You leave it to me.’

‘Is it true that you come here to see the Mangiacarrubbe girl, when she comes to the window?’

‘I come here on quite different business, comare Barbara. I come here to see how the Provvidenza is coming along.’

‘She’s coming along well, and my father said that you will have her in the water by Christmas Eve.’

During the nine days before Christmas, the Malavoglia spent all their time coming and going from mastro Zuppiddo’s courtyard. Meanwhile the whole village was preparing for the celebrations; each house decorated its images of the saints with branches and oranges, and the children trooped after the bagpipes which were played in front of the niches with their lit-up saints, outside the doorways. Only in the house by the medlar tree did the statue of the Good Shepherd remain unlit, while padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni strutted here and there, and Barbara Zuppidda said to him:

‘I hope at least that you’ll remember that it was I who melted down the pitch for the Provvidenza, when you’re at sea?’

Piedipapera maintained that all the girls were wild about ’Ntoni.

‘I’m the person who’s wild,’ whinged zio Crocifisso. ‘I’d like to know where they are going to get the money for the lupins from, if ’Ntoni gets married, let alone having to give Mena a dowry, with the rates to be paid on the house, and all those complications of the mortgage which cropped up at the last minute. Christmas is here, but I still haven’t seen the Malavoglia.’

Padron ’Ntoni went back into the square, or under the shelter, to look for him, and said: ‘What do you expect me to do if I haven’t got the money? You can’t get blood out of a stone! Wait until June, if you’re willing to do me that favour, or take the Provvidenza and the house by the medlar tree. I haven’t anything else.’

‘I want my money,’ repeated Dumb bell, his back to the wall. ‘You said that you were decent folk, and that you wouldn’t make me idle offers about the Provvidenza and the house by the medlar tree.’

He had put body and soul into the whole business, and lost sleep and appetitite over it, and couldn’t even let off steam by saying that the whole matter would end with the bailiffs, because padron ’Ntoni would immediately send don Giammaria or the town clerk to ask for mercy, and they wouldn’t let him back on to the square, for his own affairs, without trailing after him, so that everyone in the village said that the money involved was devil’s money. He couldn’t let off steam with Piedipapera because Piedipapera immediately piped up that the lupins had been rotten, and that he had merely been the broker. ‘But he could do that much for me,’ Dumb bell suddenly said to himself and couldn’t sleep any longer that night, so pleased was he with his brain wave, and he went to find Piedipapera as soon as it was light, and indeed Piedipapera was still stretching and yawning in his doorway. ‘What you must do is pretend you’re taking over my credit,’ he told him, ‘that way we can send the bailiff to the Malavoglia and they won’t tell you you’re acting the usurer, nor that it’s devil’s money.’ ‘Did you have that bright idea last night?’ sniggered Piedipapera, ‘that you should wake me at dawn to tell me about it?’

‘I also came to tell you about those vine shoots; if you want them, you can come and get them.’ Then you can send for the bailiff,’ replied Piedipapera, ‘but you’re responsible for the expenses.’ Comare Grazia, good woman that she was, had come out specially in her nightdress to ask her husband what zio Crocifisso had come to chat with him about: ‘You leave those poor Malavoglia alone, they’ve got enough problems as it is.’ ‘You get on with your spinning,’ said compare Tino. ‘Women are long of hair and short of judgment,’ and he hobbled away to drink absinthe with compare Pizzuto.

‘They want to give that family a bad Christmas,’ murmered comare Grazia with hands folded.

In front of each house every little shrine was decorated with branches, and oranges, and in the evenings the candles were lit, when they came to play the bagpipes, and they sang the litany in such a way that the festive spirit seemed to be abroad everywhere. The children played at their Christmas version of fivestones, using hazel nuts, and if Alessi paused to watch them in a business-like fashion, they said to him: ‘You go away, if you haven’t any hazelnuts to play with. Now they’re taking your house away, too.’

And indeed on Christmas Eve the bailiff came specially for the Malavoglia, in a carriage, so that the whole village was in uproar; and he deposited an official document on the chest of drawers, by the statue of the Good Shepherd.

‘Did you see, the bailiff has come for the Malavoglia?’ said comare Venera. ‘Now they’re in a pretty pickle.’

Then her husband, who could hardly believe he had been right, began to clamour tumultuously.

‘Ye holy saints in Paradise, I said I didn’t want ’Ntoni hanging around the house.’

‘You be quiet, you know nothing,’ snapped la Zuppidda. ‘This is women’s business. This is how girls get married, otherwise they are left hanging around for you to trip over, like old saucepans.’

‘This is some time to talk of marriage! when the bailiff has called.’

‘Did you know that the bailiff was going to come? You’re always yapping about things after they’ve happened, but you don’t lift a finger to stop them happening. Anyhow, the bailiff doesn’t eat people’.

It is true that the bailiff doesn’t eat people, but the Malavoglia reacted as if disaster had suddenly struck, and they were in the courtyard, sitting in a circle, looking at each other, and the day the bailiff called, there were no meals at all in the Malavoglia household.

‘Damn it,’ exclaimed ’Ntoni. ‘We’re sitting ducks, and now they’ve sent in the bailiff to wring our necks.’

‘What shall we do?’ asked la Longa.

Padron ’Ntoni didn’t know, but at last he forced himself to take up that horrible official document and went to look for zio Crocifisso with his two older grandsons, to tell him to take the Provvidenza, which mastro Bastiano had just patched up, and the poor fellow’s voice trembled as it had done when his son Bastianazzo died. ‘I know nothing about it,’ Dumb bell replied. ‘It’s nothing to do with me any more. I’ve sold my credit to Piedipapera, and from now on you’ll have to deal with him.’

As soon as Piedipapera saw the little procession, he began to scratch his head. ‘What do you expect me to do?’ he said. ‘I’m a poor devil and I need that money, and I wouldn’t know what to do with the Provvidenza because that’s not my trade; but if zio Crocifisso wants, I’ll help you to sell her. I’ll be right back.’

Those poor creatures sat waiting there on the wall, and they hadn’t the heart to look one another in the eye; but they cast long glances on to the road where they expected Piedipapera to appear, and finally he did, walking very slowly — though when he wanted to, he could hobble along pretty speedily on that twisted leg of his. ‘He says she’s useless as an old shoe, and he wouldn’t know what to do with her,’ he shouted from a distance. ‘I’m sorry, but I couldn’t do anything.’

So the Malavoglia went home clutching the official document.

But something had to be done, because they had heard that if that paper lay around on the chest of drawers, it would devour the chest of drawers, the house and the lot of them.

‘Here’s where we need advice from don Silvestro the town clerk,’ Maruzza suggested. ‘Take him these two hens, and he will have something to tell you.’

Don Silvestro said that there was no time to lose, and he sent them to a good lawyer, doctor Scipioni, who lived on via degli Ammalati in Catania opposite zio Crispino’s stables, and he was young, but he had enough patter in him to make mincemeat of all old lawyers who wanted five onze just to open their mouths, whereas he made do with twenty five lire.

The lawyer, Scipioni, was busy making cigarettes, and he had them come and go two or three times before he gave them a hearing; the best part was that they made up quite a little procession, one behind the other, and la Longa went there too, with her child in her arms, to help state the case, and they wasted the whole day like that. Then when the lawyer had read the papers, and had managed to glean something from the garbled answers which he had painfully to extract from padron ’Ntoni, while the others were perched on their chairs without daring to breath, he began to laugh with all his might, and the others laughed with him, without knowing why, just to get their breath back. ‘Nothing,’ replied the lawyer, ‘there’s nothing you need do’; and as padron ’Ntoni was about to repeat that the bailiff had come, ‘Let the bailiff come once a day if he wants, the creditor will soon get tired of paying for him.