‘So. What then?’ he said aloud. As if terrified by his own voice, he opened his eyes wide, then closed them again and muttered softly. ‘I don’t want her any longer as my wife. She’s a fallen woman. She’s been with another man. Since she’s been with him she could come back to me or go with others. She’s like Mattea. I spit in her face.’

He opened his eyes again and spat with scorn for Giovanna. Then, tender memories of times long gone passed through his mind. He remembered one morning when he had awakened his wife with a kiss. Opening her eyes briefly, rather surprised, she had said, ‘I thought you were someone else.’

Was it an accident he had remembered that? He was a fool. He did not even know whether Giovanna would welcome him or throw him out if he went to see her. He decided she would not welcome him. He had to go on living and suffering but if he went and she did not want him, perhaps a ray of light would be kindled in the cold emptiness that surrounded him. For he still wanted her, still desired her. He had never for one moment ceased to want her, to desire her. He still dreamed of an honest Giovanna, lost for ever on this earth, but his alone in eternity. If now she deceived her second husband, even for the first, she would not be honest. In the secret depths of his conscience he thought of Brontu Dejas as Giovanna’s real husband.

It was about ten o’clock, and he was still lying on the little bench when a melancholy tune floated through the air. It was the blind boy playing the accordion in the distance and singing a deep, monotonous song. The song seemed to express an overwhelming nostalgia, as if the dead were remembering the few happy days of their lives. The music seemed to beg for light, joy, happiness, all the things the dead had departed from and would never have again. Shivering, Costantino stood up. The song and the music retreated further and further into the distance and then ceased.

A wave of tenderness and anguish washed over Costantino’s heart. In the darkness, in the infinite silence, in the vast solitude that surrounded him, he understood the blind man’s overwhelming need for light. He felt like a sleepwalker. He could hear, under his feet, the rustle of dry leaves that the wind had swept up and piled round Isidoro’s cottage. His eyes, accustomed to the darkness, could see the lighter line of the street, the black cottages, the empty background of the horizon. Waking up, he quickened his step.