He was calling hen "Ida! Ida!" but his voice no longer issued from his parched and almost cork-like throat.

"Where was Ida? What was she doing?"

She had run off to the distant village to seek help for the horse without stopping to think that the peasants who lived there were the very ones who had dragged the dying beast over here.

He remained there, alone, sitting on the rock, completely at the mercy of those increasing tremors; and, as he sat there, huddling like a great owl upon a perch, he suddenly caught a glimpse of what seemed to him to be... why yes, of course, now he could see it, howsoever horrible it was, howsoever much it looked like a vision of another world. The moon. A large moon, rising slowly from that yellow sea of stubble. And silhouetted in black against that enormous, vapory, copper disk, the skeletal head of that horse, still waiting with its neck outstretched; it would perhaps always wait like that, so darkly etched upon that copper disk, while the ravens, circling overhead, could be heard cawing high up in the sky.

When the disappointed and indignant Ida returned, after making her way back through the plain, all the while shouting "Nino! Nino!" the moon had already risen; the horse had again collapsed to the ground as if dead; and Nino... where was Nino? Oh, there he was; he, too, was lying on the ground.

Had he fallen asleep there?

She ran over to him. She found him with the death rattle in his throat. His face, too, was on the ground, and it was almost black. His eyes were swollen and tightly shut. He was flushed.

"Oh, God!"

She looked around as if in a trance. She opened her hands where she held a few dried beans which she had brought from the village in order to feed the horse. She looked at the moon, then at the horse, and then at this man lying here on the ground, he, too, looking like a corpse. She felt faint, suddenly assailed by the suspicion that everything she saw was unreal. Terrified, she fled back towards the villa, calling for her father in a loud voice, calling for her father to come and take her away — oh, God! — away from that man who had that death rattle... who knows why!... away from that horse, away from that crazy moon up above, away from those ravens cawing up in the sky... away, away, away...

Fear Of Being Happy

Before Fabio Feroni decided to take a wife (no longer guided by the wisdom he once possessed), he had cultivated a unique pastime for many long years. While others sought relief from their usual occupations by taking walks or by going to cafes, he found his recreation, loner that he then was, on the small terrace of his bachelor home where he curiously and passionately studied the lifestyles of the many flies, spiders, ants, and other insects that lived among his numerous flowerpots.

He especially enjoyed watching the clumsy efforts of an old turtle that for several years stubbornly, pig-headedly persisted in scaling the first of the three steps leading from the terrace to the dining room.

I wonder, Feroni often thought, I wonder what great delights it imagines it can find in that room, since it has persisted in these efforts for so many years.

When at long last it would place its tiny protruding feet on the edge of the step, after having managed to reach the top with enormous difficulty, it would scratch desperately to pull itself up, then suddenly lose its balance and fall backwards, landing on its hard, bumpy shell.

Though certain that it would want to go back down to the floor of the terrace, once it had finally scaled the first, then the second, and then the third step, and had wandered about the dining room, Feroni more than once had picked it up gently and placed it up onto the first step, thereby rewarding its useless persistence of so many years.

But he had been astonished to discover that the turtle, either out of fear or mistrust, had never wanted to take advantage of that unexpected help. Retracting its head and feet into its shell, it remained there for a long time, as still as a stone, and then, turning around ever so slowly, returned to the edge of the step, showing unmistakable signs of wanting to descend.

And so he had put it back down, and a little later, lo and behold, the turtle would repeat its eternal labor of scaling that first step by itself.

"What an animal!" Feroni exclaimed the first time he saw it happen.

But then, thinking it over more carefully, he realized that he had called an animal an animal, like one might call a man an animal.

In fact, he had called it an animal, certainly not because after so many years of trying, it still had not been clever enough to realize that the face of the step was too high, and that in attempting to adhere vertically to it, it would naturally lose its balance at a certain point and fall backwards. No, it was because, though he had tried to help it, it had refused his help.

What followed from this observation? That in calling man an animal, you do animals a very great injustice, because you take for stupidity what instead is their integrity or instinctual prudence. You call a man who doesn't accept help, an animal, because it doesn't seem right to praise a man for what is appropriate in animals.

This, in brief, is how he reasoned.

Feroni, moreover, had his own particular reasons for feeling scorn for the old turtle's integrity — or prudence, if that's what it was — and for a while he enjoyed seeing the ridiculous and desperate kicks it thrust in the air, as it lay there upside down. Finally, tired of seeing it suffer, he would extend it a mighty kick.

Never, never had anyone ever wanted to lend him a hand in all his efforts to climb. And yet, all things considered, not even that would have greatly upset Fabio Feroni, since he was aware of life's harsh difficulties and of the selfishness that they bring out in people, if it had not been his lot in life to have another and much sadder experience. Because of it, he felt that he had virtually earned the right, if not exactly to people's assistance, at least to their compassion.

The experience he had had was this: whenever he was just about to achieve a goal for which he had striven patiently, tenaciously, and with all the strength of his spirit, chance, despite all his efforts, would arrive with the sudden spring of a grasshopper and take pleasure in throwing him down, belly up — just like that turtle.

It was a ferocious game. A gust of wind, a puff of air, a little shake at the crucial moment, and then everything would collapse.

Nor could it be said that, because of the modesty of his aspirations, his sudden falls merited little sympathy. First of all, his aspirations had not always been modest, as they were of late. But then... yes, of course, the higher you fly, the harder you fall... But isn't the fall of an ant from a twig six inches high, in effect equivalent to the fall of a man from a bell tower? Besides, if anything, the modesty of his aspirations should have made that little game that chance played on him seem a greater cruelty. A fine sort of pleasure it was, taking it out on an ant, that is, on a poor individual who for so many years has been scraping along and doing all he can by hook or by crook to bring about and set into motion some small enterprise to slightly improve his condition! A fine sort of pleasure it was, surprising him suddenly, and in an instant frustrating all his subtle strategies and the long, painful hope that was ever so carefully nurtured, but that remained ever more illusory.

To hope no more, delude oneself no longer, desire nothing more; to continue along in this manner, in total submission, abandoned to the whims of chance — that would be his only alternative, and Fabio Feroni knew it well.