Part 6

The colt, after such a long waiting in the sun, let his head and ears hang down; his _padrone_ went and squatted on the stones, with his hands also hanging between his knees and the halter in his hands, gazing at the long shadows that began to be cast across the plain from the sun, which was preparing to set, and at the legs of all those animals that had not as yet found purchasers.

Just then _compare_ Neli and his brother, and a friend of theirs whom they had picked up for the occasion, came sauntering by, with their noses in the air; but the owner of the young ass turned his head aside so as not to seem to be on the look out for them. And _compare_ Neli's friend, squinting up his eyes, remarked as if the idea had just occurred to him:

"O, see that Saint Joseph's ass! Why don't you buy that one, _compare_ Neli?"

"I bargained it this morning; but he asks too much for it. Besides, I should be the laughing stock of the town if I were seen with that black and white beast. You see no one has had a thought of buying it so far."

"That's so, but the color makes no difference in the use that you make of one."

And turning to the _padrone_ he asked,--

"How much must we pay for that Saint Joseph's ass of yours?"

The mistress of the Saint Joseph's ass, seeing that the business was on once more, had quietly approached, with her hands clasped under her apron.

"Don't speak to me of it," cried _compare_ Neli making off across the field. "Don't speak of it again, I don't want to hear a word."

"If you don't want it, let it be," replied the _padrone_. "If he does not take it, some one else will. 'A sad wretch is he who has nothing left to sell after the fair.'"

"And I will be heard, _santo diavolone_!" screamed the friend. "Can't I be permitted to have my say?"

And he ran and caught _compare_ Neli by the jacket, then he came back and whispered something in the _padrone's_ ear as the man was about to return home with his young ass, and he flung his arm round his neck, murmuring,--

"Look here! five _lire_ more or less, and if you don't sell it to-day you won't find another blunderhead like my _compare_ to buy a beast, which between you and me, isn't worth a cigar!"

He also embraced the young ass's mistress, whispered in her ear to win her to his way of thinking. But she shrugged her shoulders and replied with stern face,--

"'Tis my husband's business: I don't mix myself in it. But if he lets it go for less than forty _lire_ he is a dunce, and that's what I say. It cost us more than that."

"This morning I was crazy when I offered him thirty-five _lire_," resumed _compare_ Neli. "Has he found any other purchaser even at that price? I reckon not. In the whole fair there aren't more than four scabby rams and the Saint Joseph's ass. I'll give thirty _lire_ if he'll take it."

"Take it," softly whispered the young ass's mistress to her husband, and the tears came into her eyes. "We haven't made enough this evening to buy our supper, and Turiddu has the fever again; he'll have to have quinine."

"_Santo diavolone!_" screamed her husband, "if you don't get away from here I'll give you a taste of this halter."

"Thirty-two and a half, there now!" cried the friend at last, giving him a powerful shake to the collar.

"Neither you nor I! This time my advice ought to hold, by all the saints in paradise! and I don't even ask for a glass of wine. Don't you see the sun is set? What is the use of you both holding out any longer?"

And he snatched the halter from the _padrone's_ hand, while, at the same time, _compare_ Neli with an oath took out of his pocket his closed fist clutching the thirty-five _lire_, and gave them to the man without looking at them as if they took his liver with them. The friend retired to one side with the mistress of the young ass to count over the money on a rock, while the _padrone_ went off to another part of the fair like a colt, cursing and beating himself with his fists.

But when he was at last rejoined by his wife, who was carefully recounting the money in her handkerchief, he demanded,--

"Have you got it?"

"Yes, the whole of it; praised be San Gaetano![16] Now I'll go to the apothecary's."

[16] The especial saint of the Provident.

"I got the best of them! I'd have let them have the beast for twenty _lire_; asses of that color are _vigliacchi_--vile."

And _compare_ Neli, as he got behind the ass to drive it off, said,--

"As God exists I robbed him of the colt! The color makes no difference. See what solid legs, _compare_! That beast is worth forty _lire_ with one's eyes shut."

"If it had not been for me," returned the friend, "you would not have struck the bargain. Here are still two _lire_ and a half of your money. And if you don't object we will go and have a drink to the health of the ass!"

Now the colt needed to have its health in order to repay the thirty-two and a half _lire_ which had been paid for it, and the straw which it ate. Meanwhile it was contented to frisk behind _compare_ Neli, trying to bite his new _padrone's_ coat tails, and making no ado because it was leaving forever the stall where it had been sheltered by its mother's side, free to rub its nose on the edge of the manger, or to gambol and cut up capers, butting with the ram or going to rub the pig's back in its pen.

And the _padrone_, who was still again counting over the money in her handkerchief before the apothecary's counter, had on her side no regrets, although she had assisted at the birth of the foal with its black and white skin, as shiny as silk, and which could not at first stand up on its legs, but lay in the warm sun in the court-yard while all the grass which had made it grow so big and strong had passed through her hands!

The only person who missed the foal was its mother, who stretched out her neck toward the entrance of the stall and brayed. But when her udder was no longer painfully distended with the milk, she also forgot about the foal.

"Now you will see," said _compare_ Neli, "that this ass will carry four bushels of corn better than a mule, for me."

And at harvest time he was set to threshing.

At the threshing, the colt, fastened by the neck, in a row with other animals--worn out mules, decrepit horses, paced over the sheaves, from morning till night, so that when it was brought back to the stable, he was so tired that he had no desire to bite at the heap of straw where they put him up in the shade when the wind blew, while the peasants did their winnowing with shouts of "_Viva Maria!_"

Then he let his nose hang down and drooped his pendent ears, like a full-fledged ass with eyes dulled, as if he were weary of gazing across over that vast plain, smoking here and there with the dust of the threshing-floors, and he seemed made for nothing else than to die of thirst and enforced treading on sheaves.

At eventide, it was sent to the village with the saddle-bags filled full, and the _padrone's_ boy followed, to prick it in the withers, along the hedges lining the road, that seemed alive with the chattering of the tomtits, and the odor of the catnip and rosemary; and the ass would gladly have snatched a mouthful, if they had not always kept it on the go, until at last, the blood ran to its legs and they had to take it to the farrier; but this did not trouble the _padrone_, because the harvest was good, and the young ass had earned its cost,--his thirty-two _lire_ and a half. The _padrone_ said,--

"Now, the work has worn him out, but if I could sell him for twenty _lire_, I should still have made a good thing out of him."

The only person who had a fondness for the young ass was the boy who made it trot over the road on the way from the threshing-floor. And he felt badly when the farrier burnt its legs with red-hot irons, so that the young ass squirmed and flung its tail into the air, and pricked up its ears, and when it ran across the field of the fair, and it tried to break loose from the twisted rope which they fastened to its lip, and it rolled its eyes with the agony, as if it were undergoing torture, when the farrier's apprentice came to change the hot irons, red as fire, and the skin smoked and sizzled, like fish in a frying-pan. But _compare_ Neli cried to his boy,--

"You beast! what are you weeping for? Now that he is played out, and since the harvest has been a good one, we'll sell him and buy a mule, and that will be better."

Boys do not understand some things, and after the young ass was sold to _massaro_ Cirino, of Licodiana, _compare_ Neli's son used to visit it in the stall, and to caress its face and neck, and the ass would turn round its head, and snuff as if it had become attached to him, while, as a general thing, asses are made to be tied wherever their _padrone_ may see fit to tie them, and change their lot as they change their stall.

_Massaro_ Cirino, of Licodiana, had paid a very small price for the Saint Joseph's ass, because it still bore the scars on its pastern, and _compare_ Neli's wife, when she saw the poor beast go by with its new master, said,--

"That beast was our mascot. That black and white skin brought joy to the threshing-floor, and now the profits are going from bad to worse, for we have had to sell the mule, too."

* * * * *

_Massaro_ Cirino had yoked the ass to the plow, together with an old mare which matched it like a stone in a ring, and drew her brave furrow all day long, for miles and miles, from the time the lark began to sing in the clear morning sky, till, with quick and hasty flights, and melancholy chirping, the robin red-breasts ran to hide behind the naked bushes, trembling with cold under the mist that rose like a sea.

Only, as the ass was smaller than the mare, a cushion of hay was put over the saddle under the yoke, and it had hard work to break up the frozen clods, by dint of chafed shoulders.

"It'll help spare the mare, who's getting old," said _massaro_ Cirino. "It's got a heart as broad and big as the Plain of Catania, that Saint Joseph's ass has! and you would not think it!"

And he added, turning to his wife, who had followed him, wrapped in a mantellina, penuriously scattering the seed,--

"If anything should happen to it--Heaven forefend--we are ruined with the prospects before us."

The woman looked forward to the prospects of crops in the rocky, desolate, little field, with its white and cracked soil, so long had it been since the rain fell, and all the water it got came in the form of mist and fog, of the kind that spoils the seed, and when it was time to dig up the ground, it was so yellow and hard, that you would call it the very beard of the devil, as if it had been burnt with sulphur matches!

"In spite of the crop which I put in," mourned _massaro_ Cirino, pulling off his doublet, "why, that ass has worked himself to death like a stupid mule. That ass is under a curse!"

His wife had a lump in her throat at the sight of the parched field, and she replied with tears rolling from her eyes,--

"The ass had nothing to do with the failure. It brought a good crop to _compare_ Neli. But we are unfortunate."

So the Saint Joseph's ass changed masters once more, when _massaro_ Cirino returned from the field with the sickle over his shoulder, it being useless even to try to reap that year, although the images of the saints had been stuck into bamboo sticks all over the ground for protection, and two _tarì_[17] had been paid to the priest for his blessing.

[17] A _tarì_ is one-thirtieth of an _onza_.

"It's the devil that we want rather than the saints," said _massaro_ Cirino, irreverently, when he saw all those stalks standing up like crests, which even the ass refused to touch, and he spat up towards that turquoise-colored sky, so relentlessly cloudless.

It was then that _compare_ Luciano, the carter, meeting _massaro_ Cirino, as he was driving back the ass with empty saddlebags, asked,--

"What'll you take for that Saint Joseph's ass?"

"Anything you'll give me! Cursed be he and the saint who made him!" replied _massaro_ Cirino. "Now we haven't any more bread to eat, or fodder to give the beast."

"I'll give you fifteen _lire_ for it, seeing that you are ruined, but the ass isn't worth so much, for it won't last out more than six months! See how thin it is!"

"You might have got more than that," grumbled _massaro_ Cirino's wife, after the bargain was settled. "_Compare_ Luciano's mule's dead, and he hadn't money enough to buy another. Now if he hadn't bought our Saint Joseph's ass, he wouldn't have known what to do with his cart and harnesses; you'll see that ass'll be a fortune to him."

The ass was set to work drawing the cart, but the shafts of it were much too high for it, and brought all the weight on its shoulders, so that it would not have survived even six months; for it went limping along over the hilly roads under _compare_ Luciano's cruel cudgelling, who tried to put a little spirit into it; and when it went down hill, the case was even worse, for then the whole load rested on it, and pushed against it so hard that it had to make its back like an arch to hold the cart back, and push with those poor scarred legs, and people would laugh to see it, and when it fell it would have taken all the angels of Paradise to get it to its feet again. But _compare_ Luciano knew that he carried three quintals of merchandise more than a mule, and the load would bring him five _tarì_ a quintal.

"Every day that Saint Joseph's ass lives," said he, "I make fifteen _tarì_, and his keep costs me less than a mule's would."

Every time the people who happened to be sauntering along behind the cart saw the poor beast, which could hardly put one leg in front of the other, arching its spine and panting heavily, with discouragement clouding its eye, they would say,--

"Block the wheel with a rock, and let that poor creature have a chance to get its breath."

But _compare_ Luciano would reply,--

"If I let him do as he pleases, I should not make my fifteen _tarì_ a day. His hide's got to pay for mine. When he can't do any more work I shall sell him to the lime dealer; for the beast is good enough for his work. I tell you there's no truth at all in the idea that St. Joseph's asses are _vigliacchi_. Besides, I got this one of _massaro_ Cirino for a piece of bread, after he was 'poverished."

* * * * *

In this way the Saint Joseph's ass passed into the hands of the lime-dealer, who already possessed a score or more of asses all lean and moribund, which carried his sacks of plaster, and picked up a wretched living by means of the mouthfuls of weeds that they could snatch as they went along the road.

The lime-dealer objected to the Saint Joseph's ass because it was covered with worse scars than his other beasts, with its legs seared by the hot iron, and the skin on its chest worn off by the poitrel, and the withers raw by the chafing of the plow, and the knees barked by constant falls, and then that pelt of black and white seemed to him so inharmonious among his other brown-skinned animals.

"That makes no difference," replied _compare_ Luciano. "Besides, it will serve to distinguish your asses at a distance."

But he deducted two _tarì_ from the seven _lire_ that he had asked, so as to bring the business to a settlement.

Now the Saint Joseph's ass would not have been recognized even by the _padrona_ who had been present when it was born, so greatly had it changed as it stumbled along with its nose to the ground and its ears curled over like an umbrella under the lime-dealer's heavy sacks, twitching its flanks under the blows of the youth who drove the caravan. But then the _padrona_ herself was changed at that time, what with the bad harvests they had gathered and the hunger from which she had suffered, and the fevers which they had all contracted in the low lands, she and her husband and her Turiddu, while they had no money to buy any more quinine at the apothecary's and at the same time they had no more asses even of the Saint Joseph kind to sell for the small price of thirty-five _lire_!

In winter, when there was little work and the wood for burning the lime was scarce, and to be had only at a distance, and the frozen paths hadn't a leaf on their hedges or a mouthful of stubble along by the icy gutters, life was still harder for those poor brutes, and the _padrone_ knew that in winter not half as much was eaten; so he used to buy a good stock of provisions in the spring.

At night the drove remained in the open air near the lime-burners, and the brutes clustered together for protection against the cold. But those stars shining like swords through and through them in spite of their thick hides, and all those ulcer-eaten beasts shook and trembled in the cold as if they were human beings.

But then there are many Christians who are not better off, not having even such a ragged coat as that wrapt up in which the herd-boy slept before the furnace.

Near by there lived a poor widow in a dilapidated hut, more tumble-down by far than the lime-furnace, and through its roof the stars penetrated like swords, as if it were no roof at all, and the wind fluttered the wretched rags of her covering. At first she took in washing, but that was meagre pay, for the people thereabouts do their own washing, when they wash at all, and now that her little boy had grown she went about peddling wood in the village. No one had known her husband and no one knew where she got the wood that she sold; that was known only by her son, who went about picking it up here and there at the risk of getting shot by the _campieri_.

"If you only had an ass!" the lime-dealer had said to her, hoping that he might dispose of that Saint Joseph's ass, which was good for nothing more, "then you could take down to the village much bigger fagots, now that your son is getting to be grown up."

The poor woman had a few _lire_ in the knot of her handkerchief, and she let herself be persuaded into it by the lime-burner, because it is said that "old things go to destruction in the house of a fool."

One thing at least was true: the poor Saint Joseph's ass had a more endurable existence at last, because the widow regarded it as a treasure by reason of the few _soldi_ that it had cost her, and she went out nights in search of straw and hay for it, and she kept it in her hut next her own bed because its vital heat was as good as a fire, and in this way one hand washed the other, as the proverb has it.

The woman driving the ass loaded with a mountain of wood so that its ears could not be seen, built air-castles as she went, and her son ravaged the hedges, and risked his life in the borders of the woodlands to gather together his load, while both mother and son had an idea that they were going to become rich by that business, until, finally, the baron's _campiere_ caught the boy breaking off branches, and gave him a terrible beating.

The doctor, for the price of curing the lad, devoured all the spare _soldi_ knotted in the handkerchief, the store of wood, and whatever else vendible she had,--and that was not much in all conscience,--so that the widow one night when her son was in a raging fever, with his face turned to the wall, and there was not a mouthful of bread in the house, went out, raging and talking to herself, as if she, too, had the fever, and she went to break off an almond-tree near by in such a way that it would not appear how it happened, and at dawn she loaded it on the ass to go and sell it. But the ass on the way up stumbled under the weight, and went down on its knees, just as Saint Joseph's ass knelt before the infant Jesus, and would not get up again.

"Souls of the dead!" stammered the woman, "won't you carry this load of wood for me."

And the passers-by pulled the ass's tail, and they bit its ears, so as to make it get up.

"Don't you see it's dying?" at last remarked a carter, and so at least the others let it alone, because the ass had the eye of a dead fish, a cold nose, and a shudder ran over its skin.

The woman, meantime, thought of her son, who was delirious with fever, and a flushed face, and cried,--

"Now what shall we do,--what shall we do?"

"If you will sell it, and all the wood on its back for five _tarì_, I'll give that much," said the carter who had an empty cart; and as the woman looked at it with squinting eyes, he added, "I'll only take the wood, for the ass isn't worth that--"

And he gave a kick to the carcass, which sounded like a burst drum.

THE BEREAVED.

The little girl appeared at the door, twisting the corner of her apron in her fingers, and said,--

"Here I am!"

Then, when no one paid any attention to her, she looked shyly first at one and then at another of the women who were kneading dough, and spoke again,--

"They told me,--'Go to _comare_ Sidora.'"

"Come here, come here," cried _comare_ Sidora, red as a tomato, as she stood in the back part of the bake-shop. "Wait a moment, and I'll make you a nice cake."

"It means they are bringing _comare_ Nunzia the Viaticum; they've sent the little girl away," observed the woman from Lacodia.

One of the women engaged in kneading the dough, turned her head, with her hands still at work in the trough, her arms bare to the elbow, and asked the little girl,--

"How is your step-mother?"

The child, not knowing the woman, looked at her with frightened eyes, and hanging her head, and nervously working at the ends of her apron, said, in a low voice, between her set teeth,--

"She's in bed."

"Don't you see 'tis the Sacrament," replied la Licodiana. "Now the neighbors have begun to scream at the door."

"As soon as I finish kneading this dough," said _comare_ Sidora, "I'll run over a moment to see if they have need of anything. _Compare_ Meno loses his right hand when this second wife of his dies."

"Some men have no luck with their wives, just as some are unfortunate with their mules. No sooner do they get 'em than they lose 'em. There's _comare_ Angela."

"Yesterday evening," observed la Licodiana, "I saw _compare_ Meno at his door; he had come back from the vineyard before the Ave Marie, and was blowing his nose on his handkerchief."

"But," suggested the woman who was kneading the dough, "he is a master hand at killing off his wives. In less than three years already two of _curátolo_[18] Nino's daughters have been eaten up, one after the other! Wait a little and you'll see the third go the same way, and all _curátolo_ Nino's things wasted."

[18] The manager of a farm, not a tenant.

"Is this little girl _comare_ Nunzia's daughter, or his first wife's?"

"She's his first wife's daughter. But this one has been just as kind to her as though she had been her own mamma, because the little orphan was her niece, you know."

The child, hearing them speaking of herself, began to weep silently in a corner, thus relieving her bursting heart, which she had till then kept under control, by playing with her apron.

"Come here, come here," pursued _comare_ Sidora. "The nice cake's all ready. There, there! Don't cry; for your mamma's in Paradise."

The little girl then dried her eyes with her doubled fists, because she saw that _comare_ Sidora was preparing to open the oven.

"Poor _comare_ Nunzia!" said a neighbor, appearing at the door. "The gravediggers are on their way. They just passed by here."

"Heaven protect me! as I am under Mary's grace!"[19] exclaimed the women, crossing themselves.

[19] "_Lontano sia! che son figlia di Maria!_"

_Comare_ Sidora took the cake out of the oven, brushed off the ashes, and handed it, smoking hot, to the little girl, who took it in her apron and walked away slowly, slowly, blowing on it as she went.

"Where are you going?" cried _comare_ Sidora. "Stay here! There's a black-faced _ba-bau_ at your house who carries folks off."

The little orphan listened gravely, with wide-opened eyes. Then she replied in the same obstinate drawl,--