Our driver was far quicker off the mark than we were. ‘Follow me,’ he said. And he scooped me up and with me riding piggy-back he set off trampling down a swath of grass, thereby creating a relatively dry wake for Piers and Norman to follow in.

Safe and sound later that day back in Nuoro, I traced the hotel owner and phoned to thank him for his hospitality and for his driver’s kind attention. I mentioned the visit to the nuraghe and my piggy-back ride.

Yes, our benefactor told me, his driver was a treasure. The man had been with him a year or more now, ever since he had finished his stint in prison for kidnapping.

Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro, Sardinia, in 1871. She wrote many novels and collections of short stories. D.H. Lawrence admired her for reproducing ‘the temporary psychological condition of her period … she creates the passionate complex of a primitive populace.’ After her marriage in 1900, she moved to Rome, where she lived the rest of her life. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926, she died in 1936.

Susan Ashe
Lymington, Hampshire
July 2016

I

On the floor by the bed in the Porrus’ guest room a woman sat weeping. She crouched, rocking her head on her arms, sobbing in utter despair. Her shapely figure, tightly laced into a yellow cotton bodice, rose and sank like a wave on the sea.

It was almost dark in the windowless room. Through the open door, which gave on to a bricked balcony, a stretch of ash-grey sky could be seen, gradually darkening. In it, a single yellow star shone. From the courtyard below a cricket chirped, and now and then a horse’s hoof stamped against the paving stones.

A stout old woman in the peasant dress of Nuoro appeared in the doorway carrying an iron lamp in one of whose four sockets burned a wick swimming in oil. ‘Giovanna Era, what are you doing in the dark?’ she called out in a gruff voice. ‘It sounds to me as if you’re crying.’

The sobbing went on. The old woman drew closer and went on indignantly, ‘Your mother’s downstairs waiting for you, and here you are wailing like a madwoman.’ Hooking the lamp to a nail in the wall, she crossed to the weeping girl, trying to find words of comfort. But all that came to her was, ‘You’re crazy, Giovanna.’

The guest room, traditionally reserved for friends from neighbouring villages, was large, whitewashed, and unplastered. It contained a big wooden bedstead and a table covered with a fine cotton cloth. On the table were little glass cups and saucers. A number of pictures adorned the walls, close under the rough wooden ceiling. Bunches of wrinkled grapes and yellow pears hung from the rafters, filling the room with a delicate fragrance. Sacks stuffed with wool stood about the floor.