestuous flood of jumbled words came into her head.
She told him that her husband had left the house at dawn, whereas she had lain awake all night, thinking what a wonderful time she had had at the ball.

‘But I’m not a bit tired!
This cool air’s good for you, it’s wonderful!
Changes your outlook on life, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes!
That’s true!’ Polidori replied, staring at her eyes, which she dared not raise towards him.

‘When I go to Brianza I intend to get up with the sun every day.
We live such impossible lives in the city.
But I suppose you gentlemen prefer it.’

She spoke rapidly, her voice a shade too shrill and high-pitched, her lips often parting at random into a smile.
Without being aware of it, she was grateful to find him so reluctant to interrupt what she was saying, to mingle his voice with hers.

Eventually Polidori said, ‘But why didn’t you ask me to call on you at home?’

For the first time that morning, she looked him straight in the eye with a shocked and pained expression.
In nothing they had done until now, in nothing they had said, had any wrong ever been intended, except perhaps in an exquisitely delicate way that her ultra-sensitive nature had savoured agreeably, just as the leopard lying there at their feet loved to bask in the rays of the sun, blinking its wide, golden eyes in the warmth, and sensually stretching out its limbs, with that same unawareness.
Summoned back so brusquely to reality, she clenched her fists and puckered her lips in an expression of deep sorrow.
Her eyes became clouded with tears as the magical spell of her reverie was broken, and she fixed her desolate gaze upon him.
All the experience Polidori possessed could do nothing to unravel the meaning of what he was seeing.

‘Yes!’ she exclaimed, changing her tone of voice.
‘It would have been more prudent, would it not?’

‘How cruel you are!’ Polidori murmured.

‘No!’ she replied, raising her head and blushing a little, but in a firm voice.
‘I’m not like all the other ladies, I’m not prudent!
When I decide
to break my neck, I want to savour the horror of looking down into the abyss!
So much the worse for you if you don’t understand.’

He then took her hand firmly into his, devouring all of her pulsating beauty with ravenous eyes, and stammered, ‘Will you.
then?
Will you?’

She did not reply, and made an effort to withdraw her hand.

Polidori implored her compliance in tones of deep agitation, of delirium almost.
He repeated the same question, the same entreaty, with different inflections of the voice aimed at penetrating the most intimate core of the woman’s being.
Her whole body glowed from the warmth of his passion, she had the delicious sensation of being utterly devoured and swept off her feet.
Pale, anxious, her lips trembling, she tried to release herself, casting her terror-stricken eyes up and down the avenue, twisting this way and that under his powerful grip, making an effort with both of her feverish hands to tear herself free from that other hand, which she could feel burning hotly beneath her glove.

In the end, no longer able to control her feelings, she murmured ‘Yes!
Yes!’ then took to her heels at the sound of approaching footsteps.

As she left the Gardens her head was in such a whirl that she almost stepped under a horse and carriage.
She had made a lovers’ tryst!
That was a tryst!
In a low murmur she repeated it to herself over and over again, ‘A tryst!
A tryst!’ The word took over her whole being, she was intoxicated by it, she spoke it on her pale lips without uttering a sound, dreamily savouring a sense of guilt.

She walked unsteadily up to the first carriage she saw, and gave instructions to be taken to Erminia’s house, as though seeking help.
When her friend saw her approaching with so anxious a look, she rushed to meet her at the door of the drawing-room.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s nothing!
Nothing at all!’

‘How lovely you look!
What’s the matter?’

Instead of replying, she threw her arms round her neck and gave her two wild kisses.

Erminia was accustomed to Maria’s extravagant displays of friendship.
The pair of them cast their eyes over photographs they had seen a hundred times before, then emerged on the balcony to admire the flowers that had been in bloom for the past month.

At that moment, Polidori happened to be passing by the house in the open carriage of his friend Guidetti, a cigar between his lips, and he gave Erminia the sort of greeting he could have given to Maria, if he had caught sight of her as she crouched behind the shrubs, her hands pressed tightly to her heart as if to prevent it from bursting.
It was nothing, but it was one of those nothings that pierce a woman’s breast like the point of a needle.
So when she got home, Signora Rinaldi wrote Polidori a long letter, asking him in a calm and dignified manner to forget about their appointment, to which she had agreed in a moment of aberration, a moment that continued to fill her with shame and remorse.
There was so much sincerity in the denial of her feelings towards him that an hour after the event, that moment in which she had surrendered seemed to lie in the remote past; and if, reading between the lines of her letter, some tiny echo could still be heard, it was simply her regret over dreams that vanished so rapidly.
She appealed to his sense of honour and his delicacy of feeling to help her forget the error of her ways and restore her self-esteem.

Polidori had been half-expecting her letter.
Signora Rinaldi was too inexperienced a woman not to repent several times over before repenting in earnest.
He did something that showed how this pretty, untutored little woman had reawakened his deep and genuine feelings with all the freshness of first impressions: he sent back her letter together with this brief reply.