Word: francescas
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...alas for the women of Roghudi, an outsider able to read newspapers did at last find her way across the donkey trails and the single, swaying footbridge that were the only entrances to their village. She was round-faced, innocent-eyed Francesca Zavattieri, the new schoolteacher...
...Desperate, he raced off to the town of Reggio Calabria to ask the advice of some more experienced guappi. "Appeal to her feminine curiosity," they suggested, and told him a few tricks of the trade. After that, Pietro, in the company of two friends, took up a stand opposite Francesca's door, puffing cigarettes in an urbane manner, blowing skilled smoke rings and spearing the rings with agile fingers, hoping to attract the lady...
...expensive business, for even though he was rich by the standards of Roghudi, Mayor Nucera, a landholder and the nephew of the local archpriest, could not afford those three cigarettes a day. And in the end it proved in vain. Francesca passed by all the smoke rings with a preoccupied eye. Pietro raced off once again to Reggio and bought himself a book on how to write love letters. Francesca left his best efforts unanswered...
...along a sister and a large, protective aunt. "Ah," said the villagers with wise glances, "she has brought a chaperone. Now what will he do?" For a year Pietro did nothing. Then he approached bluntly and announced: "I have decided I want to marry you." "I am sorry," said Francesca. "It cannot be." Stupefied, the mayor went to his uncle the priest. "I don't understand," he said. "How could any girl refuse?" The old priest inhaled a vast nostrilful of snuff. "Women," he said at last, "don't like to be wooed. They like to be conquered...
...years after that, Pietro Nucera never spoke a civil word to Francesca. As mayor, he barred her from her classroom of children and set her to work teaching a roomful of illiterate louts, many of them her senior in years. At last Francesca let it be known that she was leaving the village forever. On the night before her departure, the mayor set himself up in a room just across the street from her house. All night, as the girl huddled in bed with her sister and aunt, Pietro paced back and forth. Suddenly he opened his window and shot...