And then others passed, more than thirty:
young men spread out in a swarm like bees;
It seemed to me the darkness had swallowed them up,
one by one, and that the wind,
and that fog that drags across the earth
had scattered them throughout the world.
The dark pulled them away; an uproar,
a chattering, and names, and shouts and cries:
A voice that sang with all its might,
but there was so much anger in that voice,
the desperation and the sorrow
that seemed to curse heaven and earth.
—Vito Mercadante, “Focu di Mungibeddu” (Etna’s Fire)

Mariano announced it on the evening of Saint Michael’s Day when he arrived home from Baronia with his aging father. Catena, who was nursing the baby, turned white as a dead woman and said, “So they’ve managed to put it into your head, those troublemakers! Well, if you really want to go, you’d better know that I didn’t get married just to end up a widow or stay a girl after one year of marriage!”

Mariano angrily threw his hoe down in the corner, cursing; Catena shook her head and with pale lips repeated, “I’m coming. I’m coming, or I’ll throw myself off the top of the Castle!”

Returning from the stable, Mamma Vita found them arguing. When they quarreled like that, she never said a word, out of prudence, but seeing them so agitated and hearing the words La Mèrica, fear gripped her heart, and she murmured, “My son, what are you saying?”

She was hunched over in the doorway, black and tiny, with a fistful of straw in her raised apron, and Mariano, feeling himself watched by those clear, frightened eyes, composed himself and said, “I’m just doing what everyone else in Amarelli is doing, and this one is tormenting me with her all whining. Just see if it’s possible for someone like Catena to leave.”

Mamma Vita didn’t move, as though she didn’t comprehend. Then she bent over the wood chest, covering her face with her hands. With the toddler now asleep on her lap, Catena stared blankly ahead, her enormous black eyes full of passion and pain. Finally, the old man came up, too. He knew about his son’s sad decision and went toward the stairs without saying a word.

Everyone in the neighborhood of Amarelli was leaving, and there was weeping in every house. It was like wartime, and just as when there is war, wives were left without husbands and mothers without sons.