The House by the Medlar-Tree

by Giovanni Verga

Ntoni went out to sea every blessed day, and had to row, tiring his back dreadfully. But when the sea was high, and fit to swallow them all at one gulp—them, the Pravvidenza, and everything else—that boy had a heart as brave as the sea itself—“Malavoglia blood!”—said his grandfather; and it was fine to see him at work in a storm, with the wind whistling through his hair, while the bark sprang over the big waves like a porpoise in the spring.

The Provvidenza often ventured out into blue water, old and patched though she was, after that little handful of fish which was hard to find, now that the sea was swept from side to side as if with brooms. Even on those dark days when the clouds hung low over Agnone, and the horizon to the east was full of black shadows, the sail of the Provvidenza might be seen like a white handkerchief against the leaden-colored sea, and everybody said that Padron ’Ntoni’s people went out to look for trouble, like the old woman with a lamp.

Padron ’Ntoni replied that he went out to look for bread; and when the corks disappeared one by one in the wide sea, gleaming green as grass, and the houses of Trezza looked like a little white spot, so far off were they, and there was nothing all around them but water, he began to talk to his grandsons in sheer pleasure. La Longa and the others would come down to the beach to meet them on the shore as soon as they saw the sail rounding the Fariglione; and when they too had been to look at the fish flashing through the nets, and looking as if the bottom of the boat were full of molten silver; and Padron ’Ntoni replied before any one had asked, “Yes, a quintal or a quintal twenty-five” (generally right, even to an ounce); and then they’d sit talking about it all the evening, while the women pounded salt in the wooden mortars; and when they counted the little barrels one by one, and Uncle Crucifix came in to see how they had got on, to make his offer, so, with his eyes shut; and Goosefoot came too, screaming and scolding about the right price, and the just price, and so on; then they didn’t mind his screaming, because, after all, it was a pity to quarrel with old friends; and then La Longa would go on counting out sou by sou the money which Goosefoot had brought in his handkerchief, saying, “These are for the house; these are for the every-day expenses,” and so on. Mena would help, too, to pound the salt and to count the barrels, and she should get back her blue jacket and her coral necklace, that had been pawned to Uncle Crucifix; and the women could go back to their own church again, for if any young man happened to look after Mena, her dowry was getting ready.

“For my part,” said ’Ntoni, rowing slowly, slowly round and round, so that the current should not drive him out of the circle of the net, while the old man pondered silently over all these things—“for my part, all I wish is that hussy Barbara may be left to gnaw her elbows when we have got back our own again, and may live to repent shutting the door in my face.”

“In the storm one knows the good pilot,” said the old man. “When we are once more what we have always been, every one will bear a smooth face for us, and will open their doors to us once more.”

“There were two who did not shut their doors,” said Alessio, “Nunziata and our cousin Anna.”

“‘In prison, in poverty, and in sickness one finds one’s friends’; for that may the Lord help them, too, and all the mouths they have to feed!”

“When Nunziata goes out on the downs to gather wood, or when the rolls of linen are too heavy for her, I go and help her too, poor little thing,” said Alessio.

“Come and help now to pull in this side, for this time Saint Francis has really sent us the gift of God!” and the boy pulled and puffed, with his feet braced against the side of the boat, so that one would have thought he was doing it all himself. Meanwhile ’Ntoni lay stretched on the deck singing to himself, with his hands under his head, watching the white gulls flying against the blue sky, which had no end, it rose so pure and so high, and the Provvidenza rushed on the green waves rolling in from farther than the eye could see.

“What is the reason,” said Alessio, “that the sea is sometimes blue and sometimes green and then white, then again black as the sand of the beach, and is never all one color, as water should be?”