After the Divorce by Grazia Deledda (buy e reader .txt) 📕

deep blue sky, like an immense, silent vale dotted over with yellow, starry flowers. At first Costantino’s sensations were not altogether unhappy. True, he was going into the unknown to fulfil a cruel destiny, but down in the bottom of his heart he firmly believed that before very long he would be liberated, and he never lost hope.

The bustle on deck, the rattle of the chains, and the first motion of the ship as it got under way, filled him with childish curiosity. He had never been to sea, but, as a boy, he had often stood scanning the horizon, and gazing at the grey stretch of the Mediterranean, sometimes dotted over with the white wings of sailing vessels. At such times, as he stood among the wild shrubs and undergrowth of his native mountains, he would dream of some day crossing that far-away sea to distant, unknown lands, and to the golden cities of the Continent. He could read and write, and had a book in which St. Peter’s at Rome was depicted; and in the chapter on sacred history there was an engraving of ancient Jerusalem. Ah! Jerusalem. According to his ideas, Jerusalem must be the finest and largest city in the world; and, as he stood there dreaming among the bushes on Mount Bellu, and gazing off at the grey Mediterranean, it was to Jerusalem that he longed to go. And now, here he was crossing the sea; but how different from his dreams! Yet, so splendid was his conception of Jerusalem that if it had been thither that he was bound, even a chained and condemned prisoner on his way to expiate a crime, he would, nevertheless, have been content to go.

The pitching and rolling of the ship was accompanied by the ceaseless rush of the water from the bows. Some of the convicts chattered among themselves, laughing and cracking jokes. Costantino fell asleep and dreamed, as he always did, that he was at home again. He had been set free almost immediately⁠—he dreamed⁠—and had gone home without letting Giovanna know a word about it so as to give her the unutterable joy of the surprise. She kept saying: “But this is a dream, this is a dream⁠—” The expenses of the trial had stripped the little house bare of everything, even the bed was gone; but nothing made any difference. All the riches in the world could not compare with the bliss of being free and of living with Giovanna and Malthineddu. But he was terribly tired, so he curled himself up in the baby’s cradle; the cradle rocked, harder and harder all the time. Giovanna laughed and called out: “Be careful not to fall out, Costantino, my dear, my lamb!” And the cradle rocked more than ever. At first he laughed as well, but all at once he found he was suffering, then he fell head foremost on the ground, and woke up.

There was a heavy sea on, and Costantino was sick. The ship struggled up to mountain-heights and then plunged swiftly into bottomless gulfs of water, the waves breaking even over the third deck.

All the convicts were ill; some still attempted to joke, while others swore, and one, with a yellow, cunning face⁠—he was Costantino’s companion⁠—moaned and lamented like a child.

“Oh!” he groaned, cowering down, gasping and frightened. “I was dreaming that I was at home, and now⁠—now⁠—oh! dear St. Francis, have pity on me!”

Notwithstanding his own misery, both physical and mental, Costantino felt sorry for him. “Patience, my brother, I was dreaming too about being at home.”

“I feel,” cried another, “as though my soul were melting away. What the devil is the matter with this ship! It seems to be trying to dance the Sardian dance!” Whereat some of the others still had sufficient spirit left to laugh.

The storm was increasing. At times Costantino thought he was dying, and was frightened; yet, on the other hand, he felt an unutterable weariness of life. His soul seemed to be steeped in the same bitter fluid that his stomach was casting up. Never, not even at the moment when the sentence of condemnation had been passed upon him, had he experienced anything like his present condition of hopeless misery. He too began to swear and groan, doubling his fists, and twisting his chilled toes. “May you die just as I am dying now, you murderous dogs, who brought all this on me!” he muttered, while tears as bitter as gall welled up into his eyes.

Towards dawn the wind subsided, but even when the sickness had passed, Costantino found no relief; he felt as though he had been beaten to the point of death, and he was shaking with cold, and exhaustion, and dread. The steamer relentlessly pursued its way. Oh, if it would only stop for just one moment! A single moment of quiet, it seemed to Costantino, would suffice to restore his strength; but this continuous forging ahead, the constant rolling, the never-ceasing roar of the waves as they lashed the sides of the vessel, kept him in a state of nervous tremor. On, and on, and on; the long hours of agony dragged slowly by; night came again; and all the time his subtle-faced, yellow-visaged companion hardly ceased to sigh and lament, driving Costantino into a perfect frenzy of irritation. Sleep came at length, and then, strange to relate, he had the same dream as on the previous night, only this time it was Giovanna who was in the cradle, and the cradle was rocking quite gently.

When Costantino awoke, the boat seemed hardly to move; in the silence that precedes the dawn, he heard a voice say: “That is Procida.”

He was shaking with cold, and wondered if they were to land there, where, he thought he remembered to have heard, the galleys were.

Presently his companion awoke, shivering and yawning prodigiously.

“Are we there?” asked Costantino. “How do you feel?”

“Pretty well. Are we there?”

“I don’t know; we are near Procida; is that where the galleys are?”

“No;