I've called off the wedding and tomorrow I'm leaving for America.

Yours truly, Ermanno Levera

 

See? If I had not greeted him, poor young man, having taken him for that other fellow, at this moment, who knows? He would probably be a happy husband... Who knows? Everything is possible in this world, even miracles such as that.

But I believe that if the encounter with that other fellow was so startling to him as to produce such an effect, he, too, must have believed that he had found himself in Bindi as he would have been three years later. And until I have proof to the contrary, I cannot assert in all conscience that this Mr. Levera, too, is mad.

In the meantime I expect that one of these days I will receive a visit from the abandoned bride-to-be and from the no longer future mother-in-law. I will send them both off to Forli, word of honor. Who knows whether they might not recognize themselves in poor Bindi's wife and mother-in-law. It now seems to me, too, that they are all really a single thing, with in addition only that blind child who, God willing, won't be born, if it is true that this Mr. Levera did leave for America yesterday.

Set Fire to the Straw

Since he no longer had anyone to order about, Simone Lampo had acquired the habit-, quite some time ago, of ordering himself around. And he did so with a stick.

"Here, Simone! There, Simone!"

Out of spite for his condition, he purposely assigned himself the most thankless chores. He sometimes pretended to rebel in order to force himself to obey, acting out both roles of the farce at the same time. He would angrily say, for example:

"I don't want to do it!"

"Simone, I'll beat you. I told you to collect the manure! No?"

Whack!... He would inflict on himself a walloping slap, and then collect the manure.

That day, after visiting his small field, the only parcel remaining of the numerous lands he once owned (barely an acre, left abandoned up there without the supervision of a single farmhand), he ordered himself to saddle the old she-donkey with which he was accustomed to carrying on the most specious conversations on his trip back to town.

The donkey, now pricking up this, now that bald ear, seemed to listen to him patiently, though she was bothered by a certain inconvenience that for some time now her master had been inflicting on her, but which she was at a loss to identify. It was something that, as she moved along, bumped against her hind legs, back there under her tail.

It was a small wicker basket without a handle, tied with two straps to the crupper of the saddle and suspended under the poor animal's tail. Its function was to collect and retain the fuming hot pellets of manure that she would otherwise have planted along the road.

Everyone laughed when they saw the old donkey with that basket behind her, ready for use, and Simone Lampo had the time of his life.

The townsfolk knew quite well how openhandedly he had once lived and what little regard he had had for money. But now, he had had to learn his lesson from the provident ants who, b-a-ba, b-a-ba, had taught him this expedient for not losing even a bit of those droppings, good for enriching the soil! Yes, indeed!

"Come on, Nina, come on; let me put this pretty frill on you! What are we anymore, Nina? You're nothing and I'm no one. All we're good for is making the town laugh. But don't worry about it. We still have several hundred little birds at home. Cheep-cheep-cheep- cheep... They don't want to be eaten! But I do eat them, and the whole town laughs. Let's be merry!"

He was referring to another brainstorm of his that could have been a perfect match for the basket hanging under the donkey's tail.

Several months before, he had pretended to believe that he could again become rich by raising birds. He had converted five rooms of his house in town into one large coop (hence it was called "the madman's coop"). He had confined himself to living in two small rooms on the upper floor, with the few kitchen utensils he had saved from his bankruptcy, and with the doors, blinds, and panes of the small and large windows that he had covered with screens in order to provide ventilation for his birds.

From morning to night, to the great delight of the neighborhood, there arose from the five rooms below, snarls and squeals and screeches and cheeps, the warbling of blackbirds, the chirping of finches - a twittering, a dense, continuous, deafening chatter of birds.

But for quite a number of days now, fearing that that venture would be unsuccessful, Simone Lampo had been eating small birds at every meal, and there in his small field, had destroyed the apparatus of nets and rods that he had used to catch hundreds and hundreds of those little birds.

Having saddled the donkey, he rode towards town.

Nina would not have hastened her pace, not even if her master had rained lashes down upon her. It seemed she purposely went slowly in order to make him better savor, with the slowness of her pace, the sad thoughts that, according to him, came to his mind also because of her. They came to him because her slow pace forced him to continually nod his head. Yes sir! Since his head went up and down as he sat atop the animal, looked about, and saw the desolation of the fields that darkened by degrees with the last glimmers of twilight, he couldn't help lament his ruin.

It was the sulphur mines that had ruined him.

How many mountains he had disemboweled, all for the mirage of hidden treasure! He had believed he would find another California in every mountain. Californias everywhere! Pits as deep as 600 or even 900 feet, ventilation shafts, steam-engine systems, aqueducts for drainage, and so, so many other expenses for a small vein of sulphur that ultimately was not really worth mining. The sad experience he had had on several occasions, and his vow never again to attempt other enterprises, had been of no use in discouraging him from new ventures, until he ended up as he was now, practically on the street. What is more, his wife had left him to move in with a wealthy brother of hers, because their only daughter had become a nun out of desperation.

Now he was alone, without even an old servant around the house. He was alone, and consumed by a constant feeling of anxiety that made him commit all those crazy acts.

Yes, he knew it; he was aware of his crazy acts; he committed them purposely to spite the people who, when he was rich, had so greatly respected him and who now turned their backs and laughed at him.