The House by the Medlar-Tree

by Giovanni Verga

“You did not think me worthy of the honor of marrying you,” he said once when they were alone, and he could bear it no longer.

“No, Cousin Alfio,” answered Mena, with starting tears. “I swear it by the soul of this innocent creature in my arms; that is not my motive. But I cannot marry.”

“And why should you not marry, Cousin Mena?”

“No, no,” repeated Cousin Mena, now nearly-weeping outright. “Don’t make me say it, Cousin Alfio! Don’t make me speak. If I were to marry now people would begin to talk again of my sister Lia, so that no one can marry a girl of the Malavoglia after what has happened. You yourself would be the first to repent of doing it. Leave me; I shall never marry, and you must set your heart at rest.”

So Cousin Alfio set his heart at rest, and Mena continued to carry her little nephews in her arms, almost as if her heart, too, were at rest; and she swept out the room up-stairs, to be ready for the others when they came back—for they also had been born in the house. “As if they were gone on journeys from which any one ever came back!” said Goosefoot.

Meanwhile Padron ’Ntoni was gone—gone on a long journey, farther than Trieste, farther than Alexandria in Egypt, the journey whence no man ever yet came back and when his name fell into the talk, as they sat resting, counting up the expenses of the week, or making plans for the future, in the shade of the medlar-tree, with the plates upon their laps, a silence fell suddenly upon them, for they all seemed to have the poor old man before their eyes, as they had seen him the last time they went to visit him, in that great wide chamber, full of beds in long rows, where they had to look about before they could find him, and the grandfather waited for them as the souls wait in purgatory, with his eyes fixed on the door, although he now could hardly see, and went on touching them to be sure that they were really there and still said nothing, though they could see by his face that there was much he wished to say; and their hearts ached to see the suffering in his face, which he could not tell them. When they told him, however, how they had got back the house by the medlar, and were going to take him back to Trezza again, he said yes, yes with his eyes, to which the light came back once more, and he tried to smile, with that smile of those who smile no more or who smile for the last time, which stays, planted in the heart like a knife.

And so it was with the Malavoglia when they went on Monday with Alfio Mosca’s cart to bring back their grandfather, and found that he was gone. Remembering all these things, they left the spoons on their plates, and went on thinking and thinking of all that had happened, and it all seemed dark, as it was, under the shade of the medlar-tree. Now when their cousin Anna came to spin a little while with her gossips, she had white hair and had lost her cheerful laugh, because she had no time to be gay, now that she had all that family on her shoulders, and Rocco, too; and every day she had to go hunting him up, about the streets or in front of the tavern, and drive him home like a vagabond calf. And the Malavoglia had also two vagabonds; and Alessio went on beating his brains to think where they could be, by what burning hot roads, white with dust, that they had never yet come back after all that long, long time. .

Late one evening the dog began to bark behind the door of the court, and Alessio himself, who went to open the door, did not know ’Ntoni—who had come back with a bag under his arm—so changed was he, covered with dust, and with a long beard. When he had come in, and sat down in a corner, they hardly dared to welcome him. He did not seem like himself at all, and looked about the walls as if he saw them for the first time; and the dog, who had never known him, barked at him without stopping. They gave him food, and he bent his head over the plate, and ate and drank as if he had not seen the gifts of God for days and days, in silence; but the others could not eat for sadness. Then ’Ntoni, when he had eaten and rested a while, took up his bag to go.

Alessio had hardly dared to speak, his brother was so changed. But seeing him take his bag again, in act to go, his heart leaped up into his breast, and Mena said, in a wild sort of way:

“You’re going?”’