before the good man would leave again. In the meanwhile, peace
had returned to the square. After a bitter struggle, Carlo Chiara
had given up the ghost.
Elisabetta was distraught. All that time she had stayed at
his side, talking softly to him, washing him, stroking his skin. She
had kissed him and prayed for him. She could do nothing more.
Helplessly she had looked on as her son’s life slipped through her
rheumatic fingers. ‘My Carlo, my darling. Perchè? Why must you
suffer so? Where is God? Oh Mother Maria, HELP ME!’
There had been moments when hope, both for herself and
her son, had leapt up like a flame in her heart, whilst really she
knew how things would end. After all, she had lost six children and
a husband. She knew how it felt to have Death in the house; she
recognised the chill of his shadow as it fell upon her again. Still
she held fast to every movement her son made and every sound he
uttered. Where there was life there was hope! The priest had few
prayers to offer. He knew the end was nigh. And indeed, in the
early morning of the third day after the accident the mother’s last
spark of hope was extinguished as the last fine wreath of mist is
evaporated by the slowly rising sun. She had no tears left to cry. It
was over.
A great emptiness filled her tortured body and soul. She
could not let her son go, not yet. She could not bear the thought
that this once joyous, thronging family home would henceforth be
inhabited only by spirits of the past.
‘Who shall not weep,
seeing the Mother of Christ
in all her anguish?’
Antonio feels the immortality of the lines echo down the centuries.
Would Maria have received the support of those around her, he asks
himself?
A collection had been made in the neighbourhood for
Elisabetta , so that she could give Carlo a good burial and still have
something left over for herself. But for how long would people
stand by her? How long before it would be business as usual again
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