And he wanted to appear cheerful on the night of his departure, too. Peppe and Cola came to get him at around eight, and gna’ Nunzia accompanied him as far as Cicè. With reddened eyes, Maredda appeared at the window to say goodbye, leaning forward with her head peeking out between a basil pot and a rose.

In the street they met other emigrants; they didn’t know one another well, but they gathered together as though they’d been friends since birth. Everyone wanted to appear calm, but everyone was leaving home and a woman. Cola held his young son by the hand, and gesticulating, he lifted the little arm he held tightly in his callused hand, making waving motions that caused the child to raise his eyes, frightened. As he passed in front of his quota he knit his brow and shook his head and cursed the ungrateful land.

But Peppe Sciuto began to sing, and then everyone joined in. And the street was filled with a strong, melancholy song that seemed to come from a single voice, at times reaching a pitch that was dark and menacing, at times trembling like an inconsolable cry, at times hushed like a prayer.

Maredda waited for word of Vanni, and it seemed like a holiday whenever gna’ Nunzia had some news for her.

After two months the mailman handed her a yellowed letter with a printed address, and she read anxiously, full of emotion.

Vanni said lots of loving things that filled her with happiness, but then her mother started grumbling. The letter had arrived on a bad day. The bread in the cupboard was finished, and because there wasn’t any money to buy grain, mother and daughter were reduced to buying bread in a shop like the poorest of the poor, like those who just barely get by. And so, gna’ Liboria, who was in a bad mood for her own reasons, lashed out at the innocent letter and at her daughter who believed the empty words of that fool who, even if he did come back with a little money, would never look her in the face. She had noticed Cristoforo of Licata, a tree trimmer who made ten lire a week, hanging around their little street, and it pained her to see her daughter turning her back on him coldly or slamming the window shut in his face. She could have slapped her for that!

“I’m old,” she’d often say, “and you’re poor. What do you expect from life? You’re not exactly a well-off lady who can afford to have her head in the clouds! Don’t you see that the fool didn’t even make you a formal offer?”

Maredda was mortified, but she thought of her Vanni. She would have liked to at least send him a word, but they weren’t engaged, and it would have been too forward, worse than letting herself be kissed in public.