Petrù had seemed the same when he first arrived, but he was another person. He was still a handsome man, tall and robust, but now his one higher shoulder was bent, and his cheeks were gaunt. And a wrinkle carved in the middle of his forehead gave his eyes an expression of fierceness and pain that wasn’t there before. He now stayed silent for long periods of time as though preoccupied by a fixed thought, and he observed everyone and everything with suspicion. At times he would stand just gazing about with the distracted air of someone who appears to be looking for something and then suddenly forgets what it is.

A few weeks after his return, he stretched out on the bed board and announced to his wife: “I’ve rented out don Ferdinando’s store.”

“To do what?”

“I want to open up a grocery.”

Suddenly, Venera cheered up considerably, and from that moment on she showered her husband with all kinds of attention and consideration. But he just lowered his head, remembering that first evening when his wife had repeated: “Poor?” with that stunned look on her face.

The grocery store took off quickly, with all kinds of things coming in from il Continente. And rather than pay an outsider, Petrù taught his wife how to keep the books, how to weigh, and how to slice. As people crowded around the counter, husband and wife took in money by the ton because in their store you could find fresh, quality products the likes of which had never been seen in don Calogero’s shop.

But Petrù wasn’t happy. One day he said: “Venera, success has come, but my health is gone.”

It was the truth. He ate little and suffered constant stomach pain.

“Over there your body doesn’t realize it, but in the peace of the village you feel the effects,” he continued. “In La Mèrica they ruin us. No one can escape it. It’s like droplets of water that corrode a rock.”

He asked himself why he’d worked; who he’d come back for…. He was as alone here in his town as he’d been in the huge American city. He suffered a burning, unquenchable thirst.

“I feel like my stomach’s in shreds,” he’d complain. “All I did was work a clothes press, six hours a day, pressing pleats, nothing else. An iron so heavy it ripped my stomach in two.” He called the doctor, who was puzzled. “It’s a new illness!” he repeated, observing Petrù.

The doctor prescribed cool liquids and just to be sure put him on a diet of broth and milk. Petrù followed his instructions faithfully. He even stopped going to the shop because the smell of fresh cheeses brought on a feeling of weakness, a violent and irresistible desire to eat that would then make him cry like a baby. And he wanted to get better. But he got worse.