Then the youth came away to the doorway,
with a flush mounting on his face and a grimace distorting its
youngness. Only Paolo, unmoved and detached, stood by the tree with
unchanging, abstract face, very strange, his eyes fixed in the ageless
stare which is so characteristic.
Meanwhile the priest swung drunken blows at the tree, his thin buttocks
bending in the green-black broadcloth, supported on thin shanks, and
thin throat growing dull purple in the red-knotted kerchief.
Nevertheless he was doing the job. His face was wet with sweat. He
wanted another glass of wine.
He took no notice of us. He was strangely a local, even a mountebank
figure, but entirely local, an appurtenance of the district.
It was Maria who jeeringly told us the story of the priest, who shrugged
her shoulders to imply that he was a contemptible figure. Paolo sat with
the abstract look on his face, as of one who hears and does not hear, is
not really concerned. He never opposed or contradicted her, but stayed
apart. It was she who was violent and brutal in her ways. But sometimes
Paolo went into a rage, and then Maria, everybody, was afraid.
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