A Spirit in Prison Part 124

Hermione stood still.

"What are you talking about?"

"Signora! About Antonio Bernari, who has just come home from prison!

Didn't you see him? But you were there--in the house!"

"Oh--yes, I saw him. A rivederci!"

"Ma--"

"A rivederci!"

She felt in her purse, found a coin, and gave it to him. Then she walked on. She did not see him any more. She did not know what became of him.

Of course she had seen the return of Antonio Bernari. She remembered now. As Ruffo stood before her with the wet hair on his forehead there had come a shrill cry from the old woman in the kitchen: a cry that was hideous and yet almost beautiful, so full it was of joy. Then from the kitchen the two women had rushed in, gesticulating, ejaculating, their faces convulsed with excitement. They had seized Maddalena, Ruffo. One of them--the old woman, she thought--had even clutched at Hermione's arm. The room had been full of cries.

"Ecco! Antonio!"

"Antonio is coming!"

"I have seen Antonio!"

"He is pale! He is white like death!"

"Mamma mia! But he is thin!"

"Ecco! Ecco! He comes! Here he is! Here is Antonio!"

And then the door had been opened, and on the sill a big, broad-shouldered man had appeared, followed by several other evil-looking though smiling men. And all the women had hurried to them.

There had been shrill cries, a babel of voices, a noise of kisses.

And Ruffo! Where had he been? What had he done?

Hermione only knew that she had head a rough voice saying:

"Sangue del Diavolo! Let me alone! Give me a gla.s.s of wine! Basta!

Basta!"

And then she went out in the street, thinking of the green parrot and hearing the cries of the sellers, the tram-bells, and Fabiano's questioning voice.

Now she continued her walk towards the harbor of Mergellina alone. The thought of the green parrot obsessed her mind.

She saw it before her on its board, with the rolled-up bed towering behind it. Now it was motionless--only the pupils of its eyes moved.

Now it lifted its claw, bowed its head, shuffled along the board to hear their conversation better.

She saw it with extreme distinctness, and now she also saw on the wall of the room near it the "Fattura della Morte"--the green lemon with the nails stuck through it, like nails driven into a cross.

Vaguely the word "crucifixion" went through her mind. Many people, many women, had surely been crucified since the greatest tragedy the world had ever known. What had they felt, they who were only human, they who could not see the face of the Father, who could--some of them, perhaps--only hope that there was a Father? What had they felt? Perhaps scarcely anything. Perhaps merely a sensation of numbness, as if their whole bodies, and their minds, too, were under the influence of a great injection of cocaine. Her thoughts again returned to the parrot. She wondered where it had been bought, whether it had come with Antonio from America.

Presently she reached the tramway station and stood still. She had to go back to the "Trattoria del Giardinetto." She must take the tram here, one of those on which was written in big letters, "Capo di Posilipo."

No, not that! That did not go far enough. The other one--what was written upon it? Something--"Sette Settembre." She looked for the words "Sette Settembre."

Tram after tram came up, paused, pa.s.sed on. But she did not see those words on any of them. She began to think of the sea, of the brown body of the bathing boy which she had seen shoot through the air and disappear into the shining water before she had gone to that house where the green parrot was. She would go down to the sea, to the harbor.

She threaded her way across the broad s.p.a.ce, going in and out among the trams and the waiting people. Then she went down a road not far from the Grand Hotel and came to the Marina.

There were boys bathing still from the breakwater of the rocks. And still they were shouting. She stood by the wall and watched them, resting her hands on the stone.

How hot the stone was! Gaspare had been right. It was going to be a glorious day, one of the tremendous days of summer.

The nails driven through the green lemon like nails driven through a cross--Peppina--the cross cut on Peppina's cheek.

That broad-shouldered man who had come in at the door had cut that cross on Peppina's cheek.

Was it true that Peppina had the evil eye? Had it been a fatal day for the Casa del Mare when she had been allowed to cross its threshold? Vere had said something--what was it?--about Peppina and her cross. Oh yes!

That Peppina's cross seemed like a sign, a warning come into the house on the island, that it seemed to say, "There is a cross to be borne by some one here, by one of us!"

And the fishermen's sign of the cross under the light of San Francesco?

Surely there had been many warnings in her life. They had been given to her, but she had not heeded them.

She saw a brown body shoot through the air from the rocks and disappear into the shining sea. Was it Ruffo? With an effort she remembered that she had left Ruffo in the tall house, in the room where the green parrot was.

She walked on slowly till she came to the place where Artois had seen Ruffo with his mother. A number of tables were set out, but there were few people sitting at them. She felt tired. She crossed the road, went to a table, and sat down. A waiter came up and asked her what she would have.

"Acqua fresca," she said.

He looked surprised.

"Oh--then wine, vermouth--anything!"

He looked more surprised.

"Will you have vermouth, Signora?"

"Yes, yes--vermouth."

He brought her vermouth and iced water. She mixed them together and drank. But she was not conscious of tasting anything. For a considerable time she sat there. People pa.s.sed her. The trams rushed by. On several of them were printed the words she had looked for in vain at the station. But she did not notice them.

During this time she did not feel unhappy. Seldom had she felt calmer, more at rest, more able to be still. She had no desire to do anything.

It seemed to her that she would be quite satisfied to sit where she was in the sun forever.

While she sat there she was always thinking, but vaguely, slowly, lethargically. And her thoughts reiterated themselves, were like recurring fragments of dreams, and were curiously linked together. The green parrot she always connected with the death-charm, because the latter had once been green. Whenever the one presented itself to her mind it was immediately followed by the other. The shawl at which the old woman's yellow fingers had perpetually pulled led her mind to the thought of the tunnel, because she imagined that the latter must eventually end in blackness, and the shawl was black. She knew, of course, really that the tunnel was lit from end to end by electricity.

But her mind arbitrarily put aside this knowledge. It did not belong to her strange mood, the mood of one drawing near to the verge either of some abominable collapse or of some terrible activity. Occasionally, she thought of Ruffo; but always as one of the brown boys bathing from the rocks beyond the harbor, shouting, laughing, triumphant in his glorious youth. And when the link was, as it were, just beginning to form itself from the thought-shape of youth to another thought-shape, her mind stopped short in that progress, recoiled, like a creature recoiling from a precipice it has not seen but has divined in the dark. She sipped the vermouth and the iced water, and stared at the drops chasing each other down the clouded gla.s.s. And for a time she was not conscious where she was, and heard none of the noises round about her.

It was the song of Mergellina, sung at some distance off in dialect, by a tenor voice to the accompaniment of a piano-organ. Hermione ceased from gazing at the drops on the gla.s.s, looked up, listened.

The song came nearer. The tenor voice was hard, strident, sang l.u.s.tily but inexpressively in the glaring sunshine. And the dialect made the song seem different, almost new. Its charm seemed to have evaporated.

Yet she remembered vaguely that it had charmed her. She sought for the charm, striving feebly to recapture it.