Donna Cristina Lamonica, meanwhile, sent for La Cinigia, a woman of the
ignorant masses, who followed the profession of magic and unscientific
medicine. Previously, La Cinigia had several times discovered stolen
goods and some said that she had underhand dealings with the thieves.
Donna Cristina said to her, “Recover the spoon for me and I will give
you a rich present.”
La Cinigia answered, “Very well. Twenty-four hours will suffice me.”
And after twenty-four hours she brought the news, “The spoon is to be
found in the court in a hole adjacent to the sewer.” Donna Cristina and
Maria descended to the court, searched, and to their great astonishment
found the missing piece.
The news spread rapidly throughout Pescara. Then in triumph, Candia
Marcanda immediately began to frequent the streets. She seemed taller,
held her head more erect and smiled into the eyes of everyone as if to
say, “Now you have seen for yourselves?”
The people in the shops, when she passed by, murmured something and
then broke into laughter. Filippo Selvi, who was drinking a glass of
brandy in the Café d’Angeladea, called to Candia, “Over here is a glass
waiting for Candia.”
The woman, who loved ardent liquor, moved her lips greedily.
Filippo Selvi added, “And you are deserving of it, there is no doubt of
that.”
A crowd of idlers had assembled before the café. All wore a teasing
expression upon their countenances. Filippo La Selvi having turned to
his audience while the woman was drinking, vouchsafed, “And she knew
how to find it, did she? The old fox....”
He struck familiarly the bony shoulder of the laundress by way of
prelude.
Everyone laughed.
Magnafave, a small hunchback, defective in body and speech and halting
on the syllables, cried:
“Ca-ca-ca—Candia—a—and—Cinigia!” He followed this with
gesticulations and wary stutterings, all of which implied that Candia
and La Cinigia were in league. At this the crowd became convulsed with
mirth.
Candia remained dazed for a moment with the glass in her hand. Then of
a sudden she understood. They still did not believe in her innocence.
They were accusing her of having secretly carried back the spoon, in
agreement with the fortune-teller as to the placing of it, in order to
escape disgrace.
At this thought, the blind grip of rage seized her. She could not
find words for speech. She threw herself upon the weakest of her
tormentors, which was the small hunchback, and belaboured him with
blows and scratches. The crowd, taking a cruel pleasure in witnessing
the scuffle, cheered itself into a circle as if watching the struggle
of two animals, and encouraged both combatants with cries and
gesticulations.
Magnafave, terrified by her unexpected madness, sought to flee, dodging
like a monkey; but, detained by those terrible hands of the laundress,
he whirled with ever-increasing velocity, like a stone from a sling,
until at length he fell upon his face with great violence.
Several ran forward to raise him. Candia withdrew in the midst of
hisses, shut herself up in her house, threw herself across her bed,
weeping and biting her fingers. This latest accusation burnt into her
more than the former, particularly because she realised that she was
capable of such a subterfuge. How to disentangle herself now? How make
the truth clear? She grew desperate on thinking that she could not
bring to the aid of her argument any material difficulties that might
have hindered the execution of such a deceit. Access to the court was
very easy; a never closed door was on the first landing-place of a
large staircase and in order to dispose of waste matter and to attend
to other diverse duties, a quantity of people passed freely in and
out of that doorway. Therefore she could not close the mouths of her
accusers by saying, “How could I have got in there?” The means for
accomplishing such an undertaking were many and simple, and on this
very lack of obstacles popular opinion chose to establish itself.
Candia therefore sought different persuasive arguments; she sharpened
all her cunning, imagined three, four, five separate circumstances
that might easily account for the finding of the spoon in that hole;
she took refuge in mental turnings and twistings of every kind and
subtilised with singular ingenuity. Later she began to go around from
shop to shop, from house to house, straining in every way to overcome
the incredulity of the people.
At first they listened to her enticing arguments for a diversion.
At last they said, “Oh, very well! Very well!” But with a certain
inflection of the voice which left Candia crushed. All her efforts then
were useless. No one believed!
With an astonishing persistency, she returned to the siege. She
passed entire nights pondering on new reasons, how to construct
new explanations, to overcome new obstacles. Little by little, from
the continuous absorption, her mind weakened, could not entertain
any thought save that of the spoon, and had scarcely any longer any
realisation of the events of every day life. Later, through the cruelty
of the people, a veritable mania arose in the mind of the poor woman.
She neglected her duties and was reduced almost to penury. She washed
the clothes badly, lost and tore them. When she descended to the bank
of the river under the iron-bridge where the other laundresses had
collected, at times she let escape from her hands garments which the
current snatched and they were gone forever. She babbled continuously
on the same subject. To drown her out the young laundresses set
themselves to singing and to bantering one another from their places
with impromptu verses. She shouted and gesticulated like a mad woman.
No one any longer gave her work. Out of compassion for her, her former
customers sent her food. Little by little the habit of begging settled
upon her. She walked the streets, ragged, bent, and dishevelled.
Impertinent boys called after her, “Now tell us the story of the spoon,
that we may know about it, do, Candia!”
She stopped sometimes unknown passersby to recount her story and to
wander into the mazes of her defence. The scapegoats of the town hailed
her and for a cent made her deliver her narration three, four times;
they raised objections to her arguments and were attentive to the end
of the tale for the sake of wounding her at last with a single word.
She shook her head, moved on and clung to other feminine beggars and
reasoned with them, always, always indefatigable and unconquerable. She
took a fancy to a deaf woman whose skin was afflicted with a kind of
reddish leprosy, and who was lame in one leg.
In the winter of 1874 a malignant fever seized her. Donna Cristina
Lamonica sent her a cordial and a hand-warmer. The sick woman,
stretched on her straw pallet, still babbled about the spoon. She
raised on her elbows, tried to motion with her hands in order to assist
in the summing up of her conclusions. The leprous woman took her hands
and gently soothed her.
In her last throes, when her enlarged eyes were already being veiled
behind some suffusing moisture that had mounted to them from within,
Candia murmured, “I was not the one, Signor ... you see ... because ...
the spoon....”
X
_THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF OFENA_
I
When the first confused clamour of the rebellion reached Don Filippo
Cassaura, he suddenly opened his eyelids, that weighed heavily upon his
eyes, inflamed around the upturned lids, like those of pirates who sail
through stormy seas.
“Did you hear?” he asked of Mazzagrogna, who was standing nearby, while
the trembling of his voice betrayed his inward fear.
The majordomo answered, smiling, “Do not be afraid, Your Excellency.
Today is St. Peter’s day. The mowers are singing.”
The old man remained listening, leaning on his elbow and looking
over the balcony. The hot south wind was fluttering the curtains. The
swallows, in flocks, were darting back and forth as rapidly as arrows
through the burning air. All the roofs of the houses below glared with
reddish and greyish tints. Beyond the roofs was extended the vast, rich
country, gold in colour, like ripened wheat.
Again the old man asked, “But Giovanni, have you heard?”
And indeed, clamours, which did not seem to indicate joy, reached their
ears. The wind, rendering them louder at intervals, pushing them and
intermingling with its whistling noise, made them appear still more
strange.
“Do not mind that, Your Excellency,” answered Mazzagrogna. “Your ears
deceive you.”
“Keep quiet.” And he arose to go towards one of the balconies.
He was a thick-set man, bow-legged, with enormous hands, covered with
hair on the backs like a beast. His eyes were oblique and white, like
those of the Albinos. His face was covered with freckles. A few red
hairs straggled upon his temples and the bald top of his head was
flecked with dark projections in the shape of chestnuts.
He remained standing for a while, between the two curtains, inflated
like sails, in order to watch the plain beneath. Thick clouds of
dust, rising from the road of the Fara, as after the passing of
immense flocks of sheep, were swept by the wind and grew into shapes
of cyclones. From time to time these whirling clouds caused whistling
sounds, as if they encompassed armed people.
“Well?” asked Don Filippo, uneasily.
“Nothing,” repeated Mazzagrogna, but his brows were contracted.
Again the impetuous rush of wind brought a tumult of distant cries.
One of the curtains, blown by the wind, began to flutter and wave in
the air like an inflated flag. A door was suddenly shut with violence
and noise, the glass panel trembled from the shock. The papers,
accumulated upon the table, were scattered around the room.
“Do close it! Do close it!” cried the old man, with emotional terror.
“Where is my son?”
He was lying upon the bed, suffocated by his fleshiness, and unable to
rise, as all the lower part of his body was deadened by paralysis. A
continuous paralytic tremor agitated his muscles. His hands, lying on
the bed sheets, were contorted, like the roots of old olive trees. A
copious perspiration dripped from his forehead and from his bald head,
and dropped from his large face, which had a pinkish, faded colour,
like the gall of oxen.
“Heavens!” murmured Mazzagrogna, between his teeth, as he closed the
shutters vehemently. “They are in earnest!”
One could now perceive upon this road of Fara, near the first house, a
multitude of men, excited and wavering, like the overflow of rivulets,
which indicated a still greater multitude of people, invisible, hidden
by the rows of roofs and by the oak trees of San Pio. The auxiliary
legion of the country had met the one of the rebellion. Little by
little the crowd would diminish, entering the roads of the country
and disappearing like an army of ants through the labyrinth of the ant
hill.
The suffocated cries, echoing from house to house, reached them now,
like a continuous but indistinct rumbling. At moments there was silence
and then you could hear the great fluttering of the ash trees in front
of the palace, which seemed as if already abandoned.
“My son! Where is he?” again asked the old man, in a quivering,
squeaking voice. “Call him! I wish to see him.”
He trembled upon his bed, not only because he was a paralytic, but also
because of fear.
At the time of the first seditious movement of the day before, at the
cries of about a hundred youths, who had come under the balcony to
shout against the latest extortions of the Duke of Ofena, he had been
overcome by such a foolish fright, that he had wept like a little girl,
and had spent the night invoking the Saints of Paradise. The thought
of death and of his danger gave rise to an indescribable terror in that
paralytic old man, already half dead, in whom the last breaths of life
were so painful. He did not wish to die.
“Luigi! Luigi!” he began to cry in his anguish.
All the place was filled with the sharp rattling of the window glasses,
caused by the rush of the wind. From time to time one could hear the
banging of a door, and the sound of precipitate steps and sharp cries.
“Luigi!”