“Blessed that he is!” sighed Santuzza, “he died on a fortunate day, a day blessed by the Church—the eve of Our Lady of Sorrows—and now he’s praying for us sinners, like the angels and the saints. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.’ He was a good man, one of those who mind their own business, and don’t go about speaking ill of their neighbors, as so many do, falling into mortal sin.”
Maruzza, sitting at the foot of the bed, pale and limp as a wet rag, looking like Our Lady of Sorrows herself, began to cry louder than ever at this; and Padron ’Ntoni, bowed and stooping, looking a hundred years older than he did three days before, went on looking and looking at her, shaking his head, not knowing what to say, with that big thorn Bastianazzo sticking in his breast as if a shark had been gnawing at him.
“Santuzza’s lips drop nothing but honey,” observed Cousin Grace Goosefoot.
“To be a good tavern-keeper,” said La Zuppidda, “one must be like that; who doesn’t know his trade must shut his shop, and who can’t swim must be drowned.”
“They’re going to put a tax on salt,” said Uncle Mangiacarubbe. “Don Franco saw it in the paper in print. Then they can’t salt the anchovies any more, and we may just use our boats for firewood.”
Master Turi, the calker, was lifting up his fist and his voice, “Blessed Lord—” he began, but caught sight of his wife and stopped short.
“With the dear times that are coming,” added Padron Cipolla, “this year, when it hasn’t rained since Saint Clare, and if it wasn’t for this last storm when the Provvidenza was lost, that was a real blessing, the famine this year would be solid enough to cut with a knife.”
Each one talked of his own trouble to comfort the Malavoglia and show them that they were not the only ones that had trouble. “Troubles old and new, some have many and some have few,” and such as stood outside in the garden looked up at the sky to see if there was any chance of more rain—that was needed more than bread was. Padron Cipolla knew why it didn’t rain any longer as it used to do, “It rained no longer on account of that cursed telegraph-wire that drew all the rain to itself and carried it off.” Daddy Tino and Uncle Mangiacarubbe at this stood staring with open mouths, for there was precisely on the road to Trezza one of those very telegraph-wires; but Don Silvestro began to laugh with his hen’s cackle, ah! ah! ah! and Padron Cipolla jumped up from the wall in a fury, and railed at “ill-mannered brutes with ears as long as an ass’s.” Didn’t everybody know that the telegraph carried the news from one place to another; this was because inside the wires there was a certain fluid like the sap in the vines, and in the same way it sucked the rain out of the sky and carried it off where there was more need of it; they might go and ask the apothecary, who said it himself; and it was for this reason that they had made a law that whoever broke the telegraph-wire should go to prison. Then Don Silvestro had no more to say, and put his tongue between his teeth.
“Saints of Paradise! some one ought to cut down those telegraph-posts and burn them!” began Uncle Zuppiddu, but no one listened to him, and to change the subject looked round the garden.
“A nice piece of ground,” said Uncle Mangia-carubbe; “when it is well worked it gives food enough for a whole year.”