A LETTER arrived from Isabella a little later; she knew nothing of the catastrophe as yet, and her letter would have made the stones weep. The duke also wrote – a small sheet of notepaper with a black border as thick as your finger, and the crested seal, that black as well, enough to break your heart – inconsolable for the loss of his mother-in-law. He said that the truth had to be hidden from the duchess, by the doctors’ advice, for it would have come like a thunderbolt to her, ailing as she was, and just on the eve of starting off to see her mother! – He wound up by asking for some memento of the dead woman, for his wife; some trifle, a lock of hair, her mass-book, the wedding-ring she wore on her finger –
He wrote also to the lawyer to inquire whether the defunct, rest her soul, had left any property outside her dowry – Then it came out through Don Emanuel Florio, the postmaster, who nosed out the business of everybody in the village, that the lawyer never even answered the letter, and that he only went round grumbling among his intimate friends, like the peevish old man he had become with age:
‘It strikes me that the noble duke is driven to fishing for the moon in a pond, that’s what it strikes me!’
The poor dead woman had gone to the grave in haste, between four candles, amid the hubbub of the mutinous populace who wanted this, that, and the other, stuck in the market-place from morning till night, bawling, with their hands in their pockets and their mouths open, waiting for the manna to fall down from the flag on the church-tower. Ciolla had become somebody at last, with a black feather in his cap and a velvet blouse, so that he looked a perfect child, at his age, and he walked up and down the square, looking here and there as if to say to folks: ‘Hey! You mind yourselves!’ – Don Luca, carrying the cross in front of the coffin, winked amicably, so that the people would make way for him through the crowd, and he smiled to his acquaintances as he heard all the chants of praise which they vented along the street after Mastro-don Gesualdo.
A thief! An assassin! A fellow who had got rich, while so many others were left poor and more needy than ever! A fellow who had his store-barns full of stuff, and sent round the sergeant-bailiff to collect the debts from other people.
Those who shouted loudest were such debtors as had eaten their corn in the blade, before it came to ear. They reproached him, moreover, with having been the most obstinate against letting them have the communal lands, each his own bit. They didn’t know whence the accusation had arisen, but it was a fact. Everybody said so: the canon-priest Lupi armed to the teeth. Baron Rubiera in his fustian hunting-jacket, like any poor devil. They were always in the midst of the land-labourers, handy and jolly, with their heart on their lips:
That Mastro-don Gesualdo was always alike! He had let his wife die without so much as sending to Palermo for a doctor! A Trao! One who had raised him up to honour in the world! What good had it done her, being so rich? –
The canon-priest let out more things against the other man, in confidence: – He had begrudged the very masses for the soul of the poor woman! – ‘I know it for certain. I was in the sacristy. If he has no feeling even for his own flesh and blood! – Don’t make me talk, I’ve got to say mass tomorrow morning! –’
Gentry and plebeians, after the first shock, had become all one family. Now the gentry were fervent protectors of liberty: priests and friars with the crucifix on their breast, or the cockade of Pius IX, and with muskets on their shoulders. Don Nicolino Margarone was nominated captain, with spurs and a striped cap. The Captain’s lady went round collecting to buy firearms, dressed in the tricolour, a short red overdress, a white skirt, and a Calabrian hat with green feathers that was a perfect love. The other ladies carried stones every day to the barricades, outside the gates, with their little baskets ornamented with ribbons and the band playing in front. It was like a festival, morning and evening, with all those flags and that crowd down the street, the shouting of Hurrah for! and of Down with! every moment, the bells chiming and the band playing, and later on the illumination. The only windows that remained shut were those of Don Gesualdo Motta. He alone had retired into his lair like a wolf, the enemy of his village, now that he’d got rich, doing nothing but complain because they came to him every day to ask for something, the commission for the poor, the forced loan, the requisition of firearms! – They put him at the head of the list, and made him pay twice as much as anybody else. He had to defend himself and contend with them. The gentlemen of the Committee returned from his house worn out and telling fine tales. They said he didn’t understand anything any more, absolutely stupid, nothing but a shadow of Mastro-don Gesualdo, a real corpse, who kept on his feet still to defend his own property, but the hand of God would fall on him sooner or later.
Meanwhile the peasantry and the starving people who stood about the square from morn till night, open-mouthed, expecting the manna that never came, inflaming one another as fast as they could, talked of the fraudulent way they’d been treated, the hardships they suffered in winter, while there were folks who had store-barns full of stuff, and fields, and vineyards! – They could do with the real gentry, who were born to it. – But they couldn’t rest for thinking that Don Gesualdo Motta had been born poor and naked as themselves. – They all remembered him a poor navvy – Speranza, his own sister, preached there in front of the flag hoisted on the Town Hall, that now at last the moment had come to make restoration of ill-gotten gains, to take justice into one’s own hands. She incited her own children against their uncle, and now that her boys had grown big and strong they would have been able to make themselves felt, if they hadn’t been two ninnies, like their father, who had quieted down the moment his brother-in-law had sent a handful of money, when Bianca was so ill, saying he wanted to make peace with everybody, and he had only too many troubles already. Giacalone, whom Don Gesualdo had made to pawn his mule to pay for the harvest-debt; and Pirtuso’s heir who was still fighting him in a law-suit about certain moneys which the agent had carried with him into the other world; all those who were against him for one reason or another, now blew up the fire, saying he was a shady one, telling all the dirty tricks of Mastro-don Gesualdo, crying him down in every little drinking-tavern and in every club, even rousing up those who had nothing against him, with the story of the communal lands which were going to be divided amongst everybody, so that everybody was expecting his bit from day to day, and yet nothing was really decided about it, and anybody who talked about it they had him killed to stop his mouth. – They knew well enough where the shot had come from! Master Titta had recognized Gerbido, the former servant-boy of Don Gesualdo, as he ran away hiding his face in his handkerchief. And so came up again the story of Nanni l’Orbo who had taken on Don Gesualdo’s woman and the children she had had by him, poor foundlings who went hoeing in their father’s fields to earn their bread, and kissed his hands into the bargain, like that fool of a Diodata who if you gave her a kick said Thank you for it.
So on and so on, they managed to let loose even these two upon him, one evening when they had drawn them into the tavern with their talk, and the two lads hadn’t even the money to pay for a drink for their friends. Then, at that hour, Don Gesualdo saw appear before him Nunzio, the more fiery of the two. His grandfather’s name, yes, that he had given him; but the property, no! – As near as nothing they were to coming to blows, father and son. There was a great shouting, a row that lasted for half an hour. Nunzio, rolling drunk, stuck up for himself there to his father’s face, and told him everything he could lay his tongue to, him and her as well. Uncle Santo, who had made it up with his brother after the death of his sister-in-law, helping him to live through his grief, eating and drinking at his expense, seized the wooden bar to make peace between them. Poor Don Gesualdo went to lie down, more dead than alive.
In the midst of so many worries he had really got ill. It poisoned his blood to hear all the talk that went on. Don Luca the sexton, who had come and established himself in the house, as if it was already time to bring him the extreme unction, made out that Don Gesualdo ought to open his store-barns to the poor, if he wished to save body and soul. He himself had five children to keep, five mouths to fill, six with his wife. Master Titta, when he came to bleed him, sang the rest of the song, lancet in air:
‘You see! If they don’t use a bit more sense, some of them, it’ll come to a bad end this time! People can’t stand any more. I’ve been cutting hair and letting blood for forty years, and I’m not changed, I’m not!’
Don Gesualdo, ill, yellow, with his mouth always bitter, had lost appetite and sleep; he had cramps in his stomach like mad dogs inside him. Baron Zacco was the only friend he had left. And people said that even he had something to gain by being friends with him, some scheme up his sleeve. He came to see him morning and evening, and brought his wife and daughters, all dressed in black, so that they darkened the street. He left him his daughter to look after him.
‘Lavinia is a splendid hand at making decoctions – Lavinia is a demon for keeping her eye on things about the house. – Let Lavinia do it, she knows how to manage things –’
On the other hand, the baron looked black if Diodata dared so much as to show her face there, at Don Gesualdo’s, with a black kerchief on her head, loaded with children, already grey and bent like an old woman.
‘No, no, good woman. We don’t want you! Better look after your own affairs, we don’t keep lavish open house here any more –’
Afterwards he babbled his paternal advice to his friend.
‘What the devil do you want with that old woman? – You’ve no business to have her hanging round, now she’s a widow! – Especially seeing that you used to have her in the house when she was a lass. – You know what the world is, and how it talks! – Then that other business of her husband’s death – Though it’s true he deserved it! – Besides, you don’t need anybody, now we have my daughter here –’
He himself took upon himself to order and dispose of everything in the house of his cousin Don Gesualdo, poking his nose into all his business, running up and down with the keys of the store-houses and the cellar. He advised him, moreover, to put out his ready money to interest, supposing he had any by him, for fear things should get worse.
‘Give it out on loan, with a good lawyer’s security – a bit for everybody, for those who shout loudest, because they’ve nothing to lose, and are threatening now to break in to your store-houses and burn your house. Then they’ll be quiet for the time being. Then, if they do manage to get hold of the communal lands, you can jump on them with a fine mortgage. Things can’t go on always like they are now. Things will change round again, and you’ll have got your claws in in time –’
But he wouldn’t hear of money. He said he hadn’t any, that his son-in-law had ruined him, that he’d rather meet them with guns, the folks who came to burn his house or to break in to his store-barns. He had become like a wild beast, green with bile, the illness itself making him frantic. He shouted, threatening:
‘Ah! My own property! I’d like to see them! After I’ve been forty years getting it together – penny by penny! – Better cut out my liver and all the rest at once, for I’m rotten inside with miseries. – With guns, I say! I’d like to murder a dozen or so of them first! If a man wants to take from you what you’ve got, you take his life from him!’
So he had armed Santo and Master Nardo, the old labourer, with sabres and carbines. He kept the door barred, and two fierce mastiffs in the courtyard. People said that his house was like an arsenal; that at night he received Canali, Marchese Limòli and the others, to conspire with them, and that one fine morning you’d find the gallows set up in the market-place and all those who had made the revolution hanging on it. So his few friends had abandoned him so as not to be looked upon with dislike. And Zacco really ran an ugly risk by keeping on going to see him, with all his family.
‘Pity that soap and water don’t wash with you!’ the baron said to him more than once. The baroness at last, seeing that there was no coming to a conclusion with that man, decided to explode the bomb one day when Don Gesualdo was just nodding on the sofa, yellow as death, and her daughter was playing sick-nurse, sitting on guard by the window.
‘Excuse me, cousin! I’m a mother and I can’t keep quiet any longer, I can’t – you, Lavinia, go out a minute while I speak to Cousin Don Gesualdo. – Now that my daughter’s gone, tell me what’s in your heart, Cousin – tell me plainly what is your intention. – As for me, I shall be very pleased – so will the baron, my husband. – But we must speak out plainly –’
The poor wretch opened his sleepy eyes wide, still a wreck after the colic –
‘Eh? What do you say? What do you mean? I don’t understand you.’
‘Oh! You don’t understand me? Not when my daughter Lavinia is here doing everything for you? An unmarried girl! And you’re a widower at last, and you ought to have reached years of discretion, so that you can make up your mind and know what you want to do.’
‘Nothing. I don’t want to do anything. I want to be left in peace, if you’ll leave me alone –’
‘Ah? So that’s it? Then stay as it suits you. – But anyhow it’s not right – you know it! – I am a mother –’
And now, resolute, she ordered her daughter to take her mantle and come away home. Lavinia obeyed, also in a fury. The two of them, as they left that house for the last time, drew a cross savagely on the threshold. –
A veritable galley, that hole! Poor Cousin Bianca had left her bones there with a slow decline! – Zacco went that very evening to visit Baron Rubiera, instead of boring himself to death with that farm-labourer of a Mastro-don Gesualdo who spent the whole time whining, holding his stomach, in the dark in order to save the light.
‘You don’t mind my coming, eh? Cousin Rubiera – Donna Giuseppina –’
Don Ninì had gone out to some secret meeting or other, to decide some weighty matter. While waiting for him, Baron Zacco wanted to pay his respects to the dowager baroness, since he had not seen her for some time. He found her in her room, nailed in her chair facing the matrimonial bed, near which still hung her husband’s gun, rest his soul, and the crucifix which they had laid on his breast when he was dying. She was bunched up in an old shawl, her helpless hands in her lap. The moment she saw her cousin Zacco come in, she began to cry with emotion, childish: – big silent tears which welled little by little in her dull eyes, and fell slowly down her loose cheeks.
‘Good, good, that’s right, Cousin Rubiera! Your head is all right! You know people when you see them!’
She also wanted to tell him of her own troubles, mumbling, puffing, and confusing herself, with her thick tongue and her violent lips frothing with saliva. The baron bent over her, listening closely and affectionately.
‘Eh? What! Yes, yes, I understand! You are right, poor thing!’
Whereupon arrived the infuriated daughter-in-law.
‘She doesn’t understand a damn thing,’ said the baron. ‘It must be a purgatory for you who are closely related to her.’
The paralytic looked daggers at them, lifting more than she was really able, her head which was bent over her shoulder, while Donna Giuseppina scolded her like a child, wiping her chin with a dirty handkerchief.
‘What’s the matter? – What do you want? – Stupid! – You’ll ruin your health! – She’s a real infant, God bless us! You don’t have to believe what she says! It takes the patience of a saint to put up with her, it does.’
The mother-in-law now made big eyes, looking round in dismay, drawing her head in between her shoulders, as if she was afraid of being beaten.
‘You see! Blessed patience!’
‘As I told you,’ concluded the baron. ‘You’ve got your purgatory here on earth, you can go straight to heaven after this.’
Don Ninì came in to take the keys of the cellar. Finding his cousin there, he put on a silly sort of look.
‘Ah – Cousin! – What’s the latest? Is your wife well? – Here you can see what it is – trouble by the shovelful. What’s amiss, mamma? – the same old worries? Excuse me, cousin Zacco, I must go downstairs a moment –’
The keys always hung there on the door-post. The paralysed woman followed them with her eyes, without being able to say a word, forcing herself to turn her head more than she could, following every stride her son took, while splotches of sick blood burnt again all at once in her cadaverous face. Then Zacco began to recite the rosary against Mastro-don Gesualdo.
‘Lord God, I blame myself, and I repent! I’ve kept on only too long with that fellow! It seemed to me a miserable thing to abandon him in his need – in the midst of all his enemies – if it was only out of Christian charity. – But no more! it’s too much. – Not even his own relations can put up with that man! Think of it! not even a simpleton like Don Ferdinando! He’d rather stop at home than be forced to put on the new suit his brother-in-law sent him. – As long as he lives, you understand? He’s a man of character! And really I am tired, you know. I don’t want to ruin myself for love of Mastro-don Gesualdo. I’ve got a wife and children. Must I carry him hung round my neck like a stone to drown myself with?’
‘Ah! – I told you so! Why look, in all conscience! What was Mastro-don Gesualdo twenty years ago? – And now he puts his foot on all our necks. Just look my sirs, a Baron Zacco blacking his boots and quarrelling with all his relations on account of him! –’
The other bowed his head in contrition. He confessed that he’d been wrong, but in a good cause, to prevent the man from doing any more harm and to try and get out of him the little good that was in him. Once in a lifetime one may make a mistake.
‘But you know now? Now you know which of us two was right?’
His wife stopped the words in his mouth with a nudge of her elbow.
‘Let him speak. It’s his business now to tell us what he wants of us – what he’s come for –’
‘All right,’ returned Zacco with a good-humoured smile. ‘I’ve come to play the Prodigal Son, my word! Does it please you?’
Donna Giuseppina was pleased with a sour mouth. Her husband looked first at her, then at his cousin Zacco, and didn’t know what to say.
‘All right,’ resumed Zacco once more. ‘I know that those lads want to make a bit of a row in the streets tonight. You’ve just got the keys of the cellar in your hand, to keep them good-tempered. And you remember that I’m not one of your mealy-mouthed sort, if some of them take it into their heads to come and annoy me under my windows. I’ve got my own stomach full of stuff, and I don’t want to have a lot of enemies to my credit, like Mastro-don Gesualdo –’
Husband and wife looked at one another meaningly.
‘I’m father of a family!’ the baron went on. ‘I’ve got to defend my own interests. – Excuse me. – But if we play at kick who can amongst ourselves – !’
Donna Giuseppina took up the reply, scandalized.
‘Why whatever are you talking about? – Excuse me, really, if I speak about your business. But, after all, we’re relations.’
‘That’s what I say. We are relations! And it’s better to hang together, among ourselves – in these days! –’
Don Ninì held out his hand.
‘What the devil! – what nonsense!’
Then he unbuttoned altogether, looking frequently at his wife.
‘Come to the theatre this evening, for the singing of the hymn. Show yourself along with us. The canon-priest will be there as well. He says it won’t be a sin, because it’s the Pope’s hymn. – We’ll talk about it. – But you’ll have to put your hand in your pocket, my friend. You’ve got to spend and treat. See me?’ And he shook the cellar keys before him. The old woman, who had not lost a word of this conversation, although nobody was paying any heed to her, began to growl in the obstinate anger of a child. on purpose making the veins of her neck swell till she was purple in the face. Then the racket began again: son and daughter-in-law scolded her together; and she tried to howl more loudly, shaking her head infuriated. Rosaria appeared, with a huge belly, and with her dirty hands in her greyish, towsled hair, and she too began threatening the paralytic:
‘Just you look! She’s become as wicked as a sandy-coloured ass! What does she want, eh? She eats like a wolf!’
Rosaria never knew when to finish this tune. Baron Zacco thought well to take his leave out of that upset.
‘Well, good evening till the cantata.’