The Church of Solitude

Pages 121 - 151

Grazia Deledda 121 some way that would become known, and perhaps also with money, had gone off on his own business. The “doctor” exasperated Concezione. Sometimes he even managed to mesmerize and frighten her, weaving his own special version of the mysterious happenings. “It probably happened like this: that simpleton was practically out of his head with passion for you, and even more from the sucking of that vampire, the lovely Maria Pasqua. Everyone knows what type of bat that one is: a mammalian bird, the devil’s spore. She likes money, handsome young men, and no children, neither sons nor daughters. I think she also likes wine, and rosolio. She’s like certain vampires in America that, during the hot season, land on the necks of overheated horses and make a breeze with their wings so that their victims feel somewhat refreshed and happily let them suck their blood; that’s what that Siren does with her lovers. She drank the blood of Aroldo—a nice name, like a troubadour, and he even has a mandolin—and when the blond boy tried to console himself, other than with music, wine, and acquavita, he fell lower and lower. When he was drunk, he talked about his suffering over you—oh yes, you, Signora Maria Concezione—and some people laughed at him. Others listened to him seriously, and trailed him; and these, probably, have made him vanish like a cloud at sunset.” “But who, who, for the love of God? You tell me, Doctor; you act like those American vampires with me.” “Maybe so! You really would restore my blood, if you let me suck your sweet neck. Because you, my friend, have hot blood, boiling, even if you pretend otherwise. Happy the man who will succeed in sucking even one drop from your lips!” And he stretched out his trembling hand, with veins like the leeches he once applied to the sick; but Concezione was quick to move away with indescribable repugnance. She was more afraid of him than of all her other suitors put together. Even so, like children on the sad evenings of winter, she shivered with a pleasant anguish when he began again to tell stories about the subterranean passage, and concluded, if jokingly, that 122 The Church of Solitude Aroldo too had been lured in there and maybe was still in there, with his guitar, like a bird in a cage. Then she protested, still painfully repeating her futile question , “But who? Who could it have been?” “You know better than I do, fickle girl.” “Stop joking, Doctor. Do me a favor: go away, and don’t talk like that anywhere else.” He pretended to obey: he bowed, and went away with dignity, leaving her in great agitation. She thought she was going mad. Aroldo’s image was always before her, alive, touchable , with beautiful, sad eyes, and lips held out to kiss. And now that he wasn’t there anymore, and would never be there again, she felt she loved him, wanted him, with all her truly incandescent blood. Not only that, but it seemed to her that now her only reason for living was no longer her affection for her mother, but this love for him. “If he were to reappear! If he were to come back! I would give myself to him without thinking about anything else. I would cling to him until I became one body with his—like that, like that!” And she bit her lips with a spasm. She threw herself on the bed crying, embraced by the shadow of nothingness. h On a moonlit night, the sergeant came back. He immediately said, in his voice like a bubbling fountain, “Don’t be afraid, Signorina. I just stopped by because I was going by here on some business.” It’s true that such personages have business in all the most remote corners of the world, wherever the devil tries to hide with all his malevolent inventions. But then, in the neighborhood of the little church protected by the little Madonna, since the death of those ancestors, evil had little hold; even Aroldo’s case could not yet be clearly judged. At any rate, Concezione had secretly prided herself on being more clever than the sergeant , and she put herself on the alert But she was courteous, Grazia Deledda 123 even to the point of asking if he would...