Now she had so much to do in the new house, where everything had to be found a new place, and you could no longer see the medlar tree and the door of cousin Anna’s and Nunziata’s kitchen. Her mother feasted her eyes on her, while she worked beside her, and seemed almost to caress her with the tone of her voice, when she said: ‘Pass me the scissors,’ or ‘hold my skein,’ because she felt for her daughter in her very bowels, now that everyone was turning their backs on them; but the girl sang like a starling, because she was eighteen years old, and at that age if the sky is blue it shines through your eyes, and the birds sing right in your heart. In any case she had never had any feeling for that fellow, she told her mother in a low voice, while they were laying out the threads. Her mother was the only person who had seen into her heart, and who had let a kind word fall amidst all that distress. ‘If only compare Alfio were here, he wouldn’t turn his back on us. But when the new wine is ready, he’ll come back too.’

The neighbourhood women, poor things, hadn’t turned their backs on the Malavoglia either. But cousin Anna was so busy, with all she had to do to keep her head above water with her daughters, who were still on her hands just like unused saucepans, and comare Piedipapera was ashamed to show herself because of that trick that compare Tino had played on the poor Malavoglia. She had a good heart, gnà Grazia, and she didn’t go along with her husband when he said that she should leave them be, because they had neither king nor kingdom, and anyway what were they to her? The only person they saw from time to time was Nunziata, with the little one in her arms, and all the others trailing behind; but even she kept herself to herself.

And that is how the world goes. It is each man for himself: as comare Venera said to padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, charity begins at home. ‘Your grandfather gives you nothing, what obligation have you towards him? If you marry, you’ll set up on your own, and what you earn will go towards your own home. ‘God blessed a hundred hands, but not all in the same dish’.’

‘That’s a fine way of looking at things,’ answered ’Ntoni. ‘Now that my family is in trouble, you tell me to desert them along with the rest! How will my grandfather keep the Provvidenza going and find food for them all, if I leave him?’

‘Then sort it out among yourselves,’ exclaimed la Zuppidda, turning her back to him to go and poke around in the drawers, or in the kitchen, throwing things into confusion in order to seem to be doing something, so as not to look him in the eye. ‘My daughter’s not stolen property! One could turn a blind eye if you had nothing, because you’re young, and you’ve always got your health, so you can work, and you’re in a good line of business, especially since husbands are scarce now, with that fiendish conscription which whisks all the young men out of the village; but if the dowry you’re given has to be pocketted by your whole family, that’s another matter! I only want one husband for my daughter, not five or six, and I don’t want to make two families dependent on her.’

Barbara, in the other room, pretended not to hear, and carried on firmly with her woolwinding. But as soon as ’Ntoni appeared on the threshold she lowered her eyes to the spools, and her face lengthened too. So that the poor lad went yellow and green and a hundred colours, and didn’t know what to do, because Barbara had him ensnared like a sparrow with those great dark eyes of hers, and she said to him: ‘That means that you don’t love me as much as you love your own family!’ and began to cry into her apron when her mother wasn’t there.

‘Hang it all,’ exclaimed ’Ntoni, ‘I’d rather go back to soldiering!’ And he tore his hair and pummelled his head, but he couldn’t resolve himself to take the right decision, like the real oaf that he was. ‘Well then,’ said la Zuppidda, ‘birds of a feather must flock together.’ And her husband repeated: ‘I told you to steer clear of the whole thing!’ ‘You go and get on with your work,’ she replied, ‘because you know nothing about it.’

Everytime he went to the Zuppiddo’s house, ’Ntoni found long faces, and gnà Venera continued to reproach him for the fact that the Malavoglia had invited Grazia Piedipapera to comb Mena’s hair — ‘and a fine job she made of it!’ — in order to lick compare Tino’s boots, because of those few pennies owing on the house; but he’d taken the house all the same, and had left them stripped to their undergarments like the infant Jesus.

‘Do you think I don’t know what your mother Maruzza said all that time when she had her nose in the air — that Barbara wasn’t right for her son ’Ntoni because she had been brought up as a lady, and didn’t know what was needed to be a good sailor’s wife. They told me at the wash place, comare Mangiacarrubbe and gnà Cicca.’

‘Comare Mangiacarrubbe and gnà Cicca are two old gossips,’ answered ’Ntoni, ‘and they were just irritated that I didn’t marry the Mangiacarrubbe girl.’

‘You can have her as far as I’m concerned. And what a bit of luck for her!’

‘If you say that to me, comare Venera, it is tantamount to telling me not to set foot in your house again.’

’Ntoni wanted to act the man, and didn’t show himself around there for two or three days. But little Lia, who knew nothing of such chatterings, continued to go and play in comare Venera’s courtyard, as they had accustomed her to doing, when Barbara gave her prickly pears and chestnuts, because she loved her brother ’Ntoni, and now they didn’t give her anything any more; and la Zuppidda would say to her: ‘Is it your brother you’ve come looking for? Your mother is afraid they’ll steal him from you!’

And comare la Vespa would go into the Zuppiddos’ courtyard too, with her knitting at her neck, saying inflammatory things about men, who were worse than dogs. And Barbara would say pointedly to the little girl: ‘I know I’m not as good a housekeeper as your sister!’ and comare Venera would conclude: ‘Your mother is a washerwoman, and instead of twittering about other people’s doings at the wash place, she would do better to give a rinse to that few ha’porth worth of a dress you’ve got on.’

Much of this went over the little girl’s head; but what little she did answer annoyed la Zuppidda, and led her to say that it was her mother Maruzza who put her up to it and sent her round there on purpose to annoy her, so that finally the little girl stopped going there, and gna Venera said it was better like that, then they wouldn’t come to the house snooping, still afraid of being robbed of that precious nincompoop of theirs.

Things reached a point where comare Venera and la Longa no longer talked to one another, and if they saw each other in church they turned their backs on one another.

‘Soon they’ll be getting out the brooms,’ said the Mangiacarrubbe girl gleefully, ‘or my name isn’t Mangiacarrubbe. That business of la Zuppidda and the Booby is a fine carry on.’

Usually the men don’t meddle in such women’s quarrels, otherwise matters would go from bad to worse and might end up with knives; but after they have put the brooms out, and given vent to their fury by swearing, and tearing each other’s hair, neighbourhood women are immediately reconciled, and hug and kiss each other, and stand at their doorways talking just like before. And ’Ntoni, bewitched by Barbara’s eyes, had gone back on the sly to stand under her window, to make up, but gnà Venera felt like throwing the bean water over his head, sometimes, and even her daughter shrugged her shoulders, now that the Malavoglia had neither king nor kingdom.

And she said as much to his face, finally, to rid herself of the whole matter, because the lad was always standing outside her door like a puppy dog, and would make her lose such chances as she had, if ever anyone else might have the intention of passing that way with her in mind.

‘Come now, compare ’Ntoni, the fish in the sea are for those who can eat them; let’s just resign ourselves and think no more about it.’

‘You may be able to resign yourself, comare Barbara, but as for me, ‘love cannot be compelled.”

‘Just you try — you’ll find you can do it as well as the next man. You loose nothing by trying. I wish you well and all good luck, but now leave me to my own affairs, because I’m already twenty two.’

‘I knew you were bound to say that to me when they took the house away from us, now that everyone is against us.’

‘Listen, compare ’Ntoni, my mother may come in from one moment to the next, and it wouldn’t be right for her to find you with me.’

‘Yes, that’s true; now that they’ve taken away the house by the medlar tree, it’s not right.’ He felt heavy at heart, poor ’Ntoni, and didn’t want to leave her like that. But she had to go and fill the jug at the fountain, and said goodbye to him, running off swiftly and swinging her hips bravely — she was called Zuppidda, the lame, because her father’s grandfather had broken his leg in a cart accident at the feast of Trecastagni, but Barbara had two fine legs of her own and no mistake about it.

‘Goodbye, comare Barbara,’ the poor fellow answered, and thus they let bygones be bygones and he went back to rowing like a galley slave, from Monday to Saturday, and he was tired of being driven mad for nothing, because when you have nothing it is pointless to slave away from morning to night, and not find even a dog who welcomes you, and that was why he had had a belly full of that life; he would have preferred really to do nothing, to stay in bed malingering, like when he was fed up of military service, and his grandfather didn’t examine him as carefully as the doctor on the frigate. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked him.

‘Nothing, that’s what. The matter is that I’m a poor devil.

‘And what can you do about that? We have to live as we were born.’

Unwillingly he allowed himself to be loaded up with tackle worse than some poor donkey, and the whole day long he didn’t open his mouth except to grumble or to swear: ‘People who fall in the water are bound to get wet.’ If his brother happened to sing, while they were under sail, ‘yes, yes, sing on. When you’re old, you’ll bark like grandfather, too,’ he would snap.

‘Well, you won’t gain anything by barking now,’ the boy replied.

‘You’re right — since life is so good.’

‘Good or not, it’s our own doing,’ said his grandfather.

In the evening he ate his soup in a sulk, and on Sundays he went to hang around the wine shop, where all people had to do was laugh and enjoy themselves and forget about the next day when they would have to go back to doing what they had done the whole week; or he would stay for hours on end sitting on the church steps, with his chin cupped in his hand, watching people go by, musing about those trades where you have nothing to do.

At least on Sundays he enjoyed those things in life which are free — the sun, standing with your hands tucked beneath your armpits doing nothing, and then he was irritated even by the effort of thinking about his condition, by wanting those things he’d seen as a soldier and with whose memory he used to wile away the time on working days. He liked to stretch out like a lizard in the sun and do nothing more. And when he met carters who were sitting on their shafts, he would mutter that theirs was a fine trade, going around in a carriage all day, and if he saw some poor old woman pass by, coming back from town, bent under her load like a tired donkey and complaining as she went, as old people do:

‘I wish I could be doing what you’re doing, my sister,’ he would say to comfort her.