Moscardino Read Online Free Page A

striking and melting together.
    Now her mouth was against his ear saying strange words, dizziness in his soul as in the ripples on the water beneath him.
    Grumpy remained stock still with his eyes closed, he felt her mouth move away from his ear and fastened to his nape; a circle of fire, a brand to leave lasting mark.
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    But Cleofe who had brought her milky and blood-tinted face from the mountains now had circles under her eyes and there was a waxen shadow on her clear face. The dark spots that had showed her pregnant had not left with the birth.
    Her mouth was no longer cool, her lips were thin now. Only her eyes seemed larger.
    Perhaps her thought ran: If I had married a shepherd in my own mountains, now I would be happy. She wept in the daytime, lamenting that she had not enough milk, as have the women of her own village, they have it so that they suckle the lambs. That is abundance.
    If she had married a shepherd she would be free, all that milk, all those sons, all that sky and a will to singing . . .
    And now instead, she was afraid of the man who was her husband in that shadowy house.

    Why do you look at yourself in the glass?
    You have combed your hair to look prettier.
    Why do you want to look prettier?
    If someone went by in the street, if anyone stood near a window in one of the neighboring houses, if someone knocked at the door to collect a bill or bring a message, there was a bloody row.
    Everything was in turmoil and chaos in my grandfather’s mind.
    Cleofe did not answer, ever. She obeyed, she looked terrified. Her face was full of suspicion, like that of my grandfather’s, unquiet.
    He wanted her not to wash, so that she would be ugly; to leave her hair uncombed, to wear the country clothes that she had brought with her, out of date, of grey flannel, plowman’s shoes, canvas aprons, fichus crossed on her breast.
    That she should look badly, that she should dress like an old woman so that no one would look at her.
    And even so my grandfather found her more beautiful, too beautiful. It was the majesty of her figure; unsuppressible by the clumsiness of old-fashioned clothes. Taking from her the grace of fashion, her beauty shone through as a joke, almost as a dream, as if she were a girl of past time.
    Sometimes he wanted to feel he was right, tortured himself, helping her to put on her good clothes.

    A new dress of shot silk, with a white front and a low lace collar.
    He wanted her to put on the necklace of gold beads with a cross, and with her hair coiled round her cheeks and ears as when she had come down from the hills. Then he watched her move away, his eyes fixed on her as if in a vision, as something no longer his.
    He wanted her to stand on the balcony so that the sunlight could play over her dress, so the gold beads could come to life, so that her face would seem again compound of milk and blood.
    He forced himself to indifference before the serenity of that wax Madonna, leapt as it were of a sudden from among the rays of God to his balcony.
    But if anyone passed and turned unexpectedly, if a shadow showed at a window of a house opposite, the spell broke and his being was shattered, trembling, brute jealousy leapt back with all its instincts, he slammed shut the window to shut out the sun’s kindness, he tore the gold beads from Cleofe’s neck, trampled them, tore the shot silk dress to tatters, tore it with his teeth, stripped it off her.
    Cleofe grew worse.
    The doctor came to the house and my grandfather had a new war within him, everything in him on fire, so that if he concealed his anguish it shone terribly through his eyes.
    Cleofe wanted to get well again.

    And the doctor’s presence increased my grandfather’s torment, drop by drop, a whirling torrent, that Cleofe felt with terror.
    The doctor had looked at her breasts, had felt her belly, pressed his head between her shoulders to listen, and tapped her white body all over. Cleofe felt it would drive my