‘They have to, because behind every soldier there is a corporal with a loaded gun, and his whole job consists in keeping an eye on the soldier to see if he’s trying to escape, and if he does the corporal shoots him worse than a little garden warbler.’

‘Oh, I see! What a business!’

The whole evening there was laughing and drinking in the Malavoglia’s courtyard, under a fine moon; and later, when everyone was tired, and slowly chewing over the roasted beans, and some were even singing quietly, with their backs to the wall, they began to tell the news which the two discharged soldiers had brought to the village. Padron Fortunato had left early, and had taken away Brasi with his new suit.

‘Those poor Malavoglia,’ he said when he met Dumb bell on the square. ‘May Heaven spare them! They’ve got the evil eye upon them.’

Zio Crocifisso kept silent and scratched his head. Now it was not his business any more, he had washed his hands of it. Now it was Piedipapera’s lookout; but he was sorry, in all conscience.

The next day the rumour began to go round that there had been a battle at sea towards Trieste between our ships and those of the enemy, though no one even knew who they were, and a lot of people had died; some told the story one way and some another, in dribs and drabs; swallowing their words. The neighbourhood women came with their hands under their aprons to ask whether comare Maruzza’s Luca had been there, and they stood and looked at her all eyes before going off again. The poor woman began to sit around in the doorway, as she did every time something awful happened, turning her head this way and that, looking from one end of the street to the other, as though she were expecting her father-in-law and the children back from sea earlier than usual. Then the neighbours asked her if Luca had written, or whether she hadn’t heard from him for a long time. In fact she hadn’t thought about letters, and she couldn’t sleep the whole night, and in her mind she was down there, in the sea towards Trieste, where the disaster occurred; and she could see her son before her, pale and motionless, looking at her with such staring shining eyes, and just saying yes, yes, like when they had sent him to do his soldiering — so that she too felt a thirst upon her, an unspeakable burning. Amidst all the stories which were going the rounds in the village, and which they had come to tell her, one remained with her in particular, of one of those sailors, whom they fished up after twelve hours, when the sharks were about to devour him, and in the middle of all that water he was dying of thirst. When she thought about that man who was dying of thirst in the midst of that water, la Longa couldn’t help going to drink from the jug for minutes on end, as though that thirst had been within herself, and she opened her eyes wide in the darkness, where the image of that fellow was forever imprinted.

But with the passing of the days, no one talked about what had happened any more; but as the letter didn’t seem to be arriving la Longa had no interest either in working or in staying indoors: she wandered continually from door to door, as though she were looking for some kind of answer. ‘Ever seen a cat which has lost its kittens?’ said the neighbours. But the letter didn’t come. Padron ’Ntoni didn’t go to sea either and stayed hanging around his daughter-in-law’s skirts like a puppy dog. People told him to go to Catania, which was a big place, and they would be able to tell him something there.

In that big place the poor old man felt worse than if he’d been at sea at night, without knowing which way to turn the rudder. At last they had the goodness to tell him that he should go to the harbour master, since he probably knew the news. There, after having sent him from pillar to post, for a bit, they began to leaf through certain sinister looking books, running their fingers down the list of the dead. When they came to one name la Longa, who hadn’t heard properly because her ears were ringing, and she was listening as white as the paper itself, slumped gently to the floor, more dead than alive.

‘It happened over a month ago,’ added the clerk, closing the register. ‘At Lissa; didn’t you know?’

They took la Longa back home on a cart, and she was ill for several days. From then onwards she was seized with a great devotion for Our Lady of Sorrows, on the altar of the little church, and it seemed to her that that long body stretched out on his mother’s knee, with its black ribs and knees red with blood, was the image of her Luca, and she herself felt all those silver swords of the Madonna planted in her own heart. Every evening, when they went to benediction, and as compare Cirino rattled the keys before shutting up, the old women saw her still there, in the same spot, having fallen to her knees, and they called her Our Lady of Sorrows, too.

‘She’s right,’ they said in the village. ‘Luca would soon have been back, and he would have worked for his thirty soldi a day. It never rains but it pours.

‘Have you seen padron ’Ntoni?’ added Piedipapera; ‘after that tragedy with his grandson he looks just like an owl. Now the house by the medlar tree is letting in water from all sides, like an old boot, and every decent man has to look to his own.’

La Zuppidda was in a permanent sulk, muttering that now the whole family would be dependent on ’Ntoni! Now a girl would think twice before taking him as a husband.

‘What have you got against that poor man?’ asked mastro Turi.

‘You keep quiet, you understand nothing,’ his wife shrieked at him. ‘I don’t like such messes. Go and get working; this isn’t your business,’ and she sent him out of the door with his arms dangling at his side and his great caulker’s mallet in his hand.

Sitting on the parapet of the terraces and stripping the dry leaves off the carnations, with her mouth set, Barbara proferred the comment that ‘married couples and mules like to be alone,’ and that‘there’s little love lost between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law.’

‘When Mena is married,’ answered ’Ntoni, ‘grandfather will give us the upstairs room.’

‘I’m not used to being in an upstairs room, like the doves,’ Barbara snapped back, so that her father, who after all was her father, said to ’Ntoni, looking around him while they walked down the little street: ‘She’ll become just like her mother, Barbara will; you’ll have to be firm with her right from the start, otherwise you’ll end up with the pack saddle on, just like me.’

But comare Venera had pronounced. ‘Before my daughter goes to sleep in the dovecote we’ll need to know who the house is going to, and I want to see how this lupin business will end.’

How it ended was that this time Piedipapera wanted to be paid, by Christ! St. John’s Day had come, and the Malavoglia started to talk again of giving part payments, because they hadn’t got all the money, and they hoped to get together the sum with the olive harvest. He had taken that money out of his own mouth, and he had no bread to eat, as sure as God exists! He couldn’t get by until the olive harvest.

‘I’m sorry, padron ’Ntoni,’ he had said; ‘but what can I do? I have to consider my own interest. Charity begins at home.’

‘The year will soon be over,’ added zio Crocifisso, when he was alone grumbling with compare Tino, ‘and we haven’t seen a ha’porth of interest: those two hundred lire will barely cover expenses.