I
The great sandy square scintillated as if spread with powdered pumice stone. All of the houses around it, whitened with plaster, seemed red hot like the walls of an immense furnace whose fire was about to die out. In the distance, the pilasters of the church reflected the radiation of the clouds and became red as granite, the Windows flashed as if they might contain an internal conflagration; the sacred images possessed personalities alive with colour; the entire structure, beneath the splendour of this meteoric twilight, assumed a more lofty power of dominion over the houses of Radusani.
There moved from the streets to the square groups of men and women, vociferating and gesticulating. In the souls of all, superstitious terror was rapidly becoming intense; in all of those uncultivated imaginations a thousand terrible images of divine chastisement arose; comments, passionate contentions, lamentable conjurations, disconnected tales, prayers, cries mingled with the ominous rumbling of an imminent hurricane.
Already for many days that bloody redness had lingered in the sky after the sunset, had invaded the tranquillity of the night, illuminated tragically the slumber of the fields, aroused the howls of the dogs.
“Giacobbe! Giacobbe!” cried several while waving their arms who previous to this time had spoken in low voices, before the church, crowded around a pilaster of the vestibule. “Giacobbe!”
There issued from the main door and approached the summoners a long and lean man, who seemed ill with a hectic fever, was bald upon the top of his head, and crowned at the temples and neck with long reddish hair.
His small, hollow eyes, animated as if from the ardour of a deep passion, converged slightly toward his nose, and were of an uncertain colour. The lack of the two front teeth of the upper jaw gave to his mouth as he spoke, and to the movements of his sharp chin scattered with hairs, a singular appearance of satyr-like senility. The rest of his body was a miserable architectural structure of bones badly concealed by clothes, while on his hands, on the under sides of his arms and on his breast, his skin was full of azure marks, incisions made with the point of a pin and powder of indigo, in memory of visits to sanctuaries, of grace received, of vows taken.
As the fanatic drew near to the group around the pilaster, a medley of questions arose from these anxious men.
“What then? What had Don Consolo said? Had he made only the arm of silver appear?”
“And was not the entire bust a better omen? When would Pallura return with the candles?”
“Were there a hundred pounds of wax? Only a hundred pounds? And when would the bells begin to sound? What then? What then?”
The clamours increased around Giacobbe; those furthest away drew near to the church; from all the streets the people overflowed on to the piazza and filled it.
Giacobbe replied to the interrogators. He spoke in a low voice, as if he were about to reveal terrible secrets, as if he were the bearer of prophecies from afar. He had witnessed on high, in the centre of blood, a threatening hand and then a black veil, and then a sword and a trumpet....
“Tell us! Tell us!” the others induced him, while watching his face, seized with a strange greediness to hear marvellous things, while, in the meantime the fable sped from mouth to mouth throughout the assembled multitude.