Sparrow (and other stories)

by Giovanni Verga

  So he would pass by, four times a day, before and after lunch, always holding a laggardly child by the hand, with the rest straggling behind, of every background, of all sorts, dressed in smart fashionable clothes or dragging their feet in worn-down old shoes; but invariably keeping by him the pupil closest to home, so that every mother might think that her child was his favourite.

  He knew all the mothers. Ever since they had come into this world, they had seen him pass by, morning and evening, with his faded old hat over one ear, his shoes always shiny, and whiskers likewise, an unfailingly patient smile on a face like a battered old book; with no sign of tiredness except in the sun-faded and brush-worn jacket on his slightly stooped shoulders.

  They knew too that he had a great weakness for the ladies. For almost forty years he had been traipsing backwards and forwards, morning and evening, like a mother hen with her chicks, always with his head in the clouds, waving his cane like a decoy, as if he were a real bird-catcher, in search of a sweetheart – without meaning the slightless harm. Someone who would look out for him every time he passed, and produce a handkerchief when he blew his nose, nothing more. He would have been satisfied just to know that somewhere, near or faraway, he had a soulmate. So, along that daily Via Crucis of year after year, he had imaginary stations of consolation, windows on which he used to cast sidelong glances as he turned the corner; which meant something, spoke, only to him; at which he had seen beloved faces grow old, or from which they had disappeared to go off and get married. Only he remained ever the same, bearing within himself an inexaustible youthfulness, dedicating to the children the sentiment he had felt for their mothers, dreaming of playing Don Giovanni while living the life of a hermit.

  It was almost the inevitable result of his profession: the projection of the poetic fancies that filled his hours of leisure, in the evening, before the oil lamp, with his aching feet in his felt slippers, well wrapped up in his overcoat, while his sister Carolina darned his socks, on the other side of the small table, she too with a book open in front of her. He was a schoolteacher because he had to make a living, but his real passion in life was literature, sonnets, odes, Anacreontic poems, acrostics especially, with the names of all the saints in the calendar spelled out in the first letters of the lines. As he went from one side of town to the other, trailing the schoolchildren behind him, he bore beneath his threadbare coat the sacred flame of poetry, that which makes young girls sing on their balconies in the moonlight, and must have made them think of him. He knew, as well as if someone actually had told him, of all the curiosity his appearance was bound to arouse, the quickening heartbeats one of his glances excited, the daydreams left in his wake. Though he was too scrupulous to take advantage.

  One day, as he remembered ever after with sweet inward embarrassment, a young girl to whom he used to go and give lessons in handwriting, tried to present him on his nameday with a beautiful flower that was in a vase on the desk, a rose or a carnation, he could not remember which because of the confusion that had clouded his vision. She offered it to him with kindness and, seeing how shy and embarrassed he was, she said, ‘I kept it here for you, sir.’

  ‘No, I beg you … Spare me …’

  ‘What do you mean? You don’t want it?’

  ‘Let’s continue the lesson, please! These are not things that …’

  ‘But why ever not? What harm is there in it?’

  ‘To betray the trust of your parents … in my capacity as your teacher …’

  Then the girl burst into such uncontrolled, impudent laughter that it still rang in his ears at the recollection, and still, after so long, a misgiving would enter his mind, one of those flashes of illumination that make you hide your head under the pillow at night, in order to escape their radiance. Ah, those blessed young girls, who would ever understand them, no matter how many years went by! They laughed at him behind his back. Then, long afterwards, when he came by to pick up their children, twirling his persistently black whiskers, they would soften, feeling a certain emotion in recalling the past, the rosy daydreams of their early youth, evoked by the melancholy figure of that eternal seeker of love.

  ’Come in, Don Peppino, the boy’s getting dressed.’

  ‘No, thank you, there’s no need.’

  ‘You want to wait in the sun, sir?’

  ‘I have some children with me. I can’t leave them alone.’

  ‘Heavens above, you have so many! You must need the patience of a saint, from morning till night, all these years you’ve been doing this job!’

  ‘Yes, we’ve known each other for some time now, by sight at least. When you lived in Via del Carmine, the terrace with the basil plants. Do you remember?’

  ‘We’re all growing old, Don Peppino! Now our hair’s turning white. I speak for myself, with a daughter old enough to be married.’

  ‘Indeed, I’ve a little something for Donna Lucietta. It’s her nameday today, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘What is it, a picture of St Lucy? No, a poem! Lucia, Lucia, come here, look what the schoolmaster has brought you.’

  ‘Just a trifle, Donna Lucietta, forgive my boldness.’

  ‘It’s lovely, lovely, thank you so much. Look, mother, what a beautiful sheet of paper. It looks like lace.’

  ‘It’s really nothing. Just a little piece of embroidery in verse, befitting a lovely girl like you. A trifle, truly!’

  ‘Thank you, thank you. Here’s Bardolino. The schoolmaster’s been waiting half an hour for you, you bad-mannered child!’

  ‘Look, mama, if you cut the edge of the paper off all the way round, it would make a pretty surround for a posy, were anyone to send me flowers today.’

  The school was in a big whitewashed room, with a partition wall at the end of it, half the height of the room, and a mysterious big semicircular fanlight above, to let the light into a cubicle on the other side. Beside the door stood the schoolmaster’s desk, covered with a hand-embroidered table-mat, and a lot of other objects on top of it, made of odd bits and pieces: a pen-wiper, a lampshade, and an orange-wool tangerine with little green leaves, a source of infinite distraction to the pupils. The other ornament in the school, on the large expanse of bare wall behind the desk, was a small picture frame made of perforated card, a painstaking work by the same hand, which contained two small yellowing photographs, portraits of the schoolteacher and his sister, as alike as two peas in a pod, despite his waxed whiskers and her grotesque hair style: the same prominent cheekbones that seemed to jut out of the frame, the same thin line of bloodless lips, the same cloudy eyes, as though weary of gazing perpetually, from the depths of sunken eye sockets, at the mismatched chairs scattered across the schoolroom; and all around the dreariness of those white walls, tinged in one corner by the wan light from the dusty window that looked out on the little courtyard.

  Early in the morning, as soon as the carpenter next door began to hammer, two sleepy voices could be heard whispering in the dark cubicle, and then the fanlight above the partition would light up. Shuffling in his slippers, and all bundled up in a threadbare overcoat, the schoolmaster would go and fetch a handful of wood shavings, and light the fire to make coffee. Then, outside the misted window, a flame could be seen rising from the fireplace sheltered beneath four tiles projecting from the wall, and thick smoke gathered in the enclosed yard. Meanwhile, at the far end of the tiny cubicle, the schoolmaster’s sister would start coughing, from dawn.

  He would fetch his shoes that were leaning up against the door jamb, side by side, heels uppermost, and begin to polish them lovingly, while waiting for the coffee to boil, a fireside ritual, with the collar of his overcoat turned up to his ears. Then he would remove the coffee pot from the flame, always with his left hand, and with his right hand take the cup without a handle from the shelf nailed up beside the cooking hearth, rinse it in the cracked bowl wedged between two stones by the well, and finally fetch the lamp from the cubicle, which was divided in two by an old curtain suspended on a piece of string. H
is sister would sit up in bed at the back of the room, with difficulty, coughing, blowing her nose; moaning constantly, with her dishevelled braids, her consumptive face, and already weary eyes, greeting her brother with the sad smile of the incurably sick.

  ‘How do you feel today, Carolina?’ her brother would ask.

  ‘Better,’ she invariably replied.

  Meanwhile sunlight spilled over the roof opposite the window, like gold dust, in which chattering sparrows darted. Outside the door came the sound of goat bells passing.

  ‘I’m just going for the milk,’ Don Peppino would say.

  ‘All right,’ she replied, with the usual weary nod.

  And she would begin to dress slowly, while the schoolmaster, squatting down with a glass in his hand, would argue with the goatherd who measured out the milk for him as if it were liquid gold.

  Carolina would get up and make her brother’s bed, on the other side of the curtain, which she would lift up, over the string, to air the room, as she would say; and she would start slowly sweeping the schoolroom, moving the chairs, one by one, resting on the broomstick to cough, amid the dust.

  Her brother would return with two cents’ worth of milk in the bottom of the glass, and two breadrolls in the pockets of his overcoat. He would fold back the edge of the tablemat, so as not to dirty it, and they would sit and breakfast in silence, on either side of the table, cutting thin slices of bread, one by one, chewing slowly, as though lost in thought. Yet, every time she coughed, her brother would raise his head and gaze at her anxiously, then look down at his plate again.

  Eventually he would go off with his cane under his arm, his hat over his ear, his whiskers waxed, turning up the collar of his jacket, carefully pulling on his gloves that smelt strongly of ink, with his sister, who insisted on wearily passing a clothes brush over him, trailing after, cherishing him with an almost maternal gaze, accompanying him to the doorway with the resigned smile of an old maid who thought all women were in love with her brother.

  She too had been young once, though for a girl without a dowry, and no beauty, it was a forlorn spring, when, for every major festival, she would make adjustments to the same simple wool and silk dress, and create fantastic hair-styles in front of the small cracked mirror. Oh, what bright hopes were invested in that poor garment, as she sewed all night long. And what bitter dejection afflicted her in front of that mirror, which would inevitably reflect those bony cheeks and a nose that was too long. Among the exuberantly frivolous group of other girls she had a constant and painful vision of her own grotesque appearance, and she would keep at a distance – out of shame, some said, out of pride, said others. For she also was known to be bookish. Amid the bleakness of their respectable poverty literature had brought comfort, illusion, as it were a touch of luxury that made up for her neighbours’ ill-disguised pity. She jealously treasured her brother’s verses, in beautiful handwritten copies, all flourishes and embellished capital letters; and when he had finally yielded to general indifference, to weariness of the humble and taxing use he had to make of his learning to earn his living, she alone continued to be a great reader of novels and verse: epic cloak-and-dagger adventures, complicated and extraordinary tales, heroic love stories, crime mysteries, four hundred pages of letters, all harping on one word, lamentations bayed at the moon, the sorrows of souls grieving before birth, bewailing future disappointment. Her entire dismal youth was consumed in those ardent fantasies, which peopled her sleepless nights with plumed horsemen, fair-haired consumptive poets, bizarre and fabulous events, among which she dreamed of living, even while she swept the schoolroom or cooked their meagre dinner in the enclosed yard that served as a kitchen. And under the influence of all this medievalism, her painful anxiety about her plainness and poverty manifested itself in a grotesque manner, in contrived ringlets on her forehead, flowing locks down her to shoulders, medieval-style puff sleeves and starched frilly collars.

  ‘Is that the latest fashion?’ the most elegant and cruellest of her companions asked her one day.

  But for him alone – so long ago! these days he worked at the local magistrate’s court – what tremors of the heart, what joys, what dreams! And now, nothing, whenever she happened to run into him, with his wife and children in tow. In those days he was a gaunt young man, with big pensive eyes, watching the ‘whirl of the dance’ from a doorway, as though from on high, miles and miles away. The girls used to tease him, partly because he never danced; they called him ‘the poet’. From a distance, he pinned a fateful glance on that young girl, standing alone and forgotten in a corner, like himself. Finally one Sunday he arranged an introduction; he told her in a long garbled sentence that he had sought the honour of making her acquaintance because ‘at the party’ she was the only person with whom one might exchange a few words: he could tell, he had been told so; he also knew that she was a great book-lover …

  The dances whirled round and round, raising a great cloud of dust, beneath the light of the oil lamps, and they could have been a hundred miles away, exactly as described in novels, half-hidden behind the crocheted curtain, he with his hat on his hip, concentrating his mind on every word that fell from her lips; she made radiant by this first flattering attention she had ever received from a man, with a new softness in her eyes, peering through her curls.

  ‘Is it a poem?’

  ‘No, a novel.’

  ‘Historical?’

  ‘Shame on you, young lady! What do you take me for? You know the saying: “Who will free us from the Greeks and Romans?” ’

  ‘Like Manzoni, then?’

  ‘No, more modern. I was about to say more subtle, certainly more restless … with all the restlessness of the century in which we live …’

  ‘And the title? May one ask what that is, at least?’

  ‘You may, of course! Love and Death!’

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful wonderful! Have you spent a long time working on it?’

  ‘About four years.’

  ‘Why don’t you have it printed?’

  The young man shrugged his shoulders with a disdainful smile.

  ‘What a pity!’

  There was a gleam in his eyes, to accompany the reply that flashed into his mind, prompt and sure; a gleam that misled the poor girl.

  ‘I needed only to hear you say so!’

  Carolina blushed with joy, and bowed her head, her heart bursting.

  ‘What do you mean? I? What ever do you mean?’

  And he, swelling in his frockcoat at this first experience, for him too, of being flattered by a woman, imparted to her bowed head, from the lofty height of his starched collar, the confidence that for a writer the most coveted success was a word … a single word … of praise … of encouragement … from someone …

  ‘Excuse me!’ He broke off abruptly, suddenly stepping backwards.

  ‘Did you get wet?’ the lady of the house, who was going round with a watering can, asked apologetically. ‘Forgive me … It’s just that we’re being choked by the dust. Don’t you think so?’

  The poet continued, saying that it was truly a stroke of good fortune to have met each other … amid such intrusive vulgarity …

  ‘Do you not dance?’ he finally asked her.

  ‘I?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I don’t dance either. You know the saying: “I don’t understand why they don’t get servants to do the work!” And that’s the truth of it. Try blocking your ears, and see how grotesque they look …’

  ‘You’re right, you’re right.’

  ‘And then listen to the topics of conversation! The heat, the crush of people, the lights. When the talk turns to hair-styles, that’s already great progress. By the way, you look divine … No, no, let me have my say, you’re different from the others; you have good taste, originality …’

  He arched his eyebrow and let fly the final arrow.

  ‘And after all, appearances can be deceptive, but good taste reveals the soul.’

  How lovely the waltz playing
at that moment sounded! How it remained in her heart all night long! And how she would then hum it under her breath, her eyes swollen with delicious tears, as she sewed in the dark courtyard. On the step of the well the carnations that reached out their stunted stems from a cracked flowerpot stirred gently in the sun, and seemed to revive. How much at peace with herself, when she looked in the mirror! What sweetness in certain tones of her voice! What softness in the moonbeam that kissed the top of the wall opposite! And in the golden sunset that peeped out from behind the chimney pot on the rooftop, and glinted on the windowpane in which you could sometimes see a little fair-haired infant, sitting motionless for hours in a high-backed armchair. To feel so alive, even in that dreary courtyard, within those four walls with their familiar almost cherished gloom, in the humble tasks grown dear to her, with that other fantastic world that books opened up to her, in the caress of her brother’s loving and protective voice; and now deep in her heart, what might be described as a spot of brightness, a delicate string that quivered at the slightest touch, a great joy that needed to conceal itself and leapt to her throat at every moment, a feeling of trust, a new tenderness for everything and everyone she knew – looking forward to the next Sunday, the next country dance amid the dust and the stench of oil, when she knew she would see him again, someone who for the last week had occupied such a great part of her heart and her life!