When he came into the village it was about half-past two o'clock, and the
long, narrow main street was deserted. The owners of some of the
antiquity shops had already put up their shutters for the summer. Other
shops, still open, showed gaping doorways, through which no travellers
passed. Inside, the proprietors were dozing among their red brocades,
their pottery, their Sicilian jewelry and obscure pictures thick with
dust, guarded by squadrons of large, black flies, which droned on walls
and ceilings, crept over the tiled floors, and clung to the draperies and
laces which lay upon the cabinets. In the shady little rooms of the
barbers small boys in linen jackets kept a drowsy vigil for the
proprietors, who were sleeping in some dark corner of bedchamber or
wine-shop. But no customer came to send them flying. The sun made the
beards push on the brown Sicilian faces, but no one wanted to be shaved
before the evening fell. Two or three lads lounged by on their way to the
sea with towels and bathing-drawers over their arms. A few women were
spinning flax on the door-lintels, or filling buckets of water from the
fountain. A few children were trying to play mysterious games in the
narrow alleys that led downward to the sea and upward to the mountains on
the left and right of the street. A donkey brayed under an archway as if
to summon its master from his siesta. A cat stole along the gutter, and
vanished into a hole beneath a shut door. But the village was almost like
a dead village, slain by the sun in his carelessness of pride.
On his way to the post Maurice passed through the Piazza that was the
glory of Marechiaro and the place of assemblage for its people. Here the
music sounded on festa days before the stone steps that led up to the
church of San Giuseppe. Here was the principal caffè, the Caffè Nuovo,
where granite and ices were to be had, delicious yellow cakes, and
chocolate made up into shapes of crowing cocks, of pigs, of little men
with hats, and of saints with flowing robes. Here, too, was the club,
with chairs and sofas now covered with white, and long tables adorned
with illustrated journals and the papers of Catania, of Messina, and
Palermo. But at this hour the caffè was closed and the club was empty.
For the sun beat down with fury upon the open space with its tiled
pavement, and the seats let into the wall that sheltered the Piazza from
the precipice that frowned above the sea were untenanted by loungers. As
Maurice went by he thought of Gaspare's words, "When a man cannot go any
more into the Piazza--Madonna, it is finished!" This was the place where
the public opinion of Marechiaro was formed, where fame was made and
characters were taken away. He paused for an instant by the church, then
went on under the clock tower and came to the post.