She was tall and lean; but she had a firm, full bust, and yet she was
no longer young; her complexion was brunette, but pallid as if she had
always suffered from malaria, and this pallor set forth two big eyes
and fresh rosy lips that seemed to eat you.
In the village she was called _la Lupa_--the She-Wolf--because she was
never satisfied. Women made the sign of the cross when they saw her
pass, always alone like a big ugly hound, with the vagabond and
suspicious gait of a famished wolf; she would bewitch their sons and
their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with her red lips and she
made them fall in love with her merely by looking at them out of those
big Satanic eyes of hers, even if they were before Santa Agrippina's
altar.
Fortunately _la Lupa_ never came to church at Easter or at Christmas,
nor to hear Mass or to make confession. _Padre_ Angiolino of Santa
Maria di Gesu, a true servant of God, had lost his soul on her
account.
Maricchia,--poor girl, pretty and clever she was,--secretly wept
because she was _la Lupa's_ daughter, and no one had offered to marry
her though she had nice clothes in her bureau, and her own little
piece of land in the sun, like every other girl of the village.
One time _la Lupa_ fell in love with a handsome youth who had just
served out his time in the army, and had come home and was helping to
reap the notary's harvest with her; for surely it means to be in love
when she felt the flesh burn under the fustian shift, and on looking
at him to experience the thirst that one has in hot June days down in
the low-lands.
But he went on with his work, undisturbed, with his nose on his
sheaves, and he said to her, "Oh, what's the matter, _gna_ Pina?"
In the immense fields where the only sound was the rustle of the
grasshoppers flying up, while the sun was pouring down his hottest
beams perpendicularly, _la Lupa_ was heaping up sheaf on sheaf, and
pile on pile, without ever showing any signs of fatigue, without one
moment straightening herself up, without once touching her lips to the
water jug, so as to stick close to Nanni's heels as he reaped and
reaped; and now and again he would ask,--
"What do you want, _gna_ Pina?"
One evening she told him, it was while the men were sleeping in the
threshing-floor, weary of the long day's work and the dogs were
howling through the vast black campagna,--
"I want you! you are as handsome as the sun and as sweet as honey; I
want you!"
"But I want your daughter--I want the young calf," said Nanni,
laughing at his own joke.
_La Lupa_ thrust her hands into the masses of her hair, scratching her
temples, without saying a word, and went off and was not seen again in
the harvest field. But the following October she saw Nanni again at
the time when they were pressing the oil, because he worked near her
house, and the rattle of the press kept her awake all night.
"Take a bag of olives," she said to her daughter, "and come with me."
Nanni was shoveling the olives into the hopper and shouting "Ohi" to
the mule to keep it going.
"Do you want my daughter Maricchia?" demanded _gna_ Pina.
"What dowry will you give with your daughter Maricchia?" replied
Nanni.
"She has her father's things, and besides I will give her my house; it
will be enough for me if you'll let me have a corner in the kitchen to
spread out a mattress in."
"If that is so, we can talk about it at Christmas," said Nanni. Nanni
was all grease and dirt from the olives put to fermenting, and
Maricchia would not have him on any account; but her mother grabbed
her by the hair as they stood in front of the hearth and hissed
through her set teeth,--
"If you don't take him, I'll kill you."
_La Lupa_ looked ill, and the people remarked: "When the devil was old
the devil a monk would be." She no longer went wandering about; she
stood no more at her doorway looking out with those eyes as of one
possessed.
Her son-in-law, when she fixed those eyes on his face, always began to
laugh, and would pull out his cloth talisman, with its effigy of the
Madonna, to cross himself with.
Maricchia stayed at home to nurse her children, and her mother went
out to work in the fields with the men, just like a man,--to weed, to
dig, to guide the animals, to dress the vines, whether it were during
the Greek-Levant winds[13] of January, or during the August sirocco,
when mules let their heads droop, and men sleep prone on their bellies
under the shadow of the North wall.
[13] North-east.
In that time between vespers and nones, when, according to the saying,
no good woman is seen going about, _gna_ Pina was the only living
creature to be seen wandering across the campagna, over the fiery hot
stones of the narrow streets, among the parched stubble of the wide,
wide fields that stretched away into the burning haze toward cloudy
Etna, where the sky hangs heavy on the horizon.
"Wake up!" said _la Lupa_ to Nanni, who was asleep in the ditch next
the dusty harvest-field, with his head on his arms. "Wake up, for I've
brought you some wine to cool your throat."
Nanni opened his eyes, half awake, and saw her sitting up straight and
pale before him, with her swelling breast, and her eyes as black as
coal, and drew back waving his arms,--
"No! a good woman does not go about between vespers and nones,"
groaned Nanni, thrusting his face in amongst the dried weeds of the
ditch as far as he could, and putting his fingers into his hair. "Go
away! Get you gone! And don't you come to the threshing-floor any
more."
She turned and went away,--_la Lupa_,--knotting up her splendid
tresses again, looking down steadily as she made her way among the hot
stubble, with her eyes black as coal.
But she did go back to the threshing-floor, and Nanni no longer
reproached her; and when she failed to come, in that hour between
vespers and nones, he went, and with perspiration on his brow, waited
for her at the top of the white deserted footpath, but afterwards he
would thrust his hands through his hair, and every time he would say,
"Go away! Go away! Don't come to the threshing-floor again."
Maricchia wept night and day, and she looked into her mother's face
with eyes blazing with tears and jealousy, like a _lupachiotta_,
a young wolf herself, every time that she saw her coming back from
the fields, silent and pale.
"Vile! _scellerata!_" she would say, "Vile mamma."
"Hold your tongue!"
"Thief! thief!"
"Hold your tongue!"
"I'll go to the _brigadiere_!"[14]
[14] Brigadiere is the station or the Commandant of the detachment
of the Carabaneers in a small town.
And she actually went with her infants in her arms, without a sign of
fear, and without shedding a tear, like a crazy woman, because now she
passionately loved that husband whom she had been forced to marry,
greasy and dirty as he was from the olives set to fermenting.
The _brigadiere_ summoned Nanni, and threatened him with the galleys
and the gallows. Nanni began to weep, and pull his hair; he denied
nothing, did not try to justify himself.
"The temptation was too much," said he, "'twas the temptation of
hell." He flung himself at the _brigadiere's_ feet, begging him to
send him to the galleys.
"For mercy's sake, _Signor brigadiere_, take me out of this hell! Have
me shot! Send me to prison! Don't let me see her ever again! never
again!"
"No," replied _la Lupa_, to the _brigadiere's_ question. "I kept a
corner of the kitchen to sleep in when I gave him my house as my
daughter's dowry. The house is mine. I do not intend to go away."
Shortly after, Nanni was kicked in the chest by a mule, and was like
to die; but the priest refused to bring him the Holy Unction unless
_la Lupa_ was out of the house.
_La Lupa_ went away, and her son-in-law was then permitted to pass
away like a good Christian; he confessed and partook of the Sacrament
with such signs of penitence and contrition that all the neighbors and
inquisitive visitors wept as they surrounded the dying man's bed.
And it would have been better for him if he had died then and there,
before the devil had a chance to return to tempt him, and take
possession of him, mind and body, when he got well again.
"Let me be!" he said to _la Lupa_; "for mercy's sake, leave me in
peace! I have seen death with my own eyes! Poor Maricchia is in
despair. Now the whole region knows about it! If I don't see you, it's
better for you and better for me."
And he would rather have put his eyes out, than see _la Lupa's_, for
when hers were fastened on him, they made him lose soul and body. He
did not know what to do to overcome the enchantment. He paid for
Masses to be sung for the souls in Purgatory, and he went for aid to
the priest and the _brigadiere_. At Easter he went to confession, and
as a penance, publicly stood on the flint stones of the holy ground in
front of the church, putting out six handbreadths of tongue, and then,
when _la Lupa_ returned to tempt him,--
"See here," said he, "don't you come on the threshing-floor again,
because if you do come to seek me again, as sure as God exists, I'll
kill you."
"All right, kill me!" replied _la Lupa_. "It makes no difference to
me; but I can not live without you."
When he saw her afar off coming through the green corn field, he left
off pruning the vines, and went and got his axe from the elm.
_La Lupa_ saw him coming to meet her, with his face pale and his eyes
rolling wildly, with the axe shining in the sun; but she did not
hesitate an instant, did not look away. She went straight forward with
her hands full of bunches of red poppies, and devouring him with those
black eyes of hers.
"Ah! a curse on your soul!" stammered Nanni.