“Pallura, poor Pallura, why do you not answer?”
He remained motionless, with closed hands, with mouth half open, with a brown down on his throat and chin, with a sort of beauty of youth still apparent in his features even though they were strained by the convulsions of pain. From beneath the binding of his forehead a stream of blood dropped down upon his temples, while at the angles of his mouth appeared little bubbles of red foam, and from his throat issued a species of thick, interrupted hissing. Around him the assistance, the questions, the feverish glances increased. The mare every so often shook her head and neighed in the direction of her stable. An oppression as of an imminent hurricane weighed upon the country.
Then one heard feminine cries in the direction of the square, cries of the mother, that seemed even louder in the midst of the sudden silence of the others. An enormous woman, almost suffocated by her flesh, passed through the crowd, and arrived crying at the cart. As she was so heavy as to be unable to climb into the cart, she grasped the feet of her son, with words of love interspersed among her tears, given in a broken voice, so sharp, and with an expression of grief so terribly beast like, that a shiver ran through all of the bystanders and all turned their faces aside.
“Zaccheo! Zaccheo! my heart! my joy!”—the widow cried, over and over again, while kissing the feet of the wounded one, and drawing him to her toward the ground. The wounded man stirred, twisted his mouth in a spasm, opened his eyes wide, but he really could not see, because a kind of humid film covered his sight. Great tears began to flow from the corners of his eyelids and to run down upon his cheeks and neck, his mouth remained twisted, and in the thick hissing of his throat one perceived a vain effort to speak. They crowded around him. “Speak, Pallura! Who has wounded you? Who has wounded you? Speak! Speak!”
And beneath the question their wrath raged; their violent desires intensified, a dull craving for vengeance shook them and that hereditary hatred boiled up again in the souls of all.
“Speak! Who has wounded you? Tell us about it! Tell us about it!”
The dying man opened his eyes a second time, and as they clasped both of his hands, perhaps through the warmth of that living contact the spirit in him revived and his face lighted up. He had upon his lips a vague murmur, betwixt the foam that rose, suddenly more abundant and bloody. They did not as yet understand his words. One could hear in the silence the breathing of the breathless multitude, and all eyes held within their depths a single flame because all minds awaited a single word.
“Ma—Ma—Ma—scalico.”
“Mascalico! Mascalico!” howled Giacobbe, who was bending, with strained ear, to grasp the weak syllables from that dying mouth. An immense cry greeted this explanation. There was at first a confused rising and falling as of a tempest in the multitude. Then when one voice raised above the tumult gave the signal, the multitude disbanded in mad haste.
One single thought pursued those men, one thought that seemed to have flashed instantaneously into the minds of all: to arm themselves with something in order to wound. A species of sanguinary fatality settled upon all consciences beneath the surly splendour of the twilight, in the midst of the electrifying odours emanating from the panting country.