Chapter III: Part 3

"Two days later our Workers' Society met. Cirotta had to face them, having been accused of libelling a woman. Old Giacomo Fasca, a blacksmith, said in a way that did credit to him:

"'Citizens, comrades and good people! We demand that justice shall be done to us. We on our part must be just to everybody: let everybody understand that we know the high value of what we want, and that justice is not an empty word for us as it is for our masters. Here is a man who has libelled a woman, offended a comrade, disrupted one family and brought sorrow to another, who has made his wife suffer jealousy and shame. Our attitude to this man should be stern. What do you propose to do?'

"Sixty-seven tongues exclaimed in one voice:

"'Drive him out of the commune!'

"Fifteen of the men thought that this was too severe a punishment, and a dispute arose. And the dispute became a very noisy one, for the fate of a man hung on their decision, and not the fate of one man only: the man was married and had three children. What had his wife and children done? He had a house, a vineyard, a pair of horses, four donkeys for the use of foreigners. All these things had been acquired by his own labour and had cost him a deal of pains. Poor Giuseppe was skulking in a corner amongst the children and looked as gloomy as the very devil. He sat doubled up on a chair, his head bowed, fumbling his hat. He had pulled off the ribbon already, and now was slowly tearing off the brim. His fingers jerked as if he were playing the fiddle. When he was asked what he had to say he stood up slowly and, straightening his body, said:

"'I beg you to be lenient! There is no one without sin. To drive me off the land on which I have lived for more than thirty years, and where my ancestors have worked, would not be just.'

"The women were also against his being exiled, so Giacomo Fasca at last made the following proposal:--

"'I think, friends, that he will be sufficiently punished if we saddle him with the duty of keeping Luigi's wife and child--let him pay her half as much as Luigi earned!'

"They discussed the matter at great length and finally settled on that. Giuseppe Cirotta was very pleased to get off so easily. Besides, this decision satisfied all: the matter was not taken into the law courts, it was decided in their own circle and no knives were used.

"We do not like, signor, what they write about our affairs in the papers in a language unfamiliar to us. The words that we can understand occur only here and there, like teeth in an old man's mouth. Besides, we don't like the way the judges talk of us, for they are strangers to us and don't understand our life. They talk of us as if we were savages and they themselves angels of God, who don't know the taste of meat or wine, and don't touch womenkind. We are simple folks and we look on life in a simple way.

"So they decided that Giuseppe Cirotta should keep the wife and child of Luigi Meta.

"The matter however had a different ending.

"When Luigi found out that Cirotta's words were untrue and that his wife was innocent, and when he heard our decision, he wrote her a short note in which he invited her to come home:

*

"'Come to me and we shall live happily again. Do not take a farthing from that man and, if you have taken any, throw it in his face! I am guilty before you. Could I have thought that a man would lie in such a matter as love?'

*

"But he also wrote another letter to Cirotta:

"'I have three brothers and all four of us have sworn to one another that we will kill you like a ram if you ever leave the island and land in Sorrento, Castellamare, Torre, or anywhere else. As soon as we find it out we shall kill you, remember! This is as true as that we belong to your commune and are good honest people. My wife has no need of your help. Even my pig would refuse to eat your bread. Do not leave this island until I tell you you may!'

"That is how it all happened. It is said that Cirotta took this letter to the judge and asked him whether Luigi could not be punished for threatening him, and that the judge said:

"'Of course he can, but then his brothers will certainly kill you; they will come over here and kill you. I advise you to wait. That is better. Anger is not like love: it does not last for ever!'

"The judge may have said it: he is a good and clever man, and makes very good verses; but I don't believe that Cirotta ever went to him or showed him the letter. No, Cirotta is a decent fellow and it is not likely that he would have acted so stupidly. People would have jeered at him.

"We are simple working people, signor. We have our own life, our own ideas and opinions. We have a right to shape our life as we like and as we think best.

"Socialists? Friend, in my opinion a working man is born a socialist; although we don't read books we can smell the truth--truth has a strong smell about it which is always the same--the smell of the sweat of labour!"

THE SOCIALIST

Before the door of a white canteen hidden among the thick vines of an old vineyard, in the shade of a canopy of vine branches interspersed with morning glory and small Chinese roses, at a table on which stood a decanter of wine, sat Vincenzo, a painter, with Giovanni, a locksmith. The painter is a small man, thin and dark; his eyes are lit with the soft, musing smile of a dreamer. His upper lip and cheeks have the appearance of having been recently shaved, but his smile makes him look very young, almost childlike. He has a small, pretty mouth like that of a girl; his wrists are slender, and in his nimble fingers he twists a yellow rose, pressing it to his full lips and closing his eyes.

"Perhaps so. I don't know; perhaps so," he says quietly, shaking his head, which has hollows at the temples. Dark curls fall over his high forehead.

"Yes, yes, the farther north one goes the more persistent are the people," asserts Giovanni, a broad-shouldered fellow with a large head and black curls. His face is copper-coloured, his nose sunburnt and covered with white scales of dead skin. His eyes are large and gentle like those of an ox, and there is a finger missing from his left hand. His speech is as slow as the movements of his hands, which are stained with oil and iron dust. Grasping his wineglass in his dark fingers, the nails of which are chipped and broken, he continues in his deep voice:

"Milan, Turin--there are splendid workshops there in which new people are being made, where a new brain is growing. Wait a little while and the world will become honest and wise!"

"Yes," said the little painter; and he lifted his glass, trying to catch a sunbeam in the wine, and sang:

"When we are young
How high the heart aspires!
How Time hath slaked its fires
When we are old!"

"The farther north one goes, I say, the better is the work. The French, for instance, do not lead such a lazy life as we do. Farther on, there are the Germans, and last of all the Russians: they are men if you like!"

"Quite true."

"Having no rights and no fear of being deprived of their freedom and life, they have done grand work: it is owing to them that the whole East has awakened to life."

"The county of heroes," said the painter, inclining his head. "I should like to live amongst them."

"Would you?" exclaimed the locksmith, striking his knee with his fist. "You would turn into a piece of ice there in a week!"

They both laughed good humouredly.

Around them there are blue and golden flowers; sunbeams tremble in the air; in the transparent glass of the decanter and the tumblers the wine seems to be on fire. From afar comes the soft murmur of the sea.

"Well, my good Vincenzo," said the locksmith, with a broad smile. "Tell me in verse how I became a socialist. Do you know how it happened?"

"No," said the painter, filling the glasses with wine and smiling at the red stream. "You have never told me. This skin fits your bones so well that I thought you were born in it!"

"I was born naked and stupid, like you and everybody else; in my youth I dreamed of a rich wife; when I was a soldier I studied in order to pass the examination for an officer's rank. I was twenty-three when I felt that all was not as it should be in this world, and that it was a shame to live as if it were, like a fool."

The painter rested his elbows on the table and, raising his head, gazed at the mountains where, on the very edge of the precipice, moving their large branches, stood huge pine-trees.

"We, our whole regiment, were sent to Bologna. The peasantry there were in revolt, some demanding that the rent of land should be lowered, others shouting about the necessity for raising wages: both parties seemed to be in the wrong. 'To lower rents and increase wages, what nonsense!' thought I. 'That would ruin the landowners.' To me, who was a town-dweller, it seemed utter foolishness. I was very indignant--the heat helped to make one so, and the constant travelling from place to place and the mounting guard at night. For, you know, these fine fellows were breaking the machinery belonging to the landowners; and it pleased them to burn the corn and to try to spoil everything that did not belong to them. Just think of it!"

He sipped his wine and, becoming more animated, went on:

"They roamed about the fields in droves like sheep, always silently, but threateningly and as if they meant business. We used to scatter them, threatening them with our bayonets sometimes. Now and then we struck them with the butts of our rifles. Without showing much fear, they dispersed in leisurely fashion, but always came together again. It was a tedious business, like mass, and it lasted for days, like an attack of fever. Luoto, our non-commissioned officer, a fine fellow from Abruzzi, himself a peasant, was anxious and troubled: he turned quite yellow and thin, and more than once he said to us:

"'It's a bad business, boys; it will probably be necessary to shoot, damn it!'

"His grumbling upset us still more; and then, you know, from every corner, from every hillock and tree we could see peeping the obstinate heads of the peasants; their angry eyes seemed to pierce us. For these people, naturally enough, did not regard us in a very friendly light."

"Drink," said little Vincenzo cordially, pushing a full glass towards his friend.

"Thank you. Long live the people who persist!" exclaimed the locksmith in his bass voice. He emptied the glass, wiped his moustache with his hands, and continued:

"Once I stood on a small hillock near an olive grove, guarding some trees which the peasants had been injuring. At the bottom of the hill two men were at work, an old man and a youth. They were digging a ditch. It was very hot, the sun burnt like fire, one felt irritable, longed to be a fish, and I remember I eyed them angrily. At noon they both left off work, and got out some bread and cheese and a jug of wine. 'Oh, devil take them!' thought I to myself. Suddenly the old man, who previously had not once looked at me, said something to the youth, who shook his head disapprovingly, but the old man shouted:

'Go on!' He said this very sternly.

"The youth came up to me with the jug in his hand, and said, not very willingly, you know:

"'My father thinks that you would like a drink and offers you some wine.'

"I felt embarrassed, but I was pleased. I refused, nodding at the same time to the old man and thanking him. He responded by looking at the sky.

"'Drink it, signor, drink it. We offer this to you as a man, not as a soldier. We do not expect a soldier to become kinder because he has drunk our wine!'

"'D--you, don't get nasty,' I thought to myself, and having drunk about three mouthfuls I thanked him. Then they began to eat down below. A little later I was relieved by Ugo from Salertino. I told him quietly that these two peasants were good fellows. The same night, as I stood at the door of a barn where the machinery was kept a slate fell on my head from the roof--it did not do much damage, but another slate, striking my shoulder edgewise, hurt me so severely that my left arm dropped benumbed."

The locksmith burst into a loud laugh, his mouth wide open, his eyes half-closed.

"Slates, stones, sticks," said he, through his laughter, "in those days and at that place were alive. This independent action of lifeless things made some pretty big bumps on our heads. Wherever a soldier stood or walked, a stick would suddenly fly at him from the ground, or a stone fall upon him from the sky. It made us savage, as you can guess."

The eyes of the little painter became sad, his face turned pale and he said quietly:

"One always feels ashamed to hear of such things."

"What is one to do? People take time to get wise. Then I called for help. I was led into a house where another fellow lay, his face cut by a stone. When I asked him how it happened he said, smiling, but not with mirth:

"'An old woman, comrade, an old grey witch struck me, and then proposed that I should kill her!'

"'Was she arrested?'

"'I said that I had done it myself, that I had fallen and hurt myself. The commander did not believe it, I could see it by his eyes. But, don't you see, it was awkward to confess that I had been wounded by an old woman. Eh? The devil! Of course they are hard pressed and one can understand that they do not love us!'

"'H'm!' thought I. The doctor came and two ladies with him, one of them fair and very pretty, evidently a Venetian. I don't remember the other. They looked at my wound. It was slight, of course. They applied a poultice and went away."

The locksmith frowned, became silent and rubbed his hands hard; his companion filled the glasses again with wine; as he lifted the decanter the wine seemed to dance in the air like a live red fire.

"We used both to sit at the window," continued the locksmith darkly. "We sat in such a way that the light did not fall on us, and there once we heard the charming voice of this fair lady. She and her companion were walking with the doctor in the garden outside the window and talking in French, which I understand very well.

"'Did you notice the colour of his eyes?' she asked. 'He is a peasant of course, and once he has taken off his uniform will no doubt become a socialist, like they all are here. People with eyes like that want to conquer the whole world, to reconstruct the whole of life, to drive us out, to destroy us in order that some blind, tedious justice should triumph!'

"'Foolish fellows,' said the doctor-'half children, half brutes.'

"'Brutes, that is quite true. But what is there childish about them?'

"'What about those dreams of universal equality?'

"'Yes, just imagine it. The fellow with the eyes of an ox and the other with the face of a bird our equals! You, she and I their equals, the equals of these people of inferior blood! People who can be bidden to come and kill their fellows, who are brutes like them....'

"She spoke much and vehemently. I listened and thought:

"'Quite right, signora.' I had seen her more than once, and you know of course that no one dreams more ardently of a woman than a soldier. I imagined her to be kind and clever and warmhearted; and at that time I had an idea that the landed nobility were especially clever, or gifted, or something of the kind. I don't know why!

"I asked my comrade:

"'Do you understand this language?'

"No, he did not understand. Then I translated for him the fair lady's speech. The fellow got as angry as the devil, and started to jump about the room, his one eye glistening--the other was bandaged.

"'Is that so?' he murmured. 'Is that possible? She makes use of me and does not look upon me as a man. For her sake I allow my dignity to be offended and she denies it. For the sake of guarding her property I risk losing my soul.'

"He was not a fool and felt that he had been very much insulted, and so did I. The following day we talked about this lady in a loud voice, not heeding Luoto, who only muttered:

"'Be more careful, boys; don't forget that you are soldiers, and that there is such a thing as discipline.'

"No, we did not forget it. But many of us, almost all, to tell you the truth, became deaf and blind, and these young peasants made use of our deafness and blindness to very good purpose. They won. They treated us very well indeed. The fair lady could have learnt from them: for instance, they could have taught her very convincingly how honest people should be valued. When we left the place whither we had come with the idea of shedding blood, many of us were given flowers. As we marched along the streets of the village not stones and slates but flowers were thrown at us, my friend. I think we had deserved it. One may forget a cool reception when one has received such a good send-off!"

He laughed heartily, then said:

"That is what you should turn into verse, Vincenzo."

The painter replied with a pensive smile:

"Yes, it's a good subject for a small poem. I think I may be able to do something with it. But when a man is over twenty-five he is a poor lyric poet."

He threw away the crumpled flower, picked another and, looking round, continued quietly:

"When one has covered the road from mother's breast to the breast of one's sweetheart, one must go on to another kind of happiness."

The locksmith became silent, tilting his wine in the glass.

Below them the sea murmurs softly; in the hot air above the vineyards floats the perfume of flowers.

"It is the sun that makes us so lazy and good-for-nothing," murmured the locksmith.

"I don't seem to be able to manage lyric verse satisfactorily now. I am rather sick about it," said Vincenzo quietly, knitting his thin brows.

"Have you written anything lately?"

The painter did not reply at once.

"Yes, yesterday I wrote something on the roof of the Hotel Como."

And he read in a low tone and pensive and sing-song manner:

"The autumn sun falls softly, taking leave,
And lights the greyness of the lonely shore.
The greedy waves o'erlip the scattered stones
And lick the sun into the cold blue sea.
The autumn wind goes gleaning yellow leaves,
To toss them idly in the blust'ring air.
Pale is the sky, and wild the angry sea,
The sun still faintly smiles, and sinks, and sets."

They were both silent for a time. The painter's head had sunk and his eyes were fixed on the ground. The big, burly locksmith smiled and said at last:

"One can speak in a beautiful way about everything, but what is most beautiful of all is a word about a good man, a song of good people."

THE HUNCHBACK

The sun, like a golden rain, streams down through the dark curtain of vine leaves on to the terrace of the hotel; it is as if golden threads were strung in the air.

On the grey pavement and on the white table-cloths the shadows make strange designs, and it seems as though, if one looked long at them, one might learn to read them as one reads poetry, one might learn the meaning of it all. Bunches of grapes gleam in the sun, like pearls or the strange dull stone olivine, and the water in the decanter on the table sparkles like blue diamonds.

In the passage between the tables lies a round lace handkerchief, dropped, without a doubt, by a woman divinely fair--it cannot be otherwise, one cannot think otherwise on this sultry day full of glowing poetry, a day when everything banal and commonplace becomes invisible and hides from the sun, as if ashamed of itself.

All is quiet, save for the twitter of the birds in the garden and the humming of the bees as they hover over the flowers. From the vineyards on the mountain-side the sounds of a song float on the hot air and reach the ear: the singers are a man and a woman. Each verse is separated from the others by a moment's pause, and this interval of silence lends a special expression to the song, giving it something of the character of a prayer.

A lady comes from the garden and ascends the broad marble steps; she is old and very tall. Her dark face is serious; her brows are contracted in a deep frown, and her thin lips are tightly compressed, as if she had just said:

"No!"

Round her spare shoulders is a long, broad, gold-coloured scarf edged with lace, which looks almost like a mantle. The grey hair of her little head, which is too small for her size, is covered with black lace. In one hand she carries a long-handled red sunshade, in the other a black velvet bag embroidered in silver. She walks as firmly as a soldier through the web of sunbeams, tapping the noisy pavement with the end of her sunshade.

Her profile is the very picture of sternness: her nose is aquiline and on the end of her sharp chin grows a large grey wart; her rounded forehead projects over dark hollows where, in a network of wrinkles, her eyes are hidden. They are hidden so deep that the woman appears almost blind.

On the steps behind her, swaying from side to side like a duck, appears noiselessly the square body of a hunchback with a large, heavy, forward-hanging head, covered with a grey soft hat. His hands are in the pockets of his waistcoat, which makes him look broader and more angular still. He wears a white suit and white boots with soft soles. His weak mouth is half open, disclosing prominent, yellow and uneven teeth. The dark moustache which grows on his upper lip is unsightly, for the bristles are sparse and wiry. He breathes quickly and heavily. His nostrils quiver but the moustache does not move. He moves his short legs jerkily as he walks. His large eyes gaze languidly, as if tired, at the ground; and on his small body are displayed many large things: a large gold ring with a cameo on the first finger of his left hand, a large golden charm with two rubies at the end of a black ribbon fob, and a large--a too large--opal, an unlucky stone, in his blue necktie.

A third figure follows them leisurely along the terrace. It is that of another old woman, small and round, with a kind red face and quick eyes: she is, one may guess, of an amiable and talkative disposition.

They walk across the terrace through the hotel doorway, looking like people out of a picture of Hogarth's--sad, ugly, grotesque, unlike anything else under the sun. Everything seems to grow dark and dim in their presence.

They are Dutch people, brother and sister, the children of a diamond merchant and banker. Their life has been full of strange events if one may believe what is lightly said of them.

As a child, the hunchback was quiet, self-contained, always musing, and not fond of toys. This attracted no special attention from anybody except his sister. His father and mother thought that was how a deformed boy should be; but in the girl, who was four years older than her brother, his character aroused a feeling of anxiety.

Almost every day she was with him, trying in all possible ways to awaken in him some animation. To make him laugh she would push toys towards him. He piled them one on top of another, building a sort of pyramid. Only very rarely did he reward her efforts with a forced smile; as a rule he looked at his sister, as at everything else, with a forlorn look in his large eyes which seemed to suffer from some strange kind of blindness. This look chilled her ardour and irritated her.

"Don't dare to look at me like that! You will grow up an idiot!" she shouted, stamping her foot. And she would pinch him and beat him. He whimpered and put up his long arms to guard his head, but he never ran away from her and never complained.

Later on, when she thought that he could understand what had become quite clear to her she kept saying to him:

"Since you are a freak, you must be clever, or else everybody will be ashamed of you, father, mother, and everybody! Even other people will be ashamed that in such a rich house there should be a freak. In a rich house everything must be beautiful and clever. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," said he, in his serious way, inclining his large head towards one side and looking into her face with his dark, lifeless _eyes._

His father and mother were pleased with this attitude of their daughter towards her brother. They praised her good heart in his presence and by degrees she became the acknowledged guardian of the hunchback. She taught him to play with toys, helped him to prepare his lessons, read him stories about princes and fairies.

But, as formerly, he piled his toys in tall heaps, as if trying to reach something. He did his lessons carelessly and badly; but at the marvellous in tales he smiled in a curious, indecisive way, and once he asked his sister:

"Are princes ever hunchbacks?"

"No."

"And knights?"

"Of course not."

The boy sighed, as though tired; but putting her hand on his bristly hair his sister said:

"But wise wizards are always hunchbacks."

"That means that I shall be a wizard," submissively remarked the hunchback, and then, after pondering a while, he said:

"Are fairies always beautiful?"

"Always."

"Like you?"

"Perhaps. I think they are even more beautiful," she said frankly.

When he was eight years old his sister noticed that when, during their walks, they passed houses in course of construction a strange expression of astonishment always appeared on the boy's face; he would look intently at the people working and then turn his expressionless eyes questioningly to her.

"Does that interest you?" she asked. And he, who spoke little as a rule, replied:

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

But once he explained:

"Such little people, and such small bricks, and the houses are so big.... Is the whole town made like that?"

"Yes, of course."

"And our house?"

"Of course."

Looking at him she said in a decisive manner:

"You will be a famous architect, that's it."

They bought a lot of wooden cubes for him, and from that time on an ardent passion for building took possession of him: for whole days he would sit silently on the floor of his room, building tall towers, which fell down with a crash, only to be built again. So constant did his preoccupation become that even at table, during dinner, he used to try to build things with the knives and forks and napkin rings. His eyes became deeper and more concentrated, his arms more agile and very restless, and he handled every object that came within his reach.

Now, during their walks in the town, he was ready to stand for hours in front of a building in construction, observing how from a small thing it grew huge, rising towards the sky. His nostrils quivered as they took in the smell of the brick dust and lime. His eyes became clouded, as if covered with a film, and he seemed deeply engrossed in thought. When he was told that it was not the proper thing to stand in the street he did not hear.

"Let us go!" His sister would rouse him, taking his arm.

He lowered his head and walked on, but kept looking back over his shoulder.

"You will become an architect, won't you?" she asked him repeatedly, trying to inculcate this idea in him.

"Yes."

Once after dinner, while waiting for the coffee in the sitting-room, the father remarked that it was time for him to leave his toys and begin to study in real earnest, but the sister, speaking in a tone which indicated that her authority was recognised, and that her opinion too had to be reckoned with, said:

"I hope, papa, that you will not send him to school."

The father, who was tall, clean-shaven and adorned with a large number of sparkling precious stones, replied, lighting his cigar:

"Why not?"

"You know why."

As the conversation turned upon the hunchback he quietly walked out of the room; but he walked slowly and heard his sister say:

"They will jeer at him."

"Yes, of course," said the mother, in a low tone, which sounded as cheerless as the autumn wind.

"Boys such as he should be kept in the background," his sister said fervently.

"Yes, he is nothing to be proud of," said the mother. "There is not much sense in his little head."

"Perhaps you are right," the father agreed.

"No, there's a lot of sense."

The hunchback came back, stopped in the doorway and said:

"I am not a fool either."

"We shall see," said the father; and his mother remarked:

"No one thinks anything of the sort."

"You will study at home," declared his sister, making him sit down by her side.

"You will study everything that it is necessary for an architect to know. Would you like that?"

"Yes, you will see."

"What shall I see?"

"What I like."

She was slightly taller than he, about half a head, but she domineered over everybody, even her father and mother. At that time she was fifteen; he resembled a crab, but she was slim and straight and strong and seemed to him a fairy, under whose power the whole house lived--even he, the little hunchback.

Polite, formal people came to him, explaining things and putting questions to him. But he confessed frankly that he did not understand what they were trying to teach him, and would look in an absent-minded way past his instructors, preoccupied with his own thoughts. It was clear to everybody that he took no interest in ordinary things. He spoke little, but sometimes he asked strange questions.

"What happens to those who don't want to do anything at all?"

The well-trained tutor, in his tightly buttoned black frock-coat--he resembled at once a priest and a soldier--replied: "Everything bad happens to such people, anything that you can imagine. For instance, many of them become socialists."

"Thank you," said the hunchback. His attitude towards his teachers was always correct and reserved, like that of an adult. "And what is a socialist?" "At best he is a dreamer and a lazy fellow--a moral freak who is deprived of all idea of God, property and nationality."

The teachers always replied briefly and to the point. Their answers fixed themselves in one's memory as tightly as if they were the stones of a pavement.

"Can an old woman also be a moral freak?"

"Of course in their midst----"

"And girls too?"

"Yes, it is an inborn quality."

The teachers said of him:

"He has little capacity for mathematics, but he shows great interest in moral questions."

"You speak too much," said his sister to him on hearing of his talks with the tutors.

"They talk more than I do."

"You pray very little to God."

"He won't set my hump right."

"Oh, is that how you are beginning to think!" exclaimed his sister in astonishment; and she warned him:

"I will excuse you this time, but don't entertain such thoughts again. Do you hear?"

"Yes."

She already wore long dresses; he was then just thirteen.

And now a number of annoyances began to fall to her lot: almost every time she entered her brother's work-room, boards and tools and blocks of all sorts fell at her feet, grazing her shoulder, her head, or hurting her hands. The hunchback always cautioned her by a cry of:

"Look out!"

But he was always too slow and the damage was done. Once, limping slightly, pale and very angry, she sprang at him, and shouted in his face:

"You do all this purposely, you freak," and she struck him in the face.

His legs were weak, he fell down, and, as he sat on the floor, quietly, without tears and without complaining, he said to her:

"How can you think that? You love me, don't you? Do you love me?"

She ran away groaning. Presently she came back.

"You see this never happened formerly," she explained.

"Nor this," he quietly remarked, making a wide circle with his long hand: in the corners of the room boards and boxes were heaped up; everything was in confusion; there were piles of wood on the carpenter's and turner's benches which stood against the wall.

"Why have you brought in all this rubbish?" she asked, looking doubtfully and squeamishly around.

"You will see."

He had begun to build, he had made a little rabbit hutch and a dog kennel. He was planning a rat-trap. His sister followed his work with interest and at table spoke proudly to his mother and father about it. His father, nodding his head approvingly, said:

"Everything springs from small beginnings and everything begins like that."

And his mother, embracing her, said to her son:

"You don't realise how much you owe to her care of you."

"Yes, I do," replied the hunchback.

When he had finished the rat-trap he asked his sister into his room and showed her the clumsy contrivance, saying:

"This is not a toy, mind you, and we can take out a patent for it. See how simple and strong it is; touch it here."

The girl touched it; something snapped and she screamed wildly; but the hunchback, dancing around her, muttered:

"Oh, not that, not that."

His mother ran up, and the servants came; they broke the rat-trap, and freed the girl's finger, which had turned quite blue. They carried her away fainting, and the boy's mother said to him:

"I will have everything thrown away. I forbid you."

At night he was asked to go to his sister, who said to him:

"You did it purposely. You hate me. What for?"

Moving his hunch he said quietly and calmly:

"You touched it with the wrong hand."

"That's a lie."

"But why should I hurt your hand? It is not even the hand you hit me with."

"Look out, you freak, I'll pay you out."

"I know."

There were no signs that he pitied his sister or looked upon himself as being to blame for her misfortune. His angular face was as calm as it always was, the expression of his eyes was serious and steady--it was impossible to believe that he could lie or be actuated by malice.

After that she did not go so often to his room. She was visited by her friends, chattering girls in bright coloured dresses, as noisy as so many crickets. They brought a welcome note of colour and gaiety to the large rooms, which were rather cold and gloomy--the pictures, the statues, the flowers, the gilt, everything seemed warmer in their presence. Sometimes his sister took them to his room. They affectedly held out their little pink-nailed fingers, taking his hand gingerly as if they were afraid of breaking it. They talked to him very nicely and pleasantly, looking a little astonished, but showing no particular interest in the little hunchback, busy in the midst of tools, drawings, pieces of wood and shavings. He knew that the girls called him "the inventor." His sister had impressed this idea upon them and told them that in the future something might be expected of him which would make the name of his father famous. His sister spoke of this with conviction.

"Of course he is ugly, but he is very clever," she reminded them very often.

She was nineteen years old, and had a sweetheart, when her father and mother both perished at sea. The yacht in which they were taking a pleasure trip was run down and sunk by an American cargo boat in charge of a drunken helmsman. She was to have accompanied them, but a sudden toothache had prevented her going.

When the news came of her father's and mother's death she forgot her tooth-ache, and rushed about the room throwing up her arms and crying:

"No, no; it cannot be."

The hunchback stood at the door and, wrapping the portiere round him, looked at her closely and said, shaking his hunch:

"Father was so round and hollow; I don't see how he could be drowned."

"Be quiet; you do not love anybody!" shouted his sister.

"I simply cannot say nice words," he replied.

The father's corpse was never found, but the mother had been killed in the moment of the collision. Her body was recovered and laid in a coffin, looking as lean and brittle as the dead branch of an old tree--just as she had looked when she was alive.

"Now you and I are left alone," the sister said to her brother sternly, but in a mournful voice, after the mother's funeral; and the cold look in her grey eyes daunted him. "It will be hard for us: we are ignorant of the world and may lose much. What a pity it is that I cannot get married at once."

"Oh!" exclaimed the hunchback.

"What do you mean by 'Oh'?"

He said, after thinking a while:

"We are alone."

"You seem to speak as if you rejoiced at it."

"I do not rejoice at anything."

"What a pity it is you are so little like a man."

In the evenings her lover came--an active little man, with white eyebrows and eyelashes, and a round sunburnt face relieved by a woolly moustache. He laughed continuously the whole evening, and probably could have laughed the whole day long. They were already engaged, and a new house was being built for them in one of the best streets of the town, the cleanest and the quietest. The hunchback had never seen this building and did not like to hear others talk of it. One day the fiancé slapped him on the shoulder with his plump and much beringed little hand, and said, showing a great number of tiny teeth:

"You ought to come and look over it, eh? What do you say?"

He refused for a long time under different pretexts, but at last he gave way and went with him and his sister. The two men climbed to the top storey of the scaffolding and then fell. The fiancé dropped plump to the ground into the lime-pit, but the brother, whose clothes got caught in the scaffolding, hung in mid-air and was rescued by the workmen. He had no worse than a dislocated leg and wrist and a badly bruised face. The fiancé, on the other hand, broke his back and was severely gashed in the side.

The sister fell into convulsions, and tore at the ground with her hands, raising little clouds of white dust. She wept almost continuously for more than a month and then became like her mother. She grew thin and haggard, and began to speak in a cold, expressionless voice.

"You are my misfortune," she said.

He answered nothing, but kept his large eyes bent upon the ground. His sister dressed herself in black, made her eyebrows meet in a line, and whenever she met her brother clenched her teeth so that her jaw-bones made sharp angles. He, on his part, tried to avoid meeting her eye and was for ever busy planning and designing, alone in silence. So he lived till he was of age, and then began between them an open struggle to which their whole life was given, a struggle which bound them to each other by the strong links of mutual insults and offences.

On the day of his coming of age he said to her in the tone of an elder brother:

"There are no wise wizards, and no kind fairies. There are only men and women, some of them wicked, others stupid, and everything that is said about goodness is a myth. But I want the myth to become a reality. Do you remember saying, 'In a rich house everything should be beautiful and smart'? In a rich town also everything should be beautiful. I am buying some land outside the town and am going to build a house there for myself and for freaks like me. I shall take them out of the town, where their life is almost unendurable and where it is unpleasant for people like you to look upon them."

"No," she said; "you certainly will not do that. It is a crazy idea."

"It is your idea."

They disputed about it in the coldly hostile manner in which two people dispute who hate each other bitterly, and have no need to disguise their hatred.

"It is decided," he said.

"Not by me," his sister replied.

He raised his hunch and went off; and soon after his sister discovered that the land had been bought and, what was more, that workmen were already digging trenches for the foundation; that tens of thousands of bricks were being carted, and stones and iron and wood.

"Do you think you are still a boy?" she asked. "Do you think it is a game?"

He made no answer.

Once a week his sister, lean and straight and proud, drove into the town in her little carriage drawn by a white horse. She drove slowly past the spot where the work was proceeding and looked coldly at the red bricks, like little chunks of meat, held in place by a framework of iron girders; yellow wood was being fitted into the ponderous mass like a network of nerves. She saw in the distance her brother's crab-like figure. He crawled about the scaffolding, stick in hand, a crumpled hat upon his head. He was covered with dust and looked like a grey spider. At home she gazed intently at his excited face and into his dark eyes, which had become softer and clearer.

"No," he said quietly to himself, "I have hit upon an idea: it should be equally good for all concerned! It is wonderful work to build, and it seems to me that I shall soon consider myself a happy man."

"Happy?" she asked wonderingly, measuring with her eyes the hunchback's body.

"Yes, you know people who work are quite unlike us, they awaken new thoughts in one.... How good it must be to be a bricklayer walking through the streets of a town where he has built dozens of houses. There are many socialists among the workers--steady, sober fellows, first of all. Truly they have their own sense of dignity.... Sometimes it seems to me that we don't understand our people."

"You are talking strangely," she said.

The hunchback was becoming animated, getting more and more talkative every day.

"In reality everything is turning out as you wished it: I am becoming a wise wizard who frees the town from freaks. You could be a good fairy if you wished. Why don't you help me?"

"We will speak about it later," she said, playing with her gold watch-chain.

Once he spoke out in a language quite unfamiliar to her:

"Maybe I have wronged you more than you have wronged me."

She was astonished.

"I wronged you?"

"Wait a minute. Upon my word of honour I am not as guilty as you think. I walk badly. I may have pushed him, but there was no malicious intention. No, believe me. I am more guilty of having wanted to injure your hand, the hand you hit me with."

"Don't let us speak about that," she said.

"It seems to me one ought to be kinder," muttered the hunchback. "I think that goodness is not a myth--it is possible."

The big building in the town grew rapidly; it had spread over the rich soil and was rising towards the sky, which was always grey, always threatening with rain.

Once a little group of officials came to the place where the work was proceeding. They examined the building and, after talking quietly among themselves, gave orders to stop the work.

"You have done this," exclaimed the hunchback, rushing at his sister and clutching her throat with his long, nervous hands; but some men ran up and pulled him away from her. The sister said to them:

"You see, gentlemen, he is really abnormal, and must be looked after. This sort of thing began immediately after the death of his father, whom he loved passionately. Ask the servants: they all know of his illness. They kept silence until latterly, these good people; the honour of the house where many of them have lived since their childhood is dear to them. I also tried to hide our misfortune. An insane brother is not a thing to be proud of."

His face turned purple and his eyes started out of their sockets as he listened to this speech. He was dumbfounded, and silently scratched with his nails the hands of those who held him while she continued:

"This house was a ruinous enterprise. I intend to give it to the town, in the name of my father, as an asylum for insane people."

He shrieked, lost consciousness and was carried away.

His sister continued the building with the same speed with which he had been conducting it, and when the house was finished, the first patient who went into it was her brother. Seven years he spent there--ample time for him to develop melancholia and become an imbecile. His sister turned old in the meantime. She lost all hope of ever becoming a mother, and when at last she saw that he was vanquished and would not rise against her she took him under her care.

And now they are travelling all over the globe, hither and thither, like blinded birds. They look on everything without sense or joy, and see nothing anywhere except themselves.

ON THE STEAMER

The blue water seems as thick as oil. The screw of the steamer works softly, almost silently. One can detect no trembling of the deck and the mast, pointing towards the clear sky, strains and quivers ever so slightly. The rigging, taut as the strings of an instrument, hums gently, but one has grown used to the vibration, and does not notice it, and it seems as if the steamer--white and graceful as a swan--were motionless on the smooth water. To perceive the motion one must look over the gunwale, where a greenish wave retreats from the white side of the steamer. It seems to fall away in broad soft folds, rolling and glistening like quicksilver and splashing dreamily.

It is morning. The sea seems half asleep. The rosy hues of sunrise have not yet disappeared from the sky. We have just passed the island of Gorgona, still slumbering. It is a stern, solitary rock, covered with woods and surmounted by a round grey tower; a cluster of little white houses can be seen at the edge of the sleepy water. A few small boats are moving rapidly on either side of the steamer, rowed by people from the island going to catch sardines. The measured splashing of the long oars and the slim figures of the fishermen linger in the memory. The men row standing and seem to be bowing to the sun.

Behind the ship's stern is a broad streak of greenish foam. Above it seagulls soar lazily. Now and then a bird seems to come from nowhere. It flies noiselessly, stretched out like a cigar, and, after skimming the surface of the water, suddenly darts into it like an arrow.

In the distance, like a cloud from the sea, rises the coast-line of Liguria, with its violet mountains. In another two or three hours the steamer will enter the narrow harbour of the marble town of Genoa.

The sun climbs higher and higher, promising a hot day.

The stewards run up on to the deck; one of them is young, thin, and quick in his movements, like a Neapolitan, with an ever-changing expression on his mobile face; the other is a man of medium height, with a grey moustache, black eyebrows, and silvery bristles on his round skull. He has an aquiline nose and serious, intelligent eyes. Laughing and joking they quickly lay the table for breakfast and depart. Then one after another the passengers creep slowly from their cabins. First comes a fat man with a small head and red bloated face; he looks melancholy and his tired swollen red lips are half open. He is followed by a tall, sleek man with grey side-whiskers, eyes that cannot be seen, and a little nose that looks like a button on his flat yellow face. After them, leaping over the brass rail of the companion-way, comes a plump red-haired man, with a moustache curled in military fashion; he is dressed like an Alpine mountaineer, and wears a green feather in his hat. All three stop near the gunwale. The fat man, half-closing his sad eyes, remarks:

"How calm it is!"

The man with the side-whiskers put his hands into his pockets, spread out his legs, and stood there resembling a pair of open scissors. The red-haired man took out his large gold watch, which looked like the pendulum of a clock, looked at it, then at the sky and along the deck; then he began to whistle, swinging his watch and beating time with his foot.

Two ladies came up, the younger, _embonpoint,_ with a porcelain face and amiable milky-blue eyes. Her dark brows seemed to have been pencilled and one was higher than the other. The other was older, sharp-featured, and her headdress of faded hair looked enormous. She had a large black mole on her left cheek, two gold chains round her neck, and a lorgnon and a number of trinkets hanging from the belt of her grey dress.

Coffee was served; the young lady sat down silently at the table and began to pour out the black liquid, affectedly curving her arms, which were bare to the elbow.

The men came to the table and sat down in silence. The fat man took a cup and said sighing:

"It is going to be hot."

"You are spilling it on to your knees," remarked the elder lady.

He looked down, his chin and cheeks became puffed out as they rested on his chest; he put his cup on the table, wiped drops of coffee off his grey trousers with a handkerchief, and then wiped his face, which was in a perspiration.

"Yes," unexpectedly remarked the red-haired man in a loud voice, shuffling his short legs. "Yes, yes, even if the Parties of the Left have begun to complain about hooliganism it means----"

"Don't chatter, John," interrupted the elder lady. "Isn't Lisa coming out?"

"She doesn't feel well," answered the younger lady in a sonorous voice.

"But the sea is quite calm."

"Oh, but when a woman is in her condition."

The red-haired man smiled voluptuously and closed his eyes.

Beyond the gunwale, breaking the calm expanse of the sea, porpoises were making a commotion. The man with the side-whiskers, watching them attentively, said:

"The porpoises look like pigs."

The red-haired man chimed in:

"There is plenty of piggery here."

The colourless lady raised a cup to her lips, smelt the coffee and made a grimace.

"It is disgusting."

"And the milk, eh?" said the fat man, blinking and seeming ill at ease.

The lady with the porcelain face said in a sing-song voice: "Everything is very dirty, and they all look very much like Jews."