The next day comare Orsolina found her with reddened eyes and again repeated her vigilant questions. But her goddaughter smiled. She was happy, she was. Graziano treated her splendidly, like a piece of fine gold in the palm of his hand. Why had she cried? Just imagining too many things … fantasies.

Her godmother shook her head. Then she said, “Listen.” Touching her eyes with her index and middle fingers spread wide, she pointed toward the street.

“Look around?”

When she was alone Ciancianedda fretted over the thought, consumed with anguish. Look around? She opened the door and sat down to spin outside. It was the first time. She had never dared to mingle with the strangers in that unfamiliar neighborhood.

Everyone in the vicinity was out in the cool March sun. Ciancianedda saw the girl with black eyes that looked like they’d been made with the dye used for orbace.

A woman who was mending exclaimed, “The bride has come out.”

“So she’s done snubbing us,” added another.

The old woman murmured, “Still, she has a kind face, the poor girl.”

Seeing that people were talking, Ciancianedda suffered the same as if a hundred pins were jabbing her skin. And yet she refused to think about going in.

But when Silvestra passed directly in front of her, moving her hips and looking straight at her, Ciancianedda stiffened and went back inside, slamming the door as though they had slapped her.

She kept the door slightly open and sat down again below the grate. But she stopped spinning. Hidden from view, she peered out the door to watch her pass; and staring at her with eyes full of curses, she began to tremble the way she did when she forgot she was deaf and thought she could still speak. She tried to pray, but she stopped short. Even the desire to pray had been poisoned. Silence, her mocking enemy, filled her with terrible, frightening thoughts.

She wanted to confide in her father, but when she saw him so resolute in all his gestures, she immediately regretted the idea, fearing for Graziano. You don’t start a war between two men.

Instead, she smiled to make her father understand that she was happy and lacking nothing.

Graziano came in after one in the morning when the soup had gotten cold on the fire, which was half out. She was waiting for him, curled up in a corner in the dark. The words that she couldn’t pronounce formed a lump in her dry throat.

Why are you coming back with your saddlebags half empty? Don’t they harvest the first broad beans, all tender shells and downy fuzz, in April at San Martino? Last year you brought me a basketful for our engagement.

The words were suffocating her; and she moaned loudly, like a little dog that’s been beaten.