On one of the pastures, the Dejas’ farm labourers were burning the scrub, clearing the ground to plant barley and wheat. The flames crackled, the smoke spread out heavy with odours like the fumes of incense. The thorny hedges were sketched like purple embroidery against the silvery air. The flocks of sheep had been herded in, and only a few horses still grazed, muzzles to the ground. Behind the hut Giacobbe’s voice could be heard through a tinkling of sheep bells, the distant bark of a dog, and the harsh cry of a crow.

Inside the hut, stretched on warm skins and fleeces like an Arab sheikh, Brontu pursued his unbroken sleep. The fiery liquor flooded his heart with its deep sweetness. It was rash to disturb him then. The sweetness would change into a bile, bitter as gall. As a dog thumps its tail when pestered in its sleep, so he would flare into a blind rage. His father too had loved hard liquor. Once, when drunk, he fell into the fire and died of his burns. But Brontu was more careful and anyway he had his passion for Giovanna to keep him safe. Grappa and Giovanna! The most beautiful, fiery, and intoxicating things in the world. But, even when inflamed by grappa, Brontu was timid with Giovanna. He trembled at the thought of approaching her, of speaking to her. On the days when he knew she was working for Martina, he was racked by the desire to return to the village, to see her in his house, to watch her. Then he would not dare leave the sheepfolds. But as time went by, waiting and anxiety consumed him. He feared that if he delayed Giovanna would refuse him once again. He wanted to show her how he cared for her, to tell her that the moment Costantino was convicted, he, Brontu, had wanted to marry her, to look after her. He was good at heart, like all drunkards, and he was by nature honest. Since boyhood, when his family had come to live in the new house, his one passion, besides the grappa, had been Giovanna. She was fifteen then, fresh and beautiful. Every time he saw her, Brontu blushed to the roots of his hair, and she, realizing, was not offended. But he never spoke, and when finally he decided to send his mother to Giovanna’s mother, the place had been taken. In those days Giovanna was as proud and wild as a filly. She did not understand the value of money and, just as she would have married Brontu Dejas for his fine teeth alone, so she would not have been false to Costantino even for the viceroy, had there still been one in Sardinia.