By Giovanni Verga
Translated by Frederic Taber Cooper.
After Turridu Macca, Mistress Nunzia’s son, came home from soldiering, he used to strut every Sunday, peacock-like, in the public square, wearing his rifleman’s uniform, and his red cap that looked just like that of the fortune-teller waiting for custom behind the stand with the cage of canaries. The girls all rivaled each other in making eyes at him as they went their way to mass, with their noses down in the folds of their shawls; and the young lads buzzed about him like so many flies. Besides, he had brought back a pipe, with the king on horseback on the bowl, as natural as life; and he struck his matches on the back of his trousers, raising up one leg as if he were going to give a kick. But for all that, Master Angelo’s daughter Lola had not once shown herself, either at mass or on her balcony, since her betrothal to a man from Licodia, who was a carter by trade, and had four Sortino mules in his stable. No sooner had Turridu heard the news than, holy great devil! but he wanted to rip him inside out, that was what he wanted to do to him, that fellow from Licodia. However, he did nothing to him at all, but contented himself with going and singing every scornful song he knew beneath the fair one’s window.
“Has Mistress Nunzia’s Turridu nothing at all to do,” the neighbors asked, “but pass his nights in singing, like a lonely sparrow?”
At last he came face to face with Lola, on her way back from praying to Our Lady of Peril; and at sight of him she turned neither white nor red, as though he were no concern of hers.
“It is a blessing to have sight of you!” said he.
“Oh, friend Turridu, I was told that you came back around the first of the month.”
“And I too was told many other things besides!” he answered. “So it is true that you are going to marry Alfio the carter?”
“If such is the will of God!” answered Lola, drawing together beneath her chin the two corners of her kerchief.
“You do the will of God by taking or leaving as it pays you best! And it was the will of God that I should come home from so far away to hear such fine news, Mistress Lola!”
The poor fellow still tried to make a show of indifference, but his voice had grown husky; and he walked on ahead of the girl with a swagger that kept the tassel of his cap dancing back and forth upon his shoulders. It really hurt the girl to see him with such a long face, but she had not the heart to deceive him with fair words.
“Listen, friend Turridu,” she said at length, “you must let me go on to join the other girls. What would folks be saying if we were seen together?”
“That is true,” replied Turridu; “now that you are to marry Alfio, who has four mules in his stable, it won’t do to set people talking. My mother, on the other hand, poor woman, had to sell our one bay mule, and that little bit of vineyard down yonder on the high-road, during the time that I was soldiering. The time is gone when the Lady Bertha span; and you no longer give a thought to the time when we used to talk together from window to courtyard, and when you gave me this handkerchief just before I went away, into which God knows how many tears I wept at going so far that the very name of our land seemed forgotten. But now good-by, Mistress Lola, let us square accounts and put an end to our friendship.”
Mistress Lola and the carter were married; and on the following Sunday she showed herself on her balcony, with her hands spread out upon her waist, to show off the big rings of gold that her husband had given her.
Turridu kept passing and repassing through the narrow little street, with his pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, pretending indifference and ogling the girls; but inwardly he was eating his heart out to think that Lola’s husband had all that gold, and that she pretended not even to notice him as he passed by.
“I’d like to take her from under his very eyes, the dirty dog!” he muttered.
Across from Alfio’s house lived Master Cola, the vine-grower, who was rich as a porker, so they said, and had an unmarried daughter. Turridu said so much, and did so much, that Master Cola took him into his employ; then he began to haunt the house and make pretty speeches to the girl.
“Why don’t you go and say all these fine things to Mistress Lola?” Santa answered him.
“Mistress Lola is a big lady! Mistress Lola is wife of one of the crowned heads now!”
“I suppose I am not good enough for the crowned heads.”
“You are worth a hundred such as Lola; and I know one fellow who would never so much as look at Mistress Lola or her patron saint when you are around. For she isn’t fit even to carry your shoes for you, indeed she isn’t!”
“When the fox found that he couldn’t reach the grapes—”
“He said, ‘how lovely you are, you sweet little grape!’”
“Oh! come, hands off, friend Turridu.”
“Are you afraid I am going to eat you?”
“No, I am not afraid of you nor of him you serve.”
“Ah! your mother was from Licodia, we all know that. Your blood boils quickly! Oh! I could eat you up with my eyes!”
“Then eat me up with your eyes, and leave no crumbs; but meanwhile pick up that bundle of twigs for me.”
“For your sake I would pick up the whole house, that I would!”
To hide her blushes, she threw at him the fagot she happened to have in her hands, but for a wonder missed him.
“Cut it short! Talking doesn’t bind fagots.”
“If I was rich, I should be looking for a wife just like you, Santa!”
“I shall not marry a crowned head, as Mistress Lola did; but I shall have my dower, as well as she, when the Lord sends me the right man.”
“We know that you are rich, yes, we know that!”
“If you know so much, then stop talking, for my father will soon be here, and I don’t care to have him catch me in the courtyard.”
The father began to make a wry face, but the girl pretended not to notice, for the tassel of the rifleman’s hat had set her heart-strings quivering and was forever dancing before her eyes. After the father had put Turridu out of the door, the daughter opened her window to him, and would stand chatting with him all the evening, until the whole neighborhood could talk of nothing else.
“I am crazy about you,” Turridu would say; “I am losing my sleep and my appetite.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“I wish I was the son of Victor Emanuel, so that I could marry you!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“By our Lady, I could eat you up, like a piece of cake!”
“I don’t believe it!”
“On my honor!”
“Oh, mother mine!”
Lola, listening night after night, hidden behind a pot of sweet basil, turning first pale and then red, one day called down to Turridu: “How is it, friend Turridu, that old friends no longer greet each other?”
“Alas!” sighed Turridu, “blessed is he who may greet you!”
“If you care to give me greeting, you know where my home is,” answered Lola.
Turridu came back to greet her so often that Santa took notice of it, and closed her window in his face. The neighbors pointed him out with a smile or a nod of the head when he passed by in his rifleman’s uniform. Lola’s husband was away, making a circuit of the village fairs with his mules.
“On Sunday I mean to go to confession, for last night I dreamt of black grapes,” said Lola.
“Wait a while! wait a while!” begged Turridu.
“No, now that Easter is so near, my husband would want to know why I have not been to confession.”
“Ahah!” murmured Master Cola’s Santa, waiting for her turn on her knees before the confessional where Lola was washing herself clean of her sins. “On my soul, it is not to Rome I would send you to do penance!”
Friend Alfio came home with his mules and a pretty penny of profit, and brought his wife a present of a fine new dress for the holidays.
“You do well to bring her presents,” his neighbor Santa said to him, “for while you are away your wife has been trimming up the honor of your house!”
Master Alfio was one of those carters who wear the cap well down over one ear, and to hear his wife talked of in this fashion made him change color as though he had been stabbed. “Holy big devil!” he exclaimed, “if you have not seen aright, I won’t leave you eyes to weep with, you and your whole family!”
“I have forgotten how to weep!” answered Santa; “I did not weep even when I saw with these very eyes Mistress Nunzia’s son, Turridu, go in at night to your wife’s house.”
“Then it is well,” replied Alfio; “many thanks to you.”
Now that the husband was home again, Turridu no longer wasted his days in the little street, but drowned his sorrow at the tavern with his friends; and on Easter eve they had on the table a big dish of sausage. When Master Alfio came in, just from the way he fastened his eyes upon him, Turridu understood what business he had come on, and laid his fork down upon his plate.
“How can I serve you, friend Alfio?” he asked.
“Nothing important; friend Turridu, it is some time since I have seen you, and I wanted to talk with you of the matter that you know about.”
Turridu had at once offered him a glass, but Alfio put it aside with his hand. Then Turridu arose and said to him: “Here I am, friend Alfio.”
The carter threw an arm around his neck.
“If you will come to-morrow morning down among the prickly pears of Canziria, we can talk of this affair, friend Turridu.”
“Wait for me on the high-road at sunrise, and we will go together.”
With these words they exchanged the kiss of challenge. Turridu seized the carter’s ear between his teeth, and thus solemnly bound himself not to fail him.
The friends had all silently withdrawn from the dish of sausage, and accompanied Turridu all the way to his home. Mistress Nunzia, poor woman, was accustomed to wait for him late every night.
“Mother,” said Turridu, “do you remember when I went away to be a soldier, and you thought that I was never coming back! Give me a kiss, such as you gave me then, for to-morrow I am going on a long journey!”
Before daybreak he took his clasp-knife, which he had hidden under the straw at the time he went away as a conscript, and started with it for the prickly pears of Canziria.
“Holy Mother, where are you going in such a rage?” sobbed Lola in terror as her husband started to leave the house.
“I am not going far,” answered Alfio, “but it will be far better for you if I never come back.”
Lola, in her night-gown, prayed at the foot of her bed, and pressed to her lips the rosary which Fra Bernadino had brought her from the Holy Land, and recited all the Ave Marias that there were beads for.
“Friend Alfio,” began Turridu after he had walked quite a bit of the way beside his companion, who remained silent, with his cap drawn over his eyes, “as true as God himself, I know that I am in the wrong, and I ought to let you kill me. But before I came here, I saw my old mother, who rose early to see me start, on the pretext that she had to tend the chickens; but her heart must have told her the truth. And as true as God himself, I am going to kill you like a dog, sooner than have the poor old woman weeping for me.”
“So much the better,” replied Master Alfio, stripping off his jacket, “strike your hardest, and so will I.”
They were both worthy foes. Turridu received the first thrust, and was quick enough to catch it on his arm. When he paid it back, he gave good measure, and aimed for the groin.
“Ah, friend Turridu, you have really made up your mind to kill me?”
“Yes, I told you so; ever since I saw my old mother going out to feed the chickens, her face floats all the time before my eyes.”
“Then open your eyes wide,” Alfio called to him, “for I am going to square accounts with you.”
And as he stood on guard, crouching ever, so as to hold his left hand upon his wound which was aching, and with his elbow almost touching the ground, he suddenly caught up a handful of dust and threw it into his opponent’s eyes.
“Oh!” howled Turridu, “I am done for!”
He sought to save himself by making desperate leaps backward; but Alfio overtook him with another blow in the stomach and a third in the throat.
“And the third is for the honor of my house, that you made free with. Now, perhaps, your mother will forget to feed her chickens.”
Turridu stumbled about for a moment, here and there among the prickly pears, and then fell like a log. The blood gurgled in a crimson foam out of his throat, and he had no chance even to gasp out, “Oh, mother mine!”
