Gracia Deledda - Reeds in the Wind

The aunts start thinking back and forth; and the longer they think, the less they are able to come to an agreement.

"Does he want to work?" Says Fraulein Ruth, the most prudent one. "Where the village doesn't even feed the natives?"

Miss Esther, on the other hand, favors the nephew's plans, while Miss Noemi, the youngest, only smiles coldly and mockingly.

“Perhaps he's thinking of playing fine gentleman here. Let him come ! Then he can go to the river and fish fish ... "

“But Noemi, dear sister, he writes himself that he would like to work. And he will certainly work too, start a little business like his father. "

“He should have started a little earlier. And our ancestors never traded cattle. "

“Other times, dear Noemi, by the way, the dealers are the real masters these days. Take a look at the Milese! He says: I am now the master of Galte! "

Noemi laughs, there is a malicious flash in her dark eyes, and Esther's laughter discourages Esther even more than any of the other sister's objections.

It's the same song every day. Giacinto's name echoes throughout the house; even when the sisters are silent, he lingers among them, as he has since the hour of his birth, and his strange shape fills the crumbling house with young life.

Efix did not remember ever taking part directly in the conversations of his mistresses. He did not dare to do it, especially because they did not consult him, but also because he did not want to burden his conscience; but he wished the young gentleman would come.

He loved him, had always loved him, almost like a son.

After Don Zame's death, he stayed with the three ladies to help them sort out the confused financial situation. The relatives did not care for her, rather despised and avoided her; they only knew about the household and didn't even know the small estate, the last remnant of their fathers' legacy.

I'll stay in her service for another year, Efix had said to himself, sympathetic to her helplessness. And one year had turned into twenty.

The three women lived on the produce of the estate that he worked. If the harvest was bad, Miss Esther said when the time came when she was to give him his wages - thirty silver guilders and a pair of boots - to the servant:

“In God's name, be patient a little longer; you shouldn't lose yours. "

And he tolerated himself, and his assets grew from year to year, so that Fraulein Esther promised, half jokingly and half seriously, to make him the sole heir of the property and house, although he was much older than all of them.

True , he was old and frail, but still a man, and his shadow gave the three women sufficient protection.

And now he was dreaming of a happier future for the three of them. At least dreamed that Noemi would find a husband. What if the yellow letter contained good news? What if he announced an inheritance? Or what if it were a marriage proposal for Miss Noemi? The Pintor ladies still had rich relatives in Sassari and Nuoro. Why shouldn't one of them marry Noemi? Even Don Predu could have written the yellow letter.

And with a m M al things change in the tired mind of the servant of the face; everything is now bathed in a bright, soft light; his noble mistresses grow young again; their dying generation is strengthened to new life, and everything around sprouts and blossoms like the valley in spring.

And he, the poor servant, has no choice but to retire to his old days on the little estate, spread out his straw sack and sleep in the master, while in the silence of the night the reeds lull the land into slumber with a monotonous rustle .

At dawn he set out and left the young fellow to guard the estate.

The road went steadily uphill to the village, and he walked slowly along on her, because he had had malaria last year and had a great weakness in his legs. Every now and then he stopped and looked back at the manor, which lay bright green between the two fig hedges; and the hut up there, nestling black between the blue-green of the reeds and the white of the rock, seemed to him like a nest - a real bird's nest. Each M al when he left, he looked at her so tenderly half and half sad, just like a bird that pulls into the distance. It was almost as if he were leaving his better self there, the strength that loneliness, remoteness from the world gives; and as he climbed the road, through the blooming heather, past the rushes and the low alder scrub by the river , he felt like a pilgrim walking to a place with a small sack of hair on his shoulder and an elder stick in hand Striving towards repentance: the world.

But the will of the Lord be done forever! And suddenly the valley opened before his eyes, and the old castle ruins appeared on the top of a hill as if on a huge heap of rubble . From a black wall, a blue, empty window looks down like the eye of the past on the melancholy, reddish landscape glowing red in the glow of the rising sun, on the gently undulating, gray and yellow speckled plain, on the silver-green ribbon of the river, on the white Village, the long rolling heights and the blue-gold cloud of the Nuoreser Mountains in the distance.

Small and black, Efix steps into the radiant light. The oblique rays of the sun flood brilliantly over the land; every rush carries a silver thread, a bird's call rises from every milkweed bush; and there the green and white spotted cone of the Galteberg, furrowed by shadows and sunbeams, beckons, and at its foot rests the little village that seems to consist only of rubble: the remains of the old Roman city.

Long broken walls, collapsed houses without a roof, crumbling courtyards and overgrown gardens, huts that are still in good condition, but which seem almost sadder than all the rubble, line the steep streets paved in the middle with mighty sandstone blocks; Lumps of lava lie around, giving the impression that an earthquake has destroyed the old city and scattered the inhabitants to the wind; here and there a new house appears almost shyly in the desolate wasteland, and pomegranate and carob trees, a number of fig bushes and palm trees give the sad place a friendlier character.

But the higher Efix climbed, the more desolate and deserted it became around him, and to make matters worse, the remains of an old churchyard and the crumbling basilica loomed gloomily at the roadside, in the shadow of the mountain, between the dense brambles and milkweed to the sky. The roads were deserted, and the rocks on the hilltop shimmered like mortuary stones into the land.

Efix made in front of a large, to the old cemetery bordering gate stop. The two gates were almost the same; three weathered, grass-covered steps led up to them. But while the gate of the old churchyard was only covered by worm-eaten entablature, a stone arch arched over that of the Pintor ladies, and on the pillar a faded coat of arms was indicated: a knight's head with a helmet and an arm armed with a sword. The motto below was: Quis resistit hujas?

Efix strode through the wide, square courtyard, through which a wide gutter, like the pavement of sandstone blocks, ran, took the sack from his shoulders and looked around to see if one of his mistresses was in sight. The one-story house rose at the end of the courtyard, under the shelter of the mountain, which seemed to rest on him like a huge white and green piebald hood.

Three small doors yawned under a wooden veranda that ran around the whole house and to which a rotten staircase led up outside. A blackish rope knotted around the nails rammed into the bottom and top steps replaced the broken railing. The porch doors, pillars, and railings were neatly carved, but everything was in danger of collapsing, and it looked as if the black, weathered, worm-eaten wood would crumble to dust at the slightest breath of air .

A small, stout woman in black, with a white cloth around her dark, angular face, stepped out onto the veranda; she leaned over the railing,caught sight of the servant, and her black, almond-shaped eyes lit up with joy.