Ntoni Malavoglia did meet Don Michele, and “gave him his change,” and a very ugly business it was. It was by night, when it rained in torrents, and so dark that even a cat could have seen nothing at the turn on the down which leads to the Rotolo, whence those boats put out so quietly, making believe to be fishing for cod at midnight, and where ’Ntoni and Rocco Spatu, and Cinghialenta and other good-for-nothing fellows well known to the coast-guard, used to hang about with pipes in their mouths—the guards knew those pipes well, and could distinguish them perfectly one from another as they moved about among the rocks where they lay hidden with their guns in their hands.
“Cousin Mena,” said Don Michele, passing once more down the black street—“Cousin Mena, tell your brother not to go to the Rotolo of nights with Cinghialenta and Rocco Spatu.”
But ’Ntoni would not listen, for “the empty stomach has no ears”; and he no longer feared Don Michele since he had rolled over with him hand to hand on the floor of the tavern, and he had sworn, too, to “give him the rest of it,” and he would give him the rest of it whenever he met him; and he wasn’t going to pass for a coward in the eyes of Santuzza and the rest who had been present when he threatened him. “I said I’d give him the rest when I met him next, and so I will; and if he chooses to meet me at the Rotolo, I’ll meet him at the Rotolo!” he repeated to his companions, who had also brought with them the son of La Locca. They had passed the evening at the tavern drinking and roaring, for a tavern is like a free port, and no one can be sent out of it as long as they have money to pay their score and to rattle in their pockets. Don Michele had gone by on his rounds, but Rocco Spatu, who knew the law, said, spitting and leaning against the wall the better to balance himself, that as long as the lamp at the door was lighted they could not turn them out. “We have a right to stay so long!” he repeated. ’Ntoni Malavoglia also enjoyed keeping Santuzza from going to bed, as she sat behind her glasses yawning and dozing. In the mean time Uncle Santoro, feeling his way about with his hands, had put the lamp out and shut the door.
“Now be off!” said Santuzza, “I don’t choose to be fined, for your sake, for keeping my door open at this hour.”
“Who’ll fine you? That spy Don Michele? Let him come here, and I’ll pay him his fine! Tell him he’ll find ’Ntoni Malavoglia here, by Our Lady’s blood.”
Meanwhile the Santuzza had taken him by the shoulders and put him out of the door: “Go and tell him yourself, and get into scrapes somewhere else. I don’t mean to get into trouble with the police for love of your bright eyes.”
’Ntoni, finding himself in the street in this unceremonious fashion, pulled out a long knife, and swore that he would stab both Santuzza and Don Michele. Cinghialenta was the only one who had his senses, and he pulled him by the coat, saying: “Leave them alone now! Have you forgotten what we have to do to-night?”
La Locca’s son felt greatly inclined to cry.
“He’s drunk,” observed Spatu, standing under the rain-pipe. “Bring him here under the pipe; it will do him good.”
’Ntoni, quieted a little by the drenching he got from the rain-pipe, let himself be drawn along by Cinghialenta, scolding all the while, swearing that as sure as he met Don Michele he’d give him what he had promised him. All of a sudden he found himself face to face with Don Michele who was also prowling in the vicinity, with his pistols at his belt and his trousers thrust into his boots. ’Ntoni became quite calm all of a sudden, and they all stole off silently in the direction of Vanni Pizzuti’s shop. When they reached the door, now that Don Michele was no longer near them, ’Ntoni insisted that they should stop and listen to what he had to say.
“Did you see where Don Michele was going? and Santuzza said she was sleepy!”
“Leave Don Michele alone, can’t you?” said Cin-ghialenta; “that way he won’t interfere with us.”
“You’re all a lot of cowards,” said ’Ntoni.
“You’re afraid of Don Michele.”
“To-night you’re drunk,” said Cinghialenta, “but I’ll show you whether I’m afraid of Don Michele. Now that I’ve told my uncle, I don’t mean to have anybody coming bothering after me, finding out how I earn my bread.”
Then they began to talk under their breath, drawn up against the wall, while the noise of the rain drowned their voices. Suddenly the clock struck, and they all stood silent, counting the strokes.
“Let’s go into Cousin Pizzuti’s,” said Cinghialenta. “He can keep his door open as late as he likes, and doesn’t need to have a light.”
“It’s dark, I can’t see,” said La Locca’s son.
“We ought to take something to drink,” said Rocco Spatu, “or we shall break our noses on the rocks.”
Cinghialenta growled: “As if we were just out for our pleasure! Now you’ll be wanting Master Vanni to give you a lemonade.”
“I have no need of lemonade,” said ’Ntoni. “You’ll see when I get to work if I can’t manage as well as any of you.”
Cousin Pizzuti didn’t want to open the door at that hour, and replied that he had gone to bed; but as they wouldn’t leave off knocking, and threatened to wake up the whole place and bring the guards into the affair, he consented to get up, and opened the door, in his drawers.
“Are you mad, to knock in that way?” he exclaimed. “I saw Don Michele pass just now.”
“Yes; we saw him too.”
“Do you know where he came from?” asked Pizzuti, looking sharply at him.
’Ntoni shrugged his shoulders; and Vanni, as he stood out of the way to let them pass, winked to Rocco and Cinghialenta. “He’s been at the Malavoglia’s,” he whispered. “I saw him come out.”
“Much good may it do him!” answered Cinghialenta; “but ’Ntoni ought to tell his sister to keep him when we have anything to do.”
“What do you want of me?” said ’Ntoni, thickly.
“Nothing to-night. Never mind. To-night we can do nothing.”
“If we can do nothing to-night, why did you bring me away from the tavern?” said Rocco Spatu. “I’m wet through.”
“It was something else that we were speaking of;” and Vanni continued: “Yes, the man has come from town, and he says the goods are there, but it will be no joke trying to land them in such weather as this.”
“So much the better; no one will be looking out for us.”
“Yes, but the guards have sharp ears, and mind you, it seems to me that I heard some one prowling about just now, and trying to look into the shop.”
A moment’s silence ensued, and Vanni, to put an end to it, brought out three glasses and filled them with bitters.
“I don’t care about the guard!” cried Rocco Spatu, after he had drunk. “So much the worse for them if they meddle in my business. I’ve got a little knife here that is better than all their pistols, and makes no noise, either.”
“We earn our bread the best way we can,” said Cinghialenta, “and don’t want to do anybody harm. Isn’t one to get one’s goods on shore where one likes?”
“They go swaggering about, a lot of thieves, making us pay double for every handkerchief that we want to land, and nobody shoots them,” added ’Ntoni Malavoglia. “Do you know what Don Giammaria said? That to rob thieves was not stealing. And the worst of thieves are those fellows in uniform, who eat us up alive.”
“I’ll mash them into pulp!” concluded Rocco Spatu, with his eyes shining like a cat’s.
But this conversation did not please La Locca’s son at all, and he set his glass down again without drinking, white as a corpse.
“Are you drunk already?” asked Cinghialenta.
“No,” he replied, “I did not drink.”
“Come into the open air; it will do us all good. Good-night.”
“One moment,” cried Pizzuti, with the door in his hand. “I don’t mean for the money for the bitters; that I have given you freely, because you are my friends; but listen, between ourselves, eh? If you are successful, mind, I am here, and my house. You know I’ve a room at the back, big enough to hold a ship-load of goods, and nobody likely to think of it, for Don Michele and his guards are hand-and-glove with me. I don’t trust Cousin Goosefoot; the last time he threw me over, and put everything into Don Silvestro’s house. Don Silvestro is never contented with a reasonable profit, but asks an awful price, on the ground that he risks his place; but I have no such motive, and I ask no more than is reasonable. And I never refused Goosefoot his percentage, either, and give him his drinks free, and shave him for nothing. But, the devil take him! if he plays me such a trick again I’ll show him that I am not to be fooled in that way. I’ll go to Don Michele and blow the whole business.”
“How it rains!” said Spatu. “Isn’t it going to leave off to-night?”
“With this weather there’ll be no one at the Rotolo,” said La Locca’s son. “Wouldn’t it be better to go home?”
’Ntoni, Rocco, and Cinghialenta, who stood on the door-step listening in silence to the rain, which hissed like fish in the frying-pan, stopped a moment, looking into the darkness.
“Be still, you fool!” cried Cinghialenta, and Vanni Pizzuti closed the door softly, after adding, in an undertone:
“Listen. If anything happens, you did not see me this evening. The bitters I gave you out of good-will, but you haven’t been in my house. Don’t betray me; I am alone in the world.”
The others went off surlily, close to the wall, in the rain. “And that one, too!” muttered Cinghialenta. “And he’s to get off because he has nobody in the world, and abuses Goosefoot. At least Goosefoot has a wife. And I have a wife, too. But the balls are good enough for me.”
Just then they passed, very softly, before Cousin Anna’s closed door, and Rocco Spatu murmured that he had his mother, too, who was at that moment fast asleep, luckily for her. “Whoever can stay between the sheets in this weather isn’t likely to be about, certainly,” concluded Cousin Cinghialenta.
’Ntoni signed to them to be quiet, and to turn down by the alley, so as not to pass before his own door, where Mena or his grandfather might be watching for him, and might hear them.
Mena was, in truth, watching for her brother behind the door, with her rosary in her hand; and Lia, too, without saying why she was there, but pale as the dead. And better would it have been for them all if ’Ntoni had passed by the black street, instead of going round by the alley. Don Michele had really been there a little after sunset, and had knocked at the door.
“Who comes at this hour?” said Lia, who was hemming on the sly a certain silk kerchief which Don Michele had at last succeeded in inducing her to accept.
“It is I, Don Michele. Open the door; I must speak to you; it is most important.”
“I can’t open the door. They are all in bed but my sister, who is watching for my brother ’Ntoni.”
“If your sister does hear you open the door it is no matter. It is precisely of ’Ntoni I wish to speak, and it is most important. I don’t want your brother to go to the galleys. But open the door; if they see me here I shall lose my place.”
“O blessed Virgin!” cried the girl. “O blessed Virgin Mary!”
“Lock him into the house to-night when he comes back. But don’t tell him I told you to. Tell him he must not go out. He must not!”
“O Virgin Mary! O blessed Mary!” repeated Lia, with folded hands.
“He is at the tavern now, but he must pass this way. Wait for him at the door, or it will be the worse for him.”
Lia wept silently, lest her sister should hear her, with her face hidden in her hands, and Don Michele watched her, with his pistols in his belt, and his trousers thrust into his boots.
“There is no one who weeps for me or watches for me this night, Cousin Lia, but I, too, am in danger, like your brother; and if any misfortune should happen to me, think how I came to-night to warn you, and how I have risked my bread for you more than once.”
Then Lia lifted up her face, and looked at Don Michele with her large tearful eyes. “God reward you for your charity, Don Michele!”
“I haven’t done it for reward, Cousin Lia; I have done it for you, and for the love I bear to you.”
“Now go, for they are all asleep. Go, for the love of God, Don Michele!”
And Don Michele went, and she stayed by the door, weeping and praying that God would send her brother that way. But the Lord did not send him that way. All four of them—’Ntoni, Cinghialenta, Rocco Spatu, and the son of La Locca—went softly along the wall of the alley; and when they came out upon the down they took off their shoes and carried them in their hands, and stood still to listen.
“I hear nothing,” said Cinghialenta.
The rain continued to fall, and from the top of the cliff nothing could be heard save the moaning of the sea below.
“One can’t even see to swear,” said Rocco Spatu. “How will they manage to climb the cliff in this darkness?”
“They all know the coast, foot by foot, with their eyes shut. They are old hands,” replied Cinghialenta.
“But I hear nothing,” observed ’Ntoni.
“It’s a fact, we can hear nothing,” said Cinghialenta, “but they must have been there below for some time.”
“Then we had better go home,” said the son of La Locca.
“Since you’ve eaten and drunk, you think of nothing but getting home again, but if you don’t be quiet I’ll kick you into the sea,” said Cinghialenta to him.
“The fact is,” said Rocco, “that I find it a bore to spend the night here doing nothing. Now we will try if they are here or not.” And he began to hoot like an owl.
“If Don Michele’s guard hears that they will be down on us directly, for on these wet nights the owls don’t fly.”
“Then we had better go,” whined La Locca’s son, but nobody answered him.
All four looked in each other’s faces though they could see nothing, and thought of what Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni had just said.
“What shall we do?” asked La Locca’s son.
“Let’s go down to the road; if they are not there we may be sure they have not come,” suggested Cinghialenta.
’Ntoni, while they were climbing down, said, “Goosefoot is capable of selling the lot of us for a glass of wine.”
“Now you haven’t the glass before you, you’re afraid,” said Cinghialenta.
“Come on! the devil take you! I’ll show whether I’m afraid.”
While they were feeling their way cautiously down, very slowly, for fear of breaking their necks in the dark, Spatu observed:
“At this moment Vanni Pizzuti is safe in bed, and he complained of Goosefoot for getting his percentage for nothing.”
“Well,” said Cinghialenta, “if you don’t want to risk your lives, stay at home and go to bed.”
’Ntoni, reaching down with his hands to feel where he should set his foot, could not help thinking that Master Cinghialenta would have done better not to say that, because it brought to each the image of his house, and his bed, and Mena dozing behind the door. That big tipsy brute, Rocco Spatu, said at last, “Our lives are not worth a copper.”
“Who goes there?” they heard some one call out, all at once, behind the wall of the high-road. “Stop! stop! all of you!”
“Treachery! treachery!” they began to cry out, rushing off over the cliffs without heeding where they went.
But ’Ntoni, who had already climbed over the wall, found himself face to face with Don Michele, who had his pistol in his hand.
“Blood of Our Lady!” cried Malavoglia, pulling out his knife. “I’ll show you whether I’m afraid of your pistol!”
Don Michele’s pistol went off in the air, but he himself fell like a bull, stabbed in the chest. ’Ntoni tried to escape, leaping from rock to rock like a goat, but the guards caught up with him, while the balls rattled about like hail, and threw him on the ground.
“Now what will become of my mother?” whined La Locca’s son, while they tied him up like a trussed chicken.
“Don’t pull so tight!” shouted ’Ntoni. “Don’t you see I can’t move?”
“Go on, go on, Malavoglia; your hash is settled once for all,” they answered, driving him before them with the butts of their muskets.
While they led him up to the barracks tied up like Our Lord himself, and worse, and carried Don Michele too, on their shoulders, he looked here and there for Rocco Spatu and Cinghialenta. “They have got off!” he said to himself. “They have nothing more to dread, but are as safe as Vanni Pizzuti and Goosefoot are, between their sheets. Only at my house no one will sleep, now they have heard the shots.”
In fact, those poor things did not sleep, but stood at the door and watched in the rain, as if their hearts had told them what had happened; while the neighbors, hearing the shots, turned sleepily over in their beds and muttered, yawning, “We shall know to-morrow what has happened.” Very late when the day was breaking, a crowd gathered in front of Vanni Pizzuti’s shop, where the light was burning and there was a great chattering.
“They have caught the smuggled goods and the smugglers too,” recounted Pizzuti, “and Don Michele has been stabbed.”
People looked at the Malavoglia’s door, and pointed with their fingers. At last came their cousin Anna, with her hair loose, white as a sheet, and knew not what to say. Padron ’Ntoni, as if he knew what was coming, asked, “’Ntoni, where’s ’Ntoni?”
“He’s been caught smuggling; he was arrested last night with La Locca’s son,” replied poor Cousin Anna, who had fairly lost her head. “And they have killed Don Michele.”
“Holy Mother!” cried the old man, with his hands to his head; and Lia, too, was tearing her hair. Padron ’Ntoni, holding his head with both hands, went on repeating, “Ah, Mother! Ah, Mother, Mother!”
Later on Goosefoot came, with a face full of trouble, smiting his forehead. “Oh, Padron ’Ntoni, have you heard? What a misfortune! I felt like a wet rag when I heard it.”
Cousin Grace, his wife, really cried, poor woman, for her heart ached to see how misfortunes rained upon those poor Malavoglia.
“What are you doing here?” asked her husband, under his breath, drawing her away from the window. “It is no business of yours. Now it isn’t safe to come to this house; one might get mixed up in some scrape with the police.”
For which reason nobody came near the Malavoglia’s door. Only Nunziata, as soon as she heard of their trouble, had confided the little ones to their eldest brother, and her house door to her next neighbor, and went off to her friend Mena to weep with her; but then she was still such a child! The others stood afar off in the street staring, or went to the barracks, crowding like flies, to see how Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni looked behind the grating, after having stabbed Don Michele; or else they filled Pizzuti’s shop, where he sold bitters, and was always shaving somebody, while he told the whole story of the night before, word for word.
“The fools!” cried the druggist, “the fools, to let themselves be taken.”
“It will be an ugly business for them,” added Don Silvestro; “the razor itself couldn’t save them from the galleys.”
And Don Giammaria went up close to him and said under his nose:
“Everybody that ought to be at the galleys doesn’t go there!”
“By no means everybody,” answered Don Silvestro, turning red with fury.
“Nowadays,” said Padron Cipolla, yellow with bile, “the real thieves rob one of one’s goods at noonday and in the middle of the piazza. They thrust themselves into one’s house by force, but they break open neither doors nor windows.”
“Just as ’Ntoni Malavoglia wanted to do in my house,” added La Zuppidda, sitting down on the wall with her distaff to spin hemp.
“What I always said to you, peace of the angels!” said her husband.
“You hold your tongue, you know nothing about it! Just think what a day this would have been for my daughter Barbara if I hadn’t looked out for her!”
Her daughter Barbara stood at the window to see how Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni looked in the middle of the police when they carried him to town.
“He’ll never get out,” they all said. “Do you know what there is written on the prison at Palermo? ‘Do what you will, here you’ll come at last,’ and ‘As you make your bed, you must lie down.’ Poor devils!”
“Good people don’t get into such scrapes,” screamed Vespa. “Evil comes to those who go to seek it. Look at the people who take to that trade—always some scamp like La Locca’s son or Malavoglia, who won’t do any honest work.” And they all said yes, that if any one had such a son as that it was better that the house should fall on him. Only La Locca went in search of her son, and stood screaming in front of the barracks of the guards, saying that she would have him, and not listening to reason; and when she went off to plague her brother Dumb-bell, and planted herself on the steps of his house, for hours at a time, with her white hair streaming in the wind, Uncle Crucifix only answered her: “I have the galleys at home here! I wish I were in your son’s place! What do you come to me for? And he didn’t give you bread to eat either.”
“La Locca will gain by it,” said Don Silvestro; “now that she has no one to work for her, they will take her in at the poor-house, and she will be well fed every day in the week. If not, she will be left to the chanty of the commune.”
And as they wound up by saying, “Who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind,” Padron Fortunato added: “And it is a good thing for Padron ’Ntoni too. Do you think that good-for-nothing grandson of his did not cost him a lot of money? I know what it is to have a son like that. Now the King must maintain him.”
But Padron ’Ntoni, instead of thinking of saving those soldi, now that his grandson was no longer likely to spend them for him, kept on flinging them after him, with lawyers and notaries and the rest of it—those soldi which had cost so much labor, and had been destined for the house by the medlar-tree.
“Now we do not need the house nor anything else,” said he, with a face as pale as ’Ntoni’s own when they had taken him away to town, with his hands tied, and under his arm the little bundle of shirts which Mena had brought to him with so many tears at night when no one saw her. The whole town went to see him go in the middle of the police. His grandfather had gone off to the advocate—the one who talked so much—for since he had seen Don Michele, also, pass by in the carriage on his way to the hospital, as yellow as a guinea, and with his uniform unbuttoned, he was frightened, poor old man, and did not stop to find fault with the lawyer’s chatter as long as he would promise to untie his grandson’s hands and let him come home again; for it seemed to him that after this earthquake ’Ntoni would come home again, and stay with them always, as he had done when he was a child.
Don Silvestro had done him the kindness to go with him to the lawyer, because, he said, that when such a misfortune as had happened to the Malavoglia happened to any Christian, one should aid one’s neighbor with hands, and feet too, even if it were a wretch fit only for the galleys, and do one’s best to take him out of the hands of justice, for that was why we were Christians, that we should help our neighbors when they need it. The advocate, when he had heard the story, and it had been explained to him by Don Silvestro, said that it was a very good case, “a case for the galleys certainly”—and he rubbed his hands—“if they hadn’t come to him.”
Padron ’Ntoni turned as white as a sheet when he heard of the galleys, but the advocate clapped him on the shoulder and told him not to be frightened, that he was no lawyer if he couldn’t get him off with four or five years’ imprisonment.
“What did the advocate say?” asked Mena, as she saw her grandfather return with that pale face, and began to cry before she could hear the answer.
The old man walked up and down the house like a madman, saying, “Ah, why did we not all die first?” Lia, white as her smock, looked from one to the other with wide dry eyes, unable to speak a word.
A little while after came the summonses as witnesses to Barbara Zuppidda and Grazia Goosefoot and Don Franco, the druggist, and all those who were wont to stand chattering in his shop and in that of Vanni Pizzuti, the barber; so that the whole place was upset by them, and the people crowded the piazza with the stamped papers in their hands, and swore that they knew nothing about it, as true as God was in heaven, because they did not want to get mixed up with the tribunals. Cursed be ’Ntoni and all the Malavoglia, who pulled them by the hair into their scrapes. The Zuppidda screamed as if she had been possessed. “I know nothing about it; at the Ave Maria I shut myself into my house, and I am not like those who go wandering about after such work as we know of, or who stand at the doors to talk with spies.”
“Beware of the Government,” added Don Franco. “They know that I am a republican, and they would be very glad to get a chance to sweep me off the face of the earth.”
Everybody beat their brains to find out what the Zuppidda and Cousin Grace and the rest of them could have to say as witnesses on the trial, for they had seen nothing, and had only heard the shots when they were in bed, between sleeping and waking. But Don Silvestro rubbed his hands like the lawyer, and said that he knew because he had pointed them out to the lawyer, and that it was much better for the lawyer that he had. Every time that the lawyer went to talk with ’Ntoni Malavoglia Don Silvestro went with him to the prison if he had nothing else to do; and nobody went at that time to the Council, and the olives were gathered. Padron ’Ntoni had also tried to go two or three times, but whenever he got in front of those barred windows and the soldiers who were on guard before them, he turned sick and faint, and stayed waiting for them outside, sitting on the pavement among the people who sold chestnuts and Indian figs; it did not seem possible to him that his ’Ntoni could really be there behind those grated windows, with the soldiers guarding him. The lawyer came back from talking with ’Ntoni, fresh as a rose, rubbing his hands, and saying that his grandson was quite well, indeed that he was growing fat. Then it seemed to the poor old man that his grandson was with the soldiers.
“Why don’t they let him go?” he asked over and over again, like a parrot or like a child, and kept on asking, too, if his hands were always tied.
“Leave him where he is,” said Doctor Scipione. “In these cases it is better to let some time pass first. Meanwhile he wants for nothing, as I told you, and is growing quite fat. Things are going very well. Don Michele has nearly recovered from his wound, and that also is a very good thing for us. Go back to your boat, I tell you; this is my affair.”
“But I can’t go back to the boat, now ’Ntoni is in prison—I can’t go back! Everybody looks at me when I pass, and besides, my head isn’t right, with ’Ntoni in prison.”
And he went on repeating the same thing, while the money ran away like water, and all his people stayed in the house as if they were hiding, and never opened the door.
At last the day of trial arrived, and those who had been summoned as witnesses had to go—on their own feet if they did not wish to be carried by force by the carbineers. Even Don Franco went, and changed his ugly hat, to appear before the majesty of justice to better advantage, but he was as pale as ’Ntoni Malavoglia himself, who stood inside the bars like a wild beast, with the carbineers on each side of him. Don Franco had never before had anything to do with the law, and he trembled all over at the idea of going into the midst of all those judges and spies and policemen, who would catch a man and put him in there behind the bars like ’Ntoni Malavoglia before he could wink.
The whole village had gone out to see what kind of a figure Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni would make behind the bars in the middle of the carbineers, yellow as a tallow-candle, not daring to look up for fear of seeing all those eyes of friends and acquaintances fixed upon him, turning his cap over and over in his hands while the president, in his long black robe and with napkin under his chin, went on reading a long list of the iniquities which he had committed from the paper where they were written down in black and white. Don Michele was there too, also looking yellow and ill, sitting in a chair opposite to the “Jews” (as they would call the jury), who kept on yawning and fanning themselves with their handkerchiefs. Meanwhile the advocate kept on chatting with his next neighbor as if the affair were no concern of his.
“This time,” murmured the Zuppidda in the ear of the person next her, listening to all those awful things that ’Ntoni had done, “he certainly won’t get off the galleys.”
Santuzza was there too, to say where ’Ntoni had been, and how he had passed that evening.
“Now I wonder what they’ll ask Santuzza,” murmured the Zuppidda. “I can’t think how she’ll answer so as not to bring out all her own villanies.”
“But what is it they want of us?” asked Cousin Grazia.
“They want to know if it is true that Don Michele had an understanding with Lia, and if ’Ntoni did not stab him because of that; the advocate told me.”
“Confound you!” whispered the druggist, furiously, “do you all want to go to the galleys? Don’t you know that before the law you must always say no, and that we know nothing at all?”
Cousin Venera wrapped herself in her mantle, but went on muttering: “It is the truth. I saw them with my own eyes, and all the town knows it.”
That morning at the Malavoglia’s house there had been a terrible scene when the grandfather, seeing the whole place go off to see ’Ntoni tried, started to go after them.
Lia, with tumbled hair, wild eyes, and her chin trembling like a baby’s, wanted to go too, and went about the house looking for her mantle without speaking, but with pale face and trembling hands.
Mena caught her by those hands, saying, pale as death herself, “No! you must not go—you must not go!” and nothing else. The grandfather added that they must stay at home and pray to the Madonna; and they wept so that they were heard all the length of the black street. The poor old man had hardly reached the town when, hidden at a corner, he saw his grandson pass among the carbineers, and with trembling limbs went to sit on the steps of the court-house, where every one passed him going up and down on his business. Then it came over him that all those people were going to hear his grandson condemned, and it seemed to him as if he were leaving him alone in the piazza surrounded by enemies, or out at sea in a hurricane, and so he, too, amid the crowd, went up the stairs, and strove, by rising on his tiptoes, to see through the grating and past the shining bayonets of the carbineers. ’Ntoni, however, he could not see, surrounded as he was by such a crowd of people; and more than ever it seemed to the poor old man that his grandson was one of the soldiers.
Meanwhile the advocate talked and talked and talked, until it seemed that his flood of words ran like the pulley of a well, up and down, up and down, without ceasing. No, he said; no, it was not true that ’Ntoni Malavoglia had been guilty of all those crimes. The president had gone about raking up all sorts of stories—that was his business, and he had nothing to do but to get poor helpless fellows into scrapes. But, after all, what did the president know about it? Had he been there, that rainy night, in the pitch darkness, to see what ’Ntoni Malavoglia was about? “In the poor man’s house he alone is in the wrong, and the gallows is for the unlucky.” The president went on looking at him calmly with his eye-glasses, leaning his elbows on his papers. Doctor Scipione went on asking where were the goods, who had seen the goods that was what he wanted to know; and since how long had honest men been forbidden to walk about at whatever hour they liked, especially when they had a little too much wine in their heads to get rid of.
Padron ’Ntoni nodded his head at this, or said, “Yes, yes,” with tears in his eyes, and would have liked to hug the advocate, who had called ’Ntoni a blockhead. Suddenly he lifted his head. That was good; what the lawyer had just said was worth of itself fifty francs. He said that since they wanted to drive them to the wall, and to prove plain as two and two make four that they had caught ’Ntoni Malavoglia in the act, with the knife in his hand, and had brought Don Michele there before them with his stupid face, well, then, “How are you to prove that it was ’Ntoni Malavoglia who stabbed him? Who knows that it was he? Who can tell that Don Michele didn’t stab himself on purpose to send ’Ntoni Malavoglia to the galleys? Do you really want to know the truth? Smuggled goods had nothing to do with it. Between ’Ntoni Malavoglia and Don Michele there was an old quarrel—a quarrel about a woman.” And Padron ’Ntoni nodded again in assent, for didn’t everybody know, and wasn’t he ready to swear before the crucifix, too, that Don Michele was furious with jealousy of ’Ntoni since Santuzza had taken a fancy to him, and then meeting Don Michele by night, and after the boy had been drinking, too? One knows how it is when one’s eyes are clouded with drink. The advocate continued:
“You may ask the Zuppidda, and Dame Grazia, and a dozen more witnesses, if it is not true that Don Michele had an understanding with Lia, ’Ntoni Malavoglia’s sister, and he was always prowling about the black street in the evening after the girl. They saw him there the very night on which he was stabbed.”
Padron ’Ntoni heard no more, for his ears began to ring, and at that moment he caught sight of ’Ntoni, who had sprung up behind the bars, tearing his cap like a madman, and shaking his head violently, with flashing eyes, and trying to make himself heard. The by-standers took the old man out, supposing that he had had a stroke, and the guards laid him on a bench in the witnesses’ room and threw water in his face. Later, while they were taking him down-stairs tottering and clinging to their arms, the crowd came pouring out like a torrent, and they were heard to say, “They have condemned him to five years in irons.” At that moment ’Ntoni came out himself, deadly pale, handcuffed, in the midst of the carbineers.
Cousin Grazia went off home, running, and reached there sooner than the others, panting with speed, for ill news always comes on wings. Hardly had she caught sight of Lia, who stood waiting at the door like a soul in purgatory, than she caught her by both hands, exclaiming: “Wretched girl! what have you done? They have told the judge that you had an understanding with Don Michele, and your grandfather had a stroke when he heard it.” Lia answered not a word any more than if she had not heard or did not care. She only stared with wide eyes and open mouth. At last she sank slowly down upon a chair, as if she had lost the use of her limbs. So she remained for many minutes without motion or speech, while Cousin Grazia threw water in her face until she began to stammer, “I can’t stay here! I must go—I must go away!” Her sister followed her about the room, weeping and trying to catch her by the hands, while she went on saying to the cupboard and to the chairs, like a mad creature, “I must go!”
In the evening, when her grandfather was brought home on a cart, and Mena, careless now whether she were seen or not, went out to meet him, Lia went first into the court and then into the street, and then went away altogether, and nobody ever saw her any more.
People said that Lia was gone to live with Don Michele; that the Malavoglia, after all, had nothing left to lose, and Don Michele would give her bread to eat. Padron ’Ntoni was of no use to anybody any more. He did nothing but wander about, bent almost double, and uttering at intervals proverbs without sense or meaning, like, “A hatchet for the fallen tree”; “Who falls in the water gets wet”; “The thinnest horse has the most flies”; and when they asked him why he was always wandering about, he said, “Hunger drives the wolf out of the wood,” or, “The hungry dog fears not the stick,” but no one asked how he was, or seemed to care about him, now he was reduced to such a condition. They teased him, and asked him why he stood waiting with his back against the church-tower, like Uncle Crucifix when he had money to lend; or sitting under the boats which were drawn up on the sand, as if he had Padron Fortunato’s bark out at sea. And Padron ’Ntoni replied that he was waiting for Death, who would not come to take him, for “Long are the days of the unhappy.” No one in the house ever spoke of Lia, not even Sant’Agata, who, if she wished to relieve her feelings, went and wept beside her mother’s bed when she was alone in the house. Now this house, too, had become as wide as the sea, and they were lost in it. The money was gone with ’Ntoni, Alessio was always away here or there at work, and Nunziata used to be charitable enough to come and kindle the fire when Mena used to have to go out towards evening and lead her grandfather home in the dusk, because he was half blind. Don Silvestro and others in the place said that Alessio would do better to send his grandfather to the poor-house, now that he was of no more use to anybody; but that was the only thing that frightened the poor old fellow. Every time that Mena led him out by the hand in the morning to take him where the sun shone, “to wait for Death,” he thought that they were leading him to the poor-house, so silly was he grown, and he went on stammering, “But will Death never come?” so that some people used to ask him, laughing, where he thought Death had gone.
Alessio came back every Saturday night and brought all his money and counted it out to his grandfather, as if he had still been reasonable. He always replied, “Yes, yes,” and nodded his head, and they always had to hide the little sum under the mattress, in the old place, and told him, to please him, that they were putting it away to buy back the house by the medlar-tree, and that in a year or two they should have enough. But then the old man shook his head obstinately, and replied that now they did not need the house, and that it would have been better if there had never been the house of the Malavoglia, now that the Malavoglia were all scattered here and there. Once he called Nunziata aside under the almond-tree, when no one was by, and seemed to be anxious to say something very important; but he moved his lips without speaking, and seemed to be seeking for words, looking from side to side. “Is it true what they say about Lia?” he said at last.
“No,” replied Nunziata, crossing her hands on her breast, “no; by the Madonna of Ognino, it is not true!”
He began to shake his head, with his chin sunk on his breast. “Then why has she run away, too? Why has she run away?”
And he went about the house looking for her, pretending to have lost his cap, touching the bed and the cupboard, and sitting down at the loom without speaking. “Do you know,” he asked after a while—“do you know where she is gone?” But to Mena he said nothing. Nunziata really did not know where she was, nor did any one else in the place.
One evening there came and stopped in the black street Alfio Mosca, with the cart, to which was now harnessed a mule; and he had had the fever at Bicocca and had nearly died, so that his face was yellow as saffron, and he had lost his fine, straight figure, but the mule was fat and shining.
“Do you remember when I went away to Bicocca?—when you were still in the house by the medlar?” he asked. “Now everything is changed, for ‘the world is round, some swim and some are drowned.’” This time they had not even a glass of wine to offer him in welcome.
Cousin Alfio knew where Lia was—he had seen her with his own eyes, looking just as Cousin Mena used to when she used to come to her window and he talked to her from his. For which reason he sat still, looking from one thing to another, looking at the furniture and at the walls, and feeling as if the loaded cart were lying on his breast, while he sat without speaking beside the empty table, to which they no longer sat down to eat the evening meal.
“Now I must go,” he repeated, finding that no one spoke to him. “When one has left one’s home it is better never to come back, for everything changes while one is away, and even the faces that meet one are changed, so that one feels like a stranger.”
Mena continued silent. Meanwhile Alessio began to tell him how he had made up his mind to marry Nunziata as soon as he had put together a little money, and Alfio replied that he was quite right, if Nunziata had also saved a little money, for that she was a good girl, and everybody knew her in the place. So even do our nearest and dearest forget us when we are no longer here, and each thinks of his own affairs and of bearing the burden which God has given him, like Alfio Mosca’s ass, poor beast, who was sold, and gone no one knew where.
Nunziata had her own dowry by this time, for her brothers were growing big enough to earn their own bread, and even to put by now and then a soldo; and she had never bought jewellery or good clothes for herself, for, she said, gold was for rich people, and white clothes it was nonsense to buy while she was still growing.
By this time she was grown up, a tall, slight girl with black hair and deep sweet eyes, that had never lost the look they wore when she found herself deserted by her father, with all her little brothers on her hands, whom she had reared through all those years of care and trouble. Seeing how she had pulled through all these troubles—she and her little brothers, and she a slip of a thing “no bigger than the broom-handle”—every one was glad to speak to her and to notice her if they met her in the street. “The money we have,” she said to Cousin Alfio, who was almost like a relation, they had known him so long. “At All Saints my eldest brother is going to Master Filippo as hired man, and the second to Padron Cipolla, in his place. When we have found a place for Turi I shall marry, but I must wait until I am older and my father gives his consent.”
“But your father doesn’t even think whether you are alive or dead,” said Alfio.
“If he were to come back now,” said Nunziata, calmly, in her sweet voice, sitting quietly with her hands on her knees, “he would stay, because now we have some money.”
Then Cousin Alfio repeated to Alessio that he would do well to marry Nunziata, now that she had money.
“We shall buy back the house by the medlar,” added Alessio; “and grandfather will live with us. When the others come back they will live there too, and if Nunziata’s father comes, there will also be room for him.”
No one spoke of Lia, but they all thought of her as they sat with arms on their knees, looking into the moonlight.
Finally Cousin Mosca got up to go, because his mule shook his bells impatiently, almost as if he had known who it was whom Cousin Alfio had met, and whom they did not expect, at the house by the medlar-tree.
Uncle Crucifix expected that the Malavoglia would come to him about that house by the medlar, which had been lying all this time on his hands as if nobody cared to have it; so that he had no sooner heard that Alfio Mosca was come back to the place than he went after him to ask him to speak to the Malavoglia and induce them to settle the affair, forgetting, apparently, that he had been so jealous of Alfio Mosca, when he went away, that he had wished to break his ribs with a big stick.
“Listen, Cousin Alfio,” said Dumb-bell. “If you’ll arrange that affair of the house with the Malavoglia, when they have the money, I’ll give you enough to pay for the shoes you’ll wear out going between us.”
Cousin Alfio went to speak to the Malavoglia, but Padron ’Ntoni shook his head and said, “No; now we should not know what to do with the house, for Mena is not likely to marry, and there are no Malavoglia left. I am still here, because the afflicted have long lives. But when I am gone Alessio will marry Nunziata, and they will go away from the place.”
He, too was going away. The greater part of the time he passed in bed, like a crab under the pebbles, crying out with pain. “What have I to do here?” he stammered, and he felt as if he was robbing them of the food they gave him. In vain did Mena and Alessio seek to persuade him otherwise. He repeated that he was robbing them of their food and of their time, and made them count the money hidden under the mattress, and if it grew less, he muttered: “At least if I were not here you would not need to spend so much. There is nothing left for me to do here, and it is time I was gone.”
The doctor, who came to feel his pulse, said that it was better they should take him to the hospital, for where he was he wore out his own life, and theirs too, to no purpose. Meanwhile the poor old man looked from one to the other trying to guess what was said, with sad faded eyes, trembling lest they should send him to the poor-house. Alessio would not hear of sending him to the poor-house, and said that while there was bread for any of them, there was for all; and Mena, for her part, also said no, and took him out into the sun on fine days, and sat down by him with her distaff, telling him stories as she would have done to a child, and spinning, when she was not obliged to go to wash. She talked to him also of what they would do if any little providential fortune were to happen to them, to comfort him, telling him how they would buy a calf at Saint Sebastian, and how she would be able to cut grass enough to feed it through the winter. In May they would sell it again at a profit; and she showed him the brood of chickens she had, and how they came picking about their feet as they sat in the sun and rolling in the dust of the street. With the money they would get for the chickens they would buy a pig, so as not to lose the fig-peelings or the water in which the macaroni had been boiled, and at the end of the year it would be as if they had been putting money in a money-box. The old man, with his hands on his stick, gave approving nods, looking at the chickens. He listened so attentively that at last he got so far as to say that if they had got back the house by the medlar they could have kept the pig in the court, and that it would bring a certain profit with Cousin Naso. At the house by the medlar-tree there was also the stable for the calf, and the shed for the hay, and everything. He went on, recalling one thing after another, looking about him with sunken eyes and his chin upon his stick. Then he would ask his granddaughter under his breath, “What was it the doctor said about the hospital?”
And Mena would scold him as if he were a child, saying to him, “Why do you think about such things?”
He was silent, and listened quietly to all she said. But then he repeated, “Don’t send me to the hospital, I’m not used to it.”
At last he ceased to get out of bed, and the doctor said that it was all over with him, and that he could do no more, but that he might live like that for years, and that Alessio and Mena, and Nunzi-ata, too, would have to give up their day’s work to take care of him; for that if there were not some one near him the pigs might eat him up if the door were left open.
Padron ’Ntoni understood quite well what was said, for he looked at their faces one after another with eyes that it would break one’s heart to see; and the doctor was still standing on the door-step with Mena, who was weeping, and Alessio, who said no, and stamped and stormed when he signed to Nunziata to come near him, and whispered to her:
“It will be better to send me to the hospital; here, I am eating them out of house and home. Send me away some day when Mena and Alessio are gone out. They say no, because they have the good heart of the Malavoglia, but I am eating up the money which should be put away for the house; and then the doctor said that I might live like this for years, and there is nothing here for me to do. But I don’t want to live for years down there at the hospital.”
Nunziata began to cry, and she also said no, until all the neighborhood cried out upon them for being proud, when they hadn’t bread to eat. They ashamed to send their grandfather to the hospital, when the rest were scattered about here and there, and in such places, too!
So it went on, over and over, and the doctor kept on saying that it was of no use, his coming and going for nothing; and when the gossips came to stand round the old man’s bed, Cousin Grazia, or Anna, or Nunziata, he went on saying that the fleas were eating him up. Padron ’Ntoni did not dare to open his mouth, but lay there still, worn and pale. And as the gossips went on talking among themselves, and even Nunziata could not answer them, one day when Alessio was not there he said, at last:
“Go and call Cousin Alfio Mosca, that he may do me the charity to carry me to the hospital in his cart.”
So Padron ’Ntoni went away to the hospital in Alfio Mosca’s cart—they had put the mattress and pillows in it—but the poor sick man, although he said nothing, looked long at everything while they carried him to the cart one day when Alessio was gone to Riposto, and they had sent Mena away on some pretext, or they would not have let him go. In the black street, when they passed before the house by the medlar-tree, and while they were crossing the piazza, Padron ’Ntoni continued to look about him as if to fix everything in his memory. Alfio led the mule on one side, and Nunziata—who had left Turi in charge of the calf, the turkeys, and the fowls—walked on the other side, with the bundle of shirts under her arm. Seeing the cart pass, every one came out to look at it, and watched it until it was out of sight; and Don Silvestro said that they had done quite right, and that it was for that the commune paid the rate for the hospital; and Don Franco would also have made his little speech if Don Silvestro had not been there. “At least that poor devil will be left in peace,” said Uncle Crucifix.
“Necessity abases nobility,” said Padron Cipolla, and Santuzza repeated an Ave Maria for the poor old man. Only the cousin Anna and Cousin Grace Goosefoot wiped their eyes with their aprons as the cart moved slowly away, jolting on the stones. But Uncle Tino chid his wife: “What are you whining about? Am I dead? What is it to you?”
Alfio Mosca, as he guided the cart, related to Nunziata how and where he had seen Lia, who was the image of Sant’Agata; and he even yet could hardly believe that he had really seen her, and his voice was almost lost as he spoke of it, to while the time, as they walked along the dusty road. “Ah, Nunziata! who would have thought it when we used to talk to each other from the doors, and the moon shone, and we heard the neighbors talking in front, and Sant’Agata’s loom was going all day long, and those hens that knew her as soon as she opened the door, and La Longa, who called her from the court, and everything could be heard in my house as plainly as in theirs. Poor Longa! See, now, that I have my mule and everything just as I wished, and I wouldn’t have believed it would have happened if an angel had told me; now I am always thinking of those old times and the evenings when I heard all your voices when I was stabling my donkey, and saw the light in the house by the medlar, which is now shut up, and how when I came back I found nothing as I left it, and Cousin Mena so changed! When one leaves one’s own place it is better never to come back. See, I keep thinking, too, about that poor donkey that worked for me so long, and went on always, rain or shine, with his bent head and his long ears. Now who knows where they drive him, by what rough ways, or with what heavy loads, and how his ears hang down lower than ever, and he snuffs at the earth which will soon cover him, for he is old, poor beast?” Padron ’Ntoni, stretched on the mattress, heard nothing, and they had put a covering drawn over canes on the cart, so that it seemed as if they were carrying a corpse.
“For him it is best that he should not hear,” continued Cousin Alfio. “He felt for ’Ntoni’s trouble, and it would be so much worse if he ever came to hear how Lia has gone.”
“He asked me about her often when we were alone,” said Nunziata. “He wanted to know where she was.”
“She is worse off than her brother is. We, poor things, are like sheep; we go where we see others go. You must never tell any one, especially any one in our place, where I saw Lia, for it would kill Sant’Agata. She recognized me, certainly, when I passed where she stood at the door, for she turned white and then red, and I whipped my mule to get past as quick as I could, and I am sure that poor thing would rather have had the cart go over her, or that I might have been driving her the corpse that her grandfather seems. Now the family of the Malavoglia is destroyed, and you and Alessio must bring it up again.”
“We have the money for the plenishing. At Saint John’s Day we shall sell the calf.”
“Bravo! So, when the money is put away there won’t be the chance of losing it in a day, as you might if the calf happened to die—the Lord forbid! Here we are at the first houses of the town, and you can wait for me here if you don’t want to come to the hospital.”
“No. I want to go too, so at least I shall see where they put him, and he will have me with him to the last moment.”
Padron ’Ntoni saw them even to the last moment, and while Nunziata went away with Alfio Mosca, slowly, slowly, down the long, long room, that seemed like a church, he accompanied them with his eyes, and then turned on his side and moved no more. Cousin Alfio and Nunziata rolled up the mattress and the cover, and got into the cart and drove home over the long dusty road in silence.
Alessio beat his head with his fists and tore his hair when he found his grandfather no longer in his bed, and when they brought home his mattress rolled up, and raved at Mena as if it had been she who had sent him away. But Cousin Alfio said to him: “What will you have? The house of the Malavoglia is destroyed, and you and Nunziata must set it going again.”
He wanted to go on talking about the money and about the calf, of which he and the girl had been talking as they went to town; but Mena and Alessio would not listen to him, but sat, with their heads in their hands and eyes full of tears, at the door of the house, where they were now alone, indeed. Cousin Alfio tried to comfort them by talking of the old days of the house by the medlar-tree, when they used to talk to each other from the doors in the moonlight, and how all day long Sant’Agata’s loom was beating, and the hens were clucking, and they heard the voice of La Longa, who was always busy. Now everything was changed, and when one left one’s own place it was best, he said, never to come back; for even the street was not the same, now there was no one coming there for the Mangiacarubbe; and even Don Silvestro never was seen waiting for the Zuppidda to fall at his feet; and Uncle Crucifix was always shut up in the house looking after his things or quarrelling with Vespa; and even in the drug shop there wasn’t so much talking since Don Franco had looked the law in the face and shut himself in to read the paper, and pounded all his ideas up into his mortar to pass away the time. Even Padron Cipolla no longer wore out the steps of the church by sitting there so much since he had had no peace at home.
One fine day came the news that Padron Fortu-nato was going to be married, in order that the Mangiacarubbe might not devour his substance in spite of him, for that he now no longer wore out the church-steps, but was going to marry Barbara Zuppidda. “And he said matrimony was like a rat-trap,” growled Uncle Crucifix. “After that I’ll trust nobody.”
The curious girls said that Barbara was going to marry her grandfather, but sensible people like Peppi Naso and Goosefoot, and Don Franco, too, murmured: “Now Venera has got the better of Don Silvestro, and it is a great blow for Don Sil-vestro, and it would be better if he left the place. Hang all foreigners! Here no foreigners ever really take root. Don Silvestro will never dare to measure himself with Padron Cipolla.”
“What did he think?” screamed Venera, with her hands on her hips—“that he could starve me into giving him my girl? This time I will have my way, and I have made my husband understand as much. ‘The faithful dog sticks to his own trough.’ We want no foreigners in our house. Once we were much better off in the place—before the strangers came to write down on paper every mouthful that one ate, or to pound marsh-mallows in a mortar, and fatten on other people’s blood. Then everybody knew everybody and what everybody did, and what their fathers and grandfathers had done, even to what they had to eat; if one saw a person pass one knew where they were going, and the fields and the vineyards belonged to the people who were born among them, and the fish didn’t let themselves be caught by just anybody. In those days people didn’t go wandering here and there and didn’t die in the hospital.”
Since everybody was getting married, Alfio Mosca would have been glad to marry Cousin Mena, who had no longer any prospect of marrying, since the Malavoglia family was broken up, and Cousin Alfio could not now be called a bad match for her, with the mule which he had bought; so he ruminated, one Sunday, over all the reasons which could give him courage to speak to her as he sat by her side in front of the door with his back against the wall, breaking twigs off the bushes to give himself a countenance and pass away the time. She watched the people passing by, which was her way of keeping holiday.
“If you are willing to take me now, Cousin Mena,” he said at last, “I am ready, for my part.”
Poor Mena did not even turn red, feeling that Cousin Alfio had guessed that she had been willing to have him at the time when they were going to give her to Brasi Cipolla—so long ago that time appeared, and she herself so changed!
“I am old now, Cousin Alfio,” she said; “I shall never marry.”
“If you are old, then I am old too, for I was older than you were when we used to talk to each other from’ the windows, and it seems as if it was but yesterday, I remember it all so well. But it must be eight years ago. And now, when your brother Alessio is married, you will be left alone.”
Mena drew her shoulders together with Cousin Anna’s favorite gesture, for she too had learned to do God’s will and not complain; and Cousin Alfio, seeing this, went on: “Then you do not care for me, Cousin Mena, and I beg you to forgive my asking you to marry me. I know that you are above me, for you are the daughter of a ship-master; but now you have nothing, and when your brother marries you will be left alone. I have my mule and my cart, and I would let you want for nothing, Cousin Mena—but pardon the liberty I have taken.”
“You have not taken a liberty, Cousin Alfio, nor am I offended; I would have said yes to you when we had theProvvidenzaand the house by the medlar-tree if my relations had been willing, and God knows what I had in my heart when you went away to Bicocca with the donkey-cart; and it seems as if I could see still the light in the stable, and you piling all your things in the little cart in the court before your house. Do you remember?”
“Indeed, I do remember. Then, why do you not take me now, when I have the mule instead of the donkey, and your family will not say no?”
“I am too old to marry,” said Mena, with her head bent down. “I am twenty-six years old, and it is too late for me to marry now.”
“No, that is not the reason you will not marry me,” said Alfio, with bent head as well as she. “You won’t tell me the real reason;” and they went on breaking the twigs, without speaking or looking at each other. When he got up to go away, with drooping shoulders and bent head, Mena followed him with her eyes as long as she could see him, and then looked at the wall opposite and sighed.
As Alfio Mosca said, Alessio had taken Nunziata to wife, and had bought back the house by the medlar-tree.
“I am too old to marry,” said Mena; “get married you, who are still young,” and so she went up into the upper room of the house by the medlar, like an old saucepan, and had set her heart at rest, waiting until Nunziata should give her children to be a mother to. They had the hens in the chicken-coop, and the calf in the stable, and the fodder and the wood in the shed, and the nets and all sorts of tackle hanging up, just as Padron ’Ntoni had described them; and Nunziata had planted cabbages and cauliflowers in the garden, with those slender arms of hers, that no one would have dreamed could have bleached such yards and yards of linen, or that such a slip of a creature could have brought into the world those rosy fat babies that Mena was always carrying about the place, as if she had borne them, and was their mother in very truth.
Cousin Mosca shook his head when he saw her pass, and turned away with drooping shoulders.
“You did not think me worthy of the honor of marrying you,” he said once when they were alone, and he could bear it no longer.
“No, Cousin Alfio,” answered Mena, with starting tears. “I swear it by the soul of this innocent creature in my arms; that is not my motive. But I cannot marry.”
“And why should you not marry, Cousin Mena?”
“No, no,” repeated Cousin Mena, now nearly-weeping outright. “Don’t make me say it, Cousin Alfio! Don’t make me speak. If I were to marry now people would begin to talk again of my sister Lia, so that no one can marry a girl of the Malavoglia after what has happened. You yourself would be the first to repent of doing it. Leave me; I shall never marry, and you must set your heart at rest.”
So Cousin Alfio set his heart at rest, and Mena continued to carry her little nephews in her arms, almost as if her heart, too, were at rest; and she swept out the room up-stairs, to be ready for the others when they came back—for they also had been born in the house. “As if they were gone on journeys from which any one ever came back!” said Goosefoot.
Meanwhile Padron ’Ntoni was gone—gone on a long journey, farther than Trieste, farther than Alexandria in Egypt, the journey whence no man ever yet came back and when his name fell into the talk, as they sat resting, counting up the expenses of the week, or making plans for the future, in the shade of the medlar-tree, with the plates upon their laps, a silence fell suddenly upon them, for they all seemed to have the poor old man before their eyes, as they had seen him the last time they went to visit him, in that great wide chamber, full of beds in long rows, where they had to look about before they could find him, and the grandfather waited for them as the souls wait in purgatory, with his eyes fixed on the door, although he now could hardly see, and went on touching them to be sure that they were really there and still said nothing, though they could see by his face that there was much he wished to say; and their hearts ached to see the suffering in his face, which he could not tell them. When they told him, however, how they had got back the house by the medlar, and were going to take him back to Trezza again, he said yes, yes with his eyes, to which the light came back once more, and he tried to smile, with that smile of those who smile no more or who smile for the last time, which stays, planted in the heart like a knife.