Part 18

He wanted to go on talking about the money and about the calf, of which he and the girl had been talking as they went to town; but Mena and Alessio would not listen to him, but sat, with their heads in their hands and eyes full of tears, at the door of the house, where they were now alone, indeed. Cousin Alfio tried to comfort them by talking of the old days of the house by the medlar-tree, when they used to talk to each other from the doors in the moonlight, and how all day long Sant’Agata’s loom was beating, and the hens were clucking, and they heard the voice of La Longa, who was always busy. Now everything was changed, and when one left one’s own place it was best, he said, never to come back; for even the street was not the same, now there was no one coming there for the Mangiacarubbe; and even Don Silvestro never was seen waiting for the Zuppidda to fall at his feet; and Uncle Crucifix was always shut up in the house looking after his things or quarrelling with Vespa; and even in the drug shop there wasn’t so much talking since Don Franco had looked the law in the face and shut himself in to read the paper, and pounded all his ideas up into his mortar to pass away the time. Even Padron Cipolla no longer wore out the steps of the church by sitting there so much since he had had no peace at home.

One fine day came the news that Padron Fortu-nato was going to be married, in order that the Mangiacarubbe might not devour his substance in spite of him, for that he now no longer wore out the church-steps, but was going to marry Barbara Zuppidda. “And he said matrimony was like a rat-trap,” growled Uncle Crucifix. “After that I’ll trust nobody.”

The curious girls said that Barbara was going to marry her grandfather, but sensible people like Peppi Naso and Goosefoot, and Don Franco, too, murmured: “Now Venera has got the better of Don Silvestro, and it is a great blow for Don Sil-vestro, and it would be better if he left the place. Hang all foreigners! Here no foreigners ever really take root. Don Silvestro will never dare to measure himself with Padron Cipolla.”

“What did he think?” screamed Venera, with her hands on her hips--“that he could starve me into giving him my girl? This time I will have my way, and I have made my husband understand as much. ‘The faithful dog sticks to his own trough.’ We want no foreigners in our house. Once we were much better off in the place--before the strangers came to write down on paper every mouthful that one ate, or to pound marsh-mallows in a mortar, and fatten on other people’s blood. Then everybody knew everybody and what everybody did, and what their fathers and grandfathers had done, even to what they had to eat; if one saw a person pass one knew where they were going, and the fields and the vineyards belonged to the people who were born among them, and the fish didn’t let themselves be caught by just anybody. In those days people didn’t go wandering here and there and didn’t die in the hospital.”

Since everybody was getting married, Alfio Mosca would have been glad to marry Cousin Mena, who had no longer any prospect of marrying, since the Malavoglia family was broken up, and Cousin Alfio could not now be called a bad match for her, with the mule which he had bought; so he ruminated, one Sunday, over all the reasons which could give him courage to speak to her as he sat by her side in front of the door with his back against the wall, breaking twigs off the bushes to give himself a countenance and pass away the time. She watched the people passing by, which was her way of keeping holiday.

“If you are willing to take me now, Cousin Mena,” he said at last, “I am ready, for my part.”

Poor Mena did not even turn red, feeling that Cousin Alfio had guessed that she had been willing to have him at the time when they were going to give her to Brasi Cipolla--so long ago that time appeared, and she herself so changed!

“I am old now, Cousin Alfio,” she said; “I shall never marry.”

“If you are old, then I am old too, for I was older than you were when we used to talk to each other from’ the windows, and it seems as if it was but yesterday, I remember it all so well. But it must be eight years ago. And now, when your brother Alessio is married, you will be left alone.”

Mena drew her shoulders together with Cousin Anna’s favorite gesture, for she too had learned to do God’s will and not complain; and Cousin Alfio, seeing this, went on: “Then you do not care for me, Cousin Mena, and I beg you to forgive my asking you to marry me. I know that you are above me, for you are the daughter of a ship-master; but now you have nothing, and when your brother marries you will be left alone. I have my mule and my cart, and I would let you want for nothing, Cousin Mena--but pardon the liberty I have taken.”

“You have not taken a liberty, Cousin Alfio, nor am I offended; I would have said yes to you when we had the _Provvidenza_ and the house by the medlar-tree if my relations had been willing, and God knows what I had in my heart when you went away to Bicocca with the donkey-cart; and it seems as if I could see still the light in the stable, and you piling all your things in the little cart in the court before your house. Do you remember?”

“Indeed, I do remember. Then, why do you not take me now, when I have the mule instead of the donkey, and your family will not say no?”

“I am too old to marry,” said Mena, with her head bent down. “I am twenty-six years old, and it is too late for me to marry now.”

“No, that is not the reason you will not marry me,” said Alfio, with bent head as well as she. “You won’t tell me the real reason;” and they went on breaking the twigs, without speaking or looking at each other. When he got up to go away, with drooping shoulders and bent head, Mena followed him with her eyes as long as she could see him, and then looked at the wall opposite and sighed.

As Alfio Mosca said, Alessio had taken Nunziata to wife, and had bought back the house by the medlar-tree.

“I am too old to marry,” said Mena; “get married you, who are still young,” and so she went up into the upper room of the house by the medlar, like an old saucepan, and had set her heart at rest, waiting until Nunziata should give her children to be a mother to. They had the hens in the chicken-coop, and the calf in the stable, and the fodder and the wood in the shed, and the nets and all sorts of tackle hanging up, just as Padron ’Ntoni had described them; and Nunziata had planted cabbages and cauliflowers in the garden, with those slender arms of hers, that no one would have dreamed could have bleached such yards and yards of linen, or that such a slip of a creature could have brought into the world those rosy fat babies that Mena was always carrying about the place, as if she had borne them, and was their mother in very truth.

Cousin Mosca shook his head when he saw her pass, and turned away with drooping shoulders.

“You did not think me worthy of the honor of marrying you,” he said once when they were alone, and he could bear it no longer.

“No, Cousin Alfio,” answered Mena, with starting tears. “I swear it by the soul of this innocent creature in my arms; that is not my motive. But I cannot marry.”

“And why should you not marry, Cousin Mena?”

“No, no,” repeated Cousin Mena, now nearly-weeping outright. “Don’t make me say it, Cousin Alfio! Don’t make me speak. If I were to marry now people would begin to talk again of my sister Lia, so that no one can marry a girl of the Malavoglia after what has happened. You yourself would be the first to repent of doing it. Leave me; I shall never marry, and you must set your heart at rest.”

So Cousin Alfio set his heart at rest, and Mena continued to carry her little nephews in her arms, almost as if her heart, too, were at rest; and she swept out the room up-stairs, to be ready for the others when they came back--for they also had been born in the house. “As if they were gone on journeys from which any one ever came back!” said Goosefoot.

Meanwhile Padron ’Ntoni was gone--gone on a long journey, farther than Trieste, farther than Alexandria in Egypt, the journey whence no man ever yet came back and when his name fell into the talk, as they sat resting, counting up the expenses of the week, or making plans for the future, in the shade of the medlar-tree, with the plates upon their laps, a silence fell suddenly upon them, for they all seemed to have the poor old man before their eyes, as they had seen him the last time they went to visit him, in that great wide chamber, full of beds in long rows, where they had to look about before they could find him, and the grandfather waited for them as the souls wait in purgatory, with his eyes fixed on the door, although he now could hardly see, and went on touching them to be sure that they were really there and still said nothing, though they could see by his face that there was much he wished to say; and their hearts ached to see the suffering in his face, which he could not tell them. When they told him, however, how they had got back the house by the medlar, and were going to take him back to Trezza again, he said yes, yes with his eyes, to which the light came back once more, and he tried to smile, with that smile of those who smile no more or who smile for the last time, which stays, planted in the heart like a knife.

And so it was with the Malavoglia when they went on Monday with Alfio Mosca’s cart to bring back their grandfather, and found that he was gone. Remembering all these things, they left the spoons on their plates, and went on thinking and thinking of all that had happened, and it all seemed dark, as it was, under the shade of the medlar-tree. Now when their cousin Anna came to spin a little while with her gossips, she had white hair and had lost her cheerful laugh, because she had no time to be gay, now that she had all that family on her shoulders, and Rocco, too; and every day she had to go hunting him up, about the streets or in front of the tavern, and drive him home like a vagabond calf. And the Malavoglia had also two vagabonds; and Alessio went on beating his brains to think where they could be, by what burning hot roads, white with dust, that they had never yet come back after all that long, long time. .

Late one evening the dog began to bark behind the door of the court, and Alessio himself, who went to open the door, did not know ’Ntoni--who had come back with a bag under his arm--so changed was he, covered with dust, and with a long beard. When he had come in, and sat down in a corner, they hardly dared to welcome him. He did not seem like himself at all, and looked about the walls as if he saw them for the first time; and the dog, who had never known him, barked at him without stopping. They gave him food, and he bent his head over the plate, and ate and drank as if he had not seen the gifts of God for days and days, in silence; but the others could not eat for sadness. Then ’Ntoni, when he had eaten and rested a while, took up his bag to go.

Alessio had hardly dared to speak, his brother was so changed. But seeing him take his bag again, in act to go, his heart leaped up into his breast, and Mena said, in a wild sort of way:

“You’re going?”’

“Yes,” replied ’Ntoni.

“And where will you go?” asked Alessio.

“I don’t know. I came to see you all. But since I have been here the food seems to poison me. Besides, I can’t stay here, where everybody knows me, and for that I came at night. I’ll go along way off, where nobody knows me, and earn my bread.”

The others hardly dared to breathe, for their hearts felt as if they were held in a vice, and they felt that he was right in speaking as he did. ’Ntoni stood at the door looking about him, not being able to make up his mind to go.

“I will let you know where I am,” he said at last; and when he was in the court under the medlar-tree, where it was dark, he said, “And grandfather?”

Alessio did not answer. ’Ntoni was silent, too, for a while, and then said:

“I did not see Lia.”

And as he waited in vain for the answer, he added, with a quiver in his voice, as if he were cold, “Is she dead, too?”

Still Alessio did not answer. Then ’Ntoni, who was under the medlar-tree, with his bag in his hand, sat down, for his legs trembled under him, but rose up suddenly, stammering, “Adieu; I must go.”

Before going away he wanted to go over the house to see if everything were in its old place; but now he who had had the heart to leave them all, and to stab Don Michele, and to pass five years in prison, had not the heart to pass from one room into another unless they bade him do it. Alessio, who saw in his eyes that he wanted to see all the place, took him into the stable to show him the calf Nunziata had bought, which was fat and sleek; and in a corner there was the hen with her chickens; then he took him in the kitchen, where they had made a new oven, and into the room beside it, where Mena slept with Nunziata’s children, who seemed to her like her own. ’Ntoni looked at everything, and nodded his head, saying, “There grandfather would have put the calf, and here the hens used to be, and here the girls slept when there was the other one--” But there he stopped short, and looked about him, with tears in his eyes. At that moment the Mangiacarubbe passed by, scolding Brasi Cipolla, her husband, at the top of her voice, and ’Ntoni said, “That one has found a husband, and now when they have done quarrelling they will go back to their own house to sleep.”

The others were silent, and all the village was still, only now and then was heard the closing of some door; and Alessio at last found courage to say:

“If you will, you, too, have a house to sleep in. The bed is here, kept on purpose for you.”

“No,” replied ’Ntoni, “I must go away. There is my mother’s bed here, too, that she wetted with her tears when I wanted to go and leave her. Do you remember the pleasant talks we used to have in the evenings while we were salting the anchovies? and Nunziata would give out riddles for us to guess, and mamma was there, and Lia, and all of us, and we could hear the whole village talking, as if we had been all one family. And I was ignorant, and knew no better then than to want to get away; but now I know how it all was, and I must go, I must go.”

He spoke at that moment with his eyes fixed on the ground, and his head bent down between his shoulders. The Alessio threw his arms round his neck.

“Adieu,” repeated ’Ntoni. “You see that I am right in saying that I must go. Adieu. Forgive me, all of you.”

And he went, with his bag under his arm; then, when he was in the middle of the piazza, now dark and deserted, for all the doors were shut, he stopped to hear if they would shut the door of the house by the medlar-tree, while the dog barked behind and told him in that sound that he was alone in the midst of the place. Only the sea went on murmuring to him the usual story, down there between the Fariglione--for the sea has no country, either, and belongs to whoever will pause to listen to it, here or there, wherever the sun dies or is born; and at Aci Trezza it has even a way of its own of murmuring, which one can recognize immediately, as it gurgles in and out among the rocks, where it breaks, and seems like the voice of a friend.

Then ’Ntoni stopped in the road to look back at the dark village, and it seemed as if he could not bear to leave it, now that he “knew all,” and he sat down on the low wall of Master Filippo’s vineyard.

He sat there for a long time, thinking of many things, looking at the dark village, and listening to the murmur of the sea below. He sat there until certain sounds that he knew well began to be heard, and voices called to each other from the doors, and shutters banged, and steps sounded in the dark streets. On the beach at the bottom of the piazza lights began to twinkle. He lifted his head and looked at the Three Kings, which glowed in the sky, and the Puddara, announcing the dawn, as he had seen it do so many times. Then he bent down his head once more, thinking of all the story of his life. Little by little the sea grew light, and the Three Kings paled in the sky, and the houses became visible, one after another, in the streets, with their closed doors, that all knew each other; only before Vanni Pizzuti’s shop there was the lamp, and Rocco Spatu, with his hands in his pockets, coughing and spitting. “Before long Uncle Santoro will open the door,” thought ’Ntoni, “and curl himself up beside it and begin his day’s work.” He looked at the sea again, that now had grown purple, and was all covered with boats that had begun the day’s work, too, then took his bag, and said: “Now it is time I should go, for people will be beginning to pass by. But the first man of them all to begin his day’s work has been Rocco Spatu.”

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's House by The-Medlar-Tree, by Giovanni Verga