THE LITTLE RING

THE LITTLE RING 

They had found her  at the foot of a cypress. She was almost seated, with her body slid forward, her head resting on the trunk of the cypress. Since the doctor, who had certified her death, had established that hers had been death from natural causes,_____and besides there were no wounds or signs of strangulation or of beatings on her body, it did not seem possible that Helen had been killed, and not even that she could have killed herself_____

So everyone seemed convinced that she had died by natural causes, so much so that no autopsy had even been done. THE ONLY ONE among those who had known and had frequented her not to be convinced that Helen had died of natural causes was Larissa, who knew her since many years.

The first thing that had made Larissa suspicious, indeed that had been a real alarm bell___it was as if she had heard it ringing inside her_____was the disappearance of the little ring which Helen wore on her little finger and from which she never parted. Sure that she, Helen,would have wanted to be buried with that very little ring, which was golden , with a tiny blue pebble that she, Helen, claimed it was an aquamarine. Well, when Helen was found dead in the countryside, at the foot of a cypress tree, the little ring with the tiny blue stone was gone.

She, Larissa, how much surprised, indeed unbelieving, had been when she had seen Helen (composed) in the coffin without her little ring . Since she didn’t know that when Helen had been found dead , at the foot of the cypress, her little ring was already gone, Larissa had said, almost indignant, to one Helen’s cousin : “ But why did you take her little ring off? Whose idea was it? (Can I know who came up with the wonderful idea?).”

Only then she had learned from that Helen’s distant cousin, since Helen had no close relatives, of the disappearance of the little golden ring. Oh, it was almost a trinket, but Helen had cared very much to it, even if she had always refused to say why it was so important, so essential, or even indispensable for her. So much important that little ring had seemed to be for her, and so much adamantly she had always refused to say why it was so important, that many stories had blossomed and turned on that….little golden trinket, with its blue pebble. There were ( had been) those who told that the ring was the memory of a great love of Helen, those who instead assured ah, that little ring , ah, certain a trinket, but it had been where Helen had found it , to make it so much precious. Yeah, she had found the ring on the bed of a stream near a dead rabbit, some people told, while other claimed ah, Helen had found that ring into a fish which she was eating….. Then there were ( had been) those who told that the little ring had been given to Helen as a child by her grandmother, but perhaps by her great grandmother, who used to admonish her not to waste bread, not even bread crumbs! Otherwise did she want to know what would have happened to her? After she died , her little finger would have been lit like a candle, lit with a match, and she, with the only light of the little flame of her finger, which would have burned like a candle, she would have been sent to pick up all the bread crumbs she had wasted.

Helen had died on a Friday afternoon during one her walks in the countryside. She used go for a walk even alone, but Larissa knew that on Fridays she always took her walk in the company of Gabriella, so that also that Friday she had to have been in her company. But Helen had been found dead by someone who had passed through that lawn by chance, and she was alone, there was no one with her. So Larissa had asked to Gabriella about the walk of that Friday, and she ( Gabriella) had said ( told) that oh, sadly, unfortunately that Friday she hadn’t be able to go with Helen, so Helen had gone alone to walk through the fields. “ Strange” it came to think to Larissa “But you think, on the very Friday when Helen took a hit and she died, she was alone during her walk, instead of in the company of Gabriella, as it was always on Fridays.”

When, shortly thereafter, she had heard from acquaintances that they had seen Helen and Gabriella walking side by side that Friday too, Larissa had felt something screeching , and it was as if that something was screeching inside her, but indeed into her heart. She couldn’t help but  ask Gabriella for an explanation. “ But why did you tell me you didn’t go for a walk with Helen that Friday? Several people saw you together on the same road . You were together when you passed before Paula C.’s house, she greeted you. Aldo G. met you and Helen in a lane in the middle of the fields, he remember that you were together…..” Gabriella had been not worried at all  , she had remained very calm, she had not flustered when Larissa had pointed out that it was evident she had lied about the last Helen ‘s walk, that is, she had lied about where she had been when Helen died. “ Oh, yes, now I remember, I went with Helen for a walk that Friday, but I had to go back home after a while, when we will have done just a few dozen meters together ” Gabriella said, without getting upset, without the slightest embarrassment. “ Yes, after a while I remembered that I had  to think about dinner, since my husband’s relatives were going to have dinner with us that evening. You know, I have a family, a husband and two children, while she, Helen, had no one to look after” Gabriella added. Her answer left Larissa numb, the creak inside her became a whirlwind . Nevertheless she managed to ask Gabriella. “ Do you remember where you left Helen when you went back home?”  “ Oh, look, we were still on the paved road. I seem to have turned back just before to arrive at the Doni farm” Gabriella said.

Larissa knew that Helen had been a true friend of Gabriella, she could be sure of it from how Helen had told her about Gabriella, from how she ( Helen) had been sensitive, attentive to the problems Gabriella had with her teenage children, and also with her husband. But if she had never doubted that Helen was very Gabriella’s friend, she had to admit that she never had felt Gabriella could be said a true friend of Helen. Certainly, Larissa knew they two, Helen and Gabriella, saw each other often, and not only to go for a walk together on Friday afternoons. They seemed to hang out like two friends who are good together, who are happy to be together. Yet Larissa had always felt that it was not for friendship that Gabriella frequented Helen, who, according to her, would have done better not to frequent Gabriella so assiduously.  Rather Helen should have bewared of Gabriella, this was what Larissa had always thought. It was, this hers, only a feeling, even though Larissa had happened to notice the intolerant , even rude way Gabriella had sometimes with Helen.

And now…now that it had happened that Helen had died during a walk in which she should have been in the company of Gabriella…..and she, Gabriella , with her version, indeed her versions  had been two, about that Friday afternoon…..oh, how she had fixed, arranged her first version_____when she had said she hadn’t gone for a walk with Helen that afternoon____since there were people who had seen her walking in the company of Helen, she  had had to admit that she had gone with Helen for a walk , that afternoon, but that she had left Helen shortly after since she at sudden had remembered she had guests for dinner that evening, and she had come back home to cook dinner…..Now Larissa could not help but suspect Gabriella for Helen’s death. Not that she thought that Gabriella had killed Helen. She was rather inclined to think that Gabriella was with her when Helen got sick, and Gabriella didn’t help her. She didn’t care to call for help, she abandoned Helen.

And there was the little ring which had disappeared from Helen’s little finger when she had been found dead ( at the foot of the cypress). Larissa had asked the man and the woman who had found her dead_____they had seen her by chance, they had come across her by chance, during their walk through the countryside____and none of them remembered to have seen the little ring.

She had also asked those who had taken Helen dead away of the countryside, and those , too, who had taken care of dressing the corpse, and they all had said that they had not seen any ring on the Helen’s finger. Sure, Larissa thought, some of them might have taken the little ring off Helen’s finger, but it was almost a riffle of little value, it was not flashy at all, yes, it was not an object to be tempted, Larissa( had )said herself. ( L. thought). But she had the feeling that SOMEONE had have taken that little ring from Helen’s finger, someone who had have slipped the ring off her finger when Helen was already dead, and that someone had to have to do something with her death.  Since Larissa couldn’t help but be suspicious of Gabriella, she had ended up being convinced that Helen’s little ring had been taken by Gabriella, and who knows where she had put it, where she kept it. Larissa had even thought of sneaking into Gabriella’s house to look for that little ring, which had become so much precious , so much important to her, as important as it had been to Helen.  But she had have realized that this was an impossible undertaking. Even assuming that she had manage ( could manage____could have managed) to get into Gabriella’s house when no one was there, how could she think she could find an object so small, which could stay in hundrieds  of different places, hiding places, holes too?

Of course she, Larissa, couldn’t expect to see that little ring reappear on Gabriella’s finger.

Not being able to look for that little ring ,she didn’t even know where to look for it, other than in Gabriella’s house _____ ah, Gabriella could carry it (the ring) with her in her pocket or in her bag , when she went out, but Larissa certainly couldn’t really she could search or snatch her____she began to dream it. She dreamed the little ring in the most disparate, mist unbelievable , that is the most unlikely places. She dreamed it in the hearth of a wide room, then in a bottle of wine, then at a bottom of a well. She, her head bent, was with her face over the opening of the well, looking into the well , and suddenly the little ring appeared, it was right down there, at the bottom of the well. How incandescent, flashing its tiny blue stone was shining…..Larissa put her hand in the opening of the well, and, her face bending over it, stretched out her arm , as if she thought she could reach the ring down there. In the attempt to reach the little ring, which was incredibly sparkling, wonderfully glowing, so much sparkling so much glowing, as it had never been, Larissa ( was reaching too far forward) was leaning too far , so that she was about to fall into the well upside down, but just before she fell into it, she woke up.

Larissa also wondered ( kept on wondering) if she could do anything to get Gabriella to discover herself, as she didn’t doubt that she, Gabriella, at least hadn’t told the truth about WHERE she really was when Helen died ( had died). And if she hadn0t said the truth about where she was, there had to be a reason ( a WHY?)

After having dreamed that little ring everywhere_____she had dreamed it even in the top of a cypress, even hanging from a sparrow’s beak , she dreamed it ….at its place, on Helen’s finger ( exactly as she had seen it for long time), that is, she dreamed Helen wearing her little ring.

Helen was staggering, as if she were being pushed, beating by someone who was not framed in the dream. Helen, evidently frightened, struggled , trying to escape from whoever was hitting, beating her. Then, while her face, her movements were saying, indeed screaming, a great pain, she ( Helen) fell to the the ground, at the foot of a cypress, beating her head against the trunk of the tree. Helen’s body went down to the ground sprawled, in a position of abandonment , of surrender. While Helen, with a very suffering face, was repeating: “ I don’tt want to die….I don’t want to die…”in a voice as a lament, someone, whose Larissa saw only the hands, grabbed Helen0s left hand and slipped the little ring off her little finger. Larissa woke up (had woken up) while one of those hands held Helen’s hand and two fingers of the other hand pulled the ring from the little finger of Helen, who kept on saying: “ I don’t want to die…I don’t want to die…” Larissa had woken up that she had her heart in her mouth, so much did she feel it overflowing with anguish. She stil heard Helen’s aching voice repeating : “ I don’t want to die…I don’t want to die…” To whom was she saying that she doesn’t want to die? Ah …those hands, whose were those hands? Larissa started wondering. She had seen them only for a few moments, but she would have said that those were not Gabriella’s hands. She had small and rather chubby hands.Those appeared in her dream were bigger and even more beefy hands than hers ( than. Gabriella’s hands) Those hands framed in her dream were indeed almost squared. But yes, such large, square and sinewy hands looked more like the hands of a man. A man? If she had to believe her dream, or if her dream told her what had happened, then there was a man Helen was going to die….Those hands….unfortunately she had seen them for too little time in her dream to be able to recognize them as someone’s hands.

In the meantime , since she had not stopping suspecting Gabriella, she had learned from a neighbor of hers that he day Helen died Gabriella had not had guests for dinner. Her neighbor was sure about it since she had seen Gabriella0s husband go out before dinner time, and she, Gabriella had told her ti be alone at hime that night, that her husband had had go out to meet some friends, and her son and her daughter had gone out too. Larissa had also asked the neighbor if Gabriella had gone out for a walk, alone or in the company of someone, that afternoon, but her neighbor didn’t know that.

Larissa had continued to suspect Gabriella , and to wonder whose hands where those which she had seen in her dream pull the little finger off Helen’s finger. And, of course, she kept on wondering where that that finger was now.

One evening lit was almost night, it happened to her. at all by chance, to see, on a sidewalk, Gabriella’s husband, whom she knew only by sight, hand in hand with a woman much younger than him, a girl. The two seemed very close, they seemed to be very good together.

Oh, and here the incredible surprise : on that girl’s finger there was the little ring of Helen.