I Malavoglia

by Giovanni Verga

  Later on that day they came to collect la Longa in a tearing hurry, and no one even though of the visit of condolence; everyone was thinking about their own skin, and even don Giammaria stayed on the threshold, when he sprayed the holy water with the aspergillum, holding St. Francis’ tunic bunched and raised — like the truly selfish friar he was, spouted the chemist. He on the other hand, if they had brought him the doctor’s prescription for some medicine or other, would open up the shop even at night, because he wasn’t afraid of cholera; and he even said that it was folly to believe that they spread the cholera along the streets and into the doorways.

  ‘That’s a sign that it’s him who’s spreading the cholera,’ hinted don Giammaria. So everyone greeted the chemist eagerly in the village, but he would cackle away, just exactly like don Silvestro, and would say:

  ‘I’m a republican. Now if I were a clerk, or a government lackey, it might be different…’ But the Malavoglia were left alone, in front of that empty bed.

  For a time they didn’t open the door, after la Longa had gone through it. It was lucky they had a few beans in the house, and wood and oil, because padron ’Ntoni had acted like the wise ant during good times, otherwise they would have died of hunger, and no one came to see whether they were alive or dead. Then, gradually, they began to put their black handkerchieves around their necks, and go out into the street, like slugs after the rain, pale-faced and still shattered. From a distance the neighbourhood women asked them how the tragedy had happened; for comare Maruzza had been one of the first to go. And when don Michele or another of the braided-hatted government shirkers passed by, they looked at them with eyes bright with hatred, and ran to lock themselves in their houses. The village was in a desolate state, and the very hens shunned the streets; even mastro Cirino was lying low, and didn’t bother about ringing the mid-day or evening bell, and he ate municipal bread too, with those twelve tari a month they gave him to be caretaker at the town hall, and he was afraid they might give him the greeting accorded to government lackeys.

  Now don Michele was Lord of the street, since Pizzuto, don Silvestro and all the others had gone to ground like rabbits, and the only person strutting in front of Zuppidda’s house was him, don Michele. It was a pity that the only people to see him were the Malavoglia, who now had nothing more to lose and so would sit on their doorstep looking to see who was passing by, motionless, chins in hands. In order not to waste his strolling time, don Michele would take a look at St. Agatha, now that all the other doors were closed; and he did so partly to show that lout ’Ntoni that he wasn’t afraid of anyone in the world. And then Mena, pale as she was, really did look like St. Agatha; and her little sister, with that black handkerchief, was beginning to be a fine young girl too.

  Poor Mena suddenly felt as though twenty years had fallen on her back. Now she behaved with Lia as la Longa had acted with her; she felt she had to keep her under her wing like a chicken, and as though the whole weight of the house fell on her back. She had become used to being alone with her little sister when the men went to sea, and to being with that empty bed ever before her eyes. If she had nothing to do, she would sit with her hands folded, looking at it, and then she felt that her mother had left her; and when in the street they said:

  ‘So and so is dead, or so and so,’ she thought: ‘That’s how it must have sounded when they heard: la Longa is dead,’ la Longa who had left her alone with that poor little orphan who wore a black handkerchief like herself.

  Nunziata, or cousin Anna, came from time to time, with light steps and long faces, without saying a word; and they stood on the doorstep looking at the empty road, with their hands under their aprons. The people coming back from the sea walked fast, watchfully, with their nets on their shoulders, and the carts didn’t even stop at the wine shop.

  Where was compare Alfio’s cart going now? Was he even now dying of cholera under a hedge, ‘that poor fellow who had no one in the world? Piedipapera went by sometimes too, looking starved and peering about him; or zio Crocifisso, who had business scattered here and there, and went to feel his debtors’ pulses, because if they died they were stealing his just desserts. The viaticum was also rushed by, in don Giammaria’s hands, and he had his cassock tucked up, and a barefoot boy who rang the bell, because mastro Cirino was nowhere to be seen. That bell rang with a chilling sound in the empty streets, with not even a dog to be seen, and don Franco himself kept his door half-closed.

  The only person who wandered about day and night was la Locca, with her tangled white hair, and she would sit outside the house by the medlar tree, or wait for the boats on the shore, and not even the cholera wanted anything to do with her, poor thing.

  The foreigners too had fled, like birds when winter comes, and there were no buyers for fish. So that people said the cholera would be followed by famine. Padron ’Ntoni had had to dip into the money for the house, and he saw it being frittered away bit by bit. But all he could think of was that Maruzza had died outside her own home, and the thought obsessed him. When he saw the money being spent, ’Ntoni shook his head too.

  Finally, when the cholera was over, and the money put together with so much effort had been half-spent, he went back to saying that it couldn’t go on like that, with that life of small gains and small losses; that it was better to make one big effort to get out of trouble at a single blow and that he didn’t want to stay there any longer, in that place where his mother had died, amidst all that filthy poverty.

  ‘What can I do for Mena if I stay here? You tell me.’ Mena looked at him timidly, but tenderly, just like her mother, and didn’t dare say a word. But once, leaning shyly against the doorpost, she screwed up the courage to say:

  ‘I don’t mind about your help, provided you don’t leave us. Now that mother isn’t here, I feel like a lost soul and I don’t care about anything any more. But I’m sorry for that poor orphan who’ll be without anyone in the world, if you go, like Nunziata when her father disappeared.’

  Lia and Alessi opened their eyes wide and looked at him in alarm; but his grandfather let his head fall on to his chest.

  ‘Now you have neither father nor mother, and you can do whatever you like,’ he said to him at last. ‘As long as I’m alive I’ll take care of these children; when I’m no longer here, the Lord will do the rest.’

  Since ’Ntoni wanted to leave at all costs, Mena put his affairs in order, as his mother would have done, because after all she thought that out there, in some foreign land, her brother would no longer have anyone to think of him, like compare Mosca. And while she sewed his shirts and patched his clothes, her thoughts were far away, among so many past things, and her heart swelled with memories.

  ‘I can’t bear to pass by the house by the medlar tree,’ she would say when she was sitting with her grandfather, ‘I feel it in my throat, and it chokes me, what with all the things which have have happened since we left it.’

  And while she was preparing her brother’s things, she cried as though she were never to see him again. At last, when everything was in order, her grandfather summoned his boy to give him the final lecturings, and the last advice for when he would be alone, and would have to make capital only out of his head, without his family to tell him how to behave, or to grieve together; and he also gave him a bit of money, in case he should need it; and his fur-lined cloak, because he himself was old now, and wouldn’t be wanting it.

  Seeing their older brother intent on preparations for his departure, the children trailed quietly after him through the house, and didn’t dare say a word to him, as though he were already a stranger.

  ‘That’s how my father went off,’ said Nunziata at last, from the doorstep where she was standing, having come to say goodbye. Then no one said another word.

  The neighbourhood women came by one by one to say goodbye to compare ’Ntoni, and then they stood and waited on the road to see him go. He hesitated, with his bundle on his shoulder and his shoes in his hand, as though his courage and his legs ha
d failed him at the last minute. And he looked around him as though to engrave the house and the village and everything on his memory, and he looked as upset as everyone else. His grandfather took his stick to go with him to the city, and Mena cried quietly in a corner.

  ‘Come now,’ said ’Ntoni,’ this won’t do! It’s not as though I weren’t ever coming back, after all. Don’t forget I came back from my military service.’ Then, after he had kissed Mena and Lia, and said goodbye to the women, he moved to go, and Mena ran after him with her arms outstretched sobbing aloud, almost beside herself, and saying to him:

  ‘Now what will mother say?’ for all the world as though mother had been able to see and speak. But she was repeating what had remained clearest in her mind when ’Ntoni had first said that he wanted to leave, and she had seen her mother cry every night, and had found the sheet all wet the next morning, when she was making the bed.

  ‘Goodbye, ’Ntoni,’ Alessi shouted after him as he plucked up his courage when his brother was already out of earshot, and then Lia began to scream.

  ‘That’s how my father left,’ said Nunziata after a pause, from where she was still standing in the doorway.

  ’Ntoni turned round before he turned out of strada del Nero, and he too had tears in his eyes, and waved. Then Mena closed the door, and went to sit in a corner with Lia, who was crying out loud.

  ‘Now another one has gone,’ she said. ‘And if we were in the house by the medlar tree, it would seem as empty as a church.’

  Now that all those who loved her were leaving one by one, she really did feel like a fish out of water. And Nunziata, standing there with her little ones around her, kept saying:

  ‘That’s how my father left, too.’

  CHAPTER XII

  Now that Alessi was the only person left to help with the boat, padron ’Ntoni had to take someone by the day, either compare Nunzio, who had all those children and a sick wife, or la Locca’s son, who would come whimpering outside the door that his mother was dying of hunger, and zio Crocifisso wouldn’t give her anything because the cholera had ruined him, he said, what with so many people having died and cheated him of his money, so that he had caught the cholera too — though he hadn’t died, added la Locca’s son, shaking his head gloomily.

  ‘My mother and I and all the family would have been able to eat now, if he had died. We spent two days with la Vespa looking after him, and he seemed to be sinking from one moment to the next, but then he didn’t die!’

  But what the Malavoglia earned often wasn’t enough to pay zio Nunzio, or la Locca’s son, and they had to dip into the hard-earned money for the house by the medlar tree. Every time Mena went to get the sock from under the mattress, she and her grandfather sighed. It wasn’t la Locca’s poor son’s fault; he would gladly have done the work of four men to earn his day’s keep; it was the fault of the fish, which weren’t keen to be caught. And when they came back crestfallen, banging the oars and with the sail all slack, la Locca’s son would say to padron ’Ntoni:

  ‘I’ll chop some wood or bind up vine shoots; I can work until midnight if you want, as I did with zio Crocifisso. I want to earn my day’s pay.’

  Then, after pondering a bit, padron ’Ntoni decided to talk to Mena about what they would do. She was as sensible as her mother, and there was now no one else in the house to discuss it with, whereas before there had been so many. The best thing was to sell the Provvidenza, which earned nothing, and ate up the day’s pay for Nunzio and la Locca’s son; otherwise the money for the house would all be frittered away. The Provvidenza was old and always needing more money spending on her to patch her up and keep her afloat. Later, if ’Ntoni came back and things were looking up, they would buy a new boat, when they had got the money for the house together, and would call her the Provvidenza, too.

  One Sunday he went into the square to discuss it with Piedipapera, after mass. Compare Tino shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, said that the Provvidenza was just about good for firewood, and so saying he led him down to the shore; you could see the patches, under the new coat of pitch, it was like some sluts he knew, with wrinkles under their corsets; and he started kicking her in the stomach again, with his lame foot. Anyhow, business was bad; rather than buying, people would be wanting to sell their boats, and newer than the Provvidenza. And who would buy her? Padron Cipolla didn’t want any of that old rubbish. That was zio Crocifisso’s province. But at that moment zio Crocifisso had other things on his mind, what with that one-track-minded Vespa who was driving him crazy, running after all the marriageable men in the village. At last, for the sake of friendship, he agreed to go and talk to zio Crocifisso about it, at the right moment, if padron ’Ntoni was determined to sell the Provvidenza for a song; because he, Piedipapera, had zio Crocifisso round his little finger.

  In fact, when he talked to him, leading him off towards the cattle trough, zio Crocifisso answered with a series of shrugs, and shook his head like a puppet, and showed all the signs of wanting to escape. Compare Tino, poor thing, was holding him by the jacket, so that he would be forced to listen; and he shook him; held him close so as to whisper in his ear.

  ‘Yes, you’re a fool if you let this opportunity pass you by! For peanuts! Padron ’Ntoni is selling it because he simply can’t carry on, now that his grandson has left him. But you could put it in the hands of compare Nunzio, or la Locca’s son, who are starving to death, and would come and work for nothing. You’d come in for everything they catch. You’re a fool, I tell you! The boat is well-kept, virtually new. Padron ’Ntoni knew what he was doing when he had it mended. This is a real bargain, like the lupin business, you mark my words!’ But zio Crocifisso wouldn’t hear of it, and almost burst into tears, with that yellow face, now that he had had cholera; and he pulled away and almost left Piedipapera holding his jacket.

  ‘I’m not interested,’ he repeated. ‘Not interested. You don’t know what I suffer inwardly, compare Tino! Everyone wants to suck my blood like leeches, and take my possessions. Now there’s Pizzuto too running after la Vespa, all like a pack of hunting dogs.’

  ‘You take her then, that Vespa! Isn’t she your flesh and blood, she and her smallholding? She won’t be another mouth to feed, after all; that woman’s hands are blessed by God, and the money you spend on the bread you give her will be well spent. You’ll also have a tame servant, unpaid, and you’ll get the smallholding into the bargain. Listen to me, zio Crocifisso, this is another deal as good as the lupin deal!’

  Meanwhile padron ’Ntoni was waiting for an answer in front of Pizzuto’s shop, and gazing like a lost soul at the two of them, who seemed to be fighting, and trying to guess whether zio Crocifisso was saying yes. Piedipapera came over to tell him what he had managed to get out of zio Crocifisso, and then went back to talk to him again; and he came and went across the square like the shuttle in the loom, dragging his twisted leg after him, until he managed to bring about an agreement.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said to padron ’Ntoni; ‘it’s peanuts,’ he said to zio Crocifisso, and in this way he negotiated the sale of all the tackle, because the Malavoglia had no use for it, now that they didn’t have their bread on the waters, but padron ’Ntoni felt as though they were hauling the bowels from within him, fish traps, nets, harpoons, fishing rods, the lot.

  ‘I’ll find you work on a day basis, for you and your grandson Alessi, don’t you worry,’ Piedipapera told him.

  ‘But you’ll have to be satisfied with what you get, you know! ‘The strength of the young and the wisdom of the old,’ as they say. And I’ll rely on your goodness of heart for some consideration of my part in the deal.’

  ‘You have to cut your coat according to your cloth,’ replied padron ’Ntoni. ‘Necessity lowers nobility.’

  ‘All right, we understand one another,’ concluded Piedipapera, and he went off to discuss it with padron Cipolla, in the chemist’s shop, where don Silvestro had managed to lure them yet again, him, massaro Filippo and a few other big wigs, to disc
uss municipal affairs, because after all it was their money, and it is pure foolishness to count for nothing in the village when you are rich, and pay more taxes than others.

  ‘You who are so rich, you could give some bread to that poor padron ’Ntoni,’ added Piedipapera. ‘It wouldn’t harm you to take him on by the day, with his grandson Alessi; you know he knows more about the trade than anyone else, and he’d make do with very little, because they’re really on the bread line; you’d make a mint, you mark my words, padron Fortunato.’

  Caught like that at that moment, padron Fortunato couldn’t say no; but after they had hummed and hawed a bit over the price — and since times were lean, men had no work — padron Cipolla was actually doing a charitable action in taking on padron ’Ntoni.

  ‘Yes, I’ll take him on if he comes to ask me in person! Would you believe that he has been bearing me a grudge ever since I put an end to my son’s marriage with Mena? Eh! that would have been some deal! And they have the cheek to cut me, into the bargain!’

  Don Silvestro, massaro Filippo and also Piedipapera all hastened to say that Piedipapera was right. Brasi wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace, since he had put the idea of marriage into his head, and he was running after all the girls like a cat in January, so that he was a permanent worry to his poor father. Now the Mangiacarrubbe girl had entered the fray, having taken it into her head to get her hands on him, Brasi Cipolla, since he was there for the taking; she at least was a comely girl with broad shoulders, and not old and scrawny like la Vespa; but la Vespa had that smallholding, and all the Mangiacarrubbe girl had was her black tresses, the others said. The Mangiacarrubbe girl knew what you had to do if you wanted to get Brasi Cipolla, now that his father had tethered him back at home again because of the cholera, and he no longer went hiding on the sciara, or in the smallholding, or with the chemist and in the sacristy. She walked briskly in front of him, with her dainty new shoes; and in passing she brushed him with her elbow, in the midst of the crowd coming back from mass; or she would wait for him at the door, with her hands on her stomach, and send him a lethal look, a look that steals the heart away, and turn round to adjust the corners of her handkerchief under her chin to see if he was following her; or run home as he appeared at the end of the little street and go to hide herself behind the basil on the window sill, with those great dark eyes which devoured him from her hiding place. But if Brasi stopped to gaze at her like the great oaf he was, she turned her back on him, with her chin on her chest, all red, eyes lowered, chewing the edges of her apron, as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. At last, since Brasi couldn’t steel himself to take her, she had to collar him and say: ‘Listen, compare Brasi, why do you torment me so? I know I’m not meant for you; and it would be better if you didn’t pass by this way, because the more I see you the more I want to see you, and by now I’m the talk of the village; Zuppidda comes to the door every time she sees you pass, and then goes to tell everybody; though she’d do better to keep an eye on that flirt of a daughter of hers, Barbara, who has turned this little street into an open square, so many people come here, and she keeps quiet about how many times don Michele goes up and down, to see Barbara at the window.’