Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

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.

IV

During the last days of June the ass fell sick. It took neither food nor drink for almost a week. The daily journeys were interrupted. One morning Anna, descending to the shed, found the beast all cramped upon the straw in a pitiable condition. A kind of hoarse, tenacious cough shook from time to time his huge frame thinly covered with skin, while above the eyes two deep cavities had formed like two hollow orbits, and the eyes themselves resembled two great bladders filled with whey. When the ass heard Anna’s voice he tried to get up; his body reeled upon his legs, his neck sank beneath the sharp shoulder-blades, and his ears dangled, with involuntary and ungainly motions, like those of a big toy broken at the hinges. A mucous liquid dropped from his nose, sometimes flowing in little sluggish rivulets down to his knees. The raw spots in the skin turned the colour of azure, and the sores here and there bled.

Anna, at this sight, was inwardly torn by a pitying anguish; and, since by nature and by habit she never experienced any physical repugnance on coming in contact with things commonly regarded as repellant, she drew near to touch the animal. With one hand she held up his lower jaw and with the other a shoulder and thus sought to help him walk, hoping that exercise might do him good. At first the animal hesitated, shaken by new outbreaks of coughing, but at length he began to walk down the gentle incline that led to the shore. The water before them shone white in the birth of the morning and the Calafatti near La Penna were smearing a keel with pitch. As Anna sustained her burden with her hands, and held the halter rope, the ass through a misstep of a hind leg fell suddenly. The great structure of bones gave a rattle within as if ruptured, the skin over the stomach and flanks resounded dully and palpitated. The legs made a motion as if to run, while blood issued from the gums and spread among the teeth.

The woman began to call and run toward the house. But the Calafatti, having arrived, laughed and joked at the reclining ass. One of them struck the dying beast in the stomach with his foot. Another grabbed his ears and raised his head, which sank heavily again to earth. The eyes at length closed, a chill ran over the white skin of the stomach, parting the tufts of hair as a wind would do, while one of his hind legs beat two or three times in the air. Then all was still, except that in the shoulder, where there was an ulcer, a slight quivering took place, like that caused by some insect a moment before in the living flesh. When Anna returned to the spot she found the Calafatti dragging the carcass by the tail, and singing a Requiem with imitation brays.

Thus Anna was left alone. Still for a long time she lived on in the house of her relatives and gradually faded, while she fulfilled her humble duties and endured with much Christian patience her vexations. In 1845 her epilepsy returned to her with violence, but disappeared again after some months. Her religious faith became at the same time more deep and living. She went up to the church every morning and every evening, and knelt habitually in an obscure corner protected by a great pillar of marble where was pictured in rough bas-relief the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt. Did she not at first choose that corner because she was attracted by the gentle ass bearing the child Jesus and His mother from the land of idolatry? A great peace as of love descended upon her soul when she bent her knees in the shadow, and prayers rose unpolluted from her breast as from a natural spring, because she prayed only through a blind passion to adore, and not through any hope to obtain the grace of happiness in her own life. She prayed with her head lowered on a chair, and as Christians, in coming and going, touched the holy water with their fingers and crossed themselves, she from time to time shivered on feeling on her hair some welcome drops of the holy water.