Free Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories by Giovanni Verga Page B

her lips the rosary that Brother Bernardino had brought back for her from the Holy Land, and she recited as many Ave Marias as there were beads on it.
    ‘Listen, Alfio,’ Turiddu began, after walking a fair stretch of the road alongside his companion, who remained completely silent, his cap pulled down above his eyes, ‘as God is my witness I know I did wrong and I’d be glad to let you kill me. But before coming to meet you I caught sight of my old mother, who had got up to see me leaving with the excuse of cleaning out the chicken run, looking as though her heart was breaking, and as God is my witness I’m going to kill you to stop my mother shedding any tears.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ Alfio replied, stripping off his jacket, ‘let’s give it all we’ve got.’
    They both knew how to use a knife. Turiddu took the first blow, stopping it with his arm just in time. He gave back as good as he’d got, striking Alfio in the groin.
    ‘Ah, Turiddu! So you really do want to kill me!’
    ‘Yes, I already told you. After seeing my old mother with the chickens, my eyes can see nothing else.’
    ‘Open them wide, those eyes of yours!’ roared Alfio, ‘and I’ll give you something to do them a bit of good.’
    Keeping up his guard, hunched up in pain, clutching his wound with his left hand, and crawling over the ground with the use of his elbow, he suddenly grabbed a handful of dust and hurled it into the eyes of his opponent.
    ‘Ah!’ yelled Turiddu, blinded by the dust. ‘I’m a dead man.’
    He tried to escape, leaping backward in desperation, but Alfio struck him another blow in the stomach and a third in the throat.
    ‘That’s three! For dressing up my home. Now your mother can stop bothering about the chickens!’
    Turiddu pawed the air for a while amid the cactuses, then dropped to the ground like a stone. The blood foamed up with a gurgling sound into his throat, and he couldn’t even get out the words, ‘Ah, mamma mia!’

The She-Wolf
    She was dark-haired, tall and lean, with firm, well-rounded breasts, though she was no longer young, and she had a pale complexion, like someone forever in the grip of malaria. The pallor was relieved by a pair of huge eyes and fresh red lips that looked as though they would eat you.
    In the village they called her the She-Wolf because, no matter what she had, she was never satisfied. The women crossed themselves whenever they saw her coming, lone as a stray bitch, with the restless and wary appearance of a starving wolf. She would gobble up their sons and their husbands in the twinkling of an eye with those red lips of hers, and draw them to the tail of her skirt and transfix them with those devilish eyes, as though they were standing before the altar at St Agrippina’s. Luckily the She-Wolf herself never set foot inside the church, either at Easter or at Christmas or to hear Mass or to go to confession. Father Angiolino of St Mary of Jesus, a true servant of God, had lost his soul on her account.
    Maricchia, poor girl, a good and worthy soul, shed tears in secret because she was the She-Wolf’s daughter and nobody would ever want to marry her, even though she too had a fine trousseau tucked away in a chest and a patch of decent land in the sun, like any other girl in the village.
    Then it happened that the She-Wolf fell in love with a handsome young fellow back from the army, when the two of them were haymaking on the notary’s farm. She’d fallen for him lock, stock and barrel, her flesh burning beneath her thick cotton bodice, and, staring into his eyes, she was overcome with the kind of thirst you would experience down in the valley on a hot midsummer day. But he just kept scythingcalmly away, head down over the hay, saying, ‘What’s the matter, Pina?’ In the vast expanse of the fields, where all you could hear was the chirping of the crickets as they leapt, with the sun beating straight down, the She-Wolf tied up sheaf after sheaf, bundle after bundle,