DARINA SILONE
81
It was horrible: I was putting on an act.
"Oh, I know there's a risk: one in a hundred, they told me that.
I hope I'll get away with it. But I have no fear of dying, only of not
being conscious when the moment comes. It's the last moment of
life, the most solemn of all: I don't want to miss it. My only fear is
that when I'm dead the wolves will devour you."
"What wolves are you talking about? I've never seen any except
in the zoo."
"Wolves in human form," he answered gravely. I wanted to
hear more but couldn't probe, and he remained silent. Then his eyes
took on the distant look he had when recalling sad, far-off things.
"In those freezing nights after the earthquake one could hear
the wolves howling, each time a little closer ," he said. "You know,
even outside the ruins many people had died in the snow . The
ber–
saglieri
hadn't yet arrived from Rome with their bayonets, which
were hardly suitable for excavating anyhow. By day I tried digging
with my hands in the rubble, but all I could see were the large fallen
beams . Lower down, beyond the river, the houses were still stand–
ing. My cousin F. lived there. Other cousins, hastily sent back from
military service, pitched a huge tent in the open space outside the
house. When darkness fell, relatives and friends brought straw
pallets and blankets for the night. From time to time there would be
a new tremor, nothing like the first, but how was one to know? Then
everybody rushed into the open. One night I couldn't face the cold
outside and pretended to be asleep . I heard one of my uncles saying I
must be wakened, then someone else replying, "Let him sleep, he's
better dead, since he's got no one left ."
"Who said that?" I asked.
"What does it matter?"
"But you still had your brother."
"They assumed he was dead, buried under the ruins, but ac–
tually my mother was the only one in the whole family who was
killed by the earthquake."
"You never told me the story of the tent."
"It's one of many sad memories that I've tried in vain to forget.
It came back to me now as I reflected that, for good or
ill,
I've
reached the age of seventy-eight. Who would have thought it possi–
ble? Yes, they found my brother alive after five days, with a broken
shoulder. He was a sturdy youngster and made a quick recovery.
But our home was lost and we were never again to live under the
