‘ONE guinea fifteen! – One! – two! – ’
‘Two guineas! – ’ answered Don Gesualdo impassively.
Baron Zacco got up, red as if he was having an apoplectic fit. He grasped around looking for his hat, and made as if to depart. But from the threshold he turned rushing back, foam at his mouth, almost beside himself, and yelling:
‘Two five! – ’
And he stood panting in front of the writing-table of the judges, annihilating his opponent with looks of thunder. Don Filippo Margarone, Peperito and the rest of the Town Council presiding at the auction of the communal lands, talked in each other’s ears. Don Gesualdo took a pinch of snuff, quietly continuing to cast up his accounts in his pocketbook, that lay open on his knee. Then he raised his head, and retorted in a calm voice:
‘Three guineas!’
The baron became suddenly as limp as a washed-out rag. He blew his nose; jammed his hat on his head, and bolted through the door exclaiming:
‘Ah! – when it’s like that! – since they make it! – a personal attack! – Good-day to the rest of you!’
The sworn councillors fidgeted on their seats as if they had colic. The canon-priest Lupi got up suddenly and ran to say a word in Don Gesualdo’s ear, passing his arm round his neck.
‘No, sir!’ replied the latter in a clear voice. ‘I’ve nothing to do with such rubbish. I attend to my own interests, and no more.’
A murmur ran through the audience who were attending at the auction. All the other bidders had drawn back, dismayed, sticking their tongues out to the full length. Then the young Baron Rubiera rose to his feet, throwing his chest out importantly, stroking his scanty beard, not heeding the signs Don Filippo was making him from the distance, and let fall his own offer, with the sleepy air of one to whom money does not matter.
‘Three guineas and three – ! – I say it!’
‘For God’s love,’ whispered lawyer Neri in his ear, pulling his coat-tails. ‘Baron, Baron, don’t let us do anything mad.’
‘Three guineas and three!’ repeated the young baron without heeding, giving a triumphant look around.
‘Three five.’
Don Ninì went red, and opened his mouth to answer; but the lawyer put his hand over the open mouth. Margarone deemed that the moment had come to take on a presidential air.
‘Don Gesualdo! – We are not here to play about! – You may have money – I won’t deny it – but this is a considerable sum – for one who was carrying stones like a navvy yesterday – if I may say so without giving offence. To be sure: Mind what I am, not what I was says the proverb. But the parish must have its guarantee. Consider well what you’re doing! – About five hundred square furlongs – That would make – that would make – ’ And he put on his spectacles, scribbling figures underneath figures in columns.
‘I know how much it makes,’ replied Mastro-don Gesualdo, laughing. ‘I thought it out while I was carrying stones. Ah, Don Filippo, sir, you don’t know what a satisfaction it is to have got as far as this, to be face to face here with your honour, and all these other patrons of mine, each of us speaking up for himself and doing his own business.’
Don Filippo put his spectacles down on the papers; turned a stupefied look on his colleagues to right and to left, and remained ignominiously silent. In the crowd thronging the doorway arose a tumult. Master Nunzio Motta wanted to come in at any cost, to lay hands on his son who was throwing money away in this fashion. Burgio tried to stop him. Margarone rang the bell for silence.
‘Very good! – yes, very good! – But, however, the law says – ’
As he was trying to get on with his stammering, that yellow-faced Canali suggested him an answer, while pretending to blow his nose.
‘Of course! – Who is your guarantee? – The law says – ’
‘I am my own guarantee,’ replied Don Gesualdo putting on the table a little sack of guineas which he fetched from under his hunting-jacket.
Then all the eyes opened. Don Filippo was dumbfounded.
‘Gentlemen all!’ squealed Baron Zacco re-entering infuriated. ‘Gentlemen! – look at that! – look what we’ve come to!’
‘Three five!’ repeated Don Gesualdo, returning to the attack. ‘I offer three guineas five shillings a furlong for the tax on the public lands. Continue the auction, Don Filippo, sir.’
The young Baron Rubiera went off like a spring, all his blood in his face. Chains wouldn’t have held him now.
‘Four guineas!’ he stammered, beside himself. ‘I make a bid of four guineas a furlong.’
‘Take him out! Take him away!’ squealed Don Filippo, half rising to his feet. Several people were clapping their hands. But Don Ninì persisted, white as his shirt now.
‘Yessir! four guineas a furlong! Write my offer down, secretary!’
‘Halt!’ cried the lawyer, raising both his hands in the air. ‘For the legality of the offer! – I make my reservations – ’
And he threw himself on the young baron, as if they were having a fight. There, in the balcony-opening, face to face, with his eyes starting out of his head, breathing fiery breath into the other’s face:
‘Baron, my dear sir – when you want to throw money out of the window! – go and play cards! – play with the money out of your own pocket only! – ’
Don Ninì snorted worse than a mad bull. Peperito had signalled the canon-priest Lupi to come to him, and they were confabbing in an undertone, leaning over the writing-table, shaking their heads like two hens pecking in the same spot. The canon-priest was so upset that his hands trembled on the papers. The cavaliere took him by the arm and they went to join the lawyer and the young baron, who were disputing excitedly in a corner of the hall. Don Ninì began to give in, his face lax and his legs weak. The canon-priest then made a sign to Don Gesualdo also to approach.
‘No,’ winked the latter, without moving.
‘But listen – it’s that affair of the deposit-money. – The bridge has gone, joy go with it! – We might manage to arrange that affair of the deposit-money now – ’
‘No,’ repeated Don Gesualdo. He was like a stone wall. ‘The bridge business – a trifle in comparison.’
‘Boor! obstinate mule! cuckold!’ the baron began to inveigh once more, sotto voce.
Don Filippo, after the first burst of agitation, had sat down again, wiping his perspiring face heavily. While the canon-priest was talking in a subdued voice to Don Gesualdo, the lawyer began making signs from the distance. Don Filippo leaned over to speak in Canali’s ear. Stealthily, in a falsetto voice, the auctioneer reiterated:
‘The last offer for the parish lands! At four guineas a furlong! – One! – two! – ’
‘One moment, gentlemen!’ interrupted Don Gesualdo. ‘Who guarantees this last offer?’
At this remark they were all left open-mouthed. Don Filippo opened and shut his own mouth without being able to bring forth a word. At last he answered:
‘Baron Rubiera’s offer! – Eh? Eh?’
‘Yessir. Who is guarantee for Baron Rubiera?’
The lawyer threw himself on Don Ninì, who seemed to want to commit murder. Peperito twisted about as if somebody had given him a box on the ear. The very canon-priest was dumb-founded. Margarone stammered overwhelmed:
‘Who is guarantee for Baron Rubiera? – who is guarantee?’
All at once he changed his tone, turning it into a joke: ‘Who is guarantee for Baron Rubiera? – Ah! ah! – Oh lovely! that’s a good one! – ’ And many of the others following his example, held their sides with laughter.
‘Yes, sir,’ repeated Don Gesualdo imperturbably. ‘Who is guarantee for him? The property belongs to his mother.’
At these words the laughter ceased, and Don Filippo began to stutter again. People crowded the doorway like at the theatre. The canon-priest, who seemed paler under his four-days’ heard, pulled his companion by the coat. The lawyer had succeeded in driving the young baron against the wall, while the latter, in the midst of all that turmoil, vomited forth:
‘Fool! – booby! – woman-saver!’
‘The baron’s word, – ’ said Don Filippo at length. ‘Baron Rubiera’s word is worth more than your guineas! – Don – Don – ’
‘Don Filippo,’ interrupted the other without losing his fine calm. ‘I have witnesses here to put everything down in the report.’
‘All right. Everything shall go into the report! – Write that the young Baron Rubiera has made the offer on his mother’s account.’
‘Well and good!’ added Don Gesualdo. – ‘Then at that rate write down that I offer four guineas five shillings a furlong.’
‘Madman! Assassin! Enemy of God!’ – came the scream of Master Nunzio from the crowd in the other room.
And then there was an uproar. The lawyer and Peperito pushed the young baron out of the door, while that young man roared and threw his arms about. On the other hand, the canon-priest, convulsed, flung himself on Don Gesualdo, and clasped him close, almost sitting on his knees, his arms round his neck, conjuring him desperately in a low voice and with fiery words, pouring himself down his ear, shaking him by the lapels of his coat as if he wanted to tear him in two to make him hear reason.
‘A madness! – What are we thinking of, dear Don Gesualdo?’
‘Don’t be afraid, Canon. I’ve made my reckonings. I don’t lose my head, I don’t.’
Don Filippo Margarone had been ringing the bell five minutes, for a glass of water. His colleagues also wiped their brows, done up. Don Gesualdo alone remained seated at his post like a stone, near his little sack of guineas. At a certain moment, out of the tempest in the other room burst Master Nunzio Motta into the hall, glaring wildly, trembling with rage, his white hair bristling on his head, towing behind him his son-in-law Burgio who was trying to hold him by the sleeve of his coat, like a madman.
‘Don Filippo, sir! am I his father, or aren’t I? – do I rule, or don’t I? – If my son Gesualdo is mad! – if he wants to ruin us all! – there is the public force, Don Filippo, sir! – Send for Don Liccio Papa! – ’
Speranza, in the doorway, her baby at her breast, was tearing her hair and screaming as if she was being slaughtered.
‘For the love of God! For the love of God!’ pleaded the canon-priest, running from one to another.
‘The money for the bridge! – He wants to ruin me! – Enemy of his own father, he is!’ howled Master Nunzio.
‘Was it your money, maybe?’ the canon-priest then let out. ‘Wasn’t it the blood of your son? – hadn’t he earned it with his own toil?’
Everybody was standing up shouting. Canali was heard squealing louder than the rest, to quiet Don Ninì. Baron Zacco, absolutely having lost heart, was leaning with his shoulders against the wall and his hat on the back of his head. The lawyer had come down in a rush, taking the stairs four at a time, to run to the Baroness Rubiera. On the stairs was a come-and-go of inquisitive persons; people arriving every minute, attracted by the uproar they heard in the Town Hall. From the square Santo Motta was pointing at the balcony and shouting that he didn’t want to hear anything about his brother’s extravagance. Even Donna Marianna had appeared, with her little umbrella, shading her eyes with her hand.
‘As God’s above! – I made him, and I’ll unmake him!’ howled the old man Motta, become ferocious.
‘Make way! – make way!’ cried somebody out of the crowd.
Appeared Don Giuseppe Barabba, shaking a letter aloft.
‘Canon! Canon Lupi!’
The latter pushed forward with his elbows.
‘All right,’ he said, after he had read the letter. ‘Tell Madam Sganci all right, I’ll be with her in a minute.’
Barabba ran on this errand into the other room. The throng almost suffocated him. The canon-priest got a rip in his cassock while the baron stretched out his hand to read the note. Canali, Barabba and Don Ninì quarrelled among themselves. Then Canali began to cry: ‘Make way! Make way!’ and he pushed smiling towards Don Gesualdo.
The young Baron Rubiera is here and would like to shake hands with you.’
‘At your service! At your service entirely! I’m not angry with anybody.’
‘That’s what I say! – What the deuce! – Now that you’re relations! – ’
And pulling the young baron forward by his coat he brought them together in an embrace, almost making them kiss one another. Then Baron Zacco came running to throw himself also into their arms, sparks flying from his eyes.
‘Let the devil be damned! – I’m not made of bronze! – what nonsense! – ’
At that point the lawyer joined them. First he went to glance at the secretary’s report, and then began to clap his hands.
‘Hurrah for peace! – Hurrah for concord! – I’ve always told you! – ’
‘Look what your aunt Madam Marianna Sganci writes me!’ said the canon-priest, quite moved, holding out the open letter to Don Gesualdo. And turning to the balcony he waved the sheet of paper in the air, like a white flag; while Madame Sganci replied with nods of her head from the balcony.
‘Peace! – Peace! – You are all one family!’
Canoli ran to lay hold of Master Nunzio, Burgio, even Santo Motta in his shirt sleeves, to thrust them into the arms of their new relations. The canon-priest went so far as to embrace Gossip Speranza and her infant. The very stones could have wept.
‘For the wife’s sake – you are cousins – ’
‘It’s true,’ added Don Ninì, still rather red in the face. ‘We grew up together, Bianca and I – like brother and sister – ’
‘Dear Don Nunzio! – you remember the lime-kiln – near Fontanarossa – ’
The old fox shrugged his shoulders, to shake off the heavy hands of Baron Zacco, and replied rudely:
‘My name’s Master Nunzio, Sir Baron! I’ve not got my son’s swelled head.’
‘And why? – For why you want to quarrel? Who wouldn’t enjoy so much money thrown away?’ concluded Canali fervidly.
‘Madness! Childishness! – Blood went to his head! – The hot day! – A fool’s obstinacy – a misunderstanding. – Now it’s done! Let us go! Don’t let us set the whole place laughing! – ’ And the lawyer tried to lead them all away, all the lot.
‘Just a moment!’ interrupted Don Gesualdo. ‘The candle is still alight. Let us see first if they have written down my last offer.’
‘What, what do you mean? What are you talking about? – What do you mean? – Are we going to start all over again?’ – the din rose up once more. – ‘Aren’t we friends any more? Aren’t we relations?’
But Don Gesualdo insisted, worse than a mule.
‘Yes, sir, we are relations. But we’ve come here for the taxauction of the communal lands. I have made an offer of four guineas five shillings a furlong – ’
‘Boor! Cuckold – !’
In the midst of that bustle Don Filippo was forced to sit down again on his seat, snorting. He emptied the glass of water at one draught, and rang the bell.
‘Gentlemen!’ shouted the secretary. ‘The last offer – at four guineas five – ’
Everybody had gone to discuss and shout about in the other room, leaving Don Gesualdo alone before the writing-table. In vain the canon-priest breathed into his ear:
‘Don’t take it on, no! – They have come to an understanding among themselves – ’
‘At four guineas five shillings a furlong! – final offer! – ’
‘Don Gesualdo! Don Gesualdo!’ shouted the lawyer as if he wanted to bring the hall down.
Then they all re-entered in procession: Baron Zacco fanning himself with his hat, the canon-priest and Canali talking together in a low voice; Don Ninì more restive, in the rear of the others. The lawyer made a circular gesture with his arms to group them all round him.
‘Don Gesualdo! – Hark here!’
He threw a conspirator’s glance round, and lowered his voice:
‘A serious proposal!’ – and he made another significant pause. ‘First of all, the deposit-money – a large sum! – The misfortune happened as it did – but through no fault of yours, Don Gesualdo – nor of yours, Master Nunzio. – It is only fair that you should not lose this money! – We’ll arrange the matter! – You, Baron Zacco, sir, you regret relinquishing lands which have been in your family for forty years? – Very well! – Baroness Rubiera now wants her share also, does she? – she has more than three thousand head of cattle on her hands. – Once more, very well! – Don Gesualdo, here, has money to spend, for his part; he would like to speculate in the lease. – Then very well and good! Divide the lands among you three – without quarrels, without being exacting or obstinate, without falling out for other people’s advantage. – To whose advantage is it, after all? – the commune’s! That means nobody’s! Let us throw over the auction – I’ll find a reason to give! – In a week’s time we open the sale afresh, at the original price; and we make one single offer. – Not I – nor these gentlemen either! – The canon-priest Lupi! – in your name, Don Gesualdo – And we will trust one another – We are gentlemen! One offer only at the original price; and the lands shall be knocked down to you without a farthing’s increase. Only a little brokerage for me and the Canon. – And the rest you divide among you three, fair and square – in friendship and harmony. Do you like it? Are we agreed?’
‘No sir,’ replied Don Gesualdo. ‘I’ll take all the lands myself.’
Just as the others were all pleased approval, nodding their heads to the triumphant glance which the lawyer cast around him, came this answer like a bucket of cold water. At first the lawyer was left dumbfounded; then he turned on his heel and went off humming a tune. Don Ninì bolted without saying a word. The baron this time pretended to put his hat on for good. The canon-priest himself jumped up viperishly:
‘Then I’ve done with you too! – If you want to crack your cranium, the balcony’s there, wide and open! – They offer you a good arrangement! They hold out their hand to you! – I’ve done with you, I leave you to yourself, as God’s above!’
But Don Gesualdo persisted, with his foolish-seeming little smile, the only one who didn’t lose his head in the turmoil.
‘You’re a fool,’ he replied, smiling continually.
The canon-priest opened his eyes and became docile again, wanting to see what that devil of a Mastro-don Gesualdo was at now.
The lawyer, wary, was able to control himself sooner than the rest, and came back with a smile on his lips and his snuff-box in his hand.
‘So then? – you want them all!’
‘Eh! eh! – What else are we here for!’ replied the other.
Neri offered him the open snuff-box, and replied in a low voice, in a tone of cordial confidence:
‘What the devil will you do with them? – nearly five hundred square furlongs of land? – ’
Don Gesualdo shrugged his shoulders.
‘Dear lawyer, do I try to poke my nose into your old books, eh?’
‘If it’s like that, Don Gesualdo, then hark – we’ll discuss it between us. We won’t make a point of anything. We won’t talk of friendship. We’ll stick to business – ’
At every phrase he bowed his head first to left and then to right, with a cadenced manner that was meant to be very persuasive.
‘If you want all the land, we’ll make you pay double, and there’s half your gains gone in smoke at once – without counting the risks – bad seasons! Leave us our skins, dear Don Gesualdo. Stop your mouths! – Because we’ve got teeth and we can bite! We shall be running to break our necks, we others and you as well! – ’
Don Gesualdo shook his head, grinning, as if to say: ‘No sir! Go and break your necks, you others by yourselves. – ’ He kept repeating:
‘Do I try to poke my nose into your old books?’
Then seeing that the lawyer was going green with bile, he wanted to make concession from his side.
‘I will explain you the mystery in two words, since I see you speak to me with your heart in your hand. I will take the lease of the communal lands – and of the County lands, even – all the lot, you understand, Master Notary? – Then I command prices and harvests, you understand? – I tell you because you’re a friend, and because to do what I say wants a great deal of capital in hand, and a heart as big as the plains of Santa-margherita, dear notary. That is why I will push the auction to where you others can’t come up. But mind! at a certain point, if it doesn’t suit me, I shall draw back, and leave you with a weight on your shoulders that’ll break your backs – ’
‘And this is the end? – ’
‘Eh? eh? – Do you like it?’
The lawyer turned this way and that, as if he was looking for something on the ground, thrust his hat on his head definitely, and turned away.
‘Good-bye to the rest of you! – We’re going! – We’ve nothing more to do.’
The canon-priest, who had listened open-mouthed, pressed himself upon his partner with enthusiasm the moment they were left alone.
‘What a stroke, eh? Don Gesualdo! What a deep one you are! – I shall have my share, shan’t I?’
Don Gesualdo nodded reassuringly to the canon-priest, and said to Margarone:
‘Don Filippo, sir, let us get on – ’
‘I’m not going an inch further,’ Margarone replied finally, in a rage. – ‘The law says – There’s no competition any more! – I don’t have any guarantee! – I must consult my colleagues.’ And he began to gather the papers together in frenzy and rage.
‘Ah! That’s the way, is it? – that’s how you behave? – All right! Oh right you are! We’ll talk about this later, Don Filippo. – A memorial to His Majesty! – ’ So the canon-priest, with his cloak on his arm like a Roman orator, perorated the cause of his friend, threatening. Don Gesualdo on the other hand, calmer, took up his money again and the pocket-book full of figures.
‘I shall be always here, Don Filippo, for when you open the auction again.’
‘But gentlemen! – but just look! – what we’ve come to!’ grumbled Margarone.
On the steps of the Town Hall, and in all the village, was a row going on, when it was known that an attempt had been made to take out of Baron Zacco’s hands the communal lands that had been in his family for forty years, and the price to which the lands had risen. People crowded to the door, to see Mastro-don Gesualdo pass by.
‘Just think of it, my sirs, – what we’ve come to!’
Cool as a glass of water, that Mastro-don Gesualdo, going home with his hands in his pockets. He’d got more money in his pockets than hairs on his head! – and he was too much for the first gentlemen in the place! –
In his ante chamber he found Don Giuseppe Barabba, waiting in livery.
‘Don Gesualdo, sir, there’s my mistress inside, paying you a visit – yessir – ’
Donna Mariannina was seated in all her finery on the silk sofa, under the big mirror, in the fine yellow drawing-room.
‘My dear nephew, you’ve been going it strong! You’ve raised old Harry in the whole family! Really! – The wife of Cousin Zacco came to show me her bruises! – The baron seems to have gone off his head! – He starts raving to everybody he meets. So does Cousin Rubiera as well – she says it’s a piece of treachery! – that the canon-priest Lupi had brought into agreement and sympathy, and then all at once. – It is true, my dear nephew? I came on purpose to have a chat with Bianca – Come, Bianca, you help me. Let us try and set it right. You, Don Gesualdo, you will do this kind act for your wife’s sake. Eh? What do you say to it?’
Bianca looked timidly first at her, then at her husband. She was curled in a corner of the sofa, her arms in her lap, and round her head the silk kerchief she had put on hastily to receive her aunt. She opened her mouth to say something, made bashful by Donna Mariannina, who kept on pressing her:
‘Eh? What do you say? It’s your business as well now.’
Bianca turned to look at her husband, and was silent, embarrassed. But he relieved her of all doubt.
‘I say no,’ he replied simply.
‘Ah? Ah? Is that what you say?’
Donna Mariannina herself remained open-mouthed for an instant. Then she became as red as a cock.
‘Ah, you say no? – Excuse me. – It’s not my affair. I came to talk to my niece, because I don’t like quarrels and disagreements between relations. – With your brothers as well, Bianca – I don’t know what I haven’t done, to try and persuade them – specially Don Diego, who is so obstinate! A calamity, a real affliction! – ’
‘What can you expect!’ replied Don Gesualdo. ‘All our bargains aren’t good ones. Me as well, if you did but know. I don’t speak of the wife I have taken, no! I don’t repent it! – Good, careful, obedient – I tell you so, in front of her. – But as for the rest – we’ll leave it alone!’
‘You say well, we’ll leave it alone. So I just came to have a talk with Bianca, because I know you are fond of her. Now you’re husband and wife, as God has chosen. And she is mistress as well – ’
‘So she is, she’s the mistress. But I am her husband – ’
‘Which is as much as to say that I’ve made a mistake,’ said Dame Sganci, touched on the quick.
‘No, you haven’t made a mistake, my lady. The point is that Bianca doesn’t understand these things, poor child. Isn’t it true, Bianca, that you don’t understand? – Yes?’
Bianca said Yes, nodding her head obediently.
‘Let it be as if we hadn’t spoken. Enough said, we’ll say no more. I’ve done my duty as a good aunt, trying to make peace between you. – And the same today there in the Town Hall, did you see? – what I sent to say to you, by the canon-priest Lupi?’
‘Lupus in fabula!’ exclaimed that individual entering as if he was in his own house, his hat on his head, his mantle floating behind him, rubbing his hands. ‘You were speaking ill of me, eh? My ears were burning.’
‘You, is it, you woolly sheep! You look as if you’d just won first prize in the lottery.’
‘First prize in the lottery? You’re taking a rise out of me also, are you? A poor devil who is kept running round from morning till night! – ’
‘We were talking about the auction of the communal lands,’ said Don Gesualdo calmly, taking a pinch of snuff. ‘Just for the sake of talking – ’
‘Ah! Ah!’ replied the canon-priest, and he took to staring into the air. For her part Aunt Sganci examined the new furniture, turning her head from side to side.
‘Lovely! Lovely they are! Cousin Cirmena told me – ! Pity I wasn’t feeling well on the wedding day – ’
‘Like all the others, Donna Mariannina, Ma’am!’ replied the canon-priest with a laugh. ‘Quite an epidemic!’
‘No! No! I can assure you! Upon my word! – Madam Rubiera, poor thing! – Her son as well – I hear him always complaining – Aunt, how could !? –’ Donna Mariannina interrupted herself. ‘But we have said we wouldn’t speak about it any more. But really he’s sorry he can’t come and pay his respects. – Dissension there always is, say I, even between brothers and sisters. But it will pass, with God’s help. – Do you know, Bianca, your cousin is going to get married. We needn’t make a mystery of it now, because it’s all settled. Don Filippo gives the property of Salonia, thirty furlongs of land! A fine dowry!’
Bianca flushed with a wave of blood in her face, then she became white as a sheet, but she neither moved nor said anything.
The canon-priest replied in her stead, still chewing his bile –
‘We know it! We know it! We guessed as much today, at the Town Hall!’ – But in the end he couldn’t contain himself, as if the wound burned in him.
‘Baroness Rubiera tried to give me the kick, did she! – me who proposed the whole affair to her! – She went over and joined with the adversaries! – Everybody against us! – The relations of the wife joining forces against the husband! – Such a scandal as was never heard of! They’ve invited new applications for the contract for the bridge – so as to make the unlucky man here lose his deposit! Every form of extortion! – And for making the new roads they are bringing contractors even from Caltagirone and Lentini, to compete! – ’
‘ “Anyhow from over there they won’t get another relation coming down on them”, said Baron Mendola with his own mouth, in the pharmacy.’
Donna Mariannina turned all colours and bit her lips to keep herself from spitting out what was in her mind. Don Gesualdo, however, laughed quietly, sprawling on his fine soft sofa, and at a certain point he even put his hand over the mouth of the canon-priest, to silence him.
‘Leave it alone! – This is the sort of chatter that brings no grist to the mill. Everybody minds for himself.’
‘I was only answering Donna Mariannina. Do you want to hear another, eh? the best of all – They have all joined together to sell the corn at any cost, to lower the prices. A camorra! The young baron said it didn’t matter to him if he lost a hundred guineas, so long as he could make Don Gesualdo, who’s got his barns full, lose a thousand. Does that to his cousin’s husband! Shameful! I’ve got twenty quarters of corn myself, you know, your honour! A piece of rascality!’
The canon-priest was getting more and more excited, turning to Mastro-don Gesualdo.
‘You’ve earned a fine wage by relating yourself to them. Who would have thought it – eh? You made a mistake! – Excuse me, Donna Bianca! – I don’t speak of you, we know you are a treasure! – Well then, my dear Donna Mariannina! – well then, when it’s like that, let Samson die along with all the Philistines.’
‘And we’ll let them die,’ said Madame Sganci, rising. ‘The world won’t end even for that.’
As her niece rose also from the sofa, mortified by all this talk, her arms crossed in front of her, Donna Mariannina continued laughing and fixing her eyes on the young wife:
‘Is it true, Bianca, that you’re not going to let the world finish, anyhow?’
Bianca became red again.
‘Well done! I congratulate you. Now you’ve got this fine house you ought to have a grand christening in it – with all the relations – in friendship and harmony. Else, why have you spent all this money?’
Don Gesualdo did not want to seem beaten before all his enemies, but he was gnawed inside himself, because really all that money he had spent had not brought him much return.
‘Eh, eh,’ he replied with that sort of good-humour which he wanted to make the most of just then. ‘Patience! – it’ll be of use to those who will come after us, in God’s will.’
And he patted his wife’s shoulder, affectionate and smiling, while thinking in reality that if his children were going to have the same fate as himself, it was really all money thrown away, so much weariness, the very profits even, always with that weary result. Then, when Aunt Sganci had gone he began to grumble at Bianca for not having put on a better dress to receive her aunt.
‘What good is it your having things! They’ll say I keep you like a servant. It’s a nice thing to spend money and nobody to enjoy it, neither ourselves nor anybody else!’
‘Let us drop that nonsense, and talk about serious things!’ interrupted the canon-priest, whose face had clouded again. ‘There’s the devil of a row. They’re trying to set all the place against you, saying you’ve got a long arm, and that you want to lay hold of all the land you set your eyes on, to starve everybody. That swine Ciolla is going round preaching for them. – They want to let loose even the labourers against you – against you and me, my friend! They say I hold the sack. I daren’t stir out of my house – ’
Don Gesualdo shrugged his shoulders.
‘Ah, the labourers! We’ll talk about them afterwards, when winter comes. What are you frightened of?’
‘What am I frightened of? – for – my! – Don’t you know that they’ve made a revolution in Palermo.’
He went on tiptoe to shut the door, and came back pensive, his face dark.
‘The Carbonari, you know! – And they’ve brought this nice novelty even here. I can speak about it, since I haven’t had it under seal of confession. We’ve got the sect here as well.’
And he explained what the new attempt was to make new laws and overthrow all those who had commanded up till then.
‘A political faction, you know. We’ll put Tavuso in place of Margarone; have all that lot bossing the show. Every labourer wanting his own portion of land! big fish and small fry, all together. They say that the son of the king is one of them: the Duke of Calabria, no other.’
Don Gesualdo, who had been listening with his eyes wide enough open, blurted out:
‘If it’s like that – I’m for it! Suit me entirely! – And you tell it me with a face like that? You gave me a rare fright, holy God!’
The other remained open-mouthed.
‘What are you laughing at? Do you know what revolution means? What they did in France, you know? But you don’t read history – ’
‘No, no – ’ said Don Gesualdo. ‘It’s no matter to me.’
‘It matters to me though. Revolution means turning the basket upside-down, and those who were underneath coming cock o’ the walk; the starving, the good-for-nothings! – ’
‘All right! What was I twenty years ago?’
‘But now you’re not! Now you’ve got something to lose, holy saints! Don’t you know how it is? Today they want the communal lands; and then tomorrow they want yours and mine as well! Thank you! Thank you very kindly! I haven’t given my soul to the devil for so many years just so that – ’
‘Of course! You’ve got to look out for yourself that you don’t go to the bottom of the basket, dear Canon! We’ve got to keep on top, cock of the walk, if we don’t want the labourers to help themselves with their own hands. I know them – and I know what to do, never fear.’
He explained his idea better; pull the chestnuts out of the fire with the paws of the cat; bring the water to his own mill; and if he could manage to get hold of the ladle for a quarter of an hour, and deal out the soup, and so give a kick to all those big-wigs whom he had not succeeded in conciliating even by marrying one of them without dowry or anything; why, so much the better.
His eyes wandered at that moment to Bianca who was still huddled on the sofa, livid with fear, looking from one to the other without daring to open her mouth.
‘I don’t speak about you, lass, you know that. I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. It’s not been your fault. All bargains don’t pan out alike. Then if you happen to do good, at the same time – ’
The canon-priest began to get the hang of it, with his mouth and his eyes twisted, very thoughtful, so he supported his partner’s speech with his own: One didn’t want to do anybody any damage – if one did happen to get the ladle into one’s hands for a little while – such a lot of things one could do –
‘You ought to do one thing!’ interrupted Don Gesualdo. ‘Talk with those that have got the handling of this business, and tell them we’d like to be one with them.’
‘Eh? what are you saying? – a clergyman?’
‘Leave that alone, Canon! – Besides if the King’s son is one of them, you can be one as well.’
‘Oh yes! They won’t go cutting the King’s son’s head off, whatever – ’
‘Don’t be afraid. They won’t cut your head off. Nay, if it’s as you say, they ought to be cutting the heads off all the village. Do you think I haven’t reckoned up what I’m doing, these days! When we’re there, we can see what’s boiling in the pot. – We’ve got to get near the ladle – with a bit of discretion – and a bit of money. – I know what I’m talking about.’
Then Bianca began to stammer:
‘Oh Lord God! What are you thinking to do? – The father of a family!’
The canon-priest, undecided, looked at her uneasily, as if he felt the noose already round his neck. To reassure him Don Gesualdo added:
‘No, no. My wife doesn’t know what she’s saying. She speaks out of too much affection, poor thing – ’ Then as he was accompanying his partner into the antechamber: ‘You see! She begins to be fond of me. Children are a great bond. Let us hope at least that they may be happy and content; for I – . Shall I tell you, Canon, as if I was on my deathbed? I have killed myself with work – I have killed myself getting the property together – Now I risk even my neck, according to you! And what have I had out of it all, eh? tell me then, just you tell me! – ’
THERE was a great ferment in the village. They were expecting the news from Palermo. Bomma holding audience in the pharmacy and Ciolla spouting all round the place. Agitators were rousing even the peasant-labourers with speeches that made them open their eyes: the communal lands which were leaving the Zacco family for the first time for forty years; – a price such as had never been seen the like of! – That Mastro-don Gesualdo had too long an arm. – If he’d made the lands go up to that price, it meant that there was still something to be gained by it. – All out of the blood of the poor! – Communal property – Which meant that everyone had his right to it! – Very well, why shouldn’t everyone take his own bit!
It was a Sunday, the feast of the Assumption. The evening before had arrived from Palermo a letter that put a spark to the powder, as if everybody had read it. From the break of day you saw the Great Square cram full of peasant-labourers; a swarm of white stocking-caps; a threatening buzz. Fra Girolamo of the Mercenaries, sitting there in the shadow, along with other persons of evil intention, on the steps in front of lawyer Neri’s office, as he saw Baron Zacco going by with his tail between his legs, showed him the pistol which he carried in his wide sleeve.
‘See that, Baron Zacco? – The times of arrogance are over! From now on we are all equal!’
A lot of talk was going round, about what Fra Girolamo intended to do: leave his cassock in his cell, take himself a property at Passaneto, and Margarone’s daughter to wife, the youngest one.
The lawyer who had come to fetch some interesting papers out of his office, had to raise his hat to Fra Girolamo.
‘Allow me! – gentlemen!’
Then he went to rejoin Don Filippo Margarone in the little square of Santa Teresa.
‘Listen here; I want to tell you something! – ’
And he took him by the arm, turning homewards, talking in low tones as they walked. Don Filippo went paler and shrank at every gesture that cut upon the air; but he kept on saying no, yellow with fear. The other pulled him hard by the arm, crossing the lane of the Masera to go up towards Sant’ Antonio.
‘See them? Hear them? Do you want them to lay hold of us, the peasants, and show us what for?’
The square at the end of the little street seemed a hive of wasps. Nani l’Orbo, Pelagatti, other agitators, in a wild state of excitement went about from one group to another, shouting, gesticulating, spitting bile. Master Titta’s clients appeared every moment. In Bomma’s pharmacy they were wrangling with their fists in one another’s faces. Opposite, on the pavement in front of the Café of the Gentry, Don Anselmo had set out the chairs in the open as usual; but there was nobody there, except Marcheseò Limòli with his stick between his legs, looking calmly at the threatening crowd.
‘What do they want, Don Anselmo? What the devil’s got them today? Do you know?’
‘They want the communal lands, my lord marchese. They say that up to now you gentry have enjoyed them, and now it’s our turn, because we are all equal.’
‘At their service! At their service entirely! I’m not going to contradict them! All equals! – Bring me a glass of water, Don Anselmo.’
From time to time, out of the Rosary Sreet and the street of San Giovani issued a flood of people – and a more threatening murmur that spread like thunder. Then Santo Motta came out of the tavern of Pecu Pecu, and with his hand at his cheek began to shout:
‘The communal lands! – Who wants the communal lands? One! – two! – three! – ’ – and he finished with a shout of laughter.
‘Make way! – Make way! – ’
People ran towards the Masera. Above the crowd the young baron was seen, flourishing his whip over the head of his horse that snorted with fear. The estate keeper who ran at his side, armed to the teeth, shouted like one obsessed:
‘Your Lordship – Sir! – This is no day for – ! You need to be prudent today!’
From the Sant’ Agata district the Captain also showed himself for a moment, to intimidate the mutinous crowd by his presence. He took his stand at the top of the steps, leaning on his malacca cane, Don Liccio Papa behind him, glittering in the sun with such an expanse of white sword-belt across his stomach. But seeing that sea of heads they suddenly decamped, the pair of them. Anxious faces were peeping at the windows, behind the shut panes, as if it was raining. The Sganci mansion hermetically closed, and Don Giuseppe Barabba perched on the attic window-sill. Friend Bomma had got rid of his friends earlier than usual, for fear of his window-glass. From time to time, on the Margarones’ terrace, above the roofs which piled up towards the castle, appeared the hood and the yellow face of Don Filippo. At mid-day, as soon as high mass rang, everybody went off about his own business; and in the deserted square only Santo Motta remained shouting:
‘Do you see how it’s turned out? – ’
Even Ciolla ran off to his dinner. Don Liccio Papa, now there was nobody left, once more put in an appearance in the streets, his hand on his sabre, glaring proudly at the closed doors. At length he entered Pecu Pecu’s and sat down at a table with neighbour Santo.
‘You see how it’s turned out? – ’
Ciolla swallowed his dinner as fast as he could, his hat on his head and his stick between his knees, so as to get back into the square at once, to chew over his last mouthful there, carrying in his pocket a handful of boiled lupin seeds or of broiled chickpeas, in winter also a little warming-pot of hot ashes under his cloak, lounging, saying his say to everybody, spitting right and left and scattering the ground with husks.
‘You see how it’s turned out? – ’
He made his first call at the cobbler’s, then to the coffee-house as soon as it was open, without ever drinking anything there, following the shade in summer, and in winter following the sun. And things happened just as he foretold, according to Ciolla. Giacinto put out the little tables for the ice-cream, Don Anselmo arranged the chairs on the pavement in front of the Café of the Gentry. Only the last clouds of the storm remained: assemblies here and there, in front of Pecu Pecu’s shop and before the Town Hall; people who looked anxiously about, or inquisitive persons who came running and crowding at the least noise. But for the rest everything had resumed its Sunday aspect. The Archpriest Bugno licking up his ice-cream with his little spoon, making it spin out for an hour; the marchese and the other gentry seated in a row in front of the Café; Bomma preaching in the midst of his usual set, in the pharmacy door-way; a swarm of peasants a little way off, at the required distance; and every ten minutes the ancient carriage of Baron Mendola, in which drove the Baron’s mother, deaf as a mole, back and forth from the Rosary to Santa Maria di Jesu; the hairy, weary ears of the mules wagging through the crowd, the coachman perched on the seat with his whip between his legs, beside the chasseur in fine uniform, whose white stockings looked as if they were stuffed with nuts, and the yellow plumes of the baroness’ big hat passing and re-passing above that sea of peasants’ white stocking-caps.
All at once there was a helter-skelter; some sort of row in front of the tavern. Don Liccio Papa was trying to arrest Santo Motta, because he had shouted that morning, and the Captain was encouraging him from the distance, brandishing his malacca cane:
‘Halt! Halt! – the law – !’
But Santo freed himself with a shove, and began to run towards Sant’ Agata. The crowd whistled and howled after the policeman who was trying to follow him.
‘You see! You see!’ said Bomma, who had climbed on to a chair to look. ‘If they don’t respect the authorities any longer!’ Tavuso signed to him to be quiet, putting his forefinger across his mouth.
‘Hark here, Don Bastiano!’
And they began to talk in low tones, drawing aside. The lawyer came down from the Maddalena quarter cautiously, step by step, his stick behind his back. Bomma began to make signs to him from the distance; but the attorney pretended not to see; he nodded to the Captain who was making his way towards the College, and, then passed into the church through the little door. The Captain, as he passed before the pharmacy, withered the free-thinkers with a look, and muttered, turning to the ring-leader:
‘Remember you have wives and children – ’
‘Blood of – ! Body of – !’ The chemist began to rave. At that moment the bell rang for benediction, and everybody in the square kneeled down. A little while after, Ciolla, who was passing his time chewing broiled beans, sitting in front of the ice-cream shop, saw something that made him prick up his ears; the lawyer Neri coming out of church again with the canon-priest Lupi, and mounting again towards the Maddalena parish, lingeringly, talking in low tones. The lawyer shrugged his shoulders, looking furtively here and there. Ciolla tried to join them, but they repulsed him. Bomma stared after them from the distance, wagging his head.
‘Mind what you’re up to! – You mind your skin!’ said the Captain to him as he passed again close by.
‘Cuckold!’ the chemist would have shouted after him. ‘You mind yourself first – !’
But the doctor shoved him by force into the shop. Ciolla had run up San Sebastiano Street after the canon-priest and Lawyer Neri, and saw the pair of them still standing under the arch of the Conduit, in spite of the stench, almost in the dark, talking in low tones, and gesticulating. The moment they saw Ciolla they made off in haste, one this way, the other that. The lawyer went on up the little stony street, and the canon-priest came down again at breakneck speed towards San Sebastiano, stopping Ciolla as if by accident.
‘That lawyer – he’s let me in nicely! – He had an agreement with Farmer Sbrendola – a safe, straight contract – and now he says he remembers nothing of it!’
‘No you don’t, no you don’t, you don’t get me to swallow that!’ murmured Ciolla to himself as soon as the canon-priest had turned away. And he ran at once to the pharmacy.
‘There’s big things happening! Cats and dogs are consorting together! There’s big things happening! – ’
Tavuso swelled his cheeks without answering. The apothecary, however, blurted out:
‘I know it! I know it!’
Then he clapped his open hand over his mouth, withered by the severe look from the doctor.
About two hours after dark Don Gesualdo was just sitting down to supper when with great mystery arrived the canon-priest dressed up as a shepherd, looking for him. Bianca very nearly had a miscarriage, with fright.
‘Don Gesualdo, we are ready, if you are coming; friends are expecting you.’
But the poor devil’s voice trembled. And Don Gesualdo as well, when it came to the point of throwing himself into that affair, had some unpleasant thoughts in his head; he turned pale, and his fork fell from his hand. Then Bianca rose convulsed, stumbling about the room, quarrelling with the canon-priest for dragging the father of a family into that mess.
‘If it’s like that!’ stammered the canon-priest. – ‘If you cast the evil eye on it beforehand – then good night!’
Don Gesualdo tried to laugh it off, with white lips.
‘Bravo, Canon! Now we shall see if you are a man! – I am glad, look you, Bianca! I am glad to go up to the precipice brink, if it shows me that you’re beginning to get fond of me and of the home – ’
Sweating, his hands trembling a little, he muffled himself up inside a hood, for prudence’s sake, and they went down to the street. There wasn’t a living soul about. On the college terrace an unknown hand had even extinguished the lamp in front of the statue of the Immaculate Virgin: something to make your flesh creep, that evening! And then he felt his heart contract with an unwonted tenderness, thinking of his home and his relations.
‘Poor Bianca! Did you see? She is good-hearted, yes she is, at the bottom – I didn’t believe it really – !’
‘Hush!’ interrupted the canon-priest. ‘If you let them recognize your voice, it’s no good our muffling ourselves up and sweating like animals!’
Every minute they kept turning round, afraid they were being spied on. When they got into the Street of San Giovanni they saw a shadow going up towards the square, and the canon-priest said softly:
‘See? – That’s one of us! He’s going where we are – ’
It was in a store-barn of Grancore, down among the little tortuous streets that seemed made on purpose, towards San Francisco. A low little house with one window lighted as a signal. They knocked three times in a special way at the little door which they reached by descending three steps; they crossed a large, dark, broken courtyard, and at the end they came to a large room where, from the buzzing that was heard beyond the closed door, they concluded many people were talking together. The canon-priest said:
‘It is here!’ – and he gave the proper signal.
Both their hearts jumped in their throats. By good luck another accomplice arrived at that moment, muffled up as they were, walking on the tips of his toes among the stones of the yard, and he repeated the signal the same.
‘Don Gesualdo,’ – said the lawyer Neri, putting his nose out of a big scarf. ‘Is it you? I recognized you by the canon-priest, who looks like a scarecrow, poor chap!’
The lawyer took it livelily. – He told them that at Palermo they had done it grand; they had killed the Prince of Aci and had seized Castellammare. – ‘And the one in command now is a priest, one called Ascenso!’
‘Ah? – ’ replied the canon-priest, feeling himself concerned. ‘Ah?’
‘Silence for the present! – We’ll go slowly! Do you know how it is? – it’s a question of who will bell the cat! And every gentleman would rather not put his foot in the trap. But there’s a fair number of us. – There is even Baron Zacco this evening.’
‘Why are we waiting to go in, gentlemen?’ interrupted Don Gesualdo, brave as a lion when he heard that news.
When they came out again, however, after a long while, they were all more dead than alive. Bomma forced himself to bluster; Tavuso did not say a word; and the lawyer also was plunged in thought. Zacco ran to take Don Gesualdo’s arm, as if they had really become brothers for good.
‘Listen, Cousin, I want to tell, you something – ’
And they went on, arm in arm, in silence.
‘Ssh! – a whistle! – towards the Capucin Monastery! – ’
The baron put his hand on his pistol: all felt their hearts beating wildly. They heard a barking of dogs.
‘Hold!’ exclaimed the canon-priest sotto voce, clutching the arm which held the weapon, as the baron stared round in the dark. ‘It is Fra Girolamo, who had rather not be seen in these parts!’ Hardly had they heard the door closing again upon the glimpse of white cassock they had seen in the doorway, than the apothecary murmured gasping:
‘We’ve had a rare escape, upon my word!’
The baron for his part pressed the arm of Don Gesualdo tight, without saying anything. Then he let everyone go his own road, Bomma uphill, towards the Great Square, the canon-priest to the foot of the steps that led up to San Sebastiano.
‘This way, Don Gesualdo – come with me.’
And he made him go all round by the Capucins, then mount towards Santa Maria di Jesu by certain dark little streets where you didn’t know where to put your foot down. All at once he stopped, looking his new friend full in the face, with eyes that glittered in the dark.
‘Don Gesualdo, did you hear all those fine things we talked about! Now we are all brothers. We’re going to swim in milk and honey, from now on. – You believe it, eh?’
The other neither said yes nor no, prudent, waiting for what was coming.
‘Because I don’t – I don’t trust all these brothers of mine that my own mother never bore.’
‘Then why did you come, your honour!’
‘So that you shouldn’t have it all your own way, do you see? I don’t deal in mysteries. We are playing at cutting the grass under one another’s feet, we who have something to lose, and this is what it leads to. Cooking the meat for the cats, and risking our own property and heads! – I am looking after my own interests, as you are after yours. – I’m not full of fools’ conceits like the rest of them. – Relations, ten times relations! I’m perfectly willing. – Then let us come to an understanding between ourselves – ’
‘All right? What do you want to do?’
‘Ah! What do I want to do? – Is that your tune? You play the simpleton to me? All right then, nothing said. – Every man for himself! Brothers! Carbonari! We’ll make a revolution! We’ll put the world upside-down as well! – I’m not afraid!’
In the heat of his discourse the baron had leaned against the door of a courtyard. A dog began to bark furiously. Zacco, terrified, took to his heels with his pistol in his fist, and Don Gesualdo behind him, panting. Before they got into the Square of Santa Maria di Jesu a man who came running towards them stopped him, putting his hand on his breast.
‘Don Gesualdo, Sir! where are you going? – the police are in your house!’
Just as the canon-priest had feared! Just as Bianca had feared! He ran on in the dark, without knowing where, with a great confusion in his head, and his heart almost bursting out of his chest. Then, hearing the fellow limping behind, with a peculiar noise as if he was knocking with a stick:
‘And you, who are you?’
‘Nardo, the labourer, the one who lost his leg on the bridge. Don’t you know me, your honour? Donna Bianca set me to keep night-watch.’
And he told how the Armed Force had come unexpectedly, at four hours after dark. The Captain and others of the Armed Force were in Don Gesualdo’s house. Above, towards the Castle, lights were seen gleaming; there was, moreover, a lantern hung in front of the stable doors, at the Poggio, and soldiers dressing down the horses. Further off, near the Great Square, from time to time voices were heard: a confused murmuring, footsteps resounding in the night, dogs barking all over the village.
Don Gesualdo stopped to reflect.
‘Where are we going, your honour?’ asked Nardo.
‘I’ve thought it out. Don’t make a sound. Ah! Holy Madonna of Peril! Go and call Nanni l’Orbo. You know him? The husband of Diodata?’
It was beginning to dawn. But in the insignificant back alleys they had taken they did not meet a soul. The miserable little house of Diodata was hidden among a heap of blackish hovels and thickets of cactus, where the mud did not dry up even in summer. There was a vine-trellis over the terrace, and a light which leaked out through the dilapidated door-frame.
‘You knock, in case – ’ said Don Gesualdo.
Diodata, seeing her previous master appear before her panting and worn out, began to tremble like a leaf.
‘What do you want of me at this hour? – For the love of God leave me in peace, Don Gesualdo! – If my husband comes in! – He’s gone out this minute to gather one or two prickly pears – just near here.’
‘Fool!’ he said. ‘I’ve got something else on my mind! I’ve got the police at my heels.’
‘What’s happened?’ asked Diodata, terrified.
He made her a sign with his hand, to keep quiet. At that moment Nardo came running back; you could hear the wooden leg some distance off, on the cobblestones.
‘Here he is! – here he comes! – ’
Entered Nanni l’Orbo, surly, the pointed cane for gathering prickly pears on his shoulder, and his squinting eyes glaring this way and that. Diodata, her arms crossed over her breast, vowed and swore.
‘But master!’ exclaimed Nanni. ‘What game are we playing at? This isn’t the way to – !’
‘Fool!’ cried Don Gesualdo at length, losing patience, ‘I’ve got the gibbet before my eyes, and you talk to me of jealousy!’
At the row the neighbours were running up.
‘You see?’ repeated Nanni infuriated. ‘What sort of a figure do I cut before them all, master? In all conscience, the bit you gave her to get her married is a misery, seeing the fool you make of me!’
‘Be quiet! You’ll bring up the police with that row! What do you want? I’ll give you what you want.’
‘I want my own honour, Don Gesualdo! My own honour which can’t be bought with money!’
All the dogs in the neighbourhood began to bark.
‘Do you want the Carmine field? – a bit of land to make your mouth water.’
At last neighbour Nardo succeeded in bringing them to an agreement about the Carmine field.
‘Body of Judas! Property comes in handy for these things: prison, illness, and persecution. … You got it together, and now it comes in handy to save your skin – ’
Don Gesualdo, with a face like a funeral, grumbled:
‘You can talk! You can hold forth! You’re right of it! Now you’re right of it, you are!’
‘But take into consideration your fellow-man, your honour! A wife to keep – The children that will be born. … And if those others come home to me, those that arrived beforehand, I shall have to keep them as if they were my own – because I am the husband of Diodata. Folks will say in any case it was me who put them in the world – ’
‘Shut up! Shut up! Haven’t I said Yes about the field!’
‘Word of a gentleman? Before these witnesses? If it’s like that then – even though you say you have come only to save your skin, you can stop as long as you like. I’m a good-natured devil, I am, you know! – ’
It had become late. Neighbour Nanni, completely restored to good humour, proposed also to go and see what was happening out there:
‘You make as free here as if you were in your own home, Don Gesualdo. – Neighbour Nardo will come with me. When I come back, for a signal I’ll knock three knocks on the door. But don’t you open for anything else, not even to the devil.’
There was a reign of terror in the village: doors and windows still shut, men of the Armed Force in the street, noise of sabres and of spurs. The Margarone young ladies, wearing their trinkets and with their heads bristling with ribbon-ends, like a fireworks, ran on to the balcony every moment. Don Filippo, triumphant and with his chest thrown out proudly, was now seated along with the Civic Captain and the Fiscal Attorney in the Café of the Gentry, making anybody who passed tremble with a mere look. In Don Gesualdo’s stable the police runners were grooming the horses, while their commander, in his slippers, was smoking on the balcony as if he was in his own house.
Nanni l’Orbo came back laughing fit to split. Before entering, however, he knocked three times as he had said, coughed, blew his nose, then remained talking for a while in a loud voice with a neighbour who was combing her hair on her terrace. Don Gesualdo was eating a salad of onions, to keep him from having an illness brought on by fright.
‘Eat well! eat well, Don Gesualdo! I found strangers in your house, just the very same as you here in mine. Baron Zacco is still running! – He was seen before dawn beyond Passaneto, would you believe it! Very devil’s business! – behind a hedge, more dead than alive! – His wife is going on like a madwoman. – I went to find lawyer Neri as well, thought he might write a word or two about this Carmine field which you’re giving to my wife for services rendered. – Not that I don’t trust you – you know that as well as I do – life or death. But nobody knows where he is, the lawyer! They say he’s hidden in the monastery of San Sebastian – dressed as a woman – yessir! – The police are hunting everywhere! But you’ve nothing to be frightened of here, your honour. – Hark! Hark!’
He seemed to take a delight in making the blood freeze in the veins of his fellow-man, did that rascal. There came as a matter of fact a sound of gossips’ voices, a running of heavy-shod feet, squealing of children. Diodata clambered right up to the granary attic-top to look. Then Nanni came to say:
‘It is the viaticum, God preserve us! – It is going up to Sant’ Agata. I saw the canon-priest Lupi carrying the Host – looking down at the ground – and a face like a saint, as God’s above!’
‘This evening, as soon as it is dark, I’ll get somebody to find me a mount down at the Masera, and something to disguise myself a bit,’ said Don Gesualdo, who looked more livid than ever in the light of the attic window.
‘Why? Don’t you like stopping in my house? Has Diodata done something to put you out?’
‘No, no. – It seems a thousand years to me till I can get away – ’
‘But you’ve got nothing to be frightened of here – The police runners won’t come to look for you here! In your own house of course. Look you! – ’
As a matter of fact Bianca had had the Captain of the Armed Force appearing at three hours after dark, the evening before: a fine man with a fringe beard and military moustaches, bringing the notice that he was billeted in the house. Bianca, already anxious about her husband, not knowing what to do, had sent for her uncle Limòli, who arrived yawning and in a bad temper. In vain did the Captain of the Force caress his moustaches, which he had only lately let grow, and say to her in a deep voice:
‘Don’t be afraid! – Calm yourself, dear lady! – We soldiers are gallant men where the fair sex is concerned! – ’
‘But then,’ added the marchese, ‘these fellows are just so-to-speak soldiers; like me who have taken the vow of chastity by way of being a Knight of Malta.’
The Captain frowned, but the other, without heeding, continued, patting him familiarly on the shoulder:
‘I know, Don Bastiano! – You were only so high, with your little open breeches, in the days when I was having escapades with your father. – And my vow bothered me then as your rapier that you wear at your side bothers you now. – Happy days! – A fine man your father! Heart and purse always open! – Don Marcantonio Stangafame, of the Stangafames of Ragusa! – one of the first families in the County! Pity there are so many of you. You must have found it so before you had yourself appointed Captain of the Force! Two hundred guineas a year to be responsible for all the thefts out in the country. It’s a nice sum of money. – And it goes every penny into your pocket – because the district is quiet! – Just a trifle of a dozen soldiers whose keep you have to provide – eightpence a day apiece, eh! – ’
‘Drop it, body of – Bacchus!’ shouted the Captain, hitting his sabre on the ground. ‘Do you want to make game of me, body of Bacchus!’
‘Hey, hey! gently, Mr Captain! I am Marchese Limòli, and I’ve still got friends at Naples to uncaptain you and to shave off your new moustaches, you know!’
At that moment arrived the sexton’s boy, who came on an errand of great importance, muddling himself up, always going over the same thing again, red with shyness. The marchese, who was beginning to be a bit deaf, snapped at him and frightened him still more, squealing:
‘Eh? What the deuce do you want?’
But Bianca uttered a lacerating cry, a cry which left her uncle open-mouthed, and ran round the house looking for her mantle, looking for something to throw over her head, to go out in, to run at once.
EVERY day for years, at the same hour, Donna Giuseppina Alòsi on her balcony knitting as she waited for Peperito to pass, Don Filippo Margarone as he turned the tomato paste which was drying on the terrace, the arch-priest Bugno as he hung out his canary in its cage, even those who were yawning in Bomma’s pharmacy, were accustomed to turn their eyes upwards towards the castle, above the roofs, and to see Don Diego and Don Ferdinando Trao, one after the other, peeping at a window, cautiously, each of them looking to the right and then to the left, then up into the air, and then withdrawing his head like a snail. After a few minutes the doors of the big balcony gradually opened, screeching on their hinges, shakily, shoved apart bit by bit, and Don Diego appeared, bent, cadaverous, with his cotton bonnet pulled right down to his ears, coughing, spitting, clinging to the iron balustrade with one hand; and behind him Don Ferdinando, yellow, gaunt, a real spectre, bringing the watering-can. Don Diego watered, trimmed, attended to Bianca’s flowers; he bent down to pick off the dry twigs and the withered leaves; he stirred up the earth with a bit of broken pot; counted over the new buds, and treasured them as he looked at them. Don Ferdinando followed his every movement, most attentive; he bent down his white-washed face also to every plant, making his nose more pointed, knotting his brows. Then they leaned their elbows on the rail, and remained like two fowls perched on the same perch, turning their heads first this way and then that, according as there appeared one of Farmer Burgio’s mules loaded with grain, or as the girl who sold eggs came up the Rosary Street, or the sexton’s wife crossed the square to ring the Ave Maria. Don Ferdinando was intent on counting the number of persons he saw cross that bit of street which he could see beyond, between the roofs of the houses that descended in a huddle down the slope of the hill; Don Diego for his part following the last rays of the sun as they rose slowly towards the elevation of the Paradiso and of Mount Lauro, and rejoicing at seeing the sudden sparkle of the windows of the little houses which were already disappearing among the fields, like whitish blotches. Then he smiled and pointed his trembling, skeleton finger, nudging his brother with his elbow, while the latter nodded Yes and smiled as well, like a child. Then he told what he had seen himself:
‘Twenty-seven today! – twenty-seven people gone past. The arch-priest Bugno was with cousin Limòli! – ’
For a few days, towards the beginning of August, Don Ferdinando had come alone to water the flowers, trailing himself along with effort, his grey hairs flying loose, slopping himself all over at every step. When again appeared Don Diego, he seemed like Lazarus risen from the dead: all nose, his ears purple, buried alive in an old greatcoat, coughing his soul away at every stride; a weak cough that one could hardly hear any more, but which shook from head to foot both him and his brother on whose arm he leaned as he went making his bow before every pot of flowers. And this was the last time. From that time forward the two grey heads of the brothers were seen at rare intervals behind the window-panes that were patched with paper, as they looked for the sun. Don Diego spitting and staring at the ground every moment. The day when there was that uproar in the Town Hall, so that the voices were heard right up in the little Square of Sant’ Agata, the top of a white, trembling bonnet appeared for a moment at the window. But when the day came for the procession of San Giuseppe to stop before the great door of the Traos, paying the traditional homage to the family, the windows remained shut, in spite of the shouting of the crowd. Don Ferdinando went down to buy the picture of the saint, swollen with asthma, his eyes burnt with lack of sleep, his body bent double, his blackened hands trembling so much that he could hardly find the two farthings in his purse to pay for the card. The procurator of San Giuseppe, who was conducting the procession, said to him:
‘You’ll see how miraculous that image is! How much health and abundance to all in your house!’
And he trusted him with the saint’s silver staff, to put at the bed-head of the sick man: one touch is health. But however that didn’t help either.
Neighbour Cosimo and Pelagatti, leaving for the open fields at two hours before dawn, or returning after dark, saw the light always in Don Diego’s window. And the Motta’s black dog howled through the square, like a lament. Then, towards nine, Don Luca’s boy came knocking at the big door, bringing a glass of milk. Occasionally Don Giuseppe Barabba came with a plate covered with a napkin; or the servant of the Fiscal Attorney brought a flask of wine. Gradually, however, even these visits became fewer. Doctor Tavusa had gone away the last time shrugging his shoulders. The children of the neighbourhood played the whole day long against the great door which never opened any more. One evening, late, the neighbours who were eating their supper heard the hoarse voice of Don Ferdinando calling for the sexton, there across the way; a voice to make the bread drop from your mouth. And immediately after a loud bang at the battered door, and steps hurrying away into the distance.
That was the same night that the Armed Force came. A tumult all over the village. At the unusual noise even Don Diego opened his eyes for a moment. Burgio, on his own terrace, stretching his ears towards the big square, whence he heard all that uproar, seeing people on the Traos’ balcony, asked uneasily:
‘What is it? – What’s amiss?’
‘Don Diego,’ replied the sexton; and he made the sign of the cross, as if Don Diego could see him in the dark; ‘alone like a dog! – they leave him on my hands! I’ve sent Grazia for the doctor – at this time of night! – ’
‘Hark, down there, towards the square! – do you hear? – What sort of day will tomorrow bring, God save us! – ’
‘Sufficient that you’ve got a clear conscience, Farmer Fortunato. I’ve always been a poor devil! I kiss the hand that gives me bread – ’
‘The doctor! – him, yes! – I bet he’s got the trembles at this moment! – And the canon-priest Lupi too, they say! – Good night! – Walls have ears in the dark!’
In fact, Doctor Tavuso, who was leader of all the jacobins in the village, at present hiding in the woodshed, trembling like a leaf, now felt that his last hour had come, hearing someone banging at the door with such fury.
‘The police! – The Armed Force! – ’
When they told him it was the wife of the sexton, however, come to fetch him to Don Diego, who was dying, he got into a bestial rage.
‘Still alive, is he? – Send him to the devil! – They come and frighten me out of my life! – at this hour! – in times like these! – The father of a family! – Go and fetch his own relations instead – or the viaticum, if you want something better! – ’
Neither did Aunt Sganci want to open. Barabba replied from behind the closed door, that was bolted to such a degree:
‘My good woman, these are not the times when you can go running about the streets at night. Tomorrow morning, by God’s will, those that are alive will see each other again.’
Luckily Grazia had nothing to fear; her husband would have sent her without misgiving among the company of soldiers. Going round so late at night, and on such a night, was really terrifying. Even Baron Rubina, who had left the Margarones’ house early, had a man with a lantern to go with him.
‘Ninì! Ninì!’ squealed Donna Fifì with her thin voice, as if her fiancé was running to throw himself over a precipice.
‘Don’t be afraid – no!’ replied the young man, with a deep voice.
Hearing people in the little square, at the big door of the Traos, which resounded like a cannonade, Don Luca came running out.
‘Oh, Baron – sir! – Your cousin Don Diego is dying! – alone like a dog! – There’s not a soul in the house!’
Facing the black, wretched mansion of the Traos shone the lit-up balcony of the Margarones, and in the light the shadow of Donna Fifì, reminding the young baron of that other shadow that used to wait for him once on a time at the window of the dilapidated mansion. Don Ninì went off in haste, his head dropped, carrying with him in his eyes the memory of that closed, dark window.
‘Lot of swine! – They leave him on my hands! – me all alone!’ – grumbled Don Luca, returning to the chamber of the dying man.
Don Ferdinando was seated at the foot of the bed, without saying a word, like a mummy. From time to time he went to look into his brother’s face; then he looked at Don Luca, bewildered, and went back to sit with his head hanging over his breast. At the outburst of the sexton, however, he got up suddenly as if someone had given him a shove, and asked softly, in the somnolent voice of one who speaks in his sleep:
‘Is he asleep?’
‘Yes, he is asleep! You go and get to sleep yourself, won’t you?’
But the other did not stir. At first the sick man asked every minute what time it was; then, towards midnight, he didn’t ask anything any more. He lay still, with his nose to the wall, and the bedclothes up to his ears. Grazia, on her return, had set the door ajar, put the light near, on the little table, and had gone to see to her own house. Her husband settled himself as best he could on two chairs. Don Ferdinando from time to time got up again and went on tiptoe to lean over the bed, like a bird of ill-omen, and returned to whisper in Don Luca’s ear:
‘What is he doing? Is he asleep?’
‘Yes! Yes! – You go to sleep yourself, won’t you! – go on!’
And he went with him to his chamber, to get rid of the bother of him. Don Ferdinando dreamed that the black dog of the neighbour Motta was crouched on his chest and wouldn’t go away, no matter how he tried to shake him off, and to shout out. The tail of the dog, so long that there was no end to it, was twisted round his neck and arms and was squeezing him, suffocating him, strangling his voice in his throat, when he heard another voice that made him jump out of bed, with his heart beating wildly.
‘Get up, Don Ferdinando! This is no time to be sleeping.’
Don Diego seemed to be snoring loudly, you could hear him from the other room; stretched out, his eyes open wide and spent, his nostrils going black; a face that you couldn’t recognize. As Don Ferdinando called him softly, softly, and began again calling him and shaking him, all to no purpose, the few hairs that poor Don Ferdinando had on his head fairly stood on end, and he turned to the sexton, dazed, pleading:
‘What is he doing now? – What is he doing?’
‘What is he doing? – You can see what he’s doing! Grazia! Grazia!’
‘No! – Don’t do that! – Don’t open now! – ’
It was clear day. Donna Bellonia in her petticoat stood on the terrace to spy towards the Great Square, at her husband’s request, terrified by the great hubbub that had been heard all through the night in all the village; and Burgio was grooming the mule tied to the big door of the Traos. At the shouting of Don Luca he lifted his head towards the balcony and asked with a toss of his head what was the matter. The sexton also replied with a wave of the hand, making a sign of one who is going away.
‘Who?’ asked Madam Margarone, who also perceived it. ‘Who? Don Diego or Don Ferdinando?’
‘Yes my lady, Don Diego! They leave him all on my hands! – I’m going for the doctor – at least for the receipt of the viaticum, deuce take it! – my sirs, is it right for a christian to go like this, without doctor or apothecary?’
Speranza began by screaming at her husband who had tied the mule to the house of a dying man: –
‘It’s a bad luck! And we need that, I must say! – ’
Then she went on to conjure the numbers of the lottery along with Donna Bellonia, who had run to get the book of Rutilio Benincasa. Donna Giovannina appeared, wiping her face; but she didn’t see anything except the sexton running to fetch Doctor Tavuso, a few yards further on, at the little green door there with the bell-cord tied up high so that folk shouldn’t come bothering him in the night. He knocks and knocks again, and then the servant of Tavuso at last calls to him through the keyhole:
‘Oh stop the noise, the doctor isn’t going out not if the world falls. He’s more ill than anybody, himself.’
Bomma, yellow as saffron, was pounding cream of tartar at the back of the pharmacy, as lonely as if he had the plague. Don Luca entered in a rush, gasping:
‘Don Arcangelo, Sir! – Don Diego Trao is dying this minute. The doctor won’t come. – What am I to do?’
‘What are you to do? – Make the dead man his coffin, plague on you! You frightened me to death! That’s not the way – today when every gentleman has his heart in his mouth! – Go and fetch the priest then – there, at the college, there’s the canon-priest Lupi in a frenzy saying mass and matins all the time till dawn, to show himself in church! He always falls on his feet, he does! He laughs at the police! I am the apothecary! I am pounding cream of tartar since I can’t pound anything else. – I can’t come!’
But seeing Ciolla going by handcuffed like a robber, he bit his tongue and bent his head over the mortar.
‘Sirs, my sirs!’ vociferated Ciolla – ‘just look here! – a gentleman who is only standing in the square minding his own business!’
The Armed Force, without heeding him, drove him forward with shoves; Don Liccio Papa as escort carrying an unsheathed sabre, shouting:
‘Make way! Make way for the Law!’
The Civic Captain, from the top of the steps of the Café of the Gentry, moralized:
‘We’ve got to make an example of one of them! They’ll kick us, we all know where, if we give them time! – a set of scoundrels! – A village like ours that was a convent of friars till now! – To the castle! – to the castle! Don Liccio, here are the keys! – ’
Thank the Lord they could breathe once more. The well-disposed began to show themselves on the streets again towards evening, so late in the day; the arch-priest in front of the Café; Peperito up and down the Rosary Street; Canali going arm in arm with Don Filippo towards the wax-chandling cousin; Don Giuseppe Barabba taking Donna Marianna Sganci’s little dog for a walk once more; then the Captain’s lady all dressed up as if it was her birthday, now there were so many soldiers about, her embroidered satchel on her arm, her little hat loaded with plumes, wagging her tail, laughing, flirting, towing behind her Don Bastiano Stangafame, or the lieutenant, or any other colleague of her husband, which latter gentleman stood looking on like a real body, with his malacca cane behind his back, while his own colleagues strolled with his wife, splitting themselves in their stride like pairs of compasses, laughing at the top of their voices, staring proudly at the women who dared to show themselves at the windows, making the whole place ring with a noise of sabres and the clinking of spurs, as if they had bells at their heels. The Margarone girls, cooped on the terrace, were dying of jealousy. Especially of the lieutenant, who had moustaches like the tail of a horse, and two rows of buttons along the front of him that shone in the distance.
So that in this holiday air the little bell of the viaticum rang more sadly. Also sinister rumours were afoot. – A battle had taken place! – men condemned to death! – One of the men who carried the tall lantern behind the canopy said that the Host was going to the Trao house. – ‘Another great family dying out!’ gravely observed the Fiscal Attorney, baring his head. The Captain’s lady, skipping on her toes to show her silk stockings, was launching back at Don Bastiano a smile calculated to damn him:
‘I know! I know! Sailor’s vows! – ’
The Captain of the Force winked at Donna Bianca who was passing just then, as if to say: ‘Her as well! – but is it my fault?’ – taking off his hat with servile obsequiousness. But the poor thing did not answer. She was almost running, spent, with her mantle slipping down her shoulders, her face pale and anxious, Donna Fifì Margarone drew back from the balcony with a grimace as she saw her come into the square from the Sant’ Agata steps.
‘Ah! – at last! – the good sister! – how condescending of her!’
‘Bianca! Bianca!’ cried Uncle Limòli, who could not keep up with her.
In front of the big doorway whose two doors were wide open, the children of Burgio and Don Luca were crowding. The sexton’s wife came out at that moment, dishevelled, yellow, and without any stomach. She began dealing smacks to right and left.
‘Be off! Be off from here! – What do you want? – is there a treat?’
Then she darted into the church. Gossips stood at their windows, inquisitive. At the top of the stairs Don Giuseppe Barabba was shaking out some black banners, gnawed and holed by the rats, that bore the coat-of-arms of the Traos: a red splotch all moth-eaten. Aunt Macrì had come running at once with her daughter, and Baron Mendola stood near her; a come-and-go throughout the house, a smell of incense and of candlewicks, a confusion. In the background, through a half-open door, the foot of a low bed could be seen, and a flickering of lighted candles, funereal in the light of day. Bianca saw nothing else, in the midst of all those relations crowding in there, blocking her way.
‘No! – let me go in!’
The dazed face of Don Ferdinando appeared for a moment, like a phantom; then the door closed. Friendly arms supported her, affectionately, and Aunt Macrì repeated:
‘Wait! Wait!’
The wife of the sexton came back panting, carrying candle-sticks under her apron. Her husband, who showed himself again at the door, said:
‘The viaticum is coming – the extreme unction. – But he knows nothing – ’
‘I want to see him! – Let me in!’
‘Bianca! – At this moment! – Bianca!’
‘Do you want to kill him? – upsetting him? – If he recognized you! – Don’t go on like that, don’t, Bianca! – A glass of water! – quick!’
Donna Agrippina ran to the kitchen. They opened the door again before the gleaming of a procession. The priest, the canopy, the tall lanterns of the viaticum passed like a vision. The marquis, bowing to earth, murmured:
‘Domine salva me – ’
‘Amen!’ replied the sexton. ‘I’ve done what I could – alone like a dog! – twice to the doctor! – in the middle of the night! – And to the apothecary as well! – he says the account is already a long one – and he hasn’t got the herb of Lazarus Risen, he says! – ’
‘Why? – Why don’t you let me in? – What have I done?’
She was trembling so much that her teeth tinkled on the glass, almost beside herself, facing people with her terrified eyes.
‘Let me go in! Let me go in!’
Her uncle the marchese hastily got out his handkerchief to wipe away the water she had spilled down her. Baron Mendola and Aunt Macrì were talking in the big window-bay.
‘A long illness! – The Traos are all like that! – there’s nothing to be done – ’
‘Look!’ said the Baron, who had been watching for some time. ‘They’ve opened a little window on to my roof! – down there! – that chief of a Canali! – good thing I noticed it! – I’ll have him up for it! – he’s guilty, as black as pitch!’
‘Don Luca! Don Luca!’ somebody was calling. The door flew open all at once and Don Ferdinando appeared waving his arms in the air. Don Luca came running as fast as he could: screams, agitated voices, a mad running here and there, Donna Agrippina looking for the Vinegar of the Seven Thieves, the others struggling to restrain Bianca, who was behaving like a madwoman, foam at her mouth, her eyes flashing lightning, so that you could hardly recognize her.
‘Why not? – Why won’t you? Let me! Let me! – Let me go in!’
‘Yes! Yes!’ said the marchese. ‘It is nothing but right that she should see him! – Let her go in!’
She saw a long, stiff body on the low bed, a sharp chin bristling with a greyish beard, sticking up into the air, and two wide-open, glaucous eyes.
‘Diego! – Diego! – Oh my brother!’
‘Don’t go on like that, Donna Bianca!’ said Don Luca quietly. ‘If he is still conscious, think what a fright for him!’
She stood still shuddering, terrified, her hands in her hair, looking around dazed. Then she fixed her dry, burning eyes on Don Ferdinando, who was gesticulating frantically as if he wanted to drive her from the bed.
‘Not a thing! – not a thing did you let me know! – I don’t count any more – a stranger! – Shut out of heart and home! – shut out! – from everywhere!’
‘Be quiet!’ stammered Don Ferdinando, putting a trembling finger on her mouth. ‘Besides! – besides! – Be quiet just now! – So many people, you know – ’
‘Bianca! Bianca!’ pleaded the others, taking her in their arms, pushing her, pulling her by her dress.
‘Take her away!’ cried Aunt Macrì from the door. ‘In her condition, poor thing – there’ll be another tragedy if we don’t mind – ’
In the meanwhile arrived Donna Sarina Cirmena, exhausted, bathed in perspiration.
‘I’ve only just heard!’ she stammered, letting herself sink on the leather armchair in the midst of the relations gathered in the great drawing-room. – ‘What can you expect! with all that hubbub there’s been in the village! If it hadn’t been for the viaticum which I saw coming this way – ’
The marchese nodded towards the door of the other room. Aunt Cirmena, huddled in the arm-chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes, whimpered:
‘I can’t bear these scenes! – I’m simply prostrate – !’
And as she continued interrogating with her eyes first one and then the other, Donna Agrippina replied sotto voce, afflicted, making the sign of the cross:
‘Just now! – five minutes ago!’
Don Giuseppe came bringing the bundle of mourning flags.
‘Here you are! – I’ve told the joiner.’
Baron Mendola rose to go and hear what he wanted.
‘All right! all right!’ said Mendola. ‘We shall attend to everything just now. Don Luca? Hey, here, Don Luca! Don Luca!’ Just as the sexton’s head appeared in the doorway, came screams to tear your heart.
‘Poor Bianca! – do you hear her?’
‘She’s like a madwoman!’ Don Luca confirmed. ‘Tearing her hair!’
Baron Mendola asked him before everybody:
‘You’ve thought of everything, have you, Don Luca?’
‘Yessir. The catafalque, the banners, as many masses as there are priests. But who’s going to bear the expense?’
‘Go away! Go!’ interrupted Aunt Cirmena sharply, pushing the sexton by the shoulders towards the death-chamber, where the confusion was increasing.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Aunt Macrì, rising to see how far the sun had got. ‘I’m sorry it’s so late, and there’s nobody at home to see to a mouthful of food.’
Don Luca came out of the death-chamber, troubled in countenance.
‘It’s a risky thing! – She’ll have to be taken away by love or force! – It’s a risky thing, I tell you!’
‘Is it allowed? May we?’
It was the big voice of the gamekeeper who accompanied Baroness Mendola, with the plumed hat and the stockings stuffed with nuts. The old woman, without needing to hear more, stiff and straight as a distaff, went to take her place among the relations who had all gone quiet when she appeared, seated around on the old armchairs, with long faces and their hands in their laps. The Baroness looked around, crying in a high voice:
‘And Madam Rubiera? – and Cousin Sganci? – What are we doing nowadays? – The relations must be told, for the funeral.’
‘There she goes!’ said Donna Sarina in Dame Macrì’s ear. ‘If the world fell – she’d be there! Did you see the commotion in the streets?’
Her cousin replied with a pale smile, implying that the old woman feared nothing because she was deaf.
‘As a matter of fact – ’ began the baron.
But at that moment they came out carrying Bianca in a dead faint, her arms hanging, while Donna Agrippina and the sexton, red in the face, panted and gasped under the burden.
‘As if she was dead,’ puffed the sexton, ‘her bones weigh.’
‘There, there in her own room,’ advised Aunt Macrì.
‘As a matter of fact,’ resumed Baron Mendola, drawing his cousin Limòli and Sarina Cirmena aside – ‘as a matter of fact we shall have to club together for the funeral. And now you’ll see brother-in-law Motta’s relations coming forward. – We shall make a fine show – side by side with Burgio and Master Nunzio Motta! – But we can’t leave her husband out. – It’s a calamity, I don’t say it isn’t – but we’ve got to reckon with Mastro-don Gesualdo, eh?’
‘Of course! of course!’ replied Aunt Cirmena.
She wanted to raise some other objection, but Marchese Limòli put in his word.
‘Leave it alone, my dear cousin! – In any case – the dead are dead, and won’t speak again – ’
‘For all that,’ persisted Dame Cirmena, growing red, ‘it’s simply disgraceful that Mastro-don Gesualdo hasn’t even showed himself here.’
Mendola went on to the landing to tell Barabba to run to the Sgancis.
‘It’ll cost some money! Did you hear the sexton? “Who’s going to bear the expense?” ’
Aunt Macrì pretended not to hear, talking in a low voice with Dame Cirmena.
‘Poor Bianca! – in her condition! How many months is it? Do you know?’
‘Seven! it must be seven! – Really it’s a risky thing – ’
Marchese Limòli who was discussing with Mendola and Barabba the preparations for the funeral, concluded:
‘I would invite the White Fraternity, seeing it’s a question of a man of some distinction – ’
‘Of course! – We must do things properly – spare no expense – ’
But everybody sheered off into generalities when it came to the point of laying down a farthing. Meanwhile in the death-chamber continued the conflict between the sexton’s wife, who wanted to make Don Ferdinando leave the room, and Don Ferdinando who insisted on staying; like the whining of a little dog, and the shrill voice of Auntie Grazia squealing:
‘Holy Madonna! Don’t you understand a thing, don’t you? – You are an out-and-out child! My boy would have more sense, believe me!’
And all at once, in the midst of the group of relations who were talking in low tones, appeared Don Ferdinando, dragging his legs, with his hair all ruffled, his shirt open, a face like a corpse on him too, bringing an old paper which he went round showing to everybody.
‘There’s the privilege! – The diploma of King Martin – You must put it in the death notice – you must let them know that we’ve the right to be buried in the royal tombs – una cum regibus! Have you thought of the banners with the coat-of-arms? Have you thought of the funeral?’
‘Yes, yes, don’t be afraid – ’
As everybody avoided taking direct responsibility, turning away from him, Don Ferdinando went from one to the other mumbling, with tears in his eyes:
‘Una cum regibus! – My poor brother! – Una cum regibus!’
‘All right, all right,’ answered Marchese Limòli. ‘Don’t think about it any more now.’
Baron Mendola, who had been confabbing with folks outside on the landing, came back gesticulating.
‘Gentlemen! – if you did but know! – I’ve fallen out of the clouds!’ –
‘Quiet, quiet!’ the marchese motioned to him. ‘What is it now?’
In Bianca’s room a great bustle was heard; anxious and pleading voices; a fluttering as of people in a quarrel; delirious cries of pain and anger; then a scream which made everybody start. The door was banged open violently, and the marchese suddenly came out, in distress. A moment after appeared Aunt Macrì crying:
‘A doctor! Quick! Quick!’
Other relations now arrived one after the other, afflicted, in black gloves. And above all the noise of chairs shifted rose the cry of Aunt Macrì again:
‘Quick! – a doctor! quick!’
Though an agglomeration of ceremonious phrases forms not the theme of these lines, homage remains undiminished. Outpourings less false and more enduring are the only prayers I esteem. The favour of one look from you is what I sigh for, and this the reward I covet for these awkward lines of mine.
At 7 o’clock on the 17th.
Baron Antonino Rubiera.
‘OF course!’ added Master Titta who was standing on the threshold of the box while Donna Fifì perused this note. ‘He gave it me himself, did the young baron, to hand it over secretly to the leading lady. But for mercy’s sake! I’m father of a family – Don’t make me lose my daily bread.’
Donna Fifì, yellow with bile, answered never a word. In private, behind the parapet, she unfolded the letter with feverish hand. Then she passed it to her mamma, who stammered:
‘But let us hear – What does he say?’
‘I’ll be going,’ continued the barber humbly. ‘I’m going round to the back of the stage, because she murders her first love just now, and I’ve got to comb her with her hair down over her shoulders. My respects, Donna Fifì – Don’t you betray me! – ’
‘Whatever does he say?’ repeated the mamma.
Nicolino stuck his head between them, and got a kick for his pains. At his cries Don Filippo came running in. He had been walking in the corridor, because the box was chock full.
‘What’s the matter! – As usual! – We shall have all theatre turning on us – nobody but us! – ’
Canali also poked his head into the box.
‘You must attend now! This is the scene where they kill one another! – ’
‘Let them!’ muttered Fifì between her teeth.
‘Eh? What?’
‘Nothing. Fifì has got a headache,’ replied Don Filippo. Then softly to his wife: ‘May we ask what’s amiss?’
‘It’s really stifling!’ added Canali. ‘Can you make me a bit of room? – Just look up there – what a lot of people! I’d take my coat off as leave as not.’
There was a hedge of heads. Peasants standing on the benches of the gallery, holding on to the beams of the ceiling in order to look down into the pit; boys almost hanging outside the balustrade, as if they were pruning olives and hanging on the boughs; such a crowd, that the Captain’s lady in the box opposite threatened every minute to faint away, her bottle of smelling-water under her nose.
‘Why doesn’t she let the Force Captain unlace her?’ said Can-au, who was addicted to such little jokes.
Baron Mendola, who was paying a visit to Donna Giuseppina Alòsi in the next box, turned round with his foolish laugh that was heard all over the hall.. Donna Giovannina went red. Mita stretched her eyes wide, and the mamma pushed Canali out of the door. Then she said to Fifì:
‘Look out! The Captain’s wife is watching you through her glasses.’
‘No! She’s not watching me,’ replied the other, shrugging her shoulders.
‘Do you want to hear the latest?’ said the baron, persisting in poking his head through the doorway. ‘There’s the deuce to pay, at the Captain’s lady’s. She’s having the lodging-house where the leading lady is stopping put under surveillance! – Her husband himself, poor fellow! – Apparently they’ve found out some pretty doings!’ The Force Captain, really annoyed, had to get a bit of his own back: ‘Why don’t you attend to what’s happening in your own house, my dear colleague?’
‘Hem! hem!’ coughed Don Filippo gravely. From the pit, however, they called for silence, the curtain having risen. Then Donna Bellonia fetched out her spectacles to read the note, sheltering behind Fifì’s back.
‘But what does he say? I don’t understand a thing!’
‘Ah, you don’t understand? – He’s never once written me one single nice word! – the villain! the traitor!’
The fact is that Ciolla, who prided himself on being literary, had distilled the quintessence of his brain into the epistle as he sat with the young baron shut up in absolute privacy in the back of Giacinto’s shop.
‘But what’s it about? – Can one get an idea?’
‘Sssst!’ they hissed from the pit.
You could have heard a fly buzz. The leading lady, all white except her hair, which hung loose down her back, as Master Titta had combed it out for her, made the flesh creep on the bones of all those who were listening to her. Some, for sheer anxiety, had risen to their feet, in spite of the protests of those who were sitting behind and couldn’t see a thing. Canali himself, profoundly moved, blew his nose like a trumpet.
‘Look! – Look! – Now!’
‘ “I! – I myself! – with this right hand which thou didst clasp, swearing me eternal faith! – ” ’
The lover, a mingy little fellow whom she could have put in her pocket, recoiled step by step backwards, with one hand on his velvet vest and the other, in the act of horror, amongst his curls.
‘I can’t stand it, I can’t!’ muttered Canali. And he fled away just in the moment when the applause resounded.
‘What an actress, eh? What talent!’ exclaimed Don Filippo, also getting out of hand. – ‘Peste! – you clown!’
Nicolino, scared, kicked and floundered towards the door, head downwards, squealing that he wanted to go home. An earthquake down below in the pit. Everybody standing up, shouting and banging. The leading lady bowed her thanks to one side and to the other, wagging her hips, stretching her neck to right and left like a tortoise, sending kisses and smiles on her finger-tips to all the crowd, her lips gathered into a rosette, her breasts escaping quivering out of her bodice every time she bent forward.
‘Blood of – ! body of – !’ exclaimed Canali who had come back to applaud. ‘I am a married man. I am father of a family – ! But I shall be doing something I shouldn’t! – ’
‘Oh papa, papa,’ broke forth Donna Fifì, bursting into tears. ‘If you love me, Oh papa! have that trollop whipped as she deserved.’
‘Eh?’ stammered Don Filippo, arrested with his mouth open and his hand uplifted. ‘What’s got you now?’
Donna Bellonia, Mita, Giovannina all rose together to cairn down Donna Fifì, surrounding her, pushing her into the background, towards the door, to hide her. In the boxes opposite, and down in the pit, there was a wave of uplifted faces, bursts of laughter, and a set of inquisitive individuals pointing their glasses at the Margarone box. Don Filippo, to put an end to the scandal, posed himself in the front row along with Nicolino, leaning on the parapet, saluting the ladies with a superficial smile on his lips, while he muttered in an undertone:
‘Stupid donkey! Your brother, little as he is, has more sense than you!’
Also in the next box there was a scuffle. Madam Alòsi in a great bustle, her bottle of smelling-waters in her hand, and Baron Mendola turning his back on the theatre, shaking by the arms a boy as white as his shirt, who lay fainting in a chair.
‘The young La Gurna is taken bad – ’ said Baron Mendola from Donna Giuseppina’s box. ‘He understands like a grownup! – A nuisance!’
‘Like my Fifì – just now! – Blessed children! They take everything so seriously.’
The boy, pale, with big, timid, intelligent eyes, was still looking at the stage whose curtain was fallen. Donna Giuseppina, after her young nephew had somewhat come round, out of courtesy offered her smelling bottle to the Margarones. Don Filippo kept grumbling under his breath:
‘Just exactly like the La Gurna boy, who is no more than seven years old! – Shameful! – You don’t play that dodge on me again, my word you don’t!’
But he held his peace seeing Mendola enter on a visit, dressed up in a bottle-green cut-away coat, apple-blossom knee-breeches, only his cravat black in mourning for his Cousin Trao. He went making visits from box to box in this fashion so as not to have to pay for a seat.
‘Don’t disturb yourselves – an inch of room – in a corner – you, Canali, can go to Donna Giuseppina next door here, there’s nobody there! – No, no, really nobody! Sarino, her little lad – the boy as tall as her fan – you know the song – and Carradino La Gurna, the child of her aunt Trao. Donna Giuseppina takes him with her wherever she goes to serve as a screen – when she is expecting certain particular visits – you know what I mean! They sent him on purpose from Syracuse to bleed our pockets! – ’
And then, as soon as Canali had gone: – ‘Peperito will be coming as well just now! – I don’t like playing gooseberry!’
He closed one eye in a wink. Nobody answered him. Then, seeing all their long faces, he resumed, changing his tone:
‘What a performance, eh! The woman especially! – She made me cry like a child!’
‘Same here! Same here!’ replied Don Filippo, pretending to turn it into a joke.
‘Ah, Donna Fifì? – cheer up, they make friends again here in the third act. He is only wounded. A girl who loves him secretly saves him, and then vice versa they discover that she is her foster-sister. – A play that was produced twice on two successive evenings at Caltagirone. – Oh-ho! Oh-ho! – What is it now?’
The Captain of the Force, in the box opposite, thinking he wasn’t seen behind the back of the Captain’s lady, made a sign towards them with his white handkerchief, pretending to blow his nose. Mendola, on turning round, surprised Miss Giovannina with her handkerchief at her face. She dropped her eyes suddenly and became as red as a pepper-pod.
‘Ah! Ah! A splendid company! Lucky to get them in these parts. Specially the leading lady! – She is lodging there facing my house in Nanni Ninnaro’s lodging-house. You should just see, every evening after the performance!’ And he finished his sentence in the ear of Don Filippo, who went: ‘Hem! Hem!’
‘I’ll slap your face,’ threatened the mamma meanwhile sotto voce, as she glared at Giovannina. ‘I’ll cool you down – ’
‘Of course!’ continued the baron in a louder voice, so that the girls should not understand what had happened. ‘Master of the bunch is that noble father, the one that wears the long white beard. They pretend to quarrel every evening on the stage. – But then, at home, you should see! – It’s the truth I’m telling you! I made a hole on purpose in the granary window-cover, looking right into her room. There are the casuals, however, the three-farthing worshippers, you know! Those who come to bring their offering – Lawyer Neri’s son ransacked the pantry, that time when his father had fled away – sausages, the remains of the dried figs, whole cheeses – every day he brought something in his pocket! Ha-ha!’
The Captain’s lady was of a mind to leave before the end. Standing in the front of- the box, she had rudely taken the scarf from the Force Captain’s uniform, and had given it to the lieutenant, who was putting it on her bare shoulders, adjusting it there under the nose of his superior, leisurely, calmly taking his own time, without caring a bit about all the eyes that were staring at him. Don Bastiano on the other side of the box, holding the fan in his hand, and the lady’s own pacific husband, both looked on in silence. Mendola nudged Margarone, and these two then began to stare into space, scratching their chins. Canali remarked from the next box:
‘A bit for everybody, and no harm to anybody – ’
‘You mind yourself though! – You mind yourself!’
‘Yes, yes, I saw him come. – Now I’m off, before he’s here, the cavaliere.’
He ran into Peperito right in the doorway on to the corridor.
‘Oh Cavaliere! – What a blessing to see you! Somebody here-abouts was anxious about you – honest truth!’
‘Why?’ stammered Peperito, going red.
‘Why! – A performance that brings the whole place crowding like this – They were all saying – but how is the cavaliere?’
Peperito hesitated a while, trying to find an answer, not knowing what to do with himself, he was so angry. Then he banged the door in the other’s face.
‘Now they’ll just do for the picture of the four innocents,’ added Canali laughing. ‘I’m going into the pit to look at him from down below.’
‘Cheer up, Donna Fifì!’ then said Baron Mendola. ‘You’re neither dead nor dying! – If we can’t make you laugh whatever we do, it will mean – ’
Just then a rustle of silk was heard in the corridor, and a noise of sabre and spurs. Donna Giovannina went red as fere, feeling her mamma’s eyes on her. The Captain’s lady pushed open the door of the box, and put her curly, smiling little head inside.
‘No, no, don’t move. I just came for a moment to say how do you do. This performance is really indecent – I’m going, so as not to hear any more – And the woman’s dress! – Did ever you see, when she bends forward – ’
‘Eh! Eh!’ went Don Filippo, with a motion indicating his girls there.
‘Exactly! A mother can’t bring her girls to the theatre – ’
‘That’s a fact,’ observed Don Filippo then. ‘The authorities ought to take action.’
The lieutenant, who was very chirpy owing to the courtesy of the Captain’s lady, added:
‘I am the authority. I’m just going on to the stage to see if it is as I say – I want to touch with my own hand, like Saint Thomas.’
But nobody laughed. Only the Captain’s lady gave him a tap on the arm, and bent smiling to confide in Donna Bellonia’s ear what it was that the lieutenant affirmed: – ‘But I say it’s not so. – Look at Donna Giovannina – She is almost as fat as the leading lady, and yet one doesn’t see any signs – Just a bit, maybe – from near to – perhaps from her stays being too tight – ’
‘Very graceful!’ stammered the Force Captain from the corridor. ‘Very elegant!’
Zacco, who arrived just then, was for going back when he saw the uniforms, he had such a fear on him since that affair of the Carbonari. But then he took courage, so as not to arouse suspicion, and went round shaking everybody’s hand, smiling, and yellow as death.
‘I have just left Cousin Bianca Trao. She is still at her brother’s house, poor thing’ She can’t move! – She had to have her baby right there in her own old home! – I didn’t know a thing, having been in the country looking after my business.’
‘But what are they waiting for, that they don’t baptize that child?’ asked Margarone. ‘Arch-priest Bugno is raising the deuce for the soul of that innocent girl-baby, which is in every danger of going to hell – ’
Then the Civic Captain spoke up:
‘They are waiting for the mandate from His Majesty, God love us. – Marchese Limòli’s idea, to carry on the Trao name in the collateral branch, now that the male line dies out. – I had the papers in my hands.’
‘Yes, a great family – a great house,’ added the Captain’s lady. ‘I went to see Donna Bianca. I saw the baby too – a nice little face – ’
‘Well and good!’ concluded Zacco. ‘Then Mastro-don Gesualdo finds that even his own child isn’t his own.’
The joke raised a laugh. Canali, returning with his pockets full of roast chestnuts, wanted them to tell it him again.
‘Good night! Good night! I won’t hear any more!’ exclaimed the Captain’s lady smiling all over her face, stopping her ears with her little gloved hands. ‘No – I am off – really!’
They were all in the corridor, Donna Fifì chewing a smile between her yellow teeth; Nicilino behind Canali, who was distributing chestnuts; also Donna Giuseppina had opened her box door, so as not to give occasion for talk. Only Donna Giovannina remained in her seat, nailed there by the black looks of her mamma. Don Ninì, who came on the quiet so as not to arouse suspicion in his fiancée, a little bunch of roses in his hand, was rather taken aback seeing everybody in the corridor. Donna Fifì darted a look at him, and rudely dragged away her brother who was climbing all over the young man to search in his pockets. The Force Captain caressed the boy, and said, looking into the Margarone box with those burning eyes of his:
‘What a fine lad! – so attractive! – A fine family!’
Donna Fifì replied with a fetching smile, right under the very eyes of her fiancé. The Captain’s lady also gave a wry smile; she looked at Donna Giovannina, whose eyes were shining; and as Peperito was just caressing Corradino La Gurna so as to pay court to Donna Giuseppina, saying the boy had a distinguished look, just like the Traos, she added, with her honied little voice:
‘It is surprising what a family likeness there is between them all. Have you noticed how like Don Ninì Bianca’s little baby is?’
‘What the deuce!’ muttered Canali in her ear. ‘What tales are those you are trumping up?’
Then followed some moments of embarrassing silence. Zacco went off humming. Canali announced that they were going to start the last act. There was an exchange of kisses and pungent smiles between the ladies; and Donna Fifì let herself go as far as to clasp with soft abandon the hand which the Captain held out to her in the foreign fashion.
‘Here, come in for a moment,’ said Donna Bellonia to the young baron. ‘You will sit in the back of the box with Fifì, since you are quarrelling with one another. Nobody will see you. Get up from there, Giovannina.’
‘Always the same!’ muttered the latter who was furious with her sister. ‘I’ve always got to give way to her, I have!’
‘Mamma – let him go – if he wants to quarrel! – He can see the play from behind the scenes!’ sneered Fifì.
‘I?’
But she turned her back on him. Mendola had stuck himself in front of everybody else in the box, to see the act which he had described, and at every verse-end he explained: ‘Hark now! – Here they find out that the foster-sister is the daughter of the other one – ’
‘Such things do happen,’ observed Canali from the door-way.
‘Be quiet! Be quiet! Spiteful!’
All eyes turned on the young baron, even those of the girls. He pretended not to hear.
‘If you are in a temper – ,’ muttered Donna Fifì – ‘since you stand there like an owl – why don’t you go?’
‘I?’
‘There you are!’ interrupted Mendola in triumph. ‘There now – you see!’
‘I’m a married man,’ Canali began once more. – ‘I’m father of a family. – But that leading lady would easily make me do something I shouldn’t do! – She’s even got a lovely name! – Aglae!’
‘Aggly – Ugly! – What a name!’ jeered Baron Mendola. ‘I shouldn’t know what to do – face to face with her! – ’
Don Filippo cut in.
‘She’s a famous actress – a leading lady on the placards. – So you can guess – ’
‘Why yes,’ ejaculated Don Ninì rashly, so as to say something.
‘Ah! – You like her as well, do you?’
‘Certainly – that is – I mean – ’
‘Say it, say it then! – We know all about it!’ Mendola smelt a storm and rose to clear out. ‘I know the rest that’s coming. Good night. If you’ll allow me, Don Filippo. – Listen, Canali – ’
As ill luck would have it, the leading lady, who ought to have kept her eyes turned to heaven whilst declaiming: ‘It is written above – by Fate – ’ let her looks wander into the Margarone box. And then Donna Fifì could not restrain herself.
‘Yes, we know all about it! The agglomeration of ceremonious phrases! – these awkward lines of mine! – ’
‘I? – these awkward – ?’
But she flew at him as if she wanted to set her teeth in his face:
‘You may well make a brazen face! – Yessir, the letter with the awkward lines! – here it is! – ’ and she waved it under his nose, bursting into tears of rage. Don Ninì remained at first overwhelmed. Then he went off like a fury, looking for his hat. In the doorway he ran into Don Filippo, who was rushing up at the noise.
‘You are a fool! – an imbecile! – You’ve brought up your daughter in a nice fashion! – Thank God I shan’t set foot in your house again!’
And he went off in a rage, banging the door. Don Filippo, who had stood open-mouthed, bolted into the box the moment the young baron had gone, and in his turn flew at his wife:
‘You are a fool! – A fine way you’ve brought up your daughters! – You see what I’ve had to listen to! You ought never to have brought that knave to my house – ’
The rupture created a stir. Five minutes later nobody was talking of anything else in the theatre. It was a wonder the performance didn’t end in whistling. The leading actor rounded on the leading lady, who was ruining him in the eyes of the first families in the place. But she vowed and swore that she didn’t even know him by sight, that baron, and that he didn’t matter a straw to her. Master Cosima, the carpenter, and everybody behind the scenes heard them. Don Ninì, furious, went immediately next day to find Ciolla, who was going his own ways after those twenty-four hours under lock and key in the Castle.
‘You’ve made a nice fool of me with your awkward phrases! – The whole place knows your letter off by heart – ’
‘All right! What does it signify? It’s a sign that they all like it, if they know it off by heart.’
‘Like be damned! She says she doesn’t care a straw about me – ’
‘Oh! Oh! – that’s impossible! – That letter would have fetched a wall down! As a matter of fact it’s your fault, Don Ninì. – I don’t speak of your physical appearance. But you ought to have made some sort of present to her along with it, dear baron! Powder makes the ball fly! Did you think you were going to do the trick with your handsome face? – with two farthings’ worth of satin note paper? – Because you haven’t given me anything, you know.’
In vain did friends and relations try to intervene to patch up the quarrel. The mamma repeated:
‘What can one do? – Men – ! Even your father! – ’
Don Filippo tried another tune:
‘Follies! – Youthful pranks! It was just circumstances – the novelty. – Leading ladies don’t come every year, not by any means. – You are a Margarone, when all’s said and done! He certainly won’t change a Margarone for a comedian! – And then, if I forgive him, because it’s I who have most to forgive – ’
But Donna Fifì was not to be placated. She said she wanted to have nothing more to do with him, a simpleton, a stingy creature. Baron Awkward Lines! – Anyhow, she would never lack for a swain twenty times better than he – She went about vilifying him among friends and relations. There was nothing Don Ninì couldn’t have done, for rage. He swore that he wanted to throw her over at any cost, and have the leading lady, if only out of spite.
‘Ah! I’ll show her, that witch! Powder makes the ball fly!’
And he sent presents of sausages, fine cheese, and a four-gallon jar of wine. They filled the table of the lodging-house. People talked of nothing else in all the village. Baron Mendola told how he saw the Marriage Feast of Cana every night through his hole. Presents upon presents, till the baroness had to hide the key of the store-pantry. Master Titta came at length to tell Don Ninì:
‘She resists no longer, your honour! The leading lady has lost her head. Every night while I’m combing her hair she talks of nothing else to me.’
‘You must get me the satisfaction I told you of! – Right under Donna Fifì’s own eyes I want that satisfaction! I want to make her die of consumption!’
But the first meeting was a fraud. Signora Aglae pretended to be a poor unsuspecting creature, and had her face painted like a mask. Nevertheless she received him like a queen, in the hole at the back of the scenes, that stank of candlewicks, and she presented him to a bit of a man who was rummaging in the chest, in his shirt-sleeves, and who didn’t even turn round.
‘Baron Rubiera, the distinguished agriculturalist – Signore Pallante, the celebrated artiste – ’
Then she threw a look at the back of the celebrated artiste, who went on rummaging and grumbling, another longer look at Don Ninì, and added in a half-tone:
‘I have known him for some time! – I see him every evening in the pit! ’
Then he began excusing himself that he hadn’t been to the theatre because the family was in mourning; but at that, Signor Pallante turned round with his hands dirty with dust, his face also plastered up, and on his head a bladder-skin from which hung greasy hair.
‘It isn’t there,’ he said in a deep voice that seemed to come from under the ground. ‘I told you so! – be damned to it!’ and he took himself off growling.
She looked round with a mysterious air, her eyes bewildered in the midst of the black circles around them; she stole on tiptoe to close the door, and then turned to the young man, one hand on her bosom, and a pallid smile at the corner of her mouth.
‘Strange how my heart beats! – No – it is nothing. Be seated!’
Don Ninì looked round for a chair, his brain on fire and his heart beating indeed. At last he perched on the trunk, trying to find some appropriate phrases that might take effect, whilst she was burning a bit of cork in the smoky flame of the oil-lamp.
Another visitor arrived, Mommino Neri, who when he found Rubiera there, became suddenly ill-tempered and didn’t say a word, leaning on the door-frame, sucking the knob of his walking-stick. Signora Aglae alone kept up the conversation: a fine town – a cultured, intelligent public – handsome young people there too – ’
‘Good night!’ said Mommino.
‘You are going already?’
‘Yes – you can’t stir inside here – Too many of us – ’
Don Ninì looked after him with a grin, and kept up a drumming of the big drum with his heels upon the chest. She caught his grin and raised her shoulders with a fascinating smile, sighing as if a weight was lifted from her stomach.
The young baron, transported, began:
‘If I am in the way too – ’ and he looked round for the hat he was holding in his hand.
‘Oh no – you no!’ she said earnestly, bowing her head.
‘May we come in?’ asked the cracked little voice of the scene-shifter behind the door.
‘No! No!’ cried Signora Aglae with as much agitation as if she had been caught in the act.
‘We are going on!’ came the deep voice of Signor Pallante. ‘Hurry up.’ Then she, lifting towards Don Ninì her resigned face, said with a sad smile:
‘You see! – I haven’t a moment’s liberty! – I am a slave of the arts!’
Don Ninì took up the refrain: The arts – a splendid thing – It was her own kingdom – her own altar! – Everyone filled with admiration of her! – all the hearts she made beat!
‘Ah yes! – I have given myself entirely to my art – I have given myself entirely.’
And she opened her arms, turning herself towards him, with such abandon, as if offering herself to her art, there in front of him, that Don Ninì sprang down from the chest.
‘Take care!’ exclaimed she in a low voice, rapidly. ‘Take care!’
Her hands trembled as she stretched them instinctively towards him, as if to keep him off. Then she rubbed her eyes, suppressing a sigh, and stammered as if just waking up:
‘Oh forgive me. – One moment – I must dress – ’
And a malicious smile flashed in her eyes.
That nuisance of a Mommino Neri was still there, leaning against a side-scene, and talking with Signor Pallante, who was already dressed as a king, with a furred gown and a paper crown. This time it was Don Ninì’s turn to look black. She. as if she knew, half opened the door again, leaning out her naked arm and shoulder:
‘Baron, if you wait till the end of the act, – I have got those verses that you want to read there at the bottom of the trunk.’
No! no woman had ever given him such joy, such a hot flame at his heart and in his head; neither that first time when Bianca abandoned herself in his arms, quivering; nor when a Margarone had inclined her superb head, showing herself together with him in the midst of the murmur which they excited in the crowd. It was a real access of madness. It put him in such a state that he would have borrowed money wherever he could, in order to make her presents. The baroness in desperation warned the tenants not to lend a farthing to her son, unless they wanted to reckon with her.
‘Ah! Ah! – they shall see! My son has got nothing of his own. And for certain I shan’t pay! – ’
There had been violent scenes between mother and son. He more obstinate than a mule, worse than ever since Signora Aglae had not even let him come up the stairs at the lodging-house. At last she had told him why, one evening, in the dark there on the threshold, while Pallante had gone up to light the lamp.
‘He is jealous! – I am his! – I have been his! – ’
And she had confessed all, with her head drooped, and her beautiful sonorous voice suffocated with emotion. He, a great gentleman disinherited by his father on account of that unlucky passion, had loved her for years, madly, desperately; such a love as one reads of in books; he had devoted himself to Art, to follow her; had suffered in silence; had implored, had wept – At last one evening – when – still all trembling and palpitating with the emotions which art aroused – pity – sacrifice – she did not herself know how – while her heart was soaring to other skies – flying far away to another ideal – But afterwards, never again! – never again! – She had recovered herself! – ashamed – repenting – implacable – He, who loved her always, the same as before – more than before – loved her to madness – he was jealous; jealous of everything and of everybody, of the air, of sleep, of thought – and of him also, Don Ninì! –
‘Hey!’ they heard the deep voice on the stairs. ‘Do you want them fried or with tomato sauce?’
Over her face, sweetly veiled in the semi-darkness, strayed an angelic smile.
‘You see? – Always the same! – Always the same devotion!’
Ciolla, who was Don Ninì’s confidant, said to him later:
‘What a silly you are! That fellow’s nothing but a – an old pimp. They swallow together the stuff you and Neri’s son send.’
Indeed he had often met Mommino on the stage, and even outside the door of the lodging-house, up and down like a sentinel. Mommino was now all smiles and sweetness for him. When it seemed to him that he was really made a fool of, he got in a rage.
‘Ah! – You want that?’ she said to him in fevered tones. ‘Well! – well – if there’s no other way of proving to you how I love you – If I must be lost at any cost – this evening – after midnight! – ’
There was a smell of stables on those dark stairs whose steps were dirty and broken by the iron-shod boots of all the clientele. At the top, a thread of light, and a white figure which offered itself entirely, brusquely, with hair all loose.
‘You want me – your Indian slave – your odalisk? – ’
There were dirty plates on the table, upon the bed a damask mantle worked with arabesques, carnations and a lighted night-light on the cupboard-top under the little picture of the Virgin, and a scent of incense rising from a pomade pot which was smoking on the floor. Over the doorway which led into the other room was nailed a beautiful turkish shawl, spotted with oil; and behind the turkish shawl could be heard Signor Pallante snoring upon his jealousy.
‘To tell the truth she has bewitched him,’ wrote the canon-priest Lupi to Mastro-don Gesualdo, proposing that they should do a good one on the young Baron Rubiera. ‘Don Ninì is up to his ears in debt, and doesn’t know which way to turn. The baroness swears that while she lives she won’t pay a farthing. But she’s got no other heirs, and one day or another she’ll have to leave him everything. As you see, it’s a good opportunity, if you have the courage – ’
‘How much?’ replied Mastro-don Gesualdo. ‘How much does he want, young Baron Rubiera? If I can manage it, I am ready – ’
Later, when it was known in the village what a large sum Don Gesualdo had advanced to Baron Rubiera, everybody said he was mad, and that he’d lost his money. He replied with his own peculiar smile:
‘Don’t you trouble. I don’t lose money. The baron is a gentleman – and time is a better gentleman than he.’
So the proverb says truly that woman is the root of all evil. And when it comes to an actress –
DON NINÌ had hoped to keep the negotiation a secret. But for some time his mother had been refusing to leave him alone, seeing him so changed, disrespectful, with his face shining and his chin shaved every morning. At night she couldn’t close her eyes for worrying where her son managed to find the money for all those silk kerchiefs and bottles of scent. She had set Rosaria and Alessi on his track. She asked the farm-bailiff and the country people. She kept the key of the pantry and of the store-barn under her pillow. How her heart talked to her, poor thing! Her cousin Limòli had been so kind as to point Aglae out to her, as the actress was waggling her hips and tinkling with trinkets.
‘See her? that’s the one. How do you like the looks of her, eh, for a daughter-in-law? Like her, do you?’
For all the world as if Don Diego Trao, dying, had cast the evil eye on her.
In little towns there are people who would walk miles to bring you a piece of bad news. One morning the baroness was seated in the shade under the awning on the balcony, basting together one or two sacks of rough canvas which she handed on to Rosaria to sew properly, as the girl squatted there on the outer stairway, pursing her mouth and screwing up her eyes so that the needle shouldn’t escape from her coarse, roughened hands, turning round from time to time to look down into the narrow, deserted street.
‘And three!’ – Rosaria blurted as she saw Ciolla passing back and forth with that police-bailiff’s look on his face, examining the baroness’s house from top to bottom, stopping every two strides, turning round as if he expected her to call to him. Dame Rubiera, who had been following that come-and-go for some time, from under her spectacles, finally leaned forward to fix Ciolla with a look that said plainly enough, ‘What are you up to and what do you want?’
‘How do you do?’ He started the conversation himself. And he stood there with his feet apart, leaning against the wall opposite, his hat over his eye and in his hand his stick that looked like the land-surveyor’s measuring cane, waiting. In answer to his greeting the baroness asked with a bitter-sweet smile:
‘What are you after? Valuing the house? Do you want to buy it?’
‘I – no! I don’t, dear Madam.’
‘No, I don’t,’ he said again more emphatically, seeing that she had begun her sewing again. Then Madam Rubiera leaned again towards the narrow street, her spectacles shining, and she and Ciolla remained eyeing one another for a moment, like two basilisks.
‘If you’ve got something to tell me, then come up – ’
‘No, nothing,’ said Ciolla; and yet he made for the big door. Rosaria pulled the cord, and began to mutter: ‘What does he want now, that fellow? In a minute it’ll be time for lighting the fire.’
However, the clamour of the livestock was heard from the court-yard, and the steps of Ciolla coming up very leisurely. He entered with his hat on his head, very polite, repeating: ‘Deo gratias! Deo gratias!’ and praising the order which reigned everywhere in that house.
‘Managers like you aren’t born today, Baroness. There you are, there you are, always on the go, ruining your eyes with work. They’ve got some property together, those hands have! – And they have squandered nothing, that I can say.’
The baroness, who was listening with all her ears, began to be uneasy. Meanwhile Rosaria had cleared a chair of the sacking which had been piled over it, and stood there listening, scratching her head.
‘Go and see if the hen has laid an egg,’ said her mistress. And then she turned to talk to Ciolla, more affable than before, so as to get out of him what he had to say. But Ciolla wouldn’t let it out yet. He spoke of the weather, of the crops, of the ferment which the Force Company had left in the village, and of the troubles that had come upon himself.
‘Poor folks get pitched on, dear Madam, and the folks who’ve made the mischief go scot free. Blessing for you that you stop at home and mind your own business. You’re right of it! You do well! Everything you’ve got here is of your own making. I don’t say it to praise you. Bless your hands that can work! Your husband, rest his soul! – but there, we won’t speak of the dead! – everything slipped through his fingers, as it does with all the Rubieras’ – The property all mortgaged up to the hilt – and the house – What was the Rubiera house, when all’s said and done? – Those five rooms there – ’
The baroness pretended to sup up the praise, giving him the information he wanted, following him from room to room, explaining to him where the doorways had been opened to put the old into communication with the new.
Ciolla kept looking round with his bailiff’s eyes, nodding his head, pointing with the cane:
‘Precisely! Those five rooms there! All the rest belongs to you. Nobody can set their claws in your belongings while you live – God send you may live to a hundred! A house like this – a real palace! big as a monastery! It would be a mortal pity if your enemies went and broke it up again for you – for enemies has every man – ’
She felt herself going pale, but pretended to smile; a smile that simply got his pecker up.
‘Well, what? Have I said something funny? Enemies has every man. Mastro-don Gesualdo, for example, if you like! – He’s one that I wouldn’t like to have mixed up in my affairs – ’
Then he too pretended to look around suspiciously, as if he saw the long hands of Mastro-don Gesualdo everywhere.
‘That man – if he’s made up his mind to get inside your house – bit by bit – if it takes a hundred years – like the hedgehog – ’
The baroness had returned to the balcony to take the air, without answering him, so as to get the remainder out of him. He hung back a little still, pretending to be going, taking off his hat to give it a rub, looking for his cane which he had in his hand, asking her to excuse him for all the chatter he had been filling her ears with till then.
‘You’ve got so much to do, eh? You ought to be getting dressed to go to the baptism of Don Gesualdo’s baby? It will be a choice christening – in the Trao house! – See how the devil puts his spoke into everything, that the baby of Mastro-don Gesualdo goes and is born in the Trao house! – All the relations will be there – a general peace – you are a relation as well.’
The baroness kept on laughing, and Ciolla kept up with her. each looking the other in the face with eyes alone remaining serious.
‘No? You’re not going? You are right. You beware of that man. I say no more. – Your son is a fool! – I say no more!’
‘My son has his belongings and I have mine –If he’s made a fool of himself he will pay – if he can pay – Because I shan’t! He can pay out of his own belongings, those five rooms there that you saw. He’s got nothing else, worse luck. – But I shall keep what I’ve got for myself. – I don’t mind if my son enjoys himself. He’s young – young folks must enjoy themselves. But I’m not going to pay for it, that I’m not.’
‘That’s what everybody says. Mastro-don Gesualdo thinks himself very smart. But this time, for once, he’s found somebody smarter than himself. He’ll look lovely, if he’s got Don Ninì’s mistress to keep! – He’ll be able to fancy he is sowing his own wild oats, for his young self! – ’
The baroness laughed so much that she had to hold on to the furniture lest she should fall.
‘Ha – ha! that’s a good one! – You are right there, Don Roberto! – ’
Ciolla kept pace with her, pretending to laugh also, spying her out of the corner of his eye, irritated that she took it so cheerfully. But Rosaria, when she came to take the sacking, found her mistress so pale that she was going to shout for help.
‘Fool! What are you doing? What are you standing stuck there for? Can’t you see Don Roberto to the door! – ’
So Ciolla finally made up his mind to go, grumbling as hard as he could to the servant:
‘How jolly your mistress is! I’m pleased to see it! Laughter is good for the blood and makes you live long. Splendid! Splendid!’
When Rosaria got upstairs again she saw her mistress in a fearful state, rummaging in drawers and cupboards, with eyes that saw nothing, foam at her mouth, dressing herself in haste to go to the christening at cousin Motta’s.
‘Yes, I’m going. – We’ll find out what it really is. – Better know the truth.’
People seeing her going down the street haggard and with her bonnet on one side, didn’t know what to think. In the small square of Sant’ Agata there was great curiosity, as the guests arrived to the christening in the Trao house, and Don Luca the sexton was running back and forth with the candlesticks and other sacred implements under his arm. Speranza came out on to her terrace every other minute, shaking her skirts and planting her fists on her hips, and she began to rail at that baby which was robbing her brother’s inheritance from her:
‘It’ll be a famous christening! The house is full of them – all the swells – Only not any of us! We’re not going – so the grand relations needn’t blush. We’ve nothing to do with it, we haven’t. Nobody has invited us to my niece’s christening. – You can see that it’s no blood of ours – ’
Old man Motta had also refused, that morning, when Gesualdo had gone to ask him to put the holy water on his grandchild. Seated at table – he was just eating a mouthful – he told him No, holding up the wine-flask which he had had at his mouth. Then, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he gave him a black look.
‘Go yourself to your daughter’s christening. It’s your own business! I was never born to mix up with your grand gentry. You can come for me only when you need me – to stop folks’ talking – No, no – when there’s something to be earned you don’t come to fetch me, no indeed! – Don’t you know? – The contract for the road – the communal lands – ’
Master Nunzio wanted to recite the whole litany of his grievances now he’d started. But Gesualdo, who already had his house full of people, and who knew he’d never make him come round if once he had said no, went away with heavy heart and drooping shoulders. He wasn’t feeling very cheerful either, poor fellow, although he had to make a smiling face for all the congratulations and the deep bows he would get. Then at last he burst out at Nanni l’Orbo, who was at the bottom of the stairs more impudent than ever, asking him for sweets and money:
‘Yes! – It goes without saying! – It goes without saying a man must be skinned even to the roof-beams, now that a child is born in this house.’
Barabba and the chasseur of Baroness Mendola had swept a bit, and dusted, and set the rickety altar on its feet, after it had been shut up for so many years in the wall-cupboard of the big drawing-room that served as a chapel. The room itself was still draped in the mourning remaining from the death of Don Diego, the portraits covered and the chandeliers wound round and round with black cloth for the relations to come to the funeral, as was the custom in old families. Don Ferdinando, newly shaved, in one of Cousin Zacco’s black coats that hutched up on his back, went poking his long–nosed face in everywhere, his arms dangling out of his short coat-sleeves, smeary, suspicious, asking everybody:
‘What is it? – What’s happening?’
‘Here is your brother-in-law,’ his aunt Sganci said to him as she entered the room along with Don Gesualdo Motta. ‘Now you must embrace one another and be really nice with one another, now that that little creature has come to bring you together.’
‘How do you do! How do you do!’ muttered Don Ferdinando; and turned his back.
But the other relations had more sense, and were nice with Don Gesualdo; Mendola, the Zacco cousins, all the lot. Already times had changed: the whole village had been upside-down for twenty-four hours, and you never knew what might happen from day to day. Anyhow, by love or force Mastro-don Gesualdo had established himself among all the relations, and now they had to reckon with him. All of them therefore wanted to see the baby – a flower, a rose of Mary! – Aunt Rubiera kissed Bianca like a mother who has found her lost child again, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief wet as a sponge.
‘No! I’ve not got the feelings of a horse! – I couldn’t believe it was true, I couldn’t, after I’d reared you like a daughter! – Oh dear, I’m a fool – I am as I always was, a simple countrywoman – just like my own mother, rest her soul – with my heart in my hand.’
Bianca, who was all decked out under the canopy of the bed, so pale that she looked like wax, dazed with all that crowd, didn’t know what to say, looked at the people, bewildered, trying to rake up a smile, stammering. Her husband, however, played his part among all those friends and relations and congratulations, with his face open and jovial, his shoulders broad and genial, his ear on the alert to catch the things that were being said around him and behind him. Aunt Cirmena, infatuated, said in answer to those who wished the parents a fine boy-child later on, that girls are absolutely like twitch-grass, and that in the end they clear everything worth having out of the house, when they’ve got to be married –
‘Eh – children! – you’ve got to take them as God sends them, boys or girls. If we could go and pick them in the market – Don Gesualdo wouldn’t want for money to buy himself a boy.’
‘Don’t talk to me!’ said Aunt Rubiera at length. ‘You don’t know what boys cost you! – The amount of trouble! – I know – ’
And she continued to unburden herself into Bianca’s ear, watching Don Gesualdo out of the corner of her eye to see what he would say. Don Gesualdo said nothing. Bianca for her part kept her eyes dropped and changed colour continually.
‘I don’t know him, I don’t! – and I’m his mother who bore him! – Do you remember, what a good child he was, good as gold! – quiet, loving, obedient! – And now he’d even turn on his mother, for the sake of that beastly stranger-woman – a strolling actress, do you know her? They say she’s got false hair and teeth. She must have cast some evil spell on him! Strolling actress and a stranger, just imagine! – he can’t think of anything else. – Spends the very blood out of his veins; – and bad people – scoundrel they are, they help him. But I’m not going to pay, no I’m not. – No, that I shan’t do!’
‘Cousin!’ stammered Bianca, all her blood in her face.
‘What do you think of it! He is my cross! If only I knew how much, though – ’
Don Gesualdo kept on chatting with Cousin Zacco, each of them with his heart in his hand, oh so friendly! Then the baroness spat out the question that was boiling inside her:
‘Is it true that your husband lends him money – on the quiet? – Have you seen him come here to him? – Tell me, what do you know? – ’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ replied Don Gesualdo at that moment. ‘You must take children as they come.’
To confirm this, Zacco pointed to his own girls, ranged in a row like so many organ-pipes, modest and pleasing.
‘Look you! I have five girls, and I’m fond of them all alike.’
‘Why, of course!’ replied Limòli. ‘That’s why you don’t want to marry any of them off.’
Donna Lavinia, the eldest, threw an ugly look behind her.
‘Ah, are you there?’ said the baron. ‘You are always ready like the devil in the litany, you are!’
The marchese, who was to be godfather, had put on his Cross of Malta. Don Luca came to say that the canon-priest was ready, and the ladies passed into the drawing-room, with a great rustling of silk, behind Donna Marianna who was carrying the baby. Through the open doorway was seen a twinkling of little flames. Don Ferdinando was peeping at the bottom of the corridor, curious. Bianca wept softly for tenderness. Her husband, who had remained on his knees, as Dame Macrì had told him, with his nose to the wall, got up to calm her.
‘Be still – Don’t let them see you! – Before them all you’ve got to keep a smiling face – ’
All at once down in the square below there exploded the deuce of a noise of crackers. Don Ferdinando fled in terror. The others who were attending to the christening ran to the balcony with their tapers in their hands. Even the canon-priest in gown and stole. It was Santo, Don Gesualdo’s brother, celebrating the baptism of his niece in that fashion, in his shirt-sleeves, on all fours down below there, with a lighted fuse. Don Gesualdo opened the window to pour out a sackful of abuse.
‘Fool! – You’d have to be doing something! – Fool! – ’
The friends calmed him.
‘Poor chap! – let him alone! It’s one way of showing his pleasure – ’
Aunt Sganci triumphantly put his daughter into his arms.
‘Here you have Isabella Trao!’
‘Motta and Trao! Isabella Motta and Trao!’ corrected the marchese.
Zacco said it was a successful grafting: the two familes becoming one. Don Gesualdo, however, was still somewhat gloomy as he held the child in his arms. Meanwhile Don Luca, aided by Barabba and the chasseur, served the ice-slush and the sweets. Aunt Cirmena, who had brought the La Gurna nephew along with her on purpose, filled his pockets and his handkerchief. The Zacco girls, because the eldest had disdained to take anything, all said no, one after the other, devouring the tray all the while with their eyes. Don Luca encouraged them to take something, saying:
‘They’re all quite fresh. I went myself to order them at Santa Maria and the college. No expense spared.’
‘The deuce!’ said Zacco, who was seeking an opportunity to appear amiable. ‘The deuce I am pleased to see this day.’
The others chimed in in chorus:
‘Now the house of Trao is resuscitated. God’s will it is. The child herself chose to be born in the maternal home.’
The canon-priest Lupi also arrived to present his congratulations, along with Marchese Limòli who had thought out this means of not letting the Trao house become extinct with the death of Don Ferdinando.
‘Of course, of course – ’ grumbled Don Gesualdo. ‘It was an understood thing – I agreed to it before – and when I have given my word – ’
He went to put the baby in the arms of its mother, who was robbed of it again by all the aunts in turn. Baroness Mendola wanted to know what everybody was saying. Zacco, very considerate, came to ask for sweets for Don Ferdinando, whom nobody had thought of.
‘Of course, of course. He is the master of the house.’
‘You see,’ observed Dame Rubiera. ‘There’s soon plenty of folks in the world ready to carry off your child and your property.’
There was a burst of laughter. Donna Agrippina twisted her mouth and bent to earth her great eyes which said so many things, as if she had heard something indecent. Don Gesualdo was also laughing, carrying everything off pleasantly. In the end even he risked his joke:
‘And when she marries she’ll leave her Trao name behind her again. – But she won’t leave her dowry behind – ’
Dame Rubiera, deeming the moment propitious and not wanting to lose the opportunity, drew him privately to the side of the bed, whilst Mendola and Don Ferdinando were heard quarrelling at the end of the corridor in loud voices, and everybody was running to see.
‘Listen, Don Gesualdo. I’m not one of your mealy-mouthed sort. I wanted to speak to you about my scamp of a son. You help me, Bianca.’
‘I, aunt?’
‘You must excuse me, I speak with my heart in my hand, – just like my mother who made me. Now that you’re a father yourself, Don Gesualdo, you’ll understand what I feel – what a thorn I’ve got in my heart – what a torment – ’
She looked now at her niece and now at her niece’s husband, with that simple, good smile, which her parents had taught her to put on when making a thorny bargain. Don Gesualdo listened quietly. Bianca, embarrassed by this exordium, seemed like a wax statue with her child in her lap.
‘You know all the talk that’s going round, about Ninì and that actress, don’t you? All right. As for her, I don’t care a thing. She’s not the first and she won’t be the last. His father, rest his soul, was just the same. But I’ve kept him from making any great mess so far. And now he’s got into bad company, a set of scoundrels and – bad companions. Hark here, Bianca, I wouldn’t have given my daughter to that canon-priest to baptize – ’
Bianca, dismayed, moved her livid lips without uttering a word. Don Gesualdo, however, had twisted his mouth to a smile as the baroness let out that remark. She, hearing everybody coming back, at last asked openly:
‘Tell me the truth. He has asked you to lend him money, hasn’t he! – Have you given him any?’
Don Gesualdo grinned wider. Then seeing the baroness going red as a pepper-pod, he replied:
‘Excuse me – excuse me. – You see – why not ask him himself? – This won’t do – I’m not your son’s confessor, you know – ’
Mendola burst into the room telling amid noise of laughter the scene he had just had with that bear of a Don Ferdinando, who didn’t want to come and make peace with his brother-in-law. Dame Rubiera, without saying any more, wiped her lips with her handkerchief that was still sticky with the sweet-stuffs, while the relations were taking their leave. As they departed they all had a word of praise for the way in which everything had gone off. Donna Marianna said to Dame Rubiera that she, the baroness, had done well to come, so as not to let anything appear exceptional or to give occasion for spiteful talk. – The other replied with a glance which Donna Agrippina caught as it passed:
‘A lot of help it’s been to me. Serpents they are! I’ll say no more. But we’ve taken the viper into our bosom – ! You’ll see before long – ’
Don Gesualdo, left alone with his wife, quaffed in one draught a large glass of water, without saying anything. Bianca, her face haggard, as if she felt ill, followed every movement of his with frightened-seeming eyes, pressing the baby to her bosom.
‘Here, do you want a drink?’ said he. ‘You must be thirsty as well – ’
She nodded assent. But the glass trembled so much in her hand that she spilt all the water down her.
‘Never mind, never mind,’ said her husband. ‘There’s nobody to see you now.’
And he began to wipe the sheet with his handkerchief. Then he took the baby in his arms, because it had begun to cry, dancing it to soothe it, carrying it round the room.
‘Did you see the folks, eh? – the loving relations? But they don’t take your husband in, not they.’
Outside in the square all the neighbours had gathered to see the guests leave. At the Margarone window away in the backgrounds, above the roofs, there were other sorts of people peering every moment. Dame Rubiera began saluting from the distance with her fan, with her handkerchief, whilst she talked so vehemently with Marchese Limòli that the pair of them seemed as if they were coming to blows.
‘Race of serpents! Rogues of all rogues! They’ll swallow him in one bite, that reprobate of a son of mine! – But first they’ll have to reckon with me! Look, come with me to the Margarones’ for a minute. – We’ve not seen anything of one another for some time. – But there’s really no reason why we should have done with our old friends – for a mere childishness. You are a man of the world – and sometimes – a word in season – ’
Donna Giovannina came with a glowering face to open the door. In the background you could see the parlour door open, and through the door the furniture with the covers taken off. A ceremonial air, in short.
‘What is it?’ asked the marchese entering, ‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know at all,’ exclaimed Donna Giovannina, who seemed on the point of tears. ‘There’s somebody come to see us, I believe. But I know nothing.’
‘Poor lass! poor lass!’ The marchese lingered in the ante-chamber, caressing the girl. He had taken her plump chin between two fingers, winking wickedly at her, looking round as he said in a low voice:
‘What do you expect, though? Patience! First come first served. Donna Fifì and your mamma, eh, receiving visits? Don Bastiano, eh? the Force Captain? – ’
Don Bastiano was actually there, in the parlour, dressed in civilian clothes, a fine new suit that shone on his back, newly shaven, seated on the sofa next to Mamma Margarone, like a suitor, letting slide a languid, sentimental look from time to time towards the young woman, stroking his new moustaches that refused to be caressed into form. Donna Fifì, seeing Dame Rubiera appear, bridled superbly, triumphant, cooing apart with the stranger in order to insult her.
‘Oh, oh – ’ said the marchese, saluting Don Bastiano who was looking rather sheepish. ‘Are you here then? Good! Good!’
And he began to talk with the Captain, while the ladies chattered all together, asking him why the Force Company had departed without him; if he intended to stay for some time, if he liked the village, and if he wanted to quit his epaulettes. But Don Bastiano kept to generalities, praising the locality, the climate, the inhabitants, underlining his words with expressive looks at Donna Fifì, who was pretending to gaze out of the balcony windows, with eyes full of poetry, and was bowing her head and blushing, at every compliment, as if it had been paid to her herself. The marchese asked all at once whether Don Filippo was not at home, and they answered that he had gone to take Nicolino for a walk.
‘Ah good! good!’
Dame Rubiera bit her lips waiting for the marchese to turn the conversation to the things she wanted. Meanwhile she watched on the sly the languid airs of Fifì, who seemed to be melting under the fiery looks of Don Bastiano Stangafame, and couldn’t keep still on her chair, with her flat bosom heaving like a pair of bellows, and her restless little feet speaking so many things as they showed themselves every minute from under the hem of her dress. The conversation languished. They talked of the christening and of the people who had been there. But everybody was thinking of his own affairs, chattering more or less, trying to say something, with an absent smile on the lips. Only the marchese seemed to take a great interest in the Captain’s talk, as if the game wasn’t his business. Then, catching sight of the red face of Donna Giovannina who was hanging round to spy through the half-open door, he called her in a clear voice: ‘Come in, come in, my pretty dear. We want to see your lovely face. We’re alone here, en famille – ’
The mamma and the elder sister darted two black looks at the girl who remained in the doorway, hiding her servant’s hands under her apron, ashamed of being caught like that, in her house-dress. Limòli, without noticing anything, asked in a low tone of Donna Bellonia:
‘When shall we marry this handsome child? The eldest comes first, naturally. But then remember that I’m here to play the intermediary, – gratus et amore, of course – We are old friends! – ’
Donna Bellonia kept giving’ him looks, though the marchese pretended not to see. Then she said to him, sotto voce:
‘What are you saying? – What ideas are you putting into her head? She’s too young yet. – She’s hardly out of short frocks – ’
‘I see, I see! – ’ replied the marchese eyeing the white stockings of Donna Giovannina. Donna Fifì had taken the Captain to look at her flowers on the balcony. She plucked a carnation, breathed its scent in a long breath, half closing her eyes, and gave him the flower.
‘I see, I see,’ repeated the little old man.
Then Dame Rubiera wanted to go, chewing a smile, the yellow flowers on her bonnet trembling. While the ladies were exchanging kisses and embraces, the marchese turned to the Captain.
‘I’m very pleased! – I’m very pleased indeed – really – Don Bastiano!’
‘Why? – What about?’
The Captain, surprised and embarrassed, tried to find a response to retaliate with. But the other had turned away, and was saluting the ladies with a kind word for each; he caressed Giovannina in a paternal manner, while that young lady was still scowling.
‘What’s amiss? What’s amiss? What do you mean by it? Girls ought to be pleased and lively. Did you hear what your mother said? She says you’ve plenty of time to grow up. Now then, now, cheer up!’
Dame Rubiera felt herself bursting under her mantle; after she had turned round in the street to wave her hand to all the Margarones arrayed there on the small terrace, she began to mutter:
‘Did you realize, eh?’
‘Diamine! It didn’t need many wits. But we’ve got to put Giovannina’s heart to rest also – ’
‘Why yes, yes! I’d put her heart to rest with all the pleasure in the world. – A flirt! – Did you see the game with that carnation? We should have been in for something, my son and I – He almost deserved it, really! The reprobate; the enemy of his own mother! – ’
A few yards further on they met Canali who was going to the Margarones’, and had seen all the hand-kissing exchanged between the street and the terrace. Canali made an important face, and stopped the baroness to greet her, leading the conversation round about, ferreting in her face with two inquisitive eyes.
‘You’ve been to see Donna Bellonia, have you? Well done. An old friendship like yours! – Pity that Don Ninì – ’
The baroness also wanted to draw him out, assuming a non-chalant air, fanning herself and enticing the dog through the barnyard.
‘Ah well – follies – the follies of youth – ’
‘No no, pardon me!’ returned Canali. ‘I’d just like to see how you would feel – ! A father must keep his eyes open and mind whom he gives his child to. – I don’t speak of your son. – A good young fellow – a heart of gold. The trouble is, he’s let himself be taken in – surrounded by false friends. There are always plenty of rascals. – They’ve got him to sign something or other – ’
The baroness marched off, leaving him standing there.
‘You hear? – You see?’ she mumbled to her cousin Limòli. And then she left him also, since he couldn’t keep up with her.
‘Good day! Good day!’
And she ran to lawyer Neri, pale and overcome, to see – to hear. The lawyer knew nothing – nothing positive, at least –
‘You know, Don Gesualdo is a sharp fox. – There are things that are done on the quiet, you know. They’ll have had the contract drawn up by some strange lawyer. Lawyer Sghembri from Militello, they say. – But there! There’s no need for you to get into such a state for a thing like that – I don’t like the looks of you.’
Rosaria, who was busy cleaning out the fowl place when her mistress came home, all at once heard a fearful scream from the courtyard, as if they were cutting the throat of some large beast upstairs, a scream that made her lose her slippers as she ran. The baroness was still there, where she had begun taking off her things, leaning against the chest of drawers, bent double as if she had colic, moaning and lamenting, while the saliva ran from her mouth and her eyes started from her head:
‘Assassin! unnatural son! – I won’t let him devour my property! – I ’d rather leave it to the poor – to the nuns – I want to make my will! – I want to make donations! Fetch me the lawyer – quick! – ’
Don Ninì was fooling with his Aglae, in that wretched lodging-house room which had become an inferno for him ever since he had saddled himself with that debt to Mastro-don Gesualdo. The bed in disorder, the dirty clothing, the uncombed hair, even her caresses, and the meat stews which friend Pallante cooked for them, had all turned to poison for him since they cost him so dear. Seeing Alessi appear, coming to fetch him, and talking of lawyers and donations, he went suddenly pale. In vain did the leading lady clasp him round the neck, her dress all ungirdled, heedless of Pallante who ran from the kitchen and of Alessi who stood there open-eyed, rubbing his hands.
‘Ninì! My Ninì! – Do not abandon me in this state! – ’
‘Damn it all! Let me go – the lot that you are! – Do you think it’s a joke! – That woman is capable of everything!’
Don Ninì, once more entirely under the spell of the love of property, was moved neither by the scene nor by the fainting. He left the poor Aglae there lying stretched out on the floor where she was, like the last act of a tragedy, and Pallante pulling her dress down over her stockings, while Ninì himself ran home without his hat. There at home ensued a terrible scene between mother and son. At first he wanted to deny it; then working himself up to a frenzy, he complained that he was kept like a slave, worse than a child, without a shilling to spend; and the baroness threatened to go herself to the lawyer, to dispose of her property, go just as she was, in her petticoat, that very moment, if they wouldn’t send and fetch him. Then Don Ninì went down to double-lock the street door, and put the key in his pocket, threatening to break every bone of the lad’s body if he so much as breathed.
‘Ah, this is my reward!’ mumbled Alessi. ‘Next time I shall really go to the lawyer’s.’
At last, by love or force, they succeeded in getting the baroness to bed, while she struggled and screamed that they wanted to kill her outright so as to squander her property.
‘Mastro-don Gesualdo! – Yes – It’s he who is devouring all I’ve got!’
Her son tried to calm her with fair words and foul. ‘Don’t you see you’re poorly? Do you want to get really ill, to drive me to perdition?’
And then all night he never closed his eyes, rising every minute to run and hark if his mother was still crying out, terrified that the neighbours would hear her and would come into the house with the lawyer and the police, cursing the leading lady in his heart, that he’d ever come across her, troubled, if he dozed off for a moment, by a host of bad dreams; Mastro-don Gesualdo, the debt, people crowding in and filling the house, a great crowd.
Rosaria came to knock at his door early in the morning.
‘Don Ninì, oh Baron, sir, come and see. – The baroness can’t speak! – I am frightened – if you saw – ’
The baroness was stretched out in her bed like an ox felled by the butcher, with all her blood in her face and with her tongue hanging out. Bile, and bitterness, all those ill humours which must have accumulated upon her stomach, were seething inside her, and came out at her mouth and nostrils, running out on to the pillow. And how she tried to help herself, still in that state, how she tried to grasp with her heavy, swollen hands, how she tried to call, in those inarticulate tones that were swamped in the viscous slime.
‘Mamma! Oh mamma!’
Don Ninì overcome, still puffed with sleep, was crying from room to room, striking his head with his fists, running to the balcony in despair, whilst the neighbours knocked and stormed at the locked door below. After a while, doctor, barber, relations, inquisitive folks filled the house. The very dream of the night before. Don Ninì told everybody the same thing, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose as if he was blowing a trumpet. As soon as he saw lawyer Neri there, he wouldn’t move from his mother’s bedside, asking the doctor every moment:
‘What do you think, doctor? Will she recover her speech?’
‘In time, in time,’ replied the doctor at last, annoyed. ‘Damnation, do you think it’s as easy as sneezing?’
You would hardly have known Don Ninì any more, from one day to another; with a long beard, dishevelled hair, fixed at his mother’s bed-head, or else immersed in the business of the establishment. Not a bean went out of the store-pantry unless it passed through his hands. So true it is that trouble teaches a man sense. His mother would have told him so herself, if she could have spoken. You could see it in the way she looked at his hands, her eyes all bloodshot, every time he came to take the keys that were hung on the door-post. And even he understood, now that the stuff was passing through his own hands, how much misery he must have given to the poor woman; he repented, and tried to win forgiveness, with patience and loving care, keeping always near her, watching over the sick woman and the visitors who came to see her, growing pale every time his mother tried to loosen the bonds of her tongue in the presence of strangers. He felt a great tenderness when he thought that the poor paralytic could neither move nor speak to take the property away from him, as she had threatened.
‘No, no, she won’t do it! Those are things one says in a moment of anger – I would like to see her – ! When all’s said and done, I’m her own flesh and blood. – She’d be the first to die of a stroke if she had to leave away all she’s got to one body and another – ’