IN SICILY
leaves the house and spends at least a part of the afternoon out.
"What did it fetch?" the sick man asks her later.
The woman says that it fetched one lira and fifty centesimi.
The sick man
is
discontented. In the fever's unre'lenting grip he never
fully grasps the situation, as he lies on his side on his bed that is
three days stale. Yet he wants something, apart from the book that
was
his
since youth: and he expects a little soup, and bawls out his
wife who, instead, has brought bread and cheese for herself and the
children.
·
"Hawks!" he yells at the babies.
They get a plate of soup every day at school. This reveals good
intentions, providing a plate of soup every day in schools for the chil–
dren of people who are dying of ,hunger. But it seems to serve as
appetizer. After that spoonful of soup the boys return home ravenous.
Deaf to reason, they are resolved to eat at any cost. They are like
wild beasts, they devour chair rungs and they would like to devour
their father and mother. Should they find the sick man alone one
day, they would devour him. On the table by the sickbed lie the
medicines. The boys arrive from school, ravenous, wrought up, their
appetites whetted. Prowling like wolves they approach the sick man,
they want to eat him up. But their mother
is
at home, so the boys
leave the invalid alone and fall on the medicines.
"Hawks!" cries the sick man.
Meanwhile the gas man has cut off the gas, and the electricity
man has cut off the light, and the lengthy evenings are passed in
the sickroom in total darkness. Only the water has not been cut off:
the water man comes every six months, and thus there
is
no imme–
diate risk of his arriving and cutting off the water: they keep drink–
ing as much water as they can, water cooked in every form, water
boiled and even unboiled.
But there
is
the landlady who comes every day and demands
to see the "sick gentleman," demands to see him in person, and,
entering the sickroom and seeing him, she says:
"Well, my sick gentleman-far too extravagant-paying no rent
and staying in bed . . . at least send me your wife to wash up for
me.... "
So
his
wife goes to the landlady's to wash her pots, to wash
her floors, to wash her linen, all
in
lieu of the unpaid rent, and
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