Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

These effects repeated themselves daily, with a periodic regularity. At vespers in the oratorio they lit the lamps; the nuns made a kneeling circle, and the sacred representation began. As the infirm woman entered into the cataleptic ecstasies, vague preludes on the organ lifted the souls of the worshippers to a higher sphere. The light of the lamps was diffused on high, giving forth an uncertain flicker, and a fading sweetness to the appearance of things. At a certain point the organ was silent. The respiration of the infirm woman became deeper, her arms were stretched so that in the emaciated wrists the tendons vibrated like the strings of an instrument. Then suddenly, the sick woman bounded to her feet, crossed her arms on her breast, while resting in the position of the Caryatides of a Baptistery. Her voice resounded in the silence, now sweetly, now lugubriously, now placid, almost always incomprehensible.

At the beginning of the year 1877 these paroxysms diminished in frequency, they occurred two or three times a week and then totally disappeared, leaving the body of the woman in a miserable state of weakness. Then several years passed, in which the poor idiot lived in atrocious suffering, with her limbs rendered inert from muscular spasms. She was no longer able to keep herself clean, she ate only soft bread and a few herbs and wore around her neck and on her breast a large quantity of little crosses, relics and other images. She spoke stutteringly through lack of teeth and her hair fell out, her eyes were already glazed like those of an old beast of burden about to die.

One time, in May, while she was suffering, deposited under the portal, and the sisters were gathering the roses for Maria, there passed before her the turtle which still dragged its pacific and innocent life through the cloisteral garden. The old woman saw it move and little by little recede. It awakened no recollection in her mind. The turtle lost itself among the bunches of thyme.

But the sisters regarded her imbecility and the infirmity of the woman as one of those supreme proofs of martyrdom to which the Lord calls the elect in order to sanctify and glorify them later in Paradise and they surrounded her with veneration and care.

In the summer of the year 1881, there appeared signs of approaching death. Consumed and maimed, that miserable body no longer resembled a human being. Slow deformations had corrupted the joints of the arms; tumours, large as apples, protruded from her sides, on her shoulder and on the back of her head.

The morning of the 10th day of September, about the eighth hour, a trembling of the earth shook Ortona to its foundations. Many buildings fell, the roofs and walls of others were injured, and still others were bent and twisted. All of the good people of Ortona, with weeping, with cries, with invocations, with great invoking of saints and madonnas, came out of their doors and assembled on the plain of San Rocco, fearing greater perils. The nuns, seized with panic, broke from the cloister and ran into the streets, struggling and seeking safety. Four of them bore Anna upon a table. And all drew toward the plain, in the direction of the uninjured people.

As they arrived in sight of the people, spontaneous shouts arose, since the presence of these religious souls seemed propitious. On all sides lay the sick, the aged and infirm, children in swaddling clothes, women stupid from fear. A beautiful morning sun shed lustre upon the tumultuous waves of the sea and upon the vineyards; and along the lower coast the sailors ran, seeking their wives, calling their children by name, out of breath, and hoarse from climbing; and from Caldara there began to arrive herds of sheep and oxen with their keepers, flocks of turkey-cocks with their feminine guardians, and cart-houses, since all feared solitude and men and beasts in the turmoil became comrades.

Anna, resting upon the ground, beneath an olive tree, perceiving death to be near, was mourning with a weak murmur, because she did not wish to die without the Sacrament, and the nuns around her administered comfort to her, and the bystanders looked at her piously. Now, suddenly among the people spread the news that from the Porta Caldara had issued the image of the Apostle. Hope revived and hymns of thanksgiving mounted to the sky. As from afar vibrated an unexpected flash, the women knelt and tearfully with their hair dishevelled, began to walk upon their knees, towards the flash, while intoning psalms.

Anna became agonised. Sustained by two sisters, she heard the prayers, heard the announcement, and perhaps under her last illusions, she saw the Apostle approaching, for over her hollow face there passed a smile of joy. Several bubbles of saliva appeared upon her lips, a violent undulation of her body occurred, extended visibly to the extremities of her body, while upon her eyes the eyelids fell, reddish as from thin blood, and her head shrank into her shoulders. Thus the virgin Anna finally expired.

When the flash appeared more closely to the adoring women, there shone in the sun the form of a beast of burden carrying balanced upon its back, according to the custom, an ornament of metal.