Eh, don Michele?’

Don Michele gave a grunt of approval. ‘I’ll see about cutting ’Ntoni and all his family down to size,’ threatened Piedipapera. ‘I have no wish to be the laughing stock of the whole village. You can rest assured of that, don Michele!’

And he went off hobbling and swearing as though he were blind with fury, muttering to himself:

‘You have to keep the lot of them sweet, those narks’; and pondering on how to keep them sweet he went to the wine shop, where zio Santoro told him that neither Roccu Spatu nor Cinghialenta had been seen, so he went to cousin Anna, who had not slept, poor thing, and was standing at the door looking first in one direction and then the other, pale and distraught. There he also met la Vespa who was coming to see whether comare Grazia had a little yeast, by any chance.

‘I’ve just met compare Mosca,’ she said, for something to say. ‘He hadn’t got his cart with him, and I’ll warrant he was going to hang about on the sciara, behind St Agatha’s vegetable patch. ‘Loving your neighbour is a fine thing indeed, you see each other often and to travel there’s no need.’ ’

‘A fine saint to pin up on the wall, that Mena!’ la Vespa began to bawl. ‘They want to give her to Brasi Cipolla, and she carries on flirting all over the place. What a disgraceful business!’

‘You leave her be! That way people will know what sort of a person she is, and their eyes will be opened. But doesn’t compare Mosca know she’s been promised to compare Cipolla?’

‘You know what men are like, if there’s some little flirt with an eye on them they all run after her just for the joy of it. But then, when they want to start something serious, they need the kind of girl I have in mind.’

‘Compare Mosca ought to take someone like you.’

‘For the moment, I’m not thinking about marriage; but certainly he’d be well-suited with me. Anyway, I’ve got my smallholding, and no one can lay their hands on that, whereas the house by the medlar tree could be blown away at the first chill wind. We’ll see what’s what, when the trouble starts.’

‘You leave her be! Fair weather is followed by foul, and the lightweights get blown away like dead twigs. To-day I have to talk to your uncle Dumb bell about you-know-what.’

Dumb bell was all too willing to talk about the never-ending affair, and ‘long things turn into snakes…’ Padron ’Ntoni kept repeating that the Malavoglia were decent folk, and would pay, but he would like to know where they were going to get that money from. In the village they already knew what everyone owned, down to the last centesimo, and those ever so decent Malavoglia would never be able to raise the sum between now and Easter, even by selling their souls to the Turks; and to take over the house by the medlar tree would require a lot of red tape, and don Giammaria and the chemist were right when they talked of the government being a thief; as true as his name was zio Crocifisso, he was angry not only with the people who fixed the taxes, but also with the people who objected to them, and who turned the whole village upside down to such a degree that a decent fellow could no longer sit quietly in his own house with his own possessions, and when they came to ask him if he would like to be mayor, he had answered: ‘That’s a fine question. And who would look after my business? I’ll look after my own affairs.’ Meanwhile padron ’Ntoni was thinking of marrying off his granddaughter, because they had seen him going around with padron Cipolla — zio Santoro had seen them — and they had also seen Piedipapera playing the go-between for la Vespa and acting for that starveling Alfio Mosca, who wanted to get his hands on her smallholding. ‘I tell you, he’ll get his hands on it,’ said Piedipapera shouting in his ear to convince him. ‘It’s all very well huffing and puffing around the house. Your niece is crazy about him, always trailing after him. I can’t shut the door in her face, when she comes to chat with my wife, just for your sake, after all she is your niece and flesh of your flesh.’

‘Some consideration you show for me! Such consideration that you’re making me lose my smallholding!’

‘Of course you’ll lose it! If the Malavoglia girl marries Brasi Cipolla, compare Mosca will be helpless, and he’ll take la Vespa and the smallholding and have done with it once and for all!’

‘The devil can take her, for all I care,’ exclaimed zio Crocifisso at last, dazed by compare Tino’s babble. ‘I don’t give a hang; what I do mind about more than anything is the sins that witch has made me commit. I want my property, which I earned with the sweat of my brow, as true as Christ’s blood in the chalice at mass, and yet you’d think it was stolen property, the way everyone seems to be dicing for it, compare Alfio, la Vespa and the Malavoglia. I’m going to start a lawsuit, and take the house.’

‘You’re the boss. If you tell me to start proceeding, I’ll do so right away.’

‘Not yet. We’ll wait for Easter; ‘you may know the man by his word and the ox by its horns’; but I want to be paid down to the last brass farthing, and I won’t listen to any talk of postponement.’

Easter was indeed now approaching. The hills were covered in green again, and the prickly pears were once again in flower. The girls had sown the basil in their window-boxes, and white butterflies came to settle on it; even the poor broom on the sciara had its own pale little flowers. In the morning, on the roofs, the green and yellow tiles smoked, and the sparrows twittered until sunset.

The house by the medlar tree, too, had a cheerful air about it once again; the courtyard was swept clean, the tools were standing in good order along the wall or hanging from hooks, the vegetable patch was green with cabbages and lettuces and the bedrooms so open and full of sun that it too seemed pleased with life, and everything told you that Easter was on its way. The old people sat out at their doorways towards mid-day, and the girls sang at the wash place. The carts started to pass by at night again and once again in the evening there was a hum of people chatting in the little street.

‘Comare Mena is going to be married,’ people said.