A group of people, black against the clear sky, was heading towards the muck heap, playing instruments and singing. Realizing what was going on, Isidoro went out to meet them. About twenty of their number were women, some old, some young. They were singing a harsh, melancholy chant, or spell, against the tarantula’s bite, accompanied by a primitive lyre, its sounding-box made from the dried bladder of a pig. The musician was a blind young beggar, dressed as a woman, in ragged, dirty clothes.

Three men emerged from the group, one of them looking flushed and feverish. His hand was bandaged. Isidoro saw that it was Giacobbe Dejas. The fisherman touched the wounded hand with a finger, while Giacobbe watched him, his eyes full of terror.

‘I’ve been bitten by a tarantula,’ he told Isidoro. ‘I’m going to die. I’m frightened.’

The group of women consisted of seven widows, seven married women, and seven girls. Among the widows was Giacobbe’s sister. In spite of her grief, she still looked pink and fresh-faced, and her fine, strong voice, strident as a cricket’s, rang out above the rest.

‘Saint Peter he went down to the sea

And behind him dropped his key.

Said God, “What is it, Peter mine?”

“She has bitten my foot, my heart, my spine.”

“Take the sad thorn1 and grind and pound,

And in three days you’ll be safe and sound.”

Tarantula with the spotted breast,

Your mean daughter you laid in the nest.

High on the hill you left one child,

Another you left in the valley wild.

One in the dale, one on the hill,

For you and I each other to kill.’

Still singing, the women approached the old dung heap. Two men, who carried mattocks, began to dig a hole, while Isidoro stayed with Giacobbe beside the women and the blind man who was playing the lyre.

Giacobbe watched the two men in silence while Isidoro, for his part, contemplated the invalid who had changed so much he seemed a different person. His face was red and inflamed and lined by anxious suffering. Under their bare eyebrows, his normally shrewd little eyes were clouded by a childlike fear of death. When they reached the last line of their chant, the women began again from the beginning, and the music of the curious lyre took up the strident, monotonous theme, which sounded like the buzzing of many bees. The cold wind had frozen the sweat on Giacobbe. His face had grown pale and his teeth chattered. They made their way to Anna-Rosa’s house. Isidoro, who had completely forgotten his dinner, followed the oddly-assorted group.

‘Did you kill it?’ he asked the sick man, remembering that anyone who kills a tarantula with his ring finger is endowed with the power to heal a bite with a touch of that finger.