‘’Ntoni. To you, the eldest, I command these orphans.’ And hearing her talk like that, while she was still alive, the others could not help bursting out crying and sobbing.

So they spent all night around the bed where Maruzza now lay motionless, until the candle began to gutter and go out, too, and the dawn came in through the window, as pale as the dead woman, whose face was haggard and sharp as a knife, with blackened lips. But Mena wouldn’t stop kissing her on the mouth, and talking to her as if she could hear her. ’Ntoni beat his breast sobbing:

‘Oh mother! now you have gone before me, and I wanted to leave you!’ And that picture of his mother, with her white hair and face as yellow and sharp as a knife, remained in front of Alessi’s eyes until his own hair whitened.

Later on that day they came to collect la Longa in a tearing hurry, and no one even though of the visit of condolence; everyone was thinking about their own skin, and even don Giammaria stayed on the threshold, when he sprayed the holy water with the aspergillum, holding St. Francis’ tunic bunched and raised — like the truly selfish friar he was, spouted the chemist. He on the other hand, if they had brought him the doctor’s prescription for some medicine or other, would open up the shop even at night, because he wasn’t afraid of cholera; and he even said that it was folly to believe that they spread the cholera along the streets and into the doorways.

‘That’s a sign that it’s him who’s spreading the cholera,’ hinted don Giammaria. So everyone greeted the chemist eagerly in the village, but he would cackle away, just exactly like don Silvestro, and would say:

‘I’m a republican. Now if I were a clerk, or a government lackey, it might be different…’ But the Malavoglia were left alone, in front of that empty bed.

For a time they didn’t open the door, after la Longa had gone through it. It was lucky they had a few beans in the house, and wood and oil, because padron ’Ntoni had acted like the wise ant during good times, otherwise they would have died of hunger, and no one came to see whether they were alive or dead. Then, gradually, they began to put their black handkerchieves around their necks, and go out into the street, like slugs after the rain, pale-faced and still shattered. From a distance the neighbourhood women asked them how the tragedy had happened; for comare Maruzza had been one of the first to go. And when don Michele or another of the braided-hatted government shirkers passed by, they looked at them with eyes bright with hatred, and ran to lock themselves in their houses. The village was in a desolate state, and the very hens shunned the streets; even mastro Cirino was lying low, and didn’t bother about ringing the mid-day or evening bell, and he ate municipal bread too, with those twelve tari a month they gave him to be caretaker at the town hall, and he was afraid they might give him the greeting accorded to government lackeys.

Now don Michele was Lord of the street, since Pizzuto, don Silvestro and all the others had gone to ground like rabbits, and the only person strutting in front of Zuppidda’s house was him, don Michele. It was a pity that the only people to see him were the Malavoglia, who now had nothing more to lose and so would sit on their doorstep looking to see who was passing by, motionless, chins in hands. In order not to waste his strolling time, don Michele would take a look at St. Agatha, now that all the other doors were closed; and he did so partly to show that lout ’Ntoni that he wasn’t afraid of anyone in the world. And then Mena, pale as she was, really did look like St. Agatha; and her little sister, with that black handkerchief, was beginning to be a fine young girl too.

Poor Mena suddenly felt as though twenty years had fallen on her back. Now she behaved with Lia as la Longa had acted with her; she felt she had to keep her under her wing like a chicken, and as though the whole weight of the house fell on her back. She had become used to being alone with her little sister when the men went to sea, and to being with that empty bed ever before her eyes. If she had nothing to do, she would sit with her hands folded, looking at it, and then she felt that her mother had left her; and when in the street they said:

‘So and so is dead, or so and so,’ she thought: ‘That’s how it must have sounded when they heard: la Longa is dead,’ la Longa who had left her alone with that poor little orphan who wore a black handkerchief like herself.

Nunziata, or cousin Anna, came from time to time, with light steps and long faces, without saying a word; and they stood on the doorstep looking at the empty road, with their hands under their aprons. The people coming back from the sea walked fast, watchfully, with their nets on their shoulders, and the carts didn’t even stop at the wine shop.

Where was compare Alfio’s cart going now? Was he even now dying of cholera under a hedge, ‘that poor fellow who had no one in the world? Piedipapera went by sometimes too, looking starved and peering about him; or zio Crocifisso, who had business scattered here and there, and went to feel his debtors’ pulses, because if they died they were stealing his just desserts. The viaticum was also rushed by, in don Giammaria’s hands, and he had his cassock tucked up, and a barefoot boy who rang the bell, because mastro Cirino was nowhere to be seen. That bell rang with a chilling sound in the empty streets, with not even a dog to be seen, and don Franco himself kept his door half-closed.

The only person who wandered about day and night was la Locca, with her tangled white hair, and she would sit outside the house by the medlar tree, or wait for the boats on the shore, and not even the cholera wanted anything to do with her, poor thing.

The foreigners too had fled, like birds when winter comes, and there were no buyers for fish. So that people said the cholera would be followed by famine. Padron ’Ntoni had had to dip into the money for the house, and he saw it being frittered away bit by bit. But all he could think of was that Maruzza had died outside her own home, and the thought obsessed him. When he saw the money being spent, ’Ntoni shook his head too.

Finally, when the cholera was over, and the money put together with so much effort had been half-spent, he went back to saying that it couldn’t go on like that, with that life of small gains and small losses; that it was better to make one big effort to get out of trouble at a single blow and that he didn’t want to stay there any longer, in that place where his mother had died, amidst all that filthy poverty.

‘What can I do for Mena if I stay here? You tell me.’ Mena looked at him timidly, but tenderly, just like her mother, and didn’t dare say a word. But once, leaning shyly against the doorpost, she screwed up the courage to say:

‘I don’t mind about your help, provided you don’t leave us. Now that mother isn’t here, I feel like a lost soul and I don’t care about anything any more.