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Under the Shadow of Etna: Sicilian Stories from the Italian of Giovanni Verga
Language: en525 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Short Stories·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #37979.
The opening · free to read
A few years ago, down by the Simeto, they were giving chase to a brigand, a certain Gramigna,[1] if I am not mistaken, a name as cursed as the weed that bears it. The man had left behind him, from one end of the province to the other, the terror of his evil reputation. Carabineers, compagni d'armi, and cavalry-men had been on his track for two months, without ever succeeding in putting their claws on him; he was alone, but was equal to ten, and the evil plant threatened to take firm root.
[1] Gramigna means dog's-tail-grass.
Moreover the harvest-time was approaching, the crops already covered the fields, the ears bent over and were calling to the reapers, who indeed had their reaping-hooks in their hands, and yet not a single proprietor dared show his nose over the hedge of his estate, for fear of meeting Gramigna, who might be stretched out among the furrows with his carbine between his legs, ready to blow off the head of the first person who should venture to meddle with his affairs.
Thus the complaints were general. Then the prefect summoned all those gentlemen of the district--carabineers and companies of armed men and told them two words of the kind that makes men prick up their ears. The next day an earthquake in every nook and corner:--patrols, squadrons, scouts for every ditch and behind every wall; they hunted him by day, by night, on foot, on horseback, by telegraph, as if he had been a wild beast! Gramigna eluded them every time, and replied with shots if they came too close on his track.
In the fields, in the villages, among the factories, under the signs of country taverns, wherever people met, Gramigna was the only topic of conversation,--that wild chase, that desperate flight. The carabineers' horses returned dead-tired; the soldiers threw themselves down in utter weariness on the ground when they got back to the stables; the patrols slept wherever chance offered; Gramigna alone was never tired, never slept, kept always on the wing, climbed down precipices, slipped through the harvest-fields, crept on all fours among the prickly pear-trees,[2] made his way out of danger like a wolf by means of the hidden channels of the torrents.
[2] Fichidindia, also called Indian figs.
The chief argument of every discourse at the cross roads, before the village entrances, was the devouring thirst from which the fugitive must suffer in the immense, barren plain, under the June sun. The lazy loungers opened wide their eyes.
Peppa, one of the prettiest girls of Licodia, was expecting at that time soon to marry compare Finu, called "_Candela di sego_" (the tallow-candle), who had landed property and a bay mule, and was a tall young man, handsome as the sun, who carried the standard of Santa Margherita without bending his back, as though he were a pillar.
Peppa's mother shed tears of delight over the good fortune that had befallen her daughter, and spent her time in looking over and over the bride's effects in the trunk, all white linen and of the nicest quality, like a queen's, and earrings that would hang down to the shoulders and gold rings for all the ten fingers of both hands; more money than Santa Margherita could have ever had--and so they were to have been married on Santa Margherita's day, which would fall in June, after the hay had been harvested.
"Candela di Sego," on his way back from the field, used every evening to leave his mule at Peppa's front door and go in to tell how the crops promised to be a veritable enchantment, unless Gramigna set them on fire, and the lattice over against the bed would not be large enough to hold all the grain, and that it seemed to him a thousand years off before he should carry home his bride on the crupper of his bay mule.
The poor "Candela di Sego" was dumbfounded, and the old mother began to tear her hair when she heard that her daughter had refused the best match in the village.
"I am in love with Gramigna," said the girl, "and he is the only one whom I will marry."
"Ah!" screamed the mamma, and she stormed through the house, with her gray hair streaming so that she looked like a witch--"Ah! that demon has been here to bewitch my daughter!"
"No," replied Peppa, with her eyes flashing like a sword--"no, he has not been here."
"Where did you ever see him?"
"I never saw him. I have only heard him spoken of. But I feel something here, that burns me."
The report spread through the region, though they tried to keep it a secret. The women and girls who had envied Peppa the prosperous farming, the bay mule and the handsome youth who could bear the standard of Santa Margherita without bending his back, went around telling all sorts of unkind stories: how Gramigna had been to visit her one night in the kitchen, and how he had been seen hiding under the bed. The poor mother burnt a lamp for the souls in purgatory and even the curato went to Peppa's house to touch her heart with his stole, so as to drive out that devil of a Gramigna, who had got possession of it.
But she persisted in her statement that she did not know the fellow by sight; but that she had seen him one night in a dream, and the following morning she had got up with her lips dry as if she had herself suffered from all the thirst which they reported him to be enduring.
Then the old woman shut her up in the house, so that she might not hear another word about Gramigna, and she stopped up all the cracks of the door with images of the saints.
Peppa heard all that was said in the street behind the sacred images, and she turned red and white, as if the devil had kindled all his fires in her face.
Finally she heard it said that Gramigna had been located among the prickly pear-trees of Palagonia.
"They have been firing for two hours," they said. "He has killed one carabineer and wounded more than three compagni d'armi. But they sent back such a hailstorm of shots that he must have been hit; there was a pool of blood where he had been."
Then Peppa made the sign of the cross before the old mother's pillow, and made her escape out of the window.
Gramigna was in the prickly pear-trees of Palagonia, and they were not able to find him in that stronghold of rabbits. He was ragged and covered with blood, pale after two days of fasting, burning with fever, and he had his carbine levelled. When he saw her coming, resolute, among the prickly pear bushes, in the dim light of the gloaming, he hesitated a moment whether to shoot or not:--
"What do you want?" he demanded. "What are you coming here for?"
"I am coming to stay with you," said she, looking straight at him. "Are you Gramigna?"
"Yes, I am Gramigna. If you expect to get those twenty _oncie_[3] of reward, you are mightily mistaken."
[3] An onza is $2.55.
"No, I have come to stay with you," she replied.
"Go away!" said he. "You can't stay with me, and I don't want anyone with me. If you are after money, I tell you you have made a mistake. I haven't any, mind you! For two days I haven't had even a morsel of bread."
"I can't go back home now," said she; "the place is all full of soldiers."
"Go away! What is that to me? Each for himself."
As she was turning away like a kicked dog, Gramigna called to her:
"Say, go and get me a jug of water, down yonder in the brook. If you want to stay with me, you must risk your skin."
Peppa went without saying a word, and when Gramigna heard the gunshots he began to laugh immoderately, and said to himself: "That was meant for me!"
But when he saw her coming back a few minutes later with the jug in her hand, pale and bleeding, he said, before he sprang forward to snatch the jug from her, and then when he had drunk till it seemed as if he had no more breath:
"You escaped, did you? How did you do it?"
"The soldiers were on the other side, and there was a thick bush on this."
"But they put a bullet through your skin. There's blood on your dress."
"Yes."
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