MOONSICKNESS


 Translation


 


Batà was all crouched up on a bale of straw in the middle of the threshing yard.


His wife, Sidora, turned to look at him anxiously from time to time from the threshold where she was sitting, with her head leaning against the doorpost and her eyes half-closed. Then, overwhelmed by the oppressive heat, she went back to stretching her gaze towards the blue strip of the far-off sea, as if she were waiting for a breath of air, now that it was near sunset, to rise from there and softly make its way over to her, across the naked earth bristling with burnt stubble.


So oppressive was the heat that the air could be seen trembling like the breath of burning embers above the straw left in the yard after the threshing.


Batà had drawn out a stalk from the bale where he was seated, and with a listless hand was trying to beat it against his hobnailed boots. It was a futile gesture. The stalk of freshly mown straw kept bending. And Batà remained sullen and absorbed as he stared at the ground.


In the dismal and motionless brilliance of the scorching air, there was an oppression so suffocating that her husband’s repetitive, futile gesture was causing Sidora unbearable agitation. In truth, the man’s every action—even just the sight of him—caused her agitation, that she could barely repress.


 


 


 


1


Married to him just twenty days, Sidora already felt destroyed—ruined. She noticed a strange heavy and terrible emptiness, inside and surrounding her. And it seemed almost untrue, that she had been brought there such a short time ago, to that old, isolated property, with its stable and house combined, in the middle of that stubble wasteland, without a tree about—without a hint of shade.


There, for twenty days, barely smothering her tears and revulsion, she had only just managed to force herself to surrender her body to that taciturn man, who was about twenty years older than she and who seemed to now be weighed down by a sorrow more desperate than her own.


She remembered what the local women had said to her mother, when she had announced the marriage proposal to them.


“Batà! Good lord, I wouldn’t give a daughter of mine to him.”


Her mother had believed they said it out of envy, because Batà was well-off. And the more she insisted on giving her to him, the more they, with a sorrowful air, showed reluctance to join in her satisfaction at the good fortune that had befallen her daughter. No, in all conscience, quite honestly, nothing bad was ever said about Batà, but nothing good was either. Cast away forever on that far-off piece of land of his, no one knew how he lived. He was always alone, like an animal in the company of his animals, two she-mules, a she-ass and the guard dog. And he certainly had a strange demeanour, grim and at times that of a fool.


 


 


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There had actually been another reason, and perhaps a more forceful one, why her mother had insisted on giving her to that man. Sidora still remembered this other reason, which at that moment seemed far, far away, as if in another life, but nevertheless distinct—precise. She could see two youthful lips, full of wit and brilliant red like two carnation petals, opening up into a smile that caused all the blood in her veins to tremble and tingle. They were the lips of Saro, her cousin, who, in his love for her, had not known how to find the strength to come to his senses—to break free from the company of his wretched friends—in order to remove any excuse of her mother’s for opposing their marriage.


Oh, certainly, Saro would have made an awful husband; but what kind of husband was this one, now? The troubles that, without a doubt, the other one would have given her, were they perhaps not preferable to the anguish, the revulsion, the fear, that this one aroused in her?


Batà finally came out of his crouching position, but as soon as he was on his feet, he turned halfway round, almost overcome by vertigo. His legs, as if fettered, folded up under him. With his arms in the air, he barely held himself upright. A moaning, almost of rage, sprang from his throat.


Sidora, terrified, rushed towards him, but he stopped her with a wave of his arms. A relentless whimpering rose from him and prevented him speaking. He choked it back with difficulty and battled against his sobs—a horrible gurgling in his throat. And his face was white, turbid, ashen, his eyes dark and veiled. Behind the madness in them


 


 


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could be distinguished an almost childlike fear, still conscious, never ending. He continued to signal to her with his hands to wait and to not be frightened and to keep her distance. At last, in a voice that was no longer his, he said, “Inside…shut yourself inside…well… Don’t be afraid… If I knock, if I shake the door and scratch it and cry out…don’t be afraid…don’t open it… Not for anything… Go! Go!”


“But what’s wrong with you?” Sidora cried at him, horrified.


Batà moaned again and shook all over with a powerful, convulsive jolt that seemed to split his limbs, then, with a flash of his arm, he pointed to the sky and roared, “The moon!”


Sidora, while turning around to run to the house, through her fear actually caught sight of the moon of the fifteenth*, enflamed, violet, enormous, only just risen from the colourless hills of Crocca.


Barricaded inside and holding herself tight, as if to prevent her limbs from breaking off with their continuous, increasing, unswerving shaking, she too was moaning, out of her mind with terror. Soon after, she heard the drawn-out, feral howls of her husband writhing outside the door, a victim of the horrendous sickness coming at him from the moon, and he was beating his head, his feet, his knees, his hands, against the door, and he was scratching, as if his fingernails had become claws, and he was snorting, as if in the fever pitch of a raging bestial toil, as if he wanted to pull that door out, tear it off, and now he was baying, baying, as if he had a dog in his body,


* The fifteenth day after the new moon, i.e., the full moon.


 


 


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and once again he was scratching, salivating, howling, and beating his head and his knees against it.


“Help! Help!” she cried, even though she knew that no one in that wasteland would hear her cries. “Help! Help!” and she held the door with her arms, in fear lest, at any moment, despite the many latches, it would yield to the repeated ferocious and relentless force of that blind, howling fury.


Oh, if only she could have killed him! Dazed, she turned, as if to search for a weapon in the room. But through the window grating high up in the wall facing her, she again caught sight of the now translucent moon as it rose in the sky, suffused by a peaceful glow. At that sight, as if suddenly struck down by contagion from the sickness herself, she let out a great cry and fell on her back—senseless.


When she regained consciousness, in her lightheadedness, she did not at first understand why she had been thrown to the ground. The door latches brought back her memory and immediately she grew frightened by the silence that now reigned outside. She rose to her feet. Unsteadily she approached the door, and held her ear up to it.


Nothing. No more.


She remained listening for a long time, oppressed by fear of that enormous, mysterious silence—of the entire world. And finally she seemed to hear a sigh from nearby—a mighty sigh—as if emitted from a deadly anguish.


 


 


5


She immediately ran to the chest under the bed. She drew it forward, opened it and pulled out her woollen cape. She returned to the door, held her ear up to it again for a long time, then hurriedly, silently, lifted up the latches one by one, silently lifted the bolt, then the crossbar. She opened one shutter just slightly and suspiciously eyed the narrow opening at ground level.


Batà was there. He was lying like a dead animal face downwards amidst his drool, black, tumefied, with his arms spread open. Squatting close by, his dog was guarding him—under the moon.


Sidora came outside holding her breath. Very slowly, she closed the door partway, made an angry sign to the dog to not move and, warily, with the tread of a wolf, fled with her cape under her arm through the countryside towards the village, in the still deep night tinged by the glow of the moonlight.


She arrived at her mother’s house in the village a little before dawn. Her mother had just gotten up. Dark as a cave, the hovel at the end of a narrow alley was barely illuminated by an oil lamp. As she rushed inside, dishevelled and breathless, Sidora seemed to fill the whole space.


Upon seeing her daughter at that hour and in such a state, the mother raised a cry and caused all the local women to come running with their oil lamps in hand.


 


 


6


Sidora began to weep loudly and, while weeping, she tore her hair and pretended to be unable to speak, so that her mother, and the neighbours, would better understand the enormity of the event that had befallen her—of the fright she had received.


“The moonsickness! The moonsickness!”


At Sidora’s recounting, the superstitious terror of that mysterious sickness took hold of all the women.


Oh, poor child! They had told her mother so, that that man was not natural, that that man must have been hiding some great defect, that not one of them would have given him to their own daughter. He was baying, eh? He was howling like a wolf, eh? Scratching at the door? Good heavens, how frightening! And how was that she wasn’t dead, poor child?


Collapsed on a chair, completely overcome, her arms and head hanging, her mother was irresolutely chanting, “Oh, my daughter! Oh, my daughter! Oh, my poor ruined little girl!”


At sunset, pulling the two harnessed mules behind him, Batà appeared in the alley, still swollen and bruised, humiliated, dejected, bewildered.


At the scuttling of the mules on the cobblestones of the alley, which the August sun enflamed like an oven and blinded as it dazzled against the whitewash, all the women, with gestures and cries choked back with fear, hurriedly retreated with their chairs


 


 


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into their huts, and stuck their heads out of their doorways to keep watch, and to give each other knowing looks.


Sidora’s mother stood on the threshold, proud and trembling all over with anger, and began to cry, “Go away, wretched soul! Have you got the nerve to face me again? Get away from here! Get away from here! Treacherous murderer, get away from here! You’ve ruined my daughter!”


And she carried on ranting and raving for a bit, while Sidora, hiding inside, wept and begged her mother to protect her—not to let him in.


Batà listened to the threats and insults with his head bowed. They wounded him. He was to blame. He had hidden his sickness. He had hidden it, because no woman would have accepted him if he had confessed beforehand. It was right that he now pay the penalty for his sin.


He kept his eyes closed and bitterly shook his head, without moving a step. Then his mother-in-law slammed the door in his face and bolted it. Batà remained a bit longer, head bowed, before the closed door. Then he turned and noticed the many appalled and fear-filled eyes at the doorways of the other huts, spying on him.


Those eyes saw the tears on the disheartened man’s face, and at that moment their fear turned to compassion.


 


 


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First one, more courageous, old woman held out a chair to him, then the others, in twos and threes, came outside and gathered around him. And Batà, after thanking them with silent nods of his head, began very slowly to relate his misfortune to them: that when she was young his mother, out in the cornfields, while sleeping peacefully in a threshing yard, had kept her baby exposed all night to the moon, and, that he, poor innocent baby, with his little belly in the air, his eyes wandering and waving his legs and arms about, had played with the beautiful moon. And the moon had “enchanted” him. The enchantment had slumbered inside him for years and years, however, and had only recently woken up. Every time the moon was in the fifteenth, the sickness took him again. But it was a sickness for him alone. The others need only avoid him, and they could avoid him easily, because it was precisely timed and he could feel it coming and he could give advance warning. It lasted only one night, and then that was it. He had hoped that his wife would have been more courageous, but, since she wasn’t, it could be resolved in this way: at each occurrence of the moon, either she came to her mother’s in the village, or her mother went down to the farmhouse to keep her company.


“Who? My mother?” Sidora cried out at this point, flaring up in anger, her eyes fierce, she threw open the door behind which she had been standing, listening in. “You are mad! Do you want to make my mother die of fear as well?”


Then her mother also came outside, nudging her daughter with her elbow and ordering her to stay quiet and calm in the house. She approached the group of women, who had by now become quite compassionate, and started to chat with them secretly, and then talked privately with Batà.


 


9


From the threshold, angry and full of consternation, Sidora followed her mother’s and husband’s gestures, and since they appeared to be fervently discussing something that her mother was agreeing to with obvious pleasure, she began to shriek, “Oh, no! Don’t listen to him! Are you agreeing to something? There’s no point! There’s no point! I’m telling you!”


The local women urgently gestured to her to be quiet and to wait for the conversation to finish. Finally, Batà said good-bye to his mother-in-law, left one of the two mules in her charge, and having thanked the good neighbours, he departed, pulling the other mule behind him by the halter.


“Be quiet, you foolish girl!” Sidora’s mother said quietly as soon as she returned home. “When the full moon comes, I will go down, with Saro…”


“With Saro? Did he say that?”


“It was me who said it. Shush! With Saro.”


And, lowering her eyes in order to hide her smile, her mother pretended to wipe her toothless mouth with the corner of the headscarf tied under her chin, and added, “Do we happen to have anyone else in the way of men amongst our relatives? He’s the only one who can help and comfort us. Shush!”


So the next morning, at dawn, Sidora set out again for the countryside on the other mule left by her husband.


 


 


10


* As well as being a word to describe an extremity of the moon, a horn is the emblem of a cuckold.


She thought of nothing else for the entire twenty-nine days that went by until the new fifteenth. She watched the August moon gradually set and rise ever later, and her desire made her wish she could hasten the declining phases. Then, she did not see it anymore for a few evenings. She finally saw it again, pale and slender in the yet twilit sky, and gradually, once again, it started to grow more and more.


“Don’t be afraid,” Batà told her sadly, seeing her with her eyes always firmly fixed on the moon. “There’s still time. There’s time! The trouble will start when it no longer has horns*…”


At those words that were accompanied by an ambiguous smile, Sidora felt herself freeze, and she looked at him, dumbfounded.


At last the evening arrived, so long-awaited and at the same time so dreaded. The mother arrived by horse with her nephew Saro two hours before the moon would rise.


Batà, as on the previous occasion, was all crouched up in the threshing yard, and didn’t even raise his head to greet them.


Sidora, trembling all over, gestured to her cousin and mother not to say anything to him and led them inside the house. Her mother immediately went and poked her nose into a dark little closet where old tools were piled up—hoes, sickles, saddles, baskets, saddlebags—next to the big room that also sheltered the animals.


 


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“You’re a man,” she said to Saro. “And you already know what he’s like,” she said to her daughter. “I am old and I’m more afraid than anyone else. I’ll stay hidden away here, very quiet and very alone. I’ll shut myself in tight. Let him be the wolf outside.”


All three of them went out into the open again and remained for quite a long while talking in front of the house. As darkness gradually descended on the countryside, Sidora threw looks at Saro that became increasingly more ardent and provocative. But on meeting those looks, Saro, although usually so lively and spirited, gradually felt himself grow pale, the laughter on his lips harden, his tongue dry out. As if there were thorns on the low wall where he was sitting, he fidgeted continuously and swallowed with difficulty. And from time to time he extended a sidelong look at the man awaiting the assault of the sickness. He also extended his neck to see if, from behind the hills of Crocca, the frightful face of the moon had yet emerged.


“Still nothing,” he said to the two women.


Sidora answered him with a lively gesture of indifference and carried on, smiling, and provoking him with her eyes.


Those eyes, by then almost impudent, began to fill Saro with horror and terror, more than the man crouching over there, waiting.


And he was the first to jump inside the house as soon as Batà let out the proclamatory whimpering and signalled with his hand to the three to close themselves inside


 


 


 


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immediately. Oh, with what fury did Saro set about making fast the latches and latches and latches, while the old woman dejectedly shut herself up in the store-room, and Sidora, impatient, disappointed, repeated to him, with an ironic tone, “Easy, easy…don’t hurt yourself…You’ll see that it’s nothing.”


It was nothing? Oh, it was nothing? With the hair at his forehead standing on end, at her husband’s first howls, at the first kicks to the door, at the first salivations and scratches, Saro, thoroughly soaked in cold sweat, with his back shivering, his eyes opened wide, was trembling all over like a leaf. It was nothing? Good Lord! Good Lord! What? Was she crazy, that woman? While outside her husband was causing a tempest at the door, here she was, laughing on the bed, swinging her legs, stretching her arms out to him, calling him, “Saro! Saro!”


Oh, yes? Angrily, indignantly, Saro bounded into the old woman’s store-room, grabbed her, dragged her outside and threw her down to sit on the bed next to her daughter.


“Here,” he cried out. “This woman is mad!”


And while stepping back towards the door, through the high window grating in the wall facing him, he also saw the moon that, while causing such harm to the husband out there, here seemed to be laughing, blissful and spiteful, at the wife’s unsuccessful revenge.



 


 



 


 



 


 



 


 



 



Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com


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