_SORCERY_
When seven consecutive sneezes of Mastro Peppe De Sieri, called La
Brevetta, resounded loudly in the square of the City Hall, all the
inhabitants of Pescara would seat themselves around their tables
and begin their meal. Soon after the bell would strike twelve, and
simultaneously, the people would become very hilarious.
For many years La Brevetta had given this joyful signal to the people
daily, and the fame of his marvellous sneezing spread through all the
country around, and also through the adjoining countries. His memory
still lives in the minds of the people, for he originated a proverb
which will endure for many years to come.
I
Mastro Peppe La Brevetta was a plebeian, somewhat corpulent, thick-set,
and clumsy; his face shining with a prosperous stupidity, his eyes
reminded one of the eyes of a sucking calf, while his hands and
feet were of extraordinary dimensions. His nose was long and fleshy,
his jaw-bones very strong and mobile, and when undergoing a fit of
sneezing, he looked like one of those sea-lions whose fat bodies, as
sailors relate, tremble all over like a jelly-pudding.
Like the sea-lions, too, he was possessed of a slow and lazy motion,
their ridiculously awkward attitudes, and their exceeding fondness for
sleep. He could not pass from the shade to the sun, nor from the sun
to the shade without an irrepressible impulse of air rushing through
his mouth and nostrils. The noise produced, especially in quiet spots,
could be heard at a great distance, and as it occurred at regular
intervals, it came to be a sort of time-piece for the citizens of the
town.
In his youth Mastro Peppe had kept a macaroni shop, and among the
strings of dough, the monotonous noise of the mills and wheels, in the
mildness of the flour-dusty air, he had grown to a placid stupidity.
Having reached maturity, he had married a certain Donna Pelagia of
the Commune of Castelli, and abandoning his early trade, he had since
that time dealt in terra cotta and Majolica ware,—vases, plates,
pitchers, and all the poor earthenware which the craftsmen of Castelli
manufactured for adorning the tables of the land of Abruzzi. Among the
simplicity and religiousness of those shapes, unchanged for centuries,
he lived in a very simple way, sneezing all the time, and as his wife
was a miserly creature, little by little her avaricious spirit had
communicated itself to him, until he had grown into her penurious and
miserly ways.
Now Mastro Peppe was the owner of a piece of land and a small farm
house, situated upon the right bank of the river, just at the spot
where the current of the river, turning, forms a sort of greenish
amphitheatre. The soil being well irrigated, produced very abundantly,
not only grapes and cereals, but especially large quantities of
vegetables. The harvests increased, and each year Mastro Peppe’s pig
grew fat, feasting under an oak tree which dropped its wealth of acorns
for his delectation. Each year, in the month of January, La Brevetta,
with his wife, would go over to his farm, and invoke the favour of San
Antonio to assist in the killing and salting of the pig.
One year it happened that his wife was somewhat ill, and La Brevetta
went alone to the slaughtering of the beast. The pig was placed upon a
large board and held there by three sturdy farm-hands, while his throat
was cut with a sharp knife. The grunting and squealing of the hog
resounded through the solitude, usually broken only by the murmuring of
the stream, then suddenly the sounds grew less, and were lost in the
gurgling of warm vermilion blood which was disgorged from the gaping
wound, and while the body was giving its last convulsive jerks, the new
sun was absorbing from the river the moisture in the form of a silvery
mist. With a sort of joyous ferocity La Brevetta watched Lepruccio
burn with a hot iron the deep eyes of the pig, and rejoiced to hear the
boards creak under the weight of the animal, thinking of the plentiful
supply of lard and the prospective hams.
The murdered beast was lifted up and suspended from a hook, shaped
like a rustic pitchfork, and left there, hanging head downward. Burning
bundles of reeds were used by the farm-hands to singe off the bristles,
and the flames rose almost invisible in the greater light of the
sun. At length, La Brevetta began to scrape with a shining blade the
blackened surface of the animal’s body, while one of the assistants
poured boiling water over it. Gradually the skin became clean, and
showed rosy-tinted as it hung steaming in the sun. Lepruccio, whose
face was the wrinkled and unctuous face of an old man, and in whose
ears hung rings, stood biting his lips during the performance, working
his body up and down, and bending upon his knees. The work being
completed, Mastro Peppe ordered the farm-hands to put the pig under
cover. Never in his life had he seen so large a bulk of flesh from one
pig, and he regretted that his wife was not there to rejoice with him
because of it.
Since it was late in the afternoon, Matteo Puriello and Biagio Quaglia,
two friends, were returning from the home of Don Bergamino Camplone, a
priest who had gone into business.
These two cronies were living a gay life, given to dissipation, fond of
any kind of fun, very free in giving advice, and as they had heard of
the killing of the pig, and of the absence of Pelagia, hoping to meet
with some pleasing adventure, they came over to tantalise La Brevetta.
Matteo Puriello, commonly called Ciavola, was a man of about forty, a
poacher, tall and slender, with blond hair and a yellow tinted skin,
with a stiff and bristling moustache. His head was like that of a
gilded wooden effigy, from which the gilding had partly worn off. His
eyes round and restless, like those of a race-horse, shone like two
new silver coins, and his whole person, usually clad in a suit of earth
colour, reminded one, in its attitudes and movements and its swinging
gait, of a hunting dog catching hares as he ran across the plain.
Biagio Quaglia, so-called Ristabilito, was under medium height,
a few years younger than his friend, with a rubicund face, of the
brilliancy and freshness of an almond tree in springtime. He possessed
the singular faculty of moving his ears and the skin of his forehead
independently, and with the skin of the cranium, as does a monkey. By
some unexplained contraction of muscles, he was in this way enabled
greatly to change his aspect, and this, together with a happy vocal
power of imitation, and the gift of quickly catching the ridiculous
side of men and things, gave him the power to imitate in gesture and in
word the, different groups of Pescara, so that he was greatly in demand
as an entertainer. In this happy, parasitical mode of life, by playing
the guitar at festivals and baptismal ceremonies, he was prospering.
His eyes shone like those of a ferret, his head was covered with a sort
of woolly hair like the down on the body of a fat, plucked goose before
it is broiled.
When La Brevetta saw the two friends, he greeted them gently, saying:
“What wind brings you here?”
After exchanging pleasant greetings, La Brevetta took the two friends
into the room where, upon the table, lay his wonderful pig, and asked:
“What do you think of such a pig? Eh? What do you think about it?”
The two friends were contemplating the pig in wondering silence, and
Ristabilito made a curious noise by beating his palate with his tongue.
Ciavola asked:
“And what do you expect to do with it?”
“I expect to salt it,” answered La Brevetta, his voice full of
gluttonous joy at the thought of the future delights of the palate.
“You expect to salt it?” cried Ristabilito. “You wish to salt it?
Ciavola, have you ever seen a more foolish man than this one? To allow
such an opportunity to escape!”
Stupefied, La Brevetta was looking with his calf-like eyes first at one
and then at the other of his interlocutors.
“Donna Pelagia has always made you bow to her will,” pursued
Ristabilito. “Now, when she is not here to see you, sell the pig and
eat up the money.”
“But Pelagia?—Pelagia?——” stammered La Brevetta, in whose mind arose
a vision of his wrathful wife which brought terror to his heart.
“You can tell her that the pig was stolen,” suggested the ever-ready
Ciavola, with a quick gesture of impatience.
La Brevetta was horrified.
“How could I take home such a story? Pelagia would not believe me. She
will throw me out of doors! She will beat me! You don’t know Pelagia.”
“Uh, Pelagia! Uh, uh, Donna Pelagia!” cried the wily fellows
derisively. Then Ristabilito, mimicking the lamenting voice of Peppe
and the sharp, screeching voice of the woman, went through a scene of a
comedy in which Peppe was bound to a bench, and soundly spanked by his
wife, like a child.
Ciavola witnessed this performance in great glee, laughing and jumping
about the pig, unable to restrain himself. The man who was being
laughed at was just at this moment taken with a sudden paroxysm of
sneezing, and stood waving his arms frantically toward Ristabilito,
trying to make him stop. The din was so great that the window panes
fairly rattled as the light of the setting sun fell on the three faces.
When Ristabilito was silenced at last, Ciavola said:
“Well, let’s go now!”
“If you wish to stay to supper with me ...” Mastro Peppe ventured to
say between his teeth.
“No, no, my beauty,” interrupted Ciavola, turning toward the door.
“Remember me to Pelagia,—and do salt the pig.”