Moscardino by Enrico Pea Read Free Book Online

courage to say a word of reproof to the doctor who could give him a powder of something and kill him off like a dog if he needed the doc for a constipation?
    He worried: That doctor will come every day as he has done for two years . . .
    And is today the first time? . . . and he convinced himself that the doctor had come to an agreement with Sabina, they had cooked up this trip to the seaside between ’em.
    Jack of Clubs had arranged with her that he would be waiting by the new bridge under the plane trees.
    Why had she told the driver to go by the New Bridge and not by the Annunziata?
    Was it Sabina who told him? Cleofe’s need of sea air had been invented on purpose?

    This had all happened because of Cleofe. He hoped she would die soon and end it. That confounded consumptive would hang on for a long time yet, he would have to stand it or die off himself.
    He scratched his head, his hands, got up, hitched the shawl round his neck, looked at Don Pietro Galanti with begging eyes. Turned his eyes to the fields, there were the red poppies. He looked at Cleofe, there was that damn one-lunger, cause of it all; who might at least die off and end it, then the doctor wouldn’t come to the house any more. He didn’t know where to look, if he cast his gaze inward he was terrified. He remembered all his past life, the meeting at the well, the first fear of those mocking reflections down in the water beneath him, which took him by the hair and slapped him against Sabina’s face; that was the first bewitchment, hoodoo. Then that woman kissed him. That brought the blood of his disemboweled brother back before his eyes.
    He saw red for the rest of the drive.
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    Gulls at rest on the sea-water, in little groups, crowds of them further off, others scattered over a sea fanned by a cool northwest wind. Patternless as a field of daisies sprouting in an unbounded meadow.
    A sea paler than spring grass feathered by so gentle a breeze, petals blown off, deflowered.

    A sea streaked by little furrows, unpatterned as soon as formed, as if a golden comb passed invisible, lining the white and blue, a page of the book eternally fabulous upsetting all men’s calculations.
    On the hard beach inshore the water scarcely moved, without foam, as if the sea breathed in blessed rest. No shadow of effort in the sleeping giant.
    Cleofe hunched up on the sand under a black umbrella, not much shade, but enough for her. She does not feel the sun’s heat though the sun is already high.
    With all the pale sea in her eyes, sinuosity of the gulls, small pigeons new hatched, black and white with their wings open on the live water. Great lake as a bed for water lilies, amazed at the soon come summer.
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    Tota pulchra es. Wholly fair art thou, Mary full of Grace! The abbé Don Lorenzo was reading the book of Sunday prayers for the month of May the most amorous pages that the faithful can say to the Virgin when she stands in the silver niche unveiled for the evening novena, with the golden rosebuds and the celestial mantle and on her rosy forehead the crown of lilies which shines and shakes to the echo of children’s voices.
    Wholly fair art thou, Mary, piena di grazia, said the abbé in a tiny lowered voice in the shadow near Cleofe.

    It was the first time he had been so near that Madonna, who seemed to breathe, absorbed, with all the gleaming sea reflected in her tobacco-coloured eyes.
    That pale wax face, the head bent toward the left shoulder, protected from the sun rays by a black baldacchino, with the child at breast as Mary in the desert of Egypt, followed by Herod. Eyes the colour of Macaboy snuff.
    Full of grace; wholly fair art thou, Mary; for the first time Don Lorenzo dared to speak so near to her, protected by the shadow of the little black rain umbrella.
    Tota pulchra es, Mary, piena di grazia. He spoke the words of the Christian poet, and though protected by the shadow he was not free, he felt his heart caught in his