THERE was a full theatre because entrance was free. Lights, singing, applause rising to the stars. Signora Aglae had come on purpose from Modica, at the village expense, to declaim the Hymn of Pius IX and other suitable poems. Seeing her dressed in Greek robes, with all that flesh on her, good luck to her, Don Ninì Rubiera amid the general emotion felt tears come to his eyes, and clapped louder than anybody, murmuring to himself:
‘Body of –! She is still a fine-looking woman! – Blessing my wife isn’t here!’
But those who were shut out, who pushed without being able to get in, went off at last to shout Death! and Hurrah! on their own account; and all those who were in the theatre, hearing the uproar, went out into the square, leaving the leading lady and Signor Pallante to embrace alone, with the flag in their hands. In a moment a great crowd gathered, and kept on increasing like a river. There was an immense shouting, yells which in the darkness and the confusion sounded threatening. Don Nicolino Margarone, Zacco, Mommino Neri, all the well-disposed, burst their throats shouting ‘Out with the lights!’ so that they could see better, so that trouble should not arise.
The crowd kept on shouting this way and that for a time. Then it burst in a torrent down the street of San Giovanni. In front of Pecu Pecu’s Tavern there was a bench with dishes of fried vegetables and things, and this went flying – pumpkin and tomato all underfoot. Santo Motta, who was as if shopkeeper and at home there, seeing all this stuff go to waste, screamed like one possessed:
‘Fools! animals! – Don’t you eat good food, don’t you?’
They were very near to pounding him too, in the fury. Giacalone and the most fervent proposed to bash in the church doors and carry round the saint in procession, to make more impression. – Yes and No. – Curses and knocks on the jaw, there in the dark, in the sacred place. Master Cosimo meanwhile climbed the belfry and rang unceasingly. The cries and the clash of bells were heard even at the Alia, even as far as Monte Lauro, like the ravings of a hurricane. Lights were seen running in the upper village – an end of the world. All at once, as if some word of order had been given, the crowd poured tumultuously towards the Fosso, apparently following some precious leaders.
Mendola, Don Nicolino, and canon-priest Lupi himself, who had buried himself in the thick of the tumult to do what good he could, in vain yelled:
‘Stop! Stop!’
Baron Zacco, not having young legs any more, landed out right and left with his stick, biff! bang! to make the bereft hear reason.
‘Hey? What are we up to? – Gently, gently, my masters! We’re not going to begin doing dirty fools’ tricks! In these things you know where you begin but you don’t know –’
Just as many of them had lent their ears to the talk about smashing in doors and taking out all the saints for a dance, so now the mob thronged before the storehouses of Mastro-don Gesualdo. They said they were full to the roof. – A man who was born poor as Job, and now who had got stuck-up, and was sworn enemy of the poor and of the liberals – ! With stones, with cudgels! – Some of them had armed themselves with a big stone and were smiting the street-door with blows that sounded like canon-shot. The shrill voice of Brasi Camauro was heard whining:
‘My sirs! There’s no religion left! They won’t have any more to do with Christs and saints! They want to let us starve to death every one of us!’
All at once out of the commotion came yells to make your flesh creep. Santo Motta, torn and bleeding, by rolling himself on the floor succeeded in making a bit of space in front of the storehouse door. And then the gentry, also yelling, shoving, fighting, drove back the most riotous. The canon-priest Lupi, clinging on to the iron grating of the window, tried to make himself heard:
‘… like this? … religion! … other people’s possessions! – The Holy Father! … if we begin –’
Other shouts responded from the multitude:
‘… equal … poor people … dragged by his feet! … fat ox! –’
Giacalone, in order to excite the mob, pushed forward Diodata’s two bastards who were there in the crowd, yelling:
‘… Don Gesualdo! … if there is justice anywhere! … abandoned on the streets … the Lord God Himself weeps at such a sight! … go and reckon with him! …’
From the Square of Santa Maria di Jesu, from the first houses of San Sebastiano, the neighbours, terrified, saw a flood of people passing, a great commotion, weapons glinting, men’s arms waving in the air, flushed, fiery faces, showing convulsed in the light of the torches. Doors and windows slammed to. From the distance came screams and weeping of women, voices crying:
‘Holy Mother of God! Oh, holy Saints!’
Don Gesualdo was sick in bed, when he heard somebody knocking at the little side-door opening on to the alley, knocking as if they would break it down. Then the rumble of the tempest supervened. That very evening a kind soul had run to warn him:
‘Beware, Don Gesualdo! They’re threatening you because you are for the Bourbons. Lock yourself in the house!’
He, having got so much other trouble on him, shrugged his shoulders. But now, seeing it was really turning out seriously, he jumped out of bed just as he was, with handkerchief round his head and a cataplasm on his stomach, pulling on his trousers anyhow, putting his pains aside at the sound of that voice crying:
‘Don Gesualdo! – quick! – escape!’
A voice he’d not forget if he lived to be a thousand. Dishevelled, half-dressed, with his eyes glittering like a wildcat’s and his face green with bile, he went about the room looking for pistols and hunting-knives, resolved at least to sell his life dear. Master Nardo and those few house-servants who had remained faithful out of necessity, recommended their souls to God. At last Baron Mendola succeeded in making them open the little side-door to him, Don Gesualdo, posted at the window with a gun, nearly caused a disaster.
‘Eh?’ yelled Mendola, entering done-up. ‘You want to shoot me dead, if you please! This is my reward!’
The other wouldn’t hear reason. He was trembling from head to foot with rage.
‘Ah? so that’s it! That’s what we’ve come to, that a gentleman isn’t safe even in his own house? and his own things aren’t his own? Here I am! But Samson will fall along with the Philistines, mark you! Even the wolf, when you get him cornered –’
Zacco and two or three others of the well-disposed, having arrived in the meantime, worked themselves into a sweat trying to persuade him, shouting all at once:
‘What do you think you can do? Against a whole village! You’re out of your mind. They’ll burn everything down! They’re starting their Massacre of the Innocents here! You’ll get yourself murdered and everybody else.’
He, infuriated, with his hair bristling:
‘So, if it’s like that! – If they reckon they’re going to put their hand in my pocket by force! – If this is how they’re going to repay me! I’ve been good to them – I’ve fed the whole village – Now they can eat powder, and I’ll start with the first that comes up –’
Actually! He was determined to make a slaughter of it. Thank goodness, canon-priest Lupi burst into the room and flung himself upon him without minding risks, pushing him and wrestling with him round the room till he succeeded in wresting the gun from his hands.
‘What the devil! You don’t play with firearms!’
He was gasping for breath, his cranium was red and bald, smoking like when he was young, and he stammered in a broken voice:
‘Oh, holy devils! – Lord, forgive me! You make me sweat like a pig. Don Jackass! We’re here to save your life, though you’re not worth it! Do you want them to start sacking and burning the whole village? I don’t care about you, fool that you are! But there are some things that we mustn’t let start even in fun, you understand. Nay, not even against a mortal enemy! If that lot who have got no further than shouting, so far, if they once lay their hands on other people’s possessions, we’re done for!’
The canon-priest was properly beside himself. Then the others all started again on that pig-headed fool of a Mastro-don Gesualdo who was risking compromising them all; they abused him for ingratitude; they simply stunned him. Baron Zacco even went so far as to put his arm round his neck, in confidence, confessing in his ear that he was with him, on his side against all the rabble; but for the moment you had to be prudent, let things take their course, and give in.
‘Say yes – everything they want, now. – There’s no lawyer to put your promises on paper. – A bit of management, a bit of money. – Better your purse should suffer than your belly –’
Don Gesualdo, seated on a chair wiping away his sweat with his shirt-sleeve, did not say a word, dazed. Down before the great door meanwhile Baron Rubiera, Don Nicolino, Neri’s son were all striving and struggling with all their might to calm the most riotous spirits.
‘Gentlemen – you are right – Everything you want shall be done. – We can swallow all the lot of them in one bite. – Hurray! Hurrah! – All brothers! – One hand washes the other. – Tomorrow – by daylight. Anybody who’s in want come here to us. – Now it’s late, and we’re all one colour, – rogues and gentlemen. – Hey! Hey! I say – !’
Don Nicolino had to catch by the collar a fellow who was slipping through the partly opened door, profiting by the confusion and press which had arisen around a woman who was screaming and pleading:
‘Nunzio! Gesualdo! My sons! – What are they making you do! – Nunzio – Ah, holy Madonna! –’
It was Diodata, who had heard that her boys were among the mob, shouting for death and destruction against Don Gesualdo, along with the rest, and she had come running with her hands in here hair.
‘Holy Madonna! – What are they making you do!’
Meanwhile Zacco and Master Nardo brought down little barrels full of wine, and helped to make peace by pouring out drink for whoever wanted it, while the canon-priest preached from above:
‘Tomorrow! Come back tomorrow, whoever wants anything. – There’s nobody at home now. – Don Gesualdo is away in the country – but in his heart he also is here, along with us – helping us. – Every man is to have his own loaf of bread and his own piece of land. – We’ll make it right. – Come back tomorrow –’
‘Tomorrow be damned!’ Don Gesualdo grumbled inside himself. ‘It looks to me as if your honour wanted to pay for everything out of my pocket, Canon!’
‘Will you keep quiet! Do you want to make me look a liar? – Haven’t I said you’re not here, to save your skin –’
But Don Gesualdo still rebelled.
‘Why? What have I done? I’m in my own house! –’
‘What you’ve done is that you’re as rich as a pig! – ‘ the canon-priest bawled in his ear at last, losing patience. Then all the others attacked him at once, with fair words and foul, saying that if the revolutionaries only found him there, they wouldn’t leave one stone of the house upon another; they’d take everything; they wouldn’t even leave him his eyes to weep his losses. So at last they induced him to flee by the side door. Mendola ran to knock at Uncle Limòli’s.
Hearing the uproar in the village, the marchese by this time as deaf as a mole, had thrown a mantle over his shoulders and stood at his balcony window looking down; he was in his shirt, with his bare feet in heel-less slippers, and a little earthenware warming-pan in his hands, when this new shot took him in the wind. They had a rare job making him understand what they wanted with him at that hour, Mastro-don Gesualdo more dead than alive, the others shouting at the top of their voices in the old man’s ear:
‘They want to play the deuce with him – with your nephew Don Gesualdo. – You must hide him –’
He winked with his flabby, dropping eyelids, nodding yes, and showing a malicious smile.
‘Ah? – play the deuce? – with Don Gesualdo? – Quite right! Your time has come, my dear man. – You are the sample of the goods –’
But at last, when he realized that they actually did want to do for him, he changed his tone, pretending to be anxious, in his cracked voice:
‘What? – Him himself! But what do they want then? – What’s going to become of us, at this rate?’
Mendola explained to him that Don Gesualdo was just the pretext for falling upon the richest people in the village but there at the marchese’s they’d never come to look for riches. The old man shook his head, agreeing that they naturally wouldn’t, looking round his rooms with that sour little smile on his toothless mouth.
They were two little rooms that had grown old along with him, and on which his every habit had left its mark; the patch of grease behind the chair in which he nodded off after dinner; the floor-tiles worked loose in that short track between door and window, the plaster rubbed off the wall by the bed where he struck a light. And in that squalor the marchese lived like a prince, spitting his poverty in everybody’s face.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen, if I receive you in this rat-hole. – It isn’t good enough for you, Don Gesualdo. – The fine lot of relations you’ve got now, eh? –’
On the old sofa with its back against the wall, after they had propped it steady with pieces of the above-mentioned broken tiles, they made up a bed for Don Gesualdo, who could not keep up any more, while the Marchese grumbled on:
‘Look you now what’s come to pass! – I’ve seen a good many things! But this I didn’t expect!’
However he offered to share with him the basin of milk in which he had put his crusts to soak.
‘I’ve come back to pap, you see. I’ve nothing else to offer you for supper. Meat won’t do for my teeth any more – neither for my purse. – You’re used to different fare, my friend. – Well, it can’t be helped! The world turns round for all of us, my dear Don Gesualdo!’
‘Ah!’ replied the latter. ‘It isn’t that, Marchese, sir. It’s that my stomach won’t let me. It’s full of poison. I’ve got a mad dog in my belly.’
‘All right,’ said the others. ‘You can thank God. Here nobody will touch you.’
It was a tremendous blow for Mastro-don Gesualdo. The agitation, the bile, the sickness he had upon him. – The night passed as best it might. But the day after, at Ave Maria, Mendola came again muffled up in his cloak, with his hat down on his eyes, looking carefully around before entering the door.
‘Now something else!’ he exclaimed, entering. ‘They’ve set spies on to you, Don Gesualdo! And they want to dog you out even from here, to make you keep all those promises which the canon-priest made. – Ciolla in person – I saw him just down there, standing sentinel –’
The marchese, who had become lively again and gay amid all this upset, sharpening his ears and poking in between people to catch a word of what was said, now ran to the balcony.
‘That’s right! There he is in his blouse like a litle boy. – That’s a sign that everybody is growing backwards! –’
Don Gesualdo had risen gasping, shouting that it was better to make an end of it, that he would run down and pay Ciolla, pay him all the promises, full on the spot! And that if they were looking for him, there he was, quite ready to receive them! –
‘Of course, of course,’ repeated the marchese. ‘If they’re looking for you it means they need you. They don’t come looking for me, you bet. They want to make you shout Death! and Hurrah! along with them. Well then go along! Hurrah for you if you’ve got something to make them shout with.’
‘No! I know what they want!’ returned Don Gesualdo, who was becoming stupefied.
‘Excuse me, but it’s not a question of you only,’ observed Mendola. ‘It’s that after you there’s the whole village, me and everybody!’
Arrived the canon-priest, scratching his head, perplexed by the turn things had taken. The spree was still going on. A fine look-out for some folks! Those rascals had fastened on to those words of peace which he had let fall, and now they were waiting in the market-place expecting the manna to drop from heaven: – ‘You’ve got me into a fine mess, you have, Don Gesualdo!’
At this new departure from the canon-priest arose a new squabbling between the two of them.
‘I, eh? – I? – It was I who promised them earth and air and sea?’
‘To keep them quiet, in God’s name! Words of the moment, of course. I’d have liked to see you stuck in front of all their infernal faces.’
The marchese was quite amused:
‘Just hark! hark now! Look! Look!’
‘Anyhow,’ concluded Mendola, ‘this sort of talk is no good, and we’ve got to gain time! So meanwhile you’ll take yourself off, causa causarum! At the bottom of a cistern, in a hole, where the devil you like, but you can’t go on putting so many fathers of families into danger, just for the sake!’
‘In the Trao house!’ suggested the canon-priest. ‘Your brother-in-law will receive you open-armed. Everybody’s forgotten that he’s still alive, and they won’t come looking for you there.’
The marchese also approved of this.
‘Splendid! It’s a splendid idea! Dog and cat shut up together! –’
Don Gesualdo was obstinately against it.
‘Then,’ exclaimed the canon-priest, ‘I wash my hands of it, like Pilate. Then I’ll go and call Ciolla and all the lot of them, if that’s what you want.’
Don Gesualdo was reduced to such a state that they did as they liked with him. Two hours after dark, through certain back streets, they went to wake Grazia who had the keys of the street door, and then in the darkness, cautiously, they arrived at Don Ferdinando’s door.
‘Who is it?’ they heard an asthmatic voice bleating from within. ‘Grazia, who is it?’
‘It’s us, Don Gesualdo, your brother-in-law –’
No answer. Then they heard a stir in the darkness. And all at once Don Ferdinando bolted himself in, and began to pile tables and chairs in front of the door, screaming continually:
‘Grazia! Grazia!’
‘Devil and all!’ exclaimed Mendola. ‘This is worse than ever! That fool will bring all the village.’ The canon-priest was smiling under his nose, shaking his head. Meanwhile Grazia had lighted a stump of candle, and was looking first one and then the other in the face, bewildered, blinking her eyes.
‘What do you want to do, gentlemen?’ she hazarded timidly. Don Gesualdo, who really could not stand, pale and broken, broke forth in a desperate tone:
‘I want to go back to my own house! – no matter what happens. – I’m determined on it! –’
‘No sir!’ interrupted the canon-priest. ‘This is your own house as well. There’s your wife’s share in it. Why, good Lord! You’ve borne till now. – Now enough! – There, in Donna Bianca’s room. The bed is there same as ever.’
Mendola regained his good humour while they were making the bed. He rummaged round everywhere. He went to poke his nose into the dark passage behind the door. He made jokes, recalling old stories. – What changes! What things had happened! – Who could ever have told, eh, Don Gesualdo? –
Even the canon-priest himself let slip a little smile.
‘While you’re here you can meditate all you wish upon life and death, to pass the time away. What a comedy it is, this dirty world! Vanitas vanitatum!’
Don Gesualdo gave him a black look, but did not reply. He still had strength of stomach enough to shut his troubles and misfortunes inside himself, without amusing his friends by sharing with them. He threw himself down on the bed and was left alone with his pains, stifling his laments and swallowing down the bitterness that every memory brought up into his throat. Only one thing troubled him, that he might die there where he was, without his daughter ever knowing. And there in the fever there passed before his darkened eyes Bianca, Diodata, Master Nunzio, and others, and then his own second self that slaved and toiled in sun and wind, always with a sullen face, and which spat in his face with words like:
‘Fool! Fool! What have you done! You look well!’
With the day returned Grazia who came to help him a bit, spent as she was, panting if she moved a chair, stopping every moment full in front of him with her hands on her enormous stomach, to start again her complaints against Don Ferdinando’s relations, who left him there on her hands, poor thing, begrudging him even his bread and wine.
‘Yessir, they’ve every one forgotten him, there in his corner like a sick dog! – But my heart won’t let me! – We’ve always been neighbours – good servants of the family – a great family – My heart won’t let me, it won’t!’
In her wake came a swarm of children turning everything up-side-down. Then arrived Speranza screaming that she wanted to see her brother, as if he was on the point of death.
‘Let me come in! He’s my own flesh and blood, when all’s said and done. Now he is as he is I don’t think of anything but that I’m his sister.’
She, her husband and children. They set all the neighbourhood in an uproar. Don Gesualdo got up out of bed gasping. Chains wouldn’t have kept him in it.
‘I want to go to my own house! What am I doing here? Anyhow, everybody knows –’
With great effort they persuaded him to wait till evening. And then after Ave Maria, quietly and secretly, Burgio and all his relations accompanied him home. Speranza wanted to stop and look after her brother, since he was so ill, and for a miracle they hadn’t put everything to sack and pillage that night.
‘It’s no good saying we’ve fallen out. In time of need folks show their heart. Money is one thing, love is another. We have quarrelled and we shall quarrel till the Judgement Day, but we are children of the same father, we are one blood!’
She protested that she’d cherish him like the apple of her eye, him and all that belonged to him. She arrayed in front of him her husband and her children, who kept looking around with greedy looks, and she repeated:
‘These are your own kith and kin! These won’t betray you!’
And he, beaten, weary, disheartened, hadn’t even the strength to rebel.
So, bit by bit, they all foisted themselves on him. His nephews roving round the house and gardens, playing the master, laying hands on everything. His sister, with the keys at her waist, rummaging, ransacking, sending her husband here and there, to fetch remedies, to look for healing herbs. As Farmer Fortunato grumbled that he hadn’t the legs of a man of twenty to run round in this fashion, she yelled at him:
‘What do you want? Don’t you do it for love of your brother-in-law? Prison, sickness and necessity call for an amnesty.’
She wasn’t frightened of Ciolla nor any of that tribe. Once when Vito Orlando thought he would come and do a bit of showing off, with his pistol in his pocket, to settle certain debts with Don Gesualdo, she followed him down the stairs throwing a pot of dirty water over him. Even canon-priest Lupi himself had had to put his tail between his legs, and couldn’t try being generous with other people’s things any more, now that Ciolla and the most scoundrelly members had gone off to seek fortune in the city, with banners and trumpets. The canon-priest, in order to quiet the rest, had had to resort to the expedient of going out in procession, with the scourge and the crown of thorns; and so the others let off their steam in festivals and holidays, while he went round preaching brotherhood and love of one’s neighbour.
‘He doesn’t fork out a farthing, for all that,’ bawled Gossip Speranza. – ‘And all right then. But if he comes trying it on again here at this house, playing the camorrista, I’ll receive him as he deserves – like Vito Orlando.’
In the meantime Don Gesualdo’s house was being sacked and pillaged all the same. Wine, oil, cheese, pieces of cloth also, disappeared in the twinkling of an eye. From the Canziria farm and from Mangalavite appeared farm-managers and peasants laying complaints against the sons of Farmer Fortunato Burgio who came ruling with a high hand, and sacked the fields and orchards of their uncle as if the place was already masterless. He, poor wretch, fast in bed, fretted in silence; he dared not rebel against his sister and her husband; he thought of his own troubles. He had a dog, there in his belly, which devoured his liver, the mad dog of Saint Vito the Martyr, which martyred him also. In vain did Speranza lovingly seek for herbs and medicines, and consult Zanni and others who had secrets for all ills. Each one brought a new remedy, decoction, ointments, even the relic and the image of the blessed saint, which Don Luca wanted to try with his own hands. It was all no good. The sick man insisted:
‘It’s nothing – a touch of colic. I’ve had so much to trouble me. Tomorrow I shall get up –’
But even he didn’t believe it, and he never got up. He was reduced almost to a skeleton, skin and bone; only his belly swollen like a water-sack. In the village they began to say he was done for; the hand of God was upon him destroying him in the midst of his riches. His noble son-in-law wrote from Palermo for precise information. He also spoke of affairs which he had to regulate, and moneys which were falling due, and which he had to pay. In the postcript were two unhappy lines from Isabella, who had not recovered from the blow she had received a little while before. Speranza, who was present just when her brother was feeling touched by the letter, spat out her venom:
‘There you are! Now you’ll make yourself worse, and all! If you don’t look out you’ll be gone to the next world – alone and abandoned like one who doesn’t own a thing! – Who have you found ready at your side in time of need, tell me that! Your daughter may send you pretty words – But her husband knows what he’s after –’
Don Gesualdo did not answer. But when he was alone he turned to the wall and lay and cried, softly, unseen. He seemed to have become a child again. You wouldn’t have recognized him. When Diodata heard that he was so ill, and wanted to go and ask his pardon for the breach of respect her boys had committed, on the night of the rising, she was petrified at seeing him such a wreck, smelling of the grave, with eyes that became so lustrous at every new face.
‘Don Gesualdo, sir – I came to see you because they told me you were so bad. – You must forgive them – those scamps who offended you like that. – Boys who didn’t understand. – They let themselves be led on, without knowing what they were doing. – You must forgive them for my sake, Don Gesualdo sir!’
Any one saw she spoke sincerely, poor thing, with her pitiful face, trying to swallow down and hide the tears that came to her eyes at every word, trying to take his hand to kiss it. He made a vague gesture, and shook his head, as if to say it didn’t matter, now. Whereupon arrived Speranza and took upon herself to abuse the brazen hussy who had come to tempt her brother on his death-bed, to get something out of him, to strip him to the last shred. A blood-sucker! She had fattened upon him already! Wasn’t it enough? The crows were flying, now they smelt carrion. The sick man closed his eyes to escape the torture, and writhed in his bed as if he had another attack of colic. So that Diodata left without being able to say good-bye to him, her head hanging, clutching herself together in her mantle. Speranza came back to her brother all loving and smiling.
‘You’ve got us here now to help you. – We won’t leave you by yourself, don’t you worry. – Everything you want. – You’ve only to speak. What do you want with that witch now? She’d eat you up body and soul. You couldn’t even take the viaticum with that scandal in the house!’
As for her, she attended to him better than a servant, looked after him with love, sparing neither trouble nor expense. But seeing that nothing did him any good, she went so far as to call in the son of Tavuso, who had just returned raw and fresh from Naples, with a doctor-of-medicine degree – a young fellow without a hair on his chin yet; who made you pay as if he was a prince. – However, Don Gesualdo spoke his mind when he saw him putting pen to paper to write the usual fraud.
‘Don Margheritino, I saw you born. Do you want to write me a prescription? What do you take me for, my dear chap?’
‘All right then!’ returned the little doctor, infuriated. ‘All right then, let the vet cure you. What did you send for me for?’ And he took his hat and marched off.
But since the sick man suffered all the tortures of the damned, in the hope that somebody might still find a cure for him, and to shut the mouths of the neighbours, who accused him of avarice, he had to bow his head once more, bow his head to doctors and medicaments. Tavuso’s son, and Bomma, and all the upstarts in the village, they all passed before Don Gesualdo’s bed. They came, they looked, they touched and poked, they bandied among themselves a lot of nasty outlandish words that made your flesh creep, and they all left their say each one on a bit of paper – bits of scribble like leeches. Don Gesualdo, terrified, didn’t say a word, but tried to catch whatever they meant; watching their hands suspiciously as they wrote. Only, so as not to throw his money away too freely, he took Don Margheritino aside and showed him that he’d got a cupboardful of little pots and bottles, bought for his wife, poor soul.
‘I spared no expense, Doctor. And I’ve got them all there, just as they are. If you think they might be any good now –’
But they took no notice of him even when he kept stammering, frightened by those serious faces:
‘I feel better. Tomorrow I’m going to get up. Send me into the country and I shall be better in twenty-four hours.’
They said yes, to please him, like a child.
‘Tomorrow! The day after tomorrow –’
But they kept him there, to milk him, doctors, relations, and druggists. They turned him over, and they turned him back again, they tapped him on the stomach with two fingers, they made him drink a thousand dirty mixtures, they smeared him with stuff that raised blisters on his abdomen. Once more there was an arsenal of medicines on the chest of drawers, just as in the last days of Bianca, rest her soul. He grumbled, wagging his head:
‘We’ve come to the medicines that cost a lot. That means there’s no more hope.’
Money in streams, a come and go, a turmoil throughout the house, the table spread the whole day long. Burgio, who wasn’t used to it, ran to show his tongue to the doctors, when they came to visit his brother-in-law; Santo never stirred out of the house any more, not even to go to the tavern; and the nephews, when they came in from the land, tore each other’s hair, quarrels and contentions amongst them as to who could lay hold of most, rows which even reached the sick man’s chamber, so that he listened for all he was worth, crazy to know what they were doing with his things, till he even began to shout from his bed:
‘Let me go to Mangalavite. All my things are going to rack and ruin. Here I eat my heart out. Let me go, else I shall die.’
He’d got a ball of lead in his stomach, which weighed on him, and wanted to come out, always hurting him; from time to time it contracted, it got red hot, it throbbed like a hammer, and danced in his throat till it made him scream like one in hell, and bite everything that was near him. Then he was left spent, panting, with the vague terror of another attack in his starting eyes. Everything that he made himself swallow, to keep him alive, the most delicate tit-bits, that he never asked what they cost, just turned to poison inside him; they came back again like hell-stuff, blacker than ink, bitter, God-cursed. And the pains and the swelling increased; a paunch that his legs couldn’t support any more. Bomma tapping on it one day, said:
‘There’s something here!’
‘What did you say, your honour?’ stammered Don Gesualdo, bouncing up into a sitting posture on the bed, in a cold sweat.
Bomma looked him full in the face, drew up his chair, turned this way and that to see if they were alone.
‘Don Gesualdo, you are a man – you’re not a child, are you? –’
‘Yessir,’ he replied with a firm voice, all at once calm, showing the courage which he had always had upon necessity. ‘Yes-sir, speak out.’
‘Very well, you ought to have a consultation. You haven’t just got a prickly-pear thorn in your stomach! It’s something really serious, you know! It’s not a thing for the wise beard of Don Margheritino or one of that sort – let me say it without offence to them, here in confidence. Fetch the best doctors you can find, from a distance, Don Vincenzo Capra, Doctor Muscio from Caltagirone, whom you like. – You’re not short of money –’
At these words Don Gesualdo went into a rage.
‘Money! – You can none of you take your eyes off the money I’ve earned! – What good is it to me – if I can’t buy even my health? – A lot of bitterness it’s brought me – always! –’
But nevertheless he wanted to hear the rest of what Bomma had to say. You never can tell. – He let him finish, keeping still, holding his chin, thinking of his own case. At last he wanted to know:
‘A consultation? What will a consultation do for me?’ Bomma lost his stirrups.
‘What will it do for you? Be hanged! It’ll do what it can for you – at least folks won’t be able to say you died without proper attention. I speak for your own sake. It won’t put anything in my pocket – I’m just a druggist. – It’s not my affair – I don’t understand those things. I’ve attended you for friendship’s sake –’
But as the other shook his head, diffident, a sly smile on his livid lips, the apothecary put aside every respect.
‘You’re a dead man, Don Sillyface! I tell you straight.’
Then Don Gesualdo looked around slowly and tenaciously, blew his nose. and sank down on to the bed. After a while, looking up at the ceiling, he added with a sigh:
‘All right. We’ll have the consultation.’
He didn’t sleep a wink at night. Tormented by a new anxiety, with shivers that seized him from time to time, and cold sweats, fears which made him suddenly sit up in bed with his hair on end, looking around in the shadows, always seeing the menacing face of Bomma, feeling himself, stifling his pain, trying to delude himself. He really did think he felt better. He wanted to take care of himself, since it was a serious matter. He wanted to get better. He repeated the very words of the apothecary: he wasn’t short of money; he had worn out his life for it; he hadn’t earned it all to please his noble son-in-law; why should ungrateful folks enjoy it, when they left him to die without coming near him; out of sight out of mind! That’s how the world is made, everybody turns the water to his own mill. And his own mill, for his part, was to get his health back again, with his own money. There were good doctors in the world who might cure him if he paid them. Then he wiped away his sweat of agony, and tried to sleep. He wanted the strange doctors who were coming the next day to find him in better form; he counted the hours: it seemed a thousand years to him, till he could see them there before his bed. The very light of dawn encouraged him. Then, when he heard the bells of the litter which carried Doctor Muscio and Don Vincenzo Capra, he felt his heart expand, I can’t say how much. He drew himsef lightly up to sit on the bed like one who really feels better. He greeted these good folk with a fine smile which would reassure even them, the moment he saw them enter.
But they hardly looked at him. They were all ears for Don Margheritino, who was telling the story of the illness with a great amount of personification of abstract things; and they nodded their heads from time to time; they only glanced now and then abstractedly at the sick man, whose face was becoming more and more perturbed, seeing those grave countenances, and those grimaces, and hearing the trilling of the bit of a doctor who seemed as if he was reciting the funeral oration. After this youngster had finished chattering, the other doctors rose one after the other, and began feeling and questioning the sick man, shaking their heads, with a certain sententious blinking, and certain glances from one to another that absolutely stopped his breathing. There was one of the strangers particularly who stood there frowning and pensive, going every moment ‘Uhm! Uhm!’ without opening his mouth. The relations, the servants, even some neighbours crowded round the doorway out of curiosity, waiting for the sentence, while the doctors confabulated together in low voices in a corner. At a sign from the apothecary, Burgio and his wife also went to hear, on tiptoe.
‘Speak out, gentlemen!’ then exclaimed the poor man, who was pale as death. ‘I’m the one who’s bad, I believe. I want to know where I stand.’
The Muscio fellow started a smile that made him look uglier than ever. And Don Vincenzo Capra, in proper style, began to expound the diagnosis of the illness: Pylori Cancer, the pyrosis of the Greeks. There were as yet no symptoms of ulceration; even the adhesion of the tumour to the vital organs was not certain; but the degeneration of the tissues was already shown by certain pathological symptoms. Don Gesualdo, after having listened attentively, replied:
‘That is all very fine. But tell me if you can cure me, your honour. Without thinking about money – paying you according to your merit –’
At first Capra wouldn’t answer, and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Eh, eh – cure you – of course – that’s what we’re here for, to try and cure you.’
But the Muscio fellow who was more brutal blabbed straight out the only thing that there was left to try, the extirpation of the tumour, a rare job, a surgical operation that would do anybody credit. – He explained the way how it should be done, getting quite heated over the proposition, accompanying his words with gestures, already smelling blood, his eyes kindling in his fat face that went quite purple, as if he was just going to roll up his sleeves and set to work; so that the patient opened his eyes and mouth, and shrank instinctively away; and the women, overcome, broke out into moans and sobs.
‘Madonna of the Perils!’ Speranza began to scream. ‘They want to kill my brother for me – cut him up and quarter him alive like a pig!’
‘Be quiet,’ said he, passing the hem of the sheet over his face that was dripping drops of sweat. The other physicians were silent, and agreed more or less with Doctor Muscio, out of courtesy. Don Gesualdo, seeing that nobody uttered a sound, repeated again:
‘Be quiet! – It’s my skin that they’re talking about – so I can say what I think. – Gentlemen – I am a man – I am not a child. If you say it is necessary, this operation. – If you say it is necessary – yessir – we’ll have it done. – But let me say what I think –’
‘That’s right, you say.’
‘Well then – one thing only. – I want to know first if you really guarantee to save my life. – We are gentlemen – and I trust you. – It’s not a bargain to be made with your eyes shut. I want to see my way clearly –’
‘What are you talking about!’ interrupted the Muscio man, bouncing on his chair. ‘I am a surgeon, my friend. I practise my own profession, and don’t set out to make quack’s promises! Do you think you’re dealing with Zanni, at the fair?’
‘Then we’ll have nothing to do with it,’ replied Don Gesualdo. And he turned his back on them. ‘Look here, Bomma, you gave me a fine bit of advice!’
Speranza, most anxious, saw that the time had come to turn to the saints, and she rushed round trying to procure relics and blessed images. Neri thought that they ought to warn the daughter and son-in-law at once of the danger Don Gesualdo was in. But he wouldn’t hear anything. He said he’d got a heap of saints and relics already, there in Bianca’s cupboard, along with the other medicines. He didn’t want to see anybody. Since he was condemned, he wanted to die in peace, without any operations, away from all his worries, in his own country place. He clung to life with might and main, desperate. He had gone through other stress before this, and he had always helped himself, when he was in a tight fix. He’d got courage and a thick skin. He ate and drank; he persisted that he was better; he got up for two or three hours a day; he trailed himself through the rooms, from one piece of furniture to another. At last he had himself carried to Mangalavite, gasping for breath. Master Nardo on one side and Masi on the other, holding him up on the mule; – a journey that took three hours, and made him say a hundred times:
‘Throw me in the ditch, that’s the best.’
But once there, among his own possessions, he realized that it was actually all over, that every hope was lost, for nothing mattered to him any more. The vines were already coming into leaf; the young corn was high, the olives in flower, the sumachs green, and over everything a mist was spread, a gloom, a black veil. The house itself, with its windows shut, and the terrace where Bianca and his daughter used to sit and work, the deserted avenue, even his own country people who were afraid of bothering him and kept at a distance, there in the courtyard or under the shed, everything wrung his heart; everything said to him: ‘What are you doing? What do you want?’ – All the things that belonged to him, there, the pigeons that circled in flocks above his head, the geese and the turkeys that cackled in front of him. – You could hear the voices and singing of labourers working in the fields. Along the little road from Licodia, in the near distance, people passed on foot and on horseback. The world still went its way, while there was no more hope for him, gnawed by a worm like a rotten apple that must fall from the bough, not having strength to take a stride, nor even the will to swallow an egg. Then, in despair that he must die, he began to beat the ducks and turkeys, to break down the buds and the young plants. He would have liked to destroy with one blow all the wealth and substance he had got together bit by bit. He wanted his possessions to go along with him, desperate as he was. Master Nardo and the manservant had to carry him back to the village again more dead than alive.
A few days after arrived the Duca di Leyra, summoned by express courier, and he took possession of his father-in-law and of the house, saying that he wanted to take him to Palermo to have him attended to by the best doctors. The poor wretch, now only a shadow of himself, let them do as they liked; yet he opened his heart again to hope; he was softened by the anxiety of his son-in-law and of his daughter, who was awaiting him with open arms. He fancied his strength was already coming back. He couldn’t wait to be gone, as if he thought he would leave all his ills behind him, there in that house and in those fields that had cost him so much sweat, and which now weighed on him like a burden. His son-in-law busied himself with the procurator getting his affairs in order. As soon as Don Gesualdo was fit to travel, they put him in a litter and set off for the city. It was a rainy day. The houses of note, and the faces of acquaintances, which hardly turned to look at him, passed by the windows of the litter. Speranza and her lot, angry because the duke had come to turn them out, did not put in an appearance. Master Nardo had wanted to accompany his master as far as the last houses in the village. In the Street of the Masera they heard somebody shouting: ‘Stop! Stop!’ – And Diodata appeared, wanting to say good-bye to her master for the last time, there in front of her own door. And then, when she came near him she hadn’t a word to say, and she stood with her hands on the window-ledge nodding her head.
‘Ah Diodata – you’ve come to wish me a good journey? – ‘ said he.
She nodded yes, yes, trying to smile, her eyes filling with tears.
‘Poor Diodata! You’re the only one that remembers your master –’
He looked out of the window, perhaps expecting somebody else, but as it was raining he drew in quickly again.
‘Now you mind yourself – out in the rain – and nothing on your head! – It’s your old bad ways! – You remember, don’t you, you remember?’
‘Yessir,’ she replied simply, and she kept on nodding her head to her words. ‘Yessir, have a good journey, your honour!’
Then slowly, slowly she drew back from the litter, as if unwillingly, and she went back into her house, closing the door, humble and very sad. Then Don Gesualdo remembered Master Nardo who had come with him so far, and he put his hand in his pocket to give him a few pence.
‘ – I’m sorry, Master Nardo! – I haven’t got anything. – It’ll have to be another time, if we see one another again, eh? – if we see one another again –’
And he threw himself back, with his heart swollen because of all the things he was leaving behind him, the muddy road he had traversed so often, the church-tower lost in the mist, the cactus plants striped with the rain which threaded down on either side of the litter.