But women have no business sense, and padron ’Ntoni had to explain to her that if the deal went well they would have bread for the winter, and ear-rings for Mena, and Bastiano would be able to go to Riposto and back in a week, with Menico della Locca. Meanwhile Bastiano was snuffing out the candle without saying a word. That was how the lupin deal came about, and with it the voyage of the Provvidenza, which was the oldest of the village boats but which had a lucky name anyhow. Maruzza still felt black at heart, but she kept quiet, because it wasn’t her business, and she quietly went about organizing the boat and everything for the trip, the fresh bread, the pitcher with the oil, the onions and the fur-lined coats stowed under the footrest and in the locker.
The men had been up against it all day, what with that shark zio Crocifisso, who had sold them a pig in a poke, and the lupins, which were past their prime. Dumb bell said he knew nothing about it, honest to God. ‘What’s been agreed is fair indeed,’ was his contribution. And Piedipapera fussed and swore like a maniac to get them to agree, insisting heatedly that he had never come upon such a deal in his whole life; and he thrust his hands into the pile of lupins and showed them up to God and the Virgin, calling upon them as witnesses. Finally, red, flustered and beside himself, he made a last desperate offer, and put it to zio Crocifisso who was still acting dumb and to the Malavoglia who had the sacks in their hands: ‘Look. Pay for them at Christmas, instead of paying so much a month, and you’ll save a tari per salma. Now can we call an end to it?’ And he began to put the lupins into the sacks: ‘In God’s name, let’s call it a day!’
The Provvidenza set sail on Saturday towards evening, and the evening bell should already have rung, though it hadn’t, because mastro Cirino the sexton had gone to take a pair of new boots to don Silvestro the town clerk; that was the time of evening when the girls clustered like a flock of sparrows around the fountain, and the evening star was already shining brightly, so that it looked like a lantern hanging from the Provvidenza’s yard. Maruzza stood on the seashore with her youngest child in her arms, not saying a word, while her husband unfurled the sail, and the Provvidenza bobbed like a young duckling on the waves which broke around the fangs of rock offshore.
‘When the north is dark and the south is clear, you may set to sea without any fear,’ padron ’Ntoni was saying from the shore, looking towards Etna which was all black with clouds. Menico della Locca, who was in the Provvidenza, shouted something, but the sea swallowed it. ‘He said you can give the money to his mother, la Locca, because his brother is out of work,’ added Bastianazzo, and this was the last word they heard him speak.
The whole village was talking of nothing but the lupin deal, and as La Longa came home with Lia in her arms, the neighbours stood on their doorsteps to watch her pass.
‘What a deal!’ bawled Piedipapera, clumping along with his twisted leg behind padron ’Ntoni, who had gone to sit down on the church steps, alongside padron Fortunato Cipolla and Menico della Locca’s brother, who were enjoying the cool of the evening. Old zio Crocifisso was squawking like a plucked fowl, but there was no need to worry, the old man had plenty of feathers to spare. ‘We had a hard time of it, didn’t we, padron ’Ntoni?’ — but he would have thrown himself off the top of those sharp rocks for padron ’Ntoni, as God lives, and zio Crocifisso paid heed to him, because he called the tune, and quite a tune it was, more than two hundred onze a year! Dumb-bell couldn’t blow his own nose without Piedipapera.
La Locca’s son, overhearing mention of zio Crocifisso’s wealth — and zio Crocifisso really was his uncle, being la Locca’s brother — felt his heart swell with family feeling.
‘We’re related,’ he would say. ‘When I work for him by the day he gives me half-pay, and no wine, because we’re relatives.’
Piedipapera snickered. ‘He does that for your good, so as not to get you drunk, and to leave you the richer when he dies.’
Compare Piedipapera enjoyed speaking ill of people who cropped up in conversation; but he did it so warmly, and so unmaliciously, that there was no way you could take it amiss.
‘Massaro Filippo has walked past the wine shop twice,’ he would say, ‘and he’s waiting for Santuzza to signàl to him to go and join her in the stable, so they can tell their beads together.’
Or he might say to La Locca’s son:
‘Your uncle Crocifisso is trying to steal that smallholding from your cousin la Vespa; he wants to pay her half of what it’s worth, by giving her to understand that he’s going to marry her. But if she manages to get something else taken from her too, you can say goodbye to any hope of that inheritance, along with the wine and the money that he never gave you.’
Then they started to argue, because padron ’Ntoni maintained that when all was said and done, zio Crocifisso was a decent member of the human race, and had not thrown all judgment to the dogs, to consider going and marrying his brother’s daughter.
‘How does decency come into it?’ retored Piedipapera. ‘He’s mad, is what you mean. He’s swinish rich, while all la Vespa has is that pocket-handkerchief smallholding.’
‘That’s no news to me,’ said padron Cipolla, swelling like a turkey-cock, ‘it runs along the side of my vineyard.’
‘Do you call that couple of prickly pears a vineyard?’ countered Piedipapera.
‘There are vines among those prickly pears, and if St. Francis sends us rain, it will produce some fine grape must, you’ll see. The sun set behind the clouds to-day — that means wind or rain.’
‘When hidden by cloud the sun goes to rest, then you may hope for a wind from the west,’ specified padron ’Ntoni.
Piedipapera couldn’t bear that pontificating pedant padron Cipolla, who thought he was always right just because he was rich, and felt that he could force those who were less well off than himself to swallow his rubbish wholesale.
‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison,’ he went on. ‘Padron Cipolla is hoping for rain for his vineyard, and you’re hoping for a west wind for the Provvidenza. A rippling sea means a fresh wind, as the proverb has it. The stars are all out to-night, and at midnight the wind will change; listen to it blowing.’
You could hear carts passing slowly by on the road. ‘There are always people going about the world, day and night,’ compare Cipolla then observed.
And now that you couldn’t see either land or sea any more, it seemed as if Trezza were the only place in the whole world and everyone wondered where those carts could be going at that hour.
‘Before midnight the Provvidenza will have rounded the Capo dei Mulini,’ said padron ’Ntoni, ‘and then this strong wind won’t be against her any more,’
All padron ’Ntoni thought about was the Provvidenza, and when he wasn’t talking about his own affairs he made no more contribution to the conversation than a discarded broom handle.
So Piedipapera said to him, ‘You ought to go and join the chemist’s lot, they’re discussing the pope and the king. You’d cut a fine figure there. Listen to them bellowing.’
The chemist held forth at the door of his shop, in the cool, with the parish priest and one or two others. As he knew how to read, he would read the newspaper aloud to the rest, and he also owned the history of the French Revolution, which he kept to hand, under the glass mortar, and that was why he quarrelled all day long with don Giammaria, the parish priest, to pass the time, and this made them almost ill from bad temper; but they wouldn’t have lasted a day without seeing each other. Then on Saturdays, when the newspaper arrived, don Franco would actually run to half an hour’s candle, or even an hour, at the risk of being scolded by his wife, so as to parade his ideas and not just go to bed like a dumb beast, like compare Cipolla or compare Malavoglia. And during the summer there wasn’t even any need for the candle, because you could stay out at the front door under the lamp, when mastro Cirino lit it, and sometimes don Michele, the customs guard, would come along too; and so would don Silvestro, the town clerk, pausing for a moment or two on his way home from his vineyard.
Then, rubbing his hands, don Franco would say that they were quite a little Parliament there, and he would go and settle in behind the counter, running his fingers through his bushy beard with a special sly smile as though he wanted to eat a man for breakfast, and at times he would let slip the odd brief phrase to the public, getting up on his short legs, so that you could tell he was shrewder than the others, and indeed he induced in don Giammaria a feeling of such intense gall that he found him quite unbearable, and would spit assorted Latin tags in his direction.
1 comment