But I’m sorry for that poor orphan who’ll be without anyone in the world, if you go, like Nunziata when her father disappeared.’

Lia and Alessi opened their eyes wide and looked at him in alarm; but his grandfather let his head fall on to his chest.

‘Now you have neither father nor mother, and you can do whatever you like,’ he said to him at last. ‘As long as I’m alive I’ll take care of these children; when I’m no longer here, the Lord will do the rest.’

Since ’Ntoni wanted to leave at all costs, Mena put his affairs in order, as his mother would have done, because after all she thought that out there, in some foreign land, her brother would no longer have anyone to think of him, like compare Mosca. And while she sewed his shirts and patched his clothes, her thoughts were far away, among so many past things, and her heart swelled with memories.

‘I can’t bear to pass by the house by the medlar tree,’ she would say when she was sitting with her grandfather, ‘I feel it in my throat, and it chokes me, what with all the things which have have happened since we left it.’

And while she was preparing her brother’s things, she cried as though she were never to see him again. At last, when everything was in order, her grandfather summoned his boy to give him the final lecturings, and the last advice for when he would be alone, and would have to make capital only out of his head, without his family to tell him how to behave, or to grieve together; and he also gave him a bit of money, in case he should need it; and his fur-lined cloak, because he himself was old now, and wouldn’t be wanting it.

Seeing their older brother intent on preparations for his departure, the children trailed quietly after him through the house, and didn’t dare say a word to him, as though he were already a stranger.

‘That’s how my father went off,’ said Nunziata at last, from the doorstep where she was standing, having come to say goodbye. Then no one said another word.

The neighbourhood women came by one by one to say goodbye to compare ’Ntoni, and then they stood and waited on the road to see him go. He hesitated, with his bundle on his shoulder and his shoes in his hand, as though his courage and his legs had failed him at the last minute. And he looked around him as though to engrave the house and the village and everything on his memory, and he looked as upset as everyone else. His grandfather took his stick to go with him to the city, and Mena cried quietly in a corner.

‘Come now,’ said ’Ntoni,’ this won’t do! It’s not as though I weren’t ever coming back, after all. Don’t forget I came back from my military service.’ Then, after he had kissed Mena and Lia, and said goodbye to the women, he moved to go, and Mena ran after him with her arms outstretched sobbing aloud, almost beside herself, and saying to him:

‘Now what will mother say?’ for all the world as though mother had been able to see and speak. But she was repeating what had remained clearest in her mind when ’Ntoni had first said that he wanted to leave, and she had seen her mother cry every night, and had found the sheet all wet the next morning, when she was making the bed.

‘Goodbye, ’Ntoni,’ Alessi shouted after him as he plucked up his courage when his brother was already out of earshot, and then Lia began to scream.

‘That’s how my father left,’ said Nunziata after a pause, from where she was still standing in the doorway.

’Ntoni turned round before he turned out of strada del Nero, and he too had tears in his eyes, and waved. Then Mena closed the door, and went to sit in a corner with Lia, who was crying out loud.

‘Now another one has gone,’ she said. ‘And if we were in the house by the medlar tree, it would seem as empty as a church.’

Now that all those who loved her were leaving one by one, she really did feel like a fish out of water. And Nunziata, standing there with her little ones around her, kept saying:

‘That’s how my father left, too.’

CHAPTER XII

Now that Alessi was the only person left to help with the boat, padron ’Ntoni had to take someone by the day, either compare Nunzio, who had all those children and a sick wife, or la Locca’s son, who would come whimpering outside the door that his mother was dying of hunger, and zio Crocifisso wouldn’t give her anything because the cholera had ruined him, he said, what with so many people having died and cheated him of his money, so that he had caught the cholera too — though he hadn’t died, added la Locca’s son, shaking his head gloomily.

‘My mother and I and all the family would have been able to eat now, if he had died. We spent two days with la Vespa looking after him, and he seemed to be sinking from one moment to the next, but then he didn’t die!’

But what the Malavoglia earned often wasn’t enough to pay zio Nunzio, or la Locca’s son, and they had to dip into the hard-earned money for the house by the medlar tree. Every time Mena went to get the sock from under the mattress, she and her grandfather sighed. It wasn’t la Locca’s poor son’s fault; he would gladly have done the work of four men to earn his day’s keep; it was the fault of the fish, which weren’t keen to be caught. And when they came back crestfallen, banging the oars and with the sail all slack, la Locca’s son would say to padron ’Ntoni:

‘I’ll chop some wood or bind up vine shoots; I can work until midnight if you want, as I did with zio Crocifisso. I want to earn my day’s pay.’

Then, after pondering a bit, padron ’Ntoni decided to talk to Mena about what they would do. She was as sensible as her mother, and there was now no one else in the house to discuss it with, whereas before there had been so many. The best thing was to sell the Provvidenza, which earned nothing, and ate up the day’s pay for Nunzio and la Locca’s son; otherwise the money for the house would all be frittered away. The Provvidenza was old and always needing more money spending on her to patch her up and keep her afloat. Later, if ’Ntoni came back and things were looking up, they would buy a new boat, when they had got the money for the house together, and would call her the Provvidenza, too.

One Sunday he went into the square to discuss it with Piedipapera, after mass. Compare Tino shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, said that the Provvidenza was just about good for firewood, and so saying he led him down to the shore; you could see the patches, under the new coat of pitch, it was like some sluts he knew, with wrinkles under their corsets; and he started kicking her in the stomach again, with his lame foot. Anyhow, business was bad; rather than buying, people would be wanting to sell their boats, and newer than the Provvidenza. And who would buy her? Padron Cipolla didn’t want any of that old rubbish. That was zio Crocifisso’s province. But at that moment zio Crocifisso had other things on his mind, what with that one-track-minded Vespa who was driving him crazy, running after all the marriageable men in the village. At last, for the sake of friendship, he agreed to go and talk to zio Crocifisso about it, at the right moment, if padron ’Ntoni was determined to sell the Provvidenza for a song; because he, Piedipapera, had zio Crocifisso round his little finger.

In fact, when he talked to him, leading him off towards the cattle trough, zio Crocifisso answered with a series of shrugs, and shook his head like a puppet, and showed all the signs of wanting to escape. Compare Tino, poor thing, was holding him by the jacket, so that he would be forced to listen; and he shook him; held him close so as to whisper in his ear.

‘Yes, you’re a fool if you let this opportunity pass you by! For peanuts! Padron ’Ntoni is selling it because he simply can’t carry on, now that his grandson has left him. But you could put it in the hands of compare Nunzio, or la Locca’s son, who are starving to death, and would come and work for nothing.