On that immense bed Giacobbe Dejas slept. In his fever he thought he was still in the hole in the ground and that the two men who had buried him were piling earth around his head, suffocating him. He was in agony, but he let them go on, hoping he would be cured more quickly if he were completely buried. His head was Father Elias, on whose chest the thin tail of a tarantula moved. In the dream the fear of death clutched frenziedly at him. Lying in the warm oven he had thought that hell might be a lighted oven, inside which the damned would lie, stretched out, for ever.

Now, in his dreams, the same feeling came over him. He was buried in the hole, the earth piling up round his face, his mouth shut tight so as not to swallow any, and then he saw the lighted oven. It was hell. So great was his terror that, even in his sleep, even in his fevered nightmare, something willed him to understand that what he was feeling was just an illusion. He woke up, but with the same sensation that stones, had they any feelings, would have in a fire. He was burning, but he could not move, could not flee his horrendous fate. He tried to scream, but only a dull moan came out of his mouth. Yet the sound of his own, human voice in the horrors of hell comforted him.

From the nearby kitchen, where he lay sleeping, Isidoro, who had stayed to help the widow in whatever way he could, heard that moan and was afraid. He woke and, thinking that Giacobbe had died, he went into the sick man’s room. Giacobbe lay still, his face oddly lengthened, his eyes glistening, black with tears.

‘Are you awake?’ Isidoro asked softly. ‘Do you want something?’

He touched the sick man’s pulse, bending his head as if to listen to the heartbeat. Suddenly, on the other side of the bed, Anna-Rosa’s little face appeared, bound in a white kerchief. The sick man’s face seemed to shrink, his mouth widened and his eyes squeezed shut. A long groan wheezed out into the room. The woman remembered how, years ago as a child, Giacobbe had sobbed on the self-same bed. She put out a hand and stroked the sick man’s head, saying to him in a half-gentle, half-angry voice, ‘The holy souls in Purgatory bless you, what’s the matter? How do you feel, little brother?’

Isidoro went on trying to test the sick man’s pulse, finding now one vein, now another. ‘This is strange,’ he said.

‘What is? Tell me what’s wrong. What’s the matter, Isidoro Pane?’

‘Nothing, nothing. He called, that’s all. Perhaps he had a bad dream. Bring some water. Drink, now, Giacobbe. Look how he drinks. Are you thirsty? It’s the fever, you see.’