“Yes,” replied ’Ntoni.
“And where will you go?” asked Alessio.
“I don’t know. I came to see you all. But since I have been here the food seems to poison me. Besides, I can’t stay here, where everybody knows me, and for that I came at night. I’ll go along way off, where nobody knows me, and earn my bread.”
The others hardly dared to breathe, for their hearts felt as if they were held in a vice, and they felt that he was right in speaking as he did. ’Ntoni stood at the door looking about him, not being able to make up his mind to go.
“I will let you know where I am,” he said at last; and when he was in the court under the medlar-tree, where it was dark, he said, “And grandfather?”
Alessio did not answer. ’Ntoni was silent, too, for a while, and then said:
“I did not see Lia.”
And as he waited in vain for the answer, he added, with a quiver in his voice, as if he were cold, “Is she dead, too?”
Still Alessio did not answer. Then ’Ntoni, who was under the medlar-tree, with his bag in his hand, sat down, for his legs trembled under him, but rose up suddenly, stammering, “Adieu; I must go.”
Before going away he wanted to go over the house to see if everything were in its old place; but now he who had had the heart to leave them all, and to stab Don Michele, and to pass five years in prison, had not the heart to pass from one room into another unless they bade him do it. Alessio, who saw in his eyes that he wanted to see all the place, took him into the stable to show him the calf Nunziata had bought, which was fat and sleek; and in a corner there was the hen with her chickens; then he took him in the kitchen, where they had made a new oven, and into the room beside it, where Mena slept with Nunziata’s children, who seemed to her like her own. ’Ntoni looked at everything, and nodded his head, saying, “There grandfather would have put the calf, and here the hens used to be, and here the girls slept when there was the other one—” But there he stopped short, and looked about him, with tears in his eyes. At that moment the Mangiacarubbe passed by, scolding Brasi Cipolla, her husband, at the top of her voice, and ’Ntoni said, “That one has found a husband, and now when they have done quarrelling they will go back to their own house to sleep.”