I.
Once the Malavoglia were as numerous as the stones on the old road to Trezza; there were some even at Ognino and at Aci Castello, and good and brave seafaring folk, quite the opposite of what they might appear to be from their nickname of the Ill-wills, as is but right. In fact, in the parish books they were called Toscani; but that meant nothing, because, since the world was a world, at Ognino, at Trezza, and at Aci Castello they had been known as Malavoglia, from father to son, who had always had boats on the water and tiles in the sun. Now at Trezza there remained only Padron ’Ntoni and his family, who owned the Provvidenza, which was anchored in the sand below the washing-tank by the side of Uncle Cola’s Concetta and Padron Fortunato Cipolla’s bark. The tempests, which had scattered all the other Malavoglia to the four winds, had passed over the house by the medlar-tree and the boat anchored under the tank without doing any great damage; and Padron ’Ntoni, to explain the miracle, used to say, showing his closed fist, a fist which looked as if it were made of walnut wood, “To pull a good oar the five fingers must help one another.” He also said, “Men are like the fingers of the hand—the thumb must be the thumb, and the little finger the little finger.”
And Padron ’Ntoni’s little family was really disposed like the fingers of a hand. First, he came—the thumb—who ordered the fasts and the feasts in the house; then Bastian, his son, called Bastianazzo because he was as big and as grand as the Saint Christopher which was painted over the arch of the fish-market in town; and big and grand as he was, he went right about at the word of command, and wouldn’t have blown his nose unless his father had told him to do it. So he took to wife La Longa when his father said to him “Take her!” Then came La Longa, a little woman who attended to her weaving, her salting of anchovies, and her babies, as a good house-keeper should do; last, the grandchildren in the order of their age—’Ntoni, the eldest, a big fellow of twenty, who was always getting cuffs from his grandfather, and then kicks a little farther down if the cuffs had been heavy enough to disturb his equilibrium; Luca, “who had more sense than the big one,” the grandfather said; Mena (Filomena), surnamed Sant’Agata, because she was always at the loom, and the proverb goes, “Woman at the loom, hen in the coop, and mullet in January;” Alessio, our urchin, that was his grandfather all over; and Lia (Rosalia), as yet neither fish nor flesh. On Sunday, when they went into church one after another, they looked like a procession.
Padron ’Ntoni was in the habit of using certain proverbs and sayings of old times, for, said he, the sayings of the ancients never lie: “Without a pilot the boat won’t go;” “To be pope one must begin by being sacristan,” or, “Stick to the trade you know, somehow you’ll manage to go;” “Be content to be what your father was, then you’ll be neither a knave nor an ass,” and other wise saws. Therefore the house by the medlar was prosperous, and Padron ’Ntoni passed for one of the weighty men of the village, to that extent that they would have made him a communal councillor. Only Don Silvestro, the town-clerk, who was very knowing, insisted that he was a rotten codino, a reactionary who went in for the Bourbons, and conspired for the return of Franceschello, that he might tyrannize over the village as he tyrannized over his own house. Padron ’Ntoni, instead, did not even know Franceschello by sight, and used to say, “He who has the management of a house cannot sleep when he likes, for he who commands must give account.” In December, 1863, ’Ntoni, the eldest grandson, was called up for the naval conscription. Padron ’Ntoni had recourse to the big-wigs of the village, who are those who can help us if they like. But Don Giammaria, the vicar, replied that he deserved it, and that it was the fruit of that satanic revolution which they had made, hanging that tricolored handkerchief to the campanile. Don Franco, the druggist, on the other hand, laughed under his beard, and said it was quite time there should be a revolution, and that then they would send all those fellows of the draft and the taxes flying, and there would be no more soldiers, but everybody would go out and fight for their country if there was need of it. Then Padron ’Ntoni begged and prayed him, for the love of God, to make the revolution quickly, before his grandson ’Ntoni went for a soldier, as if Don Franco had it in his pocket, so that at last the druggist flew into a rage. Then Don Silvestro, the town-clerk, dislocated his jaws with laughter at the talk, and finally he said that by means of certain little packets, slipped into certain pockets that he knew of, they might manage to get his nephew found defective in some way, and sent back for a year. Unfortunately, the doctor, when he saw the tall youth, told him that his only defect was to be planted like a column on those big ugly feet, that looked like the leaves of a prickly-pear, but such feet as that would be of more use on the deck of ah iron-clad in certain rough times that were coming than pretty small ones in tight boots; and so he took ’Ntoni, without saying “by your leave.” La Longa, when the conscripts went up to their quarters, trotted breathless by the side of her long-legged son, reminding him that he must always remember to keep round his neck the piece of the Madonna’s dress that she had given him, and to send home news whenever any one came that way that he knew, and she would give him money to buy paper.
The grandfather, being a man, said nothing; but felt a lump in his throat, too, and would not look his daughter-in-law in the face, so that it seemed as if he were angry with her. So they returned to Aci Trezza, silent, with bowed heads. Bastianazzo, who had unloaded the Provvidenza in a great hurry, went to meet them at the top of the street, and when he saw them coming, sadly, with their shoes in their hands, had no heart to speak, but turned round and went back with them to the house. La Longa rushed away to the kitchen, longing to find herself alone with the familiar saucepans; and Padron ’Ntoni said to his son, “Go and say something to that poor child; she can bear it no longer.” The day after they all went back to the station of Aci Castello to see the train pass with the conscripts who were going to Messina, and waited behind the bars hustled by the crowd for more than an hour. Finally the train arrived, and they saw their boys, all swarming with their heads out of the little windows like oxen going to a fair. The singing, the laughter, and the noise made it seem like the Festa of Trecastagni, and in the flurry and the fuss they forgot their aching hearts for a while.
“Adieu, ’Ntoni! Adieu, mamma! Addio. Remember! remember!” Near by, on the margin of the ditch, pretending to be cutting grass for the calf, was Cousin Tudda’s Sara; but Cousin Venera, the Zuppidda (hobbler), went on whispering that she had come there to see Padron ’Ntoni’s ’Ntoni, with whom she used to talk over the wall of the garden. She had seen them herself, with those very eyes, which the worms would one day devour. Certain it is that ’Ntoni waved his hand to Sara, and that she stood still, with the sickle in her hand, gazing at the train as long as it was there. To La Longa it seemed that that wave of the hand had been stolen from her, and when she met Cousin Tudda’s Sara on the piazza (public square), or at the tank where they washed, she turned her back on her for a long time after. Then the train moved off, hissing and screaming so as to drown the adieus and the songs. And then the curious crowd dispersed, leaving only a few poor women and some poor devils that still stood clinging to the bars without knowing why. Then, one by one, they also moved away, and Padron ’Ntoni, guessing that his daughter-in-law must have a bitter taste in her mouth, spent two centimes for a glass of water, with lemon-juice in it, for her. Cousin Venera, the Zuppidda, to comfort her gossip La Longa, said to her, “Now, you may set your heart at rest, for, for five years you may look upon your son as dead, and think no more about him.”
But they did think of him all the time at the house by the medlar—now it would be a plate too many which La Longa found in her hand when she was getting supper ready; now some knot or other that nobody could tie like ’Ntoni in the rigging—and when some rope had to be pulled taut, or turn some screw, the grandfather groaning, “O-hi! O-o-o-o-hi!” ejaculated: “Here we want ’Ntoni!” or “Do you think I have a wrist like that boy’s?” The mother, passing the shuttle through the loom that went one, two, three! thought of the boum, boum of the engine that had dragged away her son, which had sounded ever since in her heart, one!—two!—three!
The grandpapa, too, had certain singular methods of consolation. “What will you have? A little soldiering will do that boy good; he always liked better to carry his two arms out a-walking of a Sunday than to work with them for his bread.” Or, “When he has learned how salt the bread is that one eats elsewhere he won’t growl any longer about the minestra * at home.”