Before the steps of her house the neighbors were waiting for her, talking among themselves in a low voice. When they saw her coming, Mammy Goose-foot and her cousin Anna came towards her silently, with folded hands. Then she wound her hands wildly in her hair, and with a distracted screech rushed to hide herself in the house.
“What a misfortune!” they said among themselves in the street. “And the boat was loaded—forty scudi worth of lupins!”
IV.
The worst part of it was that the lupins had been bought on credit, and Uncle Crucifix was not content with “fair words and rotten apples.” He was called Dumb-bell because he was deaf on one side, and turned that side when people wanted to pay him with talk, saying, “the payment can be arranged.” He lived by lending to his friends, having no other trade, and for this reason he stood about all day in the piazza, or with his back to the wall of the church, with his hands in the pockets of that ragged old jacket that nobody would have given him a soldo for; but he had as much money as you wanted, and if any one wanted ten francs he was ready to lend them right off, on pledge, of course—“He who lends money without security loses his friends, his goods, and his wits”—with the bargain that they should be paid back on Sunday, in silver, with the account signed, and a carlino more for interest, as was but right, for, in affairs, there’s no friendship that counts. He also bought a whole cargo of fish in the lump, with discount, if the poor fellow who had taken the fish wanted his money down, but they must be weighed with his scales, that were as false as Judas’s, so they said. To be sure, such fellows were never contented, and had one arm long and the other short, like Saint Francesco: and he would advance the money for the port taxes if they wanted it, and only took the money beforehand, and half a pound of bread per head and a little quarter flask of wine, and wanted no more, for he was a Christian, and one of those who knew that for what one does in this world one must answer to God. In short, he was a real Providence for all who were in tight places, and had invented a hundred ways of being useful to his neighbors; and without being a seaman, he had boats and tackle and everything for such as hadn’t them, and lent them, contenting himself with a third of the fish, and something for the boat—that counted as much as the wages of a man—and something more for the tackle, for he lent the tackle too; and the end was that the boat ate up all the profits, so that they called it the devil’s boat. And when they asked him why he didn’t go to sea, too, and risk his own skin instead of swallowing everything at other people’s expense, he would say, “Bravo! and if an accident happened, Lord avert it! and if I lost my life who would attend to my business?” He did attend to his business, and would have hired out his very shirt; but he wanted to be paid without so much talk, and there was no use arguing with him because he was deaf, and, more than that, wasn’t quite right in his head, and couldn’t say anything but “Bargaining’s no cheating;” or, “The honest man is known when pay-day comes.”
Now his enemies were laughing in their sleeves at him, on account of those blessed lupins that the devil had swallowed; and he must say a De profundis for Bastianazzo too, when the funeral ceremony took place, along with the other Brothers of the Happy Death, with the bag over his head.
The windows of the little church flashed in the sunshine, and the sea was smooth and still, so that it no longer seemed the same that had robbed La Longa of her husband; wherefore the brothers were rather in a hurry, wanting to get away each to his own work, now that the weather had cleared up. This time the Malavoglia were all there on their knees before the bier, washing the pavement with their tears, as if the dead man had been really there, inside those four boards, with the lupins round his neck, that Uncle Crucifix had given him on credit, because he had always known Padron ’Ntoni for an honest man; but if they meant to cheat him out of his goods on the pretext that Bastianazzo was drowned, they might as well cheat our Lord Christ. By the holy devil himself, he would put Padron ’Ntoni in the hulks for it!—there was law, even at Trezza.
Meanwhile Don Giammaria flung two or three asperges of holy-water on the bier, and Mastro Cirino went round with an extinguisher putting out the candles. The brothers strode over the benches with arms over their heads, pulling off their habits; and Uncle Crucifix went and gave a pinch of snuff to Padron ’Ntoni by the way of consolation; for, after all, when one is an honest man one leaves a good name behind one and wins Paradise, and this is what he had said to those who asked him about his lupins:
“With the Malavoglia I’m safe, for they are honest people, and don’t mean to leave poor Bastianazzo in the claws of the devil.”