THE MEDIUM'S IMPRISONMENT
The summer rain beat sadly on the pavement; two broad yellow gutters
went down the sides of Nardones Road; the sickening sulphurous smell
of August storms was in the air. In San Ferdinando Square the cabs
had their hoods up, and were shiny all over with rain, dripping on
all sides. The long thin horses stood with their heads down, drenched
to the bones, and running down with water. The drivers sat huddled
up, their shapeless hats over their eyes, keeping their heads down
and hands spasmodically fixed in the pockets of their torn capes,
as they patiently bore the deluge from the sky. All around was
dreary-looking--the royal palace, the porch of San Francesco di Paolo
Church, the Prefecture, barracks, and large coffee-houses--all were
dreary, in spite of the grandeur of the buildings and the numbers
of lights behind the plate-glass windows. There was the majestic
edifice of San Carlo Theatre also; but the whole night landscape
was wrapped up in the noisy tempest that never rested, and seemed
to draw new force from its weariness to beat on houses, streets,
and men. There were few passers-by, and these looked like unhappy
folks' ghosts walking under dripping umbrellas, or, having no
umbrella, they scraped along the wall with coat-collar raised and
soft hat soaked with rain. Some few wanderers turned the corner from
Toledo Street into Nardones Road, which is a broad enough street in
the best quarter of the town; but it has an equivocal appearance,
all the same, as if it was uninhabited and unsafe. It had no
shady corners, but shutter-closed windows, ill-lit balconies, and
half-open doors, where the gaze was checked by a dark passage, had
a suspicious appearance. Some great door now and then broke through
this doubtful impression, from the brightness of the gas and width
of its courtyard, but a shop with far from clean windows, obscured
by reddish stuff curtains carefully drawn, a feeble light coming
through and small or large shadows showing behind, gave a new feeling
of suspicion and uneasiness to the minds of people going home that
way who might be bending under the weight of cares and long fatigue.
At one point a woman with a black shawl barely covering her yellow
dress and white bodice turned the corner from Toledo Street and went
up Nardones Road slowly, holding the corners of the handkerchief on
her head tightly between her teeth, sheltering from the rain under a
very small umbrella. She went along very cautiously, lifting her feet
so as to wet her bright leather shoes as little as possible, lifting
her skirt to let red cotton stockings be seen. When she passed under
a lamp-post's reddish light she raised her head and showed the face,
now sad and tired, for all its commonplace beauty, of Filomena,
Annarella and Carmela's unfortunate sister. She got as far as the
suspicious-looking shop with the red curtains, and stopped before
the plate-glass door as if she was trying to see someone or find out
what was going on, and did not dare to open the door. She could make
out nothing but some dark shadows with hats on moving about. After
hesitating a little, she decided to put her hand on the knob of a
small window and open it. She put in her head timidly, and called:
'Raffaele! Raffaele!'
I am coming immediately,' the young Camorrist's voice answered from
inside in rather an impatient tone.
She quickly shut the window again and set herself to wait in the
rain. A man passed, and cast a queer look at her, his curiosity
aroused by meeting anyone in that strange stormy weather at so late
an hour. But she cast down her eyes as if she was ashamed, and
watched the end of Nardones Road to see who came round the corner,
evidently being much afraid of being recognised. Suddenly she gave
a start. Two working men were coming along, going up Nardones Road,
not speaking to each other, getting all the rain on their shoulders.
The one man, old, hump-backed, dragging his leg, turned out to be
Michele, the shoeblack, not carrying his block for once; the other,
tall and thin, with burning eyes in hollow sockets, was Gaetano, the
glover. On recognising her sister Annarella's husband, Filomena gave
a frightened shiver and got closer to the wall, as if she wanted to
get to the other side of it. She lowered her umbrella, and prayed
silently, with lips that could hardly stammer out the words, that
Gaetano should not recognise her. She shivered and trembled, fearing
the shop door would open and that Gaetano would see the man who was
coming out. But Gaetano, as he was getting the full force of the rain
on his head, took no notice of the people on the road, luckily for
Filomena, nor did the shop door open as he passed. Instead of that,
the working men disappeared, one after the other, into a gateway,
forty paces off, where some other men had gone in before them. But
Filomena felt her cheeks icy under the rouge, from the fright she had
got, and she opened the door again to beg and beseech in a whisper:
'Raffaele, do come!'
'I am coming--I am coming,' the young fellow answered in a bored
tone, not even noticing that the poor woman was waiting all this time
in the rain, at night, in a wind-swept road.
She sighed deeply. Her eyes had no need now of bistre, for a deep
line of fatigue went under them, and they were filled with tears. The
rain now had soaked through her green cotton umbrella and come down
on her head. It soaked her shiny black hair and ran down her face and
neck, a warm water, like tears. But she did not even feel the rain
trickling, for she felt nothing. She did not see three or four other
men come out of Toledo Street, go on to the top of Nardones Road, and
disappear into the gateway where Michele and Gaetano had rushed in.
Inside the shop the shadows moved about, and a noise of voices in
discussion arose. She got up closer and strained her ears anxiously
as she heard Raffaele cursing and threatening. She could not stand
the noise of angry voices. Again she opened the door, crying out
beseechingly:
'Raffaele, Raffaele, do come!'
Still angrier words burst out on all sides from those drinking and
gambling in that wretched coffee-house; then Raffaele came out of the
shop, putting on his hat with a bang, as if he was being pushed from
inside. On finding himself confronted by Filomena's humble figure,
soaking, the rouge running down her cheeks, her face distorted by
fear, he cursed impiously, and gave her an ugly shove.
'Come on home--do come!' said she, taking no notice of the push and
the curses.
The Camorrist furiously told her to go and kill herself. But it was
raining, and he had no umbrella; his short jacket did not shelter him
well, so he got under her umbrella, still cursing.
'Be patient with me, be kind,' she said, lengthening her steps on the
pavement to keep alongside of him, and lowering the umbrella to his
side, so that he should not get soaked.
'But you know you should not come to the billiard-saloon,' said the
young fellow, with suppressed rage. 'It bores me to look like a
schoolboy being fetched home--it bores me.'
'Be patient with me. I could not help it,' she whispered, drinking in
the tears that ran down her cheeks, not being able to wipe them.
'I will leave you--as true as death, I'll leave you! You have
your sister's fault. She was so ragged she disgusted me. She came
everywhere to look for me, and made my friends laugh at me. I left
her for that. Do you understand?'
'Poor sister!' she moaned out.
'You are not ragged, but you get me laughed at just the same. Do you
hear?'
'Yes, I know.'
'If you don't give over, I will leave you, as I did Carmela. I am a
young fellow of honour, you know.'
'Yes, I know that.'
'Don't come here again.'
'Very well, I never will.'
They still went on with this talk, for he felt enraged at losing
his game and at being laughed at by his friends, also at not having
any money. She was penitent, feeling that ill-treatment was her
just punishment for playing her sister false; so, while he bit at
his spent cigar in a corner of his mouth and went on abusing her,
taunting her with her unhappy life, calling her every bad name, she
went alongside, silent and pale, for all the rouge had run down
with the rain. Her wet chemise stuck to her shoulders, and her hair
was glued to her forehead with damp. She went on, keeping down the
umbrella to his side, bearing his insults; for she was carried away
by sorrow and repentance, and said mechanically over and over again:
'It is little to what I deserve.'
Up there all those who went in at the gateway on the right side of
Nardones Road had gone up a stair of one flight, opposite the chief
staircase, which was a little broader. They went into an apartment
of two rooms that was let for an office--so called by the owner
because it had no kitchen. But the two rooms were so low in the
ceiling, so badly lighted by two small windows, the red brick floors
were so cold, the wall-paper so dirty, and the paint of the doors
and windows so greasy, that no small notary, poor advocate, doctor
without practice, or dealer in doubtful business, stayed there more
than a month. The cobbler who served as a porter and the inmates
who went down the big stair were accustomed, therefore, to see new
faces for ever going up and down the small stair--young and old men,
ushers and commission agents, a string of white-faced people, often
very queer-looking. Who troubled themselves about the people living
there? No one--not even the porter. He got no pay from the occupiers
of the flat, and did not care therefore if the tenants were changed.
On the big stair busy people lived: house-agents, writing-masters, a
third-rate dentist, a midwife, and others of queer professions. They
went up and down, taken up about their own interests and business,
their decent poverty or unsuccessful ill-doing. They were people who
took little notice of their neighbours, so that one might call the
office, that always was having new tenants or being left vacant,
rather isolated. The ticket 'To Let' stood there on the door the
whole year round; every month it was the same. When the apartment was
let, then the tenant carried off the key at dusk; when it was vacant,
the cobbler kept it on his counter, or, if he was away, he handed it
over to the charcoal-dealer opposite. The stair of the apartment was
broken in places, slippery and dangerous for those who had not good
legs and sharp eyes.
Now, that August the little place had been occupied for a couple of
months by a neatly-dressed young gentleman, affecting the style of
a provincial trying to be fashionable. He was fat and thick, with
a bull-like neck, and his red hair, joined to a florid complexion,
gave him an apoplectic look. So the office was opened several times a
week for a few hours, and two or three men, or sometimes more, came
in. They disappeared up the staircase, and nothing more was heard,
nothing showed behind the dirty window-panes; only after an hour or
so these men appeared again, one by one, some red in the face, as if
they had shouted for a long time, others pallid, as if gulping down
repressed rage. They vanished each one by his own road, without even
the porter seeing them sometimes.
But one evening of the week, always the same one, seven or eight men
met in the office, and then a dirty petroleum lamp, covered by a
shade that might cost threepence, lighted up the dirty room. Its only
furniture was a rough table and eight or ten chairs, of odd patterns.
On that evening the confabulation lasted till past midnight; often
some gesticulating shadow showed queerly against the panes; sometimes
the men leant out of the window, and looked stolidly into the dull
black court, as if they saw the ghosts of their own excited minds.
The cobbler, tired with his hard day's work, casting an indifferent
glance at the windows of the office, saw it was still lighted up,
and, shrugging his shoulders, went off to sleep in his den, a hole
under the staircase. The courtyard was not lighted up; the street
door was left half open; some people still went out and came in
cautiously from the so-called great staircase. Some mysterious
night-patient of the dentist, some hurried client to call the
midwife, who opened the door mysteriously to go out.
It was after midnight when Dr. Trifari's guests went away from the
meeting, all together, silently, hurrying down one after the other to
get away as quickly as possible. The last one pulled the office door
behind him, and it gave the creaking noise of old rotten wood. The
two small rooms that formed the office returned to their solitude,
and, with hearts beating high in the excitement of their dream, the
party melted away through the town. But this dreary evening the poor
cobbler had gone to bed at dusk, wrapping himself up in his ragged
bed-covering and torn cape he had worn all day, feeling the chill of
the tertian fever and the damp of the stormy weather in his bones.
So, in the confusion of the fever that had come on like a block of
ice on his chest, he heard the clatter of those going up and down
the big stair. Two or three times he seemed to hear voices raised
in the office, where there was a window open, and the scirocco wind
carried the rain rushing in, and made the oil-lamp flicker. The
rain went on falling in the badly-paved court, covering any other
noise; then the window was shut, and no more could be heard. Later
on the shutters were fastened too, and everything sank again into
deep shadow. Still, there was a meeting going on there. Trifari, the
master of the house, had been the first to arrive; he lighted the
lamp, and went through to the second room to arrange some things,
going and coming from it, with his hat a little on the back of his
head. In spite of the scirocco wind, it was the first time the colour
had gone out of his red face, and some drops of sweat came out on his
forehead. Sometimes he stood still, as if he repented of what he was
going to do or thought of doing; but he quickly recovered from that
momentary depression. When the shrill bell rang the first time, Dr.
Trifari gave a start and stood still uncertainly, as if he dared not
open it. Still, he went, but he only half opened the folding-door,
with great caution, to let Colaneri pass through. The ex-priest's
face was rather gloomy, and his shoulders were dripping wet; for
his small umbrella, a very shabby one, only protected his head.
They said good-evening to each other in a whisper; Colaneri, with
cautious glances from behind his spectacles, dried his wet hands with
a doubtfully white handkerchief--the fat, flabby, whitish hands that
are peculiar to priests. They said nothing to each other. The same
complicated anguish bore down on them, so that their Southerners'
loquacity was subdued; all the past excitement, beaten down by
disappointments following each other, had ended by sapping their
strength.
Suddenly, raising his head, Colaneri asked: 'Is he to come?'
'Yes, he is coming,' Trifari breathed between his lips.
'Has he no suspicion of what we are going to do?'
'None at all.'
A gust of wind came into the room and nearly put out the light. It
was then Trifari went to shut the window.
'We are only doing what is an absolute necessity,' Professor Colaneri
replied, repeating aloud the excuse with which he had been soothing
his conscience for some days.
'It is impossible to go on any longer like this,' the doctor remarked
in a dull voice; then he lighted a cigar to try and look at his ease,
but he did not manage it: he let the match go out.
'The report made against me to the governors is frightful,' said
Colaneri in a whisper, with his eyes down. 'I have a lot of
enemies--lads I ploughed in the examinations, you know. They reported
me to the President of the University as having sold the exercises
to some students. They put down the names, too....'
'How could they know all that?' the doctor asked slowly.
'Who can tell? I have so many enemies. The President made a dreadful
report; I am threatened....'
'With being turned out?'
'Not only that; there is to be a lawsuit....'
'You don't say so?'
'I have so many enemies, Trifari. It is a serious threat. How will I
be able to prove my innocence?'
'You have sold these exercises, then?' the doctor muttered cynically,
throwing away his cigar.
'The pay is so wretched, Trifari, and the examinations are all a
fraud, too.'
'If they take you to law it will be bad for you.'
'I am ruined if they do. I must have money in hand at any cost this
time, do you understand; if not, I am ruined. There is nothing left
but to shoot myself, if they take me to law. We must win, Trifari.'
'We will win,' the other affirmed sternly. 'I have a lot of trouble,
here and at my home. My father has sold everything; my brother,
instead of coming home after his service as a soldier, out of poverty
has enlisted in the military police; my sister is not to be married,
she has not a farthing of dowry now; she is reduced to making dresses
for rich peasants. We had very little, and I have eaten all there
was, and there are a number of debts, of calls.... The father of
the student whom we forced to sign a promissory note at Don Gennaro
Parascandolo's wants to denounce me as a cheat.... We must win,
Colaneri; we cannot live another week without winning.... I am more
ruined than you are.'
Here the bell rang very gently.
'Perhaps it is him, do you think?' Colaneri asked with a little shake
in his voice.
'No, no,' Trifari answered; 'he is to come later, when we are all
here....'
'Who took the message to him?'
'Formosa took it.'
'He has no suspicion, then?'
'No, none.'
'Then, the spirit has not told him anything?'
'It looks as if the spirit could not go against Fate, for it tells
him nothing about this.'
'It is Fate, I suppose?'
Another ring came. Trifari went to open the door. It was Marzano,
the lawyer, the sprightly, good-natured, smiling old man. But
sudden decrepitude seemed to have come over him; his pallor had got
yellowish, his pepper-and-salt moustache was quite white, and had got
thin over his mouth. His smile had gone for ever; evidently, as death
drew near, his good opinion of life had gone. He came in sighing. He
was soaking, his overcoat shone with drops of water all over, and
his lean hands trembled. He sat down saying nothing, and kept his
hat well down over his ears, only his mouth kept up the old habit
of moving, always chewing ciphers. Now he leant his pointed chin,
where a neglected beard was growing, on his stick, being so wrapt in
thought he did not even hear what Trifari and Colaneri were saying
to each other. Suddenly he, too, having the same engrossing thought,
asked: 'Will he come, do you think?'
'Of course he will,' the other two answered together.
'Has he not guessed?'
'He knows nothing about it.'
'These mediums either see a lot or they see nothing.'
'Better so,' the other two muttered.
Dr. Trifari, on hearing knocking at the door, went first into the
second room to fetch three or four other chairs, and arranged them
round the shabby table. Ninetto Costa and Don Crescenzio, the
lottery banker at Nunzio Lane, came in. The stock-broker had lost
all his smartness. He was dressed anyhow--in a morning coat; his
too light overcoat had big splashes of wet on it; not even a pebble
breast-pin shone on his black silk necktie. His fine lucky man's
bright smile that showed his teeth had gone too with the smartness.
The stock-broker was going on with difficulty from one settling-day
to another, taking no more risks, not daring to gamble; he had lost
all his audacity; he only managed to keep his creditors at bay: they
still had faith in him; because his name was known on the Exchange,
because his father had been a model of honesty and he himself had
been so lucky, all still believed in his fortune. But the unhappy man
knew that the hour of the crisis had come, that he would not even
be able to pay the interest on his debts soon, that Ninetto Costa's
name would be on the bankrupt list. He had put down everything--his
handsome house, carriages, luxurious appliances, journeys, dinners,
and English clothes from Poole. But this sacrifice was not enough,
for the cancer that gnawed his breast, that ate into everything, was
not rooted out. He still desperately played at the lottery, being
taken by it now soul and body, shutting his eyes to the storm so
as not to see the waves coming that would drown him. Alongside of
him Don Crescenzio, with his handsome, serene face and well-combed
chestnut beard, had the traces also of beginning to fall off in
prosperity. By dint of being in contact with feverish people, just
as if he had been touching too hot hands, something of the gambling
fever had been affecting him, and through the desperate insistence of
the gamblers he had got to giving them credit. How could he resist
the imploring demands of Ninetto Costa, Trifari and Colaneri's
pretexts, that had a vague threat under them, the Marquis di
Formosa's grand promises?--all used different forms of supplication.
To begin with, he let them have credit from Friday till Tuesday, the
day he got ready the State profits; they, doing a renewed miracle
every week, managed to give him what they owed, so that he might be
ready on Wednesday; but at last, their resources being exhausted,
some of them began to pay a part only, or not to pay anything, and he
began to put his own money into it, so that his caution money should
not be seized by the State. The gamblers dared not show again till
they had got money; then they paid off part of the debt and staked
what they had over. One client had disappeared altogether--Baron
Lamarra, son of the mason who had got to be a contractor and a rich
man. He owed Don Crescenzio more than two thousand francs, and when
Don Crescenzio had waited for him two or three weeks, he went to look
for him at his house. He found the wife in a furious state. Baron
Lamarra had forged her signature on a number of bills, and she had
to pay unless she wanted to be a forger's wife; but she was already
trying for a separation. Baron Lamarra had fled to Isernia, and from
there gave not a sign of life. Don Crescenzio was rudely turned away
from the door--that was two thousand francs and more lost! He swore
not to give more credit to anyone; but, in spite of the debtors
paying him a little now and then, seven or eight thousand francs were
still risked, with little hope of getting them back. Eight thousand
francs was the exact sum of his savings for several years. Besides,
he could not press his debtors much--they had nothing now but a few
desperate resources that only came to light from a wicked, burning
love of gambling. He now took a lively interest in their gambling,
and was anxious for them to win, so as to get his savings back, to
recover the money left so imprudently in the hands of these vicious
fellows. He watched the gamblers so that they should not go to play
elsewhere, now uneasy and sick himself from coming in contact with
so many infected people. It was for this reason that the evening's
mysterious design was made known to him; they all owed him money, and
could hide nothing from him. And in spite of a secret friendship, we
would almost say complicity, between Don Pasqualino, the medium, and
him, he told him nothing about the mysterious plan; by his silence he
seemed to approve of it.
There were five of them already in the small room, seated round the
table in different thoughtful or rather absent-minded attitudes. They
were not speaking: some held their heads down, and scribbled with
their nails on the dusty table; others looked at the smoky ceiling,
where the petroleum lamp threw a small ring of light.
'Seven hundred thousand francs have been paid out in Rome,' said Don
Crescenzio to break that weighty silence.
'Lucky they! lucky they!' two or three cried out, with a stirring of
envy against the lucky Roman winners.
'If what we are doing is successful,' Colaneri muttered darkly, and
his spectacles gave a sad twinkle, 'the Government will pay Naples
three or four millions of francs.'
'We must succeed,' Ninetto Costa retorted.
'The urn will be under command this time,' said Marzano mysteriously.
Now came renewed knocking, very gently, as if timidity had enfeebled
the hand at the door. Trifari disappeared to open it, after asking
through the door who it was; he had suddenly grown suspicious. The
answer was 'Friends!' and he recognised the voice. The two common
folk, Gaetano the glover and Michele the shoeblack, came in; they
took off their caps, saying 'Good-evening!' and stood at the entrance
of the room, not daring to sit down in such good company.
Outside the wind and rain grew furious, a gutter full of water
emptied into the court with a loud swish. Now, under the
window-frames, a stream of water came in at the cracks, wetting
the window-sills and trickling to the ground, the closed but
broken-ribbed umbrellas leaning against the walls in the corners
of the room dripped moisture on the dusty floor, and the wet shoes
made mud-pies. The men sitting down never moved: they kept up a
solemn stiffness and lugubrious silence, as if they were watching
a dead person and were overwhelmed with fatigue and the oppression
of their funereal thoughts. The two working men standing, one lean,
colourless, with a cutter-out's round shoulders, the hair thinned
already on the forehead and temples, the other man crooked and
hunchbacked, twisted like a corkscrew and old, though his rugged,
sharp face was lively still, kept silence too, waiting. Only
Ninetto Costa, to give himself a careless look, had taken out an
old pocket-book, the remnant of his old smartness, and was writing
ciphers in it with a small pencil, wetting the point in his mouth.
But they were fancy figures, and his hand trembled a little. His
friends said it was from his fast life that it shook. Thus they spent
about fifteen long slow minutes that lay heavily on the souls of all
those waiting there to carry out their mysterious plan.
'What bad weather we are having,' said Ninetto Costa, passing his
hand over his forehead.
'The sky has opened,' Don Crescenzio remarked, yawning nervously.
'What o'clock is it, doctor,' asked old Marzano in a trembling,
decrepit little voice.
'It is five minutes to ten,' said the doctor, taking out an ugly
nickel watch, the sort that cannot be pawned, attached to a sordid
black cord.
'What hour is the appointment for?' asked Colaneri, trying to look as
if he was indifferent.
'It was to have been ten o'clock, but who knows whether he will
come?' the doctor replied, lowering his voice, putting all his
uncertainty and doubt into what he said.
'Who can tell?' said Ninetto Costa profoundly. A long sigh relieved
his breast, as if he could not bear the weight that bore him down.
'Are you feeling ill?' Colaneri asked him.
'I wish I was dead,' muttered the stock-broker desolately. Someone
shook his head, sighing; another one had the same feeling, evidently,
from the expression of his face, and the sad words spread through
the damp dirty room under the smoky lamp. Then for a little the
summer storm calmed down, fewer drops rattled on the window, and
again there came a great silence. Through the wall, no one knew from
where, like a slow warning voice, a solemn clock gave ten melancholy
strokes. There was a pause between each stroke, and it cast a breath
of fear among the men gathered there to plot some cruel device or
other.
'That will be the Spirit,' said Don Crescenzio, trying to joke.
'Don't let us jest,' Trifari said, in a severely reproving tone; 'we
are occupied about serious matters here.'
'No one wants to make jokes!' Ninetto Costa said chidingly. 'We all
know what we are doing.'
'There is no Judas here, is there?' said the doctor, looking round at
everyone.
There was a protesting murmur, but it was feeble. No, none of them
was Judas, nor was there a Christ among them; but all felt vaguely
at the bottom of their hearts that they were going to carry out a
betrayal.
'No one is Judas--no one,' cried out the doctor impetuously. 'Swear
before God that if there is he must make a bad end.'
'Don't swear, don't swear,' said old Marzano, quite frightened.
Again the bell rang; they all caught each other's eye suddenly, pale
and shivering; their fault rose before them. No one moved to open the
door, just as if there was a serious peril behind it.
'It will be him,' Colaneri dared to say, not raising his eyes.
'Perhaps it is,' Costa muttered, twisting his pocket-book absently in
his hand.
At once all of them regretted that the medium was outside the door.
The same shadow of furious disappointment disfigured their faces,
hardening them, from the cruelty of a wicked man who sees his prey
escaping. The furious instinct that sleeps at the bottom of all
human hearts, urged by long unsatisfied passion, burst forth in
that delirious form that vice produces in young and old, gentleman
and working man. The faces were reserved and hard, strong in their
ferocity. Dr. Trifari went forward in an energetic way to open the
door. To let the company know for certain that the medium was there,
he greeted him and the Marquis di Formosa at once, aloud.
'Good-evening, good evening, Don Pasqualino; we are all expecting
you.'
He stood aside to let them go in; the men in the room took a long
breath with fierce joy; there was no danger now that the medium would
escape them. And he that spoke every night with spirits, who had
especial communication by favour with wandering souls, he that ought
to have known all the truth, went quietly into the little room where
the meeting was, without suspecting anything. He cast, as usual, an
oblique glance all round, but the Cabalists' faces said nothing new
to him. They had the pallor, contortions, and feverish excitement
usual on Friday evening, but he saw nothing else. Only the Marquis
di Formosa, who was coming in with him, shivered two or three times;
it almost looked as if he wanted to turn back. But the Marquis had
been very excitable for some time past. He stammered in speaking, his
noble countenance was now degraded by traces of his ignoble passion,
he was badly dressed and untidy, had dirty shoes and a frayed collar,
and his ill-shaved beard was disgusting and pitiable. He had got so
excitable since he no longer had any money, since his daughter's
engagement to Dr. Amati. The medium could get no more money out of
him, so avoided him, and only saw him at the Friday evening meetings
in Nardones Road. But that evening the intimacy had begun again, the
Marquis had looked everywhere for the medium, and during the day had
given him fifty francs, making an appointment for the evening at ten
o'clock; indeed, he had anxiously insisted on this appointment, and
the medium had put it down to a disappointed gambler's eagerness to
get lottery numbers.
The Marquis's manner on the way to the office had been peculiar,
still, Don Pasqualino was accustomed to gamblers' eccentricities, and
took no notice of it. He went to sit at his usual place every week
near the table, putting one hand over his eyes to shelter them from
the glare of the lamp. Around the deep silence still held, broken
by a sigh now and then, and on looking at all their pallid, dumb,
excited faces the medium felt his first suspicion. He tried to do his
usual fantastic humbugging work.
'It rains, but the sun will come out at midnight.'
'That is idle chatter,' shouted Trifari, bursting into an ironical
laugh.
The others around muttered sneeringly. Now there was no longer any
belief in Don Pasqualino's mysterious words. This want of faith stood
out so plainly that the medium drew back as if he wanted to parry an
attack. But he tried again, thinking he could profit as usual from
the feverish imaginations of the Cabalists by striking a sympathetic
chord.
'It rains, the sun will come out at midnight, but he who wears the
Virgin's scapulary does not get wet.'
'Don Pasqualino, you are joking,' the glove-cutter said ironically.
The medium darted a look of rage at him. 'You need not look at me
as if you wanted to eat me, Don Pasqualino. Asking the gentlemen's
pardon, you are trying to make fools of us, and we are not the people
to allow it.'
'My lord, make that ass hold his tongue,' muttered the medium, making
a scornful gesture.
'He is not such an ass after all, Don Pasqualino,' said Formosa,
keeping down his excitement with difficulty.
'What do you mean, my lord?' asked Don Pasqualino sharply, getting
up to go away; but Trifari, who had never left the medium's
neighbourhood, put a hand on his shoulder without speaking, and
obliged him to sit down again. The medium sank his head on his breast
a minute to think it over, and gazed sideways at the door.
'Sit still, Don Pasqualino,' said Formosa slowly, 'we have a lot to
talk about here.'
A slightly agonized expression went over the caller-up of spirits'
face. Once more looking round the company, he only saw hard, anxious
faces, determined on success. He understood now confusedly.
'Gaetano the glover is not an ass for saying you are making fools of
us. What you have been doing for three years past looks like a trick.
For three years, you see, you have gone on saying the most disjointed
things with the excuse that the spirits said these things to you. For
three years you have made us stake the very bones of our necks upon
this nonsense of yours; every one of us has not only gained nothing,
but thrown his whole means away, from following your rubbish, and we
are full of woes, some of them incurable. What sort of a conscience
have you? We are ruined!'
'Yes, we are ruined--ruined!' shouted a chorus of agonized voices.
The speaker with spirits had often heard these lamentations,
especially lately; but faith had come again into the souls of his
followers. Now, he understood they no longer believed in him. Still,
hiding his fear, he tried to brazen it out.
'It is not my fault, it is your want of faith.'
'Rubbish!' the old lord shouted in a rage, whilst the others stormed
against the medium for repeating to them his invariable reason to
account for disappointment. 'Rubbish! how can we have failed in
faith when we have believed in you as in Jesus Christ? How can you
say faith is wanting when, to reward your overflow of chatter, we
have paid through the nose? You have pocketed thousands of francs in
these three years. Don't deny it. Have we no faith? We, who have had
Masses, prayers, and rosaries said; we, who have knelt and beat our
breasts, asking the Lord's favour--have we no faith? Why, we must
have had it! How can you account otherwise for the squandering of
money, for the way we wasted our own means and our families', thus
causing such unhappiness that it would have been nothing but a crime
if we had not believed in you? You say we have no faith; you have
been our God for three years, you have deceived us, and we never said
anything, but went on believing in you after you had taken every
penny from us.'
'Everything--you have taken everything!' shouted the company.
'You insult me, that is enough,' said the medium, getting up
resolutely. 'I am going away. Good-evening.'
'You do not leave this till we get satisfaction!' the Marquis di
Formosa cried out. 'Is it not the case that he will not get out of
this till he does?' he asked the assembled Cabalists.
'No, no, no!' the company of these cruel madmen shouted ferociously.
The medium understood, a deadly hue spread over his pallid cheeks,
his frightened glance wandered round in a desperate attempt to fly;
but the fierce gamblers had got up and made a circle round him. Some
of them were very pale, as if they were keeping down strong emotion,
the others were red with rage. In all their eyes the medium read the
same implacable cruelty.
'I wish to go away,' he said in a whisper, with that hoarse tone
that gave such a mysterious attraction to his voice.
'None of us would wish to detain you,' said the Marquis di Formosa
with ironical deference, 'if we had not need of you. If you do not
give us lottery numbers, you don't leave this!' he ended up by
shouting in a fit of fury.
'Lottery numbers, lottery numbers!' hissed Colaneri's thin voice.
'If not, you don't get out of this!' shrieked Ninetto Costa.
'Either give numbers, or you stay here!' thundered Dr. Trifari.
'An end to your fooling; give us the real tip for the lottery,' said
Gaetano, grinding his teeth.
'Don Pasqualino, make up your mind that those gentlemen won't let you
go away till you have given them lottery numbers--make up your mind
to it,' Don Crescenzio remarked wisely. He wished to pretend he was
not interested in the question.
'Next week. I promise them to you then; now I have not got them, I
swear it upon the Virgin!' stammered the medium, turning his eyes to
heaven despairingly.
'What good is next week?' all yelled out. 'It must be to-night, for
to-morrow--quick!'
'I have not got them, I have not got them,' he stammered again,
shaking his head.
'You must give them. We will make you give them,' the Marquis roared.
'We can do no more. Either we win this week, or we are ruined. Don
Pasqualino, we have waited long enough; we have believed too much;
you have treated us unfairly. The spirit tells you the real figures,
you know them, you always have known them; but you went on mocking
at us, telling us silly things. We can't wait till next week; before
that we may die, or see someone else die, or go to the galleys. This
evening or to-morrow we must have the true numbers. You understand?'
'The true--the true ones!' hissed Colaneri.
'Do not go on talking nonsense; it is past the time for that now,'
shouted Ninetto Costa, with the greatest indignation.
Still, in spite of feeling conquered and taken hostage to the
unreasonable fury that he had set on fire himself, the medium tried
to fight on.
'The spirit does not give numbers by force,' he slowly announced.
'You have offended him. He will not speak to me again.'
'Lies--you are telling lies! A hundred--a thousand times you have
told us that the spirit obeys you, that you do what you like with
him,' retorted the Marquis. 'A hundred thousand times you have told
us that the urn is under orders. Tell the truth; it will be best for
you, I assure you. You are at a bad pass, Don Pasqualino; the spirit
ought to help you. Our patience is exhausted, so is our money, and
other people's, too. The spirit must give you the right numbers.'
Then the medium stood silent for a little, as if he was collecting
himself, his eyes turned up showing the whites. Everyone looked at
him, but coldly, being accustomed to these antics of his.
'In a little the camellias will flower,' he said suddenly, trembling
all over.
But not one of the company troubled himself about this mystic giving
out of lottery numbers. Dr. Trifari, who always carried a book of
dreams in his pocket, did not even take out the torn book to see what
figures corresponded to the camellias.
'In a little the camellias will flower by the sea, on the mountain,'
repeated the medium, still trembling.
No one stirred.
'In a little the camellias will flower by the sea, on the mountain,'
he repeated the third time, trembling with anxiety, looking his
persecutors in the face.
An incredulous snigger answered him.
'But what do you want from me?' he cried out, with a gasp of fear.
'The _real_ numbers,' said Formosa coldly. 'We don't believe these
that you are telling us can be the right ones; that is to say, just
on the chance we will play the numbers corresponding to the mountain,
the sea-coast, and flowering camellias. But the _real_ figures must
be different. While waiting for them, we will play these three, but
we will keep you shut up here in the meanwhile.'
'Until when?' he asked hurriedly.
'Until your numbers come out,' retorted the Marquis harshly.
'Oh, God!' said the medium softly under his breath.
'You understand, Don Pasqualino, these gentlemen wish to have a
guarantee, and they intend to keep you as a pawn,' the lottery-banker
explained, trying to make out that shutting him up was lawful. 'What
does it signify to you? What trouble is it to tell the truth? If you
have kept them in error up till now, it is time to speak seriously,
Don Pasqualino. These gentlemen have a right to be enraged, and I
know it. Speak, Don Pasqualino, send us off satisfied. You will stay
here till to-morrow at five. When the lottery drawing is over, we
will come and take you in a carriage for an airing. Come, come; do
what you ought to do.'
'I can't do it,' said the medium, opening out his arms.
'Don't tell lies. You can, but you won't. The spirits obey you,' said
Colaneri, letting himself go in a passion of rage.
'Tell them this evening; it will be better for you,' Gaetano the
glover muttered in an ill-natured tone.
'Get rid of this obstinacy,' Ninetto Costa advised in a brotherly way.
'Give us the truth--the truth,' stammered the old lawyer, Marzano.
'I can't tell you,' the medium still said, looking at the doors and
windows.
Then the Cabalists, on a sign from the Marquis di Formosa, gathered
in the window recess. Only Trifari stayed beside the medium. With a
threatening, cruel face he put his fat, hairy hand on his shoulder.
They spoke to each other a long time, and disputed in a ring, all
heads close together; then, having decided, they turned round.
'These gentlemen say they are firmly resolved--as they have a right
to be--to get the real lottery numbers, after having made so many
sacrifices,' the Marquis di Formosa said coldly, 'and that therefore
Don Pasqualino will remain shut up here until he makes up his mind
to satisfy our just demands. He cannot go away from here; besides,
Dr. Trifari, who is afraid of nothing, will stay with Don Pasqualino.
To make a noise would be useless, as the neighbours would not hear;
and if by chance Don Pasqualino wished to right himself by going to
law, we have an action ready for him as a cheat, with witnesses and
documents enough to send twenty mediums to prison. It is better,
therefore, to bow your head this time, and try to get off by giving
the right numbers. We are quite decided. Until Don Pasqualino allows
us to win, he will not get out; Dr. Trifari will sacrifice himself to
keep him company. In that other room there is sleeping accommodation
for two and food for several days. Between to-night and to-morrow one
of us by turns will come every four hours to see if he has made up
his mind. We hope he will do so soon.'
'You are trying to kill me,' said the medium with angelic resignation.
'You can free yourself when you choose. We wish you good-night,' the
Marquis ended up with, implacably.
And the seven wicked Cabalists passed in front of the medium, wishing
him good-night ironically. The medium stood there near the table, his
hand lightly placed on the wooden surface, with a tired, suffering
expression on his face. He looked now at one, then at another of the
Cabalists, as if he were questioning their faces to see if any of
them were more civil, and would say a word of release to him. But sad
delusions had hardened these men's hearts; the excitement prevented
them from understanding they were committing a crime. They went in
front of the medium, greeting him, saying a cold phrase or word of
condolence without heeding his suffering expression, his entreating
eyes.
'Good-night, Don Pasqualino. God enlighten you!' said old Marzano,
shaking his head.
'We ask too much of God,' the medium answered in a very melancholy
voice.
'Good-night; quiet sleep,' the glover ironically wished him. His
words, countenance, and voice had all become cutting.
'So I wish you,' the medium answered darkly, lowering his eyelids to
deaden the cruel flash of revenge that shone in his eyes.
'Good-night, good-night, Don Pasqualino,' Ninetto Costa muttered
rather regretfully; his frivolous nature was so opposed to tragedy.
'We will soon meet each other again.'
'Of course,' the man of the spirits muttered with a slight grin.
'Good-night,' Michele the shoeblack ventured to remark. He was a keen
accomplice in that gentlemanly plot, and thought it made a gentleman
of him to be mixed up in it. 'Good-night; keep in good health.'
The medium did not answer him even. He scorned to cast a glance at
the deformity, who belonged to the common folk he came from himself,
out of whom he could never get any money.
'Pasqualino, do you intend to give these _true_ numbers?' asked
Colaneri, passing in front of him, still wild with rage.
'I cannot give them like this, being bullied into it.'
'You are joking. We are all your friends here,' squeaked the
Professor. 'Do as you like. Good-night.'
'Good-night; the Madonna go with you,' the medium muttered piously,
intensifying the mysticism of his voice.
'Dear Don Pasqualino, come, be good-natured before we go,' said the
Marquis di Formosa with sudden affability. 'Give us real numbers, and
your prison will last only till to-morrow evening at five o'clock.'
'I know nothing,' said the medium, darting a look of hatred at the
Marquis, since it was the noble lord who had brought him to this bad
pass.
They joined each other at the door to go out, leaving him alone with
Dr. Trifari, who went backwards and forwards quietly and coldly from
the room alongside, with that icy determination born villains have in
carrying out a misdeed. Up till then the medium, except for a shadow
crossing his face, leaving its traces of boredom and sorrow, but for
a humble, beseeching glance, had given tokens of sufficient courage;
but when he saw the others were going away, when he felt he was to be
left alone with Dr. Trifari for long hours, days, and weeks, perhaps,
all his courage fell, the cowardice of an imprisoned man rose up,
and, stretching out his arms, he called out:
'Don't go away! don't go away!'
At that agonized cry the accomplices in that imprisonment stood
still; their faces, set like stern judges till then, got suddenly
pale. That was the only moment of the whole gloomy evening they
realized they were condemning a human creature, a fellow-Christian,
a man like themselves, to a frightful punishment. It was the only
moment they saw the whole extent of what they were doing in its
legal and moral bearings. But the demon of gain had taken possession
of them, soul and body, completely. Every one of them, turning
back, surrounded the medium, still asking him for lottery numbers,
certain real numbers, that he knew, and up till then would not give
them. Then, choking with emotion, understanding they were turning
the weapons against him that he had wounded them with, the man who
had gradually brought the waves of a slow shipwreck over them, who
had taken their money and their souls, when confronted with that
persistent, malignant cruelty that nothing could soften, that demon
his own voice had called up, that real evil spirit he had truly got
in communication with, the cowardly medium felt a tremendous fear,
and began to sob like a child. The others, alarmed and disturbed,
gazed at him; but the demon was stronger than all their wills
together. The supreme hour of their life had come for old and young,
gentlemen and working men--the tragic hour when nothing can prevent a
tragedy, when everything pushes men forward to a tragedy.
Hearing the medium weep like a child, drying his tears with a
flaming, torn pocket-handkerchief, none of them felt pity. All felt
the warmer, keener desire for lottery numbers to save them from the
ruin that threatened them. They left him, to weep meanly, like a
frightened fool; one by one, making no noise, they went slowly from
that house that had become a prison. He, still going on sobbing,
stretched his ears, and heard the door shut dolefully, with that sort
of noise that gives echoes in the soul. Trifari, standing behind the
door, went putting up chains and bolts, shutting himself up with
the new prisoner, with no fear either of the man or of the spirits
he might evoke. The hairy red face, when it showed in the shining
circle of the lamp, had something animal in it; it showed cruelty
and obstinacy in cruelty. On coming in again, the doctor breathed
in a relieved way. He looked around, as if the departure of the
Cabalists, his friends who had deputed him to be gaoler, pleased him.
Now he still went and came from the next room, carrying backwards and
forwards all sorts of things. Then he came back from the bedroom,
having changed his clothes; he had put on an old jacket instead
of his frock-coat. The medium followed all his gaoler's movements
closely, for, like all prisoners, he studied his only companion with
profound observation. At one point they exchanged a cold, hard glare
as from prisoner to turnkey.
'Do you want to smoke?' the doctor asked from a corner of the room.
'I don't smoke,' the medium answered sulkily.
'Won't you sit down?' Trifari asked the medium in a whisper.
'Thank you, I will,' he replied, letting himself down on a chair.
'Do you wish to sleep?'
'No, thank you.'
The doctor sat down, too, then, beside the table, putting one hand
over his eyes as if to shield them from the light. There was deep,
nocturnal silence. Outside the rain had ended; inside the long,
gloomy vigil began.