A Very Italian Christmas Page 9

  “My mother was calm; she gathered the beads in her apron and began to thread them once more. She left me to fall silent; then she said: ‘And why couldn’t the other two have been the sons of the stranger’s lover?’ ‘Because they had gold coins to give their brides, not crosses …’ ‘The coins have crosses on them, too,’ she said, ‘Listen. The stranger passes through the home of all the brides-to-be and leaves a cross with every one of them. Do you think the three girls didn’t go after him last night? Of course they did, and they got their cross, and their sons will be his sons, too. How simple you are!’ she said, seeing my perplexity. ‘Do you not believe in God? Yes, you believe in God and Christ, and you know that Christ isn’t dead. He lives forever, and in the world, with us, and wanders without end, and he goes into the homes and blesses those who have given him alms, multiplying their loaves of bread; he blesses those who are good of heart, and turns their water into wine; and to every wife he gives a cross: of gold, but still, a cross! It was him, and you’re a simpleton, and you didn’t recognize him!’

  “And so the cross,” the old man finished, “remained with me.”

  1913

  BLACK BREAD

  Giovanni Verga

  Neighbor Nanni had hardly taken his last breath, and the priest in his stole was still there, when the quarrel broke out among the children as to who should pay the costs of the burial, and they went at it till the priest with the aspersorium under his arm was driven away.

  For Neighbor Nanni’s illness had been a long one, the sort that eats away the flesh off your bones and the things out of your house. Every time the doctor spread his piece of paper on his knee to write out the prescription, Neighbor Nanni watched his hands with beseeching eyes, and mumbled, “Write it short, your honor; anyhow write it short, for mercy’s sake.”

  The doctor carried out his own job. Everybody in the world carries out his own job. In carrying out his, Farmer Nanni had caught that fever down there at Lamia, land blessed by God, producing corn as high as a man. In vain the neighbors said to him, “Neighbor Nanni, you’ll leave your bones on that half-profits farm!”

  “As if I was a baron,” he replied, “to do what I like and choose!”

  The brothers, who were like the fingers on the same hand as long as their father lived, had now each one to think for himself. Santo had a wife and children on his back; Lucia was left without any dowry, as good as turned on the street; and Carmenio, if he wanted to have bread to eat, would have to go away from home and find himself a master. Then the mother, who was old and ailing, didn’t know whose business it was to keep her, for none of the three children had anything at all.

  The oxen, the sheep, the store in the granary had all gone with their owner. There remained the dark house, with the empty bed, and the equally dark faces of the orphans. Santo carried his things across, with Redhead, his wife, and said he’d take his mamma to live with him. “Then he won’t have to pay rent,” said the others. Carmenio made up his own bundle and went as shepherd to Herdsman Vito, who had a piece of grazing land at Camemi; and Lucia threatened to go into service rather than live with her sister-in-law.

  “No!” said Santo. “It shan’t be said that my sister has to be servant to other folks.”

  “He wants me to be servant to Redhead,” grumbled Lucia.

  The great question was this sister-in-law who had driven herself into the family like a nail. “What is there to be done, now I’ve got her?” sighed Santo shrugging his shoulders. “I should have listened in time to that good soul, my father.”

  That good soul had preached to him: “Leave that Nena alone, for she’s got no dowry, nor house, nor land.”

  But Nena was always at his side, at the Castelluccio farm; whether he was hoeing or mowing, she was there gathering the corn into sheaves, or removing the stones from under his feet with her hands; and when they rested, at the door of the great farm-place, they sat together with their backs to the wall, at the hour when the sun was dying over the fields, and everything was going still.

  “Neighbor Santo, if God is good you won’t have lost your labors this year.”

  “Neighbor Santo, if the harvest turns out well, you ought to take the big field, down on the plain; because the sheep have been on it, and it’s rested for two years.”

  “Neighbor Santo, this winter, if I’ve time, I want to make you a pair of thick leggings to keep you warm.”

  It was while he was working at Castelluccio that Santo had gotten to know Nena, a girl with red hair, daughter of the keeper, whom nobody wanted. So for that reason, poor thing, she made a fuss of every dog that passed, and she denied herself the bread from her mouth in order to make neighbor Santo a present of a black silk stocking cap, every year at Saint Agrippina’s Day, and to have a flask of wine for him, or a piece of cheese, when he arrived at Castelluccio. “Take this, for my sake, Neighbor Santo. It’s the same as the master drinks.” Or else: “I’ve been thinking, you never had a bit of something to eat with your bread—not all last week.”

  He didn’t say no, but took everything. The most he ever did was to say out of politeness: “This won’t do, Neighbor Nena, you deny your own self to give to me.”

  “I like it better for you to have it.”

  And then, every Saturday night when Santo went home, that dear departed soul used to tell him again: Leave that Nena alone, for she hasn’t got this; leave that Nena alone, for she hasn’t got the other.

  “I know I’ve got nothing,” said Nena as she sat on the low wall facing the setting sun. “I’ve neither land nor houses; and to get together that bit of linen I’ve had to go without bread to eat. My father is a poor keeper, who lives at his master’s charge, and nobody wants to saddle himself with a wife without a dowry.”

  Nevertheless the nape of her neck was fair, as it usually is with red-haired people; and as she sat with her head bowed, all those thoughts heavy inside it, the sun glowed among the golden-colored hairs behind her ears, and lit on her cheeks that had a fine down like a peach; and Santo looked at her flax-blue eyes, and at her breast which filled her stays and swayed like the cornfield.

  “Don’t you worry, Neighbor Nena,” he said. “You won’t go short of husbands.”

  She shook her head, saying no; and her red earrings that were almost like coral caressed her cheeks. “No, no, Neighbor Santo. I know I’m not beautiful, and nobody wants me.”

  “Look though!” said he all at once, as the idea came to him. “Look how opinions vary! They say red hair is ugly, and yet on you now it doesn’t strike me as bad.”

  The good departed soul, his father, when he saw that Santo was altogether smitten with Nena and wanted to marry her, had said to him one Sunday: “You want her whether or not, that redhead? Say the truth, you want her whether or not?”

  Santo, with his back to the wall and his hands behind him, didn’t dare to raise his head; but he nodded yes, yes, that he didn’t know what to do with himself without the redhead, and it was the will of God it should be so.

  “And have you given it a thought as to how you’re going to keep a wife? You know I can give you nothing. But I’ve one thing to tell you, and your mother here will say the same: Think it over before you go and get married, for bread is scarce, and children come quick.”

  His mother, crouching on the stool, pulled him by the jacket and said to him, sotto voce, with a long face: “Try and fall in love with the widow of Farmer Mariano, she’s rich, and she won’t ask a great deal of you, being part paralyzed.”

  “Oh yes!” grumbled Santo, “You may bet Farmer Mariano’s widow would take up with a beggar like me!”

  Neighbor Nanni also agreed that Farmer Mariano’s widow was looking for a husband as rich as herself, lame though she was. And then there’d have been that other misery to look forward to, seeing your grandchildren born lame as well.

  “Well, it’s for you to think about it,” he repeated to his son. “Remember that bread is scarce, and children come quick.”

 
Then toward evening on St. Bridget’s Day, Santo had met the redhead by chance, as she was gathering wild asparagus beside the path, and she blushed at seeing him as if she didn’t know quite well that he had to pass that way going back to the village, and she dropped down the hem of her skirt that she had turned up around her waist for going on all fours among the cactus plants. The young man looked at her, also went red in the face, and could say nothing. At last he began to stammer that the week was over and he was going home. “You’ve no messages to send to the village, Neighbor Nena? Tell me if I can do anything.”

  “If I’m going to sell the asparagus, I’ll come along with you, and we’ll go the same way,” said Redhead. And he, as if stupefied, nodded yes, yes; she added, with her chin on her heaving bosom: “But you don’t want me, women are a nuisance to you.”

  “I’d like to carry you in my arms, Neighbor Nena, carry you in my arms.”

  Then Neighbor Nena began to chew the corner of the red handkerchief she wore around her head. And Neighbor Santo again had nothing to say; but he looked at her, and looked at her, and changed his saddlebag from one shoulder to the other, as if he couldn’t find words to begin. The mint and the marjoram were making the air merry, and the side of the mountain, above the cacti, was all red with sunset. “You go now,” Nena said to him. “You go now, it’s late.” Then she stood listening to the crickets rattling away. But Santo didn’t move. “You go now, somebody might see us here by ourselves.”

  Neighbor Santo, who was really going at last, came out again with his old assertion, and another shake of the shoulder to settle his double sack, that he’d have carried her in his arms, he would, he’d have carried her if they’d been going the same road. And he looked Neighbor Nena in the eyes, and she avoided his looks and kept on seeking for the wild asparagus among the stones, and he watched her face that was as red as if the sunset were beating upon it.

  “No, Neighbor Santo, you go on by yourself, you know I’m a poor girl with no dowry.”

  “Let us do as Providence wishes, let us—”

  She kept on saying no, that she was not for him, and now her face was dark and frowning. Then Neighbor Santo, downcast, settled his bag on his shoulder and moved away, with bent head. But Redhead wanted at least to give him the asparagus that she had gathered for him. They’d make a nice little dish for him, if he would eat them for her sake. And she held out to him the two corners of the full apron. Santo put his arm around her waist and kissed her on the cheek, his heart melting inside him.

  At that moment her father appeared, and the girl ran away in a fright. The keeper had his gun on his arm, and didn’t see at all what should prevent him from laying Neighbor Santo out for practicing this treachery on him.

  “No! I’m not like that!” replied Santo with his hands crossed on his breast. “I want to marry your daughter, I do. Not for fear of the gun; but I’m the son of a good man, and Providence will help us because we do no wrong.”

  So the wedding took place on a Sunday, with the bride in her holiday dress, and her father the keeper in new boots in which he waddled like a tame duck. Wine and baked beans made even Neighbor Nanni merry, though his case of malaria was strong; and the mother took out of the chest a pound or two of worsted yarn which she had put aside toward a dowry for Lucia, who was already eighteen, and who combed and arranged her hair for half an hour every Sunday morning before going to Mass, looking at herself in the water of the washbowl, for a mirror.

  Santo, with the tips of his ten fingers stuck in the pockets of his coat, exulted as he looked at the red hair of his bride, at the yarn, and at all the celebration that there was for him that Sunday. The keeper, with a red nose, hobbled inside his shoes and wanted to kiss them all around, one after the other.

  “Not me!” said Lucia, sulky because of the yarn they were taking from her. “This isn’t water for my mouth.”

  She stayed in a corner pulling a sulky face, as if she already knew what her lot would be the moment her parents were gone.

  And now sure enough she had to cook the bread and sweep the house for her sister-in-law, who as soon as God sent daylight set off for the field with her husband, although she was again with child, she being worse than a cat for filling the house with little ones. There was more needed now than presents at Christmas and at St. Agrippina’s Day, or than the pretty talk she used to have with Neighbor Santo at Casteluccio. That swindler of a keeper had done well for himself marrying off his daughter without a dowry, and now Neighbor Santo had to see about maintaining her. Since he’d gotten Nena he saw that there wasn’t bread enough for the two of them, and that they’d got to wring it out of the earth at Licciardo, by the sweat of their brow.

  As they went to Licciardo with the double bag over their shoulder, wiping the sweat from their foreheads on their shirtsleeves, they had the young corn always in their mind and in front of their eyes; they saw nothing else but that between the stones of the path. It was to them like the thought of one who is sick and whom you have always heavy on your heart, that corn; first yellow, swamped in mud with all the rain; and then, when it did begin to get a bit of a hold, came the weeds, so that Nena had made pitiful work of both her hands, pulling them out one by one, bending down over all that load of her belly, drawing her skirt above her knees so as not to hurt the corn. And she didn’t feel the weight of her child, or the pains of her back, as if every green blade that she freed from the weeds was a child she had borne. And when at last she squatted on the little bank, panting, pushing her hair behind her ears with both her hands, she seemed to see before her the tall ears of June, bending over one above the other as the breeze touched them; and they would count up, she and her husband, as he was untying his soaking gaiters, and cleaning his hoe on the grass of the bank: So much seed they had taken, and therefore they’d have so much corn if the ear came to twelvefold or to tenfold or even to sevenfold; the stalk wasn’t very stout but the growth was thick. If only March was not too dry, and if only it didn’t rain except when rain was needed! Blessed Saint Agrippina must remember them! The sky was clear and the sun lingered in gold on the green meadows, from the fiery west, whence the larks fell singing on to the clods, like black dots. Spring was really beginning everywhere, in the cactus hedges, in the bushes of the little road, between the stones, on the roofs of the hamlets green with hope; and Santo, walking heavily behind his companion, who was bent beneath the sack of straw for the animals, with all that belly on her, felt his heart swell with tenderness for the poor thing, and went along talking to her, his voice broken by the steep climbs, about what he’d do if the Lord blessed the corn up to the last. Now they didn’t have to talk anymore about red hair, whether it was beautiful or ugly, or any such nonsense. And when treacherous May came with its mists to rob them of all their labors and their hopes of harvest, the husband and wife, seated once more on the bank watching the field going yellow under their eyes, like a sick man departing to the other world, said not a word, their elbows on their knees and their eyes stony in their pale faces.

  “This is God’s punishment!” muttered Santo. “That sainted soul my father told me how it would be.”

  And into the hovel of the poor penetrated the ill-humor of the black, muddy little road outside. Husband and wife turned their backs on each other, stupefied, and they quarreled every time Redhead asked for money to buy necessities, or whenever the husband came home late, or when there wasn’t enough wood for the winter, or when the wife became slow and idle with her childbearing; long faces, ugly words, and even blows. Santo seized Nena by her red hair, and she set her nails in his face; the neighbors came running up, and Redhead squealed that that villain wanted to make her have a miscarriage, and that he didn’t care if he sent a soul to hell. Then, when Nena had her baby, they made peace again, and Neighbor Santo went carrying the infant girl in his arms, as if he had fathered a princess, and ran to show her to his relations and his friends, he was so pleased. And for his wife, as long as she was in bed he made her broth, he swept t
he house, he cleaned the rice, he stood there in front of her to see that she wanted for nothing. Then he went to the door with the baby at his shoulder, like a wet nurse; and to anybody who asked him, as they were passing, he replied: “It’s a girl, neighbor! Bad luck follows me even here, and I’ve got a girl born to me. My wife couldn’t do any better than that.”

  And when Redhead got knocks from her husband, she turned around on her sister-in-law, who never did a hand’s turn to help in the house, and Lucia flew back at her saying that without having any husband of her own she’d got all the burden of other folk’s children foisted on her. The mother-in-law, poor thing, tried to make peace in these quarrels, repeating: “It’s my fault, I’m no good for anything now. I eat idle bread, I do.”

  She was no good for anything but to hear all those miseries, and to brood over them inside herself; Santo’s difficulties, his wife’s crying, the thought of her other son far away, a thought that stuck in her heart like a nail; Lucia’s bad temper, because she hadn’t got a rag of a Sunday frock and never saw so much as a dog pass under her window. On Sundays, if they called her to join the group of gossips who were chattering in the shadow, she replied with a shrug of the shoulders: “What do you want me to come for? To show you the silk frock I haven’t got?”

  Sometimes however Pino the Tome, him of the frogs, would join the group of neighbor women, though he never opened his mouth, but stood with his back to the wall and his hands in his pockets, listening, and spitting all over the place. Nobody knew what he came for; but when Neighbor Lucia appeared in the doorway, Pino looked at her from under his eyes, pretending to be turning to spit. And at evening, when all the street-doors were shut, he went so far as to sing her little songs outside the door, making his own bass for himself—hmmm! hmmm! hmmm! Sometimes the young fellows of the village going home late, recognizing his voice, would strike up the frog tune, to mock him.