A Very Italian Christmas. Джованни Боккаччо

      Sitting on the wooden bench in the shadows beneath the hearth’s broad black hood, Pasqualina recited the rosary with her hands under her apron. Only the psss psss of her moving lips could be heard as she murmured her prayers. Night was falling and there was no light left in the smoke-blackened kitchen, with its great greenish-brown wooden table, dark cupboard, and chairs with painted backs. The hearth fire, half-extinguished, lay hidden beneath the cinders.

      A wooden clog banged against the closed door. Pasqualina got up and opened the door, and Teresa, also known as “Cloth-head” because she had worked as a maid for the nuns in a convent in Sessa, came in with the water bucket on her head, stooped over a bit because she was tall, thin, and bony. Pasqualina helped her to put the bucket down on the floor. Teresa stood motionless for a moment, without breathing hard in spite of the great weight she had borne. Then she unwound the rag she had used to support the bucket on her head and spread it over a chair because it was soaking wet, as were both the cotton handkerchief she wore knotted around her head and her tousled gray locks.

      In the meantime Pasqualina had lit one of those brass oil lamps with three beaks and a wick made of cotton wool that soaks in the oil, while holding up— hanging on thin brass chains—the snuffer, wick trimmer, and poker. Then she opened the wooden cupboard and cut a long, thick piece of stale brown bread, added to it a small piece of strong cacio cheese, and gave Teresa her supper.

      “And Canituccia?” Pasqualina asked.

      “I haven’t seen her.”

      “It’s late and that little smart-ass isn’t back yet.”

      “She’ll come.”

      “Tere’, remember that tomorrow afternoon at one o’clock you have to go to Carinola to carry that sack of corn.”

      “Yes’m.”

      Without eating, Teresa stuck the bread and cheese in the deep pocket of her apron. She stayed a little while longer, with her mouth half-open and her whole face dazed and devoid of expression, not displaying the least sign of weariness.

      “I’m going. Good night to you, ma’am.”

      “Good night.”

      And slowly Teresa went off toward Via della Croce, where four youngsters were waiting for her in a little room for their supper.

      Pasqualina stood on the threshold and called: “Canituccia!”

      No one answered. Evening had come on this February day. Pasqualina struggled to see in the darkness. She called out again loud and long:

      “Canituccia, Canituccia!”

      Mumbling curses, Pasqualina then went down the narrow walkway that, bisecting the vegetable garden, led from the door of the house to the front gate. From there she looked toward the Carinola road, toward the road leading from the crossroads to the church of the Blessed Virgin, and toward the single street cutting in two the little village of Ventaroli.

      “She must have dropped dead, that lousy girl,” Pasqualina muttered.

      In reply, she heard a low lament. Canituccia was sitting on the step to the front gate, hunched over, with her head almost between her knees, and her hands in her hair, moaning.

      “Ah, so you’re here, and you don’t answer me when I call? May you hang for that! What? Why are you crying? Did they give you a thrashing? And where is Ciccotto?”

      Canituccia, who was seven years old, didn’t answer, but moaned more loudly.

      “Why did you come back so late? And Ciccotto? Tell the truth: Did you lose Ciccotto?”

      The old peasant spinster’s angry voice grew frightening.

      Canituccia threw herself sobbing onto the ground face down, with her arms outspread.

      She had lost Ciccotto.

      “Ah, you scamp, you murderer of what’s mine, you’re nothing but the daughter of a whore! You lost Ciccotto? Take this. You lost Ciccotto? Take that. You lost Ciccotto? Here’s some more.”

      Pasqualina punched, kicked, and slapped the little girl. Canituccia struggled to try to shield herself from the blows, shrieking without crying. When Pasqualina grew tired, she gave the child a shove and said in a hoarse voice:

      “Listen, smart-ass, I only let you live with me out of charity. If you don’t leave now and go look for Ciccotto in the countryside, and if you don’t bring him back home, remember that I’ll make you die on the street like the daughter of a bitch that you are.”

      Canituccia, who was still shrieking from the beating she’d just been given, hoisted her ragged skirt—made out of red cloth—and set off barefoot toward the road for the church of the Blessed Virgin. As she walked, she looked to her left and right in the hedges and in the farmers’ fields, calling to Ciccotto in a low voice. She had lost him on the way home: she hadn’t realized that he wasn’t following her any longer. But in the dark of night she couldn’t see anything. Canituccia walked on mechanically, stopping every so often to look around without being able to see. Her bare feet, which had turned a deep burgundy red in color from a whole winter’s worth of cold, no longer felt either the ground beneath them, which was growing icy cold, or the stones over which she stumbled. She was not afraid of the night or the lonely countryside: she just wanted to get Ciccotto back. All she could hear were Pasqualina’s threats not to feed her if she didn’t bring him home. She felt a gnawing, intense hunger that was twisting her stomach into knots. If she brought Ciccotto back, she’d eat: this was her one and only thought. So she called and called to him, walking fast between the tall hedges, a tiny speck of motion in that nocturnal calm:

      “Here, Ciccotto! My darling Ciccotto, where are you? Come to your Canituccia! Ciccotto, Ciccotto, Ciccotto, come to Canituccia! If I don’t bring you home, Mama Pasqualina won’t give me anything to eat. O Ciccotto, o Ciccotto!”

      She came out onto the main road that leads to Cascano, to Serra, and to Sparanisi. In the gloom of night the road shone white, and the desolate child’s little shadow cast strange, distorted figures on the ground. Her voice grew weary. She began to run wildly now, calling to Ciccotto with all her might. Twice she sat down on the ground, defeated and in despair: and twice she got up and started to run again. Finally, in Antonio Jannotta’s field, she heard something like a small grunt, then something like a little gallop, and Ciccotto came to brush up against her feet with his snout.

      Ciccotto was a pinkish-white piglet, rather chubby and round, with a gray spot on his back. Canituccia shouted with joy, took Ciccotto in her arms, and started back with the last strength left in her young legs. Laughing and talking, she hugged Ciccotto to her chest to keep him from escaping, while the piglet, with his short legs dangling in the air, grunted contentedly. Canituccia started to run, thinking that she’d once again be able to eat. From afar she spotted Pasqualina’s figure at the gate, and when within earshot Canituccia shouted to her:

      “I found Ciccotto, I found my darling Ciccotto.”

      She soon reached Pasqualina and triumphantly handed the piglet over to her. In the darkness, Pasqualina grinned. They went back into the house and Ciccotto was put into his pen, where he ate and immediately fell asleep. Breathing heavily, Canituccia watched everything that Pasqualina did. The little girl too was hungry, like Ciccotto; she followed Pasqualina into the kitchen, looking at her with big wild eyes that were unable to ask. Then Canituccia sat down on the raised edge of the hearth, without saying a thing. The peasant woman had taken her place on the bench and returned to her rosary, praying in a passionless monotone. Canituccia, doubled over in order not to feel the spasms in her stomach, followed the prayer with her eyes. She was no longer able to think at all: she was just hungry. Only a half hour later, when she had finished reciting the Salve Regina, did Pasqualina get up, open the cupboard, cut a piece of bread, put a few cold leftover beans on a little plate, and give Canituccia her supper. Still seated on the raised edge of the hearth, the girl ate hungrily. She had a small head, with a tiny white face full of freckles and frizzy hair that was a little bit reddish and a little