|Once the Malavoglia were as numerous as the stones on the old road to
Trezza; there were some even at Ognino and at Aci Castello, and good and
brave seafaring folk, quite the opposite of what they might appear to be
from their nickname of the Ill-wills, as is but right. In fact, in the
parish books they were called Toscani; but that meant nothing, because,
since the world was a world, at Ognino, at Trezza, and at Aci Castello
they had been known as Malavoglia, from father to son, who had always
had boats on the water and tiles in the sun. Now at Trezza there
remained only Padron ’Ntoni and his family, who owned the
_Provvidenza_, which was anchored in the sand below the washing-tank by
the side of Uncle Cola’s _Concetta_ and Padron Fortunato Cipolla’s bark.
The tempests, which had scattered all the other Malavoglia to the
four winds, had passed over the house by the medlar-tree and the boat
anchored under the tank without doing any great damage; and Padron
’Ntoni, to explain the miracle, used to say, showing his closed fist,
a fist which looked as if it were made of walnut wood, “To pull a good
oar the five fingers must help one another.” He also said, “Men are like
the fingers of the hand--the thumb must be the thumb, and the little
finger the little finger.”
And Padron ’Ntoni’s little family was really disposed like the fingers
of a hand. First, he came--the thumb--who ordered the fasts and the
feasts in the house; then Bastian, his son, called Bastianazzo because
he was as big and as grand as the Saint Christopher which was painted
over the arch of the fish-market in town; and big and grand as he was,
he went right about at the word of command, and wouldn’t have blown
his nose unless his father had told him to do it. So he took to wife
La Longa when his father said to him “Take her!” Then came La Longa, a
little woman who attended to her weaving, her salting of anchovies, and
her babies, as a good house-keeper should do; last, the grandchildren
in the order of their age--’Ntoni, the eldest, a big fellow of twenty,
who was always getting cuffs from his grandfather, and then kicks a
little farther down if the cuffs had been heavy enough to disturb
his equilibrium; Luca, “who had more sense than the big one,” the
grandfather said; Mena (Filomena), surnamed Sant’Agata, because she was
always at the loom, and the proverb goes, “Woman at the loom, hen in the
coop, and mullet in January;” Alessio, our urchin, that was his
grandfather all over; and Lia (Rosalia), as yet neither fish nor flesh.
On Sunday, when they went into church one after another, they looked
like a procession.
Padron ’Ntoni was in the habit of using certain proverbs and sayings
of old times, for, said he, the sayings of the ancients never lie:
“Without a pilot the boat won’t go;” “To be pope one must begin by being
sacristan,” or, “Stick to the trade you know, somehow you’ll manage to
go;” “Be content to be what your father was, then you’ll be neither a
knave nor an ass,” and other wise saws. Therefore the house by the
medlar was prosperous, and Padron ’Ntoni passed for one of the weighty
men of the village, to that extent that they would have made him a
communal councillor. Only Don Silvestro, the town-clerk, who was very
knowing, insisted that he was a rotten _codino_, a reactionary who went
in for the Bourbons, and conspired for the return of Franceschello, that
he might tyrannize over the village as he tyrannized over his own house.
Padron ’Ntoni, instead, did not even know Franceschello by sight, and
used to say, “He who has the management of a house cannot sleep when he
likes, for he who commands must give account.” In December, 1863,
’Ntoni, the eldest grandson, was called up for the naval conscription.
Padron ’Ntoni had recourse to the big-wigs of the village, who are
those who can help us if they like. But Don Giammaria, the vicar,
replied that he deserved it, and that it was the fruit of that satanic
revolution which they had made, hanging that tricolored handkerchief to
the campanile. Don Franco, the druggist, on the other hand, laughed
under his beard, and said it was quite time there should be a
revolution, and that then they would send all those fellows of the draft
and the taxes flying, and there would be no more soldiers, but everybody
would go out and fight for their country if there was need of it. Then
Padron ’Ntoni begged and prayed him, for the love of God, to make the
revolution quickly, before his grandson ’Ntoni went for a soldier, as
if Don Franco had it in his pocket, so that at last the druggist flew
into a rage. Then Don Silvestro, the town-clerk, dislocated his jaws
with laughter at the talk, and finally he said that by means of certain
little packets, slipped into certain pockets that he knew of, they might
manage to get his nephew found defective in some way, and sent back for
a year. Unfortunately, the doctor, when he saw the tall youth, told him
that his only defect was to be planted like a column on those big ugly
feet, that looked like the leaves of a prickly-pear, but such feet as
that would be of more use on the deck of ah iron-clad in certain rough
times that were coming than pretty small ones in tight boots; and so he
took ’Ntoni, without saying “by your leave.” La Longa, when the
conscripts went up to their quarters, trotted breathless by the side of
her long-legged son, reminding him that he must always remember to keep
round his neck the piece of the Madonna’s dress that she had given him,
and to send home news whenever any one came that way that he knew, and
she would give him money to buy paper.
The grandfather, being a man, said nothing; but felt a lump in his
throat, too, and would not look his daughter-in-law in the face, so that
it seemed as if he were angry with her. So they returned to Aci
Trezza, silent, with bowed heads. Bastianazzo, who had unloaded the
_Provvidenza_ in a great hurry, went to meet them at the top of the
street, and when he saw them coming, sadly, with their shoes in their
hands, had no heart to speak, but turned round and went back with them
to the house. La Longa rushed away to the kitchen, longing to find
herself alone with the familiar saucepans; and Padron ’Ntoni said to
his son, “Go and say something to that poor child; she can bear it no
longer.” The day after they all went back to the station of Aci Castello
to see the train pass with the conscripts who were going to Messina,
and waited behind the bars hustled by the crowd for more than an hour.
Finally the train arrived, and they saw their boys, all swarming with
their heads out of the little windows like oxen going to a fair. The
singing, the laughter, and the noise made it seem like the Festa of
Trecastagni, and in the flurry and the fuss they forgot their aching
hearts for a while.
“Adieu, ’Ntoni! Adieu, mamma! Addio. Remember! remember!” Near by, on
the margin of the ditch, pretending to be cutting grass for the calf,
was Cousin Tudda’s Sara; but Cousin Venera, the Zuppidda (hobbler), went
on whispering that she had come there to see Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni,
with whom she used to talk over the wall of the garden. She had seen
them herself, with those very eyes, which the worms would one day
devour. Certain it is that ’Ntoni waved his hand to Sara, and that she
stood still, with the sickle in her hand, gazing at the train as long as
it was there. To La Longa it seemed that that wave of the hand had been
stolen from her, and when she met Cousin Tudda’s Sara on the piazza
(public square), or at the tank where they washed, she turned her back
on her for a long time after. Then the train moved off, hissing and
screaming so as to drown the adieus and the songs. And then the curious
crowd dispersed, leaving only a few poor women and some poor devils that
still stood clinging to the bars without knowing why. Then, one by
one, they also moved away, and Padron ’Ntoni, guessing that his
daughter-in-law must have a bitter taste in her mouth, spent two
centimes for a glass of water, with lemon-juice in it, for her. Cousin
Venera, the Zuppidda, to comfort her gossip La Longa, said to her, “Now,
you may set your heart at rest, for, for five years you may look upon
your son as dead, and think no more about him.”
But they did think of him all the time at the house by the medlar--now
it would be a plate too many which La Longa found in her hand when she
was getting supper ready; now some knot or other that nobody could tie
like ’Ntoni in the rigging--and when some rope had to be pulled
taut, or turn some screw, the grandfather groaning, “O-hi! O-o-o-o-hi!”
ejaculated: “Here we want ’Ntoni!” or “Do you think I have a wrist
like that boy’s?” The mother, passing the shuttle through the loom that
went one, two, three! thought of the boum, boum of the engine that
had dragged away her son, which had sounded ever since in her heart,
one!--two!--three!
The grandpapa, too, had certain singular methods of consolation. “What
will you have? A little soldiering will do that boy good; he always
liked better to carry his two arms out a-walking of a Sunday than to
work with them for his bread.” Or, “When he has learned how salt the
bread is that one eats elsewhere he won’t growl any longer about the
minestra * at home.”
* Macaroni of inferior quality.
Finally, there arrived the first letter from ’Ntoni, which convulsed
the village. He said that the women oft there swept the streets with
their silk petticoats, and that on the mole there was Punch’s theatre,
and that they sold those little round cheeses, that rich people eat, for
two centimes, and that one could not get along without soldi; that did
well enough at Trezza, where, unless one went to Santuzza’s, at the
tavern, one didn’t know how to spend one’s money.
“Set him up with his cheeses, the glutton,” said his grandfather. “He
can’t help it, though; he always was like that. If I hadn’t held him at
the font in these arms, I should have said Don Giammaria had put sugar
in his mouth instead of salt.”
The Mangiacarubbe when she was at the tank, and Cousin Tudda’s Sara was
by, went on saying:
“Certainly. Those ladies with the silk dresses waited on purpose for
Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni to steal him away. They haven’t got any
pumpkin-heads down there!”
The others held their sides with laughing, and henceforth the envious
girls called ’Ntoni “pumpkin-head.”
’Ntoni had sent his portrait, too; all the girls at the tank had seen
it, as Sara showed it to one after another, passing it under her apron,
and the Mangiacarubbe shivered with jealousy. He looked like Saint
Michael the Archangel with those feet planted on a fine carpet, and a
curtain behind his head, like that of the Madonna at Ognino; and he was
so handsome, so clean, and smooth and neat, that the mother that bore
him wouldn’t have known him; and poor La Longa was never tired of gazing
at the curtain and the carpet and that pillar, against which her
son stood up stiff as a post, scratching with his hand the back of a
beautiful arm-chair; and she thanked God and the saints who had placed
her boy in the midst of such splendors. She kept the portrait on the
bureau, under the glass globe which covered the figure of the Good
Shepherd; so that she said her prayers to it, the Zuppidda said, and
thought she had a great treasure on the bureau; and, after all, Sister
Mariangela, the Santuzza, had just such another (anybody that cared to
might see it) that Cousin Mariano Cinghialenta had given her, and she
kept it nailed upon the tavern counter, among the bottles.
But after a while ’Ntoni got hold of a comrade who could write, and
then he let himself go in abuse of the hard life on board ship, the
discipline, the superiors, the thin rice soup, and the tight shoes.
“A letter that wasn’t worth the twenty centimes for the postage,” said
Padron ’Ntoni. La Longa scolded about the writing, that looked like a
lot of fishhooks, and said nothing worth hearing.
Bastianazzo shook his head, saying no; it wasn’t good at all, and that
if it had been he, he would have always put nice things to please people
down there on the paper--pointing at it with a finger as big as the pin
of a rowlock--if it were only out of compassion for La Longa, who, since
her boy was gone, went about like a cat that had lost her kitten.
Padron ’Ntoni went in secret, first, to Don Giammaria, and then to Don
Franco, the druggist, and got the letter read to him by both of them;
and as they were of opposite ways of thinking, he was persuaded that
it was really written there as they said; and then he went on saying to
Bastianazzo and to his wife:
“Didn’t I tell you that boy ought to have been born rich, like Padron
Cipolla’s son, that he might have nothing to do but lie in the sun and
scratch himself?”
Meanwhile the year was a bad one, and the fish had to be given for
the souls of the dead, now that Christians had taken to eating meat on
Friday like so many Turks. Besides, the men who remained at home were
not enough to manage the boat, and sometimes they had to take La Locca’s
Menico, by the day, to help. The King did this way, you see--he took the
boys just as they got big enough to earn their living; while they were
little, and had to be fed, he left them at home. And there was Mena,
too; the girl was seventeen, and the youths began to stop and stare at
her as she went into church. So it was necessary to work with hands and
feet too to drive that boat, at the house by the medlar-tree.
Padron ’Ntoni, therefore, to drive the bark, had arranged with Uncle
Crucifix Dumb-bell an affair concerning certain lupins * to be bought
on credit and sold again at Riposto, where Cousin Cinghialenta, the
carrier, said there was a boat loading for Trieste. In fact, the lupins
were beginning to rot; but they were all that were to be had at Trezza,
and that old rascal Dumb-bell knew that the _Provvidenza_ was eating her
head off and doing nothing, so he pretended to be very stupid, indeed.
“Eh! too much is it? Let it alone, then! But I can’t take a centime
less! I can’t, on my conscience! I must answer for my soul to God! I
can’t”--and shook his head till it looked in real earnest like a bell
without a clapper. This conversation took place at the door of the
church at Ognino, on the first Sunday in September, which was the
feast of Our Lady. There was a great concourse of people from all the
neighborhood, and there was present also Cousin Agostino Goosefoot, who,
by talking and joking, managed to get them to agree upon two scudi
and ten the bag, to be paid by the month. It was always so with Uncle
Crucifix, he said, because he had that cursed weakness of not being able
to say no. “As if you couldn’t say no when you like,” sneered Goosefoot.
“You’re like the--” And he told him what he was like.
* Coarse flat beans.
When La Longa heard of the business of the lupins, she opened her eyes
very wide indeed, as they sat with their elbows on the table-cloth after
supper, and it seemed as if she felt, the weight of that sum of forty
scudi on her stomach. But she said nothing, because women have nothing
to do with such things; and Padron ’Ntoni explained to her how, if the
affair was successful, there would be bread for the winter and ear-rings
for Mena, and Bastiano could go and come in a week from Riposto with La
Locca’s Menico. Bastiano, meantime, snuffed the candle and said
nothing. So the affair of the lupins was arranged, and the voyage of
the _Provvidenza_, which was the oldest boat in the village, but was
supposed to be very lucky. Maruzza had a heavy heart, but did not speak;
he went about indefatigably, preparing everything, putting the boat in
order, and filling the cupboard with provisions for the journey--fresh
bread, the jar with oil, the onions--and putting the fur-lined coat
under the deck.
The men had been very busy all day with that usurer Uncle Crucifix, who
had sold a pig in a poke, and the lupins were spoiling. Dumb-bell
swore that he knew nothing about it, in God’s truth! “Bargaining is
no cheating,” was he likely to throw his soul to the pigs? And Goosefoot
scolded and blasphemed like one possessed--to bring them to agreement,
swearing that such a thing had never happened to him before; and he
thrust his hands among the lupins, and held them up before God and the
Madonna, calling them to witness. At last--red, panting, desperate--he
made a wild proposition, and flung it in the face of Uncle Crucifix (who
pretended to be quite stupefied), and of the Malavoglia, with the sacks
in their hands. “There! pay it at Christmas, instead of paying so much a
month, and you will gain two soldi the sack! Now make an end of it. Holy
Devil!” and he began to measure them. “In God’s name, one!”
The _Provvidenza_ went off on Saturday, towards evening, when the Ave
Maria should have been ringing; only the bell was silent because Master
Cirino, the sacristan, had gone to carry a pair of new boots to Don
Silvestro, the town-clerk; at that hour the girls crowded like a
flight of sparrows about the fountain, and the evening-star was shining
brightly already just over the mast of the _Provvidenza_, like a
lamp. Maruzza, with her baby in her arms, stood on the shore, without
speaking, while her husband loosed the sail, and the _Provvidenza_
danced on the broken waves by the Fariglione * like a duck. “Clear south
wind and dark north, go fearlessly forth,” said Padron ’Ntoni, from
the landing, looking towards the mountains, dark with clouds.
La Locca’s Menico, who was in the _Provvidenza_ with Bastianazzo, called
out something which was lost in the sound of the sea. “He said you may
give the money to his mother, for his brother is out of work;” called
Bastianazzo, and that was the last word that was heard.
* Rocks rising straight out of the sea, separate from the shore.