Per riflesso

For many long years nothing of interest had disturbed the peace of Larentu Verre's sheep-farm, when an extraordinary event occurred.

The women, old Coanna the servant and young Millèna the mistress, were making bread; uncle Larentu had just come back from the fields and stood by the wide-open door, mending the strap of a gun.

"What would you give me, Millè?"

So aunt Coanna cut a slice of lard on the board used for kneading bread, and made it into little pieces which she arranged over a round, wide loaf of raw dough; then she put the loaf to bake in the oven.

Suddenly he shouted:

"Go and hide; I'll stay!" the woman said proudly.

"You hide, if you like!"

And at once she grew uneasy.

Everyone knew that only through the instigations and gossip of aunt Coanna, who for forty years had ruled the farm, had the master, no longer young, failed to marry Andreana Verre.

And through aunt Coanna's scheming, he had instead taken as wife a relative of the old servant's, twenty years younger than himself.

"What does that woman want?"

"Go away, Larentu Verre, go and hide: I'll stay, go!"

"She's surely coming to ask you for money!" the old servant muttered.

"I'll manage on my own!"

"Go!"

He pretended to still be mending the gun's strap, keeping himself very busy; but every so often he looked outside, and felt a vague uneasiness, or rather a dull, secret anger.

"Now they're really starting to annoy me."

"The day before yesterday it was the schoolmaster, who let me know that that boy is first in his school, and that I must send him to study."

"Then the parish priest too."

"Let them all go to the devil!"

"Let them put him to work the land, or have him study at their own expense!"

"And that shameless woman who dares come here; just look at that!"

"Well then, let her come!"

"I'll kick her out!"

He was afraid of the servant, and ashamed before his wife, whose youth and goodness he loved.

"As many kicks as they want!" he repeated to himself, thinking of Andreana and of that boy he did not love: but meanwhile he would have liked to go out to meet them and beg them not to come nearer.

For a moment he hoped the woman and boy would pass straight by the farm, but when he saw them close and heading for his door he stepped back, hung the gun in its usual place, then started to go out.

"Those two" were advancing; there they were by the yard hedge, there they were before the door.

Behind the hedge the dogs were barking loudly.

She had come to ask for her son's future, and felt a lioness's courage.

But the boy looked, with his big hazel eyes, clear and a little frightened, at that small, reddish man with the spiteful face, who in his fur jacket looked like a malicious fox, and he blushed.

The kitchen was indeed still the same, plastered with yellow earth, and almost half taken up by the oven: in the corner behind the door the gun still hung; a little further along, a skirt of coarse black wool belonging to the old servant hung from a nail, and beside the skirt a wooden board with a hollow for holding the salt.

There, the granite hearth was still in the middle of the kitchen; through the dirty glass of the window one of the few cork-oaks rising over the plain could be seen.

The dogs were still barking.

Ah, there, she remembered one by one the farm's old dogs: the one whose bark sounded like a hoarse child crying was Maccioni, Larentu's favorite red dog.

Ah, the women were making bread?

She knew the tools they were using; only a paddle of white wood was new.

And aunt Coanna was still the same, the old witch, with her little marten's eyes and her hooked, yellow hands, like a goshawk's claws.

Only two people were new to Andreana in that familiar setting: little Andrea seated beside her, and Millèna seated before the oven.

And although little Andrea and Millèna, red-faced and confused, kept their eyes lowered, they were the only ones who made the brave mother feel ill at ease.

But suddenly he actually met aunt Coanna's small eyes, and it seemed to him he would burst out laughing to himself.