Maruzza la Longa was silent, as behooved her; but she could not stand still a minute, and went up and down and in and out without stopping, like a hen that is going to lay an egg. The men were at the tavern, or in Pizzuti’s shop, or under the butcher’s shed, watching the rain, sniffing the air with their heads up. On the shore there was only Padron ’Ntoni, looking out for that load of lupins and his son Bastianazzo and the Provvidenza, all out at sea there; and there was La Locca’s son too, who had nothing to lose, only his brother Menico was out at sea with Bastianazzo in the Provvidenza, with the lupins. Padron Fortunato Cipolla, getting shaved in Pizzuti’s shop, said that he wouldn’t give two baiocchi for Bastianazzo and La Locca’s Menico with the Provvidenza and the load of lupins.
“Now everybody wants to be a merchant and to get rich,” said he, shrugging his shoulders; “and then when the steed is stolen they shut the stable door.”
In Santuzza’s bar-room there was a crowd—that big drunken Rocco Spatu shouting and spitting enough for a dozen; Daddy Tino Goosefoot, Mastro Cola Zuppiddu, Uncle Mangiacarubbe; Don Michele, the brigadier of the coast-guard, with his big boots and his pistols, as if he were going to look for smugglers in this sort of weather; and Mastro Mariano Cinghialenta. That great big elephant of a man, Mastro Cola Zuppiddu, went about giving people thumps in fun, heavy enough to knock down an ox, as if he had his calker’s mallet in his hand all the time, and then Uncle Cinghialenta, to show that he was a carrier, and a courageous man who knew the world, turned round upon him, swearing and blaspheming.
Uncle Santoro, curled all up in the corner of the little porch, waited with out-stretched hand until some one should pass that he might ask for alms.
“Between the two, father and daughter, they must make a good sum on such a day as this,” said Zuppiddu, “when everybody comes to the tavern.”
“Bastianazzo Malavoglia is worse off than he is at this moment,” said Goosefoot. “Mastro Cirino may ring the bell as much as he likes, to-day the Malavoglia won’t go to church—they are angry with our Lord—because of that load of lupins they’ve got out at sea.”
The wind swept about the petticoats and the dry leaves, so that Vanni Pizzuti, with the razor in his hand, held on to the nose of the man he was shaving, and looked out over his shoulder to see what was going on; and when he had finished, stood with hand on hip in the door-way, with his curly hair shining like silk; and the druggist stood at his shop door, under that big ugly hat of his that looked as if he had an umbrella on his head, pretending to have high words with Don Silvestro, the town-clerk, because his wife didn’t force him to go to church in spite of himself, and laughed under his beard at the joke, winking at the boys who were tumbling in the gutters.
“To-day” Daddy Goosefoot went about saying, “Padroni ’Ntoni is a Protestant, like Don Franco the apothecary.”
“If I see you looking after that old wretch Don Silvestro, I’ll box your ears right here where we are,” shouted La Zuppidda, crossing the piazza, to her girl. “That one I don’t like.”
La Santuzza, at the last stroke of the bell, left her father to take care of the tavern, and went into church, with her customers behind her. Uncle Santoro, poor old fellow, was blind, and didn’t go to the mass, but he didn’t lose his time at the tavern, for though he couldn’t see who went to the bar, he knew them all by the step as one or another went to take a drink.