Giovanna alone was not there, and this was for two reasons. First, her plight placed her in a kind of mourning which prevented her from appearing outside the house except when her work made it necessary. But the main reason was that she had fallen into a sort of apathy that prevented her from moving, from leaving the house, from working or praying. She had never been a devout Christian, but before the trial she had made a vow to walk barefoot and bareheaded to a certain church in the mountains, and, if Costantino were acquitted, to drag herself on her knees from the point where the church first came into view from the pathway, a distance of about two kilometres.

Now she neither prayed, nor spoke, nor ate. She also seemed to have lost all interest in her baby. To keep him alive, Bachisia had to feed him with bread mashed up in milk. Some said that Giovanna was going mad. Indeed, when she came out of her apathy where she crouched in a corner hour after hour, her glazed eyes fixed on nothing, it was only to fly into a rage, tearing her hair and screaming out unintelligible words. After the last time she had seen Costantino, when she had taken the baby with her, she could think of nothing else, and went on talking about the prison in the wild tones of someone obsessed.

‘He was laughing. He was pale and he laughed. Behind the bars. Little Martino clung to the bars, and Costantino clutched the baby’s hands and laughed. Oh God! Oh God! Don’t laugh like that! It hurts me, for I know that your laugh is the laugh of the dead. The warders stood there like vultures. At first they were kind, those warders of human flesh, but later, after Costantino had been convicted, they were cruel. Cruel as dogs. Baby Martino cried with fear when he saw them. And his father laughed, do you understand? The baby, the innocent creature, cried. He understood that his father had been convicted, and he cried. Oh my God! Oh my God!’

‘Giovanna, my dear, you’re behaving like a two-year-old child,’ Bachisia fumed, having had enough of it. ‘Your son has more sense than you, you fool.’ She even made as if to hit the girl. But nothing – prayers, sympathy, threats – nothing had any effect.

Meanwhile, word came from Nuoro that to await the appeal, Costantino had been transferred to a gaol in Cagliari. Then came a short, sad letter from him. He said the journey had gone well but Cagliari was suffocatingly hot. Red insects and others of various colours tormented him night and day. He sent a kiss to the child, begged Giovanna to bring baby Marty up in the fear of the Lord. He also sent greetings to his friend Isidoro.