Graziano used to then come home in a bad mood, and while his wife watered the mule, he waited, with outstretched legs, for her to strip off his leggings. Ciancianedda served him meekly, watching always with taut nerves to see if he needed anything. She had learned to read that face well; a face that of late had been angry or irritated. She wanted to ask him why he was upset with her, if he was holding a grudge for something she’d forgotten to do, without realizing it. But it was difficult to ask such a long question with gestures. She tormented herself trying to find a way to make herself understood. One evening she thought she’d found it. She knelt in front of him with her hands joined. He shrugged his shoulders then pushed her away, without looking at her, and went out on the doorstep.

Motionless and on her knees, Ciancianedda continued looking at Graziano’s figure, black against the white light of the moon.

He was leaning against the doorjamb, breathing in the fresh March air like a man just released from prison. Ciancianedda trembled, her blood burning from pain and passion. What was he holding against her?

She got up and approached him slowly on tiptoe, touching his arm timidly. Graziano didn’t turn around. He was listening.

Ciancianedda began to weep aloud. A cruel, sharp voice was singing:

“All your songs I’ve stolen from you

Your love I’ve utterly bewitched

And you will die of a broken heart because of it.”

Maybe Graziano was tired of seeing her cry. She looked at herself in the little mirror she kept among her combs and saw her puffy eyes and colorless cheeks. He had liked her because even without words she still had a serene manner that always reminded him of the Ciancianedda of old, of the Ciancianedda who sang in a full voice like a bird in springtime.

And the whole next day all she did was wait for him to get home, to show him how she’d changed. But he came in after dusk, long after every peasant had returned from his quota. His face was dark. As soon as he finished eating, he lit his pipe and sat down outside on the doorstep.

Ciancianedda watched him intently. She saw him spellbound, listening. And his face seemed to brighten.

What voice was rising up in the night? What voice could please him that much?

She felt more sharply than ever the pain of that deathlike silence that bound her ears. No gift on earth was greater than the one she had lost when she was sixteen. Not beauty, not money, nothing linked two creatures together like the power of the spoken word. A word that can often be sweeter than kisses….