* Dazio (French, octroi), tax on substances entering a town,levied by the town-council.
The good wine made them shout, and shouting made them thirsty (for the tax had not yet been raised on the wine), and such as had much shook their fists in the air, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, raging even at the flies.
Vanni Pizzuti had closed his shop door because no one came to be shaved, and went about with his razor in his pocket, calling out bad names from a distance, and spitting at those who went about their own business with oars on their backs, shrugging their shoulders at the noise.
Uncle Crucifix (who was one of those who attended to their own affairs, and when they drew his blood with taxes, held his tongue for fear of worse, and kept his bile inside of him) was never seen in the piazza now, leaning against the wall of the bell-tower, but kept inside his house, reciting Paternosters and Ave Marias to keep down his rage against those who were making all the row—a lot of fellows who wanted to put the place to sack, and to rob everybody who had twenty centimes in his pocket.
Whoever, like Padron Cipolla, or Master Filippo, the ortolano, had anything to lose stayed shut up at home with doors bolted, and didn’t put out even their noses; so that Brasi Cipolla got a rousing cuff from his father, who found him at the door of the court, staring into the piazza like a great stupid codfish. The big fish stayed under water while the waves ran high, and did not make their appearance, not even those who were, as Venera said, fish-heads, but left the syndic with his nose in the air, counting his papers.
“Don’t you see that they treat you like a pup-pet?” screamed his daughter Betta, with her hands on her hips. “Now that they have got you into a scrape, they turn their backs on you, and leave you alone wallowing in the mud; that’s what it means to let one’s self be led by the hose by that meddling Don Silvéstro.”
“I’m not led by the nose by anybody,” shouted the Silk-worm. “It is I who am syndic, not Don Silvestro.”
Don Silvestro, on the contrary, said the real syndic was his daughter Betta, and that Master Croce Calta wore the breeches by mistake. He still went about and about, with that red face of his, and Rocco Spatu and Cinghialenta, when they saw him, went into the tavern for fear of a mess, and Vanni Pizzuti swore loudly, tapping his razor in his breeches-pocket all the time. Don Silvestro, without noticing them, went to say a word or two to Uncle Santoro, and put two centimes into his hand.
“The Lord be praised!” cried the blind man. “This is Don Silvestro, the secretary; none of these others that come here roaring and thumping their stomachs ever give a centime in alms for the souls in Purgatory, and they go saying they mean to kill your syndic and the secretary; Vanni Pizzuti said it, and Rocco Spatu and Master Cinghialenta. Vanni Pizzuti has taken to going without shoes, not to be known; but I know his step all the same, for he drags his feet along the ground, and raises the dust like a flock of sheep passing by.”
“What is it to you?” cried his daughter, when Don Silvestro was gone. “These affairs are no business of ours. The inn is like a seaport—men come and go, and one must be friendly with all and faithful to none, for that each one has his own soul for himself, and each must look out for his own interests, and not make rash speeches about other people. Cousin Cinghialenta and Rocco Spatu spend money in our house. I don’t speak of Pizzuti, who sells absinthe, and tries to get away our customers.”
Cousin Mosca was among those who minded their own business, and passed tranquilly through the piazza with his cart, amid the crowd, who were shaking their fists in the air.
“Don’t you care whether they put on the hide tax?” asked Mena when she saw him come back with his poor donkey panting and with drooped ears.
“Yes, of course I care; but to pay the tax the cart must go, or they’ll take away the ass, and the cart as well.”
“They say they’re going to kill them all. Grandpapa told us to keep the door shut, and not to open it unless they come back. Will you go out tomorrow too?”
“I must go and take a load of lime for Master Croce Calta.”
“Oh, what are you going to do? Don’t you know he’s the syndic, and they’ll kill you too?”
“He doesn’t care for them, he says. He’s a mason, and he has to strengthen the wall of Don Filippo’s vineyard; and if they won’t have the tax on pitch Don Silvestro must think of something else.”
“Didn’t I tell you it was all Don Silvestro’s fault?” cried Mammy Venera, who was always about blowing up the fires of discord, with her distaff in her hand. “It’s all the affair of that lot, who have nothing to lose, and who don’t pay a tax on pitch because they never had so much as an old broken board at sea. It is all the fault of Don Silvestro,” she went on screeching to everybody all over the place, “and of that meddling scamp Goose-foot, who have no boat, either of them, and live on their neighbors, and hold out the hat to first one and then another. Would you like to know one of his tricks? It isn’t a bit true that he has bought the debt of Uncle Crucifix. It’s all a lie, got up between him and old Dumb-bell to rob those poor creatures. Goosefoot never even saw five hundred francs.”
Don Silvestro, to hear what they said of him, went often to the tavern to buy a cigar, and then Rocco Spatu and Vanni Pizzuti would come out of it blaspheming; or he would stop on the way home from his vineyard to talk with Uncle Santoro, and heard in this way all the tale of the fictitious purchase by Goosefoot; but he was a “Christian” with a stomach as deep as a well, and all things he left to sink into it. He knew his own business, and when Betta met him with his mouth open worse than a mad dog, and Master Croce Calta let slip his usual expression, that it didn’t matter to him, he replied, “What’ll you bet I don’t just go off and leave you?” And went no more to the syndic’s house; but on the Sunday appointed for the meeting of the council Don Silvestro, after the mass, went and planted himself in the town-hall, where there had formerly been the post of the National Guard, and began tranquilly mending his pens in front of the rough pine table to pass away the time, while La Zuppidda and the other gossips vociferated in the street, while spinning in the sun, swearing that they would tear out the eyes of the whole lot of them.
Silk-worm, as they had come all the way to Master Filippo’s vineyard to call him, couldn’t do less than move. So he put on his new overcoat, washed his hands, and brushed the lime off his clothes, but wouldn’t go to the meeting without first calling for Don Stefano to come to him. It was in vain that his daughter Betta took him by the shoulders, and pushed him out of the door, saying to him that they who had cooked the broth ought to eat it, and that he ought to let the others do as they liked, that he might remain syndic. This time Master Calta had seen the crowd before the town-hall, distaffs in hand, and he planted his feet on the ground worse than a mule. “I won’t go unless Don Silvestro comes,” he repeated, with eyes starting out of his head. “Don Silvestro will find some way out of it all.”
At last Don Silvestro came, with a face like a wall, humming an air, with his hands behind his back. “Eh, Master Croce, don’t lose your head; the world isn’t going to come to an end this time!” Master Croce let himself be led away by Don Silvestro, and placed before the pine council-table, with the glass inkstand in front of him; but there was no council, except Peppi Naso, the butcher, all greasy and red-faced, who feared nobody in the world, and Messer Tino Piedipassera (Goosefoot).
“They have nothing to lose,” screamed La Zuppidda from the door, “and they come here to suck the blood of the poor, worse than so many leeches, because they live upon their neighbors, and hold the sack for this one and that one to commit all sorts of villanies. A lot of thieves and assassins.”
“See if I don’t slit your tongue for you!” shouted Goosefoot, beginning to rise from behind the pine-wood table.
“Now we shall come to grief!” muttered Master Croce Giufà.
“I say! I say! what sort of manners are these? You’re not in the piazza,” called out Don Silvestro. “What will you bet I don’t kick out the whole of you? Now I shall put this to rights.”
La Zuppidda screamed that she wouldn’t have it put to rights, and struggled with Don Silvestro, who pulled her by the hair, and at last ended by thrusting her inside her own gate. When they were at last alone he began:
“What is it you want? What is it to you if we put a tax on pitch? It isn’t you or your husband that will have to pay it, but those who come to have their boats mended. Listen to me: your husband is an ass to make all this row and to quarrel with the town-council, now when there is another councillor to be chosen in the room of Padron Cipolla or Master Mariano, who are of no use, and your husband might come in.”
“I know nothing about it,” answered La Zuppidda, becoming quite calm in an instant. “I never mix myself up in my husband’s affairs. I know he’s biting his hands with rage. I can do nothing but go and tell him, if the thing is certain.”
“Certain? of course it is—certain as the heavens above, I tell you! Are we honest men or not? By the holy big devil!”
La Zuppidda went straight off to her husband, who was crouching in the corner of the court carding tow, pale as a corpse, swearing that they’d end by driving him to do something mad. To open the sanhedrim and try if the fish would bite, there were still wanting Padron Fortunato Cipolla and Master Filippo, the market-gardener, who stayed away so long that the crowd began to get bored—so much so that the gossips began to spin, sitting on the low wall of the town-hall yard. At last they sent word that they couldn’t come; they had too much to do; the tax might be levied just as well without them.
“Word for word what my daughter Betta said,” growled Master Croce Giufà.
“Then get your daughter Betta to help you,” exclaimed Don Silvestro. Silk-worm said not another word audibly, but continued to mutter between his teeth.
“Now,” said Don Silvestro, “you’ll see that the Zuppiddi will come and ask me to take their daughter Barbara, but they’ll have to go on asking.”
The meeting was closed without deciding upon anything. The clerk wanted time to get up his subject. In the mean while the clock struck twelve, and the gossips quickly disappeared. The few that stayed long enough to see Master Cirino shut the door and put the key in his pocket went away to their own work, some this way, some that, talking as they went of the dreadful things that Goosefoot and La Zuppidda had been saying. In the evening Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni heard of this bad language, and, “Sacrament!” if he wouldn’t show Goosefoot that he had been for a soldier! He met him, just as he was coming from the beach, near the house of the Zuppiddi, with that devil’s club-foot of his, and began to speak his mind to him—that he was a foul-mouthed old carrion, and that he had better take care what he said of the Zuppiddi; that their doings was no affair of his. Goosefoot didn’t keep his tongue to himself either.
“Holloa! do you think you’ve come from foreign parts to play the master here?”
“I’ve come to slit your weasand for you if you don’t hold your tongue!”
Hearing the noise, a crowd of people came to the doors, and a great crowd gathered; so that at last they took hold of each other, and Goosefoot, who was sharp as the devil he resembled, flung himself on the ground all in a heap with ’Ntoni Malavoglia, who thus lost all the advantage which his good legs might have given him, and they rolled over and over in the mud, beating and biting each other as if they had been Peppi Naso’s dogs, so that ’Ntoni had to be pulled into the Zuppiddi’s court with his shirt torn off his back, and Goose-foot was led home bleeding like Lazarus.
“You’ll see!” screamed out again Gossip Venera, after she had slammed the door in the faces of her neighbors—“you’ll see whether I mean to be mistress in my own house. I’ll give my girl to whomsoever I please!”
The girl ran off into the house, red as a turkey, with her heart beating as fast as a spring chicken’s.
“He’s almost pulled off your ear!” said Master Bastiano, as he poured water slowly over ’Ntoni’s head; “bites worse than a dog, does Uncle Tino.” ’Ntoni’s eyes were still full of blood, and he was set upon vengeance.
“Listen, Madam Venera!” he said, in the hearing of all the world. “If your daughter doesn’t take me, I’ll never marry anybody.” And the girl heard him in her chamber.
“This is no time to speak of such things, Cousin ’Ntoni; but if your grandfather has no objection, I wouldn’t change you, for my part, for Victor Emmanuel himself.”
Master Zuppiddu, meanwhile, said not a word, but handed ’Ntoni a towel to dry himself with; so that ’Ntoni went home that night in a high state of contentment.
But the poor Malavoglia, when they heard of the fight with Goosefoot, trembled to think how they might at any moment expect the officer to turn them out-of-doors; for Goosefoot lived close by, and of the money for the debt they had only, after endless trouble, succeeded in putting together about half.
“Look what it means to be always hanging about where there’s a marriageable girl!” said La Longa to ’Ntoni. “I’m sorry for Barbara!”
“And I mean to marry her,” said ’Ntoni.
“To marry her!” cried the grandfather. “And who am I? And does your mother count for nothing? When your father married her that sits there, he made them come and tell me first. Your grandmother was then alive, and they came and spoke to us in the garden under the fig-tree. Now these things are no longer the custom, and the old people are of no use. At one time it was said, ‘Listen to the old, and you’ll make no blunders.’ First your sister Mena must be married—do you know that?”
“Cursed is my fate!” cried ’Ntoni, stamping and tearing his hair. “Working all day! Never going to the tavern! Never a soldo in one’s pocket! Now that I’ve found a girl to suit me, I can’t have her! Why did I come back from the army?”
“Listen!” cried old ’Ntoni, rising slowly and painfully in consequence of the racking pain in his back. “Go to bed and to sleep—that’s the best thing for you to do. You should never speak in that way in your mother’s presence.”
“My brother Luca, that’s gone for a soldier, is better off than I am,” growled ’Ntoni as he went off to bed.
Luca, poor fellow, was neither better off nor worse. He did his duty abroad, as he had done it at home, and was content. He did not often write, certainly—the stamps cost twenty centimes each—nor had he sent his portrait, because from his boyhood he had been teased about his great ass’s ears; instead, he every now and then sent a five-franc note, which he made out to earn by doing odd jobs for the officers. The grandfather had said, “Mena must be married first.” It was not yet spoken of, but thought of always, and now that the money was accumulating in the drawer, he considered that the anchovies would cover the debt to Goosefoot, and the house remain free for the dowry of the girl. Wherefore he was seen sometimes talking quietly with Padron Fortunato on the beach while waiting for the bark, or sitting in the sun on the church steps when no one else was there.
Padron Fortunato had no wish to go back from his word if the girl had her dowry, the more that his son always was causing him anxiety by running after a lot of penniless girls, like a stupid as he was. “The man has his word, and the bull has his horns,” he took to repeating again. Mena had often a heavy heart as she sat at the loom, for girls have quick senses. And now that her grandfather was always with Padron Fortunato, and she so often heard the name Cipolla mentioned in the house, it seemed as if she had the same sight forever before her, as if that blessed Christian Cousin Alfio were nailed to the beams of the loom like the pictures of the saints. One evening she waited until it was quite late to see Cousin Alfio come back with his donkey-cart, holding her hands under her apron, for it was cold and all the doors were shut, and not a soul was to be seen in the little street; so she said good-evening to him from the door.
“Will you go down to Biccocca at the first of the month?” she asked him, finally.
“Not yet; there are still a hundred loads of wine for Santuzza. Afterwards, God will provide.”
She knew not what to say while Cousin Alfio came and went in the little court, unharnessing the donkey and hanging the harness on the knobs, carrying the lantern to and fro.
“If you go to Biccocca we shall not see each other any more,” said Mena, whose voice was quite faint.
“But why? Are you going away too?”
The poor child could not speak at all at first, though it was dark and no one could see her face.
From time to time the neighbors could be heard speaking behind the closed doors, or children crying, or the noise of the platters in some house where supper was late; so that no one could hear them talking.
“Now we have half the money we want for old Goosefoot, and at the salting of the anchovies we can pay the other half.”
Alfio, at this, left the donkey in the court and came out into the street. “Then you will be married after Easter?”
Mena did not reply.
“I told you so,” continued Alfio. “I saw Padron ’Ntoni talking with Padron Cipolla.”
“It will be as God wills,” said Mena. “I don’t care to be married if I might only stay on here.”
“What a fine thing it is for Cipolla,” went on Mosca, “to be rich enough to marry whenever he pleases, and take the wife he prefers, and live where he likes!”
“Good-night, Cousin Alfio,” said Mena, after stopping a while to gaze at the lantern hanging on the wicket, and the donkey cropping the nettles on the wall. Cousin Alfio also said good-night, and went back to put the donkey in his stall.
Among those who were looking after Barbara was Vanni Pizzuti, when he used to go to the house to shave Master Bastiano, who had the sciatica; and also Don Michele, who found it a bore to do nothing but march around with the pistols in his belt when he wasn’t behind Santuzza’s counter, and went ogling the pretty girls to pass away the time. Barbara at first returned his glances, but afterwards, when her mother told her that those fellows were only loafing around to no purpose—a lot of spies—all foreigners were only fit to be flogged—she slammed the window in his face—mustache, gold-bordered cap and all; and Don Michele was furious, and for spite took to walking up and down the street, twisting his mustache, with his cap over his ear. On Sunday, however, he put on his plumed hat, and went into Vanni Pizzuti’s shop to make eyes at her as she went by to mass with her mother. Don Silvestro also took to going to be shaved among those who waited for the mass, and to warming himself at the brazier for the hot water, exchanging saucy speeches with the rest. “That Barbara begins to hang on ’Ntoni Malavoglia’s hands,” he said. “What will you bet he doesn’t marry her after all? There he stands, waiting, with his hands in his pockets, waiting for her to come to him.”
At last, one day, Don Michele said:
“If it were not for the cap with the border, I’d make that ugly scamp ’Ntoni Malavoglia hold the candle for me—that I would.”
Don Silvestro lost no time in telling ’Ntoni everything, and how Don Michele, the brigadier, who was not the man to let the flies perch on his nose, had a grudge against him.
Goosefoot, when he went to be shaved and heard that Don Michele would have given him something to get rid of ’Ntoni Malavoglia, ruffled himself up like a turkey-cock because he was so much thought of in the place. Vanni Pizzuti went on, saying: “Don Michele would give anything to have the Malavoglia in his hands as you have. Oh, why did you let that row with ’Ntoni pass off so easily?”
Goosefoot shrugged his shoulders, and went on warming his hands over the brazier. Don Silvestro began to laugh, and answered for him:
“Master Vanni would like to pull the chestnuts out of the fire with Goosefoot’s paws. We know already that Gossip Venera will have nothing to say to foreigners or to gold-bordered caps, so if ’Ntoni Malavoglia were out of the way he would be the only one left for the girl.”
Vanni Pizzuti said nothing, but he lay awake the whole night thinking of it. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he thought to himself; “everything depends upon getting hold of Goosefoot some day when he is in the right sort of humor.”
It came that day, once when Rocco Spatu was nowhere to be seen. Goosefoot had come in two or three times rather late, to look for him, with a pale face and starting eyes, too; and the customs guard had been seen rushing here and there, full of business, smelling about like hunting-dogs with noses to the ground, and Don Michele along with them, with pistols in belt and trousers thrust into his boots.
“You might do a good service to Don Michele if you would take ’Ntoni Malavoglia out of his way,” said Vanni to Papa Tino, as he stood in the darkest corner of the shop buying a cigar. “You’d do him a famous service, and make a friend of him for life.”
“I dare say,” sighed Goosefoot. He had no breath that evening, and said nothing more.
In the night were heard shots over towards the cliffs called the Rotolo and along all the beach, as if some one were hunting quail. “Quail, indeed!” murmured the fisher-folk as they started up in bed to listen. “Two-legged quail, those are; quail that bring sugar and coffee and silk handkerchiefs that pay no duty. That’s why Don Michele had his boots in his trousers and his pistols in his belt.”
Goosefoot went as usual to the barber’s shop for his morning glass before the lantern over the door had been put out, but that next morning he had the face of a dog that has upset the kettle. He made none of his usual jokes, and asked this one and that one why there had been such a devil of a row in the night, and what had become of Rocco Spatu and Cinghialenta, and doffed his cap to Don Michele, and insisted on paying for his morning draught. Goosefoot said to him: “Take a glass of spirits, Don Michele; it will do your stomach good after your wakeful night. Blood of Judas!” exclaimed Goosefoot, striking his fist on the counter and feigning to fly into a real rage, “it isn’t to Rome that I’ll send that young ruffian ’Ntoni to do penance.”
“Bravo!” assented Vanni. “I wouldn’t have passed it over, I assure you; nor you, Don Michele, I’ll swear.”
Don Michele approved with a growl.
“I’ll take care that ’Ntoni and all his relations are put in their places,” Goosefoot went on threatening. “I’m not going to have the whole place laughing at me. You may rest assured of that much, Don Michele.” And off he went, limping and blaspheming, as if he were in a fearful rage, while all the time he was saying to himself, “One must keep friends with all these spies,” and ruminating on how he was to make a friend of Santuzza as well, going to the inn, where he heard from Uncle Santoro that neither Rocco Spatu nor Cin-ghialenta had been there; then went on to Cousin Anna’s, who, poor thing, hadn’t slept a wink, and stood at her door looking out, pale as a ghost. There he met the Wasp, who had come to see if Cousin Anna had by chance a little leaven.
“Today I must speak with your uncle Dumbbell about the affair you know of,” said Goosefoot. Dumb-bell was willing enough to speak of that affair which never came to an end, and “When things grow too long they turn into snakes.” Padron ’Ntoni was always preaching that the Malavoglia were honest people, and that he would pay him, but he (Dumb-bell) would like to know where the money was to come from. In the place, everybody knew to a centime what everybody owned, and those honest people, the Malavoglia, even if they sold their souls to the Turks, couldn’t manage to pay even so much as the half by Easter; and to get possession of the house one must have stamped paper and all sorts of expenses; that he knew very well.
And all this time Padron ’Ntoni was talking of marrying his granddaughter. He’d seen him with Padron Cipolla, and Uncle Santoro had seen him, and Goosefoot had seen him too; and he, too, went on doing the go-between for Vespa and that lazy hound Alfio Mosca, that wanted to get hold of her field.
“But I tell you that I do nothing of the sort!” shouted Goosefoot in his ear. “Your niece is over head and ears in love with him, and is always at his heels. I can’t shut the door in her face, out of respect for you, when she comes to have a chat with my wife; for, after all, she is your niece and your own blood.”
“Respect! Pretty sort of respect! You’ll chouse me out of the field with your respect.”
“Among them they’ll chouse you out of it. If the Malavoglia girl marries Brasi Cipolla, Mosca will be left out in the cold, and will take to Vespa and her field for consolation.”
“The devil may have her for what I care,” called put old Crucifix, deafened by Uncle Tino’s clatter. “I don’t care what becomes of her, a godless cat that she is. I want my property. I made it of my blood; and one would think I had stolen it, that every one takes it from me—Alfio Mosca, Vespa, the Malavoglia. I’ll go to law and take the house.”
“You are the master. You can go to law if you like.”
“No, I’ll wait until Easter—‘the man has his word, and the bull has his horns;’ but I mean to be paid up to the last centime, and I won’t listen to anybody for the least delay.”
In fact, Easter was drawing near. The hills began once more to clothe themselves with green, and the Indian figs were in flower. The girls had sowed basil outside the windows, and the white butterflies came to flutter about it; even the pale plants on the sea-shore were starred with white flowers. In the morning the red and yellow tiles smoked in the rising sun, and the sparrows twittered there until the sun had set.
And the house by the medlar-tree, too, had a sort of festive air: the court was swept, the nets and cords were hung neatly against the wall, or spread on drying-poles; the garden was full of cabbages and lettuce, and the rooms were open and full of sunshine, that looked as if it too were content. All things proclaimed that Easter was at hand. The elders sat on the steps in the evening, and the girls sang at the washing-tank. The wagons began again to pass the high-road by night, and at dusk there began once more the sound of voices in conversation in the little street.
“Cousin Mena is going to be married,” they said; “her mother is busy with her outfit already.”
Time had passed—and all things pass away with time, sad things as well as sweet. Now Cousin Maruzza was always busy cutting and sewing all sorts of household furnishing, and Mena never asked for whom they were intended; and one evening Brasi Cipolla was brought into the house, with Master Fortunato, his father, and all his relations.
“Here is Cousin Cipolla, who is come to make you a visit,” said Padron ’Ntoni, introducing him into the house, as if no one knew anything about it beforehand, while all the time wine and roasted pease were made ready in the kitchen, and the women and the girls had on their best clothes.
That evening Mena looked exactly like Sant’-Agata, with her new dress and her black kerchief on her head, so that Brasi never took his eyes off her, but sat staring at her all the evening like a basilisk, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his hands between his knees, rubbing them now and then on the sly for very pleasure.
“He is come with his son Brasi, who is quite a big fellow now,” continued Padron ’Ntoni.
“Yes, the children grow and shoulder us into the ground,” answered Padron Fortunato.
“Now you’ll take a glass of our wine—of the best we have, and a few dried pease which my daughter has toasted. If we had only known you were coming we might have had something ready better worth your acceptance.”
“We happened to be passing by,” said Padron Cipolla, “and we said, ‘Let’s go and make a visit to Cousin Maruzza.’”
Brasi filled his pockets with dried pease, always looking at the girl, and then the boys cleared the dish in spite of all Nunziata, with the baby in her arms, could do to hinder them, talking all the while among themselves softly as if they had been in church. The elders by this time were in conversation together under the medlar, all the gossips clustering around full of praises of the girl—how she was such a good manager, and kept the house neat as a new pin. “The girl as she is trained, and the flax as it is spun,” they quoted.
“Your granddaughter is also, grown up,” said Padron Fortunato; “it is time she was married.”
“If the Lord sends her a good husband I ask nothing better,” replied Padron ’Ntoni.
“The husband and the bishop are chosen by Heaven,” added Cousin La Longa.
Mena sat by the young man, as is the custom, but she never lifted her eyes from her apron, and Brasi complained to his father, when they came away, that she had not offered him the plate with the dried pease.
“Did you want more?” interrupted Padron Fortunate when they were out of hearing. “Nobody could hear anything for your munching like a mule at a sack of barley. Look if you haven’t upset the wine on your new trousers, lout! You’ve spoiled a new suit for me.”
Padron ’Ntoni, in high spirits, rubbing his hands, said to his daughter-in-law: “I can hardly believe that everything is so happily settled. Mena will want for nothing, and now we can put in order all our other little matters, and you may say the old daddy was right when he said, ‘Tears and smiles come close together.’”
That Saturday, towards evening, Nunziata came in to get a handful of beans for the children, and said: “Cousin Alfio goes away to-morrow. He’s packing up all his things.”
Mena turned white, and stopped weaving.
In Alfio’s house there was a light. Everything was topsy-turvy. He came a few minutes after, knocking at the door, also with a very white face, and tying and untying the knot of the lash of his whip, which he held in his hand.
“I’ve come to say good-bye to you all, Cousin Maruzza, Padron ’Ntoni, the boys, and you too, Cousin Mena. The wine from Aci Catena is finished. Now Santuzza will get it from Master Filippo. I’m going to Biccocca, where there is work to be got for my donkey.”
Mena said nothing; only the mother spoke in reply to him: “Won’t you wait for Padron ’Ntoni? He will be glad to see you before you go.”
So Cousin Alfio sat down on the edge of a chair, whip in hand, and looked about the room, in the opposite direction to that where Mena was.
“Now, when are you coming back?” said La Longa.
“Who knows when I shall come back? I shall go where my donkey carries me. As long as there is work I shall stay; but I should rather come back here if I could manage to live anyhow.”
“Take care of your health, Cousin Alfio; I’ve been told that people die like flies of the malaria down there at the Biccocca.”
Alfio shrugged his shoulders, saying there was nothing to be done. “I would much rather not have gone away from here.” He went on looking at the candle. “And you say nothing to me, Cousin Mena?”
The girl opened her mouth two or three times as if to speak, but no words came; her heart beat too fast.
“And you, too, will leave the neighborhood when you are married,” added Alfio. “The world is like an inn, with people coming and going. By-and-by everybody will have changed places, and nothing will be the same as it was.” So saying, he rubbed his hands and smiled, but with lips only—not in his heart.
“Girls,” said La Longa, “go where Heaven appoints them to go. When they are young they are gay and have no care; when they go into the world they meet with grief and trouble.”
Alfio, after Padron ’Ntoni and the boys had come back, and he had wished them also good-bye, could not make up his mind to go, but stood on the threshold, with his whip under his arm, shaking hands now with one, now with another—with Cousin Maruzza as well as the rest—and went on repeating, as people do when they are going for a long journey, and are not sure of ever coming back, “Pardon me if I have been wanting in any way towards any of you.” The only one who did not take his hand was Sant’Agata, who stayed in the dark corner by the loom. But, of course, that is the proper way for girls to behave on such occasions.
It was a fine spring evening, and the moon shone over the court and the street, over the people sitting before the doors and the girls walking up and down singing, with their arms around each other’s waists. Mena came out, too, with Nunziata; she felt as if she should suffocate in the house.
“Now we sha’n’t see Cousin Alfio’s lamp any more in the evenings,” said Nunziata, “and the house will be shut up.”
Cousin Alfio had loaded his cart with all the wares he was taking away with him, and now he was tying up the straw which remained in the manger into a bundle, while the pot bubbled on the fire with the beans for his supper.
“Shall you be gone before morning, Cousin Alfio?” asked Nunziata from the door of the little court.
“Yes. I have a long way to go, and this poor beast has a heavy load. I must let him have a rest in the daytime.”
Mena said nothing, but leaned on the gate-post, looking at the loaded cart, the empty house, the bed half taken down, and the pot boiling for the last time on the hearth.
“Are you there too, Cousin Mena?” cried Alfio as soon as he saw her, and left off what he was engaged upon.
She nodded her head, and Nunziata ran, like a good house-keeper as she was, to skim off the pot, which was boiling over.
“I am glad you are here; now I can say goodbye to you, too.”
“I came here to see you once more,” she said, with tears in her voice. “Why do you go down there where there is the malaria?”
Alfio began to laugh from the lips outward, as he did when he went to say good-bye to them all.
“A pretty question! Why do I go there? and why do you marry Brasi Cipolla? One does what one can, Cousin Mena. If I could have done as I wished to do, you know what I would have done.”
She gazed and gazed at him, with eyes shining with tears.
“I should have stayed here where the very walls are my friends, and where I can go about in the night to stable my donkey, even in the dark; and I should have married you, Cousin Mena—I have held you in my heart this long while—and I shall carry you with me to the Biccocca, and wherever I may go. But this is all useless talk, and one must do what one can. My donkey, too, must go where I drive him.”
“Now farewell,” said Mena at last. “I, too, have something like a thorn here within me.... And now when I see this window always shut, it will seem as if my heart were shut too, as if it were shut inside the window—heavy as an oaken door. But so God wills. Now I wish you well, and I must go.”
The poor child wept silently, hiding her eyes with her hand, and went away with Nunziata to sit and cry under the medlar-tree in the moonlight.
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 theProvvidenzawas 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 theProvvidenza.
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 theProvvidenza. 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 theRed 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, theMother 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 theProvvidenzaand 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 theProvvidenza, 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 theProvvidenzaand 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.”