'As sure as death,' said the medium dolefully.
He bowed to Don Gennaro, and, with renewed strength, went off quickly towards Municipio Square. Parascandolo looked at him as he went off, and felt for the first time a shudder at cold malignity.
CHAPTER XVII
BARBASSONE'S INN—THE DUEL
In the little Barbassone inn, on the road that goes down from Moiariella di Capodimonte to Ponte Rossi, there were no customers that clear winter morning. It was really an outhouse on pillars, roughly built, and on the ground-floor there was a big, smoky kitchen with a wide, grimy fireplace and a large hall, where rustic tables were set out for eating and drinking. On the upper floor, which was reached by a queer outside staircase, the host and his wife slept in the room over the kitchen. The other bare room, used as a storeroom, was full of black sausages and stinking cheese, strings of garlic hung on the walls, and bunches of onions and winter marrows strung on osier withes. Below, in front of the inn, were two or three arbours, that must have been covered thick with leaves in spring and summer, but now they were bare, showing the wooden framework. Under the arbours were dusty, broken tables covered with dry, rustling leaves; and at the side of the inn was a bowling-green, surrounded by a low myrtle hedge. The host had had a wooden stair made inside, leading from the ground-floor to the upper rooms; and a door at the back opened on to the fields. From the first-floor windows could be seen the suburbs of Naples, Reclusorio Road, the railway-station, the swamps outside the town, and the Campo Santo Hill. Two roads went up to the inn; one came from Moiariella, the other from Ponte Rossi. There was the way from the fields also, but it did not count.
However, if the neighbourhood of the country inn was deserted, some company were certainly expected, for the servant in the kitchen that fine quiet morning was giving hard blows to some pork chops on a big table. On the stove a kettle was boiling for a macaroni. Before the inn door the host, a sagacious-looking peasant, was washing fennel and salad in a bowl on the ground, throwing away the bad leaves to the thin fowls that were clucking about. The hostess of the Barbassone was away; her husband often sent her out when it suited him, to buy fresh fish, tripe, or whatever could not be got at Capodimonte market. He stayed at home with the old servant, who was busy in the kitchen helping him; and there was a son of his, about twelve years old, who waited on the customers. This boy was now employed in the kitchen grating down some white nipping Cotrone cheese, that looks like chalk and burns the throat, but Naples throats do not object to it.
It was a soft, quiet time near noon. The host often looked to see if anyone was coming from the low road of Ponte Rossi, or if anyone was coming down Moiariella road, but Barbassone's keen face was as serene as the December morning. He bent down again to soak the lettuce-leaves in the already earthy water of the basin, when, without his having seen her, a black figure of a woman rose before him. She was a girl a little over twenty, but so worn with fatigue, want and sorrow she looked years older, and her great black eyes burned in her lean face. She was Carmela, the cigar-girl, Annarella and Filomena's unhappy sister, Raffaele or Farfariello's despised love. She had come on foot, so naturally made no noise. A thinly-veiled excitement was mingled in her face with the weariness after her long walk. She was dressed like a vagrant in a cotton frock quite washed out, with a rag of a red shawl round her neck and a rumpled cotton apron at her waist.
'Good-day, gossip,' she said, greeting the host with Naples common folk's favourite title.
'Good-morning, lass,' he answered, looking at her suspiciously.