If you happen to pass my door some day, I’ll tell you all about it.’

‘The Mangiacarrubbe girl has set her sights on padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, and that’s a bit of good luck for cousin Anna,’ said comare Venera.

’Ntoni went off all arrogant, rolling his hips, with a band of friends in tow, and he would have liked every day to be Sunday, so that he could parade his star-covered shirt; that afternoon they amused themselves having a good punch-up with compare Pizzuto, who wasn’t afraid of God himself, although he’d never done military service, and he went sprawling on the ground in front of the wine shop, with a bloody nose; whereas Rocco Spatu was stronger, and had ’Ntoni down on the floor.

‘Holy Virgin,’ exclaimed the bystanders. ‘That Rocco is as strong as Turi Zuppiddo. If he chose to work, he could certainly earn his bread.’

‘I know how to use this fellow,’ said Pizzuto brandishing his razor, so as not to appear the loser.

In a word, ’Ntoni enjoyed himself the whole day long; but that evening, while they were sitting chatting around the table, and his mother was asking him about this and that, and the younger ones, half-asleep, were gazing at him wide-eyed, and Mena was touching his beret and shirt with the stars, to see how they were made, his grandfather told him that he had found him a job by the day on compare Cipolla’s fishing boat, and well-paid too.

‘I took them on out of charity,’ padron Fortunato would say to anyone who cared to listen, sitting outside the barber’s shop. ‘I took them on out of the goodness of my heart, when padron ’Ntoni came to ask me, under the elm tree, if I needed men for my boat. Now I never need men; but a friend in need is a friend indeed, and padron ’Ntoni is so old anyway, that you’re really wasting your money!…’

‘He’s old but he knows his trade,’ replied Piedipapera; ‘you’re not wasting your money; and his grandson is a boy anyone would envy you.’

‘When mastro Bastiano has put the Provvidenza in order, we’ll fit out our boat, and then we won’t need to go out to work by the day,’ padron ’Ntoni would say.

In the morning, when he went to waken his grandson, it was two hours before dawn, and ’Ntoni would have preferred to stay under the covers a little longer; when he went out yawning into the courtyard, Orion was still high towards Ognina, with his legs in the air, and the Pleiades were sparkling to the other side of the sky, which was swarming with stars which looked for all the world like the sparks running over the black bottom of a frying pan. ‘It’s just like being in the navy,’ grumbled ’Ntoni. ‘This wasn’t worth coming home for.’

‘You be quiet — your grandfather is getting the tackle ready and he got up a good hour before us,’ said Alessi. But Alessi was just like his father Bastianazzo, God rest his soul. Their grandfather was coming and going in the courtyard with the lantern; outside you could hear people going down to the sea, and knocking from one door to another to waken their companions. But when they reached the beach, in front of the black sea where the stars were reflected, and which was snoring quietly on the shingle, and they saw the lanterns on the boats dotted here and there, even ’Ntoni felt his heart swell.

‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, lifting his arms. ‘It’s good to come home. We know each other, the beach and I.’ And padron ’Ntoni had already said that a fish can’t live out of water, and the sea waits patiently for those who are born to fish.

In the boat they teased him because Sara had jilted him, while they took in the sails, and the Carmela swung gently round, with the nets behind her like a snake’s tail. ‘Pork meat and soldiers have short spans,’ the proverb says; this was why Sara jilted him.

‘Woman will be faithful to man when the Turk becomes Christian,’ added zio Cola. ‘I’m not short of girl friends,’ replied ’Ntoni; ‘in Naples they ran after me like pet lambs.’

‘In Naples you wore proper clothes, and a cap with the name of your ship, and shoes on your feet,’ said Barabba.

‘Are there beautiful girls in Naples, as there are here?’

‘The girls here can’t hold a candle to the girls in Naples. I saw one with a silk dress and red ribbons in her hair, and an embroidered bodice, and golden epaulets like the captain’s. A fine figure of a girl, taking her employer’s children for a walk, and that was all she had to do.’

‘It must be some life around those parts,’ commented Barabba.

‘You on the left! Stop rowing,’ shouted padron ’Ntoni.

‘By the blood of Judas! you’re taking us into the nets,’ zio Cola began to shriek from the tiller. ‘Now just stop that jabbering; are we here for our health, or to do a job?’

‘It’s the swell which is pulling us back,’ said ’Ntoni.

‘Ease off on your side, you bastard,’ Barabba shouted at him, ‘you’re making us waste the day, with those fancy queens you’ve got on your mind.’

‘Damn it,’ said ’Ntoni with his oar poised in the air, ‘if you say that again I’ll lay into you with this.’

‘What’s all this now?’ called zio Cola sharply from the tiller; ‘is this the sort of thing you learned on military service, not to take criticism?’

‘I’ll be going then,’ replied ’Ntoni.

‘Be off if you like, padron Fortunato can find someone else for his money.’

‘The servant needs patience, and the master prudence,’ said padron ’Ntoni.

’Ntoni carried on rowing, grumbling the while, because he couldn’t storm off on foot, and to make the peace compare Mangiacarrubbe said that it was time for breakfast.

At that moment the sun appeared, and everyone was ready for a good swig of wine, because the air had turned chill. Then the lads began chewing, with the flask between their legs, while the fishing boat heaved gently amid the broad circle of corks.

‘A kick up the backside for whoever talks first,’ said zio Cola.

Everyone began to chew like oxen, to avoid getting that kick, looking at the waves approaching from the open sea, and rolling in without breaking, green wineskins which, even on a sunny day, put you in mind of the black sky and slatecoloured sea.

‘Padron Cipolla will have a few things to say this evening,’ said zio Cola sharply; ‘but it’s not our fault. You don’t catch fish when the sea is rough!’

First compare Mangiacarrubbe landed him a hefty kick, because zio Cola, who had made the rule, had been the first to talk; and then he answered: ‘Still, now that we’re here, let’s wait a bit before pulling the nets in.’

‘And the swell is coming from the open sea, which is good for us,’ added padron ’Ntoni.

‘Ahi,’ grumbled zio Cola the while.

Now that the silence was broken, Barabba asked ’Ntoni Malavoglia to give him a cigar butt.

‘I haven’t got one,’ said ’Ntoni, forgetting the previous disagreement, ‘but I’ll give you half of mine.’

Seated on the bottom of the boat, with their backs to the seat and hand behind their heads, the men were singing popular songs, each on his own behalf and quite softly, so as not to fall asleep, because their eyes were closing under the bright sunlight; and Barabba clicked his fingers as the mullet jumped out of the water.

‘They haven’t got anything else to do,’ said ’Ntoni,’ so they pass the time by jumping.’

‘It’s good, this cigar,’ said Barabba; ‘did you smoke cigars like this in Naples?’

‘Oh yes, dozens of them.’

‘Look, the corks are beginning to sink,’ observed compare Mangiacarrubbe.

‘Do you see where the Provvidenza went down with your father?’ said Barabba; ‘over there at the Cape, where there’s that sunlight on those white houses, and the sea looks all gold.’

‘The sea is salt and the sailor dies at sea,’ was ’Ntoni’s reply.

Barabba passed him his flask, and then they began to grouse in low voices about zio Cola, who was merciless with the men in his fishing boat, as though padron Cipolla were there to see that they were doing and what they were not doing.

‘All to make him think that the boat couldn’t move without him,’ added Barabba. ‘Copper’s nark.’

‘Now he’ll say that it was his skill that caught us the fish, with this rough sea. Look how the nets are sinking, you can’t see the corks any more.’

‘Hey boys,’ shouted zio Cola, ‘shall we pull in the nets? When the swell gets here it will pull them out of our hands.’

‘Ohi. Oohi,’ the crew men began to shout, passing the rope to one another.

‘Saint Francis help us,’ exclaimed zio Cola, ‘I can hardly believe we’ve taken this many fish with this swell.’

The nets were swarming and sparkling in the sun as they emerged from the water, and the whole of the bottom of the boat seemed full of quicksilver. ‘Padron Fortunato will be pleased,’ murmered Barabba, red and sweating, ‘and he won’t resent the three carlini he gives us for our day’s work.’

‘Just our luck,’ added ’Ntoni, ‘to break our backs for other people; and then when we’ve put a bit of money together, the devil comes and takes it.’

‘What are you complaining about?’ asked his grandfather, ‘doesn’t compare Fortunato pay you a day’s wages?’

The Malavoglia were working desperately to make money in all sorts of ways. La Longa took in the odd rotolo of cloth to weave, and also did people’s washing at the wash place; padron ’Ntoni and his grandsons hired themselves out by the day, helped one another as best they could, and when the sciatica bent the old man like a nail, he stayed in the courtyard mending the nets and the fish traps and tidying up the tackle, because he knew every aspect of his trade. Luca went to work on the railway bridge for fifty centesimi a day, although his brother ’Ntoni said that it wasn’t worth the shirts he ruined carrying stones in a basket, but Luca didn’t care about his shoulders, let alone shirts, and Alessi went collecting crayfish along the rocks, or worms for bait, which were sold at ten soldi a rotolo, and sometimes he went as far as Ognina and the Capo dei Mulini, and came back with his feet in shreds. But compare Zuppiddo took good money every Saturday, for patching up the Provvidenza, and it took all those mended fish traps, all those stones from the railway, that ten soldi of bait and the cloth for bleaching, with water up to one’s knees and the sun beating down overhead, to make the forty onze needed! All Souls’Day had come and gone, and zio Crocifisso did nothing but walk up and down the little street with his hands behind his back, looking for all the world like the basilisk.

‘This business is going to end up with the bailiffs,’ zio Crocifisso would say to don Silvestro and don Giammaria the parish priest.

‘There won’t be any need of a bailiff, zio Crocifisso,’ padron ’Ntoni told him when he came to hear what Dumb bell was saying. ‘The Malavoglia have always been decent folk, and they don’t need any bailiffs.’

‘That’s neither here nor there,’ replied zio Crocifisso with his shoulders against the wall, beneath the roof of the courtyard, while they were piling up his vine shoots, ‘All I know is, I must be paid.’

At last, through the good offices of the parish priest, Dumb bell agreed to wait until Christmas to be paid, accepting as interest the seventy-five lire which Maruzza had put together soldo by soldo in the stocking hidden under the mattress.

‘That’s how things go,’ grumbled padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni; ‘we work day and night for zio Crocifisso, and then when we’ve put a few lire together, Dumb Bell comes and takes it from us.’

Padron ’Ntoni and Maruzza comforted themselves by building castles in the air for the summer, when there would be anchovies to be salted, and prickly pears at ten a grano, and they made great plans to go fishing for tuna and swordfish, where you could get a good day’s pay, and by then mastro Turi would have set the Provvidenza to rights. Chins cupped in their hands, the boys listened attentively to those discussions, which took place on the balcony, or after supper at table; but ’Ntoni, who had been away and knew the world better than the others, got bored listening to that babbling, and preferred to go and hang around the wine shop, where there were so many people doing nothing, and zio Santoro among them, who was as badly off as you could be, did the light job of stretching out his hand to whoever passed by, mumbling Hail Maries the while; or he went to compare Zuppiddo’s, with the excuse of seeing how the Provvidenza was getting on, to have a chat with Barbara, who came to put kindling under the cauldron, when compare ’Ntoni was there. ‘You’re always busy, comare Barbara,’ ’Ntoni said to her, ‘and you’re the mainstay of the family; that’s why your father doesn’t want to marry you off.’

‘He doesn’t want to marry me off to unsuitable parties,’ answered Barbara. ‘Birds of a feather flock together, and people should stick to their own kind.’

‘I’d stick to your kind, by the holy Virgin, if you wanted, comare Barbara…’

‘What are you saying, compare ’Ntoni? Mother is spinning in the courtyard, she can hear every word.’

‘I was talking about those green sticks, which won’t burn.