Pescara Tales

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

  Then Turlendana stopped to look up at the moon, red and round like the face of a well-fed cleric. The area all about was quiet. The houses stood white in their long files. A cat meowed to the May night through the grill of a nearby door. Now, when in drink, this was a man drawn by a singular inclination towards tenderness, and he stretched out his hand slowly towards the animal to stroke it. But it was an unsociable cat, and it leapt away and vanished.

  He saw a stray dog approaching, and he sought to pour on it the abundance of his loving benevolence. But the dog passed him on the other side of the street without responding to his call, halting by a corner at the next junction, where in the night’s silence it could be clearly heard working over with its teeth a bone it had discovered.

  The door of the cantina closed behind him and Turlendana found himself alone in the great plenilunal spaces occupied by shadows and travelling clouds. And his mind was given over to that rapid distancing from him that had occurred one after another by every creature that had been near him a moment ago. Was everyone fleeing him, then? What had he done that they should want to flee him?

  He began an uncertain meander towards the river. As he went, the thought of that universal distancing increasingly engaged his drink-fuddled brain. Coming across two more street dogs, he stopped not far from them and as if to test that idea called to them. The curs again slunk away, keeping close to their walls, tail between legs, and when they were some distance from him they began to bark; and instantly, from every point, from the Bourbon Baths, from Sant’Agostino, the Arsenal, the fish market, from all the lurid and dark regions of the city, mongrel dogs came padding over, as if to a call to battle, and the hostile choir of that famished tribe rose to the moon.

  Turlendana, stunned, a vague uneasiness growing in his mind, began again to walk, with quicker steps now, from time to time stumbling where the ground was uneven. When he arrived at the locality of the coopers, where the big barrels of Zazzetta stood one on top of another in pale columns like monuments, he heard the uneven breathing of animals; and since his thoughts were now fixated on the hostility shown to him by other creatures, and with the obstinacy of a drunk, he drew towards that sound to make another test.

  Inside a low barn the three old horses of Michelangelo stood wheezing over their manger. They were decrepit animals, having worn out their lives in twice-daily dragging on the Chieti Road the great carcass of a wagon loaded with merchandise and merchants. Under their dark skins, here and there worn clean of hair by harness straps, their bones protruded like so much dry ribbing through the thatch of a ruin; their front legs had grown so distorted that it was hard to make out the original shape of the knees; the vertebrae showed like the teeth of a saw; and the much-excoriated necks, on which scarcely the last vestige of a mane hung, so drooped to the ground that sometimes the nostrils, incapable of blowing now, touched the worn-thin hooves.

  A rickety wooden gate closed off the barn’s entry.

  Turlendana began calling to the horses:

  ‘Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!’

  The horses did not move, but they breathed together in an attentive, human kind of way, and the shape of their bodies was indistinct in the dark-blue shadows, and the odour of their breathing rose mingled with that of manure.

  ‘Ush, ush, ush!’ Turlendana repeated, in the lamenting tone that he had used when leading Barbará to water.

  The horses remained still.

  ‘Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!’

  One of them turned and came to put its great deformed head over the gate, looking out of eyes that glistened in the moonlight as if the globes contained turbid water. Its lower lip hung down like a piece of flaccid skin, exposing the gum; the humid cartilages that were the nostrils trembled with every breath and closed at times, resembling then the soft movement with which a bubble in fermenting leaven rises and deflates.

  The sight of that senile head recalled the drunk to his senses. Why had he had such a skinful on this occasion, he who was so sober usually? In a sudden moment of his benumbed state the form of dead Barbarà appeared before him, the recollection of the dying camel lying on the ground with its long, inert neck stretched out on the straw and coughing like a man, or stirring weakly from time to time while with each movement the swollen belly made a noise such as a rocked keg half-full of water makes.

  A great pitying tenderness invaded him, and the agony of the camel – with those sudden convulsions and strange raucous sobs that made the enormous moribund carcass quake and vibrate sonorously, those forced attempts to breathe which raised the neck for an instant to then fall back on the straw with a heavy, muffled thud, the legs meanwhile moving in a circular act of running, that continuous tremor of the ears, the immobility of the eyeballs, already, it seemed, spent before any other sensory organ – all that agony with its so human misery returned now lucidly to his memory. And he, leaning on the gate, with a mechanical movement of the mouth continued to address Michelangelo’s horse:

  ‘Ush, ush, ush! Ush, ush, ush!’

  With the unconscious persistence of the drunk, with growing hebetude, he continued and continued; and it was a monotonous and heartrending lament, almost as lugubrious as the song of night birds:

  ‘Ush, ush, ush!’

  Finally, Michelangelo, who could hear Turlendana from his bed, appeared at a window above and began hurling abuse and maledictions upon the one who had disturbed his rest:

  ‘Son of a whore, go throw yourself in the river! Be gone! Go, or I’ll drop the door-bar on you, you abomination! What do’ye mean, coming to torment Christians? Filthy drunkard! Be gone!’

  Turlendana began walking again in the direction of the river, swaying as he went. At the junction where the women sold vegetables, a band of mongrels were conducting an amorous convention. As the man approached, they dispersed, running towards the Baths. Another band appeared out of Gesidio’s alley and turned into the Street of the Bastions. Under the gentle, honeyed light of the spring’s full moon, all the town of Pescara was full of the loves and battles of dogs. Madrigale’s mastiff, chained to watch over a newly slaughtered ox, from time to time made heard its deep bellow of a bark that dominated all other voices. An occasional lone dog went by at a great gallop in the direction of some assembly of its peers. Within the houses imprisoned pets sent forth distressed long howls.

  Perturbing impressions possessed the brain of the drunk. In front of him, behind him, all around him, the imagined flight from him of all things seemed to begin again. He advanced, and everything retreated: the clouds, the trees, the stones, the two riverbanks, the rigging on boats, the houses. The appearance of being universally rejected and reprobated filled him with dread. He stopped. From the pit of his belly came an extended gurgle of distress. Next, through his discomposed brain flashed a thought: that hare! Even Ciávola’s hare would now depart from him! His panic increased, a tremor afflicted his legs and arms, but pursued by his fear he managed to push through willow withes and high grass and descended to the edge of the water.

  The moon, round and radiant, expanded a sweet, snowy serenity to the furthest reaches of the sky. Trees inclined in peaceful attitudes contemplated the passing water. Something like a slow and solemn exhalation emanated from the river asleep under the moon. Frogs sang.

  Turlendana, crouched and almost hidden in the vegetation, relieved himself, his hands trembling on his knees. Then he felt something alive moving under him: a frog! With a cry, he straightened and took off in a swaying run through willows that whipped at his face, in his disorder of spirit become unnerved as if by the vision of some supernatural freak. Stumbling into a subsidence in the ground, his breeches undone, he fell forward with his face in the grass. He lifted himself up with some difficulty and stood a moment looking about him at the trees.

  The silver columns of poplars rose taciturn and motionless in the air, seeming to reach to the moon by a deceiving extension at their crowns. The riverbanks dissolved into indefiniteness, almost into immateriality, like th
e images of countrysides in dreams; to the right, the estuary sparkled, dazzling white with the whiteness of its saltpans, on which at intervals shadows cast by migratory cloudlets drifted lightly like sweeps of deep-blue veils; inland beyond the pans a forest stretched across the horizon, its airborne fragrance blending with that of the sea.

  ‘Oh, Turlendana! O-oh!’ a voice sounded clearly.

  Turlendana turned in surprise.

  ‘Oh, Turlendana-a!’

  And Binchi-Banche appeared in the company of a trooper of the customs police, the two walking on a path in the willows that led to the sea.

  ‘Where’you off to this hour? Grievin’ over the camel?’ asked Binchi-Banche with familiarity, nearing.

  Turlendana did not reply at once. He was holding up his breeches with his hands and he stood with his knees bent forward a little, and he had such a foolish expression on his face and he babbled incomprehensible things so miserably, that Binchi-Banche and the trooper burst out laughing.

  ‘Go then, man, go!’ said the laughter-wrinkled little man, propelling the drunk towards the shore with a kindly shove to his back.

  Turlendana went ahead, while the other two followed at some distance, laughing and talking quietly.

  Now the vegetation was ending and the first sand became visible and the sound of light surf came from the sea at the mouth of the Pescara. In an arid concavity between two dunes he came across Barbarà’s still unburied carcass. The great body had been skinned and was bloody; the uncovered adipose masses of the spine were revealed as yellowish in colour; the legs and haunches had been untouched and their hair and callouses remained; the camel’s two large, angled and curved front teeth were visible, jutting from the top mandible, the pale tongue beneath them drooping sideways in the mouth; the lower jaw receded unexpectedly and somehow unnaturally. The neck still resembled a serpent’s trunk.

  Turlendana, confronted by that pitiful sight, broke out into moans of lament, shaking his head. He repeated the same barely human noise:

  ‘Ahò! Ahò! Ahò!’

  In an attempt to throw himself on the camel he tripped and fell heavily. He tried to lift himself, but he was overcome at last by the wine and dropped into a stupor of unconsciousness.

  Binchi-Banche and the trooper saw him fall and they came over. They placed themselves one at the head and the other the feet of Turlendana, lifted him and laid him gently over the corpse of Barbarà, positioning him in a loving embrace, chuckling softly as they worked.

  And Turlendana lay thus with the camel until dawn.

  SEA SURGERY

  The trabaccolo Trinita, an Adriatic lugger laden with grain, weighed anchor for Dalmatia towards evening. She made way down the tranquil river, passing lateen-rigged trawlers from Ortona moored in rows, while on the shore fires were being lit and singing came from men who were resting from the sea. Emerging carefully through the narrow mouth, the vessel rode out into open water.

  The weather was mild. In the October sky the full moon hung like a mellow, rosy lamp almost touching the sea; behind, the hills and the mountains beyond them looked like recumbent women. Wild geese flew by without uttering that discordant cry of theirs and vanished in the distance.

  At first the six men and the cabin boy worked in unison, manoeuvring to fill the sails with wind; then, once those were bellying well and displaying their crude figures on the dyed-red canvas, the men found places to sit and began quietly smoking, and the cabin boy went forward and sat astride the bow, to sing absently to himself a nostalgic song of home.

  The elder of the Talamonte brothers spoke, jetting a long stream of saliva into the water and replacing a much-worn pipe in his mouth:

  ‘T’aint goin’ to hold. T’weather.’

  On hearing the prophecy, the others looked around and made no reply. They were all hardened seamen, inured to the vagaries of the sea. They had navigated to the Dalmatian islands before, and to Zadar and to Trieste and to Split; they knew the way. One or two could even recall with fondness the wine of Dignano, with its odour of roses, and the fruits of those islands.

  The trabaccolo’s captain was Ferrante La Selvi. Cirù, Massacese, Gialluca, and the brothers Talamonte made up the crew. Nazareno was the cabin boy.

  Since the moon was full, they lingered on deck. The sea was dotted with small trawlers, fishing. Every so often a pair, trawling their net between them, passed near the trabaccolo, and the crews shouted to each other familiarly across the water. It seemed the fishing was good. When those boats were left behind and the sea grew empty again, Ferrante and the Talamonte brothers went below to rest. Massacese and Gialluca once they had finished smoking followed their example. Cirù remained on watch.

  Before going down, Gialluca, showing the side of his neck to his companion, said:

  ‘Take a look; have I got somethin’ here?’

  Massacese looked and said:

  ‘Nah, tain’t nothin’ to worry you.’

  There was a redness there like that produced by the sting of an insect, and in the middle of the redness was a small nodule.

  Gialluca added:

  ‘Hurts.’

  During the night the wind veered and the sea began to heave; the trabaccolo was now dancing on the waves, was being dragged eastward and losing headway. Gialluca, while they adjusted the trim to the new conditions, released a soft moan as every brusque movement of his head delivered him a jolt of pain.

  Ferrante La Selvi asked him:

  ‘What’s with you?’

  Gialluca in the dawn light showed him his neck. The redness there had grown, and the small peak of an abscess appeared in the centre.

  After examining it, Ferrante too said:

  ‘T’aint nothin’. Don’t worry about it.’

  Gialluca got a handkerchief and wound it around his neck, then he lit his pipe.

  The trabaccolo, buffeted by breaking waves and dragged off course by a contrary wind, continued its flight eastwards. The noise of the sea overwhelmed any sound of speech; occasional waves thudded against the side of the vessel and broke over the deck.

  Towards evening the storm began to reduce its intensity and the moon emerged like a fiery cupola. But with the wind abating, the trabaccolo became almost becalmed, its sails now hanging flaccidly, from time to time a passing breeze agitating them for a moment only.

  Gialluca complained about his pain. In an interval of calm the others began to give their attention to his ailment. Each proposed a different remedy. Cirù, who was the oldest there, came forward with the suggestion of a poultice made from apples and flour. He had some vague medical notions because his wife back on land practiced curing combined with magical arts, healing by the aid of nostrums reinforced by cabalistic invocations. But there were no apples on board and there was no flour. The ship’s biscuits were deemed unsuitable.

  Cirù then took an onion and a handful of the cargo wheat, he pounded the wheat and chopped the onion finely and so created a poultice. At the touch of that compound Gialluca felt his pain increasing sharply, and after an hour seized by ungovernable irritation he tore the dressing from his neck and threw the whole contrivance into the sea. To win over his misery he spent a long time steering, holding grimly to the tiller. The wind had risen again and the sails flapped joyously; in the clear night a little island which should have been Pelagosa appeared in the distance like a cloud resting on the water.

  In the morning Cirù, who by now had taken it on himself to cure the abscess, asked to see it. The swelling had grown to occupy a large part of Gialluca’s neck and assumed a new form and a darker colour which at the apex had turned violet.

  ‘He-ey… what’ve we got here!’ he exclaimed, perplexed and in a tone that alarmed his patient; and he called Ferrante, the two Talamontes and the others.

  Their opinions varied. Ferrante worried that it might be some malignant growth by which Gialluca could be choked. Gialluca, his eyes wide open now and his face grown pasty, listened to their prognoses. What with the sky lost in mist and the
sea dark and flights of shrieking gulls hurrying towards the coast, dread had descended on him.

  Finally, the younger Talamonte announced:

  ‘Tis a chancre.’

  The others agreed:

  ‘Could be.’

  In fact, next day the outer skin covering the abscess had been forced up by an accumulation of bloody pus and was tearing in places, and the whole area now resembled a wasps’ nest through whose openings issued an abundance of purulent matter. The inflammation and suppuration were deepening and extending rapidly.

  Gialluca, in the grip of terror, invoked Saint Rocco, deliverer of the plagued. He promised him ten pounds-weight of candle wax, twenty even. He was kneeling in the centre of the deck, raising his arms to the heavens, making his votive undertakings with earnest gestures, invoking by name as witnesses to the contract his father, his mother, his wife and children; and around him with each appeal his companions made a grave sign of the cross over themselves.

  While they were thus engaged, Ferrante La Selvi heard the approach of a powerful gust and he shouted a raucous command over the roar of the sea. The length of the trabaccolo healed over. Massacese, the Talamontes, Cirù threw themselves into the work of righting the vessel, while Nazareno scrambled up one of the masts, from which the mainsails were lowered in a moment, only the two jibs being left in place, and the trabaccolo began running precipitately from one wave’s crest to the next, rolling steeply from side to side.

  ‘Sante Rocche! Sante Rocche!’ bellowed with greater fervour Gialluca, agitated even more by the surrounding tumult, bending over on his knees and propping himself on his arms to resist being thrown down on the heaving deck.

  Periodically, a larger wave rolled over the bow, and salt water swept over the length of the deck.

  ‘Git below!’ Ferrante shouted to Gialluca.

  Gialluca clambered down into the hold. He was troubled all over by feverish heat, there was a noisome dryness in his throat, and the fear of his affliction gripped his insides. Down there in the dim light the shapes of things took on singular aspects. The sound of massive blows against the sides of the vessel and the creaking of all its joints assailed his ears.