Meanwhile the year was a bad one, and the fish had to be given for the souls of the dead, now that Christians had taken to eating meat on Friday like so many Turks. Besides, the men who remained at home were not enough to manage the boat, and sometimes they had to take La Locca’s Menico, by the day, to help. The King did this way, you see—he took the boys just as they got big enough to earn their living; while they were little, and had to be fed, he left them at home. And there was Mena, too; the girl was seventeen, and the youths began to stop and stare at her as she went into church. So it was necessary to work with hands and feet too to drive that boat, at the house by the medlar-tree.
Padron ’Ntoni, therefore, to drive the bark, had arranged with Uncle Crucifix Dumb-bell an affair concerning certain lupins * to be bought on credit and sold again at Riposto, where Cousin Cinghialenta, the carrier, said there was a boat loading for Trieste. In fact, the lupins were beginning to rot; but they were all that were to be had at Trezza, and that old rascal Dumb-bell knew that the Provvidenza was eating her head off and doing nothing, so he pretended to be very stupid, indeed. “Eh! too much is it? Let it alone, then! But I can’t take a centime less! I can’t, on my conscience! I must answer for my soul to God! I can’t”—and shook his head till it looked in real earnest like a bell without a clapper. This conversation took place at the door of the church at Ognino, on the first Sunday in September, which was the feast of Our Lady. There was a great concourse of people from all the neighborhood, and there was present also Cousin Agostino Goosefoot, who, by talking and joking, managed to get them to agree upon two scudi and ten the bag, to be paid by the month. It was always so with Uncle Crucifix, he said, because he had that cursed weakness of not being able to say no. “As if you couldn’t say no when you like,” sneered Goosefoot. “You’re like the—” And he told him what he was like.
* Coarse flat beans.
When La Longa heard of the business of the lupins, she opened her eyes very wide indeed, as they sat with their elbows on the table-cloth after supper, and it seemed as if she felt, the weight of that sum of forty scudi on her stomach. But she said nothing, because women have nothing to do with such things; and Padron ’Ntoni explained to her how, if the affair was successful, there would be bread for the winter and ear-rings for Mena, and Bastiano could go and come in a week from Riposto with La Locca’s Menico. Bastiano, meantime, snuffed the candle and said nothing. So the affair of the lupins was arranged, and the voyage of the Provvidenza, which was the oldest boat in the village, but was supposed to be very lucky. Maruzza had a heavy heart, but did not speak; he went about indefatigably, preparing everything, putting the boat in order, and filling the cupboard with provisions for the journey—fresh bread, the jar with oil, the onions—and putting the fur-lined coat under the deck.
The men had been very busy all day with that usurer Uncle Crucifix, who had sold a pig in a poke, and the lupins were spoiling. Dumb-bell swore that he knew nothing about it, in God’s truth! “Bargaining is no cheating,” was he likely to throw his soul to the pigs? And Goosefoot scolded and blasphemed like one possessed—to bring them to agreement, swearing that such a thing had never happened to him before; and he thrust his hands among the lupins, and held them up before God and the Madonna, calling them to witness. At last—red, panting, desperate—he made a wild proposition, and flung it in the face of Uncle Crucifix (who pretended to be quite stupefied), and of the Malavoglia, with the sacks in their hands. “There! pay it at Christmas, instead of paying so much a month, and you will gain two soldi the sack! Now make an end of it. Holy Devil!” and he began to measure them. “In God’s name, one!”
The Provvidenza went off on Saturday, towards evening, when the Ave Maria should have been ringing; only the bell was silent because Master Cirino, the sacristan, had gone to carry a pair of new boots to Don Silvestro, the town-clerk; at that hour the girls crowded like a flight of sparrows about the fountain, and the evening-star was shining brightly already just over the mast of the Provvidenza, like a lamp. Maruzza, with her baby in her arms, stood on the shore, without speaking, while her husband loosed the sail, and the Provvidenza danced on the broken waves by the Fariglione * like a duck. “Clear south wind and dark north, go fearlessly forth,” said Padron ’Ntoni, from the landing, looking towards the mountains, dark with clouds.
La Locca’s Menico, who was in the Provvidenza with Bastianazzo, called out something which was lost in the sound of the sea. “He said you may give the money to his mother, for his brother is out of work;” called Bastianazzo, and that was the last word that was heard.
* Rocks rising straight out of the sea, separate from the shore.