I Malavoglia Page 12

  ‘You don’t seem to set much store by my duty, do you? If I had caught them red-handed to-night there would have been plenty in it for us, damn it!’

  ‘If they want you to believe that it was massaro Filippo trying to smuggle his wine in, don’t you believe them, by this blessed scapular I’m wearing so unworthily on my chest. That’s a pack of lies told by brazen people without consciences, who would damn their own souls in their eagerness to harm their neighbours.’

  ‘No, I know what it was! It was silk handkerchieves and coffee and sugar, more than a thousand lire’s worth of goods, by the Virgin, which slipped through my fingers like eels; but I’ve got them in my sights, the whole gang, and another time they won’t get away with it.’

  Then Piedipapera said to him: ‘Have a drink, don Michele, it’ll do your stomach good, with all that sleep you’ve lost.’

  Don Michele was in a bad mood, and he huffed and puffed.

  ‘He’s asking you to have one, so have one,’ added Vanni Pizzuto. ‘If compare Tino is paying, it means he’s got money, and to spare. And he has got money, the cunning devil! In fact he has taken over the debt from the Malavoglia; and now they’re repaying him with beatings.’

  Here don Michele allowed himself to laugh a little.

  ‘By the blood of Judas,’ exclaimed Piedipapera, banging his fists on the counter, and pretending to get into a real rage now. ‘I don’t need to send that lout ’Ntoni to Rome, to make him do penance!’

  ‘Bravo,’ said Pizzuto encouragingly. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have let it pass. Eh, don Michele?’

  Don Michele gave a grunt of approval. ‘I’ll see about cutting ’Ntoni and all his family down to size,’ threatened Piedipapera. ‘I have no wish to be the laughing stock of the whole village. You can rest assured of that, don Michele!’

  And he went off hobbling and swearing as though he were blind with fury, muttering to himself:

  ‘You have to keep the lot of them sweet, those narks’; and pondering on how to keep them sweet he went to the wine shop, where zio Santoro told him that neither Roccu Spatu nor Cinghialenta had been seen, so he went to cousin Anna, who had not slept, poor thing, and was standing at the door looking first in one direction and then the other, pale and distraught. There he also met la Vespa who was coming to see whether comare Grazia had a little yeast, by any chance.

  ‘I’ve just met compare Mosca,’ she said, for something to say. ‘He hadn’t got his cart with him, and I’ll warrant he was going to hang about on the sciara, behind St Agatha’s vegetable patch. ‘Loving your neighbour is a fine thing indeed, you see each other often and to travel there’s no need.’ ’

  ‘A fine saint to pin up on the wall, that Mena!’ la Vespa began to bawl. ‘They want to give her to Brasi Cipolla, and she carries on flirting all over the place. What a disgraceful business!’

  ‘You leave her be! That way people will know what sort of a person she is, and their eyes will be opened. But doesn’t compare Mosca know she’s been promised to compare Cipolla?’

  ‘You know what men are like, if there’s some little flirt with an eye on them they all run after her just for the joy of it. But then, when they want to start something serious, they need the kind of girl I have in mind.’

  ‘Compare Mosca ought to take someone like you.’

  ‘For the moment, I’m not thinking about marriage; but certainly he’d be well-suited with me. Anyway, I’ve got my smallholding, and no one can lay their hands on that, whereas the house by the medlar tree could be blown away at the first chill wind. We’ll see what’s what, when the trouble starts.’

  ‘You leave her be! Fair weather is followed by foul, and the lightweights get blown away like dead twigs. To-day I have to talk to your uncle Dumb bell about you-know-what.’

  Dumb bell was all too willing to talk about the never-ending affair, and ‘long things turn into snakes…’ Padron ’Ntoni kept repeating that the Malavoglia were decent folk, and would pay, but he would like to know where they were going to get that money from. In the village they already knew what everyone owned, down to the last centesimo, and those ever so decent Malavoglia would never be able to raise the sum between now and Easter, even by selling their souls to the Turks; and to take over the house by the medlar tree would require a lot of red tape, and don Giammaria and the chemist were right when they talked of the government being a thief; as true as his name was zio Crocifisso, he was angry not only with the people who fixed the taxes, but also with the people who objected to them, and who turned the whole village upside down to such a degree that a decent fellow could no longer sit quietly in his own house with his own possessions, and when they came to ask him if he would like to be mayor, he had answered: ‘That’s a fine question. And who would look after my business? I’ll look after my own affairs.’ Meanwhile padron ’Ntoni was thinking of marrying off his granddaughter, because they had seen him going around with padron Cipolla — zio Santoro had seen them — and they had also seen Piedipapera playing the go-between for la Vespa and acting for that starveling Alfio Mosca, who wanted to get his hands on her smallholding. ‘I tell you, he’ll get his hands on it,’ said Piedipapera shouting in his ear to convince him. ‘It’s all very well huffing and puffing around the house. Your niece is crazy about him, always trailing after him. I can’t shut the door in her face, when she comes to chat with my wife, just for your sake, after all she is your niece and flesh of your flesh.’

  ‘Some consideration you show for me! Such consideration that you’re making me lose my smallholding!’

  ‘Of course you’ll lose it! If the Malavoglia girl marries Brasi Cipolla, compare Mosca will be helpless, and he’ll take la Vespa and the smallholding and have done with it once and for all!’

  ‘The devil can take her, for all I care,’ exclaimed zio Crocifisso at last, dazed by compare Tino’s babble. ‘I don’t give a hang; what I do mind about more than anything is the sins that witch has made me commit. I want my property, which I earned with the sweat of my brow, as true as Christ’s blood in the chalice at mass, and yet you’d think it was stolen property, the way everyone seems to be dicing for it, compare Alfio, la Vespa and the Malavoglia. I’m going to start a lawsuit, and take the house.’

  ‘You’re the boss. If you tell me to start proceeding, I’ll do so right away.’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll wait for Easter; ‘you may know the man by his word and the ox by its horns’; but I want to be paid down to the last brass farthing, and I won’t listen to any talk of postponement.’

  Easter was indeed now approaching. The hills were covered in green again, and the prickly pears were once again in flower. The girls had sown the basil in their window-boxes, and white butterflies came to settle on it; even the poor broom on the sciara had its own pale little flowers. In the morning, on the roofs, the green and yellow tiles smoked, and the sparrows twittered until sunset.

  The house by the medlar tree, too, had a cheerful air about it once again; the courtyard was swept clean, the tools were standing in good order along the wall or hanging from hooks, the vegetable patch was green with cabbages and lettuces and the bedrooms so open and full of sun that it too seemed pleased with life, and everything told you that Easter was on its way. The old people sat out at their doorways towards mid-day, and the girls sang at the wash place. The carts started to pass by at night again and once again in the evening there was a hum of people chatting in the little street.

  ‘Comare Mena is going to be married,’ people said. ‘Her mother is working on her trousseau.’

  Time had passed and time carries away cruel things as well as kind ones. Now comare Maruzza was busy cutting and sewing garments, and Mena didn’t even ask who they were for; and one evening they had brought Brasi Cipolla into the house, with padron Fortunato his father, and the whole family. ‘Here’s padron Fortunato come to pay you a visit,’ said padron ’Ntoni, ushering them in, as though no one knew anything about it, while wine and toasted chick peas had been prepared in th
e kitchen, and women and children were dressed in their best. Mena really did look like St Agatha, with that new dress and her black handkerchief on her head, so that Brasi couldn’t take his eyes off her, like the basilisk, and was sitting perched on that chair, with his hands between his legs, rubbing them from time to time in sheer glee. ‘He has come with his own son Brasi, who is a grown man now,’ added padron ’Ntoni.

  ‘That’s right, boys grow up and elbow their fathers into the grave,’ replied padron Fortunato.

  ‘Now drink a glass of wine with us — it’s good wine,’ added la Longa, ‘and those chick peas were roasted by my daughter. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you, and I can’t offer you anything that is really worthy of you.’

  ‘We were just passing by,’ answered padron Cipolla, ‘and we said: ‘let’s go and call on comare Maruzza.’ ’

  Brasi filled his pockets with chick peas, staring at the girl, and then the children pillaged the tray, though Nunziata with the baby in her arms vainly tried to hold them at bay, speaking in a low voice as if she were in church. Meanwhile the old people had begun to talk among themselves, under the medlar tree, and the neighbourhood women formed a circle and sang the girl’s praises, saying what a good housewife she was, keeping the house as clean as a new pin. ‘A girl’s worth lies in her upbringing, and the quality of hemp lies in the spinning!’

  ‘Your granddaughter too has grown up,’ observed padron Fortunato, ‘and it must now be time for her to marry.’

  ‘If the good Lord sends us a good match, we would like nothing better,’ replied padron ’Ntoni.

  ‘Marriages and bishoprics are made in heaven,’ added la Longa.

  ‘A good horse does not lack for a saddle,’ concluded padron Fortunato; ‘a girl like your Mena will not lack for takers.’

  Mena sat near the young man, but she didn’t raise her eyes from her apron, and Brasi grumbled, when he went off with his father, that she hadn’t offered him the plate with the chick peas.

  ‘You mean you wanted more?’ padron Fortunato thundered at him, when they were some way off; ‘all we could hear was you munching, as if you were a mule with a sack of oats! Look, you’ve got wine on your trousers, Brasi, and ruined me a new suit!’

  Delighted, padron ’Ntoni was rubbing his hands and saying to his daughter-in-law: ‘I can hardly believe we’re home and dry, with God’s help! Mena won’t lack for anything, and now we’ll sort out our little affairs, and you’ll remember how your old father-in-law used to say that laughter and tears go hand in hand.’

  That Saturday, towards evening, Nunziata came to get a handful of beans for her children, and said: ‘Compare Alfio is off to-morrow. He’s taking out all his things.’

  Mena went pale and stopped spinning.

  The light was on in compare Alfio’s house, and everything was topsy turvy. He came to knock on their door soon afterwards, and he too had an odd look on his face, and fiddled with the knots of the whip he held in his hand.

  ‘I’ve come to say goodbye to you all, comare Maruzza, padron ’Ntoni, the children, and you too, comare Mena. The Aci Catena wine is finished. Now Santuzza has started taking wine from massaro Filippo. I’m going to Bicocca, where there’s work I can do with my donkey.’

  Mena said nothing; only her mother opened her mouth to answer: ‘Will you wait for padron ’Ntoni? he’ll want to say goodbye to you.’

  Compare Alfio perched uncomfortably on the chair, with his whip in his hand, and looked around, at those parts of the room not containing Mena.

  ‘So when will you be back?’ asked la Longa.

  ‘Heaven only knows. I go where my donkey takes me. I’ll stay away as long as I have work; though I’d prefer to come right back here, if I had any way of earning a living.’

  ‘Look after yourself, compare Alfio. They tell me people are dying like flies at Bicocca, of malaria.’

  Alfio shrugged, and said that there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he repeated, looking at the candle. ‘Have you nothing to say to me, comare Mena?’

  The girl opened her mouth once or twice to say something, but her courage failed her.

  ‘You too will be leaving the district, now that you’re getting married, added Alfio. ‘The world is like a stable, some come and some go, and gradually everyone will have changed places, and nothing seems the same.’ As he said this he rubbed his hands and laughed, but with his lips and not from his heart.

  ‘Girls,’ said la Longa, ‘go where God sends them. At first they have no worries or cares, and when they go out into the world they begin to know its sorrows and its disappointments.’

  After padron ’Ntoni and the children had come home, compare Alfio couldn’t bring himself to leave, and he hung about at the doorway, with his whip under his arm, shaking hands with this person and that, even with comare Maruzza, as you do when you are about to leave for a distant place and don’t know whether you’re ever going to be seeing each other again: ‘Forgive me if I haven’t always been all I should.’ The only person who didn’t shake his hand was St Agatha, who was sitting in a corner, near her loom. But that is how girls have to behave, as everyone knows.

  It was a fine spring evening, with the moonlight in the streets and on the courtyards, the people at their doorsteps and the girls walking by arm in arm, singing. Mena too came out arm in arm with Nunziata, feeling she would stifle in the house.

  ‘Now we won’t see compare Alfio’s light in the window any more, of an evening,’ said Nunziata, ‘and the house will be shut up.’

  Compare Alfio had loaded most of his poor possessions on to the cart, and was putting what little hay was left in the manger into a sack, while his bean soup was cooking.

  ‘Will you be leaving before daybreak?’ asked Nunziata at the entrance to the courtyard.

  ‘Yes, I’ve a long way to go, and that poor animal will have to have a bit of a rest during the day.’

  Mena said nothing, leaning against the door post to look at the loaded cart, the empty house, the half-made bed and the pan boiling on the stove for the last time.

  ‘Are you there too, comare Mena?’ Alfio exclaimed as soon as he saw her, and left what he was doing.

  She nodded, and meanwhile Nunziata had run to skim the saucepan which was boiling over, like the good housewife she was.

  ‘That’s good, then I can say goodbye to you,’ said Alfio.

  ‘I came to say goodbye to you,’ she said, with a knot in her throat. ‘Why are you going to Bicocca if there’s malaria there?’

  ‘Why am I going? That’s a good question. Why are you marrying Brasi Cipolla? You do what you can, comare Mena. If I had been able to do what I wanted, you know quite well what I would have done…’

  She looked at him and he looked at her, their eyes bright. ‘I’d have stayed here, where the very walls know me, and I know where to put my hands, and indeed I could even drive the donkey by night; and I’d have married you, comare Mena, for I’ve had a place for you in my heart for quite a time now, and I’d have taken you with me to Bicocca, and everywhere else I went. But there’s no point in talking about this now, and you have to do what you can. Even my donkey goes where I make it go.’

  ‘Goodbye then,’ said Mena; ‘I too feel as if I had a thorn inside me… and now that I shall always see this window closed, I’ll feel as if my heart is closed too, and that window closed on top of it, as heavy as a wine cellar door. But that is God’s will. Now I’ll say goodbye and be off.’

  The poor creature was crying quietly, with her hands over her eyes, and she went off together with Nunziata to cry under the medlar tree in the moonlight.

  CHAPTER IX

  Neither the Malavoglia nor anyone else in the village knew what Piedipapera was concocting with zio Crocifisso. On Easter Day padron ’Ntoni took the hundred lire from the chest of drawers and put on his new jacket to go and take them to zio Crocifisso.

  ‘Is that the lot?’ zio Crocifisso asked.

 
; ‘Well, it couldn’t be the lot, zio Crocifisso; you know what it takes to earn a hundred lire. But ‘something is better than nothing,’ and ‘the person who pays a first instalment is not a bad payer.’ Now the summer is coming, and with God’s help we’ll pay the lot.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this? You know it’s nothing to do with me, but with Piedipapera.’

  ‘It comes to the same thing, because when I see you I still feel that I owe you the money. Compare Tino won’t say no, when you tell him you want to wait till the Madonna of Ognina.’

  ‘This isn’t even enough for the expenses,’ repeated Dumb bell, tossing the money in his hand. ‘You go and ask him if he’ll wait, it’s not my business any more.’

  Piedipapera began to swear and dash his cap to the ground, in his usual way, saying that he had no bread to eat, and couldn’t wait even until Ascension Day.

  ‘Listen, compare Tino’, padron ’Ntoni said to him with his hands clasped as though he were in the presence of God Himself. ‘If you don’t wait until St John Day, now that I am about to marry off my grand-daughter, you might as well give me a stab in the back right now.’

  ‘Heavens alive,’ shrieked compare Tino, ‘You’re forcing me to do something I can’t do,’ and he cursed the day and the hour when he got himself involved in this mess, and went off tearing his old cap.

  Padron ’Ntoni arrived home quite pale, and said to his daughter-in-law: ‘I did it, but I had to beg him as if he were God Almighty,’ and the poor fellow was still all a-tremble. But he was pleased that padron Cipolla should know nothing about it, so that his grand-daughter’s wedding hadn’t gone up in smoke.

  On the evening of Ascension Day, while the children were jumping around the bonfires, the neighbourhood women had come together again outside the Malavoglia’s balcony, and even comare Venera la Zuppidda arrived to hear what was being said, and to make her own contribution. Now that padron ’Ntoni was marrying off his granddaughter, and the Provvidenza was seaworthy once more, everyone had a welcome again for the Malavoglia, who knew nothing of what Piedipapera was hatching, and nor indeed did comare Grazia his wife, who chatted with comare Maruzza as though her husband were hatching nothing at all. ’Ntoni would go every evening to chat with Barbara, and he had confided in her that his grandfather had said that Mena must marry first. ‘And then it’s my turn,’ added ’Ntoni. So Barbara sent Mena a gift of basil, all decorated with carnations, and a fine red bow, which was an invitation to become special friends; and everyone made a fuss of St Agatha, and her mother had even taken off her black handkerchief, because when there is a wedding in the offing it is bad luck to wear mourning; and they had even written to Luca, to tell him that Mena was getting married.