Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

III

In the summer of 1835 Luca set sail for a Grecian port upon the skiff “Trinita” belonging to Don Giovanni Camaccione. Moreover, as he held a secret thought in his mind, before leaving, he sold his furniture and asked some relatives to keep Anna in their house until he should return. Some time after that the skiff returned loaded with dried figs and eggs from Corinth, after having touched at the coast of Roto. Luca was not among the crew, and it became known later that he had remained in the “country of the oranges” with a lady-love.

Anna remembered their former stuttering hostess. A deep sadness settled down upon her life at this recollection. The house of her relatives was on the eastern road, in the vicinity of Molo. The sailors came there to drink wine in a low room, where almost all day their songs resounded amid the smoke of their pipes. Anna passed in and out among the drinkers, carrying full pitchers, and her first instinct of modesty awoke from that continuous contact, that continuous association with bestial men. Every moment she had to endure their impudent jokes, cruel laughter and suggestive gestures, the wickedness of men worn out by the fatigues of a sailor’s life. She dared not complain, because she ate her bread in the house of another. But that continuous ordeal weakened her and a serious mental derangement arose little by little from her weakened condition.

Naturally affectionate, she had a great love for animals. An aged ass was housed under a shed of straw and clay behind the house. The gentle beast daily bore burdens of wine from Saint Apollinare to the tavern; and for all that his teeth had commenced to grow yellow, and his hoofs to decay, for all that his skin was already parched and had scarcely a hair upon it, still, at the sight of a flowering thistle he put up his ears and began to bray vivaciously in his former youthful way.

Anna filled his manger with fodder and his trough with water. When the heat was severe, she came to rest in the shadow of the shed. The ass ground up wisps of straw laboriously between his jaws and she with a leafy branch performed a work of kindness by keeping his back free from the molestation of insects. From time to time the ass turned its long-eared head with a curling of the flaccid lips which revealed the gums as if performing a reddish animal smile of gratitude, and with an oblique movement of his eye in its orbit showed the yellowish ball veined with purple like a gall bladder. The insects circled with a continuous buzzing around the dung-heap; neither from earth nor sea came a sound, and an infinite sense of peace filled the soul of the woman.

In April of 1842 Pantaleo, the man who guided the beast of burden on his daily journeys, died from a knife-wound. From that time on the duty fell to Anna. Either she left at dawn and returned by noon, or she left at noon and returned by night. The road wound over a sunny hill planted with olives, descended through a moist country used for pasture, and on rising again through vineyards, arrived at the factories of Saint Apollinare. The ass walked wearily in front with lowered ears, a green fringe all worn and discoloured beat against his ribs and haunches and in the pack-saddle glittered several fragments of brass plate.

When the animal stopped to regain his breath, Anna gave him a little caressing blow on the neck and urged him with her voice, because she had pity for his infirmities. Every so often she tore from the hedges a handful of leaves and offered them to him for refreshment; she was moved on feeling in her palm the soft movement of his lips as they nibbled her offering. The hedges were in bloom and the blossoms of the white thorn had a flavour of bitter almonds.

On the confines of the olive grove was a large cistern, and near this cistern a long, stone canal where the animals came to drink. Every day Anna paused at this spot and here she and the ass quenched their thirst before continuing the journey. Once she encountered the keeper of a herd of cattle, who was a native of Tollo and whose expression was a little cross and who had a hare-lip. The man returned her greeting and they began to converse on the pasturage and the water, then on sanctuaries and miracles. Anna listened graciously and with frequent smiles. She was lean and pale with very clear eyes and uncommonly large mouth, and her auburn hair was smoothed back without a part. On her neck one saw the red scars of her burns and her veins stood out and palpitated incessantly.

From that time on their conversations were repeated at intervals. Through the grass the cattle dispersed, either lying down and pondering or standing and eating. Their peaceful moving forms added to the tranquillity of the pastoral solitude. Anna, seated on the edge of the cistern, talked simply and the man with his split lip seemed overcome with love. One day with a sudden, spontaneous blossoming of her memory, she told of her sailing to the mountain of Roto; and, since the remoteness of the time had blurred her memory, she told marvellous things with a strong appearance of truth. The man, astonished, listened without winking an eye. When Anna stopped speaking, to both the surrounding silence and solitude seemed deeper and both remained in thought. Then the cattle, driven by habit, came to the trough and between their legs dangled the bags of milk supplied anew from the pasture. As they thrust their noses into the stream, the water diminished with their slow, regular gulps.