‘Her mother is working on her trousseau.’
Time had passed and time carries away cruel things as well as kind ones. Now comare Maruzza was busy cutting and sewing garments, and Mena didn’t even ask who they were for; and one evening they had brought Brasi Cipolla into the house, with padron Fortunato his father, and the whole family. ‘Here’s padron Fortunato come to pay you a visit,’ said padron ’Ntoni, ushering them in, as though no one knew anything about it, while wine and toasted chick peas had been prepared in the kitchen, and women and children were dressed in their best. Mena really did look like St Agatha, with that new dress and her black handkerchief on her head, so that Brasi couldn’t take his eyes off her, like the basilisk, and was sitting perched on that chair, with his hands between his legs, rubbing them from time to time in sheer glee. ‘He has come with his own son Brasi, who is a grown man now,’ added padron ’Ntoni.
‘That’s right, boys grow up and elbow their fathers into the grave,’ replied padron Fortunato.
‘Now drink a glass of wine with us — it’s good wine,’ added la Longa, ‘and those chick peas were roasted by my daughter. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you, and I can’t offer you anything that is really worthy of you.’
‘We were just passing by,’ answered padron Cipolla, ‘and we said: ‘let’s go and call on comare Maruzza.’ ’
Brasi filled his pockets with chick peas, staring at the girl, and then the children pillaged the tray, though Nunziata with the baby in her arms vainly tried to hold them at bay, speaking in a low voice as if she were in church. Meanwhile the old people had begun to talk among themselves, under the medlar tree, and the neighbourhood women formed a circle and sang the girl’s praises, saying what a good housewife she was, keeping the house as clean as a new pin. ‘A girl’s worth lies in her upbringing, and the quality of hemp lies in the spinning!’
‘Your granddaughter too has grown up,’ observed padron Fortunato, ‘and it must now be time for her to marry.’
‘If the good Lord sends us a good match, we would like nothing better,’ replied padron ’Ntoni.
‘Marriages and bishoprics are made in heaven,’ added la Longa.
‘A good horse does not lack for a saddle,’ concluded padron Fortunato; ‘a girl like your Mena will not lack for takers.’
Mena sat near the young man, but she didn’t raise her eyes from her apron, and Brasi grumbled, when he went off with his father, that she hadn’t offered him the plate with the chick peas.
‘You mean you wanted more?’ padron Fortunato thundered at him, when they were some way off; ‘all we could hear was you munching, as if you were a mule with a sack of oats! Look, you’ve got wine on your trousers, Brasi, and ruined me a new suit!’
Delighted, padron ’Ntoni was rubbing his hands and saying to his daughter-in-law: ‘I can hardly believe we’re home and dry, with God’s help! Mena won’t lack for anything, and now we’ll sort out our little affairs, and you’ll remember how your old father-in-law used to say that laughter and tears go hand in hand.’
That Saturday, towards evening, Nunziata came to get a handful of beans for her children, and said: ‘Compare Alfio is off to-morrow. He’s taking out all his things.’
Mena went pale and stopped spinning.
The light was on in compare Alfio’s house, and everything was topsy turvy. He came to knock on their door soon afterwards, and he too had an odd look on his face, and fiddled with the knots of the whip he held in his hand.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye to you all, comare Maruzza, padron ’Ntoni, the children, and you too, comare Mena. The Aci Catena wine is finished. Now Santuzza has started taking wine from massaro Filippo. I’m going to Bicocca, where there’s work I can do with my donkey.’
Mena said nothing; only her mother opened her mouth to answer: ‘Will you wait for padron ’Ntoni? he’ll want to say goodbye to you.’
Compare Alfio perched uncomfortably on the chair, with his whip in his hand, and looked around, at those parts of the room not containing Mena.
‘So when will you be back?’ asked la Longa.
‘Heaven only knows. I go where my donkey takes me. I’ll stay away as long as I have work; though I’d prefer to come right back here, if I had any way of earning a living.’
‘Look after yourself, compare Alfio. They tell me people are dying like flies at Bicocca, of malaria.’
Alfio shrugged, and said that there was nothing he could do about it.
‘I don’t want to go,’ he repeated, looking at the candle. ‘Have you nothing to say to me, comare Mena?’
The girl opened her mouth once or twice to say something, but her courage failed her.
‘You too will be leaving the district, now that you’re getting married, added Alfio. ‘The world is like a stable, some come and some go, and gradually everyone will have changed places, and nothing seems the same.’ As he said this he rubbed his hands and laughed, but with his lips and not from his heart.
‘Girls,’ said la Longa, ‘go where God sends them. At first they have no worries or cares, and when they go out into the world they begin to know its sorrows and its disappointments.’
After padron ’Ntoni and the children had come home, compare Alfio couldn’t bring himself to leave, and he hung about at the doorway, with his whip under his arm, shaking hands with this person and that, even with comare Maruzza, as you do when you are about to leave for a distant place and don’t know whether you’re ever going to be seeing each other again: ‘Forgive me if I haven’t always been all I should.’ The only person who didn’t shake his hand was St Agatha, who was sitting in a corner, near her loom. But that is how girls have to behave, as everyone knows.
It was a fine spring evening, with the moonlight in the streets and on the courtyards, the people at their doorsteps and the girls walking by arm in arm, singing. Mena too came out arm in arm with Nunziata, feeling she would stifle in the house.
‘Now we won’t see compare Alfio’s light in the window any more, of an evening,’ said Nunziata, ‘and the house will be shut up.’
Compare Alfio had loaded most of his poor possessions on to the cart, and was putting what little hay was left in the manger into a sack, while his bean soup was cooking.
‘Will you be leaving before daybreak?’ asked Nunziata at the entrance to the courtyard.
‘Yes, I’ve a long way to go, and that poor animal will have to have a bit of a rest during the day.’
Mena said nothing, leaning against the door post to look at the loaded cart, the empty house, the half-made bed and the pan boiling on the stove for the last time.
‘Are you there too, comare Mena?’ Alfio exclaimed as soon as he saw her, and left what he was doing.
She nodded, and meanwhile Nunziata had run to skim the saucepan which was boiling over, like the good housewife she was.
‘That’s good, then I can say goodbye to you,’ said Alfio.
‘I came to say goodbye to you,’ she said, with a knot in her throat. ‘Why are you going to Bicocca if there’s malaria there?’
‘Why am I going? That’s a good question. Why are you marrying Brasi Cipolla? You do what you can, comare Mena. If I had been able to do what I wanted, you know quite well what I would have done…’
She looked at him and he looked at her, their eyes bright. ‘I’d have stayed here, where the very walls know me, and I know where to put my hands, and indeed I could even drive the donkey by night; and I’d have married you, comare Mena, for I’ve had a place for you in my heart for quite a time now, and I’d have taken you with me to Bicocca, and everywhere else I went. But there’s no point in talking about this now, and you have to do what you can. Even my donkey goes where I make it go.’
‘Goodbye then,’ said Mena; ‘I too feel as if I had a thorn inside me… and now that I shall always see this window closed, I’ll feel as if my heart is closed too, and that window closed on top of it, as heavy as a wine cellar door. But that is God’s will. Now I’ll say goodbye and be off.’
The poor creature was crying quietly, with her hands over her eyes, and she went off together with Nunziata to cry under the medlar tree in the moonlight.
Neither the Malavoglia nor anyone else in the village knew what Piedipapera was concocting with zio Crocifisso. On Easter Day padron ’Ntoni took the hundred lire from the chest of drawers and put on his new jacket to go and take them to zio Crocifisso.
‘Is that the lot?’ zio Crocifisso asked.
‘Well, it couldn’t be the lot, zio Crocifisso; you know what it takes to earn a hundred lire. But ‘something is better than nothing,’ and ‘the person who pays a first instalment is not a bad payer.’ Now the summer is coming, and with God’s help we’ll pay the lot.’
‘Why are you telling me all this? You know it’s nothing to do with me, but with Piedipapera.’
‘It comes to the same thing, because when I see you I still feel that I owe you the money.
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