In the summer of 1835 Luca set sail for a Grecian port upon the skiff
“Trinita” belonging to Don Giovanni Camaccione. Moreover, as he held
a secret thought in his mind, before leaving, he sold his furniture
and asked some relatives to keep Anna in their house until he should
return. Some time after that the skiff returned loaded with dried figs
and eggs from Corinth, after having touched at the coast of Roto. Luca
was not among the crew, and it became known later that he had remained
in the “country of the oranges” with a lady-love.
Anna remembered their former stuttering hostess. A deep sadness settled
down upon her life at this recollection. The house of her relatives
was on the eastern road, in the vicinity of Molo. The sailors came
there to drink wine in a low room, where almost all day their songs
resounded amid the smoke of their pipes. Anna passed in and out among
the drinkers, carrying full pitchers, and her first instinct of modesty
awoke from that continuous contact, that continuous association with
bestial men. Every moment she had to endure their impudent jokes, cruel
laughter and suggestive gestures, the wickedness of men worn out by the
fatigues of a sailor’s life. She dared not complain, because she ate
her bread in the house of another. But that continuous ordeal weakened
her and a serious mental derangement arose little by little from her
weakened condition.
Naturally affectionate, she had a great love for animals. An aged ass
was housed under a shed of straw and clay behind the house. The gentle
beast daily bore burdens of wine from Saint Apollinare to the tavern;
and for all that his teeth had commenced to grow yellow, and his hoofs
to decay, for all that his skin was already parched and had scarcely a
hair upon it, still, at the sight of a flowering thistle he put up his
ears and began to bray vivaciously in his former youthful way.
Anna filled his manger with fodder and his trough with water. When
the heat was severe, she came to rest in the shadow of the shed. The
ass ground up wisps of straw laboriously between his jaws and she with
a leafy branch performed a work of kindness by keeping his back free
from the molestation of insects. From time to time the ass turned its
long-eared head with a curling of the flaccid lips which revealed the
gums as if performing a reddish animal smile of gratitude, and with
an oblique movement of his eye in its orbit showed the yellowish ball
veined with purple like a gall bladder. The insects circled with a
continuous buzzing around the dung-heap; neither from earth nor sea
came a sound, and an infinite sense of peace filled the soul of the
woman.
In April of 1842 Pantaleo, the man who guided the beast of burden on
his daily journeys, died from a knife-wound. From that time on the duty
fell to Anna. Either she left at dawn and returned by noon, or she left
at noon and returned by night. The road wound over a sunny hill planted
with olives, descended through a moist country used for pasture, and
on rising again through vineyards, arrived at the factories of Saint
Apollinare. The ass walked wearily in front with lowered ears, a green
fringe all worn and discoloured beat against his ribs and haunches and
in the pack-saddle glittered several fragments of brass plate.
When the animal stopped to regain his breath, Anna gave him a little
caressing blow on the neck and urged him with her voice, because she
had pity for his infirmities. Every so often she tore from the hedges
a handful of leaves and offered them to him for refreshment; she was
moved on feeling in her palm the soft movement of his lips as they
nibbled her offering. The hedges were in bloom and the blossoms of the
white thorn had a flavour of bitter almonds.
On the confines of the olive grove was a large cistern, and near this
cistern a long, stone canal where the animals came to drink. Every
day Anna paused at this spot and here she and the ass quenched their
thirst before continuing the journey. Once she encountered the keeper
of a herd of cattle, who was a native of Tollo and whose expression was
a little cross and who had a hare-lip. The man returned her greeting
and they began to converse on the pasturage and the water, then on
sanctuaries and miracles. Anna listened graciously and with frequent
smiles. She was lean and pale with very clear eyes and uncommonly large
mouth, and her auburn hair was smoothed back without a part. On her
neck one saw the red scars of her burns and her veins stood out and
palpitated incessantly.
From that time on their conversations were repeated at intervals.
Through the grass the cattle dispersed, either lying down and pondering
or standing and eating. Their peaceful moving forms added to the
tranquillity of the pastoral solitude. Anna, seated on the edge of
the cistern, talked simply and the man with his split lip seemed
overcome with love. One day with a sudden, spontaneous blossoming of
her memory, she told of her sailing to the mountain of Roto; and, since
the remoteness of the time had blurred her memory, she told marvellous
things with a strong appearance of truth. The man, astonished,
listened without winking an eye. When Anna stopped speaking, to both
the surrounding silence and solitude seemed deeper and both remained
in thought. Then the cattle, driven by habit, came to the trough
and between their legs dangled the bags of milk supplied anew from
the pasture. As they thrust their noses into the stream, the water
diminished with their slow, regular gulps.