‘Go and tell him, it’s as certain as God exists, I tell you! Are we decent folk or not, by heavens?’
La Zuppidda ran off to get her husband, who was cowering in the courtyard carding tow, pale as death, and he wouldn’t come out for love or money, shouting that they would cause him to commit some dreadful deed, by God!
Before opening the council, and seeing what the nets held, they would still have to wait for padron Fortunato Cipolla and massaro Filippo the greengrocer, who didn’t seem to be showing up, so that people began to get irritated, and indeed the neighbourhood women had begun spinning, along the low wall of the smallholding.
At last they sent word that they weren’t coming because they were busy; and the council could decide about the tax without them, if they wanted. ‘Just what my daughter Betta said,’ grumbled mastro Croce, the man of straw.
‘Then get your daughter Betta to help you,’ exclaimed don Silvestro. Silkworm did not utter a breath and continued to grumble in a strangled voice.
‘Now,’ said don Silvestro, ‘you’ll see that the Zuppiddos will come of their own accord, to tell me they’re letting me take Barbara, but I’ll play hard to get.’
The session was disbanded without anything being concluded. The town clerk wanted a bit of time to ponder; in the meantime midday had struck and the women had hurried home. When they saw mastro Cirino closing the door and putting the key in his pocket, the few who remained also went about their business here and there, chattering about the insults that had flown between Piedipapera and Zuppidda.
That evening padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni too heard about those words, and by Christ, he wanted to show that fellow Piedipapera that he had done his military service! He met him just as he was coming in from the sciara, near the Zuppiddos’ house, with that fiend’s foot of his, and he began to tell him where he got off, that he was a swine and should think twice before speaking ill of the Zuppiddos and what they did, because it was none of his business. Piedipapera couldn’t contain himself. ‘So you think you’ve come back from so far just to act the braggart round here, do you?’
‘I came to give you a thrashing, if you say anything more.’
At these shouts people had come to their doorways, and a big crowd had gathered; so that they scrapped for real, and Piedipapera, who was no stranger to the fist fight, let himself fall to the ground in a huddle with ’Ntoni Malavoglia, and that way at least it didn’t matter what sort of legs you had, and they thrashed around in the mud, hitting out at each other and biting like Peppi Naso’s dogs, so much so that padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni had to rush into the Zuppiddo’s courtyard, because his shirt was all torn, and Piedipapera was led home as bloody as Lazarus.
‘Now look here,’ shrieked comare Venera again after they had banged the door in the neighbours’ faces, ‘kindly note that in my own house I am mistress to do just as I please. I can give my daughter to whomsoever I want.’
All red in the face, the girl had run into the house, with her heart beating like that of a day-old chick.
‘They half pulled your ear off,’ said compare Turi, carefully pouring water over ’Ntoni’s head. ‘Compare Tino bites worse than a Corsican dog!.
’Ntoni still had blood all over his face, and was burning to do something rash.
‘Listen, comare Venera,’ he then said in front of everybody, ‘personally, if I can’t have your daughter, I won’t marry anyone.’ And the girl was listening from the other room. ‘This isn’t the moment for such talk, compare ’Ntoni; but if your grandfather agrees, I for my part would have you rather than Victor Emanuel himself.’ Meanwhile compare Zuppiddo was sitting silent, and handed him a piece of towelling to dry himself; so that evening ’Ntoni went home well pleased.
But when they heard about the fight with Piedipapera, the poor Malavoglia were expecting the bailiff to arrive from one moment to the next to come and drive them out of their house, since Easter was approaching, and they had hardly got together half of the debt, and that with great difficulty.
‘See what happens when you hang around houses where there are marriageable girls,’ said la Longa to ’Ntoni. ‘Now everyone is talking about your affairs. And I’m sorry for Barbara.’ ‘And I’ll marry her, ’Ntoni replied.
‘You’ll marry her?’ exclaimed his grandfather.
‘And what about me? When your father took a wife, and she was the woman whom you see there, he came to consult me first. Your grandmother was alive then, and he came to talk to me about things in the vegetable patch, under the fig tree. But now such things aren’t done, and old people count for nothing. Once there used to be a saying, ‘an old person’s word is the best insurance’. Your sister Mena has to marry first, do you realise that?’
‘What a life I lead,’ ’Ntoni began to shout, tearing his hair and stamping his feet. ‘Working all day long! Never going to the wine shop! and not a penny in my pocket! And now I’ve found the right girl, I can’t have her. Why did I ever come back from military service?’
‘Listen,’ his grandfather said to him, rising with difficulty because of the pains in his back. ‘The best thing you can do now is to go to sleep. This isn’t the sort of discussion to have in front of your mother!’
‘My brother Luca is better off than I am, being a soldier,’ grumbled ’Ntoni as he went off.
CHAPTER VIII
Luca, poor lad, was neither better off nor worse; he was doing his duty, as he had at home, and he made the best of a bad job. He didn’t write often, it’s true — the stamps cost twenty centesimi — nor had he yet sent his portrait, because as a small boy he had been teased for having sticking out ears; but instead of that he put the odd five lire note in his letters, which he managed to set aside by doing odd jobs for the officers.
As his grandfather had said: ‘First Mena must marry.’ They weren’t actually talking about it yet, but they thought of it all the time, and now that they had the odd something set aside in the chest of drawers to pay the debt, padron ’Ntoni calculated that with the salting of the anchovies they could pay Piedipapera, and the house would be unencumbered for his grand-daughter’s dowry. That was why he sometimes chatted with padron Fortunato on the sea shore, in low voices, while they were waiting for the boats to come in, or sitting in the sun in front of the church, when there were no people around. Padron Fortunato didn’t want to go back on his word, if the girl had a dowry, particularly since his son Brasi was giving him more than his fair share of worry, running after girls who had nothing, like the dolt he was.
‘You may know the man by his word, and the ox by its horns,’ he would say.
Mena often felt sick at heart while she wove, because girls have a seventh sense, and now that her grandfather was constantly out conversing with compare Fortunato, and talking about the Cipolla family often at home, she had that same image always before her eyes, as if that lad compare Alfio were stuck on to the wood of the loom, along with the pictures of the saints. One evening she waited until late to see compare Alfio coming home with his donkey cart; she had her hands under her apron, because it was cold and all the doors were closed, and there wasn’t a living soul all up and down the lane; so she said good evening to him from the doorway.
‘Will you be going off to Bicocca on the first of the month?’ she asked him at last.
‘Not yet, no; I’ve still got over a hundred cartloads of wine for Santuzza. After that, God will provide.’ Then she didn’t know what to say, and compare Alfio busied himself in the courtyard unharnessing the donkey, and hanging the tackle on the hook, and coming and going with the lantern. ‘If you go to Bicocca there’s no knowing when we shall meet again,’ Mena said at last, in a voice that was barely audible.
‘Now why is that? Are you going away too?’
The poor creature didn’t answer for a bit, although it was dark and no one could see her face. Every so often you could hear the neighbours talking behind their closed doors, and children crying, and the noise of the bowls, when they were eating, so that no
one could hear them either. ‘Now we’ve got half the money we need for Piedipapera, and when we’ve salted the anchovies we’ll have the other half too.’
On hearing this Alfio left the donkey in the middle of the courtyard and came out on to the road. ‘So they’ll be marrying you off after Easter?’ Mena didn’t answer. ‘I told you so,’ added compare Alfio. ‘I saw padron ’Ntoni talking to padron Cipolla.’
‘It’s all in God’s hands,’ Mena then said. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting married, as long as they let me stay on here.’
‘It must be a fine thing,’ added Mosca, ‘when you are as rich as padron Cipolla’s son, who can take any wife and can live anywhere he chooses!’
‘Goodnight, compare Alfio,’ Mena then said, after another short spell of gazing at the lantern hanging on the gate, and at the donkey cropping the nettles along the wall. Compare Alfio said goodnight too, and went back to putting the donkey in the stable.
‘That brazen-faced St Agatha,’ muttered la Vespa, who was at the Piedipaperas at all times of the day with the excuse of borrowing knitting needles, or presenting them with the odd handful of beans she had picked in her smallholding, ‘that brazen-faced St Agatha is for ever hanging round compare Alfio. She doesn’t leave him a moment to draw breath! It’s shameful!’ and she carried on grousing in the road, while Piedipapera shut the door, sticking his tongue out after her. ‘La Vespa is as angry as a wasp in July,’ compare Tino sniggered.
‘What does it all matter to her?’ asked comare Grazia.
‘It matters to her because she has it in for anyone who gets married, and she’s got her eye on Alfio Mosca.’
‘You ought to tell her that I don’t like playing gooseberry. As if people couldn’t see that she comes here for compare Alfio, and then la Zuppidda goes around spreading the word that it suits us to play the part.’
‘La Zuppidda would do better to worry about her own affairs, because there’s plenty to worry about! what with that nonsense of discussing marriage with padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, while the old man and the rest of them are raising hell and don’t want to hear anything about it. To-day I spent a good half-hour enjoying the scene between ’Ntoni and Barbara, and my back still hurts from being crouched against that wall, to hear what they were saying. ’Ntoni had slipped away from the Provvidenza, with the excuse of going to get the big harpoon for the grey mullet; and he said to her: ‘If my grandfather is against it, how shall we manage?’ ‘We’ll manage by running away together, and once we’ve done that they’ll have to think about marrying us, they’ll be forced to agree to it,’ she replied; and her mother was there behind the wall listening, I’ll bet my eye teeth. A fine figure that witch cuts! Now I feel like setting the whole village cackling. When I told him, don Silvestro said that he felt he could make Barbara drop into his arms like a ripe pear. And don’t put the latch down, I’m expecting Rocco Spatu to come and have a word with me.’
To get her to drop into his arms, don Silvestro had cooked up a trick so cunning that not even the friar who gives out lottery numbers could ever have conceived of it. ‘What I need,’ he had said, ‘is for everyone who is trying to take her from me to be out of the way. When she has no one else to marry, then she will have to beseech me, and I’ll drive a hard bargain, like they do at the market, when buyers are scarce.’
Among those who were trying to take Barbara from him had been Vanni Pizzuto, when he went to shave mastro Turi who had sciatica, and also don Michele, who was bored with strutting around with his pistol slung over his stomach doing nothing, when he wasn’t behind Santuzza’s counter, and making eyes at the pretty girls, to wile away the time. At first Barbara had responded to these come-hither looks, but when her mother had told her that they were all spongers and scroungers, police spies rather than anything else, and that all foreigners should be whipped, she had slammed the window in his face, all moustachioed and braided-capped as he was, and don Michele had fumed and fretted, and carried on walking up and down the street out of sheer spite, twirling his moustache, with his cap over his eye. Then on Sundays he wore his hat with the feather, and would deliver a very nasty look from Vanni Pizzuto’s shop, while the girl was going to mass with her mother. Don Silvestro too took to having himself shaved with the other people who were waiting to go to mass, and warming himself at the brazier for the hot water, and exchanging jokes. ‘That Barbara has got her eye on ’Ntoni Malavoglia,’ he said. ‘What’s the betting he collars her? You can see he’s all set to wait for her, lounging about with his hands in his pockets.’
Then Vanni Pizzuto left don Michele with the soap all over his face, and went to the door:
‘What a fine figure of a girl, by the Virgin! The way she walks with her nose in her shawl, so that she looks just like a spindle! And to think that that dunderhead ’Ntoni Malavoglia will get her all for himself!’
‘ ’Ntoni won’t be getting her if Piedipapera intends to be paid, let me tell you. The Malavoglia will have other worries, if Piedipapera takes the house by the medlar tree.’
Vanni Pizzuto resumed possession of don Michele’s nose. ‘What do you say, don Michele? You’ve been after her too. But she’s the sort of girl who makes you eat gall.’
Don Michele said nothing, but he brushed himself down, curled his moustaches and put on his hat in front of the mirror. ‘You need something more than hats with feathers for that girl,’ sniggered Pizzuto.
At last, on one occasion, don Michele said:
‘If it weren’t for my hat with the feather, by Christ, I’d show that lout of a Malavoglia how I go about things.’ Don Silvestro was thoughtful enough to go and tell ’Ntoni Malavoglia everything, including the fact that don Michele the sergeant was the fighting kind, and would probably want to have things out with him.
‘I’ll laugh in the face of that moustachioed sergeant,’ replied ’Ntoni. ‘I know why he’s annoyed with me; I’ll let him off this time, but if he has any sense he’ll stop spoiling his shoes by constantly walking up and down in front of la Zuppidda’s place, with his braided cap, as though he had a crown on his head; because people don’t give a hoot about him or his cap.’
And if he met him he would look him in the eye, narrowing his gaze as a red-blooded young man who has been a soldier should do, and not let his cap be snatched away amidst the crowd. Don Michele carried on walking down the little road out of pigheadedness, so as not to seem beaten by ’Ntoni, because he would have snapped him up like bread, if he hadn’t been for that hat with a feather.
‘They’re eating each other alive,’ said Vanni Pizzuto to anyone who came to have a shave, or to buy cigars, or fishing bait, or small bone buttons. ‘One of these days ’Ntoni Malavoglia and don Michele are going to snap each other up like bread! It’s only that blessed hat with a feather which is tying don Michele’s hands. He’d pay Piedipapera anything to get that fathead ’Ntoni out of the way.’ So much so that la Locca’s son, who spent the whole day wandering around with his arms dangling at his side, began to trail after them to see how it would all end.
When he went to have a shave and heard that don Michele would have given anything to have ’Ntoni Malavoglia out of the way, Piedipapera swelled up like a turkey cock, because that implied that he was held in some regard in the village.
As Vanni Pizzuto kept telling him: ‘The sergeant would pay any amount of money to have the Malavoglia in his clutches as you have. So why did you let ’Ntoni off so lightly over that punch up?’
Piedipapera shrugged and carried on warming his hands at the brazier. Don Silvestro began to laugh, and answered for him:
‘Mastro Vanni Pizzuto would like to use Piedipapera’s paw to get his chestnuts out of the fire for him. As you know, comare Venera doesn’t want any truck with foreigners or people in braided caps; so when she has got rid of ’Ntoni Malavoglia, there would be only him left to fool around with the girl.’
Vanni Pizzuto said nothing, but he chewed over this all night.
‘That might be no bad thing,
’ he pondered to himself. ‘The important thing is to grab Piedipapera by the horns, and on the right day.’
The right day arrived, and just in time, one evening when Rocco Spatu didn’t show up and Piedipapera came two or three times, late, to ask about him, white-faced and looking distraught, and the customs guards had been seen rushing about busily this way and that, with their noses to the ground like hunting dogs, and don Michele along with them with his pistol on his stomach and his trousers tucked into his boots. ‘You could do don Michele a great favour, by getting ’Ntoni Malavoglia out of his way,’ Pizzuto repeated to compare Tino, when the latter went to stick himself in the darkest corner of the little shop to buy a cigar. ‘You’d do him a famous favour, and then he really would be your friend for life.’
‘A fine thing that would be,’ sighed Piedipapera, who was short of breath that evening, and he said no more.
In the night shots were heard towards the Rotolo, and along the whole plain, so that it sounded like quail-hunting. ‘Quails my foot,’ murmured the fishermen sitting up in their beds to listen. ‘Those are two-footed quails, the sort that bring sugar and coffee, and contraband silk handkerchieves. Last night don Michele was going about with his trousers in his boots and his pistol slung on his stomach!’
Piedipapera was in Pizzuto’s shop having a little drink, before dawn, and the lantern was still burning outside the door; but this time he looked like a dog with its tail between its legs, he wasn’t telling the usual funny stories and he was asking people what all that racket had been about, and had they seen Rocco Spatu and Cinghialenta, and he doffed his cap to don Michele, who had swollen eyes and dusty boots, and he did his best to pay for the sergeant’s drink. But don Michele had already been to the wine shop where Santuzza, pouring him a glass of her good wine, had said: ‘What have you been doing, risking your skin, you fool? Don’t you know that if you get killed, you’ll drag others into the grave with you?’
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