“Why didn’t Don Silvestro and the vicar come?” asked Goosefoot.
“I told them to, but they appear to have something particular to do,” answered Padron ’Ntoni.
“They’re over there at the shop, and there’s a fuss as if the man with the numbers of the lottery had come. What the deuce can have happened?”
An old woman rushed across the piazza, screaming and tearing her hair as if at some dreadful news; and before Pizzuti’s shop there was a crowd as thick as if an ass had tumbled under his load there; and even the children stood outside listening, open-mouthed, not daring to go nearer.
“For my part I shall go and see what it is,” said Goosefoot, coming slowly down off the wall.
In the group, instead of a fallen ass, there were two soldiers of the marine corps, with sacks on their shoulders and their heads bound up, going home on leave, who had stopped on their way at the barber’s to get a glass of bitters. They were telling how there had been a great battle at sea, and how ships as big as all Aci Trezza, full as they could hold of soldiers, had gone down just as they were; so that their tales sounded like those of the men who go about recounting the adventures of Orlando and the Paladins of France on the marina at Catania, and the people stood as thick as flies in the sun to listen to them.
“Maruzza la Longa’s son was also on board the Red d’Italia” observed Don Silvestro, who had also drawn near to listen with the rest.
“Now I’ll go and tell that to my wife,” cried Master Cola Zuppiddu, “then she’ll be sure to go to Cousin Maruzza. I don’t like coolnesses between friends and neighbors.”
But meanwhile the poor Longa knew nothing about it, and was laughing and amusing herself among her relations and friends.
The soldier seemed never tired of talking, and gesticulated with his arms like a preacher.