Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories (27 page)
Read Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories Online
Authors: GIOVANNI VERGA
The cripple told him the same thing, that he must never go back there again, otherwise she would throw him out of the house, as poor and hungry as when she took him in.
‘Don’t you realize it wasn’t God but I who saved you from starving to death?’
Her husband had everything he wanted.
Well dressed, well fed, and with shoes on his feet, he had nothing else to do but wander about the village-square all day on a full stomach, his hands clasped behind his back, chatting to the greengrocer, the butcher and the fishmonger as they served their customers.
‘That’s all he’s good for, to do nothing!’ said The Redhead.
To which Lucia replied that he did nothing because he had a rich wife to support him.
‘If he’d married me he would have worked to support his wife.’
Santo, with his head in his hands, simply reflected that his mother had urged him to marry the cripple himself, and if anyone was to blame it was himself for letting go the food from their mouths.
‘When we’re young,’ he sermonized to his sister, ‘we fill our heads with foolish ideas like the ones you have now, and we only go for what
we like, without thinking of what comes afterwards.
Ask The Redhead here whether we would do what we did all over again!’
The Redhead, squatting on the doorstep, nodded her head in agreement as her offspring ran around her, shrieking their heads off and tugging at her clothes and her hair.
‘The good Lord could at least spare us the pain of having children!’ she whimpered.
She took with her to the fields, every morning, those of her children she could manage, like a she-mule with her foals, the baby girl tucked into her rucksack whilst she held the eldest one by the hand.
The other three she was forced to leave at home, to persecute her sister-in-law.
The baby in the rucksack and the little girl who trotted along limping behind her would cry out in unison along the path, in the cold air of the grey morning, and every so often the mother had to stop, scratch her head and sigh, ‘Oh, my God!’ Then she would breathe on the girl’s tiny hands that had turned purple from the cold, or she would haul the infant out of her rucksack to suckle her, and carry on walking.
Her husband meanwhile went on ahead, bent low beneath the burden he was carrying, scarcely turning round for a moment to allow her to catch up, all breathless, dragging the child behind her, her breast naked to the elements.
No longer did he turn to admire The Redhead’s flowing tresses, or her gently heaving breasts, as on the farm at Castelluccio.
Nowadays The Redhead exposed her bosom to the sun and the icy cold, like something that was useful only for giving suck, exactly like a she-mule.
She was truly a beast of the field (and her husband could have no complaints on that score), digging, reaping and sowing, better than a man, when she pulled up her skirts, with those half-white, half-brown legs of hers, in the open field.
She was twenty-seven now, with more to think about than pretty shoes and bright blue stockings.
‘We’re growing old,’ her husband would tell her, ‘and we have to think of the children.’ At least they worked as a team, like a pair of oxen harnessed to the same plough.
That, nowadays, was what their marriage had turned into.
‘Don’t I know it!’ mumbled Lucia.
‘I have their children to cope with, and no husband at all.
When this poor old woman passes on, they might still give me my daily bread, but then again they might turn me out on to the street.’
Her poor mother was at a loss for an answer, and simply sat by the bed with a scarf round her head and her face yellow with illness.
During the day she would sit quietly without a word outside the front door until the light of the setting sun faded over the grey roofs opposite, and the neighbours called in their chickens.
Except that, when the doctor came to see her, and her daughter held up the lighted candle to her face, she would ask him, with a timid smile, ‘For pity’s sake, doctor, is it going to take long?’
To which Santo, who had a heart of gold, responded, ‘I’m not worried about spending money on medicines, as long as that poor old woman stays here, and I know she’s waiting there in the corner of the room when I come back home.
She too worked hard all her life, and when we’re old, our children will do the same for us.’
Meanwhile, at Camemi, Carmenio too had gone down with the fever.
If his master had been a rich man he would have bought him medicines, but Vito was just a poor devil who depended on that small flock of his, and he was employing the lad out of charity.
He could easily have looked after those few sheep himself, but for the fear of catching malaria.
Besides, he was anxious to do a good deed by providing Nanni’s orphan child with something to eat, and thus winning the good graces of Providence, which would surely come to the boy’s assistance if there was any justice in heaven.
What could he do to help if all he owned was that scrap of pasture land at Camemi, where the foul air lay as thick as a blanket of snow, and Carmenio had picked up tertian fever?
One day, when the boy felt the fever crushing every bone in his body, he dropped off to sleep behind a large boulder that threw its shadow across the dusty lane and, as the horseflies buzzed in the sultry air of the hot summer’s day, the sheep burst through into the neighbouring field, a barren piece of ground no bigger than a pocket handkerchief, where the crop, such as it was, had been half-destroyed by the heat.
But to Zio Cheli, the field was the apple of his eye.
It had cost him gallons of sweat, it was his harvest dream, and he kept strict watch over it in the shade of the branches of an old tree.
When he saw the sheep running about, he shouted, ‘Ah!
Why bother paying these people?’ He laid into Carmenio with his fists and his feet, and Carmenio woke up to find
him running like a lunatic after the sheep, wailing and screaming.
All Carmenio needed was that barrage of blows to his body that was already racked with malaria!
But how could the neighbour feel compensated for the damage with merely a stream of abuse and oh my Gods?
‘The crop’s ruined,’ he yelled.
‘My children will go hungry next winter!
Look at the damage you’ve done, you murderer!
If I were to finish you off altogether, it wouldn’t be enough!’
Zio Cheli sought out witnesses to cite them before the judge, along with Vito and his sheep.
When Vito was served with the writ, he and his wife were in despair.
‘Ah!
That villain Carmenio has completely ruined us!’ ‘This is the way they pay you back for doing them a favour!’ ‘How was I to look after the sheep with all that malaria around?’ ‘Now Zio Cheli will end up by taking every penny we possess!’
It was mid-day, and the poor fellow ran to Camemi, out of his mind with despair over all the misfortunes pouring down upon him, and with every kick and every blow he dealt to Carmenio, he puffed for breath and muttered, ‘You’ve turned us into paupers!
You’ve ruined us, you villain!’
‘Don’t you see what a state I’m in?’ Carmenio replied as he tried to ward off the blows.
‘How am I to blame if I collapsed from the fever?
It took me by surprise, by the boulder over there!’ But it was no use, he had to pick up his stick and bundle, say goodbye to the two
onze
he was owed by Vito the farmer, and abandon the flock.
After so many misfortunes, Vito was prepared to catch the fever himself next time.
Carmenio said nothing to anybody when he returned home empty-handed, with his bundle and stick slung over his shoulder.
His mother was the only one to worry on seeing how pale and emaciated he was looking, but failed to discover the reason.
She found out later from Don Venerando, who lived nearby and also owned some land at Camemi that bordered on Zio Cheli’s field.
‘Don’t tell anyone why Zio Vito sent you away!’ the mother advised her son.
‘Otherwise nobody will offer you a job.’
And Santo also put in a word of advice: ‘Don’t tell anyone about your malaria.
Nobody’ll want you if they know you’re unwell.’
However, Don Venerando took him on for his sheep flock at Santa
Margherita, where the shepherd was robbing him blind, and doing him more damage than any sheep straying into a sown field.
‘I’ll see you have medicine,’ he said, ‘so that you don’t have to take a nap and allow my sheep to wander about where they like.’ Don Venerando had taken a kindly interest in the whole family for the sake of Lucia, whom he admired from his balcony when he was taking a breath of fresh air after lunch.
‘If you let me have the girl as well, I’ll pay her six
tarì a
month.’ Not only that, but he said that Carmenio would be able to take his mother with him to Santa Margherita, because the old woman was growing weaker by the day, and at least, living with the flock, she would not go short of eggs, milk, and meat broth when a sheep was slaughtered.
The Redhead went to great lengths to put together a bundle of white linen for her.
Harvest time was approaching, they would no longer be going to Licciardo every day, and everything became scarce in the winter.
And this time Lucia said she would be really glad to go into domestic service at Don Venerando’s.
They settled the old woman on to the donkey, Santo on one side and Carmenio on the other, with the goods and chattels behind her.
And while this was going on, the mother turned to her daughter, pale and heavy-eyed, and said, ‘Who knows, who can tell, if I’ll ever see you again?
They say I’ll be back in April.
You be a good girl now, and stay with your master.
At least you’ll have everything you need.’
Lucia sobbed into her apron, and The Redhead too, poor girl.
At that moment they were at peace with one another, and wept in each other’s arms.
‘The Redhead’s good-hearted really,’ said her husband.
‘The trouble is, we’re not rich enough to love each other all of the time.
When the hens have nothing to peck at in the coop, they peck at one another.’
Lucia was nicely settled now, in Don Venerando’s house, and said she wanted to live and die there, as the saying goes, to show how grateful she was to her master.
She had as much bread and minestra as she could eat, a glass of wine every day, and her meat dish on Sundays and holidays.
Meanwhile her monthly pay remained untouched, and in the evening she even found time to weave white linen for her own trousseau.
She already had her eye on her prospective husband.
Brasi, who was
living under the same roof, was the scullery-boy who prepared the meals, and who also lent a hand with jobs in the country when he was needed.
Their master had made his fortune in the same way, starting out in the service of the baron, and now he had his Don’s title and his farms and his cows and sheep in abundance.
Because Lucia came from a decent family that had fallen on hard times, and was known to be a respectable girl, she was given the less demanding jobs, washing dishes, keeping the cellar in order, and looking after the chickens.
Her sleeping quarters were a cubby-hole under the stairs that was like a small room, with a bed, a chest of drawers, and all the rest, and Lucia was so contented that she wanted to live and die there.
Meanwhile she was giving Brasi the glad eye, and she confided in him that in two or three years she would have her little nest-egg, and would be able to ‘take the plunge’, if the Lord so willed it.
Brasi turned a deaf ear to all this, though he liked Lucia, what with those coal-black eyes of hers, and the grace of God she had about her.
And she was just as fond of Brasi, who was stockily built and curly-haired, with fine features and eyes full of mischief.
As they washed the dishes or stoked up the fire beneath the copper kettle, he got up to all kinds of tricks to make her laugh, as though she were being tickled.
He would splash water down the back of her neck and stick endive leaves into her tresses.
Lucia would stifle her yells to prevent her master and mistress from hearing, and take refuge in the corner of the fireplace, her features red as burning coals, and start throwing twigs and dusters at him, while the water ran deliciously down her back.
‘It takes two to play,’ said Brasi.
‘I’ve done my bit, now it’s your turn.’
‘Oh no, it isn’t,’ Lucia responded, ‘I don’t like playing these games.’
Brasi pretended to be mortified.
He picked up the endive leaf she had thrown in his face and thrust it down his shirt,
7
murmuring, ‘This belongs to me.
Touch who dares, it’s mine, and it stays where it is!
If you want to put something of mine in the same place, here you are!’ At this he pretended to grab a handful of his hair and hand it to her, sticking out his tongue as he did so.
With her countrywoman’s fists she thumped him so hard he pretended to double up, claiming she would give him nightmares.
Then, grabbing
him by the hair like a lapdog, she felt a thrill of pleasure as she buried her fingers into his soft woollen curls.
‘That’s it, let off steam!
I’m not fussy like you.
With those hands of yours you can beat me as hard as you like!’
Once, as they were playing these games, Don Venerando surprised them and created a rumpus.
If there were any more goings-on of that sort in his house, he would boot out the pair of them.
Yet when he found the girl alone in the kitchen, he tried to caress her, taking her by the chin between his finger and thumb.
‘No!
No!’ she cried.
‘I don’t like playing these games.
If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll pack my things and leave.’
‘You play these games with him, don’t you!
But not with me, the master of the house!
What’s all this?
Don’t you realize I can give you rings and gold chains, and provide you with a dowry if I want to?’
According to Brasi he really could, because the master had all the money he wanted, and his wife wore a silk cloak like a real lady, now that she was all skin and bone and as ancient as a mummy, which was why her husband would go down to the kitchen to chat up girls.
He went there to keep an eye, also, on how much wood was being burnt, and how much meat they were cooking.
He was rich, yes, but he knew how to hold on to his fortune, and he was forever having to placate his wife, who was hard to please now that she was a fine lady, and regularly complained about the smoke from the fire and the smell of onions.
‘I intend to make up my dowry with my own hands,’ Lucia retorted.
‘I’m my mother’s daughter, and I’m going to keep my honour till a good man comes along in search of a wife.’
‘Very well, keep it!’ the master responded.
‘Let’s see what a fine dowry you put together, and how many men come looking for this precious honour of yours!’
If the macaroni were overcooked, or Lucia brought a couple of fried eggs to table that were burnt at the edges, Don Venerando abused her roundly in his wife’s presence.
He seemed another man entirely as he stuck out his chest, shouting, ‘What’s all this pig’s swill?
These two servants are eating me out of house and home!
If it happens again I’ll throw the food in her face!’
His wife, bless her, was afraid the neighbours might hear the uproar, and sent away the maidservant, shrieking in a high-pitched voice, ‘Go back to the kitchen!
Get out, you slovenly good-for-nothing!’
Lucia returned to sit weeping in the corner of the fireplace, but Brasi cheered her up with his prankish smile, saying, ‘What’s it matter?
Let them squawk!
A fine mess we’d be in if we paid attention to our employers!
If the eggs were burnt at the edges, it’s too bad!
I couldn’t be chopping wood in the backyard and turning over the eggs at the same time.
They get me to do the cooking as well as the odd jobs, and expect to be served like royalty!
Don’t they remember the time he sat eating bread and onion under the olives, and she gathered corn for him in the fields?’
Cook and maidservant then told each other how they had been dogged by ill luck, and how they both came of respectable parents who had once been richer than their master.
Brasi was the son of no less a man than a wheelwright.
He himself was to blame for dropping out of the craft and taking it into his head to wander round the country fairs, chasing after the wagon of a trader, who had taught him how to cook and look after animals.
Lucia recited the litany of her own troubles: her father’s death, the livestock, The Redhead, the poor harvests.
She said they were so alike that she and Brasi, there in the kitchen, seemed to be made for one another.
‘Like your brother and The Redhead?’ Brasi replied.
‘Thanks very much!’ However, he was not going to fling that marriage in her teeth and leave it at that.
It was not because she was a peasant girl that he refused to marry her.
But they were both so poor it would be like throwing themselves down the well with a stone round their necks.
Lucia suffered all this in silence, and whenever she felt like crying she would retire to her cubby-hole under the stairs, or to the corner of the fireplace when Brasi was nowhere about.
Spending all day with him by the kitchen fire, she had grown to love the fellow.
When the master stormed and bellowed, it was she who took the blame, and she always saw that Brasi had the bigger helping and the fuller glass.
She would go out to the yard and chop wood for him, and she learned how
to turn over the eggs and serve up the macaroni at exactly the right moment.
When Brasi saw her crossing herself as she was preparing to eat, with the bowl on her lap, he said, ‘Have you never seen food before?’
He was constantly complaining about everything, about living in a prison, or about having only three hours in the evening to drop in at the tavern to see his mates.
Sometimes Lucia, blushing and lowering her gaze, would pluck up courage and say, ‘Why go to the tavern?
Stay away from it.
It’s no place for you.’
‘Anyone can see you’re a peasant!’ he would reply.
‘You people think every tavern has the devil inside it.
My dear woman, I come from a long line of craftsmen.
I’m no country bumpkin!’
‘I say it for your own good.
You spend good money there, and you could easily end up by picking a fight with someone.’
With a thrill of satisfaction, mollified by her words and by those eyes that were still turned shyly away from him, Brasi said, ‘What does that matter to you?’
‘Nothing.
I’m saying it for your own sake.’
‘Don’t you get bored, spending all day inside the house?’
‘No, I thank God for the way I am, and only wish my family could say the same.
I have everything I need.’
She was drawing off some wine, crouching down with the earthenware jar between her legs, and Brasi had descended with her into the cellar to light the way.
The cellar was big and dark, like a church, with not a sound to be heard, and the pair of them, Brasi and Lucia, alone together below ground, when he put an arm round her shoulders and planted a kiss on those coral-red lips of hers.
Poor Lucia, leaning forward and keeping her eyes on the jug, waited anxiously, with neither of them saying a word, and all she could hear was his heavy breathing and the gurgling of the wine.
Then suddenly, trembling all over, she let out a strangled cry and started backward, spilling some froth from the red wine on to the floor.
‘What’s the matter?’ exclaimed Brasi.
‘Anyone would think I’d given you a slap!
So you don’t really love me at all!’
She dared not look at him, even though she was dying to do so.
Red
in the face, she stared at the spilt wine, murmuring, ‘Poor me!
What have I done?
Poor me!
The master’s wine!’
‘Oh, forget the wine, the master’s got plenty more.
Pay attention to me instead.
Do you love me or don’t you?’
This time, without replying, she let him take her hand, and when Brasi asked her to return his kiss, she turned and kissed him, flushed with something more than a feeling of shame.
‘Has no one ever kissed you before?’ Brasi asked, laughing.
‘That’s a good one!
You’re shaking all over as if I said I was going to kill you.’
‘Yes, I do love you,’ she replied.
‘I’ve been dying to tell you.
Don’t worry about it if I’m still shaking.
I was worried about the wine.’
‘You too, then!
When did it happen?
Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It was when we were saying we were made for one another.’
‘Come on,’ said Brasi, scratching his head.
‘Let’s go back up, in case the master comes.’
Lucia was enormously happy after being kissed like that.
She felt that Brasi had sealed on her lips his promise to marry her.
But he never even talked about it, and if the girl were to mention the subject, he would answer, ‘Why are you in such a hurry?
Anyway, there’s no point in tying a halter round our necks when we can be together here as though we were man and wife.’
‘No, it’s not the same.
Now we each live for ourselves, but when we’re married, we’ll be one, and one alone.’
‘A fine pair the two of us’ll make!
Besides, we’re not made of the same stuff.
Now if only you had some kind of dowry!’
‘What a low creature you are!
You’re not in love with me at all!’
‘Oh yes, I am.
I’ll do anything for you, but I don’t want to hear that sort of talk.’
‘In that case you’ll get nothing out of me!
Let me alone, keep your eyes off me!’
Now that she realized that all men were liars and deceivers, she wanted nothing more to do with them.
She would rather throw herself head first down the well, she would become a Child of Mary, she would take her good name and hurl it out of the window!
What was the use of it, without a dowry?
Very well then, very well, she would go crawling to that dirty old man of a master, and trade her honour for
a dowry.
Don Venerando was forever at her heels with his compliments and complaints, looking after his interests, seeing whether they were putting too much wood on the fire or using too much oil in the cooking.
He would send Brasi off to buy him an ounce of snuff, and try to give Lucia a pinch on the cheek, chasing her round the kitchen on tiptoe so that his wife would hear nothing, reproaching her for lack of respect by making him run after her in that fashion!
‘No!
No!’ she shrieked, like a scalded cat.
She would rather take her things and go away!
‘And what’ll you eat?
And where will you find a husband without a dowry?
Take a look at these earrings!
And I’ll present you with 20
onze
for your dowry.
Brasi would give his eye-teeth for 20
onze!’
Ah, yes!
That low creature of a Brasi had left her to be mauled by the filthy, shaking paws of their master!
He’d left her with the thought of her mother who could not survive for very much longer, and of the house now broken up and full of troubles, and of Tricky Joe who had ditched her to go and eat the widow’s bread!
He’d left her with her mind filled with the temptation of the earrings and the 20
onze!
So one day she came into the kitchen looking all perturbed, with the golden earrings dangling against her cheeks.
Brasi rubbed his eyes, and said, ‘What a pretty picture you make, Comare Lucia!’
‘Is that how you like to see me, then?
Very well, that’s good!’
Now that he saw her with the earrings and all the rest, Brasi did his utmost to make himself useful and solicitous as if she had become a second mistress of the house.
He saw to it that she got the bigger helping and sat in the best place at the fireside.
He opened his heart to her, pointing out how poor they both were, and how much good it did to a man’s soul to share his troubles with the person he loved.
If only he could manage to lay his hands on 20
onze
, he would start up a little café and take a wife, with himself in the kitchen and his wife behind the counter.
No longer would they have to take orders from others.
If the master wished to do them a good turn, it was no trouble, because to him, giving away 20
onze
was like taking a pinch of snuff.
Brasi wouldn’t be asking any awkward questions, not he!
In this world, one hand washes the other.
And no one could blame him for earning his corn in whatever way he could.
Poverty was no crime.