A Very Italian Christmas Read online

  Meanwhile Lucia pretended to be busying herself about the house, as far as possible from the light, her head sunk, so that they shouldn’t see her face. But if her sister-in-law grumbled, “There goes the music!” she turned around like a viper to retort: “Even the music is a trouble to you, is it? In this galley-hole there mustn’t be anything for eyes to see nor ears to hear, my word!”

  The mother who noticed everything, and who was also listening, watching her daughter, said that as far as she was concerned that music made her feel happy inside herself. Lucia pretended not to understand anything. Yet every day, at the time when the frog fellow was due to be passing, she did not fail to be standing in the doorway with her distaff in her hand. The Tome, as soon as he got back from the river, went around and around the village, always returning to that particular quarter, with the remains of his frogs in his hand, crying, “Song fish! Song fish!” As if the poor folks of those mean streets could afford to buy song fish!

  “But they must be good for sick people!” said Lucia, who was dying to get a start bargaining with the Tome. But the mother wouldn’t let them spend money on her.

  The Tome, seeing Lucia watching him from under her eyes, her chin on her breast, slackened his pace before the door, and on Sunday he summoned enough courage to draw a little nearer, till he came so far as to sit on the steps of the next terrace, with his hands hanging between his thighs; and he told all the women in the group about how you caught frogs, how it needed the devil’s own cunning. He was more cunning than a red-haired ass, was Pino the Tome, and he waited till the goodwives had gone away to say to Neighbor Lucia, “We want rain badly for the corn, don’t we!” Or else, “Olives will be scarce this year!”

  “What does that matter to you? You live by your frogs,” Lucia said to him.

  “You listen here, my dear friend; we are all like the fingers on one hand; or like the tiles on the roof of the house, one sending water to the other. If there’s no crop of corn or of olives, there’ll be no money coming into the village, and nobody will buy my frogs. You follow what I mean?”

  That “my dear friend” went sweet as honey to the heart of the girl, and she thought about it all evening long as she was spinning silently beside the lamp; and she turned it around and around in her mind, like her spool that spun from her fingers.

  The mother seemed as if she read into the secrets of the distaff, and when for a few weeks no more songs had been heard in the evening, and the frog seller had not been seen going past, she said to her daughter-in-law: “How miserable the winter is! We don’t hear a living soul in the neighborhood.”

  Now they had to keep the door shut, for the cold, and through the little opening they never saw a thing except the window of the house across the road, black with rain, or some neighbor going home in his soaking wet cloak. But Pino the Tome never showed his face, so that if a poor sick person wanted a drop of frog broth, said Lucia, there was no telling how you were going to get it to her.

  “He’ll have gone to earn his bread some other road,” said the sister-in-law. “It’s a poor trade, that is, and nobody would follow it who could do anything else.”

  Santo, who had heard the chatter on Saturday evening, made his sister the following speech, out of love for her: “I don’t like this talk about the Tome. He’d be a fancy match for my sister! A man who lives on frog catching, and stands with his legs in the wet all day long! You ought to get a man who works on the land, so that even if he owned nothing, at least he’d be drawn from the same class as yourself.”

  Lucia was silent, her head lowered and her brows knit, biting her lips from time to time so as not to blurt out: “And where am I going to find a man who works on the land?” How indeed was she to find him, all by herself ? The only one she had managed to find now never showed his face anymore, probably because Redhead had played on her some nasty trick, envious, tattling creature that she was. There was Santo who never said anything but what his wife said, and she, the Redhead, had gone around repeating that the frog man was a good-for-nothing, which bit of news of course had come to the ears of Neighbor Pino.

  Therefore squabbles broke out every moment between the two sisters-in-law.

  “The mistress here isn’t me, that it isn’t,” grumbled Lucia. “The mistress in this house is the one who was clever enough to wheedle around my brother and snap him up for a husband.”

  “If I’d only known what was coming I’d never have wheedled around him, I wouldn’t, brother or no brother; because if I needed one loaf of bread before, now I need five.”

  “What does it matter to you whether the frog catcher has got a proper trade or not? If he was my husband, it would be his business to look after keeping me.”

  The mother, poor thing, came between them to soothe them down; but she was a woman of few words, and she didn’t know what to do but run from one to the other, clutching her hair with her hands, stammering:

  “For mercy’s sake! For mercy’s sake!”

  But the women took not the slightest notice of her, setting their nails in each other’s faces after Redhead had called Lucia that bad word, “Nasty-cat!”

  “Nasty-cat yourself ! You stole my brother from me!”

  Then arrived Santo, and gave both of them knocks to quiet them, so that Redhead, weeping, grumbled: “I say it for her own good! Because if a woman marries a man who’s got nothing, troubles come fast enough.”

  And to his sister, who was screaming and tearing her hair, Santo said, to quiet her: “Well what do you expect, now that she is my wife? But I’m fond of you and I speak for your own sake. You see what a lot of good we’ve done ourselves by getting married, us two!”

  Lucia lamented to her mother: “I want to do as much good for myself as they’ve done for themselves! I’d rather go out to service! If a mortal man does show his face around here, they drive him away.” And she thought about the frog catcher of whom there was never a sign nowadays.

  Afterward they got to know that he had gone to live with the widow of Farmer Mariano; even that he was thinking of getting married to her; because though it was true he hadn’t got a proper trade, he was none the less a fine piece of a young fellow, built without any sparing of material, and as handsome as San Vito in flesh and blood, that he was; and the lame woman had property enough to be able to take what husband she liked and chose.

  “Look at this, Neighbor Pino,” she said. “This is all white things, linen and everything; these are all gold earrings and necklaces; in this jar there are twelve gallons of oil; and that section is full of beans. If you like you can live with your hands in your pockets, and you needn’t stand up to your knees in the marsh catching frogs.”

  “I should like it all right,” said the Tome. But he thought of Lucia’s black eyes looking for him under the cotton panes of the window, and then of the hips of the lame woman, which wobbled like a frog’s as she went about the house showing him all her stuff. However, one day when he hadn’t been able to get a scrap of anything for three days and had had to stay in the widow’s house, eating and drinking and watching the rain fall outside the door, he persuaded himself to say yes, out of love for daily bread.

  “It was for the sake of my daily bread, I swear to you,” he said with his hands crossed on his breast, when he came back to look for Neighbor Lucia outside her door. “If it hadn’t been for the hard times, I wouldn’t have married the lame woman, I wouldn’t, Neighbor Lucia!”

  “Go and tell that to the lame woman herself,” replied the girl, green with bile. “I’ve only got this to say to you; you don’t set foot here anymore.”

  And the lame woman also told him that he wasn’t to set foot there anymore, for if he did she’d turn him out of her house, naked and hungry as when she had taken him in. “Don’t you know that, even more than to God, you’re obliged to me for the bread you eat?”

  But as her husband he went short of nothing: well clad, well fed, with shoes on his feet and nothing else to do but lounge in the marketplace all
day, at the greengrocer’s, at the butcher’s, at the fishmonger’s, with his hands behind his back and his belly full, watching them buy and sell.

  “That’s his real trade, being a vagabond!” said Redhead. And Lucia gave it to her back again, saying that if he did nothing it was because he’d got a rich wife who kept him. “If he’d married me he’d have worked to keep his wife.” Santo, with his head in his hands, was thinking how his mother had told him to take the lame woman himself, and how it was his own fault if he’d let the bread slip from his mouth.

  “When we’re young,” he preached to his sister, “we have these notions in our heads, like you have now, and we only think of pleasing ourselves, without counting what comes after. Ask Redhead now if she thinks folks ought to do as we have done.”

  Redhead, squatting on the threshold, shook her head in agreement with him, while her brats squealed around her, pulling her by the dress and the hair.

  “At least the Lord God shouldn’t send the plague of children,” she said fretfully.

  As many children as she could she took with her to the field, every morning, like a mare with her foals; the least one inside the bag over her shoulder, and the one a bit bigger she led by the hand. But she was forced to leave the other three at home, to drive her sister-in-law crazy. The one in the sack and the one that trotted limping behind her screamed in concert the length of the rough road, in the cold of the white dawn, and the mother had to pause from time to time, scratching her head and sighing: “Oh, my Lord!” And she breathed on the tiny blue hands of the little girl, to warm them, or she took the baby out of the sack to put it to her breast as she walked. Her husband went in front, bent under his load, and if he turned half around, waiting to give her time to overtake him, all out of breath as she was, dragging the little girl by the hand, and with her breast bare, it wasn’t to look at the hair of Redhead, or at her breast which heaved inside her stays, like at Castelluccio. Now Redhead tipped out her breast in sun and frost, as if it served for nothing more except to give out milk, exactly like a mare. A real beast of burden, though as far as that went her husband could not complain of her: hoeing, mowing, sowing, better than a man, when she pulled up her skirts, and was black half-way up her legs, on the corn-land. She was twenty-seven years old now, with something else to do besides think of thin shoes and blue stockings. “We are old,” said her husband, “and we’ve got the children to think of.” But anyhow they helped each other like two oxen yoked to the same plough, which was what their marriage amounted to now.

  “I know only too well,” grumbled Lucia, “that I’ve got all the trouble of children, without ever having a husband. When that poor old woman shuts her eyes at last, if they want to give me my bit of bread they’ll give it, and if they don’t they’ll turn me out onto the street.”

  The mother, poor thing, didn’t know what to answer, and sat there listening to her, seated beside the bed with the kerchief around her head and her face yellow with illness. During the day she sat in the doorway, in the sun, keeping still and quiet till the sunset paled upon the blackish roofs opposite, and the goodwives called the fowls to roost.

  Only, when the doctor came to see her, and her daughter put the candle near her face, she asked him, with a timid smile:

  “For mercy’s sake, your honor, is it a long job?”

  Santo, who had a heart of gold, replied: “I don’t mind spending money on medicine, so long as we can keep the poor old mother here with us, and I can know I shall find her in her corner when I come home. Then she’s worked her share, in her own day, and when we are old our children will do as much for us.”

  And then it happened that Carmenio had caught the fever at Camemi. If the master had been rich he’d have bought him medicine; but Herdsman Vito was a poor devil who lived on that bit of a flock, and he kept the boy really out of charity, for he could have looked after that handful of sheep himself, if it hadn’t been for fear of the malaria. But then he wanted to do the good work of giving bread to Neighbor Nanni’s orphan, hoping by that means to win over Providence to his help, as it ought to help him, if there was justice in heaven. How was it his fault if he owned nothing but that bit of grazing land at Camemi, where the malaria curdled like snow, and Carmenio had caught the ague? One day when the boy felt his bones broken by the fever, he let himself sink asleep behind a rock which printed a black shadow on the dusty little road, while heavy flies were buzzing in the sultry air of May, and in a minute the sheep broke into the neighbor’s corn, a poor little field as big as a pocket handkerchief, already half eaten up by the hot drought. Nevertheless Uncle Cheli, who was curled up under a little roof of boughs, cherished it like the apple of his eye, that corn-patch that had cost him so much sweat and was the hope of the year for him. Seeing the sheep devouring it, he cried: “Ah! You Christians don’t eat bread, do you?”

  And Carmenio woke up under the blows and kicks of Uncle Cheli, and began to run like a madman after the scattered sheep, weeping and yelling. Carmenio, who had his bones already broken by the ague, stood badly in need of that cudgeling! But he thought, did he, that he could pay in squeals and laments for the damage done to his neighbor?

  “A year’s work lost, and my children without bread this winter! Look at the damage you’ve done, you assassin! If I skin you alive it won’t be as much as you deserve.”

  Uncle Cheli went round getting witnesses to go to the law with the sheep of Herdsman Vito. The latter, when he was served with the summons, felt as if he was struck with paralysis, and his wife as well. “Ah, that villain of a Carmenio has ruined us all! You do somebody a good turn, and this is how they pay you back! Did he expect me to stop there in all the malaria and watch the sheep? Now Uncle Cheli will finish us off into poverty, making us pay the costs.” The poor devil ran to Camemi at midday, blinded by despair, because of all the misfortunes which were raining down on him, and with every kick and every punch on the jaw he fetched Carmenio he stammered, panting: “You’ve brought us down to nothing! You’ve landed us in ruin, you brigand!”

  “Don’t you see how sick I am?” Carmenio tried to answer, parrying the blows. “How is it my fault, if I couldn’t stand on my feet with fever? It got me unawares, there, under the rock.”

  Nonetheless, he had to make up his bundle there and then, and say goodbye to the five dollar-pieces which were due to him from Herdsman Vito, and leave the flock. And Herdsman Vito was downright glad to catch the fever again, he was so overwhelmed by his troubles.

  Carmenio said nothing at home, when he came back empty-handed and empty-bellied, with his bundle on a stick over his shoulder. Only his mother grieved at seeing him so pale and wasted, and didn’t know what to think. She learned everything later from Don Venerando, who lived just near and also had land at Camemi, next to the field of Uncle Cheli.

  “Don’t you tell anybody why Uncle Vito sent you away,” said the mother to her boy. “If you do, nobody will take you on as a hired lad.” And Santo added as well: “Don’t say anything about having Tertian fever, because if you do nobody will want you, knowing you’re ill.”

  However, Don Venerando took him for his flock at Santa Margherita, where the shepherd was robbing him right and left, and doing him more hurt even than the sheep in the corn. “I’ll give you medicine myself, and so you’ll have no excuse for going to sleep, and letting the sheep rove where they like.”

  Don Venerando had developed a kindly feeling toward all the family, out of love for Lucia, whom he used to see from his little terrace when he was taking the air after dinner. “If you’d like to give the girl as well I’ll give her half a dollar a month.” And he said moreover that Carmenio could go to Santa Margherita with his mother, because the old woman was losing ground from day to day, and with the flock she would at any rate not lack for eggs, and milk, and a bit of mutton broth, when a sheep died. Redhead stripped herself of the best of anything she had worth taking, to get together a little bundle of white washing for the old woman. It was now sowing time, and they c
ouldn’t come and go every day from Licciardo, and winter, the season of scarcity of everything, would be on them again. So now Lucia said she absolutely would go as servant in the house of Don Venerando.

  They put the old woman on the ass, Santo on one side and Carmenio on the other, and the bundle behind; and the mother, while she let them have their way with her, said to her daughter, looking at her with heavy eyes from her blanched face: “Who knows if we shall ever see one another again? They say I shall come back in April. You live in the fear of the Lord, in your master’s house. Anyhow you’ll want for nothing there.” Lucia sobbed in her apron, and Redhead did the same, poor thing. At that moment they had made peace, and held their arms around each other, weeping together.

  “Redhead has got a good heart,” said her husband. “The trouble is we aren’t rich enough to be always fond of one another. When hens have got nothing else to peck at in the fowl house, they peck at one another.”

  Lucia was now well settled in Don Venerando’s house, and she said she never wanted to leave it till she died, as folks always say, to show their gratitude to the master. She had as much bread and soup as she wanted, a glass of wine every day, and her own plate of meat on Sundays and holidays. So that her month’s wages lay in her pocket untouched, and at evening she had also time to spin herself linen for her dowry on her own account. She had already got the man ready to hand, there in the selfsame house: Brasi the kitchen man who did the cooking and also helped in the fields when necessary. The master had got rich in the same way, in service at the baron’s, and now he was a Don, and had farmland and cattle in abundance. Because Lucia came from a respectable family that had fallen on evil days, and they knew she was honest, they had given her the lighter jobs to do, to wash the dishes, and go down into the cellar, and look after the fowls; with a cupboard under the stairs to sleep in, quite like a little bedroom, with a bed and a chest of drawers and everything; so that Lucia never wanted to leave till she died. Meanwhile she turned her eyes on Brasi, and confided to him that in two or three years she’d have a bit of savings of her own and would be able to “go out into the world,” if the Lord called her.