THAT was a black Christmas for the Malavoglia. Just then Luca had to draw his number for the conscription a low number, too, like a poor devil as he was and he went off without many tears; they were used to it by this time. This time, also, ‘Ntoni accompanied his brother, with his cap over his ear, so that it seemed as if it were he who was going away, and he kept on saying that it was nothing, that he had been for a soldier himself. That day it rained, and the street was all one puddle.
“I don’t want you to come with me,” repeated Luca to his mother; “the station is a long way off.” And he stood at the door watching the rain come down on the medlar-tree, with his little bun-dle under his arm. Then he kissed the hands of his mother and his grandfather, and embraced Mena and the children.
So La Longa saw him go away, under the um-brella, accompanied by all his relations, jumping from stone to stone, in the little alley that was all one puddle; and the boy, who was as wise as his grandfather himself, turned up his trousers on the landing, although he wouldn’t have to wear them any more when he got his soldier-clothes. “This one won’t write home fof money when he is clown there,” thought the old man; “ and if God grants him life he will bring up once more the house by the medlar-tree.” But God did not grant him life, just because he was that sort of a fellow; and when there came, later on, the news of his death, a thorn remained in his mother’s heart because she had let him go away in the rain, and had not accompanied him to the station.
“Mamma,” said Luca, turning back, because his heart bled to leave her so silent, on the landing, looking like Our Lady of Sorrows, “when I come back I’ll let you know first, and then you can come and meet me at the station.”
And these words Maruzza never forgot while she lived; and till her death she bore also that other thorn in her heart, that her boy had not been present at the festa that was made when the Provvi-denza was launched anew, while all the place was there, and Barbara Zuppidda came out with the broom to sweep away the shavings. “ I do it for your sake,” she said to Padron ‘Ntoni’s ‘Ntoni; “because it is your Providence.”
“With the broom in your hand, you look like a queen,” replied ‘Ntoni. “ In all Trezza there is not so good a housewife as you.”
“Now you have taken away the Provvidenza, we shall not see you here any more, Cousin ‘Ntoni.”
“Yes, you will. Besides, this is the shortest way to the beach.”
“You come to see the Mangiacarubbe, who always goes to the window when you pass.”
“I leave the Mangiacarubbe for Rocco Spatu. I have other things in my mind.”
“Who knows what you have in your mind those pretty girls in foreign parts, perhaps?”
“There are pretty girls here, too, Cousin Bar-bara, and I know one very well.”
“Really?”
“By my soul!”
“What do you care?”
“I care! Yes, that I do; but she doesn’t care for me, because there are certain dandies who walk under her window with varnished boots.”
“I don’t even look at those varnished boots, by the Madonna of Ognino! Mamma says that var-nished boots are only fit to devour the dowry and everything else; and some fine day I shall go out with my distaff, and make him a scene, that Don Silvestro, who won’t leave me in peace.”
“Do you mean that seriously, Cousin Barbara?”
“Yes, indeed I do!”
“That pleases me right well,” said ‘Ntoni.
“Listen; let’s go down to the beach on Monday, when mamma goes to the fair.”
“On Mondays I never shall have a chance to breathe, now that the Provvidenza has been launched.”
Scarcely had Master Turi said that the boat was in order, than Padron ‘Ntoni went off to start her with his boys and all the neighbors; and the Prov-videnza, when she was going down to the sea, rocked about on the stones as if she were sea-sick among the crowd.
“This way, here!” called out Cousin Zuppiddu, louder than anybody; but the others shouted and struggled to push her back on the ways as she rocked over on the stones. “ Let me do it, or else I’ll just take the boat up in my arms like a baby, and put her in the water myself.”
“Master Turi is capable of doing it, with those arms of his,” said some one; or else, “Now the Malavoglia will be all right again.”
“That devil of a Cousin Zuppiddu has lucky fingers,” they exclaimed. “ Look how he has put her straight again, when she was like an old shoe.”
And in truth the Provvidenza did seem quite another boat —shining with new pitch, and with a bright red line along her side, and on the prow San Francesco, with his beard that seemed to have been made of tow, so much so that even La Longa had made peace with the Provvidenza, whom she had never forgiven, for coming back to her without her husband; but she made peace for fright, now that the bailiff had been in the house.
“Viva San Francesco!” called out every one as the Provvidenza passed; and La Locca’s son called out louder than anybody, in the hope that now Padron ‘Ntoni would hire him by the day, instead of his brother Menico. Mena stood on the landing, and once more she cried for joy; and, at last, even La Locca got up like the rest, and followed the Malavoglia.
“O Cousin Mena, this is a fine day for all of you,” said Alfio Mosca to her from his window opposite. “It will be like this when I can buy my mule.”
“And will you sell your donkey?”
“How can I? I’m not rich, like Vanni Pizzuti; if I were, I swear I wouldn’t sell him, poor beast! If I had enough to keep another person, I’d take a wife, and not live here alone like a dog.”
Mena didn’t know what to say, and Alfio added:
“Now that the Provvidenza has put to sea again, you’ll be married to Brasi Cipolla.”
“Grandpapa has said nothing about it.”
“He will. There’s still time. Between now and your marriage who knows how many things may happen, or by what different roads I shall drive my cart? I have been told that in the plain, at the other side of the town, there is work for everybody on the railroad. Now that Santuzza has arranged with Master Philip for the new wine, there is nothing to be done here.”
Meanwhile the Provvidenza had slipped into the sea like a duck, with her beak in the air, and danced on the green water, enjoying its coolness, while the sun glanced on her shining side. Padron ‘Ntoni enjoyed it, too, with his hands behind his back, and his legs apart, drawing his brows together, as sail-ors do when they want to see clearly in the sun-shine; for it was a fine winter’s day, and the fields were green and the sea shining and the deep blue sky had no end. So return the sunshine and the sweet winter mornings for the eyes that have wept, to whom the sky has seemed black as pitch; and:so all things renew themselves like the Provvidenza, for which a few pounds of tar and a handful of boards sufficed to make her new once more; and the eyes that see not these things are those that are done with weeping and are closed in death.
“Bastianazzo is not here to see this holiday!” thought Maruzza, as she went to and fro, arranging things in the house and about the loom where almost everything had been her husband’s work on Sundays or rainy clays and those hooks and shelves he had fixed in the wall with his own hands. Everything in the house was full of him, from his water-proof cape in the corner to his boots under the bed, that were almost new. Mena, setting up the warp, had a sad heart, too, for she was thinking of Alfio, who was going away, and would have sold his donkey, poor beast! for the young have short memories, and have only eyes for the rising sun; and no one looks westward save the old, who have seen the sun rise and set so many times.
“Now that the Provvidenza has put to sea again,” said Maruzza at last, noticing that her daughter was still pensive, “your grandfather has begun to go with Master Cipolla again; I saw them this morning, from the landing, before Peppi Naso’s shed.”
“Padron Fortunato is rich, and has nothing to do, and stays all day in the piazza,” answered Mena.
“Yes, and his son Brasi has plenty of the gifts of God. Now that we have our boat, and our men no longer need to go out by the day to work for others, we shall get out of this tangle; and if the souls in Purgatory will help us to get rid of the debt for the lupins, we shall be able to think of other things. Your grandfather is wide-awake, don’t you fear, and he won’t let you feel that you have lost your father. He will be another father to you.”
Shortly after arrived Padron ‘Ntoni, loaded with nets, so that he looked like a mountain, and you couldn’t see his face. “ IVe been to get them out of the bark,” he said, “ and I must look over the meshes, for tomorrow we must rig the Provvidenza”
“Why did you not get ‘Ntoni to help you?” an-swered Maruzza, pulling at one end of the net, while the old man turned round in the middle of the court, like a winder, to unwind the nets, which seemed to have no end, and looked like a great serpent trailing along.
“I left him there at the barber’s shop; poor boy, he has to work all the week, and it is hot even in January with all this stuff on one’s shoulders.”
Alessio laughed to see his grandfather so red, and bent round like a fish-hook, and the grandsire said to him, “ Look outside there; there is that poor Locca; her son is in the piazza, with nothing to do, and they have nothing to eat.” Maruzza sent Alessio to La Locca with some beans, and the old man, drying his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, added:
“Now that we have our boat, if we live till sum-mer, with the help of God, we’ll pay the debt.”
He had no more to say, but sat under the medlar-tree looking at his nets, as if he saw them filled with fish.
“Now we must lay in the salt,” he said after a while, “ before they raise the tax, if it is true it is to be raised. Cousin Zuppiddu must be paid with the first money we get, and he has promised that he will then furnish the barrels on credit.”
“In the chest of drawers there is Mena’s linen, which is worth five scudi,” added Maruzza.
“Bravo! With old Crucifix I won’t make any more debts, because I have had a warning in the affair of the lupins; but he will give us thirty francs for the first time we go out with the Provvidenza”
“Let him alone!” cried La Longa. “ Uncle Crucifix’s money brings ill luck. Just this last night I heard the black hen crowing.”
“Poor thing!” cried the old man, smiling as he watched the black hen crossing the court, with her tail in the air and her crest on one side, as if the whole affair were no business of hers. “ She lays an egg every day, all the same.”
Then Mena spoke up, and coming to the door, said, “ There is a basketful of eggs, and on Mon-day, if Cousin Alfio goes to Catania, you can send them to market.”
“Yes, they will help to pay the debt,” said Pa-dron ‘Ntoni; “but you can eat an egg yourselves now and then if you feel to want it”
“No, we don’t need them,” said Maruzza, and Mena added, “ If we eat them they won’t be sold in the market by Cousin Alfio; and now we will put duck’s eggs under the setting hen. The duck-lings can be sold for forty centimes each.” Her grandfather looked her in the face, and said:
“You’re a real Malavoglia, my girl!”
The hens scratched in the sand of the court, in the sun, and the setting hen, looking perfectly silly, with the feather over her beak, shook herself in a corner.; under the green boughs in the garden, along the wall, there was more linen bleaching, with a stone lying on it to keep it from blowing away. “All this is good to make money,” said Pa-dron ‘Ntoni, “ and, with the help of God, we shall stay in our house. ‘ My house is my mother.’ ”
“Now the Malavoglia must pray to God and Saint Francis for a plentiful fishing,” said Goose-foot meanwhile.
“Yes, with the times we’re having,” exclaimed Padron Cipolla, “ they must have sown the cholera for the fish in the sea, I should think.”
Mangiacarubbe nodded, and Uncle Cola began to talk of the tax that they wanted to put on salt, and how, if they did that, the anchovies might be quiet, and fear no longer the wheels of the steam-ers, for no one would find it worth his while to fish for them any more.
“And they have invented something else,” added Master Turi, the calker: “to put a duty on pitch.” Those to whom pitch was of no importance had nothing to say, but Zuppiddu went on shouting that he should shut up shop, and whoever wanted a boat mended might stuff the hole with his wife’s dress. Then they began to scold and to swear.
At this moment was heard the scream of the engine, and the big wagons of the railway came rushing out all of a sudden from the hole they had made in the hill, smoking and fuming as if the devil was in them. “There!” cried Padron Fortu-nate, “the railroad one side and the steamers the other, upon my word it’s impossible to live in peace at Trezza nowadays.”
In the village there was the devil to pay when they wanted to put the tax upon pitch.5 La Zuppidda, foaming at the mouth, mounted upon her balcony, and went on preaching that this was some new villany of Don Silvestro, who wanted to bring the whole place to ruin, because they (the Zup-piddus) wouldn’t have him for a husband for their daughter; they wouldn’t have him even for a companion in the procession, neither she nor her girl! When Madam Venera spoke of her daughter’s hus-band it always seemed as if she herself were the bride.
5 Ddzio (French, octroi], tax on substances entering a town, levied by the town-council.
Master Tun Zuppiddu tramped about the landing, mallet in hand, brandishing his chisel as if he wanted to shed somebody’s blood, and wasn’t to be held even by chains. The bile ran high from door to door, like the waves of the sea in a storm. Don Franco rubbed his hands, with his great ugly hat on his head, saying that the people was raising its head; and seeing Don Michele pass with pistols hanging at his belt, laughed in his face. The men, too, one by one, allowed themselves to be worked up by their womankind, and began hunting each other up, to try and rouse each other to fury, losing the whole day standing about in the piazza, with arms akimbo and open mouths, listening to the apothecary, who went on speechifying, but under his breath, for fear of his wife up-stairs, how they ought to make a revolution if they weren’t fools, and not to mind the tax on salt or the tax on pitch, but to clear off the whole thing, for the king ought to be the people. Instead, some turned their backs, muttering, “ He wants to be king himself; the druggist belongs to those of the rev-olution who want to starve the poor people.............