The mayor, himself a shepherd, a pale proud man who looked a little like Napoleon, condemned the marriage. Whenever he met Giovanna or Brontu, he would spit on the earth in contempt. Even before the love-affair came to light people had muttered, but now, with a real piece of scandal to gossip about, they were only too delighted. When the question of marriage arose they laughed, thinking it would never happen and assumed that Brontu was making fools of the Era women. No more might have been said had Brontu and Giovanna simply lived together, since they would not have been the first nor the last to do so. Giovanna would have been forgiven because she was young and poor. But to marry a woman who was already married! This, the people could not tolerate. Some threatened to make a scene on the wedding day, to throw stones and hiss and boo or even to beat up the couple. And they knew it. Brontu was furious. Bachisia said, ‘Leave it to me,’ while Martina raised her head like a mare sniffing the dust of an explosion. She felt old and tired of working. She wanted an unpaid servant. Giovanna suited very well. Brontu must take her, even if the village people burst with envy.

No one knew where or by whom the marriage was to be celebrated. Some said it would be in a country church, by a drunkard priest whom Brontu had presented with a pair of oxen. There was a great deal of laughter at this detail, but at whose expense, the first or the second husband, no one really knew.

One night Isidoro Pane was at work in his tumbledown hovel by the light of a large, cheerful fire. He had gathered the sticks from the fields, the river bank, and the woodlands. During the winter he plaited rope out of horsehair. He could do anything, sewing, spinning, cooking – when there was anything to cook – cobbling shoes. But he remained poor. All at once the door opened, revealing a slice of the clear but sombre March night, and Giacobbe Dejas came in and sat silently beside the fire.

The fisherman’s kitchen glowed as if it were burning. Its red light picked out the figures of the two men and a few other objects, leaving the rest of the room in darkness. A large greyish cobweb with a spider in the middle occupied one corner while, beside the hearth, stood a glass jar, brimming with water in which black leeches swam. A yellow basket stood propped against the wall. The old fisherman sat with a rope of frayed black horsehair between his reddened, bony fingers.

‘How are you these days?’ Giacobbe asked.

‘How am I?’ answered the old man. ‘I don’t know.’