Page:The International - Volume 1.djvu/158

148 Phenicia was all in all to Carmenio. Although younger than he, she took the place of the mother whom they had lost in tender years. Phenicia always had a smile and a kiss for him. Whenever he brought her a woven cage with a singing cicada, she would thank him as fervently, while hanging it among the blossoms of the passion flower spreading so luxuriously over the mouldering balcony, as if he had brought her all the treasures that, in their childish fancy, they imagined to be hidden within the burning crater of Ætna.

Phenicia would comfort him whenever Uncle Petrone—the kettle-maker to whom he was apprenticed—was unusually severe. She always gave him a part of her beans or bread when Aunt Pina had a streak of stinginess while apportioning their food in their little earthen dishes; she also proved herself a brave defender whenever the children, in their thoughtless cruelty, abused him, mocking him on account of his crooked legs, throwing stones at him, and calling out: "Pulcinello! Pulcinello!" And Phenicia had hard fists, for indeed Aunt Pina did not give her bread and beans for nought. From morning till night, she was obliged to toil in the small garden and vineyard that nestled on the rocky slopes of Mount Venera.

In the evening Phenicia might rest upon the mouldering balcony, where the passion flower bloomed. Here she could look down on the ocean beyond, which also was resting from its day's labor, could observe the stars as they twinkled above Ætna, and see the mount slowly enveloping itself in mist. Beautiful dreams visited her whenever she fell asleep there. Neither did Aunt Pina forbid her to go out with other girls and sit under the church portico of mouldering red marble and hard gray sandstone, beneath whose arch the old frescoes seemed to be fading away. There Phenicia could laugh heartily, and there one beautiful evening she was first seen by the young shoemaker, Archangelo Guisti. He had come that day to Mola on some business, and had been delayed till the cool of the evening. When he first spied Phenicia she was laughing: her voice sounded like the rippling of the fountain, her white teeth tinged with blue seemed like the blossoms of the pomegranate that she had stuck behind her ear, and her eyes beamed like stars that shine at night in the dark blue sky above the sea. Archangelo's mind involuntarily wandered to the strange goddess painted upon the crumbling ceiling of the old palace of Corvejo, where he dwelt with his mother, Venera, in Taormin. When he returned home that evening, his eyes constantly sought the face of that goddess, which seemed to smile at him through the smoke of the little lamp, by the light of which his mother was getting him his supper.

From that time he visited Mola quite often, and Uncle Petrone was not a little glad to get rid of the orphans, when Archangelo asked him for Phenicia, who consented only upon condition that Carmenio move down to Taormin with her.

Venera, however, wept and lamented when she heard that her son was to marry a girl without a single sou. She finally became somewhat resigned, and merely tore her hair when there was no one to see her but old Nunziata. To her she did not hesitate to unburden her heart; she was not ashamed to shake her fist at St. Christopher, the saint whom she had honored above all others, and who now repaid her with such treachery.

Nunziata tried to comfort her, by telling her that other saints were apt to serve their devotees in the same manner. What a trick had St. Rosalia played upon her once! If she should tell it! But no—it was so long ago.

Venera shrugged her shoulders, as much as to say: "How can you presume to compare that St. Rosalia of yours with my St. Christopher?"

Nunziata understood this and felt deeply insulted. In her young days she had been to Palermo, and once had gone on a pilgrimage to Mount Pelegrino, into the valley where St. Rosalia had lived. She was dazzled with the splendor surrounding the saint. Her statue of marble and gold