XIII
The air was filthy. Everything was calm. The great valley of the feud was, that day, unreachable by the breeze. You couldn’t help but to sweat, standing or sitting in the shade of the huge magnolia near the stables. Some relief, it is true, was offered by the fragrance of flowers, candid and as big as bells, that looked out from the tangle of leathery evergreen foliage of the plants.
Totò was under the tree, seemingly bored. He had passed the simple life of adolescence and the discussions that began to interest him were related to women. Nino Ventura was into erotic fantasies, of which he spoke freely about while leaning against the trunk of a small fig tree loaded with ripe fruit that had miraculously grown in the shade of the magnolia. Peppuccio was missing, as he had gotten up to
