When, one day, toward two o’clock in the afternoon, Don Giovanni Ussorio was about to set his foot on the threshold of Violetta Kutufas’ house, Rosa Catana appeared at the head of the stairs and announced in a lowered voice, while she bent her head:
“Don Giovà, the Signora has gone.”
Don Giovanni, at this unexpected news, stood dumbfounded, and remained thus for a moment with his eyes bulging and his mouth wide open While gazing upward as if awaiting further explanations. Since Rosa stood silently at the top of the stairs, twisting an edge of her apron with her hands and dilly-dallying somewhat, he asked at length:
“But tell me why? But tell me why?” And he mounted several steps while he kept repeating with a slight stutter:
“But why? But why?”
“Don Giovà, what have I to tell you? Only that she has gone.”
“But why?”
“Don Giovà, I do not know, so there!”
And Rosa took several steps on the landing-place toward the door of the empty apartment. She was rather a thin woman, with reddish hair, and face liberally scattered with freckles. Her large, ash-coloured eyes had nevertheless a singular vitality. The excessive distance between her nose and mouth gave to the lower part of her face the appearance of a monkey.
Don Giovanni pushed open the partly closed door and passed through the first room, and then the third; he walked around the entire apartment with excited steps; he stopped at the little room, set aside for the bath. The silence almost terrified him; a heavy anxiety weighted down his heart.
“It can’t be true! It can’t be true!” he murmured, staring around confusedly.
The furniture of the room was in its accustomed place, but there was missing from the table under the round mirror, the crystal phials, the tortoise-shell combs, the boxes, the brushes, all of those small objects that assist at the preparation of feminine beauty. In a corner stood a species of large, zinc kettle shaped like a guitar; and within it sparkled water tinted a delicate pink from some essence. The water exhaled subtle perfume that blended in the air with the perfume of cyprus-powder. The exhalation held in it some inherent quality of sensuousness.
“Rosa! Rosa!” Don Giovanni cried, in a voice almost extinguished by the insurmountable anxiety that he felt surging through him.
The woman appeared.
“Tell me how it happened! To what place has she gone? And when did she go? And why?” begged Don Giovanni, making with his mouth a grimace both comic and childish, in order to restrain his grief and force back the tears.
He seized Rosa by both wrists, and thus incited her to speak, to reveal.
“I do not know, Signor,” she answered. “This morning she put her clothes in her portmanteau, sent for Leones’ carriage, and went away without a word. What can you do about it? She will return.”
“Return-n-n!” sobbed Don Giovanni, raising his eyes in which already the tears had started to overflow. “Has she told you when? Speak!” And this last cry was almost threatening and rabid.
“Eh? … to be sure she said to me, ‘Addio, Rosa. We will never see each other again … ! But, after all … who can tell! Everything is possible.’ ”
Don Giovanni sank dejectedly upon a chair at these words, and set himself to weeping with so much force of grief that the woman was almost touched by it.
“Now what are you doing, Don Giovà? Are there not other women in this world? Don Giovà, why do you worry about it … ?”
Don Giovanni did not hear. He persisted in weeping like a child and hiding his face in Rosa Catana’s apron; his whole body was rent with the upheavals of his grief.
“No, no, no. … I want Violetta! I want Violetta!” he cried.
At that stupid childishness Rosa could not refrain from smiling. She gave assistance by stroking the bald head of Don Giovanni and murmuring words of consolation.
“I will find Violetta for you; I will find her. … So! be quiet! Do not weep any more, Don Giovannino. The people passing can hear. Don’t worry about it, now.”
Don Giovanni, little by little, under the friendly caress, curbed his tears and wiped his eyes on her apron.
“Oh! oh! what a thing to happen!” he exclaimed, after having remained for a moment with his glance fixed on the zinc kettle, where the water glittered now under a sunbeam. “Oh! oh! what luck! Oh!”
He took his head between his hands and swung it back and forth two or three times, as do imprisoned monkeys.
“Now go, Don Giovanino, go!” Rosa Cantana said, taking him gently by the arm and drawing him along.
In the little room the perfume seemed to increase. Innumerable flies buzzed around a cup where remained the residue of some coffee. The reflection of the water trembled on the walls like a subtle net of gold.
“Leave everything just so!” pleaded Don Giovanni of the woman, in a voice broken by badly suppressed sobs. He descended the stairs, shaking his head over his fate. His eyes were swollen and red, bulging from their sockets like those of a mongrel dog.
His round body and prominent stomach overweighted his two slightly inverted legs. Around his bald skull ran a crown of long curling hair that seemed not to take root in the scalp but in the shoulders, from which it climbed upward toward the nape of the neck and the temples. He had the habit of replacing from time to time with his bejewelled hands, some disarranged tuft; the jewels, precious and gaudy, sparkled even on his thumb, and a cornelian button as large as a strawberry fastened the bosom of his shirt over the centre of his chest.
When he reached the broad daylight of the square, he experienced anew that unconquerable confusion. Several cobblers were working near by and eating figs. A caged blackbird was whistling the hymn of Garibaldi, continuously, always recommencing at the beginning with painful persistency.
“At your service, Don Giovanni!” called Don Domenico Oliva, as he passed, and he removed his hat with an affable Neapolitan cordiality. Stirred with curiosity by the strange expression of the Signor, he repassed him in a short time and resaluted him with greater liberality of gesture and affability. He was a man of very long body and very short legs; the habitual expression of his mouth was involuntarily shaped for derision. The people of Pescara called him “Culinterra.”
“At your service!” he repeated.
Don Giovanni, in whom a venomous wrath was beginning to ferment which the laughter of the fig-eaters and the trills of the blackbird irritated, at his second salute turned his back fiercely and moved away, fully persuaded that those salutes were meant for taunts.
Don Domenico, astonished, followed him with these words:
“But, Don Giovà! … are you angry … but. …”
Don
