“I don’t know; they give me the wine in barrel.”
“That last was vinegar—only fit for salad—regular poison it was; that’s the way Santuzza gets rich; and to cheat the better, she wears the big medal of the Daughters of Mary on the front of her dress. Nowadays whoever wants to get on must take to that trade; else they go backward, like crabs, as the Malavoglia have. Now they have fished up the Provvidenza, you know?”
“No; I was away, but Cousin Mena knew nothing of it.”
“They have just brought the news, and Padron ’Ntoni has gone off to the Rotolo to see her towed in; he went as if he had got a new pair of legs, the old fellow. Now, with the Provvidenza, the Malayoglia can get back where they were before, and Mena will again be a good match.”
Alfio did not answer, for the Zuppidda was looking at him fixedly, with her little yellow eyes, and he said he was in a hurry to take the wine to Santuzza.
“He won’t tell me anything,” muttered the Zuppidda, “as if I hadn’t seen them with my eyes. They want to hide the sun with a net.”
The Provvidenza had been towed to shore, all smashed, just as she had been found beyond the Cape of the Mills, with her nose among the rocks and her keel in the air. In one moment the whole village was at the shore, men and women together, and Padron ’Ntoni, mixed up with the crowd, looked on like the rest. Some gave kicks to the poor Provvidenza to hear how she was cracked, as if she no longer belonged to anybody, and the poor old man felt those kicks in his own stomach. “A fine Providence you have!” said Don Franco to him, for he, too, had come—in his shirt-sleeves and his great ugly hat, with his pipe in his mouth—to look on.
“She’s only fit to burn,” concluded Padron For-tunato Cipolla; and Goodman Mangiacarubbe, who understood those matters, said that the boat must have gone down all of a sudden, without leaving time for those on board to cry “Lord Jesus, help us!” for the sea had swept away sails, masts, oars, everything, and hadn’t left a single bolt in its place.
“This was papa’s place, where there’s the new rowlock,” said Luca, who had climbed over the side, “and here were the lupins, underneath.”
But of the lupins there was not one left; the sea had swept everything clean away. For this reason Maruzza would not leave the house, and never wanted to see the Provvidenza again in her life.