And she hadn’t deceived herself. On the last day of November a letter arrived, and in the letter were three large bills the likes of which gna’ Lidda had never touched in her life. Should she tell mastro Nitto now, to make him envious and to ward off evil spirits? She regretted more than ever not knowing how to read, but she had to tell him. She listened with a pounding heart as he read the letter. It was longer and more affectionate than usual. But little by little as the cook read, in the same voice as always, gna’ Lidda’s lips pursed and lost their color. Suddenly, she leaned against the wall, because it seemed the house was spinning around her. And since the cook had finished, she begged him with a weak voice: “Read it again, mastro Nitto, there must be a mistake.”

No, there was no mistake. He’d read it correctly. And the same mastro Nitto, who never showed any emotion, slowly folded the sheet, put it back in the envelope, and looked with pity at the old woman while stroking his short curly beard.

“And now?” said gna’ Lidda slowly in a voice that hardly seemed her own.

Mastro Nitto slowly shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and said: “He’s his son. There’s nothing you can do….”

But just like that, all at once? And without even a month’s notice? Maybe compare Tano was traveling; maybe he was already in town. And couldn’t he have come along with compare Tano to see his mother as well? He was asking for the child just like that, as though it were nothing. Forgetting that it was she who had raised him with so much difficulty, an old woman, when he had left him to her just like you leave a kitten! Didn’t he know what a blow he had dealt her, oh estranged son! Oh wretched son!

And the old woman fell silent, and while looking at mastro Nitto with her small, dry eyes, so many disconcerting thoughts whirled about in her mind. Getting up and taking the letter she only murmured: “May God’s will be done. If only I could cry.”

But she could not. It was as if her dry throat was bound by a cord.