‘Does he want to die with this on his conscience too?’

But hearing this story about don Silvestro, donna Rosolina suddenly changed her tune, and began to hold forth with her ladle in the air, as red as her tomato preserve, against men who flatter marriageable girls, and those gossips who stand at windows to hoodwink such men. Everyone knew what sort of a flirt Barbara was; but it was surprising that even someone like don Silvestro should fall for it, because he seemed a man of judgement, and no one would have expected such a betrayal from him; whereas in fact he was looking for trouble with Zuppidda and don Michele, while he had good luck within his grasp, and was letting it go. In this day and age, to know a man you have to eat through a full seven salme of salt.

But don Silvestro was seen around arm in arm with don Michele, and no one dared to say a word to their faces about the rumours which were going around. Now donna Rosolina slammed the window in his face, when the town clerk stood gazing upwards from the door of the chemist’s shop, and didn’t even turn her head when she put the tomato preserve in the sun on the little terrace; then once she went to confess at Aci Castello, because there was something she couldn’t confess to her brother, and as it happened she met don Silvestro by chance, just as he was coming back from the vineyard.

‘Fancy seeing you,’ she began to say, pausing to draw breath, because she was all red and flustered. ‘You must have weighty matters on your mind, not to remember old friends.’

‘I have nothing on my mind, donna Rosolina.’

‘I have been told that you have, and such nonsense it is that it would really weigh you down, if it were true.’

‘Who says so?’

‘The whole village is talking about it.’

‘Let them talk. Anyway, as it happens, I do just as I wish; and if I’m weighed down, as you put it, that’s my affair.’

‘Much good may it do you,’ said donna Rosolina all red in the face. ‘It seems to me that these worries are starting to affect you right now, if you answer me in this fashion, and indeed I didn’t expect it, because I always thought you were a man of judgement; forgive me if I was mistaken. This is tantamount to saying that ‘water afar quenches not the fire,’ and ‘good weather and bad weather, neither weather lasts for ever.’ But don’t forget that the proverb says: ‘Better the devil you know’ and ‘handsome is as handsome does.’ Enjoy Zuppidda in peace, because it doesn’t mean a thing to me. And for all the gold in the world I wouldn’t want people to say of me the things they say of your Zuppidda.’

‘Don’t you worry, donna Rosolina — by now there’s nothing anyone could say about you.’

‘At least people don’t say that I wolf up half the village; do you understand me, don Silvestro?’

‘Let them say what they wish, donna Rosolina. ‘He who has a mouth may eat, and he who doesn’t may die.’ ’

‘And they don’t say of me what they say of you, either, that you’re a defrauder!’ continued donna Rosolina, green as garlic. ‘Do you understand me, don Silvestro? and one can’t say as much of everyone. When you can spare them, I’d be glad of those twenty five onze I lent you. I don’t steal money, as some people do.’

‘Don’t you worry, donna Rosolina, I didn’t say that you stole your twenty five onze, and I shan’t go telling your brother, don Giammaria. It doesn’t matter to me whether you got them out of the household expenses or not; all I know is, I don’t owe you them. You told me to invest them for your dowry, if anyone were to take you in marriage, and I put diem in a Bank on your account, in my name, so that the matter shouldn’t be discovered by your brother, who would ask where the money came from. Now the Bank has gone bankrupt. What fault is it of mine?’

‘You swindler!’ Donna Rosolina spat in his face, foaming at the mouth. ‘You trickster! I didn’t give you that money to put in a bank that would go bankrupt. I gave it to you to cherish as if it were your own!’

‘But I did, I did,’ answered the town clerk, so brazenly that donna Rosolina turned her back to him so as not to explode with rage, and she went back to Trezza dripping like a sponge, in the heat of the day, with her shawl on her back. Don Silvestro stood there sneering, in front of the wall of massaro Filippo’s vegetable patch, until she had rounded the corner, muttering to himself:

‘I don’t care what they say.’

And he was right not to care what they said. They said that if don Silvestro had got it into his head to get Barbara to drop into his arms, then drop she would, such an arrant rascal was he! But they doffed their caps to him, and his friends nodded in his direction, when he went to chat in the chemist’s shop.

‘You’re a masterful fellow!’ don Franco said to him, patting his shoulder. ‘A real feudal lord! You’re the man of destiny, sent down to earth to prove once and for all that the old society must be flushed out!’ And when ’Ntoni came to get his grandfather’s medicines he would say:

‘You’re the people. As long as you behave like patient donkeys, you’ll get beaten.’

To change the subject, the Signora, who was knitting behind the counter, asked how his grandfather was getting on. ’Ntoni didn’t dare open his mouth in front of the Signora, and went off mumbling, with the glass in his hands.

His grandfather was better now, and they put him in the doorway, in the sun, wrapped up in a cloak, with a handkerchief on his head, so that he looked like someone who had returned from the dead, and people used to go and look at him out of curiosity; and the poor old man nodded to this person and that, and smiled, he was so pleased to be there, in his cloak, at the doorway, with Maruzza spinning at his side, the sound of Mena’s loom behind him inside, and the hens scratching in the street. Now that he had nothing else to do, he learned to know the hens one by one, and watched what they were doing, and spent the time listening to the neighbour’s voices, saying:

‘That’s comare Venera scolding her husband,’ or ‘That’s cousin Anna coming back from the washplace.’ Then he would watch the shadow of the houses lengthening, and when the sun had gone from the doorway, they put him against the wall opposite, so that he was like mastro Turi’s dog, who always followed the sun to stretch out in.

At last, he began to be on his feet again, and they took him down to the seashore, because he liked to doze among the stones, nears the boats, and he said that the smell of the salt water did him good; and he passed the time watching the boats, and hearing how other people’s days had gone. The men, while they were busy about their own affairs, proferred him the odd word, saying, to comfort him:

‘This means there’s oil in the old lamp yet, eh, padron ’Ntoni?’

In the evening, when the whole family was at home, with the door closed, while la Longa told her beads, he liked seeing them all there, and gazed at each one of them in turn, and looked at the walls of the house, and the chest with the statuette of the Good Shepherd, and the little table with the light on it;

‘I can’t believe I’m still here, with all of you,’ he would say.

La Longa said that fear had caused a great mix up in her blood and in her head, and that now she didn’t seem to have those two poor dead souls before her eyes any longer; whereas until that day they had been like two thorns in her breast, so that she had gone to confess the matter to don Giammaria. But the confessor had given her absolution, because with misfortunes this is what happens, one thorn drives out another, and our Lord doesn’t choose to thrust them all in at the same time, because you would die of heartbreak. Her son and husband were dead; she had been driven from her home; but now she was glad that she had managed to pay the doctor and the chemist, and didn’t owe anyone anything any more.

Gradually their grandfather began to ask for something to do, saying he couldn’t sit like that without doing anything. He mended nets; and wove fish traps; then, leaning on his stick, he began to go as far as mastro Turi’s courtyard to see the Provvidenza, and stayed there enjoying the sun. Finally he actually went in the boat with his grandsons.

‘Just like a cat,’ said Zuppidda, ‘with nine lives.’ La Longa had even put a little bench at the door, and sold oranges, nuts, hard-boiled eggs and black olives.

‘Soon she’ll be selling wine, too,’ said Santuzza.