"And you, remember——" began Anania, stung by his companion's ridicule. But he checked himself and grew red.
"Oh, I remember perfectly. I owe you twenty-seven lire. Don't be afraid for your twenty-seven lire. My father, you recollect, has seven tancas in a row."
"With a river in the middle!" cried Anania, banging his books on the table. "I defy you and your father and your tancas! I snap my fingers at you."
Thus they separated, the two little supermen who in the Coliseum had thought themselves as high as the moon. Anania flung out of the dingy room with the intention of never setting foot in it again.
Once in the street, his heart still swelling with indignation, he went automatically towards the Corso, and almost without noticing it, found himself in Via del Seminario. It was burning noon, parched by a hot east wind. The awning of the shops flapped spitefully against the passers-by. The smell of the pavement was blended with perfume of flowers but also with odours of paint, of drugs, of provisions. Anania's nerves were on edge. He encountered a flock of young priests with floating black cassocks and compared them to crows. He remembered a long ago quarrel with Bustianeddu, and hated Battista Daga who represented the race of vain-glorious and cynical Sardinians. In this mood he rang at the door of Maria Obinu.
A tall, pale woman, shabbily dressed in black, came to open. Anania felt sudden dismay. Her greenish eyes seemed familiar.
"Signora Obinu?" he asked.
"Yes, that is my name," answered the woman, her tones somewhat coarse.
"No," thought the youth, "it's not her voice."
He went in. Signora Obinu took him across a dark vestibule, then into a small parlour, grey, dreary, badly lighted. His attention was caught by a variety of Sardinian objects, specially the head of a deer and a wild sheepskin nailed to the wall. He thought of his birthplace and felt his doubts reborn.