I Malavoglia Page 6

  ‘What with the bad season we’ve got ahead of us,’ added padron Cipolla, ‘with no rain since St Clare’s Day, if it hadn’t been for that last storm when the Provvidenza was lost, which was truly a godsend, you would have been able to cut hunger with a knife this winter!’

  Everyone told their own troubles, partly to console the Malavoglia, who weren’t the only people to have problems. ‘The world is full of sorrows, and some have more than others, like everything else,’ and the people who were outside in the courtyard were looking at the sky, because another drop of rain wouldn’t have come amiss. Padron Cipolla personally knew why it never rained now as it used to do. ‘It never rains nowadays because they’ve put up that dratted telegraph wire, which attracts all the rain and draws it away.’ Then compare Mangiacarrubbe and Tino Piedipapera stood open-mouthed, because indeed there were telegraph posts right there on the Trezza road; but as don Silvestro began his farmyard cackling, padron Cipolla got up from the wall in a fury, and expressed irritation with those ignorant people whose ears were as long as a donkey’s. Didn’t they know that the telegraph carried news from one place to the next; it did this because there was a sort of juice inside the wire like the sap in a vine tendril, and in the same way it drew water from the clouds and carried it away, to where it was needed more; they could go and ask the chemist, he had said so; and this was why they had passed a law saying that anyone breaking a telegraph wire should go to prison. Then don Silvestro did not know what more to say, and he held his tongue.

  ‘Holy saints! We ought to cut down all those telegraph poles and throw them on the fire,’ began compare Zuppiddo, but no one paid him any attention, and they peered into the vegetable patch, to change the subject.

  ‘A fine bit of land,’ said compare Mangiacarrubbe; ‘when it’s properly tended, it provides vegetables for soup the whole year round.’

  The Malavoglia’s house had always been one of the most important in Trezza; but now, after the death of Bastianazzo, and with ’Ntoni doing his soldiering, and Mena to be married off, it was letting in water from all sides.

  Anyhow, what could the house be worth? Everyone craned their necks to look over the wall of the vegetable patch and gave an appraising look, to reckon it up at a glance. Don Silvestro knew better than anyone else how things stood, because he had the deeds, in the office in Aci Castello.

  ‘Do you want to bet twelve tari that all that glitters is not gold?’ he said; and he showed everyone a new five lire piece.

  He knew that the house had a rateable value of five tari a year. Then they all began to tot up how much the house could be sold for, with the vegetable patch and everything.

  ‘Neither the house nor the boat can be sold, because they are part of Maruzza’s dowry,’ said somebody else, and everyone got so worked up that they could be heard in the room where they were mourning the dead man. ‘Quite so,’ said don Silvestro, delivering his bombshell. ‘It’s part of the dowry.’

  Padron Cipolla, who had exchanged the odd word with padron ’Ntoni about marrying Mena to his son Brasi, shook his head and held his peace.

  ‘So,’ continued compare Turi, ‘the real victim is zio Crofifisso, who won’t get the credit on his lupins.’

  They all turned towards Dumb bell, who had come along too, out of tact, and was sitting quietly in a corner, to hear what they were saying, with his mouth open and his nose in the air, so that he seemed to be counting how many tiles and rafters there were on the roof, as though wanting to assess the value of the house. The more curious craned their necks from the doorway, and winked at one another glancing in his direction. ‘He looks like the bailiff making a distraint,’ they sniggered.

  The neighbours who knew about the discussions between padron ’Ntoni and compare Cipolla said that now comare Maruzza would have to be helped over her grief, and conclude that marriage of Mena’s. But at that moment Maruzza had quite other matters on her mind, poor creature.

  Padron Cipolla turned his back on them coldly without a word; and after everyone had gone away, the Malavoglia were left alone in the courtyard. ‘Now,’ said padron ’Ntoni, ‘we are ruined, and it is as well for Bastianazzo that he knows nothing of it.’

  At those words first Maruzza, and then all the others started crying again, and the children, seeing the grown ups cry, started to wail too, although their father had been dead for three days. The old man wandered hither and thither, not knowing what he was doing; but Maruzza did not stir from the foot of the bed, as though she had nothing more to do. When she did utter a word, she would repeat it, gazing fixedly, and it seemed as though she had nothing else in her mind at all. ‘Now there’s nothing more for me to do!’

  ‘No!’ replied padron ’Ntoni, ‘that’s not so, we must pay the debt to zio Crocifisso, so that there is no excuse for people to say that when a decent man becomes poor, he becomes a rogue.’

  And the thought of the lupins thrust the thorn of Bastianazzo deeper into his heart. The medlar tree loosened its grip on its withered leaves, and the wind drove them around the courtyard.

  ‘He went because I sent him,’ padron ’Ntoni would say over and over, ‘like the wind sending those leaves blowing over the ground, and if I’d told him to throw himself off the rocks with a stone round his neck, he would have done so without a word. At least he died when the house and the medlar tree were still his, down to the last leaf; and I, an old man, am still here. ‘Long life knows long misery.’ ’

  Maruzza said nothing, but she had a single thought fixed in her head, which kept hammering at her and gnawing at her heart, and that was to know what had happened on the fateful night, because if she closed her eyes she seemed still to see the Provvidenza down there towards the Capo dei Mulini, where the sea was glassy and dark blue and dotted with boats, which looked like so many gulls in the sun, and you could count them one by one, zio Crocifisso’s, compare Barabba’s, the Concetta belonging to zio Cola, and padron Fortunato’s fishing boat, a sight to make the heart ache. And you could hear mastro Turi singing like a mad thing with those ox’s lungs of his, while thumping away with his caulker’s mallet, and there was a smell of tar coming from the beach, and the linen that cousin Anna was beating on the stones of the wash place, and you could even hear Mena crying quietly away in the kitchen.

  ‘Poor thing,’ murmured her grandfather, ‘the house has fallen about your ears too, and compare Fortunato went off so coldly, without saying a word.’

  And one by one he touched the implements which were lying in a heap in the corner, with shaking hands, as old people do; and seeing Luca dressed in his father’s jacket which they had put on him, and which came down to his ankles, he said to him: ‘That will keep you warm, when you go to work; because now we must all help each other to pay off the lupin debt.’

  Maruzza stopped her ears with her hands so as not to hear la Locca who was perched on the balcony, outside the door, shrieking from dawn to dusk, with that cracked voice of hers, demanding that they give her son back, and she wouldn’t listen to reason.

  ‘She does that because she’s hungry,’ said cousin Anna at last; ‘now zio Crocifisso has it in for all of them because of the lupin deal, and he won’t give her anything. I’ll go and take her something now, and then she’ll go away.’

  Cousin Anna, poor creature, had left her linen and the girls to come and give comare Maruzza a hand — because it was as though Maruzza were ill, and if they had left her to her own devices she wouldn’t even have remembered to light the fire, and put on the pot, and they would all have died of hunger. ‘Neighbours must be like the tiles on a roof, and send the water over one from the other.’ Meanwhile those children’s lips were pale with hunger. Nunziata helped too, and Alessi, his face grubby from all the crying that he had done, seeing his mother weep, kept an eye on the little ones, so that they shouldn’t always be under people’s feet, like a brood of chicks, because Nunziata wanted to have her hands free.

  ‘You know your business,’ cousin Anna said to her; ‘and
you’ll have your dowry right there in your own hands, when you’re grown up.’

  CHAPTER V

  Mena had no idea that they wanted to marry her to padron Cipolla’s Brasi to help her mother get over her grief, and the first person to mention it to her, some time later, was compare Alfio Mosca, by the gate to the vegetable patch, when he was coming back from Aci Castello with his donkey cart. Mena said that it just wasn’t true; but she was embarrassed, and while he was explaining how and when he had heard this news from la Vespa, at zio Crocifisso’s house, she suddenly became quite red in the face.

  Compare Mosca too looked distraught, and seeing the girl like that, with that black handkerchief round her neck, he started to fiddle with the buttons on his jerkin, and would have paid good money to be transported elsewhere. ‘Listen, it’s no fault of mine, I heard in in Dumb bell’s courtyard, while I was chopping up the carob tree that was brought down in the storm on St. Clare’s day, do you remember? Now zio Crocifisso gets me to do his odd jobs for him, because he doesn’t want any more to do with la Locca’s son, after the other brother got involved in the wretched lupin business.’ Mena had her hand on the gate latch but she couldn’t bring herself to open it. ‘And anyhow if it wasn’t true, why have you gone so red?’ She couldn’t say, in all conscience, and kept fiddling with the latch. She knew the fellow by sight only, that was all, Alfio reeled off a long list of Brasi Cipolla’s possessions; after compare Naso the butcher, he passed for the village’s biggest catch, and the girls feasted their eyes on him. Mena stood there listening wide-eyed, and then marched off abruptly with a firm goodbye, and went into the vegetable patch. Alfio, furious, ran off to complain to la Vespa who had fed him such lies, just to make him quarrel with people.

  ‘It was zio Crocifisso who told me,’ replied la Vespa. ‘I don’t tell lies.’ ‘Lies, lies,’ grumbled zio Crocifisso. ‘I wouldn’t damn my immortal soul for that lot. I heard it with these very ears. I also heard that the Provvidenza is part of Maruzza’s dowry, and the house has a rateable value of five tari.’

  ‘Never mind, we’ll see. Sooner or later we’ll see whether you’re lying or not,’ continued la Vespa, lolling to and fro as she leant against the doorpost, with her hands behind her back, watching him with those devouring eyes of hers. ‘You men are all the same, untrustworthy.’

  Sometimes zio Crocifisso would go deaf, and instead of swallowing the bait he changed the subject entirely, and began to talk about the Malavoglia who were thinking about marriage, but not paying any heed at all to that matter of the forty onze.

  ‘Look here,’ la Vespa snapped out at last, losing her patience, ‘if they were to listen to you, nobody would even think about getting married.’

  ‘I don’t care about whether people marry or not. I want my rightful deserts, that’s all that matters to me.’

  ‘It may be all that matters to you, but some people have other concerns, do you hear? Not everyone behaves as you do, putting things off from one day to the next.’

  ‘And what might you be in such a rush about?’

  ‘Unfortunately, I am in a rush. You’ve plenty of time; But do you really think that other people want to wait until they’re as old as St Joseph, to get married?’

  ‘It’s been a bad year,’ said Dumb bell, ‘and this is no time to think of such things.’

  Then la Vespa stuck her hands on her hips and let fly with her stinging tongue.

  ‘Now here is what I’ve come to say to you. When all is said and done, I have my property, and thanks to God I have no need to go begging for a husband, as well you know. And if it weren’t for your having put that bee in my bonnet with your flattery, I could have found a hundred husbands, Vanni Pizzuto and Alfio Mosca, and cousin Cola, who was tied to my apron strings before he went as a soldier, and he wouldn’t have let me so much as bend down to tie up a shoelace. All simmering with impatience, and they wouldn’t have kept me hanging on for so long, from Easter to Christmas, as you have done!’

  This time zio Crocifisso put his hand to his ear, so as to hear properly, and he began to soothe her with fine words. ‘Yes, I know you’re a sensible girl, that’s why I’m so fond of you, and I’m not one of those men who run after you to get their hands on your smallholding, which they would then drink away at Santuzza’s wine shop.’

  ‘It’s not true that you’re fond of me,’ and she carried on, fending him off with her elbows, ‘if it were true, you’d know what you ought to do, and you’d see that that’s all I’m thinking about.’

  She turned her back on him angrily, and unintentionally knocked against him with her shoulder. ‘But you don’t give a hang about me.’ Her uncle was offended at this slanderous accusation. ‘You’re saying this to lead me into sin,’ he began complainingly. He not care about his own flesh and blood? because she was his own flesh and blood, like the smallholding — which had always been in the family, and would have remained in it, if his brother, God rest his soul, had not bethought himself to marry and bring la Vespa into this world; and that was why she had always been the apple of his eye, and he had always considered her welfare. ‘Listen,’ he said to her, ‘I thought of handing you over the Malavoglia debt, in exchange for the smallholding — it’s forty onze, and it could be as much as fifty, with expenses and interest, and you stand to get the house by the medlar tree, which could be better for you than the smallholding.’

  ‘You can keep your house by the medlar tree,’ snapped la Vespa. ‘I’m sticking to my smallholding, and I know what to do with it.’

  Then zio Crocifisso too became angry, and told her that he knew what she wanted to do with it, she wanted to let it slip into the clutches of that down-and-out Alfio Mosca, who had been giving her the sheep’s eye for that smallholding, and he didn’t want to see Mosca around the house and courtyard any more, because when all was said and done he had human blood in his veins too.

  ‘So now you’re going to put on a jealous act,’ exclaimed la Vespa.

  ‘Of course I’m jealous,’ retorted zio Crocifisso, ‘jealous as anything’; and he felt like paying someone five lire to break Alfio Mosca’s bones.

  But he didn’t do so because he was a good Christian with the fear of God in him, and in this day and age anyone who is a decent fellow gets swindled, good faith being lodged in simpleton street, where they sell you enough rope to hang yourself, and this was proved by the fact that he had marched back and forth in vain in front of the Malavoglia’s house, so that people actually began to laugh, and said that he was making a ‘pilgrimage’ to the house by the medlar tree as people make a votive offering to the Madonna of Ognina. The Malavoglia repaid him with much cap doffing; and when they saw him looming into sight at the end of the lane, the children ran off as if they’d seen the bogy man; but so far none of them had spoken to him about the money for the lupins, and All Souls’ Day was almost upon them, and meanwhile padron ’Ntoni was thinking of marrying off his granddaughter.

  He went to let off steam with Piedipapera, who had got him into that scrape, as he told other people; but others said that he went there just to gaze at the house by the medlar tree, and la Locca, who was always hanging about there because they had told her that her Menico had gone out in the Malavoglia’s boat and she thought she might still find him there, began to howl like a crow of doom as soon as she saw her brother Crocifisso, and this upset him more than ever. ‘She’ll drive me to sin yet,’ he muttered.

  ‘It isn’t All Souls’ Day yet,’ replied Piedipapera waving his arms; ‘be patient. Do you want to suck padron ’Ntoni dry? You haven’t lost anything yet, because the lupins were all rotten, as well you know.’

  But he knew no such thing; all he knew was that his peace of mind was in God’s hands. And the Malavoglia children didn’t dare play on the balcony when he walked past Piedipapera’s door.

  And if he met Alfio Mosca with his donkey cart, and Alfio too doffed his cap, while looking quite brazen, Dumb bell felt his blood boil, out of jealousy about the smallholding. ‘
He’s hoodwinking my niece to steal my smallholding,’ he grumbled to Piedipapera. ‘What a wastrel. All he can do is wander about with that donkey cart, which is all he’s got. A dead beat. A rascal who puts it about that he’s in love with that ugly mug of that hideous witch of a niece of mine, all for love of her property.’ And when he had nothing else to do he would go and plant himself in front of Santuzza’s wine shop, near zio Santoro, who seemed just another poor soul like himself, and he didn’t go there to spend a brass farthing on wine, but would whinge and whine like zio Santoro, as if he too wanted alms; and he would say: ‘Listen, compare Santoro, if you see my niece la Vespa around this way when Alfio Mosca comes to bring your daughter Santuzza a cartload of wine, keep an eye on what they get up to together;’ and zio Santoro with his beads and sightless eyes, said yes, he shouldn’t worry, he was there for that very reason, and not a fly passed by without his noticing; and indeed his daughter Mariangela used to ask him why he got involved in Dumb bell’s affairs, saying that he never spent any decent money at the wine shop, and he stood in the doorway for nothing.

  But Alfio Mosca wasn’t thinking of la Vespa, and if he had anyone in his thoughts at all it was rather padron ’Ntoni’s comare Mena, whom he saw every day in the courtyard or on the balcony, and if he heard the cackling of the two hens he had given her, he felt something within him, and it seemed to him as if he himself were in the courtyard of the house by the medlar tree, and if he had not been a poor carter, he would have asked for St Agatha’s hand in marriage, and carried her away in his donkey cart. Whenever he thought of all this, he felt he had so many things there in his head to tell her, and when he saw her his tongue was tied and he discussed the weather, or the cartload of wine he had taken to Santuzza, or the donkey which could pull four quintals better than a mule, poor animal.

  Mena stroked the poor animal, and Alfio smiled as if she were stroking him. ‘Ah! If my donkey were yours, comare Mena.’ Mena shook her head and her breast swelled as she reflected that it would have been better if the Malavoglia had been carters, then her father wouldn’t have died like that.