She didn’t even like to work anymore, though she’d been the best worker in all of Amarelli. She spent her days huddled on the front doorstep while Mamma Vita spun or mended, listening to the chatter of the child, who had learned to say “papa.” And both of them, without ever admitting it, kept their eyes on the corner where the postman usually appeared, jumping up if they saw him approaching their house.

But the letters came less frequently. And Catena didn’t even unleash her anger on her mother-in-law anymore; too many thoughts churned through her head, making her temples pound as if she had a fever; she thought of La Mèrica, with its tall houses and dark streets; she thought about Mariano, young and strong, of the good earth of Baronia, and she saw again the beautiful and haughty figure of her stepsister.

The neighbor women were no longer able to engage her in the slightest conversation. But at times they would hear her voice sounding strange and sharp; they heard her talking to her toddler as though he could understand her, calling him by a string of bizarre nicknames in a frantic, strange voice.

“My treasured star, my noble knight.

My blond Saint George. My little bee.

Only you are left to me.

Call Papa, call him, for he is far away.”

At first the little one laughed when his mother’s nervous arms would lift him up, but then, suffocated by the impetuous caresses, he always ended up crying.

One morning, seeing gna’ Maria pass, Catena asked if she might have two large baskets for grapes and prickly pears to send to Mariano.

“He likes prickly pears so much, and there aren’t any over there…. Yes, I’m leaving with the baby,” she said, opening her huge, black, frightened eyes widely.

“Now I know about traveling!”

And since gna’ Maria just shook her head, Catena turned her back, vexed, and sat down again on the doorstep.

No letters came, and her eyes didn’t get better. And even though they’d made three novenas and three candle offerings to Saint Lucy, the saint hadn’t looked with favor on her.

By now there was no longer any hope of being cured. And Catena had become so ill tempered that poor Mamma Vita, out of pity and affection, never contradicted her.

One morning, in fact it was Saint Michael’s Day again, gna’ Vita closed the front door because it was cold.

Her daughter-in-law, who knows why, had gone down to the stable and said to her mother-in-law when she came back in: “Go get me those baskets that gna’ Maria promised me for the tomatoes and prickly pears.”

“What are you talking about, Catena? This isn’t tomato season!”

Catena threw the door open violently, holding the child by the hand.