NOW everything was going to rack and ruin for Don Gesualdo; the house all in disorder; the country labourers, far from the master’s eyes, doing what they liked; the very servants left one by one, afraid of catching consumption; even Mena, the last one remaining for the absolute needs, when they spoke to her about washing the sick woman’s clothes, that the washerwoman refused to take to the river, for fear of losing her other custom, said straight out:
‘Don Gesualdo, you’ll excuse me, but my life’s worth as much as yours, though you’re rich. – Don’t you see how far gone your wife is? – It’s a wasting decline, God help us! I’m frightened of it, and so excuse me.’
And that after she had grown fat in his house! Now everybody abandoned him as if he was ruined, and there was nobody even to light the lamp. It was like that night at Salonia, when he had had to put his father in the coffin with his own hands. Neither money nor anything was any good any more. Then Don Gesualdo really lost heart. Not knowing what to do, he thought of his old friends, those whom one remembers in time of need, and he send to fetch Diodata to lend a hand. Instead of her appeared her husband, suspicious, looking around, careful where he put his feet, spitting right and left.
‘As for me – I’ll risk my skin for you, if you want it, Don Gesualdo! But Diodata is mother of a family, you know. – If anything was to happen to her, God preserve you and me. – If she caught your wife’s illness. – We are poor folks. – And you’re rich enough; but I shouldn’t even have the money to pay the doctor and the druggist –’
In short the same old song, the same chanting to get more money out of him, to bleed him again. At last, after a bit of pulling and holding back, they agreed as to the recompense. He had to shut his eyes and bow his head. Nanni l’Orbo, quite content with the bargain he had made, wound up:
‘As for us, you’re the master even of our lives, Don Gesualdo. You’ve only to give your orders, night and day. I’m going to fetch my wife, and I’ll bring her along.’
But now Bianca had got another cause for suffering. She didn’t want to see Diodata about the house. She wouldn’t take anything from her hands.
‘No! – You, no! – Go away with you! – What have you come for, you? –’
And she fretted against those greedy creatures who came to feed at her expense. How she clung to her possessions, now! – and how the old rancour awoke again in her now, a jealousy of her husband whom they wanted to rob away from her, those wicked people who had come on purpose to hurry her into her grave, to make themselves masters of everything that was hers. She had become absolutely like a child, suspicuous, irascible, capricious. She complained that they put something in her broth, and that they changed her medicines. Every time she heard the door-bell there was a scene. She said they sent people away because they didn’t want to let them see her.
‘I heard my brother Don Ferdinando’s voice! – There was a letter came from my daughter, and they wouldn’t give it me! –’
The thought of her daughter was another torment. Isabella also was in poor health, so far away, that a journey would have prostrated her for ever, wrote the husband. For the rest they had known for some time how Bianca dragged herself from her bed to her lying-chair, and they would never have believed that the catastrophe was so near. But the poor mother would give herself no peace, she turned upon Don Gesualdo and everybody who was near her. It needed the patience of a saint. In vain her husband said to her:
‘Look now! – What the deuce are you getting into your mind now? – Even you take it into your head to be jealous!’
She looked at him with such black looks as he had never seen. And with a certain tone he had never heard before in her hoarse voice, she said to him:
‘You’ve taken my daughter away from me – even now when I’m in the state I am in! – I leave you to your own conscience! –’
Or else she threw it in his face that he had brought these other people around her. Or else she wouldn’t answer at all, with her face turned to the wall, implacable.
Nanni l’Orbo had installed himself like a father in Don Gesualdo’s house. He ate and drank, he came every day to fill his belly. Diodanta looked after what there was to do, whist he ran round in the market-place amusing himself, confabulating with his friends, holding forth about what was needed and what must be done, upholding the cause of the poor people in the matter of dividing up the communal lands, every man his own bit, as God had intended it, and every gentleman to have as many portions as he had children to bring up. He also knew by thread and sign all the manoeuvres of the big-wigs who were trying to get the lands for themselves. On one occasion he started a grand discussion on this point with Canali, and they came to blows over it, now that the days of arrogance were over and every man might say his say.
The day after, Master Titta had gone to Canali’s to shave him, when the door-bell rang and Canali went to see who it was, with all the soap on his chin. While he was sharpening the razor, Master Titta stretched his neck from simple curiosity, and saw Canali talking in the anteroom with Gerbido, and the pair of them with faces to make anybody open his ears full width. Canali said to Gerbido:
‘So you rely on it, then?’
And Gerbido replied:
‘Oh! ! !’
Nothing else.
Canali came back to be shaved, as quiet as if it was all nothing, and Master Titta thought no more about it. Only that evening, he himself didn’t know why – but he had a presentiment, seeing Gerbido leaning against the corner of the Masera, with his gun behind him! – The words he had heard a while before came back to him.
‘Who knows whom that pill is destined for,’ he thought to himself.
Things were already looking doubtful, and people had hurried home before Ave Maria was rung. Further on, meeting Nanni l’Orbo hanging around down there, his heart told him that this was the very person for whom Gerbido was waiting.
‘What are you doing out at this hour, neighbour Nanni?’ said Master Titta to him. ‘Better come along home. We’ll be going the same way.’
‘No, Master Titta, I’ve got to go to the tobacconist’s here, and then I’m going for a moment to see Diodata who is waiting on Don Gesualdo’s wife –’
‘Do me this favour, neighbour Nanni! Come along home now! I’ll give you tobacco, and you can go to see your wife tomorrow. These are no fit times for roving round the street at this hour! – You believe me! –’
The other passed it off in joke; saying he wasn’t frightened of their robbing him of money he hadn’t got. – His wife was expecting him with a plate of macaroni – and plenty else. – For a plate of macaroni, God save us, you’d risk your skin! –
As soon as Master Titta heard the noise of the gun two minutes later, he said to himself:
‘There’s neighbour Nanni getting it.’
Don Gesualdo had had other trials that morning. Speranza sent the sergeant-bailiff just when she knew it would make him most mad. They gave him no peace from year’s end to year’s end, and they’d made his hair go grey with those law-suits. And Speranza herself was become like nothing but a witch; she had eaten up the fields and the vineyard, egged on by everybody who had a grudge against her brother. She went round everywhere vilifying him. She waited for him in the street in order to vomit insults upon him. She incited her children against him, since her husband didn’t want to inflame himself – he was good for nothing but for taking his belly for a walk round the village, he was; and Santo himself, now that he wanted money, turned his coat and went over to Don Gesualdo’s side, to spit back at his sister the same ugly things he had said before against his brother; a weathercock who spun round with the wind.
‘It’s a real villainy, that it is, Don Camillo! They come down on me with this, just when I’m up to my neck in trouble already. I’ve sown good and reaped evil from everybody, I have.’
Don Camillo shrugged his shoulders.
‘Excuse me, Don Gesualdo. I do my duty. Why did you fall out with the canon-priest Lupi? – About the contract for the high-road! – for a mere nothing. – You need to keep friends with that servant of God. Now he blows the fire up against you with your relations. I don’t want to speak ill of anybody; but he’ll make it hot for you, my dear Don Gesualdo.’
And Don Gesualdo was silent; he bent his back now that everybody could say his say against him, and anybody could throw stones at him.
As it was known that his wife was worse, Marchese Limòli came to visit his niece and had even brought Don Ferdinando as well, arm in arm the two of them, holding each other up. ‘Death and the dunce,’ said those who met them in the street at that hour, with the ferment there was in the village; and they crossed themselves, seeing Don Ferdinando still in the world of the living, with that old greatcoat which hardly hung together any more. The two old men had sat down by the bed, their chins on their sticks, while Don Gesualdo told the story of the illness, and his brother-in-law turned his back on him without saying anything, looking towards his sister, who looked back first at one, then at the other, poor thing, with those eyes of hers which seemed to want to make everybody happy, when suddenly they heard a shouting in the street below, people running, crying loudly, as if the expected revolution had really broken out. All at once, they heard a knocking at the street door, and a voice calling:
‘Neighbour Diodata, open! Come quick. Come and see your husband, he’s been shot – he’s there in the pharmacy –’
Diodata ran just as she was, with her head uncovered, screaming down the streets. In a moment Don Gesualdo’s house was all upside-down. Baron Zacco also came, suspicious, anxious, mumbling his words, looking in front and behind him before he opened his mouth.
‘Did you see? They’ve done it! They’ve killed Diodata’s husband.’
Then Don Gesualdo lost patience.
‘Well, what’s it to do with me? I needed this, that I did! What the devil do you want with me?’
‘Ah – what’s it to do with you? – Excuse me! I thought you’d thank me – if I came at once to let you know – out of good feeling for you – as a friend – and as a relation –’
Meanwhile other people arrived. Zacco went to see who it was, half closing the door of the anteroom. Every minute there was a banging at the street door, so many shocks for the poor sick woman. Then Zacco came to say, quite overwhelmed:
‘There’s been the devil of a row at Palermo. – The revolution. – They want to make it here as well. – That rascal of a Nanni l’Orbo did well to get himself killed just now! –’
Don Gesualdo still only shrugged his shoulders, like one to whom nothing mattered now, nothing except the poor dying woman. After a while the wife and daughters of Baron Zacco also arrived, dressed in their house dresses, with their yellow shawls down their backs, and long faces, never saluting anybody. You could see that all was over. Every minute the baroness went over to speak to her husband, in a low voice. Donna Lavinia had appropriated the keys. Seeing this Don Gesualdo went white. He hadn’t even the courage to ask if the hour had come. Only his bright eyes interrogated first one and then the other.
But they answered him with half words. The baron pulled a long face, and his wife turned her eyes up to heaven and put her hands together. The girls, already sleepy, kept silent, sitting together in the next room. Towards midnight, as the sick woman had gradually become quieter, Don Gesualdo wanted to send them away to rest.
‘No,’ said the baron. ‘We shall not leave you alone tonight.’
Then Don Gesualdo breathed no more, since there was no more hope. He began to walk up and down, with bent head, and his hands behind his back. From time to time he leaned over his wife’s bed. Then he went to continue his walking in the next room, muttering to himself, shaking his head, shrugging his shoulders. At last he turned to Zacco, his voice full of tears:
‘I say we ought to send for her relations – eh? – Don Ferdinando – What do you think?’
Zacco made a grimace.
‘Her relations? – Ah, all right – as you will. – Tomorrow – as soon as it’s day –’
But the poor man couldn’t contain himself, the words were burning inside him and on his lips.
‘Don’t you see? – Not even letting her see her daughter for the last time! – He’s a swine, that noble duke! For three months he’s been writing – we’ll come today and we’ll come tomorrow! As if the poor thing had got a hundred years to live! It’s a true proverb: Out of sight, out of mind. He’s stolen both child and dowry, that assassin!’
And he went on raving like this for some time with Zacco’s wife, for she was a mother herself, and she nodded yes! yes! forcing her eyes to keep open, while they shut by themselves. He felt neither sleepy nor anything, and began grumbling again:
‘What a night! What an endless night! How long this night lasts, Lord God!’
Day had hardly dawned when he opened the balcony doors to call Nardo the labourer, and sent him round to all the relations to say that Bianca was very bad, poor thing, and if they wanted to see her. Along the street there was an extra-ordinary come and go, and down in the square you could hear a great buzzing. On his return Master Nardo brought the news:
‘They have made the revolution. There’s the flag on the church-tower.’
Don Gesualdo sent him to the devil. Little he cared about the revolution now. He’d got revolution enough at home now! But Zacco tried to calm him down.
‘Careful! Careful! In these days we have to be careful, my dear friend.’
A short time after, they heard a knocking at the street door. Don Gesualdo ran to open it himself, thinking it was the doctor or one or other of all those whom he had sent for. Instead he found himself face to face with the canon-priest Lupi, who was dressed in short clothes and with a ragged hat on his head, and the young Baron Rubiera, who stood aside.
‘Excuse me, Don Gesualdo. We don’t want to bother you – But it’s a serious business. – Hark here –’
He drew him aside into the stable to tell him in a low voice what he had come for. Don Ninì, in the distance, still scowling, nodded approbation.
‘We’ve got to make a demonstration, you understand? – Shout that we want Pio Nono and liberty as well. – If we don’t the peasants will turn on us. And you must join in. We mustn’t give a bad example, good God!’
‘Ah! The old song about the Carboneria?’ burst out Don Gesualdo, infuriated. ‘Many thanks to you, Canon! I’m not making any more revolutions! We made a fine show of it at the start! They’ve got to like it now, and every little while they’ll be making another, to get the money out of your pocket. I know what it all amounts to now: – You get out, and give me what you’ve got!’
‘You mean to say you stick up for the Bourbon? Speak out.’
‘I stick up for my own possessions, bless you! – I have worked hard – with my sweat. – And so – all right. – But now I’m not going any more to do just what suits those who don’t own anything or possess anything.’
‘Then they’ll do it to you, you understand! They’ll sack your house and everything!’
The canon-priest added that he came on behalf of those who had something to lose and who ought to unite together, in the present peril, for the common good. – Otherwise he wouldn’t have set foot in his house – after the trick he had played him about the contract for the high-road –
‘Excuse me. – Since you want to play at being deaf. – You know how many enemies you’ve got! Jealous persons – who would like to lay hold of. – They don’t look on you very kindly – They say you’re worse than the others, now you’ve got money. This is the time to spend your money, if you want to save your skin!’
At this point Don Ninì chimed in also:
‘You know they accuse us of having had Nanni l’Orbo killed – to stop his mouth – you for the first! – I’m sorry they saw me coming here the other evening with my wife.’
‘Ay,’ observed the canon-priest – ‘we are honest men. Whose concern could it be, after all, to stop neighbour Nanni from talking so much? – The devil’s own tongue he had, my sirs! The whole village knows the history of Diodata. Now they’re letting loose even the children against you. – You’ll see, Don Gesualdo!’
‘All right – ‘ replied Don Gesualdo. ‘Good day. I can’t leave my wife in the state she’s in, to listen to your gossip.’ And he turned his back on them.
‘Ah – ‘ returned the canon-priest, following him up the stairs. ‘Excuse me, I knew nothing about it. I didn’t think it had already got so far –’
Since they were there they could do no less than go up and see Donna Bianca for a moment, he and the young baron. Don Ninì stopped in the doorway, hat in hand, without saying a word, and the canon-priest, who understood these things, after a while nodded his head to Don Gesualdo as if to say Yes, the hour had come.
‘I will go,’ said Don Ninì putting his hat on again. ‘Do excuse me, but I can’t bear it.’
Don Ferdinando Trao was already there at the bedhead, like a mummy, and Aunt Macrì, who was wiping her niece’s face with a handkerchief of fine linen. The Zaccos were pale with having lost a night’s sleep, and Donna Lavinia could hardly stand. The Marchese Limòli arrived with the confessor. Donna Agrippina then turned them all out, all the lot. Don Gesualdo, behind that closed door, felt a knot in his throat, as if they were taking his poor wife from him before her time.
‘Ah!’ muttered the marchese. ‘What a comedy, poor Bianca! We remain here to keep up the comedy every day, eh, Don Ferdinando! – Even death has forgotten that we’re in the world –’
Don Ferdinando listened blankly. Now and again he looked timidly, furtively, at his brother-in-law, whose eyes were swollen, whose face was yellow and bristly, and he made as if to go away, frightened –
‘No,’ said the marchese. ‘You can’t leave your sister at this point. You are like a child, bless my life!’
At that moment Baron Mendola entered, out of breath, beginning at once to make excuses in a loud voice.
‘I’m sorry. – I knew nothing about it. – I didn’t think –’
Then seeing around him such faces and such silence, he dropped his voice and went to finish his discourse in a corner, in the ear of Baron Zacco. The latter began to talk about the night’s sleep he had lost; his daughters who had never closed their eyes, Lavinia who could hardly stand. Don Gesualdo, it is true, stared blankly around, but it was obvious he didn’t take it in. Just then the priest came out again, dragging his feet, and so moved that his hanging lips were trembling, poor old man.
‘A saint!’ he said to the husband. ‘A real saint!’
Don Gesualdo nodded his head, his heart also swollen. Bianca now lay prostrate, her eyes unseeing, her face as if veiled by a shadow. Donna Agrippina was preparing the altar on the commode, with a damask tablecloth and silver candlesticks. What good would silver candlesticks do anybody now? Don Ferdinando went round touching everything, really like an inquisitive child. Then he stood right in front of the bed, watching his sister who was making her account with the Lord God at that moment, and he began to weep and sob. They were all crying. At that instant Donna Sarina Cirmena peeped in at the door, flustered, her mantle inside out, hesitating, looking round to see how she would be received, beginning already to rub her eyes with her embroidered handkerchief.
‘Excuse me! Pardon me! I haven’t got the heart of a stone. – I heard that my niece. – My heart is in the right place, and it’s tender! – I’ve loved her like a daughter! – Bianca! – Bianca! –’
‘No, aunt! – She is waiting for the sacrament. Don’t disturb her now with worldly thoughts – ‘ said Donna Agrippina.
‘You are right,’ said Donna Sarina. ‘Excuse me, Don Gesualdo.’
After she had taken the communion, Bianca seemed a little calmer. The choking passed off, and she managed to stammer a few words. But in a voice that was hardly audible.
‘You see?’ said Donna Agrippina. ‘You see, now she has made her peace with God! – Sometimes the Lord performs the miracle.’
They put on her breast the relic of the Madonna. Donna Agrippina got the girdle of the tunic to push it under her pillow. Aunt Cirmena gave examples of miraculous healings: everything depends on having faith in the saints and in the blessed relics: The Lord can do as much and more. Don Gesualdo himself began to cry like a baby.
‘Even he!’ murmured Donna Sarina, pretending to speak in Dame Macrì’s ear. ‘Even he hasn’t got a bad heart, at the bottom. But I can’t understand why Isabella hasn’t come – duchess or not! – We’ve only got one mother! – Was it necessary to tell so many stories just to get this fine result here –’
‘He’s a swine! – a villain! – an assassin!’ Don Gesualdo kept growling, glaring round, his lips compressed and his eyes glowing like a madman’s.
‘Eh? What did you say? – ‘ asked Dame Cirmena.
‘Ssh! Ssh!’ interrupted Donna Agrippina.
Baron Mendola leaned over to say something in Zacco’s ear. The other shook his dishevelled, swollen head once or twice. The baroness took advantage of this good opportunity to press Don Gesualdo to take a little refreshment from Lavinia’s own hands.
‘Yes, a drop of broth, for it’s two days since the poor man opened his mouth! –’
As they went into the next room, which opened on to the street, they heard a noise like the sea in storm. Mendola then told what he had seen, coming along.
‘Yessir! They’ve put the flag on the church tower. They say it’s a sign that all food-taxes and land-taxes are abolished. So they’ll be making the demonstration just now. The letter-carrier has brought news that at Palermo they have already done it – and in all the villages along the road as well. So that it would be vile if they didn’t do the same here. However, what will it amount to? The band, four ells of muslin – Look! Look!
From the Rosary Street dawned a tricolour banner on a long cane, and behind it a flood of people shouting and waving arms and caps in the air. From time to time also there was a gun-shot. The marchese, who was deaf as a mole, asked:
‘Eh? What is it?’
The end of the world it was! Don Gesualdo stood arrested, basin in hand. A loud ringing was heard at the street door, and Zacco ran to see. After a moment he poked his head through the door of the anteroom, and called loudly:
‘Marchese! Marchese Limòli!’
They were discussing for some time, in low voices, in the other room. It sounded as if the baron were putting in a good word for a third party who had just arrived, and the marchese was getting fiery.
‘No! no! it’s a swinish trick! –’
‘Listen, Don Gesualdo! – A moment – just a word –’
The crowd had gathered right under the house; you could see the banner there at the balcony height, as if it wanted to come in. Shouts were heard: Hurrah for – Down with –!
‘One moment!’ exclaimed Zacco then putting every consideration aside. ‘Come out here a moment, Don Gesualdo. Show yourself to them, or else there’ll be I don’t know what devil to pay! –’
There was the canon-priest Lupi carrying the portrait of Pope Pius IX, the young Baron Rubiera, yellow as a corpse, waving his handkerchief, and a lot more people all shouting:
‘Hurrah for –! – down with –! – death to –!’
Don Gesualdo, huddled in a chair with his basin in his hand, kept shaking his head and lifting his shoulders, white as his shirt, looking a perfect wreck. The marchese absolutely insisted on knowing what all those people wanted down there:
‘Eh: What is it?’
‘They want all you’ve got!’ burst out Baron Zacco at last, quite beside himself.
The marchese began to laugh, saying:
‘Welcome! Welcome every time!’
At that moment Donna Agrippina Macrì passed in a frenzy, her puce-coloured tunic flapping behind her, and in the dying woman’s room was heard a great commotion, chairs upset, women crying. Don Gesualdo jumped up, swaying, his hair on end; he put the basin on the little table, and began to walk up and down, beside himself, hitting his hands against one another and repeating:
‘The game’s up! – it’s over!’