Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

V

When in the year 1851 Anna came for the first time to the country of Pescara, the feast of Rosario was approaching, which is celebrated on the first Sunday of October.

The woman came from Ortona on foot, for the purpose of fulfilling a vow; and bearing with her, hidden in a handkerchief of silk, a little heart of silver, she walked religiously along the seacoast; since at that time the province road was not yet constructed, and a wood of pines almost covered the virgin soil. The day was calm, save that the waves of the sea were ever increasing and at the farthest point of the horizon the clouds continued to rise in the shape of large funnels. Anna walked on entirely absorbed in holy thoughts. Towards evening, as she was approaching Salini, suddenly the rain began to fall, at first gently, but later in a great downpour; so much so that, not finding any shelter, she was wet through and through. Further on, the gorge of the Alento was flooded, and she had to remove her shoes and ford the river. In the vicinity of Vallelonga the rain ceased, and the forest of pines serenely revived gave forth an odour almost of incense. Anna, rendering thanks in her soul to her Lord, followed the shore path with steps more rapid, since she felt the unwholesome dampness penetrate her bones, and her teeth began to chatter from a chill.

At Pescara she was suddenly stricken with a swamp-fever, and cared for through pity in the house of Donna Cristina Basile. From her bed on hearing the sacred chants, and seeing the tops of the standards wave to the height of her window, she set herself to praying and invoking her recovery. When the Virgin passed she could see only the jewelled crown, and she endeavoured to kneel upon the pillows in order to worship.

After three weeks she recovered and Donna Cristina having asked her to remain, she stayed on in the capacity of a servant. She had a little room looking out upon a court. The walls were whitened with plaster, an old screen covered with curious figures blocked a corner, and among the beams of the roof many spiders stretched in peace their intricate webs. Under the window projected a short roof, and further down opened the court full of tame birds. On the roof grew from a pile of earth enclosed with five tiles a tobacco plant. The sun lingered there from early in the morning until the evening. Every summer the plant bloomed. Anna, in this new life, in this new house, little by little felt herself revive and her natural inclination for order reasserted itself.

She attended tranquilly and without speaking to all her duties. Meanwhile her belief in things supernatural increased. Two or three legends had in the distant past established themselves with regard to certain spots in the Basile house, and from generation to generation they had been handed down. In the yellow room on the second floor (now unoccupied) lived the soul of Donna Isabella. In a dark room with a winding staircase descending to a door that had not been opened for a long time, lived the soul of Don Samuele. Those two names exercised a singular power over the present occupants, and diffused through the entire ancient building a kind of conventional solemnity. Further, as the inside court was surrounded by many roofs, the cats on the loggia gathered in counsel and mewed with a mysterious sweetness, while begging Anna for bits from her meals.

In March of the year 1853 the husband of Donna Cristina after many weeks of convulsions died of a urinary disease. He was a God fearing man, domestic and charitable, at the head of a congregation of landowners, read theological works, and knew how to play on the piano several simple airs of the ancient Neapolitan masters. When the viaticum arrived, magnificent with its quantity of servers and richness of equipage, Anna knelt on the doorsill and prayed in a loud voice. The room filled with the vapour of incense, in the midst of which glittered the cyborium and the censers flickering like burning lamps. One heard weeping, and then arose the voices of the priests recommending the soul to the Most High. Anna, carried away by the solemnity of that sacrament, lost all horror of death, and from that time on the death of a Christian seemed to her a journey sweet and joyful.

Donna Cristina kept the windows of her house closed for an entire month. She mourned for her husband at the hours of dinner and supper, gave in his name alms to beggars; and many times a day, with the tail of a fox swished the dust from his piano, as if from a relic, while emitting sighs. She was a woman of forty years, tending toward fleshiness, although still youthful in her form which sterility had preserved. And since she inherited from the deceased a considerable sum, the five oldest bachelors of the country began to lay ambushes for her and to allure her with flattering wiles to new nuptials. The competitors were: Don Ignazio Cespa, an effeminate person, of ambiguous sex, with the face of an old gossip marked from the small-pox, and a head of hair filled with cosmetics, with fingers heavy from rings and ears pierced with two minute circles of gold; Don Paolo Nervegna, doctor of law, a man talkative and keen, who had his lips always curled as if he were chewing on some bitter herb, and a kind of red, unconcealable wart on his forehead; Don Fileno d’Amelio, a new leader of the congregation, slightly bald, with a forehead sloping backward, and deep-set lamb-like eyes; Don Pompeo Pepe, a jocular man and a lover of wine, women and leisure, luxuriantly corpulent, especially in his face and sonorous in laughter and speech; Don Fiore Ussorio, a man of pugnacious disposition, a great reader of political works, and a triumphant quoter of historical examples in every dispute, pallid with an unearthly pallor, with a thin circle of beard around his cheeks and a mouth peculiarly leaning toward an oblique line. To these were added, as a help to Donna Cristina’s power of resistance, the Abbot Egidio Cennamele who, wishing to draw the heritage to the benefit of the church, with well covered cleverness antagonised the wooers by means of flattery. This great contest, which some day should be narrated in more detail, lasted a long time and held great variety of incident.

The principal theatre of the first act was the dining-room—a rectangular room where on the French paper of the walls were graphically represented the facts of Ulysses’ sail to the island of Calypso. Almost every evening the combatants assembled around the besieged’s window and played the game of briscola and of love alternately.