IT is as if we were at the Cosmorama, when it’s the village feast, and we put our eye to the peep-glass to see the famous characters pass one after the other, Garibaldi and then Victor Emmanuel; so now comes ‘Brothpot,’ for he too is a famous character, and he looks very well among the rest of the mad folks who have had their wits in their heels instead of their heads, and have done everything that a Christian body shouldn’t do, if he wants to eat his bread in blessed peace.
Now if we have to examine the conscience of all the good folks who have got themselves talked about in the farmyard during the gossiping hour after midday meal; and if we must do as the factor does every Saturday evening, when he says to one: ‘How much is due to you for your day-work?’ — and to another: ‘What have you done this week?’ — we can’t pass by ‘Brothpot’ without having it out with him, what he’s been up to, and a nasty piece of work it is, and folks gave him that pretty nickname because of that ugly business, you know what I mean.
We all know that jealousy is a defect everybody suffers from; it makes the young cocks tear one another’s feathers out, before they get their crests, and makes mules let out kicks in the stable. But when a person has never had that vice and has always bowed his head in blessed peace, Saint Isidore defend us! then you don’t see why he should go off his head all of a sudden, like a bull in the month of June, and do absolutely mad things, like somebody in a blind frenzy with toothache, for such things are just like your teeth, which cost you a martyrdom enough to drive you mad while they’re coming, and then afterwards don’t hurt you any more, and are good to chew your food with, and he had chewed his food so well that he’d laid on a paunch, like a gentleman, and looked a very priest; for which reason people called him ‘Brothpot,’ because his wife Venera kept a full pot going for him, with Don Liborio.
He had wanted to marry Venera at any cost, though she hadn’t a thing to bless herself with, and his only capital was his two arms, with which he earned his bread. In vain did his mother, poor thing, keep telling him: ‘You leave that Venera alone, she’s not your sort; she wears her shawl half-way back on her head, and she shows her feet when she goes down the street.’ Old people know better than we do, and we should listen to them for our own good.
But he couldn’t forget that little shoe and those bold eyes which hunted for a husband from under her head-shawl; therefore he took her without hearing anything against her, and his mother had to leave the house where she’d lived for thirty years, because mother-in-law and daughter-in-law together in one house are like two wild mules at the same manger. The daughter-in-law, with that plaintive little mouth of hers, said so much and behaved in such a way that at last the poor, grumbling old woman had to clear out and go to die in a hovel; and there was a row between the husband and wife every time the month’s rent for the hovel had to be paid. And then when the son ran breathless, hearing that they’d brought the Viaticum to the little old woman, he couldn’t receive her blessing, nor even get the last word from the dying mouth, for the lips were already glued together by death, and the face was all changed, in the corner of the wretched house where twilight was falling, and only the eyes remained alive, that seemed to want to say so many things to him.— ‘Eh? Eh?’
Those who don’t respect their parents bring on themselves their own misfortune, and come to a bad end.
The poor old woman had died in bitterness because her son’s wife had turned out such a bad piece of goods; and God had been good to take her from this world, to remove her to the other world with all she’d got on her stomach against her daughter-in-law, knowing how the creature had made her son’s heart bleed. And as soon as the daughter-in-law was mistress in her own house, with nobody to bridle her, she had carried on in such a fashion that nowadays folks never called her husband anything but by that ugly nickname, and when the thing came to his ears, and he ventured to complain to his wife:— ‘Why? do you mean to say you believe it?’ she said to him; and he didn’t believe it, pleased as punch not to.
He was such a poor-spirited chap, and except in this respect, he did no harm whatsoever to anybody. If you’d have shown him the thing with his own eyes, he’d have said it wasn’t true, Either because of his mother’s curse Venera had gone out of his heart and he cared for her no more; or else because he was away working in the country all the year round, and only saw her on Saturday nights, she had become disagreeable and unloving towards her husband, and he had ceased to like her; and when we don’t like a thing any more, we think nobody else will want it either, and we don’t care who has it; and altogether, jealousy was a thing that never entered his head, not if you drove it in with a peg, and for a hundred years he’d have gone himself to fetch the doctor, who was Don Liborio, every time his wife wanted him fetched.
Don Liborio was also his partner, they went halves in a piece of land; they had some thirty sheep in common; they rented pasture-land in their joint names, and Don Liborio gave his own name as guarantee, when they went before the notary. ‘Brothpot’ brought him the first beans and the first peas, chopped his wood for the kitchen, and trod out his grapes for him in the wine-press; and for his own part he lacked for nothing, neither corn in the bin, nor oil in the jar, nor wine in the barrel; his wife, white and red like an apple, sported new shoes and silk kerchiefs; Don Liborio didn’t charge for his visits, and had stood godfather to one of the babies. In short, they were one household, and he called Don Liborio ‘Signore compare,’ and he worked conscientiously — you couldn’t say a word against ‘Brothpot’ in this respect — to make the company of the ‘Signore compare’ and himself flourish, which had its advantages for him too, and so they were pleased all round, for sometimes the devil’s not as black as he’s painted.
And then this peace of angels was turned into a turmoil of devils all at once, in one day, in one moment, when the other peasants who were working on the arable land sat talking in the shade, at evening, not knowing that ‘Brothpot’ was on the other side of the hedge, and the talk chanced to turn on him and his wife and the life they led. He had thrown himself down to sleep, and no one knew he was there, which shows that folks are right when they say: ‘When you eat, shut the door, and when you’re going to talk, look around first.’
This time it really seems as if the devil had given ‘Broth-pot’ a nudge while he was asleep, and whispered in his ear all the nasty things they were saying of him, and which went into his brain like a nail.— ‘And that booby “Brothpot,” they were saying, ‘who dances round Don Liborio! and eats and drinks from his dirty leavings, and gets fat as a pig on it!’
He got up as if a mad dog had bitten him, and started off full speed towards the village in a blind fury, the very grass and stones blood-red in his eyes. In the doorway of his house he met Don Liborio, who was just quietly leaving, fanning himself with his straw hat.— ‘Hark here! Signor compare!’ he said to him, ‘if I see you in my house again, as sure as God’s above, you’ll pay for it!’
Don Liborio gazed at him as if he were speaking Turkish, and thought his brain must have turned with the heat, for really you couldn’t imagine ‘Brothpot’ taking it into his head to be jealous all of a sudden, after he’d kept his eyes shut all that time, and was the best-natured fellow and husband in the world.
‘Why, what’s amiss today, Compare?’ he asked him.
‘What! Why, if I see you again in my house, as true as God’s above, you’ll pay for it!’
Don Liborio shrugged his shoulders, and went off with a laugh. The other went wildly into the house, and repeated to his wife: ‘If I see the Signor compare here again, as true as God’s above, he’ll pay for it!’
Venera stuck her fists on her hips and began to go for him, saying insulting things to him. He kept nodding his head, yes! yes! leaning against the wall like an ox that’s got the fly, and wouldn’t listen to reason. The children started crying, seeing such an unusual state of affairs. At last his wife took the door-bar and drove him out of the house to get rid of him, and said she was mistress in her own house to do as she pleased and fancied.
‘Brothpot’ could no longer work on his own land; his mind dwelt always on the same thing, and he had such a sour face you couldn’t recognize him. Before the dark fell, on the Saturday evening, he stuck the mattock in the earth and went off without drawing his week’s pay. When he came home with no money, and two hours earlier than usual into the bargain, his wife started abusing him again, and wanted to send him to the square, to buy salted anchovies, because she felt a pricking in her throat. But he wouldn’t leave the kitchen, sat there with the baby on his knee, and the poor little thing whimpered and daren’t move, her father frightened her so with that face. Venera had got the devil on her back that evening, and the black hen, which was perching on the ladder, kept on cluck-clucking as if something bad was going to happen.
Don Liborio usually called after he’d been his round, before he went to the cafe to play a game of cards; and that evening Venera said she wanted him to feel her pulse, for she’d felt feverish all day with that tickling in her throat. ‘Brothpot’ remained quite still, sitting where he was. But as he heard in the little street the slow step of the doctor, who was coming very leisurely, tired a little with visiting his patients, puffing with the heat, and fanning himself with his straw hat, ‘Brothpot’ got the bar with which his wife had driven him out of the house when he was in her way, and he took his stand behind the door. Unfortunately Venera never noticed him, because at that moment she’d gone into the kitchen to put an armful of kindling under the boiling pot. The moment Don Liborio set foot in the room, his partner lifted the bar and brought it down with such force just on the back of his neck, that it killed him like an ox, without any need either of doctor or druggist.
And so it was that ‘Brothpot’ went to end his days in prison.