You’d come in for everything they catch. You’re a fool, I tell you! The boat is well-kept, virtually new. Padron ’Ntoni knew what he was doing when he had it mended. This is a real bargain, like the lupin business, you mark my words!’ But zio Crocifisso wouldn’t hear of it, and almost burst into tears, with that yellow face, now that he had had cholera; and he pulled away and almost left Piedipapera holding his jacket.

‘I’m not interested,’ he repeated. ‘Not interested. You don’t know what I suffer inwardly, compare Tino! Everyone wants to suck my blood like leeches, and take my possessions. Now there’s Pizzuto too running after la Vespa, all like a pack of hunting dogs.’

‘You take her then, that Vespa! Isn’t she your flesh and blood, she and her smallholding? She won’t be another mouth to feed, after all; that woman’s hands are blessed by God, and the money you spend on the bread you give her will be well spent. You’ll also have a tame servant, unpaid, and you’ll get the smallholding into the bargain. Listen to me, zio Crocifisso, this is another deal as good as the lupin deal!’

Meanwhile padron ’Ntoni was waiting for an answer in front of Pizzuto’s shop, and gazing like a lost soul at the two of them, who seemed to be fighting, and trying to guess whether zio Crocifisso was saying yes. Piedipapera came over to tell him what he had managed to get out of zio Crocifisso, and then went back to talk to him again; and he came and went across the square like the shuttle in the loom, dragging his twisted leg after him, until he managed to bring about an agreement.

‘Excellent,’ he said to padron ’Ntoni; ‘it’s peanuts,’ he said to zio Crocifisso, and in this way he negotiated the sale of all the tackle, because the Malavoglia had no use for it, now that they didn’t have their bread on the waters, but padron ’Ntoni felt as though they were hauling the bowels from within him, fish traps, nets, harpoons, fishing rods, the lot.

‘I’ll find you work on a day basis, for you and your grandson Alessi, don’t you worry,’ Piedipapera told him.

‘But you’ll have to be satisfied with what you get, you know! ‘The strength of the young and the wisdom of the old,’ as they say. And I’ll rely on your goodness of heart for some consideration of my part in the deal.’

‘You have to cut your coat according to your cloth,’ replied padron ’Ntoni. ‘Necessity lowers nobility.’

‘All right, we understand one another,’ concluded Piedipapera, and he went off to discuss it with padron Cipolla, in the chemist’s shop, where don Silvestro had managed to lure them yet again, him, massaro Filippo and a few other big wigs, to discuss municipal affairs, because after all it was their money, and it is pure foolishness to count for nothing in the village when you are rich, and pay more taxes than others.

‘You who are so rich, you could give some bread to that poor padron ’Ntoni,’ added Piedipapera. ‘It wouldn’t harm you to take him on by the day, with his grandson Alessi; you know he knows more about the trade than anyone else, and he’d make do with very little, because they’re really on the bread line; you’d make a mint, you mark my words, padron Fortunato.’

Caught like that at that moment, padron Fortunato couldn’t say no; but after they had hummed and hawed a bit over the price — and since times were lean, men had no work — padron Cipolla was actually doing a charitable action in taking on padron ’Ntoni.

‘Yes, I’ll take him on if he comes to ask me in person! Would you believe that he has been bearing me a grudge ever since I put an end to my son’s marriage with Mena? Eh! that would have been some deal! And they have the cheek to cut me, into the bargain!’

Don Silvestro, massaro Filippo and also Piedipapera all hastened to say that Piedipapera was right. Brasi wouldn’t give him a moment’s peace, since he had put the idea of marriage into his head, and he was running after all the girls like a cat in January, so that he was a permanent worry to his poor father. Now the Mangiacarrubbe girl had entered the fray, having taken it into her head to get her hands on him, Brasi Cipolla, since he was there for the taking; she at least was a comely girl with broad shoulders, and not old and scrawny like la Vespa; but la Vespa had that smallholding, and all the Mangiacarrubbe girl had was her black tresses, the others said. The Mangiacarrubbe girl knew what you had to do if you wanted to get Brasi Cipolla, now that his father had tethered him back at home again because of the cholera, and he no longer went hiding on the sciara, or in the smallholding, or with the chemist and in the sacristy. She walked briskly in front of him, with her dainty new shoes; and in passing she brushed him with her elbow, in the midst of the crowd coming back from mass; or she would wait for him at the door, with her hands on her stomach, and send him a lethal look, a look that steals the heart away, and turn round to adjust the corners of her handkerchief under her chin to see if he was following her; or run home as he appeared at the end of the little street and go to hide herself behind the basil on the window sill, with those great dark eyes which devoured him from her hiding place. But if Brasi stopped to gaze at her like the great oaf he was, she turned her back on him, with her chin on her chest, all red, eyes lowered, chewing the edges of her apron, as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. At last, since Brasi couldn’t steel himself to take her, she had to collar him and say: ‘Listen, compare Brasi, why do you torment me so? I know I’m not meant for you; and it would be better if you didn’t pass by this way, because the more I see you the more I want to see you, and by now I’m the talk of the village; Zuppidda comes to the door every time she sees you pass, and then goes to tell everybody; though she’d do better to keep an eye on that flirt of a daughter of hers, Barbara, who has turned this little street into an open square, so many people come here, and she keeps quiet about how many times don Michele goes up and down, to see Barbara at the window.’

What with such natterings Brasi no longer budged from the street, in fact not even a sound thrashing could have dislodged him, and he was always hanging around, strolling about with his arms dangling, nose in the air and mouth agape, like a puppet. The Mangiacarrubbe girl for her part would be at the window, changing silk handkerchieves every day, and glass necklaces, like a queen. She put everything she had on display in that window, and that nincompoop Brasi took the lot for pure gold, and he was driven wild, to the point where he wasn’t afraid even of his own father, if he had come to remove him with a thrashing.

‘Here we see God’s handiwork in punishing padron Fortunato’s pride,’ people said. ‘It would have been a hundred times better for him to have given his son to the Malavoglia girl, who at least had that bit of dowry, and didn’t spend it on handkerchieves and necklaces.’

Mena on the other hand didn’t even put her nose to the window, because that would not have been right, now that her mother was dead, and she wore a black handkerchief; and then she had to look after her little sister, and act as mother to her, and she had no one to help her with the household chores, so that she even had to go to the wash place, and the fountain, and take the bread to the men, when they were out on a day’s work; so that she was no longer like St. Agatha, as she had been, when no one saw her and she was always at her loom. From the day Zuppidda had begun to preach from the balcony, with her spindle as though she wanted to gouge out his eyes with it, don Michele, if he came to hang around those parts for Barbara, would pass along the strada del Nero ten times a day, to show he wasn’t afraid of Zuppidda or of her spindle either; and when he got to the Malavoglia’s house he would slow down, and look inside, to see the fine girls who were growing up in the Malavoglia household.

Of an evening, coming back from the sea, the men would find everything ready: the pan boiling and the table set; but by now that table was too big for them, and they looked quite lost around it. They closed the door and ate in peace and quiet; then they would go to sit at the doorway, clasping their knees, to rest from the day’s labours. At least they lacked for nothing, and were no longer dipping into the money for the house. Padron ’Ntoni never took his gaze off that house, nearby as it was, with the windows closed and the medlar tree visible over the top of the courtyard wall. Maruzza had not been able to die there; nor perhaps would he; but the money was beginning to pile up, and his grandchildren would go back there one day, now that Alessi too was becoming a man, and was a good lad in the true Malavoglia mould. Then when they had married off the girls and bought back the house, if they could get a boat to sea as well, they would have all they wished for, and padron ’Ntoni would be able to close his eyes in peace.

Nunziata and cousin Anna too came to sit there on the stones, chatting after supper with those poor folks, who were so forsaken like themselves, so that it was almost as though they were relatives. It was almost a second home for Nunziata, and she brought her little ones with her, like a hen with her chicks.