"If I let him do as he pleases, I should not make my fifteen _tari_ a
day. His hide's got to pay for mine. When he can't do any more work I
shall sell him to the lime dealer; for the beast is good enough for
his work. I tell you there's no truth at all in the idea that St.
Joseph's asses are _vigliacchi_. Besides, I got this one of _massaro_
Cirino for a piece of bread, after he was 'poverished."
* * * * *
In this way the Saint Joseph's ass passed into the hands of the
lime-dealer, who already possessed a score or more of asses all lean
and moribund, which carried his sacks of plaster, and picked up a
wretched living by means of the mouthfuls of weeds that they could
snatch as they went along the road.
The lime-dealer objected to the Saint Joseph's ass because it was
covered with worse scars than his other beasts, with its legs seared
by the hot iron, and the skin on its chest worn off by the poitrel,
and the withers raw by the chafing of the plow, and the knees barked
by constant falls, and then that pelt of black and white seemed to him
so inharmonious among his other brown-skinned animals.
"That makes no difference," replied _compare_ Luciano. "Besides, it
will serve to distinguish your asses at a distance."
But he deducted two _tari_ from the seven _lire_ that he had asked, so
as to bring the business to a settlement.
Now the Saint Joseph's ass would not have been recognized even by the
_padrona_ who had been present when it was born, so greatly had it
changed as it stumbled along with its nose to the ground and its ears
curled over like an umbrella under the lime-dealer's heavy sacks,
twitching its flanks under the blows of the youth who drove the
caravan. But then the _padrona_ herself was changed at that time,
what with the bad harvests they had gathered and the hunger from which
she had suffered, and the fevers which they had all contracted in the
low lands, she and her husband and her Turiddu, while they had no
money to buy any more quinine at the apothecary's and at the same time
they had no more asses even of the Saint Joseph kind to sell for the
small price of thirty-five _lire_!
In winter, when there was little work and the wood for burning the
lime was scarce, and to be had only at a distance, and the frozen
paths hadn't a leaf on their hedges or a mouthful of stubble along by
the icy gutters, life was still harder for those poor brutes, and the
_padrone_ knew that in winter not half as much was eaten; so he used
to buy a good stock of provisions in the spring.
At night the drove remained in the open air near the lime-burners, and
the brutes clustered together for protection against the cold. But
those stars shining like swords through and through them in spite of
their thick hides, and all those ulcer-eaten beasts shook and trembled
in the cold as if they were human beings.
But then there are many Christians who are not better off, not having
even such a ragged coat as that wrapt up in which the herd-boy slept
before the furnace.
Near by there lived a poor widow in a dilapidated hut, more
tumble-down by far than the lime-furnace, and through its roof the
stars penetrated like swords, as if it were no roof at all, and the
wind fluttered the wretched rags of her covering. At first she took in
washing, but that was meagre pay, for the people thereabouts do their
own washing, when they wash at all, and now that her little boy had
grown she went about peddling wood in the village. No one had known
her husband and no one knew where she got the wood that she sold; that
was known only by her son, who went about picking it up here and
there at the risk of getting shot by the _campieri_.
"If you only had an ass!" the lime-dealer had said to her, hoping that
he might dispose of that Saint Joseph's ass, which was good for
nothing more, "then you could take down to the village much bigger
fagots, now that your son is getting to be grown up."
The poor woman had a few _lire_ in the knot of her handkerchief, and
she let herself be persuaded into it by the lime-burner, because it is
said that "old things go to destruction in the house of a fool."
One thing at least was true: the poor Saint Joseph's ass had a more
endurable existence at last, because the widow regarded it as a
treasure by reason of the few _soldi_ that it had cost her, and she
went out nights in search of straw and hay for it, and she kept it in
her hut next her own bed because its vital heat was as good as a fire,
and in this way one hand washed the other, as the proverb has it.
The woman driving the ass loaded with a mountain of wood so that its
ears could not be seen, built air-castles as she went, and her son
ravaged the hedges, and risked his life in the borders of the
woodlands to gather together his load, while both mother and son had
an idea that they were going to become rich by that business, until,
finally, the baron's _campiere_ caught the boy breaking off branches,
and gave him a terrible beating.
The doctor, for the price of curing the lad, devoured all the spare
_soldi_ knotted in the handkerchief, the store of wood, and whatever
else vendible she had,--and that was not much in all conscience,--so
that the widow one night when her son was in a raging fever, with his
face turned to the wall, and there was not a mouthful of bread in the
house, went out, raging and talking to herself, as if she, too, had
the fever, and she went to break off an almond-tree near by in such a
way that it would not appear how it happened, and at dawn she loaded
it on the ass to go and sell it. But the ass on the way up stumbled
under the weight, and went down on its knees, just as Saint Joseph's
ass knelt before the infant Jesus, and would not get up again.
"Souls of the dead!" stammered the woman, "won't you carry this load
of wood for me."
And the passers-by pulled the ass's tail, and they bit its ears, so as
to make it get up.
"Don't you see it's dying?" at last remarked a carter, and so at least
the others let it alone, because the ass had the eye of a dead fish, a
cold nose, and a shudder ran over its skin.
The woman, meantime, thought of her son, who was delirious with fever,
and a flushed face, and cried,--
"Now what shall we do,--what shall we do?"
"If you will sell it, and all the wood on its back for five _tari_,
I'll give that much," said the carter who had an empty cart; and as
the woman looked at it with squinting eyes, he added, "I'll only take
the wood, for the ass isn't worth that--"
And he gave a kick to the carcass, which sounded like a burst drum.