Pasqua

On the morning of Holy Saturday, Apollonia Fara sprang from her great canopied wooden bed, just as dawn began to lay a sea-green gleam on the little window's single pane of glass.

A single coarse pane, but marvelous for the small picture it framed: a landscape which, in the clear and almost faded freshness of early spring, seemed painted by Poussin — a fold of hillside, a blue and winding brook, and picturesque, scattered trees whose branches, green with moss, were just beginning to dress themselves in tender little leaves; and grass, grass everywhere, low pale grass that gave whoever looked at it an impression of purity and innocence.

While she was putting on her yellow and red costume, Apollonia studied the sky through the glass, then went to look inside a basket woven of asphodel, full of flour that had been rising since the evening before, and on which she had traced the holy cross with her finger.

The flour had risen a little around this sign of good omen.

As the day grew bright, rosy and mild, Apollonia thought with trepidation:

"Oh my Jesus, my little Jesus Christ!"

"Well, I don't even want to think about it — let him come whenever he likes."

The person whose arrival she awaited and dreaded was the young Vicar, who was to visit the houses of the village for the Easter blessing.

The young Vicar had, some years before, been engaged to Apollonia, but she had abandoned him to marry a rich shepherd.

The young man, madly in love with her, had tried to kill himself by firing a revolver shot into his side; saved with great difficulty, he had afterward become a priest.

He had only recently returned to the village with the title of Vicar, and every time he saw Apollonia he turned a little pale.

She looked at him with indifference; that morning, however, she felt a certain unease at the thought that he would come into her house to bless her bread and her still-barren bed: and when she threw open the little window to watch the procession passing by chanting psalms, and saw the Vicar's thin, frightened face, she was troubled.

Still, she stayed to watch: at the head of the procession went a dark-skinned Madonna with seven swords driven into her heart, searching for her dead Son; the green brocade banner followed, and then came the village musicians and the women dressed in mourning.

When everything had vanished down the country road, Apollonia went back to her oven and her kneaded flour, from which she wonderfully made the Easter bread — the whitest of bread, all carved and pierced with openwork — and the casadinas, little cakes of dough and fresh cheese yellowed with saffron, and certain small figures shaped like swaddled babies, mummies, and birds, each with a large hard-boiled egg for a head.

A deep silence reigned in the deserted little house and over the sunlit countryside; the bells were still, bound for the death of Our Lord, and everything shared in this silence, waiting for some mysterious event; only a bird now and then began to sing among the hedges, but soon fell silent again, as if frightened by the silence it had broken.

Around ten o'clock Apollonia felt something like a shiver pass through the air; she too gave a start and raised her head, listening.

The bells rang out.

And through their first peal came the sound of a shot, then another, then three more, then ten, then a hundred.

Shouts and voices of almost frenzied joy accompanied the sound of the bells and the crack of the gunshots, echoed back by the hillside.

Bands of children passed through the village singing:

She finished baking her bread, her flatcakes, her Easter sweets; and in the afternoon she received gifts from neighbors, relatives, and friends, and gave back gifts of bread, sweets, and meat.

With every new gift she delighted in comparing the bread she received with the bread she had made, happy to find her own whiter and better made.

Toward evening her husband returned from the sheepfold; he came back on his sturdy white horse, with a saddlebag full of dairy foods, and with two lambs, one white and the other black, which were to serve for the Easter feast.

Apollonia's husband was rich, but like all rich husbands who have married poor girls, he was ugly and rather old: in his sallow face only the nose, a bit of the forehead, and a bit of the cheeks emerged from a black cloud of tangled beard and hair.

On Saturday evening the Easter festivities began: the rich shepherd invited relatives, friends, and neighbors to his house, and everyone sang, improvising songs of joy in honor of Our Risen Lord.

Meanwhile they ate the flatcakes and drank wine, absinthe, and brandy.

Needless to say, everyone got drunk, to spite the Jews who had crucified Our Jesus.

As the sun rose above the hill, the young woman grew troubled again, thinking of the Vicar's visit.

Ah!

today he will come, he will surely come.

Apollonia knows that he too has risen at dawn, and, dressed in his sacred vestments, followed by a man with a saddlebag over his shoulders and a boy with a pail of holy water, is making the visits he was unable to attend to yesterday.

In every house the women drop bread, flatcakes, and dried fruit into the saddlebag, and eggs and coins into the pail.

He arrived in front of Apollonia's house around nine; the man with the saddlebag stooped under the weight of the gifts he had received, and the boy, with his pail almost full of eggs and coins, looked as if he had drawn water from a miraculous well.

The priest entered Apollonia's house without asking leave, and for the first time since he had begun seeing the young woman again, he did not turn pale — while she turned pale instead.

Would he bless, or curse, the house where the woman who had driven him to the very threshold of death now lived happily?

She asked herself this question with a kind of terror, for in the small villages of Sardinia it is believed that priests, by means of the sacred books, can excommunicate and curse with great effect.

But it was enough for Apollonia to look at the priest's inspired face and the gentle gesture with which he took up the gleaming aspergillum and scattered the holy water here and there, above and below, for her to become convinced that in his heart, too, he was blessing her.

Then she opened the door that closed off the storeroom; he blessed the bread, the flatcakes, the wheat, the vegetables, the cheese.

Apollonia loaded the saddlebag with two great loaves, five flatcakes, and a garland of dried figs: then she went back with the priest into the kitchen, and timidly opened the door that led into the bedroom.

Through the little window came a very bright golden light.

With bated breath, mute and pale, Apollonia looked at the priest.

Ah!

he too had gone a little pale in the face; but his gentle hand poured the blessing over the marriage bed, wishing it fruitfulness.