In Maremma/Volume 1/Chapter 4

by Marie Louise de la Ramée

 

CHAPTER IV.

 

HE grew to eight years old without ever seeming to think of accounting for her own existence.

Then, abruptly one day she said to Joconda:

'Are you my mother?'

Joconda's weatherbeaten hard face broke into a laugh.

'Lord! baby—why I am seventy years old and more!'

'Where is my mother, then?'

'In heaven,' said Joconda; and thought, 'poor soul, more like in hell!'

The child was silent, pondering.

'Where is my father, then?'

'Why do you ask such things?'

'Because the others, they have a father and a mother apiece, where are mine?'

Joconda had often dreaded the question that sooner or later was sure to come.

'Your father is dead,' she answered.

'Dead in the sea?' said the child.

People were so often killed by the sea in Santa Tarsilla.

'Yes,' said Joconda, and she looked over to the north where she knew that the isle of Gorgona rose from the waves.

'Did he go to fish?' asked the child.

'No, dear,' said Joconda, with a pang at her heart. 'No, dear; he was a mountaineer, he lived up yonder; in the hills; do not vex your soul over that, child; it is of no use.'

The child did not understand, nor did she give much heed; her grave straight brows were drawn together in thought, and her curved rosy lips were shut fast.

'I think I do remember him,' she said at last very slowly. 'I remember him kissing me, and he had something cold and bright that hurt me, and he put it away, and then there were smoke, and screaming, and shots, and I crept under Leone's stomach and hid. I do remember.'

'You dreamt that, baby,' said Joconda harshly, because she was pained; 'the cold bright thing' that had hurt her must have been the dagger red with so much blood! But the child shook her head and persisted:

'No: I do remember.'

And she sat down on the earthen floor, and put her arms round Leone, and leaned her head on his, and asked him, did he not remember too?

'Bless the good God that made the beasts dumb!' thought Joconda.

She hoped the child would not tell it to the neighbours. The child did not. She was never talkative, but held herself aloof; not out of shyness nor yet out of temper, because she was a bold child, and except for rare fits of untamable passion, was of serene temper, but out of a seriousness and indifference that seemed strange in one so young.

There was no one to give her guardian counsel in Santa Tarsilla.

The priest was a homely, ignorant man, son of a fisherman, one of themselves in both his ways and thoughts, and the rest were all poor creatures in her estimation, shrunken and sickened with fever, swollen with dropsy, or palsied with the ague of the coast, as they so often were, and living quite away from the world of men, hardly knowing when revolution was running riot in the cities, hardly hearing when ships were sinking, and squadrons were falling, in war upon sea or land.

There is, perhaps, no isolation more complete, no ignorance more absolute, than that of a little obscure town on the 'accursed Maremma,' as the people call this rich and fruitful land, because the greed and the folly of men have cursed it.

No one comes nigh it; nothing is done for it; now and then, with years between each, travellers may wander to the sites of Etruscan cities, or hunters come to kill the wild, soft creatures of the marsh and moor; that is all. The only thing known of government is the tax wrung out of the empty pocket; the fine, for which the cupboard must go breadless; no one can write, scarce any one can read; submission and weakness beget indifference to all things; if any great tidings are brought, no one cares; it will make no difference to the people. They creep about in the sun, and the slow boats go out, and the sultry heavens hang over the torpid sea, and when the bell rings they all wend their listless way to the old church and pray to Something which they believe in, but which does not help them, and so their lives go on and end: and no one cares.

It is the sea-shore, indeed.

But all the health, and vigour, and strong activity, and pungent fresh odours, and buoyant winds, of the sea elsewhere are too often missing here. No one knows how hateful the blessed and beautiful sea can be who has not seen it, oily, and glassy, and motionless, stretching under a grey sky that looks parched with mists of intensest heat, and with the fever fog of the poisonous summer hovering about the glaring sands.

It is no sin of the sea's; the sin is man's alone.

Centuries upon centuries of carnage, and destruction, and fatal waste, have laid the land bare, and brought disease and desolation in their train. Perhaps one day the whole earth will be like this wasted Maremma shore; it is very possible. This land was healthful and lovely enough in the days when the legions of Fabius coveted its wealth; and even in the later age, when Rutilius dropped anchor at Populonia, it was still for the most part busy, crowded, prosperous.

The sickliness of the shore, however, seems little to affect children, and it hurt not at all the buoyant health and elastic strength of the young child they called Velia and the Musoncella. For one thing, she was for ever in the water when she was not scampering, fleet of foot as the hill goats, along the sands, or further out to the moorlands, where the fresher air was. Hardy men came from the mountains, and fell sick, and even died; strong soldiers came on guard from hot cities, and there grew wasted, and languid, and ill, but she throve there with a splendid vitality and vigour that were the pride of Joconda and her shame; her shame, because it recalled to her the face and form which she had seen for the last time by the red autumn light in the market place at Grosseto.

'She is his image,' she would say, scanning the pure, oval face, the arched, proud lips, the eyes like the eyes of the Braschi Antinous, the whole face that had the colour and the beauty of a flower with the firm lines of a classic bronze.

Of beauty she was no great judge, herself, but she knew that this child was beautiful with the terrible beauty of Saturnino.

The law, with its curious one-sided chastisement which it calls justice, had taken to itself the guilty man, and left the innocent offspring alone to perish as it might; and the heart of Joconda was heavy because she herself was old and the child was so young, and was not a child to put away in peace within convent walls, nor yet grow up to dwell contentedly in a fisherman's hut.

'Blood will out,' she thought.

Meanwhile the child for the time was content enough; she fared hardly, for Joconda could do no better for her; she bit black bread and salt fish with her pearl-like teeth and often was hungry; she raked in the glass wrack and the ribbon weed for fuel, and wore rough homespun clothes about her supple loins, but she was content enough; she had the freedom of the shore and the sea, and if any maltreated her it was the worse for them. And she knew nothing of that wild life which had been caught like a wild beast, and caged like one, on that island, which lay far off upon the waters like a little light golden cloud.

When she grew old enough to listen to what people said, the story of Saturnino had grown older also, and few even gave a thought to it. There had been wars and other heroes since then; he was at the galleys at Gorgona; but the Maremma had ceased to talk of him except when, now and then, round a fire in the forests, or becalmed out at sea, a charcoal burner or a coral fisher would say, 'Aïe! he was a man!—that was in the good time; we have no such men now, we are all afraid.'

For as the monotonous years rolled on, all alike, exactly alike, bringing the drouth of summer and the storms of winter over the low sea-shore, twelve years had drifted away like twelve hours, and the child was fourteen years old before Joconda could have counted twelve on her fingers; so she said, one day, looking up at the lithe figure between her and the sunshine.

'Holy Mary, you will be a woman before one knows it!' she cried, with a pang at her heart, for she was now very old herself, and when she was gone—who could tell?

'A woman!' repeated the girl: it did not seem a word that suited her.

'Yes, you are not a boy,' said Joconda testily. 'So a woman you will be, worse luck. If one could only see a little way ahead—woe's me!'

'Does it vex you I am not a boy?' said the girl. 'Why should it vex you? I can do all that they can. I can row better than many, and sail and steer; I can dive too, and I know what to do with the nets; if I had a boat of my own you would see what I could do.'

'All that is very well,' said Joconda, with a little nod. 'I do not say it is not. But you have not the boat of your own, that is just it; that is what women always suffer from; they have to steer, but the craft is someone else's and the haul too.'

The child looked at her from under bent brows. She did not understand the words, she took them literally.

'For me,' she said, 'I do not care whose it is, not at all; I care for the fishing, but what does it matter who has what it brings?'

'It matters when one starves,' said Joconda.

'But we do not starve.'

'No we do not.'

She spoke with curtness, but there was a dimness in her eyes that was not merely from old age. They did not, while she was here, with her lease of the old house, and her prudent savings, but when she was gone?——

The people were very poor; they could seldom get food enough for themselves; who would cherish a nameless child? She herself, though she had neighbours, had no friends; she was always the 'woman of Savoy' to all the folks of Santa Tarsilla.

It made her very anxious, for she was a good woman, and the creature that lay on her bed and ate at her board, she loved, though she said but little.

'Do you ever think that I shall die?' she said abruptly to the child, who looked at her in some surprise.

'Die?' she echoed. 'That is going away into the earth, you mean, as everything does, and then it goes upward and lives with God, they say; would you wish that?'

'I will have to do it whether I wish or not, and about living with God I do not know. I am a sinful soul, though not worse than most. But you do not understand. When I am dead, under the earth as you say, what will you do?'

'I do not know.'

She did not; she had never thought of the matter; her mind was blank, though her body was vigorous. Then she added after a little thought:

'I will give myself to the sea; that is the way I will die.'

'You! I speak of myself.'

'I will die if you do.'

Joconda looked at her amazed and keenly touched.

'Do you love me so much then?' she cried suddenly.

'Is that love?' said the child. 'I should not like to live if you were not here; I do not know if you call that love.'

'It is love,' said Joconda.

She felt her eyes full of the slow tears of age, tears salt as the crystals the sea left on the shore. 'Ah, my dear, my dear!' she muttered, 'It is not myself that will cause you to die for love, but it may be some other—when I am gone and cannot help you! Ah, child, why were you born?'

Musa did not hear; she was standing with her brown hand on the white head of her dog looking out seaward; the words that had been spoken had not saddened her because they were vague to her. Joconda had always been there—why should she go away to earth or sky?

It was an April day; at this season the sea had no vapour and the shore no miasma; there was enough breeze to curl the little waves and send the foam in ripples; the boats were out and the low pale beach was alive with life, as the women shook and tossed the seaweed, and raked up the crystals of the salt, in the morning light.

'If I had only a boat!' she said with a sigh.

It seemed to her the one supreme glory of life—a boat.

A boat altogether one's own, to go out with in wild weather when all others were afraid; to lie in, all still and alone, on tranquil waters, gazing down into the blue depths where the coral branches were, and the starry flowers of the sea, and the gemlike eyes of the fishes; to steer, all by oneself, through tossing roaring breakers, through wind and tempest, under inky skies and beetling rocks, with the fierce hurricane in front and the thundering waters behind; a boat all one's own; that was the one triumph of life.

But she had no boat; Joconda could not give her one; and when it was stormy weather the men put her back, and would not let her go with them, because she was a child, because she would be a woman. Yes; she understood as she thought of the boat; she understood that it was very bad to be a woman.

Joconda broke in on her thoughts.

'Wild bird of sea and cloud,' she said more tenderly than she had ever spoken, 'you are a stormy petrel, but there may come a storm too many—and I am old. I have done my best, but that is little. If you were a lad, one would not be so uneasy. I suppose the good God knows best—if one could be sure of that—I am a hard-working woman, and I have done no great sin that I know of, but up in heaven they never take any thought of me. When I was young, I asked them at my marriage altar to help me, and when my boys were born, I did the same, but they never noticed; my man was drowned, and my beautiful boys got the fever, and sickened one by one and died: that was all I got. Priests say it is best; priests are not mothers.'

She was silent awhile, her thoughts travelling backward many a year to the time when she had been young, and had known both the joys and the travails begotten of love. She had been a hard-working woman, toiling for the bare bread of life, until she had grown old; but she had been faithful, and she had not forgotten.

Only heaven had forgotten her.

She was one amongst so many, she thought; it was not wonderful.

Then she roused herself and went on with her speech to the child.

'I am old and you are young. Soon I must leave you, dear, down in the earth, up in the sky, one way or another I must go. I am anxious—there is the little money in the jug under the bricks, and the linen and the mule, that is all; the house goes back to the master. I cannot tell what you will do—may the saints spare me just a little. If you were a woman grown, one would not be so anxious. To please me will you go and learn of the Sisters?'

'No,' said the child, resolutely. There was a bare, dreary place near at hand, where a few good women dwelt, who nursed the fever-stricken and taught the children. They would have taught this child, too, but she would never go to them.

'Within four walls I am stupid as a stone,' she said, and said aright.

'But the Sisters would help you to learn things useful for all your life.'

The child shook her head.

'I can sail a boat and cast a net; they cannot.'

'Some fisher lad must take you in a year or two.'

'They will not take me,' said the child, not understanding the sense that was meant. 'They are jealous, because I am strong. The old men take me; they are kind, sometimes; old Andreino most of all.'

Joconda said no more; she would not disturb the innocence and ignorance of the child by saying what she herself had meant.

'These thoughts come soon enough,' she said to herself, and added aloud:

'Don Piero says you sing like all the angels. 'That is better than even to sail a boat, for it pleases those in heaven.'

'I sing for myself,' said the child, 'and it is on the sea that I sing the best. In the church my throat gets full of dust; there is no air, and I hate it.'

'Hush, hush! The church is a holy place, and the sea may drown you some day.'

'It is a good death,' said the child, carelessly.

Joconda shuddered; she remembered the night of fifty years before, when her husband's boat had gone down, heeling over into the white, boiling surf, on the very edge of the shore.

'There are such beautiful things to see down, down, deep down, in the sea,' added the child.

'What good is that to them? Dead men are blind, said Joconda wearily. 'Whether you lie in the sand or the sea it matters nothing once you are dead, but it matters to those that are left. Child, do not talk of such things; death is no toy, and the sea is greedy always.'

'The sea is good,' said the child jealously, as if some creature she loved were aspersed. 'The sea is better than the land. You wish me a boy. It is a seagull that I wish I were; I would be if I could.'

'A seagull cannot sing.'

'I would sooner fly than sing. It is something that sings in my throat, not me; but when I swim, when I dive, that is all me.'

Joconda for her part did not understand.

'You are a strange creature,' she said impatiently. 'It would have been better if you had been ugly and quiet, and without that devil in you that will never let you be still. But it is no fault of yours. There are seagulls and there are barn-door fowls, and the good Lord made them both. Well, go, rake some seaweed together or any other rack of your precious sea that one can burn; we are very poor; we shall be poorer, for I get too old and you are too young.'

Joconda looked after her as the little erect figure stood out in the light against the turquoise blue of the sky and sea, and the primrose colour of the low sunlit clouds.

'She would never be a house-keeping, heaven-fearing thing,' she thought with a sigh. 'All one can hope for is that she may please some fishing lad and be an honest mother of young sea dogs. There is fierce blood in her; it will out.'

And she felt sorrowful, and as though she herself had done some sin, sitting in the stone archway of her house door with the heavy brown sail dropped across her knees.

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