'Just because,' she replied with a woman's favourite answer.
'Why should you be a nun? No one wants to be a nun nowadays. Why should you do it?'
'Because, if there is one single person in the world that should go into a convent, it is I; because I have neither desires, nor hopes, nor anything before me. As that is so, you see, I must at least have prayer across this void desert and the desolation that comes before death.'
'Don't say that—don't say it!' he implored, as if for the first time fatality had breathed on his energy and destroyed it.
CHAPTER VI
DONNA CATERINA AND DONNA CONCETTA
The two sisters, Donnas Caterina and Concetta, were sitting opposite each other at the dinner-table. They were eating silently, with their eyes down; and occasionally they bent down to wipe their lips on a corner of the tablecloth that was all marked with bluish wine. A large deep-rimmed dish stood on the table between the two, full of macaroni cooked in oil, salted anchovies, and garlic, all fried lightly in an earthen pan and thrown over the boiling pasta; the two women plunged their forks now and then into the shiny oily macaroni, put some in their plates, and began to eat again. There was a big loaf of white underbaked bread, too—the tortano: they broke off bits with their hands to eat the macaroni with. A greeny-blue glass bottle full of reddish wine, that made bluish reflections, stood on the tablecloth; big glasses, and a salt-cellar, also of glass—nothing else. The sisters used leaden forks, and coarse knives with black handles; they sometimes broke off a bit of bread and dipped it in the fried oil at the bottom of the dish. Caterina, who was the roughest and saw fewest people—she lived furtively almost—put her bread into the macaroni dressing with her fingers; Concetta, who was more refined, from always going about and seeing people, put the bread neatly on her fork to dip it in the garlic, and nibbled at it after examining it. At one point, indeed, Concetta, finding a burnt bit of garlic, put it aside with a frown. Otherwise the sisters were exactly alike in gestures, way of speaking, and style of dress, though not so much so in features. Both had their hair dressed by the same woman at two sous each: it was drawn up to the top of the head, the coil fastened by big sham tortoise-shell pins, and the fringe slightly powdered over the forehead. Both wore the dress of well-to-do Naples common folk—a petticoat with no jacket, merely a trimmed bodice, that keeps the Spanish name baschina; and they never went without a thick gold chain round the neck—it was the sign of their great power—and they wore high felt boots, with noisy wooden heels. It being dinner-hour, they had left their usual work—a great coverlet of calico, pink one side and green the other, stuffed with cotton-wool—stretched over a big loom, where they stitched at it in wheels, stars, and lozenges, working quickly, one on each side of it, their heads down and noses on the pattern, pulling the needle out and in monotonously. The loom was pushed into a corner; the displaced chairs were noticeable. Now a little servant of fourteen came in, red-haired, white-faced, and marked with freckles, carrying the second course—a bit of Basilicata cheese, like a dry cream cheese, called provola, and two big sticks of celery. She glanced at Donna Caterina to know what to do with the macaroni left in the dish.
'Keep two bits for Menichella,' said the holder of the small game, as she cut a big slice of cheese.
'Yes, ma'am,' the girl said as she went out.