Silvio d'Arzo (1920–1952)

Short novella applying near perfect suspense, set in a small village in the Italian Apennines. It opens with a scene describing six lamenting women and a pastor, sitting beside a corpse (unclear whose). Next it briefly describes the uneventful life of the village which contains 7 houses, and many sheep that are herded in the mountains during the day. Next a mysterious woman appears each end of day, washing clothes in the canal. The pastor waits, assuming she will come to him. But then she doesn’t. So he sends out his little spy. Next she comes with an odd question about the Church’s ruling on divorces – can exceptions be made? This intrigues the pastor, because he (rightly) suspects it was a dummy question to test the waters for the real question that bothers her. A game of cat and mouse evolves. The pastor wants to know, she rebuffs or ignores his advances. The woman is caught by young boys pestering her about her (supposed) marriage, the pastor tries to wean them off by jokingly coming out of his house as the supposed bridegroom. The woman drops a letter for him, but recollects it before he returns home to read it. Finally the pastor can take it no longer and forces her more or less to ask her question. She laments her hard life. She has never blamed the Gods for anything. Still, would the church grant her wish for suicide? The pastor is dumb folded. She claims she knew he would react that way. This is the end of their interaction. A couple of weeks later she is dead. The pastor meticulously takes care of the funeral, against the standard custom for suicide victims.

This novella is written in such a crafty manner with short sentences and crisp characterisations of things like the light fall, seasons, and day-to-day activities of the villagers and the ecclesiastic practices throughout the year. And the reader is urged on and on, because s/he wants to know. In one word: crafty. Pity the writer died young.… (mer)