|Neither the Malavoglia nor any one else in the town had any idea what
Goosefoot and Uncle Crucifix were hatching together. On Easter Day
Pa-dron ’Ntoni took out the hundred lire which were amassed in the
bureau drawer, and put on his Sunday jacket to carry them to Uncle
Crucifix.
“What, is it all here?” said he.
“It can’t yet be all, Uncle Crucifix; you know how much it costs us to
get together a hundred lire. But ‘better half a loaf than no bread,’ and
‘paying on account is no bad pay.’ Now the summer is coming, and with
God’s help we’ll pay off the whole.”
“Why do you bring it to me? You know I have nothing more to do with it;
it is Cousin Goosefoot’s affair.”
“It is all the same; it seems always to me as if I owed it to you,
whenever I see you. Cousin Tino won’t say no, if you ask him to wait
until the Madonna del’Ognino.”
“This won’t even pay the expenses,” said old Dumb-bell, passing the
money through his fingers. “Go to him yourself and ask him if he’ll wait
for you; I have nothing more to do with it.”
Goosefoot began to swear, and to fling his cap on the ground after his
usual fashion, vowing that he had not bread to eat, and that he could
not wait even until Ascension-tide.
“Listen, Cousin Tino!” said Padron ’Ntoni, with clasped hands, as if
he were praying to our Lord God, “if you don’t give me at least until
Saint Giovanni, now that I have to marry my granddaughter, it would be
better that you should stab me with a knife and be done with it.”
“By the holy devil!” cried Uncle Tino, “you make me do more than I can
manage. Cursed be the day and the hour in which I mixed myself up in
this confounded business.” And he went off, tearing at his old cap.
Padron ’Ntoni went home, still pale from the encounter, and said to
his daughter-in-law, “I’ve got off this time, but I had to beg him as if
I had been praying to God,” and the poor old fellow still trembled. But
he was glad that nothing had come to Padron Cipolla’s ears, and that the
marriage was not likely to be broken off.
On the evening of the Ascension, while the boys were still dancing
around the post with the bonfire, the gossips were collected around the
Malavoglia’s balcony, and Cousin Venera Zuppidda was with them to listen
to what was said, and to give her opinion like the rest. Now, as Padron
’Ntoni was marrying his granddaughter, and the _Provvidenza_ was on
her legs once more, everybody was ready to put a good face on it with
the Malavoglia--for nobody knew anything of what Goosefoot had in his
head to do, not even Cousin Grace, his wife, who went on talking with
Cousin Maruzza just as if her husband had nothing on his mind. ’Ntoni
went every evening to have a chat with Barbara, and had confided to her
that his grandfather had said, “First we must marry Mena.”
“And I come next,” concluded ’Ntoni. After this Barbara had given to
Mena the pot of basil, all adorned with carnations, and tied up with
a fine red ribbon, which was the sign of particular friendship between
girls; and everybody made a great deal of Sant’Agata--even her mother
had taken off her black kerchief, because it is unlucky to wear mourning
in the house where there is a bride, and had written to Luca to give him
notice that Mena was going to be married. She alone, poor girl, seemed
anything but gay, and everything looked black to her, though the fields
were covered with stars of silver and of gold, and the girls wove
garlands for Ascension, and she herself went up and down the stairs
helping her mother to hang the garlands over the door and the windows.
While all the doors were hung with flowers, only that of Cousin Alfio,
black and twisted awry, was always shut, and no one came to hang the
flowers there for the Ascension.
“That coquette Sant’Agata,” Vespa went about saying in her furious way,
“she’s managed at last to send that poor Alfio Mosca out of the place.”
Meanwhile they had made a new gown for Sant’-Agata, and were only
waiting until Saint John’s Day to take the silver dagger out of her
braids of hair, and part it over her forehead, before she went to
church, so that every one who saw her pass said, “Lucky girl!”
Padron Cipolla at this time sat for whole evenings together with Padron
’Ntoni, on the church steps, talking of the wondrous doings of the
_Provvidenza_.
Brasi was always hanging about the street near the Malavoglia, with his
new clothes on; and soon after it was known all over the place that on
that Sunday coming Cousin Grace Goosefoot was going herself to part the
girl’s hair, and to take out the silver dagger from her braids--because
Brasi Cipolla had lost his mother--and the Malavoglia had asked Cousin
Grace on purpose to please her husband, and they had asked also Uncle
Crucifix and all the neighborhood, and all their relations and friends
without exception.
Cousin Venera la Zuppidda made no end of a row because she hadn’t been
asked to dress the bride’s hair--she, who was going to be a connection
of the Malavoglia--and her girl had a sweet-basil friendship with Mena,
so much so that she had made up a new jacket for Barbara in a hurry, not
expecting such an affront. ’Ntoni prayed and begged in vain that they
would not take it up like that, but pass it over. Cousin Venera, with
her hair ready dressed, but with her hands covered with flour, for she
had begun to make the bread, so that she didn’t mean to go to the party
at the Malavoglia, replied:
“You wanted Goosefoot’s wife, keep her! Or her or me; we can’t stay
together. The Malavoglia know very well that they have chosen Madam
Grace only because of the money they owe her husband. Now they are hand
and glove with old Tino since Padron Cipolla made him make it up with
Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni after that affair of the fight. They would
lick his boots because they owe him that money on the house,” she went
on scolding. “They owe my husband fifty lire too, for the _Provvidenza_.
To-morrow I mean to make them pay it.”
“Do let them alone, mother,” supplicated Barbara. But she was in the
pouts too, because she couldn’t wear her new jacket, and she was
almost sorry she had spent the money for the basil-plant for Mena; and
’Ntoni, who had come to take her home with him, had to go off alone,
quite chapfallen, looking as if his new coat were too big for him.
Mother and daughter stood looking out of the court, where they were
putting the bread in the oven, listening to the noise going on at the
house by the medlar, for the talking and laughing could be heard quite
plainly where they were, putting them in a greater rage than ever.
The house was full of people, just as it had been at the time of
Bastianazzo’s death, and Mena, without her dagger, and with her hair
parted in the middle, looked quite differently; so that the gossips all
crowded around her and made such a chattering that you couldn’t have
heard a cannonade. Goosefoot went on talking nonsense to the women, and
made them laugh as if he had been tickling them; while all the time the
lawyer was getting ready the papers, although Uncle Crucifix had said
that there was time enough yet to send the summons. Even Padron Cipolla
permitted himself a joke or two, at which no one laughed but his son
Brasi; and everybody spoke at once; while the boys struggled on the
floor for beans and chestnuts. Even La Longa, poor woman, had forgotten
her troubles for the moment, so pleased was she; and Padron ’Ntoni sat
on the low wall, nodding his head in assent to everybody and smiling to
himself.
“Take care that this time you don’t give your drink to your trousers,
which are not thirsty,” said Padron Cipolla to his son.
“The party is given for Cousin Mena,” said Nunziata, “but she doesn’t
seem to enjoy it as the others do.”
At which Cousin Anna made as if she had dropped the flask which she had
in her hand, in which there was still nearly a half-pint of wine, and
called out: “Here’s luck, here’s luck! ‘Where there are shards there is
feasting,’ and ‘Spilled wine is of good omen.’”
“A little more and I should have had it on my new trousers this time
too,” growled Brasi, who, since his misfortune to his new clothes, had
become very cautious.
Goosefoot sat astride of the wall, with the glass between his legs (it
seemed to him as if he were already the master, because of that, summons
he meant to send), and called out, “To-day there’s nobody at the tavern,
not even Rocco Spatu; today all the fun’s here, the same as if we were
at Santuzza’s.”
From the wall where he sat Goosefoot could see a group of people who
stood talking together by the fountain, with faces as serious as if the
world were coming to an end. At the druggist’s shop there were the usual
idlers with the journal, talking and shaking their fists in each other’s
faces, as if they were coming to blows the next minute; while Don
Giammaria laughed, and took snuff with a satisfaction visible even at
that distance.
“Why didn’t Don Silvestro and the vicar come?” asked Goosefoot.
“I told them to, but they appear to have something particular to do,”
answered Padron ’Ntoni.
“They’re over there at the shop, and there’s a fuss as if the man with
the numbers of the lottery had come. What the deuce can have happened?”
An old woman rushed across the piazza, screaming and tearing her hair as
if at some dreadful news; and before Pizzuti’s shop there was a crowd
as thick as if an ass had tumbled under his load there; and even the
children stood outside listening, open-mouthed, not daring to go nearer.
“For my part I shall go and see what it is,” said Goosefoot, coming
slowly down off the wall.
In the group, instead of a fallen ass, there were two soldiers of the
marine corps, with sacks on their shoulders and their heads bound up,
going home on leave, who had stopped on their way at the barber’s to get
a glass of bitters. They were telling how there had been a great battle
at sea, and how ships as big as all Aci Trezza, full as they could
hold of soldiers, had gone down just as they were; so that their tales
sounded like those of the men who go about recounting the adventures
of Orlando and the Paladins of France on the marina at Catania, and the
people stood as thick as flies in the sun to listen to them.
“Maruzza la Longa’s son was also on board the _Red d’Italia_” observed
Don Silvestro, who had also drawn near to listen with the rest.
“Now I’ll go and tell that to my wife,” cried Master Cola Zuppiddu,
“then she’ll be sure to go to Cousin Maruzza. I don’t like coolnesses
between friends and neighbors.”
But meanwhile the poor Longa knew nothing about it, and was laughing and
amusing herself among her relations and friends.
The soldier seemed never tired of talking, and gesticulated with his
arms like a preacher.
“Yes, there were Sicilians--there were men from every place you can
think of. But, mind you, when the calls pipe to the batteries, one minds
neither north nor south, and the guns all talk the same language. Brave
fellows all, and with strong hearts under their shirts. I can tell you,
when one has seen what I have seen with these eyes, how those boys stood
up to their duty, by Our Lady! one feels that one has a right to cock
one’s hat.”
The youth’s eyes were wet, but he said it was only because the bitters
were so strong.
“It seems to me those fellows are all mad,” said Padron Cipolla, blowing
his nose with great deliberation. “Would you go and get yourself killed
just because the King said to you, ‘Go and be killed for my sake?’”
All the evening there was talking and laughing and drinking in the
Malavoglia’s court in the bright moonlight, and when nearly everybody
was tired, and they sat chewing roasted beans, with their backs against
the wall, some of them singing softly among themselves, they began
talking about the story that the two soldiers on leave had been telling.
Padron Fortunato had gone away early, taking with him his son in his
new clothes. “Those poor Malavoglia,” said he, meeting Dumb-bell in the
piazza; “God have mercy on them! It seems as if they were bewitched.
They have nothing but ill luck.”
Uncle Crucifix scratched his head in silence. It was no affair of
his any more. Goosefoot had taken charge of it, but he was sorry for
them--really he was, in earnest.
The day after the rumor began to spread that there had been a great
battle at sea, over towards Trieste, between our ships and those of the
enemy. Nobody knew how many there were, and many people had been killed.
Some told the story in one way, some in another--in pieces, as it were,
and broken phrases. The neighbors came with hands under their aprons
to ask Cousin Maruzza whether that were not where Luca was, and looked
sadly at her as they did so. The poor woman began to stand at the door
as they do when a misfortune happens, turning her head this way and
that, or looking down the road towards the turn, as if she expected her
father-in-law and the boys back from the sea before the usual time. Then
the neighbors would ask her if she had had a letter from Luca lately, or
how long it had been since he had written. In truth she had not thought
about the letter, but now she could not sleep nor close her eyes the
whole night, thinking always of the sea over towards Trieste, where
that dreadful thing had happened; and she saw her son always before her,
pale, immovable, with sad, shining eyes, and it seemed as if he nodded
his head at her as he had done when he left her to go for a soldier. And
thinking of him, she felt as if she had a burning thirst herself, and
a burning heat inside that was past description. Among all the stories
that were always going in the village she remembered one of some sailors
that had been picked up after many hours, just in time to save them from
being devoured by the sharks, and how in the midst of all that water
they were dying of thirst. And as she thought of how they were dying of
thirst in the midst of all that water, she could not help getting up
to drink out of the pitcher, and lay in the dark with wide-open eyes,
seeing always that mournful vision.
As days went on, however, there was no more talk of what had happened,
but as La Longa had no letter, she began to be unable either to work or
to stay still; and she was always wandering from house to house as if
so she hoped to hear of something to ease her mind. “Did you ever see
anything so like a cat who has lost her kitten?” asked the neighbors
of each other. And Padron ’Ntoni did not go to sea, and followed his
daughter-in-law about as if he had been a dog. Some one said to him, “Go
to Catania, that is a big place; they’ll be able to tell you something
there.”
In that big place the poor old man felt more lost than he ever did out
at sea by night when he didn’t know which way to point his rudder. At
last some one was charitable enough to tell him to go to the captain
of the port, who would be certain to know all about it. There, after
sending them from Pilate to Herod and back again, he began to turn over
certain big books and run down the lists of the dead with his finger.
When he came to one name, La Longa, who had scarcely heard what went on,
so loudly did her ears ring, and was listening as white as the sheet of
paper, slipped silently down on the floor as if she had been dead.
“It was more than forty days ago,” said the clerk, shutting up the list
“It was at Lissa. Had not you heard of it yet?”
They brought La Longa home in a cart, and she was ill for several days.
Henceforward she was given to a great devotion to the Mother of Sorrows,
who is on the altar of the little chapel; and it seemed to her as if the
long corpse stretched on the mother’s knees, with blue ribs and bleeding
side, was her Luca’s own portrait, and in her own heart she felt the
points of the Madonna’s seven sharp swords. Every evening the devotees,
when they came to church for the benediction, and Don Cirino, when he
went about shaking his keys before shutting up for the night, found her
there in the same place, with her face bent down upon her knees, and
they called her, too, the _Mother of Sorrows_.
“She is right,” they said in the village. “Luca would have been back
before long, and there would have been the thirty sous a day more to the
good for the family. ‘To the sinking ship all winds blow contrary.’”
“Have you seen Padron ’Ntoni’?” added Goosefoot. “Since his grandson’s
death he looks just like an old owl. The house by the medlar is full of
cracks and leaks, and every one who wants to save his money had better
look out for himself.”
La Zuppidda was always as cross as a fury, and went on muttering that
now the whole family would be left on ’Ntoni’s hands. This time any
girl might think twice about marrying him.
“When Mena is married,” replied ’Ntoni, “grandpapa will let us have
the room up-stairs.”
“I’m not accustomed to live in a room up-stairs, like the pigeons,”
snapped out Barbara, so savagely that her own father said to ’Ntoni,
looking about as he walked with him up the lane, “Barbara is growing
just like her mother; if you don’t get the better of her now, you’ll
lead just such a life as I do.”
The end was that Goosefoot swore his usual oath by the big holy devil
that this time he would be paid. Midsummer was come, and the Malavoglia
were once more talking of paying on account because they had not got
together the whole sum, and hoped to pick it up at the olive harvest.
He had taken those pence out of his own mouth, and hadn’t bread to
eat--before God he hadn’t. He couldn’t live upon air until the olive
harvest.
“I’m sorry, Padron ’Ntoni,” he said, “but what will you have? I must
think of my own interest first. Even Saint Joseph shaved himself first,
and then the rest.”
“It will soon be a year that it has been going on,” added Uncle
Crucifix, when he was growling with Uncle Tino alone, “and not one
centime of interest have I touched. Those two hundred lire will hardly
cover the expenses. You’ll see that at the time of olives they’ll put
you off till Christmas, and then till Easter again. That’s the way
people are ruined. But I have made my money by the sweat of my brow.
Now one of them is in Paradise, the other wants to marry La Zuppidda;
they’ll never be able to get on with that patched-up old boat, and they
are trying to marry the girl. They never think of anything but marrying,
those people; they have a madness for it, like my niece Vespa. Now, when
Mena is married you’ll see that Mosca’ll come back and carry her off,
with her field.”
He wound up by scolding about the lawyer, who took such a time about the
papers before he sent in the summons.
“Padron ’Ntoni will have been there to tell him to wait,” suggested
Goosefoot. “With an ounce of pitch one can buy ten such lawyers as
that.”
This time he had quarrelled seriously with the Malavoglia, because La
Zuppidda had taken his wife’s clothes out of the bottom of the tank
and had put hers in their place. Such a mean thing as that he could not
bear; La Zuppidda wouldn’t have thought of it if she hadn’t got that
pumpkin-head of a ’Ntoni Malavoglia behind her, a bully that he was.
A good-for-nothing lot they were, the Malavoglia, and he didn’t want to
see any more of them, swearing and blaspheming as his wont was.
The stamped paper began to rain in on them, and Goosefoot declared that
the lawyer couldn’t have been content with the bribe Padron ’Ntoni had
given him to let them alone, and that proved what a miser he was; and
how much he was to be trusted when he promised to pay what he owed
people. Padron ’Ntoni went back to the town-clerk and to the lawyer
Scipione, but he laughed in his face and told him that he was a fool for
his pains; that he should never have let his daughter-in-law give in to
it, and as he had made his bed so he must lie down.
“Woe to the fallen man who asks for help!”
“Listen to me,” suggested Don Silvestro. “You’d better let them have the
house; if not, they’ll take the _Provvidenza_ and everything else, even
to the hair off your head; and you lose all your time, besides, running
backward and forward to the lawyer.”
“If you give up the house quietly,” said Goose-foot to the old man,
“we’ll leave you the _Provvidenza_, and you’ll be able to earn your
bread and will remain master of your ship, and not be troubled with any
more stamped paper.”
After all, Cousin Tino wasn’t such a bad fellow. He went on talking to
Padron ’Ntoni as if it hadn’t been his affair at all, passing his
arm over his shoulder and saying to him, “Pardon me, brother, I am more
sorry than you are; it goes to my heart to turn you out of your house,
but what can I do? I’m only a poor devil; I’m not rich, like Uncle
Crucifix. If those five hundred lire hadn’t come actually out of my
very mouth, I would never have troubled you about them--upon my word I
wouldn’t.”
The poor old man hadn’t the courage to tell his daughter-in-law that
she must go “quietly” out of the house by the medlar-tree. After so many
years that they had been there, it was like going into banishment, or
like those who had gone away meaning to come back, and had come back no
more. And there was Luca’s bed there, and the nail where Bastianazzo’s
pea-jacket used to hang. But at last the time came that they had to
move, with all those poor sticks of furniture, and take them out of
their old places, where each left a mark on the wall where it had
stood, and the house without them looked strange and unlike itself. They
carried their things out by night into the sexton’s cottage, which they
had hired, as if everybody in the place didn’t know that now the house
belonged no more to them but to Goosefoot, and that they had to move
away from it. But at all events no one saw them carrying their things
from one house to the other. Every time the old man pulled out a nail,
or moved a cupboard from the corner where it was used to stand, he shook
his poor old head. Then the others, when all was done, sat down upon a
heap of straw in the middle of the room to rest, and looked about here
and there to see if anything had been forgotten. But the grandfather
could not stay inside, and went out into the court in the open air. But
there, too, was the scattered straw and broken crockery and coils of old
rope, and in a corner the medlar-tree and the vine hanging in clusters
over the door. “Come, boys, let’s go. Sooner or later we must,” and
never moved.
Maruzza looked at the door of the court out of which Luca and
Bastianazzo had gone for the last time, and the lane where she had
watched her boy go off through the rain, with his trousers turned up,
and then thought how the oil-skin cape had hidden him from her view.
Cousin Alfio Mosca’s window, too, was shut close, and the vine hung over
the way, so that every one who passed by plucked off its grapes.
Each one had something in the house which it was specially hard to
leave, and the old man, in passing out, laid his head softly, in the
dark, on the old door, which Uncle Crucifix had said was in need of a
good piece of wood and a handful of nails.
Uncle Crucifix had come to look over the house, and Goosefoot with him,
and they talked loud in the empty rooms, where the voices rang as if
they had been in a church.
Cousin Tino hadn’t been able to live all that time upon air, and had
sold everything to old Dumb-bell to get back his money.
“What can I do Cousin Malavoglia?” he said, passing his arm over his
shoulder. “You know I’m only a poor devil, and can’t spare five hundred
lire. If you had been rich I’d have sold the house to you.”
But Padron ’Ntoni couldn’t bear to go about the house like that, with
Goosefoot’s arm on his shoulder. Now Uncle Crucifix was come with the
carpenter and the mason and a lot of people, who ran about the place as
if they had been in the public square, and said, “Here must go bricks,
here a new beam, here the floor must all be done over,” as if they had
been the masters. And they talked, too, of whitewashing it all over, and
making it look quite a different thing.
Uncle Crucifix went about kicking the straw and the broken rubbish out
of the way, and picking up off the floor a bit of an old hat that had
belonged to Bastianazzo, he flung it out of the window into the garden,
saying it was good for manure. The medlar-tree rustled softly meanwhile,
and the garlands of daisies, now withered, that had been put up at
Whitsuntide, still hung over the windows and the door.
From this time the Malavoglia never showed themselves in the street or
at church, and went all the way to Aci Castello to the mass, and no one
spoke to them any more, not even Padron Cipolla, who went about saying:
“Padron ’Ntoni had no right to play me such a trick as that. That was
real cheating to let his daughter-in-law give up her rights for the sake
of the debt for the lupins.”
“Just what my wife says,” added Master Zuppiddu. “She says even the dogs
in the street wouldn’t have any of the Malavoglia now.”
All the same, that young heathen Brasi howled and swore that he wanted
Mena; she had been promised him, and he would have her, and he stamped
and stormed like a baby before a toyshop at a fair.
“Do you think I stole my property, you lazy hound, that you want to
fling it away with a lot of beggars?” shouted his father.
They even took back Brasi’s new clothes, and he worked out his
ill-temper by chasing lizards on the down, or sitting astride of
the wall by the washing-tank, swearing that he wouldn’t do a hand’s
turn--no, that he wouldn’t, not if they killed him for it, now that
they wouldn’t give him his wife, and they had taken back even his
wedding-clothes. Fortunately, Mena couldn’t see him looking as he did
now, for the Malavoglia always kept the door shut down there at the
sexton’s cottage, which they had hired, in the black street near the
Zuppiddi; and if Brasi chanced to see any of them, if it were ever
so far off, he ran to hide himself behind a wall or among the
prickly-pears.
Mena was quite tranquil, however--there was so much to do in the new
house, where they had to find places for all the old things, and where
there was no longer the medlar-tree; nor could one see Cousin Anna’s
door, or Nunziata’s. Her mother watched over her like a brooding bird
while they sat working together, and her voice was like a caress when
she said to her, “Give me the scissors,” or, “Hold this skein for me”;
so that the child felt it in her inmost heart, now that every one turned
away from them; but the girl sang like a lark, for she was but eighteen,
and at that age, if the sun do but shine, everything seems bright and
the singing of the birds is in one’s heart. Besides, she had never
really cared for “that person,” she said to her mother in a whisper as
they bent together over the loom. Her mother had been the only one who
had really understood her, and had had a kind word for her in that hard
time. At least if Cousin Alfio had been there he would not have turned
his back upon them.
So goes the world. Every one must look out for himself, and so said
Cousin Venera to Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni--“Every one must see to
his own beard first, and then to the others. Your grandfather gives you
nothing; what claim has he on you? If you marry, that means that you
must set up house for yourself, and what you earn must be for your own
house and your own family. ‘Many hands are a blessing, but not all in
one dish.’”
“That would be a fine thing to do, to be sure,” answered ’Ntoni. “Now
that my relations are on the street, am I to throw them over? How is
my grandfather to manage the _Provvidenza_ and to feed them all without
me?”
“Then get out of it the best way you can!” exclaimed La Zuppidda,
turning away from him to hunt over the drawers, or in the kitchen,
upsetting everything here and there, making believe to be ever so busy,
not to have to look him in the face. “I didn’t steal my daughter. You
can go on by yourselves, because you are young and strong and can work,
and have your trade at your finger-ends--all the more now that there are
so few young men, with this devil of a conscription sweeping off all the
village every year; but if I’m to give you the dowry to spend it on your
own people, that’s another affair. I mean to give my daughter to
one husband, not to five or six, and I don’t mean she shall have two
families on her shoulders.”
Barbara, in the other room, feigned not to hear, and went on plying her
shuttle briskly all the time. But if ’Ntoni appeared at the door,
she cast down her eyes and wouldn’t look at him. The poor fellow turned
yellow and green and all sorts of colors, for she had caught him, like a
limed sparrow, with those great black eyes of hers, and then she said
to him after her mother was gone, “I’m sure you don’t love me as much as
you do your own people!” and began to cry, with her apron over her head.
“I swear,” exclaimed ’Ntoni, “I wish I could go back to soldiering
again!” and tore his hair and thumped himself in the head, but couldn’t
come to any decision one way or the other, like the pumpkin-head that he
was.
“Then,” cried the Zuppidda, “come, come! each to his own home!” And her
husband went on repeating:
“Didn’t I tell you I didn’t choose to have a fuss?”
“You be off to your work!” replied she. “You know nothing about it.”
’Ntoni, every time he went to the Zuppiddi, found them in an
ill-humor, and Cousin Venera went on throwing in his face that time that
his people had asked Goosefoot’s wife to dress Mena’s hair--and a fine
hair-dressing they’d made of it!--licking Cousin Tino’s boots because
of that twopenny business of the house, and he’d taken the house all the
same.
“Then, Cousin Venera, if you speak in this way, I suppose you mean, ‘I
don’t want you in my house any longer.’”
’Ntoni meant to play the man, and did not show himself again for two
or three days. But little Lia, who knew nothing of all this chatter,
still continued to go to play in the court at Cousin Venera’s, as they
had taught her to do in the days when Barbara used to give her chestnuts
and Indian figs for love of her brother ’Ntoni, only now they gave her
nothing. And La Zuppidda said to her: “Have you come here to look for
your brother? Does your mother think we want to steal your precious
brother?”
Things came to such a pass that La Longa and La Venera did not speak,
and turned their backs upon each other if they met at church.
’Ntoni, bewitched by Barbara’s eyes, went back to stand before the
windows, trying to make peace, so that Cousin Venera threatened to fling
water over him one time or another; and even her daughter shrugged her
shoulders at him, now that the Malavoglia had neither king nor kingdom.
And she said it to his face, too, to be rid of him, for he stood like
a dog always in front of the window, and might stand in the way of a
better match, too, if any one were to come that way for her.
“Now then, Cousin ’Ntoni, ‘the fish of the sea are destined for those
who shall eat them’; let’s make up our minds to say good-bye, and have
it over.”
“You may say good-bye to it all, Cousin Barbara, but I can’t. Love isn’t
over so easily as that with me.”
“Try. I guess you can manage it. There’s nothing like trying. I wish you
all the good in the world, but leave me to look after my own affairs,
for I am already twenty-two.”
“I knew it would come to this when they took our house, and everybody
turned their backs on us.”
“Listen, Cousin ’Ntoni. My mother may come at any minute, and it won’t
do for her to find you here.”
“Yes, yes, I know; now that they’ve taken our house, it isn’t fair.”
Poor ’Ntoni’s heart was full; he couldn’t bear to part from her like
that. But she had to go to the fountain to fill her pitcher, and she
said adieu to him, walking off quickly, swaying lightly as she went;
for though they were called hobblers because her great-grandfather had
broken his leg in a collision of wagons at the fair of Trecastagni,
Barbara had both her legs, and very good ones too.
“Adieu, Cousin Barbara,” said the poor fellow; and so he put a
stone over all that had been, and went back to his oar like a
galley-slave--and galley-slave’s work it was from Monday morning till
Saturday night--and he was tired of wearing out his soul for nothing,
for when one has nothing, what good can come of driving away from
morning till night, with never a dog to be friends with one either, and
for that he had had enough of such a life. He preferred rather to do
nothing at all, and stay in bed, as if he were sick, as they did on
board ship when the service was too hard, for the grandpapa wouldn’t
come to pull him and thump him like the ship’s doctor.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing. Only I’m a poor miserable devil.”
“And what can be done for you, if you are a poor miserable devil? We
must go on as we come into the world.”
He let himself be loaded down with tackle, like a beast of burden, and
the whole day long never opened his mouth except to growl and to swear.
On Sunday ’Ntoni went hanging about the tavern, where people did
nothing but laugh and amuse themselves; or else he sat for whole hours
on the church steps, with his chin in his hands, watching the people
passing by, and pondering over this hard life, where there was nothing
to be got by doing anything.
At least on Sunday there was something that cost nothing--the sun, the
standing idle with hands in one’s pockets; and then he grew tired even
of thinking of his hard fate, and longing to bask again in the strange
places he had seen when he was a soldier, and with the memory of which
he amused himself on working-days. He only cared to lie like a lizard
basking in the sun. And when the carters passed, sitting on their
shafts, he muttered, “They have an easy time of it, driving about like
that all day long and when some poor little old woman came from the
town, bent down under her heavy burden like a tired donkey, lamenting
as she went, as is the manner of the old, he said to her, by way of
consolation:
“I would be willing to take your work, my sister; after all, it is like
going out for a walk.”
Padron ’Ntoni would go off to old Crucifix, saying to him over and
over again, at least a hundred times: “You know, Uncle Crucifix, if we
can manage to put the money together for the house you must sell it to
us and to nobody else, for it has always belonged to the Malavoglia, and
‘his own nest every bird likes best,’ and I long to die in my own bed.
‘Blest is he who dies in the bed where he was born.’”
Uncle Crucifix muttered something which sounded like “Yes,” not to
compromise himself, and then would go off and put a new tile or a patch
of lime on the wall of the court, to make an excuse for raising the
price of the house.
Uncle Crucifix would reassure him in this way: “Never fear, never fear;
the house won’t run away, you know. Only keep an eye upon it. Every one
should keep an eye upon whatever he sets store by.” And once he went on,
“Isn’t your Mena going to be married?”
“She shall be married when it shall please God,” replied Padron
’Ntoni. “For my part, I should be glad if it were to be to-morrow.”
“If I were you I would give her to Alfio Mosca; he’s a nice young
fellow, honest and hard-working, always looking out for a wife
everywhere he goes; it is the only fault he has. Now they say he’s
coming back to the place. He’s cut out for your granddaughter.”
“But they said he wanted to marry your niece Vespa.”
“You too! You too!” Dumb-bell began to scream, in his cracked voice.
“Who says so? That’s all idle chatter. He wants to get hold of her
ground, that’s what he wants! A pretty thing that would be! How would
you like me to sell your house to somebody else?”
And Goosefoot, who was always hanging about the piazza, ready to put
in his oar whenever he saw two people talking together, broke in with,
“Vespa has Brasi Cipolla in her head just now, since his marriage with
Sant’Agata is broken off. I saw them with my own eyes walking down the
path by the stream together.”
“A nice lot, eh?” screamed Uncle Crucifix, quite forgetting his
deafness. “That witch is the devil himself. We must tell Padron
Fortunato about it, that we must. Are we honest men, or are we not?
If Padron Fortunato doesn’t look out, that witch of a niece of mine will
carry off his son before his eyes, poor old fellow.”
And off he ran up the street like a madman. In less than ten minutes
Uncle Crucifix had turned the place topsy-turvy, wanting to call Don
Michele and his guest to look up his niece; for, after all, she was his
niece, and belonged to him, and wasn’t Don Michele paid to look after
what belonged to honest men? Everybody laughed to see Padron Cipolla
running hither and thither, panting like a dog with his tongue out,
after his great lout of a son, and said it was no more than he deserved
that his son should be snapped up by the Wasp when he thought Victor
Emmanuel’s daughter hardly good enough for him, and had broken off with
the Malavoglia without even saying “by your leave.”
Mena had not put on mourning, however, when her marriage went off; on
the contrary, she began once more to sing at her loom, and while she
was helping to salt down the anchovies in the fine summer evenings,
for Saint Francis had sent that year such a provision as never was--a
_passage_ of anchovies such as no one could remember in any past year,
enough to enrich the whole place; the barks came in loaded, with the men
on board singing and shouting and waving their caps above their heads
in sign of success to the women and children who waited for them on the
shore.
The buyers came from the city in crowds, on foot, on horseback, and in
carts and wagons, and Goosefoot hadn’t even time to scratch his head.
Towards sunset there was a crowd like a fair, and cries and jostling and
pushing so as no one ever saw the like. In the Malavoglia’s court the
lights were burning until midnight, as if there were a festa there. The
girls sang, and the neighbors came to help their cousin Anna’s daughters
and Nunziata, because every one could earn something, and along the wall
were four ranges of barrels all ready prepared, with stones on the top
of them.
“I wish the Zuppidda were here now!” exclaimed ’Ntoni, sitting on the
stones to make weight, and folding his arms; “then she would see that we
can manage for ourselves as good as anybody, and snap our fingers at Don
Michele and Don Silvestro.”
The buyers ran after Padron ’Ntoni with money down in their hands.
Goosefoot pulled him by the sleeve, saying, “Now’s your time; make your
profit while you can.”
But Padron ’Ntoni would only answer: “Wait till All Saints, that’s the
time to sell anchovies. No, I won’t take earnest-money. I don’t mean to
be tied; I know how things will go.” And he thumped on the barrels with
his fist, saying to his grandchildren: “Here is your house and Mena’s
dowry; and the old house is ready to take you to its arms. Saint Francis
has been merciful. I shall close my eyes in peace.”
At the same time they had made all their provision for the
winter--grain, beans, oil--and had given earnest to Don Filippo for a
little wine for Sundays. Now they were tranquil once more. Father and
daughter-in-law began once more to count the money in the stocking,
and the barrels ranged against the wall of the court, and made their
calculations as to what more was needed for the house. Maruzza knew the
money, coin from coin, and said, “This from the oranges and eggs; this
from Ales-sio for work at the railroad; this Mena earned at the loom;”
and she said, too, “Each has something here from his own work.”
“Did I not tell you,” said Padron ’Ntoni, “that to pull a good oar
all the five fingers must help each other? Now there is but little more
needed.” And then he would go off into a corner with La Longa, and
they would have a great confabulation, looking from time to time at
Sant’Agata, who deserved, poor child, that they should talk of her,
because she had neither word nor will of her own, and attended to her
work, singing softly under her breath like a bird on its nest before the
break of morning; and only when she heard the carts pass on the highroad
in the evening she thought of Cousin Alfio Mosca’s cart, that was
wandering about the wide world, she knew not where; and then she
stopped singing.
In the whole place nothing was seen but men carrying nets and women
sitting in their doors pounding salt and broken bricks together; and
before every door was a row of tiny barrels, so that it was a real
pleasure to a Christian to snuff the precious odor as he passed, and for
a mile away the breath of the gifts of the blessed Saint Francis floated
on the breeze; there was nothing talked of but anchovies and brine,
even in the drug-store, where all the affairs of all the world were
discussed. Don Franco wanted to teach them a new way of salting down,
a receipt which he had found in a book. They turned their backs on
him, and left him storming like a madman. Since the world was a world,
anchovies had always been cured with salt and pounded bricks.
“The usual cry! My grandfather used to do it,” the druggist went on
shouting at them. “You want nothing but tails to be complete asses! What
is to be done with such a lot as this? And they are quite contented,
too, with Master Croce Giufà (which means oaf), because he has always
been syndic; they would be capable of saying that they didn’t want a
republic because they had never seen one.” This speech he repeated to
Don Silvestro on a certain occasion when they had a conversation without
witnesses. That is to say, Don Franco talked, and Don Silvestro listened
in silence. He afterwards learned that Don Silvestro had broken with
Betta, the syndic’s daughter, because she insisted on being syndic
herself; and her father let her wear the breeches, so that he said white
to-day and black to-morrow.