‘There’s a basket full of eggs,’ she added, ‘and on Monday, if compare Alfio goes to Catania, you could get him to sell them in the market.’

‘Yes, that all helps with the debt,’ said padron ’Ntoni ‘but all of you ought to eat the odd egg, when the mood takes you.’

‘Well the mood doesn’t take us,’ replied Maruzza, and Mena added ‘If we eat them, compare Alfio won’t have any to sell in the market; now we’ll put ducks’ eggs under the sitting hen, and the chicks will sell at eight soldi a piece.’ Her grandfather looked her in the eye and told her that she was a real Malavoglia.

The fowl were flapping in the dust of the courtyard, and the broody hen, all dazed, with her comb drooping, was shaking her beak in a comer; along the wall, more cloth was hanging for bleaching in the sun, under the greenery of the plants in the vegetable patch, weighed down by stones. ‘It all brings in money,’ repeated padron ’Ntoni; ‘and with God’s help, they won’t need to evict us from our own house. ‘East, west, home’s best.’ ’

‘Now the Malavoglia will have to pray to God and St Francis for the catch to be good,’ Piedipapera was saying.

‘Yes, what with catches as they are,’ exclaimed padron Cipolla, ‘and they seem to have thrown the cholera into the sea for the fish, into the bargain.’

Compare Mangiacarrubbe nodded, and zio Cola returned to the subject of the salt tax they wanted to introduce, after which the anchovies could relax, with no more fear of the steamboat wheels, because no one would go and fish for them any more.

‘And they’ve dreamt up something else,’ added mastro Turi the caulker, ‘a tax on pitch.’ Those who didn’t care about pitch said nothing but Zuppiddo carried on shrieking that he would shut up shop, and anyone who needed their boat caulking would have to use their wife’s chemise as oakum. Then there was a wave of shouting and swearing. At this juncture the engine whistle sounded, and the great railway coaches emerged suddenly out of the slope of the hill from the hole they had made in it, smoking and clamouring like the very devil. ‘Here we go,’ said padron Fortunato; ‘the railway on the one hand and the steamers on the other. Life at Trezza has become impossible, upon my soul!’

In the village all hell broke loose when they wanted to put a tax on pitch. Zuppidda, foaming at the mouth, went up on to the balcony and began to proclaim that this was another of don Silvestro’s dastardly deeds, since he wanted to ruin the village, because they hadn’t wanted him for a husband for Barbara; neither she nor her daughter even wanted the man in the wedding procession. When comare Venera talked about the husband her daughter would be taking, you would have thought that she herself was the bride. Mastro Turi would shut up shop, she said, but she would like to see how people would manage to get their boats to sea, and they would be reduced to devouring each other for want of bread. Then the neighbourhood women came to their doorsteps with their distaffs in their hands, bawling that they wanted to kill the lot of them, those tax people, and set fire to all their vile papers, and the place where they kept them. As they came back from the sea, the men left their tackle to dry, and stood at the windows to watch the revolution their wives were bringing about.

‘All because padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni is back,’ continued comare Venera, ‘and he’s always here, hanging on to my daughter’s apron strings. Now don Silvestro doesn’t like those cuckold’s horns. And if we won’t have him, what can he hope for? My daughter is my affair, and I can give her to whomsoever I please. I gave a clear no to mastro Callà when he came with the message, zio Santoro saw me too. Don Silvestro gets that stooge of a mayor to do anything he wants; but I don’t give a damn about the mayor and his town clerk. Now they are trying to get us to shut up shop all because I won’t let my possessions be grabbed by any Tom, Dick or Harry! What a crowd, eh? why don’t they put a tax on wine, or on meat, since no one eats it? but massaro Filippo wouldn’t like that, out of love for Santuzza, and they’re both in a state of mortal sin, and she wears the scapular of a Daughter of Mary to hide her dirty deeds, and that old cuckold zio Santoro sees nothing. Everyone feathers their own nest, like compare Naso, who’s fatter than his own pigs! Fine councillors we have! Now we’re going to have to make mincemeat of the whole rotten bunch.’

Mastro Turi Zuppiddo was stumping about on the balcony clutching his mighty implements, wanting to draw blood, and not even chains would have held him back. Fury was spreading from one doorstep to the next like the waves of the sea in a storm. Don Franco was rubbing his hands, with his awful great hat, and saying that the people were rearing their heads at last; and when he saw don Michele pass by, with his pistol slung over his stomach, he laughed right in his face. Gradually the men too had allowed themselves to become heated by their womenfolk, and were seeking each other out in order for their tempers to mount; and they wasted their day hanging around the square with their hands under their armpits and mouths agape, listening to the chemist who was holding forth in a low voice, so that his wife upstairs shouldn’t hear him, saying that the people should rise up in revolt, if they weren’t fools, and not take any notice of the tax on salt or the tax on pitch, but a clean sweep was needed, and the people should be king. But some people sneered and turned their backs on him, saying that he was the one who wanted to be king, and that he was involved in the revolution to reduce poor people to starvation. And they preferred to go off to Santuzza’s wine shop, where there was good wine which went to your head, and compare Cinghialenta and Rocco Spatu got angry enough for ten. Now that the business of the taxes was under discussion once again, there would be more talk of that next tax on ‘hair’, as they called the tax on beasts of burden, and of raising the tax on wine. By Christ! This time it would end badly, by the Virgin!

The good wine loosened tongues, and loose tongues make you thirsty, and for the moment they hadn’t raised the tax on wine; and those who had drunk waved their fists in the air, with their shirt sleeves rolled up, and got worked up against the very flies as they flew.

‘This is a real windfall for Santuzza,’ they said. La Locca’s son, who had no money for drink, was there outside the doorway, shouting that he would prefer to die, now that zio Crocifisso didn’t want him even on half pay, because of his brother Menico who had been drowned along with the lupins. Vanni Pizzuto had shut up shop, because no one went to get shaved any more, and he carried his razor in his pocket, and poured out curses from a distance, and spat on people who were only going about their business, with their oars over their shoulders, shrugging.

‘They’re all swine, and they don’t give a fig about their country,’ bawled don Franco, puffing on his pipe as though he wanted to devour it. ‘People who wouldn’t lift a finger for their country.’

‘You let them talk away,’ said padron ’Ntoni to his grandson, who wanted to break his oar over the heads of anyone who called him a swine; ‘they don’t get us any bread with their chatter, nor do they reduce our debt by a single soldo.’

Zio Crocifisso, who was the sort of person who minds his own business, and lets his wrath simmer within him, for fear of something worse, when they drew blood from him with their taxes, was now no longer to be seen on the square, leaning against the wall of the belltower, but stayed holed up in his house, reciting paternosters and Hail Maries to cool his anger at all those loudmouths, people who wanted the village put to fire and sword, and went around ransacking anyone who had two beans to rub together. ‘He’s quite right,’ they said in the village, ‘because he must have pots of money. Now he’s even got the five hundred lire from the lupins which Piedipapera gave him!’

But la Vespa, whose wealth was all in land, so that she had no fear that it would be stolen from her, went round shouting on his behalf, waving her hands in the air, as black as a smoking coal and with her hair loose in the wind, saying that they ate her uncle alive every six months, with the land tax, and she would gouge out the collector’s eyes with her own hands, if he came back again.