The Day of Judgment

by Salvatore Satta

  The social scene at the Caffè Tettamanzi had not substantially changed. There were more clients, because the tendency of the shepherds and peasants to become middle class was creating unemployment, but the distribution of roles was still the same, with Bartolino and Boelle Zicheri, the pharmacist, pulling the strings, and Fileddu and the rest of them bearing the brunt of it. If one could have stopped the action, as when a film breaks down, one would have seen a lot of hands raised in the air, a lot of ecstatic faces staring wide-eyed at the “tresette” cards, Fileddu lost in his oversized coat, with his doglike eyes fixed on his own dear Boelle, Pietro Catte with his bulging eyes fixed on the full wineglass on the table, and Don Ricciotti—who had returned to the caffè after his mad adventure—wearing his sarcastic smile. All was the same as ten years earlier, twenty years earlier, or indeed since the beginning of time.

  Things, however, were not as they seemed. For example, anyone looking closely at Boelle Zicheri’s hands, even when he seemed at his most carefree, organizing the fun at the expense of Fileddu or Maestro Manca, would have noticed that for some time now they had begun to tremble. And not just one but a hundred eyes were fixed on them, the eyes of all who laughed at his jokes and followed the progress of the tremor. Now he couldn’t even raise a glass to his lips (although he drank little) without spilling several drops on his impeccable suit. When he left, people would wink at one another (while some swore that he was unsteady on his feet), and there was an exchange of diagnoses. “He sowed his wild oats when he was young,” they said, “and now he’s paying for it.” And they spoke with relish of general paralysis, or of other worse afflictions, if there are any. Boelle, on the other hand, had never been so gay as since the symptoms of the disease first appeared. He seemed to be seized with a frenzy to live. For this reason Maestro Manca, following him with an eye dimmed by the latest glass of wine, from the heights of his culture loudly declared: Et exsultabunt ossa humiliata. There was a sort of ferocious sadism, or worse still a feeling of revenge, against this tortured frame. Each one of them felt smitten in the person of Boelle. Now that sickness had seized him, the jovial pharmacist reflected the uselessness of each one of their lives; and therefore they hated him, because they hated themselves. “He’s going to die, he’s not going to die, he’s sure to die, he’ll only last three months.” Even Fileddu, in the darkness of his mind, had a dim feeling that Boelle was in danger, and when Boelle got to his feet he followed him step by step all the way home.

  Worst of all, the person who noticed the trembling of his hands more than anybody else was Boelle himself, and as pharmacists are doctors in a small way, he had at once made the fearful diagnosis. In the midst of all the rowdiness at the Caffè Tettamanzi, perhaps he had been expecting it for some time. And maybe he was aware from other signs, not evident to the idlers in the bar, that his life was drawing to a close. And a strange thing was that he felt toward himself the same hatred that others felt for him. It was as if that God who was preparing to destroy him was destroying Himself, as one day long ago He had created him; and this gave Boelle the sadistic joy of nonexistence. According to his calculations, he still had a few months to go. He had to arrange everything, because he wanted to take it all with him. Just as with him would die all his friends in the caffè, all the Nuorese, and the whole world, so he wanted all his property to die, so that no one might henceforth say, “This is Boelle’s house,” or “This is Boelle’s tanca.” He was dying a bachelor; therefore it was already as if he had never lived. The next morning he would go to see Don Sebastiano and ask him to help him with his will. But first, at once, he wanted to write something himself, with his trembling hand, two lines that would be his real will and testament. Like all the bachelors in Nuoro, and they were legion (as I think I have said), he hated the priests. He reviewed them all, one by one: Canon Floris, Father Porcu, Father Delussu, Canon Fele... These men, for him, were the Church. But even as they were, boozers, swindlers, hypocritical and quarrelsome, they were witnesses of God, of a life without end; and this he could not stand. He went to the desk, dipped his pen in the ink, and wrote in a hand that seemed to him steady, on account of the effort it took: “At my funeral I want neither priest nor cross. Let my body be cast into the bare earth, without a name.” Then, recalling the fears of Don Gaetano Pilleri (who had seized a whip and chased away the priest who dared to enter his tobacco shop for the Easter blessing), he added: “I am in full possession of my mental faculties. But if, with the progression of my disease, I should change my mind, it is today’s wish that counts. That is: I want neither priest nor cross.” He put the paper into an envelope and went to bed.

  At seven o’clock the next morning he was already at the pharmacy. But he was not there to arrange the decorative jars that made such a show behind the counter. He was waiting for Don Sebastiano to pass the door; for like all the gentry at that time he used to go in person to buy the meat, nearby in the Piazza San Giovanni, where the market then was. And sure enough, a little while later Boelle saw him coming down the road with the brown-paper package held out in front of him like a bunch of flowers (how sweet life could be, it seemed to him at that moment), and motioned to him to come inside. In the empty back premises they whispered for a quarter of an hour. Don Sebastiano said that he would go to the land-registry office and make a list of all Boelle’s properties, because he had had two legacies from old aunts on his mother’s side, and not even he knew what he owned. They arranged to meet again the following Saturday evening.

  “Listen, Sebastiano,” said Boelle, getting to his feet. “Look at this envelope. It contains my true wishes. I entrust it to you. You must open it in the presence of my corpse. But you must swear to me that you will do what is written here. I’ll expect you on Saturday.”

  Boelle’s idea was simplicity itself. He wished to disinherit all his nephews, and he had many, both rich and poor. He did not want to connect his life to anyone. For this reason he had even decided against leaving anything to poor Fileddu. He would leave all his property to the hospital, thus throwing it into the common grave, or restoring it to the community at large, where it would lose all individuality. It was even likely that the hospital would put the properties up for auction, which is like scattering ashes to the winds. The thought that this was giving charity did not even occur to him. There was no question of benefiting anything or anyone: it was simply a matter of disappearing, with the same indifference with which, on one distant day, he had appeared. He felt satisfied with this decision. The important thing now was that no one should realize that he was so far gone. He therefore started frequenting the caffè again, indulging in pranks that grew noisier and noisier, and that made him breathless and purple in the face, never noticing the winks passing from one end of the room to the other.

  He died suddenly in May, on a night so warm that he had left the windows of his room open. It was because of the open windows, and the locked door of the pharmacy, that they realized something serious had happened. They broke down the door and found him lying quietly stretched out. His relatives appeared at once, and wept, and sang the praises of the dead man. Don Sebastiano was informed, and came and opened the envelope that had been entrusted to him. There was a chorus of protests—the shame it would mean for the family, the damnation of his soul. Then Don Sebastiano told them that he had left all his property to the hospital, and that was the end of the protests.

  The funeral took place the same day. People had come from all sides to see a burial without priests. The silence of the bells weighed heavily on the town as the coffin passed among the few bystanders, who even forgot to take their hats off. In this way they reached the cemetery, and then the people turned back; or so they thought, because they did not know that Boelle had taken them with him to the grave. But right at the entrance an unexpected episode occurred. Fileddu had done his duty by accompanying Boelle to the graveside, but he had the misfortune to bump into Casizolu, his envious rival. Casizolu gave vent to the rancor he had been nursing for years,
and began to yell, “He’s dead! He’s dead—the man who used to give you his old jackets!” Fileddu, who had understood nothing, was already in the distance and the other was still crying out, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” That evening in the bar the jokers tried to coax Fileddu into challenging Casizolu, but Fileddu was sad because his great friend had not come.

  *

  The last wishes of Boelle Zicheri were respected only in part, because some ass at the hospital thought it wrong that such a benefactor should be left to rot in the same earth as Poddanzu or Dirripezza, and (with the dead man’s money) had him built a marble-flagged sepulcher, with an enameled portrait held in place by two bronze bosses. It is hard to find, because the mausoleums of the nouveaux riches have sprung up around it, but when you manage to part the wild grasses that have overgrown the tomb, his faded eyes look at you sadly, because you don’t know him, but he knows you very well indeed.

  But these are things of no importance, because no one will go to look for the pharmacist in the old cemetery. On the other hand Boelle’s death had an odd sequel, if indeed it was not a coincidence. The Caffè Tettamanzi returned to normal: the void left by the dead man was soon filled. For a few days people spoke ill of him, mostly because he had left everything to the hospital. That swarm of disinherited relatives could understand anything except charity. Bartolino, left on his own, continued to flaunt his towering Continental stature, and played twice as many pranks, although he had become more quarrelsome. The only one who gave signs of being upset by Boelle’s death was Maestro Manca, but this was because the young fellows who surrounded him, knowing the terror he had of death, would tell him it was his turn next. He gnashed his teeth, and pressed his index finger on the vein in his temple, which seemed to get larger every day. Pietro Catte rolled his ox-eyes around, and everyone knew that he was waiting for his aunt to die, so as to inherit her house and vineyard, and they insinuated that she would do the same as Boelle.

  From the little window at the top of the building, Dr. Nurra still strained his ears to catch the latest news. The customers who had noticed this began to invent the wildest stories imaginable, but above all they spread the word that he had a tumor of the throat—no, the lung—no, the intestine; and that his hour had come. The result was that, terrified and full of aches and pains here, there, and everywhere, he pulled in his head and shut the window amid the laughter of all present. And so the hands of the clock went round and round, and all seemed to be as usual. Except that one day, when Boelle had been dead for a month, a few people began to notice that Fileddu had not been seen. Where could he have gone to? Even Casizolu, who always waited for him at the corner to shout, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” was surprised, and scented some mysterious treason. Finally someone went down to inquire around the hovel where Fileddu lived, but no one knew anything. Then they called the carabinieri, who barged down the four planks that served as a door. A fearful sight met their eyes. Fileddu was lying on the rush mat, covered with rags, motionless, with staring eyes. By his side was his almost-blind mother, gazing at him with whitened eyes, waiting for her son to wake up. When she noticed such a crowd of people, she seemed to understand, and went groping her way out into the sunlight.

  The news that Fileddu was dead went through the town in a flash. And then the strangest thing happened, one that even now I cannot account for. It was not even a case of following the body of Don Pasqualino or Don Sebastiano, but from their houses at the upper end of San Pietro the ordinary folk began to move, and then the shepherds, and then even the bigwigs of the great dynasty of the Corrales. Fileddu’s hut was on the very edge of Sèuna, practically out in the cheerless countryside, and they had to traverse the whole of Nuoro to get there. Along the route the gentry of Santa Maria left their respectable homes (except for Don Pasqualino, who was immobilized by gout), and it was as if a torrent were pouring down the Corso toward the hovel where the coffin, donated by a carpenter in Sèuna, rested on the ground waiting for the burial. Someone had given orders for the bells to ring slowly, as was the custom for the rich, and the funeral chimes kept time with the thoughts of all. At last Father Porcu arrived, with the young deacon. He was beside himself with rage, because he had not been expecting all those people, who would make the business drag on and on. Finally four stalwarts hoisted the coffin on their shoulders and Father Porcu set off, chanting away. He tried to hurry things along, because it seemed to him a waste of breath, but the Nuorese were cramming the roadways, while the women stood weeping on the balconies. They followed a stretch of the Corso, but at the Alberetti, where the cobbled road leads up toward San Pietro, the priest motioned for them to turn off. The bearers stopped in their tracks, and so did the whole procession.

  “Let’s carry on along the Corso,” said Pascale Farranca.

  “I have the right to go the shorter way,” replied Father Porcu. And on he went, without looking back.

  Then an incredible thing happened. Pozeddu, who you may remember was sacristan at the Grazie, but had learned the priest’s job, exchanged a glance with Pascale Farranca and stepped up to the head of the procession. “In paradisum perducant te angeli,” he began in his sonorous voice; and while the priest went off toward the cemetery with never a dead man behind him, Fileddu with his immense following passed along the Corso, of which he had at last and in truth become the master. With increasing solemnity Pozeddu advanced, in his threadbare cassock instead of surplice and stole. Perhaps the priest would expel him from the church as soon as he got back, but for this very reason he sang all the louder. Dies irae, dies illa... In the deep, deep silence of men and of things, it seemed as if the Nuorese were offering up to God this half- witted child of theirs, in expiation for the sin of being either good or bad, rich or poor, in sickness or in health; for the sin of living.

  So it was that Fileddu had his moment of glory, even if it lasted only until the last of the shovelfuls of earth that Milieddu hastily and noisily threw onto his coffin lid.

  15

  That evening, as usual, Don Sebastiano sat reading in his now deserted study by the light of the huge oil lamp, which he had not chosen to replace with Don Pasqualino’s electric light because, he said, it tired the eyes. But there was no need for much light or strong spectacles for those banner headlines announcing the brutal killing of an Austrian archduke in an obscure town in Serbia. Don Sebastiano read, and at every line he wiped his eyes with the large handkerchief he wore between his neck and his shirt to absorb the sweat while out in the country. Like every Nuorese, he was used to hatred and killing. Not a month went by without news of some slaughter from Orgósolo, and even the Orgolese who took refuge in Nuoro did not escape their destiny. Only a week or so had passed since they had stretched out Antonio Bussu in a pool of his own blood, and he was a decent man, who had fled from Orgósolo to the house of Franziscu Sole, of whom he was an amico de posada. He stayed shut in the house for days. That morning he thought he would take a breath of fresh air, and ventured as far as the Alberetti of Sèuna, no more than two hundred yards away. Two shots reduced him to nothing in a moment. Even I remember it, because we played truant from school to go and see the gore still trickling among the stones. But Antonio Bussu knew who had killed him, as Abel knew Cain. This archduke knew nothing, any more than did the King of Italy whom they had killed fourteen years before. The notary did not understand the eye-for-an-eye of hate, and therefore he wept beneath his reading glasses. Through a film of tears he read that Austria was threatening to make war on Serbia, and that this war would inevitably drag in the whole of Europe.

  In 1914 Don Sebastiano was sixty-four, which was a lot in those days; but he bore his years very well, with that health-giving to-ing and fro-ing from desk to vineyard, which after so much work was now paying well. He was still the head of the family, even if the family had split up. Only little Sebastiano and Peppino were left in the old house (though the next year even Peppino would be leaving the nest for his lycée studies in Sassari or Cagliari), while Ludovico spent long
periods there. He had qualified at the lycée with a thesis on Quisque est suae fortunae faber, maintaining that it wasn’t true. This had been discussed at length, and still was. Unfortunately, as a result of his efforts, his nervous condition had worsened, and he did not often attend the law school, in which he was enrolled. It may have been (but perhaps this was part of his neurosis) that he was upset by the sight of those strapping fellows in Sassari, who took life with such impetuosity, almost with scorn, and set about learning as they set about having a binge. Many of them came from out-of-the-way villages in the interior, and had all the drive of the underprivileged discovering the world. The delicate web of his programmed life was upset by this. Anyway, he spent a lot of time in Nuoro, as if to prolong his childhood, and there, alongside his literary library, he began to put together a law library, buying treatises and monographs that he would read when the time came. Little by little, because of his studied way of speaking, the prudence which masked his basic insecurity, the everlasting maxims which he used to avoid the dangers of action, and even because of his precarious health, he was becoming the family authority, and even Don Sebastiano began to consult him when he ran into a problem—the very man who had never asked for or listened to advice from anyone in the family, as in her misery Donna Vincenza knew. And still she cradled this child, anxious about his health, and resentful against Sanna, who noticed nothing.