What a fine trade his father had taught him, making money with water from the water tanks! But ’Ntoni’s grandfather had taught him a trade which consisted of breaking his back and arms all day long, and risking his neck, and dying of hunger, and never having a day to stretch out in the sun like Mosca’s donkey. A thieving trade which destroyed your soul, by the Virgin! and he had had it up to here, so that he preferred to do as Rocco Spatu did, which at least was nothing. Already he was past caring about Zuppidda and comare Tudda’s Sara, or any other girl in the world. All they did was look for a husband who would toil like a maniac to provide them with food, and buy them silk handkerchieves, while they sat out on the step of a Sunday, with their hands on their full stomachs. But in his case it was he who wanted to sit down with his hands on his stomach, of a Sunday and a Monday too, and all the other days, because there is no point in wearing yourself to a shadow for nothing.

So ’Ntoni too acted the preacher, like the chemist; at least he had learned this much on his travels, and now his eyes were opened, like kittens’ ten days after they’re born. ‘The hen that leaves the coop comes home with a full stomach.’ At least he had filled his stomach with good sense, and he would go into the square to tell people what he had learned, to Pizzuto’s shop and to Santuzza’s wine shop too. He didn’t sneak off to Santuzza’s on the quiet any more, now that he was a man, and his grandfather couldn’t pull his ears, after all; and he could have held his own if they chided him for going after such crumbs of comfort as he could find.

Instead of seizing him by the ear, his grandfather, poor thing, approached him with kindness.

‘You see,’ he would say to him, ‘now that you’re here we’ll soon make up the money for the house’ — he always kept on with that refrain about the house. ‘Zio Crocifisso has said that he won’t give it to anyone else. Your mother, poor creature, wasn’t able to die there! The house will help to provide for Mena’s dowry; because at my age, you know, it’s hard to go out by the day, and be at someone else’s beck and call, when you’ve been your own master. Do you think we should buy the boat with the money for the house? Now you’re a man, and you must have your say too, because you have more judgement than an old man like me. What would you like to do?’

What ’Ntoni wanted to do was nothing! What did he care about the house and the boat? Another bad year would come, another cholera epidemic, another disaster, and eat up the house and the boat, and they’d all be back to acting like ants. A fine business! And anyhow when they had got the house and the boat, did that mean an end to work? or that one could eat meat and pasta every day? While in those places where he had been, there were people who went around in carriages all day long, no more no less. People in comparison with whom don Franco and the town clerk worked like donkeys covering their reams of ridiculous paper, and making holes in the dirty water in the mortars. At least he had the wit to want to know why there were people in this world who enjoyed themselves without lifting a finger, and had been born with silver spoons in their mouths, and others who had nothing, and led lives of hopeless drudgery.

And the idea of going out by the day didn’t appeal to him at all, after all he had been born his own master, even his grandfather had said as much. To have someone else call the tune, people who had come up from nothing, and everyone in the village knew how they had made their money bit by bit, sweating and straining! He would work by the day because his grandfather was forcing him to, and he hadn’t the heart to say no. But when the skipper was towering over him, like a cur, and shouting to him from the stern: ‘Hey, you there, what’s going on?’, then he felt like hitting him over the head with his oar, and preferred to stay at home mending the fish traps, and the nets, sitting on the shore with his legs outstretched, and his back to the stones; because then no one criticised you if you sat for a moment with your arms crossed.

Rocco Spatu went to stretch out there too, and Vanni Pizzuto, when he hadn’t anything else to do, between one beard and the next, and even Piedipapera, because his trade was chatting with this person or that, looking for opportunities for deals. And they talked about what was happening in the village, of what donna Rosolina had told her brother, under the seal of confession, when the cholera had been raging, that don Silvestro had swindled her out of twenty five onze, and she couldn’t call in the police, because donna Rosolina had robbed those twenty five onze from her brother the priest, and they would all have known the reason she had given don Silvestro that money, to her shame!

‘Anyhow,’ observed Pizzuto, ‘where did donna Rosolina get those twenty five onze from? ‘Stolen goods are soon gone.’

‘At least they were still in the family,’ said Spatu; ‘if my mother had twelve tari and I took them from her, would I rate as a thief?’

Since they were on the subject of thieves, they began to talk of zio Crocifisso, who had lost more than thirty onze, they said, with so many people having died of cholera, and he had been left with the pledges. Now, because he didn’t know what to do with all those rings and ear-rings he’d been left, Dumb bell was marrying la Vespa; this was no rumour, because they’d even seen him going to sign on at the town hall, for the banns, with don Silvestro as witness.

‘It’s not true he’s taking her because of the ear-rings,’ said Piedipapera, who was in a position to know. ‘After all, the ear-rings and necklaces are pure gold and silver, and he could have gone and sold them in the city; indeed he would have made a hundred per cent on the money he had lent. He’s taking her because la Vespa has made it quite clear to him that she was about to go to the notary with the intention of marrying compare Spatu, now that the Mangiacarrubbe girl has lured Brasi Cipolla into her house. No offence, compare Rocco.’

‘That’s all right, compare Tino,’ answered Rocco Spatu. ‘I don’t mind; anyone who trusts that monstrous pack of women is a fool. The one I love is Santuzza, who gives me credit when I need it; and you’d need two Mangiacarrubbe girls to make one of her! with that chest, eh, compare Tino?’

‘A handsome hostess means a big bill,’ said Pizzuto spitting.

‘They want husbands so they can be supported by them,’ added ’Ntoni. ‘They’re all the same.’ Piedipapera continued: ‘So zio Crocifisso ran panting to the lawyer, puffing like a grampus, and he’s really taking la Vespa.’

‘What a bit of luck for the Mangiacarrubbe girl,’ exclaimed ’Ntoni.

‘A few years from now, when his father dies, God forbid, Brasi Cipolla will be stinking rich,’ said Spatu.

‘Now his father is raising hell, but as time goes by he’ll resign himself. He has no other children, and all he can do is marry, if he doesn’t want the Mangiacarrubbe girl to enjoy his property against his will.’

‘I’m delighted,’ concluded ’Ntoni. ‘The Mangiacarrubbe girl has nothing. Why should padron Cipolla be the only one who’s rich?’

Here the chemist entered the discussion, having come to smoke his pipe on the shore, after lunch, and he kept harping on that the world had taken a wrong turning, and everything should be started again from scratch. But with that lot, it really was like trying to make a hole in water. The only one who had any grasp was ’Ntoni, who had seen the world, and had his eyes that bit open, like kittens; as a soldier he had been taught to read, and so he too went to the door of the chemist’s shop to listen to what the papers said, and to chat with the chemist, who was good-hearted enough with everyone, and hadn’t his wife’s fancy ideas, so that she would scold him, asking him why he got involved in matters that didn’t concern him.

‘You have to let women speak on, and just do things on the quiet,’ said don Franco as soon as the Signora had gone up into her room. He had no objection to mingling with people who went barefoot, provided they didn’t put their feet on the chair struts; and he explained to them what the papers said word by word, stabbing the newsprint with his finger and saying that the world ought to be run just as they said there.

Arriving on the shingle where his friends were having their discussions, don Franco winked at ’Ntoni Malavoglia, who was mending the nets with his legs stretched out and his back up against the stones, and nodded in his direction, shaking his big beard in the air.

‘It’s a fine just world where some have their backs against stones, while others lie with their bellies in the sun, smoking their pipes, whereas all men ought to be brothers, and Christ, the greatest revolutionary of them all, said so, and to-day his priests act the policeman and the spy.’ Didn’t they know that don Michele’s business with Santuzza had been discovered by don Giammaria, in confession?

‘Don Michele indeed! Santuzza had got massaro Filippo; and don Michele is always buzzing about the strada del Nero, without the slightest fear of comare Zuppidda and her spindle.