After dinner Margherita used to come to the kitchen and entertain him. She asked questions about the people at the mill, then took him to the courtyard, to the granaries, to the cellar. She was delighted when, aping Bustianeddu's grand manner, he said, "Good Lord! What a lot of things you have!"
She never condescended to play with him, but Anania cared little for play. He was timid and grave; without understanding its significance he was already conscious of his position's irregularity.
Years rolled on.
After the mistress with the moustache came the master like a cock: then an old man, much addicted to snuff, who wept when he pointed to Spitzbergen and said, "Here Silvio Pellico was imprisoned." Then came a master with a round face, who was very pale and very lively, and who presently committed suicide. This lamentable event was morbidly impressive to the whole school, and for a long time the children neither spoke nor thought of anything else. Anania could not explain to himself why a man of such great cheerfulness should have cut his throat; but he declared before the whole school that he was ready to follow the example at the earliest opportunity. Fortunately the opportunity was lacking. At this time he had no sorrows. He was loved at home, he did well at school. His life unfolded evenly without change in its events, without change in the faces which surrounded him. One day was like another, one year was like another, resembling an interminable roll of stuff printed all over on the same pattern.
In winter the same people assembled round the olive press. In spring the elder flowered in the courtyard, the flies and the bees buzzed in the luminous air. The same figures moved in the streets. Uncle Barchitto, the madman, with his staring blue eyes, his long beard, and flowing hair, like a Jesus become old and a beggar, continued his harmless extravagances. Maestro Pane rapped on the table and talked to himself in a loud voice. Efès and Nanna reeled and stuttered. The ragged children played with the dogs, and the cats, and the chickens, and the baby pigs. The women squabbled. The young men sang melancholy love songs in the serene moonlit nights. Rebecca's lament shook the air like the cry of the cuckoo across the sadness of a barren landscape. As the sun sometimes shines out from an unexpected quarter of a cloudy sky, so the florid figure of Signor Carboni sometimes appeared in this district of dismal poverty. Then the women came to their doors smiling and saluting; the men who did no work, and passed their time stretched out indolently in the sunshine, sprang to their feet and blushed; the children ran after him and kissed his hand which he carried carelessly behind his back. In hard winters he gave polenta (maize) and oil to the whole neighbourhood. People came to him for small loans which they never repaid. Everywhere in the dirty wind-swept lanes he met boys and girls who called him Godfather, and men and women whom he addressed as Gossip. He could not keep count of his god-children, and Uncle Pera declared that many called him Gossip merely to get his money.
"They all hope he'll educate their sons," said the old gardener, warming himself at the olive press furnace, his cudgel across his knees.
"Well, there's one he's going to educate," said the miller, looking proudly at Anania who was gazing out of the window.
"Not even one. The padrone is vain, but he isn't going to ruin himself."
"Oh, shut up, you old grasshopper," said the miller; "you're just like the devil—the older you get the more disagreeable you are!"
"Why doesn't the padrone educate his own bastards?" said the old man, hawking and coughing. Anania, who was looking out of the window felt a shudder run through him as if he had been struck.