It was a
white heavy rage, when his blue eyes shone unearthly, and his mouth
opened with a curious drawn blindness of the old Furies. There was
something of the cruelty of a falling mass of snow, heavy, horrible.
Maria drew away, there was a silence. Then the avalanche was finished.
They must have had some cruel fights before they learned to withdraw
from each other so completely. They must have begotten Marco in hatred,
terrible disintegrated opposition and otherness. And it was after this,
after the child of their opposition was born, that Paolo went away to
California, leaving his San Gaudenzio, travelling with several
companions, like blind beasts, to Havre, and thence to New York, then to
California. He stayed five years in the gold-mines, in a wild valley,
living with a gang of Italians in a town of corrugated iron.
All the while he had never really left San Gaudenzio. I asked him, 'Used
you to think of it, the lake, the Monte Baldo, the laurel trees down the
slope?' He tried to see what I wanted to know. Yes, he said--but
uncertainly. I could see that he had never been really homesick.
Pages:
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163