“Give me one for five hundred.”
“Of course! I’d have it replaced and keep four hundred and eighty lire! Of course! Of course!” And she clapped her hands. “But now tell me,” she went on, “why were you ready to practically kill me for those pictures of yours? I wasn’t going to eat them, you know.”
“Let’s not talk about it. It’s a sad story that upsets me.”
She looked abashed. She yawned, stretched her arms, settled her head more comfortably on my lap, and fell asleep.
Not wanting to wake the girl, I sat still and gradually became immersed in my painful cherished memories. Giorgetta, too, had frequently settled down to sleep on my lap, while her mother read to me in her clear voice an article from the newspaper, or a chapter of a novel. But my niece’s hair was as fair as a saint’s halo, her face like the face of an angel, and the breath that escaped her of the very purest, purer than the mountain breeze at sunrise. Occasionally, she would stir, talking in her dream to her doll. I would wait until she was sound asleep, and then very slowly I would get up, holding one arm under her back, supporting her little legs with the other, and I would carry her on tiptoe, followed by Emilia, to her beautiful golden cradle beneath the lace canopy her mother had embroidered. It was in that very same cot, which was so pretty, that Giorgetta died, choked by diphtheria. Before she was taken to heaven, she looked at us one by one—me, her mother, and old Maria—with those darling blue eyes of hers, and could not understand why we were weeping. Even the doctor was weeping.
The rings under Emilia’s eyes, which at the beginning were a delicate blue, turned to dark brown, and the soft rosiness of her cheeks changed to a pale ethereal shade of ivory. The sweetness of that gentle disposition, eager to do good, always forgetful of herself, innocent, kind, and wise, was being purified into the nature of an angel.
As the illness gradually gnawed away at her entrails, her spirit rose up to God. In the final hours, when racked with excruciating pains, she tried to conceal them from everyone with countless sublime stratagems. When I very gently raised her head and arranged her pillows more comfortably, she whispered to me in a faint voice, “I’m so sorry, Giorgio. You see how much trouble I am to you!” And she tried to squeeze my hand. And to Maria and everyone else, for however small a service, she never stopped repeating with a smile, “Thank you.”
Before she died, she seemed to feel better. She called me to her side and softly said to me, “Giorgio, we were born at the same time, and have lived together twenty-four years, almost without ever being apart, and you’ve always been so very good to me. God bless you. But if I’ve ever upset you, or been rude to you, if I’ve not always shown the great love I have for you, forgive me.” Two tears slowly fell from her eyes. “I’m sorry to die, I’m sorry for your sake. Your health is poor. You have need of a lot of loving care and”—after a long pause—“guidance.” With these words she died. I sat up all night, alone, in her room, while old Maria sobbed and prayed in the room next door.
Her black eyes were open. Her black hair framed her white face; in marked contrast to that lugubrious whiteness and that funereal blackness was the pinkness of her lips, slightly parted to show the poor dead girl’s teeth, which were even whiter than her brow.
A jolt to my leg roused me from my gloomy thoughts. I had a fever and my head was inflamed. I pressed the rigid blade of a fruit knife to my forehead, which was burning hot. The coolness of it felt good.
The girl reeked of the sour stench of wine. I leaned over to look at her: she was loathsome. She was sleeping with her mouth open. I then felt a sense of utter humiliation, acute remorse, and a kind of spirit of vendetta, at the same time raging and wary, stirred within my breast. I looked at the knife held in my hand, balancing it to find the point at which it would deliver its most telling blow. Then, with one finger I delicately raised the girl’s upper lip and gave a sharp tap with the tip of the blade to one of those pretty front teeth. The tooth broke, and more than half of it fell out.
The drunken hussy hardly stirred. I shoved some cushions under her head and went to open the window. Freezing fog entered the room like dense smoke. There was nothing to be seen, not even the streetlights. But from the entrance to the inn came the sound of trunks being loaded onto the omnibus. I was seized with an urgent desire to leave. The servant I called told me that this omnibus was just about to depart for the station, to catch the train to Turin, but there was no time to lose. I put a five hundred-lire note into a sealed envelope, which I handed the servant, saying, “Give this letter to the lady when she wakes, and send her home in a carriage. Then pack my bags with all that you find on the tables and in the drawers. Here are the keys. Send everything to my address in Turin. But first post me the bill, which I haven’t time to wait for now.”
I threw my coat over my shoulders and left.
These papers were entrusted to me by Signor Giorgio three days after he arrived back in Turin. He had returned from Milan all but cured of his serious stomach ailment, and more active, more lively than before. I felt relieved. He wrote for a good part of the day, and when I asked him, “What is it that you’re writing so furiously, Signor Giorgio?” he replied, “I’m writing my ugly confessions and doing my penance.” Then he added in a most sad and resigned tone of voice, “My dear Maria, it’s a terrible penance!”
On the morning of the fourth day he was unable to get out of bed. He had a burning fever. After a long visit the doctor shook his head and as he left he said in my ear, “This is the end.”
Signor Giorgio could not swallow anything, not even diluted milk. And his fever continued more violently than ever. He was so weak, he could hardly lift his arm. He raved almost the whole time. He talked to himself under his breath. I often heard the names of Giorgetta and Signora Emilia, and at such moments his face would take on a blissful expression, bliss that reduced me to tears. Then his face would darken again, and he would close his eyes, as though some fearful image was tormenting him.
One evening, the seventh after Signor Giorgio’s return, a servant came to fetch me. My patient seemed to be asleep, and I dared to leave him alone just for a moment. There was a woman wanting to speak to him. She insisted, she shouted. What a woman! How vulgar she looked! How brazen in her speech and manners! Never had such a woman set foot in this house before. She claimed that Signor Giorgio owed her money, how much I don’t know, and that she had come from Milan specially to collect it. I tried to quiet her, and just so that she would go I promised to let her in the following morning. She seemed prepared to leave, but as I returned to the bedroom she quietly followed behind me, and Signor Giorgio, who had woken up, saw her. I put my hands together and begged her not to move and not to speak.
In the pale glow of the night lamp, my poor sick Giorgio stared at that despicable woman. His face grew serene, and he beckoned her close with his hand. “Emilia!” he murmured. It was a sweet delirium, and certainly full of many fond images that could be seen on the dying man’s face. He wanted to say something, but he kept repeating certain words in such a faint voice that even I could not understand him. At last I managed to grasp that he was asking for the pearl necklace—a magnificent thing, his last present to Emilia, given to her a few days before she died. I took it from the cabinet and handed it to him.
He accepted it with both hands. And making an effort I would not have thought him capable of, and indicating to that dreadful woman to bend down, he very slowly placed it around her neck. He smiled with sublime tranquility.
Having avidly examined the precious necklace, the woman twisted her lips in a smile of such base joy that it was a horror to see. A black gap, right in the middle of those white teeth, made her look even more sinister. Signor Giorgio stared at her, screamed with fright, then turned away, burying his face in the bolster, and breathed his last.
1873
CANITUCCIA
Matilde