I
The great sandy square scintillated as if spread with powdered pumice
stone. All of the houses around it, whitened with plaster, seemed
red hot like the walls of an immense furnace whose fire was about to
die out. In the distance, the pilasters of the church reflected the
radiation of the clouds and became red as granite, the Windows flashed
as if they might contain an internal conflagration; the sacred images
possessed personalities alive with colour; the entire structure,
beneath the splendour of this meteoric twilight, assumed a more lofty
power of dominion over the houses of Radusani.
There moved from the streets to the square groups of men and women,
vociferating and gesticulating. In the souls of all, superstitious
terror was rapidly becoming intense; in all of those uncultivated
imaginations a thousand terrible images of divine chastisement arose;
comments, passionate contentions, lamentable conjurations, disconnected
tales, prayers, cries mingled with the ominous rumbling of an imminent
hurricane.
Already for many days that bloody redness had lingered in the sky after
the sunset, had invaded the tranquillity of the night, illuminated
tragically the slumber of the fields, aroused the howls of the dogs.
“Giacobbe! Giacobbe!” cried several while waving their arms who
previous to this time had spoken in low voices, before the church,
crowded around a pilaster of the vestibule. “Giacobbe!”
There issued from the main door and approached the summoners a long and
lean man, who seemed ill with a hectic fever, was bald upon the top of
his head, and crowned at the temples and neck with long reddish hair.
His small, hollow eyes, animated as if from the ardour of a deep
passion, converged slightly toward his nose, and were of an uncertain
colour. The lack of the two front teeth of the upper jaw gave to his
mouth as he spoke, and to the movements of his sharp chin scattered
with hairs, a singular appearance of satyr-like senility. The rest
of his body was a miserable architectural structure of bones badly
concealed by clothes, while on his hands, on the under sides of his
arms and on his breast, his skin was full of azure marks, incisions
made with the point of a pin and powder of indigo, in memory of visits
to sanctuaries, of grace received, of vows taken.
As the fanatic drew near to the group around the pilaster, a medley of
questions arose from these anxious men.
“What then? What had Don Consolo said? Had he made only the arm of
silver appear?”
“And was not the entire bust a better omen? When would Pallura return
with the candles?”
“Were there a hundred pounds of wax? Only a hundred pounds? And when
would the bells begin to sound? What then? What then?”
The clamours increased around Giacobbe; those furthest away drew near
to the church; from all the streets the people overflowed on to the
piazza and filled it.
Giacobbe replied to the interrogators. He spoke in a low voice, as if
he were about to reveal terrible secrets, as if he were the bearer
of prophecies from afar. He had witnessed on high, in the centre of
blood, a threatening hand and then a black veil, and then a sword and a
trumpet....
“Tell us! Tell us!” the others induced him, while watching his face,
seized with a strange greediness to hear marvellous things, while,
in the meantime the fable sped from mouth to mouth throughout the
assembled multitude.