I Malavoglia

by Giovanni Verga

  ‘The sea is salt,’ she said, ‘and the sailor dies in the salt sea.’

  Alfio, who was in a hurry to unload Santuzza’s wine, could not make up his mind to get up and go, and stood there chatting about what a fine thing it was to be an innkeeper, a trade where you always made money, and if the price of wine must went up all you had to do was add more water to the barrels. That was how zio Santoro got rich, and now he asked for alms as a pure pastime.

  ‘And do you earn good money, with cartloads of wine?’ asked Mena.

  ‘Yes, in the summer, when you can go by night as well; then I make a decent day’s living. This poor animal earns its keep. When I’ve put aside a bit of money I’ll buy a mule and be able to be a real carter, like compare Cinghialenta.’

  The girl was all ears for what compare Alfio was saying, and meanwhile the grey olive tree was rustling as if it were raining and scattering the road with little dry crumpled leaves. ‘Now winter is coming, and I shan’t be able to do that again before the summer,’ observed compare Alfio. Mena kept her eyes on the shadows of the clouds which were running over the fields and scattering like the leaves of the grey olive tree; that was how the thoughts ran in her head, and she said to him: ‘compare Alfio, did you know, that story about padron Fortunato Cipolla’s son is quite untrue, because first we have to pay off the debt for the lupins?’

  ‘I’m pleased about that,’ replied Mosca, ‘because that way you won’t be leaving the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Soon ’Ntoni will be back from military service, and we’ll all work to pay off the debt, with grandfather and all the others. Mother has taken in cloth to weave for the Signora.’

  ‘Being a chemist is no bad thing either,’ observed Mosca.

  At that point comare Venera Zuppidda appeared in the lane, spindle in hand. ‘Oh goodness,’ exclaimed Mena, ‘people are coming,’ and she rushed inside.

  Alfio whipped the donkey, and wanted to be off too. ‘Oh compare Alfio, what’s the hurry?’ asked la Zuppidda; ‘I wanted to ask you whether the wine you’re delivering to Santuzza is from the same cask as last week’s.’

  ‘I don’t know; they give me the wine in barrels.’

  ‘Hers was fit for making salads,’ replied Zuppidda, ‘real poison; that’s how Santuzza got rich, and to cheat the world at large she’s hung the scapular of the Daughter of Mary from her chest! That scapular covers a multitude of sins. In this day and age, that’s the way you have to behave. If you don’t, you just move crabwise, like the Malavoglia. They’ve pulled up the Provvidenza, have you heard?’

  ‘No, I haven’t been around, but comare Mena didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘They brought the news just now, and padron ’Ntoni ran straight to the Rotolo, to see her being towed towards the village, and it was as though the old man had new legs. Now they’ve got the Provvidenza, the Malavoglia will get their feet again, and Mena will be marriageable once more.’

  Alfio said nothing, because Zuppidda was staring at him with her little yellow eyes, and he said that he was in a hurry to go and deliver the wine to Santuzza. ‘He won’t say anything to me,’ grumbled Zuppidda. ‘As if I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes. They’re trying to hide the sun with a net.’

  They had towed the Provvidenza to shore all shattered, just as they had found her beyond the Capo dei Mulini, with her nose amid the rocks, and her back in the air. The whole village, men and women, had immediately run to the shore, and padron ’Ntoni, mingling with the crowd, was there as well, just like the other lookers-on. Some even gave a kick at the Provvidenza’s belly, and the poor old man felt that kick as though it were to his own stomach. ‘Providential for you, what?’ don Franco said to him, having come down in shirt sleeves, with his awful old hat on his head and pipe in his mouth, to have a look along with the rest.

  ‘Now all she’s good for is burning,’ concluded padron Fortunato Cipolla; and compare Mangiacarrubbe, who was in the trade, volunteered the information that the boat had sunk all at once, and without those in her having been able to say so much as ‘Christ, help me!’ because the sea had swept away sans, yards, oars and everything; and it had not left a single wooden peg holding firm.

  ‘This was where father sat, where there’s the new rowlock,’ said Luca, who had climbed on to the edge, ‘and the lupins were under there.’

  But there was not a single lupin left, for the sea had washed everything out, swept everything clean. That was why Maruzza had not even left the house, and she never wanted to see the Provvidenza again as long as she lived.

  ‘Her belly is sound, and something can still be done with her,’ mastro Zuppiddo the caulker pronounced finally, and he too gave her a few kicks with his great feet. ‘A few planks, and I could have her back at sea for you. She’ll never be a boat for strong tides, a sideways wave would knock the bottom out of her like a rotten barrel. But she could still serve for longshore fishing, in good weather.’ Padron Cipolla, compare Mangiacarrubbe and compare Cola stood listening without saying a word.

  ‘Yes,’ said padron Fortunato gravely at last.

  ‘Rather than throw her on the fire…’

  ‘I’m delighted,’ said zio Crocifisso who was there taking a look too, with his hands behind his back. ‘We’re good Christians, and must rejoice in our neighbours’ good fortune; the proverb says ‘it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’.

  The Malavoglia children had settled in the Provvidenza, along with the other village children who wanted to climb in too.

  ‘When we’ve patched up the Provvidenza good and proper,’ said Alessi,’she’ll be just like zio Cola’s Concetta;’ and they too puffed and panted, pushing and pulling the boat to mastro Zuppiddo’s door, where there were big stones to hold the boats, and the tub for the tar, and a pile of ribs and planking leaning against the door.

  Alessi was for ever scuffling with the boys who wanted to climb on to the boat and help to blow into the fire under the tar cauldron, and when they gave him a good thrashing he would threaten, snivelling the while:

  ‘Soon my brother ’Ntoni will be back from military service.’

  And indeed ’Ntoni had managed to obtain his discharge, although don Silvestro the town clerk had assured them all that if he stayed on for another six months, his brother Luca would be exempted from conscription. But ’Ntoni didn’t want to stay on even another week now that his father was dead; Luca would have done the same, and he had had to weep over his misfortune alone, when they brought him the news about his father, and he would have liked to drop everything then and there, if it hadn’t been for those brutes of superiors.

  ‘Myself,’ said Luca, ‘I’ll gladly go for a soldier instead of ’Ntoni. That way, when he comes back, you’ll be able to put the Provvidenza to sea again, and we won’t need to take on anyone extra.’

  ‘He’s a Malavoglia through and through,’ commented padron ’Ntoni exultantly. ‘Just like his father Bastianazzo, whose heart was as big as the sea, and as good as God’s mercy.’

  One evening, after the boats had returned, padron ’Ntoni arrived at the house all breathless, and said: ‘The letter’s here; compare Cirino gave it to me just now, while I was taking the fish traps to the Pappafave.’ La Longa went white as a sheet, and they all rushed into the kitchen to see the letter.

  ’Ntoni arrived with his beret at a rakish angle and a shirt with the five pointed military star, and his mother couldn’t get enough of touching it, and trailed after him amidst all the friends and relatives while they were coming back from the station; and then the house and the courtyard were suddenly filled with people, just like when Bastianazzo had died, all that time back, and now no one thought about that any more. There are some things that only old people think about, as though it were yesterday — and indeed la Locca still hung around outside the Malavoglia’s house, leaning up against the wall, waiting for Menico, and she turned her head this way and that down the little road, at every step she heard.

  CHAPTER VI

&
nbsp; ’Ntoni had arrived on a holiday, and he went from door to door greeting friends and neighbours, so that everyone stood looking at him as he passed; his friends followed after him, and the girls came to stand at the window; but the only one not in evidence was comare Tudda’s Sara.

  ‘She’s gone to Ognina with her husand,’ Santuzza told him. ‘She married Menico Trinca, who was a widower with six children, but stinking rich. She married him within a month of his wife’s death, and the bed was still warm, God forgive them!’

  ‘A widower is like a person who goes off soldiering,’ added Santuzza. ‘A soldier’s love it does not last, at the beat of a drum his love is past.’ ’ And then, the Provvidenza had been lost.

  Comare Venera, who had been at the station when padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni had left, to see whether comare Tudda’s Sara had gone to say goodbye to him, because she had seen them talking over the vineyard wall, wanted to get a good look at ’Ntoni’s face when he received this news. But time had gone by for ’Ntoni too and, as they say, ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ And now ’Ntoni wore his beret at a rakish angle, like a real man of the world. ‘Compare Menico is aiming to die a cuckold,’ he said to comfort himself, and she liked that, the Mangiacarrubbe girl, who had called him ‘booby’, and now that she saw what kind of a booby he was, she would willingly have exchanged him for that good-for-nothing Rocco Spatu, whom she’d taken up with because there was no one else.

  ‘I don’t like those flippertigibbets who carry on with two or three boys at a time,’ said the Mangiacarrubbe girl, pulling the corners of her scarf over her chin and looking all demure.

  ‘If I loved someone, I wouldn’t exchange them for Victor Emanuel, or Garibaldi, you wait and see!’

  ‘I know who you’re interested in,’ said ’Ntoni with his hand on his hip.

  ‘Of no you don’t, compare ’Ntoni, and what you’ve heard is gossip. If you happen to pass my door some day, I’ll tell you all about it.’

  ‘The Mangiacarrubbe girl has set her sights on padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, and that’s a bit of good luck for cousin Anna,’ said comare Venera.

  ’Ntoni went off all arrogant, rolling his hips, with a band of friends in tow, and he would have liked every day to be Sunday, so that he could parade his star-covered shirt; that afternoon they amused themselves having a good punch-up with compare Pizzuto, who wasn’t afraid of God himself, although he’d never done military service, and he went sprawling on the ground in front of the wine shop, with a bloody nose; whereas Rocco Spatu was stronger, and had ’Ntoni down on the floor.

  ‘Holy Virgin,’ exclaimed the bystanders. ‘That Rocco is as strong as Turi Zuppiddo. If he chose to work, he could certainly earn his bread.’

  ‘I know how to use this fellow,’ said Pizzuto brandishing his razor, so as not to appear the loser.

  In a word, ’Ntoni enjoyed himself the whole day long; but that evening, while they were sitting chatting around the table, and his mother was asking him about this and that, and the younger ones, half-asleep, were gazing at him wide-eyed, and Mena was touching his beret and shirt with the stars, to see how they were made, his grandfather told him that he had found him a job by the day on compare Cipolla’s fishing boat, and well-paid too.

  ‘I took them on out of charity,’ padron Fortunato would say to anyone who cared to listen, sitting outside the barber’s shop. ‘I took them on out of the goodness of my heart, when padron ’Ntoni came to ask me, under the elm tree, if I needed men for my boat. Now I never need men; but a friend in need is a friend indeed, and padron ’Ntoni is so old anyway, that you’re really wasting your money!…’

  ‘He’s old but he knows his trade,’ replied Piedipapera; ‘you’re not wasting your money; and his grandson is a boy anyone would envy you.’

  ‘When mastro Bastiano has put the Provvidenza in order, we’ll fit out our boat, and then we won’t need to go out to work by the day,’ padron ’Ntoni would say.

  In the morning, when he went to waken his grandson, it was two hours before dawn, and ’Ntoni would have preferred to stay under the covers a little longer; when he went out yawning into the courtyard, Orion was still high towards Ognina, with his legs in the air, and the Pleiades were sparkling to the other side of the sky, which was swarming with stars which looked for all the world like the sparks running over the black bottom of a frying pan. ‘It’s just like being in the navy,’ grumbled ’Ntoni. ‘This wasn’t worth coming home for.’

  ‘You be quiet — your grandfather is getting the tackle ready and he got up a good hour before us,’ said Alessi. But Alessi was just like his father Bastianazzo, God rest his soul. Their grandfather was coming and going in the courtyard with the lantern; outside you could hear people going down to the sea, and knocking from one door to another to waken their companions. But when they reached the beach, in front of the black sea where the stars were reflected, and which was snoring quietly on the shingle, and they saw the lanterns on the boats dotted here and there, even ’Ntoni felt his heart swell.

  ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, lifting his arms. ‘It’s good to come home. We know each other, the beach and I.’ And padron ’Ntoni had already said that a fish can’t live out of water, and the sea waits patiently for those who are born to fish.

  In the boat they teased him because Sara had jilted him, while they took in the sails, and the Carmela swung gently round, with the nets behind her like a snake’s tail. ‘Pork meat and soldiers have short spans,’ the proverb says; this was why Sara jilted him.

  ‘Woman will be faithful to man when the Turk becomes Christian,’ added zio Cola. ‘I’m not short of girl friends,’ replied ’Ntoni; ‘in Naples they ran after me like pet lambs.’

  ‘In Naples you wore proper clothes, and a cap with the name of your ship, and shoes on your feet,’ said Barabba.

  ‘Are there beautiful girls in Naples, as there are here?’

  ‘The girls here can’t hold a candle to the girls in Naples. I saw one with a silk dress and red ribbons in her hair, and an embroidered bodice, and golden epaulets like the captain’s. A fine figure of a girl, taking her employer’s children for a walk, and that was all she had to do.’

  ‘It must be some life around those parts,’ commented Barabba.

  ‘You on the left! Stop rowing,’ shouted padron ’Ntoni.

  ‘By the blood of Judas! you’re taking us into the nets,’ zio Cola began to shriek from the tiller. ‘Now just stop that jabbering; are we here for our health, or to do a job?’

  ‘It’s the swell which is pulling us back,’ said ’Ntoni.

  ‘Ease off on your side, you bastard,’ Barabba shouted at him, ‘you’re making us waste the day, with those fancy queens you’ve got on your mind.’

  ‘Damn it,’ said ’Ntoni with his oar poised in the air, ‘if you say that again I’ll lay into you with this.’

  ‘What’s all this now?’ called zio Cola sharply from the tiller; ‘is this the sort of thing you learned on military service, not to take criticism?’

  ‘I’ll be going then,’ replied ’Ntoni.

  ‘Be off if you like, padron Fortunato can find someone else for his money.’

  ‘The servant needs patience, and the master prudence,’ said padron ’Ntoni.

  ’Ntoni carried on rowing, grumbling the while, because he couldn’t storm off on foot, and to make the peace compare Mangiacarrubbe said that it was time for breakfast.

  At that moment the sun appeared, and everyone was ready for a good swig of wine, because the air had turned chill. Then the lads began chewing, with the flask between their legs, while the fishing boat heaved gently amid the broad circle of corks.

  ‘A kick up the backside for whoever talks first,’ said zio Cola.

  Everyone began to chew like oxen, to avoid getting that kick, looking at the waves approaching from the open sea, and rolling in without breaking, green wineskins which, even on a sunny day, put you in mind of the black sky and slatecoloured sea.

  ‘Padron Cipolla will h
ave a few things to say this evening,’ said zio Cola sharply; ‘but it’s not our fault. You don’t catch fish when the sea is rough!’

  First compare Mangiacarrubbe landed him a hefty kick, because zio Cola, who had made the rule, had been the first to talk; and then he answered: ‘Still, now that we’re here, let’s wait a bit before pulling the nets in.’

  ‘And the swell is coming from the open sea, which is good for us,’ added padron ’Ntoni.

  ‘Ahi,’ grumbled zio Cola the while.

  Now that the silence was broken, Barabba asked ’Ntoni Malavoglia to give him a cigar butt.

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ said ’Ntoni, forgetting the previous disagreement, ‘but I’ll give you half of mine.’

  Seated on the bottom of the boat, with their backs to the seat and hand behind their heads, the men were singing popular songs, each on his own behalf and quite softly, so as not to fall asleep, because their eyes were closing under the bright sunlight; and Barabba clicked his fingers as the mullet jumped out of the water.

  ‘They haven’t got anything else to do,’ said ’Ntoni,’ so they pass the time by jumping.’

  ‘It’s good, this cigar,’ said Barabba; ‘did you smoke cigars like this in Naples?’

  ‘Oh yes, dozens of them.’

  ‘Look, the corks are beginning to sink,’ observed compare Mangiacarrubbe.

  ‘Do you see where the Provvidenza went down with your father?’ said Barabba; ‘over there at the Cape, where there’s that sunlight on those white houses, and the sea looks all gold.’

  ‘The sea is salt and the sailor dies at sea,’ was ’Ntoni’s reply.

  Barabba passed him his flask, and then they began to grouse in low voices about zio Cola, who was merciless with the men in his fishing boat, as though padron Cipolla were there to see that they were doing and what they were not doing.