One evening she waited for him outside, where no one could see her. He came back before dusk and stopped in front of the other house. He unloaded his saddlebags, helped by the other woman. Then they shut the door.

Ciancianedda came back inside, shaking as if she had malarial fever. Maybe this had been going on since they were married, maybe even before….

She waited for him, crouched on the doorstep with her chin on her knees. She wasn’t thinking anymore. She felt as if she’d been on that doorstep for years, tossed there like some dead thing.

When he arrived, she raised her disheveled face, moved her lips, and then extended her hands.

She wanted to push him away. She wanted to stop him. In her wide eyes there was an overpowering will to speak. She wrapped herself tightly around his knees. Graziano’s face was red and his veins swollen, like someone who’d been drinking heavily. He pushed her away, then shoved her into a corner, striking her.

Her father had never hit her. Never.

She wanted to run away, but she stopped at the doorway. The house was all closed up now. The men were in Petranìca.

Still, there was comare Orsolina, she would open her arms and comfort her….

She made a desperate gesture toward the dark and deserted street.

Graziano laughed, pointing at the doorway with an ugly smirk on his blazing face. Leave? Fine, do as you please!

Leave…. Now he was mocking her. But her house was all closed up. And the men were in Petranìca. There was only comare Orsolina. And then? When her father and Michele found out that Ciancianedda had been mistreated?

No, you can’t plant hate and rancor between men.

Graziano had flung himself down on the coarse wool blanket and shut his eyes. Exhausted, she let herself fall onto the bench.

In the colorless dawn she rose to her feet. Maybe she had dozed off for a while. She was shivering from the cold, and her head was dull, her mouth bitter.

Graziano was in a deep sleep, breathing heavily; his open shirt exposed a chest and neck that looked like shimmering bronze.

Ciancianedda gazed down at him.

There was only one thing to do. The colorless dawn told her so, as did the mocking silence, weaving its dark shroud.

• • •

Like the noise from a drill that turns without stopping, a stubborn thought made her temples pound. And her eyes now had a cold, metallic luster, like the darkening skies over Lipari when the southwest wind blows.

When her godmother asked the usual questions, she answered by shrugging her shoulders. She was happy. Couldn’t she see that? She was waiting for Easter. Easter that brings peace to everyone, to good people and bad; to friends and enemies. And she counted cheerfully on her fingers: today and tomorrow and then Palm Sunday.