CHAPTER IV—THE WINE-SHIP
Peppino usually took half an hour off and came about noon to wherever I was sketching to fetch me to lunch. One morning as we walked along nearly every man we met smiled and said to him—
“Buona festa, Peppino,” and he smiled and returned their salutes with the same words. He accounted for it by saying it was his onomastico—the day of the saint whose name he bears.
“What?” said I, “is it S. Peppino and you never told me? I wish you many happy returns of the day. But it cannot be everybody’s onomastico as well, and you say ‘Buona festa, Peppino’ to all who speak to you.”
He replied that it was the 19th of March, the festa of S. Giuseppe, and assured me that he had said “Buona festa, Peppino”
to no one who was not a namesake; so that about two-thirds of the men at Castellinaria must have been baptized Giuseppe.
“Then that explains it,” said I. “I was beginning to think that you might have become engaged to be married and they were congratulating you.”
That did not do at all.
“I got no time to be married,” said he, “too much busy. Besides, marriage very bad thing. Look here, I shall tell you, listen to me. Marriage is good for the woman, is bad for the man: every marriage makes to be one woman more in the world, one man less. Did you understand? And they are not happy together. We have a bad example in this town.”
“Surely you don’t mean to tell me that here in Castellinaria, where everything moves so smoothly and so peacefully, you have an unhappy married couple?”