He would spend whole days seated on the bed with his hat thrown back on his head and his restless gaze fixed on the door. If friends stopped by to keep him company, he heard their conversations without ever listening to them. Whenever he changed positions he would sigh heavily or bite his lip in pain.

And he became silent. If he did speak, he retold the story of his trip to La Mèrica, using the same words. “I went there,” he always concluded, “so I could open a grocery store.”

And he never added anything that might help explain what he was thinking. What he wanted to say was that he’d wasted his life for nothing. With his eyes on the door, he seemed to be waiting restlessly for someone who never showed.

He knew death would come, today or tomorrow. And he was afraid of death.

Venera would put the pot of broth on the fire and then go out. At noon, when the store closed, she busied herself for a few hours tending to her husband

“Do you want soup? Milk? Do you want me to plump up the mattresses? Do you want to put on a wool sweater?”

He didn’t want anything. He sipped his broth and forced liquids down, overcoming his nausea with the pained hope of getting better. He now answered his wife’s questions only with gestures, but gradually he came to enjoy her attentions and would say to his friends: “A man without a wife isn’t a man. Only a wife takes care of us and looks after us the way no other woman can.”

Venera ran the store better than a man. The daily handling of money, the constant reaching for Swiss cheese and mortadella, had given her a new purpose. Having put on some weight and now dressed in the finest wool and always cheerful, she was a consolation to see.

And since Petrù had abandoned the store, Brasi no longer worked as a cobbler and instead just hung around the doorway, yawning between jars of preserves and a barrel of dried herring. He was waiting to become boss of the shop so he, too, could get behind the counter and wear a nice cloth apron.

Venera wasn’t in a hurry, however. As things stood, she felt like a queen. With her husband sick and in need of medical attention, she was free to do what she wanted. And Brasi, not wanting to be cast aside, now treated her like a lady. If a poor relative stopped by to ask, “How’s Petrù doing?” Venera would respond rudely. “Better. He’s better!”

And then, turning to the vendors with her knife raised above the prosciutto, she would add: “Vultures! They’re all vultures! As if the poor man hasn’t earned his money.”