Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories (14 page)

In any case, she only saw him on Saturday evenings, when he came back home with his paltry weekly wage, and since he was
malpelo
she was always afraid he had kept a bit of it back.
Just in case he had, and to be on the safe side, his elder sister greeted him with one or two clouts around the ear.

However, the pitowner had confirmed that his wages amounted to such and such a figure and no more, and to tell the truth even that was too high for Malpelo, a ragamuffin nobody wanted to see anywhere near him, a person to be avoided like a mangy dog, and they greeted him with the toes of their boots whenever he came within range.

He truly was an ugly-looking creature, with a surly, quarrelsome and excitable temperament to match.
At noon, when all the other mineworkers were sitting round in a circle eating up their minestra and taking a break, he would squat some distance away with his wicker basket between his knees, nibbling away at his mouldy bread like an animal, and they all joined in to poke fun and throw stones at him until the foreman sent him back to work with a kick in the pants.
He thrived on being kicked about, and allowed them to load him up more heavily than the grey mule, without ever daring to complain.
He always went around in rags, covered from head to foot in red sand, because his sister was engaged to be married now and had other things to think about.
But all the same everyone in Monserrato and Carvana knew who he was, so much so that they called the mine where he worked Malpelo’s Mine, much to the annoyance of the owner.
In fact, they only kept him on out of charity and because his father, Misciu, had died in the mine.

The way he died was that, one Saturday, he’d decided to finish off some piece-work he had taken on, which involved removing a pillar, originally erected to hold up the roof of the cave but now no longer needed, and he’d agreed with the owner to extract at a rough estimate thirty-five to forty cartloads of sand.
Misciu had been digging away for three whole days, and there was still enough work left to keep him busy till lunch time on Monday.
It was a rotten deal, and only a fool like Misciu would have let himself be cheated in that way by the owner.
No wonder he was called Misciu Blockhead, and people thought of him as the pack-mule for the whole mine.
Instead of laying into his workmates and arguing with them, the poor devil simply ignored them and got on with earning his daily bread.
But Malpelo sulked as if their remarks were being aimed at him, and although he was very small he pulled such long faces that they told him to cheer up, saying, ‘Come on, now, you’re not going to die in your bed, like that father of yours.’

However, Misciu never died in his bed at all, even though he was such an inoffensive creature.
Old Mommu, known as The Cripple, had said all along that the pillar was so dangerous that he wouldn’t have gone near it for all the money in the world.
But then, life in the caves is a dangerous business, and if you listen to all the nonsense people spout, you might as well go and become a lawyer.

That Saturday evening, Misciu was still scraping away at his pillar long after sunset had come and gone, and all his mates had lit up their pipes and left the site, telling him to enjoy himself as he scratched away for the owner’s benefit, and to be careful not to die like a rat in a trap.

He was used to their taunts and paid no attention to them, but simply replied with his groans of ‘Ah!
Ah!’ as he dug away with his spade, meanwhile muttering to himself, ‘That’s for the bread!
That’s for the wine!
That’s for Nunziata’s new skirt!’ And in this way he worked out how he would be spending the proceeds of the piece-work he had let himself in for.

Outside the cave, the sky was teeming with stars, while down there his lantern was pouring out smoke and swinging from side to side.
The big red pillar, ripped open by the blows of his spade, twisted and bent itself into an arc as if it had stomach-ache, and groaned on its own account.
Malpelo cleared everything from the floor of the cave, making sure the pickaxe, the empty lunch-bag and the flask of wine were in a safe place.
His father, poor fellow, was very fond of him, and kept shouting, ‘Stay back!’ or ‘Watch out!
Watch out for stones or thick sand falling from above.’ Then suddenly his voice was no longer heard, and Malpelo, who had turned away to stow the tools in the wicker bag, heard a dull, thunderous roar as of sand shifting en masse all at once, and the light went out.

The pit-engineer was at the theatre that evening, and would not have exchanged his seat in the stalls for a royal throne when they came to tell him about Malpelo’s father, who had died like a rat in a trap.
All the women of Monserrato were shrieking and beating their breasts to announce the terrible distress that Santa, Misciu’s wife, was suffering because of the accident.
She was the only one saying nothing, but simply stood there with her teeth chattering as though she had caught a tertian fever.
When they had explained how the accident had happened, three hours before, and told the engineer that Misciu Blockhead must be well and truly in Paradise by now, he set off with ropes and ladders to drill holes in the sand, more for the sake of his conscience than for any other reason.
Forty cartloads, indeed!
The Cripple said it would take a whole week at least to clear the floor of the cave.
A colossal amount of sand had fallen, fine as it ever comes and well scorched by the lava, so you could work it into mortar with your hands, one part sand to two parts lime.
There was enough there to keep you filling up carts for weeks.
Blockhead had made a really good job of it!

In the crowd of people all talking at once, nobody was taking any notice of a child’s voice, yelling like a lunatic, ‘Dig!
Dig here!
Quick!’

‘Hello!’ someone said in the end.
‘That must be Malpelo!
Where’s he sprung from?
If it had been anyone else he would have been dead by now.’ And one of them said he was in league with the Devil, and another that he was like a cat with nine lives.

Malpelo ignored them.
He wasn’t even crying, but carried on
burrowing furiously away at the sand with his fingernails.
Nobody had noticed him, and when they approached him, carrying a lantern, they caught sight of a face that was frightening to behold, contorted with distress, glassy-eyed, and foaming at the mouth.
His nails had been torn off and were dangling from his fingers, covered in blood, and it took a great effort on their part to extract him from the scene.
No longer able to scratch them, he started to bite like a rabid dog, and they had to grab him by the hair and drag him away by main force.

Eventually, however, after a few days he went back to work at the mine on the arm of his mother, who was crying and holding him by the hand.
People have to eat, after all, and jobs are not always easy to come by.
There was no way to shift him from the cave, and he dug away furiously, as though every basketful of sand was relieving the weight on his father’s chest.
Every so often he would suddenly stop digging, holding his spade in the air to stare grimly ahead of him, rolling his eyes, as if to listen to what the Devil was whispering in his ears from the other side of that mountain of fallen sand.
For several days he behaved more badly and wickedly than ever, so much so that he hardly ate a thing and threw his bread to the dog, as though it wasn’t fit for human consumption.
The dog came to love him, because dogs never look further than the hand that feeds them, but the grey mule, poor beast, bow-legged and emaciated, was the target for every outburst of Malpelo’s frustrated anger.
He beat it mercilessly with the handle of his spade, muttering as he did so, ‘That’ll kill you off more quickly!’

After the death of his father he seemed to be possessed by the Devil, and worked like one of those wild buffaloes that are led by an iron ring through the nose.
Knowing he was
malpelo,
he lived up to his name more conscientiously than ever, and if an accident happened, or a workman lost his tools, or a mule broke its leg, or the roof of a tunnel caved in, everyone put the blame on him.
He took without a murmur all the blows they rained on him, like mules that bend their backs but go on doing what they have to do in their own good time.
He treated the younger boys with sheer brutality, and seemed intent on avenging himself on the weak for all the misfortunes he imagined that others had inflicted on himself and his father, and for the way they had let him die.
When he was alone he would mutter to himself, ‘They’ll do the
same to me!
They called my father Blockhead because he let them walk all over him!’ On one occasion, as he was passing the pitowner, he gave him a withering look and mumbled, ‘He’s the one who did it, for thirty-five
tarì!’
Then again, behind The Cripple’s back, he said to himself, ‘And he’s another one!
He was even laughing that night!
I heard him myself!’

By way of a refined piece of cruelty he appeared to take under his wing one of the poorer boys, who had come to work at the mine a little while before, and who had given up his trade after dislocating a thigh bone when he fell from scaffolding.
When he was carrying his basket of sand on his back, the poor wretch would hop along as if he was dancing the tarantella, and all the mineworkers laughed at him and called him The Frog.
But frog or no frog, when he was working below ground he earned his crust, and Malpelo even gave him some of his own, simply for the pleasure, so they said, of playing the tyrant over him.

In fact, he found a hundred different ways to torment him.
He would beat him for no reason at all without mercy, and if The Frog failed to put up a fight, he would turn really nasty and hit him harder, saying, ‘Take that, you idiot!
You’re an idiot!
If you don’t have the courage to defend yourself against someone like me, who doesn’t wish you any harm, it means you’ll let anybody come and trample all over you!’

Again, if The Frog was mopping up the blood flowing from his mouth or his nose, he would say, ‘The more you feel the pain of being beaten, the better you learn to hand it out to others.’ Whenever Malpelo, driving a laden mule up the steep slope below ground, found it digging in its hooves from exhaustion and bending its back under the load, leaden-eyed and panting for breath, he would use the handle of his spade to beat it without mercy, and the blows would ring out loud and clear as he struck it on its shins and its bare ribs.
There were times when the beast was bent double under the battering, but being powerless to move one leg in front of the other, it sank to its knees, and there was one mule that had fallen so often that it had two wounds on its forelegs.
Malpelo would say to The Frog, ‘The mule gets beaten because it can’t fight back, and if it could, it would trample us under its feet and steal the food out of our mouths.’

Or else he would say, ‘If you happen to give anyone a hiding, make sure you beat him as hard as you can, and then the others will respect you and you’ll have a lot fewer of them on your back.’

Apart from that, when he was working with his pick and shovel he went at it like a maniac as though he had it in for the sand, and he hacked and dug away at it through clenched teeth, groaning, ‘Ah!
Ah!’ as his father did.
‘The sand can never be trusted,’ he muttered to The Frog under his breath, ‘it’s like all the others, who stamp on your face if you’re weaker than they are, and if you’re stronger than them, or have the crowd on your side, like The Cripple, it surrenders.
My father beat away at it regularly for his whole life, which is why they called him Blockhead, and in the end the sand crept up on him and swallowed him, because it was stronger than he was.’

Every time The Frog had a heavy job to do, and cried over it like a frail old woman, Malpelo slapped him on the back and shouted, ‘Be quiet, you sissy!’ But if the lad couldn’t get it done, he gave him a hand, saying to him in a proud sort of voice, ‘Leave it to me.
I’m stronger than you are.’ Or else he would let him have his half-onion and be content with eating dry bread, shrugging his shoulders and saying, ‘I’m used to it.’

He was used to everything, in fact, to being beaten, being kicked, being struck with the handle of a spade or the strap of a pack-saddle, being knocked about and taunted by everybody, and sleeping on stones, with his arms and his back aching from a fourteen-hour shift.
He was used to going hungry as well, whenever the pitowner punished him by denying him his bread or his minestra.
He used to say the pitowner never denied him his ration of beatings, but the beatings didn’t cost him anything.
He never complained, however, and cunningly took secret revenge with some devilish trick or other, with the result that they gave him a beating for various things that happened even when he was not to blame, on the grounds that if Malpelo was not responsible, he was quite capable of having done it.
He never attempted to prove they were wrong, which would not have helped in any case.
Sometimes, when The Frog, frightened to the point of bursting into tears, pleaded with him to tell the truth and prove his innocence, he repeated, ‘What’s the use?
I’m
malpelo!’
and nobody could tell whether he was shaking
his head and shrugging his shoulders from a sense of fierce pride or hopeless resignation, or whether it was a case on his part of obtuseness or timidity.
What was certain was that his own mother had never known him to embrace her, so she had never done the same to him either.