Seated by her, Alessi would say:

‘Have you finished your cloth for to-day?’ or: ‘Will you be going to pick olives at massaro Filippo’s on Monday? What with it being the olive harvest, you’ll have no trouble finding work by the day, and you can take your little brother along with you, because now they’ll give him a couple of pence a day too.’ Nunziata gravely told him all her plans, and asked his advice, and they drew aside and talked sagely together, as though they were already full of years.

‘They’ve learned young because they’ve seen so many troubles,’ padron ’Ntoni would say. ‘Misfortune brings sound judgement.’ Alessi, with his arms round his knees just like his grandfather, would ask Nunziata:

‘Will you have me for a husband when I’m grown up?’

‘There’s plenty of time,’ she would say.

‘Yes, there is time, but it’s better to start thinking now, so that I’ll know what I have to do. First we must marry off Mena, and Lia, when she’s grown up too. Lia is beginning to want long clothes, and handkerchieves with roses, and then you’ve got to settle your own children. Somehow we must buy a boat; and the boat will help us to buy the house. My grandfather would like to buy back the house by the medlar tree, and I would too, because I know my way about it, blindfold, or at night; and there’s a big courtyard for the tackle, and you’re right near the sea. And when my sisters are married, grandfather can come and be with us, and we’ll put him in the big room in the courtyard, which gets the sun; so that when he can’t come down to the sea any more, poor old man, he can sit at the doorway into the courtyard, and in the summer he’ll have the medlar tree to give him shade. We’ll have the room overlooking the vegetable patch, if you like, and you’ll have the kitchen near by, so we’ll have everything to hand. Then when my brother ’Ntoni comes back we’ll give it to him, and we’ll go up to the attic. All you’ll need to do is go down the little stairs to be in the kitchen or vegetable patch.’

‘The fireplace in the kitchen needs rebuilding,’ said Nunziata. ‘The last time I cooked the soup on it, when poor comare Maruzza didn’t feel like doing anything, you had to hold the saucepan up with stones.’

‘Yes, I know,’ answered Alessi with his chin on his hands, nodding. He had a look of enchantment in his eyes, as though he could see Nunziata in front of the hearth, and his grief-stricken mother beside the bed. ‘You too could find your way around the house by the medlar tree in the dark, you’ve been there so often. Mother always said you were a good girl.’

‘Now they’ve planted onions in the vegetable patch, and they’ve come up as big as oranges.’

‘Do you like onions?’

‘Of course, I have to. They’re good with bread, and they don’t cost much. When we haven’t got enough money for soup, me and the little ones always eat onions.’

‘That’s why they sell so many. Zio Crocifisso doesn’t care about having cabbages and lettuces, because he has another vegetable patch in his own house, and he’s grown nothing but onions. But we’d have broccoli, and cauliflowers, wouldn’t we? That’ll be good, won’t it?’

Squatting on the step, with her arms around her knees, the young girl too was gazing into the distance; and then she began to sing, while Alessi sat there listening intently. At last she said:

‘But there’s plenty of time.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Alessi; ‘first we have to marry off Mena, and Lia too, and settle your little ones. But it’s as well to start thinking about it.’

‘When Nunziata sings,’ said Mena, appearing in the doorway, ‘it’s a sign that the next day will be fine, and she’ll be able to go to the wash place.’ Cousin Anna was in the same position, because her smallholding and vines were at the wash place, and what was good news for her was when she had washing to do, all the more so now that her son Rocco deposited himself in the wine shop from one Sunday to the next, to digest the ill-humour which that flirt of a Mangiacarrubbe girl had visited upon him.

‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’ padron ’Ntoni said to her. ‘Perhaps this way he’ll learn sense, your Rocco. It’ll do my ’Ntoni good to be away from home too; then when he comes back, tired of wandering around the world, everything will seem good to him, and he won’t complain about things any more; and if we manage to have boats at sea once again, and to put our beds up there, in that house, you’ll see what a fine thing it will be to rest in the doorway, of an evening when you come back tired, and the day has gone well; and to see the light in that room where you’ve seen all the dear faces you’ve ever known. But now so many of them have gone away one by one, and they’ll never be back, and the room is dark and the door closed, as if those who’ve gone away had put the key in their pockets for ever.’

“Ntoni shouldn’t have left,’ added the old man after a pause. ‘He should have known that I’m old, and if I die these children will have nobody’.

‘If we buy the house by the medlar tree while he’s away, he’ll hardly be able to believe it when he comes back,’ said Mena, ‘and he’ll come looking for us here.’

Padron ’Ntoni shook his head sadly.

‘But there’s plenty of time,’ he too said at last, like Nunziata; and cousin Anna added:

‘If ’Ntoni comes back rich, he’ll buy the house.’ Padron ’Ntoni said nothing; but the whole village knew that ’Ntoni was to come back rich, after having been away so long seeking his fortune, and many were already envying him, and wanting to leave everything and go off in search of their fortunes, like him. And indeed they were right, because all they were leaving behind was silly whimpering women; and the only one who hadn’t the heart to leave his woman was that blockhead, la Locca’s son, who had the sort of mother you know her to be, and Rocco Spatu, whose heart was in the wine shop.

But luckily for those silly women, suddenly the news spread that padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni was back, one night, on a ship from Catania, and was ashamed to be seen without shoes. If it had been true that he was coming back rich, he wouldn’t have had anywhere to put his money, so ragged was he. But his grandfather and brother and sisters greeted him warmly all the same, as though he had come back rolling in it, and his sisters hung around his neck, laughing and crying, because ’Ntoni hardly recognised Lia, she had grown so, and they said to him:

‘Now you won’t leave us again, will you?’

His grandfather too blew his nose, and muttered:

‘Now I can die in peace, knowing that these children won’t be left alone and stranded.’

But for a week ’Ntoni didn’t have the courage to set foot in the street. When they saw him everyone laughed in his face, and Piedipapera went round saying:

‘Have you seen the riches padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni has brought back with him?’ And those people who had been rather slow to make up their bundles before embarking on that giddy venture, held their sides for laughing.

When someone doesn’t manage to grab fortune by the tail, he is an imbecile, as is well-known. Don Silvestro, padron Cipolla and massaro Filippo weren’t imbeciles, and everyone was pleased to see them, because those who have nothing stand agape looking on at the rich and fortunate, and work for them, like compare Alfio’s donkey, for a handful of hay, instead of lashing out, and kicking the cart under foot, and lying down on the grass with their hooves in the air.

The chemist was right when he said that the world as it was right now needed a kick, and a fresh start. And yet he too, with his big beard, preaching about fresh starts, was one of those who had grabbed fortune by the tail, and he kept it in his glass cases, and enjoyed prosperity standing on the doorstep of his shop, chatting with this person or that, and when he had pounded away making a hole in the drop of dirty water in his mortar, his work was done.