But in Anania's soul dolorous tumult raged still. Alas! the illumined sea which had flooded his soul while he poured over his letters on the hill of Bonaria, had grown dark, and was tossed and torn by tempest.
"Oh God! oh God! grant she may be dead. Have pity on me, Lord!" he sobbed that night, racked with insomnia and sad thoughts.
The idea had shot through his mind that one of the brawling women who lived in the pink cottage might be his mother. He no longer however thought that, for the landlady when she brought his supper had told him particulars of the women which would not fit for Olì. But what matter? If she were not here, she was there; in some unknown but real place; at Cagliari, in Rome, somewhere, she was living or had been living, a life like that of the women whom the decent inhabitants of the Via S. Lucifero wanted to chase from their vicinity.
"Why did Margherita write to me?" said Anania in anguish, "and why have I replied? That woman will always stand between us. What have I been dreaming? To-morrow I must write to Margherita and tell her all."
"But how can I tell her?" he asked, again turning and tossing on his bed. "And if that woman is dead? Why must I renounce my happiness? Doesn't Margherita probably know about my birth? If it shocked her, she would not have written to me. Yes, but she thinks my mother is dead, or at any rate dead for me. While I feel she is alive, and that it is my duty to seek her, and find her, and lift her out of hell. Perhaps she has reformed already. No, she hasn't. I am sure she hasn't! Oh, it's horrible! I hate her! I hate her, hate her! I'll murder her."
Atrocious visions appeared before his eyes. He saw his mother brawling with other women of her own sort, with lurid and bestial men. He heard cries. He shook with hatred and disgust.
At midnight he wept, smothering his sobs, biting the pillow, wringing his hands, tearing his breast. He snatched away the amulet Olì had given him on the day of their flight from Fonni, and flung it against the wall. Could he but tear out and hurl from him the whole memory of his mother!
Suddenly he marvelled at his tears, rose, and found the amulet, but did not again put it round his neck. He asked himself whether he would have minded so much about his mother if he were not in love with Margherita. He answered himself, Yes, just as much. A sort of emptiness filled his mind. He wearied of his self-torment. Then other thoughts came to him. He heard the moaning of the wind, the loud roar of the sea. He thought of a forest searched by the wind, silvered by the moon; he remembered the woods of Orthobene, where so often while he was picking violets the sound of the wind in the ilexes had seemed to him the sound of the sea. Then suddenly the cruel problem assaulted him with renewed fury. "Suppose she has reformed? It will be just the same, just the same. I've got to seek her, and find her, and help her. It was for my good she deserted me. Otherwise, I shouldn't have had a name or a place in society. If I had stayed with her I'd have been a beggar. I'd have lived in shame, I'd have been a thief, a criminal. But isn't it all the same? Am I not ruined just the same? No! no, it's not the same! I am the son of my own deeds. Only Margherita won't have me because—Oh why, why? why shouldn't she have me? Am I dishonoured? What fault is it of mine? She loves me. Yes, she loves me because I'm the son of my own deeds. And probably that woman is dead. Ah, why do I delude myself? She is not dead, I feel it. She's alive, and she is still young! How old is she? Thirty-three, perhaps; ah yes, quite young!"
The idea that she was still young softened him somewhat. "If she were fifty I couldn't forgive her, that would make it impossible. Oh, why did she desert me? If she had kept me with her she wouldn't have gone back into sin. I would have worked for her. By this time I'd have been a labourer, a shepherd, a workman. I should never have known Margherita. I should have been quite happy."
But the dream of what he might have been disgusted him. He did not love labour. He did not love poor people. He had endured the poverty of the environment in which he had lived till quite lately, only because he had good hope of rising above it in the future.