A Very Italian Christmas Read online

  Brasi was deaf in that ear. But Lucia pleased him, with her eyes as black as coals, and the good flesh she had on her bones, and for her part she liked Brasi, too; a little, curly-headed fellow with the delicate cunning face of a little fox-dog. While they were washing dishes or putting wood under the boiler he invented every kind of roguery to make her laugh, as if he was trying to rouse her up. He squirted water on the back of her neck, and stuck endive leaves in her hair. Lucia squealed, in a subdued manner, so that the masters shouldn’t hear; she took refuge in the corner by the oven, her face as red as fire, and she threw dishrags and twigs in his face, while the water trickled down her back like a thrill.

  “With meat you make rissoles—I’ve made mine, you make yours.”

  “I won’t,” replied Lucia. “I don’t like these jokes.”

  Brasi pretended to be mortified. He picked up the leaf of endive, which she had thrown at him, and stuck it in his bosom, inside his shirt, grumbling: “This belongs to me. I don’t touch you. It belongs to me and is going to stop here. Don’t you want something from me, to put in the same place, you?” And he pretended to pull out a handful of his hair to offer her, sticking out the length of his tongue as he did so.

  She punched him with the solid punches of a peasant woman, which made him hunch up his back, and gave him bad dreams at night, he said. She seized him like a little dog by the hair, and found a certain pleasure in thrusting her fingers in that soft, curly wool.

  “Keep it up! Keep it up! I’m not touchy like you, and I’d let myself be pounded to sausage meat by your hands.”

  One day Don Venerando caught him at these games, and made the devil of a row. He wasn’t going to have carryings-on in his house; he’d kick them both out if there was any more of it. And yet when he found the girl alone in the kitchen he took her by the chin and wanted to caress her with two fingers.

  “No! No!” replied Lucia, “I don’t like those sort of carryings-on. If you don’t leave me alone I’ll get my things and go.”

  “You like them from him all right, you like them from him. And yet not from me who are your master? What do you mean by it? Don’t you know I can give you gold rings and gold earrings with pendants, and make you up your dowry if I like.”

  Certainly he could, Brasi assured her, for the master had any amount of money, and his wife wore a silk mantle like a lady, now that she was old and thin as a mummy, for which reason her husband came down to the kitchen to have his little joke with the maids. And he came as well to watch his own interests, how much wood they burned, and how much meat they were putting down to roast. He was rich, yes, but he knew what it cost to get property together, and he quarreled all day long with his wife, who had no end of vanities in her head, now that she played the lady, and had taken to complaining of the smoke from the firewood and the nasty smell of onions.

  “I want to gather my dowry together with my own hands,” retorted Lucia. “My mother’s daughter wants to remain an honest girl, in case any Christian should ask her to be his wife.”

  “Remain it then!” replied her master. “You’ll see what a grand dowry it will be, and how many men will come after your honesty!”

  If the macaroni was a little overcooked, if Lucia brought to table a couple of fried eggs that smelled a bit singed, Don Venerando abused her thoroughly, quite another man in his wife’s presence, with his stomach stuck out and his voice loud. Did they think they were making swill for the pigs? With two servants in the kitchen sending everything to rack and ruin! Another time he’d throw the dish in her face! The mistress, blessed dear, didn’t want all that racket, because of the neighbors, and she sent away the servant, squealing in falsetto: “Be off into the kitchen; get out of here, you jackanapes! You wastrel!”

  Lucia went to cry her eyes out in the corner by the oven, but Brasi consoled her, with that tricky face of his.

  “What does it matter? Let them rattle! If we took any notice of the masters it would be poor us! The eggs smelled burned? All the worse for them! I can’t split the wood in the yard and turn the eggs at the same time. They make me do the cooking and the outside work as well, and then they expect to be waited on like the king. I should think they’ve forgotten the days when he used to eat bread and onion under an olive tree, and she used to go gleaning corn.”

  Then maidservant and cook discussed their “misfortunes,” born as they were of “respectable people,” and their parents were richer than the master, once upon a time. Brasi’s father was a cart builder, no less, and it was the son’s own fault if he hadn’t wanted to follow the same trade, but had taken it into his head to go wandering around the fairs, following the cart of the travelling draper, and it was then he had learnt to cook and look after a horse and cattle.

  Lucia recommenced the litany of her woes—her father, the cattle, Redhead, the bad harvest—both of them alike, she and Brasi, in that kitchen; they seemed made for each other.

  “What, another case of your brother and Redhead?” replied Brasi. “Much obliged!” However he did not want to insult her with it, straight to her face. He didn’t care a rap that she was a peasant. He didn’t reject her out of pride. But they were both of them poor, and it would have been better to throw themselves down the well with a stone around their necks.

  Lucia swallowed that bitter pill without saying a word, and if she wanted to cry she went and hid in the stair cupboard, or in the oven corner, when Brasi wasn’t there. For she was now very fond of that Christian, what with being with him in front of the fire all day long. The reprimands and abuse of the master she took upon herself, and kept the best plate of food for him, and the fullest glass of wine, and went into the yard to chop wood for him, and had learned to turn the eggs and dish up the macaroni to a nicety. Brasi, as he saw her crossing herself, with her bowl on her knees, before she began to eat, said to her: “Have you never seen food in your life before?”

  He grumbled at everything all the time; that it was a galley slave’s life, and that he had only three hours an evening to go for a walk or to go to the inn. Lucia sometimes went so far as to ask him, with her head bent and her face growing red: “Why do you go to the inn? Leave the inn alone, it’s not the place for you.”

  “Anybody can see you’re a peasant,” he replied. “You folks think there’s the devil in the public house. I was born of shop workers, masters of their trade, my dear. I am not a clodhopper!”

  “I say it for your good. You spend all your money, and besides there’s always a chance of you starting a quarrel with somebody.”

  Brasi felt himself soften at these words, and at those eyes which avoided looking at him. And he allowed himself the gratification of asking:

  “Well, does it matter to you, anyhow?”

  “No, it doesn’t matter to me. I speak for your own sake.”

  “Well, doesn’t it get on your nerves, stooping here in the house all day long?”

  “No, I thank the Lord I am so well off, and I wish all my own people were like me, and lacked for nothing.”

  She was just drawing the wine, squatting with the jug between her knees, and Brasi had come down into the cellar with her to show her a light. As the cellar was big and dark as a church, and not even a fly was to be heard in that subterranean place, only they two alone, Brasi and Lucia, he put his arm around her neck and kissed her on her coral-red mouth.

  The poor lass remained overcome, as she crouched with her eyes on the jug, and they were both silent, she hearing his heavy breathing, and the gurgling of the wine. But then she gave a stifled cry, drawing back all trembling, so that a little of the red froth was spilled on the floor.

  “Why what’s amiss?” exclaimed Brasi. “As if I’d given you a slap on the face! It isn’t true then that you like me?”

  She dared not look him in the face, though she was dying to. She stared at the spilled wine, embarrassed, stammering:

  “Oh poor me! Oh poor me! What have I done? The master’s wine!”

  “Eh! Let it go; he’s go
t plenty, the master has! Listen to me rather. Don’t you care for me? Say it, yes or no!”

  This time she let him take her hand, without replying, and when Brasi asked her to give him the kiss back again, she gave it him, red with something that was not altogether shame.

  “Have you never had one before?” asked Brasi laughing. “What a joke! You are all trembling, as if I’d said I was going to kill you.”

  “Yes, I do like you,” she replied, “but I could hardly tell you. Don’t take any notice if I’m trembling. It’s because I was frightened about the wine.”

  “There now, think of that! You do, eh? Since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Since that saying we were made for one another.”

  “Ah!” said Brasi, scratching his head. “Let’s go up, the master might come.”

  Lucia was all happiness since that kiss, it seemed to her as if Brasi had sealed on her mouth his promise to marry her. But he never spoke of it, and if the girl tried him on that score, he replied: “What are you bothering about? Besides, what’s the good putting our necks in the yoke, when we can be together just as if we were married.”

  “No, it’s not the same. Now you fend for yourself and I fend for myself, but when we are married, we shall be one.”

  “And a lovely thing that will be, an’ all! Besides, we don’t belong to the same walk of life. It would be different if you had a bit of dowry.”

  “Ah! What a black heart you’ve got! No! You’ve never cared for me!”

  “Yes, I have! And I’m ready for you for whatever you want of me; but without talking about that there—”

  “No! I don’t want any of that sort of thing! Leave me alone, and don’t look at me anymore!”

  Now, she knew what men were like. All liars and traitors. She didn’t want to hear of it anymore. She’d rather throw herself headfirst down the well; she wanted to become a Daughter of Mary; she wanted to take her good name and throw it out the window! What good was it to her, without a dowry? She wanted to break her neck with that old creature her master, and get her dowry out of her shame. Don Venerando was always hanging round her, first saying nice things and then nasty, looking after his own interests, seeing if they put too much wood on the fire, how much oil they used for the frying, sending Brasi to buy a half a penny’s worth of snuff, and trying to take Lucia by the chin, running around after her in the kitchen, on tiptoe so his wife shouldn’t hear, scolding the girl for her lack of respect for him, making him run in that fashion! “No! No!” She was like a mad cat. She’d rather take her things and go! “And where shall you find anything to eat? And how shall you find a husband, without a dowry? Look at these earrings! Then I’ll give you fifty notes for your dowry. Brasi would have both his eyes pulled out, for fifty notes.”

  Ah, that black-hearted Brasi! He left her in the wicked hands of her master, which trembled as they pawed at her. Left her with the thought of her mother, who hadn’t long to live; and of the bare house empty of everything except trouble, and of Pino the Tome who had thrown her over to go and eat the bread of the widow! He left her with the temptation of the earrings and the fifty notes in her head!

  And one day she came into the kitchen with her face all dismayed, and the gold pendants dangling against her cheeks. Brasi opened his eyes, and said to her; “How fine you look now, Neighbor Lucia!”

  “Ah! You like me in them? All right, all right!”

  Brasi, now that he saw the earrings and the rest, strove so hard to show himself helpful and useful to her, that you might have thought she had become another mistress in the house. He left her the fuller plate, and the best seat at the fire. And he opened his heart wide to her, that they were two poor things both of them, and it did your soul good to tell your troubles to somebody you were fond of. And as soon as he could scrape fifty notes together he’d set up a little public house and take a wife. He in the kitchen, she behind the bar. And then you weren’t at anybody’s bidding. If the master liked to do them a good turn, he could do it without hurting himself, because fifty notes was a pinch of snuff to him. And Brasi wouldn’t look down his nose, not him! One hand washes the other in this world. And it wasn’t his fault if he tried to earn his living as best he could. Poverty wasn’t a sin.

  But Lucia went red-and-white, her eyes swelled with tears, or she hid her face in her apron. After some time she didn’t show herself outside the house, neither for Mass, nor for confession, nor at Easter, nor at Christmas. In the kitchen she hid herself in the darkest corner, with her face dropped, huddled in the new dress her master had given her, wide around the waist.

  Brasi consoled her with kind words. He put his arm round her neck, felt the fine stuff of her frock, and praised it. Those gold earrings were made for her. Anybody who is well dressed and has money in her pocket has no need to feel ashamed and walk with her eyes down; above all when the eyes are as lovely as Neighbor Lucia’s. The poor thing took courage by looking into his face with those same eyes, still overcome, and she stammered: “Do you mean it, Master Brasi? Do you still care for me?”

  “Yes, yes, I do really!” replied Brasi, with his hand on his conscience. “But is it my fault if I’m not rich enough to marry you? If you’d got fifty notes, I’d marry you with my eyes shut.”

  Don Venerando had now taken to liking him also, and gave him his old clothes and his broken boots. When he went down into the cellar he gave him a good pot of wine, saying to him:

  “Here, drink my health!”

  And his fat belly shook with laughing, seeing the grimaces which Brasi made, and hearing him stuttering to Lucia, pale as a dead man: “The master is a gentleman, Neighbor Lucia! Let the neighbors cackle, they’re all jealous, because they’re dying with hunger, and they’d like to be in your shoes.”

  Santo, the brother, heard the gossip in the square some month or so later. He ran to his wife, staggered. Poor they had always been, but honorable. Redhead was also overwhelmed, and she ran in dismay to her sister-in-law, who couldn’t utter a word. But when she came back home, she was quite different, serene and with roses in her cheeks.

  “If you did but see! A chest as high as this, full of white goods! And rings, and pendant earrings, and necklaces of fine gold. Then there are fifty notes for the dowry. A real God’s provision!”

  “And what by that?” the brother kept saying from time to time, unable to take it all in. “At least she might have waited till our mother had closed her eyes!”

  All this took place in the year of the snow, when a good many roofs fell in, and there was a great mortality among the cattle of the district, God preserve us!

  At Lamia and on the Mount of Santa Margherita, as folks saw that livid evening declining, heavy with ill-omened clouds, so that the oxen looked suspiciously behind them, and mooed, all the people stood outside their huts to gaze far off toward the sea, with one hand over their eyes, not speaking. The bell of the Old Monastery, at the top of the village, was ringing to drive away the bad night, and on the Castle hillcrest there was a great swarming of goodwives, seen black against the pale sky rim, watching the Dragon’s Tail in the sky, a pitch-black stripe that smelled of sulfur, they said, and which meant it was going to be a bad night. The women made signs with their fingers to conjure him away, the dragon, and they showed him the little medal of the Madonna on their bare breasts, and spat in his face, making the sign of the cross upon themselves right down to their navels, and praying God and the souls in purgatory, and Santa Lucia, whose eve it was, to protect their fields, their cattle, and also their men, all living creatures that were outside the village. At the beginning of winter Carmenio had gone with the flock to Santa Margherita. His mother wasn’t well that evening, and tossed in her bed, with her dilated eyes, and wouldn’t keep quiet like she usually did, but wanted this, and wanted that, and wanted to get up, and wanted them to turn her over onto the other side. Carmenio had run around for a while, attending to her, trying to do something. Then he had posted himself by the bed, stupefied, with his
hands clutching his hair.

  The hut was across the stream, in the bed of the valley, between two great rocks which leaned over the roof. Opposite, the coast, seeming to stand on end, was beginning to fade in the darkness which was rising from the valley, naked and black with stones, and between the stones the white stripe of the road lost itself. When the sun was setting the neighbors had come from the flock in the cactus grove, to see if the sick woman wanted anything; but she was lying quite still in her bit of a bed, with her face upward and her nose going black, as if dusted with soot.

  “A bad sign!” Herdsman Decu had said. “If I hadn’t got the sheep up above, and the bad weather that’s coming on, I wouldn’t leave you alone tonight. Call me, if there’s anything!”

  Carmenio said yes, with his head leaning against the doorpost; but seeing him going away step by step, to be lost in the night, he had a great desire to run after him, to begin to shout, and tear his hair—to do he knew not what.

  “If anything happens,” shouted Herdsman Decu from the distance, “run up to the flock in the cactus thicket, up there, there’s people there.”

  The flock was still to be seen on the rocky height, skywards, in that dim of twilight which still gathered on the tops of the mountains, and penetrated the thickets of the cactus. Far, far away, toward Lamia and the plain, was heard the howling of dogs—waow! waow! waow!—the sound coming right up to there and making your bones turn cold.

  Then the sheep suddenly were possessed and began to rush about in a mass in the enclosure, driven by a mad terror, as if they heard the wolf in the neighborhood; and at that frantic clanging of sheep bells, it seemed as if the shadows had become lit up with so many fiery eyes, all going around. Then the sheep stopped still, huddled close together, with their noses down to the ground, and the dog with one long and lamentable howl, left off barking, seated there on his tail.