|Mena did not know that there was an idea of marrying her to Padron
Cipolla’s Brasi “to make the mother forget her grief,” and the first
person to tell it her was Alfio Mosca, who, a few days later, came
to the garden gate, on his way back from Aci Castello, with his
donkey-cart. Mena replied, “It isn’t true, it isn’t true!” but she was
confused, and as he went on telling her all about how he had heard it
from La Vespa in the house of Uncle Crucifix, all of a sudden she turned
red all over. Cousin Alfio, too, lost countenance seeing the girl like
that, with her black kerchief over her head. He began to play with the
buttons of his coat, stood first on one leg, then on the other, and
would have given anything to get away. “Listen; it isn’t my fault;
I heard it in old Dumb-bell’s court while I was chopping up the
locust-tree that was blown down in the storm at the Santa Clara, you
remember. Now, Uncle Crucifix gets me to do chores for him, because
he won’t hear of La Locca’s son ever since his brother played him that
trick with the cargo of lupins.” Mena had the string of the gate in her
hand, but couldn’t make up her mind to open it. “And then if it isn’t
true, why do you blush?” She didn’t know, that was the truth, and she
turned the latch-string round and round. That person she knew only by
sight, and hardly that. Alfio went on telling her the whole litany of
Brasi Cipolla’s riches; after Uncle Naso, the butcher, he was the best
match in the place, and all the girls were ready to eat him up with
their eyes. Mena listened with all hers, and all of a sudden she made
him a low courtesy, and went off up the garden path to the house.
Alfio, in a fury, went off and scolded La Vespa for telling him such a
lot of stupid lies, getting him into hot water with everybody.
“Uncle Crucifix told me,” replied La Vespa; “I don’t tell lies!”
“Lies! lies!” growled old Crucifix. “I ain’t going to damn my soul
for that lot! I heard it with these ears. I heard also that the
_Provvidenza_ is in Maruzza’s dowry, and that there’s a mortgage of two
francs a year on the house.”
“You wait and you’ll see if I tell lies or not,” continued La Vespa,
leaning back against the bureau, with her hands on her hips, and looking
at him all the time with the wickedest eyes. “You men are all alike;
one can’t trust any of you.” Meanwhile Uncle Crucifix didn’t hear,
and instead of eating, went on talking about the Malavoglia, who were
talking of marriages in the family; but of the two hundred francs for
the lupins nobody heard a word.
“Eh!” cried La Vespa, losing patience, “if one listened to you nobody
would get married at all.”
“I don’t care who gets married or who doesn’t, I want my own; I don’t
care for anything else.”
“If you don’t care about it, who should? I say--everybody isn’t like
you, always putting things off.”
“And are you in a hurry, pray?”
“Of course I am. You have plenty of time to wait, you’re so young; but
everybody can’t wait till the cows come home, to get married.”
“It’s a bad year,” said Uncle Dumb-bell. “No one has time to think of
such things as those.”
La Vespa at this planted her hands on her hips, and went off like a
railway-whistle, as if her own wasp’s sting had been on her tongue.
“Now, listen to what I’m going to say. After all, my living is mine, and
I don’t need to go about begging for a husband. What do you mean by it?
If you hadn’t come filling my head with your flattery and nonsense,
I might have had half a thousand husbands--Vanni Pizzuti, and Alfio
Mos-ca, and my Cousin Cola, that was always hanging on to my skirts
before he went for a soldier, and wouldn’t even let me tie up my
stockings--all of them burning with impatience, too. They wouldn’t have
gone on leading me by the nose this way, and keeping me slinging round
from Easter until Christmas, as you’ve done.”
This time Uncle Crucifix put his hand behind his ear to hear the better,
and began to smooth her down with good words: “Yes, I know you are a
sensible girl; for that I am fond of you, and am not like those fellows
that were after you to nobble your land, and then to eat it up at
Santuzza’s tavern.”
“It isn’t true! you don’t love me. If you did you wouldn’t act this
way; you would see what I am really thinking of all the time--yes, you
would.”
She turned her back on him, and still went on poking at him, as if
unconsciously, with her elbow. “I know you don’t care for me,” she said.
The uncle was offended by this unkind suspicion. “You say these things
to draw me into sin.” He began to complain. He not care for his own
flesh and blood!--for she was his own flesh and blood after all, as the
vineyard was, and it would have been his if his brother hadn’t taken it
into his head to marry, and bring the Wasp into the world; and for that
he had always kept her as the apple of his eye, and thought only of her
good. “Listen!” he said. “I thought of making over to you the debt
of the Malavoglia, in exchange for the vineyard, which is worth forty
scudi, and with the expenses and the interest may even reach fifty
scudi, and you may get hold even of the house by the medlar, which is
worth more than the vineyard.”
“Keep the house by the medlar for yourself,” said she. “I’ll keep my
vineyard. I know very well what to do with it.” Then Uncle Crucifix also
flew into a rage, and said that she meant to let it be gobbled up by
that beggar Alfio Mosca, who made fish’s-eyes at her for love of the
vineyard, and that he wouldn’t have him about the house any more, and
would have her to know that he had blood in his veins, too. “I declare
if he isn’t jealous!” cried the Wasp.
“Of course I’m jealous,” said the old man, “jealous as a wild beast;”
and he swore he’d pay five francs to whoever would break Alfio Mosca’s
head for him, but would not do it himself, for he was a God-fearing
Christian; and in these days honest men were cheated, for good faith
dwells in the house of the fool, where one may buy a rope to hang one’s
self; the proof of it was that one might pass and repass the house of
the Malavoglia till all was blue, until people had begun to make fun of
him, and to say that he made pilgrimages to the house by the medlar, as
they did who made vows to the Madonna at Ognino. The Malavoglia paid
him with bows, and nothing else; and the boys, if they saw him enter the
street, ran off as if they had seen a bugbear; but until now he hadn’t
heard a word of that money for the lupins--and All Souls was hard
at hand--and here was Padron ’Ntoni talking of his granddaughter’s
marriage!
He went off and growled at Goosefoot, who had got him into this scrape,
he said to others; but the others said he went to cast sheep’s-eyes at
the house by the medlar-tree; and La Locca--who was always wandering
about there, because she had been told that her son had gone away in the
Malavoglia’s boat, and she thought he would come back that way, and she
should find him there--never saw her brother Crucifix without beginning
to screech like a bird of ill omen, making him more furious than ever.
“This one will drive me into a mortal sin,” cried Dumb-bell.
“All Souls is not yet come,” answered Goosefoot, gesticulating, as
usual; “have a little patience! Do you want to suck Padron ’Ntoni’s
blood? You know very well that you’ve really lost nothing, for the
lupins were good for nothing--you know that.”
He knew nothing; he only knew that his blood was in God’s hands, and
that the Malavoglia boys dared not play on the landing when he
passed before Goosefoot’s door. And if he met Alfio Mosca, with his
donkey-cart, who took off his cap, with his sunburnt face, he felt his
blood boiling with jealousy about the vineyard. “He wants to entrap my
niece for the sake of the vineyard,” he grumbled to Goosefoot. “A lazy
hound, who does nothing but strut round with that donkey-cart, and has
nothing else in the world. A starving beggar! A rascal who makes that
ugly witch of a niece of mine believe that he’s in love with her pig’s
face, for love of her property.”
Meantime Alfio Mosca was not thinking of Vespa at all, and if he had any
one in his eye it was rather Padron ’Ntoni’s Mena, whom he saw every
day in the garden or on the landing, or when she went to look after the
hens in the chicken-coop; and if he heard the pair of fowls he had given
her cackling in the court-yard, he felt something stir inside of him,
and felt as if he himself were there in the court of the house by the
medlar; and if he had been something better than a poor carter he would
have asked for Sant’Agata’s hand in marriage, and carried her off in the
donkey-cart. When he thought of all these things he felt as if he had
a thousand things to say to her; and yet when she was by his tongue was
tied, and he could only talk of the weather, or the last load of wine
he had carried for the Santuzza, and of the donkey, who could draw four
quintals’ weight better than a mule, poor beast!
Mena stroked the poor beast with her hand, and Alfio smiled as if it had
been himself whom she had caressed. “Ah, if my donkey were yours, Cousin
Mena!” And Mena shook her head sadly, and wished that the Malavoglia had
been carriers, for then her poor father would not have died.
“The sea is salt,” she said, “and the sailor dies in the sea.”
Alfio, who was in a hurry to carry the wine to Santuzza, couldn’t make
up his mind to go, but stayed, chatting about the fine thing it was to
keep tavern, and how that trade never fell off, and if the wine was
dear one had only to pour more water into the barrels. Uncle Santoro had
grown rich in that way, and now he only begged for amusement.
“And you do very well carrying the wine, do you not?” asked Mena.
“Yes, in summer, when I can travel by night and by day both; that way I
manage pretty well. This poor beast earns his living. When I shall
have saved a little money I’ll buy a mule, and then I can become a real
carrier like Master Mariano Cinghialenta.”
The girl was listening intently to all that Alfio was saying, and
meanwhile the gray olive shook, with a sound like rain, and strewed the
path with little dry curly leaves.
“Here is the winter coming, and all this we talk of is for the summer,”
said Goodman Alfio. Mena followed with her eyes the shadows of the
clouds that floated over the fields, as if the gray olive had melted and
blown away; so the thoughts flew through her head, and she said:
“Do you know, Cousin Alfio, there is nothing in that story about Padron
Fortunato Cipolla, because first we must pay the debt for the lupins.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Mosca; “so you won’t go away from the
neighborhood.”
“When ’Ntoni comes back from being a soldier, grandfather and all of
us will help each other to pay the debt. Mamma has taken some linen to
weave for her ladyship.”
“The druggist’s is a good trade, too!” said Alfio Mosca.
At this moment appeared Cousin Venera Zup-pidda, with her distaff in her
hand. “O Heaven! somebody’s coming,” cried Mena, and ran off into the
house.