‘What I need,’ he had said, ‘is for everyone who is trying to take her from me to be out of the way. When she has no one else to marry, then she will have to beseech me, and I’ll drive a hard bargain, like they do at the market, when buyers are scarce.’

Among those who were trying to take Barbara from him had been Vanni Pizzuto, when he went to shave mastro Turi who had sciatica, and also don Michele, who was bored with strutting around with his pistol slung over his stomach doing nothing, when he wasn’t behind Santuzza’s counter, and making eyes at the pretty girls, to wile away the time. At first Barbara had responded to these come-hither looks, but when her mother had told her that they were all spongers and scroungers, police spies rather than anything else, and that all foreigners should be whipped, she had slammed the window in his face, all moustachioed and braided-capped as he was, and don Michele had fumed and fretted, and carried on walking up and down the street out of sheer spite, twirling his moustache, with his cap over his eye. Then on Sundays he wore his hat with the feather, and would deliver a very nasty look from Vanni Pizzuto’s shop, while the girl was going to mass with her mother. Don Silvestro too took to having himself shaved with the other people who were waiting to go to mass, and warming himself at the brazier for the hot water, and exchanging jokes. ‘That Barbara has got her eye on ’Ntoni Malavoglia,’ he said. ‘What’s the betting he collars her? You can see he’s all set to wait for her, lounging about with his hands in his pockets.’

Then Vanni Pizzuto left don Michele with the soap all over his face, and went to the door:

‘What a fine figure of a girl, by the Virgin! The way she walks with her nose in her shawl, so that she looks just like a spindle! And to think that that dunderhead ’Ntoni Malavoglia will get her all for himself!’

‘ ’Ntoni won’t be getting her if Piedipapera intends to be paid, let me tell you. The Malavoglia will have other worries, if Piedipapera takes the house by the medlar tree.’

Vanni Pizzuto resumed possession of don Michele’s nose. ‘What do you say, don Michele? You’ve been after her too. But she’s the sort of girl who makes you eat gall.’

Don Michele said nothing, but he brushed himself down, curled his moustaches and put on his hat in front of the mirror. ‘You need something more than hats with feathers for that girl,’ sniggered Pizzuto.

At last, on one occasion, don Michele said:

‘If it weren’t for my hat with the feather, by Christ, I’d show that lout of a Malavoglia how I go about things.’ Don Silvestro was thoughtful enough to go and tell ’Ntoni Malavoglia everything, including the fact that don Michele the sergeant was the fighting kind, and would probably want to have things out with him.

‘I’ll laugh in the face of that moustachioed sergeant,’ replied ’Ntoni. ‘I know why he’s annoyed with me; I’ll let him off this time, but if he has any sense he’ll stop spoiling his shoes by constantly walking up and down in front of la Zuppidda’s place, with his braided cap, as though he had a crown on his head; because people don’t give a hoot about him or his cap.’

And if he met him he would look him in the eye, narrowing his gaze as a red-blooded young man who has been a soldier should do, and not let his cap be snatched away amidst the crowd. Don Michele carried on walking down the little road out of pigheadedness, so as not to seem beaten by ’Ntoni, because he would have snapped him up like bread, if he hadn’t been for that hat with a feather.

‘They’re eating each other alive,’ said Vanni Pizzuto to anyone who came to have a shave, or to buy cigars, or fishing bait, or small bone buttons. ‘One of these days ’Ntoni Malavoglia and don Michele are going to snap each other up like bread! It’s only that blessed hat with a feather which is tying don Michele’s hands. He’d pay Piedipapera anything to get that fathead ’Ntoni out of the way.’ So much so that la Locca’s son, who spent the whole day wandering around with his arms dangling at his side, began to trail after them to see how it would all end.

When he went to have a shave and heard that don Michele would have given anything to have ’Ntoni Malavoglia out of the way, Piedipapera swelled up like a turkey cock, because that implied that he was held in some regard in the village.

As Vanni Pizzuto kept telling him: ‘The sergeant would pay any amount of money to have the Malavoglia in his clutches as you have. So why did you let ’Ntoni off so lightly over that punch up?’

Piedipapera shrugged and carried on warming his hands at the brazier. Don Silvestro began to laugh, and answered for him:

‘Mastro Vanni Pizzuto would like to use Piedipapera’s paw to get his chestnuts out of the fire for him. As you know, comare Venera doesn’t want any truck with foreigners or people in braided caps; so when she has got rid of ’Ntoni Malavoglia, there would be only him left to fool around with the girl.’

Vanni Pizzuto said nothing, but he chewed over this all night.

‘That might be no bad thing,’ he pondered to himself. ‘The important thing is to grab Piedipapera by the horns, and on the right day.’

The right day arrived, and just in time, one evening when Rocco Spatu didn’t show up and Piedipapera came two or three times, late, to ask about him, white-faced and looking distraught, and the customs guards had been seen rushing about busily this way and that, with their noses to the ground like hunting dogs, and don Michele along with them with his pistol on his stomach and his trousers tucked into his boots. ‘You could do don Michele a great favour, by getting ’Ntoni Malavoglia out of his way,’ Pizzuto repeated to compare Tino, when the latter went to stick himself in the darkest corner of the little shop to buy a cigar. ‘You’d do him a famous favour, and then he really would be your friend for life.’

‘A fine thing that would be,’ sighed Piedipapera, who was short of breath that evening, and he said no more.

In the night shots were heard towards the Rotolo, and along the whole plain, so that it sounded like quail-hunting. ‘Quails my foot,’ murmured the fishermen sitting up in their beds to listen. ‘Those are two-footed quails, the sort that bring sugar and coffee, and contraband silk handkerchieves. Last night don Michele was going about with his trousers in his boots and his pistol slung on his stomach!’

Piedipapera was in Pizzuto’s shop having a little drink, before dawn, and the lantern was still burning outside the door; but this time he looked like a dog with its tail between its legs, he wasn’t telling the usual funny stories and he was asking people what all that racket had been about, and had they seen Rocco Spatu and Cinghialenta, and he doffed his cap to don Michele, who had swollen eyes and dusty boots, and he did his best to pay for the sergeant’s drink. But don Michele had already been to the wine shop where Santuzza, pouring him a glass of her good wine, had said: ‘What have you been doing, risking your skin, you fool? Don’t you know that if you get killed, you’ll drag others into the grave with you?’

‘You don’t seem to set much store by my duty, do you? If I had caught them red-handed to-night there would have been plenty in it for us, damn it!’

‘If they want you to believe that it was massaro Filippo trying to smuggle his wine in, don’t you believe them, by this blessed scapular I’m wearing so unworthily on my chest. That’s a pack of lies told by brazen people without consciences, who would damn their own souls in their eagerness to harm their neighbours.’

‘No, I know what it was! It was silk handkerchieves and coffee and sugar, more than a thousand lire’s worth of goods, by the Virgin, which slipped through my fingers like eels; but I’ve got them in my sights, the whole gang, and another time they won’t get away with it.’

Then Piedipapera said to him: ‘Have a drink, don Michele, it’ll do your stomach good, with all that sleep you’ve lost.’

Don Michele was in a bad mood, and he huffed and puffed.

‘He’s asking you to have one, so have one,’ added Vanni Pizzuto. ‘If compare Tino is paying, it means he’s got money, and to spare. And he has got money, the cunning devil! In fact he has taken over the debt from the Malavoglia; and now they’re repaying him with beatings.’

Here don Michele allowed himself to laugh a little.

‘By the blood of Judas,’ exclaimed Piedipapera, banging his fists on the counter, and pretending to get into a real rage now. ‘I don’t need to send that lout ’Ntoni to Rome, to make him do penance!’

‘Bravo,’ said Pizzuto encouragingly. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have let it pass.