‘I don’t tell lies.’ ‘Lies, lies,’ grumbled zio Crocifisso. ‘I wouldn’t damn my immortal soul for that lot. I heard it with these very ears. I also heard that the Provvidenza is part of Maruzza’s dowry, and the house has a rateable value of five tari.’

‘Never mind, we’ll see. Sooner or later we’ll see whether you’re lying or not,’ continued la Vespa, lolling to and fro as she leant against the doorpost, with her hands behind her back, watching him with those devouring eyes of hers. ‘You men are all the same, untrustworthy.’

Sometimes zio Crocifisso would go deaf, and instead of swallowing the bait he changed the subject entirely, and began to talk about the Malavoglia who were thinking about marriage, but not paying any heed at all to that matter of the forty onze.

‘Look here,’ la Vespa snapped out at last, losing her patience, ‘if they were to listen to you, nobody would even think about getting married.’

‘I don’t care about whether people marry or not. I want my rightful deserts, that’s all that matters to me.’

‘It may be all that matters to you, but some people have other concerns, do you hear? Not everyone behaves as you do, putting things off from one day to the next.’

‘And what might you be in such a rush about?’

‘Unfortunately, I am in a rush. You’ve plenty of time; But do you really think that other people want to wait until they’re as old as St Joseph, to get married?’

‘It’s been a bad year,’ said Dumb bell, ‘and this is no time to think of such things.’

Then la Vespa stuck her hands on her hips and let fly with her stinging tongue.

‘Now here is what I’ve come to say to you. When all is said and done, I have my property, and thanks to God I have no need to go begging for a husband, as well you know. And if it weren’t for your having put that bee in my bonnet with your flattery, I could have found a hundred husbands, Vanni Pizzuto and Alfio Mosca, and cousin Cola, who was tied to my apron strings before he went as a soldier, and he wouldn’t have let me so much as bend down to tie up a shoelace. All simmering with impatience, and they wouldn’t have kept me hanging on for so long, from Easter to Christmas, as you have done!’

This time zio Crocifisso put his hand to his ear, so as to hear properly, and he began to soothe her with fine words. ‘Yes, I know you’re a sensible girl, that’s why I’m so fond of you, and I’m not one of those men who run after you to get their hands on your smallholding, which they would then drink away at Santuzza’s wine shop.’

‘It’s not true that you’re fond of me,’ and she carried on, fending him off with her elbows, ‘if it were true, you’d know what you ought to do, and you’d see that that’s all I’m thinking about.’

She turned her back on him angrily, and unintentionally knocked against him with her shoulder. ‘But you don’t give a hang about me.’ Her uncle was offended at this slanderous accusation. ‘You’re saying this to lead me into sin,’ he began complainingly. He not care about his own flesh and blood? because she was his own flesh and blood, like the smallholding — which had always been in the family, and would have remained in it, if his brother, God rest his soul, had not bethought himself to marry and bring la Vespa into this world; and that was why she had always been the apple of his eye, and he had always considered her welfare. ‘Listen,’ he said to her, ‘I thought of handing you over the Malavoglia debt, in exchange for the smallholding — it’s forty onze, and it could be as much as fifty, with expenses and interest, and you stand to get the house by the medlar tree, which could be better for you than the smallholding.’

‘You can keep your house by the medlar tree,’ snapped la Vespa. ‘I’m sticking to my smallholding, and I know what to do with it.’

Then zio Crocifisso too became angry, and told her that he knew what she wanted to do with it, she wanted to let it slip into the clutches of that down-and-out Alfio Mosca, who had been giving her the sheep’s eye for that smallholding, and he didn’t want to see Mosca around the house and courtyard any more, because when all was said and done he had human blood in his veins too.

‘So now you’re going to put on a jealous act,’ exclaimed la Vespa.

‘Of course I’m jealous,’ retorted zio Crocifisso, ‘jealous as anything’; and he felt like paying someone five lire to break Alfio Mosca’s bones.

But he didn’t do so because he was a good Christian with the fear of God in him, and in this day and age anyone who is a decent fellow gets swindled, good faith being lodged in simpleton street, where they sell you enough rope to hang yourself, and this was proved by the fact that he had marched back and forth in vain in front of the Malavoglia’s house, so that people actually began to laugh, and said that he was making a ‘pilgrimage’ to the house by the medlar tree as people make a votive offering to the Madonna of Ognina. The Malavoglia repaid him with much cap doffing; and when they saw him looming into sight at the end of the lane, the children ran off as if they’d seen the bogy man; but so far none of them had spoken to him about the money for the lupins, and All Souls’ Day was almost upon them, and meanwhile padron ’Ntoni was thinking of marrying off his granddaughter.

He went to let off steam with Piedipapera, who had got him into that scrape, as he told other people; but others said that he went there just to gaze at the house by the medlar tree, and la Locca, who was always hanging about there because they had told her that her Menico had gone out in the Malavoglia’s boat and she thought she might still find him there, began to howl like a crow of doom as soon as she saw her brother Crocifisso, and this upset him more than ever. ‘She’ll drive me to sin yet,’ he muttered.

‘It isn’t All Souls’ Day yet,’ replied Piedipapera waving his arms; ‘be patient. Do you want to suck padron ’Ntoni dry? You haven’t lost anything yet, because the lupins were all rotten, as well you know.’

But he knew no such thing; all he knew was that his peace of mind was in God’s hands. And the Malavoglia children didn’t dare play on the balcony when he walked past Piedipapera’s door.

And if he met Alfio Mosca with his donkey cart, and Alfio too doffed his cap, while looking quite brazen, Dumb bell felt his blood boil, out of jealousy about the smallholding. ‘He’s hoodwinking my niece to steal my smallholding,’ he grumbled to Piedipapera. ‘What a wastrel. All he can do is wander about with that donkey cart, which is all he’s got. A dead beat. A rascal who puts it about that he’s in love with that ugly mug of that hideous witch of a niece of mine, all for love of her property.’ And when he had nothing else to do he would go and plant himself in front of Santuzza’s wine shop, near zio Santoro, who seemed just another poor soul like himself, and he didn’t go there to spend a brass farthing on wine, but would whinge and whine like zio Santoro, as if he too wanted alms; and he would say: ‘Listen, compare Santoro, if you see my niece la Vespa around this way when Alfio Mosca comes to bring your daughter Santuzza a cartload of wine, keep an eye on what they get up to together;’ and zio Santoro with his beads and sightless eyes, said yes, he shouldn’t worry, he was there for that very reason, and not a fly passed by without his noticing; and indeed his daughter Mariangela used to ask him why he got involved in Dumb bell’s affairs, saying that he never spent any decent money at the wine shop, and he stood in the doorway for nothing.

But Alfio Mosca wasn’t thinking of la Vespa, and if he had anyone in his thoughts at all it was rather padron ’Ntoni’s comare Mena, whom he saw every day in the courtyard or on the balcony, and if he heard the cackling of the two hens he had given her, he felt something within him, and it seemed to him as if he himself were in the courtyard of the house by the medlar tree, and if he had not been a poor carter, he would have asked for St Agatha’s hand in marriage, and carried her away in his donkey cart. Whenever he thought of all this, he felt he had so many things there in his head to tell her, and when he saw her his tongue was tied and he discussed the weather, or the cartload of wine he had taken to Santuzza, or the donkey which could pull four quintals better than a mule, poor animal.

Mena stroked the poor animal, and Alfio smiled as if she were stroking him. ‘Ah! If my donkey were yours, comare Mena.’ Mena shook her head and her breast swelled as she reflected that it would have been better if the Malavoglia had been carters, then her father wouldn’t have died like that.

‘The sea is salt,’ she said, ‘and the sailor dies in the salt sea.’

Alfio, who was in a hurry to unload Santuzza’s wine, could not make up his mind to get up and go, and stood there chatting about what a fine thing it was to be an innkeeper, a trade where you always made money, and if the price of wine must went up all you had to do was add more water to the barrels. That was how zio Santoro got rich, and now he asked for alms as a pure pastime.

‘And do you earn good money, with cartloads of wine?’ asked Mena.

‘Yes, in the summer, when you can go by night as well; then I make a decent day’s living. This poor animal earns its keep.