THE THREE SISTERS--CHIARASTELLA THE WITCH
The summer of that year was a bad one for the Neapolitans, morally
and materially. Above all, from the end of June the summer scirocco
had gone on dissolving into rain; storms covered the bay with black
clouds, lightning played behind Posillipo, thunder rumbled from
Capodimonte, sudden heavy summer showers raised a pungent smell of
dust, and went rushing down the city roads from the hill to the sea
like little waterspouts, making the passers-by start aside and run.
The poor cabmen, with no umbrellas, ragged, with shabby hats crushed
down on their heads, could do nothing but stick their hands in the
pockets of their worn-out jackets and keep their heads down. It was
a devilish summer, a real correction from God; that was why San
Gennaro had been so long in working the miracle that year. He makes
no mistakes.
The rushing scirocco lashed up the waves in the bay furiously; they
got livid with rage, and foamed under the chill curtain of clouds,
and all the bathing-places from Marinella to Posillipo had to take up
the boards of their wooden huts to let the raging sea pass through,
or they would have been broken to pieces. There lay the great
irrecoverable loss, for the long files of provincial people that come
from Calabria, Basilicata, Abruzzi, and Molise, to take sea-baths,
and fill up the inns and second-class eating-houses, who sit four
in a carriage that barely holds two--these country people, who are
Naples' summer source of revenue, being afraid of the bad weather,
always went on intending to start for Naples the next week, and ended
by never leaving their villages at all. Those who had arrived the
first week in July, intending to stay till the end of August, on
finding they could only have a bathe on one day out of five, and then
have to face a stormy sea, got frightened and discouraged, and ended
by going back to Campobasso, to Avellino, Benevento, and Potenza, to
the great sorrow of the girls and young fellows. It was a lost season.
At the _Fiori_ Inn, in Fiorentini Square, the _Campidoglio_, in
Municipio Square, and the _Centrale_, at Fontana Medina, there was a
void; as for the _Allegria_, in Carità Square, one of the greatest
resorts of country people, it was a desert.
Very warm days came at times between the stormy ones, which were very
exhausting. It was a real African climate, and the bathing-places--De
Crescenzio, Cannavacciuolo, Sciattone, Manetta and Pappalordo--had
five days' emptiness to one day of too large a crowd of people. The
owners shook their heads despondingly, whilst the bronzed, thin,
black-toothed, hoarse-voiced bathing-women, shoeless, in shift,
petticoat and straw hats, ran after sheets of doubtful whiteness on
the dirty brown sands, where the wind caught them and threatened to
cast them into the sea. What rain! what rain! The eating-houses in
the centre of Naples had poor business, but those who put tables out
in the open air on Santa Lucia causeway, the eating-houses that go
from Mergellina to Posillipo, the _Bersaglio_, the _Schiava_, the
_Figlio di Pietro_, all those whose slender existence depends on fine
weather, summer and winter, these suffered most; no one had anything
to do, from the cook yawning in the kitchen to the few waiters left,
who sat sleepily in the steamy atmosphere that even the storms
did not freshen up. Only crawling flies buzzed on the uselessly
prepared tables. There was a general idleness; a chorus of oaths
and lamentations arose at every new outburst of showers. Even the
evenings at the Villa, round the bandstand, where the municipal band
plays its old polkas and variations on 'Forza del Destino' of ancient
date, where a penny for a seat is all that is needed to be able to
enjoy the pleasant sight of a middle-class crowd, seated or wandering
round the band, just a penny to sit in the open air and hear the
modest concert--even these simple, economical, popular evenings were
spoilt. Among the tradesmen's daughters, for whom the Villa means
an occasion to show their humble white frocks, sewn and starched at
home, to see their lovers, even at a distance, under the flickering
gas-lamps, to go a step further on the road, often a long one, that
leads to marriage--among these girls there was secret weeping. The
chair-hirer wandered through the deserted, damp avenues, full of
snails, to see if no one would come to brave the bad weather, or,
driven desperate, he settled himself in a corner of Vacca Café to
talk over his woes with one of the waiters. What a season!
Don Domenico Mayer's son and daughter, who in other years went every
evening to the Villa, walking there and back, so as to spend only
fourpence, this year nearly expired with heat and boredom in their
Rossi Palazzo flat. Their father was so stern. Their mother was even
more sickly and doleful than usual. It was a bad season for the
three sisters scattered in different parts of Naples--Carmela, the
cigar-maker; Annarella, the servant; and Filomena, the young girl who
lived in sin. Above all, their mother was dead in the cellar where
she had lived with Carmela, and in spite of having got a pauper's
coffin for her from the Pendino district authorities, and her being
thrown into the common pit on the great heap of the wretched at
Poggio Reale, Carmela still had had to pay seventy or eighty francs
for burial expenses, without even having the consolation of knowing
that her mother had had a separate grave. For some time Carmela had
paid a small weekly sum to a pious _Congregazione_ so as to have at
her own death, or any of her family's, a separate carriage following
and a grave; but debts and wretchedness, gambling resorted to in
desperation, had prevented her from going on paying the fees, and she
had lost her claim. She was left alone, with no mother, in that damp,
dark cellar, in debt up to the eyes, not having twelve francs even to
get a black dress or any mourning; she wore a light-coloured cotton
with a black kerchief at her neck, and her neighbours criticised
her for her heartlessness. Her everlasting lover, Raffaele, had now
risen to the highest grades of the Camorrist hierarchy from having
taken part in two duels, or _dichiaramenti_, and from having a mark
against him with the police; he had got still more haughty to her,
especially after her mother's death; he fled from Carmela, and when
she went after him at inn doors and suburban taverns, he treated her
brutally, all the more that she had got into a wretched condition;
she could not give him five francs ever now, or even the two francs
he haughtily asked for and she humbly gave.
A subtle suspicion was growing in the girl's mind, and from her
mother's death, her excessive poverty, and Raffaele's suspected
false-dealing, she lost her head. She often failed to go to
the tobacco factory, and lost her day's work, or worked so
absent-mindedly, so badly, she was fined and got very little on
Saturday. Often during the week she broke her fast with a penny-worth
of dry bread dipped in macaroni-water, that a neighbour, not so
poor as herself, treated her to. It was too hard, too hard, for one
who only wished for others' happiness, to see her mother die of
privation, and then thrown into a common paupers' ditch, to mingle
her bones with theirs; to see her lover going down gradually the
whole ladder of vice, even to prison, perhaps to capital crime; and
also to see her sisters fading away for want of moral and physical
comfort. Now, with her mother gone to her eternal rest--how Carmela
envied her sometimes!--and with Raffaele always going farther off
from her, she, feeling her heart as cold as her stomach, went oftener
to see her sisters. She thought of going to live with Annarella, for
economy's sake, and not to live in such a lonely way; but Annarella
lived in a cellar in Rosariella di Porta Medina--she, her husband,
and two children, already getting of a good size--in a cellar with
a beaten earth floor and walls not white-washed for years. The
husband and wife slept on a bed made of two iron trestles, with
three squeaking boards laid over them lengthwise, and a big mattress
stuffed with maize leaves--the _paglione_, which has an opening in
the middle to put in the hand when the bed is made. The girl slept by
the mother in the big conjugal bed, and they made up a little bed for
the boy every evening upon two broken chairs.
Frightful, utter misery had gradually fallen on the glove-cutter's
family. He not only staked his whole week's pay on the lottery, but
on Friday evening and Saturday morning he beat his wife, enraged if
she had only one or two francs to give him. Now the children were
beginning to earn something. The girl worked at a dressmaker's, the
boy as a stable-hand; and when he could not get anything from his
wife, Gaetano went to the dressmaker's where his little girl worked
by the week, called her down, and, by dint of lies, wheedling, or
blows, one after the other, he managed always to draw some pence from
the child, who got the dressmaker to advance them on her week's pay.
With his son, now a boy of twelve, Gaetano behaved still worse. The
stable-boy often refused him money, taunting him with his vice and
the wretchedness he had reduced his mother to. The father rained
down blows on him. The boy, choking with tears, shouted, swore, and
struggled. People came up to hear a son call his father a scoundrel,
an assassin. Once, when his father gave him a blow on the nose,
making the blood flow, he got enraged and bit his hand. On Saturday
evening, when they came back to their home, the children carried
the marks of their father's blows. The mother, who had forgotten
the blows she got herself, found the marks, and wept over her poor
children, asking them:
'How much has he taken away from you?'
'Fourteen sous,' Teresina answered sadly.
'He took half a franc from me,' said Carmine, raging.
'Merciful God!' the mother cried out, weeping.
But what she could not get out of her mind was her
two-and-a-half-year-old baby, which died from bad milk, bad
nourishment, from languishing in that black cellar, which dripped
from damp summer and winter. If Peppino was named by chance, she grew
pale, and nothing could get it out of her head that her husband's
vice had killed her little son. She had religiously kept the big
swinging basket that poor Naples children are cradled in (the
_sportone_); but she first sold the pillow, then the little maize
mattress, and one day of great hunger, not knowing where to get a
half-penny, she sold the cradle. Parting from it was so agonizing
that the mother sat on the doorstep, not caring who passed, and wept
for an hour, with her head in her apron. 'You know, Peppino--you
know!' she whispered, as if she was asking pardon of the tiny dead
for having sold his cradle.
Now that summer had come in so unsettled and stormy, it had made
the family position worse than ever. Of the two half-days' service
she did, she had lost one, which meant ten francs. It was the
lodging-house keeper: as she had empty rooms, she dismissed her
servant. The girl Teresina had had her weekly pay reduced, as the
dressmaker had no work; but, not wishing to dismiss the girl straight
off, she let her do the house-work out of charity. The coachman that
Carmine was stable-boy to went off with his master's family to the
country for four months, and would have taken the boy with him; but
Gaetano, the lad's father, knowing he could always get some pence out
of the boy if he stayed in Naples, by threats, arguments, or blows,
prevented him from going to the country. He ordered him to look out
for another service in Naples. Carmine shrieked, wept, cursed,
threatening to go away secretly.
'I am going away, mother; I am going off secretly, and father won't
see a farthing of my money, you know. I will send it to you in a
letter; father is not to have any of it.'
'What can I say, darling? You are right to go,' his mother lamented.
And that going away of her son tore her heart also.
But the debts they had with Donna Concetta, the usurer, were
Carmela's greatest agony, also Annarella's and Gaetano's. Even she
had suffered from the bad season, as the debtors almost all failed
to pay, and had not even money to pay the interest with by the week.
She did not lend a farthing more to anyone; she was embittered
and fierce, for even she was feeling the pinch of other people's
wretchedness. She shut herself up in the house at night behind iron
bars, for she had pension papers and savings-bank books in the house;
and that put her in a state of constant fury. She wandered about all
day from one street to another, from cellar to attic, from shop to
factory, running after her own money, till she was out of breath;
for she always went on foot. Devoured with rage from the constant
refusals, she began by asking for her interest at least, coldly
insistent, and ended up by making a scene, yelling, demanding her
'blood,' as she passionately called her money. But those who most
enraged her were Gaetano, Annarella and Carmela. Between them they
had got about two hundred francs from her, and she could not get even
a centime of the weekly ten francs' interest. Oh, these three! these
three! She went to the Bossi factory at Foria, where Gaetano cut out
gloves, and had the workman called down sometimes; but, warned by a
companion, he got them to say he was not at the factory that day. But
she persisted, being suspicious and unbelieving; she walked about in
front of the door, and he ended by going down to her, a black cigar
ever in his mouth.
The scene began in a whisper, short, energetic, violent: sometimes
Gaetano, grinning--for the lottery made him lose all sense of
shame--repeated to her the motto of Naples' bad payers: 'If I had
it and could, I would pay; but not having it, I can't and won't
pay.' But she set to yelling, said she would go to Carlo Bossi to
complain, or to the judge; and Gaetano, in a rage, but controlling
himself, made answer. What would she gain by getting him turned out
of the factory? She would not get another farthing then. The judge?
What could he do? The prison for debtors no longer exists in Naples;
the Concordia prison has been abolished by gentlemen who could not
pay their big debts. Then she got in a rage like a witch; the whole
neighbourhood came out to the doors and balconies. He listened, very
pale, biting at his black cigar-stump. One day he threatened in a
whisper to cut her in pieces. Muttering vague, threatening words,
pulling her shawl round her angrily, Donna Concetta went off with
the swinging step of rich, lazy women of the lower class, her head a
little to one side, her face still discomposed after the scene.
Since she happened to be at Foria, and the cigar-makers' work ended
at four o'clock, she went to stand at the door of the factory in
Santi Apostoli Square, waiting till Carmela came out, to ask her for
her money. She was not the only one that was waiting; other women
were at the door who had lent money or clothes to the workers at
high interest; and they knew and recognised each other, feeling they
had a strong, mutual interest in the laws of usury; they made a long
lament together over the tardiness in paying and inexactness of their
clients. They all said they were ruined by the bad season and the
ill-will of their debtors; the words '_my blood, our blood_' came
up always like a wail, as they spoke of the money lost. It was not
allowable to send up for any workgirl, but the money-lenders waited,
like the cake and fruit sellers, till the workpeople came out. The
poor women who were coming from the factory, with sickly faces from
the bad tobacco fumes, their hands stained up to the wrist, stopped
to buy something to carry home to feed their families on, after their
day's work. The money-lenders mingled with pot-herb-sellers, and
vendors of parsnips in vinegar and pancakes, and waited patiently,
pulling their shawls up on their shoulders--that common trick. At
last the women, after being searched, one by one, by an overseer to
find out if they had stolen any tobacco, came out. Some slipped away,
others stopped to buy broccoli, radishes, potatoes, or some pancake;
but the palest certainly were those who were caught outside by their
creditors. The palest of all, and not from tobacco fumes, but shame,
was Carmela. She tried to lead off Donna Concetta towards Vertecoeli
Street or Santi Apostoli steps, so as not to let her friends hear
what was said; but Donna Concetta went slowly and raised her voice.
She wanted her money, her blood; it was a shame not to give it to
her; she would have the interest, at any rate. If Carmela had any
shame, she must at least give her the interest. The cigar-girl's
eyes filled with tears at that abuse, and, having a few pence in
her purse, it was impossible to hold out. She handed them to Donna
Concetta; but it was so little always that, although she sacrificed
her day's meal, it only got her the more abuse. She listened, with
her head bent, to Donna Concetta's taunts up Arcivescovato Street and
Gerolomini Road; after a time Donna Concetta recognised that the girl
had no more money, and that it was useless to worry her.
But Carmela, even when Donna Concetta had gone off, felt the shiver
of shame that bitter voice had sent through her, saying such
offensive words; and tired, crushed, without a farthing in her pocket
after working a whole day, she again felt envy of her dead mother.
Of course, she, too, had that vice of gambling, but it was for good
ends--to give money to everyone, to make all her friends happy, if
she won, to let Raffaele, or Farfariello, as he was called, draw
money from her; but to be so severely punished for this venial sin
cut her to the heart. Ah! on some days how willingly she would have
thrown herself into the well of the building where the factory was,
so as not to hear or feel anything more! But Donna Concetta's thirst
was not at all quenched by that drop of water, Carmela's pence, and
on her way home every evening, before going in at her door, she
hurried to the Rosariella Street cellar where Annarella lived. She
was generally seated near the bed, and often in the dark, for she had
nothing to buy oil with, saying the Rosary with her daughter. Donna
Concetta crossed herself and waited till the Rosary was ended, to
ask for her loan back, uselessly as it happened every day. Annarella
could do nothing now but answer with a sigh or lament, and when Donna
Concetta burst into eloquence she began to cry. Then Teresina broke
in, speaking to both women.
'Don't cry, mother, to please me.' And to the money-lender: 'Do you
not see, Donna Concetta, that mother has not got any money?'
'Dear girl, my darling!' sobbed her mother, choked by all the sorrows
of her life.
The money-lender would not be appeased; she was so accustomed to the
sham tears of those who wished to cheat her of her money that she no
longer believed in any sorrow; it was only when she had exhausted her
whole vocabulary of abuse that she decided to go away, slowly, with
that sleek walk of hers, muttering that she would do justice with her
own hands, against robbers of her blood. The mother and daughter were
left alone in the damp, dark cellar's unhealthy heat, and the poor
charwoman, responding to an inward thought, exclaimed:
'Soul of Peppinello, do me this grace!'
When Carmela and Annarella afterwards met in the street or the
Rosariella cellar, there was a long outpouring of sorrows and
interchange of news, when the physical and moral bitterness of their
sad existences burst out.
'That lottery! what bad luck, what infamous luck, it was, for it
never to give a farthing's winnings, and to take their all--even the
bit of bread that just kept them alive!' Sometimes, through speaking
about their wretchedness and solitariness, Filomena, the third
unfortunate sister, was referred to. 'What was she doing? How could
she bear that life of sin?'
Carmela had twice gone to seek her in the alley behind Santa Barbara
Steps: once she was out; the other time she found her so cold, so
changed, as if struck by remorse, that Carmela, filled with emotion,
ran away at once. Another time Annarella had met Filomena in the
street, in blue and yellow, with the usual red ribbon at her neck;
she asked her why she wore no mourning for her mother.
'I am not worthy,' Filomena had answered, casting down her eyes,
and going off with that sliding step on high-heeled, shiny shoes.
All through this Carmela felt, besides her open griefs, besides
the sequence of wretchedness and humiliation, something she could
not take hold of, as if a new misfortune was coming on her head, a
crowning fatality was hemming her in, with no way of escape. What
was it? She could not say what it was. Perhaps it was Raffaele's
increasing coldness, and the brutal way he treated her when they met;
it may have been her brother-in-law Gaetano's fierce expression, or
that queer look that Filomena gave her: she dared not go to ask for
her now.
For some time Annarella and she had been making up a plan to put an
end to their difficulties. Among all Naples common folk there are
women famed as witches--_fattucchiare_, as they call them--whose
witchcraft, philtres and charms cannot be resisted. Some, indeed,
have a large practice, much larger than a doctor's would be in the
same neighbourhood; almost every quarter boasts of its witch, who can
do the most extraordinary miracles, always, however, by God's help
and the Virgin's. Well, Chiarastella, the great sorceress, who lived
up there at Centograde Lane, near the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, had a
tremendous reputation: there was not a shop, cellar, road, square, or
street corner where Chiarastella's marvellous deeds were not known
and spoken of. It was said everywhere that, to get Chiarastella's
spells, you must ask for things that were not against God's will;
but no one who attended to this rule had come home disappointed from
her little place in Centograde Lane. No one among the mass of Naples
common folk dared to throw a doubt on Chiarastella's magic powers.
If in the provision stores and macaroni shops, where young and old
women love to gossip, or in front of herb-sellers' baskets and
barrows, where small folk haggle for three-quarters of an hour over
a bundle of borage, and at basement doors, where such long, animated
talk goes on; any ignorant woman, on hearing of the Centograde
witch's miracles, raised her eyebrows in surprise and unbelief,
twenty anxious, excited voices told her of all the deeds done by
Chiarastella. In one place a traitor husband had been brought back to
his young wife; then a young fellow dying of consumption was cured
when the doctors had given him up. Another case was a dressmaker who
had lost her customers, and had got them all back gradually by the
witch's influence; then there was a heartless girl who drove her
lover to an evil life and crime by her coldness, and Chiarastella
had set things right. Above all there was the tying of the tongue:
that--that was Chiarastella's grand feat. Everyone who had a lawsuit
coming off, or a trial in which they might be overcome by their
adversary or by justice, where money, honour, liberty or life would
be at stake, rushed in desperation for Chiarastella's magic. After
hearing about the case, if she considered it moral and in accordance
with God's will, she promised to tie the tongue of the adversary's
lawyer. The spell consisted of a magic cord with three knots in it
to represent the number of persons in the Trinity. Means must be
found to put it on the advocate's person, either in his pocket or
in the lining of his clothes, on the decisive morning of the trial,
and by the help of prayer the rival's advocate would not be able to
say over any of his arguments, even if he had them in his mind--his
tongue was tied, the suit was lost to him, the spell had secured
its object. Examples were quoted where the innocent and oppressed,
suffering from man's injustice, had been thus saved by Chiarastella.
Carmela and Annarella had thought of applying to Chiarastella for
some time, Carmela to try and awaken in Raffaele's heart renewed love
for her, she never having had his love, and now it was less hers than
ever. Annarella required a spell to get her husband Gaetano to give
up gambling at the lottery.
Carmela had been up already at Centograde Lane to make inquiries
about getting the magic; she found five francs were necessary; and,
besides, there were some small ingredients that had to be bought.
Afterwards, if it was successful, just as God willed it, the two
sisters would make the witch a good present. Chiarastella certainly
never promised anything; she spoke mysteriously, in a doubtful way,
and kept deep silence at certain questions. It seemed as if she did
not care about money; she contented herself with a small fee for her
support, counting on people's gratitude to get a better gift if it
was God's will that the thing turned out well later on. Meanwhile,
ten francs at least were needed; without them nothing whatever
could be done. Whatever privations the sisters might endure that
bad summer, they never would have been able to put aside ten francs
between them.
But days went by, and moral wretchedness was as urgent of care as
their bodily wants required looking to: it was the only remedy left,
so, though much against the grain, Carmela made up her mind to sell
her old marble-topped chest of drawers, the chief bit of furniture in
her room, that had been bought by her mother as a bride. She barely
got twelve francs for it--everyone was selling furniture that hateful
summer; there was not a dog left that would buy a farthing's worth of
things. She put her few pieces of linen in a covered basket under her
bed, and hung her poor clothes on a bit of string from two nails in
the wall, where they got damp, but she had her twelve francs.
It was one Sunday at the end of August, after hearing Mass in Sette
Dolori Church, that the sisters went towards Centograde Lane.
Carmela had shut up her home and carried the key in her pocket.
Annarella left her daughter Teresina at home mending a torn dress,
after working till mid-day at the dressmaker's. For eight days now
Carmela had not succeeded in finding Raffaele, though she wandered
through Naples in her free hours. Gaetano, Annarella's husband, had
not come home on Saturday night, nor that morning. In Sette Dolori
Church, kneeling at a dark wooden form that the poor must use, as
they cannot pay for seats, they prayed earnestly during Mass. Now
they were laboriously going up the steps of the steep incline that
leads from Sette Dolori Street to Vittorio Emanuele Corso, not
speaking, wrapt up in vague hopes and fears. Chiarastella, the witch,
lived appropriately in a dark alley. It was quiet, but well enough
lighted, and stood to the right of the steep steps that lead from
the principal street up the hill to the little outlets Pignasecca,
Carità, and Monte Santo. There was a great quietness in that blind
alley, but the damp summer scirocco had covered the flint pavement
with a thin coating of mud, so they had to walk carefully not to
fall, and they made no noise.
'Does she expect us?' Annarella asked, hardly moving her lips. She
was panting after going up the steps.
'Yes, she does,' said Carmela in a whisper, as she went in at the
door.
They went up to the first-floor, on to the narrow landing. There
were two doors facing each other; one was shut fast; indeed, it was
fastened by a chain and a heavy iron padlock. It looked as if the
dwellers there had gone off after a misfortune, shutting up their
dull abode for ever. The door on the left was half open; but the
sisters, on hearing a muffled sob, dared not go in without knocking.
It was startling for Carmela to pull a brown monkey's paw joined
to a big-ringed iron chain the bell inside was hung to. The black,
mummified paw gave one a shudder; it was hairy above and pink
underneath. It seemed like finding a bit of a swarthy murdered child.
The bell tinkled long and shrilly, as if it would never give over.
A very old, decrepit, bent servant, with a pointed nose that seemed
to wish to go into her toothless mouth, appeared. She signed to the
two women to come into the bare, narrow lobby, which was rather damp
underfoot. The choked sobbing went on behind another closed door.
Soon after the door opened, and a girl of the people, a seamstress
(Antonietta the blonde it was), crossed the lobby, her shawl off her
shoulders, weeping, her handkerchief at her eyes. Nannina, her short
friend, kept one arm round her waist, as if she wanted to hold her
up, and went on repeating, to console her:
'It does not matter; never mind about it.'
But on the sobbing getting louder the old woman opened the outer door
and sent the girls off, almost pushing them out; then she disappeared
without saying a word to Annarella or Carmela. They, already moved
by the feelings that induced them to invoke the witch's power, were
very sympathetic with the two girls, one so inconsolable, the other
so vainly trying to soothe. Leaning at the lobby window, they waited,
their eyes cast down and hands crossed over their aprons, tightly
holding the ends of their shawls, not saying a word to each other. A
great silence was around, in the damp summer sultriness of that long
summer noon. Annarella, being gentler, more saddened, and at the same
time less infatuated than Carmela, bent her shoulders to her fatal
destiny, feeling an increasing want of confidence in any means of
salvation, being almost sure that Gaetano would never be brought back
to reason by any prayer nor charm. She felt nothing but a growing
fear all through her low spirits. Carmela, instead, having an ardent,
loving soul that nothing could subdue, felt the flame of passion
light up within her. She was not afraid; no, she would have dared
any sight or danger to get Raffaele's heart again. But the decrepit
servant, bent into a bow, as if she wanted to reach the earth again,
appeared in the lobby and made a sign to Carmela to come in. Without
making a sound, the sisters disappeared into the other room, and the
door shut behind them.
'Here is my sister that I told you of,' whispered Carmela, standing
aside to present Annarella, who stood just behind her.
Chiarastella nodded as a salutation. The witch was of middle height,
or a little below it, very thin, with long lean hands, the skin of
them shiny from sticking to the bones; her body moved automatically,
as if she could stiffen every muscle at will. She had a small
head, and short face covered with deep red blotches, the jaw very
prominent; her complexion was of a warm vivid pallor, and the nose
a short one. But her eyes were the interesting thing in the witch's
neurotic face; they had a very mobile glance, and the colour varied
from gray to green, with always a luminous point, a sparkle, in
them; the glance was sometimes shy, then frightened-looking, then
seemingly carried away in a spiritual ecstasy; her whole vitality
was summed up in them. Chiarastella looked as if she were more
than forty, but her hair remained very black, and her forehead was
marked by a single deep wrinkle; but when her eyes lighted up, an
irradiation of youthfulness spread over her face and person. She wore
a black woollen dress, simply made, the usual cut among the common
people, only it was ornamented with white silk buttons, and a white
silk ribbon hung at her waist, in a knot with two long ends, at the
side. White and black are the colours worn by the votaries of Our
Lady of Sorrows. A thick crooked red coral horn hung from her neck
on a thin black silk cord; in making some careless gesture, the
witch often touched this horn. She was seated at a big walnut table
that had a closed iron box on it, of deep-cut, artistic workmanship,
an antique, evidently. A big black cat slept beside her, its paws
gathered up under it. Set round the small room were a little sofa of
faded chintz and five or six chairs; that was all that was in it. On
the wall was a black wooden crucifix; the figure of Christ, carved in
ivory, was a work of art also. She kept silence, with her eyes down.
The sisters felt that a great mystery was coming near, and would
envelop them.
'We have brought the ten francs,' Carmela said timidly, taking them
out of the corner of her handkerchief and putting them on a table by
Chiarastella's hand.
The witch did not move an eyelash; only the black cat raised its
head, showing fine yellow eyes like amber.
'Have you heard Mass this morning?' Chiarastella asked, without
turning her head.
'Yes, we have,' the sisters muttered shyly.
She had a low, hoarse voice--one of those women's voices that seem
always charged with intense feeling--and it caused deep emotion in
the heart and brain of the hearers.
'Say three _Aves_, three _Pater Nosters_, three _Glorias_, out loud,'
commanded the witch.
Standing in front of her, the sisters said the words of prayer; she
said them too, in her vibrating voice, her hands clasped in her lap
on her black apron. The cat rose on its long black legs, holding down
its head. Then, altogether, the three women, after bowing three times
at the _Gloria Patri_, said the _Salve Regina_. The prayers were
ended. The witch opened the wrought-iron casket, holding the lid so
as to hide what was in it, and groped with her fingers a long time.
Then, taking out some little things, still hiding them in her hands,
she got mortally pale, her eyes became wild, as if she saw a terrible
sight.
'Holy Virgin, help us!' Annarella uttered in a low tone, shaking with
fear.
Now Chiarastella, with a yellow lighted taper, burnt two queer
scented pastilles, which were pungent and heavy at the same time;
she gazed intently at the flying smoke-rings; her eyes dilated,
showing the whites streaked with blue, as if she was trying to read
a mysterious word. When the smoke had disappeared, only a heavy
smell was left; the sisters felt stupefied already, from that smell,
perhaps. Monotonously, not looking at them, Chiarastella asked:
'Have you made up your mind to work a spell on your husband?'
'Yes, provided that he does not suffer in health from it,' Annarella
replied feebly.
'You want to tie his hands, two or three times, so that he never at
any time can stake at the lottery, do you not?'
'Yes, that is it,' the other answered eagerly.
'Are you in God's grace?'
'I hope I am.'
'Ask the Virgin's help, but under your breath.'
Whilst Annarella raised her eyes as if to find heaven, the witch took
out of the iron casket a thin new cord, looked at it, muttered some
queer irregular verses in the Naples dialect, invoking the powers of
heaven, its saints, and some good spirits with queer names. The chant
went on; the witch, still holding the cord tight in her hand, looked
at it as if filling it with her spirit; she breathed on it and kissed
it devoutly three times. Whilst she was carrying out this deed of
magic, her thin brown hands shook, and the cat went up and down the
big table excitedly, spreading its whiskers.
Annarella now repented more than ever of having come, of trying
to cast a spell on her husband. It would have been better, much
better, to resign herself to her fate, rather than call out all
these spirits, and put all that mystery into her humble life. She
deeply repented; her breathing was oppressed, her face saddened. She
wanted to fly at once far off to her dark cellar; she preferred to
endure cold and wretchedness there. It was her sister who had led
her into such an extreme measure; she had done it more out of pity
for her, seeing her so melancholy, desolate, and worn out by sorrow
from Raffaele's desertion. It was not right--no, it could not be--to
try and find out God's will by witchcraft and magic in any case. No
witchcraft, however powerful, would conquer her husband's passion.
She had read one Saturday in his eyes, grown suddenly ferocious,
how unconquerable the passion was. She had seen him ill-treat his
children with that repressed rage that is capable of even greater
cruelty. That witchcraft, you see, with its alarming prelude and
continuation, seemed to her another big step on the way to a dark,
fatal end.
Now Chiarastella, with sharpened features, her skin more shiny and
eyes burning, made three fatal knots in the twine, stopping at each
to say something in a whisper. At the end she threw herself all at
once from the chair to kneel on the ground, her head down on her
breast. The black cat jumped down too, as if possessed, and went
round and round the witch in the convulsive style of cats when going
to die.
'Mother of God, do not forsake me!' Annarella called out, shaking
with fear; but the witch, after crossing herself wildly several
times, got up and said in solemn tones to the gambler's wife:
'Take--take this miraculous cord. It will tie your husband's hands
and mind when Beelzebub tells him to gamble. Believe in God; have
faith; hope in Him.'
Trembling, feeling hot all over from excessive emotion, Annarella
took the witch's cord. She was to put it on her husband without his
noticing it. She would have liked to go away now, to fly, for she
felt the sultriness of the room, and the perfume was turning her
brain; but Carmela, pale, disturbed from what she had seen and the
commotion in her own mind, turned an appealing look on her to get her
to wait.
Chiarastella had already begun the charm to make Raffaele love
Carmela again. She called Cleofa, her decrepit servant, and said
something in her ear. The woman went out, and came back carrying with
great care a deep white porcelain dish full of clear water, looking
at it as if hypnotized, not to spill a drop; then she disappeared.
Chiarastella, with her face close to the dish, muttered some of her
mysterious words over the water. She put in one finger, and let three
drops fall on Carmela's forehead, who at a sign had leant forward to
her. Then the witch lit a big wax candle Carmela had brought, and
went on muttering Latin and Italian words. The candle-wick spluttered
as if water had been thrown on the flame.
'Did you bring the lock of hair cut from your forehead on Friday
evening when the moon was rising?' Chiarastella's hoarse voice
demanded in the middle of the prayer.
'Yes, I have it,' said Carmela, with a deep sigh, handing a tress of
her black hair to the witch.
From the iron casket Chiarastella had taken a platinum dish with
some hieroglyphics on it, as shiny as a mirror. On this she put the
hair, and raised it up three times, as if making a sacrifice to
heaven. Then she held the black tress a little above the crackling
flame, which stretched up to devour it; a second after there was a
disagreeable smell of burnt hair, and nothing was seen on the dish
but a morsel of stinking ashes. The incantation went on, Chiarastella
singing under her voice her great love-charm, which was a queer
mixture of sacred and profane names--from Belphegor's to Ariel's,
from San Raffaele's, the girl's protector, to San Pasquale's, patron
saint of women--partly in Naples dialect, partly in bad Italian.
She afterwards took a small phial from the wrought-iron box, which
held all the ingredients for her charms, and put three drops from it
into the plate of water, which at once became a fine opal colour,
with bluish reflections. The witch looked again to try and decipher
that whitish cloud which whirled round in spirals and volutes, and
dropped the ashes of the hair in. Gradually under her gaze the water
got clear and limpid again in the dish; then she told Carmela to hand
her a new crystal bottle, bought on Saturday morning after making her
Communion, and she filled it slowly with water from the dish. The
love-philtre was ready.
'Take it,' the witch said in her solemn tones, ending the
incantation--'take and keep it jealously. Make Raffaele drink some
drops of it in wine or coffee. It will inflame his blood and burn in
his brain; it will make his heart melt for love of thee. Believe in
God, have faith, and hope in Him.'
'It is not poison, is it?' Carmela ventured to ask.
'It will do him good, and not harm. Have faith in God.'
'And what if he goes on despising me?'
'Then, that means that he is in love with someone else, and this
charm is not enough. You must find out who the woman is that he has
left you for, and bring me here a bit of her chemise, petticoat, or
dress, be it wool, linen, or cotton. I will make a charm against her.
We will drive in a bit of her chemise or dress with a nail and some
pins into a fresh lemon; then you must throw this bewitched lemon
into the well of the house where the woman lives. Every one of these
pins is a misfortune; the nail is a sorrow at the heart of which she
will never be cured. Do you see?'
'Very well, I will try and find out,' said Carmela, in despair at the
very idea of Raffaele being unfaithful.
'Let us go away,' said Annarella, who could bear no more.
'Thank you for your kindness, ma'am,' said Carmela.
'Thank you so much,' added Annarella.
'Thank God! thank Him!' the witch cried out piously.
She cast herself down again, kneeling, fervently praying, while the
big black cat gently mewed, rubbing its pink nose on the table. The
two women went out, thoughtful and preoccupied.
'That witchcraft is not good,' said Annarella, in a melancholy way to
her sister.
'Then, what should be done--what can be done?' the other asked,
wringing her hands, her eyes filled with tears.
'Nothing can be done,' said Annarella, in a solemn voice.
They went down slowly, tired, worn out by that long scene of
witchcraft, which was above their intellectual capacity, and
depressed by the tension on their nerves. A man went up the steps of
Centograde Lane quickly, turning towards the witch's house. It was
Don Pasqualino De Feo. The sisters did not see him; they went on,
feeling the weight of their unhappy life heavier, fearing to have
gone beyond the limits allowable to pious folk, and that they had
drawn God's mysterious vengeance on the heads of those they loved.