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the long beard who stopped to eat at the Osteria della Bassa said he’d seen it . . . There’s only one way to forestall such a dreadful prediction: find the demonic creature and destroy it or . . . ” his voice became deep and ragged, “or offer a victim in expiation.”
    Callisto and Clerice couldn’t understand much of their guest’s difficult language, but his dark and gloomy mood didn’t escape them. They lowered their heads and made the sign of the cross and the umbrella mender walked out of the courtyard. Their eyes followed him as he took off down Via Celeste and then turned left towards the
osteria
. What could he have meant by those words?
    They would never see him again.
    Â 
    On Sunday afternoons, on those first days of spring, their boys’ friends would come over to play
bocce
in the courtyard. Checco would uncork a couple of bottles of Albana and a good time would be had by all. But at five o’clock on the dot, when the priest rang Vespers, Clerice shooed them all out: she didn’t want anyone missing prayers at church because they were playing
bocce
in the front yard. And when the church bell tolled for the benediction of the Eucharist, she would make the sign of the cross in the middle of the courtyard and everyone would lower their heads in silence.
    As the days got longer and the nights shorter, they had to work longer hours in the fields. The hemp was springing up before their eyes, as was the wheat. At night they began to hear the monotonous croaking of the tree toads and the chirping of crickets. One evening at dinner, Callisto told his children what the umbrella mender had said the morning he’d left, as he walked off towards the
osteria
. Words that had left a weight on his heart that he needed to share with them.
    â€œ
Papà
!” protested Floti. “You can’t believe such nonsense! He’s just a bloke who lives on the charity of others and he has to show he’s worth something. This legend of the golden goat has no basis in fact. People see what they want to see.”
    â€œSo then why, in your opinion, would people want to see a goat all made of gold standing on one of the four hills of Pra’ dei Monti under a snowstorm?”
    Floti didn’t answer right away but he thought to himself that there had to be some kind of explanation. What do poor people worry about if not some kind of catastrophe? It was too easy to prophesy misfortune on its way. He had been an altar boy as a child and he remembered the Latin words of a certain invocation well:
A peste, fame et bello libera nos, Domine!
Deliver us, Oh Lord, from the plague, from hunger and from war! Apart from the plague, which hadn’t been around for centuries, hunger and war had always been rampant.
    He said: “People need to believe in another world, a supernatural one, a world in which miraculous things occur. Different than the usual things that happen, day in and day out, different than a life where they’re doing the same things in the same places, one year after another. That’s what I think!”
    â€œThat may be,” replied Callisto. “All I know is that I’ve always heard tell of this story of the golden goat, since the day I was born.” And he went off to bed without saying another word.
    Â 
    The summer was hot and dry and, when it was harvest time, the Brunis had to bend their backs for ten hours a day in the suffocating heat, cutting the wheat with hand sickles and tying it up into sheaves. Hundreds of them. The women lowered buckets filled with bottles of watered-down wine into the well to keep them cool, and they’d carry them out to fields, where the men were sweating like animals and needed to drink continuously. And when it came time to thresh the wheat, it was even worse. The sun beat down like a hammer on their heads and shoulders. Yet threshing was a celebration, like always.
    And Floti was always first, standing at