Hermione was outside in the street, hearing the cries of ambulant
sellers, the calls of women and children, the tinkling bells and the
rumble of the trams, and the voice of Fabiano Lari speaking--was it to
her?
“Signora, did you see him?”
“Yes.”
“He is glad to be out of prison. He is gay, but he looks wicked.”
She did not understand what he meant. She walked on and came into the
road that leads to the tunnel. She turned mechanically towards the
tunnel, drawn by the darkness.
“But, Signora, this is not the way! This is the way to Fuorigrotta!”
“Oh!”
She went towards the sea. She was thinking of the green parrot expanding
and contracting the pupils of its round, ironic eyes.
“Was Maddalena pleased to see him? Was Donna Teresa pleased?”
Hermione stood still.
“What are you talking about?”
“Signora! About Antonio Bernari, who has just come home from prison!
Didn’t you see him? But you were there--in the house!”
“Oh--yes, I saw him. A rivederci!”
“Ma--”
“A rivederci!”
She felt in her purse, found a coin, and gave it to him. Then she walked
on. She did not see him any more. She did not know what became of him.
Of course she had seen the return of Antonio Bernari. She remembered
now. As Ruffo stood before her with the wet hair on his forehead there
had come a shrill cry from the old woman in the kitchen: a cry that was
hideous and yet almost beautiful, so full it was of joy. Then from the
kitchen the two women had rushed in, gesticulating, ejaculating, their
faces convulsed with excitement. They had seized Maddalena, Ruffo. One
of them--the old woman, she thought--had even clutched at Hermione’s
arm. The room had been full of cries.
“Ecco! Antonio!”
“Antonio is coming!”
“I have seen Antonio!”
“He is pale! He is white like death!”
“Mamma mia! But he is thin!”
“Ecco! Ecco! He comes! Here he is! Here is Antonio!”
And then the door had been opened, and on the sill a big,
broad-shouldered man had appeared, followed by several other
evil-looking though smiling men. And all the women had hurried to them.
There had been shrill cries, a babel of voices, a noise of kisses.
And Ruffo! Where had he been? What had he done?
Hermione only knew that she had head a rough voice saying:
“Sangue del Diavolo! Let me alone! Give me a glass of wine! Basta!
Basta!”
And then she went out in the street, thinking of the green parrot
and hearing the cries of the sellers, the tram-bells, and Fabiano’s
questioning voice.
Now she continued her walk towards the harbor of Mergellina alone. The
thought of the green parrot obsessed her mind.
She saw it before her on its board, with the rolled-up bed towering
behind it. Now it was motionless--only the pupils of its eyes moved.
Now it lifted its claw, bowed its head, shuffled along the board to hear
their conversation better.
She saw it with extreme distinctness, and now she also saw on the wall
of the room near it the “Fattura della Morte”--the green lemon with the
nails stuck through it, like nails driven into a cross.
Vaguely the word “crucifixion” went through her mind. Many people, many
women, had surely been crucified since the greatest tragedy the world
had ever known. What had they felt, they who were only human, they
who could not see the face of the Father, who could--some of them,
perhaps--only hope that there was a Father? What had they felt? Perhaps
scarcely anything. Perhaps merely a sensation of numbness, as if their
whole bodies, and their minds, too, were under the influence of a great
injection of cocaine. Her thoughts again returned to the parrot. She
wondered where it had been bought, whether it had come with Antonio from
America.
Presently she reached the tramway station and stood still. She had to
go back to the “Trattoria del Giardinetto.” She must take the tram here,
one of those on which was written in big letters, “Capo di Posilipo.”
No, not that! That did not go far enough. The other one--what was
written upon it? Something--“Sette Settembre.” She looked for the words
“Sette Settembre.”
Tram after tram came up, paused, passed on. But she did not see those
words on any of them. She began to think of the sea, of the brown
body of the bathing boy which she had seen shoot through the air and
disappear into the shining water before she had gone to that house where
the green parrot was. She would go down to the sea, to the harbor.
She threaded her way across the broad space, going in and out among the
trams and the waiting people. Then she went down a road not far from the
Grand Hotel and came to the Marina.
There were boys bathing still from the breakwater of the rocks. And
still they were shouting. She stood by the wall and watched them,
resting her hands on the stone.
How hot the stone was! Gaspare had been right. It was going to be a
glorious day, one of the tremendous days of summer.
The nails driven through the green lemon like nails driven through a
cross--Peppina--the cross cut on Peppina’s cheek.
That broad-shouldered man who had come in at the door had cut that cross
on Peppina’s cheek.
Was it true that Peppina had the evil eye? Had it been a fatal day for
the Casa del Mare when she had been allowed to cross its threshold? Vere
had said something--what was it?--about Peppina and her cross. Oh yes!
That Peppina’s cross seemed like a sign, a warning come into the house
on the island, that it seemed to say, “There is a cross to be borne by
some one here, by one of us!”
And the fishermen’s sign of the cross under the light of San Francesco?
Surely there had been many warnings in her life. They had been given to
her, but she had not heeded them.
She saw a brown body shoot through the air from the rocks and disappear
into the shining sea. Was it Ruffo? With an effort she remembered that
she had left Ruffo in the tall house, in the room where the green parrot
was.
She walked on slowly till she came to the place where Artois had seen
Ruffo with his mother. A number of tables were set out, but there were
few people sitting at them. She felt tired. She crossed the road, went
to a table, and sat down. A waiter came up and asked her what she would
have.
“Acqua fresca,” she said.
He looked surprised.
“Oh--then wine, vermouth--anything!”
He looked more surprised.
“Will you have vermouth, Signora?”
“Yes, yes--vermouth.”
He brought her vermouth and iced water. She mixed them together and
drank. But she was not conscious of tasting anything. For a considerable
time she sat there. People passed her. The trams rushed by. On several
of them were printed the words she had looked for in vain at the
station. But she did not notice them.
During this time she did not feel unhappy. Seldom had she felt calmer,
more at rest, more able to be still. She had no desire to do anything.
It seemed to her that she would be quite satisfied to sit where she was
in the sun forever.
While she sat there she was always thinking, but vaguely, slowly,
lethargically. And her thoughts reiterated themselves, were like
recurring fragments of dreams, and were curiously linked together. The
green parrot she always connected with the death-charm, because the
latter had once been green. Whenever the one presented itself to her
mind it was immediately followed by the other. The shawl at which the
old woman’s yellow fingers had perpetually pulled led her mind to
the thought of the tunnel, because she imagined that the latter must
eventually end in blackness, and the shawl was black. She knew, of
course, really that the tunnel was lit from end to end by electricity.
But her mind arbitrarily put aside this knowledge. It did not belong to
her strange mood, the mood of one drawing near to the verge either of
some abominable collapse or of some terrible activity. Occasionally, she
thought of Ruffo; but always as one of the brown boys bathing from the
rocks beyond the harbor, shouting, laughing, triumphant in his glorious
youth. And when the link was, as it were, just beginning to form itself
from the thought-shape of youth to another thought-shape, her mind
stopped short in that progress, recoiled, like a creature recoiling from
a precipice it has not seen but has divined in the dark. She sipped the
vermouth and the iced water, and stared at the drops chasing each other
down the clouded glass. And for a time she was not conscious where she
was, and heard none of the noises round about her.
It was the song of Mergellina, sung at some distance off in dialect,
by a tenor voice to the accompaniment of a piano-organ. Hermione ceased
from gazing at the drops on the glass, looked up, listened.
The song came nearer. The tenor voice was hard, strident, sang lustily
but inexpressively in the glaring sunshine. And the dialect made the
song seem different, almost new. Its charm seemed to have evaporated.
Yet she remembered vaguely that it had charmed her. She sought for the
charm, striving feebly to recapture it.
The piano-organ hurt her, the hard voice hurt her. It sounded cruel and
greedy. But the song--once it had appealed to her. Once she had leaned
down to hear it, she had leaned down over the misty sea, her soul had
followed it out over the sea.
“Oh, dolce luna bianca de l’ estate
Mi fugge il sonno accanto a la Marina:
Mi destan le dolcissime serate
Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
Those were the real words. And what voice had sung them?
And then, suddenly, her brain worked once more with its natural
swiftness and vivacity, her imagination and her heart awaked. She was
again alive. She saw the people. She heard the sounds about her. She
felt the scorching heat of the sun. But in it she was conscious also of
the opposite of day, of the opposite of heat. At that moment she had a
double consciousness. For she felt the salt coolness of the night around
the lonely island. And she heard not only the street singer, but Ruffo
in his boat.
Ruffo--in his boat.
Suddenly she could not see anything. Her sight was drowned by tears. She
got up at once. She felt for her purse, found it, opened it, felt for
money, found some coins, laid them down on the table, and began to walk.
She was driven by fear, the fear of falling down in the sun in the sight
of all men, and crying, sobbing, with her face against the ground. She
heard a shout. Some one gave her a violent push, thrusting her forward.
She stumbled, recovered herself. A passer-by had saved her from a tram.
She did not know it. She did not look at him or thank him. He went away,
swearing at the English. Where was she going?
She must go home. She must go to the island. She must go to Vere, to
Gaspare, to Emile--to her life.
Her body and soul revolted from the thought, her outraged body and her
outraged soul, which were just beginning to feel their courage, as flesh
and nerves begin to feel pain after an operation when the effect of the
anaesthetic gradually fades away.
She was walking up the hill and still crying.
She met a boy of the people, swarthy, with impudent black eyes, tangled
hair, and a big, pouting mouth, above which a premature mustache showed
like a smudge. He looked into her face and began to laugh. She saw his
white teeth, and her tears rushed back to their sources. At once her
eyes were dry. And, almost at once, she thought, her heart became hard
as stone, and she felt self-control like iron within her.
That boy of the people should be the last human being to laugh at her.
She saw a tram stop. It went to the “Trattoria del Giardinetto.” She got
in, and sat down next to two thin English ladies, who held guide-books
in their hands, and whose pointed features looked piteously inquiring.
“Excuse me, but do you know this neighborhood?”
She was being addressed.
“Yes.”
“That is fortunate--we do not. Perhaps you will kindly tell us something
about it. Is it far to Bagnoli?”
“Not very far.”
“And when you get there?”
“I beg your pardon!”
“When you get there, is there much to see?”
“Not so very much.”
“Can one lunch there?”
“No doubt.”
“Yes. But I mean, what sort of lunch? Can one get anything clean and
wholesome, such as you get in England?”
“It would be Italian food.”
“Oh, dear. Fanny, this lady says we can only get Italian food at
Bagnoli!”
“Tcha! Tcha!”
“But perhaps--excuse me, but do you think we could get a good cup of tea
there? We might manage with that--tea and some boiled eggs. Don’t you
think so, Fanny? Could we get a cup of--”
The tram stopped. Hermione had pulled the cord that made the bell sound.
She paid and got down. The tram carried away the English ladies, their
pointed features red with surprise and indignation.
Hermione again began to walk, but almost directly she saw a wandering
carriage and hailed the driver.
“Carrozza!”
She got in.
“Put me down at the ‘Trattoria del Giardinetto.’”
“Si, Signora--but how much are you going to give me? I can’t take you
for less than--”
“Anything--five lire--drive on at once.”
The man drove on, grinning.
Presently Hermione was walking through the short tunnel that leads to
the path descending between vineyards to the sea. She must take a boat
to the island. She must go back to the island. Where else could she
go? If Vere had not been there she might--but Vere was there. It was
inevitable. She must return to the island.
She stood still in the path, between the high banks.
Her body was demanding not to be forced by the will to go to the island.
“I must go back to the island.”
She walked on very slowly till she could see the shining water over the
sloping, vine-covered land. The sight of the water reminded her that
Gaspare would be waiting for her on the sand below the village. When she
remembered that she stopped again. Then she turned round, and began to
walk back towards the highroad.
Gaspare was waiting. If she went down to the sand she would have to meet
his great intent eyes, those watching eyes full of questions. He would
read her. He would see in a moment that--she knew. And he would see more
than that! He would see that she was hating him. The hatred was only
dawning, struggling up in her tangled heart. But it existed--it was
there. And he would see that it was there.
She walked back till she reached the tunnel under the highroad. But
she did not pass through it. She could not face the highroad with its
traffic. Perhaps the English ladies would be coming back. Perhaps--She
turned again and presently sat down on a bank, and looked at the dry and
wrinkled ground. Nobody went by. The lizards ran about near her feet.
She sat there over an hour, scarcely moving, with the sun beating upon
her head.
Then she got up and walked fast, and with a firm step, towards the
village and the sea.
The village is only a tiny hamlet, ending in a small trattoria with a
rough terrace above the sea, overlooking a strip of sand where a few
boats lie. As Hermione came to the steps that lead down to the terrace
she stood still and looked over the wall on her left. The boat from
the island was at anchor there, floating motionless on the still water.
Gaspare was not in it, but was lying stretched on his back on the sand,
with his white linen hat over his face.
He lay like one dead.
She stood and watched him, as she might have watched a corpse of some
one she had cared for but who was gone from her forever.
Perhaps he was not asleep, for almost directly he became aware of her
observation, sat up, and uncovered his face, turning towards her and
looking up. Already, and from this distance, she would see a fierce
inquiry in his eyes.
She made a determined effort and waved her hand.
Gaspare sprang to his feet, took out his watch, looked at it, then went
and fetched the boat.
His action--the taking out of the watch--reminded Hermione of the
time. She looked at her watch. It was half-past two. On the island they
lunched at half-past twelve. Gaspare must have been waiting for hours.
What did it matter?
She made another determined effort and went down the remaining steps to
the beach.
Gaspare should not know that she knew. She was resolved upon that,
concentrated upon that. Continually she saw in front of her the pouting
mouth, the white teeth of the boy who had laughed at her in the street.
There should be no more crying, no more visible despair. No one should
see any difference in her. All the time that she had been sitting still
in the sun upon the bank she had been fiercely schooling herself in an
act new to her--the act of deception. She had not faced the truth that
to-day she knew. She had not faced the ruin that its knowledge had made
of all that had been sacred and lovely in her life. She had fastened her
whole force fanatically upon that one idea, that one decision and the
effort that was the corollary of it.
“There shall be no difference in me. No one is to know that anything has
happened.”
At that moment she was a fanatic. And she looked like one as she came
down upon the sand.
“I’m afraid I’m rather late--Gaspare.”
It was difficult to her to say his name. But she said it firmly.
“Signora, it is nearly three o’clock.”
“Half-past two. No, I can get in all right.”
He had put out his arm to help her into the boat. But she could not
touch him. She knew that. She felt that she would rather die at the
moment than touch or be touched by him.
“You might take away your arm.”
He dropped his arm at once.
Had she already betrayed herself?
She got into the boat and he pushed off.
Usually he sat, when he was rowing, so that he might keep his face
towards her. But to-day he stood up to row, turning his back to her. And
this change of conduct made her say to herself again:
“Have I betrayed myself already?”
Fiercely she resolved to be and to do the impossible. It was the only
chance. For Gaspare was difficult to deceive.
“Gaspare!” she said.
“Si, Signora,” he replied, without turning his head.
“Can’t you row sitting down?”
“If you like, Signora.”
“We can talk better then.”
“Va bene, Signora.”
He turned round and sat down.
The boat was at this moment just off the “Palace of the Spirits.”
Hermione saw its shattered walls cruelly lit up by the blazing sun,
its gaping window-spaces like eye-sockets, sightless, staring, horribly
suggestive of ruin and despair.
She was like that. Gaspare was looking at her. Gaspare must know that
she was like that.
But she was a fanatic just then, and she smiled at him with a resolution
that had in it something almost brutal, something the opposite of what
she was, of the sum of her.
“I forgot the time. It is so lovely to-day. It was so gay at
Mergellina.”
“Si?”
“I sat for a long time watching the boats, and the boys bathing, and
listening to the music. They sang ‘A Mergellina.’”
“Si?”
She smiled again.
“And I went to visit Ruffo’s mother.”
Gaspare made no response. He looked down now as he plied his oars.
“She seems a nice woman. I--I dare say she was quite pretty once.”
The voice that was speaking now was the voice of a fanatic.
“I am sure she must have been pretty.”
“Chi lo sa?”
“If one looks carefully one can see the traces. But, of course, now--”
She stopped abruptly. It was impossible to her to go on. She was
passionately trying to imagine what that spreading, graceless woman,
with her fat hands resting on her knees set wide apart, was like
once--was like nearly seventeen years ago. Was she ever pretty,
beautiful? Never could she have been intelligent--never, never. Then
she must have been beautiful. For otherwise--Hermione’s drawn face was
flooded with scarlet.
“If--if it’s easier to you to row standing up, Gaspare,” she almost
stammered, “never mind about sitting down.”
“I think it is easier, Signora.”
He got up, and once more turned his back upon her.
They did not speak again until they reached the island.
Hermione watched his strong body swinging to and fro with every stroke,
and wondered if he felt the terrible change in her feeling for him--a
change that a few hours ago she would have thought utterly impossible.
She wondered if Gaspare knew that she was hating him.
He was alive and, therefore, to be hated. For surely we cannot hate the
dust!