And I’m sorry for Barbara.’ ‘And I’ll marry her, ’Ntoni replied.
‘You’ll marry her?’ exclaimed his grandfather.
‘And what about me? When your father took a wife, and she was the woman whom you see there, he came to consult me first. Your grandmother was alive then, and he came to talk to me about things in the vegetable patch, under the fig tree. But now such things aren’t done, and old people count for nothing. Once there used to be a saying, ‘an old person’s word is the best insurance’. Your sister Mena has to marry first, do you realise that?’
‘What a life I lead,’ ’Ntoni began to shout, tearing his hair and stamping his feet. ‘Working all day long! Never going to the wine shop! and not a penny in my pocket! And now I’ve found the right girl, I can’t have her. Why did I ever come back from military service?’
‘Listen,’ his grandfather said to him, rising with difficulty because of the pains in his back. ‘The best thing you can do now is to go to sleep. This isn’t the sort of discussion to have in front of your mother!’
‘My brother Luca is better off than I am, being a soldier,’ grumbled ’Ntoni as he went off.
Luca, poor lad, was neither better off nor worse; he was doing his duty, as he had at home, and he made the best of a bad job. He didn’t write often, it’s true — the stamps cost twenty centesimi — nor had he yet sent his portrait, because as a small boy he had been teased for having sticking out ears; but instead of that he put the odd five lire note in his letters, which he managed to set aside by doing odd jobs for the officers.
As his grandfather had said: ‘First Mena must marry.’ They weren’t actually talking about it yet, but they thought of it all the time, and now that they had the odd something set aside in the chest of drawers to pay the debt, padron ’Ntoni calculated that with the salting of the anchovies they could pay Piedipapera, and the house would be unencumbered for his grand-daughter’s dowry. That was why he sometimes chatted with padron Fortunato on the sea shore, in low voices, while they were waiting for the boats to come in, or sitting in the sun in front of the church, when there were no people around. Padron Fortunato didn’t want to go back on his word, if the girl had a dowry, particularly since his son Brasi was giving him more than his fair share of worry, running after girls who had nothing, like the dolt he was.
‘You may know the man by his word, and the ox by its horns,’ he would say.
Mena often felt sick at heart while she wove, because girls have a seventh sense, and now that her grandfather was constantly out conversing with compare Fortunato, and talking about the Cipolla family often at home, she had that same image always before her eyes, as if that lad compare Alfio were stuck on to the wood of the loom, along with the pictures of the saints. One evening she waited until late to see compare Alfio coming home with his donkey cart; she had her hands under her apron, because it was cold and all the doors were closed, and there wasn’t a living soul all up and down the lane; so she said good evening to him from the doorway.
‘Will you be going off to Bicocca on the first of the month?’ she asked him at last.
‘Not yet, no; I’ve still got over a hundred cartloads of wine for Santuzza. After that, God will provide.’ Then she didn’t know what to say, and compare Alfio busied himself in the courtyard unharnessing the donkey, and hanging the tackle on the hook, and coming and going with the lantern. ‘If you go to Bicocca there’s no knowing when we shall meet again,’ Mena said at last, in a voice that was barely audible.
‘Now why is that? Are you going away too?’
The poor creature didn’t answer for a bit, although it was dark and no one could see her face. Every so often you could hear the neighbours talking behind their closed doors, and children crying, and the noise of the bowls, when they were eating, so that no one could hear them either. ‘Now we’ve got half the money we need for Piedipapera, and when we’ve salted the anchovies we’ll have the other half too.’
On hearing this Alfio left the donkey in the middle of the courtyard and came out on to the road. ‘So they’ll be marrying you off after Easter?’ Mena didn’t answer. ‘I told you so,’ added compare Alfio. ‘I saw padron ’Ntoni talking to padron Cipolla.’
‘It’s all in God’s hands,’ Mena then said. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting married, as long as they let me stay on here.’
‘It must be a fine thing,’ added Mosca, ‘when you are as rich as padron Cipolla’s son, who can take any wife and can live anywhere he chooses!’
‘Goodnight, compare Alfio,’ Mena then said, after another short spell of gazing at the lantern hanging on the gate, and at the donkey cropping the nettles along the wall. Compare Alfio said goodnight too, and went back to putting the donkey in the stable.
‘That brazen-faced St Agatha,’ muttered la Vespa, who was at the Piedipaperas at all times of the day with the excuse of borrowing knitting needles, or presenting them with the odd handful of beans she had picked in her smallholding, ‘that brazen-faced St Agatha is for ever hanging round compare Alfio. She doesn’t leave him a moment to draw breath! It’s shameful!’ and she carried on grousing in the road, while Piedipapera shut the door, sticking his tongue out after her. ‘La Vespa is as angry as a wasp in July,’ compare Tino sniggered.
‘What does it all matter to her?’ asked comare Grazia.
‘It matters to her because she has it in for anyone who gets married, and she’s got her eye on Alfio Mosca.’
‘You ought to tell her that I don’t like playing gooseberry. As if people couldn’t see that she comes here for compare Alfio, and then la Zuppidda goes around spreading the word that it suits us to play the part.’
‘La Zuppidda would do better to worry about her own affairs, because there’s plenty to worry about! what with that nonsense of discussing marriage with padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, while the old man and the rest of them are raising hell and don’t want to hear anything about it. To-day I spent a good half-hour enjoying the scene between ’Ntoni and Barbara, and my back still hurts from being crouched against that wall, to hear what they were saying. ’Ntoni had slipped away from the Provvidenza, with the excuse of going to get the big harpoon for the grey mullet; and he said to her: ‘If my grandfather is against it, how shall we manage?’ ‘We’ll manage by running away together, and once we’ve done that they’ll have to think about marrying us, they’ll be forced to agree to it,’ she replied; and her mother was there behind the wall listening, I’ll bet my eye teeth. A fine figure that witch cuts! Now I feel like setting the whole village cackling. When I told him, don Silvestro said that he felt he could make Barbara drop into his arms like a ripe pear. And don’t put the latch down, I’m expecting Rocco Spatu to come and have a word with me.’
To get her to drop into his arms, don Silvestro had cooked up a trick so cunning that not even the friar who gives out lottery numbers could ever have conceived of it.
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