smell which was the sign of recent corpses. They were blue, their eyes sunk deep in the sockets, and their faces, reduced to skin and bone, thrust out enormous noses, thin as knife blades. There were three women and two men collapsed like the others in a scatter of ashes, kitchen utensils, and overturned stools.
Many thoughts, red and black, whirled through Angeloâs mind. He was quite terrified and frozen from head to foot; and he had, in addition, a perpetual and violent desire to vomit owing to the sugary smell and the grimaces of the dead. But these deaths were a mystery, and mystery is always resolutely Italian: that is why Angelo, in spite of his disgust and fear, leaned over the corpses and saw that their mouths were full of a matter resembling rice pudding.
âCould they all have been poisoned together?â he wondered. In this notion too there was something so familiar to Angelo, and capable of giving him so much courage, that he dared to step over the dead, to go and see what was happening in an alcove whose curtains were still drawn.
He found there a fourth body, naked, very thin, quite blue, curled up on the bed amid copious evacuations of milky curds. Some rats that were busy eating the shoulders and arms jumped aside when Angelo parted the curtains. He wanted to kill them with the spade, but he would have had to strike the corpse, too; besides, they were watching him with inflamed eyes, they were grinding their teeth, crouching on all fours as if to spring. Angelo was over-eager to enter into this tragedy, he was excessively angry with these animals; they were on the wrong side, like the birds and the dog. He couldnât think at all reasonably. He pulled off the sheets and with the spade killed the rats as they fell off the bed. But he was nearly bitten by two of the animals, which flung themselves at his boots. He put his foot on one and crushed it with his full weight; the other, terrified, ran across the room and raised a stench so horrible that Angelo had to get out of the house as fast as he could.
He was too wrought up to stay out of the other three houses that formed the center of the hamlet along the road. At his approach they disgorged thick flocks of birds and darting animals that Angelo took to be foxes. But they were merely cats, and made off across the fields. In each house he found the same spectacle of corpses, grimaces, blue flesh, milky excreta, and that abominable odor, sugary and putrid, smelling like the calyx of the fly-eating terebinth plant.
There were five or six houses more, set apart from the little group. A few steps toward them were enough to raise clouds of birds, which infested their doorways, windows, and yards.
It must have been about noon. The sun was beating straight down. The heat, as on the day before, was heavy and oily, the sky white; mists like dust or smoke were rising from chalky fields. There was not a breath of air, and the silence was impressive despite the sounds from the cattle sheds: bleating, neighing, kicks against the doors, scarcely any louder than the sound of a pan of fat on the fire in the great mortuary chamber of the valley.
âIâm a fine one,â thought Angelo. âI really ought to rush off somewhere as fast as I can with the news and get these dead buried before they start a first-rate plague. Especially if this air continues to cook them. And now I have no horse, and I donât know the country.â
To return to Banon would mean recrossing the whole mountain. On foot it would take all day. Besides, in spite of his anger and Italian appetite for mystery, emotion had deprived Angelo of his legs. He could feel them giving beneath him at each step. Revolving these considerations, he walked along the little road bordered with still poplars.
It was straight, and he had hardly gone a hundred paces when he saw a horseman approaching at a trot. Furthermore, he was leading by the bridle something that must be the runaway
Many thoughts, red and black, whirled through Angeloâs mind. He was quite terrified and frozen from head to foot; and he had, in addition, a perpetual and violent desire to vomit owing to the sugary smell and the grimaces of the dead. But these deaths were a mystery, and mystery is always resolutely Italian: that is why Angelo, in spite of his disgust and fear, leaned over the corpses and saw that their mouths were full of a matter resembling rice pudding.
âCould they all have been poisoned together?â he wondered. In this notion too there was something so familiar to Angelo, and capable of giving him so much courage, that he dared to step over the dead, to go and see what was happening in an alcove whose curtains were still drawn.
He found there a fourth body, naked, very thin, quite blue, curled up on the bed amid copious evacuations of milky curds. Some rats that were busy eating the shoulders and arms jumped aside when Angelo parted the curtains. He wanted to kill them with the spade, but he would have had to strike the corpse, too; besides, they were watching him with inflamed eyes, they were grinding their teeth, crouching on all fours as if to spring. Angelo was over-eager to enter into this tragedy, he was excessively angry with these animals; they were on the wrong side, like the birds and the dog. He couldnât think at all reasonably. He pulled off the sheets and with the spade killed the rats as they fell off the bed. But he was nearly bitten by two of the animals, which flung themselves at his boots. He put his foot on one and crushed it with his full weight; the other, terrified, ran across the room and raised a stench so horrible that Angelo had to get out of the house as fast as he could.
He was too wrought up to stay out of the other three houses that formed the center of the hamlet along the road. At his approach they disgorged thick flocks of birds and darting animals that Angelo took to be foxes. But they were merely cats, and made off across the fields. In each house he found the same spectacle of corpses, grimaces, blue flesh, milky excreta, and that abominable odor, sugary and putrid, smelling like the calyx of the fly-eating terebinth plant.
There were five or six houses more, set apart from the little group. A few steps toward them were enough to raise clouds of birds, which infested their doorways, windows, and yards.
It must have been about noon. The sun was beating straight down. The heat, as on the day before, was heavy and oily, the sky white; mists like dust or smoke were rising from chalky fields. There was not a breath of air, and the silence was impressive despite the sounds from the cattle sheds: bleating, neighing, kicks against the doors, scarcely any louder than the sound of a pan of fat on the fire in the great mortuary chamber of the valley.
âIâm a fine one,â thought Angelo. âI really ought to rush off somewhere as fast as I can with the news and get these dead buried before they start a first-rate plague. Especially if this air continues to cook them. And now I have no horse, and I donât know the country.â
To return to Banon would mean recrossing the whole mountain. On foot it would take all day. Besides, in spite of his anger and Italian appetite for mystery, emotion had deprived Angelo of his legs. He could feel them giving beneath him at each step. Revolving these considerations, he walked along the little road bordered with still poplars.
It was straight, and he had hardly gone a hundred paces when he saw a horseman approaching at a trot. Furthermore, he was leading by the bridle something that must be the runaway
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