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The statue of the Patron Saint was enormous, very heavy, made of hollow bronze, blackish, with the head and hands of silver.
Mattala cried:
“Ready!”
The people, everywhere, struggled to see. The windows of the church roared at every gust of the wind. The nave was fumigated with incense and resin. The sounds of instruments were heard now and then. A kind of religious fever seized the eight men, in the centre of that turbulence. They extended their arms to be ready.
Mattala cried:
“One! Two! Three!”
Simultaneously the men made the effort to raise the statue to the altar. But its weight was overpowering, and the figure swayed to the left. The men had not yet succeeded in getting a firm grip around the base. They bent their backs in their endeavour to resist. Biagio di Clisci and Giovanni Curo, the least strong, lost their hold. The statue swerved violently to one side. L’Ummalido gave a cry.
“Take care! Take care!” vociferated the spectators on seeing the Patron Saint so imperilled. From the square came a resounding crash that drowned all voices.
L’Ummalido had fallen on his knees with his right arm beneath the bronze. Thus kneeling, he held his two large eyes, full of terror and pain, fixed on his hand which he could not free, while his mouth twisted but no longer spoke. Drops of blood sprinkled the altar.
His companions, all together, made a second effort to raise the weight. The operation was difficult. L’Ummalido, in a spasm of pain, twisted his mouth. The women spectators shuddered.
At length the statue was lifted and L’Ummalido withdrew his hand, crushed and bleeding and formless. “Go home, now! Go home!” the people cried, while pushing him toward the door of the church.
A woman removed her apron and offered it to him for a bandage. L’Ummalido refused it. He did not speak, but watched a group of men who were gesticulating and disputing around the statue.
“It is my turn!”
“No!—no! It’s my turn!”
“No! let me!”
Cicco Ponno, Mattia Seafarolo and Tommaso di Clisci were contending for the place left vacant by L’Ummalido.
He approached the disputants. Holding his bruised hand at his side, and with the other opening a path, he said simply:
“The position is mine.”
And he placed his left shoulder as a prop for the Patron Saint. He stifled down his pain, gritting his teeth, with fierce will-power.
Mattala asked him:
“What are you trying to do?”
He answered:
“What Saint Gonselvo wishes me to do.”
And he began to walk with the others. Dumbfounded the people watched him pass. From time to time, someone, on seeing the wound which was bleeding and growing black, asked him:
“L’Umma’, what is the matter?”
He did not answer. He moved forward gravely, measuring his steps by the rhythm of the music, with his mind a little hazy, beneath the vast coverlets that flapped in the wind and amongst the swelling crowd.
At a street corner he suddenly fell. The Saint stopped an instant and swayed, in the centre of a momentary confusion, then continued its progress. Mattia Scafarola supplied the vacant place. Two relations gathered up the swooning man and carried him to a nearby house.
Anna di Cenzo, who was an old woman, expert at healing wounds, looked at the formless and bloody member, and then shaking her head, said:
“What can I do with it?”
Her little skill was able to do nothing. L’Ummalido controlled his feelings and said nothing. He sat down and tranquilly contemplated his wound. The hand hung limp, forever useless, with the bones ground to powder.
Two or three aged farmers came to look at it. Each, with a gesture or a word, expressed the same thought.
L’Ummalido asked:
“Who carried the Saint in my place?”
They answered:
“Mattia Scafarola.”
Again he asked:
“What are they doing now?”
They answered:
“They are singing the vespers.”
The farmers bid him good-bye and left for vespers. A great chiming came from the mother church.
One of the relations placed near the wound a bucket of cold water, saying:
“Every little while put your hand in it. We must go. Let us go and listen to the vespers.”
L’Ummalido remained alone. The chiming increased, while changing its metre. The light of day began to wane. An olive tree, blown by the wind, beat its branches against the low window.
L’Ummalido began to bathe his hand little by little. As the blood and concretions fell away, the injury appeared even greater. L’Ummalido mused:
“It is entirely useless! It is lost. Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
He took a knife and went out. The streets were deserted. All of the devotees were in the church. Above the houses sped, like fugitive herds of cattle, the violet clouds of a September sunset.
In the church the united multitude sang in measured intervals as if in chorus to the music of the instruments. An intense heat emanated from the human bodies and the burning tapers. The silver head of Saint Gonselvo scintillated from on high like a light house. L’Ummalido entered. To the stupefaction of all, he walked up to the altar and said, in a clear voice, while holding the knife in his left hand:
“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
And he began to cut around the right wrist, gently, in full sight of the horrified people. The shapeless hand became detached little by little amidst the blood. It swung an instant suspended by the last filaments. Then it fell into a basin of copper which held the money offerings at the feet of the Patron Saint.
L’Ummalido then raised the bloody stump and repeated in a clear voice:
“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
II THE COUNTESS OF AMALFI