Sicilian Stories

by Giovanni Verga

  “I’d carry you in my arms, neighbor Nena, so I would.”

  Then neighbor Nena started chewing the corner of the red kerchief she was wearing on her head. And neighbor Santo didn’t know what to say, either; he looked and looked at her, shifting his bags from one shoulder to the other, as if he couldn’t find the right way to carry them. The calamint and rosemary gave off a wonderful scent, and the mountainside, up there amid the prickly pears, was all red in the sunset. “Go now,” Nena was saying, “go now, because it’s late.” And then she started listening to the titmice, which were making a racket. But Santo didn’t budge. “Go, because we can be seen, standing alone here.”

  Neighbor Santo, who was finally about to leave, reverted to his earlier idea (with another jerk of his shoulder to adjust the bags): that he’d carry her in his arms, so he would, if they took the walk together. And he looked neighbor Nena in the eyes, the eyes that were avoiding him and looking for the asparagus among the rocks, and in the face, the face that was as fiery red as if the sunset were beaming onto it.

  “No, neighbor Santo, go alone, because I’m a poor girl without a dowry.”

  “Let’s leave it to Providence, let’s . . .”

  She kept saying no, that she wasn’t for him, this time with a dark, sulky face. Then neighbor Santo, discouraged, adjusted the bags on his shoulders and prepared to depart, his head bowed. Redhead at least wanted to give him the asparagus she had picked for him. It would make a tasty dish, if he consented to eat it for her sake. And she held out to him the two corners of her filled apron. Santo put an arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek, his heart melting.

  At that moment her father arrived, and the girl ran off in alarm. The livestock watchman had his rifle slung over his shoulder, and didn’t know what was keeping him from really giving it to neighbor Santo, who had gone behind his back that way.

  – No! non ne faccio di queste cose! – rispondeva Santo colle mani in croce. – Vostra figlia voglio sposarla per davvero. Non per la paura del fucile; ma son figlio di un uomo dabbene, e la Provvidenza ci aiuterà perché non facciamo il male.

  Così la domenica appresso s’erano fatti gli sponsali, colla sposa vestita da festa, e suo padre il camparo cogli stivali nuovi, che ci si dondolava dentro come un’anitra domestica. Il vino e le fave tostate misero in allegria anche compare Nanni, sebbene avesse già addosso la malaria; e la mamma tirò fuori dalla cassapanca un rotolo di filato che teneva da parte per la dote di Lucia, la quale aveva già diciott’anni, e prima d’andare alla messa ogni domenica, si strigliava per mezz’ora, specchiandosi nell’acqua del catino.

  Santo, colla punta delle dieci dita ficcate nelle tasche del giubbone, gongolava, guardando i capelli rossi della sposa, il filato, e tutta l’allegria che ci era per lui quella domenica. Il camparo, col naso rosso, saltellava dentro gli stivaloni, e voleva baciare tutti quanti ad uno ad uno.

  – A me no! – diceva Lucia, imbronciata pel filato che le portavano via. – Questa non è acqua per la mia bocca. – Essa restava in un cantuccio, con tanto di muso, quasi sapesse già quel che le toccava quando avrebbe chiuso gli occhi il genitore.

  Ora infatti le toccava cuocere il pane e scopar le stanze per la cognata, la quale come Dio faceva giorno andava al podere col marito, tuttoché fosse gravida un’altra volta, ché per riempir la casa di figliuoli era peggio di una gatta. Adesso ci volevano altro che i regalucci di Pasqua e di santa Agrippina, e le belle paroline che si scambiavano con compare Santo quando si vedevano al Castelluccio. Quel mariuolo del camparo aveva fatto il suo interesse a maritare la figliuola senza dote, e doveva pensarci compare Santo a mantenerla. Dacché aveva la Nena vedeva che gli mancava il pane per tutti e due, e dovevano tirarlo fuori dalla terra di Licciardo, col sudore della loro fronte.

  Mentre andavano a Licciardo, colle bisacce in ispalla, asciugandosi il sudore colla manica della camicia, avevano sempre nella testa e dinanzi agli occhi il seminato, ché non vedevano altro fra i sassi della viottola. Gli era come il pensiero di un malato che vi sta sempre grave in cuore, quel seminato: prima giallo, ammelmato dal gran piovere; poi, quando ricominciava a pigliar fiato, le erbacce, che Nena ci si era ridotte le due mani una pietà per strapparle ad una ad una, bocconi,

  “No! I don’t do such things!” Santo answered, making a cross with his hands to affirm his statement. “I genuinely want to marry your daughter. Not because I’m afraid of your gun, but because I’m the son of an honorable man, and Providence will help us, because we aren’t doing any wrong.”

  And so, the following Sunday, the wedding was held, with the bride in holiday dress, and her father, the livestock watchman, in new boots, waddling in them like a barnyard duck. The wine and the roasted beans made even neighbor Nanni merry, though he was already suffering from malaria; and Santo’s mother took out of the bench-chest a roll of yarn that she had set aside for Lucia’s dowry; Lucia was already eighteen and, before going to Mass every Sunday, she’d spruce up for half an hour, looking at her reflection in the water of the basin.

  Santo, his ten fingertips thrust into his jacket pockets, rejoiced at the sight of his bride’s red hair, the yarn, and all the merriment on his account that Sunday. The livestock watchman, his nose red, went hopping around inside his big boots and wanted to kiss everyone individually.

  “Not me!” said Lucia, sulking over the yarn they were taking away from her. “That’s no water for my mouth.” She remained in a corner, pulling a long face, as if she already knew what was in store for her after her father died.

  And, in fact, she now had to bake the bread and sweep out the rooms for her sister-in-law, who would set out for the farm with her husband at daybreak, though she was pregnant again; because, when it came to filling the house with children, she was worse than a cat. Now it was no longer a question of little presents for Easter or St. Agrippina’s Day, or of the sweet nothings she had exchanged with neighbor Santo when they used to meet at Castelluccio. That swindler of a livestock watchman had made a good deal, marrying off his daughter without a dowry, and it was up to Santo to support her. After winning Nena, he saw that both of them were short of bread, and they had to wring it out of the land at Licciardo, in the sweat of their brow.

  While they walked to Licciardo, knapsacks on their backs, wiping away their sweat with their shirtsleeves, they constantly had the grain crop on their mind and before their eyes; they saw nothing else among the rocks on the path. That grain was like the thoughts of a sick man that are always heavy in his heart: first, it was yellow, muddied by the abundant rains; then, when it began to recover, came the weeds, which had made Nena’s two hands a wreck to pull out one by one, face down, with

  con tanto di pancia, tirando la gonnella sui ginocchi, onde non far danno. E non sentiva il peso della gravidanza, né il dolore delle reni, come se ad ogni filo verde che liberava dalle erbacce, facesse un figliuolo. E quando si accoccolava infine sul ciglione, col fiato ai denti, cacciandosi colle due mani i capelli dietro le orecchie, le sembrava di vedere le spighe alte nel giugno, curvandosi ad onda pel venticello l’una sull’altra; e facevano i conti col marito, nel tempo che egli slacciava i calzeroni fradici, e nettava la zappa sull’erba del ciglione. – Tanta era stata la semente; tanto avrebbe dato se la spiga veniva a 12, o a 10, od anche a 7; il gambo non era robusto ma il seminato era fitto. Bastava che il marzo non fosse troppo asciutto, e che piovesse soltanto quando bisognava. Santa Agrippina benedetta doveva pensarci lei! – Il cielo era netto, e il sole indugiava, color d’oro, sui prati verdi, dal ponente tutto in fuoco, d’onde le lodole calavano cantando sulle zolle, come punti neri. La primavera cominciava a spuntare dappertutto, nelle siepi di fichidindia, nelle macchie della viottola, fra i sassi, sul tetto dei casolari, verde come la speranza; e Santo, camminando pesantemente dietro la sua compagna, curva sotto il sacco dello strame per le bestie, e con tanto di pancia, sentivasi il cuore gonfio di tenerezza per la poveretta, e le andava chiac-cherando, colla voce rotta dalla salita, di quel che si avrebbe fatto, se il Signore bened
iceva i seminati fino all’ultimo. Ora non avevano più a discorrere dei capelli rossi, s’erano belli o brutti, e di altre sciocchezze. E quando il maggio traditore venne a rubare tutte le fatiche e le speranze dell’annata, colle sue nebbie, marito e moglie, seduti un’altra volta sul ciglione a guardare il campo che ingialliva a vista d’occhio, come un malato che se ne va all’altro mondo, non dicevano una parola sola, coi gomiti sui ginocchi, e gli occhi impietriti nella faccia pallida.

  – Questo è il castigo di Dio! – borbottava Santo. – La buon’anima di mio padre me l’aveva detto!

  E nella casuccia del povero penetrava il malumore della stradicciuola nera e fangosa. Marito e moglie si voltavano le spalle ingrugnati, litigavano ogni volta che la Rossa domandava i denari per la spesa, e se il marito tornava a casa tardi, o se non c’era legna per l’inverno, o se la moglie diventava lenta e pigra per la gravidanza: musi lunghi, parolacce ed anche busse. Santo agguantava la Nena pei capelli rossi, e lei gli piantava le unghie sulla faccia; accorrevano i vicini, e la Rossa strillava che quello scomunicato voleva farla abortire, e non si curava di mandare un’anima al limbo. Poi, quando Nena partorì, fecero la pace, e compare Santo andava portando sulle braccia la bambina,

  her big belly, pulling her skirt up over her knees to cause no damage to it. She didn’t feel the burden of her pregnancy or the pain in her back, as if with every green shoot that she freed from the weeds she were giving birth to a child. And when she finally crouched down on the boundary ridge, out of breath, tucking her hair behind her ears with both hands, she seemed to see the stalks of grain as tall as they would be in June, bending and waving against one another in the breeze. She would do calculations with her husband while he undid his soaking-wet heavy trousers and cleaned off his hoe on the grass of the ridge. There had been this much seed grain; it would yield this much if there were 12, or 10, or even only 7 spikelets to an ear; the stalks weren’t very strong, but they were densely planted. If only March weren’t too dry, and it rained only when necessary! Blessed St. Agrippina had to look after it! The sky was clear, and the golden sun lingered over the green meadows in the fiery west, from which the larks descended onto the sods singing, like black specks. Spring was beginning to burgeon everywhere, in the prickly-pear hedges, in the bushes beside the lane, amid the rocks, on the cottage roofs, as green as hope. And Santo, walking heavily behind his wife, who was bent under the sack of straw for the animals, with her big belly, felt his heart swell with tenderness for the poor woman; he kept chatting with her, his voice impeded by the climb, about what they’d do if the Lord blessed the crops up to the last minute. Now they had no more time for such discussions as whether red hair was beautiful or ugly, and other nonsense like that. And when a treacherous May robbed them, with its fogs, of all the season’s labors and hopes, husband and wife, seated once more on the ridge, looking at the field growing yellow as they watched, like a sick man departing for the next world, didn’t say a single world, their elbows on their knees and their eyes turned to stone in their pallid faces.

  “This is God’s punishment!” Santo would mutter. “My dear departed father told me so!”

  And the bad mood of the dark, muddy lane penetrated into the poor man’s hut. Husband and wife turned their backs on each other grumpily, arguing each time that Redhead asked for money for expenses; and if the husband came home late, or there was no firewood for the winter, or the woman became slow and sluggish because she was pregnant, there were long faces, curses, and even blows. Santo would seize Nena by her red hair, and she would dig her nails into his face; the neighbors would come running, and Redhead would shriek that that monster wanted her to miscarry, and wasn’t concerned about sending an infant’s soul to Limbo. Then, when Nena gave birth, they made

  come se avesse fatto una principessa, e correva a mostrarla ai parenti e agli amici, dalla contentezza. Alla moglie, sinché rimase in letto, le preparava il brodo, le scopava la casa, le mondava il riso, e le si piantava anche ritto dinanzi, acciò non le mancasse nulla. Poi si affacciava sulla porta colla bimba in collo, come una balia; e chi gli domandava, nel passare, rispondeva: – Femmina! compare mio. La disgrazia mi perseguita sin qui, e mi è nata una femmina. Mia moglie non sa far altro.

  La Rossa quando si pigliava le busse dal marito, sfogavasi colla cognata, che non faceva nulla per aiutare in casa; e Lucia rimbeccava che senza aver marito gli erano toccati i guai dei figliuoli altrui. La suocera, poveretta, cercava di metter pace in quei litigi, e ripeteva:

  – La colpa è mia che non son più buona a nulla. Io vi mangio il pane a tradimento.

  Ella non era più buona che a sentire tutti quei guai, e a covarseli dentro di sé: le angustie di Santo, i piagnistei di sua moglie, il pensiero dell’altro figlio lontano, che le stava fitto in cuore come un chiodo, il malumore di Lucia, la quale non aveva uno straccio di vestito per la festa, e non vedeva passare un cane sotto la sua finestra. La domenica, se la chiamavano nel crocchio delle comari che chiaccheravano all’ombra, rispondeva, alzando le spalle:

  – Cosa volete che ci venga a fare! Per far vedere il vestito di seta che non ho?

  Nel crocchio delle vicine ci veniva pure qualche volta Pino il Tomo, quello delle rane, che non apriva bocca e stava ad ascoltare colle spalle al muro e le mani in tasca, sputacchiando di qua e di là. Nessuno sapeva cosa ci stesse a fare; ma quando s’affacciava all’uscio comare Lucia, Pino la guardava di soppiatto, fingendo di voltarsi per sputacchiare. La sera poi, come gli usci erano tutti chiusi, s’arrischiava sino a cantarle le canzonette dietro la porta, facendosi il basso da sé – huum! huum! huum! – Alle volte i giovinastri che tornavano a casa tardi, lo conoscevano alla voce, e gli rifacevano il verso della rana, per canzonarlo.

  Lucia intanto fingeva di darsi da fare per la casa, colla testa bassa e lontana dal lume, onde non la vedessero in faccia. Ma se la cognata brontolava: – Ora comincia la musica! – si voltava come una vipera a rimbeccare:

  – Anche la musica vi dà noia? Già in questa galera non ce ne deve essere né per gli occhi né per le orecchie!

  peace, and neighbor Santo would carry the baby girl around in his arms, as if he had begotten a princess, and he’d run over to show her to relatives and friends in his joy. As long as his wife was confined to bed, he made the broth for her, swept the house for her, cleaned the rice for her, and stood there right in front of her, so she would lack nothing. Then he’d stand in the doorway holding the baby, like a wetnurse. To every passerby who asked, he’d reply: “A girl, neighbor. Misfortune pursues me even here, and my child is a girl. That’s all my wife knows how to give me.”

  When Redhead was beaten by her husband, she let out her feelings on her sister-in-law, saying she was no help to her in the house. Lucia would retort that, though she had no husband, she had all the trouble of other people’s children. The poor mother-in-law tried to make peace in those squabbles, repeating:

  “It’s my fault, because I can’t do anything anymore. I eat my bread at your expense.”

  All she was still good for was to hear all those troubles and brood over them in silence: Santo’s worries; his wife’s whining; the thought of her other son being so far away, which stuck in her heart like a nail; the unhappiness of Lucia, who didn’t have a shred of holiday clothing, and didn’t see a dog go by under her window. On Sundays, if she was called to join the group of neighbor women chatting in the shade, she’d shrug her shoulders and reply:

  “What do you expect me to do there? Show you the silk dress I don’t own?”

  The group of neighbor women was sometimes joined by Pino “the odd character,” the frogcatcher, who didn’t open his mouth, but just stood listening with his back against the wall and his hands in his pockets, spitting in different directions. No one knew what he was doing there, but when neighbor Lucia showed her face at the window, Pino would look at her furtively, pretending to be turning around to spit. Then, in the evening, when all the doors were closed, he even ventured to sing songs to her outside the door, supplying his own bass accompa
niment: “Hmm, hmm, hmm!” Sometimes the young hooligans who were coming home late recognized him by his voice and imitated frog calls to make fun of him.

  Meanwhile Lucia pretended to busy herself around the house, her head bowed, far from the light so that no one could see her face. But if her sister-in-law grumbled, “Now the music is starting!,” she’d turn around like a viper and retort:

  “Even the music bothers you? In this jail, nothing is supposed to please either the eyes or the ears!”

  La mamma che vedeva tutto, e ascoltava anch’essa, guardando la figliuola, diceva che a lei invece quella musica gli metteva allegria dentro. Lucia fingeva di non saper nulla. Però ogni giorno nell’ora in cui passava quello delle rane, non mancava mai di affacciarsi all’uscio, col fuso in mano. Il Tomo appena tornava dal fiume, gira e rigira pel paese, era sempre in volta per quelle parti, colla sua resta di rane in mano, strillando: – Pesci-cantanti! pesci-cantanti! – come se i poveretti di quelle straduccie potessero comperare dei pescicantanti.

  – E’ devono essere buoni pei malati! – diceva la Lucia che si struggeva di mettersi a contrattare col Tomo. Ma la mamma non voleva che spendessero per lei.

  Il Tomo, vedendo che Lucia lo guardava di soppiatto, col mento sul seno, rallentava il passo dinanzi all’uscio, e la domenica si faceva animo ad accostarsi un poco più, sino a mettersi a sedere sullo scalino del ballatoio accanto, colle mani penzoloni fra le cosce; e raccontava nel crocchio come si facesse a pescare le rane, che ci voleva una malizia del diavolo. Egli era malizioso peggio di un asino rosso, Pino il Tomo, e aspettava che le comari se ne andassero per dire alla gnà Lucia: – E’ ci vuol la pioggia pei seminati! – oppure: – Le olive saranno scarse quest’anno.

  – A voi cosa ve ne importa? che campate sulle rane – gli diceva Lucia.

  – Sentite, sorella mia, siamo tutti come le dita della mano; e come gli embrici, che uno dà acqua all’altro. Se non si raccoglie né grano, né olio, non entrano denari in paese, e nessuno mi compra le mie rane. Vi capacita?