After all, he’s got a pistol.’
‘Santuzza has both, I tell you! Those women who confess every Sunday have a big sack to put their sins in; that’s why Santuzza wears that medal on her chest, to cover all the filth beneath.’
‘Don Michele is wasting his time with Zuppidda; the town clerk has said that he’ll get her to fall for him like a ripe pear.’
‘Oh, I know! In the meantime don Michele is enjoying himself with Barbara, and the others in the street. I know,’ and he winked slyly at ’Ntoni.
‘He has nothing to do, and every day he gets his four tari wages.’
‘That’s what I always say,’ repeated the chemist tugging at his beard. ‘The whole system is rotten; idlers are paid to do nothing, and cuckold us, who pay them, that’s how it is. People get four tari a day to stroll under Zuppidda’s windows; and don Giammaria pockets a lira a day to hear Santuzza’s confession, and listen to all the filth she tells him; and don Silvestro… I know! and mastro Cirino gets paid to irritate us with his bells, but doesn’t light the lamps, and pockets the oil himself, and goodness knows what other skullduggery goes on there at the town hall. My word! And they wanted to make a clean sweep of them all, but then they all came to some kind of an understanding yet again, don Silvestro and the rest, and not another word was said about it. Just like those other thieves in Parliament, who do nothing but jabber among themselves; but do you have any idea of what they say? They froth at the mouth, and seem to grab one another by the hair from one moment to the next, but they’re laughing up their sleeves at those idiots who have any faith in them. It’s all bluster, eyewash for the people who pay the thieves and toadies, and police spies like don Michele.’
‘A fine business,’ said ’Ntoni, ‘four tari a day to stroll up and down. I’d like to be a customs guard.’
‘That’s it,’ said don Franco with his eyes starting out of his head. ‘Here you see the results of the system. The result is that everyone becomes riff-raff. No offence, compare ’Ntoni. ‘The fish stinks from the head downwards.’ I’d be like you too, if I hadn’t studied, and didn’t have this trade which earns me my daily bread.’
Indeed, they said, the trade his father had taught him was a good trade, pounding away with a pesde and making money out of dirty water; while there were people who had to roast their heads in the sun, and get cramp in their legs and backs in order to earn ten sous; and so they left the meeting and the chatting, and went off to the wine shop, spitting as they went.
When his grandson came home drunk of an evening, padron ’Ntoni did all he could to get him to go to bed without the others noticing, because this was one thing they had never had in the Malavoglia family, and it made the tears start in his eyes. At night, when he got up and called Alessi to go down to the sea, he let the other boy sleep; he would have been good for nothing, anyway. At first ’Ntoni had been ashamed, and had gone to wait for them on the shore, as soon as they came back, with his head bent. But gradually he became hardened, and said to himself that he would have a Sunday again, to-morrow.
The poor old man looked for all the means he could to touch the boy’s heart, and even had his shirt exorcised by don Giammaria on the quiet, and spent three tari on it.
‘You see,’ he said to him, ‘we’ve never had this in the Malavoglia family! If you start taking Rocco Spatu’s path, your brother and sisters will follow. ‘One bad apple infests the barrel,’ and that money we’ve put aside with so much effort will go up in smoke. ‘For a horse’s nail the kingdom was lost,’ and then what shall we do?’
’Ntoni kept his head bowed, and muttered to himself; but the next day he was at it again, and once he said to him: ‘What do you expect? At least when I’m drunk I don’t think about my troubles.’
‘What troubles? You’re healthy, you’re young, you know your trade, what more do you ask? I am old, and your brother is still a boy, and we’ve pulled ourselves out of the ditch. Now if you were willing to help us we could get things back as they were, even if we no longer felt the old happiness, because the dead don’t come back to life, but at least we wouldn’t have other troubles; and we’d all be together, as the fingers of a hand should be, and with bread in the house. And if I die, what will become of you? Because, you see, I can’t help feeling afraid every time I leave the shore. I’m old…’
When his grandfather succeeded in touching him, ’Ntoni began to cry. His brother and sisters, who knew everything, cowered in a corner when they heard him coming, as though he were a stranger, or as though they were afraid of him, and their grandfather, with his beads in his hands, called upon the blessed soul of Bastianazzo, or of his daughter-in-law Maruzza, to work a miracle. When Mena saw him come in with a pale face and bright eyes, she would say to him: ‘Come in this way, grandfather is in there!’ And she let him in through the little door into the kitchen; then she would begin to cry quietly by the hearth; so that at last ’Ntoni said: ‘I won’t go to the wine shop again, not even if they drag me there!’ And he started to work with a will like before; indeed, he got up before the others, and went to wait for his grandfather on the shore, two hours before daybreak, when the Three Kings were still high over the village belltower, and the crickets were trilling in the small holdings as though they were right nearby. His grandfather could hardly contain himself for joy, and would chatter on to show him how much he loved him, and to himself he said that this miracle was the work of those blessed souls, ’Ntoni’s parents.
The miracle lasted the whole week, and on Sunday ’Ntoni didn’t even want to go out into the square, so as not to glimpse the wine shop and his friends calling him there. But he almost broke his jaw yawning during that whole day with nothing to do, and it seemed endless. He was no longer a young boy who could pass the time going for broom on the sciara, singing like his brother Alessi and Nunziata, or sweeping the house like Mena, but nor was he an old man like his grandfather, to enjoy himself mending broken barrels and fish traps. He sat by the door on the strada del Nero, and not even a hen passed by, and he heard the voices and laughter from the wine shop. And he actually went off to bed out of sheer idleness, and on Monday he started to sulk again. His grandfather said to him: ‘For you it would be better if there were no Sundays; because the next day you’re like one possessed.’ So that was what would have been better for him, that there should never be any Sundays, and his heart sank to think that all days should be Mondays.
So that when he came back from the sea, of an evening, he didn’t even feel like going to sleep, and vented his feelings by roaming about with his miseries, until at last he went back to the wine shop.
At first, when he came home unsteady on his feet, he would go in shame-facedly, making himself small and muttering excuses, or at least holding his tongue. But now he would raise his voice, pick a quarrel with his sister if she was waiting for him at the door, pale-faced and swollen-eyed, and if she told him in a low voice that his grandfather was there, he would answer that he didn’t care. The next day he would get up upset and ill-tempered, and begin to shout from morning till night.
Once there was a nasty scene.
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