A Cry in the Night
By Grazia Deledda

Three old men to whom their age and perhaps also their habit of always staying together had given them the resemblance of brothers, stay sat down all day long and even a large part of the evening when the weather is nice, on a stone bench against the dune wall of the Nuorese cottage. 

All three of them, with their walking stick between their legs, and every now and then, they look at the sun to guess the time, or they make a small hole to spit into or to bury an insect. And they laugh and make small talk with the kids in the street, not much calmer or more innocent than them.

Nearby is the sleepy serenity of the Sant’Ussula neighbourhood and the stone hideouts of the Nuorese farmers and shepherds: a few fig trees hanging out of the little courtyard walls and if the wind blows, the leaves hit against each other as if they were made of metal. At the turn in the road Mount Orthobene appears, grey and green between the two grand blue wings of the Oliena and Lula Mountains. 

Since I was a girl, the three old men have lived there, exactly the same as they are now, clean and chubby, with faces the colour of burnt rust from the years blown by, hair and beards golden white, black eyes still full of light — lightly clouded pearls in the custody of their stony shell-like eyelids. Our maid used to go often, in the years of the drought, to draw water from a well near there: I used to follow her and while she talked with this one and that one like the Good Samaritan, I used to stop to listen to the stories of the three old men. The kids nearby, those sat in the dust, those leaning against the wall, threw pebbles at each other aiming carefully for the face, but at the same time they were listening. The old men told stories more for themselves than for the little kids: one was tragic, the other comic, and the third, Ziu Taneddum, was the one who I liked the most because in his stories the tragic and the comical mixed together, and maybe until that point I had felt that life was like this, a little red, a little blue, like the sky in those long summer sunsets when the maid drew water from the well and Ziu Taneddu, Ziu Jubanne and Ziu Predumaria told stories that I liked so much because I didn’t understand them very well and now I liked them just as much because I understood them too well. 

Between them, I remember this one told by Ziu Taneddu.

— Well, little chicks, I want to tell you a story. My first wife, Franzisca Portolu — you met her, right, Jubà, you were ghermanitos (third cousins) — well, she was a courageous and good woman, but she had certain curious fixations. She had just turned fifteen, when I married her, but she was already tall and strong like a soldier: she used to ride without a saddle, and if she saw a viper or a tarantula, they were the ones who were scared of her. Since she was a child she had  become accustomed to going alone across the countryside: she went to her father’s sheep pen on the mountain and, if needed, she watched the flock and passed the night out in the open. On top of all of this she was as pretty as a picture: long hair like waves in the sea and shining eyes like the sun. My second wife, Maria Barca, was also beautiful, you remember her, Predumarì, you were cousins; but not like Franzisca. Ah, like Franzisca I haven’t met another: she had everything, cleverness, strength, health; she was capable in everything, she understood everything; you couldn’t hear the buzz of a fly without her knowing about it first. And she was happy, oh, my brothers; I spent with her five years of happiness, like I didn’t even spend as a child. She used to wake me, sometimes, when the Morning Star was still behind the mountain, and say to me:

“Up, Tanè, let’s go to the festival, in Gonare, or in San Francesco or even further to San Giovanni di Mores.”

And so, in an instant, she used to leap out of bed, prepare the saddlebag, feed the mare, and away, we left happy as a pair of magpies on a branch at the first crow of the cockerel. How many festivals we enjoyed! She had no fear of crossing the rugged areas and forests at night; and in those days my brothers, remember, in the land of Sardinia there were little boars on two legs. Oh! They were there still: however I knew one of these bandits by sight, and to some of the others I had rendered a service, so we had nothing to be scared of.

So, Franzisca used to have what was almost a defect, she wasn’t afraid of anyone, she was alert, but indifferent to everything. She used to say: “I’ve seen so much, in my life, that nothing shocks me anymore, and even if I saw a Christian die, it wouldn’t scare me.” She wasn’t nosy like the other women: if a brawl broke out in the street, she didn’t even open the door. Well, one night she was waiting for me, and I was running late because the mare had run away from the farm and I had to return by foot. So Franzisca was waiting, sat next to the fire since it was a late autumn night, misty and cold. “All of a sudden,” she later recounted to me, “a terrible cry reverberated in the night, just behind our house: a cry so desperate and strong that the walls seemed to tremble in fright.” Yet she did not move: she said later that she wasn’t frightened, that she believed it was a drunk, that she heard a man run, some windows thrust open, some voices ask “what is it?” Then nothing more. 

I came back in a little later; but in that moment Franzisca told me nothing. The next day behind the wall of our courtyard a young man was found killed, a child almost, Anghelu Pinna, you remember him, the eighteen-year-old son of Antoni Pinna: and because of this murder I had a lot of trouble because, like I told you, the wretched boy’s corpse was found next to our house, spread out — I remember it well — in the middle of a large stain of coagulated blood, like a red blanket. But nobody knew any specifics, although many believe that Anghelu had an affair with our neighbour and that it was her parents who killed him coming back from a meeting. Enough, this is not important — what is important is that the report verified that the victim bled to death: helped in time, the wound bandaged, he would have been saved.

Well, my brothers, this terrible incident destroyed my peace. My wife became depressed, she lost weight, she seemed a different person, as if she had been cursed, and day and night she used to repeat: “if I had gone outside and looked and responded to the voices that called out, — the cry was behind our courtyard — the boy would have survived…”

She became a different person, yes! No more festivals, no more cheerfulness; she dreamed of the dead, and at night she used to hear the desperate cry and run outside, quivering and searching. In vain I said to her:

— “Franzisca, listen to me: it was me who cried that night, to see if it would frighten you. By the will of rotten chance the murder occurred the same night: but the unlucky man didn’t cry out and you have nothing to blame yourself for.”

But she had this idea fixed in her mind, and she wasted away, even though she pretended to believe my words to appease me, and she didn’t speak again of the dead. So a year passed; now I was the one who wanted to roam with her and accompany her to the festivals. One time, around two years after she heard the cry in the night, I accompanied her to the festival of San Cosimu and San Damianu, where a family friend had invited us to spend a few days there. The evening of the festival we all found ourselves in the open space in front of the little church. It was in the final days of September but it seemed like summer, the moon illuminated the forests and the mountains, and the people danced and sang around the fires lit as a sign of cheer. Suddenly I realised my wife had disappeared and I thought that she’d gone to lie down, when I saw her leave the church running, frightened like a sleepwalker who is woken up during one of their nocturnal excursions. 

—“Franszisca, my lamb, what is it, what is it?”

She was shaking, propped against my chest, and turned her face behind her, looking towards the door of the church.

I dragged her inside the hut, eased her down onto the bedding, and only then did she tell me that she entered the little church to pray for the soul of poor Anghelu Pinna when, all of a sudden, some of the young women from Mamojada left the church, and she found herself alone, kneeling on the steps at the foot of the altar. 

“I was left alone,” she recounted with her breathless voice, holding onto me like a child struck with fear. “I continued to pray, but all of a sudden I heard a whisper like the wind and a rustling of steps. I turned around, and in the semi-darkness, in the middle of the church, I saw a circle of people that were dancing hand in hand, without songs, without noise; they were almost all dressed in costumes, men and women, but they had no heads. They were the dead, my darling, the dead that were dancing! I stood up to run away but I was caught in the middle: two cold and lean hands had grasped mine… and I had to dance, my darling, dance with them. In vain I prayed and I whispered:

Santu Cosimu abbocadu,

Ogademche dae mesu…

They continued to drag me and I continued dancing. Suddenly the dancer to my right bent over me, and although he had no head, I distinctly heard these words:

—‘You see, Franzi? You too didn’t care that I cried!’

“It was him, husband mine, the unlucky young boy. From that moment I couldn’t see anything anymore. Here, the moment has come, I was thinking, now they will drag me to hell It is right, it is right, I was thinking, because I lived without love for my neighbour and I didn’t listen to the cry of he who was dying. And yet I was feeling an extraordinary strength; while, continuing to dance, we brushed against the door, I managed to twist between the hands of the two ghosts and I freed myself and ran away; however Anghelu Pinna chased me to the door and tried to grab me again, but he couldn’t step foot outside of the threshold, while I had already crossed it. The hem of my tunic remained in his hand; to free myself I unfastened the tunic, I left it with him and I ran away. My beautiful husband, I’m dying… I’m dying… When I am dead remember to celebrate three masses for me and three for the poor Anghelu Pinna… And go and see if you can find my tunic, before the dead reduce it to shredded wool.”

—Yes, little chicks, — concluded the old Ziu Taneddu, — my wife was delirious; she had a fever, and was no longer well and died some months later, convinced she had danced with the dead, like you often heard told. Also, a curious thing: one day, a shepherd found in front of the door of San Cosimu’s, a pile of shredded wool, and many women believe still that it was the wool from my wife’s tunic, reduced to shreds by the dead. 

Yes, kids, here you are listening to me with eyes like bright lanterns, the fact is this: what is most curious, I want to tell you, is that yes, I really did make the cry that night, to see if my wife was indifferent as she attested. When she was dead I had the masses said, but I was thinking too: if I hadn’t cried out, that wretched night, my wife wouldn’t have died. And I cursed myself, and I cried at myself: that justice casts a spell on you, that the ravens pick at your eyes like two beads of grapes, go to the gallows, Sebastiano Pintore, you killed your wife…

But then everything passed: I had to die too? Eh, my brothers, my children, and you, firefly eyes, gentle Ele, what do you say? I wasn’t a scaredy cat me, and after all I will die all the same, when Christ Our Lord commands it…

Translated by Sean McDonagh