Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

Anna, with a spontaneous impulse for charity, gave to Rosaria all her money kept for alms-giving and her superfluous clothes as well as her earrings, two gold rings and her coral necklace and she promised still further support. At length she retraced the road to Pescara, in company with Fra Mansueto, and bearing the turtle in her basket.

During their walk, as the houses of Ortona withdrew into the distance, a great sadness descended upon the soul of the woman. Crowds of singing pilgrims were passing in other directions, and their songs, monotonous and slow, remained a long while in the air. Anna listened to them; an overwhelming desire drew her to join them, to follow them, to live thus, making pilgrimages from sanctuary to sanctuary, from country to country, in order to exalt the miracles of every saint, the virtues of every relic, the bounty of every Mary.

“They go to Cucullo,” Fra Mansueto said, pointing with his arm to some distant country. And both began to talk of Saint Domenico, who protected the men from the bite of serpents and the seed from caterpillars; then they spoke of the patron saints. At Bugnara, on the bridge of Rivo, more than a hundred cart-houses, among horses and mules, laden with fruit, were going in a procession to the Madonna of the Snow. The devotees rode on their chargers, with sprigs of spikenard on their heads, with strings of dough on their shoulders, and they laid at the feet of the image their cereal gifts. At Bisenti, many youths, with baskets of grain on their heads, were conducting along the roads an ass that carried on its back a larger basket, and they entered the Church of the Madonna of the Angels, to offer them up, while singing. At Torricella Peligna, men and children, crowned with roses and garlands of roses, went up on a pilgrimage to the Madonna of the Roses, situated upon a cliff where was the foot-prints of Samson. At Loreto Apentino a white ox, fattened during the year with abundance of pasturage, moved in pomp behind the statue of Saint Zopito. A red drapery covered him and a child rode upon him. As the sacred ox entered the church, he gave forth the excrescence of his food and the devotees from this smoking material presaged future agriculture.

Of such religious usages Anna and Fra Mansueto were speaking, when they reached the mouth of the Alento. The Channel carried the water of spring between the green foliage not yet flowered. And the Capuchin spoke of the Madonna of the Incoronati, where for the festival of Saint John the devotees wreath their heads with vines, and during the night go with great rejoicing to the River Gizio to bathe.

Anna removed her shoes in order to ford the river. She felt now in her soul an immense and loving veneration for everything, for the trees, the grass, the animals, for all that those Catholic customs had sanctified. Thus from the depths of her ignorance and simplicity arose the instinct of idolatry.

Several months after her return, an epidemic of cholera broke out in the country, and the mortality was great. Anna lent her services to the poor sick ones. Fra Mansueto died. Anna felt much grief at this. In the year 1866, at the recurrence of the festival, she wished to take leave and return to her native place forever, because she saw in her sleep every night Saint Thomas who commanded her to depart. So she took the turtle, her clothes and her savings, weeping she kissed the hand of Donna Cristina, and departed upon a cart, together with two begging nuns.

At Ortona she dwelt in the house of her paralytic uncle. She slept upon a straw pallet and ate nothing but bread and vegetables. She dedicated every hour of the day to the practices of the Church, with a marvellous fervour, and her mind gradually lost all ability to do anything save contemplate Christian mysteries, adore symbols and imagine Paradise. She was completely absorbed with divine charity, completely encompassed with that divine passion which the sacerdotals manifest always with the same signs and the same words. She comprehended but that one single language; had but that one single refuge, sweet and solemn, where her whole heart dilated in a pious security of peace and where her eyes moistened with an ineffable sweetness of tears.

She suffered, for the love of Jesus, domestic miseries, was gentle and submissive and never proffered a lament, a reproof, or a threat. Rosaria extracted from her little by little all of her savings, and commenced then to let her go hungry, to overtax her, to call her vicious names and to persecute the turtle with fierce insistency. The old paralytic gave forth continuously a species of hoarse howls, opening his mouth where the tongue trembled and from which dripped continually quantities of saliva. One day, because his greedy wife swallowed before him some liquor and denied him a drink, escaping with the glass, he arose from his chair with an effort and began to walk toward her, his legs wavering, his feet striking the ground with an involuntary rhythmic stroke. Suddenly he moved faster, his trunk bent forward, while hopping with short pursuing steps, as if pushed by an irresistible impulse, until at length he fell face downward upon the edge of the stairs.

XV

Then Anna, in distress, took the turtle and went to ask succour of Donna Veronica Monteferrante. As the poor woman had already done several services for the monastery, the Abbess, pitying her, gave her work as a serving-nun.