The Land of Cockayne: A Novel

by Matilde Serao

Up till then, everything had gone on like a commonplace joyous winter trip, on a fine sunny day in a quiet country place: the inn, the host in the doorway, the boy serving the table, and the four fellow-guests, looked perfectly easy, in sympathy with the quietness around. But again there was a noise of wheels from Ponte Rossi Road, and an ostentatious whip-cracking. Raffaele and his friends looked up, as if out of mere curiosity, while Carmela, cut to the heart by that sound, felt her legs giving way, and she prayed the Lord silently to give her the strength not to die just then.

It was a party like the first one—of four young fellows with light trousers, tight at the knees, and neat black jackets, wearing their caps over one ear. Carmela recognised the one that led the party—Ferdinando, called the l'Ammartenato Teaser. He said something to the driver on paying him; the man listened, bending down, then went off slowly the road he had come, without turning his head. The two parties looked straight at each other solemnly, and bowed very punctiliously. Raffaele and his friends went on eating quietly; the other four took off their hats and hung them on the bare boughs. Macaroni was much quicker served for them, perhaps because the host had got ready enough for the two parties, so that at one time, as Raffaele's friends were eating slower and Ferdinando's were hurrying their mouthfuls, they got to the same stage, then went on together to the next course, swallowing, in two gulps, pork chops and lettuce salad, and drinking glasses of wine one after another as if they were water. While they were drinking, the two tables glanced at each other now and then quite indifferently. In spite of the quantity of wine swallowed they seemed to keep very cool; some of them lay back in their chairs occasionally in a calm way. Still, all that calm and free-and-easiness was the same at each table, curiously alike, as if the two sets had made a tacit agreement; but it fell short of the gaiety natural to Neapolitans on an outing, when laughter, shouts, and songs rise to heaven. Sometimes the youths round Raffaele, nicknamed Farfariello, bent towards him, and he smiled proudly; it was the only sign of cheerfulness in the company. Ferdinando—Ammartenato as his nickname was—did not smile even; his set tossed glasses of wine down their throats always, not moving a muscle. Carmela looked on from above; her lover's smiles, the wine drunk off by the two sets, and their peaceful free-and-easiness, did not reassure her. Amongst other things, she saw the movement of the lips, but did not hear the words. It seemed to her that a deep silence was between these people, who understood each other by signs; it was a doleful silence, in the midst of country peace. A slow, ever-increasing anguish oppressed her breathing, as if her heart had contracted and only beat at intervals; her whole will was in abeyance. She stood, leaning with her forehead against the dusty window, rigid, her sad eyes fixed on Raffaele's face, as if she wanted to read what was passing through his mind. Now the inn-keeper and his boy brought the fruit—that is to say, dried chestnuts and a bundle of celery with white stalks and long, thin green leaves—and with it more wine. Then, all of a sudden, after his father had whispered something in his ear, the little boy took off his apron, put on his cap, and started off running up the Ponte Rossi Road. As it was getting near the end of the meal, Carmela felt her brain giving way; she had one single desire growing in her mind to go down, take Raffaele by the arm, and carry him off with her, afar, where neither cammorristi nor guappi could reach. She dared not. For a month before that Raffaele had been cold and hard to her, avoiding her persistently, so that she got to places he had been at always ten minutes after he had left. He had let her know, too, that it was no use; in any case, he would have nothing to do with her.

'He might at least tell me why, and I would go away satisfied,' she cried out, weeping, to those who had repeated Raffaele's words.

But she had not seen him for a month; in fact, if she knew that two sets of Hooligans were going that day to a mysterious appointment at the Barbassone inn at Ponte Rossi, it was from an indiscretion of a chum of Raffaele's. He had said it, looking her straight in the eyes, with a secret meaning she could not help guessing, so that she left him at once, and on foot, from her low-lying quarter, she had dragged herself up there, panting, sorrowful, biting her lips, not to cry out nor weep.

She dared not go down; she felt Raffaele would abuse her and chase her away rudely, as he had always done lately. She shook at his angry voice and contemptuous words. Now the dinner was coming to an end very quietly; the two sets were smoking cigars, gazing into vacancy with the solemn satisfaction of people who have dined well and are getting ready to digest. For a time the peace that rose from the surroundings was such, and the youths were all so quiet, that for a moment Carmela felt her anguish soothed, and she hoped it was a tragic dream. Only for a moment, to fall deeper again into a sorrowful abyss, where the moments passed with dramatic slowness.

Ferdinando's party rose. The four young fellows, with the usual cheap swell gestures, pulled up their trousers, tightening the straps, dragged down their jackets, and set their caps haughtily across their heads. They went away, passing beside Raffaele's table solemnly; then they all touched their hats, and the others answered, saying the same word. Carmela could not bear what; it was 'Greeting.' They went away; she gave a sigh of relief. But instead of returning by Ponte Rossi, whence they came, and where perhaps the carriage was waiting for them, Carmela saw them go round the house, and one by one. She had run to the window that looked on to the inn-keeper's garden and the fields, and saw them disappear behind a green screen of trees. Panting, she ran again to the other window, that looked on to the inn-yard, where Raffaele's party were getting ready to go off also. All was safe if they took the Capodimonte Road, whence they had come. It would only mean that there had been two dinners, with no after-thought nor consequences. The preparations had been somewhat slow, but at a signal from Raffaele all hurried, while he, with a spent cigar in a corner of his mouth, paid the reckoning quietly. He got up, stretching his arm for his cap, which was hanging from a bough; in doing it his waistcoat pulled up, and Carmela saw something shining at his trousers belt. It was a revolver. Yet for a last moment she still hoped. Perhaps they were going away peacefully by the quiet country roads to the noisy town; and, at any rate, Raffaele always carried a revolver, a small-sized one. But in a moment the horrid fact she dreaded looked to her like a certainty. Very quietly Raffaele and the other three youths turned, not by Capodimonte Road, but behind the inn, through the garden, following the same road as the other set, and making up to them—that is to say, walking quietly with their springy step one after the other. She could bear it no longer; she felt something give way within. She ran to the storeroom door; the man had locked her in, evidently, for it would not open. She, wild, blind with grief and rage, began to shake the door, which was old and worm-eaten, so that it offered little resistance. The bolt the host had drawn broke with the rattling, and she very nearly fell on the landing from the shock. She went down the outside stair at a bound, but on the last steps she found the host, his shrivelled peasant's face very pale, for he had heard all the noise. He stood in her way.

'Where are you going?'

'Let me pass—let go!'

'Where are you going? Are you mad?'

'Let me go, I say!'