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better for him to die here at home . . . at least he would go to the cemetery where his father . . . and where we all, anyhow.
    Signora Pellegrina, you might at least say something or other to keep ’em from taking him away . . . You are his mother, I have done every . . . I have told ’em to let him die in peace in his bed.
    There was a pool of blood on the floor.
    How can a man live without blood? It’s true, it’s all God’s will, but God’s will could cure him in his own bed.
    To die in his own bed . . .
    The mayor says it can’t be done.
    I haven’t been able even to give him the sacraments.
    The Misericordia will be here . . . anyhow it’s your business . . . come see him before they take him away and give him your benediction before they get him out of the door.
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    Mrs. Pellegrina trembled and stared into nothingness, rolled her eyes from the depth of her arm-chair . . . and didn’t answer.

    Her teeth clicked from time to time, and the beads of the rosary tapped one against another. And a fug in that room that hadn’t been opened for months, a smell of oil wick and of mold, a feeling of death. That skeleton hardly moved by its trembling . . . hunched into wide-sided arm-chair in the darkness of the room.
    When the Misericordia did come with the coffin and the two horses the whole village was on the brick sidewalk.
    Toward evening. Cloudlets reddish and dark, hurrying in escape, in herds, from sea to hills. Those far off seemed like one cloud thinned out on a turquoise sky, more blackish than reddish.
    The cold breeze stung the women’s faces and they stopped their mouths with their yarn tippets keeping their hands under their aprons so that their bellies seemed to bulge out. They stood stock still looking at our house, close to the opposite wall like a frightened flock of pregnant and widowed witches.
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    Those two horses with traces and harness ends of yellow leather, brass buckles, bridles with square blinkers that almost boxed in the horses’ noses to keep them from shying, and with tinklers on their heads to keep them from going to sleep, bits with two small bars of iron sticking out on each side of their mouths, from which the rope reins passed over their rumps between two oval rings set in the tiny saddle atop the belly-band, rings oval shaped like old-fashioned key tops.

    One sorrel and one chestnut with their knees bundled in cloth, their tails bundled up, with their ears twitching against the shiny blinkers, that man with the embroidered hat with the four reins between the fingers of his heavy hands, high up, above the horses, with his whip-end touching the ground and the covering of the catafalque trailing behind, covered with oilcloth like an uneven warming pan; a terrifying apparition never described in the book of fears.
    Meanwhile it was getting dark and this mechanism started toward the Lucca asylum down the steep brick-paved lane, the creaking breaks slowed the wheels . . . chi-chi-chieee . . . wailing of wounded crows in the tragic evening.
    A window was thrown open and a living skeleton appeared. A howl and thud. The pregnant witches took their hand out from under their aprons as if to deliver themselves from an evil.
    Mrs. Pellegrina had fallen on her back. Broken her skull, could not be given the sacraments.
    Everybody in this damned house dies without being given the sacraments.
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    I adore thee in every instant, O living bread of heaven, O sacrament of the most high.
    Tomorrow thou shalt be with God.

    Say: Jesus, Joseph, Mary.
    But the eyes were set and glassy. Don Pietro had held a lighted candle to her lips and the flame does not waver.
    Sabina, tie a handkerchief under her chin so her mouth won’t flop open.
    The rosary is in her hand.
    She is dressed in black silk, all you need do is to light another lamp and keep watch.
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    Grumpy still had that pool of blood before his eyes, and his head now wrapped in a woolen shawl.
    He