|Padron ’Ntoni, now that he had no one but Alessio to help him with
the boat, had to hire some one by the day--Cousin Nunzio, perhaps, who
had a sick wife and a large family of children; or the son of La Locca,
who came whining to him behind the door that his mother was starving,
and that his uncle Crucifix would give them nothing, because, he said,
the cholera had ruined him, so many of his debtors had died and had
cheated him out of his money, and he had taken the cholera himself. “But
he hadn’t died,” added the son of La Locca, and shook his head ruefully.
“Now we might have plenty to live on, I and my mother and all the
family, if he had died. We stayed two days with Vespa, nursing him,
and it seemed as if he were dying every minute, but he didn’t die after
all.” However, the money that the Malavoglia gained day by day was often
not enough to pay Cousin Nunzio or the son of La Locca, and they were
obliged to take up those precious coins so painfully put together to
buy back the house by the medlar-tree. Every time Mena went to take
the stocking from under the mattress she and her grandfather sighed. La
Locca’s son was not to blame, poor fellow--he would have done four men’s
work sooner than not give the full worth of his wages--it was the fish,
that would not let themselves be caught. And when they came ruefully
home empty, rowing, with loosened sails, he said to Padron ’Ntoni:
“Give me wood to split, or fagots to bind; I will work until midnight,
if you say so, as I did with my uncle. I don’t want to steal the wages
from you.”
So Padron ’Ntoni, after having thought the matter over carefully,
consulted Mena as to what was to be done. She was clear-headed, like her
mother, and she was the only one left for him to consult--the only one
left of so many! The best thing was to sell the _Provvidenza_, which
brought in nothing, and only ate up the wages of Cousin Nunzio or the
son of La Locca to no purpose; and the money put aside for the house was
melting away, little by little. The _Provvidenza_ was old, and always
needed to be mended every now and then to keep her afloat. Later, if
’Ntoni came back and brought better fortune once more among them, they
might buy a new boat and call that also the _Provvidenza_.
On Sunday he went to the piazza, after the mass, to speak to Goosefoot
about it. Cousin Tino shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, said that
the _Provvidenza_ was good for nothing but to put under the pot, and
talking in this way he drew him down to the shore. The patches, he said,
could be seen under the paint, like some women he knew of with wrinkles
under their stays; and went on kicking her in the hull with his lame
foot. Besides, the trade was going badly; rather than buy, everybody was
trying to sell their boats, much better than the Provvidenza. And who
was going to buy her? Padron Cipolla didn’t want old stuff like that.
This was an affair for Uncle Crucifix. But at this moment Uncle Crucifix
had something else on his hands--with that demon-ridden Vespa, who was
tormenting his soul out running after all the marriageable men in the
place. At last, for old friendship’s sake, he agreed to go and speak
to Uncle Crucifix about it, if he found him in a good humor---if Padron
’Ntoni were really anxious to sell the _Provvidenza_ for an old song;
for, after all, he, Goosefoot, could make Uncle Crucifix do anything he
liked. In fact, when he did speak of it--drawing him aside towards the
horse-trough--Uncle Crucifix replied with shrugs and frantic shakings
of his head, till he looked like one possessed, and tried to slip out
of Goosefoot’s hands. Cousin Tino, poor man, did his best--caught him
by the coat and held him by force; shook him, to make him give his
attention; put his arm round his neck, and whispered in his ear: “Yes,
you are an ass if you let slip such a chance! Going for an old song,
I tell you! Padron ’Ntoni sells her because he can’t manage her any
longer, now his grandson is gone. But you could put her into the hands
of Cousin Nunzio, or of your own nephew, who are dying of hunger, and
will work for next to nothing. Every soldo she gains will come into
your pocket. I tell you, you are a fool. The boat is in perfectly good
condition--good as new. Old Padron ’Ntoni knew very well what he was
about when he had her built. This is a real ready money business--as
good as that of the lupins, take my word for it!”
But Uncle Crucifix wouldn’t listen to him--almost crying, with his
yellow hatchet-face uglier than ever since he had nearly died of the
cholera--and tried to get away, even to the point of leaving his jacket
in Uncle Tino’s hands.
“I don’t care about it,” said he; “I don’t care about anything. You
don’t know all the trouble I have, Cousin Tino! Everybody wants to suck
my blood like so many leeches. Here’s Vanni Pizzuti running after Vespa,
too; they’re like a pack of hunting-dogs.”
“Why don’t you marry her yourself? After all, is she not your own blood,
she and her field? It will not be another mouth to feed, not at all! She
has a clever pair of hands of her own, she is well worth the bread she
eats, that woman. You’ll have a servant without wages, and the land will
be yours. Listen, Uncle Crucifix: you’ll have another affair here as
good as that of the lupins.”
Padron ’Ntoni meanwhile waited for the answer before Pizzuti’s shop,
and watched the two who were discussing his affairs, like a soul in
purgatory. Now it seemed as if everything were at an end, now they began
again, and he tried to guess whether or no Uncle Crucifix would consent
to the bargain. Goosefoot came and told him how much he had been able
to obtain for him, then went back to Uncle Crucifix--going backward
and forward in the piazza like the shuttle in the loom, dragging his
club-foot behind him, until he had succeeded in bringing them to an
agreement.
“Capital!” he said to Padron ’Ntoni; then to Uncle Crucifix, “For an
old song, I tell you!” And in this way he managed the sale of all the
tackle, which, of course, was no longer of any use to the Malavoglia,
now that they had no boat; but it seemed to Padron ’Ntoni that they
took away his very heart from within him, as he saw them carry away the
nets, the baskets, the oars, the rope--everything.
“I’ll manage to get you a position by the day, and your grandson Alessio
too, never fear,” said Goosefoot to Padron ’Ntoni; “but you mustn’t
expect high wages, you know! ‘Strength of youth and wisdom of age.’ For
my assistance in the bargaining I trust to your good-will.”
“In time of famine one eats barley bread,” answered Padron ’Ntoni.
“Necessity has no nobility.”
“That’s right, that’s right! I understand,” replied Goosefoot, and away
he went, in good earnest, to speak to Padron Cipolla at the drug-store,
where Don Silvestro had at last succeeded in enticing him, as well as
Master Filippo and a few other bigwigs, to talk over the affairs of the
Commune--for after all, the money was theirs, and it is silly not to
take one’s proper place in the government when one is rich and pays more
taxes than all the rest put together.
“You, who are rich, can afford a bit of bread to that poor old Padron
’Ntoni,” suggested Goosefoot. “It will cost you nothing to take him on
by the day, him and his grandson Alessio. You know that he understands
his business better than any one else in the place, and he will be
content with little, for they are absolutely without bread. It is an
affair worth gold to you, Padron Fortunato; it is indeed.”
Padron Fortunato, caught as he was just at that propitious moment, could
not refuse; but after higgling and screwing over the price--for, now
that the times were so bad, he really hadn’t work for any more men--he
at last made a great favor of taking on Padron ’Ntoni.
“Yes, I’ll take him if he’ll come and speak to me himself. Will you
believe that they are out of temper because I broke off my son’s
marriage with Mena? A fine thing I should have made of it! And to be
angry about it! What could I do?”
Don Silvestro, Master Filippo, Goosefoot himself--all of them, in
fact--hastened to say that Padron Fortunato was quite right.
Mena, meanwhile, did not even put her nose at the window, for it was
not seemly to do so now that her mother was dead and she had a black
kerchief on her head; and, besides, she had to look after the little
one and to be a mother to her, and she had no one to help her in
the housework, so that she had to go to the tank to wash and to the
fountain, and to take the men their luncheon when they were at work on
land; so that she was not Sant’Agata any longer, as in the days when no
one ever saw her and she was all day long at the loom. In these days she
had but little time for the loom. Don Michele, since the day when the
Zuppidda had given him such a talking to from her terrace, and had
threatened to put out his eyes with her distaff, never failed to pass
by the black street; and sometimes he passed two or three times a day,
looking after Barbara, because he wasn’t going to have people say that
he was afraid of the Zuppidda or of her distaff; and when he passed the
house where the Malavoglia lived he slackened his pace, and looked in to
see the pretty girls who were growing up at the Malavoglia’s.
In the evening, when the men came back from sea, they found everything
ready for them: the pot boiling on the fire, the cloth ready on the
table--that table that was so large for them, now that they were so few,
that they felt lost at it. They shut the door and ate their supper in
peace; then they sat down on the door-step to rest after the fatigues
of the day. At all events, they had enough for the day’s needs, and
were not obliged to touch the money that was accumulating for the house.
Pa-dron ’Ntoni had always that house in his mind, with its closed
windows and the medlar-tree rising above the wall. Maruzza had not been
able to die in that house, nor perhaps should he die there; but the
money was beginning to grow again, and his boys at least would go back
there some day or other, now that Alessio was growing into a man, and
was a good boy, and one of the true Malavoglia stamp. When they had
bought back the house, and married the girls, if they might get a boat
again they would have nothing more to wish for, and Padron ’Ntoni
might close his eyes in peace.
Nunziata and Anna, their cousin, came to sit on the stones with them in
the evenings to talk over old times, for they, too, were left lonely and
desolate, so that they seemed like one family. Nun-ziata felt as if she
were at home in the house, and came with her brood running after her,
like a hen with her chickens. Alessio, sitting down by her, would say,
“Did you finish your linen?” or “Are you going on Monday to Master
Filippo to help with the vintage? Now that the olive harvest is coming
you’ll always find a day’s work somewhere, even when you haven’t any
washing to do; and you can take your brother, too; they’ll give him two
soldi a day.” Nunziata talked to him gravely, and asked his advice with
regard to her plans, and they talked apart together, as if they had
already been a gray-haired old couple.
“They have grown wise in their youth because they have had so much
trouble,” said Padron ’Ntoni. “Wisdom comes of suffering.”
Alessio, with his arms round his knees like his grandfather, asked
Nunziata, “Will you have me for a husband when I grow up?”
“Plenty of time yet to think about that,” replied she.
“Yes, there’s time, but one must begin to think about it now, so that
one may settle what is to be done. First, of course, we must marry Mena,
and Lia when she is grown up. Lia wants to be dressed like a woman now,
and you have your boys to find places for. We must buy a boat first; the
boat will help us to buy the house. Grandfather wants to buy back the
house by the medlar, and I should like that best, too, for I know my way
all about it, even in the dark, without running against anything; and
the court is large, so that there’s plenty of room for the tackle; and
in two minutes one is at the sea. Then, when my sisters are married,
grandfather can stay with us, and we’ll put him in the big room that
opens on the court, where the sun comes in; so, when he isn’t able to
go to sea any longer, poor old man! he can sit by the door in the court,
and in the summer the medlar-tree will make a shade for him. We’ll take
the room on the garden. You’ll like that? The kitchen is close by,
so you’ll have everything under your hand, won’t you? When my brother
’Ntoni comes back we’ll give him that room, and we’ll take the one
up-stairs; there are only the steps to climb to reach the kitchen and
the garden.”
“In the kitchen there must be a new hearth,” said Nunziata. “The last
time we cooked anything there, when poor Cousin Maruzza was too unhappy
to do it herself, we had to prop up the pot with stones.”
“Yes, I remember,” said Alessio, sitting with his chin in his hands, and
nodding gravely, with wide dreamy eyes as if he saw Nunziata at the fire
and his poor mother weeping beside the bed.
“And you, too,” said he, “can find your way in the dark about the house
by the medlar, you have been there so often. Mamma always said you were
a good girl.”
“Now they have sown onions in the garden, and they’re grown as big as
oranges.”
“Do you like onions?”
“I must; I have no choice. They help the bread down, and they are cheap.
When we haven’t money enough to buy macaroni we always eat them--I and
my little ones.”
“For that they sell so well. Uncle Crucifix doesn’t care about planting
cabbages or lettuce at the house by the medlar, because he has them at
his own house, and so he puts nothing there but onions. But we’ll plant
broccoli and cauliflower. Won’t they be good, eh?”
The girl, with her arms across her knees, curled upon the threshold,
looked out with dreaming eyes, as well as the boy; then after a while
she began to sing, and Alessio listened with all his ears. At last she
said, “There’s plenty of time yet.”
“Yes,” assented Alessio; “first we must marry Mena and Lia, and we must
find places for the boys, but we must begin to talk it over now.”
“When Nunziata sings,” said Mena, coming to the door, “it is a sign that
it will be fair weather, and we can go to-morrow to wash.”
Cousin Anna was in the same mind, for her field and vineyard was the
washing-tank, and her feast-days were those on which she had her hands
full of clothes to be washed; all the more now that her son Rocco was
feasting himself every day, after his fashion, at the tavern, trying
to drown his regret for the Mangiacarubbe, who had thrown him over for
Brasi Cipolla, like a coquette as she was.
“‘It’s a long lane that has no turning,’” said Padron ’Ntoni. “Perhaps
this may bring your son Rocco to his senses. And it will be good for my
’Ntoni, too, to be away from home for a while; for when he comes back,
and is tired of wandering about the world, everything will seem as it
should be, and he will not complain any more. And if we succeed in once
more putting our own boat at sea--and it’s putting our own beds in the
old places that we know so well--you will see what pleasant times we
shall have resting on the door-steps there, when we are tired after our
day’s work, when the day has been a good one. And how bright the light
will look in that room where you have seen it so often, and have known
all the faces that were dearest to you on earth! But now so many are
gone, and never have come back, that it seems as if the room would be
always dark, and the door shut, as if those who are gone had taken the
key with them forever. ’Ntoni should not have gone away,” added the
old man, after a long silence. “He knew that I was old, and that when I
am gone the children will have no one left.”
“If we buy the house by the medlar while he is gone,” said Mena, “he
won’t know it, and will come here to find us.”
Padron ’Ntoni shook his head sadly. “But there’s time enough yet,” he
said at last, like Nun-ziata; and Cousin Anna added, “If ’Ntoni comes
back rich he can buy the house.”
Padron ’Ntoni answered nothing, but the whole place knew that ’Ntoni
would come back rich, now he had been gone so long in search of fortune;
and many envied him already, and wanted to go in search of fortune too,
like him. In fact they were not far wrong. They would only leave a few
women to fret after them, and the only ones who hadn’t the heart to
leave their women were that stupid son of La Locca, whose mother was
what everybody knew she was, and Rocco Spatu, whose soul was at the
tavern. Fortunately for the women, Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni was
suddenly discovered to have come back, by night, in a bark from Catania,
ashamed to show himself, as he had no shoes. If it were true that he had
come back rich he had nowhere to put his money, for his clothes were all
rags and tatters. But his family received him as affectionately as if he
had come back loaded with gold. His sisters hung round his neck, crying
and laughing for joy, and ’Ntoni did not know Lia again, so tall she
was, and they all said to him, “Now you won’t leave us again, will you?”
The grandfather blew his nose and growled, “Now I can die in peace--now
that these children will not be left alone in the world.”
But for a whole week ’Ntoni never showed himself in the street. Every
one laughed when they saw him, and Goosefoot went about saying, “Have
you seen the grand fortune that Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni has brought
home?” And those who had not been in such a terrible hurry to make up
their bundles of shirts and stockings, to leave their homes like a lot
of fools, could not contain themselves for laughing.
Whoever goes in search of fortune and does not find it is a fool.
Everybody knows that. Don Silvestro, Uncle Crucifix, Padron Cipolla,
Master Filippo, were not fools, and everybody did their best to please
them, because poor people always stand with their mouths open staring
at the rich and fortunate, and work for them like Cousin Mosca’s ass,
instead of kicking the cart to pieces and running off to roll on the
grass with heels in the air.
The druggist was quite right when he said that it was high time to kick
the world to pieces and make it over again. And he himself, with his big
beard and his fine talk about making the world over again, was one of
those who had known how to make a fortune, and to hold on to it too, and
he had nothing to do but to stand at his door and chat with this one and
that one; for when he had done pounding that little bit of dirty water
in his mortar his work was finished for the day. That fine trade he had
learned of his father--to make money out of the water in the cistern.
But ’Ntoni’s grandfather had taught him a trade which was nothing but
breaking one’s arms and one’s back all day long, and risking one’s life,
and dying of hunger, and never having, a day to one’s self when one
could lie on the grass in the sun, as even Mosca’s ass could sometimes
do; a real thieves’ trade, that wore one’s soul out, by Our Lady! And
he for one was tired of it, and would rather be like Rocco Spatu, who at
least didn’t work. And for that matter he cared nothing for Barbara, nor
Sara, nor any other girl in the world. They care for nothing but fishing
for husbands to work worse than dogs to give them their living, and buy
silk handkerchiefs for them to wear when they stand at their doors of a
Sunday with their hands on their full stomachs. He’d rather stand there
himself, Sunday and Monday too, and all the other days in the week,
since there was no good in working all the time for nothing. So ’Ntoni
had learned to spout as well as the druggist--that much at least he had
brought back from abroad--for now his eyes were open like a kitten’s
when it is nine days old. “The hen that goes in the street comes home
with a full crop.” If he hadn’t filled his crop with anything else, he
had filled it with wisdom, and he went about telling all he had learned
in the piazza in Pizzuti’s shop, and also at Santuzza’s tavern. Now
he went openly to the tavern, for after all he was grown up, and his
grandfather wasn’t likely to come there after him and pull his ears, and
he should know very well what to say to anybody who tried to hinder him
from going there after the little pleasure that there was to be had.
His grandfather, poor man, instead of pulling his ears, tried to touch
his feelings. “See,” he said, “now you have come, we shall soon be able
to manage to get back the house.” Always that same old song about the
house. “Uncle Crucifix has promised not to sell it to any one else. Your
mother, poor dear, was not able to die there. We can get the dowry for
Mena on the house. Then, with God’s help, we can set up another boat;
because, I must tell you, that at my age it is hard to go out by the
day, and obey other people, when one has been used to command. You were
also born of masters. Would you rather that we should buy the boat first
with the money, instead of the house? Now you are grown up, and can
have your choice, because you have seen more of the world, and should be
wiser than I am now I am old. What would you rather do?”
He would rather do nothing, that’s what he would rather do. What did
he care about the boat or the house? Then there would come another bad
year, another cholera, some other misfortune, and eat up the boat and
the house, and they would have to begin all over again, like the ants.
A fine thing! And when they had got the boat and the house, could they
leave off working, or could they eat meat and macaroni every day? While
instead, down there where he had been, there were people that went about
in carriages everyday; that’s what they did. People beside whom Don
Franco and the town-clerk were themselves no better than beasts of
burden, working, as they did, all day long, spoiling paper and beating
dirty water in a mortar. At least he wanted to know why there should be
people in the world who had nothing to do but to enjoy themselves,
and were born with silver spoons in their mouths, and others who had
nothing, and must drag a cart with their teeth all their lives. Besides
which, that idea of going out by the day was not at all to his taste; he
was born a master--his grandfather had said so himself. He to be ordered
about by a lot of people who had risen from nothing, who, as everybody
in the place knew, had put their money together soldo after soldo,
sweating and struggling! He had gone out by the day only because his
grandfather took him, and he hadn’t strength of mind to refuse. But when
the overseer stood over him like a dog, and called out from the stern,
“Now, then, boy, what are you at?” he felt tempted to hit him over the
head with the oar, and he preferred to weave baskets or to mend nets,
sitting on the beach, with his back against a stone, for then if he
folded his arms for a minute nobody called out at him.
Thither came also Rocco Spatu to yawn and stretch his arms, and Vanni
Pizzuti, between one customer and another, in his idle moments; and
Goosefoot came there too, for his business was to mix himself up with
every conversation that he could find in search of bargaining; * and
they talked of all that happened in the place.
* Senserie--a sort of very small brokerage, upon which a tiny percentage
is paid.
From one thing to another they got talking of Uncle Crucifix, who had,
they said, lost more than thirty scudi, through people that had died
of the cholera and had left pledges in his hands. Now, Dumb-bell, not
knowing what to do with all these ear-rings and finger-rings that had
remained on his hands, had made up his mind to marry Vespa; the thing
was certain, they had been seen to go together to write themselves up at
the Municipality, in Don Silvestro’s presence.
“It is not true that he is marrying on account of the jewellery,” said
Goosefoot, who was in a position to know; “the things are of gold or of
silver, and he could go and sell them by weight in the city; he would
have got back a good percentage on the money he had lent on them. He
marries Vespa because she took him to the Municipality to show him the
paper that she had had drawn up, ready to be signed before the notary,
with Cousin Spatu here, now that the Mangiacarubbe has dropped him for
Brasi Cipolla. Excuse me. Eh, Cousin Rocco?”
“Oh, I don’t mind, Cousin Tino,” answered Rocco Spatu. “It is nothing to
me; for whoever trusts to one of those false cats of womankind is worse
than a pig. I don’t want any sweetheart except Santuzza, who lets
me have my wine on credit when I like, and she is worth two of the
Mangiacarubbe any day of the week. A good handful, eh, Cousin Tino?”
“Pretty hostess, heavy bill,” said Pizzuti, spitting in the sand.
“They all look out for husbands to work for them,” added ’Ntoni.
“They’re all alike.”
“And,” continued Goosefoot, “Uncle Crucifix ran off panting to the
notary, with his heart in his mouth. So he had to take the Wasp after
all.”
Here the apothecary, who had come down to the beach to smoke his pipe,
joined in the conversation, and went on pounding in his usual way upon
his usual theme that the world ought to be put in a mortar and pounded
to pieces, and made all over again. But this time he really might
as well have pounded dirty water in his mortar, for not one of them
understood a word he said, unless, perhaps, it were ’Ntoni. He at
least had seen the world, and opened his eyes, like the kittens; when he
was a soldier they had taught him to read, and for that reason he, too,
went to the drug-shop door and listened when the newspaper was read, and
stayed to talk with the druggist, who was a good-natured fellow, and did
not give himself airs like his wife, who kept calling out to him, “Why
will you mix yourself up with what doesn’t concern you?”
“One must let the women talk, and manage things quietly,” said Don
Franco, as soon as his wife was safe up-stairs. He didn’t mind taking
counsel even with those who went barefoot, provided they didn’t put
their feet on the chairs, and explained to them word for word all
that there was printed in the newspaper, following it with his finger,
telling them that the world ought to go, as it was written down there.