Short Sicilian Novels

by Giovanni Verga

  All Mazzaro’s property. It seemed as if even the setting sun and the whirring cicalas belonged to Mazzaro, and the birds which went on a short, leaping flight to nestle behind the clods, and the crying of the horned-owl in the wood. It was as if Mazzaro had become as big as the world, and you walked upon his belly. Whereas he was an insignificant little fellow, said the litter-driver, and you wouldn’t have thought he was worth a farthing, to look at him, with no fat on him except his paunch, and it was a marvel however he filled that in, for he never ate anything more than a penn’orth of bread, for all that he was rich as a pig, but he had a head on his shoulders that was keen as a diamond, that man had.

  In fact, with that head as keen as a diamond he had got together all the property, whereas previously he had to work from morning till night, hoeing, pruning, mowing, in the sun and rain and wind, with no shoes to his feet, and not a rag of a cloak to his back; so that everybody remembered the days when they used to give him kicks in the backside, and now they called him Excellency, and spoke to him cap in hand. But for all that he hadn’t got stuck-up, now that all the Excellencies of the neighbourhood were in debt to him, so that he said Excellency meant poor devil and bad payer; he still wore the peasant’s stocking-cap, only his was made of black silk, which was his only grandeur, and lately he had started wearing a felt hat, because it cost less than the long silk stocking-cap. He had possessions as far as his eyes could reach, and he was a long-sighted man – everywhere, right and left, before and behind, in mountain and plain. More than five thousand mouths, without counting the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, fed upon his lands, without counting his own mouth, that ate less than any of them, and was satisfied with a penn’orth of bread and a bit of cheese, gulped down as fast as he could, standing in a corner of the store-barn big as a church or in the midst of the corn-dust, so that you could hardly see him, while his peasants were emptying the sacks, or on top of a straw-stack, when the wind swept the frozen country, in the time of the sowing of the seed, or with his head inside a basket, in the hot days of harvest-time. He didn’t drink wine, and he didn’t smoke, he didn’t take snuff, although indeed he grew plenty of tobacco in his fields beside the river, broadleaved and tall as a boy, the sort that is sold at ninety shillings. He hadn’t the vice of gaming nor of women. As for women he’d never had to bother with any one of them save his mother, who had cost him actually a dollar when he’d had her carried to the cemetery.

  And he had thought about it and thought about it times enough, all that property means, when he went with no shoes on his feet, to work on the land that was now his own, and he had proved to himself what it was to earn his shilling a day in the month of July, to work on with your back bent for fourteen hours, with the foreman on horseback behind you, laying about you with a stick if you stood up to straighten yourself for a minute. Therefore he had not let a minute of his whole life pass by that wasn’t devoted to the acquiring of property; and now his ploughs were as many as the long strings of crows that arrive in November; and other strings of mules, endless, carried the seed; the women who were kept squatting in the mire, from October to March, picking up his olives, you couldn’t count them, as you can’t count the magpies that come to steal the olives; and in vintage time whole villages came to his vineyards, so that as far as ever you could hear folks singing, in the countryside, it was at Mazzaro’s vintage. And then at harvest time Mazzaro’s reapers were like an army of soldiers, so that to feed all those folks, with biscuit in the morning and bread and bitter oranges at nine o’clock and at mid-day, and home-made macaroni in the evening, it took shoals of money, and they dished up the ribbon-macaroni in kneading-troughs as big as wash-tubs. For that reason, when nowadays he went on horseback along the line of his reapers, his cudgel in his hand, he didn’t miss a single one of them with his eye, and kept shouting: “Bend over it, boys!” He had to have his hand in his pocket all the year round, spending, and simply for the land-tax the King took so much from him that Mazzaro went into a fever every time.

  However, every year all those store-barns as big as churches were filled up with grain so that you had to raise up the roof to get it all in; and every time Mazzaro sold his wine it took over a day to count the money, all good dollar pieces, for he didn’t want any of your dirty paper in payment for his goods, and he went to buy dirty paper only when he had to pay the King, or other people; and at the cattle-fairs the herds belonging to Mazzaro covered all the fairground, and choked up the roads, till it took half a day to let them go past, and the saint in procession with the band had at times to turn down another street, to make way for them.

  And all that property he had got together himself, with his own hands and his own head, with not sleeping at nights, with catching ague and malaria, with slaving from dawn till dark, and going round under sun and rain, and wearing out his boots and mules – wearing out everything except himself, thinking of his property, which was all he had in the world, for he had neither children nor grandchildren, nor relations of any sort; he’d got nothing but his property. And when a man is made like that, it just means he is made for property.

  And property was made for him. It really seemed as if he had a magnet for it, because property likes to stay with those who know how to keep it, and don’t squander it like that baron who had previously been Mazzaro’s master, and had taken him out of charity, naked and ignorant, to work on his fields; and the baron had been owner of all these meadows, and all those woods, and all those vineyards, and all those herds, so that when he came down to visit his estates on horseback, with his keepers behind him, he seemed like a king, and they got ready his lodgings and his dinner for him, the simpletons, so that everybody knew the hour and the minute when he was due to arrive, and naturally they didn’t let themselves be caught with their hands in the sack.

  “That man absolutely asks to be robbed!” said Mazzaro, and he almost burst himself laughing when the baron kicked his behind, and he rubbed his rear with his hand, muttering: “Fools should stop at home. Property doesn’t belong to those that have got it, but to those that know how to acquire it.” He, on the contrary, since he had acquired his property, certainly didn’t send to say whether he was coming to superintend the harvest, or the vintage, and when and in what way, but he turned up unexpectedly on foot or on mule-back, without keepers, with a piece of bread in his pocket, and he slept beside his own sheaves, with his eyes open and the gun between his legs.

  And in that way Mazzaro little by little became master of all the baron’s possessions; and the latter was turned out, first from the olive groves, then from the vineyards, then from the grazing land, and then from the farmsteads and finally from his very mansion, so that not a day passed but he was signing stamped paper, and Mazzaro put his own brave cross underneath. Nothing was left to the baron but the stone shield that used to stand over his entrance-door – which was the only thing he hadn’t wanted to sell, saying to Mazzaro: “There’s only this, out of everything I’ve got, which is no use for you.” And that was true; Mazzaro had no use for it, and wouldn’t have given two cents for it. The baron still said thou to him, but he didn’t kick his behind any longer.

  “Ah what a fine thing, to have Mazzaro’s fortune!” folks said, but they didn’t know what it had taken to make that fortune, how much thinking, how much struggling, how many lies, how much danger of being sent to the galleys, and how that head was sharp as a diamond had worked day and night, better than a millwheel, to get all that property together. If the proprietor of a piece of farm-land adjoining his persisted in not giving it up to him, and wanted to take Mazzaro by the throat, he had to find some stratagem to force him to sell, to make him fall, in spite of the peasant’s shrewdess. He went to him, for example, boasting about the fertility of a holding which wouldn’t even produce lupins, and kept on till he made him believe it was the promised land, till the poor devil let himself be persuaded into leasing it, to speculate with it, and then he lost the lease, his house, and his own bit of l
and, which Mazzaro got hold of – for a bit of bread. And how many annoyances Mazzaro had to put up with! His half-profits peasants coming to complain of the bad seasons, his debtors always sending their wives in a procession to tear their hair and beat their breasts trying to persuade him not to turn them out and put them in the street, by seizing their mule or their donkey, so that they’d not have anything to eat.

  “You see what I eat,” he replied. “Bread and onion! and I’ve got all those store-barns cram full, and I’m owner of all that stuff.” And if they asked him for a handful of beans from all that stuff, he said:

  “What, do you think I stole them? Don’t you know what it costs, to sow them, and hoe them, and harvest them?” And if they asked him for a cent he said he hadn’t got one, which was true, he hadn’t got one. He never had half-a-dollar in his pocket; it took all his money to make that property yield and increase, and money came and went like a river through the house. Besides money didn’t matter to him; he said it wasn’t property, and as soon as he’d got together a certain sum he immediately bought a piece of land; because he wanted to get so that he had as much land as the king, and be better than the king, because the king can neither sell his land nor say it is his own.

  Only one thing grieved him, and that was that he was beginning to get old, and he had to leave the earth there behind him. This was an injustice on God’s part, that after having slaved one’s life away getting property together, when you’ve got it, and you’d like some more, you have to leave it behind you. And he remained for hours sitting on a small basket, with his chin in his hands, looking at his vineyards growing green beneath his eyes, and his fields of ripe wheat waving like a sea, and the olive groves veiling the mountains like a mist, and if a half-naked boy passed in front of him, bent under his load like a tired ass, he threw his stick at his legs, out of envy, and muttered: “Look at him with his length of days in front of him; him who’s got nothing to bless himself with!”

  So that when they told him it was time for him to be turning away from his property, and thinking of his soul, he rushed out into the court-yard like a madman, staggering, and went round killing his own ducks and turkeys, hitting them with his stick and screaming: “You’re my own property, you come along with me!”

  THE STORY OF

  SAINT JOSEPH’S ASS

  THEY had bought him at the fair at Buccheri when he was quite a foal, when as soon as he saw a she-ass he went up to her to find her teats; for which he got a good many bangs on the head and showers of blows upon the buttocks and caused a great shouting of “Gee back!” Neighbour Neli, seeing him lively and stubborn as he was, a young creature that licked his nose after it had been hit, giving his ears a shake, said, “This is the chap for me!” And he went straight to the owner, holding his pocket in his hand which clasped the eight dollars.

  “It’s a fine foal,” said the owner, “and it’s worth more than eight dollars. Never mind if he’s got that black and white skin, like a magpie. I’ll just show you his mother, whom we keep there in the bough-shelter because the foal has always got his nose at the teats. You’ll see a fine black beast there; she works for me better than a mule, and has brought me more young ones than she has hairs on her back. Upon my soul, I don’t know where that magpie jacket has come from, on the foal. But he’s sound in the bone, I tell you! And you don’t value men according to their faces. Look what a chest, and legs like pillars! Look how he holds his ears! An ass that keeps his ears straight up like that, you can put him in a cart or in the plough as you like, and make him carry ten quarters of buckwheat better than a mule, as true as this holy day today! Feel this tail, if you and all your family couldn’t hang on to it!”

  Neighbour Neli knew it better than he; but he wasn’t such a fool as to agree, and stood on his own, with his hand in his pocket, shrugging his shoulders and curling his nose, while the owner led the colt round in front of him.

  “Hm!” muttered Neighbour Neli, “with that hide on him, he’s like Saint Joseph’s ass. Those coloured animals are all Jonahs, and when you ride through the village on their backs everybody laughs at you. What do you want me to make you a present of, for Saint Joseph’s ass?”

  Then the owner turned his back on him in a rage, shouting that if he didn’t know anything about animals, or if he hadn’t got the money to pay with, he’d better not come to the fair and make Christians waste their time, on the blessed day that it was.

  Neighbour Neli let him swear, and went off with his brother, who was pulling him by his jacket-sleeve, and saying that if he was going to throw away his money on that ugly beast, he deserved to be kicked.

  However, on the sly they kept their eye on the Saint Joseph’s ass, and on its owner who was pretending to shell some broad-beans, with the halter-rope between his legs, while Neighbour Neli went wandering round among the groups of mules and horses, and stopping to look, and bargaining for first one and then the other of the best beasts, without ever opening the fist which he kept in his pocket with the eight dollars, as if he’d got the money to buy half the fair. But his brother said in his ear, motioning towards the ass of Saint Joseph: “That’s the chap for us!”

  The wife of the owner of the ass from time to time ran to look what had happened, and finding her husband with the halter in his hand, she said to him: “Isn’t the Madonna going to send us anybody today to buy the foal?”

  And her husband answered every time: “Not so far! There came one man to try for him, and he liked him. But he drew back when he had to pay for him, and has gone off with his money. See him, that one there, in the white stocking-cap, behind the flock of sheep. But he’s not bought anything up to now, which means he’ll come back.”

  The woman would have liked to sit down on a couple of stones, just close to her ass, to see if he would be sold. But her husband said to her:

  “You clear out! If they see we’re waiting, they’ll never come to bargain.”

  Meanwhile the foal kept nuzzling with his nose between the legs of the she-asses that passed by, chiefly because he was hungry, and his master, the moment the young thing opened his mouth to bray, fetched him a bang and made him be quiet, because the buyers wouldn’t want him if they heard him.

  “It’s still there,” said Neighbour Neli in his brother’s ear, pretending to come past again to look for a man who was selling broiled chickpeas. “If we wait till ave maria we can get him for a dollar less than the price we offered.”

  The sun of May was hot, so that from time to time, in the midst of the shouting and swarming of the fair there fell a great silence over all the fair-ground, as if there was nobody there, and then the mistress of the ass came back to say to her husband:

  “Don’t you hold out for a dollar more or less, because there’s no money to buy anything in with, this evening; and then you know the foal will eat a dollar’s worth in a month, if he’s left on our hands.”

  “If you’re not going,” replied her husband, “I’ll fetch you a kick you won’t forget!”

  So the hours of the fair rolled by, but none of those who passed before the ass of Saint Joseph stopped to look at him; for sure enough his master had chosen the most humble position, next to the low-price cattle, so as not to make him show up too badly beside the beautiful bay mules and the glossy horses! It took a fellow like Neighbour Neli to go and bargain for Saint Joseph’s ass, which set everybody in the fair laughing the moment they saw it. With having waited so long in the sun the foal let his head and his ears drop, and his owner had seated himself gloomily on the stones, with his hands also dangling between his knees, and the halter in his hands, watching here and there the long shadows, which began to form in the plain as the sun went down, from the legs of all such beast which had not found a buyer. Then Neighbour Neli and his brother, and another friend whom they had picked up for the occasion, came walking that way, looking into the air, so that the owner of the ass also twisted his head away to show he wasn’t sitting there waiting for them; and the friend of Neighbour Ne
li said like this, looking vacant, as if the idea had just come to him:

  “Oh, look at the ass of Saint Joseph! Why don’t you buy him, Neighbour Neli?”

  “I asked the price of him this morning; he’s too dear. Then I should have everybody laughing at me with that black-and-white donkey. You can see that nobody would have him, so far.”

  “That’s a fact, but the colour doesn’t matter, if a thing is any use to you.”

  And he asked of the owner:

  “How much do you expect us to make you a present of, for that Saint Joseph’s donkey?”

  The wife of the owner of the ass of Saint Joseph, seeing that the bargaining had started again, came edging softly up to them, with her hands clasped under her short cloak.

  “Don’t mention such a thing!” Neighbour Neli began to shout, running away across the plain. “Don’t mention such a thing to me; I won’t hear a word of it.”

  “If he doesn’t want it, let him go without it,” answered the owner. “If he doesn’t take it, somebody else will. It’s a sad man who has nothing left to sell, after the fair!”

  “But I mean him to listen to me, by the blessed devil I do!” squealed the friend. “Can’t I say my own fool’s say like anybody else?

  And he ran to seize Neighbour Neli by the jacket; then he came back to speak a word in the ear of the ass’ owner, who now wanted at any cost to go home with his little donkey, so the friend threw his arms round his neck, whispering: “Listen! a dollar more or less, – if you don’t sell it today, you won’t find another softy like my pal here to buy your beast, which isn’t worth a cigar.”

  And he embraced the ass’ mistress also, talking in her ear, to get her on his side. But she shrugged her shoulders and replied with a sullen face:

  “It’s my man’s business. It’s nothing to do with me. But if he lets you have it for less than nine dollars he’s a simpleton, in all conscience! It cost us more!”