“What do you take me for? Some kind of beggar desperate for bread?”

Certain things gna’ Basila just didn’t understand. With seven lire a month from the state and working every day, you could live the good life, dress decently and eat something hot every evening, instead of killing yourself for a bum who was ashamed of you. With her red-rimmed eyes opened wide, Grace would say right to gna’ Basila’s face, just to convince herself that the other woman believed it, too: “It’s not true. When he’s not angry he loves me. You can tell. And besides … men are men.”

Just as long as he loved her, even a little, but forever. When they really wanted to get under her skin, they would tell her that Gemello was negotiating to marry Rosa, mastro Nele’s daughter, who had thirty gold coins of dowry, because Gemello was young and he couldn’t spend his life tied down to an ugly monkey like Grace. And she believed them. She would laugh aloud, an ugly laugh with her mouth twisting the way it did when the sickness struck her; and then she wanted to know from Gemello if it was true, whimpering to him for days on end that he wouldn’t be treated better in any other house, until the irritated man finally beat her.

Now that la Mottese had come to live nearby, Grace no longer had any peace. And she would send Vastianedda even more often to spy on Gemello, warning her not to let herself be seen. And when the orphan didn’t have exact information or couldn’t track him down or—hungry as she always was—went looking for bread instead of obeying, Grace would grab her by the hair and beat her savagely in a hysterical fury.

In her threadbare, faded red dress, she really must have looked like an ugly monkey, and would eye la Mottese with envy. She coveted her colored corsets braided in gold, her beautiful skirts, her shoes that were always new, and her red and turquoise stockings. Compared to la Motesse, what was she? La Motesse was young, with hair as soft as silk, rosy cheeks, and a beautiful body. Her tight-fitting corsets set off her youthful, firm breasts, and when she washed her face in front of her doorstep, splashing water outside the bucket, all fresh and rosy and happy, you could see parts of her neck and arms that were as white as wax. And so Grace was ashamed to be seen doing laundry with the loose skin of her rail-thin arms exposed and would then find all kinds of excuses to beat Vastianedda. She was aware that Gemello liked joking with la Mottese, who laughed at anything, and it gnawed at her.