Only Mena, poor thing, seemed less cheerful than the rest, and it was as though her heart spoke to her and made her see everything in black, while the fields were all dotted with little gold and silver stars and the children were making garlands for Ascension Day, and she herself had gone up the ladder to help her mother hang them at the door and windows.
All the doors had flowers on them, and only compare Alfio’s door, black and dilapidated, remained closed, and there was no longer anyone to hang the Ascension Day flowers on it.
‘That little flirt St Agatha,’ la Vespa went round saying, foaming at the mouth, ‘has sent compare Alfio packing from the village, with all her words and deeds.’
Meanwhile St Agatha had been dressed in her new dress and they were waiting for St John’s Day to take the little silver sword from her hair, and to part it on her forehead, before going into church, so that when they saw her pass everyone said how lucky she was.
But her mother, poor thing, did feel a deep sense of joy, because her daughter was going to be part of a family where she would want for nothing, and in the meanwhile she was completely absorbed in her cutting and sewing. Padron ’Ntoni wanted to be involved too, when he came home at night, and he would hold the cloth and the skein of cotton, and every time he went into town he would bring back some little thing. With the fine weather he felt a return of courage, and the children were all earning, some more and some less, and the Provvidenza earned her keep too, and they reckoned that with God’s help on St John’s Day they would be out of difficulties. Then padron Cipolla spent whole evenings sitting on the steps of the church disussing the achievements of the Provvidenza with padron ’Ntoni. Brasi kept wandering up and down the Malavoglia’s little street in his new suit, and soon afterwards the whole village learned that that Sunday comare Grazia Piedipapera herself was going to part the bride’s hair, and take out the little silver sword, because Brasi Cipolla’s mother was dead, and the Malavoglia had invited Grazia Piedipapera in order to ingratiate themselves with her husband, and they also invited zio Crocifisso, and the whole neighbourhood, and all their friends and relatives, with no thought of the cost.
‘I’m not going,’ muttered zio Crocifisso, to compare Tino, with his back against the elm, in the square. ‘I’ve had to down enough rage over them, and I don’t want to be driven crazy. You go though — it’s nothing to you, and it’s not your property that’s involved. There’s still time for the bailiff; the lawyer said so.’
‘You’re the boss, and I’ll do as you say. Now that Alfio Mosca has gone away, it’s not so important to you. But you’ll see, as soon as Mena is married, he’ll come back here and lay hands on your neice.’
Comare Venera la Zuppidda raised hell because they had invited comare Grazia to part the bride’s hair, while it should have fallen to her, since she was about to become an in-law of the Malavoglia, and her daughter had become special friends with Mena with the gift of basil, and indeed she had very promptly sewn Barbara a new dress, and wasn’t expecting that slight at all. In vain ’Ntoni begged and beseeched her not to take offence at that minor matter, and let things pass. Comare Venera, hair all neatly combed but hands covered in flour, because she had started kneading dough, just to show that she didn’t care about going to the Malavoglia’s gathering, answered:
“You wanted Grazia Piedipapera? Have her then; it’s either her or me! There’s no room for both of us.’
Everyone knew quite well that the Malavoglia had chosen comare Grazia because of that money they owed her husband. Now they were hand in glove with compare Tino, ever since padron Cipolla had got him to make peace with padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni in Santuzza’s wine shop, over the business of the fist fight.
‘They’re licking his boots because they owe him that money for the house,’ Zuppidda would mutter. ‘They owe my husband fifty lire for the Provvidenza, too. And to-morrow I’ll get them to hand over.’
‘Leave them be, mother, leave them be,’ begged Barbara. But she too was in a sulk, because she hadn’t been able to wear her new dress, and she almost regretted the money spent for the basil she had sent to comare Mena; and ’Ntoni, who had come to get them, was sent away all crestfallen, so that his new jacket seemed suddenly to fall limply from his very shoulders. Then while they were putting the bread into the oven, mother and daughter stood looking out from the courtyard, listening to the babble going on in the Malavoglia’s house, because the voices and laughter could be heard right where they were, to annoy them still further. The house by the medlar tree was full of people, as it had been when compare Bastianazzo died, and Mena, without her little silver sword and with her hair parted on her forehead, looked quite different, so that all the neighbourhood women crowded round her, and you couldn’t have heard a cannon shot for the babble and festivity. Piedipapera seemed to be positively tickling the women, he was so witty, while the lawyer was drawing up the documents, because there was still time to call in the bailiff, zio Crocifisso had said so; even padron Cipolla let himself go to the extent of telling some jokes, at which only his son Brasi laughed; and everyone talked at the same time, while the children fought over the beans and chestnuts between the grown-ups’ legs. Even la Longa, poor thing, had forgotten her sorrows in her delight; and padron ’Ntoni sat on the wall nodding sagely, and laughed to himself.
‘Don’t you give a drink to your trousers like last time, they’re not thirsty’ said compare Cipolla to his son, and he also said he felt in better fettle than the bride herself and wanted to dance the fasola with her.
‘Well, there’s no place for me here, I might as well go home!’ said Brasi who wanted to tell his own jokes, and who was annoyed that they left him alone in a corner like a dunderhead, and not even Mena paid him any attention.
‘The party is for comare Mena,’ said Nunziata, ‘but she’s not as cheerful as the rest of them.’
Then cousin Anna pretended the jug had slipped from her hand, with a drop of wine still in it, and she began to shout that where there were shards, there there was good cheer, and that spilt wine meant good luck.
‘I nearly ended up with wine on my trousers this time too,’ grumbled Brasi, who was watchful after his previous mishap with the suit.
Piedipapera had seated himself astride the wall, with his glass between his legs, so that he seemed like the boss, because of that bailiff he could send in, and he said: ’Not even Rocco Spatu is in the wine shop, to-day all the merry-making is here, and it’s like being at Santuzza’s place.’
‘It’s far better here,’ commented la Locca’s son, who had brought up the rear, and they had asked him in so he could have a drink too. ‘They don’t give you anything at Santuzza’s if you go there without any money.’
From his wall Piedipapera was watching a small group of people who were talking among themselves near the fountain, looking as solemn as if the end of the world were at hand. At the chemist’s there were the usual loafers, mumbling their orisons to each other with the newspaper in their hands, or waving wildly in each other’s faces, chattering, as though they wanted to pick a quarrel; and don Giammaria was laughing and taking a pinch of snuff, and you could see how delighted he was from quite a long way off.
‘Why haven’t the priest and don Silvestro come?’ asked Piedipapera.
‘I mentioned it to them too, but they must have other things to do,’ replied padron ’Ntoni.
‘They’re there, in the chemist’s shop, as though the man who predicts the lottery numbers were there. What the devil has happened?’
An old woman went shrieking through the square, and tearing her hair, as though they had brought her bad tidings; and in front of Pizzuto’s shop there was the sort of crowd you get when a donkey collapses in front of a cart, and everyone pushes forward to see what has happened, and even the idle women were peering from a distance open-mouthed, without daring to go any closer.
‘Personally, I’m going to see what’s happened,’ said Piedipapera, and he got slowly down from the wall.
>
Amidst that group, instead of a fallen donkey, there were two soldiers with bags on their shoulders and bandaged heads, who were coming home on leave. Meanwhile they had stopped at the barber’s to have a glass of absinthe. They said that a great sea battle had been fought, and that ships as big as the whole of Aci Trezza had gone down, brim full of soldiers; in short a whole rigmarole, so that it seemed as though they were telling the story of Orlando and the paladins of France on the front at Catania, and the people stood listening with their ears flapping, thick as flies.
‘Maruzza la Longa’s son was on the Re d’ltalia too,’ commented don Silvestro, who had come up to listen.
‘I’m going to tell my wife,’ said mastro Turi Zuppiddo immediately, ‘because I don’t like long faces between friends and neighbours.’
But meanwhile la Longa remained blissfully ignorant, poor thing, and she was laughing and enjoying herself among friends and relatives.
The soldier carried on chatting with anyone who would listen, making play with his arms like a preacher. ‘Yes, there were Sicilians there too; there were people from all over. But in any case when the alarm is sounded on the gundeck, you don’t have much thought for where people come from, and rifles all speak the same way. They’re all good lads! and with plenty of guts. Listen, when you’ve seen what these eyes have seen, and how those boys did their duty, you can wear this cap over your ear, by the Virgin Mary!’
The young man’s eyes were shining, but he said it was nothing, it was because he’d been drinking. ‘She was called the Re d‘Italia, a ship like no other, all armoured — if you can imagine a corset like you women wear, but a corset of iron, that’s what she had, so that you could fire cannon shots on her without doing any damage. She went to the bottom in a moment, and she was lost to sight for the smoke, which was like the smoke of twenty brick kilns, can you imagine?’
‘There was chaos in Catania,’ added the chemist. ‘Everyone was crowding around the people who were reading the papers, it was like a party.’
‘The papers are just so many printed lines,’ pronounced don Giammaria.
‘They say it’s been a bad business; we’ve lost a great battle,’ said don Silvestro. Padron Cipolla too had come up to see what the crowd was about. ‘Do you believe all this?’ he sniggered at last. ‘It’s just talk to make people pay out a soldo for the paper.’
‘But everyone says we’ve lost!’
‘What?’ asked zio Crocifisso, putting his hand to his ear.
‘A battle.’
‘Who has lost it?’
‘Me, you, Italy, everyone, in fact,’ answered the chemist.
‘I haven’t lost anything,’ said Dumb bell shrugging; ‘now it’s compare Piedipapera’s business, and he can deal with it,’ and he looked towards the house by the medlar tree where they were making merry.
‘You know what it’s like?’ concluded padron Cipolla, ‘it’s like when the Aci Trezza town council was fighting for land with the Aci Castello town council. What good did it do us, you and me?’
‘It did us some good,’ exclaimed the chemist, red in the face. ‘It did… what boors you are…’
‘Those who will suffer are all the poor mothers,’ somebody hasarded; zio Crocifisso, who wasn’t a mother, shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’ll tell you what it’s like in two words,’ the other soldier went on meanwhile. ‘It’s like at the wine shop, when people get worked up and throw plates and glasses amidst all the smoke and shouting. You’ve seen that? Well, that’s just what it’s like. At first, when you’re on the barricading with your rifle in your hand, in all that great silence, all you hear is the pumping of the engine, and it seems to you that that sound is happening to you, in your own stomach: nothing more. Then, at the first cannon shot, and as the pandemonium begins, you want to start dancing too, and chains wouldn’t hold you back, like when the violin starts in the wine shop, after you’ve eaten and drunk, and you stick out your rifle wherever you see anything human at all, amid the smoke. On land it’s quite another thing. A bersagliere who was coming back with us to Messina was telling us that you can’t hear the crack of gun-shots without feeling your feet tingling with the desire to rush forward with your head down. But the bersaglieri aren’t sailors, and they can’t imagine how you manage to stay in the rigging with your foot steady on the rope and your hand steady on the trigger, despite the pitching of the ship, while your mates are falling around you like rotten pears.’
‘Heavenly Virgin,’ exclaimed Rocco Spatu. ‘I’d like to have been there too, to give them a taste of my fists.’
All the others stood listening, all agog. The other young man then told them how the Palestro had blown up — ‘burning like a pile of wood, when she passed near us, and the flames were as high as the foremast peak. But all those boys were at their posts, on the gundeck or on the topgallant bulwark. Our commander asked whether they needed anything. ‘No thanks very much,’ they replied. Then she went to Larboard and no one saw her again.’
‘This business of being roasted to death doesn’t sound so good,’ concluded Rocco Spatu, ‘but I’d have liked the fighting part.’ And as she was going back to the wine shop Santuzza said to him:
‘Tell them to come along here, those poor lads, they must be thirsty, after all that journeying, and they could do with a bit of decent wine. That Pizzuto poisons people with his absinthe, and he doesn’t mention it at confession. Some people have their consciences behind their backs, poor things!’
‘They strike me as so many madmen,’ said padron Cipolla, blowing his nose thoughtfully. ‘Would you get yourself killed if the king told you to go and do so for his sake?’
‘Poor things, it’s not their fault,’ observed don Silvestro. ‘They have to, because behind every soldier there is a corporal with a loaded gun, and his whole job consists in keeping an eye on the soldier to see if he’s trying to escape, and if he does the corporal shoots him worse than a little garden warbler.’
‘Oh, I see! What a business!’
The whole evening there was laughing and drinking in the Malavoglia’s courtyard, under a fine moon; and later, when everyone was tired, and slowly chewing over the roasted beans, and some were even singing quietly, with their backs to the wall, they began to tell the news which the two discharged soldiers had brought to the village. Padron Fortunato had left early, and had taken away Brasi with his new suit.
‘Those poor Malavoglia,’ he said when he met Dumb bell on the square. ‘May Heaven spare them! They’ve got the evil eye upon them.’
Zio Crocifisso kept silent and scratched his head. Now it was not his business any more, he had washed his hands of it. Now it was Piedipapera’s lookout; but he was sorry, in all conscience.
The next day the rumour began to go round that there had been a battle at sea towards Trieste between our ships and those of the enemy, though no one even knew who they were, and a lot of people had died; some told the story one way and some another, in dribs and drabs; swallowing their words. The neighbourhood women came with their hands under their aprons to ask whether comare Maruzza’s Luca had been there, and they stood and looked at her all eyes before going off again. The poor woman began to sit around in the doorway, as she did every time something awful happened, turning her head this way and that, looking from one end of the street to the other, as though she were expecting her father-in-law and the children back from sea earlier than usual. Then the neighbours asked her if Luca had written, or whether she hadn’t heard from him for a long time. In fact she hadn’t thought about letters, and she couldn’t sleep the whole night, and in her mind she was down there, in the sea towards Trieste, where the disaster occurred; and she could see her son before her, pale and motionless, looking at her with such staring shining eyes, and just saying yes, yes, like when they had sent him to do his soldiering — so that she too felt a thirst upon her, an unspeakable burning. Amidst all the stories which were going the rounds in the village, and which they had come to tell her, one
remained with her in particular, of one of those sailors, whom they fished up after twelve hours, when the sharks were about to devour him, and in the middle of all that water he was dying of thirst. When she thought about that man who was dying of thirst in the midst of that water, la Longa couldn’t help going to drink from the jug for minutes on end, as though that thirst had been within herself, and she opened her eyes wide in the darkness, where the image of that fellow was forever imprinted.
But with the passing of the days, no one talked about what had happened any more; but as the letter didn’t seem to be arriving la Longa had no interest either in working or in staying indoors: she wandered continually from door to door, as though she were looking for some kind of answer. ‘Ever seen a cat which has lost its kittens?’ said the neighbours. But the letter didn’t come. Padron ’Ntoni didn’t go to sea either and stayed hanging around his daughter-in-law’s skirts like a puppy dog. People told him to go to Catania, which was a big place, and they would be able to tell him something there.
In that big place the poor old man felt worse than if he’d been at sea at night, without knowing which way to turn the rudder. At last they had the goodness to tell him that he should go to the harbour master, since he probably knew the news. There, after having sent him from pillar to post, for a bit, they began to leaf through certain sinister looking books, running their fingers down the list of the dead. When they came to one name la Longa, who hadn’t heard properly because her ears were ringing, and she was listening as white as the paper itself, slumped gently to the floor, more dead than alive.
I Malavoglia Page 13