One day ’Ntoni Malavoglia, lounging about as usual, had seen two young men who had embarked some years before at Riposto in search of fortune, and had returned from Trieste, or from Alexandria, in short, from afar off, and were spending and swaggering at the tavern—grander than Cousin Naso the butcher, or than Padron Cipolla. They sat astride of the benches joking with the girls and pulling innumerable silk handkerchiefs out of their pockets, turning the place upsidedown.
’Ntoni, when he came home at night, found nobody there but the women, who were changing the brine on the anchovies and chatting with the neighbors, sitting in a circle on the stones, and passing away the time by telling stories and guessing riddles, which amused greatly the children, who stood around rubbing their sleepy eyes. Padron ’Ntoni listened too, and watched the strainer with the fresh brine, nodding his head in approval when the stories pleased him, or when the boys were clever at guessing the riddles.
“The best story of all,” said ’Ntoni, “is that of those two fellows who arrived here to-day with silk kerchiefs that one can hardly believe one’s eyes to look at, and such a lot of money that they hardly look at it when they take it out of their pockets. They’ve seen half the world, they say. Trezza and Aci Castello put together are not to be compared to what they’ve seen. I’ve seen the world too, and how people in those parts don’t sit still salting anchovies, but go round amusing themselves all day long, and the women, with silk dresses and more rings and necklaces than the Madonna of Ognino, go about the streets vying with each other for the love of the handsome sailors.”
“The worst of all things,” said Mena, “is to leave one’s own home, where even the stones are one’s friends, and when one’s heart must break to leave them behind one on the road. ‘Blest is the bird that builds his nest at home!’”
“Brava, Sant’Agata!” said her grandfather; “that is what I call talking sense.”
“Yes,” growled ’Ntoni, “and when we have sweated and steamed to build our nest we haven’t anything left to eat; and when we have managed to get back the house by the medlar we shall just have to go on wearing out our lives from Monday to Saturday, and never do anything else.”
“And don’t you mean to work any more? What do you mean to do—turn lawyer?”
“I don’t mean to turn lawyer,” said ’Ntoni, and went off to bed in high dudgeon.
But from that time forth he thought of nothing but the easy, wandering life other fellows led; and in the evening, not to hear all that idle chatter, he stood by the door with his shoulders against the wall, watching the people pass, and meditating on his hard fate; at least one was resting against the fatigues of to-morrow, when must begin again over and over the same thing, like Cousin Mosca’s ass, that when they brought the collar reached out his neck to have it put on. “We’re all asses!” he muttered; “that’s what we are—asses! beasts of burden.” And it was plainly enough to be seen that he was tired of that hard life, and longed to leave it, and go out into the world to make his fortune, like those others; so that his mother, poor woman, was always stroking him on the shoulder, and speaking to him in tones that were each like a caress, looking at him with eyes full of tears, as if she would read his very soul. But he told her there was no cause to grieve, that it was better he should go, for himself and for the rest of them, and when he came back they would all be happy together.
The poor mother never closed her eyes that night, and steeped her pillow with tears. At last the grandfather himself perceived it, and called his grandson outside the door, under the shrine, to ask him what ailed him.
“What is it, my boy?” he said. “Tell your grandpapa; do, that’s a good boy.”
’Ntoni shrugged his shoulders; but the old man went on nodding his head, and seeking for words to make himself understood properly.
“Yes, yes! you’ve got some notion in your head, boy! some new notion or other. ‘Who goes with lame men limps himself before long.’”
“I’m a poor miserable devil, that’s what it is.”
“Well, is that all? You knew that before. And what am I, and what was your father? ‘He is the richest who has the fewest wants. Better content than complaint.’”
“Fine consolation, that is!”
This time the old man found words, for they were in his heart, and so came straight to his lips.
“At least, don’t say it to your mother.”
“My mother! She would have done better not to have brought me into the world, my mother!”
“Yes,” assented Padron ’Ntoni, “it would have been better she had not borne you, if you are to begin to talk in this way.”
For a minute ’Ntoni didn’t know what to say, then he began: “Well, I mean it for your good, too—for you, for my mother, for us all. I want to make her rich, my mother! that’s what I want. Now we’re tormenting ourselves for the house, and for Mena’s dowry; then Lia will grow up, and she’ll want a dowry too, and then a bad year will throw us all back into misery. I don’t want to lead this life any longer. I want to change my condition and to change yours. I want that we should be rich—mamma, Mena, you, Alessio, all of us.”
Padron ’Ntoni opened his eyes very wide and listened, pondering, to this discourse, which he found very hard to understand. “Rich!” he said, “rich! And what shall we do when we are rich?” ’Ntoni scratched his head, and began to wonder himself what he should do in such a case. “We should do what other people do,” he said—“go and live in town, and do nothing, and eat meat.”
“In town! go and live in town by yourself. I choose to die where I was born;” and thinking of the house where he was born, which was no longer his, he let his head drop on his breast. “You are but a boy; you don’t know what it is,” he said; “you don’t know, you don’t know! When you can no longer sleep in your own bed, or see the light come in through your own window, you’ll see what it is. I am old, and I know!” The poor old man coughed as if he would suffocate, with bent shoulders, shaking his head sadly. “‘His own nest every bird likes best.’ Look at those swallows; do you see them? They have always made their nest there, and they still return to make it there, and never go away.”
“But I am not a swallow,” said ’Ntoni. “I am neither a bird nor a beast. I don’t want to live like a dog on a chain, or like Cousin Alfio’s ass, or like a mule in a mill, that goes round and round, turning the same wheel forever. I don’t want to die of hunger in a corner, or to be eaten up by sharks.”
“Thank God, rather, that you were born here, and pray that you may not come to die far from the stones that you know. ‘Who changes the old for the new changes for the worse all through.’ You are afraid of work, are afraid of poverty; I, who have neither your youth nor your strength, fear them not. ‘The good pilot is known in the storm.’ You are afraid of having to work for your bread, that is what ails you! When my father, rest his soul, left me theProvvidenzaand five mouths to feed, I was younger than you are now, and I was not afraid; and I have done my duty without grumbling; and I do it still, and I pray God to help me to do it as long as I live, as your father did, and your brother Luca, blessed be their souls! who feared not to go and die where duty led them. Your mother, too, has done hers, poor little woman, hidden inside four walls; and you know not the tears she has shed, nor how many she sheds now, because you want to go and leave her; nor how in the morning your sister finds her sheets wet with tears. And nevertheless she is silent, and does not talk of you nor of the hard things you say to her; and she works, and puts together her provision, poor busy little ant that she is; and she has never done anything else all her life long—before she had so many tears to shed, and when she suckled you at her breast, and before you could go alone, or the temptation had come over you to go wandering like a gypsy about the world.”
The end of it was that ’Ntoni began to cry like a child, for at bottom the boy had a good heart; but the next day it began all over again. In the morning he took the tackle unwillingly on his shoulder, and went off to sea growling, “Just like Cousin Alfio’s ass: at daybreak I have to stretch out my neck to see if they are coming to load me.” After they had thrown the net he left Alessio to move the oars slowly, so as to keep the boat in its place; and folding his arms, looked out into the distance to where the sea ended, towards those great cities where people did nothing but walk about and amuse themselves; or thought of the two sailors who had come back thence, and had now for some time been gone away from the place; but it seemed to him that they had nothing to do but to wander about the world from one town to another, spending the money they had in their pockets. In the evening, when all the tackle was put away, they let him wander about as he liked, like a houseless dog, without a soldo to bless himself with, sooner than see him sit there as sulky as a bear.
“What ails you, ’Ntoni?” said La Longa, looking timidly into his face, with her eyes shining with tears, for she knew well enough, poor woman, what it was that ailed him. “Tell me, tell your mother.” He did not answer, or answered that nothing ailed him. But at last he did tell her that his grandfather and the rest of them wanted to work him to death, and he could bear it no longer. He wanted to go away and seek his fortune like other people.
His mother listened, with her eyes full of tears, and could not speak in reply to him, as he went on weeping and stamping and tearing his hair.
The poor creature longed to answer him, and to throw her arms round his neck, and beg him not to go away from her, but her lips trembled so that she could not utter a word.
“Listen,” she said at last; “you may go, if you will do it, but you won’t find me here when you come back, for I am old now and weak, and I cannot bear this new sorrow.”
’Ntoni tried to comfort her, saying he would soon come back with plenty of money, and that they would all be happy together. Maruzza shook her head sadly, saying that no, no, he would not find her when he came back.
“I feel that I am growing old,” she said. “I am growing old. Look at me. I have no strength now to weep as I did when your father died, and your brother. If I go to the washing I come back so tired that I can hardly move; it was never so before. No, my son, I am not what I was. Once, when I had your father and your brother, I was young and strong. The heart gets tired too, you see; it wears away little by little, like old linen that has been too often washed. I have no courage now; everything frightens me. I feel as one does when the waves come over his head when he is out at sea. Go away if you will, but wait until I am at rest.”
She was weeping, but she did not know it; she seemed to have before her eyes once more her husband and her son Luca as she had seen them when they left her to return no more.
“So you will go, and I shall see you no more,” she said to him. “The house grows more empty every day; and when that poor old man, your grandfather, is gone, too, in whose hands shall I leave those orphan children? Ah, Mother of Sorrows!”
She clung to him, with her head against his breast, as if her boy were going to leave her then and there, and stroked his shoulder and his cheeks with her trembling hands. Then ’Ntoni could resist her no longer, and began to kiss her and to whisper gently in her ear:
“No, no! I won’t go if you say I must not. Look at me! Don’t talk so, don’t. Well, I’ll go on working like Cousin Mosca’s ass, that will be thrown into a ditch to die when he’s too old to work any more. Are you contented now? Don’t cry, don’t cry any more. Look at my grandfather how he has struggled all his life, and is struggling still to get out of the mud, and he will go on so. It is our fate.”
“And do you think that everybody hasn’t troubles of their own? ‘Every hole has its nail; new or old, they never fail.’ Look at Padron Cipolla how he has to run here and to watch there, not to have his son Brasi throwing all the money he has saved and scraped into Vespa’s lap! And Master Filippo, rich as he is, trembling for his vineyard every time it rains. And Uncle Crucifix, starving himself to put soldo upon soldo, and always at law with this one or with that. And do you think those two foreign sailors that you saw here, and that put all this in your head with their talk of strange countries, do you think they haven’t their own troubles too? Who knows if they found their mothers alive when they got home to their own houses? And as for us, when we have bought back the house by the medlar, and have our grain in the hutch and our beans for the winter, and when Mena is married, what more shall we want? When I am under the sod, and that poor old man is dead too, and Alessio is old enough to earn his bread, go wherever you like. But then you won’t want to go, I can tell you; for then you will begin to know what we feel when we see you so obstinate and so determined to leave us all, even when we do not speak, but go on in our usual way. Then you will not find it in your heart to leave the place where you were born, where the very stones know you well, where your own dead will lie together under the marble in the church, which is worn smooth by the knees of those who have prayed so long before Our Mother of Sorrows.”
’Ntoni, from that day forth, said no more of going away, or of growing rich; and his mother watched him tenderly, as a bird watches her young, when she saw him looking sad or sitting silently on the door-step, with his elbows on his knees. And the poor woman was truly a sad sight to see, so pale was she, so thin and worn; and when her work was over she too sat down, with folded hands, and her back bent as badly as her father-in-law’s. But she knew not that she herself was going for a journey—that journey which leads to the long rest below the smooth marble in the church—and that she must leave behind her all those she loved so well, who had so grown into her heart that they had worn it all away, piece by piece, now one and now another.
At Catania there was the cholera, and everybody that could manage it ran away into the country here and there among the villages and towns in the neighborhood. And at Ognino, and at Trezza, too, these strangers, who spent so much money, were a real providence. But the merchants pulled a long face, and said that it was almost impossible to sell even a dozen barrels of anchovies, and that all the money had disappeared on account of the cholera. “And don’t people eat anchovies any more?” asked Goosefoot. But to Padron ’Ntoni, who had them to sell, they said that now there was the cholera, people were afraid to eat anchovies, and all that kind of stuff, but must eat macaroni and meat; and so it was best to let things go at the best price one could get. That hadn’t been counted in the Malavoglia’s reckoning. Hence, not to go backward, crab fashion, needs must that La Longa should go about from house to house among the foreigners, selling eggs and fresh bread, and so on, while the men were out at sea, and so put together a little money. But it was needful to be very careful, and not take even so much as a pinch of snuff from a person one did not know. Walking on the road, one must go exactly in the middle—as far away as possible from the walls, where one ran the risk of coming across all sorts of horrors; and one must never sit down on the stones or on the wall. La Longa, once, coming back from Aci Gastello, with her basket on her arm, felt so tired that her legs were like lead under her, and she could hardly move, so she yielded to temptation, and rested a few minutes on the smooth stones under the shade of the fig-tree, just by the shrine at the entrance of the town; and she remembered afterwards, though she did not notice it at the time, that a person unknown to her—a poor man, who seemed also very weary and ill—had been sitting there a moment before she came up. In short, she fell ill, took the cholera, and returned home pale and tottering, as yellow as a gilded heart among the votive offerings, and with deep black lines under her eyes; so that when Mena, who was alone at home, saw her, she began to cry, and Lia ran off to gather rosemary and marshmallow leaves. Mena trembled like a leaf while she was making up the bed, and the sick woman, sitting on a chair, with pallid face and sunken eyes, kept on saying, “It is nothing, don’t be frightened; as soon as I have got into bed it will pass off,” and tried to help them herself; but every minute she grew faint, and had to sit down again. “Holy Virgin!” stammered Mena. “Holy Virgin, and the men out at sea! Holy Virgin, help us!” and Lia cried with all her might.
When Padron ’Ntoni came back with his grandsons, and they saw the door half shut, and the light inside the shutters, they tore their hair. Maruzza was already in bed, and her eyes, seen in that way in the dusk, looked hollow and dim, as if death had already dimmed their light; and her lips were black as charcoal. At that time neither doctor nor apothecary went out after sunset, and even the neighbors barred their doors, and stuck pictures of saints over all the cracks, for fear of the cholera. So Cousin Maruzza had no help except from her own poor people, who rushed about the house as if they had been crazy, watching her fading away before their eyes, in her bed, and beat their heads against the wall in their despair. Then La Longa, seeing that all hope was gone, begged them to lay upon her breast the lock of cotton dipped in holy oil which she had bought at Easter, and said that they must keep the light burning, as they had done when Padron ’Ntoni had been so ill that they thought him dying, and wanted them all to stay beside her bed, that she might look at them until the last moment with those wide eyes that no longer seemed to see. Lia cried in a heart-breaking way, and the others, white as the wall, looked in each other’s faces, as if asking for help, where no help was; and held their hands tight over their breasts, that they might not break out into loud wailing before the dying woman, who, none the less, knew all that they felt, though by this time she saw them no longer, and even at the last felt the pain of leaving them behind. She called them one by one by name, in a weak and broken voice, and tried to lift her hand to bless them, knowing that she was leaving them a treasure beyond price.
“’Ntoni,” she repeated, “’Ntoni, to you, who are the eldest, I leave these orphans!” And hearing her speak thus while she was still alive, they could not help bursting out into cries and sobs.
So they passed the night beside the bed, where Maruzza now lay without moving, until the candle burned down in the socket and went out. And the dawn came in through the window, pale like the corpse, which lay with features sharpened like a knife, and black, parched lips. But Mena never wearied of kissing those cold lips, and speaking as if the dead could hear. ’Ntoni beat his breast and cried, “O mother! O mother! and you have gone before me, and I wanted to leave you!” And Alessio never will forget that last look of his mother, with her white hair and pinched features; no, not even when his hair has grown as white as hers.
At dusk they came to take La Longa in a hurry, and no one thought of making any visits; for every one feared for their life. And even Don Giammaria came no farther than the threshold, whence he dispensed the holy water, holding his tunic about his knees tight, lest it should touch anything in the house—“Like a selfish monk as he was,” said the apothecary. He, on the contrary, had they brought him a prescription from the doctor, would have given it them, would even have opened the shop at night for the purpose, for he was not afraid of the cholera; and said, besides, that it was all stuff and nonsense to say that the cholera could be thrown about the streets or behind the doors.
“A sign that he spreads the cholera himself,” whispered the priest. For that reason the people of the place wanted to kill the apothecary; but he laughed at them, with the cackling laugh he had learned of Don Silvestro, saying, “Kill me! I’m a republican! If it were one of those fellows in the Government, now, I might find some use in doing it, but what good would it do me to spread the cholera?” But the Malavoglia were left alone with the bed whence the mother had been carried away.
For some time they did not open the door after La Longa had been taken away. It was a blessing that they had plenty to eat in the house—beans and oil—and charcoal too, for Padron ’Ntoni, like the ants, had made his provision in time of plenty; else they might have died of hunger, for no one came to see whether they were alive or dead. Then, little by little, they began to put their black neckerchiefs on and to go out into the street, like snails after a storm, still pale and dazed-looking. The gossips, remaining aloof, called out to them to ask how it had happened; for Cousin Maruzza had been one of the first to go. And when Don Michele, or some other personage who took the King’s pay, and wore a gold-bordered cap, came their way, they looked at him with scared eyes, and ran into the house. There was great misery, and no one was seen in the street, not even a hen; and Don Cirino was never seen anywhere, and had left off ringing at noon and at the Ave Maria, for he too ate the bread of the commune, and had five francs a month as parish beadle, and feared for his life, for was not he a Government official? And now Don Michele was lord of the whole place, for Pizzuti and Don Silvestro and the rest hid in their burrows like rabbits, and only he walked up and down before the Zuppidda’s closed door. It was a pity that nobody saw him except the Malavoglia, who had no longer anything to lose, and so sat watching whoever passed by, sitting on the door-step, with their elbows on their knees. Don Michele, not to take his walk for nothing, looked at Sant’Agata, now that all the other doors were shut; and did it all the more to show that great hulking ’Ntoni that he wasn’t afraid of anybody, not he. And besides, Mena, pale as she was, looked a real Sant’Agata; and the little sister, with her black neckerchief, was growing up a very pretty girl.
It seemed to poor Mena that twenty years had fallen suddenly on her shoulders. She watched Lia now, as La Longa had watched her, and kept her always close at her side, and had all the cares of the house on her mind. She had grown into a habit of remaining alone in the house with her sister while the men were at sea, looking from time to time at that empty bed. When she had nothing to do she sat, with her hands in her lap, looking at the empty bed, and then she felt, indeed, that her mother had left her; and when she heard them say in the street such an one is dead, or such another, she thought so they heard “La Longa is dead”—La Longa, who had left her alone with that poor little orphan, with her black neckerchief.
Nunziata or their Cousin Anna came now and then, stepping softly, and with sad looks, and saying nothing, would sit down with her on the door-step, with hands under their aprons. The men coming back from the fishing stepped quickly along, looking carefully from side to side, with the nets on their shoulders. And no one stopped anywhere, not even the carts at the tavern.
Who could tell where Cousin Alfio’s cart was now? or if at this moment he might not lie dying of cholera behind a hedge, that poor fellow, who had no one belonging to him. Sometimes Goosefoot passed, looking half starved, glanced about him, as if he were afraid of his shadow; or Uncle Crucifix, whose riches were scattered here and there, and who went to see if his debtors were likely to die and to cheat him out of his money. The sacrament went by, too, quickly, in the hands of Don Giammaria, with his tunic fastened up, and a barefooted boy ringing the bell before him, for Don Cirino was nowhere to be seen. That bell, in the deserted streets, where no one passed, not a dog, and even Don Franco kept his door half shut, was heart-rending. The only person to be seen, day or night, was La Locca, with her tangled white hair, who went to sit before the house by the medlar-tree, or watched for the boats on the shore. Even the cholera would have none of her, poor old thing.
The strangers had flown as birds do at the approach of winter, and no one came to buy the fish. So that every one said, “After the cholera comes the famine.” Padron ’Ntoni had once more to dip into the money put away for the house, and day by day it melted before his eyes. But he thought of nothing, save that Maruzza had died away from her own house; he could not get that out of his head. ’Ntoni, too, shook his head every time it was necessary to use up the money. Finally, when the cholera was at an end, and there only remained about half of the money put together with such pains and trouble, he began to complain that such a life as that he could not bear—eternally saving and sparing, and then having to spend for bare life; that it was better to risk something, once for all, to get out of this eternal worry, and that there, at least, where his mother had died in the midst of that hideous misery, he would stay no longer.
“Don’t you remember that your mother recommended Mena to you?” said Padron ’Ntoni.
“What good can I do to Mena by staying here?—tell me that.”
Mena looked at him timidly, but with eyes like her mother’s, where one could read her heart, but she dared not speak. Only once, clinging to the jamb of the door, she found courage to say: “I don’t ask for help, if only you’ll stay with us. Now that I haven’t my mother, I feel like a fish out of water; I don’t care about anything. But I can’t bear the idea of that orphan, Lia, who will be left without anybody if you go away; like Nunziata when her father left her.”
“No,” said ’Ntoni, “no, I can do nothing for you if I stay here; the proverb says ‘Help yourself and you’ll be helped.’ When I have made something worth while I’ll come back, and we’ll all be happy together.”
Lia and Alessio opened their large round eyes, and seemed quite dazzled by this prospect, but the old man let his head fall on his breast. “Now you have neither father nor mother, and can do as it seems best to you,” he said at last. “While I live I will care for these children, and when I die the Lord must do the rest.”
Mena, seeing that ’Ntoni would go, whether or not, put his clothes in order, as his mother would have done, and thought how “over there,” in strange lands, her brother would be like Alfio Mosca, with no one to look after him. And while she sewed at his shirts, and pieced his coats, her head ran upon days gone by, and she thought of all that had passed away with them with a swelling heart.
“I cannot pass the house by the medlar now,” she said, as she sat by her grandfather; “I feel such a lump in my throat that I am almost choking, thinking of all that has happened since we left it.”
And while she was preparing for her brother’s departure she wept as if she were to see him no more. At last, when everything was ready, the grandpapa called his boy to give him a last solemn sermon, and much good advice as to what he was to do when he was alone and dependent only on his own discretion, without his family about him to consult or to condole with him if things, went wrong; and gave him some money too, in case of need, and his own pouch lined with leather, since now he was old he should not need it any more.
The children, seeing their brother preparing for departure, followed him silently about the house, hardly daring to speak to him, feeling as if he had already become a stranger.
“Just so my father went away,” said Nunziata, who had come to say good-bye to ’Ntoni, and stood with the others at the door. After that no one spoke.
The neighbors came one by one to take leave of Cousin ’Ntoni, and then stood waiting in the street to see him start. He lingered, with his bundle on his shoulder and his shoes in his hand, as if at the last moment his heart had failed him. He looked about him as if to fix everything in his memory, and his face was as deeply moved as any there. His grandfather took his stick to accompany him to the city, and Mena went off into a corner, where she cried silently.
“Come, come, now,” said ’Ntoni. “I’m not going away forever. We’ll say I’m going for a soldier again.” Then, after kissing Mena and Lia, and taking leave of the gossips, he started to go, and Mena ran after him. with open arms, weeping aloud, and crying out, “What will mamma say? What will mamma say?” as if her mother were alive and could know what was taking place. But she only said the thing which dwelt most strongly in her memory when ’Ntoni had spoken of going away before; and she had seen her mother weep, and used to find her pillow in the morning wet with tears.
“Adieu, ’Ntoni!” Alessio called after him, taking courage now he was gone, and Lia began to scream.
“Just so my father went,” said Nunziata, who had stayed behind the others at the door.
’Ntoni turned at the corner of the black street, with his eyes full of tears, and waved his hand to them in token of farewell. Mena then closed the door and went to sit down in a corner with Lia, who continued to sob and cry aloud. “Now another one is gone away from the house,” she repeated. “If we had been in the house by the medlar it would seem as empty as a church.”
Mena, seeing her dear ones go away, one after the other, felt, indeed, like a fish out of water. And Nunziata, lingering there beside her, with the little one in her arms, still went on saying, “Just so my father went away, just so!”
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 theProvvidenza, 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. TheProvvidenzawas 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 theProvvidenza.
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 theProvvidenzawas 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 theProvvidenzafor 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.