You never heard of the Six Hundred, though your
father was boatswain of a Palermo grain bark and lay three months in the
harbour of Sebastapol during the fighting.
Pigs everywhere, black, grunting and happy. Red-skirted, scarlet-bodiced
women everywhere, too, all moving and carrying something. Galantuomini
loafing at most of the corners, smoking clay pipes with cane stems, and
the great Jew shopkeeper's nose just visible from a distance as he
stands in the door of his dingy den. Dirtier and dirtier grow the cobble
stones as you go on. Brighter and brighter the huge bunches of red
peppers fastened by every window, thicker and thicker on the upper walls
and shaky balconies the black melons and yellowish grey cantelopes hung
up to keep in the high fresh air, each slung in a hitch of yarn to a
nail of its own.
Here and there some one greets you. What have you to sell? Will you take
a cargo of pears? Good this year, like all the fruit. The figs and
grapes will not be dry for another month. They nod and move on, as you
pass by them. Verbicaro is a commercial centre, in spite of the pigs. A
tall, thin priest meets you, with a long black cigar in his mouth.
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