Part 4

“To be a good tavern-keeper,” said La Zuppidda, “one must be like that; who doesn’t know his trade must shut his shop, and who can’t swim must be drowned.”

“They’re going to put a tax on salt,” said Uncle Mangiacarubbe. “Don Franco saw it in the paper in print. Then they can’t salt the anchovies any more, and we may just use our boats for firewood.”

Master Turi, the calker, was lifting up his fist and his voice, “Blessed Lord--” he began, but caught sight of his wife and stopped short.

“With the dear times that are coming,” added Padron Cipolla, “this year, when it hasn’t rained since Saint Clare, and if it wasn’t for this last storm when the _Provvidenza_ was lost, that was a real blessing, the famine this year would be solid enough to cut with a knife.”

Each one talked of his own trouble to comfort the Malavoglia and show them that they were not the only ones that had trouble. “Troubles old and new, some have many and some have few,” and such as stood outside in the garden looked up at the sky to see if there was any chance of more rain--that was needed more than bread was. Padron Cipolla knew why it didn’t rain any longer as it used to do, “It rained no longer on account of that cursed telegraph-wire that drew all the rain to itself and carried it off.” Daddy Tino and Uncle Mangiacarubbe at this stood staring with open mouths, for there was precisely on the road to Trezza one of those very telegraph-wires; but Don Silvestro began to laugh with his hen’s cackle, ah! ah! ah! and Padron Cipolla jumped up from the wall in a fury, and railed at “ill-mannered brutes with ears as long as an ass’s.” Didn’t everybody know that the telegraph carried the news from one place to another; this was because inside the wires there was a certain fluid like the sap in the vines, and in the same way it sucked the rain out of the sky and carried it off where there was more need of it; they might go and ask the apothecary, who said it himself; and it was for this reason that they had made a law that whoever broke the telegraph-wire should go to prison. Then Don Silvestro had no more to say, and put his tongue between his teeth.

“Saints of Paradise! some one ought to cut down those telegraph-posts and burn them!” began Uncle Zuppiddu, but no one listened to him, and to change the subject looked round the garden.

“A nice piece of ground,” said Uncle Mangia-carubbe; “when it is well worked it gives food enough for a whole year.”

The house of the Malavoglia had always been one of the first in Trezza, but now--with Bastianazzo drowned, and ’Ntoni gone for a soldier, and Mena to be married, and all those hungry little ones--it was a house that leaked at every seam.

“In fact what could it be worth, the house?” Every one stretched out his neck from the garden, measuring the house with his eye, to guess at the value of it, cursorily as it were. Don Silvestro knew more about it than any one, for he had the papers safe in the clerk’s room at Aci Castello.

“Will you bet five francs that all is not gold that glitters,” he said, showing the shining new silver piece of money. He knew that there was a mortgage of two francs the year, so he began to count on his fingers what would be the worth of the house with the well and the garden and all.

“Neither the house nor the boat can be sold, for they are security for Maruzza’s dowry,” said some one else; and they began to wrangle about it until their voices might have been heard even inside, where the family were mourning for the dead. “Of course,” cried Don Silvestro, like a pistol-shot, “there’s the dowry mortgage.”

Padron Cipolla, who had spoken with Padron ’Ntoni about the marriage of his son Brasi and Mena, shook his head and said nothing.

“Then,” said Uncle Cola, “nobody’ll suffer but Uncle Crucifix, who loses his lupins that he sold on credit.”

They all turned to look at old Crucifix, who had come, too, for appearance’ sake, and stood straight up in a corner, listening to all that was said, with his mouth open and his nose up in the air, as if he was counting the beams and the tiles of the roof to make a valuation of the house. The most curious stretched their necks to look at him from the door, and winked at each other, as if to point him out.

“He looks like a bailiff making an inventory,” they sneered.

The gossips, who had got wind of the talk between Cipolla and Padron ’Ntoni about the marriage, said to each other that Maruzza must get through her mourning, and then she could settle about that marriage of Mena’s. But now La Longa had other things to think of, poor dear!

Padron Cipolla turned coolly away without a word; and, when everybody was gone, the Malavoglia were left alone in the court.

“Now,” said Padron ’Ntoni, “we are ruined, and the best off of us all is Bastianazzo, who doesn’t know it.”

At these words Maruzza began to cry afresh, and the boys seeing the grown-up people cry began to roar again, too, though it was three days now since papa was dead. The old man wandered about from place to place, without knowing what he was going to do. But Maruzza never moved from the foot of the bed, as if she had nothing left that she could do. When she spoke she only repeated, with fixed eyes, as if she had no other idea in her head, “Now I’ve nothing more to do.”

“No!” replied Padron ’Ntoni. “No! we must pay the debt to old Dumb-bell; it won’t do to have people saying: Honest men when they grow poor become knaves.” And the thought of the lupins drove the thorn of Bastianazzo deeper into his heart.

The medlar-tree let fall dry leaves, and the wind blew them here and there about the court.

“He went because I sent him,” repeated Padron ’Ntoni, as the wind bears the leaves here and there, “and if I had told him to fling himself head foremost from the Fariglione, he would have done it without a word. At least he died while the house and the medlar-tree, even to the last leaf, were his own; and I, who am old, am still here. ‘Long are the days of the poor man.’”

Maruzza said nothing, but in her head there was one fixed idea that beat upon her brains, and gnawed at her heart--to know, if she might, what had happened on that night; that was always before her eyes, and if she shut them she seemed to see the _Provvidenza_ out by the Cape of the Mills, where the sea was blue and smooth and sprinkled with boats, which looked like gulls in the sunshine, and could be counted one by one--that of Uncle Crucifix, the other of Cousin Barrabbas, Uncle Cola’s _Concetta_, Padron Fortunato’s bark--that it swung her head to see; and she heard Cola Zup-piddu singing fit to split his throat out of his great bull’s lungs, while he hammered away with his mallet, and the scent of the tar came on the air; and Cousin Anna thumped her linen on the stone at the washing-tank, and she heard Mena, too, crying quietly in the kitchen.

“Poor little thing!” said the grandfather to himself, “the house has come down about your cars too.” And he went about touching one by one all the things that were heaped up in the corner, with trembling hands, as old men do, and seeing Luca at the door, on whom they had put his father’s big jacket, that reached to his heels, he said to him, “That’ll keep you warm at your work--we must all work now--and you must help, for we have to pay the debt for the lupins.”

Maruzza put her hands to her ears that she might not hear La Locca, who, perched on the landing behind the door, screamed all day long with her cracked maniac’s voice, saying that they must give her back her son, and wouldn’t listen to reason from anybody.

“She goes on like that because she’s hungry,” said Cousin Anna, at last. “Now old Crucifix is furious at them all about the lupins, and won’t do anything for them. I’ll go and give her something to eat, and then she’ll go away.”

Cousin Anna, poor dear, had left her linen and her girls to go and help Cousin Maruzza, who acted as if she were sick, and if they had left her alone she wouldn’t have, lighted the fire or anything, but would have left them all to starve. “Neighbors should be like the tiles on the roof that carry water for each other.” Meanwhile the poor children’s lips were pale for hunger. Nunziata came to help too, and Alessio--with his face black from crying at seeing his mother cry--looked after the little boys, crowding round him like a brood of chickens, that Nunziata might have her hands free.

“You know how to manage,” said Cousin Anna to her, “and you’ll have your dowry ready in your two hands when you grow up.”

V.

|Mena did not know that there was an idea of marrying her to Padron Cipolla’s Brasi “to make the mother forget her grief,” and the first person to tell it her was Alfio Mosca, who, a few days later, came to the garden gate, on his way back from Aci Castello, with his donkey-cart. Mena replied, “It isn’t true, it isn’t true!” but she was confused, and as he went on telling her all about how he had heard it from La Vespa in the house of Uncle Crucifix, all of a sudden she turned red all over. Cousin Alfio, too, lost countenance seeing the girl like that, with her black kerchief over her head. He began to play with the buttons of his coat, stood first on one leg, then on the other, and would have given anything to get away. “Listen; it isn’t my fault; I heard it in old Dumb-bell’s court while I was chopping up the locust-tree that was blown down in the storm at the Santa Clara, you remember. Now, Uncle Crucifix gets me to do chores for him, because he won’t hear of La Locca’s son ever since his brother played him that trick with the cargo of lupins.” Mena had the string of the gate in her hand, but couldn’t make up her mind to open it. “And then if it isn’t true, why do you blush?” She didn’t know, that was the truth, and she turned the latch-string round and round. That person she knew only by sight, and hardly that. Alfio went on telling her the whole litany of Brasi Cipolla’s riches; after Uncle Naso, the butcher, he was the best match in the place, and all the girls were ready to eat him up with their eyes. Mena listened with all hers, and all of a sudden she made him a low courtesy, and went off up the garden path to the house.

Alfio, in a fury, went off and scolded La Vespa for telling him such a lot of stupid lies, getting him into hot water with everybody.

“Uncle Crucifix told me,” replied La Vespa; “I don’t tell lies!”

“Lies! lies!” growled old Crucifix. “I ain’t going to damn my soul for that lot! I heard it with these ears. I heard also that the _Provvidenza_ is in Maruzza’s dowry, and that there’s a mortgage of two francs a year on the house.”

“You wait and you’ll see if I tell lies or not,” continued La Vespa, leaning back against the bureau, with her hands on her hips, and looking at him all the time with the wickedest eyes. “You men are all alike; one can’t trust any of you.” Meanwhile Uncle Crucifix didn’t hear, and instead of eating, went on talking about the Malavoglia, who were talking of marriages in the family; but of the two hundred francs for the lupins nobody heard a word.

“Eh!” cried La Vespa, losing patience, “if one listened to you nobody would get married at all.”

“I don’t care who gets married or who doesn’t, I want my own; I don’t care for anything else.”

“If you don’t care about it, who should? I say--everybody isn’t like you, always putting things off.”

“And are you in a hurry, pray?”

“Of course I am. You have plenty of time to wait, you’re so young; but everybody can’t wait till the cows come home, to get married.”

“It’s a bad year,” said Uncle Dumb-bell. “No one has time to think of such things as those.”

La Vespa at this planted her hands on her hips, and went off like a railway-whistle, as if her own wasp’s sting had been on her tongue.

“Now, listen to what I’m going to say. After all, my living is mine, and I don’t need to go about begging for a husband. What do you mean by it? If you hadn’t come filling my head with your flattery and nonsense, I might have had half a thousand husbands--Vanni Pizzuti, and Alfio Mos-ca, and my Cousin Cola, that was always hanging on to my skirts before he went for a soldier, and wouldn’t even let me tie up my stockings--all of them burning with impatience, too. They wouldn’t have gone on leading me by the nose this way, and keeping me slinging round from Easter until Christmas, as you’ve done.”

This time Uncle Crucifix put his hand behind his ear to hear the better, and began to smooth her down with good words: “Yes, I know you are a sensible girl; for that I am fond of you, and am not like those fellows that were after you to nobble your land, and then to eat it up at Santuzza’s tavern.”

“It isn’t true! you don’t love me. If you did you wouldn’t act this way; you would see what I am really thinking of all the time--yes, you would.”

She turned her back on him, and still went on poking at him, as if unconsciously, with her elbow. “I know you don’t care for me,” she said. The uncle was offended by this unkind suspicion. “You say these things to draw me into sin.” He began to complain. He not care for his own flesh and blood!--for she was his own flesh and blood after all, as the vineyard was, and it would have been his if his brother hadn’t taken it into his head to marry, and bring the Wasp into the world; and for that he had always kept her as the apple of his eye, and thought only of her good. “Listen!” he said. “I thought of making over to you the debt of the Malavoglia, in exchange for the vineyard, which is worth forty scudi, and with the expenses and the interest may even reach fifty scudi, and you may get hold even of the house by the medlar, which is worth more than the vineyard.”

“Keep the house by the medlar for yourself,” said she. “I’ll keep my vineyard. I know very well what to do with it.” Then Uncle Crucifix also flew into a rage, and said that she meant to let it be gobbled up by that beggar Alfio Mosca, who made fish’s-eyes at her for love of the vineyard, and that he wouldn’t have him about the house any more, and would have her to know that he had blood in his veins, too. “I declare if he isn’t jealous!” cried the Wasp.

“Of course I’m jealous,” said the old man, “jealous as a wild beast;” and he swore he’d pay five francs to whoever would break Alfio Mosca’s head for him, but would not do it himself, for he was a God-fearing Christian; and in these days honest men were cheated, for good faith dwells in the house of the fool, where one may buy a rope to hang one’s self; the proof of it was that one might pass and repass the house of the Malavoglia till all was blue, until people had begun to make fun of him, and to say that he made pilgrimages to the house by the medlar, as they did who made vows to the Madonna at Ognino. The Malavoglia paid him with bows, and nothing else; and the boys, if they saw him enter the street, ran off as if they had seen a bugbear; but until now he hadn’t heard a word of that money for the lupins--and All Souls was hard at hand--and here was Padron ’Ntoni talking of his granddaughter’s marriage!

He went off and growled at Goosefoot, who had got him into this scrape, he said to others; but the others said he went to cast sheep’s-eyes at the house by the medlar-tree; and La Locca--who was always wandering about there, because she had been told that her son had gone away in the Malavoglia’s boat, and she thought he would come back that way, and she should find him there--never saw her brother Crucifix without beginning to screech like a bird of ill omen, making him more furious than ever. “This one will drive me into a mortal sin,” cried Dumb-bell.

“All Souls is not yet come,” answered Goosefoot, gesticulating, as usual; “have a little patience! Do you want to suck Padron ’Ntoni’s blood? You know very well that you’ve really lost nothing, for the lupins were good for nothing--you know that.”

He knew nothing; he only knew that his blood was in God’s hands, and that the Malavoglia boys dared not play on the landing when he passed before Goosefoot’s door. And if he met Alfio Mosca, with his donkey-cart, who took off his cap, with his sunburnt face, he felt his blood boiling with jealousy about the vineyard. “He wants to entrap my niece for the sake of the vineyard,” he grumbled to Goosefoot. “A lazy hound, who does nothing but strut round with that donkey-cart, and has nothing else in the world. A starving beggar! A rascal who makes that ugly witch of a niece of mine believe that he’s in love with her pig’s face, for love of her property.”

Meantime Alfio Mosca was not thinking of Vespa at all, and if he had any one in his eye it was rather Padron ’Ntoni’s Mena, whom he saw every day in the garden or on the landing, or when she went to look after the hens in the chicken-coop; and if he heard the pair of fowls he had given her cackling in the court-yard, he felt something stir inside of him, and felt as if he himself were there in the court of the house by the medlar; and if he had been something better than a poor carter he would have asked for Sant’Agata’s hand in marriage, and carried her off in the donkey-cart. When he thought of all these things he felt as if he had a thousand things to say to her; and yet when she was by his tongue was tied, and he could only talk of the weather, or the last load of wine he had carried for the Santuzza, and of the donkey, who could draw four quintals’ weight better than a mule, poor beast!

Mena stroked the poor beast with her hand, and Alfio smiled as if it had been himself whom she had caressed. “Ah, if my donkey were yours, Cousin Mena!” And Mena shook her head sadly, and wished that the Malavoglia had been carriers, for then her poor father would not have died.

“The sea is salt,” she said, “and the sailor dies in the sea.”

Alfio, who was in a hurry to carry the wine to Santuzza, couldn’t make up his mind to go, but stayed, chatting about the fine thing it was to keep tavern, and how that trade never fell off, and if the wine was dear one had only to pour more water into the barrels. Uncle Santoro had grown rich in that way, and now he only begged for amusement.

“And you do very well carrying the wine, do you not?” asked Mena.

“Yes, in summer, when I can travel by night and by day both; that way I manage pretty well. This poor beast earns his living. When I shall have saved a little money I’ll buy a mule, and then I can become a real carrier like Master Mariano Cinghialenta.”

The girl was listening intently to all that Alfio was saying, and meanwhile the gray olive shook, with a sound like rain, and strewed the path with little dry curly leaves.

“Here is the winter coming, and all this we talk of is for the summer,” said Goodman Alfio. Mena followed with her eyes the shadows of the clouds that floated over the fields, as if the gray olive had melted and blown away; so the thoughts flew through her head, and she said:

“Do you know, Cousin Alfio, there is nothing in that story about Padron Fortunato Cipolla, because first we must pay the debt for the lupins.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Mosca; “so you won’t go away from the neighborhood.”

“When ’Ntoni comes back from being a soldier, grandfather and all of us will help each other to pay the debt. Mamma has taken some linen to weave for her ladyship.”

“The druggist’s is a good trade, too!” said Alfio Mosca.

At this moment appeared Cousin Venera Zup-pidda, with her distaff in her hand. “O Heaven! somebody’s coming,” cried Mena, and ran off into the house.

Alfio whipped the donkey, and wanted to get away as well, but--

“Oh, Goodman Alfio, what a hurry you’re in!” cried La Zuppidda, “I wanted to ask you if the wine you’re taking to Santuzza is the same she had last time.”

“I don’t know; they give me the wine in barrel.”

“That last was vinegar--only fit for salad--regular poison it was; that’s the way Santuzza gets rich; and to cheat the better, she wears the big medal of the Daughters of Mary on the front of her dress. Nowadays whoever wants to get on must take to that trade; else they go backward, like crabs, as the Malavoglia have. Now they have fished up the _Provvidenza_, you know?”

“No; I was away, but Cousin Mena knew nothing of it.”

“They have just brought the news, and Padron ’Ntoni has gone off to the Rotolo to see her towed in; he went as if he had got a new pair of legs, the old fellow. Now, with the _Provvidenza_, the Malayoglia can get back where they were before, and Mena will again be a good match.”

Alfio did not answer, for the Zuppidda was looking at him fixedly, with her little yellow eyes, and he said he was in a hurry to take the wine to Santuzza.

“He won’t tell me anything,” muttered the Zuppidda, “as if I hadn’t seen them with my eyes. They want to hide the sun with a net.”

The _Provvidenza_ had been towed to shore, all smashed, just as she had been found beyond the Cape of the Mills, with her nose among the rocks and her keel in the air. In one moment the whole village was at the shore, men and women together, and Padron ’Ntoni, mixed up with the crowd, looked on like the rest. Some gave kicks to the poor _Provvidenza_ to hear how she was cracked, as if she no longer belonged to anybody, and the poor old man felt those kicks in his own stomach. “A fine Providence you have!” said Don Franco to him, for he, too, had come--in his shirt-sleeves and his great ugly hat, with his pipe in his mouth--to look on.

“She’s only fit to burn,” concluded Padron For-tunato Cipolla; and Goodman Mangiacarubbe, who understood those matters, said that the boat must have gone down all of a sudden, without leaving time for those on board to cry “Lord Jesus, help us!” for the sea had swept away sails, masts, oars, everything, and hadn’t left a single bolt in its place.

“This was papa’s place, where there’s the new rowlock,” said Luca, who had climbed over the side, “and here were the lupins, underneath.”

But of the lupins there was not one left; the sea had swept everything clean away. For this reason Maruzza would not leave the house, and never wanted to see the _Provvidenza_ again in her life.

“The hull will hold; something can be made of it yet,” pronounced Master Zuppiddu, the calker, kicking the _Provvidenza_ too, with his great ugly feet; “with three or four patches she can go to sea again; never be fit for bad weather--a big wave would send her all to pieces--but for ‘long-shore fishing, and for fine weather, she’ll do very well.” Padron Cipolla, Goodman Marigiacarubbe, and Cousin Cola stood by, listening in silence.

“Yes,” said Padron Fortunato, at last. “It’s better than setting fire to her.”

“I’m glad of it,” said Uncle Crucifix, who also stood looking on, with his hands behind his back. “We are Christians, and should rejoice in each other’s good-fortune. What says the proverb? ‘Wish well to thy neighbor and thou wilt gain something for thyself.’”

The boys had installed themselves inside the _Provvidenza_, as well as the other lads who insisted on climbing up into her, too. “When we have mended the _Provvidenza_ properly,” said Alessio, “she will be like Uncle Cola’s _Concetta_;” and they gave themselves no end of trouble pushing and hauling at her, to get her down to the beach, before the door of Master Zuppiddu, the calker, where there were the big stones to keep the boats in place, and the great kettles for the tar, and heaps of beams, and ribs and knees leaning against the wall. Alessio was always at loggerheads with the other boys, who wanted to climb up into the boat, and to help to fan the fire under the kettle of pitch, and when they pushed him he would say, in a threatening whine:

“Wait till my brother ’Ntoni comes back!”