_THE COUNTESS OF AMALFI_
I
When, one day, toward two o’clock in the afternoon, Don Giovanni
Ussorio was about to set his foot on the threshold of Violetta Kutufas’
house, Rosa Catana appeared at the head of the stairs and announced in
a lowered voice, while she bent her head:
“Don Giovà, the Signora has gone.”
Don Giovanni, at this unexpected news, stood dumbfounded, and remained
thus for a moment with his eyes bulging and his mouth wide open While
gazing upward as if awaiting further explanations. Since Rosa stood
silently at the top of the stairs, twisting an edge of her apron with
her hands and dilly-dallying somewhat, he asked at length:
“But tell me why? But tell me why?” And he mounted several steps while
he kept repeating with a slight stutter:
“But why? But why?”
“Don Giovà, what have I to tell you? Only that she has gone.”
“But why?”
“Don Giovà, I do not know, so there!”
And Rosa took several steps on the landing-place toward the door of the
empty apartment. She was rather a thin woman, with reddish hair, and
face liberally scattered with freckles. Her large, ash-coloured eyes
had nevertheless a singular vitality. The excessive distance between
her nose and mouth gave to the lower part of her face the appearance of
a monkey.
Don Giovanni pushed open the partly closed door and passed through the
first room, and then the third; he walked around the entire apartment
with excited steps; he stopped at the little room, set aside for the
bath. The silence almost terrified him; a heavy anxiety weighted down
his heart.
“It can’t be true! It can’t be true!” he murmured, staring around
confusedly.
The furniture of the room was in its accustomed place, but there was
missing from the table under the round mirror, the crystal phials,
the tortoise-shell combs, the boxes, the brushes, all of those small
objects that assist at the preparation of feminine beauty. In a corner
stood a species of large, zinc kettle shaped like a guitar; and within
it sparkled water tinted a delicate pink from some essence. The water
exhaled subtle perfume that blended in the air with the perfume of
cyprus-powder. The exhalation held in it some inherent quality of
sensuousness.
“Rosa! Rosa!” Don Giovanni cried, in a voice almost extinguished by the
insurmountable anxiety that he felt surging through him.
The woman appeared.
“Tell me how it happened! To what place has she gone? And when did she
go? And why?” begged Don Giovanni, making with his mouth a grimace both
comic and childish, in order to restrain his grief and force back the
tears.
He seized Rosa by both wrists, and thus incited her to speak, to reveal.
“I do not know, Signor,” she answered. “This morning she put her
clothes in her portmanteau, sent for Leones’ carriage, and went away
without a word. What can you do about it? She will return.”
“Return-n-n!” sobbed Don Giovanni, raising his eyes in which already
the tears had started to overflow. “Has she told you when? Speak!” And
this last cry was almost threatening and rabid.
“Eh?... to be sure she said to me, ‘Addio, Rosa. We will never see
each other again...! But, after all ... who can tell! Everything is
possible.’”
Don Giovanni sank dejectedly upon a chair at these words, and set
himself to weeping with so much force of grief that the woman was
almost touched by it.
“Now what are you doing, Don Giovà? Are there not other women in this
world? Don Giovà, why do you worry about it...?”
Don Giovanni did not hear. He persisted in weeping like a child and
hiding his face in Rosa Catana’s apron; his whole body was rent with
the upheavals of his grief.
“No, no, no.... I want Violetta! I want Violetta!” he cried.
At that stupid childishness Rosa could not refrain from smiling. She
gave assistance by stroking the bald head of Don Giovanni and murmuring
words of consolation.
“I will find Violetta for you; I will find her.... So! be quiet! Do not
weep any more, Don Giovannino. The people passing can hear. Don’t worry
about it, now.”
Don Giovanni, little by little, under the friendly caress, curbed his
tears and wiped his eyes on her apron.
“Oh! oh! what a thing to happen!” he exclaimed, after having remained
for a moment with his glance fixed on the zinc kettle, where the water
glittered now under a sunbeam. “Oh! oh! what luck! Oh!”
He took his head between his hands and swung it back and forth two or
three times, as do imprisoned monkeys.
“Now go, Don Giovanino, go!” Rosa Cantana said, taking him gently by
the arm and drawing him along.
In the little room the perfume seemed to increase. Innumerable flies
buzzed around a cup where remained the residue of some coffee. The
reflection of the water trembled on the walls like a subtle net of
gold.
“Leave everything just so!” pleaded Don Giovanni of the woman, in a
voice broken by badly suppressed sobs. He descended the stairs, shaking
his head over his fate. His eyes were swollen and red, bulging from
their sockets like those of a mongrel dog.
His round body and prominent stomach overweighted his two slightly
inverted legs. Around his bald skull ran a crown of long curling hair
that seemed not to take root in the scalp but in the shoulders, from
which it climbed upward toward the nape of the neck and the temples. He
had the habit of replacing from time to time with his bejewelled hands,
some disarranged tuft; the jewels, precious and gaudy, sparkled even on
his thumb, and a cornelian button as large as a strawberry fastened the
bosom of his shirt over the centre of his chest.
When he reached the broad daylight of the square, he experienced anew
that unconquerable confusion. Several cobblers were working near by and
eating figs. A caged blackbird was whistling the hymn of Garibaldi,
continuously, always recommencing at the beginning with painful
persistency.
“At your service, Don Giovanni!” called Don Domenico Oliva, as he
passed, and he removed his hat with an affable Neapolitan cordiality.
Stirred with curiosity by the strange expression of the _Signor_, he
repassed him in a short time and resaluted him with greater liberality
of gesture and affability. He was a man of very long body and very
short legs; the habitual expression of his mouth was involuntarily
shaped for derision. The people of Pescara called him “Culinterra.”
“At your service!” he repeated.
Don Giovanni, in whom a venomous wrath was beginning to ferment
which the laughter of the fig-eaters and the trills of the blackbird
irritated, at his second salute turned his back fiercely and moved
away, fully persuaded that those salutes were meant for taunts.
Don Domenico, astonished, followed him with these words:
“But, Don Giovà! ... are you angry ... but....”
Don Giovanni did not listen. He walked on with quick steps toward his
home. The fruit-sellers and the blacksmiths along the road gazed and
could not understand the strange behaviour of these two men, breathless
and dripping with perspiration under the noonday sun.
Having arrived at his door, Don Giovanni, scarcely stopping to knock,
turned like a serpent, yellow and green with rage, and cried:
“Don Domè, oh Don Domè, I will hit you!” With this threat, he entered
his house and closed the door violently behind him.
Don Domenico, dumbfounded, stood for a time speechless. Then he
retraced his steps, wondering what could account for this behaviour,
when Matteo Verdura, one of the fig-eaters, called:
“Come here! Come here! I have a great bit of news to tell you.”
“What news?” asked the man of the long spine, as he approached.
“Don’t you know about it?”
“About what?”
“Ah! Ah! Then you haven’t heard yet?”
“Heard what?”
Verdura fell to laughing and the other cobblers imitated him.
Spontaneously all of them shook with the same rasping and inharmonious
mirth, differing only with the personality of each man.
“Buy three cents’ worth of figs and I will tell you.”
Don Domenico, who was niggardly, hesitated slightly, but curiosity
conquered him.
“Very well, here it is.”
Verdura called a woman and had her heap up the fruit on a plate. Then
he said:
“That signora who lived up there, Donna Violetta, do you remember...?
That one of the theatre, do you remember...?”
“Well?”
“She has made off this morning. Crash!”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed, Don Domè.”
“Ah, now I understand!” exclaimed Don Domenico, who was a subtle man
and cruelly malicious.
Then, as he wished to revenge himself for the offence given him by Don
Giovanni and also to make up for the three cents expended for the news,
he went immediately to the _casino_ in order to divulge the secret and
to enlarge upon it.
The “casino,” a kind of café, stood immersed in shadow, and up from
its tables sprinkled with water, arose a singular odour of dust and
musk. There snored Doctor Punzoni, relaxed upon a chair, with his arms
dangling. The Baron Cappa, an old soul, full of affection for lame dogs
and tender girls, nodded discreetly over a newspaper. Don Ferdinando
Giordano moved little flags over a card representing the battlefields
of the Franco-Prussian war. Don Settimio de Marinis appraised with
Doctor Fiocca the works of Pietro Mettastasio, not without many vocal
explosions and a certain flowery eloquency in the use of poetical
expressions. The notary Gaiulli, not knowing with whom to play,
shuffled the cards of his game alone, and laid them out in a row on the
table. Don Paolo Seccia sauntered around the billiard table with steps
calculated to assist the digestion.
Don Domenico Oliva entered with so much vehemence, that all turned
toward him except Doctor Panzoni, who still remained in the embrace of
slumber.
“Have you heard? Have you heard?”
Don Domenico was so anxious to tell the news, and so breathless, that
at first he stuttered without making himself understood. All of these
gentlemen around him hung upon his words, anticipating with delight any
unusual occurrence that might enliven their noonday chatter.
Don Paolo Seccia, who was slightly deaf in one ear, said impatiently,
“But have they tied your tongue, Don Domè?”
Don Domenico recommenced his story at the beginning, with more calmness
and clearness. He told everything; enlarged on the rage of Don Giovanni
Ussorio; added fantastic details; grew intoxicated with his own words
as he went on.
“Now do you see? Now do you see?”
Doctor Panzoni, at the noise, opened his eyelids, rolling his huge
pupils still dull with sleep and still blowing through the monstrous
hairs of his nose, said or rather snorted nasally:
“What has happened? What has happened?”
And with much effort, bearing down on his walking stick, he raised
himself very slowly, and joined the gathering in order to hear.
The Baron Cappa now narrated, with much saliva in his mouth, a
well-nourished story apropos of Violetta Kutufa. From the pupils of
the eyes of his intent listeners gleams flashed in turn. The greenish
eyes of Don Palo Seccia scintillated as if bathed in some exhilarating
moisture. At last the laughter burst out.
But Doctor Panzoni, though standing, had taken refuge again in slumber;
since for him sleep, irresistible as a disease, always had its seat
within his own nostrils.
He remained with his snores, alone in the centre of the room, his head
upon his breast, while the others scattered over the entire district to
carry the news from family to family.
And the news, thus divulged, caused an uproar in Pescara. Toward
evening, with a fresh breeze from the sea and a crescent moon,
everybody frequented the streets and squares. The hum of voices was
infinite. The name of Violetta Kutufa was at every tongue’s end. Don
Giovanni Ussorio was not to be seen.