*
Nanneddu Titùle had one idea in his head: to overcome his own penury. He had been employed by a landowner in a village where the employers are worse off than their servants: a hundred lire and a pair of shoes a year to look after a herd of goats. And if he himself managed to live practically without eating, on two slivers of bread and a touch of oil, his wife and children had to depend on the charity of the neighbors, unless they wanted to die of hunger. When that friend of Don Sebastiano’s suggested that he should go to Nuoro as a sharecropper, he thought that the Lord was at last taking notice of him. They arrived like gypsies, and when Ziu Poddanzu—who was overseer of all Don Sebastiano’s properties, although his own place was Locoi—saw them with his own eyes, he advised his employer not to take on that “load of green wood.” But Don Sebastiano, who was humane at heart, did take them on, settled them at Isporòsile, and helped them with some money in advance. Land! Land at last! That stretch of country cut through by the stream, the stream with its enormous boulders deposited there by the floods, had not one but two vegetable gardens, both fed by the channel that Don Sebastiano had cut. One blow of the mattock and he felt the place was his. Half the produce would go to the owner of course, as was only fair because he paid the taxes, but all the same, the plants that grew would be his as well: the tomatoes, the peppers, the lettuces from the garden, let alone the olives, the wheat, the almonds (not the vineyard, however, because Don Sebastiano was really particular about his wine, and had never shared the produce of his vineyards). Obsessed by this idea, the man worked like a fiend, deprived himself of everything, forced his wife and the son who was barely more than a child to do the heaviest of labor, and got up at night to listen to the growing of the vegetables which he had planted by day.
The neighboring sharecroppers looked askance at this sullen outsider who had got his hands on the best enclosure in the district, and put the blame on Don Sebastiano. The relationship of the Nuorese peasants with the soil (and I mean the peasants, not the shepherds) is a friendly one. When they hoe it they might be tickling it. And then, they know that the soil has its times of rest and of sleep; therefore when the Dog Star rages they sit under the fig tree, and everyone congregates there from all the farms around. They start work again when the sunlight, pursued by massive shadows, begins to climb the valley; then, when the first stars appear, they gather the fruits that the earth has ripened—and it is as if they asked her permission. That wretched foreigner wielded his hoe as if it were a pickax: at every blow, a wound. What was he aiming at? In early days they had tried to approach him, because in the country one cannot live without others, but a little because of the difference of speech, and a great deal because of his diffidence as a down-and-out, Nanneddu refused all contact.
After a year he was out of the red with Don Sebastiano, in the sense that he had paid off the initial loan, and was in credit to the extent of some thousands of lire. A little longer, and the life of hardship would be over. He would go back to his village and build a small house with his own hands. God would provide for the rest. And God did indeed provide, sending first that African wind which he had been able to overcome with magic, then a drought such as had never been seen before. It seemed as if the wind had polished the sky so highly that the clouds could no longer get a hold on it. There had never been a shortage of water at Isporòsile, because of the channels made by Don Sebastiano, but that year it began to get low. For a little while, working in the dead of night, Nanneddu managed to capture a small trickle that was enough to water four or five beds of vegetables, but toward six in the morning it shrank, it dwindled, it died out altogether. Beneath that metal sky the tomato plants bent their heads sadly over the furrows, the lettuces bolted, the soil turned to stone. Toward the beginning of July the trickle disappeared completely, and it was the end of everything.
He knew the source of that tragedy. Within living memory water had never run out at the Isporòsile farm. This was its great merit, the thing that set it above all other farms. But the devil was not to blame this time, as he had been for the wind. The water for the farm came from the stream that ran through Pascale Martis’s holding. He—and this meant Merriolu, his sharecropper—had the right to use it for his vegetable garden, but then he had to let it flow on down, because this was both the law and the custom. But Nanneddu, spying at night, had for some time noticed that Merriolu had made a number of little ditches in which the water collected drop by drop, forming small deposits that served for other uses. Could it be true? Had it been a hallucination? More than once he had yelled at Merriolu to let the water flow freely, and the latter had replied that on his own land he did as he saw fit. He had told Don Sebastiano, and you have heard the answer he got. Meanwhile the garden died, and with it died all his hopes.
He would stay in it motionless for hours and hours. Even the oxen would have died in that fearful drought if his son had not taken them to the town drinking trough, where a few drops still seeped in. But what did the oxen matter? He had been forced to ask Don Sebastiano for money to feed himself and his family, and his capital was very nearly exhausted. He got thinner and thinner, and was unable to sleep. Yet there was water, there on the other side of the hedge. All he had to do was destroy those deposits... All he had to do was destroy...
During the night he got up from his pallet in the porch and called to his son in a low voice. “Get up,” he said, “and come with me.” He picked up his ax, and they started toward the neighboring farm. They climbed cautiously over the hedge. Not a dog barked. Perhaps even the animals were dead, or paralyzed with thirst. Slowly they approached the cabin. The door was open, and by the glimmer of the stars they saw Merriolu lying on his matting, fast asleep. Nanneddu glanced at his son. He crossed the threshold. As Merriolu made a slight movement, he brought the ax down on his head. “Work it out between you,” Don Sebastiano had said.
If at that moment the skies had opened and rain had fallen in torrents, then his act would have had its use, like that of the crucified dog. But the skies remained inscrutable. They had to conceal the body before daybreak. Between the two of them they picked it up, trying not to get blood on themselves, and with it made the return journey. They laid it on the ground in the vegetable garden, and by working all night they buried it, carefully smoothing out the soil above it. At first light they yoked up the oxen, because they had to take the wheat to be threshed at Ziu Lucca’s threshing floor just outside Nuoro.
*
To unravel the crime was child’s play for the police. Nanneddu and his son were led in chains through the streets of Nuoro, among the hostile shouts of the crowd. Merriolu was a good man who had never harmed a fly; and the two murderers were outsiders. On top of this, it was discovered that the water deposits had never existed, so that the crime had not even a shadow of justification. Shut up in his room, Don Ricciotti Bellisai listened to the voices that reached him from the street, and filtered them one by one through his consciousness. By this time he was a finished man, because he had a cancer that was eating him away, albeit slowly. After his political disaster he was left with no hope. He spent the long hours sending snippets of news to a Rome paper, which had recently begun to print a special edition for Sardinia and—heaven knows on whose recommendation—had appointed him correspondent in Nuoro. He had to cudgel his brains to find anything to say, in a town where nothing ever happened. He was in this glum state of mind when along came the news about Nanneddu and Merriolu. In a trice he grew twenty years younger. After so many illusions and so many defeats, and just when it had condemned him to an atrocious death, destiny again put Loreneddu within his grasp; or at least his revenge, which by this time was worth more than the house itself. He got up from the bed, smoothed his unkempt beard, and went toward the writing table.
Nuoro, 20 June, 19— A dreadful act of violence took place last night. A certain Nanneddu, known as Titùle, sharecropper of the rich landowner Don Sebastiano Sanna Carboni, murdered a certain Merriolu, sharecropper of the neighboring pr
operty, in the district of Isporòsile, with a blow from an ax. A bloodcurdling detail is that the murderer enlisted the help of his fifteen-year-old son, with whom he carried away the body and buried it in the vegetable garden of the said Don Sebastiano, where it was found by the police.
The motive is to be sought in the shortage of water caused by the long drought. The murderer got it into his head that the said Merriolu was damming up the normal flow of the stream that crosses both properties. It is not known whether this is true.
So much for the reports. However, it is a persistent rumor in town that this Titùle, who comes from the remote parts of Barbagia, is a minus habens, who could not even have conceived of such an atrocious plan on his own. The more so because this interest in the water was not his concern, except at second hand. It is therefore thought that he acted for a third party. According to the commonly held opinion, the instigator is to be identified as the owner of the farm, the above-mentioned Don Sebastiano Sanna, a man who is extremely attached to his possessions. The police are maintaining strict secrecy, as the person concerned is not only wealthy, but very powerful.
He sealed the letter with a smirk, went to the mirror, and regarded his emaciated face. I am preparing my last will and testament for you, Don Sebastiano! Then he went back to bed and waited on events.
The “story” was read in the Caffè Tettamanzi and received with hoots of laughter. However much times had changed, Don Sebastiano was still respected by all, apart from which the memory of Ricciotti’s rantings had not faded. In the pharmacy they urged Don Sebastiano to sue Ricciotti, but Ludovico said that it was better to do nothing. It was probable that Ricciotti, feeling that he was close to death, wanted to be remembered for something sensational. So a week went by, and then another short article appeared.
Nuoro, 27 June, 19— The affair of Merriolu’s murder grows ever more sinister. The impression we referred to in our last dispatch, that the sharecropper was merely the hired assassin of a well-known instigator, is acquiring increasing credibility. There are countless obscure elements, but one fact seems to us irrefutable. This is that on the very day of the murder Nanneddu Titùle was sent to thresh the wheat from the farm on a threshing floor at least five kilometers away, belonging to a certain Ziu Lucca. What motive could there be for this? It is contrary to all reason that the threshing should take place outside the farm where the grain has been harvested. But the judiciary, which is responsible for the investigations, is on the right path. In fact, it seems certain that this bizarre command can only have been given in order to create an alibi for the sharecropper, and thereby divert suspicion from his employer. Justice is on the right path. In the meantime, it would be best if the killer and his abettor were both in preventive custody, to protect the truth from being tampered with.
That ass of an editor at the Rome paper, who did not know Don Sebastiano (or he would never have done it), had printed this item under a banner headline in bold type. In spite of the atrocious heat, a chill ran through Nuoro. Confidence began to waver. The fact of the threshing floor seemed really and truly inexplicable. And why shouldn’t it be true? Don Sebastiano felt that there was a slight uneasiness in his relations with others. But the most upset of all was the public prosecutor, who was a friend and admirer of Don Sebastiano’s but was unable to ignore the accusation. He had not moved before because there was nothing to go on but the slanderous backbiting of a degenerate like Ricciotti. Now this question of the wheat was at least a clue, something that forced him to act, even though with the necessary caution. The poor man, who was a stickler for his duty, asked Don Sebastiano to call on him in his office. It was a terrible blow. Don Sebastiano had never come into conflict with the law, although his whole life had been spent filling up sheets of official paper. He left home early and walked up the slope to the court building, feeling that all eyes were following him. The prosecutor received him in his dusty den, and appeared grave and cold. He wanted to know the story of this wheat. The rest of it didn’t interest him. Don Sebastiano looked at him in a bewildered way and babbled a few disconnected phrases: “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“What d’you mean, you don’t know? Are you the boss or not? You must realize the position you’re putting me in.”
It seemed to him that Don Sebastiano might be going to faint, so he changed his tone and began to suggest the answers.
“Perhaps you have someone in charge of your lands, and he might know. Can you tell me who it is?”
As if rescued from a nightmare Don Sebastiano replied, “My bailiff is Giuseppe Chisu, known as Poddanzu.”
“Very well, very well. I’ll call him in. Now you may go, and keep yourself at my disposal.”
Ziu Poddanzu was at Locoi when he received a summons to appear before the prosecutor. He put on his best costume, and then he too climbed the long slope, which he had occasionally done before, on his way to the church which stood opposite the law courts. He had even tidied his beard. Shown in at once, he found himself in front of the prosecutor, who did not even raise his eyes from the desk.
“So then,” said he in a voice which sounded threatening, “do you know why, on the morning of such and such a day, the wheat was taken by this cursed Nanneddu to be threshed a long way from Isporòsile?”
“I don’t understand,” replied Ziu Poddanzu. “We have done this every year, because there’s no threshing floor at Isporòsile.”
The public prosecutor leaped to his feet. “What are you saying? Every year? There’s no threshing floor?”
“Yes. It’s always been that way.”
The prosecutor was a man transfigured. “Give me your hand, my good man. But why didn’t that silly fellow say so? Such a simple thing! Give me your hand.”
And the callused hand of Ziu Poddanzu shook the slender hand accustomed to signing arrest warrants.
“You may go. Here is half a cigar for your trouble. And give my regards to your employer.”
And so for the second rime, and the last, Ziu Poddanzu saved Don Sebastiano’s skin.
20
The escape in which her cousin Gonaria had failed was achieved by Donna Vincenza, ever more securely nailed by arthritis to her big chair under the pergola. But Gonaria was urged by love, Donna Vincenza by hatred. Her indifference toward her husband, which we have spoken of, had developed into an absence. By this time she no longer saw him, even as the shadow her dim sight allowed her, and she did not hear him either. She came back to life only in the rare periods when her youngest son, whom she loved even though he had rejected his viaticum, came home for the holidays, and clung to her, and lamented her plight. Then he would go off again and send no news of himself. After one of his joyous appearances, overcome by grief and tedium, she had found a postcard and written as well as she could: “Out of sight, out of mind.” But she got no answer. The dispersal of her sons was practically concluded with this youngest one, even though he was still studying. He would certainly not come back to her, because he too would “look for bread made from better things than wheat.” Anyway, she did nothing to hold him back. If her troubles failed to stop him, what could her entreaties do? She realized that he was following his destiny, like a bird leaving the nest, and she too had followed her destiny, although this did not exonerate Don Sebastiano, who had been the blind instrument. She knew that in a little while it would all be over, because a woman in her condition can only live so long, and all would be as if she had never been born... That would be wonderful; but an obscure feeling warned her that it would not be all that easy. After her flesh her sorrows would remain, her life of sorrow, which no God can cause not to have happened. This is why for centuries the Church has continued to say Requiescant in pace, words that have no meaning if the dead are really dead. A short while before, she had had an experience she could not forget. She was fast asleep in her bed high up on the top floor when she was awakened in the dark by a rhythmic sobbing that seemed to come from the top of the wardrobe where she kept her few possessions. It was lik
e a word that could not force its way out of a strangled throat. For a long time she lay there listening, bathed in sweat. The thought came into her mind of an elder cousin of hers and Gonaria’s, a man who had been a formidable orator and had been struck by paralysis of the tongue. Perhaps he had come to tell her something, and was unable to. Groping in the dark, she made her way to the next room, where Sebastiano was sleeping, and woke him up. “Listen... listen...” The boy came to in a flash, and they clung together to pluck up courage. Then he got up and put on the light in his mother’s room. Two snow-white doves had come in through the window in the evening, and had perched there, and were cooing softly. As soon as he opened the window they took flight toward the moon. Sebastiano fell back to sleep at once, but in his mother’s room there remained a touch of magic, the anguish of a spiritual presence, and that maimed voice that stayed with her as an omen for the rest of her life.
But maybe these were ravings, like those of her cousin Gonaria. What can a woman think when she has been abandoned in a chair, with only her past before her? For the dispersal did not only involve the sons who had gone out into the world. Those who had willy-nilly stayed behind were no longer present either. Giovanni was glumly going after money, while Pasquale was busy trading in almonds and other products of the island. Both had departed far from her own being, and had forcibly introduced into their mother’s life women and children whom she rejected as foreign bodies. One cannot love if one has not been loved. And then... there was Ludovico.
If I remember rightly, I was speaking of him when Gonaria came to me, begging me to help her to set herself free from her life; and I traced her steps until the day she tried to escape. So everything has got behind schedule, events have piled up; and in addition I have been in such pain that for a number of months I have been unable to approach these pages. I was saying that Ludovico had opened a law office. This had not been a sudden decision; in fact, not a decision at all. In the program he had drawn up for his life there was no room for decision, because like all actions it always involves an element of irrationality, and this was incompatible with the type of character he had built up, and that had grown as he grew. If he had decided to open an office, what difference would there have been between him and those self-assured young men from the villages, who came up to Nuoro to conquer the law courts and the women? But this was not all. He had inherited from who knows what ancestors, or perhaps simply from the observation of his own uncertain health, a magical sense of things, on account of which every act was a rite, every word an echo of another word, and every fact a mystery. And one cannot say that he was wrong. For instance, the birth of thought in the depths of the spirit, the shaping and ordering of it into periods, the translation into signs, and above all the transference of it from one spirit to another, the communication that is, if only for an instant, the meeting of two beings, with the unforeseeable consequences that such a meeting always causes, is in fact a miracle; except that the moment one stops to think about it one can’t even write a letter. And indeed, the letters which Ludovico wrote seemed to come from such infinite distances, like messages set afloat in bottles; and this was reflected in his style, which wound and unwound in archaic evolutions, as if afraid of facing up to the reasons for writing, however banal these might be, in the studied consideration of what was appropriate. It even affected his handwriting, which was fine and dense, with the regularity of ideograms, stripped of the least concession to the imagination, and therefore without second thoughts or cancellations.
The Day of Judgment Page 28