Mother’s Spirit, by Grazia Deledda

Celebrating the 154th birth anniversary of Grazia Deledda, 1926 Nobel Prize for Literature

Mother’s Spirit

Lo spirito della madre – from the short story collection “Summer Sun”, by Grazia Deledda, 1933

Translated into English by Enzo Martinelli

©️ 2025 – Enzo Martinelli

In order for dry saline-jodic inhalations to succeed more effectively, during their action it is good to chat, indeed possibly to sing, and better yet, with perfect license from the nursing neighbor, to yawn without regard. And yawning, albeit with much regard and putting the back of her hand over her mouth, was the young bride Lula: involuntary and nervous yawns were her own, however, caused by the murky physical and moral malaise that filled her, right down to her soul, with a fog even more acrid than that of jodine exhalations.

She coughed, at the same time, and this benefited her throat corroded by long weeping and, more than weeping, by tears returned and swallowed in silence, over the death of her mother.

Mother had died of a heart ailment, from which she had suffered for years: but Lula believed she had killed her by running away from home with the master’s son, who would never, ever marry her. For eight days the two boys, she fifteen, he seventeen, had found to hide so that not even the police, unleashed in their footsteps, had been able to fish them out: in those eight days Lula’s mother had died, and the master had issued a kind of proclamation, with orders for the two pigeons to return home to marry.

And when they returned home, he had peremptorily enjoined Lula not to shed a single tear; first of all because he did not like sad people, and secondly because the dead also do not want to be mourned for, so that the grief of the living would not disturb them in their eternal peace.

– Yes, Mother, – moaned Lula to herself, quickly needling a little woolen work of her own, while the steam thickening around, the roar of the engine and the dusky light fading from the fogged windows, gave her the anguished impression of an impending hurricane; – you too said: as soon as one is dead, one re-enters the glory of God: therefore, one should not lament, for the sorrow of the living calls the blessed souls back to the world, who suffer from it, and so cannot comfort their loved ones, as when they are left by them in peace. And yet, mother, and yet….

And yet she could not help but suffer, especially in those days of being away from her great patriarchal home, in this estranged, though beautiful and happy abode, among people of a race quite different from her own; and to the usual worry had been added the sense of restlessness and almost dread of her incipient motherhood.

Meanwhile, the hall was filling up with people. Who were they? Ghosts. The compass doorway spun silently like a fantastical wheel, and from time to time a figure emerged from it, cautiously searching in the still diaphanous haze of inhalation for a place to sit. The little central table, with its decks of cards and boxes of dice, was already all occupied by people whose color gradually faded into a vaporous gray note. And now, since we could no longer see each other, the comments and exclamations of the dice players were succeeded by an almost awkward silence: to shake it, a tenor voice suddenly rose up, muted. It was Rodolfo, who from a hyperboreal distance, from the cold height of an attic, could see the smoke of the Paris chimneys, inflamed by the reflection of his poetry: at a certain point, however, irritated by the tingling of inhalation, the voice became hoarse, died away in a squeal of wounded alcyon. Everyone applauded and laughed: but this was enough for Lula to lift up to her eyes the woolen bonnet stuck in the irons; and her tears fell into it like the drops of night fog into a still empty nest.

Then a woman’s voice made a proposal, which actually did not clash in that hazy environment.

– Shall the table be made?

Accepted, with unanimous cheerful enthusiasm. Discordant chairs screeched: resumed the voice:

– Is there a medium among you?

– Me, Miss. – It was the warm and moved voice of Rodolfo: to which was answered with certain dog-like sneers: at any rate the offer was accepted, and the silence that followed was barely violated by faint trills of laughter, when another voice said:

– I recommend Mimi’s hand.

Lula was relieved of her sorrow, and with childlike curiosity she sharpened her eyes to distinguish something. She understood that “spirits” were being played, and she was happy about this novelty. She did not believe it, she did not, that the spirits of the dead could return to the world for the mere amusement of idle people: yet a certain chill trembled in her between scapula and scapula, when Rodolfo, in a soft and convinced voice, announced:

– His name is Napoleon.

There was no joking about it: but Napoleon, evidently tired of being called by all the spiritists in the world, did not answer: instead, Cagliostro answered, who despite his long martyrdom of being buried and walled up alive in the hole of the fortress of San Leo, said he was in hell. It is not this news, however, that impresses the onlookers: it is a benevolent warning, which reaches Lula and plunges her back into her sorrow.

Says the damned: -As soon as I leave, close the passage, for a demon may come and do you harm.

But the demon had perhaps already penetrated the hall and was wandering in the now thick fog, for suddenly Lula felt as if lifted by a formidable hand that pulled her up, standing rigid and mad. In a strange voice, which even she did not recognize as her own, she pleaded:

– Call my mother.

She sat back down, closed her eyes and bent her head, hiding it with her arm, as birds do with their wings when they are about to fall asleep. A pitiful lady asked:

– What was her name, her mother?

But she, already repentant and ashamed, dared not open her mouth again.

And the game went on just the same, lulled by the taxiing of the engine, which slowly faded away.

Lula always kept her head bent over her chest, and felt her heart pulsing harder than the machine: it seemed to her, her heart, like a bunch of black grapes, which a hand crushed causing it to drip blood. Yet this impression gave her an airy, breathing sense, as if that was the bad blood of her pain and finally freed her from her ache. And she seemed to see the vineyard on her farm, all heavy with grapes already ripe; and that a voice was calling her to harvest.

– The mother! Mother!!!

This time the thrill was deep; it rose from her gut, ran through her every vein, locked her in a glowing net. And suddenly she heard her mother’s voice again, but within herself, and it seemed to her that the conjured spirit had come to her, never to leave her again.

She opened her eyes again. The engine had stopped, the fog was dissipating: already she could see again, around the table, notes of color: reds, greens, lilacs; and the pearl of an earring looked like a star among the clouds.

She could never explain why, not even when someone told her that perhaps indeed her mother’s spirit had at that moment penetrated into her to animate her creature; but she felt an unspeakable joy lift her whole. She thought that in a few days she would return home, healed; and everything appeared beautiful and bright to her. Everything: the very tall poplar tree that, like a steel-armored sentinel, watches over the white farm day and night; the chickens that more swiftly than monkeys leap over the mulberry tree to spend the night there; the little bay colt that introduces his head under his master’s arm, to be petted, while the jealous dog bangs his hard tail on his paw; the pink handkerchief fluttering around her husband’s neck; the sun setting over the barn as if over the dome of a church.