A Winter's Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

out that house to her daughters from a distance when they were gathering wild chicory on the banks of the river.
    â€œThey say that back there, where you see that oak, is where the girls who bleed to death end up,” she told them solemnly. “She buries them in secret, then and there, in deconsecrated ground. That’s why that oak is so big, because it thrives on the corpses of those poor girls.”
    Not that she believed these stories herself, but if they helped to scare her daughters to death and keep them out of trouble, they had served their purpose. Or at least that’s what she hoped.
    â€œIf a man really loves you he’ll have the patience to wait,” was another of her lines.
    â€œAnd you,
mamma
? Did you manage to wait until you married daddy?”
    â€œCertainly,” she would reply. “And I did the right thing. We’ve always cared for each other, comforted each other and helped each other through hard times. That tiny sacrifice was nothing compared to the whole lifetime we’ve spent together.”
    She was lying, because she had always known that the heart knows no reason and that when you’re in love, waiting is out of the question. But she’d known that her Callisto was a good person from the moment she’d met him; a fine young man who would never get her into a fix: the kind who, if anything happened, would be happy to marry her right away. And she remembered when she was first married, when she would wake up at night and light a candle just to look at him, like Psyche and Eros. He was so handsome she felt it couldn’t be true. The priest had explained that her husband’s name meant “beautiful” and that’s just the way it was. But this was a story that she kept for herself because you can never be careful enough and she didn’t want her girls running any risks.
    She was a wise person, Clerice was, anyone in town could tell you that. When a woman went into labor they’d always call her to give a hand. Both because she’d had so many children herself and because she was a real expert in bolstering the courage of the first-timers, especially. Clerice was known to have uncommon skills, skills that not even doctors had. She could treat stomach ailments with a glass and a candle, cure falling sickness and shingles and even cast out worms. So many children became infected by playing on the ground and then putting their fingers in their mouths. The worms multiplied in their intestines until their stomachs became as stiff and taut as the skin of a drum and their fevers went so high it would send them into convulsions. Sometimes they died. But Clerice knew what to do. Once she’d put her hands on the child and whispered prayers under her breath, the worms were expelled, the fever went down and the convulsions stopped.
    She would often have to leave the house after dark, wrapped in her shawl, murmuring invocations to ward off the spirits of the night.
    Sometimes, after she’d helped a woman give birth and was walking back home down the lonely streets fingering her rosary beads, she thought of when she’d brought her own children into the world. She’d remember how she felt when they put the baby in her arms after washing and dressing it. She would look at that innocent creature and think, each time, what will become of him? What will he have to face or to bear in his life? And often, the contrary happened; she’d see a filthy, scabby raggedy beggar walking down the road and she’d think: he had a mother who brought him into the world with great hopes, who had wanted all the best for him and look here at the results of that woman’s dreams and her hopes! And she’d carry on praying.
    She remembered that each one of her boys, when they were born, gave clues that she would try to interpret. Dante, her firstborn, was an easy, quiet baby, more interested in food than in play, but he would carefully observe