I Malavoglia

by Giovanni Verga

  What with such natterings Brasi no longer budged from the street, in fact not even a sound thrashing could have dislodged him, and he was always hanging around, strolling about with his arms dangling, nose in the air and mouth agape, like a puppet. The Mangiacarrubbe girl for her part would be at the window, changing silk handkerchieves every day, and glass necklaces, like a queen. She put everything she had on display in that window, and that nincompoop Brasi took the lot for pure gold, and he was driven wild, to the point where he wasn’t afraid even of his own father, if he had come to remove him with a thrashing.

  ‘Here we see God’s handiwork in punishing padron Fortunato’s pride,’ people said. ‘It would have been a hundred times better for him to have given his son to the Malavoglia girl, who at least had that bit of dowry, and didn’t spend it on handkerchieves and necklaces.’

  Mena on the other hand didn’t even put her nose to the window, because that would not have been right, now that her mother was dead, and she wore a black handkerchief; and then she had to look after her little sister, and act as mother to her, and she had no one to help her with the household chores, so that she even had to go to the wash place, and the fountain, and take the bread to the men, when they were out on a day’s work; so that she was no longer like St. Agatha, as she had been, when no one saw her and she was always at her loom. From the day Zuppidda had begun to preach from the balcony, with her spindle as though she wanted to gouge out his eyes with it, don Michele, if he came to hang around those parts for Barbara, would pass along the strada del Nero ten times a day, to show he wasn’t afraid of Zuppidda or of her spindle either; and when he got to the Malavoglia’s house he would slow down, and look inside, to see the fine girls who were growing up in the Malavoglia household.

  Of an evening, coming back from the sea, the men would find everything ready: the pan boiling and the table set; but by now that table was too big for them, and they looked quite lost around it. They closed the door and ate in peace and quiet; then they would go to sit at the doorway, clasping their knees, to rest from the day’s labours. At least they lacked for nothing, and were no longer dipping into the money for the house. Padron ’Ntoni never took his gaze off that house, nearby as it was, with the windows closed and the medlar tree visible over the top of the courtyard wall. Maruzza had not been able to die there; nor perhaps would he; but the money was beginning to pile up, and his grandchildren would go back there one day, now that Alessi too was becoming a man, and was a good lad in the true Malavoglia mould. Then when they had married off the girls and bought back the house, if they could get a boat to sea as well, they would have all they wished for, and padron ’Ntoni would be able to close his eyes in peace.

  Nunziata and cousin Anna too came to sit there on the stones, chatting after supper with those poor folks, who were so forsaken like themselves, so that it was almost as though they were relatives. It was almost a second home for Nunziata, and she brought her little ones with her, like a hen with her chicks. Seated by her, Alessi would say:

  ‘Have you finished your cloth for to-day?’ or: ‘Will you be going to pick olives at massaro Filippo’s on Monday? What with it being the olive harvest, you’ll have no trouble finding work by the day, and you can take your little brother along with you, because now they’ll give him a couple of pence a day too.’ Nunziata gravely told him all her plans, and asked his advice, and they drew aside and talked sagely together, as though they were already full of years.

  ‘They’ve learned young because they’ve seen so many troubles,’ padron ’Ntoni would say. ‘Misfortune brings sound judgement.’ Alessi, with his arms round his knees just like his grandfather, would ask Nunziata:

  ‘Will you have me for a husband when I’m grown up?’

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ she would say.

  ‘Yes, there is time, but it’s better to start thinking now, so that I’ll know what I have to do. First we must marry off Mena, and Lia, when she’s grown up too. Lia is beginning to want long clothes, and handkerchieves with roses, and then you’ve got to settle your own children. Somehow we must buy a boat; and the boat will help us to buy the house. My grandfather would like to buy back the house by the medlar tree, and I would too, because I know my way about it, blindfold, or at night; and there’s a big courtyard for the tackle, and you’re right near the sea. And when my sisters are married, grandfather can come and be with us, and we’ll put him in the big room in the courtyard, which gets the sun; so that when he can’t come down to the sea any more, poor old man, he can sit at the doorway into the courtyard, and in the summer he’ll have the medlar tree to give him shade. We’ll have the room overlooking the vegetable patch, if you like, and you’ll have the kitchen near by, so we’ll have everything to hand. Then when my brother ’Ntoni comes back we’ll give it to him, and we’ll go up to the attic. All you’ll need to do is go down the little stairs to be in the kitchen or vegetable patch.’

  ‘The fireplace in the kitchen needs rebuilding,’ said Nunziata. ‘The last time I cooked the soup on it, when poor comare Maruzza didn’t feel like doing anything, you had to hold the saucepan up with stones.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ answered Alessi with his chin on his hands, nodding. He had a look of enchantment in his eyes, as though he could see Nunziata in front of the hearth, and his grief-stricken mother beside the bed. ‘You too could find your way around the house by the medlar tree in the dark, you’ve been there so often. Mother always said you were a good girl.’

  ‘Now they’ve planted onions in the vegetable patch, and they’ve come up as big as oranges.’

  ‘Do you like onions?’

  ‘Of course, I have to. They’re good with bread, and they don’t cost much. When we haven’t got enough money for soup, me and the little ones always eat onions.’

  ‘That’s why they sell so many. Zio Crocifisso doesn’t care about having cabbages and lettuces, because he has another vegetable patch in his own house, and he’s grown nothing but onions. But we’d have broccoli, and cauliflowers, wouldn’t we? That’ll be good, won’t it?’

  Squatting on the step, with her arms around her knees, the young girl too was gazing into the distance; and then she began to sing, while Alessi sat there listening intently. At last she said:

  ‘But there’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Alessi; ‘first we have to marry off Mena, and Lia too, and settle your little ones. But it’s as well to start thinking about it.’

  ‘When Nunziata sings,’ said Mena, appearing in the doorway, ‘it’s a sign that the next day will be fine, and she’ll be able to go to the wash place.’ Cousin Anna was in the same position, because her smallholding and vines were at the wash place, and what was good news for her was when she had washing to do, all the more so now that her son Rocco deposited himself in the wine shop from one Sunday to the next, to digest the ill-humour which that flirt of a Mangiacarrubbe girl had visited upon him.

  ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’ padron ’Ntoni said to her. ‘Perhaps this way he’ll learn sense, your Rocco. It’ll do my ’Ntoni good to be away from home too; then when he comes back, tired of wandering around the world, everything will seem good to him, and he won’t complain about things any more; and if we manage to have boats at sea once again, and to put our beds up there, in that house, you’ll see what a fine thing it will be to rest in the doorway, of an evening when you come back tired, and the day has gone well; and to see the light in that room where you’ve seen all the dear faces you’ve ever known. But now so many of them have gone away one by one, and they’ll never be back, and the room is dark and the door closed, as if those who’ve gone away had put the key in their pockets for ever.’

  “Ntoni shouldn’t have left,’ added the old man after a pause. ‘He should have known that I’m old, and if I die these children will have nobody’.

  ‘If we buy the house by the medlar tree while he’s away, he’ll hardly be able to believe it when he comes back,’ said
Mena, ‘and he’ll come looking for us here.’

  Padron ’Ntoni shook his head sadly.

  ‘But there’s plenty of time,’ he too said at last, like Nunziata; and cousin Anna added:

  ‘If ’Ntoni comes back rich, he’ll buy the house.’ Padron ’Ntoni said nothing; but the whole village knew that ’Ntoni was to come back rich, after having been away so long seeking his fortune, and many were already envying him, and wanting to leave everything and go off in search of their fortunes, like him. And indeed they were right, because all they were leaving behind was silly whimpering women; and the only one who hadn’t the heart to leave his woman was that blockhead, la Locca’s son, who had the sort of mother you know her to be, and Rocco Spatu, whose heart was in the wine shop.

  But luckily for those silly women, suddenly the news spread that padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni was back, one night, on a ship from Catania, and was ashamed to be seen without shoes. If it had been true that he was coming back rich, he wouldn’t have had anywhere to put his money, so ragged was he. But his grandfather and brother and sisters greeted him warmly all the same, as though he had come back rolling in it, and his sisters hung around his neck, laughing and crying, because ’Ntoni hardly recognised Lia, she had grown so, and they said to him:

  ‘Now you won’t leave us again, will you?’

  His grandfather too blew his nose, and muttered:

  ‘Now I can die in peace, knowing that these children won’t be left alone and stranded.’

  But for a week ’Ntoni didn’t have the courage to set foot in the street. When they saw him everyone laughed in his face, and Piedipapera went round saying:

  ‘Have you seen the riches padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni has brought back with him?’ And those people who had been rather slow to make up their bundles before embarking on that giddy venture, held their sides for laughing.

  When someone doesn’t manage to grab fortune by the tail, he is an imbecile, as is well-known. Don Silvestro, padron Cipolla and massaro Filippo weren’t imbeciles, and everyone was pleased to see them, because those who have nothing stand agape looking on at the rich and fortunate, and work for them, like compare Alfio’s donkey, for a handful of hay, instead of lashing out, and kicking the cart under foot, and lying down on the grass with their hooves in the air.

  The chemist was right when he said that the world as it was right now needed a kick, and a fresh start. And yet he too, with his big beard, preaching about fresh starts, was one of those who had grabbed fortune by the tail, and he kept it in his glass cases, and enjoyed prosperity standing on the doorstep of his shop, chatting with this person or that, and when he had pounded away making a hole in the drop of dirty water in his mortar, his work was done. What a fine trade his father had taught him, making money with water from the water tanks! But ’Ntoni’s grandfather had taught him a trade which consisted of breaking his back and arms all day long, and risking his neck, and dying of hunger, and never having a day to stretch out in the sun like Mosca’s donkey. A thieving trade which destroyed your soul, by the Virgin! and he had had it up to here, so that he preferred to do as Rocco Spatu did, which at least was nothing. Already he was past caring about Zuppidda and comare Tudda’s Sara, or any other girl in the world. All they did was look for a husband who would toil like a maniac to provide them with food, and buy them silk handkerchieves, while they sat out on the step of a Sunday, with their hands on their full stomachs. But in his case it was he who wanted to sit down with his hands on his stomach, of a Sunday and a Monday too, and all the other days, because there is no point in wearing yourself to a shadow for nothing.

  So ’Ntoni too acted the preacher, like the chemist; at least he had learned this much on his travels, and now his eyes were opened, like kittens’ ten days after they’re born. ‘The hen that leaves the coop comes home with a full stomach.’ At least he had filled his stomach with good sense, and he would go into the square to tell people what he had learned, to Pizzuto’s shop and to Santuzza’s wine shop too. He didn’t sneak off to Santuzza’s on the quiet any more, now that he was a man, and his grandfather couldn’t pull his ears, after all; and he could have held his own if they chided him for going after such crumbs of comfort as he could find.

  Instead of seizing him by the ear, his grandfather, poor thing, approached him with kindness.

  ‘You see,’ he would say to him, ‘now that you’re here we’ll soon make up the money for the house’ — he always kept on with that refrain about the house. ‘Zio Crocifisso has said that he won’t give it to anyone else. Your mother, poor creature, wasn’t able to die there! The house will help to provide for Mena’s dowry; because at my age, you know, it’s hard to go out by the day, and be at someone else’s beck and call, when you’ve been your own master. Do you think we should buy the boat with the money for the house? Now you’re a man, and you must have your say too, because you have more judgement than an old man like me. What would you like to do?’

  What ’Ntoni wanted to do was nothing! What did he care about the house and the boat? Another bad year would come, another cholera epidemic, another disaster, and eat up the house and the boat, and they’d all be back to acting like ants. A fine business! And anyhow when they had got the house and the boat, did that mean an end to work? or that one could eat meat and pasta every day? While in those places where he had been, there were people who went around in carriages all day long, no more no less. People in comparison with whom don Franco and the town clerk worked like donkeys covering their reams of ridiculous paper, and making holes in the dirty water in the mortars. At least he had the wit to want to know why there were people in this world who enjoyed themselves without lifting a finger, and had been born with silver spoons in their mouths, and others who had nothing, and led lives of hopeless drudgery.

  And the idea of going out by the day didn’t appeal to him at all, after all he had been born his own master, even his grandfather had said as much. To have someone else call the tune, people who had come up from nothing, and everyone in the village knew how they had made their money bit by bit, sweating and straining! He would work by the day because his grandfather was forcing him to, and he hadn’t the heart to say no. But when the skipper was towering over him, like a cur, and shouting to him from the stern: ‘Hey, you there, what’s going on?’, then he felt like hitting him over the head with his oar, and preferred to stay at home mending the fish traps, and the nets, sitting on the shore with his legs outstretched, and his back to the stones; because then no one criticised you if you sat for a moment with your arms crossed.

  Rocco Spatu went to stretch out there too, and Vanni Pizzuto, when he hadn’t anything else to do, between one beard and the next, and even Piedipapera, because his trade was chatting with this person or that, looking for opportunities for deals. And they talked about what was happening in the village, of what donna Rosolina had told her brother, under the seal of confession, when the cholera had been raging, that don Silvestro had swindled her out of twenty five onze, and she couldn’t call in the police, because donna Rosolina had robbed those twenty five onze from her brother the priest, and they would all have known the reason she had given don Silvestro that money, to her shame!

  ‘Anyhow,’ observed Pizzuto, ‘where did donna Rosolina get those twenty five onze from? ‘Stolen goods are soon gone.’

  ‘At least they were still in the family,’ said Spatu; ‘if my mother had twelve tari and I took them from her, would I rate as a thief?’

  Since they were on the subject of thieves, they began to talk of zio Crocifisso, who had lost more than thirty onze, they said, with so many people having died of cholera, and he had been left with the pledges. Now, because he didn’t know what to do with all those rings and ear-rings he’d been left, Dumb bell was marrying la Vespa; this was no rumour, because they’d even seen him going to sign on at the town hall, for the banns, with don Silvestro as witness.

  ‘It’s not true he’s taking her because of the ear-rings,’ said Piedipapera
, who was in a position to know. ‘After all, the ear-rings and necklaces are pure gold and silver, and he could have gone and sold them in the city; indeed he would have made a hundred per cent on the money he had lent. He’s taking her because la Vespa has made it quite clear to him that she was about to go to the notary with the intention of marrying compare Spatu, now that the Mangiacarrubbe girl has lured Brasi Cipolla into her house. No offence, compare Rocco.’

  ‘That’s all right, compare Tino,’ answered Rocco Spatu. ‘I don’t mind; anyone who trusts that monstrous pack of women is a fool. The one I love is Santuzza, who gives me credit when I need it; and you’d need two Mangiacarrubbe girls to make one of her! with that chest, eh, compare Tino?’