Your heart gets tired too, you see; and wears away piece by piece, as old dresses fall apart in the wash. Now my courage is failing me, and everything fills me with dread; I feel I’m sinking, as when a wave goes over your head, if you’re at sea. Go, if you want to; but let me close my eyes first.’

Her face was all wet; but she didn’t realize she was crying, and she felt as though she had her son Luca and her husband before her eyes, when they had gone away and never been seen again.

‘So I’ll never see you again,’ she said to him. ‘Now the house is gradually emptying; and when your poor old grandfather has gone too, who will look after those poor little orphans? Ah, our Lady of Sorrows!’

She held him in her arms, with his head on her breast, as though her boy wanted to run off then and there; and he couldn’t bear it any longer, and began to kiss her and talk to her with his mouth against hers.

‘No. No, I won’t go if you don’t want me to. Look! Don’t talk to me like that! All right, I’ll carry on like compare Mosca’s donkey, to be thrown in a ditch to die when it can no longer pull his cart. Now are you satisfied? Stop crying like that. You can see how grandfather slaved away all his life? and now that he’s old he’s still slaving away as though it were his first day, to get himself out of the wood. That’s our fate!’ ‘And do you think everyone doesn’t have their troubles? Look at padron Cipolla running after Brasi, to see that he doesn’t throw all that property into la Vespa’s lap, that property he’s sweated and slaved for all his life. And massaro Filippo, who gazes up to heaven and says Hail Maries for his vines with every cloud that passes. And zio Crocifisso who has half-starved himself to set money aside, and is always quarrelling with one person or another! And do you think those foreign sailors don’t have their troubles too? Who knows if they’ll find their mothers at home when they get back? And if we manage to buy back the house by the medlar tree, when we’ve got grain in the bins and beans for the winter, and when we’ve married off Mena, what will we need? When I’m underground, and that poor old man is dead too, and Alessi can earn the daily bread, then go off wherever you want. But then you won’t go, I’m telling you! because then you will understand what we all had within us, when we saw you stubbornly insisting that you wanted to leave your house, and yet we carried on with our usual business without saying anything to you! Then you won’t have the heart to leave the village where you were born, and where you grew up, and where your dead are buried under that slab, in front of the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows, which is all smooth from so many people kneeling in front of it, of a Sunday.’

From that day onward ’Ntoni stopped talking about getting rich, and gave up the idea of leaving, and his mother kept a watchful eye on him, when she saw him gloomily sitting on the front steps; and the poor woman really was so pale, tired and haggard, that as soon as she had a spare moment she too would sit down, with her hands folded and her back already bent like her father-in-law’s, so that she was a truly moving sight. But she didn’t know that she too was going to have to leave when she least expected it, on a journey after which you are at rest for ever, under that smooth marble in the church; and she was to leave them all in mid-journey, those she loved, those who were so dear to her that they seemed to tear her heart from her in little pieces, now one of them and now another.

There was cholera in Catania, so that everyone who was able, left to go wherever they might in the nearby villages and countryside. This was providential for Trezza and Ognina, with all those foreigners spending. But the retailers turned up their noses if you talked of selling a dozen barrels of anchovies, and said that money had vanished, because of the cholera.

‘So don’t people eat anchovies any more?’ Piedipapera then asked. But to padron ’Ntoni, and to anyone who had any to sell, he would say firmly that with cholera around people wouldn’t want to ruin their stomachs with anchovies and such like muck, they’d rather eat pasta and meat; so you had to close your eyes, and be flexible about the price. The Malavoglia hadn’t reckoned with that! and so, in order not to go sideways like crabs, la Longa went to take eggs and fresh bread here and there to the foreigners’ houses, while the men were at sea, and she made a few pennies. But you had to watch out for dubious types, and not accept so much as a pinch of snuff from anyone you didn’t know! Going along the street you had to walk right in the middle, well away from the walls, where you ran the risk of picking up all manner of nasty things, and not to sit down on the stones, or along the walls. Once, while she was coming back from Aci Castello, with her basket on her arm, la Longa felt so tired that her legs were shaking and seemed as if they were made of lead. So she let herself be overcome by the temptation to rest for a couple of minutes in the shade of the wild fig which is just near the little shrine, just before you enter the village; and she didn’t notice at the time, but she did remember afterwards, that a stranger who seemed tired too, poor thing, had been sitting there a few moments before, and had left drops of some nasty substance which looked like oil on those stones. Anyway, she slumped down there too; she caught cholera and when she got home she was exhausted, waxen as an ex-voto tablet to the Virgin, and with dark rings round her eyes; so that Mena, who was alone in the house, began to cry just at the sight of her, and Lia went to get costmary and mallow leaves. Mena was trembling like an aspen, while she made the bed; yet the sick woman, seated on a chair, dead tired, with her yellow face and dark-ringed eyes, insisted on saying:

‘It’s nothing, don’t be alarmed; as soon as I’m in bed, it will pass,’ and she even tried to help her, but her strength failed her at every move and she went and sat down again.

‘Holy Virgin,’ stammered Mena. ‘And the men out at sea.’

Lia took refuge in tears.

When padron ’Ntoni was coming home with his grandsons and saw the door half closed, and the light through the shutters, he dug his hands into his hair. Maruzza was already in bed, with those eyes of hers which, seen like that in the dark at that hour, looked as empty as though death had already sucked them dry, and her lips were black as coals. At that time neither doctor nor chemist were to be found about after sunset; and even the neighbourhood women had bolted their doors, for fear of the cholera, and stuck images of saints all over the cracks. For that reason Maruzza could expect help from no one except her own family, poor things, who were running through the house as though they were mad, seeing her sinking like that, in that little bed, and they were at their wits’ end, and beat their heads against the walls. Then la Longa, seeing that there was no more hope, wanted them to put that pennyworth of cotton wool soaked in holy oil that they had bought at Easter on her chest, and even said that they should leave the candle alight, as they had done when padron ’Ntoni was going to die, because she wanted to see them all around the bed, and feasted her eyes on them one by one, those staring eyes of hers which could no longer see. Lia was crying fit to break your heart; and all the others, white as rags, looked at each other hopelessly; and they gritted their teeth so as not to burst out sobbing in front of the dying woman, who was quite aware of what was going on, for all she could no longer see, and what she most regretted in going her way was leaving those poor creatures so bereft. She called them by name one by one, in a hoarse voice; and wanted to raise her hand, which she could no longer lift, to bless them, as though she knew she was leaving them a treasure. ‘’Ntoni’ she kept saying, almost inaudibly.