Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories (26 page)

For Nanni had been sick a long time, with the sort of illness that costs you an arm and a leg, and the family furniture too.
Every time the doctor spread out the sheet of paper on his knee to write the prescription, Nanni shot a pitiful look at his hands, and mumbled, ‘For pity’s sake, doctor, make it as short as you can!’

The doctor was only doing his job, like everyone else.
It was when Massaro Nanni was doing his own job that he had picked up that fever, down at Lamia,
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where God bestows his blessings so freely on the land that the crops grow as tall as a man.
The neighbours told him over and over again, ‘You’re bound to snuff it, Nanni, on that Lamia farm.’

‘Anyone would think I was a lord,’ he replied, ‘free to do whatever he liked!’

His children, who were like the fingers on the same hand as long as their father was alive, were now compelled to look to their own interests.
Santo had a wife and small children, Lucia was left high and dry with no dowry, and Carmenio, if he wanted to eat, would have to go and find work for himself away from home.
It was anybody’s guess which of the three was going to maintain their old mother, sickly as she was, as they were all penniless.
Mourning the dead is all very well when you have nothing else on your mind!

The oxen, the sheep, and the grain in the store had gone to glory with the master.
All that remained was the gloom-filled house, with
the empty bed and the orphaned mourners.
Santo shifted in his movables along with The Redhead, saying he would take care of his mother, but the others claimed he was doing it to save paying his rent.
Carmenio packed up his things and went away to become a shepherd for Vito the sheep farmer, who had a stretch of pasture land at Camemi.
Lucia threatened to move out and go into domestic service, rather than live under the same roof as her sister-in-law.

‘No!’ said Santo.
‘I won’t have people saying my sister had to go and work as a maid for anybody.’

‘He only wants me to work for The Redhead!’ Lucia mumbled.

The big problem was this sister-in-law who had driven herself into the family as firmly as a nail.
‘What am I to do about it, now that I’ve got her?’ groaned Santo, shrugging his shoulders.
‘I should have listened to my father, God rest his soul, when there was still time!’

His father, God rest his soul, had warned him, ‘Steer clear of that Nena!
She has no dowry, no roof over her head, and no land.’

But at Castelluccio Nena was forever at his back, whether he was digging or reaping.
She would gather up the corn for him or clear the rocks with her own hands from under his feet.
And whenever he was resting from his day’s labours, leaning his back against the wall by the gate of the labourers’ quarters in the hush of the evening, as the sun was setting over the fields, she would come up and say, ‘God willing, Santo, this year you won’t have laboured in vain!’ or ‘If the harvest turns out well for you, Santo, you should take that big piece of land down on the plain where the sheep have been grazing.
It’s lain fallow for two years’ or ‘This winter, Santo, if I can find the time, I’m going to knit you a pair of leggings to keep you warm.’

Santo had got to know Nena when he was working at the Castelluccio farm.
She was the daughter of the farm watchman, a girl with red hair.
Nobody wanted anything to do with her, which was why the girl made a fuss of any poor hound that came within her reach.
She would go hungry to present Santo with a black silk stocking cap every year on St Agrippina’s Day,
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and to make sure a flask of wine or a hunk of cheese was waiting for him when he arrived at the farm, saying, ‘Take this, Santo, for my sake.
It’s what the master drinks’ or ‘I was worried when you came without any lunch, the week before last.’

He was unable to say no, and accepted everything.
The most he could do, out of politeness, was to reply, ‘It’s not right, Nena, for you to go hungry for my sake.’

‘I feel happier if you have it.’

Every Saturday evening, when Santo returned home, his father, God rest his soul, would tell him all over again, ‘Steer clear of that Nena.
She doesn’t have this, that, and the other.’

‘I know I have nothing,’ Nena would say, as she sat on the low wall gazing at the setting sun.
‘No land, no property, and I’ve had to steal the bread from my mouth to put together my few bits of white linen.
My father’s a poor watchman living on his master’s charity, and nobody’s going to take a daughter without a dowry off his hands.’

But what she did have was a white neck, like most redheads, and when she lowered her head, with all those worries inside it, the sun lit up the golden hair behind her ears, and the downy complexion of her peach-like cheeks.
And Santo stared into her deep blue eyes, and admired the fullness of her breasts as they heaved gently up and down like a field of corn.
‘Don’t upset yourself, Nena,’ he told her.
‘There’ll be plenty of men wanting to marry you.’

She shook her head, and the red ear-rings that glistened like rubies brushed against her cheeks.
‘No, Santo, no,’ she said.
‘Nobody’ll ever want to marry a plain-looking girl like me.’

‘Just think!’ he said, struck by a sudden thought.
‘Just think how wrong people are!
They say red hair’s ugly, and yet your red hair doesn’t worry me in the least.’

His father, God rest his soul, on seeing that Santo was so wild about Nena that he wanted to marry her, said to him one Sunday, ‘You’ve made up your mind to take The Redhead, haven’t you?
Go on, tell me.’

Not knowing where to put himself, Santo stood there with his hands behind his back, unable to raise his head and look his father in the face.
But he agreed it was so, saying that without The Redhead he couldn’t go on living, and it was God’s will they should be man and wife.

‘You need to work out whether you can support a wife, knowing I have nothing to give you.
I and your mother here have just one thing
to tell you: think twice before you marry, because bread is scarce and children come all too quickly.’

His mother, huddled up on the bench and pulling a long face, tugged the tail of his coat and whispered, ‘Try and fall in love with the widow of Massaro Mariano.
She’s got plenty of money, and she won’t be too choosy because she’s paralysed.’

‘That’s a good one!’ Santo mumbled.
‘Massaro Mariano’s widow’ll be delighted to take a pauper like me for a husband!’

Nanni took the same view, saying that Massaro Mariano’s widow was looking for a husband as rich as herself, even though she was paralysed.
In any case the trouble was that his grandchildren might be born cripples.

‘Think twice about it, that’s all,’ he repeated.
‘Bear in mind that bread is scarce, and children come all too quickly.’

Then on St Bridget’s Day,
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towards evening, Santo had accidentally bumped into The Redhead, who was gathering asparagus shoots along the lane.
She blushed on seeing him, as though unaware that he had to pass that way on returning to the village, and she lowered the hern of her skirt that was tucked into her waist as she went crawling through the cactus bushes.
Blushing no less deeply, the young man stared at her and said nothing.
Then finally he began to speak and told her he was returning home after finishing his week’s work.

‘Tell me, Nena, do you have any news for me to take back to the village?’

‘If I wanted to sell the asparagus I could come with you, and we could walk along together,’ said The Redhead.
He nodded his head up and down like a fool, but then she added, tucking in her chin above those gently heaving breasts, ‘But you don’t want me to come, do you, because women are a nuisance.’

‘I’d carry you there in my arms, Nena, honestly I would.’

Whereupon Nena began to nibble at a corner of the red headscarf she was wearing.
Santo was equally at a loss for something to say, and simply stood and stared at her as he switched his knapsack from one shoulder to the other like an idiot.
The air was heavy with the scent of calamint and rosemary, and up on the side of the mountain the cactus bushes were catching the last rays of the sun.
‘You must go now,’ Nena
told him.
‘You must go.
It’s getting late.’ She then turned to listen to the great-tits singing merrily in the sky, but Santo stayed where he was.
‘You must go,’ she said, ‘before people see us here alone together.’

Santo was at last on the point of proceeding on his way when he reverted to his earlier idea, and with a further shrug of the shoulders to adjust his knapsack, he told her he really would carry her in his arms if she would come with him.
And he stared into those eyes of Nena’s, that had turned away from him in search of asparagus shoots between the stones.
And he stared into her face, that glowed red as if reflecting the setting sun.

‘No, Santo, you must go alone.
I’m just a poor girl without a dowry.’

‘Let’s leave all that to Providence, come on.’

She kept telling him that she was not for him, now with a dark and sulky expression on her face.
Discouraged, Santo adjusted the knapsack once again on his shoulders and made to turn away, lowering his head.
The Redhead insisted he should at least take the asparagus she had gathered specially for him.
It would make a good meal if he agreed to eat it for her sake.
And she held out the two corners of her apron to show him how much she had gathered.
Santo put an arm round her waist and kissed her on the cheek, his heart melting in his breast.

At that very moment her father arrived on the scene, and the girl ran off in terror.
The watchman had a gun slung over his shoulder, and vowed he would blast Santo to kingdom come for playing such a trick on him.

‘No!’ Santo replied, holding up his hands in an attitude of prayer.
‘I don’t get up to those sorts of tricks!
I honestly want to marry your daughter, not because I’m afraid of your gun, but because I’m the son of a gentleman, and Providence will see us through because we’ve done nothing wrong.’

Santo, the tips of all ten fingers and thumbs stuck in his coat pockets, was in his seventh heaven as he surveyed his bride’s red hair, the roll of yarn, and all the merrymaking that was going on that Sunday in his honour.
The watchman, red-nosed, was skipping about in his oversize boots, determined to kiss one by one all the people who were present.

‘Not me!’ said Lucia, who was upset because of the yarn they were taking away from her.
‘I don’t want any of your kisses.’ She stayed in a corner of the room, pulling a very long face, as if she already knew what was going to happen to her when her father breathed his last.

As they trudged along the stony lanes on their way to Licciardo, their knapsacks slung over their shoulders, wiping away the sweat on their shirtsleeves, all they could think about was the state of the crops on either side and ahead of them.
To them, the crops were like an invalid with a weak heart, yellow at first, then turning limp and soggy in the pouring rain.
And as they began to recover, there would be weeds everywhere, that Nena would pull out one by one on all fours, ruining her hands in the process, with her fat belly sticking out beneath her, and her skirt pulled up above the knees so as not to get it torn.
She was quite unconcerned about the weight she was carrying from
her pregnancy, or the pain in her back, and every time she freed a green stalk from the weeds it was like giving birth to a child.
When finally she collapsed on the bank at the end of the row, panting for breath and brushing back the hair behind her ears with both hands, in her mind’s eye she could see the cornstalks standing tall in June, touching one another as they swayed in the gentle breeze.
Then she would reckon up with her husband as he stood on the bank untying his sodden leggings and cleaning his spade on the grass.
‘So much was planted, so twelve, or ten, or even seven will see us through.
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The stalks are none too strong, but it’s a nice thick crop.
As long as March is not too dry, and we only get rain when we need it, but Saint Agrippina, bless her, will see to all that.’

The golden sun lingered, shining down upon the green fields from a fiery and cloudless western sky, where larks were singing and descending like black specks to their nests.
Spring, green as hope, was everywhere apparent, in the cactus hedgerows, in the thickets along the lane, between the stones, and on cottage roofs.
As Santo trudged along behind his companion, heavy with child as she was and bent beneath the sack of animal-feed she was carrying, his heart swelled with tenderness for the poor woman, and he chattered away to her, panting for breath from the climb, about what he would do if the good Lord blessed the crops right to the end.
There was no longer any talk of red hair, whether or not it was beautiful, and that sort of nonsense.
But when May came along with its frosts to stab them in the back and destroy all their efforts and their hopes for the harvest, husband and wife sat on the bank surveying the field that was turning yellow before their very eyes, like an invalid on his way to the next world.
Without uttering a word, they simply sat there, elbows on knees, white-faced, eyes staring from their sockets.

‘It’s God’s judgement!’ muttered Santo.
‘My father, rest his soul, warned me what would happen!’

The ill humour of the gloomy, muddy paths penetrated the walls, also, of the poor fellow’s cottage.
Husband and wife sulked and turned their backs on one another, they quarrelled whenever The Redhead asked for money to go shopping, the husband came home late, there was no wood for the fire, or the wife’s pregnancy made her seem slow
and lazy.
They pulled long faces, they swore, they even came to blows.
Santo would grab Nena by her red hair, she would dig her nails into his face, and neighbours would come running to hear The Redhead screaming that her accursed husband was trying to make her miscarry, and that he didn’t give a damn about sending an innocent soul to limbo.
Afterwards, when Nena had given birth, they made peace, and Santo took the baby girl in his arms as though he had produced a princess, and ran around proudly showing it off to all his friends and relations.
Whilst his wife was confined to bed, he prepared soup for her, he swept the house, he winnowed the rice, he stayed with her the whole time, so that she never lacked a thing.
And when he appeared on the doorstep, looking like a wet-nurse, with the baby snuggled up in his arms, he would answer anyone who asked by saying, ‘It’s a girl, my friend.
I was always unlucky, and now I have a baby girl.
That’s all my wife can manage.’

Whenever The Redhead had been beaten by her husband, she would take it out on her sister-in-law, telling her she never did anything to help around the house, whereupon Lucia would retort by saying that she had no husband but had to put up with other people’s children.

The mother-in-law, poor woman, tried to stop their quarrelling, and kept saying, ‘I’m the one to blame.
All I’m good for now is to take the bread out of your mouths.’

All she was really good for now was to suffer all her troubles, and keep them hidden inside: Santo’s hardships, his wife’s wailing, the distance separating her from her other son, which was like a nail driven into her heart, the unhappiness of Lucia, who was without a rag to put on her back, and never saw so much as a dog passing beneath her window.

On Sundays, if the other girls invited Lucia to join them for a gossip in the shade, she simply shrugged her shoulders and replied, ‘Why do you want me to come over?
To show you the silk dress I haven’t got?’

Sometimes the group of bystanders was joined by Tricky Joe, the frog-catcher, who never said a word but stood listening with his back to the wall, hands in pockets, spitting to the left and to the right.
Nobody knew what he was doing there, but whenever Lucia appeared in the doorway he would pretend to turn his head to spit, and cast a
furtive glance in her direction.
In the evening, when all the doors were shut, he would even venture to serenade her on her doorstep, to his own basso accompaniment, ‘Boom boom!
boom!’ Sometimes his voice was recognized by village youths going home late, who would taunt him by croaking away like frogs.

Lucia meanwhile pretended to busy herself about the house, keeping her head down and away from the light, so that no one could see her face.
But if her sister-in-law were to come out with There goes that music again!’ she would turn on her like a viper and answer back, ‘The music bothers you, too, does it?
Is nobody allowed to see or hear anything in this prison?’

The mother was listening also, and when she saw what was going on, she looked at her daughter and said that as far as she was concerned the music made her feel happy.
Lucia pretended to know nothing about it.
But every day, at the time when the frog-catcher was due to pass by, she appeared in the doorway with her spindle.
As soon as he had got back from the river and done the rounds of the village, he would turn up in those parts with his string of frogs, yelling, ‘Singing fish!
Singing fish!’ as if the poor devils in those back streets could ever afford to buy any from him.

‘They’re supposed to be very good for invalids!’ said Lucia, who was dying to do a deal with Tricky Joe.
But her mother refused to let them spend good money on her account.

Seeing that Lucia, chin resting on her chest, was looking towards him out of the corners of her eyes, Tricky Joe slowed down as he was passing, and next Sunday he plucked up enough courage to move nearer and seat himself on the veranda steps of the house next door, dangling his hands between his thighs.
He told the women how he went about catching frogs, and how it required the cunning of the devil.
He, Tricky Joe, was as cunning as a cartload of monkeys, and he waited for the women to go away before turning to Lucia, saying, ‘The crops could do with some rain!’ and ‘There won’t be many olives this year.’

‘What does that matter to you?
You live on frogs,’ Lucia said.

‘Listen, my love, we are all like the fingers of one hand, like the tiles on a roof, that let the water pass from one to the other.
If no corn is
harvested, and no oilseed, no money comes into the village, and nobody buys my frogs.
D’you follow?’

That ‘my love’ was like sweet music to the girl’s ears, and it kept coming back to her mind the whole evening, as she sat spinning beside the lantern.
She turned it over in her head again and again, as often as she wove her spindle up and down.

Her mother seemed to read what the spindle was saying, and when a whole fortnight went by with no sign of the frog-seller and no sound of a serenade, she said to her daughter-in-law, ‘What a sad winter it is!
Not a soul to be heard in the neighbourhood.’

The front door had to be kept closed now because of the cold, and from the window all one could see was the window opposite, streaming dark with rain, or a neighbour returning home inside a sodden overcoat.
But of Tricky Joe there was no sign whatever, and Lucia said that if any poor soul was taken ill and needed a drop of frog soup, it was just too bad.

‘He must have found another way to earn his living,’ her sister-in-law replied.
‘That stupid job is for people who can do no better.’

One Saturday evening, Santo overheard what they were saying, and out of brotherly concern he gave her a scolding.

‘I don’t like the sound of this Tricky Joe business.
No sister of mine will marry a fellow who makes a living out of frogs, and spends the whole day crawling about in mud!
You must go and look for one of your own kind, a farm worker, even if he owns nothing.’

Lucia remained silent, with lowered head and knitted brow, and it was all she could do to stop herself blurting out, ‘Where am I to find a farm worker?’ As if it was up to her to find one!
The only man she had found was no longer anywhere to be seen, perhaps because The Redhead had offended him with her jealousy and her gossip.
That was the reason.
Santo always said what his wife told him to say, and she went round telling everyone the frog-catcher was a good-for-nothing, and of course Tricky Joe had got wind of it.

So the sisters-in-law would be constantly bickering with one another.

‘I can never be my own mistress in this house!’ muttered Lucia.
‘The mistress is the one who pulled the wool over my brother’s eyes, and got him to marry her.’

‘I wouldn’t have pulled any wool over his eyes if I’d known what was coming to me.
I only had one mouth to feed, and now I have five.’

‘What does it matter to you whether the frog-catcher has a proper job?
If he were my husband, it would be up to him to maintain me.’

The mother, poor thing, tried to pacify them, as gently as she could.
But being a woman of few words, all she could do was to go from one to the other, running her hands through her hair, murmuring, ‘For pity’s sake!
For pity’s sake!’

The two women took not a blind bit of notice, scratching one another’s faces after The Redhead let fly a term of abuse, yelling, ‘You bitch!’

‘Bitch yourself!
You stole my brother!’

At that point Santo intervened, and gave them both a hiding to restore the peace.

The Redhead burst into tears, and mumbled, ‘I only said it to help her!
Troubles soon come to a woman who marries without a dowry.’

So as to pacify his sister, who was shrieking and tearing her hair out, Santo repeated, ‘What do you expect me to do about it, now that she’s my wife?
But she cares about you, and what she says is for your own good.
D’you see what good it did the two of us to marry?’

Lucia turned to her mother, complaining, ‘I wouldn’t say no to doing the same!
I’d even be better off as a domestic servant!
If a decent fellow shows his face around here, they drive him away.’ And her thoughts turned to the frog-seller, who never showed his face there any more.

Later on they heard he had taken up with Massaro Mariano’s widow, and the pair of them were thinking about getting married, because although it was true he had no proper job, he was a splendid specimen of youth, as good-looking as St Vitus
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in the flesh, no doubt about it.
And the paralytic was so stinking rich that she could make a husband out of any man who took her fancy.

‘Look around you, Joe,’ she told him.
‘This is all pure white linen, these ear-rings and necklaces are all pure gold, this big jar has forty gallons of oil inside it, and that large wicker basket is filled with beans
to overflowing.
If you wanted to, you could live like a prince, without having to spend your time up to your knees in bog-water catching frogs.’

‘I wouldn’t say no,’ said Tricky Joe.
But then he thought about Lucia’s dark eyes, looking out for him from behind her muslin-covered window, and the widow’s paralytic hips, bobbing up and down like frogs as she took him round the house showing him all those belongings of hers.
In the end, though, after three whole days without earning a penny, he was forced to call on the widow for a square meal and something to drink.
And as he stood in her doorway, looking out at the rain, he decided to say yes, so as to keep body and soul together.

‘Honestly, I had to do it to keep body and soul together!’ he said, his hands joined as if in prayer, when he returned to Lucia’s front door to look for her.
‘If it wasn’t for the poor harvest, I would never have married the cripple, Lucia!’

‘Go and tell that to the cripple!’ replied the girl, foaming at the mouth.
‘All I want to tell you is to clear off, and never come back here again.’