IN THE AMERICAN VILLAGE, MESSINA. [Page 257.]
o’clock. Al lavoro, al lavoro! Don’t you talk your Eyetalian to me!”
So the gangs are hectored and herded to their work. Soon both admonition and expostulation are drowned in the song of the saw and plane, in the good chorus of the hammer. The Anvil Chorus seems tame when one has listened to this glorious music after the dreadful silence of Messina, where the dead still lie in tens of thousands, buried only in the debris of their houses.
Brofferio had hunted up Zenobia, his washerwoman (she lived in the country), and found her alive and well, having escaped all damage to house or property from the earthquake. She was overjoyed to see him, and early that first morning she arrived at the camp for his linen. Like the good fellow he is, Brofferio shared his good fortune with the rest, and Zenobia agreed to do the washing for his friends. She took away all she could carry on her head and came back for more, making several trips in the course of the morning. She brought the clothes back in the same piecemeal fashion, a few at a time.
“The clothes are washed in a mountain stream, beaten between two stones, and dried on the grass. They come back the sweetest smelling things in Messina,” writes J., “only we have to wait an endless time for them.”
One morning J., whose house was next Brofferio’s, heard Zenobia making a great outcry:
“Signor Comandante!” she exclaimed. “Have mercy on me; I am not strong. I live five kilometres distant—the walk is long, the path is a scandal, the sun is hot. I have brought an immense load. Madonna Santa! larger no woman could carry!”
“Thou art avaricious,” said Brofferio sternly, “which is shameful, considering thou art making more money than any woman in Messina. Dost thou grudge the soldi to hire an asino? Basta! Either take the linen properly all at once and return it in the same manner, or come no more. There is always the grandmother of Gasperone—“
“It is enough; the Signor Comandante shall be obeyed—ten donkeys, if it will appease him!”