Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

of Judas. I was unaware of the pastime of poking the logs, or the joy of feeling yourself engulfed in the warmth of the flames; I had no understanding of the teasing language of the log that crackles and grumbles as it burns; my eye never grew accustomed to the bizarre designs of the sparks rushing like fireflies over the blackened firebrands, to the fantastic shapes that the wood assumes as it blazes away, to the thousand and one chiaroscuro effects of the blue and red tongues of flame that timidly lick and gracefully caress before bursting petulantly and arrogantly into life. But once I was initiated into the mysteries of the tongs and the bellows, I fell hopelessly in love with the hearth’s potential for blissful idleness. I fling my body on to the armchair beside the fire as though I were casting off a suit of clothes, allowing the flames to make the blood flow more warmly through my veins and cause my heart to quicken its beat, and entrusting the sparks, darting and fluttering like enamoured moths, with the task of keeping me awake and making my thoughts wander off in the same capricious fashion. There is something charming and indefinable in the spectacle of your thoughts taking leave of you and flying off at random into the distance, whence they shower your heart with unsuspected tokens of bittersweet melancholy. Your cigar half-spent, your eyes half-closed, your fingers holding loosely on to the tongs, you see your other self careering dizzily off into the far distance; you sense the currents of strange worlds passing through your sinews; you smile as you experience a thousand and one sensations that would turn your hair grey and line your forehead with wrinkles, without moving a finger or taking a solitary step.
    It was during one of these nomad excursions of the soul that the flame flickered a little too closely perhaps, and brought back the vision of another gigantic flame I had once seen burning in the enormous fireplace at Piano, on the slopes of Etna. It was raining, the wind was howling angrily, and the twenty or thirty women employed to gather the olives on the farm were drying out their clothes, sodden by the rain, in front of the fire. The contented ones, those who had money in their pockets, or those who were in love, were singing, whilst the others sat talking about the olive harvest, which had been poor, about the weddings in the parish, or about the rain that was stealing the bread from their mouths. The steward’s elderly wife was busy at her spinning-wheel so as not to waste the light from the lantern that hung from the fire’s canopy, and the big, wolf-coloured dog lay with its muzzle stretched out across its paws towards the fire, pricking up its ears at every new wailing of the wind. Then, while the minestra was cooking, the shepherd began to play a mountain song that made your legs itch to be moving, and the girls started dancing on the uneven tiled floor of the vast, smoke-blackened kitchen, while the dog growled for fear of their stepping on his tail. The ragged skirts fluttered merrily, and the beans too danced away in the pot, mumbling amid the froth boiled up by the heat of the flames. Once they were tired from dancing, it was time for the singing to begin, and several of the girls called out ‘Nedda! Nedda Varannisa! 1 Where’s Varannisa hidden herself?’
    ‘I’m over here,’ a voice replied from the darkest corner of the room, where a girl was squatting on a bundle of firewood.
    ‘What are you doing there?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Why weren’t you dancing?’
    ‘I’m too tired.’
    ‘Sing us one of those lovely songs of yours.’
    ‘No, I don’t want to sing.’
    ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘She’s got her mother dying,’ said one of her companions, as though she were saying she’d got toothache.
    Crouching there with her chin over her knees, the girl raised her big, black eyes, shining but tearless and seemingly impassive, towards the young woman who had