What sad days. Husband and wife did nothing but argue. But then Catena won out, and when Mariano bought the expandable suitcase and started putting his things together, Catena, trembling but decisive, organized her things along with those of the baby.

Her pale face had the look of a terrified child. She spied on everything and everyone, fearful till the last minute that something unforeseen, some betrayal on Mariano’s part, might keep her from leaving. And in the suitcases she frantically mixed in his things with hers to make sure he wouldn’t be leaving without her.

It was only on the night that the bags were ready and Mariano showed her the two tickets that she calmed down, and her eyes became sweet and laughing again the way they had always been.

And it was then that she began to feel the pain of leaving, and she felt like a thousand years would have to pass before the time would finally come to leave the little house where she’d been so happy for a year, after the ill treatment she had suffered in the house of her stepfather and stepsister, to leave a tearful Mamma Vita, who had been a mother to her, and Papà ‘Ntoni, who suffered in silence.

When they had gone, ssù ‘Ntoni went back to the farm: You don’t just abandon the land.

As always, Mamma Vita helped him load the donkey, and she gave him his bread.

“I’m not coming,” she added. “It’s the same as if they’d given me a good beating.”

Hunched over, she went back into the house and closed the door and the window the way you do when someone dies.

“What will I do from now on?” she thought, looking around. “I had two little bees buzzing about, and now they’ve flown away.”

What good was it to work the land? What good was there in spinning flax and weaving cloth anymore? She thought sadly of old ‘Ntoni, alone and sick, planting good golden grain up there in Baronia on a beautiful piece of sunny land that their son had appreciated so little. And she relived the previous night’s scene. They had left at midnight; there was no moon, and you could barely make out the two carts readied in the wide street, already filled with other emigrants, the loaded carts that had gone off in the dark night with the song of the young people and the jingle of a baby’s rattle.

“My poor children!” she sighed heavily, her heart breaking.

While unloading the donkey that evening, ssù ‘Ntoni repeated, “Vita, the land needs strong arms, and I’m old, I’m not enough.”

“I know,” answered gna’ Vita, “but I want to wait for the letter. How can I think about the farm when I don’t even know if those poor creatures have left yet?”