When he had drunk the water, Giacobbe calmed down a little. An old gown of white cotton clung to his small wiry body. The thick black hair on his chest made a strange contrast with his bald head and hairless face. Frowning thoughtfully, he passed his good hand over his injured one and said in the fretful voice of the sick, ‘Horrible dream! Yes, yes, that’s all it was. Dear Saint Costantino, how hot it is. The heat of the gallows. I dreamed of hell.’
‘What an idea! What an idea!’ his sister said reprovingly.
‘Was it hot, little chicken?’
The sick man grew petulant. ‘Don’t tease me, don’t say “little chicken” any more. It annoys me. I won’t say it again. I’ll never tease anyone again. Listen,’ he went on, feeling his arm with his good hand. ‘Hell is terrible. I’m going to die, and there’s something I must tell you. Don’t get worked up, Anna-Rosa, I have to die. You know about it already, Isidoro, so I can tell you. It was I who killed Basile Ledda.’
Anna-Rosa’s eyes and mouth widened in horror, and she leaned against the bed shaking convulsively.
‘I knew nothing about it!’ cried Isidoro.
Giacobbe lifted his head and began to tremble too. ‘Don’t have me arrested,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m going to die anyway. Do you really mean what you say? I thought you knew. What’s the matter, Anna-Rosa? Don’t be afraid, don’t have me arrested.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said, trying to pull herself together. She felt as if she had been hit on the head. Her soul seemed to have left her and been replaced by another soul that saw the world, life, and God in a different way, and everything the new soul saw was full of horror, darkness, and chaos.
‘Of course I won’t say anything. But I knew nothing about it. How could I have known?’ protested Isidoro. He felt no horror of Giacobbe, indeed he felt pity for him. But at the same time he wished him to die. All at once each of them remembered Costantino, and from that time on the thought of him never left them for an instant.
‘Lie down,’ said Isidoro, patting the sick man’s cheek with his hand. But Giacobbe shook his head and gabbled on in his fretful voice, sometimes begging, sometimes peevish.